A/N: I've done some major revising of chapters 1-6. This includes fixing awkward sentences, fine-combing through the details (re-reading Prisoner of Azkaban made me realize how many dumb mistakes I'd made) and even adding in a few scenes to better accommodate the upcoming storyline. Oh, and I also discovered a little thing called HTML, hehe (notice the bold, italics and underlines - I've been finding every excuse to add them in). I'd recommend re-reading the pervious chapters, but it's not absolutely essential or anything.
Enjoy this chapter - it's very long. I'm on vacation to China and Japan for a month, so there won't be updates for a while. Much love!
Edit -- wouldn't let me upload this before vacation, so sorry for the long wait!
Chapter Seven
The Marauders decided to reserve their last Christmas at Hogwarts to be spent together. Each boy cleared his entire vacation schedule, so they were able to pass an enjoyable and rather messy last Christmas Eve.
Dinner that night was taken in the common, with some help of the ticklish pear and James' invisibility cloak. Sirius had been put in charge of this, and Remus was more than a bit apprehensive as he entered the common. Cooking was not one of Sirius' greatest attributes. For one thing, he had a knack for accidentally setting fire to anything he touched that involved cuisine. For another, he only had two food groups - black coffee and ketchup.
But Remus, James and Peter were pleasantly surprised Christmas Eve. Sirius had magicked half a dozen coffee tables into the room, and they were (literally) groaning under the weight of dish after dish. An enormous golden-brown turkey, mounds of fluffy mashed potato, bowls of chunky chicken pasta soup, shrimp cocktail, creamy clam chowder, a large assortment of green salads, a pot of steaming spaghetti, fresh sliced fruit plates, loaves of banana nut bread, thick panfuls of lasagna, cheese fondue, garlic bread...Remus even thought he'd spotted a huge steamed lobster...and those were only the entrees and main courses. There was a delicious-looking fudge cake, soft chocolate chip cookies, an enormous blueberry pie and a few cartons of rich creamy ice cream for dessert. Not surprisingly, drinks consisted of two dozen bottles of butterbeer and about twenty mugs of coffee.
"Sirius, wow, you-" Peter started, upon seeing the array of food.
Sirius grinned boyishly. "It was nothing. Those crazy elves were actually pushing food in my pockets. They make enough to feed the entire school, but nobody stays over the holidays, so they have to get rid of it somehow. I'm a hero among them now."
Remus had a vision of Sirius being carried three feet off the ground by a hundred little elves.
Their topic of conversation over dinner was future careers.
"I'm going to be an Auror and kick some serious ass," Sirius declared proudly, tossing his turkey bone onto his plate. "That is, if I don't flunk Potions this semester. What about you, Moony?"
"Being an Auror would be pretty cool," Remus said, smiling shyly. "I was thinking of teaching here at Hogwarts, too, maybe when I get older."
"Yeah, you'd be really good at that," Peter agreed. "I should know," he added hastily.
"I'd like to play for England on the Quidditch team. They need a new Seeker, anyway - Nitcum's getting too old for the job," James said between spoonfuls of mashed potato. "That, and become an Auror."
"What about Lily? Do you two have any plans in the future?" Remus asked.
"Yeah, we talk about it occasionally. I think she wants to be a Charms teacher, which is cool. I mean, we're pretty serious," James said.
"Do you plan on proposing anytime soon?" Remus asked, though he really didn't expect an immediate answer.
"Yeah, last day before school lets out," James replied casually.
Sirius choked on his butterbeer. James had to pound him on the back a few times to stop his coughing.
"You're joking, right?" Sirius asked, wiping off his mouth.
"Sirius, I've been obsessively mad about Lily since I've had hormones. Did you really think I'd wind up with somebody else?" James raised an eyebrow.
"He's got a point, Padfoot," Remus said, grinning.
Sirius turned slightly red.
"Well, yeah, of course I knew you were going to marry Lily. But it kind of comes as a shock anyway," he huffed.
"What about you, Peter?" Remus turned to his friend. "Got any ideas?"
"Um...I really don't know," Peter said quietly. "I'm not that good at anything."
"Sure you are," Remus encouraged.
"Like what?"
Remus racked his brains frantically, trying to find something Peter could do that wasn't too pathetic.
"Er, you're not bad at Herbology," Remus answered.
"And you're pretty well-rounded," James offered.
That seemed to satisfy Peter, because he returned to his lasagna. Remus shot James a grateful look.
The truth was, Peter seemed to be acting even stranger and quieter than usual. Ever since the beginning of the school year, he had been unusually jumpy. He started at the slightest sound or touch. He went to bed relatively early and should've gotten sufficient sleep, but in the morning there were dark circles under his watery eyes, as if he couldn't shut his eyes at night. During the day, he rarely talked and ate noticeably less, which was unusual. Remus had discussed this many times with James and Sirius, but nobody could come up with a plausible explanation to Peter's erratic behavior.
The conversation had picked up again. Remus gave himself a mental slap. He hated himself drifting off - it was a most inconvenient habit.
"You think your parents are messed up?" Sirius was saying. "Get this. When I was seven, my whole family went to visit some distant relatives for a week during wintertime. And I had this fish...don't ask me why, I just did. I was kind of protective of it, because I'd never had any other pets. And so the whole damn trip I was thinking about my fish and was worrying about it being alone in the mansion. When I came back, it was in its bowl and I thought, 'Alright, it's fine.' But after I took another look, I realized it wasn't moving. And so I looked closer, and I realized the whole damned fishbowl was frozen. The water, the fish, everything! Turns out my parents had left the heater off and everything just kind of froze over."
"I cried for a week," Sirius continued, biting down his laughter. "And Regulus teased me about it twenty four seven, that little bastard. My mum flushed it down the toilet, and I refused to go into that bathroom for weeks. I had this fear that the fish would defrost, swim up and stick itself up my ass in revenge."
At the last statement, all four boys broke out in laughter.
"I've always wondered why you were so strange, Sirius," James said, absent mindedly wiping his grease-covered fingers on the armchair he was seated in. "But I never guessed it was because you had a fish lodged in your behind."
"Shut it, Prongs," a flushing Sirius grinned. "Or you'll have something up yours in a second..."
He held up an oily turkey wing and smiled coyly.
"I don't like where this is going," Remus muttered, but smiled despite himself.
James responded immediately. In one swift motion, he grabbed a spoonful of creamy mashed potato and tilted the utensil back, ready to fling-
"Don't you da-" Sirius began-
SPLAT.
The buttery, chunky mound of potato landed true. For a still second, the lumpy splotch was plastered on Sirius' eyebrow. Then the mass started to slowly drop down his cheek.
Silence filled the room. Sirius was completely still, a bewildered look upon his face. James was trying to look scared, but his shoulders were shaking and tears of silent laughter were forming in his eyes.
With a spontaneous roar, Sirius jumped up and started to fling his food at his three best friends.
Remus ducked, laughing uncontrollably. But it was to no avail - applesauce, fondue cheese, lasagna...Sirius' aim was pretty good and Remus was pelted in less than a minute. He fell off his seat and took cover behind the armchair. James was leaning forward and trying to get a handful of pie from the table, but he was temporarily blinded by a loaf of bread that hit his face. Peter had joined in and was hurling spaghetti at Sirius - it was strewn across his shoulders and hair.
They were making a terrible, terrible mess. Already some soup had tilted over and was staining the carpet, and chocolate ice cream was somehow smeared across the fireplace mantle. Everyone's robes were turning interesting splotches of color. But it was Christmas Eve, their last Marauder Christmas together. A food fight was very appropriate for seventeen-year-old boys.
Remus grinned, picked up a gravy-covered handful of mashed potato and joined in the fun.
:::
A good hour later, when cramps were settling in stomachs and adrenaline was entirely washed out, the Marauders looked proudly upon their creation.
They had painted the Gryffindor common with food.
Literally.
The curtains were covered in gravy, the tables were almost invisible under the load of spilt food, the floor sticky with butterbeer. The walls were randomly splattered with an assortment of things - fondue, ketchup, ice cream, even a few strings of noodles limply from the ceiling chandelier. Smeared across the ground were remains of the gooey chocolate cake. Sometime during the food fight, Peter had stood up on the armchairs. However, the bottom of his shoes hadn't exactly been clean, and chocolate-frosting footprints ran all over the fabric. There were even some cookies in the burning fire, which were now sizzling and filling the room with a rich aroma.
"Wow," James breathed. "It's so beautiful."
"Our best creation yet," Peter said happily. "This, and the Map."
"Wonder what McGonagall would say if she saw this," James grinned.
"She's probably tear out all her hair, then violently abuse us, and then have a heart attack," Sirius replied nonchalantly.
"Well, let's not wait to find out," Remus took out his wand. He uttered a simple cleaning spell, and the stains and messes disappeared. Instantly, the room looked just as it had before. The now empty plates were stacked neatly in the corner of a table.
Looking at each other, however, Remus realized that they, too, were absolutely filthy. Sirius looked like some sort of demented scarecrow, with thick strands of noodles in his hair and food splattered all over his robes. The top half of Peter's face was blue - Sirius had tried to throw the entire blueberry pie into his face and Peter had ducked a little too late. James looked like he had some major dandruff issues, as cheesecake crumbs were nested into his hair and shoulders.
Remus himself may have been the cleanest of the four. He had no major 'injuries' on his skin - most of the food had hit his clothes and that could be washed out in a wink. Nonetheless, everybody quickly agreed to shower, change clothing and meet back in a while.
Twenty minutes later, Remus re-entered the common, to find it empty and refreshingly clean. Figuring everyone just took longer time grooming than he did, he sat down by the fire, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the perfect still silence and sweet chocolate aroma of burning cookies.
He could hardly believe it - this was his seventh, his final year at Hogwarts. It seemed like only yesterday that he had timidly asked James if he could take a seat on the Hogwarts Express. After June, he'd be professionally training for the Order, he'd be an adult of the wizarding world.
"Moony?" Sirius' voice broke the silence. "Some help here?
Remus opened his eyes and turned around. Sirius was balancing a tray full of hot chocolate mugs on one hand and holding a bowl of roasted chestnuts with the other. Immediately, Remus got up and took the bowl, setting it down on a coffee table.
"Thanks, mate," Sirius said gratefully after putting down the tray. "You had no idea what it was like walking up stairs that spontaneously decided to move with these."
Remus laughed. "Wish I could have seen you."
"Yeah," Sirius sighed, flopping down onto a chair.
"You look exhausted," Remus commented dryly.
"Well, partly because of that fight, partly because of the food, and mostly because of scrubbing toilets earlier today," Sirius replied.
"I thought your detention was over," Remus frowned.
"It was, until Filch discovered I'd hexed the sponges to scrub by themselves."
Remus bit his lip thoughtfully.
"Sirius, maybe you and Severus-"
"Stop, Moony," Sirius interrupted. "I'm doing a good job tolerating you two, but there's no way he and I-"
"I'm not asking for that," Remus retorted back. "It's just that you and James shouldn't lose your tempers so easily around him. He's not a bad person, Padfoot. He's not any worse than me."
Sirius looked at Remus incredulously. With the fire lighting his face, Remus looked completely innocent. His large honey eyes were perfectly focused, his amber hair damp and a bit tousled. Sirius could even smell the faint, pleasant scent of Remus' cologne.
He then thought of Severus, his nasty glare, his spitting words. The cruel glint in his eyes.
Sirius sighed and shook his head.
"Remus, you're out of your mind," he picked up a chestnut and cracked the shell, revealing its rich gold meat beneath.
"No, I'm not. It's your mind that's got problems. It's too narrow," Remus said evenly. "You've tortured Severus since First Year. You can't expect him to love you back."
"I've been through this with James already," Sirius said, not looking at Remus.
"I know. And you lost your temper there, too."
"I'm not losing my temper with you!" Sirius exclaimed angrily. Remus raised an eyebrow.
Sirius sighed heavily.
"I'm really not," he said much quieter, turning to face Remus. "I don't think I could ever lose my temper with you."
This time, Remus couldn't think of anything to say back. He knew that Sirius wasn't joking.
Sirius was silent for a moment, lost in thought, before he turned to Remus.
"Moony...are you...friends with him?" he asked, almost fearful of the reply.
Remus hesitated before speaking.
"I honestly don't know. He and I have very much in common, but I'm not sure I could ever get close to him. Severus is...well, he's an exclusive person. I think he could manage both with and without my companionship. Does that answer your question?"
Sirius frowned deeply, still not wanting to drop the subject.
"I suppose he's a fabulous partner?" he then said, rather sarcastically.
"Well, yes, he is," Remus admitted. "He's very competent."
"A genius?"
"Yes, he's exceptionally intelligent-"
"Never slacks off?"
"Never."
Sirius sighed loudly and ran his fingers through his fine black hair, as if exhausted by their conversation.
"Sirius, are you jealous of him?" Remus pried gently. He was greeted by a moment's silence.
"Well," Sirius spoke slowly, choosing his words with precision. "Not in many aspects. Not socially, not physically, of course not. But you've been spending a lot of time with him, Moony. I know it sounds selfish, but it seems like he's wrenching you away from me. It seems like you like him...well, more than me. I know I acted stupidly that other morning. I'm not proud of it."
"I don't like Severus better than you, Sirius," Remus immediately said, and he knew from the bottom of his heart that his words were true. "Even you're bright enough to figure that out. Just don't explode whenever you see him, alright? I'm not asking you to marry him, just stay out of his way. I'm aware of the fact that you guys aren't great friends, but the least I can ask of you is to avoid him and if you get upset with him, to me. Will you do that, Sirius?"
"Well, why doesn't he stay out of my way?" Sirius said indignantly.
"Sirius," Remus said quietly. "He does. He tries to."
Sirius' face was fell still. He looked like a statue, a frozen figure of time. His slender cheek was propped by a fist, his head tilted slightly. His penetrating eyes were lowered, unmoving.
"Alright," Sirius finally said. "I'll stay out of his way. For you."
Remus leaned over and put a hand on Sirius' shoulder, clasping it firmly.
"Thank you," Remus said.
"Oy, am I interrupting anything here?" Sirius and Remus looked up. James had entered the common, his hair still dripping, a towel slung casually around his neck.
"No, we were just talking," Sirius said. Remus was silent.
"Where's Peter?" James questioned.
"Right here," Peter immediately said as he walked through the doorway, wiping his face. "Sorry, the blueberries weren't that easy to scrub off."
Sirius grinned rather maliciously.
"What took you so long, Prongs?" Sirius asked. "It's not like you have to look good for Moony and me."
"You wish, Siri," James said, picking up a mug of hot chocolate. "I couldn't find a pair of clean socks, for your information."
"Eh, whatever. You guys want to open presents?" Sirius suggested.
"It's traditional to open them Christmas day, Sirius," Remus said.
"To hell with tradition. Let's do it," James said. He took out his wand from his pocket. "Accio presents!"
A couple dozen wrapped presents soared out of their dormitories, a few of them accidentally hitting James' head as they landed on the couches and floor in a heap.
"Prongs, you're 17 and you still can't perform the summoning charm right," Sirius remarked as he started to gather his presents together. "I'm sure you're going to make an excellent Auror one day, mate."
Remus had given Sirius a pair of thick black dragonskin gloves ("they're for when you zoom around on your future motorcycle"), James a miniature glass model of his broomstick, and for Peter, Remus had bought a Remembrall.
"Remus, wow, thanks! These are bloody awesome," Sirius said as he eagerly slid his hands into the gloves. James and Peter had liked their presents very much also, even though as soon as Peter touched his, the Remembrall immediately lit up because he had forgotten to turn off the water taps in the bathrooms.
In return, Remus received a very beautiful phoenix feather quill from Peter and The History of Magical Chocolates form James, both of which he liked incredibly much. But his personal favorite present had been from Sirius.
"Here, it's nothing much," Sirius had muttered, handing him a small box, which was very carefully wrapped. Remus had undid the wrapping and opened the box eagerly. Lying upon tissue paper was a gleaming white tooth, sharply jagged at the tip, with a small hole at the top.
"The idea's for you to um...you know, put it on a string or something and wear it around your neck," Sirius had said, rather embarrassed. "That is, if you want to. I mean, you don't have to, I just thought it was kinda neat and uh...maybe you'd like it but if you don't then I can uh, always exchange it and get something diff-"
"Sirius, is this a werewolf tooth?" Remus had interrupted Sirius' rant.
"Well, uh, yeah."
"These are supposed to be rare - it's really nice, Sirius. Of course I'll wear it. Thanks a lot."
Sirius had smiled despite himself, glad that his present was appreciated.
:::
Finally, after a few rounds of exploding crackers and wizard chess (Remus creamed them all), the boys decided to go to bed. It had been a long and spontaneous night, one that Remus had enjoyed immensely. He was dead tired as he staggered up the staircase, looking forward to the comfort of his pillow.
But before he got into bed, Remus carefully threaded some string through Sirius' gift and tied it around his neck. He drifted off into a light and pleasant sleep, fingers wrapped around the werewolf tooth.
:::