(And they were never really stars at heart)

[lupercus]

Exams begin next week, and the library is absolutely teeming with worried expressions, sleep-deprivation (though nothing approaching the magifnicent delirium of Draco and Millicent) and panic attacks. Friday evening I escorted two fifth-year Hufflepuff to Poppy after they began gnawing at their books. I have to start keeping Sugar Quills on hand to

Comments

[just_harry]

I'm hungry and you aren't giving me any Sugar Quills, is this the opposite of favouritism?

[lupercus]

How can you possibly be hungry? You ate Canada at dinner tonight.

[just_harry]

Canada's not very filling though. I should have had China instead.

[lupercus]

No, because you'd only be hungry again an hour later.

[just_harry]

Well I'm hungry now anyway. I think you should give me permission to sneak down to the kitchens after curfew.

[lupercus]

That would be favouritism, Mr Potter. I'm not that kind of fellow.

I have biscuits. They were Sirius's, but he is asleep. You can help me eat them all before he wakes up.

[just_harry]

He'll never know it was us. We should take his records and throw them in the lake, too, so it'll look more random.

[lupercus]

That is an excellent suggestion. I should like to start with the Whitesnake.

How can anyone listen to Whitesnake, Harry? Where did we go wrong with him?

[just_harry]

Maybe it's because we're so great he needs something really awful to balance it out.

[lupercus]

That has to be it. There's no other explanation, short of the Imperius Curse.

We'll spare the Queen. That was your mother's influence, anyway. She single-handedly saved Sirius from a complete lack of good taste. We are forever in her debt.

[just_harry]

Really? What else did my mum like?

[lupercus]

The Beatles. She tormented us all by singing a song about a yellow submarine for, I think, the entirety of 1977. David Bowie. Elton John. She also loved an artist named Andy Warhol (something about soup tins), and she would read Tolkien out loud to us in the Common Room during seventh year. She could do an amazing impersonation of Gimli the dwarf.

Sometimes, when you're reading and you think I'm not looking, you look remarkably like her.

[just_harry]

I should read more. I only ever read about Quidditch. Hermione likes the hobbit books but I tried to read one of hers once and I couldn't get through the foreword. I should have tried harder to read them.

[lupercus]

You should read more, but read something you find interesting. Your mother loved Tolkien but your father never read them, I don't think. Sirius has, but Sirius reads everything. You don't have to like all the same things your parents did, Harry. You aren't them, no matter how much you look like them and how much of them I do see in you. You are just Harry, and if just Harry doesn't find Tolkien interesting, no-one's going to be disappointed.

I think you'd enjoy the Chronicles of Narnia, actually. Has Hermione got them? Would she lend them to you?

[just_harry]

Dudley has them in my room, but the religious stuff made me kind of uncomfortable. It kind of seemed like a bit, um, much?

[lupercus]

Yes, the overt Christianity inherent in Narnia is a bit off-putting, but if you can tune it out it's actually quite a compelling read.

There's always that other book series. I hear it's incredibly popular. Though really, it likely does not measure up to all the fuss made about it.

Perhaps you should just stick to those Roald Dahls I gave you.