You Call This Bacon?
' "Bonjour!" "Good day!" "You call this bacon?" '
"C'mon, guys," said Lily, leading the way to a few empty seats at the breakfast table. She looked around, suddenly realizing that she was alone. "Er, Asper? Esedora?" She spotted their retreating backs and jogged back to catch up with them. "Thanks," she said grumpily.
"Oh, sorry, Lily," said Asper, "we just wanted to eat over here."
"You guys," groaned Lily, but her complaints were unheard and she was dragged to a seat. Sirius was staring at his plate with a disgruntled expression on his face.
"What?" asked James.
"This food…there's something wrong with it."
James shrugged. "I guess the house-elves are tired or something," he said, catching Lily's eye.
Sirius prodded his toast. "Look! It's practically rock-hard! The pumpkin juice is warm! And," he continued, gathering steam and waving a limp strip of bacon, "Look at this thing! I mean, you call this bacon? It's like wet seaweed! Why is the food all horrible? The house-elves have all night!" Receiving a disapproving glare from Lily, he hastily added, "not that I advocate the exploitation of house-elves, of course."
"Don't take it the wrong way," Remus muttered to Lily, "but you just can't separate Sirius from his food."
"You think I haven't learned that by now?" asked Lily, suppressing a grin. "I've known him for seven years."
"Hogsmeade next weekend," commented Esedora to nobody in particular.
"Really?" said Asper in a tone of great surprise. "Should we go?"
"I'm out of Fizzing Whizbees," said Sirius around a mouthful of the toast he'd apparently decided he was hungry enough to eat.
"I haven't been to Zonko's in ages," added James mournfully.
"Why don't we all go together?" suggested Esedora brightly. "It'd be fun, you know, with a big group."
Sirius swallowed. "Sounds good to me."
"Me too," said James, and Remus nodded in agreement.
Lily sighed. "Fine."
Everyone turned to look at Peter. "Next weekend…" he said slowly, clearly trying to remember. "I think – oh, no – I've got Remedial Defense Against the Dark Arts," he finished dejectedly.
"Oh, that's too bad, Wormtail," said James. "So – when should we meet next weekend?"
"How about one in the afternoon, down here in the Great Hall," said Asper. "Spend the afternoon there."
"You're going without me?" cried Peter.
"Well," said Sirius, looking uncomfortably at James, "We, uh, you see, it's not that – um, well, yes, we are."
"Don't take it the wrong way," said James quickly. "It's just that we don't have to stay behind, so, well, why should we? It's not like we'd be able to keep you company anyway."
Peter shrugged. "Doesn't matter."
Remus looked at him with concern. "You sure?"
"Yeah," said Peter, with a half-hearted wave of his hand. "Go ahead. Have fun."
~
Sirius prodded Remus in the back. "Look, it's your third years," he said with a grin.
"Since when are they mine?" muttered Remus.
Lily walked up beside them. "I take it you've noticed them too?"
Sirius nodded. "D'ya know their names? I keep referring to them as the 'third years that obviously like each other but are too chicken to do anything about it'."
Lily smiled. "I think the boy's name is Joshua," she informed them, "but I don't know about the girl."
"I think her name is Rose," supplied Remus.
"Joshua and Rose," said Lily thoughtfully. "Hopefully by the time they graduate they'll have realized it." Remus and Sirius began to snicker. "What?"
"Nothing, nothing at all," said Sirius, and he and Remus turned towards the common room. Lily shrugged and continued down the hall.
"Well, well, well," said a snide voice. "If it isn't Miss Perfect Head Girl."
"Can I help you with something, Malfoy?" asked Lily through gritted teeth.
"I'm afraid not," said Malfoy, sighing and running a hand through his blond hair. "I don't accept help from Mudbloods, anyway."
Lily tensed up. "And why is that?" she asked in a deathly polite tone.
"Because, my dear Lily –"
"It's Evans to you, Malfoy."
"But of course."
"And to answer my question?" she continued, giving him the iciest glare she could muster.
"You see, Evans," he said, leaning forward and whispering slyly, "you're all trash."
"I'm afraid we differ on that point," said Lily coolly. "To my mind, trash is something one would do better off without. And I'm sure most of wizardkind would agree that we'd all be better off without the Malfoy clan."
Malfoy stiffened the tiniest bit. "Ah, but again Evans, you're wrong," he hissed. "The day is coming when the name of Malfoy will be the most powerful, the most feared, the –"
"Most annoying," supplied James, stepping out from around a corner; he'd clearly heard the whole thing. "As it stands, Malfoy, you have no redeeming qualities. In fact, all you've really got is a superiority complex."
Looking rather disgruntled at his dramatic moment being interrupted so, he eyed James. "There are those who think highly of such things."
"Well, they're not here," said James, sounding bored.
"Why don't you go find them, and we'd all be happier," added Lily.
Malfoy smiled coldly. "You will see – you will see what happens when the powerful join."
"I don't see any powerful around here, do you, James?" asked Lily, looking around earnestly.
"Certainly not," said James.
"You will see," Malfoy hissed, and swept away. Lily and James looked at each other for a moment, remembered that they were enemies, and hurried down separate corridors.
~
The next morning, Lily awoke, dressed, and headed down the stairs of her dormitory into the common room. Intent on the breakfast she knew was awaiting, she failed to notice the absence of the last three stairs. Hearing the muffled banging and thumping, Esedora and Asper rushed down.
"Are you all right, Lily?" cried Esedora, nimbly leaping the gap.
"I think so," said Lily, inspecting her various appendages. Everyone in the common room was watching the spectacle with interest.
Asper was staring at the staircase, or rather, lack thereof. "What in Merlin's name…"
"Potter," shrugged Lily. He had just come down the stairs with Sirius.
"Took a little tumble, did we?" asked Sirius good-naturedly.
"I think we ought to call her Tumbleweed," said James. "Fits her better than Lily." The people in the common room began chuckling, and Lily was still sitting in an awkward position on the ground.
"You look rather calm, considering the circumstances," said Asper, eyeing her. "Why aren't you in the process of performing an Unforgivable on Potter?"
Lily, who had risen and was dusting herself off serenely, replied, "Just wait and see." Esedora and Asper automatically took a step back. "Don't worry," said Lily, grinning wickedly. "It'll only affect Potter. Come on, let's go to breakfast." They followed her warily.
More people began to appear. Having made it out of their beds, they seemed unable to summon the energy to get down to the Great Hall; it was, after all, a lazy Sunday morning. The Mauraders, however, decided that waiting around would only result in less food left for them.
"Come on," said Sirius, taking a running leap out the portrait hole. Peter made a rather awkward hop, and Remus jumped through while still managing to look relatively normal. James backed up, preparing to make a flying hurdle in the most dramatic way possible. (There were, after all, quite a lot of people watching.)
"Come on, Prongs, we haven't got all day," called Sirius in a bored sort of voice. James made to leap through the portrait hole.
BAM.
An invisible wall had apparently sealed the doorway. James crashed into it and sprawled on the floor, the common room ringing with laughter. "Evans," he scowled. He tried to step through normally. No luck. His foot met with an unseen barrier. He pressed his hands to it. There was simply no way to get out.
Looking extremely perplexed, Remus walked back through, and out again. "I dunno, James," he said, shrugging. "Guess it only affects you."
"So am I just locked in here?" cried James.
"Until Lily gets back – I'm afraid you are. I have no idea what she used. Some sort of charm."
James, glaring at a couple of twittering second years, sank onto a couch to wait. About ten minutes later, Lily materialized in front of him.
"Problem, Potter?" she asked pleasantly.
"Yes, there bloody well is a problem!" he yelled, not caring who heard. "What's the big idea, anyway?"
"Well, I don't know," said Lily innocently. "What's the big idea of removing the bottom three stairs?"
James was unable to answer and just glowered.
"Honestly," sighed Lily, reversing the charm. "Like children, I tell you."
~
Sirius Black, when provided with large quantities of sugar, was a scary thing indeed. He was currently bouncing off the walls and introducing himself to everyone around him, not seeming to care whether he knew them already or not.
"Hi, I'm Sirius Black, nice to meet you, why, hello, Emma, how are you doing? Hello, I'm Sirius, what's your name? Nice to meet you, Esedora. Fancy seeing you here, James. Hi, I'm Sirius, what's your name? Oh, that's nice, are you named after the flower? I'm named after a star, you know. Hello there, my name's Sirius, and you –" He stopped short. Everybody around him was silent. What had happened? He had only shaken the blond girl's hand.
"Nice to meet you," she said sweetly. "My name's Asper." She dug around in her bag and found a mirror. Sirius took it and observed with interest that his skin had turned blue.
"How did you do that?" he asked, not seeming to mind the blue-ness aspect of the ordeal.
"I modified the spell a little so it could be transferred from my hand," she told him, grinning at the fact that she had successfully pulled off a prank on The Sirius Black.
"Cool," he said, grinning back at her. "Oh, don't bother fixing it," he said, seeing her pulling out her wand. "It's one of those short-term things, isn't it?" She nodded. "Then I'll just go around like this. Be a conversation piece."
~
"If you could handle things like that," declared Sirius, lounging on his bed and no longer blue, "you'd have no problem with Lily."
"Yeah, but her prank wasn't as big a deal," grumbled James.
"Wasn't as big a deal?" asked Sirius incredulously. "I was blue!"
"Well, she embarrassed me in front of half of Gryffindor!"
"She didn't know you were going to try and jump through," said Sirius, rolling his eyes. "Prongs, the sooner you stop caring so much what people think of you, the better."
"Oh, so is that your secret?" said James. "Doesn't seem to help you much in the long range."
"Girls tend to get sick of me," shrugged Sirius. "Can't imagine why."
"Perhaps you need someone, oh, I don't know, more like you?" suggested James, beginning to get bored with the subject.
"Right," agreed Sirius. "Someone who…plays pranks! Like Lily," he added devilishly, watching James' reaction.
"Someone NOT Lily," said James ferociously.
"You know," said Sirius thoughtfully, "Asper Willow…she just may be my kind of girl."
"You say that about every girl," muttered James, still disgruntled by the mention of Lily.
Sirius, however, seemed to have lost the thread of conversation.
A/N: I can't help but notice that there are a bunch of people who get author alerts from me but haven't reviewed. I hate to beg for reviews, but if you read this, I'd love to know. I'd be a lot more motivated…