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The
Concussed Adventures of Holly Golightly
o ye of little faith
by Raven
G, gen, humour. Remus is having a worse day than usual.
There had never been a Charms lesson quite like this one. Not
with the winged monkeys and scary, scary moving orange things and, Merlin on a
flying motorbike, the muskets. There had been no need for muskets. There would
never be a need for muskets. Remus would die happy if he never saw a musket
again in
his life. Peter’s had already exploded in his hand.
“Moony!” James yelled, swinging past. “Get out of the way!” His ability
on a broomstick seemed to extend to large flying red things; whatever-it-was was
made of plastic and levitating several feet above the ground, and Remus braced
himself for impact.
They collided with a sickening crunch. Remus was thrown on the floor and stayed
there. He could hear James panicking and yelling for help, but Remus didn’t
move. The floor was quiet and pleasantly cool. He liked the floor. It was nice.
Maybe he should spend more time on the floor. Maybe he should forget Lily or
Sirius or whoever and engage in a passionate love affair with the floor.
Or maybe he was concussed.
“Remus!” The professor knelt down beside him, but being Flitwick, didn’t
have to kneel very far. “My dear boy, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Remus tried to say, but it came out as “wstfgl” and he
wondered what atrocities he must have committed in a previous life, to deserve
being hit by James Potter and a miniature X-wing fighter. Run with scissors,
maybe, or taken lollipops from babies or maybe he’d been the sort of boy who
pulled the wings off flies...
“Oh, god,” James groaned, breaking into Remus’s increasingly erratic train
of thought. “Remus, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to crash into you.”
“I should hope not,” said Flitwick, standing up. “Someone send for Madam
Pomfrey.”
Remus opened his eyes. “I’m okay, really.”
This time it came out as real words, and the looks of extreme worry on both
faces cleared a little. “Are you sure?” asked Flitwick doubtfully, standing
back to dodge a winged monkey. “Perhaps you ought to go down to the hospital
wing.”
“Really.” Remus sat up and willed the world to stop revolving round his
head. “I’m fine. Really.”
Flitwick still didn’t seem convinced, but a scuttling orange chose that moment
to jump over his feet, distracting him sufficiently for James to lead Remus
gingerly across the room. Sirius greeted them enthusiastically. “Prongs!
Moony... hey, what happened to you?”
“James,” Remus muttered. “James, flying. Me. Standing there. Crash. Bang.
Wallop.”
“Ah,” said Sirius gravely. “Glad to see you’re still alive.”
“Me too.”
“And to take your mind off it” – Sirius rummaged around behind him, then
produced something with a flourish – “look at this!”
James squinted. “A frying pan?”
“A frying pan, he says. A frying pan. Not just a frying pan. Perish the
thought.” Sirius wielded the pan by its handle, then hit something that was
scuttling along the floor. Something vaguely rodent-shaped.
“Oh god,” said James, at the same time Remus thought it. “Sirius, was
that... was that... what the hell have you done?”
“Done?” repeated Sirius aggrievedly. “I haven’t done anything.
Look.”
He removed the pan. The mouse – and it was a mouse, thankfully – immediately
sprang back into shape. One second it resembled a pancake, the next a surprised
looking small mammal that scurried off towards the wall as soon as it could
move.
“Tom and Jerry,” said Sirius proudly, and paused as he caught sight of the
expressions on his friends’ faces. “Oh, for crying out loud. You thought
I’d squished Wormtail?”
Remus could only nod. The world had begun spinning again.
“He’s gone down to the hospital wing!” Sirius went on, aggravated. “One
of those gun-things exploded in his hand! As if I’d do that. Honestly,
ye of little faith.”
Remus raised his head and said, “It wasn’t a gun.”
“What?”
“The thing Peter had. It was a musket.”
Sirius glared at him. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a...”
“Don’t.” Remus lifted a weary hand. “Please. I don’t think I can take
it.” He paused as yet another winged monkey flitted between them. James gave
chase, but didn’t catch it; it flew off towards the ceiling, chittering
wildly.
“Can’t take it,” Remus repeated.
“Live a little, Moony,” Sirius suggested. “I think it’s fun.”
“Oh, yes, marvellous fun.” Remus was tired, quite possibly concussed, and
he’d just lifted his hands and seen the words “LOVE” and “HATE” on
each set of knuckles. Sarcasm seemed on the agenda. “Get Flitwick into Muggle
films, best fun ever. That’s why we’ve got flying monkeys, and small men in
bright colours looking for a yellow brick road, and stuff that explodes, and
James gets to fly mini-spaceships at my head, and those little orange
things I don’t know what the hell they are...”
Sirius picked one of them up. It was small, covered with orange fluff, with
mechanical plastic feet to walk on and key to wind it up. “A clockwork
orange?” he guessed.
“...and did I mention the stuff that explodes and that’s a
chariot.” Remus broke off to take a deep breath, then looked again at where
James was gazing in awe at a large wheeled contraption. “That’s a sodding
chariot.”
“Wow!” Sirius was no longer listening. “Can I have a go? Hey, Prongs!”
Remus took a deep breath to steady himself. Slowly, inexorably, he drew on all
the power in his body, all the magic he could feel in the room, every last scrap
of strength he could find within himself, and channelled it into two words.
“Finite incantatem.”
And then he went back to the middle of the room and embraced the floor. He loved
the floor. He hoped it loved him back, because unrequited love was just so
messy, he mused as Sirius picked him up, muttering dark threats about lost
chariot-races and soon-to-be-mincemeat werewolves, he’d seen Breakfast At
Tiffany’s enough times to know that and then everything went black.
James looked on as Remus drifted into concussed unconsciousness. “No-one
expects the Spanish Inquisition,” he said serenely, and you couldn’t add
anything to that.