The Teapot of the Orient

Part 1

At the Hogwarts Library, where most books were so old the pages practically crumpled at the touch and they had been mended with so much glue they made you a little dizzy, getting your nerdy fingers on a new book was like Christmas.

It was just wonderful, the way the pages stuck to the cover in a nice, whole bunch and didn't fall out of it, the way you didn't need a reference guide for interpreting withered print when you read them, the way no clouds of dust burst at you, triggering your asthma, when you put it down on the table.

Delicately running his fingertips over the fake leather cover of Wish Granting Creatures and Items, Remus could have spent hours just reading the title over and over, had he not felt slightly judged.

"Do you two want to be left alone?"

He hadn't heard Sirius arrive. James was with him, of course, and they were both twirling floo powder rolled in a bit of exam results amidst their fingers, every so often trying to blow smoke rings into each others' smoke rings.

He stopped with the cover fondling, slightly guiltily, and opened up the index page. Sirius offered him his floo roll. Remus put it out in the damp soil of a rubber fig that sat on the window sill.

"No smoking in the library"

"Since when?"

Remus gestured towards a no-smoking sign on the wall.

"Ever since that fire in the forbidden section yesterday. When I got here Madam Pince was still putting them up"

Speak of the devil. The sound of a squeaky cart alerted them that Madam Pince was approaching. A batch of signs rested on top of the batch of books. James hid his floo roll behind his back. Since it was practically in front of him anyway, Remus took it and put it out too.

"There's already a sign here too" she mumbled, and then sniffed in the air. "None of you are smoking, are you?"

"No" James and Sirius replied with remorseful honesty, and believing them, Madam Pince took her squeaky cart and carried on.

"Anyway, we didn't really come here to have our powder confiscated" said James. "In case you thought that"

"No" Sirius slammed his hands against the table. "But first of all, why don't you ever say anything?"

Utterly confused, and also suspicious and slightly nervous, Remus glanced up from his book.

"What?"

"Sure, you go on about potatoes that lurk under soil and entangle you with their sprouts and snogging cloak monsters and how Cabaret doesn't really qualify as a real musical, but when you meet somebody beautiful at the old people's home where you volunteer on the holidays, you don't say a thing"

Still utterly confused, suspicious and now also vigilant and a little bit scared, Remus thought that maybe if he just ignored them, they'd leave and find somebody else to mess with.

"Maybe we should just bring her in now" said James. Sirius disappeared for two seconds, and returned with- although definitely beautiful- kind of artificial looking girl with long, dark hair and sparkly pale eyes. Remus had never seen her before, nor had he expected to. As she emerged between them, fairly tall for a girl, she looked like their sister. This was definitely some kind of joke. Maybe she'd be to the fancy of most boys, but to Remus (who was regularly informed that he wasn't 'most boys' and was not rarely mistaken for a girl) she was just too much and the way she hopped up on the table and slowly crossed her legs and stroked her neck just oozed cheapness and stupidity. Did they in all honesty think he'd fall for this? He knew they loved to match-make but this was just going too far.

"Patricia was really anxious to meet you" said James. "Came all the way from Beauxbatons"

"Aye, you can call me Pat" said Pat, smiling and winking. "So nice to meet you again" She moved closer to the wall, and Remus tried to do the same except the library walls weren't like platform 9 ¾ so he remained perpetually in the same spot as ever, a spot he normally found to be very comfortable and cozy but now filled him with a desire to run. This was possibly their lowest and cruelest practical joke ever.

"Well, maybe we should… leave" said Sirius, but making no real effort to do so.

"Or we could go somewhere" Pat winked and reached out a hand to run through Remus' hair. "Rrrrruff!"

She was immediately hit in the chest with a bright light, and shifted into a gnome in a green suit before crashing into a wall and losing consciousness.

Sirius shook his head. "Every time a girl shows a little bit of interest in you, you immediately jump to the conclusion that it has to be some kind of shifter"

"It was a shifter"

"Janine wasn't a shifter" said James. "She ended up in the hospital wing for asking about your weekend plans"

"Well, Pat had trap written allover"

"That's kind of sexist, you know" said Sirius. "Assuming that every 'beautiful woman' is a trap designed to 'destroy the man', or something like that"

"But it was a trap"

"Doesn't make it not sexist. It may be true, but it is also sexist"

Since this was the first time James had ever seen a leprechaun, he went to poke it with his hazel, 11,5 inches, gryphon retina. He soon had company by a ebony, 11,5 inches, nymph follicle.

"I had no idea leprechauns could turn into women" said Sirius. "Why would they want to do that?"

"Wouldn't you, if you could?" James asked.

"True. Well, shall we wake it up?"

Suddenly Remus squeezed between them, carrying a large, empty sack that he opened up and folded down, willow, 10 inches, sphinx molar between the occupied fingers.

"That's not a good idea"

"Why not?"

"Because" He searched his mind for a plausible excuse as he threaded the sack over the leprechaun. "Waking leprechauns is really dangerous! It's much safer to lock them up somewhere-"

So Sirius took the sack from him and turned it so the leprechaun fell to the floor. Then James cast Salus Volatilus, so it would wake up. The leprechaun blinked a couple of times before opening his eyes completely.

"Where am I?" he squeaked, heavily accented.

"Hogwarts" James informed him. The leprechaun bolted upwards, glaring up at Remus.

"Alright, laddie, you caught me. Where's the gold?"

Nonchalantly, Remus returned to the table at which he parked himself every morning and that was now safe again.

There was a cracking sound and the leprechaun vanished from the floor, and appeared again on that very table.

"I said where's the gold!" it demanded.

"You turned into a witch to get gold?" Sirius asked.

"I thought that if I turned into a beautiful witch, I could lure the answer out of him" the leprechaun confessed. "I really tried to get the type right, but I didn't have a whole lot to go on"

"You should have made her more cuboid looking"

"I told you" Remus told the leprechaun. "You can have the pot back once… you know"

"I can't grant you that wish, but I can grant a lot of other wishes. Did you look though the brochure at all?"

"You're supposed to grant any three wishes. It's in the rules"
"Nobody's meant to find the gold at the end of the rainbow! It's not even a bow, you know. It's a circle, actually"

"Tough"

"You have to return it. It's the only pot we've got!"

"You really should have thought of that before you started lying!"

"Grrrr GIVE IT!" The leprechaun hopped up on Remus' head and started pulling at his fallow curls angrily. To counter this, Remus reached into the bag beside him, where he found a bottle of Tullamore Dew. He unscrewed it and splashed some drops in front of him. The effect was instant. The leprechaun hopped down from his head, chasing the drops of whiskey, catching some with his tongue as if they were snowflakes. A couple of drops were enough to make him sway and he could barely keep his eyes open.

"Hold me close kiss me I'm Irish" he slurred between hiccups before falling on his back. Snoring sounds emerged from his half-open mouth.

"I don't know why you're fussing" James put down the camera and reached into the paper bucket of popcorn Sirius' was holding. "You should know that those wishy-things are not that great" Crunch.

"Wishy-things?" Remus put the screw back on the bottle.

Sirius' let James have the bucket of popcorn and took the bottle of Tullamore Dew, unscrewed it again and poured it into his mouth as if it was Tullamore Dew.

"You know, you wish for eternal wealth for example" Chug-chug-chug. "and it turns out a bank lost all the money, that sort of thing. There's always a catch" Cough. "McGonagall has good taste. I want to tell her I love her"

"The pub's closed go home" James put down the popcorn and took the whiskey from Sirius and finished what was left, whilst simultaneously recording with the camera Sirius sinking down to the floor and passing out, as if it was the bottle that had kept him upright.