“I have been a fool,” James declared, striding into the dormitory and throwing his Quidditch robes to the floor. “A mad fool!”
He stood in the centre of the floor, his pose that of a Strong Man Overcome with Emotion. Peter looked awestruck, Sirius did not appear to notice James at all, and Remus put down his quill.
“That’s nice,” he said. “D’you mean in life generally, or—”
“On Valentine’s Day!” James exclaimed. “Last year, remember, when I sent Evans those fifteen cards?”
“If only I could forget.”
Most of the cards had landed on Lily’s head all at once, but the singing one had unfortunately landed in her tea and begun a bubbling, drowned rendition of ‘I Like You Bleary Bleary Mush.’ James had been quite chuffed when Lily sent him an Owl in return, until Remus reluctantly explained the exact meaning of a Muggle restraining order.
“It was a stupid thing to do, I see that now,” James announced, pacing restlessly like a distrait hero on the moors.
Remus often thought that James’ mother was to blame for him turning out a bit of a poseur. She was a little old for a mum, and interested in Muggle things. James couldn’t help it if he had learned how to be a man from daytime soaps.
“I’m… glad you see that.”
“I thought it was romantic, James,” Peter put in.
“No, it was foolish. I’m older now, a man of the world, I know a girl shouldn’t be pursued like that. It’s wrong. Are you even listening to me?” he snapped in Sirius’ direction.
Sirius was mostly lounging on his bed like an Eastern prince expecting sherbet and slave girls, but he waved a languid hand for James to proceed. “Sure. Evans, her red-haired sauciness, you must have it, you will have it, you will swim in a pool of freckled delight… I have the speech memorised.”
“Actually,” Remus interrupted, “Maybe you should listen. James says he’s decided to stop pursuing Lily.”
James beamed at Remus. “Right, Moony! You’re the only one who understand me, and you will be my best man when we are married.”
“Sorry, I thought you said you were going to stop pursuing Lily…”
“Yes! Sending her cards, pshaw! It was the action of a boy, too young to understand what it takes to win a woman. What I shall do is woo her. Cards are not enough, you see,” James explained, his eyes gleaming manically. “Women don’t want cards. Women want flowers, and chocolate, and serenades. Or perhaps—wait for it—singing chocolate flowers.”
James leaned back to observe the full effect of his words.
“Pure genius,” Peter said promptly. “It can’t fail.”
“It’s a very nice thought,” Remus told him, “but perhaps you should reconsider.”
“You know,” Sirius remarked, “I think Evans fancies girls.”
“Sirius, don’t be ridiculous!” James said irritably. “Anyway, Evans is perfectly free to fancy girls once we are married. When I come home and kiss her and stare into her green, green eyes and then lead her up to the bedroom where she already has the latest Broomstick Monthly model installed, I won’t mind at all. I’m open-minded like that.”
Fabian coughed. “Evans is definitely not a lesbian,” he remarked. “Believe me.”
“WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?” James bellowed. “Because I know you don’t mean to talk disrespectfully about a decent witch who happens to be the one soul who is destined for mine and if you laid one finger on her, Prewett—”
Fabian shrank back, clearly regretting his rare foray into the Marauders’ affairs. James looked down at him in darkling fashion for a few moments, and then returned to his great plan.
“I’m thinking roses,” he said dreamily. “Beautiful milk chocolate roses, opening their little chocolatey mouths to sing ‘You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me.’ Because she’s good at Charms, you know! So I’m being thoughtful, which birds totally like, and then she’ll melt and see how insane she has been to reject a good man’s love all these years and she will fling herself on me and we’ll have five redhaired babies called Lily and Lila and Lilian and Lilabet and Chudley Cannons Potter.”
He began to hum ‘You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me’ with a terrible, glazed look of happiness on his face. He began to gather up paper and quills and headed for the library, pausing only once to ruffle up his hair, which was an all-time record in the James Potter Styling Annals.
“That’s amazing,” Sirius said as the door shut behind him.
“I know,” Peter agreed fervently. “How can one woman be so blind?”
Sirius swept on, treating Peter as so much coloured confetti in the Great Parade that was the Life of Sirius Black. “James has gone completely mental over this bird. I suppose we should’ve seen it coming, but… I mean, how can one tiny girl be all this trouble? They’re all, like, pretty much the same, aren’t they? Moony, you said I could get one if I wanted, didn’t you?”
Remus coughed. “Well, yes I did, but that was two years ago, Sirius.” Sirius gave him a wide uncomprehending stare. “Two years in which you have relentlessly and callously ignored the advances of the girls at Hogwarts—”
“They were making advances?” Sirius asked. “I call that thoughtless. Imagine if one of them had managed to distract me and ruin one of my pranks. The girls of Hogwarts need to learn to keep their distance, the filthy wenches.”
“Well, they have learned, that’s what I’m telling you. They’re a little more mature now,” Remus said patiently, “and they’ve seen past the, the cavalier attitude and the superficial good looks—”
Sirius looked greatly gratified. “Thank you, Moony!”
“I don’t think you’re taking my point.”
“He’s trying to tell you they call you Sirus ‘Crazy Eyes’ Black in the common room,” Fabian said casually.
Sirius looked deeply offended. “Well. Well. Every one of those wenches are getting pranked, you wait and see. I’ll give them Valentine cards. I’ll—I’ll—but we should put friends before revenge, unless we’re talking about revenge on that greasy piece Snape or any of my foul relatives or Filch or… but I digress. Marauders, Prongs needs our help!”
“I can’t believe we’re in sixth year and you guys are still using your queer little nicknames,” said Fabian Prewett, who apparently didn’t talk much for a reason.
“I can’t believe how much you’re getting pranked until you cry for your mother,” Sirius returned sharply. “Now will you be quiet? You’re not part of our gang. You couldn’t even pass our initiation rite.”
“Sirius, we never had an ini—”
“Moony, priorities, yeah? First we help James out with his lesbian bird, then we prank Prewett and all the other little yapping girls—” Sirius gave Fabian a severe look—“and then we have the coolest initiation rites ever. We’re going to have robes and vows and Firewhiskey shots, it’ll be wicked! But first I need my trusty second in command in possession of all his mental faculties. Quiet! I must hatch a devilishly brilliant plot.”
Sirius sat up on his bed, meditating like a Buddha and grinning like a fiend.
“I thought James was leader,” Peter whispered.
“Someone hush that wittering fool,” Sirius commanded.
Peter gave Remus an anxious look—he’s crazy, Moony, crazy! We should fetch James! He is manly and will protect us—and Fabian rolled his eyes. They were both so lucky Sirius had his eyes shut.
In the lovely, peaceful silence Remus began to cherish a beautiful dream about finishing his Arithmancy homework. Peter collected up James’ Quidditch robes. Fabian returned to his copy of Witch Weekly.
“AHA!” screamed the scion of the Most Ancient House of Black at the top of his voice.
Remus’ quill sputtered on the page and Peter yelped. Fabian remained determinedly immersed in his magazine.
“What Prongs loves is the chase!” announced Sirius, who had obviously been dipping into Witch Weekly himself. “That is what excites him, what drives him into a spiralling frenzy of madness and despair. All he needs to do is get some action from Evans, and then the scales will fall from his eyes!”
Sirius looked triumphantly around for applause.
“Sirius, Love Potions are not allowed, and what’s more once it wore off Lily would kill us dead.”
“Ah, dear Moony, sweet innocent Moony, therein lies the cleverness of my scheme! Lily won’t be involved at all. We need someone who can follow the right script, who is a part of our plans. It’s so obvious, so brilliantly simple. All we need to do is brew some Polyjuice Potion to turn one of us into Evans!”
”…” said Remus, and was alarmed when no sound came out. He tried again. “…”
“Then fake Evans snogs James, and James sees the light, dumps her, comes back to us and we reign forever as kings of chaos!”
Sirius raised a clenched fist to the sky. Fabian lifted his eyes to heaven.
“Okay, Padfoot,” Remus said weakly. “It’s not your fault. Insanity runs in your family.” He ignored Sirius’ wounded and affronted look, and went on. “I mean, think about it. Not only would it be deceiving Prongs—”
“For his own good! For the greater good. For the pranks, Moony, please think of the pranks.”
“But whichever one of us drew the short straw would have to snog James. Would have to snog James. Please think about that, Sirius, take all the time you like. Imagine James being your first snog!”
“Better Prongs than a girl,” Sirius opined firmly. “Girls smell funny and they giggle and they bounce and I can’t be having with it at all. Anyway, wouldn’t he be your first too?”
“Well…” Remus paused apologetically. “…well, no.”
“I hate this conversation,” muttered Fabian from the depths of his magazine. “I hate you all.”
“Moony! Moony, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Whatever happened to the oath of open confession between pranksters? It’s in our Marauders’ Scroll!”
“We don’t have a Marauders’ Scroll, though.”
“We nearly do,” Sirius pursued in an aggrieved sort of way. “It’s a work in progress.”
Remus surrendered, which was the only sensible option for those besieged by the Forces of Black. “Well, be that as it may, Sirius, what with you being… pranksexual and me liking to kiss girls, exactly how do you plan to—”
“GIRLS!” Sirius shouted. “In the plural? How many of them are we talking about, Moony, you enormous harlot?”
“I’ll do it,” said Peter.
Remus rubbed the back of his neck and thought yearningly of Arithmancy. “A few…”
“Why didn’t we know about this? Were you sneaking around behind our backs—I knew it!” Sirius announced, thumping his bedstead with an emphatic fist. “I knew you couldn’t really be in the library all those times! Traitor!”
Sirius fixed him with a gaze of outrage and amazement. Remus wilted under the heat of Sirius’ intense stare and wondered if he was supposed to say that it had meant nothing and he’d been thinking of pranks the whole time.
Peter took advantage of the silence to repeat his bombshell. “I’ll do it,” he offered. “I’ll be Evans.”
Sirius and Remus both turned to look at him. Peter reddened under their gaze.
“Are you sure, Peter?” Remus asked gently.
“Yes! Yes, absolutely, I want to do it,” Peter said, still red and speaking very fast. “For, um. The Marauders, and all.”
“Well, good for you!” Sirius exploded genially. “Excellent! Good show! That’s brilliant, that’s noble, that’s brotherhood, not wandering off faux-studying with girls like some Marauders I could mention. See? This is the kind of devotion we need, if we are to become truly legendary.”
Sirius gave Peter a look of pride, and then Remus a look of reproach. Remus was mildly pleased to see Sirius paying Peter some attention for a change: Remus knew that Sirius would’ve died for Peter, but sometimes he could have sworn Sirius forgot Peter’s name.
“Then it’s settled,” Sirius said, smiling beatifically. “All we need is for Wormtail to snog Prongs back into some sense, and then it’s all systems go for the Valentine Pranking of a Lifetime! I am overwhelmed by my own magnificence!”
He crowed and uncurled from his lotus position, fist raised to the ceiling, and then overbalanced and fell on the floor, bringing his scarlet counterpane on top of him.
“I wish I’d been Sorted into Ravenclaw,” Fabian muttered. “You guys are crazy.”
A few weeks later with Valentine’s Day drawing inexorably nearer, it began to dawn on Remus that this did not appear to be one of the daydreams Sirius toyed with and then forgot about, like the time he wanted Dumbledore and McGonagall to get married and have superchildren.
This time it was happening, and it was infinitely more terrifying even than Sirius waylaying him after every class to whisper ‘Think of the babies, Moony! Think of their enormous throbbing brains!’ Sirius had the Polyjuice Potion almost ready, Peter was blushing constantly and clinging to the plan like a limpet, and every time Remus suggested the plan might, in fact, be utterly insane, Sirius accused him of wanting the Marauders to disband so he could kiss girls all day long.
“Why are you trying to crush my dreams, Remus? What did I ever do to you?”
The answer was lots of things, including crashing through Remus’ parents’ bedroom window on his new flying motorcycle and probably high, and offering not only Remus but his mum and dad a lift over the city, then giggling and passing out in his parents’ bed. Since Sirius was also one of the best friends Remus had ever had and surprisingly hard to stay mad at, Remus did not bring it up.
“I’m not trying to crush your dreams, Sirius. I just think you’re a mental patient.”
They were walking down the halls, away from Quidditch practise to dinner. Remus had just been on the benches, because James got fretful without an audience and Remus needed someplace to do his homework since Sirius had placed a total embargo on the library. Remus would’ve ignored it except that Sirius—damn his soul!—had actually gone to Madam Pince and explained that Remus liked to do filthy things in the library, and now Madam Pince kept wandering up to him and hissing ‘I’m watching you!’ in his ear.
Sirius waved away the issue of his mental health. “Right. So you’ll help us, won’t you? Wormtail and I are doing all the work, Remus. It’s not right and it’s not fair.”
“What do you want me to do?” Remus asked warily.
“Nothing! The littlest, tiniest thing. All you need to do is get me a teeny strand of Evans’ hair. Go on, you know you’ll love the girl touching. It’ll be so simple, so easy, please please, just for me!”
Remus turned and stared at Sirius, who gazed beseechingly back, a picture of pleading innocence in a Quidditch robe.
“Why can’t you do it? Why can’t Peter do it?”
“Because Peter fears her,” Sirius replied, “and because she won’t let me near her on account of being morbidly oversensitive about that little filling the girls’ dormitories with brie incident. Three whole years ago, and it’s nothing but hurtful yelling of ‘Back, Black, back!’ I think she must have, like, hormonal issues.”
Remus made a noncommittal sound, since the moment he had been waiting for was almost upon them. He knew from experience that the only way to avoid disaster was to distract Sirius at the crucial moment. So here they were, coming into the Great Hall at just the moment Regulus usually chivvied Snape and Narcissa up from the dungeons to dinner.
“—very intense potion making,” Remus heard Snape say, right on cue. “This interruption may prove fatal!”
A broad smile spread over Sirius’ face as he strolled forward, Remus hated himself for being a bad person, and the three Slytherins saw them and froze.
“C’mon now, Snivellus,” Sirius drawled. “Reggie here needs you at dinner. What if he ran out of olive oil?”
Snape reached for his wand, but Narcissa put her hand on his arm and Regulus went faint pink and stepped between them. “Don’t call him that. And don’t call me that, either.”
“Sirius has to call people by nicknames, so he can pretend they’re not real,” Narcissa remarked, her voice cold. “So he can see them as toys, to abandon in a cupboard whenever he feels like it. He has little nicknames for all of you, doesn’t he, Lupin? Watch out. If he can betray his family, he can betray anyone.”
“Shut up,” said Remus, master of repartee.
He should’ve tried to set up something with just Snape. Snape was a git and they’d always hated him, and one on one would have been fair, and they’d have just gone for each other and then Sirius would’ve been in too much detention to pursue his James-related insanity. Only Narcissa always talked before she went for her wand, and made things worse and dragged Remus into things.
Sometimes… things had been easier when they were younger, before everyone started talking about Dark Lords and Sirius had graduated from ‘I hate my parents’ to ‘no, really, I hate them, they are evil, I’m moving out this summer.’ Remus remembered when Narcissa was polite to all of them because Sirius was her cousin and family was an obligation, even if you were a) crazy like Bellatrix, b) crazy like Sirius’ mum or c) crazy like Sirius. They’d sat beside the lake a few times and Remus had, well, it’d been third year and he’d sort of looked at her hair going warm gold in the sunlight, lashes curving the same warm gold over the deep blue of her eyes. She was Slytherin and pureblood and even if he hadn’t been a werewolf, he wouldn’t have had a chance.
But things had been different, then. Sirius had spoken to Narcissa politely enough as well, and while he regularly called Regulus an idiot he also kept shoving people into walls and whispering dark pranklike threats to anyone who looked sideways at his little brother.
“Also Sirius wet the bed until he was six,” announced Regulus, and Remus was glad for a moment that things had not frozen completely into adulthood.
Remus had kind of liked Regulus as well. It was weird in the Black family, how cousins were like siblings and siblings like cousins, and Narcissa and Regulus had come out white-blond and capable at times of calm, while Sirius and Bellatrix had black hair and no concept of anger managent. Remus put it down to the inbreeding and the one Black trait they all had in common, which was an operatic tendency to go to extremes.
Not that Remus had ever liked Bellatrix, because she was a lunatic. Of course, so was Sirius, but he was their lunatic and it was different.
“Shut up!” yelped Sirius, graduate with honours from the Remus Lupin College of Snappy Comebacks.
“And once he made Mother a birthday card out of dried gnomes!” proceeded Regulus, sudden contender in the Running His Mouth Off Olympics. “And he’s claus—class—scared of enclosed spaces!”
Regulus stood panting between Sirius and Snape, attempting a ferocious stare and considerably shorter than both of them. Sirius stepped in and Regulus blinked, blue eyes uncertain. Remus was so sorry: this had all been a terrible idea, he wanted to take it back right now.
“Right, that’s it,” said Sirius, and went in for the kill.
Only it wasn’t it, because Sirius was hardly going to pull a wand on Regulus, and though he was perfectly capable of efficiently twisting Snape’s arm behind his back he’d never touched Regulus that Remus had seen, except in the early years, in a sort of rough affection. Now they both gripped each other with fists, bewildered and angry.
“Leave him alone!” Snape said icily.
Sirius’ mouth lifted, curling in savage relief. At this point Remus vowed never to have a plan again.
“Now Snivellus,” he said in a silky tone, “I know you didn’t just try to interfere between me and my brother. Why are they even hanging around with you, anyway? Just because Bella finally managed to pass her NEWTS without sleeping with the examiners—”
“She didn’t sleep with the examiners to pass the NEWTS!” Regulus said hotly. “She slept with the examiners because she has complicated feelings about authority figures!”
Narcissa looked embarrassed to have Regulus on her side.
“Snivellus is nothing but a Bella replacement,” Sirius sneered. “But I suppose it works. Snape’s never even had pretend friends before, have you, Snivellus? And I suppose he’s pretty girly—though just a tip? Bella washed her hair more than once a year. And whatever Bella’s issues, I never saw her looking at Cissy like you do.”
Snape, who had been tensed to deal out what was probably going to be that cutting curse again, went dull red and still.
“Pathetic,” Sirius said, triumphantly. “As if anyone would ever—”
“As if you understood anything at all!” Narcissa snapped. “You don’t have the faintest idea what to do with girls, do you, Sirius? Is it simply that you’re pathetically immature, or are you more into your ragtag little band of blood traitors—”
“Can’t we all just get dinner?” Remus asked desperately and utterly without hope. Sirius had never been one to retreat.
“Okay,” Regulus said, very quickly. Remus looked into Regulus’ face and saw desperation there too: he’d never seen a Black displaying anything like fear before.
Narcissa looked briefly annoyed, then decided that Remus had backed down first and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Regulus is right, Gryffindors aren’t worth missing dinner over.” The light grip of her fingers pulled Snape away from Sirius when Remus had been pretty sure it would take a Stunning Spell and then a few people dragging.
Regulus stayed behind for a minute, looking twitchy and upset. “You sent back Dad’s letter,” he said, not looking at Sirius. “You could’ve opened it, I didn’t even think you were angry at Dad—”
“It’s not about being angry at anyone,” Sirius said angrily.
He was right, in a way. It was not just about being angry.
Regulus spoke as if he had a bad toothache. “Are you really not coming home this summer?”
“I’ll come by to tell them what I think of them,” Sirius said in a hard voice. “And to get my stuff.” He paused and said, “Look, if you didn’t keep hanging around that twisted little git Snape, we could, I mean, I’d leave you alone—”
Regulus had two brilliant pink spots of rage in his cheeks. “He’s my friend,” he bit out. “I’m not going to abandon him. I’m not going to abandon anyone. I’m not you!”
With that, Regulus turned and fled. Sirius looked after him and looked as if he was going to explode and cost all of Hogwarts their eyebrows.
“That’s. Well. I’m going to go live with the Potters, you know,” Sirius said. “I have a whole plan. I’m. James is going to be my brother now. So it’s important that he’s happy,” he added, fixing Remus with a needle-eyed glare.
Remus reached out cautiously, because an upset Sirius was more a danger to others than himself, and gave Sirius a brief squeeze on the nape of the neck which he hoped was a brisk, we’re-walking-here equivalent of the manly hug.
“Yeah,” he said. “All right. Okay. You’re like a dog with a bone, you know that?”
It worked, the stormy expression lifted fractionally from Sirius’ face. “I did know that, yes.”
They walked to the Gryffindor table, Sirius calling in a lordly manner for his slaves to fetch him pumpkin juice, and Remus congratulating himself on the brilliancy of his plans. He’d sabotaged himself and made himself a party to lunacy.
He glanced at James, poor unsuspecting victim of all this. James was bleary-eyed from Valentine-related studying all night and Quidditch all evening, and as Remus watched he saw James’ face fall slowly into his plate.
“Wake up, Prongs!” said Sirius, giving him a sharp shove in the back.
“Wh… wh… mfff,” decided James, sitting up and automatically ruffling his hair. It did not look dashing with the added mashed potato. “Evans,” he murmured dazedly. “She will be mine.”
Remus had to admit that he was getting just a touch worried about James.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Sirius soothed him, and shot Remus a look which informed him righteously that he’d told him so.
“I still think you’re a mental patient,” Remus whispered.
Sirius snorted. “Stop being such a buzz kill, girl kisser.”
Remus found Lily in the common room, reading a book called Advanced Charms which he happened to know Professor Slughorn had inscribed with ‘To an advanced charmer‘ on the inside cover. Really, Lily was being unreasonable about James, he told himself bracingly. James was a much better prospect than Professor Slughorn. For one thing, he was extremely svelte.
He still felt like a complete wretch. Lily looked peaceful by the fire, her dark red hair lit up, her green eyes intent on her book, Sirius was plotting about an innocent, defenceless girl…
“GET BACK, BLACK!” Lily ordered from the depths of her book. “Or I’ll turn your intestines into ladies’ underwear.”
“It’s, uh, not Sirius,” Remus said.
Lily lowered her book and grinned. “Ah. Sorry about that. Only your friend Crazy Eyes—”
“He really prefers Sirius.”
“Does he? I really prefer Crazy Eyes,” Lily informed him. “He’s been stalking me for days now. Trying to touch my hair, if you can believe it. Why don’t you get yourself some better friends, Remus?”
“I’d be far too scared. Sirius would prank me if I tried to leave him.”
Lily’s smile became less perfunctory. She was an easy girl to talk to, Remus thought, he didn’t see why James always made such a complete shambles of it.
“So… is Crazy Eyes following me around for Potter, or what?” she asked after a moment. “I haven’t seen him around for a while. Is he keeping me under surveillance?”
“No! No! Nothing like that!” Remus assured her. “I, I think Sirius just—likes your hair. Yes. It’s very shiny. Er. Anyone would want to touch it,” he added, filled with horror at the words coming out of his own mouth.
He reached over, and tugged vaguely at her hair. Then he saw the tsunami of rage rising in Lily’s eyes.
“Remus Lupin,” she said in a voice of ice. “Is this some kind of perverted group activity?”
Remus blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“What—Potter’s tired of me so it’s Black’s turn to pursue me, and then it’s your turn to follow me about trying to touch me? Do you people have a system? Where exactly,” she asked icily, “does James Potter get off—”
“James hasn’t done anything!” Remus protested wildly.
“You don’t need to tell me that!” Lily exclaimed. “I suppose he’s off stalking some Hufflepuff. Well, I wish her joy of him! Good riddance, I say! Though I call it sick.”
Remus took a deep breath and tried to re-group. Lily was annoyed about nothing, which was very strange. She also thought James fancied a Hufflepuff, while all this time James was on a psychotic quest for her love. Sirius was right. Girls were most peculiar: it must be a hormonal thing.
He searched for something helpful to say. “I think James is sick,” he said carefully. “I mean, ill. Yes, that’s why he hasn’t been around, I really don’t think he’s stalking Hufflepuffs.”
“I really don’t care,” Lily told him quickly. She paused. “Sick,” she said, as if testing him. He nodded, filled with the dire suspicion that she knew all, but then she nodded. “I suppose he could be sick. He did answer ‘whipple weeble scrum’ to a question in class today. And his hair has gone strangely flat at the back.”
“Yes, he has been looking peaky lately,” Remus agreed with fervour.
“So you and Black aren’t trying to win me with creepy touching or collecting my stuff for a shrine?”
Remus put Lily’s hair behind his back. “I promise we’re not.”
“And Potter is just ill.”
“Very poorly,” Remus babbled. “Sickly from a child.”
For a moment, he thought Lily looked relieved. Then she put her book back up and said, “I hope he has ebola.”
“You see, she hates Prongs forever and she’ll probably become Mrs Professor Slughorn and have fat babies and Prongs will linger at her garden gates and sing her love songs until Professor Slughorn gets peckish and, in an awful misunderstanding, makes him into venison stew. Think of Prongs all covered in gravy because of the cruelty of a woman. Think of it!”
Peter went all wide-eyed, so Remus presumed he was thinking of it.
Sirius was gloating disturbingly over Lily’s single hair. Remus was trying to pretend all of this was happening to someone else far, far away.
“There are just two more steps to this plan and then I, Sirius Black, will have achieved my greatest victory to date! Moony, you need to distract James while Wormtail gets ready.”
“Leave me out of this,” Remus said. “Do it yourself!”
“I can’t, I need to get the real Evans out of the way. I’m going to provoke her into a duel and land us both in detention. You can’t do that, you alone in a room with a girl for hours, you couldn’t control your depraved, wanton urges.”
Remus tried to control his depraved, wanton urge to smack Sirius upside the head.
“But first!” Sirius said, eyes glittering, “we must make Wormtail a girl!”
“I thought that was already sorted,” Peter put in, his voice small.
“Well yes, obviously, we’re going to make you look like a girl. But first we should teach you to act like a girl. Your act needs to be flawless, Wormtail, you need to give Prongs the vamping of a lifetime!”
Peter’s eyes and mouth formed three perfect Os.
“Sirius,” Remus said in measured tones. “You are not a girl. You cannot teach Peter how to give James the vamping of a lifetime.”
“But you forget one thing, Moony. I am a very great genius.” Sirius paused and then added, “Besides, being a girl can’t be very hard. Girls manage it, and I don’t think they’re very bright. They almost never prank people at all.”
Remus put his head in his hands.
“First,” Sirius said in a judicious tone, “you should walk about a bit swishily.”
Remus did not dare lift his head.
“I think you should probably waggle your hips a little more,” Sirius announced after a moment.
Remus could have been so happy living in a world where he’d never heard that.
“Now watch me.”
Remus lifted his head to the sound of the door opening, so he and Fabian were both treated to the sight of Sirius standing on the bed, tossing back his hair coquettishly and saying lasciviously to the bedpost, “Why, James, have you been working out?”
“I am losing all will to live,” Fabian informed them.
“James, when was the last time you slept?” Remus asked.
“Sometime. On a book,” James added helpfully. His eyes kept sliding shut. “It was nice,” he remarked in a wistful way.
Lily, from the other side of the table, watched James narrowly over the salt cellar. Remus presumed she suspected something, but she was Sirius’ job. His was to get James on to the Quidditch pitch for seven o’clock, at which point Sirius had promised all their problems would be over and they would never speak of this again.
Clearly, the sheer persistence of Sirius’ madness was hypnotic. Remus could think of no other explanation.
“What you need is some time out in the fresh air,” he proposed brightly. “How about going off to the Quidditch pitch and showing me how often you can catch the Snitch?”
“I thought it was Peter who liked me to do that,” James said.
“I like it too,” Remus assured him. “It’s very, very impressive.”
James thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “Mum always said I had style.”
“Er. Right.”
“It’s not your fault you admire me so much,” James went on. “I have a lot of charisma. Feelings of confused envy and admiration are perfectly normal.”
“Are they?” Remus asked. “Um. Good.”
“This was all encapsulated in the third verse of ‘My Special Little Hero’ which was a song Mum used to sing to me when I was very…” James coughed. “Actually, never mind. I don’t like to talk about that. I think I’m a little overtired.”
Lily coughed from behind the salt, not overly discreetly.
“How are you feeling, Potter?” she asked, her eyes on the salt.
James’ eyes immediately fixed on her, his face going glazed and happy as if someone had hit him in the head with a stick and the brain damage had given him a warm glow. His hand moved to fluff up his hair, but in his current state of exhaustion he poked himself in the eye.
“All the better for seeing you, Evans,” he said in a deep, rich voice, and then spoiled the effect with a frantic cough at the end.
Lily pursed her lips. “I thought you were ill.”
Remus was convinced that all was lost when James said, “Perhaps I am ill. Do you have nurturing instincts? Do you have a nurse’s uniform? I could be ill if you want me to be ill.”
“Could you?” Lily asked, her eyes wide.
“I’ll do anything you want me to do, Evans,” James informed her, putting on a slight, manly American accent.
“Excellent,” Lily said, and got up. “Drop dead,” she told him, and wandered off with a bit of a smile playing about her lips.
The depths of Lily’s hatred for James were clearly increasing. Sirius’ way was not the way Remus personally would have chosen, but something had to be done.
“C’mon,” Remus said encouragingly. “Let’s go to the Quidditch pitch.”
After catching the Snitch five times and performing eleven broomstick somersaults, James was having fun and indeed singing ‘My Special Little Hero’ at intervals. Remus wanted to die of boredom, and it was only six thirty.
“Who’s My Special, Special, Special Little Hero!” James carolled, launching into his third rendition of the chorus. “Who’s my Special, Special, Special Little Man?”
“If you people go near Severus again,” said Regulus Black, “I’ll tell everyone that Sirius used to have a teddy bear he called Mr Addlypants.”
What with the intense boredom and the sudden potential for Sirius mockery, Remus was quite glad for the interruption. He made a gesture and Regulus sat down, sharp elbows pressed against his knees as he looked around.
“Why are you talking to me?” Remus asked.
“Because Sirius is a mental patient, I don’t know the other one’s name, and James Potter is a freak who thinks about nothing but Quidditch. Which is a stupid boring game, by the way, and I don’t see why Severus wants to play it so much.”
If Sirius ever heard Regulus call Quidditch boring, he’d definitely disown him. Remus tried to phrase this tactfully.
“I don’t care, it is boring,” Regulus insisted, and Sirius’ expression of furious obstinacy looked very odd on his unfamiliar face. “Everybody zips about busily for no reason at all, when ninety times out of a hundred all you need is for someone to get the Snitch. The rest of the team could sit around on the pitch. They could have tea and crumpets.”
“Sirius is a very good Beater,” Remus said, feeling obscurely called upon to defend his friends. “He hardly ever throws his bat at the crowd anymore.”
“He comes and laughs at Slytherin try-outs,” Regulus remarked in a distant sort of way. “Severus still tries out. Every year. I like him,” he added. “Severus. He’s cool. He’s really clever, he knows a lot of brilliant stuff. He’s just as clever as Sirius.”
Which was a fairly horrifying thought, because Remus was fairly sure that if Sirius wasn’t so easily distracted by shiny things he could rule the world with an iron and pranking fist.
“Do you like Potions better than Quidditch, then?” he asked, curious about this entirely original world view.
“I don’t like much of anything at school,” Regulus answered, and then paused. “I like people. I think they’re interesting.”
They sat for a few minutes looking at the Quidditch pitch, silver in the moonlight, and the crowing figure of James, so high in the sky he was nothing but a witchy silhouette against the moon. It reminded Remus of Muggle perceptions of magic, and that made him think of other Muggle things. Muggles who were interested in people became psychologists or philosophers, but neither of these careers were really open to Regulus Black.
“Look,” Regulus said in a thin voice. “You’ve got to get Sirius to come home. Mum and Dad are going spare, and him running away from us… it just makes them think that something needs to be done to change the world, if schools are allowed to turn their children against them.”
“Sirius made his own decisions,” Remus told him slowly.
“We’re his family! It shouldn’t be this easy to turn away, I couldn’t do anything like that, and he’s the clever one, I don’t know how to make things better for Mum and Dad. Sirius was always saying you were the sensible one. You have to talk sense into him, I don’t know what to do—”
Remus did not know what to say. Because—well, because the Blacks were Sirius’ family, but there was going to be a war. Difficult choices had to be made, and Remus was glad he had not had to make this one, between the parents he loved and the only friends he’d ever had.
He was uneasily aware that even if he had thought Sirius should stay with his family, he wouldn’t have wanted him to. Remus only had three friends in the world, and that was enough of a miracle. He was not likely to find any more, and if Sirius turned back to his family and away from them…
“I can’t help you,” he said, and felt like a coward and a traitor.
There was another pause. “I should’ve known better than to think a Muggle-loving blood traitor might think it worth his while to try,” Regulus said at last. “It’s fine. I don’t need your help, and my parents won’t need Sirius. I’ll make them proud.”
He got up, turning a baleful blue gaze on Remus, and said: “Also Sirius won a Cheerful, Chubby Babies Grand Prize when he was eight months old. Our house elf entered him for it, and I have pictures.”
“You wouldn’t,” Remus breathed.
Regulus smirked as he turned away. “Why d’you think they call it Blackmail?”
Remus watched Regulus’ narrow back, growing smaller and smaller as he ran for the castle, and thought of the happily brain-damaged look on James’ face when he looked at Lily. He didn’t want to think of hurting or betraying his friends. He wanted to help them, even if it was in an insane, sexually dubious way.
He checked his watch and it said seven, so he left the pitch and left James to his fate.
“Remus,” Helen Montgomery said, “Thank heavens you’re here, do you have the library copy of—”
“Come away, Moony!” Sirius commanded. “Before your baser nature overcomes you. And you, miss, library copies indeed, you should feel ashamed.”
Helen looked very puzzled.
“Er—do you have the library copy of—”
“I am not interested in your filthy minxlike wiles,” Sirius informed her sternly. “Please go away, we have important business to discuss and I can’t have you shaking your library books in Moony’s face.”
Helen backed away slowly, trying to maintain eye contact, and Remus noted that Sirius had scared off another one. It was very lucky Sirius was devastatingly attractive and a lot of girls tended to swoon at the Byronic face and fail to notice the mad, mad brain behind it.
“Just think,” Sirius hissed delightedly. “As we speak Wormtail is pouting and swishing and kissing Prongs!”
Remus stared at him. “Every day, you make me die a little more inside.”
“And Evans got an hour’s more detention than me because she made my eyelashes into tiny tentacles,” Sirius said with satisfaction. “I wanted to keep them but I was forced by the vile, prejudiced anti-tentacle agenda of this school to give them up.”
“Don’t ruin your face,” Remus advised him. “One day some lunatic woman will marry you for it and carry you away to exotic climes and I will finally be left in peace.”
Sirius made a scrunchy face. “You keep saying stuff like that. Am I very attractive? Am I more attractive than Prongs? Am I more attractive than you?”
“Um, yes,” Remus said cautiously.
Sirius looked pleased. “I wonder how I can use that for pranks. Do you think I could seduce McGonagall?”
Remus tried not to faint with horror. “Do you want to?”
“Well, no, but we’d never get detention again if I was McGonagall’s red-hot lover,” Sirius pointed out with satisfaction.
Remus tried not to faint with horror some more.
At that point Lily Evans rushed through the door and flung herself into Remus’ arms. Remus was mildly stunned until she whispered “Help me I’m changing back!” in his ear and in Peter’s reedy, terrified voice.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Sirius!”
“Make way, you people!” Sirius yelled. “Give her air! Evans has the vapours and a hot flush and it is her womanly time!”
Remus bundled Lily/Peter against his chest, really trying not to touch his breasts and have horrible sexual problems for the rest of his life. Sirius crowded around them, though Remus noted that the coward was touching Remus far more than he was their weird sexually hybrid friend, and began to chivvy them unobtrusively towards their dormitory.
Fabian met them on the stairs.
“Are you people drugging girls and taking them to our dormitory for orgies now?” he demanded. “Remus, for God’s sake. It’s the night before our Arithmancy test!”
They ignored Fabian in favour of getting Peter into the dormitory before they were caught and summarily expelled for being dirty boys. Then Sirius pushed Peter away too hard and he fell onto the carpet, red hair flying out as he fell and then shrivelling up into brown.
Instead of apologising, Sirius nudged Peter in the ribs with his toe. “Well?” he said. “How did it go? How brilliant am I, on a scale of normal brilliant to me?”
Peter lifted his round face from the carpet and grinned blindingly. Sirius grinned the exact same grin, though because of cosmic unfairness it looked better on him.
“He kissed me under the stars!”
“Brilliant!” said Sirius.
“He pushed my hair behind my ear and said he’d been thinking about this forever!”
“Fantastic!”
“He also held onto my ear and kind of hurt me but it was still really romantic!”
“Wormtail, you have made me proud today. I could kiss you, only that would be weird group activity like Fabian gave us a lecture on last year.”
Peter gave a long sigh from his place on the carpet. “I think he’s going to ask me to go to Hogsmeade with him for Valentine’s Day.”
“Wait,” Sirius said. “What?”
Remus, who had seen this coming since Peter started talking, watched with some concern as the two powerful engines of Reality and Sirius’ Insane Disturbing Glee collided and exploded. He’d known. He’d known this would end in tears and also carnage. He should have done something, like tried to defect to Ravenclaw with Fabian.
“Maybe when he’s a professional Quidditch player he’ll give me the Snitch he won in the World Cup just like in that story in Witch Weekly,” Peter went on, his face soft and glowing.
“Moony,” Sirius quavered. “I’m scared. Please hold me.”
“This is all your fault, Sirius Black,” Remus returned. “And I will not.”
“It is not my fault! It is not my fault that Wormtail has gone mad and is running amok. I could not have predicted something like this, I was kicked out of Divinations on the first day because of the exploding crystal balls, you know that! Wormtail, you cannot go to Hogsmeade with James on Valentine’s Day because you are not a girl.”
“I could be if you make the Potion again,” Peter argued.
Sirius looked lost and betrayed by a cruel world. “People will notice an extra Evans! She’s all redheaded and shouty!”
“I thought you’d come up with a plan for that!”
“Well,” Sirius mused. “I suppose there are a few things I can think of… no! No, no, no! This is madness and I will not help, I will not. Moony is right and how can you want to snog Prongs anyway I don’t understand how can this all have gone so horribly wrong?”
He gave Remus another piteous appealing look and sidled closer. Remus narrowed his eyes at him.
“Peter,” he said, as gently as he could while still trying to ward Sirius off. “You can’t honestly want to take a Potion every day for years and years that—honestly, Sirius, I said no—turns you into a woman?”
Peter looked sulky. “Don’t mind,” he muttered. “Makes me feel pretty.”
“Moony,” Sirius said urgently. “I really need a hug.”
“I thought this whole thing was about making James happy! And he is happy and I’m happy and we could move to Honolulu to get away from the real Evans and I don’t see why you two are getting so upset, he’ll never know the difference!”
“Honolulu?”
Sirius gave a soft keening sound. “I am not in a happy place right now. I want to feel reassured and cherished.”
“I am censoring Witch Weekly from now on,” Remus said dangerously. “And I am putting an end to this. Get up, Peter! I have been pushed too far. We’re going to find James and tell him all and throw ourselves on his mercy.”
This seemed like a good plan until they met James, floating through the common room wearing a dreamy expression, and Remus remembered that he was an appalling coward.
“Hi Prongs,” he said basely. “Good night?”
“She kissed me!” James exclaimed rapturously.
Peter glowed with pride and Remus felt a little sick and Sirius clawed at Remus’ shoulder, beyond words but still pleading for a cuddle.
“Gosh, what a surprise,” Remus said faintly. “Was it, er, fun?”
At which point James frowned and said, “Bit weird, really.”
Sirius made a faint disbelieving sound of hope and Peter gave a heart cry.
“I mean she was still gorgeous, still the freckled vessel of all my hopes and dreams and the future mother of my children,” James assured them all, which had the effect of having Sirius try to crawl up Remus’ arm. “But she was all sigh-y and fluttery and weird. I missed all the snapping. And the way her freckles leap from her nose when she’s angry like a beautiful pop-up book.”
He sighed at the thought. Peter was wailing on a feeble but continuous basis now, and Sirius had his face buried in Remus’ shoulder, but Remus kept listening as the awful grown-up truth began to dawn on him: that James was not crazy, or obsessed, or crushing, or drawn like a moth to flamey red hair. That James was…
“I think she’s shy,” James concluded. “But I can wait. She’ll start acting more like herself again.”
At which dramatically convenient moment Lily arrived, looking stormy from hours of detention, and Remus experienced a moment of blinding terror as he realised that Sirius had not made a contingency plan for what to do if James called the real Lily his girlfriend and tried to kiss her and she killed him to bits.
“Black,” Lily said in a voice of loathing as vast as the ocean.
Sirius made a small traumatised noise into the juncture of Remus’ neck and shoulder by way of reply.
James ignored everyone and stared at Lily with that idiot look again, like a besotted toad. “Hi, Lily,” he said in his normal voice.
Lily squinted as if she didn’t actually recognise James’ normal voice. “What is it now?” she asked, adding “Stalker,” out of long habit.
“Well… about what happened tonight,” James said.
Lily squinted at him some more. “When I told you to drop dead over the salt cellar…?” she said dryly. “Yes. Good times.”
James smiled at her as if she was a tiny little kitten instead of a tall angry girl. “Whatever you like to call it,” he said indulgently. “I can wait, you know. I’ll just think about tonight and wait until you tell me you’re ready and then I’ll ask you out on a proper date.”
“Think about tonight?” Lily said, making a face Remus couldn’t quite interpret. “Have you gone crazy?’ She paused and then looked almost worried. “Do you fancy me so much you’ve actually gone crazy?”
“Maybe,” said James, and just when Remus thought he was doing rather well he unfortunately grinned and drawled, “Does that… excite you, Evans?”
“Oh my God!” Lily exclaimed. “Do you know I have turned you down for a date sixty times now?”
“Sixty-two,” James told her helpfully.
“Listen to me. Very carefully. Potter,” she said. “It is time to stop. You can’t ask me again until next year, by which time I hope you will have grown up a little. Or at all, really. Stop. Please stop.”
She looked at James, who looked back at her with an expression of undying love reminiscent of a sick cow. Then she walked away, shaking her head and mouthing ‘Mad as a brush‘ at Remus as she passed.
“Did you hear her?” James said excitedly. “She’s going to go out with me next year!”
“That’s not—” Remus paused, as Lily’s little speech, her questions to him and her watchful eyes over the salt cellars suddenly lined up in Remus’ brain and presented him with an entirely different perspective. “Well, that’s not exactly what she said.”
“Baby, I’m so good,” James said seductively to the air. “I knew that one day she would see what she’d been missing out on. I think… I think I can go to sleep now. I should be well-rested to absorb the look on my darling Lily’s face when she gets her singing chocolate flowers.”
James, walking like a cowboy with rickets and looking more like himself than he had in days, began to whistle ‘My Special Little Hero’ to himself as he walked to the dormitories. He met Lily coming back down with her books and informed her that what with all the excitement he had forgotten to tell her she looked nice today.
Which would have been fine if he had not become carried away by the cowboy walk, and added that she was a fine-lookin’ woman.
Sirius lifted his face fractionally from Remus’ shoulder and said in a low voice, “Has it ever occurred to you that Prongs is a complete tool?”
“More than once,” Remus agreed. “Get off me, Sirius, the crisis is over.”
At this point Peter gave Remus a betrayed look and stamped off to nurse what might have been—oh how much Remus didn’t want to think about it—a broken heart.
“But I’m not happy,” Sirius moaned. “Prongs is all mad over that girl and soon he’ll have a girlfriend and since he fancies such terrifying women I bet he likes to be spanked. And soon one of those librarysluts won’t give you back. And then I’m going to die alone.”
“Regulus is blackmailing you into being nice to Snape,” Remus announced.
Sirius perked up at the challenge as he’d hoped. “Ohhh. I shall do something terrible to Snape, just you wait and see, Moony, my next plan is going to be even better.”
“This one went so well.”
Sirius disengaged from Remus at last, to Remus’ profound relief, and made a gesture of amazement, or possibly showing him how pelicans took flight. “It did! The main objective was to make James happy, was it not? And it worked, did it not? And thus I am Lord High Panjandrum of Plotting, and… and all the cannibals in the world want to eat my fantastically brilliant brain!”
“Sirius, you’re a mental patient,” Remus told him.
Above their heads, they heard James singing ‘My Special Little Hero’ at the top of his voice, and Remus remembered Regulus Black’s unhappy face, and why he’d agreed to all this madness in the first place. He caught Sirius’ eye, and the corner of Sirius’ mouth came up and then suddenly they were sharing a warm, uncontrollable grin.
“OH YES!” carolled James beatifically from above. “You’re your mother’s pride and joy, you’re her own, oh her own, VERY SPECIAL LITTLE BOY!”
“All things considered, Evans,” said Remus. “You could probably do better.”
Lily lifted her head from her book to observe, “I’m deeply aware of that,” but Remus was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and he saw that she was smiling too.
November 14, 2005