Title: Christmas Spirit

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or realities herein.

Rating: K+ to T

Summary: James decides to give Sirius to Remus as a Christmas present.

Notes: This is my first, and most likely last, Sirius/Remus 'shipper fic. I wouldn't have written it, but for a close r/l friend who was telling me about the S/R fics she'd been reading and totally inspired me to the following madness. So, this is all her fault. I don't really 'ship them, but sometimes you just get ideas that don't go away, you know?

Every year, Gryffindor Tower had a Secret Santa exchange. Every year, as part of McGonagall's ongoing attempts to train some sort of responsibility into her lions, she'd give one of the upper years the responsibility of handling the issue.

This year, she'd been forced to hand it over to James. Or, in effect, the Marauders as a whole. She (and everyone else) knew perfectly well that to give one a task, acknowledgement or punishment was to give all four one. Certainly the boy had improved in terms of responsibility over the years until he was now finally just on this side of not being particularly worse than the others in Gryffindor in terms of behaviour.

Nonetheless, it was with some trepidation that she handed over the list of letters describing Christmas wishes to him in order to distribute them to the rest of the students. "You will not hex these, charm them, transfigure them or dip them in any sort of potions," she told him sternly. "I expect no alterations save those minimal ones needed to prevent the giver from knowing who his or her present is going to, and who those gifts are from." She fixed the boy with a stern glare.

"Professor, you wound me," Potter told her, hand on his heart in a gesture that on anyone else would denote sincerity.

As had become usual, the desire to tell the boy that she would wound him if he didn't do what he was supposed to filled her, but she had been teaching long enough to know that that degree of familiarity was just asking for trouble. So she simply fixed him with a glare, and then left to see if any of the scotch Filius had bought her for her birthday was left.

James grinned as he carried the pile of letters back to the tower. Before anything else, he carefully separated out the Marauder's from the pile, knowing that, at least this year, he might be able to get Moony the present he deserved. If his friend hadn't responded every birthday and Christmas since they'd figured out he was a werewolf at the end of first year with, "Just having you guys as friends is enough," James wouldn't have had to buy Moony jumbo boxes of chocolate frogs for every occasion. Wormtail always went to Honeydukes and bought Remus masses of anything not chocolate, always accompanied by a note telling Moony he needed to expand his horizons. Padfoot had taken to buying the super-fancy and expensive chocolates from some muggle shop, which he did, James suspected, for two reasons.

The first was that it had upset his harpy of a mother to no end to discover her son was doing all his shopping in the muggle world. Sirius had deliberately lost himself utterly in muggle things, at first to upset his parents, and then because he had come to love record albums and films, football and rugby, t-shirts and trainers, discos and motorcycles and fast cars. He'd already magicked himself an illegal ID, and with an ageing potion had bought himself a motorcycle, which he had started enchanting to fly, too.

But there was another reason. James had discovered Sirius wasn't just buying things at random. Every box had been heart shaped, and the one time he'd gone with Padfoot, hoping that maybe a box of muggle chocolates would get him an in with Lily, James had seen his friend bypass all the cheaper items, which he'd always claimed was the reason behind his choices, and go straight to the heart-shaped boxes.

There were other hints too. Sirius, for all his popularity, never dated, and had often been found since third year, staring moonily at Moony.

James was pretty sure that his best friend was in love with the only non-animagus member of the Marauders.

"So," Peter said, popping out of a hole in the wall with a smooth leap and transformation from rat to boy that showed the hours of practice he'd put in to startling the ever-loving crap out of people. He grinned at James as James glared at him and picked up the letters he'd scattered all over the floor in his surprise. "I got ahold of Moony's annual, 'This is what I really want, Santa,' letter. You know, the one he always burns? Anyhow, I switched it out for his polite letter."

James immediately forgot his pique. "Seriously, Wormy?" He grinned. "That's going to be even more brilliant. We can do better than chocolate for him this year!" Then a thought occurred to him. "You knew McGonagall was going to give them to me, didn't you?"

Peter nodded. "I was in the teacher's lounge, hiding from that mad cat of Gertie's, when she started raving to Flitwick about how we were going to destroy Christmas."

"As ever, Wormy, I thank you for your dedication to forwarning us of the teachers' next moves."

"As always, Prongsy, I live but to serve," Peter said with a grin. "Now, I assume what's most important to you is this, the lovely Lily Evans' requests?" He held up the letter, written on muggle stationary with a muggle pen, the curvy writing that was just as beautiful as Lily herself.

Eyes wide, James reached for the letter, but Peter snickered and took off at a run, rapidly folding the letter to a tiny size and then transforming with a laugh of pure evil and scampering into one of his rat holes with the letter. "I'm gonna kill him." James swore as he sorted the letters into four sets, specifically setting Remus' aside.

When he got back to the tower, Peter was there with a sniggering Sirius and smirking Moony. "She wants a new quill set," he was saying, "Maybe we should get her one made all out of red roses to show Prongs' devotion to her."

"Nah, how about a case covered in little hearts and antlers," snickered Sirius.

"Too subtle for Prongs, you know," Remus said. "Quills that sing romantic songs to her whenever she's writing with them."

"Ha, ha," James grumbled as he came in. "Thanks for the help. You're all a riot. Are you going to help with the exchange or not?"

"Of course we will, Prongs," Moony said. "We'll just mercilessly mock your crush on Evans, is all."

"One of these days Moony, I'll get something on you, something good, and then we'll just see about that," James grumbled.

He handed around all the letters, finally managed to get Lily's away from Wormtail, and settled in to charm them one by one to hide the identities of the givers and recipients and didn't even give in to the temptation to hex that jerk, Thomas Mallard.

And then he got to Moony's letter.

To whom it may concern,

My wish is for Sirius to fall in love with me as much as I have him. At the very least, I want his big head out of his tight arse so that he'll stop dancing around yapping about how handsome he is when I can't do anything about it.

In short, I would like Sirius for Christmas, not more boxes of quite excellent muggle chocolates that keep making me hope he feels more than he clearly does.

Sincerely,

Remus Lupin

Slowly, a grin stretched over James' lips. This was fantastic. It was better than the first time they'd pranked the whole school, better than the first time they'd transformed, better than the time Sirius had been chased by that ugly poodle.

"James?" Remus asked. "James? What are you thinking now?"

"Hmm?" he suddenly realised that both Sirius and Remus were looking at him. He had to straighten out his face, he had to keep them from finding out . . . "Just remembering Padfoot being chased by Mr. Wiggins' poodle."

Remus and Peter fell over laughing, because it really was one of the funniest things ever in the history of wizarding Britain. Sirius glared, and James sniggered along with the other two. Then he huffed and stomped away, tossing his completed set of letters onto the table. He left with the words, "At least I never got my head stuck in a stair railing because I was staring at Evans."

The look on Remus' face over Sirius's hurt face made James clamp down on the giggles. But it turned out to be perfect, because Remus went after Padfoot to cheer him up, and James was able to grab Peter and show him the letter.

Peter's grin matched James'. "So what's the plan?"

Remus awoke Christmas morning, and headed over to the Christmas tree they'd set up in a corner of the dorm. All four of them were staying over Christmas, since there was a full moon over the holidays, and it was much safer for Remus to be on Hogwarts grounds than in his parents' home. His friends had all rolled their eyes when he'd tried to get them to go home, and Sirius had pointed out that since he was never going home again, for him it was a toss-up between not at home at James', or not at home at Hogwarts.

They'd agreed that they'd put their presents under the tree to open there, and Remus was looking forward to his semi-annual chocolate haul. James and Peter were sitting there, James with nothing on but boxers, since that was all he usually wore to bed, Peter fully dressed, because he was the only early riser of the four of them.

Peter was also holding a camera and trying not to laugh, while Sirius was nowhere to be found. Except, there was an exceptionally large and lumpy present under the tree, with an enormous tag reading, "Remus" and a card with a photo of Sirius in nothing but his underwear.

Half terrified of what he would find, Remus opened the card.

Dear Remus,

You wished for Sirius's arse for Christmas, so we're giving it to you.

Happy Christmas,

Prongs, Wormtail and Padfoot even though he doesn't know it yet.

"What did . . ." Remus started, but was interrupted as the present suddenly wriggled and fell over, making muffled noises that sounded a lot like an irritated Sirius.

He scrambled to the mass of wrapping paper and yanked it apart, revealing Sirius, tightly bound with tinsel, and a different pattern of Christmas wrapping paper spellotaped over his naughty bits and a decorative gag of ribbons. "James, Pete! I'm going to kill you both!" Sirius shouted as Remus got the last of the wrapping off his head. He pulled himself to his feet, but since they were still bound by tinsel, all that happened was he fell over again, cursing the name of Potter and Pettigrew.

Remus was furious himself. "James, you stole my private correspondence, and now . . . did you even think how humiliating it would be for me when Sirius made it clear he wasn't interested?"

"Moon-"

"No!" Remus snapped. "Just . . . don't." He was about to continue laying into his friends, when Sirius spoke.

"Interested in what, Rem?"

"In . . . I . . ."

"In giving your arse to Remus for Christmas, since he wants your arse that badly," James said baldly.

That was even more humiliating, and Remus buried his head in his hands, unable to even look at Sirius.

"Huh?"

"You know how Remus always writes two letters for the Secret Santa exchange?" Peter said. "He burns the one with what he actually wants, then puts in the one with a polite request for chocolate."

"Yeah," Sirius said as though it were common knowledge. Not for the first time, Remus cursed being friends with some of the nosiest parkers in Wizarding Britain. Nosy old biddies were nothing compared to the Marauder desire for gossip.

"He asked for your arse for Christmas," James said.

Remus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, waiting for the pain of Sirius in hysterics to start. Only suddenly he found himself on his back with the air knocked out of him, while an enthusiastic Sirius kissed him. It took ten seconds for him to work out that that was happening, five seconds to relax and happily deepen the kiss that he'd so desperately wanted for so long, and a full minute to realise that James and Peter were now making bets about his love life.

In perfect accord, he and Sirius pulled away from each other, and turned in unison to glare at James. "You drugged me," Sirius said to the boy that was more a brother to him than his own brother Regulus. "You tied me up and left me under the tree all night."

Remus didn't even remember when he'd grabbed his wand, but a flick of the wrist undid Sirius' feet and hands. "You could have utterly humiliated me on a guess about Sirius' feelings."

James' eyes went wide and he sprinted out the door. With a feral shared grin, the canine pair went after him like wolves on the scent of a weakened stag. As they hurtled past the paintings, James shouted, "Why aren't you after Pete? He helped!"

"Oh, we'll get him later," Sirius said in that all-too-calm voice he'd learned from his family. "But this isn't his sort of thing, it's yours."

"Eternal romantic," Remus added by way of clarification.

With that, James took a sharp turn, clearly heading for the Great Hall, perhaps thinking they would be too embarrassed to follow him in. But you didn't get to be a Marauder without a high tolerance for public humiliation, and the new couple just burst right in after him.

Minerva looked up at the resounding slam as the doors to the hall burst open. In ran James Potter, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts reading, "Lily's lips go here," with an arrow pointing to his crotch. Behind him were Remus Lupin, wearing pyjamas with little dog tracks all over them, and Sirius Black, wearing nothing but wrapping paper held together by charms and spellotape.

A hysterical Peter Pettigrew followed, camera in hand as he took pictures of it all.

"Potter! Black! Lupin! Pettigrew! Get back to Gryffindor at once, or holidays or not I'll have you all in detention for the rest of the year!"

They didn't necessarily seem to hear, but Potter turned and hurtled past his friends back to the door, and they all ran after him, Pettigrew staggering he was laughing so hard.

Filius turned to her, flicked his wand and said, "It's Christmas, so it's not too early. Eggnog, Minerva?" as he handed her a goblet of his special recipe, which had three different kinds of whiskey and could knock out a bull elephant at five paces.

"Please."

What had she been thinking letting the Marauders handle the Christmas gift exchange?