Disclaimer: The characters, locations and elements of Harry Potter are the creative and legal property of J.K. Rowling, who I am not, and also to some extent the legal property of certain high-powered resource publishing conglomerates, who I am definitely not, and their affiliates, who I am also not. I mean no copyright infringement by and am deriving no profit from the creation and self-publication of this small bit of fiction; merely enjoyment.
Author's Notes: Silliness, but what can I say? I mean, how else would I-- or the boys, for that matter-- have celebrated St Patty's? Hehe. ("Outtakes" for the list in this fic -- being the complete aforementioned list, including all of James and Sirius's ideas that did not make the final cut, and their comments on the ones that did --can be found on my LiveJournal, which you can get to via the home page link on my bio, for those who might be interested. More silliness!)
Please review!
o.o.o.o
When Remus Lupin, with Floo powder and soot still clinging to his clothing, stumbled from the fireplace into James Potter's living room Saturday evening, probably one of the things he most expected to see was a gorgeous redhead, thought not sitting all by herself on the sofa, flipping idly through a Quidditch magazine. "Lily," he therefore exclaimed, pausing to dust some ash off of himself. "Where's James? I wanted to talk to him about—"
"He's not here," was her reply, spoken without looking at him, or taking her eyes away from the current star Seeker of the Ballycastle Bats as he enthusiastically whipped his hair from side to side in order to endorse a miracle hair potion guaranteed to furnish the user with longer, more luscious locks (the term 'lickable' inexplicably appeared at random intervals in the slogan, as well). She was grimacing; at the advertisement, or her absent fiancée, Remus was not sure which.
Remus blinked, only a little surprised. "What?"
Finally she tore her attention away from the wildly flapping head of hair, and rolled her eyes expressively. "He's gone out with Sirius," she answered, with another grimace; clearly, the expression was for James.
"Oh," said Remus, fighting down a grimace of his own, and batting at his clothing again. He'd almost got all the soot out, and wasn't too fond of the idea of heading directly back through the Floo.
"He was gone before I got here," Lily added, sighing and flipping a page so that Lucius Larke was no longer having a seizure in her face.
"Oh," Remus repeated, and then paused. He looked at her quizzically. "How do you know he's with Sirius, then?"
Lily laughed curtly, answering, "For one thing, who else is he ever with, besides me?"
Remus had to admit that she did have a point there.
"And furthermore..." she let the magazine fall to her lap and pointed to the coat rack standing next to the front door of the flat. One glance at it, and Remus was absolutely certain that James was with Sirius; his Out With Sirius Coat — a studded leather jacket, gifted to him by Sirius on the occasion of their leaving Hogwarts — wasn't anywhere in sight. James never moved the coat, except when he was out doing something with his best friend.
"I suppose," said Remus, turning back to Lily with an expression of vague interest and massive wariness, "that last means that you don't know what, precisely, they're up to."
"On the contrary; they left their list on the counter," Lily replied disdainfully, picking the magazine up again and flipping another page. There was no way she was really reading it at this point.
"Their list," he repeated slowly, waiting to be hit with a lightning bolt of understanding from the heavens. (That was usually the only way one figured things out when dealing with a James'n'Sirius scheme.) "Their list of, for, or about, what exactly?"
She waved her arm in the direction of the kitchenette, inviting him to head that way. "See for yourself, it's still there. I haven't actually touched it; you know how they are."
"Yes," agreed Remus with a nod, remembering an incident from their last year of Hogwarts. He did, indeed, know how Sirius and James were about anyone touching their things.
He walked into the kitchenette and sure enough, there on the counter was a sheet of parchment with a ragged end, two quills and an inkwell sitting demurely next to it. On the parchment was a seven-item list, bulleted with thick dark circles, as was typical of Sirius. And in James's elegant handwriting, Remus saw as he bent over to examine the thing, was an exceptionally ominous heading. He tried to ignore it and scan the rest of the list, but his eyes kept darting back up.
How To Be Irish—
Following it was the only slightly less worrying subtitle, in Sirius's distinctive scrawl:
Quintessential Traits of An Irishman
"Oh dear," Remus heard himself whisper faintly. "Lily, what's the date today?"
"March 17th," she answered promptly, shooting him a knowing look from around the magazine.
"St. Patrick's Day."
—°—
Two black-haired men were walking down a street somewhere in London, and the taller of the pair seemed to have twinkling, shockingly emerald green shamrocks dangling from the laces of his black combat boots.
"Remind me again why we're not doing this in Ireland?" hissed James, looking a little sulky. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his trousers, his Out With Sirius Coat hanging open at his chest to reveal the bright green of his shirt. (James hadn't wanted to wear green, since Sirius wasn't — it made his Black skin look sallow, he'd said — but it had been pointed out that green was a lovely color on James and brought out the sparkle in his eyes quite well. And Irish eyes always sparkled, apparently.)
Sirius flashed him a grin, and steered them down another suspicious back alley. "Because the point, James dear, is to be Irish somewhere where no-one else is. Now come on, the pub I mentioned is close."
—°—
"This is not going to end well," Remus announced, trying to keep a fatalistic note from creeping into his voice.
"Why do you think I'm still here?" questioned Lily, flipping the last few pages of the magazine all at once. "Certainly not for the gripping reading material."
"You're waiting for them?" Remus felt unforgivably clueless, but he really couldn't help himself. The antics of his sometimes incomprehensible best mates tended to leave him like that, when things got sprung on him all of a sudden.
"Mmhm," Lily nodded, tossing the magazine back onto James's coffee table. It hit with a small, slick thwack and slid across the absurdly glossy and well-polished surface and fell off the other side. It landed open, and Lucius Larke was once again flicking his hair at the ceiling.
Propping one of his hands on the counter, Remus did his best to look stern and quizzical, rather than bewildered and incredibly bemused. "How do you know they'll be coming back here, then?"
Lily laughed lightly, stretching out on the sofa, her head against one armrest and her feet dangling from the opposite end cushion. It was James's favorite pose for couch occupation. "Hadn't you realized by now? They've got a system. Sirius's flat is for when they want to stay in and drink together; they trash it and don't clean it up until just before they start drinking again. This one, James's flat, is for after they go out and drink together." She rolled her eyes. "Because apparently that makes sense to them."
Remus was nodding, because that did sound like it would make sense to them, and certainly fit with everything he'd observed in them before — but then what Lily actually said caught up with him and he froze.
"... They're going to be drinking?" he questioned warily.
Lily leveled a truly incredulous look at him and demanded, "Did you actually read that list of theirs?"
Remus shook his head sheepishly. "Didn't get past the title," he admitted, with a tiny, involuntary blush.
"Then go on," she instructed, with a slight smile. "I promise you, in a minute, you'll think your last question was stupid, too."
With raised eyebrows, Remus returned his attention to the list. At the top, just beneath the header that still sent shivers down his spine, in Sirius's writing were the words:
Unintelligible, enthusiastic accent.
Remus paused, absorbing this information, and then queried skeptically, "Do I want to know what accents have to do with being Irish?"
"Considering that over half the world can't tell an Irish accent from a Scottish accent from an English accent, and have absolutely no concept of local dialect?" returned Lily, with another roll of her eyes that Remus couldn't tell whether was intended to be fond or not. "No, probably you don't."
—°—
"I'm thirsty," declared James, shooting a dark look at Sirius. "I thought you said this pub you knew of was pretty close?"
"It is," Sirius assured him, grinning. He pointed at a doorway on the other side of the street, less than a hundred meters ahead of them. "In fact, it's just up here."
"Excellent," James said. Then, for good measure, he repeated, "I'm thirsty."
Sirius led them toward the dark pub door and moved to hold it open for his friend. "I know. Come on now, and don't forget your accent."
"Of course not!" snapped James, in truly horrible desecration of Gaelic slaughtering of the language, ducking under Sirius's arm to enter the pub. Sirius slipped in after him, and the door closed behind them.
The Muggle patrons of this quiet little pub were now officially at their faux Irish mercy.
—°—
"Right, not asking about the accents," said Remus, shaking his head and reading the next item on the list. "Ah, yes, my question does sound stupid."
This time it was James's handwriting that declared:
Excessive, enthusiastic drinking.
"Told you it would," Lily said smugly. She'd pulled a lock of her vibrant hair over in front of her face and was busy separating it into three slender strands, which she obviously intended to braid. "And at least this one makes sense."
"Mm." Remus nodded, having to admit that Irish alcoholism certainly seemed a more obvious, if much more dangerous, character trait to fix on than having an accent — which the entire world did, anyway. But he couldn't help himself asking, as he watched Lily calmly twining hair between her fingers, "Though doesn't it make you worry?"
"Should it? They often drink excessively. And enthusiastically," drawled Lily, unconcerned, as she finished her braid. She reached for another lock of hair from the other side of her face.
"But both at once?" insisted Remus, stressing the alarm in his voice so that she couldn't possibly ignore it. The mixture of Sirius Black, James Potter, excess, enthusiasm and something distilled was enough to give him nightmares about things imploding and people's heads falling — or getting pushed — of their necks.
The same thing seemed to have occurred to Lily, in spite of her valiant attempt to fight it. Her fingers stilled abruptly. "... I was actually comfortable in my noninvolvement, until you brought that up," she murmured, letting the half-finished braid fall down over her nose.
"Rather gives you chills, doesn't it?" demanded Remus, absently picking up the list — James and Sirius's oddities about personal property respect be damned — and going over in to sit on the sofa at Lily's feet; she lifted them up and slid them across his lap to make room without thinking about it, because while he was not as big as Sirius, he was still too large to fit on the narrow part of the sofa that she wasn't taking up.
"Yes," she averred with a delicate, expressive shiver. "Horribly, extremely chilly ones."
—°—
Sirius and James had been in the pub for five minutes, and they were each on their second Guinness, which they were chasing with... well, they'd asked for Irish Whisky, but they seemed to be getting the ordinary stuff. Not that they were complaining, mind you. They had high respect for good old British whiskey. It was just that they were Irish tonight, dash it all.
They vowed not to make a fuss, though, because they were enjoying themselves despite the crafty, wicked bartender, and they were already quite tipsy enough that they really didn't care.
"Two more beers, and we move on," James leaned over to whisper in Sirius's ear. His response was a giggle that James had to smack him to stop, because it looked ridiculously unmanly, and he wasn't sure the Irish giggled anyway.
"Yes," agreed Sirius when he'd recovered himself, "That sounds about right. You ready?"
"I will be after another couple glasses of this delicious black stuff," James assured him, downing the rest of his third pint of Guinness.
—°—
Remus and Lily were busily trying not to think too much about the probable havoc that was the most likely result of Sirius and James drinking enthusiastically, Lily with rather more success than her friend, as she'd had more time to absorb the information on the list. She noticed, once she'd pulled herself from the dire imaginings of her mind, that Remus was still holding the list, the parchment dangling limply from the fingers of his left hand. He hadn't got around to reading any further on it.
She smiled, rather slyly. "You know, if the drinking made you worry, Remus, maybe you shouldn't read the next one."
"Why not?" asked Remus, blinking again, but that might have been because he'd just noticed that, on the other side of the coffee table, Lucius Larke had progressed from flipping his hair everywhere to outright licking it zealously. 'LICKABLE' was quite inescapably blazon across the entire top of the page, and pretensions toward anything resembling class had apparently been thrown out the window. The advertisement was obviously not intended to be left playing itself for nearly that long.
Remus shook his head and turned quickly back to Lily, who hadn't realized what the Quidditch magazine was doing, and had busily begun to answer his question.
"Because," she was saying briskly, but with a smirk lurking in her eyes that said she was truly enjoying baiting him, "the next item on their list is probably going to lead to the one after that, and I know that you like the boys in one — or rather, two pieces — almost as well as I do."
That caught his attention, wiping obscene Quidditch stars firmly from his mind. Miss Evans did not mention dismemberment lightly, as it had an alarming tendency of being all too possible, when one dealt with Sirius and James. "Lily," he murmured slowly, his eyes narrowed, "you're scaring me."
She waved a dismissive hand — her left one, the one with James's engagement ring on it — at him. "Read on, Remus, read on," she commanded imperiously.
Remus did as he was told. At this point, he couldn't not read on.
It was Sirius's handwriting again this time, for both of the next items:
Violent, enthusiastic spitting.
Irrational, enthusiastic fighting.
Remus gave himself a moment to consider the fact that two such brilliant minds must certainly have had a reason to position fighting directly following spitting, and the demanded rather shrilly, "Um, Lily... why are we not chasing them down to stop them yet?"
Lily frowned thoughtfully, pondering her answer.
That was never a good sign; he shivered. Did Lily maybe have some secret grievance against James that no-one had bothered to tell him about?
"Because I'm actually curious to see what happens when they go out and try this," she explained after a few minutes of silent consideration. She said it calmly, reasonably, as if it were really a rational course of thought to want to see how badly your fiancée messed himself up while out with his (traditionally dangerous) best friend on St. Patrick's day.
Remus was, understandably, a little dubious about this uncharacteristic nonchalance. He asked, his skepticism obvious, "So, you're not honestly worried that they might kill, maim, break or otherwise injure someone or something, specifically and most probably themselves?"
"I am trying not to think about it that deeply, actually," she retorted crisply, chucking a toss pillow at his face, though always having had miserable aim she of course missed.
"Oh." A long pause, as that really did make more sense than her previous statement. "Good idea."
—°—
"Which?" demanded James, taking a big gulp of Guinness and holding it in his mouth.
Sirius considered for a moment, and then gestured to a large man, shaven-headed standing just down the bar from them. "That one looks good."
James lifted both eyebrows and sent Sirius a questioning look, clearly asking, Now?
"Now," confirmed Sirius, quickly diving for his own mouthful of lager.
Turning promptly, James spewed his brew in the exact direction of their chosen target.
A roar of indignation met his efforts, and a moment later, as Sirius's projectile Guinness hit the Muggle as well, it was followed by one of rage.
The two wizards tried to restrain their un-Irish glee as they were both bowled over with one swipe of that extremely large arm. It was a pity they couldn't use their wands, because then they would definitely win, but in the meantime... Sirius set to kicking at the knees of the giant man and his equally enormous friends, while the slightly more drunken James began wind-milling his arms wildly, hitting everything near him with his fists. Including Sirius's head.
This was fun.
—°—
"What was the next one?" asked Lily quickly, to forestall further images of death, destruction and devastation from entering her mind.
Remus's eyebrows went up. "I thought you'd read this already."
"I have," Lily answered, looking around for another toss pillow to throw at him, "but that doesn't mean I committed it to memory, or anything. Why would I?"
"Lily, you're slipping," laughed Remus, but he read aloud the next bullet, which was again an addition from James.
Bloody, enthusiastic rebellion against England.
"... Why does that sound worse than the ones before it, all of a sudden?" she ventured warily.
By now Remus's mind had caught up with how Sirius and James's had obviously been working when they compiled this list of theirs, so he was able to promptly reply, "Probably because you've started thinking about why they would have put this one right after the fighting part."
"If..." Lily began to say, but trailed off, her face going red and angry.
Remus regarded her curiously. "If what, Lily?"
"I'm not sure exactly what I was going to say," she admitted slowly, apparently gritting her teeth as she spoke, and her cheeks still pink, "but I do know that it involved flaming idiots and treason and extreme rage on my part."
"Ah. If they do happen to engage in treasonous acts, there will be bringing of the wrath when James gets home, then?" Remus prophesied
"Oh, will there ever," Lily snarled, sitting up quickly. "Wrath like you wouldn't believe, Remus."
He made an agreeing mmm noise in the back of his throat, because that was what you did when Lily got that look on her face and you were still unfortunately male, and then he casually declared, "I'm thinking I should make popcorn — but you know for that we have to assume that they'll live through said treasonous acts."
One red eyebrow arched. "They should probably pray they don't."
—°—
The watch had most definitely been called, as the saying went. And the wizards were most definitely drunk and disorderly, as the legal term went. They were enjoying themselves tremendously.
"Ye bloody Brits!" screamed Sirius, his fake Irish accent out in full force, as he punched in the nose of yet another constable.
"Down wid the lot o' ye!" agreed James, his Irish accent even worse, throwing his weight into the knee he'd just launched at the stomach of another copper.
(Unfortunately for them, and as they were about to discover to their peril, this latest wave of police men had possessed the foresight to bring stun guns.)
—°—
"Right, well, after the rebellion against England, we have the odd one about the starch, right?" said Lily, apparently not content to simply dwell on her fury at just the thought of her future husband rebelling against his country. This was probably wise, as since she'd started going out with him, no-one'd had the gall to suggest that she had anything but the most fertile of imaginations.
Clearly on the same mental track as Lily, Remus obligingly checked the list, and just as Lily had mentioned, once again in James's writing, there were the words:
Frequent, enthusiastic consumption of potatoes.
"I suppose that asking why the potatoes come after the rebellion would be futile?" Remus remarked despairingly, trying to decipher what on Earth potatoes had to do with being Irish or enjoying St. Patrick's day.
"Considering that I haven't a bloody clue either, yeah, it would be," agreed Lily, slouching back down against the armrest. She was beginning to look as if she'd stopped finding the situation at all amusing. (Fortunately she still hadn't spotted Lucius Larke and his increasingly pornographic appreciation of his own hair.)
Remus passed a weary hand over his eyes and deliberately did not look over at the mantelpiece clock, which had just begun to inform him that he had been waiting with Lily for over an hour already. He went on, this time distinctly disdainful and hopelessly, "Likewise pointing out that Sirius can't stand potatoes unless they're deep-fried, or baked and smothered in bacon and cheese?"
Lily nodded forlornly. "There was probably a reason it was James writing it down, I guess," she muttered.
Remus very intelligently winced at the thought that had just entered his head. Obstinately, and more to himself than Lily, he cried, "I don't even want to think about how he got Sirius to agree to that one."
—°—
"I'm starving," muttered Sirius, as he woke up across an uncomfortable bench in what looked suspiciously like a holding cell.
"Me, too," muttered James, who had also just woken to find himself in a Muggle prison.
With a veiled, evil expression, Sirius demanded quickly, "You don't think they'd give us any potatoes, do you?"
James's grin was likewise one of masked villainy. "Worth a try, asking."
In unison they started up raising a holler that would, undoubtedly bring someone by to figure out just what the hell they thought they were doing. And, being such experienced delinquents as they were, they felt certain they could con whoever it was out of at least a few potatoes.
And raw potatoes made such wonderful explosives when being handled by wizards, didn't you know?
(Good thing for the rest of the world that Muggle policemen were made of sterner stuff than Hogwarts professors.)
—°—
Lily found herself asking, despairingly, and because she'd completely forgotten how the men had ended their list, "What else could there possibly be, after potatoes?"
Remus checked.
Large, enthusiastic... shamrocks.
"That couldn't possibly be anyone's but Sirius's," he muttered, faintly amazed. Somehow, shamrocks really did not seem like a character trait. And if there was one thing he never wanted to do, it was figure out just how in the name of all things sane they'd managed to make it work.
"The potatoes were bad enough," said Lily, a look of disbelief on her face, "but they were definitely stretching at that point, I think."
Remus shook his head in agreement. "Yeah, it's probably telling that this one is the last."
"Yeah," said Lily, and then froze. Something had occurred to her, and it was of all things one of the most terrifying thoughts she'd ever had. Remus shot her a curious look; fearfully, she whispered, "Is it the last, or did they just take the rest of the list with them?"
"Lily, I shudder to imagine what else could possibly be contained on this list," Remus rebuked quickly, going pale. He looked like he might be sick.
Repentant, Lily folded her head in her hands and groaned. "It does rather seem a recipe for certain destruction, as is, doesn't it?"
As the words left her mouth, the telephone, installed at Lily's insistence, rang suddenly, startling they both. They shared a look, and groaned, because of the four people who actually knew and remembered the number, half of them were currently sitting on the sofa listening to it ring, and the other half were out somewhere, bent on single-handedly bringing about the next world war. And of those two were calling, it meant that they'd got into some sort of trouble that they couldn't get themselves out of, and had obviously tried calling Lily's flat first. Or else they were just drunk out of their minds, and really thought that calling an empty flat would do them some sort of good.
With a consoling pat on the shoulder for Lily, Remus got up and crossed the room to answer the annoyingly loud phone.
—°—
James and Sirius were whispering together when Lily and Remus got to the police station, their twin heads of thick black hair bent close together. They each had two large shamrocks, perched on springs extending from green headbands, waving merely above their heads like bug antennae. It was possibly the oddest thing Remus had ever seen; he shook his head and turned away.
"D'you reckon we should have warned them before we went out?" James was asking worriedly.
"Nah," Sirius quickly assured them. "Better not to have given them a chance to stop us."
Lily marched down and stood directly in front of their cell, as Remus went over to work his magic on the constabulary force. James and Sirius looked up, and both of them paled at the look on Lily's face. But they were still quite drunk, so they both managed dazzling smiles, as well.
"Consider yourselves remanded into the custody of the Red Witch," she growled warningly, and as the cell door sprang open, James and Sirius gave heavy thought to remaining nice and safely behind bars.
They were in for it now.