Study Break
"I'm never going to pass."
Sirius rolled his eyes and bent down to untie his shoe.
"I'm going to fail," Wormtail moaned, slumping over the library table. "I'm going to fail everything. I'm not going to get any NEWTS, and you're all going to graduate and become Aurors while I'm stuck here doing my seventh year over, and I won't have any friends to do detentions with, and—Sirius, what are you doing?"
Sirius paused midway through peeling off one of his socks. "I was going to stuff this in your mouth," he said, straightening up. "But as you've stopped whining for the moment, I s'pose it's unnecessary now."
Wormtail narrowed his eyes. "If you'd just help me study—"
"I'm trying, Wormtail, but you're proving to be pretty unteachable."
"He's not hopeless," James said from his table, which was over by the window. He and Lily had crammed themselves into the same seat and hidden their faces behind a book as they studied for the Charms NEWT—although Sirius suspected there wasn't a lot of studying going on.
"Then you teach him." Sirius closed his Transfiguration textbook, nearly catching Wormtail's hand in the process, and stood up. "I dunno how we ended up like this," he said to James, ignoring the glare he was getting from Madam Pince. "I'm babysitting Wormtail while you huddle up with a girl? Kind of the opposite of what we've had going the past six years, don't you think?"
Wormtail turned pink and dragged the textbook back open. "Don't need babysitting," he mumbled.
"Good," Sirius said. "Then teach yourself. I'm taking a study break."
"Are you going back to the Common Room?" Lily asked. "Will you make sure Remus is still alive up there?"
"He's alive," Sirius said with another one of his famous eye-rolls. "He's just insane."
"He's insane for wanting to do well on his exams?" Lily raised her eyebrows challengingly, and Sirius couldn't help wishing James had chosen to fall in love with a less confrontational girl.
"He's insane for taking twelve of them," James said, and Lily opened her mouth (probably to argue that she was taking eleven NEWTS, and was James really so bold as to declare her insane, and Merlin it was nauseating to watch them together) but Sirius was already heading out the door.
"Your shoe's untied, Black," said Frank Longbottom as they passed each other in the corridor.
Sirius ignored him and kept walking toward the staircase. Frank Longbottom was decently smart, but he was an absolute stick-in-the-mud, and in this last month at Hogwarts Sirius wanted nothing to do with all that. This was his last chance to break some rules, to cause some havoc; if he wanted to leave his mark on the school, now was the time.
"Figgy pudding," he told the Fat Lady, and, with a pointed glance down at his unlaced shoe, she swung open to reveal the portrait hole. "I know it's untied," he said, and the Fat Lady let out a pained sigh, as if she didn't really know why she bothered anymore with this boy. "Lily wants to make sure you're alive, Moony," Sirius said as he ducked into the Gryffindor Common Room. From behind an enormous stack of textbooks, the boy in question offered a feeble thumbs-up, and Sirius nodded in confirmation and proceeded up to his dormitory.
With a quick glance to make sure nobody was lurking in the room, Sirius dropped to his knees and fished a small black notebook from under his mattress. Inside was a list of every prank he'd come up with since starting at Hogwarts nearly seven years ago; the handwriting grew neater as the pages went along (although some bits toward the end were absolutely unreadable, and Sirius wondered if he'd been writing pranks when he was drunk), and while a good number of the ideas were checked off, more than half of them hadn't been put into action yet. Things like "Give Longbottom clown makeup," "Learn to yodel and drive Moony batty," and "Enchant the mirror to insult everyone but the Marauders" lay forgotten in the pages of his book, and as Sirius flipped through, he realized with a pang of sadness that he wouldn't have time to put every last one of them into action. If only he had another year!
"Something for Wormtail," he muttered as he perused his prank book. "Something for Wormtail . . . something good for the library . . . aha!"
There on page 74 (back in his third year he'd added little hand-drawn numbers at the bottom of each page for easier access) was a prank that called for hitting someone in the face with a pie. It was a classic prank from muggle television, according to Lily, but it would work beautifully on Wormtail.
"See you, Moony," Sirius called as he jogged back through the Common Room. No response from the pile of books, but Sirius assumed that if he bothered to look over his shoulder he'd see another thumbs-up. Through the portrait hole, down the stairs, around the corner, into the hidden side door—getting to the kitchens had once been an adventure in and of itself, but nowadays it was second-nature. "House elves!" Sirius called, panting slightly. "I need you!"
The elves barely looked up. No longer were they fazed by the Marauders appearing and disappearing from their domain. "Master Sirius' shoe is untied," one of them pointed out, and Sirius let out a massive sigh.
"I know it's untied," he said. "I was going to take off my sock and shove it in Wormtail's—well, anyway, I need a pie. Can any of you whip up a pie?"
Without missing a beat, half a dozen elves started toward him, each holding a pie. Sirius grinned. "So helpful, you lot." He plucked a pie from the closest elf, and with a nod of thanks, spun out of the kitchen and back toward the library.
"Sirius Black, I won't have you galloping through my library with food," Madam Pince said as Sirius attempted to walk through the door.
"It's for Peter Pettigrew," Sirius said, but Pince was barring the door with her squat little body, so Sirius sat down on the bench just outside the door and put his pie next to him. "Will you tell Peter to come out and get it, then? Tell him I've brought him something to cheer him up. I thought he needed a study break."
Pince eyed him suspiciously for a moment, but then she disappeared into the library, and he heard her summon Peter Pettigrew to the front desk. With a grin, Sirius got to his feet, pie balanced carefully in one hand. "Brought me a what?" he heard Wormtail say, and as the other boy poked his head through the door, Sirius took aim and stepped forward—
—and tripped on his bloody shoelace and hit the floor with a splat as his face connected with the pie he'd meant for Wormtail.
Three seconds of silence passed as Sirius slowly looked up, lemon meringue dripping down his face. "Erm." He looked back down at the pie. "Shit."
Wormtail burst out laughing. "You—Sirius, was that meant for me?"
"Shut up, Wormtail."
"Because I think—I think you may have missed."
"I said shut up."
Wormtail had tears streaming down his face. "You were right," he said. "I needed this. I'm absolutely cheered up now. Thank you, Sirius. Really."
Sirius let out another curse word, and Wormtail went back into the library, calling for everyone to look at the fool of a seventh-year with pie all over his face.
Quidditch League Round 5: Glory Days
Holyhead Harpies, Seeker
Prompt: Sirius Black in his seventh year
Word Count: 1,267