"So what is it, Potter?" Sirius demanded loudly, sprawled on his back across Peter's four-poster bed, toying with the crimson drapes with a scuffed shoe. "Have you gone completely bonkers for some – some girl or what?"

Remus, marking his place in a dusty old tome with a finger, heaved a sigh and rolled onto his stomach. "James left about ten minutes ago, Sirius. Remember? He said he was going to try to find Lily."

There was a momentary pause, in which Remus began to feel concerned about the note of anger that he'd heard in Sirius' voice. In some ways, it was just plain strange; Remus had never been aware of any antagonism on Sirius' part towards the opposite gender. In fact, since acquiring a set of "Massively Manly Muscles" (as the handsome youth liked to call them) sometime during the year before, Sirius had become quite partial to the fairer sex.

"Oi, Hazel," he would call, proudly raising one tanned bicep into the light, "rest your eyes on this sweet thing."

Peter would undoubtedly snigger at this point, his face seizing into a grin before gradually fading into unmistakeable envy. Hazel, or another unfortunate female student, would either raise her eyebrows sardonically or collapse into giggles, depending on the particular girl's level of maturity.

James would roll his eyes, subconsciously dropping his gaze to his own developing muscles afterwards, and nodding in self-satisfaction.

Remus tried to ignore these moments altogether. This was often the safest strategy.

Right at this moment, however, as the pause stretched into an uncomfortable silence, ignorance was not an option. Evidently, Sirius had determined that it was time for another little chat about James' most recent obsession.

"It used to be quidditch," Sirius said suddenly, and some of the tension that had built in the room lost its edge.

"I know, Sirius," Remus answered, resting his head on his folded arms in anticipation of a lengthy discussion. "And I know that you never really minded about that obsession either. I remember you saying – what was it? 'At least we can both ride a broomstick.'"

Sirius chuckled, and then lapsed back into his former state of moroseness. "Why Lily?" he moaned abjectly, his palms raised to the top of Peter's bed as he smothered his voice in a pile of blankets. "What's so great about her, anyway?"

Remus shook his head. He had heard this argument before. There were many accurate responses to Sirius' question, and Remus was well aware that his friend did not want to hear any of them.

The thing about Sirius Black was that he was the best friend of James Potter. That, simply, was the best way to put it. Sirius and James were a double act. If one was polishing chamber pots for detention in the Hospital Wing, the other one was scrubbing the floor. If one was silently conjuring a pair of stilettos onto poor, tiny Professor Flitwick's feet, the other was asking an extremely complicated question about the nature of growth charms. If one decided to follow a girl through the corridors of Hogwarts, the other donned an invisibility cloak and joined the chase.

Or, at least, that was how it had always been before now. Before James had lost his mind at the beginning of term and asked Lily Evans out, been rejected, and perceived this rejection as a challenge.

Remus reflected sometimes on the nature of infatuation. How many innocent teenage lives, he wondered, had been utterly destroyed by an all-consuming fixation on a girl? Remus knew of two extreme examples. One was Romeo from Shakespeare's celebrated play. The other was James.

He wondered which boy's infatuation would prove to end the most tragically.

Sirius, it seemed, had unknowingly adopted the role of a sceptical Mercutio, and between his frequent lewd comments at Lily's expense (purely for the outrage such joking would provoke from James) he displayed a very real resentment at James' infatuation.

"If it had to be someone, Sirius, at least it's Lily," Remus said finally, trying to inject an extra sense of reasonableness into his tone. "Let's face it, it would be a million times worse if we had to watch James chase Hazel."

Remus watched Sirius scowl briefly, and flex his bicep almost reflexively. The werewolf smiled. Sirius was so deliciously predictable…

"Lily's bad enough. Look Moony," Sirius said more loudly, his register rising, "what is it with girls, anyway? Why chase big green eyes when there are pranks to be played, and mischief to be made?"

Thinking carefully, Remus tried to formulate a response to the real anger pouring out from the vicinity of Peter's bed. He knew that anything he said would ultimately make no difference. Like never before, there were now real emotions at play between the four boys in Gryffindor.

Remus was quite certain that James had started to feel something intangible for Lily, something more concrete than the thrill and anticipation of infatuation. James was too intelligent, and possibly even too mature, to spend so much time trying to secure a date from a girl who didn't mean anything to him. Although the bespectacled Marauder attempted to win Lily's affection in decidedly unromantic and increasingly juvenile ways, his efforts proved that he had begun to invest real emotion into his pursuit.

On the other hand, it had become quite apparent that Sirius' black reaction to James' single-mindedness these days was mostly fuelled by a sense of abandonment. Some girl had come into the picture and driven away his best friend.

Secretly, Remus suspected that the reason that Sirius was taking the whole situation so badly was because he couldn't comprehend James' motives. Perhaps the emotional capacity hadn't developed yet; perhaps Sirius really couldn't see the value of hanging off some girl.

"Bros before hos," Sirius muttered mournfully, waking Remus back to the discussion presently in session.

"Amen, mate," Remus responded with a gentle smile, and held Sirius' gaze as his friend lifted his head appreciatively.

"Promise me you'll never abandon me for some girl, Moony," Sirius said solemnly, his face twisting in disgust as he mentioned the despised creatures at the heart of his current misery.

"Never," Remus promised.

"I'm going to hold you to that," Sirius stated forebodingly, kicking his foot towards Peter's drapes again. "No girls. Only Moony."

"Only Sirius," Remus replied, feeling a surprising warmth drift through his body at his friend's touching words. He grinned to himself, knowing he should stop this leg of conversation before it became uncomfortably sentimental. "You're woman enough for me, mate."

Like Remus knew he would, Sirius snorted and threw a sock in the general direction of Remus' bed.

"You missed, Mr Snuffles, like the girly man you long to be," Remus chortled, throwing himself towards his pillow as an incensed Sirius leapt rather gracelessly across the room from Peter's bed to Remus'.

"Stop – calling me – that," Sirius panted, violently thrusting the feathered end of a random quill at Remus, much in the manner of a pirate wielding a sword.

Remus felt remarkably unthreatened.

Finally, as Remus expertly dodged a particularly feathery blow from Sirius' choice weapon, his black-haired opponent overbalanced on his knees and began to fall backwards quite helplessly. His mouth gaped comically as his arms windmilled, the quill thwacking him in the face as he attempted to fling it away in order to gain some balance.

Without thinking, Remus flung himself forward and grabbed Sirius about the neck, latching his feet around the other end of his bed, attempting to stop his friend's imminent injury. Sirius' breath escaped him all at once with a faint "oof" as a torso slammed against his own, Remus' trapped feet the only obstacle between the collapse of both onto the floor.

For a moment, the two boys hung over the edge of Remus' bed dizzily, faces inches apart as Massively Manly Muscles strained and bedposts creaked and Sirius' eyes widened and a door was flung open behind them-

"Wha-" Sirius choked distractedly, but then Remus abandoned his grip around the boy's neck, and Sirius went tumbling backwards off the side of the bed.

"Oops," Remus muttered, turning red, and rolled his eyes at Peter. "You destroyed a perfectly marvellous performance of 'Romeo and Juliet', you know that?"

Peter, who had been gaping at the pair, snapped his mouth shut, and then, after seeming to think quite hard, said, "What, was that the scene where Romeo kills himself?"

Remus, who was actually astounded that Peter knew so much about the play, quickly amassed his thoughts. "Yeah. Juliet here had gone to sleep or something."

"Play dead, werewolf," Sirius growled from somewhere below, and Remus grinned.

"Quiet, Juliet, or I won't let you handle my dagger."

"That's it!" Sirius yelled, pulling himself up off the floor and jumping recklessly back onto the bed, pinning Remus down with all the strength that his beloved biceps could offer.

Peter shook his head at the wrestling pair and headed towards his own bed, dumping his school bag on top of the twisted sheets.

"Say, has anyone seen my quill?"

A/N:

"But why, oh why," you cry tearfully, "whyever is this chapter so painfully short?"

"Alas, my dear reader," I reply, "lack of motivation was the culprit. I simply could not walk through the door after a nine hour day learning about unconscionable conduct in contract law and feel inspired. It was hard enough to even churn this midget chapter out."

"Alack!" you whimper. "But how can I help to alleviate the disastrous nature of the situation?"

Please review? :)

xx Froody