(A/N- I know, I know, I'm horrible! This fic has ten chapters in two years
of existence! I'm SOOOO sorry! Gomen nasai! Je regrette!)
(A/N 2.0- I would like to warn you that for the duration of my Harry Potter fic-writing career, I will be utterly ignoring the Canon Timeline, because I like it better my way. Thank you, and enjoy.)
Narrated by Maggie
Those of us left in the Common Room sat in relative silence after Sirius had obstructed the view of the show he and Kitty were putting on upstairs. Honestly, I think the only reason we stayed quiet so long is that there were some interesting banging sounds emanating from the fifth year girls' dorm that nobody wanted to miss, out of sheer morbid curiosity.
"Hmm, you know," James said after about seven minutes, stroking a nonexistant goatee and looking pensive, "it really is kind of amazing Padfoot hasn't knocked anyone up yet."
"Yeah, that is a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?" Remus added, nodding his agreement.
"Maybe he's sterile," Lily suggested, looking strangely hopeful that this was indeed the case. "That would solve a lot of the world's potential problems." I giggled a bit.
"Copies of Sirius running around, I can only imagine," I said. Sirius's cousin Andromeda gave me a lopsided grin.
"One Sirius Black is quite enough," she informed. "I love him dearly, of course, but sometimes-"
"He's an overzealous fella?" James offered.
"Stop finishing my sentences, Potter, you little twerp!" Andromeda laughed, chucking a pillow at his head, which he artfully dodged, three seconds before a cry of
"OH GOD, YES!" echoed down the stairs. Andromeda smacked her forehead and groaned, looking utterly disturbed by the knowledge of what was going on. For better or for worse, though, I was curious.
"Does it really...feel that good?" I asked quietly, feeling myself blush. There was an enthusiastic reply of "Yes!" from almost everyone except Remus (don't get me wrong, it's not that we Gryffindors have loose morals about sexuality, it's just that I had a bit of a habit of staying around the older students - I can promise you that if the room weren't full of fifth, sixth, and seventh years at the time, the response would have been wholly different). I looked at him questioningly. He shrugged, turning pink.
"Don't ask me, I haven't done it," he admitted, looking embarrassed to share this information.
"Oh, you're a virgin, that's so cute, Remie!" Andromeda cooed, tousling his sandy hair. A lot of the girls followed suit, crooning about how sweet and darling he was. And he looked like he couldn't have hated it more.
A tall, sixth-year brunette named Emily started petting my hair.
"We've forgotten the other innocent in the room, you guys," she announced, smiling down at me with a sort of sisterly fondness. "Sweet little Maggie. Someday you'll find a nice boy, and you'll learn all this firsthand."
"Or maybe she and Remus can practice together!" Andrew hooted.
"There's an idea," Emily giggled. "Would you like that, Maggie?"
"Oooh, they're blushing!" another girl pointed out helpfully. Remus looked like he wanted to sink into the floorboards and die - basically, the same plan of action that was forming in my head.
"D'you like him, Maggie?" Emily prompted, apparently not willing to let the subject drop. "Isn't he cute?"
"D'you want to bed him?" a boy named Joel chimed in.
"This is getting stupid," Remus informed them, his voice sounding flatter and colder than I'd ever heard it. It seemed the rest of them weren't too used to it, either, because they shut up immediately. Joel grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry, mate. Just a bit of fun," he assured.
"I am not amused. Leave the kid alone." My heart sank at being referred to by my love interest as 'The Kid'. Although he WAS speaking up in my defense, I reminded myself, so it wasn't all bad. And they were taking him so seriously that not even James chanced a witty comment when he bid me to follow him out into the hallway.
"Er, Remus? Where exactly are we going?" I enquired. "I mean, not that I'm complaining, but it IS getting rather late and-"
"I just wanted to get us out of there, okay? Does that work for you?" he snapped, finally turning to face me to reveal a slight yellow glow in his eyes. I took a step away from him, hurt and a little spooked.
"You're really cranky when you're ill," I muttered, having the feeling that I was pouting a bit - it's a bad habit of mine. He sighed deeply, and sank to the floor, leaning against the cold stone wall.
"Sorry," he grumbled. I sat down beside him, drawing my knees up to my chest and hooking my arms around them. He continued, "It's just so annoying sometimes, you know?"
"What is?"
"That whole scene in the Common Room? That's not the half of it. 'Oh, Remus, you're so darling,'" he mocked, his voice a startlingly good mimicry of Andromeda's. "Damn it."
"So? They think you're sweet, I wasn't under the impression that that was a bad thing."
"Heh. No, I suppose not, for girls. For guys, it gets pretty irritating to always be the 'sweet' one." He laughed bitterly. "The girls always come to you for advice on how to get OTHER guys; I'm the goddamned perpetual friend! I may as well be every girl in school's personal teddybear for all I'm worth."
Despite his complaints, I still couldn't say I really understood why this was a negative role.
"Teddybears are nice to have," I said, taking a stab at humor. He snorted. Okay, I wasn't the sort of comedian James and Sirius were. I'd have to work on that one. "For what it's worth," I continued, my heart beating like a jackhammer, and feeling as though I may actually have been in danger of fainting, "I like you the way you are."
"Trust me, if you knew me half as well as you think you do, you wouldn't," he said cryptically.
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking into his face and pretending I didn't notice the light reflecting off his eyes (which, honestly, is one of the coolest things I've ever seen). He shook his head.
"Nevermind, it's not important," he mumbled. Ah, must have been that werewolf thing... Well, come on, did he really expect no one but James, Sirius, and Peter to figure it out? How daft did he think the student body of Hogwarts was?! I mean, sure, the Hufflepuffs wouldn't have had the mental capacity to put two and two together - I immediately berated myself for insulting the intelligence of the Hufflepuff students. That wasn't a nice thing to do, even if they WERE stupid... Damn, now I'd done it again! I needed to stop talking to Sirius, honestly, he was influencing me!
.
.
.
Narrated by Prongs
Alright, in retrospect, it was pretty rotten of us to pick on Remus and Klutz like that, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Eh, like they say, hindsight's always twenty/twenty. On the downside, though, Petey and I were now amazingly bored, since the other half of the Marauders were off with their respective chicks.
Hence, we were now staring at each other, trying to come up with something to do that would only take two people. We considered a karaoke contest, but it was quickly vetoed due to the fact that everyone in the room starting screaming in pain when I launched into "Sufin' U.S.A".
"Okay, I get it, I can't sing!" I whined, putting on my saddest face.
"It's not really that, mate," Ted Tonks assured, clapping me on the shoulder. "I mean, you're a terrible singer, but I'm also not a Beach Boys fan." Peter and I stared at him in disbelief.
"BLASPHEMY!" we cried in unison, pouncing on the (quite ripped, if any girls wanted to know) seventh year.
"It really could have been worse, Teddy," Andromeda told her boyfriend as he tried to peel Peter and me away from him. "I once heard James singing an Elvis medley."
"You're a disgrace to Englishmen everywhere, James Potter," Ted said seriously.
"Hey, I like The Beatles too!" I exclaimed in a desperate attempt to redeem myself.
"You're too big a fan of American music, Jim, there can be no salvation." Joel informed.
"SIRIUS SINGS MICHAEL JACKSON LYRICS IN THE SHOWER!" I yelled. When all else fails, shift the blame to someone else. There was a collective gasp around the room.
"Michael Jackson?" Lily asked, disbelievingly. I nodded sadly.
"It's true," I admitted. "He knows every word to 'Thriller.'" On cue, a cry came through the ceiling in the form of
"BASTARD! YOU SWORE TO SECRECY!"
"SORRY, PADFOOT!" I hollered upwards, feeling almost sincere. Okay, I lie, I didn't really care.
.
.
.
. Narrated by Padfoot
I let out a string of expletives. Kitty was smirking maddeningly and raising one eyebrow at me.
"Mr. Black... I never would have known you to be a Jacko fan." I grumbled and rolled onto my back, crossing my arms and pouting.
"Now YOU'RE teasing me, too?" I asked, giving her my sad face. She laughed! And to make matters worse, she climbed out of the bed and started getting dressed! "No!" I cried, throwing my arms around her waist. "I'll never listen to Micheal Jackson again! Just get back in the bed!"
"You bastard," she said coldly, the light-hearted and - dare I say? - cheerful air having evidently gone completely bye-bye. Shit.
"Oh, God, what did I do THIS time?" I groaned into her stomach.
"THIS time?!" she snapped, pushing me away. "How about EVERY time?!"
"I missed a crucial detail, didn't I?"
"Goddammit, Black!" Okay, she looked pissed... And more than that, I couldn't figure out what I'd done to piss her off!
"Kitty? You're confusing Sirius," I informed helpfully. She glared at me with the utmost hatred. I think I may have cringed.
"Stop pretending to be stupid," she hissed, baring her sharp teeth. "You know damn well what I'm talking about!" (WHY do chicks always assume that? It's right up there with "It's not what you said, it's how you said it"!)
"Er, actually, no I... I don't," I said honestly. "But, if you told me what was wrong-"
"ARE YOU REALLY THAT OBLIVIOUS?!" she screamed. This time I'm SURE I cringed.
"Um...yes?"
"Here's a hint," she said, still glaring at me. "You are a lecher. You don't give a flying fuck about any girl in this school, least of all me, and yet you bang us all anyway."
"I DO care about you, Kitty-"
"No, you don't!"
"Yes I do!"
"STOP THAT!" she screeched. "Just stop! All this time you've been telling me you care, and I keep coming back to you because I'm fool enough to believe that just MAYBE it's not complete bullshit. But it IS complete bullshit, and it always has been!"
"Kitty-"
"Get out, Black."
"But-"
"Out," she commanded again, pointing to the door. I put my hands up as a sign of surrender, stopping to hastily pull on my trousers before backing out of the room, a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"She'll come around," I assured myself under my breath. Well, she always did, right? Yeah... this wouldn't last too long... Nope, not too long. No way...
I got into the Common Room. Walked straight out the portrait hole amid a mass of confused faces. Headed toward the kitchen.
I needed some liquor. Some very strong liquor.
.
(A/N- See, a small attack of conscience...)
(A/N 2.0- I would like to warn you that for the duration of my Harry Potter fic-writing career, I will be utterly ignoring the Canon Timeline, because I like it better my way. Thank you, and enjoy.)
Narrated by Maggie
Those of us left in the Common Room sat in relative silence after Sirius had obstructed the view of the show he and Kitty were putting on upstairs. Honestly, I think the only reason we stayed quiet so long is that there were some interesting banging sounds emanating from the fifth year girls' dorm that nobody wanted to miss, out of sheer morbid curiosity.
"Hmm, you know," James said after about seven minutes, stroking a nonexistant goatee and looking pensive, "it really is kind of amazing Padfoot hasn't knocked anyone up yet."
"Yeah, that is a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?" Remus added, nodding his agreement.
"Maybe he's sterile," Lily suggested, looking strangely hopeful that this was indeed the case. "That would solve a lot of the world's potential problems." I giggled a bit.
"Copies of Sirius running around, I can only imagine," I said. Sirius's cousin Andromeda gave me a lopsided grin.
"One Sirius Black is quite enough," she informed. "I love him dearly, of course, but sometimes-"
"He's an overzealous fella?" James offered.
"Stop finishing my sentences, Potter, you little twerp!" Andromeda laughed, chucking a pillow at his head, which he artfully dodged, three seconds before a cry of
"OH GOD, YES!" echoed down the stairs. Andromeda smacked her forehead and groaned, looking utterly disturbed by the knowledge of what was going on. For better or for worse, though, I was curious.
"Does it really...feel that good?" I asked quietly, feeling myself blush. There was an enthusiastic reply of "Yes!" from almost everyone except Remus (don't get me wrong, it's not that we Gryffindors have loose morals about sexuality, it's just that I had a bit of a habit of staying around the older students - I can promise you that if the room weren't full of fifth, sixth, and seventh years at the time, the response would have been wholly different). I looked at him questioningly. He shrugged, turning pink.
"Don't ask me, I haven't done it," he admitted, looking embarrassed to share this information.
"Oh, you're a virgin, that's so cute, Remie!" Andromeda cooed, tousling his sandy hair. A lot of the girls followed suit, crooning about how sweet and darling he was. And he looked like he couldn't have hated it more.
A tall, sixth-year brunette named Emily started petting my hair.
"We've forgotten the other innocent in the room, you guys," she announced, smiling down at me with a sort of sisterly fondness. "Sweet little Maggie. Someday you'll find a nice boy, and you'll learn all this firsthand."
"Or maybe she and Remus can practice together!" Andrew hooted.
"There's an idea," Emily giggled. "Would you like that, Maggie?"
"Oooh, they're blushing!" another girl pointed out helpfully. Remus looked like he wanted to sink into the floorboards and die - basically, the same plan of action that was forming in my head.
"D'you like him, Maggie?" Emily prompted, apparently not willing to let the subject drop. "Isn't he cute?"
"D'you want to bed him?" a boy named Joel chimed in.
"This is getting stupid," Remus informed them, his voice sounding flatter and colder than I'd ever heard it. It seemed the rest of them weren't too used to it, either, because they shut up immediately. Joel grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry, mate. Just a bit of fun," he assured.
"I am not amused. Leave the kid alone." My heart sank at being referred to by my love interest as 'The Kid'. Although he WAS speaking up in my defense, I reminded myself, so it wasn't all bad. And they were taking him so seriously that not even James chanced a witty comment when he bid me to follow him out into the hallway.
"Er, Remus? Where exactly are we going?" I enquired. "I mean, not that I'm complaining, but it IS getting rather late and-"
"I just wanted to get us out of there, okay? Does that work for you?" he snapped, finally turning to face me to reveal a slight yellow glow in his eyes. I took a step away from him, hurt and a little spooked.
"You're really cranky when you're ill," I muttered, having the feeling that I was pouting a bit - it's a bad habit of mine. He sighed deeply, and sank to the floor, leaning against the cold stone wall.
"Sorry," he grumbled. I sat down beside him, drawing my knees up to my chest and hooking my arms around them. He continued, "It's just so annoying sometimes, you know?"
"What is?"
"That whole scene in the Common Room? That's not the half of it. 'Oh, Remus, you're so darling,'" he mocked, his voice a startlingly good mimicry of Andromeda's. "Damn it."
"So? They think you're sweet, I wasn't under the impression that that was a bad thing."
"Heh. No, I suppose not, for girls. For guys, it gets pretty irritating to always be the 'sweet' one." He laughed bitterly. "The girls always come to you for advice on how to get OTHER guys; I'm the goddamned perpetual friend! I may as well be every girl in school's personal teddybear for all I'm worth."
Despite his complaints, I still couldn't say I really understood why this was a negative role.
"Teddybears are nice to have," I said, taking a stab at humor. He snorted. Okay, I wasn't the sort of comedian James and Sirius were. I'd have to work on that one. "For what it's worth," I continued, my heart beating like a jackhammer, and feeling as though I may actually have been in danger of fainting, "I like you the way you are."
"Trust me, if you knew me half as well as you think you do, you wouldn't," he said cryptically.
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking into his face and pretending I didn't notice the light reflecting off his eyes (which, honestly, is one of the coolest things I've ever seen). He shook his head.
"Nevermind, it's not important," he mumbled. Ah, must have been that werewolf thing... Well, come on, did he really expect no one but James, Sirius, and Peter to figure it out? How daft did he think the student body of Hogwarts was?! I mean, sure, the Hufflepuffs wouldn't have had the mental capacity to put two and two together - I immediately berated myself for insulting the intelligence of the Hufflepuff students. That wasn't a nice thing to do, even if they WERE stupid... Damn, now I'd done it again! I needed to stop talking to Sirius, honestly, he was influencing me!
.
.
.
Narrated by Prongs
Alright, in retrospect, it was pretty rotten of us to pick on Remus and Klutz like that, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Eh, like they say, hindsight's always twenty/twenty. On the downside, though, Petey and I were now amazingly bored, since the other half of the Marauders were off with their respective chicks.
Hence, we were now staring at each other, trying to come up with something to do that would only take two people. We considered a karaoke contest, but it was quickly vetoed due to the fact that everyone in the room starting screaming in pain when I launched into "Sufin' U.S.A".
"Okay, I get it, I can't sing!" I whined, putting on my saddest face.
"It's not really that, mate," Ted Tonks assured, clapping me on the shoulder. "I mean, you're a terrible singer, but I'm also not a Beach Boys fan." Peter and I stared at him in disbelief.
"BLASPHEMY!" we cried in unison, pouncing on the (quite ripped, if any girls wanted to know) seventh year.
"It really could have been worse, Teddy," Andromeda told her boyfriend as he tried to peel Peter and me away from him. "I once heard James singing an Elvis medley."
"You're a disgrace to Englishmen everywhere, James Potter," Ted said seriously.
"Hey, I like The Beatles too!" I exclaimed in a desperate attempt to redeem myself.
"You're too big a fan of American music, Jim, there can be no salvation." Joel informed.
"SIRIUS SINGS MICHAEL JACKSON LYRICS IN THE SHOWER!" I yelled. When all else fails, shift the blame to someone else. There was a collective gasp around the room.
"Michael Jackson?" Lily asked, disbelievingly. I nodded sadly.
"It's true," I admitted. "He knows every word to 'Thriller.'" On cue, a cry came through the ceiling in the form of
"BASTARD! YOU SWORE TO SECRECY!"
"SORRY, PADFOOT!" I hollered upwards, feeling almost sincere. Okay, I lie, I didn't really care.
.
.
.
. Narrated by Padfoot
I let out a string of expletives. Kitty was smirking maddeningly and raising one eyebrow at me.
"Mr. Black... I never would have known you to be a Jacko fan." I grumbled and rolled onto my back, crossing my arms and pouting.
"Now YOU'RE teasing me, too?" I asked, giving her my sad face. She laughed! And to make matters worse, she climbed out of the bed and started getting dressed! "No!" I cried, throwing my arms around her waist. "I'll never listen to Micheal Jackson again! Just get back in the bed!"
"You bastard," she said coldly, the light-hearted and - dare I say? - cheerful air having evidently gone completely bye-bye. Shit.
"Oh, God, what did I do THIS time?" I groaned into her stomach.
"THIS time?!" she snapped, pushing me away. "How about EVERY time?!"
"I missed a crucial detail, didn't I?"
"Goddammit, Black!" Okay, she looked pissed... And more than that, I couldn't figure out what I'd done to piss her off!
"Kitty? You're confusing Sirius," I informed helpfully. She glared at me with the utmost hatred. I think I may have cringed.
"Stop pretending to be stupid," she hissed, baring her sharp teeth. "You know damn well what I'm talking about!" (WHY do chicks always assume that? It's right up there with "It's not what you said, it's how you said it"!)
"Er, actually, no I... I don't," I said honestly. "But, if you told me what was wrong-"
"ARE YOU REALLY THAT OBLIVIOUS?!" she screamed. This time I'm SURE I cringed.
"Um...yes?"
"Here's a hint," she said, still glaring at me. "You are a lecher. You don't give a flying fuck about any girl in this school, least of all me, and yet you bang us all anyway."
"I DO care about you, Kitty-"
"No, you don't!"
"Yes I do!"
"STOP THAT!" she screeched. "Just stop! All this time you've been telling me you care, and I keep coming back to you because I'm fool enough to believe that just MAYBE it's not complete bullshit. But it IS complete bullshit, and it always has been!"
"Kitty-"
"Get out, Black."
"But-"
"Out," she commanded again, pointing to the door. I put my hands up as a sign of surrender, stopping to hastily pull on my trousers before backing out of the room, a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"She'll come around," I assured myself under my breath. Well, she always did, right? Yeah... this wouldn't last too long... Nope, not too long. No way...
I got into the Common Room. Walked straight out the portrait hole amid a mass of confused faces. Headed toward the kitchen.
I needed some liquor. Some very strong liquor.
.
(A/N- See, a small attack of conscience...)