Chapter 12

"Please tell me what it's like to be a muggle, Tuney," said the Hufflepuff girl.

"I didn't say you could use my nickname Charity Burbage," snapped Petunia.

"Yeah, piss off and leave her alone," said James, flipping his wand to push the girl backwards with a spell. Charity tripped and fell.

"James! How dare you!" Lily turned on him.

"What? I was defending Tuney," said James.

"No you weren't, you were bullying Charity, and sure, Tuney didn't say she could use her name, but what about gentlemen not swearing at ladies? Never mind hexing her!"

"Oh come on," James laughed. "It wasn't much and she needs to learn not to mess with Marauders."

"That," said Severus, "Would have sounded fine if you'd said 'death eaters' not 'Marauders' and I'm with Lily. Charity, it wasn't polite to use Petunia's nickname, but I apologise for my friend for acting like a git."

"Do you want Lily and Tuney to be pestered by that silly little thing?" demanded Sirius.

"I want to continue to stand up against bullies and that means not letting my friends behave like Malfoy," said Severus, coldly.

"Oh really, Sev…"

"Yes, really," said Lily, equally coldly. "You were wearing pure-blood sneers there, both of you, and if hexing a kid without provocation isn't bullying, I don't know what is. Tuney, say something!"

"She's right, James, Sirius," Petunia spoke up. "And I don't mind answering Charity's questions, but I won't answer to 'Tuney' without giving permission on it."

"And that's because of bullies at our old school," said Lily.

"They called me 'Tuna' and then 'Haddock'," said Petunia.

"Oh Petunia how horrid! And … and Petunia is such a pretty name!" declared Charity. "My daddy calls me Cherry, but I don't mind anyone using that, if they only would, and I won't pester, I … I'm just fascinated by muggle things like eclectriciy."

"Electricity," said Severus. "And actually I think it wouldn't do any pure blood types any harm to learn about muggle ways as well as for muggleborn to learn wizarding ways. It might make for fewer misunderstandings."

"I agree," said Lily. "Right, we'll have a Saturday class when Sev, Tuney and I teach Charity and the rest of you Marauders, and Narcissa if she wants to come, about how muggles live because I bet you haven't a clue, and I know from some comments I've had to deal with that a lot of wizards assume our parents talk in grunts and can't read."

"Oh, can muggles read? I didn't know that," said Peter.

"Of course muggles can read! Who do you think taught us?" demanded Lily.

"Well, I thought you learned from Sev's grandfather," said Peter.

"Oh for crying out loud!" said Lily, in disgust. "You'll be telling me next you didn't know that muggles can compose and play music or produce fine art. And your mouth dropping open means it hadn't ever occurred to you. The only thing different about muggles is that they do not have access to one kind of art – magic. The same as squibs, and since we've been taking tea with Mr. Filch and learning all he knows about the history of Hogwarts, you wouldn't be writing him off as stupid, would you? Even if his fool parents stopped educating him properly when he didn't display magic. This is why we're studying our lessons over with him to help him at least learn more about our world even if he can't ever do much magic."

"Oh, yeah, right," said Peter. "Sorry."

"Nobody ever tells us things like this!" said Charity, her eyes glowing. "Or what … electricity," she pronounced it carefully, "is for."

"It's for things we use wands for," said Lily. "Like light; electric light."

"So it copies spells?"

"No! What would be the point of the statute of secrecy if muggles copied the things they aren't supposed to know about?" said Severus. "I've never understood where that wizarding superstition arose. They go about things in a different way. Muggles discovered that ice helps preserve food, and at first they cut ice to put in ice houses but when they discovered electricity they discovered they could use it to make ice, and no, I don't know precisely how, but they can, so they have chill cabinets called refrigerators which work a bit like preserving cabinets, but not for as long, and freezers, which totally freeze food but you have to defrost it. But that's mostly for richer muggles," he added. "Most muggles have a fridge. But not all muggles have the same things. Not all muggles have cars*, which are a vehicle like a carriage but it has a … a mechanical device to make it go, instead of horses, in the same sort of way the express has a steam engine. Only they've developed engines that work in other ways to make them smaller," he added.

"Gosh!" said Charity. "That makes sense, not everyone owns a carriage and horses either. And not everyone has a preserving cabinet, because they're quite expensive."

Sirius had opened his mouth to say that of course everyone had a preserving cabinet, but saw Peter and Remus nodding agreement and shut it again.

"I've walked the road of poverty-stricken muggle, or might as well have been, as well as tasting the luxury of being a wealthy wizard's heir," said Severus. "I'm well aware that there are worlds of difference between the highest and lowest in both societies. Mr. Evans is a well-paid muggle, he is in charge of lots of other muggles, and he has a car, and colour TV … bother, we'll get to TV another time," he added.

"I want to learn, there's a lot of half blood and muggleborn in Hufflepuff House, but they brush me off and won't tell me things!" said Charity.

"I wonder why?" muttered Sirius then yelped when Petunia kicked him in the ankle.

"I don't mind you asking and if you don't make fun, I'll let you use my nickname, Cherry, but not in front of other people," said Petunia. "And perhaps you can tell me why you Hufflepuffs don't use any etiquette."

Charity blushed.

"Oh, Madam Sprout said her Badgers should look upon all as equals and did not need to confuse those who weren't pure blood with it, and though I'm nearly pure blood, I didn't learn it at home because we're not well enough off to be likely to be making alliances, and people like the Noble and Ancient Family Black are too stuck up to be likely to …." She petered off, blushing as she realised who Sirius was.

In a mercurial change of mood so typical of him, Sirius chose to find this hilarious and laughed.

"Well, Burbage, I was going to discard all the high-falutin' nonsense but Sev talked me into keeping it because it has its place. And if we're going to be learning about muggles, I suppose if you've got any muggleborn friends, we can teach them about etiquette, and penmanship."

"Oh, I haven't really got any friends," said Charity. "The ones who aren't muggleborn think I'm insane and the ones who are think I'm pushy, like you did. And I'm not, I just want to understand."

"And you won't if you don't ask questions," said Lily. "Well, if they don't want to learn, we know who aren't going to manage to be movers and shakers. If you can understand people from the highest level of wizarding society, Cherry, to how muggles think, happen we might be voting for you as Minister of Magic one day."

"Do you think so?" asked Charity.

"Oh, I can quite imagine it," said Lily. "Hey, boys! Nothing wrong with cross house friendships, let's adopt Cherry as a Marauder. We need people with the vision to understand more people."

"Hell, why not?" said James. "Adopting Narcissa made our numbers arithmantically dodgy with eight, having nine is much more the thing. So long as you don't rag Tuney."

"Oh no, I never would!" said Charity, earnestly

"She's a bit of a dweeb, but it won't do us any harm to have members in every house," said James. "Anyway, I guess it's nice for the girls to have a few more girls, and I'd rather have an earnest sort of dweeb than a giggler."

"There is that," said Sirius. "And Sev's right about needing people to fight Death Eaters, there's no point trying to do it all ourselves. And I guess we were a bit out of line, though I'm not sure I'd care to admit it to the girls."

James flushed.

"I remembered how we discussed squib baiting after Lily and Tuney had a go at me, over hexing Charity," he muttered. "I don't want them comparing me to Malfoy."

"We are privileged and I guess we don't know how other folk live," said Sirius. "I reckon we might have to ask Sev if he can invite us for the hols to stay with his granddad and take us out and about a bit."

"Yeah, neat idea," said James. "Peter ain't that well off, he only has his mum, and Remus' parents live like muggles in the muggle world, he told me, to hide his condition from the wizarding community."

"Can't blame them," said Sirius. "I wonder if Mr. Prince can cure him entirely?"

"Have to wait and see, I guess," said James, with a shrug. "I'd say his help to Sev has made a massive difference already."

"Yeah," Sirius agreed. "I was about to suggest going to hex a few Slytherin but I guess Lily and Tuney and Sev would tick us off."

"Well I suppose we're sort of working with Greengrasse and his gang," said James, sighing. "We could hex some Ravenclaws."

"And we'd still be told off," said Sirius. "I don't mind getting into trouble, but I don't like the girls giving me their 'we're so ashamed of you' looks, and Sev sneering at us as though we're maggots. And Prince isn't as prominent as Black, but he makes me feel like I'm a worm."

"Yeah, and we don't want him and the girls and Remus deciding to toss you and me out," said James, in lively horror.

"They do need our connections," said Sirius.

"Siri, mate, Sev doesn't need connections, he's going to be one of those people who is talked about in the paper for winning awards and prizes and things. And I don't want to lose our friendship with any of them. We have something special and we are going to have to be careful not to lose that because of being too … too pureblooded."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Sirius. "And I thought that just stepping away from my family and being in Gryffindor was going to make it so easy."

"It ain't though…" James sighed.

"At least you and I understand each other," said Sirius.

Severus watched Sirius and James.

"You know, Lily, I am glad we joined with Sirius and James," he said.

"You are? I find them awfully childish at times," said Lily.

"Yeah, they're all of that and so very fond of their pampered selves," said Severus. "I reckon if they'd just been a pair, or had collected a couple of people who would admire them like Peter does, they might have been bullies."

Lily considered this.

"I wouldn't say you were wrong," she said. "They have an arrogance to them."

"Yes, and we sort of need to keep that under control," said Severus. "Though I bet part of it is showing off because they aren't the princes of their household any more, well, for James it is."

"And Sirius was so lifted by his dad's approval, I reckon he is ready to be bumptious to show he doesn't care. You were a bit like that before you said you could see about fixing Tuney's magic."

"Was I? then I guess I should be more sympathetic to him," Severus said. "And I will try to help him learn things to make his father proud of him. They need to know we do value them, but we won't tolerate bad behaviour."

"Remus doesn't say a lot but he's more likely to speak out now," said Lily. "He was willing to let them walk on him just to have friends who didn't mind."

"But now he's not so moody either, and he knows we all care," said Severus. "I think we are going to be able to really help a lot of people, you know, and maybe help more people than Avery to break away from the Death Eaters. He'll be fine with Greengrasse. But I really think we're being way too serious, and we'd get Sirius and James being happier if we could pull off some massive jape and prank the whole school."

"Any idea what?"

"Well, no, but we need to put our minds to it, and it has to be funny and not upset anyone. Or not anyone reasonable."

"Well, you're the one with brains Sev."

"Abrogating responsibility!"

"Yes, and why not?" she laughed.

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* Remembering that this is 1971 when most muggles in the UK did not have cars, and not all had fridges or TVs, and of those who had TVs, they were mostly black and white. And I'm drawing of memories of growing up in a much more affluent Blue Collar area than Spinner's End.