Feast of Fools
Their Hogsmeade haul was arranged in careful piles between Sirius and James, who were sprawled out on James' bed much more carelessly than the sweets they'd purchased.
"You went to Honeydukes without me!" Peter cried in dismay when he and Remus arrived back at their room. "Why would you do that?"
"Can you blame us?" Sirius asked. When the frown on Remus' face clearly said that yes, he could, he barrelled ahead before they could vocalize their protest, explaining, "It was a constant stream of 'Wow, look at how neat Hogsmeade is! Can you believe they have owls here? It's a good thing I've never been here before and have no idea what it looks like.' Bloody annoying."
"And bloody obvious," James added, unwrapping a Chocolate Frog and tossing the card to Peter.
Peter's face was already red from being ditched, but it got ruddier still even as he fumbled to catch the card and shove it into his pocket without even looking at who it was. "You know it was supposed to be our first trip there. We would get in so much trouble if anyone found out we'd snuck out there before."
"The only reason we might give anyone reason to suspect we'd been there before was because you were being so obvious about it," said Sirius.
"You could have at least asked us to quiet down," said Remus, pretty magnanimously considering he hadn't been the one causing the problem. That was all Peter and his over-acting. "Or told us that you were taking off."
"Instead of just disappearing!" Peter said. "We spent the whole afternoon looking for you."
"Why'd you do something stupid like that?" asked Sirius because he wasn't going to let Peter make him feel guilty for ruining his and Remus' Hogsmeade trip, not when Sirius' actions had saved his owned from being likewise ruined. "We had a perfectly marvellous afternoon, hit Honeydukes and Zonko's."
"We didn't know where you went or what happened to you," said Remus, quietly. Apparently, James was a softer touch than Sirius, since he looked down at the pile of sweets they'd brought back and bit his lower lip.
"We bought some for you. Help yourself," James said, pushing the pile of sweets towards the other boys.
That was enough to make Peter finally shut up and stop scowling. He was already reaching for the pile of sweets when he pulled up short, the frown returning.
"Are those—what flavour—you can't trick me!" He was pointing at the distinctive red lollipops laying next to the Chocolate Frogs.
Sirius snatched them up. "Those aren't for you," he said
Remus sighed at all this. "Do I even want to know what you're planning on doing? Or is it best to just try to act surprise and deny everything when Professor McGonagall starts demanding answers?"
"Have more faith," said Sirius. "These are for me."
"No they aren't," Peter argued, a stubborn tilt to his mouth as if to prove that he was not going to let himself be tricked.
"They are," James piped in.
"Why do you have them, then?" Remus asked to forestall the argument.
"I figure I might as well get used to the taste," said Sirius, then shared a significant glance with James when Remus and Peter looked nonplussed at the explanation. James decided to take pity on their less brilliant roommates.
"He's decided to turn into a bat when we get the Animagus spell down. The blood-flavoured lollipops are to prepare for that."
"It'll be great. That way we can both be creatures of the night.," said Sirius, enthusiastically. He raised his arm, draping it across the lower half of his face so that only his eyes peaked out. "I vant to suck your blood.".
For once, there was no hint of the concern or gratitude that usually fought for dominance on Remus' face when they brought up their plans for helping him deal with the werewolf problem. Instead, he continued to look skeptical. "Er... I'm pretty sure you can't choose a vampire for your Animagus form."
"Vampire bat," James corrected quickly. "It's a real animal. And I'm pretty sure it drinks blood, too, at least the weird ones from South America do."
"And if I'm going to be a bat, I'm going to be a blood-sucking bat," said Sirius, because otherwise what was the point.
"So eat up," said James, happily, pushing one of the lollipops into Sirius' face.
But Remus hadn't budged. "Er..." he hesitated again. "You also know you don't get to choose what form of Animagus you are, right?"
James made a sound like a high-pitched whine and flopped over so that right arm and knee hung off the bed. "Why did you tell him that? I had him convinced eating enough blood-flavoured lollipops would help psych him for the transformation."
"You did not," said Sirius. "I knew you don't get to choose."
He answered swiftly and decisively so that the others wouldn't doubt that he'd known James' plans the entire time and had just been humouring him. But they were supposed to be best mates and James was presenting too tempting a target, so he kicked out to push him onto the floor. James fell with a sound that might have been a cry of pain or it might have been a snigger of laughter, Sirius didn't care to decide. With some dignity, he twirled the lollipop around in his fingers as if bored.
"I was only going to eat it to trick Peter into eating the Cockroach Clusters," he continued. "Really, Remus, did you have to go and ruin all of our fun?"
"Why would I eat a Cockroach Cluster?" Peter's face was going to permanently stay that shade of red at this rate. Sirius supposed it was a good show of House pride.
"Because that's what toads eat," said Sirius. His answer did nothing to calm Peter down.
"Why would I want to eat what a toad eats?" He was even louder than before.
"Did you really waste your money on Cockroach Clusters?" asked Remus.
In answer, Sirius fished out the packets from the smallest pile and tossed them, one at Remus and one at Peter. James had rolled himself so he was now seated on the floor beside the bed, only his head peeking out, so Sirius threw a Chocolate Frog at him for good measure, failing to get it to bounce down the back of his robe like he was aiming to do, but hitting him with a pretty good thwack behind the ears nonetheless.
"It's not a waste of money," said James, throwing the frog back at Sirius, who easily ducked out of the way.
"I don't think you're going to convince anyone in this room to eat them now," said Remus dryly.
"So?" said Sirius after dismissing the idea that he should prove Remus wrong by popping open the lollipop right then and there. He wasn't entirely sure it would convince the other boy that he knew what he was doing all along, nor did he think he'd have any luck with his new plan to get Peter to eat his sweets in a show of camaraderie. "There are plenty of people at the school who aren't in this room right now."
"You might as well say that we wasted our money buying the Acid Pops or Bubble Blast." James named a brand of exploding chewing gum.
"You bought..." Remus trailed off, shaking his head. "Of course you bought."
James turned his head, sharing an evil grin that Sirius was sure was identical to the one on his own face. "Gentlemen, please allow us to present: Plan B."
"We did have loads of time to think about it after we left you in Hogsmeade. Pull up a chair, help yourself to a Chocolate Frog," Sirius added, unwrapping one himself. "This is going to be fun."