December 25
The mattress felt like one giant brick. Blast-ended roaches crawled on the brick walls. Lizzy Goat's pointy heels threatened to poke James's eyes out. He sat up. Here he was now, whole but achy, in the Hogsmead juvenile jail on Yule Day, arrested for vandalism, drunk driving and assaulting aurors.
"That just sounds worse than it really is" he said. "What about the good cause? Why is it that every time we try to do something good we end up looking bad?"
Sirius fumbled after his compact mirror/magnifying glass/clock and looked less than pleased with the toll the fall had taken on his make-up.
"That's just how it is for activists" he said, wiping his face with his boa. "You know you're doing a good thing when you're arrested. There will always be bad forces trying to stop you"
He showed Remus the mirror. Last night the blue eye shadow and blue lipstick had made him look like a victim of drowning. Now he looked like a tacky clown prostitute.
"From driving drunk?" he asked and untied his flowery neckerchief.
"It's a little too late to act condemnatory"
This was truly the worst Yule Day ever. Nobody wanted to bail them out and a guard had placed a record player just outside their cell and forced them to listen to Happy Xmas (War Is Over) on repeat. Peter put his hands to his ears.
"Make it stop!"
James really had to hand it to Yoko for having found a recyclable way to ruin Yule for the entire world yearly and for breaking up The Beatles. Truly, she was an inspiration to aspiring troublemakers everywhere. He was tempted to write a really soppy Yule song himself to torture the nation with. Sirius glanced at him.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That depends what are you thinking?"
The music stopped, as if by a Yule miracle. Then the door opened.
"Ok boys and girls you're free" said a guard and ushered them out of the cell.
"Has someone bailed us out?" James asked but the guard refused to say and just returned their possessions and showed them to the exit. From there they crossed the street and followed another to Diagon Alley Square. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and the queue to the floo-station was already turning verbal arguments into physical ones. Elves were venturing newspapers in every street corner.
"Extra! Extra!" shouted one such elf. "Princess Cyllene of Far Far Away has escaped 13 years of captivity and is already one of the most influential upper class twits of Wizard Britain! Buy the Daily Prophet for the full story!"
A witch brushed by James in much hurry and dropped a newspaper in a bin and he fished it out. The photograph of a beaming, young woman was printed all over the front page. She had sandy hair that she wore in a French roll and her perfectly filed teeth sparkled like diamonds.
"Wow" he said. "She turned out to be really pretty for a witch who was already pretty"
"That's what make-over potential is" said Sirius. "When all you have to do is put up your hair. Or let it out, depending on how you kept it before"
"Did you know she was a princess?"
"Who?"
"Cyllene!"
James shoved the Prophet in Sirius's face. A post owl came and pecked him in the face until he untied his mail and he became increasingly miserable looking as he read through it.
"You look really grouchy for someone who just found out you're married to a princess" said James.
"I thought I was being edgy and non-conformist. I've just found out I've been un-disowned"
Sirius tossed both the letter and the newspaper in the bin.
"And I didn't even get to have a stag night" he said and sat down on the frozen fountain at the center of the square sullenly and refused to go anywhere until he was dearly promised a belated stag night.
The End.