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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 Four - in which something smells very fishy
Sirius awoke.
Which was not, in itself, a surprising occurrence. It was just about seven in the morning and approaching his usual hour for waking.
What was unusual was the manner in which he awoke.
“Aaargh! Getitoffgetitoffaaaargh!”
James scrambled out of bed, wide awake. A thump and roll were Remus’s way of following suit. Peter stayed in bed, but he was stirring as they ran towards Sirius’s bed-curtains and tugged. “Sirius!” James yelled. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Sirius stared out at them, eyes wide and frightened. There was something on his head. Something pink. Remus sniffed the air, testing it with his lupine senses. James merely lunged forwards and grabbed the curtains again. “Sirius?” he said tentatively.
“I was asleep,” Sirius babbled, hands flying around, “and they just… they just appeared, and they were on my head, and under the covers with me, and, and just, urgh, get them away from me please.”
Remus picked one up and swung it from side to side. It flapped dismally in his hand. “Kippers,” he said in wonder.
“Kippers,” James repeated.
They were everywhere. Great heaps of them, on the bed, on Sirius’s head, inside his pillowcase, spilling out onto the floor beneath their feet. Remus sneezed; his sense of smell was no doubt reacting adversely to the olfactory assault.
Sirius shivered. “James, Remus” – his voice was vulnerable, childlike – “please get them away from me.”
Remus padded across the dormitory and grabbed his wand from his bedside table. “Wingardium leviosa,” he said thoughtfully. Slowly, the kippers picked themselves up off the ground and headed towards the ceiling. Once a shoal of salted fish was hanging in the air above their heads, Remus moved his wand, gently guiding them to the other side of the room, where they descended in the corner into an unwieldy heap.
“Aaargh,” whispered Sirius. He seemed on the white-faced edge of hysteria. “They were all over me… they… argh…”
“You know, I think he has a phobia,” said James, looking reflective.
“Of fish?” Remus asked blandly.
“Sleeping with fish,” Sirius told him shakily.
“I’ve never known anyone with a phobia of sleeping with fish before,” James said slowly.
“How many people do you know who’ve actually had the experience?” Remus pointed out.
“Are they gone?” Sirius asked worriedly.
“Yes, Sirius, they’re all gone,” James said soothingly, adding in an aside to Remus, “I wish I could see what his Boggart looks like.”
“Time to get out of bed, Sirius.” Remus was deliberately matter-of-fact. James knew that in an hour’s time, Sirius would claim that he hadn’t been remotely affected by the whole affair.
“Is it breakfast time?” Sirius asked Remus.
“It will be soon,” Remus replied, “so why don’t you get out of bed and get dressed? I’m sure you’ll feel better.”
After a moment, Sirius seemed to see the merits of the idea; he clambered out of bed and headed unsteadily for the bathroom. Remus stared at James. James stared back. “Two things,” James said. “Firstly, I’d bet anything you cared to name that the Slytherins are behind this.”
Remus nodded. “Tranfiguration and Disapparation of inanimate objects.”
“Transfiguration?”
“What, you think they had this many kippers just lying around?”
“Suppose you’re right. And secondly…”
“Secondly?”
“Breakfast,” said James gravely, “had better not involve kippers. Or pilchards. Or sardines. Or fish in any shape or form.”
Remus agreed.
As it happened, James wasn’t the first to go down to breakfast. He had assumed that Sirius was quite recovered from his bizarre experience, but then Sirius had come back into the dormitory and tripped over the pile of fish, and with a harried look, James had told Remus to go down with breakfast with Peter, he and Sirius would be along in a minute.
The two boys sat down at their usual place near one end of the Gryffindor table, and Remus passed Peter the jug of orange juice without being asked. Peter took it gratefully, poured himself a glass, and didn’t bother offering one to Remus when he knew it would be refused. Remus preferred coffee at this time of the morning, and the glass jug was steaming hot and warmed his hands as he poured.
Peter was now busy with the toast and raspberry jam. Remus sat back in his chair, nursing his mug of coffee. He lifted it to his lips, took a sip and promptly choked.
After a moment, it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop choking any time soon, and Peter jumped up, letting a table knife drop from his hands to the floor. By the time James and Sirius arrived, Remus had gone from simple coughing to stuffing his hands in his mouth to stop himself from gagging. James began to feel he’d unwittingly walked away from one crisis straight into another one.
Sirius slapped Remus on the back, forgetting his friend’s lupine reflexes, and Remus hit him back. James hurriedly decided that the situation wasn’t being dealt with as it should be; he pushed Sirius into a chair, passed Peter a knife to spread the butter and gave Remus a glass of water, which was gratefully accepted.
A minute passed before Remus was capable of speech, and his first words were suitably hoarse and threatening. “No-one touch the coffee,” he advised, eyes still watering.
No-one had touched it. It was Sirius who bowed to curiosity first, taking the mug from Remus and giving it an exploratory poke with his wand. “There’s something in it,” he said reverently, poking and prodding. “Something… lumpy.”
“Peas,” said Remus succinctly.
They all looked at him.
“I mean it,” he persisted. “That’s what it tasted like, anyway.”
Further probing with Sirius’s wand eventually revealed small, soggy green vegetables, carefully laid on the tablecloth, and there was a general consensus that Remus had been right.
“Strange, the way they float,” said Sirius thoughtfully.
“What?” Peter asked.
“The peas,” Sirius said, still in that thoughtful tone. “You’d have expected them to fall into a pile at the bottom of the mug.”
“They’ll have had charms placed on them,” put in James. “You know, to make them float.”
Sirius shook his head. “Slytherins,” he said sadly.
At this point, Remus pushed out his chair and stood up.
“Where are you off to?” Sirius asked.
“To wash my mouth out with sugar,” Remus called over his shoulder as he left the hall.
James watched him go, and his face set in determination. “However clichéd it may be, my dear Padfoot…”
“Yes, Prongs?”
“This means war.”
Their first lesson after breakfast was History of Magic, and the four boys were seated in their classroom, earnestly discussing their latest round of thrust and parry with Slytherin, when it happened.
“That lacks finesse, James,” Sirius was saying. “Besides, anything involving Snape’s underwear has been done to death…”
Remus was
writing a note to Peter, who was on the other side of the room.
Wormtail – Sirius wants to know if you have any ideas as to what we can do to
the Slytherins, and whether you think James’s main flaw is his lack of
originality and that’s why Lily won’t go out with him.
James was reading over his shoulder. “The reason,” he said icily, “that Lily has not gone out with me is because I haven’t asked her.”
“Yes, you have. Last year, after our OWLs.”
“I didn’t mean it seriously…”
Remus shrugged. “Don’t look at me, it’s Sirius who wants to know.”
Sirius was just adding a line (and do you think Remus needs a girlfriend?) and started guiltily. “Prongs, my love…” he began.
“Good afternoon, class.”
“…holy cow.”
Sirius had voiced the thoughts of everyone in the room. They were all staring, transfixed, at the front of the classroom. For a moment, there was a pin-drop silence, which was quickly replaced by an uproar of noise.
“Someone get help!” yelled a girl from the back of the room. “Lupin, you’re a prefect, do something!”
“I’ll get Professor Dumbledore,” said Remus hurriedly, standing up and running to the door. He called over his shoulder, “James, try and talk to him!” before disappearing.
James hesitated. Professor Binns, seemingly unaware that anything was amiss, was ready to start his lecture. “Um… Professor?” James began.
“Potter, is it? What seems to be the problem?”
Again, James hesitated. Anything he might have intended to say suddenly seemed very, very stupid.
Thankfully, the girl from the back of the room chose that moment to break in. “Professor!” she yelled.
“Excuse me, Miss…
“Cheetham,” she told him, then blinked as she realised he’d successfully distracted her. “Professor!” she began again. “You’re… you’re…”
“Dead?” suggested a voice.
Remus had entered with Dumbledore in tow. The headmaster presented an entirely straight face to them all as he said, “Before any of you feels he or she must give way to excessive displays of emotion, pray allow me a chance to explain. This morning, upon entering the staff room, Professor McGonagall was most distressed to discover that Professor Binns had passed away during the night. I had intended to call the school together at dinner to inform you all, however…”
The ghostly spectre that had until yesterday been Professor Binns squinted and rubbed at its eyes. “I must object, Headmaster!” he began. “I am trying to teach!”
“However,” continued Dumbledore, ignoring this interruption, “it would appear that I shall have to make a slightly different announcement from the one I had in mind.”
Someone – who couldn’t possibly have been Sirius – stifled a noise that couldn’t possibly have been laughter, and Dumbledore couldn’t possibly have glanced in his direction before continuing. “I shall now leave you to your lesson. I apologise for any distress you may have been caused. Good day to you all.”
As the class stared at him, he nodded courteously to Professor Binns and departed.
“Ahem.” Binns cleared his throat and began. “Turn to page twenty-eight, please. We begin with the International Decree of Wizarding Secrecy and the relation thereof to the Salem Witch Trials…”
Within five minutes, Sirius had given up all pretence at writing History of Magic notes and reverted to writing notes of a more interesting kind.
Prongs – do you think he even knows he’s dead?
In a word? No. Not even subliminaly.
That’s more than a word. And it’s “subliminally.”
Piss off, Moony.
My pleasure.
Where were we?
Not a clue. Something to do with Snape’s underwear.
Delightful.
We need revenge on the Slytherins.
When don’t we?
Well. I might have an idea.
Spill it.
Sirius liked the idea so much, he made it into a paper aeroplane so Peter, still on the other side of the room, could have a read.
The paper aeroplane went straight through Binns’s head. He didn’t notice.