Lipogram

lipogram /ˈlipəˌɡram,ˈlī-/
noun
a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet

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"Uh, how exactly would that cause chaos?" James asked, scratching his head in confusion, messing up his already untidy hair. The four boys were in the Gryffindor dormitory on a Tuesday night that they miraculously had free from detentions or any other club obligations. James was lounging upside down on his bed, placing his head next to Peter's shoulder as the blond boy sat on the floor with his potions textbook in his lap.

"Try it," Remus challenged lazily from his own bed. "Say a few sentences without the letter 'e'," he said, waving his wand lazily in the air, creating little wisps of color in the air to entertain himself and the boy next to him.

"Fine—"

"E!" Remus called out, and James let out a grunt of frustration at the interruption. Lying next to the prefect, Sirius let out a bark of laughter.

"Can't believe you failed on the first word, Prongs! Do blue next Moony," Sirius said, poking Remus in the side with his elbow. Remus merely shoved back before waving his wand again, changing from gold streaks to blue.

"Shut it, Black. I'd like to see you do better." James huffed and grabbed a pillow to throw it over at the two on Remus's bed. It landed off to the side of Remus's stomach.

"I count three words in that one," muttered Peter, flipping through the textbook. "Uh, what potions are gonna be on the pop quiz tomorrow, again?"

"It's called a pop quiz for a reason, Pete." James's hand came down to awkwardly pat his friend on the head. "Also, you're supposed to be on my side, here. Unlike those two WANKERS over there."

"Can't use the word wankers, Jamesy boy!" Sirius called out. Suddenly sitting up and accidentally kneeing Remus just beneath his armpit, Sirius flung his arms up. "I bet you I could do it."

Remus snorted with a mixture of pain and amusement. "Bet. You've already failed."

Sirius grabbed James's pillow and flung it at the werewolf's face. "I," he started slowly, "can say words normally without…"

Across the room James and Peter looked at each other and snorted. "You look constipated, mate," Peter said.

Sirius crossed his arms and hunched over in a thoughtful position. "I still hav—" He paused, brows furrowing in concentration. "Still did not say… what I did not…plan to say." He straightened up and smiled at his roommates, proud of his accomplishment.

"Ha!" James shouted, face red from all the blood rushing to his head. He pointed in Sirius's general direction. "You said…you…hm…"

"He didn't," Peter supplied.

"You didn't," Remus agreed, patting Sirius on his knee, causing the other boy to smile brighter. Remus tilted his head backwards to look at James, whose face by now was a deep dark shade between red and purple, followed by messy, floppy black hair hanging a couple of feet off the ground. "Enough chaos for you, Prongs?"

Sirius flopped onto Remus's chest, eliciting a grunt from the boy beneath him. Propping his head onto one arm, he reached his other hand to stroke Remus's brown hair. "Oh dearest Moons. Enough. You couldn't even last a word."

"I will hex you."

"Hex," Sirius repeated, moving his face closer to the other boy's and looking to his bright honey colored eyes. Remus retaliated by stabbing his wand into Sirius's side, causing him to yelp and roll off.

"Alright, alright. Point," James said as he cautiously made his way to sit up with Peter's help. "Okay boys, let's get to work!"

It took the four boys eight days to research and plan the implementation of the prank. The idea was to create a force strong enough to encompass the entire castle and all its inhabitants. Remus originally wanted the spell to extend to ghosts as well ("Imagine Peeves not being able to say his own name!"), but was quickly overruled by the amount of extra effort required to affect ghosts (and the sheer uncertainty when dealing with non-corporeal bodies, honestly). Remus figured out the spellwork to get it to predict and recognize people's speech. Sirius extended that to make sure the spell was specifically looking for words with the letter 'e' in them and not merely words with both the long and short 'e' sounds. Peter then added his layer of charms to make sure that anyone uttering illegal words had their lips zipped together for five seconds before unzipping ("We should use real zippers for this!" "No, Sirius."). James was the one to complete the area and time components of the spell, ensuring that it would go off when and where they wanted and would only last a week. The boys went to bed Wednesday night the following week, exhausted and ready for the spell to activate at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Sirius crawled into Remus's bed and made his way underneath the covers, waiting for the prefect to come back from the bathroom. Remus came out in pajama bottoms that were too short since he hit his growth spurt the previous summer. They ended just above his ankles, and when Sirius had first seen them on the first night back, he had called Remus scandalous. Remus in return had vanished all of Sirius's underwear and replaced them with loincloths.

"Move," Remus said, trying to shove Sirius aside.

"Can't say that tomorrow," Sirius gloated in sleepy smug voice. "Also cold." He stretched out his arms, waiting for the other boy to scoot in and warm him up.

Remus looked critically at his friend for a few seconds before sighing and moved into Sirius's waiting arms. "When did you start?" he asked.

"Hm?"

He could feel Sirius's cold nose press into his shoulder. "The spell isn't set to go off until tomorrow, but you haven't spoken a word with an 'e' in a while. When did you start?" His arms came up and wrapped around Sirius, rubbing up and down his back.

"Shhhh. No talk. Warm only." Sirius moved to place his feet on Remus's bare ankles and chuckled when he felt his friend jump and grunt. He didn't understand how Remus was always warm, but as long as he wasn't pushed away from his favorite heat source, he didn't particularly care. Remus let out a huff of exaggerated annoyance, and Sirius shivered as he felt the other boy's breath against his neck. He settled in more comfortably against the werewolf, absorbing all the body heat he could get. Soon, both boys drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Sirius awoke bright and early to a muted chaos. No one was shouting or screaming as far as he could hear, but he could feel the humming of discontent and slight distress in the castle, and it delighted him. He got up from Remus's bed, untangling his limbs from Remus's own, and got dressed in a hurry, excited to see how his fellow schoolmates would react to their new speech limitation. He wondered how long it would take Hogwarts' occupants to realize exactly why their lips were sealing shut in intervals of five seconds.

He jumped back on Remus's bed, fully clothed. "Moony! Moony, Moony, Moony!" He started shaking the prefect, earning himself a groan from the other boy. "Up! Chaos awaits!" He could also vaguely hear Peter groaning in the background and mumbling something incoherent. James's bed was empty, and Sirius assumed he had yet another early morning quidditch practice.

"It's too e-mfph!" Remus's lips pursed together against his own will and remained closed for five seconds as Sirius laughed gleefully. Remus's still half asleep eyes widened as he looked at Sirius in confusion before realization dawned on his face. He narrowed his eyes at Sirius's early morning glee.

"It works!" He shouted. Sirius twisted his body around to look at Peter. "Wormtail! You too! Up, up!" He grabbed one of Remus's pillows, ignoring Remus's grumbled protests and sleepy attempts to hold onto it, and threw it at Peter's head, hitting him right on.

"Go away!" could be heard from underneath the pillow. Peter hadn't bothered to even move it as he rolled onto his side, back facing Sirius. "Go back to sl-mmm!"

Sirius shook his head in disappointment. "You both know what you can't say. Got to think from now on, troops!"

Remus snorted into his remaining pillow. "Troops?" He shifted his face to look at Sirius and raised an eyebrow.

Sirius shrugged. "Pack, unit, squad," he listed. "Can't say words with you know what, you know."

"Today will b-mmm!" Remus exhaled through his nose as he waited for his lips to unseal, ignoring Sirius's delighted smirk. "Will stay painful, won't it?"

Sirius gave Remus a predatory look and bent down to touch Remus's nose with his own. He stared directly into Remus's eyes, a warm honey color with disgusting crusty flakes at the edges of his eyelids. Sirius was in favor of ignoring that. He supposed even he wasn't a specimen of physical perfection all of the time. "This was all your plan," he whispered, bumping Remus's nose with his as he said each word. He took pleasure in watching Remus cross his eyes, trying to stare at their noses as he spoke.

Remus pushed Sirius away in annoyance but not hard enough for him to fall off the bed. He buried his face completely into his remaining pillow and sighed. Then he let out a groan as he felt Sirius's weight on his back. The bastard was right. This stupid prank was all his brilliant idea. And he had a whole week of it to look forward to.

"Don't worry, Moons! It's a fun plan!"