Alena here to give the author's notes, and I apologize in advance for the length of them. Apparently, as I'm the nicer of the two of us, I've been assigned to the job, not to mention my partner is out retrieving firewood. This is the joint project, co-written with me in equal parts by the talented Chevira Lowe. I warn you now: our styles are similar, as is our humour: eloquent and dry, respectively. We are also open-minded, which means that along with the het pairings that will be present in this work, there will also be slash pairings. That means gay.
The pairings will be as follows, though not in any particular order:
Het:
James/Lily — Ron/Hermione
Slash:
Sirius/Remus – Charlie/Harry – Viktor/Bill
I was going to be blunt, but I've just been informed that diplomacy is in order, so here it is: if you don't like any of the above pairings enough to yell at us for writing it, or if you don't like intelligence, or if you're retarded and can't type without using netspeak, or if you're going to leave us a pointless "UR FIC IZ REAL GUD RITE MORE" review, please kindly fuck off.
Thank you.
Everyone else, onward ho – we hope you enjoy the show.
Death is just one more misadventure.
by Chevira Lowe and Alena Kalor
Graveyards are, by nature, a quiet, unobtrusive place. If you like Goth poetry, they're also places of absolute solitude which is only broken by the quiet whispers of the mournful dead on nights with a blood-red moon. But those extremes are not to be mentioned, and often reflect horribly upon a writer's good taste.
However, on this night (absent of a blood-red moon, alas) there was a break in the absolute solitude — though not by the dead. Not the mournful dead, in any case.
"Bloody HELL!" was the loud exclamation to so rock the silence—well, not quite, as the expletive was said by rather mal-formed lips, so it really rather sounded like 'Bruddy Hep!', though that was undoubtedly not the effect the speaker was aiming for.
"James, dear," came the reprimand, "would you calm down? I've been trying to collect myself; at least you've only rotted partially. I still can't find my ring finger or a bit of my voice box, you know." Unfortunately, the entire thing sounded more like a quiet rustling of bird feathers than anything else, with some words coming in clearly and others seeming to shiver entirely away.
"Calm? Lily, darling. This is calm. As close to 'calm' as one can come when they are dead. ...Although if I'm dead, and you're dead, and we're dead together, then what's this?" The corpse, for surely he could be called little else, picked absently at a piece of rotting—intestine? —with a disdainful snort. "Mother would likely not approve of this —whatever this is. Speaking of which. Darling, what is this?"
"I believe that's your colon," the swirling ash cloud quipped. "And your mother didn't approve of my apple pie, either, so I'm not sure her opinion is worth that much. You know," she... said? swirled? thoughtfully, "we may have to rethink our family tradition of cremation after this..."
"Darling, don't say that. You're a lovely shade of taupe, if I do say so myself." Belatedly, the corpse tried a spell on himself. "Repairo?" he tried tentatively, but with little-to-no success. Strangely, the buttons to his much-rotted dinner jacket scuttled across the fabric of his shirt and into what he expected should have been their place. It wasn't helpful. "I'm...er...out of practice?" he offered to the maelstrom of dust that was his wife.
"Why thank you, dear, but I do think it's just the lighting that's making this look all right." The cloud swirled a bit more furiously. "Oh, James, you never did get a hang on that spell, look, your buttons are mismatched. Oh, how will this work? Let's see now— Repairo." The buttons hastily rearranged themselves in an almost sheepish manner, judging by the way of their movements. "There you are, dear. Much better."
James sighed in exasperation. "Transfiguration was my speciality, you remember. You were the pet of the charms class, Lily." Grudgingly, he tugged at his jacket. "Thank you, however. Er. Now...what do you think happened? I'm not about to complain—but I do seem to have this memory of being kibitzed by Voldemort, and I thought that those that he ...well, kibitzed—tended to stay...er...kibitzed." His tone was clearly one of puzzlement, and almost reflexively, he reached up to adjust his glasses which weren't, annoyingly enough, actually present.
"They removed them for the funeral, James," Lily reminded him, "you left it in your will because you said you looked better without them. In any case, we haven't stayed... er, 'kibitzed', as you said. I daresay Dumbledore may have the answer? I'm afraid I have no theories of my own." She sighed; the ash cloud billowed out and then reassembled itself hastily. "Oh!" came the muffled yelp, confusion evident. "What is going on?! James, you're decomposing!"
James couldn't help the quip. "So you noticed? Congratulations, Lily, you've become a master of understatement." A sigh. He was too old—not to mention a little too dead— for this. "And this is assuming that Dumbledore is still alive. There is a war going on, dear. Demonstratably, people die." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose—or tried to. A discouraging crunch hastily deterred him from that action and he forced his hands to his sides, determined not to touch anything. "Are you cold, darling? Do you want my coat?"
"Dumbledore? Yes, yes." Lily sounded rather flustered. "I'm sure he could help — James, how can I take your coat, I'm a cloud of ash!" She blustered around her husband fretfully, confused. "Were you in a coffin? I'm sure we died! Where is Harry? Is he safe?" She swirled around in a miserable cloud for a moment, before stopping abruptly. "Oh, I'm so sorry, James dear. I believe my sigh rather disoriented me. Yes, we should get to Dumbledore immediately. Don't be so down, James, I'm sure he's quiet all right."
James patiently observed this with little more than a sigh of his own, although it was done carefully so as not to disrupt his wife further, and covered with one hand (although that likely wouldn't do any good—he had a disturbing amount of holes). "I was in a coffin, dear, yes we died, no, I have no idea where Harry is nor if he's safe—but..." He paused. "He's our son, after all. How could you believe he's not safe?" All questions answered, he reached out to pat awkwardly at the dust, a fruitless feat. "I'm not at all 'down', darling. I'm merely being practical. How are we to get to him when we're dead? They didn't bury my broom with me, and unless you can fly...bad example. Unless I grow wings, we are quite out of luck."
"You do have your wand," Lily said impatiently, a little — and very careful — huff expelling a tiny amount of ash. "I'm sure Ernie would be glad to pick us up, we always give excellent tips."
James paused. "...Lily, we're dead. Well, I'm dead, you're a little cloud of ... lovely...ash. Do you honestly think we'd be welcome tenants on the Knight Bus? And you're also forgetting—we have no money!" But, regardless of these issues, he held up his wand, gave a precise flick of one wrist, and stood back expectantly. However many years they'd used the transit system would have to work as credit, he supposed. "Stand out of the way, dear. I wouldn't want you to get hit. One wonders if it's possible for dust to die again, but I'd rather not experiment. Imagine explaining to poor Harry that his mother was—erm. Never mind."
"Really, James, you do worry too much. Even if I did get hit, I'm sure I'd be perfectly fine, albeit a bit scattered for awhile." A disapproving noise sounded from the ash. "Where is Ernie? He's usually quite prompt."
And with that timely statement, three tombstones, a tree, and a statue of a house-elf all jumped aside as plum-coloured triple-decker bus thundered into the graveyard with a deafening bang, making quite the mess as it slammed straight into the cloud of ash, which poofed all over the windshield. A pimply young man looking to be twenty or so hopped out into the graveyard, coughing and waving his arm to dispel the cloud. "Welcome to the Knight Bu—" he coughed again "—Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or— ZOMBIE!" he screeched, waving his arms wildly to either ward off the still-swirling ash or possibly scare off the undead, though his pimples may have been more effective in that matter.
With a strangled yelp, James leapt forwards—to what end, he wasn't quite sure. Maybe to gather Lily up in one neatly pressed package. He would have to consider asking her to don a doggie-bag. "Zombie, yes," he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. "Except not quite. My, Stan, you've quite grown—do you remember me, James Potter?" He smiled hopefully, grasped at a handful of ash and cupped it between his hands, hoping that it was the fragment that was blessed with Lily's intelligence. "Er, dear?" He asked of his cupped hands. But that would have to wait—Stan was trying his hardest to get back aboard the bus, sans James and company.
"Stan Shunpike!" James bellowed with remarkable volume for someone devoid of lungs. "Get ahold of yourself, boy! I'm not about to eat your brains!" What few you have, he added silently, thinking that the pimpled boy would not appreciate the jab.
"Zombie!" Stan wailed, clawing ineffectually at the doors — Ernie had shut them immediately. "I don't know if 'e's a payin' customer, Ern, but 'e's gonna eat me a'cos I spilled hot chocolate on 'im that last time 'e rode, you 'member!"
"James?" Lily's voice was soft and rather mumbly. "I feel rather scattered, dear, do I have a fever?"
James grinned. "You're always marvelously 'hot', dear." That was an Americanized term that would have earned him a smack, were that she was corporeal. "Bloody hell, Stan!" He spared Lily's dust cloud a fond caress. "I'm not going to eat you, you see here?" —Wait, wait—Remus was Irish, and the Irish buried their dead with coins in their mouths—didn't they? He was quite sure that Remus would have attended his funeral, after all, and so—he reached up and felt around his mouth a moment and then with a triumphant grunt, pulled a golden Galleon out from between two teeth and rubbed it ineffectually on his shirt-front. "Er. Here? If I were a zombie that wanted to eat you, would I go to the trouble of paying you first?"
"You might," Stan said suspiciously, "If'n you wanted t' get close enough t' suck my brains out by my ear."
"Don't be silly, Stan," Lily said warmly, having collected herself again and slipped out of James's hands (letting a bit of herself — her left hand, perhaps? — swirl up his nose in reprimand) to float near Stan. "James prefers biscuits with his tea, I assure you."
James sneezed. Or tried to. Sneezing was a decisively tricky business when one was suffering from a nasty case of decomposition. "Er, yes. Lily's absolutely correct. Nice biscuits, with butter—freshly out of the oven. Your mother used to make biscuits for the customers of the Knight Bus, didn't she, Stan? Served them with a delicious Earl Grey tea, her own blend. Very nice woman, your mother." She was also unfortunately obese, had pinched his cheeks and constantly called him Jeremy instead of James. Between he and Sirius, they'd pranked the poor old woman so many times James was surprised she hadn't tried to kill them both. Death by squishing, what a novel concept. Better not let Voldemort get wind of that one—it could prove lethal.
"Oh yes," Stan agreed hurriedly, backing up against the doors nervously. "OI!" he near-screeched. "ERN! 'E—ah... THEY'RE PAYIN'!" He promptly tumbled forward into James as the doors swung open, thwacking him a good one. Lily, having just managed to swoosh herself aside, bit back a sigh and hovered around a flailing, shrieking Stan. "Now Stan, dear, I did tell you James wasn't out for your brains, you can stop your infernal caterwauling!" she ordered sternly.
James felt like gnashing his teeth just to frighten the boy, especially after that tumble into him, but that probably wouldn't be conducive to good service—And after all the time he'd spent being Dead (capital D, thankyouverymuch) he felt he deserved a cup of cocoa, providing he could actually drink it without any... unsightly spills. "Lily, dear—ladies first?" He made covert little herding motions at the cloud.
"How thoughtful of you, James," Lily replied, and collected herself as close as possible (she didn't fancy her shin being left in another part of the country) before swirling into the Knight Bus. Stan, having pushed himself off of James's corpse, was sagging against the side of the bus and shaking visibly. "We-welcome aboard the Knight Bus." He gave Lily a small bow and nearly tumbled over. "Where're you two 'eaded this evening?"
James gave Stan a bit of a glare and straightened himself out. The insufferable prat seemed to have actually dislodged a rib! Despite the grand total of time he'd spent as a sentient corpse was probably less than half an hour, he felt that he was not about to enjoy the experience. Although—just think of the pranks he could pull—! Business first, ahem. "Hogwarts, Stan. Where else?" He grinned, a grisly sight that, after catching his reflection in a window, he decided to refrain from. "And... er... make it fast, yes?"