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Paragons
of delight and uncertainty
by Raven
PG-13, het, Lily/James. James likes Lily. Maybe not as much as he likes Quidditch. She might like him, too - but unfortunately, Sirius, Remus and Peter have got it in their heads to be helpful. The Slytherins are less than amused by proceedings. Complications ensue. With grateful thanks to Pirate Perian for the thorough beta, to Hathor for the loan of her personality, and to Leigh, Tory and Meredith for the ideas.
The retelling of some events that did take place at Hogwarts’ School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the summer of the year nineteen seventy-six, Anno Domini.
Chapter Six - in which Liverpudlian Muggles are retarded and fiendish
When they reached the entrance hall, carrying broomsticks and sheets and trying to be discreet about it, James watched in bemusement as Sirius walked straight into Lily Evans. She looked him up and down, took in the various articles he was holding, and said neutrally, “I just ran into Gemma Cailler.”
“Really?” Sirius was carefully nonchalant.
“Really. She told me a few very interesting things. Something about the Slytherin Quidditch team receiving a sudden fright down on the pitch.” She paused, and then went on, “You would think that being Slytherins, they wouldn’t scare easily.”
“Oh, you know” – Sirius waved his hands about helplessly – “it’s the Quidditch team, and they don’t pick ‘em for their brains.”
“Indeed.” Lily paused again. “And she had a message for me to give to a friend of mine.”
“Me?”
“No, Black, a friend of mine.”
“Oh, me,” said Remus suddenly, catching on.
“That’s right.” She eyed him carefully, smiled, and continued, “She said she thinks you already know what she’s got to say, but just in case you didn’t hear it the first time – you will pay.”
After a moment of silence, she turned and walked off without looking back. James wondered if there wwas even the slightest, most remote possibility that she’d been smiling at him.
Sirius’s mind was concerned with more important matters. “We will pay?” he said. “How?”
“I’m sure it will become clear,” said Remus evenly, staring after Lily, and James decided there were times when he really, really wanted to hurt Remus Lupin. He wasn’t entirely sure why.
He was sure of only a very few things. Lily was beautiful when she was angry, and Cailler – well, he had a feeling that hell hath no fury like luminous paint.
– – – – – –
The subject was broached again the next afternoon in Muggle Studies, which was taught by a motherly old witch named Professor Carrington. A Squib, the Slytherins said, otherwise why would she be teaching Muggle Studies – but James thought that probably wasn’t the case. She was sitting at her desk as he thought it, marking a pile of parchment scrolls and getting rid of smudges with her wand, so it wasn’t a staggering leap of logic.
“What’s this rubbish you’ve written, Sirius Black? Liverpudlian Muggles are all retarded and fiendish?”
Sirius blinked. He didn’t have a clue.
“I think he means Liverpudlian Muggles are all relaxed and friendly, Professor,” James said helpfully, getting up and reading over the professor’s shoulder. He had had more experience with Sirius’s unique handwriting and spelling.
Sirius himself didn’t have a clue because he had copied the essay from Peter. He would have copied from James, but James hadn’t done that essay either, and neither could of them copy from Remus because he didn’t do Muggle Studies. Technically, Remus was pure-blooded, but he had one set of Muggle grandparents and so was of the opinion he already knew enough about Muggles. He used the lesson time for sleeping off full moons.
“Hmmm.” Professor Carrington glanced up at James and smiled. “Thank you, James. Go and sit down now.”
James did so, slipping into the seat beside Sirius with a resigned look. “You can’t copy just anything, you know,” he said wearily. “It has to make sense for you. What do you know about Liverpudlian Muggles?”
Sirius shrugged. “Nothing, really,” he said, “unless you count my mum telling me I’ll end up there one day.”
James blinked.
“You know,” Sirius clarified, “Blah, blah, blah, disgrace to the family name, blah, blah, blah, sorted into Gryffindor, whatever next, growing up to be a docker?”
“Ah,” James nodded, understanding this not in the slightest. Carefully tuning out Professor Carrington’s lecture about Beatlemania, he changed the subject. “What do you think the Slytherins are planning?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Sirius replied instantly. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. It’s just Cailler trying to scare us. We’re going to be on edge for weeks, waiting to fall into something, or have something fall on us, or find our beds full of snakes or whatever, and all they have to do is sit there and watch us get paranoid.”
“An excellent theory, Sirius, except…
“Except?”
“Kippers,” said James cruelly. “You know as well as I do that the Slytherins live for revenge. There’s no way in hell they’re not planning something. We embarrassed them; they’ll be ready to murder us. So, what are you planning?”
Sirius blinked at this sudden change of tack, and abruptly withdrew behind his copy of Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles.
“James Potter! Are you listening?”
“Yes, Professor,” murmured James demurely. “You were just talking about Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and its later supposed influence on Muggle bands and wizarding ones, such as the Weird Sisters.”
“Hmmm,” she said, and carefully wrote on the board the words “Abbey Road.”
Making sure her attention was diverted once more, Sirius leaned in. “What makes you think I’m planning something?”
“Simple. You never, ever pass up the chance for revenge on the Slytherins. Why are you trying to tell me they’re not planning anything?”
Sirius paused and shifted uncomfortably. “I just thought…”
“Go on.”
“I just thought… seeing as the Slytherins probably aren’t planning anything, we should play another prank on them. So we don’t have to wait for them to play one on us.”
James felt a slow smile spreading across his face. “You are utterly irrepressible.”
“I’m bored,” Sirius whined. “It’s a fortnight till the full moon and I just want something to do.”
“Fine, fine, we’ll do something. Just not right now.”
“Why?”
“Sirius Black, I know you’re not listening. If you don’t start paying attention I’ll move you to the front of the room.”
“Sorry, Professor,” said Sirius, sounding honestly apologetic, and she merely glanced at him before continuing. “Homework tonight. A scroll of parchment on the influence of music on Muggle society and its relation to the wizarding world. No less than five hundred words, and no more than five thousand.” James smiled; this last stipulation seemed to be aimed at the Ravenclaws in the room. “You are dismissed.”
Remus was in the common room when they clambered through the portrait hole, and he seemed quite soundly asleep, curled up in an armchair. James had often wondered how much of the time he spent asleep was attributable to his lycanthropy and how much of it was innate human laziness. In any case, James had learnt from long experience that Remus didn’t mind being woken up as long as it was done gently.
Sirius set off a couple of firecrackers. “Moony! Rise and shine!”
“It’s not morning,” said Remus malevolently, glaring at Sirius, who hummed a few bars of ‘Hey Jude.’ “I know what morning looks like and this isn’t it.”
“No, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon,” James replied, sitting down beside him. “Just listen to this, will you? Sirius has yet another plan.”
“Oh, joy.” Remus groaned. “You woke me up to tell me that?”
“Fine.” Sirius seemed positively offended, and even more so when Remus threw the burnt-out husks of the firecrackers at him. “You don’t want to hear my plan, you don’t have to. You’re the one who’s missing out.”
There was no reply. Remus had gone back to sleep. James grinned at Sirius’s discomfiture. “You’ve still got me, Padfoot,” he said soothingly. “Still got your best mate.”
“Hmmm.” Sirius glanced at him while absently stroking Remus’s hair. He resumed humming and looked innocent. It was not a look that inspired trust. In fact, James decided that if he were a Slytherin, he’d choose this moment to follow an age-old piece of advice.
Run fast, run far.
Remus slept through the plotting, the scheming, the ensuing chaos and hysteria, the pauses for James to ruffle his hair when Lily breezed through the common room, the anxious studying of the map, the incredulity from Peter, the hurrying and the scurrying and the dodging of Filch. He did not, however, sleep through the final triumph. It was a bright sunny morning, and there were several things that were preying on his mind.
“Sirius?” he said evenly at the breakfast table.
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Knock yourself out.” Sirius waved a magnanimous arm.
“Why are there so many people at the Slytherin table who are unaware they’re not wearing any clothes?”
“Are there? I hadn’t noticed.” Sirius blinked, the personification of innocence.
“Neither have they.” Remus was careful not be betray any kind of emotion in his tone.
“No, it doesn’t look like they have.”
“Oh, look, Professor McGonagall.” James was always one for the keen observation.
“She doesn’t look happy.”
“Neither do the Slytherins.”
“What is the meaning of this? How dare you come down to breakfast like this? Snape, Rosier… Lestrange! All of you! Come to my office immediately!”
“Immediately? Does she really mean that?”
“I doubt it.”
“No, wait… first go up to your dormitories and get some clothes on!”
“That’s what she meant to say.”
“I’m sure.”
“Padfoot, Moony… she’s looking straight at us.”
“Oh, bollocks.”
“I thought you said she’d never trace it to us?”
“She wasn’t supposed to! It was foolproof!”
“Yeah, it proves you’re a fool…”
“Shut up! She’s coming over here!”
“Black! Potter! Lupin! Perhaps you would care to explain this?”
“Nothing to do with us, Professor.”
“Nothing… nothing at all…”