this is a disclaimer.
AN: DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE PRETENTIOUS-SOUNDING SUMMARY. This is basically crack!fic. References abound to Beatrix Potter and Lord of the Rings. Wow, I've never done that before. (Also, this is the Halloween mentioned at the end of "the city's aflood".)
be the overflow
Remus had toothache. He wasn't sure quite how it had happened, unless he'd eaten something last week that he shouldn't have, but he doubted it, whenever that happened there was usually a lot of throwing up the next morning. Maybe it had been the cake at Peter's birthday party. There had been a lot of cake, and it had been liberally coated - nay, slathered - with icing.
Whatever the cause, he had toothache and it was annoying him no end and if Sirius didn't stop bouncing that bloody cricket ball off the wall beside his bed Remus would not be responsible for his subsequent actions.
"Will you knock it off!"
Sirius sniffed. "So-rry," he said, and pocketed the cricket ball.
From downstairs, there was a clatter, a scritch-slap of footsteps on the stone stairs, someone laughing.
"Here they come," said Peter. "It doesn't sound like she's run to McGonagall."
"Unless he's hexed her," said Sirius.
"He wouldn't do that," said Remus. "She was fine about - me."
Fine, all right. He had known, somewhere in the pit of his chest, that she would be. Remus, Remus stop, you don't have to do this, not for me.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Yes, Moony," he said, exaggeratedly patient, "but despite Barty Crouch's best efforts, it's still not actually illegal to be a werewolf. Whereas unregistered Animagi..."
Remus snorted. True.
"I told you not to do it," he said priggishly.
The dorm door crashed open.
"Do what?" James demanded, staggering inside - and no bloody wonder he was staggering, he was carrying Lily bridal-style, who was laughing into his shoulder and kicking her booted feet, just a little. "Did Benjy Fenwick lend you his shag pad?" He managed another two steps to the left and then fell onto the end of Remus' bed. It was closest the door.
The mattress bounced. One of the wooden slats underneath gave an ominous-sounding crack.
Remus sighed.
Sirius smiled that slow sharp smile he got at the beginning of a prank. "Not lend," he said. "Not exactly lend."
Peter whooped. "So when's the wedding?"
Remus looked from Sirius' smile to James and Lily sprawled giggling at the foot of his bed, and sighed again. "Which one?"
"Oh, it was brilliant," said Lily, emerging somehow from the tangle of James' body and shaking her hair back. "We got half-way up the fifth floor staircase and round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should we meet but Mr McGregor!"
James' turn to whoop. He twisted into the sheets and buried his face against the mattress, shoulders shaking.
Remus, despite his toothache, managed a grin. Prongs had the most infectious - and, to be quite honest, the zaniest - laugh of anyone he'd ever met.
"Mr McGregor?" said Sirius, floundering in the darkened sea without the life-boat of a childhood spent with Beatrix Potter to anchor him. Peter, whose Dad had been Muggle-born like Remus and Lily, was in stitches as well.
James' left hand emerged from the covers and waved helplessly. "There's," he said. "There's a. A. Talking - a talking rabbit, Padfoot!"
"In a watering-can," Lily added and fell over backwards on top of James, laughing again. "Oh, blimey. Bloody Noras. I need a drink."
"I take it," said Peter, grinning, "in this situation, you were Peter Rabbit?"
Lily shook her head, hair flying. "Flopsy and Mopsy," she gasped out. "And if you're Peter then Sirius is Cotton-tail!"
This time, the whole room shook with laughter.
"What about - what about Remus?" James, red-faced and wheezing and glasses-less, emerged from the sheets.
"Mrs Tiggywinkle," Lily said promptly.
Even Sirius could see why that one was funny. Remus was practically crying with laughter.
"So. So what did you do to Filch?"
"Nothing," said James. "We were under the Cloak."
"Snogging?" Peter asked dryly.
"No, he had his hands in my knickers," Lily shot back. The room exploded again. Sirius was sprawled on the floor, banging his fist against the floorboards. "Oh, Merlin," he managed. "I bet Filch," he stopped to gasp, "I bet Filch would have killed to see that!"
"I bet he would, said James, shaking gleefully. "Anyone would. We're quite gorgeous, you know."
Lily bent over and hid her face on her knees, hair falling down to the floor like Rapunzel's own curls. Gorgeous, all right, Remus thought. Prongs and Lily had, physically, a lot in common: long and lean and graceful, and back in the days of Mary McDonald's unrequited crush on James a great deal had been said about his perfect hands -
Remus dropped his book and pinched his own arm.
Maybe he should be taking something for this flaming toothache.
"So there we are," said Lily, delighted, "invisible with Prongs' hands in my knickers -"
Fresh burst of laughter.
"- and Filch comes round the corner slinking along like a creature from the pit, right, muttering under his breath and sniffing this way and that -"
"Like a Ringwraith," said Remus before he could stop himself.
"Exactly like a Ringwraith!" Lily exclaimed. "The Witch-King of Angmar, hunting the forests of the Shire for the Ring-bearer and his companions."
"Except I'm fairly certain Frodo never got his hands down anyone's knickers."
"Oh, shuttupayerface about the bloody knickers," said Sirius. "D'you know how long it's been since I've seen anyone's knickers?"
"Two days," James said promptly.
"I don't mean yours, sunshine. I mean knickers of the female persuasion."
"Thus discounting Benjy Fenwick's," said Peter.
"You never know," said Lily. "I have him pegged as the sort of bloke who'd wear knickers of the female persuasion."
"You have," said James, shaking again, "him pegged," and set all five of them off once more. By the time they got back to the story, everyone was red-faced and tear-stained and helplessly prone on the nearest flat surface.
"So Filch was doing the Ringwraith impression," prompted Remus.
"Right. Yeah. And then that filthy cat slinks after him and comes towards us and is sort of mewing, and we start backing up -" she stops to choke up with laughter all over again, and James has to finish.
"- and get caught in one of the trick steps!"
Horrified groans. Remus knuckles tears out of his eyes. It really shouldn't be this funny, but oh, it is, it truly is: the cosy dorm, and the dim lights, and his best mates (his family) so unconditionally happy.
"So we're stuck, right, and cannet get out or we'll dislodge the Cloak -"
"And mind he still had his hands in my knickers," Lily tossed in.
"- thank you, darling, a memory I will cherish to the end of my days - and Filch is creeping towards us and muttering and there was only one thing to do."
"Weeeeeeeeell?" Peter demands.
"Evans threw a Reducto at the suit of armour on the landing."
"I'm amazed you didn't hear the crash up here," said Lily, giggling. "It was brilliant. I didn't make it very strong, it just sort of knocked it off and sent the breastplate spinning and stuff, only the thing was –"
"It knocked into the next one and sent that toppling -"
"And then that one went into the next -"
"Like watching dominoes falling -"
"And Filch -"
"Jumped six feet into the air -"
"Came down running -"
"And legged it down the Transfiguration corridor -"
"Wailing with terror!"
This time the laughter was deafening; upstairs someone banged a door and shouted, "Will the Marauders please shut their bloody gobs and GO TO SLEEP!" in a voice which would have threatened retribution for tomorrow if it weren't for the fact that it knew perfectly well they were, well, the Marauders. Remus realised he'd fallen off the bed at some point and was crying into Sirius' shoulder. Peter was prostrate on the floor as well.
"He's not usually that easy to frighten," he gasped at last.
"Ah," said Lily, swallowing little bursts of laughter that kept rising to her lips, "but you didn't hear the yell Prongs gave - like a banshee with toothache -"
Oh, God, everything hurt, and Remus could barely breathe, and his throat felt tight and dry and he still had the bloody toothache, but he held on to Sirius and let it all out. God, if only he'd seen Filch taking to his heels like a pantomine villain - with a girly shriek and his dressing-gown flapping - and Lily knew and she didn't care about any of it, she was sitting cross-legged on his bed and cracking filthy jokes with Sirius and she loved them, Remus thought, she loved them just as much as they loved her.
No moment in his life so far had ever felt as good as this. No moment ever would again.
The next morning Lily sat with her girlfriends for breakfast the way she always did, and Peter dozed over his coffee and Sirius wolfed his bacon down and James yawned into his eggs and Remus caught sight of Filch slinking across the Hall at the same time as Lily did, and the five of them looked at each other along the length of the Gryffindor table and collapsed all over again, just about drunk with it.
Up at the staff table, McGonagall took one look at them and put her hand over her eyes in abject despair.