A Big Thanks to everyone who revieved my other, first story!
You give me confidence!
I hope you enjoy this story too, and I wish everyone a great Christmas this year! ...and Merry Christmas too, even if you happen to not be reading it in the right month )
waves hand: You will read and review...
"Mad? I'm not mad!"
"When you start singing ''Tis the Season' in the middle of April, yes, you are mad."
James' eyes seemed to up their wattage, and with a gleeful grin ploughed right on into: 'O Come O Ye Faithful'.
Remus groaned, James' opera voice was not what he needed the morning before an important test.
"James, please…" There was a particular vein in Remus' forehead that was progressively becoming a likely candidate for front row seats to every pranking expedition ever scheduled in the future.
"Hey Genius! Christmas is months away! Keep the festive season going on inside your head and spare the China glasses, OK?"
There were more times than Remus could admit that he was extremely grateful that Lily Evans existed to grace this school. She could make James stop doing anything. At least for a minute or two.
James smiled winningly at her, and watched her as she left the great hall. Shortly after he could be heard humming 'Hark The Herod Angels Sing'.
The humming seemed to get louder and louder until it was no more tuneful but a mere buzz of static and interference inside Remus' brain.
"James!" He slammed his text book down onto the table in front of him.
"Yes, Throbbing vein in Remus' forehead?" James addressed the tension.
"Sing. At. Christmas. Time! Sing all you want! Just not NOW!"
James paused. Then winked. "Right you are, extra carols this year. I'll pen it down. What do you fancy of doorknocking?"
Remus sighed, giving up; at least he had stopped singing.
Eight Months Later…
"But you remember, of course, Moony: this was all your idea."
"It was?" Peter squeaked. He looked at Remus with a worried and rather concerned expression, something he never left home without.
"What?" Remus exclaimed, he could not think for the life of him when he had ever made such a suggestion.
"Oh yes," James grinned, "Few months back. You told me to shutup and stop singing annoying Christmas carols, and I agreed to it under the terms that we would all go carolling this year!"
Remus could not remember this incident at all, but he was sure of one thing; "Even if that is true, I know for a fact that you are blowing the story way out of proportion!"
James shrugged.
Sirius could be heard before he was seen. Trudging footsteps crunched through the darkness before a tall black figure with a white beanie came striding across the snow hassled lawns. The ever-falling crystallised water speckled his jacket, and with the mischievous look he had on his face he looked somewhat like an evil panda.
"Carolling, eh?" Sirius grinned and opened his jacket just wide enough to let his fellow Marauders glimpse inside at the arrangement of dung bombs, acid bombs, yellow-sticky-jelly bombs, and ominous brown paper packages tied up with string, that were inhabiting a satchel slung over his shoulder.
"Just in case some people don't appreciate our singing." He explained in a way that implied a similar fate might meet even those that did.
Remus sighed, "Let's get on with this then." Hogsmede was lucky it was Saturday, they would need an extra day to clean up the mess.
From the top of the hill Hogwarts found itself sitting on, the small town below looked rather like an arrangement of miscoloured lightbulbs crammed into a box. Upon closer inspection one could see, however, that the reason for all this was simply that each resident of Hogsmede found the need to light up every lamppost, garden gnome, and outside privy in town.
"That's one sexy Santa on that privy!" Sirius pointed out the luminous toilet.
Someone actually had a plastic light up Santa-with-his-pants-down sitting in a dilapidated outhouse. Santa seemed to come equipped with newspaper for reading pleasure, a rather shocked expression on his face intended to imitate that someone had just walked in on him, and a complimentary length of toilet paper trailing off of his boot.
Peter's eyes widened, "The things people come up with!"
James was roaring with laughter, "Classic." He said.
"Such a simple sense of humour." Remus muttered.
Sirius, pointing up further ahead, gleamed with excitement; "Our choir career begins here!"
As light-bedecked houses went, this had to be one of the least appealing in town. The residents had obviously thought themselves a bit above sticking lightglobes on fence posts, but, in effort of keeping up appearances, had erected a single row of lights above their porch.
They walked, Remus slightly nervous, up the front door. James made to knock on it.
"Wait!" Remus hissed, "What are we going to sing?"
"Oh, right. Hadn't thought of that," James considered; "Peter, you look like a choir boy?"
He was probably right. With the light brown hair and pudgy cheeks, all Peter needed now was the choir robe and halo. A good singing voice would have only been a bonus.
"But I don't know any Christmas carols!" Peter protested.
"Well there goes your career!" James said, exasperated. Peter pouted.
James stood looking thoughtful for a moment, if Remus believed a man who's favourite catch phrase was: "No time for 'what ifs', just do it!", were even capable of thought.
"O Little Town of Bethlehem?" James turned to the group and asked, simultaneously knocking on the door.
Peter let out a cry, "But I don't know the words to O Little Town of Goodevening!"
"What?"
"Yes?" A tall man grunted while his wife hovered beside him looking pleasantly optimistic.
James charged right into the song, Remus and Sirius followed his lead, and Peter tried his best to open and close his mouth to the right words, without actually making sounds come out.
In the end the whole thing didn't go exactly as…
(Note: 'Planned' was not the right word to use here, because in truth there had been very little planning whatsoever to do with the evening. The boys had got as far as, 'Open door, insert carol', and then went ahead and decided to run with that.)
…well as the house's occupants had obviously expected when they first saw four boys ready to sing, but now realised they were just four boys there for a laugh.
"That was very, uh, nice." The wife smiled faintly at them, clearly still trying to recover from the shock to her ear lobes.
Her husband furrowed his brow and, making a rather slower but more honest recovery, he said; "That was about the worst carolling I've ever…"
Where he might have chosen to finish that sentence with the word 'heard', Sirius managed to interrupt him; "Ah well, thanks for your time, goodnight!"
With one hand he waved goodbye and with the other skilfully threw a dung bomb underarm into the living room. He then turned and began to run.
Remus' eyes widened to a slightly smaller extent than Peters, James saluted, and then each Marauder followed Sirius' lead; running back down the garden path.
Remus wondered when the notes to 'Silent Night' had been altered so much as to accommodate the vocal capacity of cats.
"You're not very good." The little girl pointed out, standing alongside her brother, her arms folded over her chest and a demeanour that screamed 'unsatisfied'.
James frowned, "I'd like to hear you do any better."
"And a Very Merry Christmas to you too." Sirius cheesed, reaching into his coat and bringing out one of his brown paper packages. "I even got you a present." He added.
With evident distrust both children eyed the package warily.
"What's in it?" The boy asked.
"Only one way to go about figuring that one out." Sirius winked annoyingly at the infant, practically shoving it into his hand.
"We'll be off then. Goodbye!"
This time Sirius only walked rather quickly back down the garden path.
"What was in that?" Remus was afraid to ask what horrors lay before the two children, but his curiosity was by and by the better of him.
"Hmmm?" Sirius' mind had obviously dismissed the issue already, and his eyes were searching for their next house to victimise; "Oh, it was a combination of…"
There was a scream from the house they had just vacated.
"…things you might be better off not knowing." He concluded.
"Ah!" James spotted their next house.
Peter had progressed onto mumbling words that had the right general idea about them, without actually being the correct lyrics to the song.
"…heavenly peas." He sang his concluding venture slightly out of time to everyone else.
A few good seconds later, the shrivelled old lady ventured a comment.
"That was lovely, dears."
Remus stopped to realise then, that her pause after completion was probably due to the time delay in nerves reaching her brain, rather then the fact that she disagreed with the song. You had to wonder.
This was obviously not what James had been expecting either, but he was one quick to recovery; "Uh, well, Yes! Thankyou ma'm. Glad you enjoyed it! Have a Merry Christmas!" He turned to Sirius and shrugged.
Against all morals, Sirius decided it best not to throw something out of his bag into the old woman's house, or turn her garden into a yellow gooey mess.
He smiled faintly and gave her a little wave, turning to leave.
"Oh no wait, you must have some of the Christmas cake I made, to say thankyou for your delightful singing!"
"Did anyone else taste just a hint of cat in that cake?" Sirius poked out his tongue a number of times and stared down cross-eyed at it, possibly hoping that such a ritual would make the taste go away.
"I may have caught a hint of pepper." Remus paused, "However 'hint' is probably understating the extent of the whole chilli I found in my piece."
Peter nodded thoughtfully.
James looked down at his watch, "Well, have we brightened up the evenings of every house in town?"
In the middle of what could, when the citizens of Hogsmede felt like advertising that they had such a thing, be counted as town square, there was a large stone water feature reminding people of the existence of small fat men with tiny wings and heart-shaped arrows.
Most people avoided that fountain, if they could help looking in the other direction.
Right now, however, the Marauders were taking a break upon its rims.
"I think just about." Sirius almost yawned. "Except for the couple we thought were too boring to bother, or the ones who'd obviously given themselves enough grief over their one-man light shows to begin with."
"Ah yes, very noble of you." James remembered one particular houses light display featured a 'Merry Christmas' sign that wrote the phrase in 27 different languages over their roof again and again, and another which had a series of little lights attached to every leaf of the tree in their front yard, the colours of the rainbow cycling through every few seconds or so.
" 'S been a good night then?" Peter asked sleepily. He always felt sleepy early. Unless you took into consideration that an 'early' night for each of the Marauders held a minimum 3am curfew.
Just then an enraged man covered in yellow sticky goo ran down the street waving a baseball bat.
"Yes, I think it's been a rather good night indeed."
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