Chapter 80
It's Alive!
"Ewww, James, NO!" Remus could hear Sirius yelling from inside the Hogwarts Express. Remus rolled his eyes and gave a small laugh, it would figure first thing he'd hear out of the pair was James driving Sirius bonkers. He felt bad for James parents, he really did.
"Come on, Si, you have to know sometime, and your parents certainly aren't going to tell you." James' voice was getting closer to the compartment, Remus opened the door so they would know where he was sitting.
"No, I really don't. I assure you I will never need this information in my entire life." Sirius saw Remus sitting there looking highly amused and ran into the compartment, shutting it very quickly so that James and Peter could not get in.
"That is bullcrap and you know it, Sirius." James didn't even bother to knock.
"What's going on?" Remus finally asked unable to hold his curiosity any longer.
"I am now scared for life that's what." Sirius let go of the door for a second and James instantly tried to open it, somehow knowing Sirius had done so, thus the two finally started fighting over the door.
"So, what else is new?" Remus replied highly amused by their antics. He'd missed them a lot.
"I mean it this time, Moony, he's finally done it. He's finally scared me for life."
James finally got the door open enough for him to go through and, as Sirius didn't have anything against Peter at the moment, so he let Peter in without a fuss. Peter seemed just as amused as Remus, though his amusement was mixed with a bit of envy.
"What did you do?" Remus asked causing Peter to finally start laughing as though he'd been holding it in for a while.
"Sirius didn't know what people do on honeymoons." James said as though Sirius had a life threatening condition.
"And I was perfectly happy not knowing thank you very much!" Sirius retorted, clearly sulking.
"You're kidding, you're fourteen and you don't even know the birds in the bees?" Remus asked, not wanting to embarrass his clearly already embarrassed friend, but that was hard to swallow.
"Birds and the bees?" James asked looking at him strangely.
"Sorry, muggle expression."
"Oh, anyway I was trying to tell him, you know like a good friend, but he stopped letting me talk to him when I said the b-word."
"B-word?"
"Baby." Peter answered clearly raising his voice a little. Wanting to be sure Sirius heard him.
"Erg! No, No more talking about this, I don't want to know, I don't need to know. I'm not getting married, I'm not getting a girlfriend, I am not producing offspring of any kind! I don't need to know!" Sirius said loudly, before realizing there was a very high chance the people in the next compartment could probably hear him.
"Sirius, wow, just wow, didn't your parents..." Remus began trailing off as he realized what he was saying. "No, I guess they wouldn't have would they. Eleven is a little young for that kind of thing."
James opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't find words, he felt kinda bad now for making fun of Sirius' lack of knowledge in the area, but Remus was right. Sirius' parents probably wouldn't have told him any of this.
The compartment was quiet, Sirius looked away for a moment before deciding that that was the longest he could stand them pitying him like that.
"Remus, do you have tons of Christmas traditions too? Cuz, James' family has like a million and two, is that normal?"
Remus laughed. "Yes, Sirius, that's normal."
"I don't get it. Why do the same thing every year?"
"Well for us it's because there's less planning to do. We have a lot of people over, so it's just easier if everyone knows what we're doing before we even start planning it." James shrugged, letting the new conversation kill the old one.
"We just like the things we do and don't try to change it." Remus added, "we don't have a party, just the three of us."
"Sounds boring." Sirius sat sideways and closed his eyes, thankfully Sirius wasn't that tall yet or Peter might be having some trouble finding room.
"Nah, you only do it once a year." James shrugged, smiling at Sirius' relaxed pose. The break had been a little hectic for Sirius, between the extremely advanced potion they'd had to make, Christmas, and New Years (in which Sirius, surprisingly, had actually celebrated, though his family didn't consider it a holiday worth much more than an acknowledgement) and messing around with James, Sirius hadn't got much in the way of actual rest.
Watching Sirius learn how to celebrate Christmas was something James immensely enjoyed. He couldn't say he thought it was funny, nor could he say it was entirely happy. But he knew he wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. Or more importantly for the pretty redhead who was just now opening the door of their compartment.
"What on earth are you doing in here?" She scolded. "I can hear you lot yelling about marriage and offspring from three compartments down!"
It took exactly three seconds of silence before James, Remus, and Peter all started laughing at her statement, and laughing hard.
Sirius' hid his face in his hands not wanting to be seen by anyone at the moment, let alone someone his age of the opposite sex.
"Oh, grow up." She said at the three laughing boys. For the first time in her entire schooling career she wondered if Sirius had been telling the truth when he said Remus really wasn't as mature as he acted. It would definitely explain why he hung out with Potter and Black all the time. She gave an irritated huff and half slammed the door walking back to her own compartment.
"I don't like any of you, you know that?" Sirius said peeking out from his hands, he only succeeded in making them laugh even more.
James smirked as he exited the carriage leading them away from the Hogwarts express and directly to the entrance of Hogwarts itself. He gave Remus a smirk and stealthily handed the werewolf his most prized possession, Remus immediately backed out of the crowd, all of them too excited about telling their friends what they'd gotten for Christmas to notice the small, sickly looking boy trying to squeeze in between them, even too busy to notice when that boy completely vanished in thin air.
"Where'd he go off too?" They heard from behind them. James turned to see Frank Longbottem standing behind him and wearing an expression curiosity. Apparently not everyone was too distracted to see Remus leave
"Went to see McGonagall about something. He's a major teacher's pet." Sirius said with a light laugh, ever since they had found out what their animagus forms will be James had begun noticing more and more things about Sirius and Peter that reminded him of their animals, such as Sirius' laugh resembling a bark, and Peter squeaking when he was scared. He wondered if he did it too. What sounds does a stag make anyway?
"Minus the record setting detentions... right?"
"Hey now, I hold the record of most detentions." Sirius replied, looking highly offended.
"Of all time?" Frank asked curiously, now walking with them into the Great Hall.
"Well, not yet, but I'm over halfway there, in the rate I'm going I'll have it beat by the end of sixth year." Sirius said proudly.
"Who keeps track of this stuff?"
"Remus keeps track of our number of detentions." James answered stopping at their seat to continue talking to Frank, whom they knew was planning on sitting with his friend Alice.
"Seriously? Remus does?"
"Yep."
"What do I do?" Remus said from behind Frank. Who jumped at the added voice, Remus laughed. "Sorry."
"He he, I meant to do that." Frank defended poorly. "I should go sit down. Alice looks like she's looking for me.. See ya, Remus." He smiled and gave Remus a wave as though to tell him it wasn't because of Remus that he'd left, before heading off to sit with his friend (whom James noted was sitting beside Evans.)
"What do I do?" Remus repeated as they all sat down.
"You keep track of our number of detentions."
"Oh, is that all?" Remus just shrugged, as though it was old news, which to him it was.
"You got all the way down to the kitchen that fast?" Sirius said, clearly impressed. "How?"
"I ran on all fours, you know like a wolf, of the non-animal variety." Remus chuckled at his own joke. The other three just stared at him. "What?"
"You made a joke..." Sirius said looking at him as though he'd never seen him before.
"I do it all the time what are you on about?"
"You joked about your furry little problem!" James said, shock mixed with pride in his voice.
"Oh, that. Yeah I guess I did." Remus smiled, clearly proud of himself.
"Who are you and what have you done with my friend." Sirius said his expression not changing.
"Meet the new and improved, Moony. " Remus said again smiling, their eyes widened impossibly larger.
"You just called yourself Moony." James said slowly.
Remus laughed. "Yeah, I've been accidently saying it in my head for a while now, I knew I'd come out eventually."
Sirius cheered loudly, thankfully the food appeared right then so everyone assumed that was the reason.
People immediately began to fill their plates.
Or at least they tried to. The moment someone reached for a ladle, or grabbed a scone the food immediately jumped away from them to their immense surprise. Some people screamed as a large helping of pudding jumped onto their head, others tried to catch their dinners.
It was chaos, and the Marauders loved it. James jumped after a particularly fast potato, while Remus was holding a struggling pork pie.
McGonagall and Dumbledore had been prepared for something to happen, but even this was not what they expected. Seeing Dumbledore with a whole steak and kidney pie on his head was almost more than James could handle
Sirius got his wand out and after shooing away couple of particularly springy peas that was attempting to hide in his hair he began to write.
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
And We'll Be Here All Year!
McGonagall was clearly trying very hard to keep from yelling in frustration as she fought off a boiled potato with a soup ladle while reading the annual Marauder Christmas message.
"Why does that sound like a threat?" Professor Slughorn said attempting to vanish McGonagall's boiled potato but missing every hit, eventually hitting her ladle. She then proceeded to glare at him in a way that most definitely did not resemble their transfiguration teacher at all, snatched his wand from his hand (hers had been previously hidden by pack of ravenous chocolate éclairs) and blew the boiled potato up. Not just into little pieces either, she blew it up into smoldering cinders, complete with dust cloud and everything. Before finally handing Slughorn's wand back to him and searching for her own.
Needless to say the Marauders labeled this prank a culinary success.
And McGonagall's glare would be forever etched in their minds as the single greatest out of character moment a teacher has ever shown. And it would have been so even if it wasn't directed at Slughbreath...
That was only the icing on top of the cake.
A/N) I loved this prank a lot. I hope I did McGonagall's epic battle with the boiled potato justice, because it was amazing in my head.
Top ten Marauder pet peeves.
#10 Sirius using serious puns, or copious amounts of said puns
# 9. Marauder's falling in love with Lily's 'imaginary' friends
This is a very irritating way to give the rest of the Marauders love interests I get that Lily probably had friends we don't know about as she was (if I remember correctly) kinda popular and the only friend we know of is Snape. But really when Sirius and Remus just happen to fall in love with James' doe's best friends things are taken a little too far. I hate coincidences in fiction, or rather large important details being coincidences. (Which is sorta why Goblet of Fire is one of my least favorite in there series, tied with Chamber of Secrets. Because it seems way too much of a coincidence that the triwizard tournament just happeneds to have been played for the first time in hundreds of years while Harry was at school, Dumbledore just happened to pick the one person no one would believe when they claimed someone broke into their home as DADA teacher that year, Wormtail just happened to find the stupidest witch in the ministry while on vacation, and all this just happened to happen the right after Wormtail [somehow] managed to find Voldemort)
Not one of them could possibly go out with someone in a different house or year? Really?
Maybe I'm over criticizing it, it's up to you, this is just how I feel about it, and I'm not saying all stories with it are bad, I've found a few that are good. I'm just saying in general, I don't like it.