Title: Book of Janus
Part 1: The letter
Hogwarts showed movies every Thursday at 8 o'clock in the Great Hall. The most popular request for this week had been the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sirius had known the words to all the songs before going in, while James had simply not been brought up watching musicals and thus had a lot of preconceived notions about them, namely that he wouldn't like them, especially if they featured Sweet Transvestites from Transexual Transylvania. It wasn't as if he was intolerant… But even if he ever had had such a streak, perhaps he owed it to Sirius' affinity for the glam scene and slightly flamboyant tendencies that he could enjoy it just a little bit, although it was in fact a terrible movie with only 2-3 good songs.
In any case, when the 100 minutes were over, they were both singing Let the time warp begin! and doing the moves. It wasn't even one of the good songs. It was one of the worse ones, as a matter of fact.
"Well that movie sucked, pardon my French" said Remus, who had in fact been brought up watching musicals of much higher quality.
"You take that back this instant!" Sirius pointed his shiny, ebony, 11 inches, vampire bone, wand at his throat.
"The plot made no sense and the songs were just not good. And I still don't understand what all those loonies were doing in that house"
"'Loonies'? Maybe next week when they show Love Story for the fifth time this semester you can go and throw some stones in glasshouses"
They sat down at the bottom steps of the stairs in the entrance hall.
"I want to dress just like Frankenfurther!" Peter blurted out. His cheeks turned rosy.
"No relative of mine ever dies and leaves me a giant house" Sirius put his hands to his cheek, moping over the fact.
"Like in Young Frankenstein?" James asked.
Suddenly a barn owl swept by and dropped a letter in Sirius' lap. He opened it and unfolded the letter.
"Oh no!" he gasped.
"What?"
"A relative of mine just died and left me a giant house! My emotions are so mixed right now!"
"Anyone you like or hate?"
"Crazy Al. He would make Crazy Potions for the St Mungos Asylum Ward. But there's more: I have to stay there tonight!"
"If he had a cool, secret lab I want to see it!" said James. "We should all go"
They looked to the Great Hall. Cas was jumping around, singing Dammit Janet and having Mac and Lily doing the unenthusiastic 'Janet' part. When she saw Sirius she swept up to him and seized him by both hands.
"Here's a ring to prove that I'm no joker! There's three ways that love can grow!" she sang, heartfelt but slightly off key. "What's that letter?"
Cas could really go from hopelessly devoted to burning with jealousy in a flash.
"A relative of mine died and left me a giant house" Sirius explained.
"I'm so sorry! Are you ok? Do you want to cry?" she squeezed between James and Sirius and started fondling Sirius' hair.
"No, I'm good" Sirius tried to move away from her, not liking much having his hair fondled, but he was already pressed against the banister. Cas snatched the letter and read it for herself.
"Oh, can we come too, can we? Please, please, please?"
"Sure"
McGonagall was the last to come out of the Great Hall.
"Professor McGonagall!" Cas shouted. "Can we all go away tonight?"
"Where to, Miss Meadows?"
"We all want to see the house that Sirius' crazy uncle left him"
McGonagall inspected the letter closely, performed several charms to make sure it wasn't fake in any way.
"I assume you all want to go, although I don't see why that would be necessary"
"Emotional support" said James. "It's a… It's a tragedy! Look, look how upset he is!"
He nudged Sirius, so he'd stop putting Frankenfatty make-up on Peter (and giggling at the word Frankenfatty).
"He seems very upset" said McGonagall dryly.
"Obviously I'm.. I'm…" Sirius struggled to find the words.
"Coping" said Remus. "With a project. Very common coping strategy"
"That"
"I still don't see why you all have to go" said McGonagall. "Especially considering some of you" she fixed her eyes on James. "Have detention"
"Can't you move it, please, please, please?" James put his hand together and channeled his inner Bambi. A moth fluttered by and landed on his nose, and it took him much self-restraint not to scream and flick it off violently. McGonagall sneaked up to him, stared at the moth for a moment before she closed her thin fingers around it and put it in her mouth a second later. It was quite disgusting, she seemed to think so herself.
"Ahem… No one saw that"
"So may I?"
"Yes, you may" she coughed up the moth and put it in a nearby Ficus pot. "Double detention for you tomorrow"
"Thank you Professor, you've always been my favourite!"
"I know"
McGonagall passed them as she went up the stairs and left. Sirius looked after her.
"Mine too"
"Yeah, the way you just said that" James frowned. "You do realize she's, like, 50"
"And fine for 50, too. What? Some of us like them mature. I wonder if she got my poem…."
"The Be my Mrs Robinson you wrote for Valentines day? Yeah, I'm sure she pasted it in her diary"
"I was hoping for a 'talk'…"
"Crushing on a Professor is just messed up" said Cas surly.
"You do it all the time!"
"That's different! It's a well known fact that girls mature faster than boys, and furthermore, I've never crushed on anybody over 40"
So now that they had permission to go, they all went on their merry way.