PART 33

James managed to make use of his Bambi eyes and convince Sirius to forgive his mistakes. The termite had been a mistake. Sirius blamed Remus and that was fine.

He also used his Bambi eyes to make Sirius see that releasing some pest in a location heavily populated by muggles wasn't such a good idea.

Had the Spanish Inquisition done that? No. They had made people confess things.

A number of Hand Blenders were prefects. This gave Always Puré a kind of license to use the prefect bath as a torture chamber.

Two Hand Blenders, Roy and Phil, were forcing the head of some random Hufflepuff they had found drinking tea outdoors under water. They counted ten seconds before pulling him out.

"Confess! Confess!" said Roy.

Tim Honeysuckle coughed and spat water.

"Confess what?"

"Don't play dumb with me!" said Roy and pushed him back under the water for another ten seconds, with Phil's help.

"The Chinese Torture Chamber not enough for you, eh? Have at you!"

When another ten seconds had passed, Roy and Phil allowed Tim Honeysuckle to get some air.

"NOW CONFESS!"

"But I don't know what to confess!" Tim cried.

James was getting bored and restless with this. The Slytherin team had booked the pitch so it was vital that James and his team got there just before them.

"Just confess whatever," he told Tim.

"No, not whatever," said Sirius.

"Not whatever?"

"No, not whatever."

"If not whatever, then what?"

"It."

For a Hufflepuff, Tim Honeysuckle was made of remarkably tough stuff. He had been dunked in the prefect bath for an hour without confessing "it".

"Just what is "it"?" James asked.

"You know!"

Sirius thought that if he gestured wildly enough, that would explain it all clearly.

"It!"

"No I DON'T know!"

Sirius let his hands fall. He just didn't know how to be clearer than that. He squinted at James, suspicious.

"How can you not know what "it" is?"

"Because nobody has told me what "it" is! Do YOU know what "it" is?"

Sirius puffed scornfully at a lock that was getting in his eye.

"Of course I know what "it" is!"
James raised his brows, not convinced.

"I don't believe you."

Roy said he had to go and asked Beau Marceau to replace him.

"Drama starts in a minute," he told Sirius. "So far we got: accidentally killed Mr Dinky's fish through neglect, once had a dirty dream involving Mr Dinky, has a crush on you, likes to sit and smell his toes-"

"Any of that it?" James asked.

"No none of that is "it"!" said Sirius.

"Then WHAT is IT?"

Sirius stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Cas appeared by his side with a ginger ale and the Daily Erised. Sirius bit off the cork on the ginger ale and pointed at a headline.

"Here for example! Six people dead in freak fire station accident. Make him confess that!"
He returned the newspaper to Cas.

"I have to go too. I also do drama."

"And I have to make it to the quidditch pitch before the Slytherins do, because they booked it so it'll be hard to make them understand that they have to leave."

James and Sirius passed through the changing room and then a low-trafficked prefect hall.

"Maybe I'm imagining things but you seemed bored in there oh great shock of shocks," said James.

"I don't know what I was doing there. I don't have to supervise my Blenders all the time. It's completely inefficient."

James wanted to walk at a fast pace. He couldn't let the Slytherin team get there before him. Sirius, however, dragged his feet and searched his body for fags.

"When does drama start?" James asked him.

Sirius put three cigarettes in his mouth, looking encumbered.

"I don't regret joining the Death Eaters," he said. "Honestly. But I just haven't had the time to figure out how to get out of the tattoo bit."

"Then maybe you should put the inquisitions on hold and prioritise getting out of the tattoo bit."

"I know. I just… Bookish Hufflepuffs sure are hard to come by, aren't they?"

"Are they? What about Beau Marceau?"

"Bookish Hufflepuffs that aren't also mimes. Sure they exist and they find things quickly, but… You know."

Sirius sipped on his ginger ale between smokes.

"No I don't, really."

Having to explain all this obvious stuff really irritated Sirius.

"I tell them to look up A. They do, and they find it quickly and all that. Then I ask: what does A mean? And they don't know. They don't understand A. They can read A, but for them to understand it they have to look up B and C… "

"...Yeah? So?"

"I guess I want to be able to just say: Look up A for me. What is A? And they will look it up and say: This is what A is, I will tell you about all things A, here you are."
"Do you want a walking encyclopedia?"

"That would also be very good. But they're so mechanic. They don't know how to filter the facts for the stuff that's really useful."

"Gosh you are demanding… You want a person who can look up A for you and then tell you about it without having look up B and C, and you want them to filter the stuff."

"A walking encyclopedia will just repeat the entire text, all of it. Doesn't save time because it takes longer to listen to a book than it does to read it so then I might as well just read it myself..."

"Look, Padfoot. I know what you want."

"I hope so, I just told you."

"You want the sort of person that will tell you about Z before you even asked about Z. And then you realise that you never knew you wanted to know about Z, until you were told about Z."

"What's Z?"

"Ass Wangs and treasure eating lions that don't have anuses and trees that grow women as fruit. The person you are describing is Moony."

"Oh. I guess you said ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! I heard wrong. You have misunderstood me completely. I was not describing THAT!"

Sirius spat disdainfully at the floor.

"Weren't you? Then I just don't understand why we have this talk."

"Do I need to have a reason to talk to my own best friend?"

"Unless… Oh. Do you want me to ask for help FOR you? Is that what you're asking?"

"No that is NOT what I'm asking!"

"Fine. You wanted to have a casual chat, then. Odd topic for a casual chat. You sounded like you were looking for practical advice."

"All I meant was that I'd appreciate it if you would help me. Not that I expect that you can do much at all that is useful-"

"Oi."

"But if you should just, you know, happen upon something. Could you just keep this talk in the back of your mind, that's all I was asking."

"Sure I will. I'm certainly not bookish. But I will have a look around and I will make sure to not ask anybody to help me!"
"...Good..."

"I just don't know what you're afraid of. Oh yeah, mummies apparently..."

"I'm not afraid of anything."

"Like, why mummies?"

"I've already explained that to you."

"It just doesn't add up. It's like you need to invent this reason to be repulsed by Moony because the reality is you love him and there is a part of your brain that has a big problem with that. But I don't get that either." Angelic smile. "Because you love me, don't you?"

Angelic smile back. "So clearly your theory fails. It must be because I hate mummies with every fibre of my bone."

"Would it make any difference if he was, I don't knooowww, a… gorgon?"

"I have no problems with gorgons. It is just too bad he is a mummy, because I have a problem with mummies."

"Well you're wrong. He's a gorgon."

"He is not a gorgon! You are saying that because you want us to be chums! There is NO evidence that supports it! He is a mummy!"

"Ok he's a werewolf."

"There is NO EVIDENCE that supports that! All evidence points to him being a mummy!"

"Ok. He's a potato."

"There is NO EVIDENCE- Ok now you're just taking the piss."

"I thought it was apple juice," James put the piss back. "Let me just ask you a simple question. If there was a potato that could help find answers to all your questions, would you not go to it?"

"Sure I would."

"So why not a mummy?"

"Because potatoes aren't sneaky and deceitful! At least not any of the potatoes I have met but I don't know about the potato in your absurd scenario! The point is that I wouldn't even trust a potato if it had a history of lying and working against me!"

"Potato would never do that out of malice, only good intentions. You must know that."

"Potato doesn't do anything! Potato is only good for chips!"
"You're not afraid to be deceived by potato."

"No."

"You are confused, because potato confuses you."

"Yes."

"If mainstream psychology tropes have taught me anything, it is that potato confronts you with something you don't like. In yourself."

"I guess I don't like potatoes in myself."

"Because you've had some views beaten so deep into you. You've been told that potatoes are bad and that you're not allowed to have potato so when you see a potato you experience this wild inner conflict because potato looks so yummy."

"You need to go on a Spells & Curses fast next Lent."

"You didn't have a problem with Potato when you were all about free love. Now you're all about free evil, and suddenly you have a problem with Potato. Potato is poking around in your subconscious, with those amber eyes, threatening all that evil."

"Oh stahp you make me feel all fluffy."

"So you want to avoid Potato. But of course, you like potato. But you don't really have time to hang around being confused by Potato. You can't ask me to talk to Potato for you, because then you'd be admitting there is more to Potato than Potato. And yet you are dropping me these hints about bookish finder, because you are afraid-"

"I am NOT afraid."

"-to say how you feel. What you want is for me to talk to Potato without you knowing about it. That way you don't have to worry about whether or not everything you know about Potato is really true. You don't want to be confused by your deeply conflicting feelings for Potato, mwa mwa!"

Sirius turned away, all dramatic like.

"Potatoes are potatoes, nothing more!"

"But this potato cares about you. This potato just wants to be your special little potato! Potato doesn't want you to have any other tattoo, than the one on your butt."

James thought that something was getting through, that something was cracking within Sirius at last, that he wavered.

Then Sirius turned back, just as chilly and unmoved as before.

"Potatoes don't care about anything but themselves."

"That's not true."

"It's in the very nature of the deceitful potato to fool you into thinking that they are something else than potatoes. Potatoes want you to think they are human with a side of potato! But that's not true. Potatoes never will be more than potatoes and they are treacherous and self-serving."
"Yet Potato rocks your socks. If you can't make use of Potato, because Potato makes you feel all confused, do you really have what it takes to lead Always Puré?"

Sirius hauled out his wand, to demonstrate just how fit he was to deal with out of line Blenders. He had been in a constant state of growing irritability since camp already, and now James had been very successful in pushing his confused buttons. Now Sirius was pressing his button.

"This feels like such a breakthrough for me!" said James, because Sirius's buttons really weren't all that easily pressed.

"You certainly have reached a new level of annoying today."
"Then you should turn me into a cake or something."

"And serve you in pieces? Maybe I will."

"Do it then. You wouldn't back away from a fight, would you?"

"I never back away from a fight!"
THERE YOU ARE, SIRIUS!

"Laterz."

Sirius's cousin Bella chased him out of the prefect hall, constantly bombarding him with curses to dodge. Sirius made use of the secret doors he knew about, and soon enough Bella lost track of him. He made it to the statue of the huge rump, said the magic words (Tits, bottom, Rhosgobel, baguette) and crawled inside when the cheeks parted.

Inside the tunnel he immediately crashed into Remus.

"Potato!"
Remus dismissed the name calling as another jab at his passive veganism. It was better than Carrot because his hair was closer to potato in terms of colour. Cabbage had just been silly. Broccoli he had liked, so that hadn't lasted very long.

"Good day," he said, intent on carrying on through the butt hole.

Sirius stopped him.

"You can't leave."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't have my permission!"
Remus thought it was weird that Sirius had seemingly just come down here to hang out by the hole.

"Are you hiding?"

"No!"

Sirius found that he was wearing his Fiendish Fisheye around his neck. He stuck it to the butt exit, and looked through it.

Bella was pacing around, convinced that Sirius was nearby. Perhaps Sirius shouldn't have dropped so many fag butts on the floor there.

"Do you mind if I go back?" Remus asked.

"Are you going to look for a kind of soap ladybird that crawls into your ear at night and drives you to suicide by singing the Queen of the Night Aria from the Magic Flute?"

"There's an earwig that does something similar. Not the Queen of the Night Aria. Largo Al Factotum from the Barber of Seville."

"Mozart. Whatever."

"Rossini."

"Did you just make that up?"

"Yes. So…?"

"What?"

"May I?"

"After the bed bugs, the stiffy bug and the termites? You most certainly mayn't! You mayn't go anywhere without one of my Blenders supervising you, freak!"
"Do you want me to stay here with you?"

"No I don't WANT you to stay here with me!"

"But I can't go?"

"I want you to shut up!"

Sirius suffered a sudden migraine and sat down. Remus thought he'd peek through the butt hole using his own Fiendish Fisheye. The witch he saw pacing around out there said some very nasty things.

Come out Sirius so I can kill you hard!

"Anyone you know?"

"He may or may not be my cousin."

" "He" ?"

Sirius got up, looked through his Fiendish Fisheye again.

"Ok she." Sigh. "We used to get on so well. But she was malicious and cruel. Everything I strived to be, my role-model in everything, like an older sister I kind of wanted to shag..."

"HO-kay then..."

"Of course for most of my life she's just seen me as a little kid. When my cousin Cassiopeia got married, Bella was the maid of honour. I was so jealous of his then boyfriend. So I pulled a Carrie on him, you know, I arranged for buckets of muggle blood to fall all over him when he told jokes about the groom. Bella broke up with him after that. She said that every time she saw him, she could smell muggle. Some of it splashed on her dress. She refused to acknowledge me for years after that. She began to have nightmares of finding out she was a muggle child adopted by wizards who then rejected her… Then she began to eat. I didn't know it was going to be THAT traumatising!"

"Nobody could have known that..."

"But she forgave me after a few suicide attempts and therapy."

"Good."

After looking encumbered for a while, Sirius lit up.

"Hey! Speaking of regretting things! Did you hear about Cas?"

"No. What about Cas?"

"She got a tattoo this summer would you believe it. And now she regrets it."

"Oh really?"

"She says her mole makes her Daisy Duck look too squint eyed."

"That's the risk that comes with getting a tattoo I guess."

"Yeah. I said to her she can just get rid of it with laser."

"That's true."

They remained quiet for a while. Bella had stopped swearing out there. She was talking to Professor McGonagall.

"I wonder if laser works on ALL tattoos..," Sirius mused, trying to sound casual.

"I think you can most likely find ways to remove any tattoo. But of course, there are certain tattoos where you might get in heaps of trouble for removing it. That would be the real concern in some cases."

"Yeah that's true..."

A cricket chirped. Remus picked it up and made plans to release it in the wild.

"Do you want me to look into tattoo removal?"

"No I want you to get back in your cage, you potato!"

Sirius pushed Remus out of the way and crawled through the butt exit.