The Magical and the Mechanical: Chapter Thirty One

December 21, 2014

Remus and James had snippets of contact with the other three Marauders for the morning. They left the mirror in James and Sirius' bedroom and would check on their progress during bathroom breaks, alternating who had to go to the bathroom and when. They made sure to drink lots of water to avoid suspicion of their hourly bathroom breaks. When questioned, and Dr. Strange did question them once after James' second and Remus' third bathroom break, they both responded in practiced unison; "Hydrate or Diedrate". Dr. Strange pinched the bridge of his nose and continued the lesson.

Remus made true on his word to Spider-Man and the Hulk from yesterday and asked about creating portals on purpose, not under pressure, and without assistance. Since Remus was the holder of the Book and therefore more likely to master portals earlier than the other four, Dr. Strange agreed to take this time to tutor James and Remus on their individual strengths relating to their new spell foci. James was practicing magical shields and Remus was practicing portals.

Much to Remus' frustration, James picked up shields and wards much faster than Remus was picking up portals.

"You've done it before, Moony," James offered. "During the Squincident."

"Yes, I… I know, Prongs, thank you," Remus hissed.

He felt like a fool, holding his hands out and trying to make a portal to move an apple from one end of the room to the other. Meanwhile, James was lazily throwing his apple about with solid state forcefields he was projecting with his hands. What an asshole; being more talented than Remus. Again. Like usual.

"Hold your will and make it real," Dr. Strange instructed for what must have been the tenth time.

"That doesn't mean anything!" Remus complained. "Can't you just… assist me like last time and maybe if I focus I'll figure it out and then I can do it on my own."

"You won't learn that way," Dr. Strange said.

"Well… and… I only really seem to perform consistently when it's a life or death situation," Remus mumbled.

"That's worked so far," Dr. Strange corrected. "But if you continue to rely on extreme circumstances to kick you into gear, you won't learn any finesse or control. You've gotten. You haven't overdone it and caused a magical rebound or underdone it and ended up squished in a…"
he sighed heavily, "Squincident."

"Oh," Remus frowned. He crossed his arms and glared at the apple in front of him. He had the Book in a harness – Sirius called it a fanny pack – at his side. He tried to look inside the Book to see if it had any pointers, but it was being tight covered about its secrets today and he couldn't pry it open. "Any tips on getting it open when it doesn't want to be?"

"It has a mind of its own," Dr. Strange answered. "And you are it's keeper, it's up to you to determine how to control it or if it can be controlled."

"That's not helpful!" Remus shouted. "Every time I ask you for help, you say something cryptic that's not helpful and I'm still exactly where I started! You're supposed to be the Sorcerer Supreme but… it's like you don't even know anything!"

"Remus, calm down," Dr. Strange commanded.

"No! I'm sick and tired and frustrated and I can't ever get any of this to work and I don't know why and you are a terrible teacher and…"

"Remus," Dr. Strange put power into his voice and Remus' mouth clamped shut. He waved his hand towards the apple. It moved from where it had been sitting to across the target table across the room. There were two green portals, one under where the apple had been and the other over the target across the room.

"Oh," Remus mumbled. "But I… I don't know how I'm doing that," he whined.

"Then figure it out," Dr. Strange said.

"I believe in you, Moony," James offered.

"That's… nice but also not very helpful, James."

"You can do it."

"Apparently," Remus slumped down on the floor and glared at the two portals, trying to figure out how he had done that, how he could close them, and most importantly, how he could repeat the spell. It felt like the longer he glared, the farther he got from the answer.

Sirius was very wobbly in the air as soon as JARVIS turned his assistance levels anywhere below 80%. The biggest problem with that was that anything above 80% was stiff and jilted and more suited to getting Tony home after a night on the town that it was for getting Sirius and passenger into and then back out of an Ultron infested Avengers Tower.

"Try being more balanced!" Meriam shouted up at him.

She somehow managed to bring snacks with her and was eating trail mix. Hulk led them to a secluded corner of New York to the roof of a warehouse that Tony supposedly owned. He bought it out from under Hammer to annoy him. All the surrounding warehouses were Hammer owned, but they had to go around the lone Stark warehouse to get anything done. That was twenty some years ago when their rivalry was still in its schoolchildren phase and hadn't yet graduated to competent superhero vs incompetent supervillain levels. Tony had spent the better two thirds of his life annoying the hell out of Justin Hammer, starting at the ripe young age of thirteen, when he outdid him at a college level science fair.

"This is way harder than it looks!" Sirius shouted back down at her.

"I'm bored," Hulk grabbed a peanut from Meriam and threw it at Sirius.

It plinked off the face plate. Sirius tried to swat it away before it hit him but forgot that he was using his hands to steady himself and spun out. It took a solid ten seconds for JARVIS' assistance to kick in and stabilize. He was lucky he didn't get motion sickness like Remus.

Birdbrain flitted through the air gracefully and fluttered to a landing on Sirius' head. She bent her head down to look into the eye slits and squawked happily at him.

"Oh, that's easy for you to say, you bloody… hm… damn? You damn bird!" Sirius shouted. "If I could figure this out without my hands, I'd hit you, you know."

Birdbrain squawked again, ruffled her feathers, and pecked Sirius' forehead.

"Don't you have some trash to steal?"

Sirius swung his arms forward and managed a very awkward and wobbly summersault through the air, knocking Birdbrain from her perch.

"Hey, nice moves!" Meriam applauded.

Lily landed next to her with a huff, "Yes, at this rate, we'll be in the Tower by Christmas morning."

"All I need to do is get good enough that JARVIS only needs to be at 75%," Sirius said. "I'm already at 81!"

"Tony's at 15%," Hulk announced.

"Really? I thought he was at 0?"

"Nah, suits past the MK III are clumsy without JARVIS," Hulk shrugged. "Every time he tries, he crashes into walls. There's no Tinhead without computer butler."

"That makes me feel a lot better, thank you."

Meriam was distracted for a moment with the mirror, then turned her attention back to the others, "That was James. He's says Dr. Strange is getting suspicious of their bathroom breaks, so if we're going to do this, we've got to do it soon, no later than lunchtime. He also wants me to inform you he packed us all snacks and lunches."

"He's such a mother hen," Lily grumbled. That was the only complaining she could justify, as somehow James managed to procure her favorite flavor of jam for her sandwich, despite everything being rationed. "Where did he find tangerine jam?"

Meriam shrugged, "Beats me, he can find anything, really, if it's food. He may have made it."

"How," Lily bit into her sandwich, "Doth he ma'e th' betht foo'." Lily mumbled into the sandwich. She swallowed. "This is the best PB n J I've ever had."

"I want one," Sirius awkwardly tried to land the armor on the roof next to Lily, but he fumbled and nearly landed face plate first.

"Land like a normal person and maybe I'll hand you one," Meriam said.

"No fair," Sirius grouched. "Tony isn't a normal person if he can make flying one of these things look that effortless."

"He's had longer in the suit," Hulk shrugged. "Sometimes he doesn't take it off for days."

"That's gross," Meriam crinkled her nose at the mere thought of the smell that would produce.

"That's where the Hero's Deodorant brand came from," Hulk agreed. "Tony keeps trying to spray me with it. I don't get it. Hulk smell nice." He lifted his arm to check his pits and Meriam nearly reached a Hulk shade of green.

"Uhg, Hulk, I'm trying to eat," she complained. "Tony's right, you have serious BO. Second only to Spider-Man, and he's going through puberty."

Hulk shrugged. He bent down, picked up a brick that way laying on the ground, and threw it at Sirius. Sirius screamed and just barely managed to dodge out of the way.

"What was that for!" Sirius shouted, still spinning as he tried to stabilize his now erratic flight pattern.

"I'm teaching," Hulk smiled.

"Maybe don't throw bricks at me!" Sirius shouted. "If you have to throw something, throw something softer!"

Meriam pulled out her whip and cracked it through the air. Sirius screamed again as fire arced next to his face.

"Meriam! What the hell!"

"Fire is soft!"

"No it isn't!"

"Well, it's not solid."

"I don't think that's how that works."

"Oh, let me try!" Lily pulled out her bow.

"This is supposed to be Help Sirius, not Kill Sirius!" Sirius screamed.

"This is helping!" Lily fired a spectral arrow at Sirius, which he also barely dodged, but only because Lily was aiming for the left of him and not the center. Either way, it would have only sent a chill down Sirius' spine. She invented the spell herself and was quite proud of it.

"This isn't helping!" Sirius spun through the air.

"On the contrary," JARVIS pipped up. "I only needed to correct 79% of your last movement to prevent you from crashing."

"Oh, well in that case, feel free to try and murder me!" Sirius screamed once more as another brick came flying towards him.

"Teaching almost as fun as smashing!" Hulk laughed.

Remus was so focused on trying to get the portals to cooperate, he hadn't realized the lesson was over until James sat down in front of him and handed him one of the PB and J's he made everyone that morning.

"Any progress?"

"No," Remus grumbled. "They're not moving or closing. I can barely feel the magic tying them to me, so I don't know what's powering them."

"Eat, maybe that'll make you feel better," James motioned to him, encouraging him to dig in.

"I feel like… like a poor excuse for a wizard," Remus sighed. He took a bite of the sandwich, "Mm, where'd you get Nutella?"

"Secret stash," James said. "I call it my Moody Moony stash and I shan't tell you where it is, you'd eat all of it and it's for emergencies."

"Thanks," Remus mumbled into the PB and Nutella sandwich. "Is this the European recipe?"

"Yeah," James said. "I know you think the stateside recipe is too oily and mild."

"You're wizard, James," Remus sniffled over the sandwich.

"You like that, I've got a limited edition chocolate frog with your name on it."

"I take it back, you're not a wizard, you're a saint. How long have you had that frog?"

"Since… I was going to give it to you at the beginning of our second year. Don't worry, my Mum wrapped it in stasis paper, so it's not gone off, I don't think."

"I wonder what the card is," Remus hummed.

"I was going to give it to you for Christmas, but I think this year is canceled."

"Oh, what happened to this being resolved in time for Christmas?"

"It's the solstice today, Moony. And… we've barely made any progress towards taking down Ultron and getting Tony and Thor back. I'm starting to lose hope, to be honest."

"You? Lose hope? That's nonsense, you're incorrigible when it comes to hope. Can't get rid of your hope," Remus did his best to comfort James. He hoped it worked. It was only fair, after all the times James came to Remus' rescue when despair and misery started settling over him.

"Thanks, Moony," James whispered. "But… most of its… fake it till you make it, you know. I've got the least amount of reasons to be sad, so it's only fair I pick up the slack for everyone else, keep spirits high. It's my job."

"Least amount of reasons," Remus mumbled. "That's… that doesn't matter, even if it were true. I don't think… I don't think we can ever truly be certain which of us has it worst."

"Sure we can," James said. "I… I'm healthy, I had loving parents, a good home, loads of money, a bunch of support, I do well in school – Hogwarts, anyway – and all that. The only bad thing that's happened to me is… my parents are dead but they were old and Meriam went through the same thing but she's also not got her health.

Then there's Lily, who wasn't exactly poor but certainly wasn't rich, her family was either dead, sick, or despised her, everyone bullied her at school, she lost her oldest friend and now she's lost everything just to muck around here with us.

And that's not even starting on the massive problems Sirius was having back home with his insane family that hated him and everything he cared about. He still flinches when the lights go off. You saw him when we were in the saferoom in the basement, he was going mental.

And then there's you."

Remus frowned, "And then there's me, sure. With my parents who hate who I am at worst and don't understand me at best. Don't forget that it's my fault my family is poor as dirt, as well, that's a big problem."

"Moony…" James whined.

"No, no, there's more," Remus stopped him. "And I've got issues, too, don't I? There's the whole werewolf thing, the PTSD that I've barely got a handle on sometimes. Oh, and I still hate myself, can't forget my seemingly bottomless self-loathing…"

"Moony, this… this isn't what I meant really…"

"No, but your life is perfect," Remus nodded. "Yeah, because that's the only option for you, surrounded by all this suffering. James, our happiness is not worth more than you just because you had it good for a few years."

"But…"

"And your pain isn't worth less because of it either."

James whined.

"You haven't got to protect us based off of whatever justification you can come up with. You still… you've been through things, James, it's normal, you're allowed to feel bad. It's not a privilege reserved for us with arguably more problems than you."

"Fine, if you insist."

"I do insist."

"Thanks, Moony."

"Anytime, Prongs. Now give me that chocolate frog or I may resort to turning into a wolf and eating you instead," Remus joked.

To his great relief, James laughed. It felt good to have people who knew what he was and not only didn't care, but could find joy in it. Even better, he was able to help James to feel better, just like James could help him. It felt so safe, so comforting. He felt loved.

He dreaded going home tonight.

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