Prompts:

The Ball Challenge - Write about a wardrobe malfunction.

[action] Making a dramatic entrance

[trait] Confident

[setting] Stage

Warnings: swearing, mentions of nausea, splinching

Sirius still wasn't a hundred percent sure how he had ended up here, being sewn into robes that were far too tight to get in over his head and barely fit him as they were.

One second, James was making Sirius join him on his quest to prove to his "Lily flower" that he was responsible by joining Dumbledore's voluntary group, (which usually consisted of them doing boring tasks such as helping first-years study for their exams or leading the board of governors on tours around the school), and the next, he was behind a makeshift stage being dressed up as Death for a dramatic rendition of the tale of the three brothers.

The left side of the stage had been turned into the men's dressing room, the right side into the women's, which meant Lily got the whole right side to herself while the boys all had to change in front of each other. Sirius usually wouldn't care as he was on the Quidditch team and he had showered in front of most of these boys but Snivellus was extremely unwelcome.

It didn't help that he was the only one who knew how to sew things so now he was the one stitching the back of Sirius's costume, and he had already stabbed Sirius ten times with the Merlin-damned needle.

It felt as though Sirius was being stitched into a corset. The movement of his torso was getting more limited with every new stitch Snape added. And as Snape stabbed him for the eleventh time while mumbling the least sorry sounding sorry, Sirius once again wondered about the ethics of Dumbledore not allowing them to back out after finding out his surprise task.

Finally, with one final stab in his lower back that made Sirius have to remind himself once again that he did not wish to spend his last night ever at Hogwarts in detention, Snivellus announced that he was done.

As Sirius looked around the room, he silently thanked his lucky stars that at least he wasn't playing one of the brothers. The clothes in the fourteen hundreds had certainly been a….choice. He couldn't tell who looked more idiotic; James, Frank, or Snivellus.

Wait he could. It was Snivellus. But between James and Frank, he supposed. The only person he envied was Remus, who as the narrator got to stay backstage in his normal clothes. He couldn't help but give him a half-hearted glare when Remus looked up from his script to snicker at Sirius.

Sirius pushed aside the curtains to check the audience and was horrified to see his parents sitting at the front.

In fact, it looked like all of their parents seemed to have been given front seats which meant this was Dumbledore's doing.

It looked as though his father had brought with him every single living member of the Black family. His blood takes up seemingly most of the second row.

He finally sank behind the curtains when his grandfather, Arcturus, caught his eye and gave Sirius a once over before his lips twitched in repressed laughter.

Once everyone was dressed, Dumbledore went and got Lily and made them stand in a circle to give them a pep talk.

"Now remember students, depending on how you all perform tonight and how the audience responds, this may become a Hogwarts tradition! So put your best foot forward and maybe one day you'll sit among the audience watching your own children! Now, don't be nervous and try to have fun! Places, everyone!"

And on that not-at-all-stressful note, James, Snivelly, and Frank climbed to stand on the side of the stage, waiting for Remus to start narrating. Professor Flitwick lowered the lights which silenced the audience as Remus began, "There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely winding road at twilight…"

Sirius took a deep breath preparing himself for his cue to Apparate onto the stage.

"...they found their path blocked by a hooded figure."

Dumbledore had opened the stage from the anti-apparition wards specifically for the performance, so Sirius Apparated into the cloud of black smoke provided by Flitwick, and he took great pleasure at the sound of the audience oohing as the smoke pooled at his feet, revealing him.

The three boys before him feigned shock with differing levels of believability.

Sirius moved his arms according to Remus's words, handing the objects exactly on cue to each corresponding brother. He grinned at James as he pulled out the true invisibility cloak and handed it to Frank, who gave them both a dubious look, probably expecting some final prank. Finally, he stepped out of the way and allowed his friends (and Snape) to pass him, letting the stage roll until he was out of sight before jumping off. So far, so good.

James was up first, as the first brother. Theatrics were never James's strong suit and they certainly weren't Peter's. He watched the two almost robotically go through the motions of their duel before James turned to address the audience to brag about "the Elder Wand" (which was a transfigured stick, courtesy of Professor McGonagall).

Remus paused, waiting for James to deliver the monologue Dumbledore had written him, but as he turned to address the audience, he seemed to lose his train of thought, simply holding the wand and not speaking.

Sirius couldn't tell if James had been overtaken by stage fright or had forgotten his lines, but he stood there staring at the audience for what felt like forever, opening and closing his mouth like a fish before Remus, seeing James struggling, swooped in, reading James' monologue off the script, as James woodenly moved his arms to Remus' words — before practically running to the bed that had appeared on stage, face red, clearly eager to end his scene.

And of course, Peter tripped as he ran upstage to steal the wand from James, snatching it and attempting to run away which caused Remus to yell his next line, "- AND FOR GOOD MEASURE SLIT HIS THROAT!" causing Peter to run back, take out the knife from his pocket, and slide it quickly against James's throat before running faster than Sirius had ever seen Peter run before.

"- and so Death took the first brother for his own." Sirius Apparated on stage again, draping his cloak onto James's form, ignoring how his head spun and feeling the threads on his back dig into his skin in protest for being stretched as he bent over James - before the stage went dark and he and James ran off, letting Snivellus take over the stage as the second brother.

"What the hell was that, James?!" Lily whisper-yelled as James shrugged.

"My aunt was staring into my bloody soul! You know she graduated from W.A.D.A. When she found out I was in the play, she sent me ten bloody pages on how to act naturally! She got into my head!"

Lily shook her head and was about to say more when Remus once again yelled "- the FIGURE of the GIRL he had once hoped to marry appeared!" while looking at Lily, who swore before running onto the stage to stand before Snivellus.

Sirius poked his head out and looked at the crowd of parents who looked as though they were struggling to pretend to enjoy this "play".

Sirius knew Beedle the Bard was probably rolling in his grave from the atrocities they were committing on the stage.

He almost missed his cue just like Lily had, but he managed to Apparate onto the stage just in time so it didn't look too unnatural.

Normally he would've made a snarky comment or would've laughed at the way Snape seemed to sink into his arms or the way it seemed every muscle in the boy's body was shaking, but all those thoughts were pushed to the back when Sirius appeared on the stage behind Snape and intense nausea overtook him.

Dumbledore had warned him that apparating multiple times in a short burst of time would be uncomfortable, especially with Sirius's very limited experience. But he had assured Dumbledore he could do it.

So he pushed the nausea down as he led Snape backstage. He only had to Apparate one more time. To claim Frank's soul as the third brother. He could do it one last time.

And so he sat there taking deep breaths, as Remus read on. He was vaguely aware that he was stretching the stitching on his back to the limit as he slouched in the chair.

"And then he greeted Death as an old friend." This was Sirius' cue, so he stood up, ignoring how his head spun as he Apparated again.

"And went with him gladly departing this life as - Sirius?!" was all Sirius heard as he stumbled, the hem of his cloak getting caught under his feet as he went down. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the sound of ripping fabric and the fact that he was sitting half-naked on the stage floor.

Or the fact that blood was running from somewhere straight into his mouth.

But most of his brain power went into making sure his situation didn't get any worse than it already was. He tried to take a deep breath.

A few people had surrounded him, trying to comfort him, but their voices were merging. He could feel his heart beating in the back of his throat. Nausea rolled in his stomach.

He was vaguely aware of someone petting his hair in a desperate attempt to comfort him.

'Oh fuck' was his last thought as he bent over spilling the contents of his stomach into…. a bucket… where had the bucket come from?

The hand petting his hair was now holding it back while another hand was rubbing his back. The owner of the hands was yelling at someone but the words were not registering to Sirius as he slumped into the person, his head now spinning more violently.

He vaguely felt himself being picked up and carried off as his eyes fell shut, the spinning becoming too much for him.

"Sirius? Sirius! He's waking up. Sirius!"

Sirius opened one eye and was greeted by his friends surrounding him as he lay in a bed in the hospital wing.

"Wha-" He sat up, but nausea overtook him and he laid back down taking deep breaths.

"Don't move too much," James said, placing a comforting hand on Sirius's shoulder. "You got really messed up from apparating so many times. Your parents are in Dumbledore's office screaming at him right now for asking you to do this. They went mental when you collapsed."

Sirius groaned. Great, he had given his parents a reason to make a scene, why did they have to come… for fuck's sake.

He had assured Dumbledore he could handle it. It was his own fault.

"Can't you do something about his eyebrow? He looks mental without an eyebrow."

"I can't just make hair grow, Mr Potter. Besides that's not a medical emergency; he will live without his eyebrow for a few months, I'm sure."

"Can't you at least… I don't know, shave the other one?"

"What are you talking about?!"

"You splinched off your eyebrow," Remus said while holding up a mirror for Sirius to stare at the horror on his face. "Frank saw you and thought you were gonna die. You scared the life out of him."

"Oh, wow, I'm sorry for scaring Frank like that. I'll try not to splinch myself around him again. Wouldn't want to scare him."

His friends snorted before James added, "Honestly, you scared us all, mate, when you just fell like that. I know we're not the best actors, but that was a bit overdramatic, even for you."

Sirius threw his head back and howled alongside his friends. He truly did wonder what had gone through Dumbledore's head when he'd thought of forcing this group into a play, and how long it would take him to make another attempt at it.

He had made one attempt when his father had been in school, to boost morale, and that one had crashed and burned… literally. Maybe Sirius and his friends would get the honour of watching their children suffer through a horrible attempt at their own version of a play.

He couldn't wait.