Disclaimer: The title of this disclaimer is "Wherein A Thing Is Disclaimed." The plot: the author, one "Jack," claims not to own rights to the Harry Potter series, and is writing this for fun and not profit. The twist ending: a lot of readers simply stop reading, having decided that the disclaimers are always their favorite part of Jack's stories, and instead go to to see if JK Rowling had put anything else out since last they checked, five minutes before.

"There's a fly on your nose."

"Is there? Shoo it off, won't you?"

"No."

"Ah, well. It's likely to go away at some point. Females all do."

Sirius was lying on the couch in the Gryffindor common room being stared at by James, Peter, and Remus. Peter and Remus were, at any rate. James had gotten tired of trying to console his friend and had taken to poking Sirius' foot with his wand, waiting to see if he got any sort of reaction. After all, Sirius would do the same for him.

"It isn't the end of the world, mate. You know that, right?" Sirius didn't respond, leading Peter to follow up with, "How d'you know that fly is a girl fly?"

"All flies are girl flies, the ones you see. The boy flies stay in the hive with the queen fly." Sirius shook his head, dislodging the insect. "Everyone knows that."

"That's bees, mate," said James, still poking Sirius.

"Nah, it's flies. Gotta be."

"Bees," Remus agreed. "Get up. Come on, now."

"No. I'm going to lie here forever, stewing like a tea leaf in the boiling water of my own failure. D'you know, I was rejected not once—"

"—not twice but three times today yes, we know." Peter had heard the story at least five times by this point; he, unlike Sirius, hadn't bothered to keep count. "By one girl whom you'd not even spoken to yet. You should get up. I know that you're going to have an epiphany sooner or later, you always do, and I have to pee. I'd rather you get on with it so that I don't miss it."

Sirius shrugged. "Too late, my friend. I have had my epiphany, and that epi—do you mind?" he snapped at James.

James grinned and pocketed his wand. "First step on the road to Siriusness is a temper. It's about time. You were going to wear down the tip on my wand, you know."

"There are easier ways to piss me off."

"Yes, but they all involve making fun of your hair. I only wanted to annoy you, not have you attack me."

"I wouldn't attack you," said Sirius, sitting up. "I'd wait til you were asleep." He stretched and aimed a half-hearted kick at James, who simply moved his leg. "There, I'm up. Now what?"

"I, for one, hadn't thought that far in advance," said Remus. "I'm all in favor of you going away until you find a girl who can whip you into shape again. So to speak."

"Or just whip you. We don't keep track of your preferences from day to day," Peter added.

"No, no. I will love no more forever." Sirius sighed. "I'll live a life of chastity and singledom, like our good friend Wormtail here."

"Thanks, mate."

James had never taken Muggle Studies, and thus didn't know what a lightbulb was, but would have appreciated the metaphor of having one over his head. "You know what your problem is? You've lost your confidence. Girls love confidence."

"It's true, they do," said Peter, nodding sagely.

Remus looked surprised. "How d'you know that?"

"Do you ever see me with a bird?"

"No."

"And what don't I have any of?"

"Ah."

"I s'pose I have lost my confidence," said Sirius, scratching his head.

"So you need it back."

"All right, how do you—"

"OI! LILS!"

Lily, who was on the other side of the room, turned her head, saw her boyfriend waving frantically, and mentally slid closer to the point of killing him. She almost yelled back, but that was largely James' influence. Instead she had the class to walk to the sofa around which the four were gathered. "What?"

James winked at Lily. She cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you have some sort of potion on you? You are our resident potions expert. Some sort of, say, confidence potion?"

Lily sat down next to Peter and set her bag down behind her. "There... there is a Confidence Potion," she said, still thrown off by the wink. The capital letters fell into place almost audibly. "But how did you know—?"

"I do pay attention in Potions class on occasion," lied James. "Would you happen to have any on your person?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"I'm certain young Sirius would greatly appreciate some," James continued, winking again.

As if hypnotized by sheer confusion, Lily motioned to her bag. "Wormy, do you see a clear stoppered vial in there?"

"Hmm?" Peter investigated. "Yes. And some gum. Can I have some gum?"

"Sure. The vial?"

Peter handed it to Lily, who handed it to James. "You're beautiful, you know that?" said James, handing the vial off to Sirius.

"Well, I am rather handsome," said Peter.

Sirius eyed the vial dubiously, but downed the contents anyway. For one thing, Lily was infinitely better at potion-making than he was, and for another, he didn't have much left to lose.

"There. Now, just piss off."

Sirius was the one to cock the eyebrow this time. Or would have done, if he were the type of person capable of raising one eyebrow at a time. "I'm sorry, excuse me?"

"You can't just gain confidence sitting around. You have to go out there into the wide world."

"Or those parts of it occupied by school grounds," said Remus quietly.

"Go find Jessica Lapin, chat about all the things that Ravenclaw's so famous for. Spend some quality time with those two huge... lips of hers. Go!"

"I'm not about to—"

Peter was still poking through Lily's bag. "Oi, Prongs, d'you reckon we could get Sirius to drink this Hair Loss Potion as well?"

"I'm going." Sirius could spare a moment to stick his tongue out at his friends before he left. As soon as Sirius was gone, Peter excused himself to go pee, since he was going to miss out on Sirius' epiphany anyway.

He had been gone for a couple of minutes before Lily said, "So just how did you know that I had made a Confidence Potion for extra credit?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"I... what do you mean you made a Confidence Potion?"

"I thought you knew. Which was why you asked. Which was why I gave it to you."

"No! I was bluffing! You were supposed to give him, I don't know, a thing that doesn't actually do anything except that he thinks it does!"

"Placebo," suggested Remus.

"Right, that." James looked at the door Sirius had left through, an alarmed look on his face. "D'you realize what you did?"

"What I did?" Lily said indignantly. "You're the one shoving potions down your friend's throat! Why would I be carrying around a placebo anyway?"

James almost made an accusing gesture, but even his current state he recognized that doing so would probably result in having the hand pointing backwards, permanently. Instead he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Sirius was going to get better. He always does. We just had to get him out of here so he could do it in a manner that's less annoying than usual. And quicker, for preference."

"So?"

"So now he'll get his regular confidence back because he thinks he will. And then the potion will kick in."

Lily still looked confused, so Remus summarized it as succinctly as possible: "We have just given a Sirius Black to the world who is more confident than Sirius Black."

Lily paled, finally grasping the gravity of the situation. "Oh, bugger."

Sirius walked down the hall in a strut that looked as if it should have a sound track to it. Wizarding England had been largely spared the horrors of disco, save for a handful of Muggle-born students who, in general, were gently discouraged from listening to it by having their records replaced with Fanged Frisbees. However, if the young witches and wizards that Sirius Black passed as he moved down the hall had been more familiar with the genre, they would have been able to tell by the way he used his walk that he, Sirius, was a woman's man, with no time to talk.

He wasn't sure when he had begun strutting, but didn't feel up to stopping just yet.

Sirius walked outside into the fresh spring air and took a deep breath. The grounds were packed with people enjoying one of the first warm days in recent memory, many of whom were beautiful girls. In his mind's eye, Sirius saw them as chocolates in a box, each delicious in its own way and all impossible to choose between.

And this might have been the end of the metaphor if not for the magic now flowing through his veins. Now he realized that no one ever said he was only allowed to pick one chocolate from the box.

Peter, James, and Remus were already eating dinner when Sirius came into the Great Hall, looking more than a little disturbed. His eyes passed over the long row of Gryffindors eating their evening meal before he found his so-called friends and descended on them, like a very attractive wolf on the fold. "You!" he pointed at James.

"Last I checked I was me, yes."

"Someone has to do it," said Peter.

"You!" he repeated. "And you!" He pointed at Lily this time, who was at the far end of the table. Sirius made a mental note to point at her later when she would be sure to notice.

"What's the problem, mate?"

"Do you have any idea what you made me do with your poison?"

James groaned. "I knew that was going to come back and bite me. All right, what did you do?"

"No, no. You did this."

Now James rolled his eyes. "All right. What did we do?"

Apparently this satisfied him, because Sirius sat down and took a plate. He was indignant, but he was also hungry. "You fed me poison, you did. Or overdosed me on that black magic of yours."

"You were the one who took the whole bottle," Remus pointed out. Sirius turned his glare on him. It only made Remus smirk.

"I didn't think it would do anything," James objected. "I thought you just needed to get over yourself. I thought she would have a Hair Gloss Potion or an Indigestion Potion that wouldn't do anything. It wasn't supposed to actually raise your confidence. I'm not insane."

"Oh, no. It didn't raise confidence or restore confidence. It broke the limits of how confident a bloke can be. Because of that stuff, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with seven Hogsmeade dates."

James goggled. "You asked seven girls to Hogsmeade?"

"No, I have seven dates to Hogsmeade. I asked nine. One of them was a Muggle-born girl who doesn't date Gryffindor boys... or any boys, ever."

James shrugged. "Bound to happen sooner or later. Who was the other one who turned you down?"

"I'm sure that must have been a fun talk at home," Sirius continued. "'Mum, you know how I'm a witch and you had to tell your friend Mrs. Stein that I got into a Scottish boarding school? It turns out I'm also queer! So have her bring her daughter over more often.'"

James didn't miss the dodge. "Padfoot? Who was the other girl?"

"It might have been... erm... Professor McGonagall."

Remus froze, a fork full of food frozen halfway to his mouth. James stared in disbelief and Peter started laughing so hard that he was barely making any actual sound, instead simply convulsing with mirth. "Yeah, yeah," said Sirius, who didn't look ashamed or embarrassed so much as bemused.

"Do you mean to tell me that you made a serious attempt to get into Professor McGonagall's tartan knickers?" said James, clearly convinced that his ears were playing some cruel trick on him.

"Oi. I'll have you know that Professor McGonagall is a very handsome woman. Any bloke would be lucky—"

"Sirius, you're talking to us." James indicated his friends. Remus was still frozen, and Peter was gasping loudly for air.

"Well... it's true. She is."

"So she turned you down, eh?" said James, speeding away from the topic of McGonagall's attractiveness as quickly as possible.

"You might say that. Another way of putting it was... well, threatening to throw me out on my ear. While blushing. And holding back a laugh. I did notice that much." Sirius sighed and pushed the noodles on his plate around with his fork. "That confidence thing was a rubbish idea, mate."

James shook his head. "I told you, Lily wasn't actually—"

"Oh, bollocks. Are you all right over there, Pete?"

Peter was leaning heavily on the table with one hand and holding his side with the other. "Oh, Lord. That... whew. I... That might set me for life. I might be out of laughs there."

"Thank you for that." Sirius rubbed his temples. "Ugh. Seven dates. I'm not entirely sure I even know who they all are. I think one of them might be a Slytherin." He said this in the same tone that an English person might say "Frenchman," or a Frenchman might say "anyone from any country anywhere."

"You have to tell them, mate."

Sirius sighed. "I know."

"Professor McGonagall?" exclaimed Remus.

"Good to see you keeping up, Moony."

"It must be going poorly," said Lily a week later at the Leaky Cauldron, sipping a butterbeer.

"Why's that?" asked Peter.

"He was supposed to be here a quarter-hour ago."

"Perhaps it's just going really, really well." Peter grinned and made a peculiar motion with his eyebrows.

Lily snorted her drink and groaned as she reached for a napkin. "Owww. You're disgusting," she said, still laughing.

Any further comments on the potential goings-on of seven teenage girls and one teenage boy were cut short as Sirius walked in, sat down at the table with his friends, and took Remus' drink. "Oi!"

"Relax." Instead of drinking it, he put it on his eye, which they now noticed was starting to swell. "It didn't go well."

"You don't say?" said James, glaring at Peter to keep his mouth shut.

"It went all right until I suggested that the day didn't have to be a total loss. Then one of them took it the wrong way, and before I knew it, the whole conversation had gotten away from me. I barely escaped with my life. That Slytherin girl really objected to my having shins." Sirius sighed and returned Remus' drink to him. "I'll be back, I just have to get a bottle of my own. A colder one."

They watched him walk away, wincing at his slight limp. Remus was the first to speak. "Just think. If he'd have had just a bit more potion in him, one of those women might have been McGonagall."

"At least when he looks back on this story in the future, he won't regret having settled for six girls," said Peter.

Lily nodded. "Truly, it's better to have loved, lost, and been beaten up by a septet of women than never to have loved at all."

James didn't have anything clever to say. Instead he pointed at Sirius, mouth slightly agape. Sirius was leaning on the bar talking to Madam Rosmerta. They were close enough that they could hear the conversation.

"I had seven dates today. But I realized that I couldn't very well date them and make time with you." With anyone else, the beer pressed against his face would have ruined any charm he might have had. But Sirius didn't have such handicaps.

"Oh? They'll be jealous, I expect."

"No doubt," Sirius agreed. "But they can make eyes at you the same as everyone else."

"My God," said Remus. "You could poke a hole in him and sell whatever fell out as Confidence Potion."

"Wish I could. He drank my extra-credit project."

"Come on, let's finish the afternoon at Zonko's." James drank the last of his beer and left the bottle on the table.

"Don't you want to wait for Padfoot?" asked Peter.

"For him to finish his talk with Madam's cleavage? I want to get to the shop before it closes, mate."

Peter did hang back just a bit to eavesdrop on Sirius. "You know, Rosie, this isn't the only wand I'm good with." With a sigh and a shake of the head, Peter closed the door completely and chased after the others.