Word Play

Disclaimer: So my friends (what, friends? What are they?) don't call me J K Rowling. Does that help?

AN: Lots of maraudery word-inspection. It just sprouted in my brain and I uprooted it and planted it on a page. How do you like it?

"Parallelogram has a nice ring to it, don't you think?" asked my friend, James Potter.

Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and I turned to stare at him.

"Plallallallellolwhat?" Peter tried, unsuccessfully, to repeat.

I smiled. "And where exactly did that spring from?"

Sirius, on the other hand, put on his unfair face – a combination of his defected- sorry, dejected face and his outraged one. "I thought random comments were supposed to be my speciality! Anyway, I prefer bituminisation. Covering something with bitumen, you know?"

James turned to Peter first. "Parallelogram. A four sided shape with two pairs of opposite parallel sides."

"Oh, yes," nodded Peter, enthusiastically. Peter was not, despite popular belief, as stupid as he looked, although that was hard to prove when he was always in James' shadow.

James gave me a brief, practised shrug of his shoulders and glared at the irrepressible, overactive and tactless Sirius Black. "Bituminisation? Are you joking?"

I joined the conversation. "I quite like rhyme."

"Yes," agreed James, quidditch expert and almost as tactless as Sirius. "It's kind of - I dunno – symple, I suppose."

"What kind of word is symple?"

"Shut up, Sirius. A mysterious one," came the assertion.

"Oh, thanks," Sirius grumbled.

"I think it's archaic," Peter piped up.

"Now there's a word- archaic just soars, doesn't it, Sirius?" James asked, winking at his best friend.

"Eh? Wha'?" There was a pause as Sirius ran over the latest developments in the conversation. "…Nah, unfazed is better."

I re-entered the conversation. "Words with unusual spellings always catch my interest," I admitted, turning to Sirius. "How does zany strike you?"

"Cool," breathed Sirius.

Peter grinned, amused at the look on Sirius' face. "You've seen the light, have you?" He faced me and James. "I prefer words that are short and kind of punchy."

"Like…" James hurriedly rifled through his vocabulary. No likely candidates surfaced. "Words with a clear meaning?"

"Yes!" agreed Peter, "Clear is a good example. Or gaze, or dark, or zero. They rouse your interest, in a way."

If you say so, I thought, a little confused. Peter's mind was clearly on a completely different wavelength from mine.

"Unobtrusive is a good word, isn't it?"

"You would think that," joked James.

"Gone is nice," decided Peter.

"Obvious," I countered.

"Trust."

"Friendship."

"Peace."

"Nobility."

"Shy."

"That's good," I admitted. "Quiet."

"Concede."

"Zany."

Peter and I glared at Sirius, and he was delighted to glare back.

Finally, James spoke up again. "You have to admit, though, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis beats them all."

He cringed as the three Snape-like glares suddenly turned his way.