A/N: It's very odd. I distinctly remember writing this in ICT, which means I must have written it last year. I apologise once again. I promise the plot and quality of the writing will pick itself up next chapter (which I've finished so you might well see tomorrow, I'm procrastinating with my massive Legal Studies project.). Anyway. I bought myself a new keyboard this morning, so hopefully there'll be less typos. Anyway - enjoy and PLEASE review!
-for you!
Weeks and months blurred into each other at Hogwarts. Suddenly time could only be measured by the size and contents of the sixth-year homework pile. As the year wore on, the Marauder pile came to take up the whole table, and the floor around it.
"This isn't fair," James sighed finally, throwing down his quill in disgust. "It's my birthday in three days and I won't even be able to enjoy it! I'll have all of this hanging over me, taunting me with the fact that if I don't do it, I'll get even more as a punishment."
Sirius had to agree. It wasn't fair. James was coming of age that Wednesday and homework wasn't really something you wanted to be lumbered with on your seventeenth. But they had learned what the punishment was for not doing it: more homework. The outlook wasn't positive. Sirius muttered something consoling and smiled as he saw Laura coming through the portrait hole. She cleared herself a space on the table by sweeping Moony's Arithmancy charts onto the floor. He yelped and picked them up again. She put on her sweetest most apologetic face.
"Moooneey," she began pleadingly.
"Don't disturb him, he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown," James interrupted.
"But I don't understand Transfiguration. This is so much harder for me! You guys have been doing this sort of stuff for five years longer than I have," she moaned, "and if I don't finish this essay… you know Dumbledore. Lovely, but particular about homework."
Sirius did; he was working on the essay himself. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of human transfiguration. "Here, let me see," he supplied. She smiled gratefully and shifted her things until she was sitting on his knee. He kissed her neck and then proceeded to explain the idea to her. "Well, theoretically, you could transfigure yourself into a fish or something and then you'd be able to breathe underwater…"
"Speaking of birthdays, though, James," he continued later, "what are we going to do on Wednesday?"
"Homework, at this rate," James replied gloomily, now trying to rub an ink blot off his parchment. Sirius thought.
"I think there are still a couple of bottles of Ogden's in the lab," he said finally. "We could crack those… it won't be nearly as good as your last one, though, mate," he added apologetically. Last year James' birthday had fallen on a Hogsmeade weekend. Madam Rosmerta had been very accommodating. James shrugged.
"Last year's kinda hard to beat," he said reminiscently. "The Ogden's sounds great."
So after dinner on Wednesday, the Marauders made a detour to the kitchens before returning to the lab. The best parties, Sirius thought, were the ones they had with just the four of them. They played stupid games like Charades and Truth or Dare and then, as the Ogden's started to disappear faster, moved on to tongue twisters…
It wasn't until the second bottle was half-empty that Sirius began to feel tipsy; Peter, always the lightweight, was already asleep and Moony looked as though he was going that way. James sat down heavily. Sirius grabbed the bottle and tried to follow him and land in a chair, but the ground didn't want to co-operate and he missed both bottle and chair quite spectacularly and ended up sitting on the floor, blinking as the bottle rolled away. He looked up at James, but the way his friend's face was swimming around made him feel seasick, so he stopped.
The bottle touched Moony's feet. "No, thanks," the werewolf mumbled, kicking at it and sending it back to them. James lunged for it, but overshot and ended up in Sirius' lap. "Smooth," he commented. James looked up as though to reach for his wand, but it was on the other side of the room, so he sat up carefully and majestically shook out the sleeves of his robes.
"Accio!" he cried; the wand twitched feebly but didn't move closer.
Moony shook his head gently and blinked a few times. "It didn't work," he said unnecessarily.
"No shit, Sherlock," Sirius said, echoing Laura's favourite saying.
"It should have worked," Moony replied. "You can do some minor spells without having your wand actually in your hand."
"Like what?" Sirius asked, taking his own wand out of his pocket and twirling it in his hands.
"Lumos. Summoning charm. Anything that would help you get it back."
James lurched unsteadily towards his wand and snatched it up. Sirius grinned. "We should have a competition!" He meant the statement to be epic and momentous, but his tongue got a little caught up over the word 'competition'. James slumped down beside him and gently placed his wand in front of his crossed legs. Sirius followed suit. "Come on, Moony."
Moony stood up from his chair, but his legs weren't ready and he fell right over on Sirius' other side. Sirius tried to laugh, but it made his head feel funny. Moony groaned. Sirius grabbed the back of his robes and tried to haul the werewolf up; the center of his balance shifted and he ended up on top of him.
"You all right, Moony?"
"Get off me, Padfoot…"
"Right, sorry…" he clambered down quickly. "Right. We're going to light our wands, okay?"
"I'll light your wand in a minute," Moony grumbled, picking himself up. "All right – Lumos!" Moony's wand spluttered, then lit feebly; the light flickered briefly, then died.
"Pssh," Sirius dismissed. "Pathetic. I can do better than that. Lumos!"
For an instant, the lab was lit by a flash brighter than lightning, that lived and died in a heartbeat. There was silence. "That was weird," James observed calmly. "Do it again."
Sirius blinked to get rid of the lingering brightness of the flash. "No," he said firmly. "Your turn."
"All right," James replied, psyching himself up. "I'm gunna waste both of you. My spell's gunna be… um… like… like normal." He paused for a while, briefly lamenting the loss of all impact from that sentence. Then he shrugged, sat up straight, and concentrated.
"Lumos."
He waited. Nothing happened. "Lumos! Lumos!" Sirius chuckled.
"Consider us wasted, mate," he said dryly. James shot him an angry look.
"C'mon… lumos… Lumos, please… Lumos!" He sighed and keeled theatrically over backwards. "All right," he proclaimed from the floor. "Knox."
"Knox what?" Sirius chipped in. "There's nothing to Knox."
"Knox your face," James retorted.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah!" James clambered laboriously to his feet.
"Oh, great, real mature, guys," Moony said resignedly, retreating to an armchair with the bottle of Ogden's in his hand. "Start a fist-fight, then."
"Come on, then," Sirius said, louder than he'd intended to. "Take a swing at me, then!"
James lunged forwards, fist swinging wildly to miss Sirius' face by about two feet; his momentum carried him until he landed, flat on his face, at the other boy's feet. Sirius laughed. "I love you, man," he said genuinely, attempting to haul James to his feet but failing. "And I will always be here to remind you not to pick fights when you're drunk."
James laughed too, and finally regained his footing. "Thanks, I think, Padfoot." He looked around for the Odgen's, but Moony quickly hid it under his robes and James soon gave up. "Hey, speaking of love, how did you manage to get Laura? I mean, she's different than Eva and Alice and stuff, right? So… so how? Why? Who?"
Sirius tried to think. "I don't know," he said finally. "I just… I just told her I loved her, and I do, and I didn't pretend to be something I'm not, like I did with all the others, so she knew I felt differently about her."
"Yeah," Moony interjected, "that's where you're going wrong, Prongs. You need to just be yourself around Lily. And tell her, like, seriously, about how you love her and stuff."
"What do you know, Moony?" James asked petulantly. "You've only had one girlfriend and she came up to you."
"No," Sirius said. "He's right. If you tell her anything Siriusly, she's bound to like you." He snorted at the pun, but James didn't find it as funny as he did. "Siriusly, mate. You just have to tell her how you actually feel about her, show her that you don't just want to get into her pants."
James sighed. "If I remember that in the morning, I'll tell her. Thanks, guys. I love you so much."
"No," said Sirius, remembering an earlier point and feeling an urgent need to express it, "I meant I love you. Before, I mean. I love you more than… more than…" he searched for a comparison, "more than Snivelly loves Slughorn!" he finished triumphantly.
James sat down on Moony; the werewolf yelled and splashed Ogden's all over him. He jumped up and settled in his own armchair. "Snivellus," he spat vindictively, licking his arm where the Ogden's was itching his skin.
"Yup."
"Don't you just hate his scrawny… greasy…"
"Three words: matchstick. Gasoline. Snivellus." Sirius said, remembering the time last year when they'd been in counseling for three months for lighting the Slytherin on fire. Moony groaned.
"What is it with you guys and Snivellus – I mean Severus Snape?"
James and Sirius stared at him, mouths open. "It's Snivellus! He's so… so greasy…"
"And flammable…"
"And awkward…"
"And snivelly…"
"And he's always hanging around Lily, like he… like he likes her or something," James finished resolutely.
"So do you," Moony pointed out.
"But it's Snivelly," Sirius stuttered helplessly. Then the helpless feeling vanished, replaced by a renewed hatred for the gawky, bat-like Slytherin boy. "It's Snivellus. He's just a foul-mouthed, vindictive little Death-Eater-to-be. I just want to… want to show him Moony on a bad day." Moony tipped the bottle back absently, missing his name.
"Yes!" James cried suddenly. "That's a brilliant idea! Moony?" The werewolf grunted. "When's your next bad day?"
"Every day," he said bitterly, throwing back the bottle again.
There was silence while James and Sirius watched Moony intently, waiting for a proper answer. He looked up at them. "You can't be serious," he said incredulously, but even he knew they were.
"I'm always Sirius," he said, deadpan.
"C'mon, Moony. You know you want to teach the slimy little greaseball a lesson."
And in his drunkenly addled state, with Firewhisky sloshing noisily in his ears, Remus Lupin had to agree.
A/N: The story about the matchstick and the gasoline doesn't actually belong to me, I apologise, it belongs to EmmiChick, who wrote a story entitled A Very Painful Interview Indeed that had me in stitches when I read it for the fourth time last week. You should read it. Great for laffs, as Captain Underpants would say.
Well, I have one more chapter written to type up, then it'll probably slow down a bit. Especially if you don't review. But I just finished another chapter of my other fic so I'll start chapter 13 tonight. Hear from you soon, I hope?
-for you!
