QLFC Round 7 – Muggle Me This;
Cannons, Captain – Write about the conflict within wizarding society, between those who want to study Muggle technology in order to understand it better and those who think it's a bunch of garbage.
AN: Thanks to Emy and Amy for betaing (and Shay for helping me decide the title).
A Waste of Time
"There, done!" Sirius exclaimed, throwing his parchment onto the table and leaning back in his chair.
"Let's see." Marlene appeared out of nowhere and picked up the discarded sheet. "Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Runes, and," Marlene scrunched up her face, "Divination? Why on earth would you take Divination?"
Sirius glanced over at James, both of them grinning. "Well, it'll be a laugh, won't it?"
Marlene glared at him.
"And we couldn't leave poor Peter on his own in there, could we?"
James nodded solemnly and Peter offered up a small smile to Marlene, but she ignored them both. Sirius had tried to force the sarcasm out of his voice, but one look at Marlene told him that he'd failed. Her eyes were still trained on Sirius, and her foot had started tapping.
"You can't just take a subject because it'll be a laugh. Why not do something useful instead?"
Sirius sighed, albeit quietly—he knew Marlene well enough by now to know she was working her way up to an argument and he didn't want to make it any worse.
"Like what?" he asked. "I'm already doing Ancient Runes, Marly, and Arithmancy and Muggle Studies aren't what I'd call 'useful'."
"And why not?" she asked. Marlene's voice was clipped as she spoke, and Sirius found himself marvelling at the fact she hadn't snapped at him yet; usually, it came straight after the foot tapping.
"I'm never going to do anything with them. I'm going to be an Auror, not work in bloody Muggle Relations or something." There was a pause before he added, "And I don't even know what Arithmancy's useful for!"
"Muggle Studies is useful for Aurors too, you know!" she said, her voice reaching a dangerously high level. "How are you going to do undercover assignments in the Muggle world if you know nothing about it?"
Sirius shrugged. "I'll work that out when I get sent on one."
"But don't you want to learn about Muggles at all?" Marlene snapped, her hands flying into the air. "There are so many of them, more than there are of us, and they manage to get by without magic. Aren't you even remotely interested in learning how?"
"Well, no," Sirius replied. He was finding it incredibly hard to keep straight face, but the backlash from Marlene would be worse if he didn't. "It's a load of rubbish, all this Muggle business. Why learn about that when we can do everything we need with magic?"
"Because, Sirius, what if one day you can't use magic?"
Sirius gulped. He knew he was close to being on the end of one of Marlene's infamous rants, but he just couldn't bring himself to take the conversation seriously.
"Then I'll move in with James, Remus, and Peter and get one of them to do everything for me. I'll never have to do anything for myself again—it'll be a dream come true."
He winked at James and Peter and all three of them burst into laughter. Remus just sighed.
"Sirius Orion Black," Marlene started. Sirius couldn't help but groan even though he knew it had been coming. "Do you ever take anything seriously? You cannot spend your life depending on other people. What if you're in danger and need to leave your friends behind to keep them safe? What if they all need to live as Muggles, too?"
"Then we'll get Evans to help. I'm sure James will win her over before that happens, and she's Muggleborn so she'll be loads of help."
"But how can you live your life not being curious about how Muggles live without magic? How they travel in the air without brooms, how they heal people without potions and spells? It's all so interesting and it could help the wizarding world loads if people just learnt from them."
"Marlene," Sirius said, getting to his feet. "I really don't care. I have magic and that's all I need."
"But what about Squibs?" she countered. "What if you have a child and they're a Squib? How would you ever teach them about living like a Muggle?"
Sirius knocked into Marlene's shoulder as he passed her and marched out of the common room. Before the portrait hole closed behind him, he heard Marlene sigh, followed swiftly by, "And don't think you're getting away with this either, James Potter."
Over the next few days, Sirius barely thought about what subjects to take the following year—apart from when Marlene was shouting at him about them—but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to hand in his completed sheet to Professor McGonagall.
"I just heard Evans is taking Arithmancy," James said as Sirius slid into the seat beside him in at the Gryffindor table. "I'm going to ask Minnie if I can have my sheet back to add it."
"You're not going to win her over by taking a subject you have no interest in," Remus said, barely glancing up from his own sheet.
"You decided yet, Moony?" Sirius asked as he loaded his plate with food.
"No," Remus said. "I ruled out Divination, but Professor McGonagall said I would only have room for three of the other subjects." He had been stressing over not being able to take all five subject since they had been told to start thinking about it. The longer he had to think about it, the more stressed he seemed to get.
"They have to be in today, don't they?" Peter, who had handed his in on the first day after choosing Care of Magical Creatures and Divination with James and Sirius, asked. At least, that's what Sirius assumed he asked—it was hard to make out the words around the food Peter had shovelled into his mouth.
Remus groaned, his head falling into his hands. "Don't remind me."
James turned to Sirius. "What about y—"
"Care of Magical Creatures!" Remus exclaimed. "I won't take Care of Magical Creatures."
James looked crestfallen. "I thought we decided we'd all take that together?"
Remus didn't seem to know how to answer.
Sirius reached over the table and grabbed Remus' sheet. "What are you taking Muggle Studies for?" he asked, his face scrunching up, much like Marlene's had when she saw Sirius' choices "Isn't your mum a Muggle? You must know loads about Muggle stuff already."
"Not really." Remus shrugged. "She left the Muggle world behind when, well, my furry little problem started." He let out a humourless laugh. "I'm interested in learning more about where I came from."
Sirius looked at Remus, really looked at him. There was something in his expression that twisted Sirius' insides—Remus seemed so determined to take Muggle Studies, to learn about his past, but Sirius just couldn't understand why.
There was a moment of silence, none of them knowing how to reply to their best friend's statement. It was broken by Peter, thankfully swallowing his food first this time.
"But why?" he asked. "Muggles are so… boring."
Remus glared at Peter. "Are you calling my mum boring?"
"I— No, that— It's not—" Peter stuttered.
"Why are you so interested, though?" Sirius asked, partly to change the subject, partly because he was genuinely curious.
"I guess it started with my grandparents," Remus told him. "They always seemed so happy. I know my parents must have been before, well, you know what happened, but they haven't been since, not properly. It made me start thinking about my grandparents and how they'd bake cakes to cheer people up, how much they loved watching the television after they were invented, how they always seemed to enjoy travelling to go on holiday. I thought, maybe, when I'm older, I could do those things for myself." He sighed. "My mum doesn't talk much about her Muggle life and my grandparents passed away so I thought the best way to learn about it is at Hogwarts."
Sirius nodded. The way Remus was speaking struck a chord inside him—if Muggles could be happy without magic, then maybe he'd learn something that could make him happy despite his parents. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, so did another one that made Sirius start scratching his quill across his own parchment.
James shot him a curious look. "Did I just see you adding Muggle Studies instead of Divination?"
"You did indeed," Sirius said, a grin spreading across his face. "I still think it's a waste of time, but just think about how much it'll annoy my parents!"
Word Count: 1,408