The record player had gone bust again. Sirius walked into the dormitory to find Remus up to his elbows in it, bits of casing strewn across the floor around him. Remus muttered something under his breath, and there was a loud spark from inside the devise. The turntable began rotating sluggishly.
"Thanks ever so much," Sirius drawled as he yanked his robes over his head. "It's not like I've been complaining about how the thing stopped working three bloody months ago."
"Well, I'm very good at tuning out your complaining." Remus pulled his wand out of the back of the machine and pointed it at the turntable, which began to gradually spin faster. "Lily let me borrow a couple things, but I promised to get them back by next week."
"And here I thought you fixed it because you like me, sweetheart." Remus ignored Sirius in favor of digging through his school bag, adding books and scraps of parchment to the detritus on the floor. His complete indifference to the flirtation, affected as it was, made Sirius feel mildly put out. He stretched out on his bed with a loud sigh and tried not to think about how vain that made him.
"Since when are you and Lily record-swapping buddies?" James was clearly trying for the bored cynicism he turned towards most of his friends' musical endeavors, but he couldn't keep a tight thread of need from wavering in his voice. Anything that involved Lily was a matter of life and death, and it had turned James from an arrogant but devoted bastard into a simpering white knight in less than a year. It left Sirius with a festering sense of frustration that was dangerously close to ending with his hands around Lily Evans' milky white throat.
"Whatever she gave you, I hope it's not that dance club shit all the other girls are passing around." Sirius smirked, grateful that he could rely on Peter to voice his negativity. "Although that'd mean going out and having fun, which would probably make her break out in a rash or something."
Remus didn't look up as Sirius held James back from cursing Peter. "I think you'll all like this one better than disco. Especially you, Sirius." Sirius looked up, his hands still on James' shoulders, as the scratch of the record filled the small room.
It sounded like a caterwauling veela. It sounded like a flock of caterwauling veela tossing a full orchestra off a cliff. It scratched at Sirius' ears like nails on a blackboard, like the shriek of sixteen years of pent up lust and anger and need and loss. And it rocked.
"It started in America, but bands are starting to crop up here. I believe they're calling it punk." Remus was gazing intently at them, open and curious and seemingly unfazed by the cacophony pouring from the speaker next to him. The barest hint of a smile began to play at his lips, and Sirius grinned in return. "The melodic structure is even worse than the bands you listen to, Sirius, but there's something cathartic about the simplistic display of emotion. I'm rather fond of it."
"Oh fuck yes." James crawled over to Sirius' bed, leaning to grab the sleeve off the floor. "So Lily's into this stuff? Merlin, I didn't think she had it in her."
Sirius looked at the sleeve over James' shoulder, and the familiarity of tight trousers and fuck you snarls and messy mops of too-long hair brought another grin to Sirius' face. "You could pull that off, mate. Bet Lily'd like it." James turned a confused look towards Sirius, taking in the lewd smirk now gracing his best friend's face. James caught plenty of girls just stumbling around in his school robes, but a little tight leather and eye makeup would make the whole school fall for him. Sirius was suddenly very grateful for his watertight reputation with the witches.
Remus began rummaging through the piles around him. "I somehow doubt Lily's the type to fall for such blatant pandering, unlike the girls Sirius spends his time with." He pulled out another record and handed it to James. "Something like this would probably work better."
"The girls I spend time with are perfectly happy with the arrangement, thank you very much." He inspected the second album cover. "Now this is something you could work, Remus. You've got plenty of stuff that's shredded like this. I bet even the scars would look good."
He ducked the swat Remus delivered to his head. "You and your perversions. Why would anyone be attracted to somebody who looks like he hasn't slept in a month?"
Before Sirius could expound on the benefits of his perversions, Peter yanked the album cover from his hands. "Guys, this is what we look like every month!" He held the album up, and there was a giddy spark in his eyes that Sirius hadn't seen in a while. "We don't have to do anything, and we're at forefront of muggle fashion. Forget Lily, we could get any girl in the school."
James sat up and stretched, unaware of what he was about to set off. "Well, I for one would love to see traditional wizarding music fucked properly in the arse. Who's with me?"