Chapter 1: Morpheus' cap.
"Now that really is awful," Dumbledore shook his head. His students affectionately called him the WB, standing for White Bumblebee. James, Remus, Sirius and Peter were standing around their headmaster with a great multititude of others. "Yeats can be a frightful man."
"God, jus' listenin' ter 'im a' Pettigrew, 'ere... yer'd think the boy 'ad no feelings!"
"None at all." Remus nodded.
"Well," Dumbledore turned his kindly blue eyes to the blonde, chubby student. "You take no notice... if it gets to any problems... just tell me, yes?"
"Yes sir," Pettigrew muttered shyly, smiling that smile of his.
Dumbledore, esteemed by many to be the greatest wizard ever and of his time, was sympathetic and listened to the problems his students suffered at hands of other masters. He would nod and shake that white beard of his, sometimes stroking it in thought. Above all, he was considered quite wise, but Severus often felt uneasy about him. "I don't know why," the Brazilian would shrug, his accent mostly gone. "He just makes me feel... strange."
It was as they were about to go to bed, that Pettigrew stopped short at his pyjama trousers and looked at a small scrap of paper, brow furrowed as if in deep concentration, before he smiled nervously and laughed according to the temperment.
"H-hey!" He called. "Look at this!"
James, Remus and Sirius walked over t his bed, nudging each other knowingly and suppressing victorious giggles. They had known that soon enough, Pettigrew would read the note and had actually been waiting separetly in their own respective bed-corners of the dorm, for the announcement to be made. Now, they, as ever the expertistes, made their way over with polite beffuddlement (now that *is* a word I made up: Lewis Carrol rules!), covering up shouts of excitement.
"What?" Sirius asked.
"Here, look: some bloke wants to go out with me for a walk!"
A suitable stunned silence followed.
"Look: 'If you would like to, I'd be pleased if you could come round for a walk with me behind Greenhouse Three. Half past two, Wednesday afternoon." Pettigrew paused. "T.J.A. Fischer."
Sirius put on an exaggerated look of dark puzzlement. "Ah, now, that is odd. A walk by Greenhouse Three, eh? Hmmm..." He rubbed his chin wearily, giving Remus a furtive wink. Remus snorted. "Oui, oui!" He added. "But... wait!" He took the note quickly from Pettigrew's hands and showed it in a mysterious manner to James.
"Jesus Christ!" James exclaimed suddenly.
"Yer've go' an admirer, Pettigrew!" Sirius laughed at Pettigrew's bewilderment.
"A what?"
"An admirer." James repeated.
"'E wants you to be 'is bijou," Remus explained, his accent now souding like something more Londonish and it was definitely more obvious now. James slapped him on the back.
"Now you've done it, Moony!"
"What's it mean, bijou?" Pettigrew asked.
"Tart, it means." James added, looking calmly at his nails but resisting the turmoil of belly-aching laughs and hoots of glee. The trick had worked!
"Tart?"
"Friend. He wants to be your protector."
"What's it mean, protector?" Pettigrew was growing paler and paler, as if bijou's and tarts and Fischers were all some sort of terrible affliction. He looked the way he did during Potions when they had to cut out Frogs bile ducts. "I don't like the sound of this-"
"Nonsense. He loves you."
"I don't even know the bloke."
"Yeah," Sirius winked. "That one who sits near Tern, you know who Tern is? Sev's protector..."
"Yes..."
"Big forehead...?" James expanded, gesturing with his hands into something like oblivion. Infnity that were wound like strands of magic around his fingers. His green, elfin eyes glinted. "Glasses... redhead..."
"'E's an 'alf-wit actually," Remus smiled.
"Half-wit?" Pettigrew spun round to meet the werewolf.
"Oh aye, mother let 'im drop on the 'ead when 'e was a wee bairn," Sirius teased. "Like yours did."
"Mine never!"
The note was passed around the common room when Pettigrew was dragged unwillingly into it. It was passed around the girls, too, who were very much aware of the secret world of bijou. Indeed, something similar was a strong tradition amongst them as well. Everyone was half-laughing, half- wondering why Fischer would write such a note to somone like Pettigrew. Everyone knew who he was really after...
"What's your dad do, Pettigrew?" Longbottom, slightly older than the Marauders, asked mockingly. "Buttons was it? Imagine! Fishes and-"
"Buttons!" Answered a plump girl with red hair.
"Trouts and Ebony!"
"No, no, no... it'd be Salmon Pearls...."
The joke about fishes and different types of buttons was spreading all around now. Soft laughter from the more polite girls and shaking heads amongst the crowd.
"You better write to him, then..." A boy who went by Fletcher, piped up.
"What?"
"Look, like zis..." Remus grabbed a quill and began to scribble down on a scrap of parchment: "'Ow do you start?... Chere..."
"No, Remus," a girl named Evans, Lily Evans spoke up. "Dear... not Chere."
"Ah, oui... pardon... Dear... Fischer-"
"-I LOVE YOU!" Someone shouted out and everyone laughed loudly.
"Look, I don't even-" Pettigrew started again.
"For God's sake, man... it doesn't matter... just put in his pyjamas..." James coaxed quietly from behind him. "Go on.... Everything'll change then... for you I mean...we're trying to help... You're making us feel bad..."
"Oh, alright!" Pettigrew answered crossly. "I'm sorry to offend, just that- never mind," he sighed, "I will."
James grinned furtively at Remus and Sirius who grinned back.
* * *
"That was mean." Severus frowned in the darkness. "Remus-"
"It's jus' a joke!" Sirius flared up. Severus merely looked at him, impassively with those dark eyes, and Sirius felt his temper fade away. "I mean, look...." But the dark haired boy merely sighed and shook his head.
Turning to James, he added softly: "And you! You know Fischer is after you..."
"I won't have him." James replied swiftly and shortly.
"I'm not saying you have to," Severus added quietly: the boy hardly ever shouted, but his message was often put across quite forcefully. James felt as if his older sister or his mother were giving him a lecture whenever Severus would speak to gently in a rebuke. "But you shouldn't toy with people's affections like that." He smiled ruefully, "but it can't be helped... I'm probably just being..." he shrugged rather than find the right word for it before turning away and walking toward the Slytherin chambers, leaving the three Marauders feeling rather uncomfortable.
* * *
It had happened quite conveniently, reader:
Fischer had crept into the Gryffindor common room, using a password from a Gryffindor friend - the school was a lot more trusting and inter- house friendships were all too common - and had entered the dorm he had seen James sleep in.
There, he had written the note and slipped it under James' pillow before walking out with as little fuss as possible: The Fat Lady had been put under a forgetful smoke and so she had not paid much attention to who had walked in or not. He smiled grimly to himself before hurrying off to Charms.
When James had entered the dorm, with Remus by his side, he had noticed Remus becoming alert. He only had a week until full moon so James asked what it was.
They followed the trail of magic and the different scent of Fischer to James pillow where they had found the note. There, James had muttered a plan to the werewolf who grudgingly accepted it and went off to tell Sirius about it. James had then placed the note in Pettigrew's pyjama bottoms. A harmless, child's prank.
* * *
"He's alright, really, that Fischer."
Lupin nudged Potter and had to turn away to stop the giggles coming up. Black merely looked on in a slightly amused way, watching Pettigrew examine his face in the mirror as if cecking for facial hairs like a boy older than he. He shook his headand smiled before pulling a towel and throwing it around his neck.
"Ah, now... Don't tell me you 'ad a nice li'l dream abou' 'im, righ'?" Sirius grinned.
"Well, no..." Pettigrew frowned. "Jus', well... no harm in going for a walk."
"None at all!" James said brightly.
"Hrrm," Remus' silent giggles subsided. He glanced over at Sirius who gave him an uneasy look in return. Sirius was still thinking about what Severus had said last night.
But the error came to light only when Pettigrew had gone off to the Greenhouse Three and had come across Fischer. Of course, Pettigrew was only a humble first year, nothing to Fischer at all, but he knew that first- years were often stupid and so he turned his back and began to whistle, not noticing the glint made by James' glasses. However, when Pettigrew kept on staring into his back and wouldn't move, still facing him, the sixth year turned round. "What?" He asked.
"Hello Fischer." Pettigrew managed a smile then gulped.
"Piss off, I'm waiting for someone."
Pettigrew hid his confusion with his annoying, blank smile. "I'm Pettigrew, Fischer."
"I really don't care."
"You write that letter, Fischer," Pettigrew was still smiling, albeit slightly nervously. "About a meeting behind Greenhouse Three, Fischer.... "
"When?" He snapped, but his face was pale and he was now watching Pettigrew intensely. "What meeting? What the fuck are you talking about, first-year? Is this some-"
"You put the letter in the pyjamas, Fischer..."
"God! I thought...James...pillow..." Fischer unstuck his throat and gasped before striding back into Hogwarts, away from the hoots of laughter coming from the corner where the Marauders had hidden themselves.
Pettigrew turned to them, laughing himself and shrugging with mirth. "Knew it was something like that..." He laughed a bit more then stopped as did Sirius and Remus.
~
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"Now that really is awful," Dumbledore shook his head. His students affectionately called him the WB, standing for White Bumblebee. James, Remus, Sirius and Peter were standing around their headmaster with a great multititude of others. "Yeats can be a frightful man."
"God, jus' listenin' ter 'im a' Pettigrew, 'ere... yer'd think the boy 'ad no feelings!"
"None at all." Remus nodded.
"Well," Dumbledore turned his kindly blue eyes to the blonde, chubby student. "You take no notice... if it gets to any problems... just tell me, yes?"
"Yes sir," Pettigrew muttered shyly, smiling that smile of his.
Dumbledore, esteemed by many to be the greatest wizard ever and of his time, was sympathetic and listened to the problems his students suffered at hands of other masters. He would nod and shake that white beard of his, sometimes stroking it in thought. Above all, he was considered quite wise, but Severus often felt uneasy about him. "I don't know why," the Brazilian would shrug, his accent mostly gone. "He just makes me feel... strange."
It was as they were about to go to bed, that Pettigrew stopped short at his pyjama trousers and looked at a small scrap of paper, brow furrowed as if in deep concentration, before he smiled nervously and laughed according to the temperment.
"H-hey!" He called. "Look at this!"
James, Remus and Sirius walked over t his bed, nudging each other knowingly and suppressing victorious giggles. They had known that soon enough, Pettigrew would read the note and had actually been waiting separetly in their own respective bed-corners of the dorm, for the announcement to be made. Now, they, as ever the expertistes, made their way over with polite beffuddlement (now that *is* a word I made up: Lewis Carrol rules!), covering up shouts of excitement.
"What?" Sirius asked.
"Here, look: some bloke wants to go out with me for a walk!"
A suitable stunned silence followed.
"Look: 'If you would like to, I'd be pleased if you could come round for a walk with me behind Greenhouse Three. Half past two, Wednesday afternoon." Pettigrew paused. "T.J.A. Fischer."
Sirius put on an exaggerated look of dark puzzlement. "Ah, now, that is odd. A walk by Greenhouse Three, eh? Hmmm..." He rubbed his chin wearily, giving Remus a furtive wink. Remus snorted. "Oui, oui!" He added. "But... wait!" He took the note quickly from Pettigrew's hands and showed it in a mysterious manner to James.
"Jesus Christ!" James exclaimed suddenly.
"Yer've go' an admirer, Pettigrew!" Sirius laughed at Pettigrew's bewilderment.
"A what?"
"An admirer." James repeated.
"'E wants you to be 'is bijou," Remus explained, his accent now souding like something more Londonish and it was definitely more obvious now. James slapped him on the back.
"Now you've done it, Moony!"
"What's it mean, bijou?" Pettigrew asked.
"Tart, it means." James added, looking calmly at his nails but resisting the turmoil of belly-aching laughs and hoots of glee. The trick had worked!
"Tart?"
"Friend. He wants to be your protector."
"What's it mean, protector?" Pettigrew was growing paler and paler, as if bijou's and tarts and Fischers were all some sort of terrible affliction. He looked the way he did during Potions when they had to cut out Frogs bile ducts. "I don't like the sound of this-"
"Nonsense. He loves you."
"I don't even know the bloke."
"Yeah," Sirius winked. "That one who sits near Tern, you know who Tern is? Sev's protector..."
"Yes..."
"Big forehead...?" James expanded, gesturing with his hands into something like oblivion. Infnity that were wound like strands of magic around his fingers. His green, elfin eyes glinted. "Glasses... redhead..."
"'E's an 'alf-wit actually," Remus smiled.
"Half-wit?" Pettigrew spun round to meet the werewolf.
"Oh aye, mother let 'im drop on the 'ead when 'e was a wee bairn," Sirius teased. "Like yours did."
"Mine never!"
The note was passed around the common room when Pettigrew was dragged unwillingly into it. It was passed around the girls, too, who were very much aware of the secret world of bijou. Indeed, something similar was a strong tradition amongst them as well. Everyone was half-laughing, half- wondering why Fischer would write such a note to somone like Pettigrew. Everyone knew who he was really after...
"What's your dad do, Pettigrew?" Longbottom, slightly older than the Marauders, asked mockingly. "Buttons was it? Imagine! Fishes and-"
"Buttons!" Answered a plump girl with red hair.
"Trouts and Ebony!"
"No, no, no... it'd be Salmon Pearls...."
The joke about fishes and different types of buttons was spreading all around now. Soft laughter from the more polite girls and shaking heads amongst the crowd.
"You better write to him, then..." A boy who went by Fletcher, piped up.
"What?"
"Look, like zis..." Remus grabbed a quill and began to scribble down on a scrap of parchment: "'Ow do you start?... Chere..."
"No, Remus," a girl named Evans, Lily Evans spoke up. "Dear... not Chere."
"Ah, oui... pardon... Dear... Fischer-"
"-I LOVE YOU!" Someone shouted out and everyone laughed loudly.
"Look, I don't even-" Pettigrew started again.
"For God's sake, man... it doesn't matter... just put in his pyjamas..." James coaxed quietly from behind him. "Go on.... Everything'll change then... for you I mean...we're trying to help... You're making us feel bad..."
"Oh, alright!" Pettigrew answered crossly. "I'm sorry to offend, just that- never mind," he sighed, "I will."
James grinned furtively at Remus and Sirius who grinned back.
* * *
"That was mean." Severus frowned in the darkness. "Remus-"
"It's jus' a joke!" Sirius flared up. Severus merely looked at him, impassively with those dark eyes, and Sirius felt his temper fade away. "I mean, look...." But the dark haired boy merely sighed and shook his head.
Turning to James, he added softly: "And you! You know Fischer is after you..."
"I won't have him." James replied swiftly and shortly.
"I'm not saying you have to," Severus added quietly: the boy hardly ever shouted, but his message was often put across quite forcefully. James felt as if his older sister or his mother were giving him a lecture whenever Severus would speak to gently in a rebuke. "But you shouldn't toy with people's affections like that." He smiled ruefully, "but it can't be helped... I'm probably just being..." he shrugged rather than find the right word for it before turning away and walking toward the Slytherin chambers, leaving the three Marauders feeling rather uncomfortable.
* * *
It had happened quite conveniently, reader:
Fischer had crept into the Gryffindor common room, using a password from a Gryffindor friend - the school was a lot more trusting and inter- house friendships were all too common - and had entered the dorm he had seen James sleep in.
There, he had written the note and slipped it under James' pillow before walking out with as little fuss as possible: The Fat Lady had been put under a forgetful smoke and so she had not paid much attention to who had walked in or not. He smiled grimly to himself before hurrying off to Charms.
When James had entered the dorm, with Remus by his side, he had noticed Remus becoming alert. He only had a week until full moon so James asked what it was.
They followed the trail of magic and the different scent of Fischer to James pillow where they had found the note. There, James had muttered a plan to the werewolf who grudgingly accepted it and went off to tell Sirius about it. James had then placed the note in Pettigrew's pyjama bottoms. A harmless, child's prank.
* * *
"He's alright, really, that Fischer."
Lupin nudged Potter and had to turn away to stop the giggles coming up. Black merely looked on in a slightly amused way, watching Pettigrew examine his face in the mirror as if cecking for facial hairs like a boy older than he. He shook his headand smiled before pulling a towel and throwing it around his neck.
"Ah, now... Don't tell me you 'ad a nice li'l dream abou' 'im, righ'?" Sirius grinned.
"Well, no..." Pettigrew frowned. "Jus', well... no harm in going for a walk."
"None at all!" James said brightly.
"Hrrm," Remus' silent giggles subsided. He glanced over at Sirius who gave him an uneasy look in return. Sirius was still thinking about what Severus had said last night.
But the error came to light only when Pettigrew had gone off to the Greenhouse Three and had come across Fischer. Of course, Pettigrew was only a humble first year, nothing to Fischer at all, but he knew that first- years were often stupid and so he turned his back and began to whistle, not noticing the glint made by James' glasses. However, when Pettigrew kept on staring into his back and wouldn't move, still facing him, the sixth year turned round. "What?" He asked.
"Hello Fischer." Pettigrew managed a smile then gulped.
"Piss off, I'm waiting for someone."
Pettigrew hid his confusion with his annoying, blank smile. "I'm Pettigrew, Fischer."
"I really don't care."
"You write that letter, Fischer," Pettigrew was still smiling, albeit slightly nervously. "About a meeting behind Greenhouse Three, Fischer.... "
"When?" He snapped, but his face was pale and he was now watching Pettigrew intensely. "What meeting? What the fuck are you talking about, first-year? Is this some-"
"You put the letter in the pyjamas, Fischer..."
"God! I thought...James...pillow..." Fischer unstuck his throat and gasped before striding back into Hogwarts, away from the hoots of laughter coming from the corner where the Marauders had hidden themselves.
Pettigrew turned to them, laughing himself and shrugging with mirth. "Knew it was something like that..." He laughed a bit more then stopped as did Sirius and Remus.
~
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