A/N: Yay! A new fic (while I really should be finishing my current one). This is a one-shot, though, and I hope you all enjoy it! As a side note/possible precaution, James's views do not reflect mine at all, even though they were written by me. Uh, does that make sense? Hopefully, it does. Anyway, I hope you like this!
QOTD: "The thing about That Guy Is a Gigolo," Radar says, "I mean, the thing about it as a game, is that in the end it reveals a lot more about the person doing the imagining than it does about the person being imagined."
Yep, and that's actually the way I feel about the process of writing this fic. It started off as a sort-of character analysis of Sirius, but I think it also says a lot about James as well, and how he views their friendship/almost-brotherly relationship.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or ten-fact fics. I own the box of mini-pizzas in my freezer, though (well, sort of. My mom owns them, actually.).
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1. Sirius's favorite color is green.
When James is feeling particularly spiteful, he'll ask Sirius if this is out of a desire to be more like his family. Usually, this leads to either a painful fistfight or an even more painful deluge of hexes rained upon him by a fuming Sirius.
The real reason is because, as Sirius once said while most likely drunk on something, he has a strange fondness for grass and the smell of it (apparently, he even smells it in Amortentia). This fondness was quickly exploited two days later when James played the "Which Bertie Bott's Bean is It" game with Sirius while the latter was blindfolded, and filled the entire carton with grass-flavored beans (in James's defense, Sirius really should have known better than to play that again with him), forcing him to keep eating them until the blindfold was ripped off and Sirius had to run to the sink to puke.
2. Sirius insists that Remus is French.
James suspects that this is from a complete lack of regard for cultural heritage (he thinks that's the right term, but he's not really sure). Throughout the six years James has known Sirius, he has said that the Black family is German, Spanish, Swedish, and Slovakian. As far as James knows, the Black family is as British as can be.
However, he still can't find a reason why Sirius would think that Remus is French. Remus doesn't look French, have a French accent, or even eat baguettes. Secretly, James is sure that Sirius is just waiting for the day Remus accidentally says something in French (which should be in approximately 5.4 billion years).
3. Sirius would probably be best friends with Lily Evans if he wasn't already best friends with James, Remus, and Peter. They're both fiery and (in Lily's case, wonderfully) stubborn.
Sirius's stubbornness can get extremely annoying, as it usually leads to arguments between them where everyone knows that James is right, but Sirius keeps arguing anyway. Lily, though, is stubborn in a good way, a way that makes James fall even more in love with her.
Aside from that, though, they also use the same shampoo (lavender-scented, and James doesn't care that people apparently like the smell of Sirius's hair, he would like his own masculinity to still remain kind-of intact, thank you very much).
4. Sirius and Marlene McKinnon have just about the strangest relationship in the world.
James doesn't know how to describe their, um, complex relationship. It's definitely not boyfriend-girlfriend, seeing as McKinnon has been making out with Gideon Prewett (or was it Fabian?) on a couch in the Gryffindor common room every day for the past week.
He doesn't think it's based on mutual hatred like her relationship with Remus, either. McKinnon actually seems to tolerate Sirius, and James has caught her even smiling at him a few times. She doesn't even seem to find him annoying, which is a hard thing to do, seeing as practically everyone finds him annoying at times.
All James can say is McKinnon likes Sirius, and he has no idea why. He doesn't feel like analyzing their relationship any deeper, since it will probably cause his brain to explode.
5. Sirius likes haggis. You know, that absolutely disgusting Scottish sheep guts thing.
James discovered this particular taste at Slughorn's last Slug Club Christmas party. There had been a rather large plate of the stuff, which no one, not even Snivelly, had dared to go near. Somehow, though, the dish had kept disappearing until it was almost gone.
It was Mary MacDonald who had commented on the strange fact that there was no one present at the party who was eating the haggis, but there was also one person missing from the party who came back occasionally with suspicious food stains on his clothes to explain away his disappearances as "a bad case of the runs". From there on, it wasn't exactly hard for James to figure out what had happened to the haggis.
The only thing that worries James is that his own father also likes haggis, and Sirius has brought up many times that it would be good to have as a nice beginning-of-summer dish. James hopes that Sirius will forget about this idea before June, since he really doesn't want to see it on his dining table anytime soon.
6. Sirius is a horrible liar.
The only person worse at lying than him is Remus, who actually starts blushing horribly (seriously, his entire face turns completely red) whenever he lies. If the two of them had to team up and lie to get themselves from being killed, they'd be dead in a second. Like the haggis on his dining table, James never wants to see the above (also known as the wonderful duo of horrible liars) come to happen.
7. Sirius is seriously tone-deaf. No pun intended.
Every single bloody morning, James wakes up to Sirius singing—no, belting—in the shower. Right now, Sirius has a Beatles fixation; for a month, James has been treated to Sirius's wonderful rendition of "We All Live in a Yellow Submarine". If he hears the line "So we sailed up to the sun/'till we found the sea of green/and we lived beneath the waves/in our yellow submarine." again, he will personally take Sirius's bottle of Merlin's Most Magical Moisturizer, and smash it into his face.
Really, James thinks that Sirius is purposely trying to suck. He can crank out a pretty good "God Save the Queen", even if his voice always cracks on the second "queen". Peter and Remus seem to have caught on, as Peter now raps out a beat on the sink and Remus (seriously) howls along. This supposed "singing" hasn't just lost James his beauty sleep (does Sirius really need to wake up at seven in the morning?), though.
Yesterday, Lily Evans came up to him, and grabbed him by his tie (that sounds more inappropriate now than it actually was. He had been seriously scared for his life.).
"Potter," she had said, faux-calmly, "Did you know that Hogwarts has awfully thin walls?" He had shaken his head frantically, trying to get out of her firm grip.
"Well, now you do. Everyone in the school can hear what you get up to in the morning."
"Ooh, Evans, getting a little inappropriate there, aren't you?" Sirius had said lewdly while walking by, leading to a quick, "Shut up, Black, and get your perverted brain-dead head out of here," from Lily.
"You know what I'm talking about, Potter," she'd continued. "Black's singing is absolutely horrible, and just as a warning, Marlene's threatened at least twenty times to start singing along even more horribly so "you'll know how I feel"; how that'll help, I don't know, but just a side note, Black sounds like an angel compared to her, and she knows it."
James had gulped (seriously, he was already barely getting eight hours of sleep a night), and shakily made a promise to stop Sirius from ever singing in the shower again. Of course, seeing as Sirius had woken him up yet again with tone-deaf notes that are definitely just to annoy them all—this time in the middle of "Ticket to Ride"—he doubts that will happen anytime soon.
8. Sirius really did care for his family, once, and he still might.
James doesn't really want to go any deeper into this topic, seeing as it's one of those things, that even he wouldn't dare touch (and it's also something that will make James feel something mushy inside for his own family, which he really doesn't want happening, because seriously, feeling mushy is not manly at all.). All he can do is restate the fact again, and know that Sirius won't ever really stop caring, somewhere deep inside.
9. Sirius drank eight huge cans of Godric Gryffindor's Brew for the Courageous the night before O.W.L.S., in order to stay up until four AM to "study" (aka. cram).
James was treated to his leg jiggling all throughout their Charms O.W.L. (he believes that this is the sole reason why he got an E instead of an O. Seriously, do you know how much time he spent preparing for it?).
The most unfair thing is, Sirius got an O. Sirius got an O and James didn't. James hates the unfairness of it all.
10. Sirius feels sorry for what happened at the Willow. He really does.
Remus has forgiven him, but Remus is one of those "forgive but does not forget" people (just like Snivellus, except Remus is also one of those people to not visibly show it, unlike the former).
James knows that Sirius will do anything just to get Remus to trust him wholly again, but he also knows that Remus is too cautious to let that completely happen, so they might as well be playing one of those games where no one will ever win.
Sirius keeps trying, though, and James can almost see Remus's resolve breaking down, so—well, James guesses that he'll just have to see what happens and hope for the best.
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