Disclaimer: As always, I don't own a thing

Chapter 3: Juvenility

"How come I always have to go with Remus?" Sirius whined.

James personally didn't see the great problem with being partnered with Remus 'my brain is the size of a basketball' Lupin, but Sirius seemed to take a perverse kind of delight in being pernickety.

Lily, however, sighed explosively, resenting that her organisational skills were being called into question. She would have liked to be partnered with Remus herself, but the thin band of metal on her left hand rendered this impossible – apparently loyalty and marriage were meant to go hand in hand.

"You like Remus, don't you?" she snapped at Sirius. James always bemoaned the fact that she had never got on with his best friend. His attitude tonight was doing little to rectify the situation.

"Of course I like Remus, but I always feel like you're insinuating we should get married when you pair us together," Sirius replied, matching Lily wide-eyed glare for glare.

James had always considered it a blessing and a curse to have surrounded himself with two of the most stubborn people on the planet. On the one hand it was always wonderfully entertaining to watch them face off, but on the other hand ninety-nine percent of the time they were facing off at him.

Remus looked slightly askance at this suggestion of marriage and looked up from his hot chocolate with a start:

"Marriage?" He shrugged his shoulders faux-nonchalantly. "Well if you're game Padfoot, then so am I," Remus continued lightly, before turning back to his steaming hot drink with a grin.

To James' intense pleasure it seemed that Sirius-baiting had overtaken James-baiting in people's Lists of Enjoyable Things to Do.

"Everyone teases me," Sirius sulked.

"So teams are: me and James, Alice and Frank, Remus and Sirius," Lily clarified, moving to mark the initials on her specially drawn out score card.

"Now, what game are we starting with?" she asked, throwing the question open to the gathering.

"Strip Poker sounds like the best bet to me," Sirius replied with a wicked grin, winking in the direction of Alice.

Frank glared and James smirked.

He knew that Sirius would never dare hit on Lily (mostly because the red head would punch his lights out if he did). On occasion though, James let himself pretend that it was due to his undeniable masculinity, whereas in truth Padfoot could beat him in a wand-less fight any day.

"Scrabble?" Frank piped up hopefully, then promptly letting out as muted yell as James trod on his foot.

"How very juvenile of you, James," commented Remus blithely.

James hated Scrabble. There was something very excluding about a game that so strongly favoured intelligent people who devoured dictionaries for bedtime reading.



"We could go Scissors, Paper, Stone to decide," he tabled, deciding that as the man of the house it was his duty to solve their impending problem. He could see that Games Night was turning into a tepid sea of argument and recrimination due to the group's inability to make quick decisions, but James vowed that he was going to be their saviour.

Super-Potter to the rescue!

"Scissors, Paper, Stone?" Lily snorted. "You have got to be kidding me."

Standing his ground for once, James folded his arms defiantly. "Why not?" he replied. "It's almost like a game in itself."

"Me and Alice put forward Scrabble," Frank jumped in, pointedly moving his feet out of reach of James' clumsiness. Frank didn't read dictionaries in bed but – knowing James' passionate hatred of the game – he sensed an opportunity to exact some protracted revenge for the foot-stamping.

"Me and the missus want Strip Poker," Remus added, delighting in the look of horror that crossed Sirius' features. Remus Lupin did not generally have much opportunity for unabashed fun, so he took his kicks where he could get them.

"We'll go for –" James began.

"-Cluedo," Lily finished, barely looking up from her score card. "It's a Muggle game," she added in response to the clueless faces surrounding her.

James would liked to have reported this as a touching indictment to the power of married couples to finish each other's sentences, but as 'Cluedo' was not going to be the end of his sentence, this was rendered impossible.

"I'll play you first Prongs," Sirius announced.

James moved in for a good luck kiss from his wife. She obliged with a quick peck, the sentiment somehow diminished by the sharp: "Oh, for God's sake it's not that big a deal" a few seconds later.

... The pair of them faced off across the kitchen table ...

1 – 2 – 3 – and...

Thwack.

Sirius 'stone' smacked into James' forehead, sending him tumbling to the floor.

"I thought that was how everyone played it," Sirius frowned, wondering why everyone was glaring at him.

"What? 1 – 2 – 3 – and knock your opponent out?!" Lily screamed, leaning over her comatose husband.

"Relax," Sirius continued, oblivious to the pointed looks Remus was giving him that screamed 'stop talking before she kills you'. "I've hit him way harder than that before when we were school – he'll bounce right back ... soon." "You know Lily, you're husband is very durable."

Lily fought back the urge to scream.

"Prongs? I didn't hit you that hard, you sissy."

"James?"

"James? Are you alright?"