The Young Ones
Chapter One - Conflagration
A/N: OK, so, this fic came out of a discussion I had on the Teachers' Lounge forum where I posited the idea of writing the young Marauders as if they were the protagonists of the sitcom The Young Ones. If you have never seen The Young Ones, go watch it. If you have, then all I need to say is this: Remus is Neil (the morose one), Peter is Rick (the idiotic poseur), Sirius is Vyvyan (the destruction-happy maniac) and James is Mike (the Cool Person). So yeah, enjoy…
It was a Saturday afternoon in the Gryffindor sixth-year boys' dorm, and anyone passing through would have seen a rather odd sight (although if the observer was familiar with the inhabitants of said dorm, they wouldn't even have blinked). There was a radio standing on one of the bedside lockers, and it was blaring out 'A Cauldron Full Of Hot, Strong Love', the latest hit by wizarding pop sensation Celestina Warbeck. This was not, in and of itself, particularly odd. While Warbeck's main audience consisted of teenage girls, she was popular, and it was perfectly reasonable that a teenage boy listening to WWN would have listened to her. The truly strange part was the pudgy sixteen-year-old boy – dressed in in Muggle clothes that might once have been black before age, spilled Butterbeers and exposure to light had got to them – who was dancing to the music with enthusiasm but no discernible coordination.
Perhaps part of why the boy's dancing looked so bizarre was the fact that he had to keep dodging various objects such as shoes and battered textbooks that were flying towards him. These were coming from under one of the beds: another boy's legs could be seen sticking out from underneath, and he was clearly throwing various things out into the middle of the dormitory floor in an effort at tidying up. Eventually, just as the song was coming to a close, he yelled "What in Merlin's name is that doing here?" and a cauldron full of something purple and sparkly came flying out, hitting the tubby boy in the stomach.
"MOONY!" he bellowed, massaging his ample belly. "What the bloody hell was that for, you bastard?"
The other boy – taller, thinner and somewhat depressed-looking – jumped up, cracking his head on the bed in the process.
"Sorry, Wormtail," he replied in a mournful tone, "no need to get mad about it. I'm just trying to clean up around here. Nobody else ever bothers."
"For fuck's sake, Moony, stop whining! There are the fucking House Elves, aren't there? Why don't they do it? Why should we become slaves to a cleaning system imposed on us by the Death Eater bastards who run this place?"
"Well," replied Moony reasonably, "you aren't a slave to the system. You never clean, do you, man? And the House Elves won't come in here ever since the thing with Padfoot, the dungbombs, and the enchanted toaster."
"Oh, shut up, you idiot! We swore we'd never speak of that again!"
Moony shrugged and started piling the things he had removed from under the bed in the middle of the room. Wormtail sniffed haughtily.
"Look at you," he sneered, "playing along. Fitting into the system. Do you care, Moony? Do you care at all about what's going on around you? Everyone in charge of everything ever is a bloody Death Eater – except Dumbledore, and I'm pretty sure he's a nutcase – and all you do is keep your head down and allow yourself to be co-opted by the system. That's why they made you a Prefect, you know! That badge is a shiny bauble, a meaningless reward for a representative of the oppressed people of wizarding Britain who signed up to help enforce the system in the hope that those in power would like him for it! That badge… that badge is a shackle! It is a ball and chain. A BALL AND CHAIN, DAMMIT, MOONY!"
"I thought you said it was a meaningless, shiny bauble…" muttered Moony.
"It can be both, you ridiculous man," snarled Wormtail. "Why can't you be more like Celestina, eh?"
"Why?"
"WHY?" screamed Wormtail. "WHY? Don't you BLOODY know, you BLOODY DEATH EATER BASTARD?"
Moony held up his hands in a placating manner.
"No, no, man, I don't. I'm sorry, man!"
"Luckily, I have composed a poem on this very topic," replied Wormtail smugly. He pulled out a tiny, dog-eared notebook and struck what he presumably thought was a declamatory pose.
Oh, CELESTINA!
Do you ever wish you were MEANER, CELESTINA?
When the Death Eaters start to get meaner and, um, MEANER, CELESTINA?
You could have been a BALLERINA, CELESTINA!
Instead of trying to make society CLEANER, CELESTINA!
Mooney stared at him for a second and then shook his head.
"Sorry, mate, but I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to mean."
Wormtail hit him over the head with the notebook.
"MOONY! YOU! FUCKING! MORON!" he yelled, accompanying each word with another smack. "All of Celestina's songs contain hidden subliminal messages criticising the Death Eaters and their lackeys in the Ministry! Everyone knows that!"
"I'm sorry, man," babbled Moony, covering his head with his arms, "I really am! This is really heavy, man, I feel really bad. I think I'm gonna transform into a werewolf now."
Wormtail rolled his eyes and turned away. Before he could say anything else, however, the door banged open and an athletic-looking young man with glasses and messy dark hair burst in, playing with a Snitch.
"And here's James, the Cool Person!" he announced dramatically, shutting the door behind him. "What's going on in here?"
"Oh, Prongs, good to see you, man," said Moony, "I'm just trying to tidy up in here. It's important that we maintain a proper standard of living and all."
Prongs threw himself on the nearest bed.
"Nonsense, Moony, it's the weekend! We should be having fun, not listening to you yammering on like an old housewife!"
Moony's shoulders slumped.
"Well, if you're all that sick of me, I guess that's it. I'm off to transform into a werewolf, then. Goodbye."
Prongs snorted, and threw a ball of scrunched-up paper at him.
"Don't be fucking ridiculous, Moony. The full moon's not for another week."
Moony sat down on the floor, completely dispirited. Suddenly, somebody smashed through the door, utterly destroying it. Wormtail yelled out in pain and anger as a large splinter embedded itself in his backside.
"YOU BASTARD, PADFOOT!" he roared at the new arrival, a dark-haired young man who was also wearing Muggle clothes: a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off and ripped jeans.
"I notice, Padfoot," said Prongs conversationally, ignoring Wormtail's attempts to twist his head into a position where he could see and remove the splinter in his posterior, "that you have dispensed with your usual, more socially-acceptable, method of coming through that door. By which I mean that this time you failed to open it first. Would you care to explain why?"
Moony leaned over and plucked the splinter out for Wormtail, who yelped with pain and punched him on the nose before realising what had happened and absent-mindedly patting his head.
Padfoot shrugged and repaired the door with a wave of his wand.
"Bored, mate," he grinned, "BORED!"
"Well," said Moony in a hopeful tone of voice, "if you're bored, I know something you can do. This rubbish needs to be sorted through. I don't know what half this stuff is, and that –" he indicated the cauldron "– is definitely the experimental potion we were working on last year, although what on Earth it was doing under your bed is beyond me."
Padfoot beamed.
"Oh, well, if you want me to get rid of stuff, then great! Incendio!"
The pile of rubbish went up in flames, creating an enormous bonfire in the middle of the dorm.
"No, no, that's not what I meant! That's dangerous, man!"
Padfoot and Prongs elected to ignore him, and started dancing around the fire singing the school song.
"Bloody Death Eater bastards," muttered Wormtail, and started scribbling in his notebook.