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Lily had always dreaded trivia night. Though she loved libraries and all the wonderful nooks and crannies they held with all her heart, even she – avid book lover as she was – had to admit that Welston Library was plain old stuffy. The leather couches she had admired on her first voyage into Welston Trivia were either never sat in or were replaced every month, for Lily's backside ached every damn time she plonked herself onto them, the cushions always unforgivingly hard, the burnished red leather stiff and void of lived-in scratches.
And the abominable leather couches were only the beginning of a long list of fastidiously elitist 'policies' the library arduously followed – book ladders were not to be used by anyone, one had to wear gloves to so much as touch the books on the shelves and the books were more like tomes. There were rows upon rows upon rows of thick, leather-bound books, so achingly beautiful and yet, as Lily soon learned, unforgivably boring, for the most heinous rule of all was that there were no romances or contemporary fiction stocked here. They were too 'frivolous', apparently.
To make the Welston Library even more boring was the fact that Lily's trivia group consisted of her most boring co-workers. Lily regretted signing up, but the name for the trivia night – that goddamned name – had been so unbelievably enticing that she had signed up and found herself unable to resign, for who wants to look bad in front of their boss (who, yes, had been a proud member of the Trivia Team for many years). Upon numerous occasions, Lily wanted to smack whoever chose to name trivia night as Welston Library's Let's Get Quizzical Trivia Night and had thus, tricked her into thinking it would be a riot.
Until suddenly, a few weeks into trivia torture, it was not so boring anymore.
A new group had joined. Whilst they often looked the part of studious academics (besides one who was decked in silver rings and scattered with tattoos who only wore black), it had been very clear from the very start that they were not. They joked and they laughed and every time they were answering a question, they would dip their heads down together, forming a jumbling mess of hair, circling and huddling like some great sports team about to score the winning goal. One of them (the one who looked straight out of the audience at an MCR concert) was often shoved out of the circle before the tidy one pulled him back, arm slung around his waist.
Their whispered murmurings of contemplation were not actually whispers, but more like loud hisses, as if they craved being ridiculously disruptive. And when their answers were read out, Lily had never had to stifle more snorts and laughter in her entire life, despite having gone to an all-girls boarding school with strict curfew. Lily knew instantly they loved the drama, needed attention, and though she had often steered clear of arrogance in her past, there was just something about this group, something inexplicable, that kept drawing her in.
They were the Marauders and Lily loved them all.
Four men were consistent members, but a few others were known to show up every now and then. There was the one who dressed like a scene kid, all long dark hair and silvery rings, the tidy one who had adorably curly brown hair and the short one who had light blonde hair which looked suspiciously as if it were backcombed due to premature balding.
And then there was The Man From Trivia.
Lily had observed all four, but none more than The Man From Trivia. His circle glasses were adorably skewed on his face and his lean figure was achingly beautiful. Lily had never wanted to touch something more than this man's hair, all pointy and ruffled and perfectly messy. His laugh, the loudest and most boisterous of them all – sort of like a wicked cackle – had some strange effect on Lily's chest and she snuck glances at him every time she heard it just to see, even if only glimpse, his gorgeous face open with unadulterated joy. If she could preserve that face in her mind and read it like a book whenever she felt down, she would.
Lily observed him constantly, found herself listening in to determine which voice belonged to him so she could know which whispers were his, just so she could muse on whether they'd get along.
"What was Stephen King's first published novel? Why are these questions so goddamn hard?" the short one whispered, scratching his head.
"Has anyone actually read anything of Stephen King's?" the scene kid mused.
"Was it the one with the orgy?" The Man from Trivia said, his voice loud. Heads from other teams looked upon him with disapproving frowns, yet he was wholly oblivious or drinking up the attention – Lily could not tell which it was.
"ORGY?" the scene kid yelled, prompting more disapproving muttering about the room. "He writes about orgies? No wonder he's so bloody popular. Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?" he asked with great accusation before turning upon the tidy one, hands on hips. "Moony, why didn't you tell me? You have a duty to inform me of such delicious depravity."
The tidy one shushed scene kid, elbowing his side. "Do shut up. And yes, there's an orgy but it's between children, so it's not exactly-"
"No, there are more orgies. Multiple books of his have orgies," The Man From Trivia said, pushing his glasses higher upon his nose.
"MORE ORGIES? How many are there? I wonder – how many orgies can one have until they just think, 'you know what? That's enough orgies for one lifetime'," the scene kid mused. The tidy one rolled his eyes.
"I think the answer is 'Carrie'," the tidy one said. Lily hid her smile when his friends ignored his – correct, might Lily add – answer to the trivia question.
"Does one ever tire of orgies?" the short one mused, scratching absently at his chin.
"Oh yes, absolutely," The Man From Trivia said with almost alarming certainty. "One can only take so many bodily appendages up various holes. It's tiring, those pesky orgies, the tedious sharing of multiple bodily fluids. I would say at least fifty should satisfy one's craving." He spoke as if he were an expert on such a topic, with an assertive confidence that usually irked Lily, but she found irreverently charming upon him.
"FIFTY? That's an awful lot of orgies," the short one exclaimed with alarm, beady eyes going wide.
The Man From Trivia tilted his head as if pondering some great existential question, then relented. "Well, maybe forty orgies, give or take."
"We need an answer!" the scene kid hissed, alarmed at the ticking down clock. "We need an answer, quick! I refuse to lose again!" He yanked at his long, black hair in distress, a gesture that amused Lily, for when had the Marauders ever won?
"Write down 'IT'!" the short one suggested frantically, wrestling to try and grab the answer sheet.
"That's much too basic for us Marauders. Write 'orgy'," The Man From Trivia said, snatching the paper away from the tidy one who merely raised his hands in resigned yet fond defeat. The Man From Trivia squinted at the paper, holding it arm's length, scowling repulsively. "'Carrie'? Who wrote that? What a ridiculous answer. We all know that's a bloody musical," The Man From Trivia said as he proceeded to hastily scribble at the page.
Needless to say, the Marauders Trivia Team got a warning that night due to 'inappropriate answers', and Lily could not help but think that the four men looked like four school boys, looking upon the trivia host with mock-seriousness as they accepted their punishment.
Lily thought she was a little bit in love with The Man From Trivia. She would have asked him out months ago if it weren't for the fact that her boss would witness her do it. She'd waited outside a few times to catch the Marauders leaving so she could finally speak to The Man From Trivia without her boss's supervision, yet it had never quite come together.
One time a car had splashed her with enough gutter-water to render Lily shivering and drenched – not a very attractive first impression. Another time, it was clear The Man From Trivia had swigged far too much liquor from the scene kid's flask and was in no state of mind to even remember who she was the following morning and Lily could not bear being forgotten by him.
And the last time Lily had ever waited outside was supposed to be the best opportunity. She'd dressed in her favourite summer dress decorated with cherries, her red kitten heels matching her hair perfectly. When The Man From Trivia had stepped outside, arm slung around a girl who had joined the Marauder's team that night, Lily hesitated, caught – should she still go up to him? Maybe they were just friends? But then he'd kissed her, and Lily had immediately backed away, beginning her trek to the underground, trying to fight off the sting of hurt and rejection and disappointment because he had never spoken to her before, probably had no idea who she was and she had no right to be hurt by him and she was much too old to be mooning over someone she'd never even spoken to.
Lily had contemplated talking to the Marauders as a group, just so she could be friends with The Man From Trivia, so she could revel in his captivating thrall, yet she could see that trivia night was evidently their night as a group. Lily could not bring herself to interrupt their easy camaraderie, their friendship so tight she knew that it had spanned across years and histories and dramas.
It seemed as if the universe was cosmically against Lily ever actually meeting The Man From Trivia.
James loved Trivia Night at Deaton's Pub. The 70's psychedelic tunes, blinking red and blue disco lights and heady cigarette smoke created an unlikely atmosphere which put James at ease. It was comfortable and rowdy, and it was a rule that all teams must be at least slightly tipsy in order to play. His team – the infamous Marauders – had never won, but it had never particularly mattered, for the questions asked were so outlandish, so utterly ridiculous as to give the team enough inside jokes even weeks afterwards. So, when the pub had burned down one day, James thought it extremely bad luck.
"But what are we to do? How will I ever be able to show off my intellectual prowess now?" James whined as he lay on his beloved couch, arm thrown over his eyes. It could perhaps appear as if James had unintentionally positioned himself as the quintessential therapist patient – especially as Sirius sat across from him on their single armchair – but one who knew James Potter knew that all theatrics from him were considered and contemplated, even subconsciously.
"I don't think knowing the answer to ' what is the most common colour toilet paper in France' constitutes 'intellectual prowess'," Remus drily replied from his seat at their dining table, coffee mug adorned with a cartoon kitten in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
"Have a little sympathy," Sirius crooned as he stood up and walked over to James before ruffling James' hair. "The poor thing will never recover. Trivia validation was his only source of happiness. It's the only bloody thing he's good at."
Remus just scoffed, shaking his head. Sirius' remark was both true and false – James was hopeless at trivia, but there was no keener pleasure, nothing more exciting than getting a trivia answer correct, particularly one where James could display his absurdly extensive knowledge of the French Revolution and amphibians. But he also loved trivia for it was almost like relieving his school days with Sirius, Remus and Peter, when they could just be troublesome and mischievous and nothing remotely serious ever happened.
James groaned before groaning again even louder, for the first did not capture his despair properly. "It's just our luck that this place burns to the ground. When do buildings ever actually burn to the ground? It's absurd. It's as if the universe doesn't want us to play trivia! First, we got banned from that one trivia place 'coz Pete was stupid enough to bring his pet rat and then we had to leave our second trivia haunt because someone," James pointed at Sirius, "cannot hold their liquor."
Sirius had the gall to look utterly affronted, hand on chest. "Excuse me? The trivia host had the hots for me and when he realised I was taken, he took the first excuse to kick us out!" Sirius turned to Remus, incensed. "Tell him, Remus!"
Remus absently turned a page of the newspaper, and said, "No, dear, you were just positively smashed."
It was only after James whined and groaned for another week that Remus suggested attending the trivia night at a library where his friend worked. Apparently, this library's trivia night was so popular, so sought-after, that James had had to offer Remus' friend a whole month's work of free coffee to get the Marauders in. It had worked – the Marauders were officially Welston Library's Let's Get Quizzical Trivia Night's new trivia team. It was going to be a riot, especially with a name like that.
But, alas, it was not.
James had never truly worked out why this trivia night was held in such high regard – it was quite clear, upon glancing about the room of elbow patches and balding heads and sweaty foreheads, that it was obnoxiously obnoxious and boringly drab.
Yet it was upon arrival, when the Marauders were told by the library's staff to keep their voices down, that their glee truly set in. The place was so similar to their stuffy boarding school that they found themselves resorting to their old tricks to stay entertained – dressing up in absurdly academic and stuffy clothes, sneaking in whisky and seeing how much they could drink until they were caught (far more now than in their old school days, James noted with pride), stealing the library's obnoxious texts and replacing them with racy novels and, of course, answering the onerous questions with highly inappropriate answers.
Q. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights recounts the tragic romance between which two lovers?
Answer: Sirius and Remus, or more commonly known by their aliases, 'Gerard Way' and 'unexpected top'. Many literary characters have been based upon them in modern texts, including, but not limited to, Neil Perry and Todd Anderson, Heathcliff and Edgar Linton etc.
Q. Which genre of fiction, in which novels like Dracula are told in letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, and more mixed formats, came to prominence in the later 18th century?
Answer: The genre fusion of gothic literature and science-fiction, more commonly dubbed as 'gothic sci-fi punk'. Most texts include elements of the supernatural and are written in first person. Modern examples include Ice Planet Barbarians.
Q. In Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist, what food does Oliver famously ask for more of when he says: 'Please, Sir, I want some more'?
Answer: my cock.
And yet the main reason why James loved trivia night at Welston Library was because of The Girl from Trivia.
She was distinctly unlike her dreary, stodgy team, and not merely because she was a knock out. Her high cheek bones, full lips and blazing, deep red hair were captivating, but more so was the fact that James could tell she was utterly bored out of her mind. Though she appeared interested and engaging with her team, James just knew she would have preferred to be anywhere else than in this sad excuse for a library, which told James she would be interesting and exciting and perhaps a little mischievous.
He stared at her constantly, watched her, and was teased mercilessly for it. James did not care – The Girl from Trivia was worth bearing his friend's nonsense. Besides, James did love a classic, dramatic pine, particularly when it included staring at her with an overly tortured, longing stare and pouting off into the distance to contemplate his unrequited infatuation.
He worked out that she liked tea, not coffee, and always had it with little milk and no sugar. She seemed to enjoy the questions about poetry more than the others and her team often looked to her for the answers. She liked the colours green and pink as nearly all her accessories were in those shades. She was funny – she had to be – for she somehow managed to make her musty old team laugh. And her laugh – God, James wished he could learn it, memorise it and play it back over and over and over again.
James assumed she had a thing for cherries as he could not forgot – nor did he want to – the particular occasion she had worn the prettiest dress James had ever seen, patterned with cherries and so different from the usual office clothing she wore. Though he was rather tipsy that night – so tipsy as to kiss his friend Rebecca who promptly kicked him in the balls – James could conjure The Girl From Trivia in her cherry dress with almost alarming clarity. For that dress alone, James knew, she was unlike every other pompous, dull person at the trivia night.
She had irrevocably charmed him and he had never even spoken to her. He wanted to speak to her, he did – but how? How could he ever not make a fool of himself around her? And what if she turned out to be perfect – how the hell could James even hope to impress her? James hoped she thought he and his friends – but mostly himself – were not utter maniacs, but what hope could there be when they were yelling about orgies half the bloody time?
No, James had decided, she was better left in his mind, this fiery creature of cherries, for any rejection from her would surely be enough to kill him or significantly maim at the very least.
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