By Admiral Albia
In which Sirius has a `bad hair day`, Fred and George bewitch some bedsheets and rumours abound...
Disclaimer; I do not own the Marauders, the Weasley twins, or any friends, family and enemies thereof. I do, however, own Bria, Tkaa, Binary, Milton, Aelops and Otto... oh, and the recipe for invisible chalk ;-). Many thanks to my beta-reader, Caitlin Black =D
Chapter Six; Weasleys Strike Back (Friday)
Sirius was quite right; Remus was back the next
day, explaining over and over again that dying was usually only temporary
for werewolves, and complaining that Hogwarts should teach magical medicine.
In truth, all the Marauders were grumpy; as Lily pointed out, they'd been
up all night. Sirius in particular seemed to be snapping at anyone who
came close, except for Tkaa and Bria, both of whom flatly refused to leave
him alone anyway.
"I just don't get what you did," Harry said to his
mother at lunch. "With the balls, I mean. Well, and with Remus."
"The balls are specially made ones," Lily explained,
"the boys developed them to do the things you saw. They're particularly
proud of the Quaffle, that took ages to get right. I thought Sirius explained
about Remus?"
"He did, and I think I get that, but why did you
need to kill him if you knew it'd only be temporary?" Lily sighed.
"Can you kill a corpse? We did it to save his life;
if that silver had hit its mark, he'd have died, end of story."
"Oh."
/\/\/\
"Yep. We've got to do every single one separately, so hurry up!"
"OK..." Fred stopped. "How do we do the girls'?"
"Can we worry about that later?" George sighed. "We only have lunchtime and people are always coming up here to get their books, so hurry up?"
"Oh, right. Let's go, then."
"Go away." Harry suppressed a sigh.
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry I yelled at you last night."
"Sure you did." Sirius ran his hand gently over Bria's back, causing her to let out a sound remarkably like a purr. "And then you'll go off and talk behind my back, and the rumours will fly once more, because someone with my background only has to put one toe out of line and suddenly everyone knows everything about me."
"Why'd I want to talk about you behind your back?" Harry asked, confused. Sirius smiled bitterly.
"I had to do that twice before; kill my friends, I mean. Both times, people started talking behind my back, usually about things which they weren't meant to know about me. I have no reason to assume that this time will be any different, do I?" He stood up suddenly, spilling Bria onto the floor. "I'm going out."
"What did I say?" Harry wondered aloud as the portrait hole closed behind his godfather.
Unfortunately, nobody else seemed to feel the same way. Sirius had been right in saying that everyone would talk about him; when Harry and Ron got into the dormitory they found Neville, Seamus and Dean, in various states of undress, discussing a certain Mr. Black.
"His parents were in Azkaban, my mum told me," Seamus said, "They're both Death Eaters."
"Sirius isn't, though, is he?" Ron pointed out.
"Yeah, but they only tried him for the stuff after Harry's parents copped it, didn't they?"
"They didn't cop it," Harry said crossly, "They've been in the school for the past week, hadn't you noticed?"
"Yeah, whatever. But I reckon that anyone who can just kill a friend like that... well."
"Despite the fact Remus lived?"
"He was aiming to kill. And he did, it's just lucky it was the werewolf he got."
"He didn't want to do it, I heard him say so," Harry said, getting thoroughly annoyed now.
"You caught the Snitch, though, didn't you, Harry? I mean, were you really paying attention to them?" Harry's mouth dropped open.
"Let's all go to bed," Ron said hastily.
"Ron?" he called softly, "Ron, are you awake?"
"Wha? `Arry? You OK... yipe!"
"I'm... trapped in the sheets..."
"Me too," Ron's voice said, "And I know who's responsible, Fred and George did this to me last year in Egypt. We'll have to wait for them to come and let us out..."
"Hm? Aargh! What's going on?" Neville's voice sounded suddenly from the other side of the room, "I'm stuck!"
"We all are, Neville," Ron said with a sigh, "We'll just have to wait until Fred and George come to let us out." They lay there and talked for a while, pausing briefly to explain to Dean and Seamus respectively about the bewitched bedsheets, then suddenly a loud roar echoed through Gryffindor tower. Harry heard the boys in the dormitory below them wake up and start yelling, especially Colin Creevey, whose lungs were as well exercised as always.
"What was that?" Neville asked, sounding thoroughly alarmed.
"Sounded like a werewolf," Dean said.
"Probably is," Ron pointed out. "Werewolves are usually really claustrophobic, so I bet Lupin doesn't like being trapped in his bedsheets..." There was a pause while they all considered this.
"It could be Sirius, too," Neville said eventually. "I mean, he's a Cargen, right?"
"Good point."
"Zzzwha?"
"Hm?"
"Gerroff, Bria... hm?"
"OK, this is embarrassing," James' voice said.
"Definitely," Lily agreed.
"We are trapped in the bedsheets," Sirius said slowly.
"Yes, that seems to be a decent assumption."
"We are trapped in the bedsheets. We are trapped in the bedsheets. Hm, I do believe we're trapped in the bedsheets. Now, why the bedsheets? We could be stuck to the toilet or pinned by a cushion in the common room, but no. We have to be trapped in the bedsheets. You know, I thought we'd passed the boundary to insanity years ago, when we turned the Minister for Magic into a blue teddy, but it seems I was wrong. We are trapped in the bedsheets."
"Is there any way of untrapping us?" Lily asked.
"Not until I find out what you two're finding so embarrassing over there," Sirius said.
"Nothing," James said a little too quickly, "Nothing at all, so if you'd just tell us how to get... hey! How'd you do that?"
"Oh, I see. I'll just do Remus..."
"No! Do us, please do us..."
"You never told me you were going to use copins," Sirius said tolerantly. "It's payback time..."
"Oh, now that is not fair. Publicly embarrassing us just because you lost your temper..."
"Really? I think it's fair..." Sirius bent over Remus.
"You're not really going to, are you?" Remus asked his friend in a whisper. Sirius grinned.
"Well, yeah. But only one or two... you, Harry, Alyssa..."
"OK, that is mean... but funny. I'm in. Once I see this."
"Right. I have to come in."
"Oh, no. You promised you would never come in..."
"I need to. I promise, I'll only do what I need to. Marauder's word..."
"Fine..." Remus relaxed, and felt Sirius enter his mind.
It was a strange feeling, having a Cargen in control; and more so because only half of Remus wanted Sirius in there. The human part of his mind just kept trying to reject Sirius, but the wolf part was happy to let him stay.
Right, let's see. Sirius' voice said in his mind, shapeshift, shapeshift... ah! Sorry `bout this, Remus... Remus felt his body begin to mutate, but he felt something else, too; the grip the bedsheets had on him loosened, and even as Sirius switched his morphogenic field A/n; shape-changing `switch`> back to human and exited his mind, he sat up and looked to see what was so embarrassing for Lily and James.
It was obvious immediately; they were both in James' bed and Lily was lying on top of James, looking rather pink, though James didn't seem to be the right colour either. The bedsheets had obviously activated at just the wrong moment for both of them. Remus tried not to smirk too obviously.
"OK, you've seen it, you've laughed, now GET US OUT OF HERE!" James yelled.
"Sirius, are you sure you want Harry to see this?"
"You cannot do this to us!"
"Hmm... good point, actually."
"Right, so if you're not going to show Harry, how about letting us out?"
"I'll go get Alyssa..."
"NO!"
"I'll tell her to bring her camera..."
"No, you will not, you will let us out..."
"I'll get her right now..."
"What.. how did you all get out of bed?" Fred asked while George goggled.
"Simple," Sirius said.
"Uh-oh," Remus muttered. Sirius glared at him.
"It is simple. The suspended animation caused by activation of the enchantment on the bedclothes is firm only when the subject of aforementioned enchantment does not, voluntarily or involuntarily, cross the transmorphic border."
"OK, I think I speak for all of us when I say, `Huh?`" Lily said after a pause.
James, however, cried "Yes!" transformed briefly into a stag, turned back into a human and rolled Lily off him, threw back the bedclothes and sat up, groping for his glasses.
"Would someone explain that in English, please?" Lily repeated. Sirius opened his mouth. "Not you." Sirius closed his mouth.
"The spell's only stable if you stay the same shape. It can't handle transfigurations of any kind," James explained.
"Oh."
A/n; Yes, weird, I know, I'm having problems again =P NOT mental ones. Well, maybe mental ones ;-) Readers of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles may have noticed that I've been reading them recently; there's a bit of Telemain in that last scene. Oh well. Only one more chapter to write... then I get to switch back to normality. What passes for normality, anyway. Many thanks to my beta-reader, Miss Caitlin Black! =D
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