A/N Hello, my dear readers, I am sincerely sorry for the long wait but updates shall become much faster iwth the new schedule which I shall attempt to stick to.
Thanks to all Reviewers!
Dedication: To TeamKillingFTard, who's review I found to be highly awesome.
Disclaimer: I own nada.
"Let's try to have a sense of order, everyone." McGonnagall ordered attempting to quiet down the Order members.
"Sense of Order. That's funny, Minnie." Sirius cackled.
"Excuse me?" His former transfiguration professor questioned. "And, while you no longer need to refer to me as Professor McGonnagall, I do wish that you would call me Minerva."
Sirius waved off her complaint and turned to his girlfriend, Marlene and indicated that she should explain the joke that Minnie was clearly missing out on.
"You see, it's like this, we're the Order of Phoenix, and you told us to have a sense of order. Get it?" Marlene said joining Sirius in his semi-hysterical laughter.
"Remus, I thought I told you to keep them away from the coffee?" Lily Evans Potter admonished. "I have enough trouble keeping track of James and Harry." She said nodding to her husband who was currently ignoring the entire conversation and ostensibly entertaining Harry with the multi-colored bubbles that were emerging from his wand-tip, although it seemed as though James was actually more amused than the baby.
"Looking after these two is a full time job, I'll have you know." Remus replied. "And, they have shall we say very effective ways of getting rid of unwanted visitors."
Sirius and Marlene strove to look innocent in response to this comment.
"Let's just move on, shall we?" McGonnagall asked wearily.
"Yes, let's." Gideon Prewett agreed. "We really need to discuss the sad lack of humor presented by members of the order when facing death eaters."
Minerva blinked in response to this and stared at the first Prewett twin as though he had fallen and hit his head or inhaled dangerous fumes of some sort, which was really not at all unlikely really.
"Honestly, do we have to act like we're facing death every time we fight them?" Fabian jumped in. "I think a little extra humor perhaps the odd hair-color changing jinx would be extremely beneficial, lighten up the mood, you know?"
"Do you know what would really lighten things up around here?" Benjy Fenwick inquired.
"What?" His best friend Caradoc Dearborn, who was known to hang out with the likes of Remus and Dorcas Meadows, asked warily.
"An Order of the Phoenix talent show!" Benjy replied.
"I like it, I like it a lot." Sirius agreed. "I knew there was something I liked about you, Fenwick." He continued approvingly.
The transfiguration mistress began to fervently wish for Dumbledore to show up at the meeting and restore some sense of decorum to the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs. A few minutes after the headmaster's belated arrival she would be wishing they could revisit the talent show idea.
"Thank Merlin, you're finally here." She greeted Dumbledore upon his arrival.
"Yes, I am. And we have very important business to discuss." He said, causing the Ravenclaw order members like Caradoc and Emmeline to give sighs of relief, as well as the more, uh, business/organizational conscious Gryffindors like Minerva, Remus, Lily, Dorcas.
"What's on the agenda today, Professor?" Lily asked.
"Recruitment, ferreting out spies-" Remus listed off, noticing that Peter looked rather nervous at the mention of the last possible activity, but then Peter always looked rather nervous, so Remus shrugged it off.
"Better." Dumbledore replied.
"Defensive Spells?" Emmeline Vance suggested.
"We are going to eat Oreos."
As one the Order of the Phoenix gaped at the Headmaster, either because they had no idea what an Oreo was or because they thought he'd been inhaling too many potion fumes.
"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." Dumbledore recited.
"Sun Tzu, The Art of War." Remus identified promptly.
"Wow, Remmie." Sirius said. "I never thought one person could be so nerdy, you even beat Vance and Dearborn, they'll probably cry themselves to sleep tonight."
Emmeline shot him a withering look.
"You know you love me, Vance." Sirius called down the table, blowing a kiss to the Ravenclaw witch, which prompted Marlene to slap him over the head with a rolled up copy of Witch Weekly.
"Keep your eyes over here, Black."
"Ooh, last name, someone's in trouble." James said in a sing-song voice.
"Yes, dear." Sirius replied leaning over to kiss Marlene lightly on the lips before pulling out his wand and using it to gain his revenge on his so-called best friend.
"I really must protest." James began. "This rhyming will give me no rest."
"Let's try to stick to the task at hand, shall we?" Minerva asked, ignoring the now Dr. Suess-esque James. "I'm afraid, I don't understand how consuming a cookie is going to help us know ourselves better."
"You see, based on how you eat Oreos your true personality is revealed." Dumbledore explained. "Thus, we will achieve a better understanding of ourselves, which will allow us to defeast our enemy."
"That seems interesting." Minerva replied diplomatically. By which she meant: 'the sooner we finish with this crackpot scheme the sooner we can move on to more important business.'
Dumbledore waved his wand and several packs of Oreos, along with enough glasses of milk for every order member appeared on the table. "Now who wants to go first?" Dumbledore asked beaming at everyone.
"Why don't you go first, Headmaster?" Marlene suggested.
"An excellent suggestion, my dear girl." Dumbledore replied. He waved a glass of milk and an Oreo over to him and proceeded to dunk the cookie. "Minerva if you would be so kind as to read us the description...?"
"Every one likes you because you are always up beat. You like to sugar coat unpleasant experiences and rationalize bad situations into good ones. You are in total denial about the shambles you call a life. You have a propensity towards narcotic addiction."
"I wonder if lemon drops count as a narcotic." Marlene mused, which incited some intense discussion before Minerva silenced them all with her most stern glare, ie. the one she reserved for joint classes of seventh year Gryffindors and Slytherins.
"Now what does this teach us about me that can be useful in fighting Voldemort?" Dumbledore inquired ignoring the flinches of several members.
Meanwhile, about half of the members began feverishly trying to answer his question, while the others (James, Sirius, Marlene, and the Prewett twins) transfigured their cookies into mini-warriors and attacked each other with them.
"That your tendency to sugar-coat how bad the situation is might lead to unpleasant effects later on." Dorcas suggested.
"Right you are." Dumbledore replied. "Now that we've moved closer to understanding my flaws, let's move on, we'll go counterclockwise around the table shall we? Elphias, you're up." Elphias as it turned out consumed his in small quick bites.
"Your boss likes you because you get your work done quickly. You always have a million things to do and never enough time to do them. Mental breakdowns and suicides run in your family. Valium and Ritalin would do you good." This time it was Emmeline who read off the description, Minerva having turned her attention to stopping the Oreo cookie battle.
They spent several minutes discussing Elphias before moving on Dedalus Diggle, who shared Dumbledore's dunking habit. Then, they moved on to Emmeline, who ceded the task of reading off the descriptions to Dorcas.
Emmeline who took slow, meticulous bites (to the point where Sirius called for her to hurry up before he died of boredom), earned the following description: "You follow the rules. You're very tidy and orderly. You're very meticulous in every detail with every thing you do to the point of being anal retentive and irritating to others. Stay out of the fast lane if you're only going to go the speed limit."
"Now what is the problem with this personality type?" Dumbledore asked the room at large.
"Well, it could prevent anything from getting done due to it's extreme slowness in decision making." Sirius piped in, momentarily turning his attention away form his Oreo cookie battle, for the sake of tormenting Emmaline which was one of his favorite tasks in life.
"Let's move on shall we?" McGonnagall suggested, because if she had learned one thing from her seven years of teaching Emmeline and Sirius it was that any battle between the two of them needed to be nipped in the bud. "Prewetts one and two your next." She ordered.
Gideon and Fabian looked as though they resented being referred to in such a way, as well as being interrupted mid-battle, but they sighed and seized an oreo and proceeded to, in freakish unison, to twist apart the cookie and eat the inside and than the cookie.
"You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong. You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior." Caradoc recited. "Your turn Benjy." He informed his best friend. "This means you consume life with abandon; you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you with their children." He rolled his eyes at this description of his best friend although he could find no fault with it.
"You too, Fenwick?" Sirius inquired, demonstrating their similarity by shoving an entire Oreo in his mouth exactly as Benjy had done a few moments earlier.
"You're getting out of order." Caradoc complained.
"Now what can be the problem with this personality type?" Dumbledore asked.
"People with that level of recklessness may be prone to jumping in headfirst without thinking." Emmeline said, gaining revenge for Sirius' earlier remarks. The two were actually friends, deep down, deep, deep down.
"Let's move, shall we?" Cardoc requested. "Frank, how do you eat your Oreos?"
"I just eat them." Frank replied, demonstrating by simply biting into his cookie.
"You are lucky to be one of the 5.4 billion other people who eat their Oreos this very same way. Just like them, you lack imagination, but that's okay, not to worry, you're normal" (1).
Frank shrugged at this description and reached for another Oreo, turning his attention back to watching the ongoing battle which now included forts for the oreo soldiers to hide out in.
"Alice, you're next." Alice as it turned out was a dunker prompting Caradoc to read off the following description: "Every one likes you because you are always up beat. You like to sugar coat unpleasant experiences and rationalize bad situations into good ones. You are in total denial about the shambles you call a life. You have a propensity towards narcotic addiction."
Alice had been notorious as the mediator in the Gryffindor girl's dormitory in the Marlene and Dorcas vs. Lily and Mary battles that had gone on for several years, due to Marlene's close friendship with Sirius and James who Lily was less than fond of to say the least (2).
Dorcas and Remus, next in line both reached for an Oreo at the same time and promptly retracted their hands, turning bright red and prompting Sirius and James (who had just gotten the rhyming spell off) to launch into a song which went thus: "Dorcas and Remus sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage."
They responded by causing it to begin raining only above Sirius and James, and the rain seemed to bounce off the floor and another surfaces only making the two Marauders wet. Harry, also seemed to be immune to the rain as although he was sitting on James' lap he did not get wet.
Dumbledore cheerfully ignored this chaos and motioned for Caradoc to read off the description for Remus and Dorcas: "You follow the rules. You're very tidy and orderly. You're very meticulous in every detail with every thing you do to the point of being anal retentive and irritating to others. Stay out of the fast lane if you're only going to go the speed limit." Sirius rolled his eyes at Remus for his cookie eating result.
"Hey, Caradoc!" Marlene said suddenly.
"Yeah?" He asked cautiously. He had learned that proceeding with caution was a wise move when dealing with Marlene.
"Remember back during first year when we were partners in Charms?" Marlene asked and continued without waiting for his response. "And I asked you if you had ever fed carrots to a deer, on account of your name sounding like carrot?"
"Unfortunately." He replied.
"You never answered my question. Have you ever?"
"Ever what?" He asked.
"Fed carrots to a deer." Marlene said in an exasperated tone.
"No, can't say that I have."
"We really need to fix that one of these days, you know James has a special affinity with deers." Marlene informed him. James glared at her from beneath his raincloud.
"We'll get right on that." Caradoc assured her. "Now how do you eat your Oreo?" He asked.
"Same as James." Marlene replied.
"You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong. You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior."
"I am not a compulsive liar." She protested.
"What do you call that time during seventh year when you orchestrated that scheme to sneak Sirius into Disney World by pretending to blind yourself?" Remus asked.
"Okay first of all, I did not pretend to blind myself. I actually blinded myself. Second of all being a compulsive liar makes it seem like I just lie every time I speak, I only lie for very specific and important reasons (3)." Marlene argued.
"You blinded yourself on purpose?" McGonnagall shrieked.
"Um. No?" Marlene asked more than stated.
"Now, now, Minnie, it was all for the greater good." Sirius defended.
"Trapping Professor Jenson and I on a field trip to Disney World with the most ill-behaved combination of students that ever hit Hogwarts?" McGonnagall inquired.
"Oh, that was her name?" James asked.
"You see back during third year we weren't paying any attention when she told us that information because we were busy..." Sirius stopped speaking abruptly. "Maybe it's best you don't hear what we were doing." (Which happened to be telling Peeves the password to the Slytherin dormitory, one of the many crimes they had been suspected of without evidence).
"And, after that it just seemed too late to ask." Marlene finished.
"Perhaps, we should just wrap this meeting up." Dumbledore suggested taking in the vein throbbing in Minerva's forehead and the general destruction permeating the room from the soaking wet Sirius and James to the scattered remains of Oreo soldiers.
"That's the best suggestion he's had all day." Dorcas muttered to Remus.
"I feel we've made some excellent progress, however, we will continue with this quest to know ourselves better in future meetings." Dumbledore said.
"Oh great." McGonnagall said under her breath.
"What was that, Minerva?"
"I said, can't wait." She replied before fleeing the room along with the rest of the order members.
A/N In compliance with my new updating schedule this story will be updated every Monday.
(1) I've always viewed Frank as just sort of an normal, sort of dependable guy, albeit an exceptionally talented wizard.
(2) For more on the early school years of the Marauders as well as the Lily vs. Marlene dynamic read our story: Si Fecisti Nega! If you did it, deny it!: http : / www . fanfiction . net /s / 4276228 /1/ Si _ fecisti _ nega _ If _ you _ did _ it _ deny _ it
Simply remove the spaces.
(3) On the fake blindness incident read our story Muggle Studies:
http :/ www . fanfiction . net /s/ 3977089 /1/ Muggle_Studies
Both of these stories are housed under the account SiRiUsLyPiNkAnDgReEn
And, finally for more on Marlene and her awesomeness check out my newest story: The Life and Times of Marlene McKinnon.
Review!