(no subject)
Title: The Right Idea
Author: Nyxty
Rating: R or NC-17 (LOTS of mentions of sex!)
Summary: James tries to find out who Sirius is having sex with after all the girls of Hogwarts go celibate.
Word count: 4, 617
Disclaimer: Not mine!!
A/N: This is just something silly I wrote. It's mostly from James's POV.
James Potter is one frustrated man. And horny. And not Stag Animagus horny. Teenage boy horny.
“Lily?” says James into Lily’s neck.
“Yes?”
“It’s kind of crowded in the common room. Don’t you agree?”
There’s a pause where James feels Lily’s neck pivot sharply against his lips. “No. Not really,” she says.
James swallows and pulls his head back so he can see a close-up, blurry form of Lily’s face. “But, don’t you…or wouldn’t you like to go be alone somewhere?”
The two fiery green blurs that are probably, when less magnified, Lily’s eyes darken slightly. “Why?”
Grinning like mad, James drags one long finger around the outside curve of Lily’s breast. Because he can, (he hopes he can). “I really want to…I mean, I think we should…”
“Have sex?”
James nods. Leave it to Lily to cut straight to the point.
“Urgh,” grunts Lily, throwing James’s hands off her.
“What?” He can practically feel the atmosphere take a drastic turn for the worst.
“I am so sick of you boys,” she says. “Is sex all you can think about?”
“I don’t know. Who else have you been talking to?” James glares at her, completely red in the face and fired up.
“No one, James. Get a hold of yourself.” Lily sweeps her small hands around the cozy, and packed, Gryffindor common room. “Us girls talk. We share stories. About our boyfriends.” She jabs her lovely manicured finger into James’s chest. “And we’re getting pretty sick of the conversation constantly reverting to sex.”
“Well…”
Lily stares at him. “That’s your explanation? Well?”
“Well,” says James again. “We’re men!” Lily makes a ton of disgruntled, affronted, and aggravated sounds. “No, listen! You should hear Sirius-”
“And my existence on this planet is that much better because I don’t have to listen to Sirius Black say anything,” snaps Lily. “Please tell me, where did you plan on going to be alone with me?”
James shrugs, though his answer to that question has been on the tip of his tongue since he discovered his tongue, since he discovered what he’d like to do with his tongue. “Your room,” he says, smiling coyly. James has this fantasy of lying in Lily’s bed, surrounded by everything Lily, and just constantly inhaling.
To James’s amazement, Lily smiles back at him. “You’ve never tried to get up to my room?” she asks.
“No. I’m not a pervert, Lily.” James knows that right now he should make a face showing just how appalled he is that Lily even suggested such a dreadful thing. But, he’s too caught up in feeling ashamed that he never attempted a Girl’s Dorm break-in to muster the strength.
Lily kisses him. It’s a slow-cooking type of kiss. A lazy Sunday kiss. “Sometimes you surprise me, Potter,” she whispers.
James giggles, because he’s secretly a girl, and kisses her back. “Why do you say that?”
“Boys aren’t allowed up on our side. The stairs turn into a slide if you even try it.”
“What kind of cracked-up magic is that?” James turns to look at the girl’s staircase as if it’ll transform simply because a member of the male species is looking at it.
“That’s smart magic,” says Lily.
James turns back around to face her. “You can come up to my room,” he says, not one to lose track of a subject.
Lily laughs, and it’s pitying and hollow. “Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Why?”
Lily’s finger charges out and points across the room. “That’s why.”
The target of Lily’s pointing is an armchair over by the fireplace that is currently occupied by Remus Lupin. Remus is serenely reading one of his many textbooks, without a care in the world, holding his book around the gangly pile of Sirius Black lounging smack dab in his lap. Sirius is rubbing his hands up and down Remus’s chest like an overgrown cat, but he’s looking at James and making obnoxious kissy faces.
James can’t stop the explosion of laughter that escapes him. “Go find a girl, mate,” he shouts.
“Go find a room,” Sirius shouts back.
“We’re trying,” says James. Whoops.
“James Potter,” yells Lily, catapulting herself out of James’s arms, off of the couch, and on to her grounded feet. “Have you even taken in a word of this conversation?”
Man, I love the way Lily’s skirt… “What?” James bends his head down and shakes it roughly. “I mean, yes I have been listening. We’re trying to find a place to go be alone.”
“No,” says Lily. She sounds like a mother explaining to a child that the first letter of the alphabet is definitely not Q. “I’m trying to tell you that I am not having sex with you anywhere inside this castle! Or-” she adds when James makes the bad move of opening his mouth. “Anywhere on the grounds or in Hogsmeade. It’s not happening, James!”
James clears his throat. “Not ever?”
Lily sighs, marking pale tracks with her fingers through her thick red hair. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re waiting till we get out of school.”
“We are?” A bit of James’s hope is slashed off, stepped on, and kicked to the curb.
“I refuse,” starts Lily. And she begins the patent Lily Evans’s Strut of Fury. “I refuse to ruin my reputation as Head Girl, and as a respectable Gryffindor, by getting caught sneaking in and out of unused classrooms with you.”
“But-”
“That is my final word, James.” Lily stops her pacing to lean down, her scary green eyes boring into James’s skull. “Deal with it.”
James can’t deal with it.
No one, except the girls, girls plural, is dealing with it. Girls plural because every other consenting sixth and seventh year Gryffindor lady turned into copycats and jumped aboard the Lily Evans Bandwagon of Celibacy.
The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws also thought it was a stand-up, moral idea and started to reject their boyfriends’ advances too.
The Slytherins didn’t even bother to pretend they joined this new trend. Now they only laugh at the rest of the Hogwarts population’s obvious sexual frustrations.
“This isn’t fair,” moans James into his plate.
“Prongs,” says Remus. He grabs a rather messy chunk of James’s black hair and pulls his head up and away from its eventual coating of pudding. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset at not getting something you’ve never had in the first place.”
“It’s the principal,” says James. “I’m upset on principal.”
“What does that mean?”
James looks around frantically and then grabs an apple from a basket of fruit sitting in the middle of the table. “It’s like this. Here’s a juicy apple. I love this apple and I can’t wait to see what it tastes like. But, out of no where, Voldemort comes along and puts a curse on my apple so that I’ll never be able to eat it ever, but I still have to look at my apple everyday and wonder.”
“Why don’t you just eat another apple?” asks Peter.
“I don’t want another apple! I want this one!”
Peter leans in and looks at the apple in James’s hand. “It’s got a worm hole, Prongs. It’s probably rotten.”
“That’s…wow,” says James, putting the apple back. He takes a look around the hall, to make sure he’s not alone in his suffering. His heart lifts slightly when he sees a group of seventh year Ravenclaws prodding morosely at their own plates of pudding, just like he is.
But his moment of elation is dashed by a snorted giggle.
James spins around and watches Sirius eat three cheery spoonfuls of Owl O’s, smiling and bopping his head and humming to himself.
A behavior, during these dark times, that can only be described as Highly Suspicious.
The situation goes from Bad to Just Please End It All Now. Julia Townsend, a seventh year Hufflepuff, decided to one up Lily and refuse to kiss her boyfriend in public.
Lily fired back with refusing to kiss James at all.
“Why am I being tortured?” moans James, rolling on the floor in his dorm room.
“You’re going to be OK,” says Sirius, flipping a page of his comic book. “It’ll all be over soon. You’ll pull through.”
James stops his tortured writhing and rolling, and sits up. Just over the foot of Sirius’s bed, James can see Sirius half lying against his headboard, looking casual, and comfortable, and content, and everything James isn’t.
“What’s going on?” asks James.
“Hmm?” Sirius barely looks up from his comic book.
“Why aren’t you depressed and in agony like the rest of us are?”
Now Sirius does look at him. “Should I be?”
James pushes his glasses up his nose. “You should be the King of Depression!” He scrambles to his feet and moves to stand next to Sirius. “Your always sneaking off at strange hours and coming back smelling like sex, and, and sperm.”
“Sperm?” Sirius raises his arm and buries his nose into his pit. “Smells like Midnight Breeze to me.”
James makes a ton of disgruntled, affronted, and aggravated sounds. “You know what I mean.” He plucks Sirius’s comic book from his hands and glares at him. “No one I know of is even getting snogged, so why are you so happy?”
“Oh Prongsy,” laughs Sirius. “Kissing is for girls.”
“What?”
“I only kiss people I love.” He quirks his perfectly shaped eyebrow, in a manner a little too chipper for James’s liking. “What else you got?”
“I know you’ve had sex before. And you can’t be having it now. I also know, Padfoot, from eyewitness accounts, that you’re a horrible actor. Tell me your secret!” James doesn’t know what answer he’s looking for. But, if he’s feeling grumpy and hot and bothered, Sirius should be feeling that way too. That’s what they’ve always done. Since they first met on the train seven years ago. They never let the other suffer alone.
Sirius does that irritating smirk thing again. He brings his right hand up and wiggles it in front of his face. “Besides Padfoot,” he says. “It’s a man’s best friend.”
“Oh come on,” groans James. He lets his frustration out by throwing Sirius’s comic book at his face and flopping his heavy, Quidditch trained body over Sirius’s legs. “I’ve been doing that in between classes. Did you think I wouldn’t have thought about doing that?”
“You didn’t think about checking a mirror before you left the dorm today,” says Sirius, trying fruitlessly to pull his legs out from under James. “If I can recall what I saw coming down the stairs, it was a messy haired boy wearing a fuzzy sweater vest on top, and, to finish the outfit, Wormtail’s saggy underpants on the bottom.”
James, ever the limber show-off, does a kind of somersault roll and releases Sirius’s legs. “Still, when it comes to getting off, let it be known I don’t leave a stone unturned!” How’d they get off the subject of Sirius’s curious normalcy, thinks James. “So, if we’ve both increased the hours given to wanking, why is it that I still feel like twice baked shit, and you’re humming? Humming happily.”
Sirius shrugs. “I guess I’m just better at it then you.”
The last thing James needs is a challenge, so he made himself forget all about Sirius’s apparent expertise at self-pleasuring, and focus on more important things.
Like getting Lily to fucking stop the madness.
And when that didn’t work, he went back to dwelling on why Sirius Black is every synonym for happy.
James is in the library of all places. Now that he has no girlfriend to snog he’s become one of those library visitors he and Sirius always make fun of. He’s at the library with Remus. Remus is one of those people they always make fun of.
Remus is also the perfect person to try his latest theory out on.
“Moony?”
“Yes?”
“I have a non-academic question for you.”
Remus takes a second to finish copying something he’ll forget he copied tomorrow before he turns his full attention to James. “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me an academic question, so why even specify?”
“Alright, just answer me this!” James closes his eyes. He’s not here to be angry with Remus. “Are there any whores in Hogsmeade?”
Remus’s eyes go through five different variations on widening. “I can’t believe you, James. I…no, this is something I would have never ever thought you’d do.” James is about to question what he did that is apparently so appalling when Remus pretty much explodes. “You want to have sex that badly that you’re going to just go behind Lily’s back and find a hooker? After all the years of chasing her? After she-”
“Remus!” screams James, grabbing Remus’s face. He shakes Remus’s head roughly. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”
Remus pulls his face away from James’s grip and rubs his red cheeks. “Then why did you ask me if there were whores in Hogsmeade?”
“Everything is fine Madam Pince! Remus was having one of his episodes.” James smiles his smile that always gets him out of trouble and pats Remus gently on the head. “I asked you because I think Padfoot is sneaking out to have sex with random whores in Hogsmeade every night, and, I’m scared that he isn’t sanitary anymore. You know, he’s riddled with diseases now.”
Remus laughs, furthering James’s decent into insanity. “Prongs, there are no whores in Hogsmeade. They’re not going to allow whores to set up shop in an area children frequent. And even if there are, and even if Padfoot is visiting them, I’m sure he’s wearing condoms.”
“But you don’t think he is, do you?”
“No, Prongs. I don’t.”
Damn. “It was still a good theory.”
Remus picks up his quill again, and puts it down. “A theory about what?”
“About why Padfoot’s not going crazy like the rest of us blokes!”
“I’m not going crazy.”
When is Remus going to get it, thinks James. “You’re different, Moony. You’re brainy. You don’t need sex to survive.” James can’t imagine Remus having sex. As far as he knows Remus doesn’t think about sex, Remus is practically a eunuch.
“Might I point out,” says Remus, pompous, arrogant Remus. “That you were surviving just fine before without sex.”
“Can we please focus, Remus? Focus on my theory that Padfoot is having sex somewhere, with someone.” James isn’t buying Sirius’s I’m Good At Wanking line of dog shit for one second. He’s seen Sirius wank off. It wasn’t impressive. Actually It was impressive.
“Hmm,” hums Remus. He has his chin in his hand, his fingers drumming awkward beats across his upper lip. “Who could Padfoot be having sex with?”
“Oh Remus,” says a sweet voice to James’s left. He turns, looks, and all he sees is red hair. Luxuriant red hair waving to and fro, to and fro. “Remus,” says Lily again. She’s leaning over the table so she can reach Remus’s face. “You’re getting ink all over you mouth.” Remus laughs as Lily cleans him up with her wand. “Hi James,” she says, sitting down and facing James.
And now there is no one else on the planet to James Potter but Lily Evans. “Hi,” he manages to say.
“So, James.” Something about the word ‘so’ is making James feel nauseous. Lily looks at him and clears her throat. “I don’t think we shou-”
“No! Oh my God! No! Lily! No!” James leaps from his seat knocking it, the one next to it, a pile of books, a small table, a first year, and another chair over in the process. “Why are you breaking up with me? You can’t! Please! I’ll do anything! ANYTHING!” James drops to his knees. His hair has reached levels of messy previously unheard of. “I don’t need sex, I don’t! You want to remove my cock? I’ll let you. I’ll get rid of it. It’s gone. It’s gone! Just give me another chance!”
“I don’t think we should study together anymore,” says Lily.
“Oh.” James licks his lips. “You aren’t dumping me?”
“No.” Lily laughs. “And I won’t make you cut off your cock. How would you pee?”
“Like a girl,” says Remus. He has half his face hidden behind a large book. Probably hiding his smile. The traitor.
With the least possible noise, and the highest level of coolness, James turns his chair right side up and sits down. Madam Pince seems to have been so irate because of the noise that she’s gone into convulsions on the floor and has yet to demand his removal. “Who are you going to study with then?”
Lily Evans is known for saying whatever she wants to whomever she wants. A look of stricken horror has never crossed her face. Until now. “Sev,” she says quickly.
“Sev…erus Snape?”
A shadow falls over James like a creeping storm. “Do you know any other people your girlfriend calls Sev?”
“Listen James,” says Lily. “Until this war between us girls is over, I can’t be alone with you. It’s too tempting.”
James wants to say something, but all he can do is look back and forth between his gorgeous girlfriend and the reincarnation of death.
“So…I’m sorry, James.” Lily bends down like she’s going to kiss him on the forehead.
“The war, Lily,” says Snape.
“Oh!” Lily springs away from James. “Wow, how stupid am I? I almost caused my own defeat!” She giggles. “I’ll talk to you later, James. Remus.” James watches Lily walk away. Snape begins to turn, but stops and smiles down at James. A smile on Severus Snape’s face is another sign that the end is near.
“Thank you, Potter. From the bottom of my heart,” he says. He saunters away towards Lily.
James turns in his seat, facing Remus. “Is it unmanly to cry?”
Remus shakes his head. “Let it out.”
The next morning Severus Snape sends James a cake (probably laced with poison) and a Thank You card (probably cursed). Neither was touched, but they did officially draw the line.
James has had enough.
“This meeting,” announces James to all of the sixth, and half of the seventh, year Gryffindor boys arranged in a corner of the common room. “I have called this meeting so that we can come up with ways to end this nonsense before Snivellus sends me to an early grave!”
Peter raises his hand. “Shouldn’t we wait for Remus and Sirius?”
James sighs. “I told them to be here at seven! I don’t see what they’re possibly-” James stops talking when the portrait swings open. In strides Remus looking haphazardly put together and out of breath.
“Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs, slinking past James to sit next to Peter. “I ran here. I…I haven’t been myself lately.”
James frowns at him. “We’re with you brother,” he says. Then he looks at the now closed portrait. “Where’s Sirius?”
Remus shrugs. “Thought he was here already.”
James knew he should have either followed Sirius around and made him be on time, or told him the meeting was at six. Sirius’s mental clock seems to run an hour later than everyone else’s. “We’ll start without him. Now…” James grabs a quill and a piece of parchment and looks expectantly around the small group. “Who has any ideas?”
The portrait door slams open, with a loud protesting sound of anger from The Fat Lady. And then the singing starts. “Gooood morning, staaaaarshine! The Earth saaaaays Helloooo! You twinkle above us, we twinkle beloooooow!” Sirius comes twirling and stamping over to the meeting area, singing at the top of his lungs. “Hey, Prongsy! Sorry I’m late.” James stares at him. Just stares like he’s never seen another human being before. “Listen, I got to run up stairs and brush my teeth,” says Sirius. He giggles. “I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth.” Sirius looks over James shoulder and winks at someone that James can’t turn around fast enough to see. It’s either Marlene McKinnon who is laughing at Sirius from across the room, Hector Waters, a sixth year, who is also laughing at Sirius, or Remus who is trying not to laugh at Sirius.
“Potter?” Frank Longbottom pulls at James’s sleeve.
“Wha’?”
“Tell us, what Slytherin is Black getting it on with?”
Frank’s question leads James, and Peter, to do something they never thought they’d ever do in their entire lives.
Talk to Severus Snape.
“We’re only here to talk to him, right?” asks Peter, trying to keep up with the taller boy’s long strides.
“Only talk.”
“We’re not going to kill him, right? Because that would be wrong, Prongs. Wrong.”
“Yes, yes. Not going to kill him.”
Peter nods. “I’d say let me do the talking, but…well, I’m kind of scared of him.”
James stops and puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “We’re all scared of him, Wormy. He’s the anti-Christ.”
“What are you doing down here, Potter?” Snape stops dead in front of them.
“How are you, Sniv-er-Snape?”
Snape takes his wand out and raises his eyebrows.
James puts his hands up. “We’re just here to talk. Not to kill you. I promise.”
“He did promise. I heard him,” squeaks Peter.
“Talk about what?” asks Snape, not putting his wand away. “Talk about how you’re blowing your chances with Lily? Not that I mind.”
“No.” James grits his teeth. “I, actually, I have a question for you.”
“What is it? I’ve got places to be. Your soon to be ex-girlfriend to see.”
“James,” hisses Peter.
“It’s ok. I…have you seen Sirius down here?”
“Black?”
“Yes, because there are so many people in the world named Sirius.”
“No, I haven’t. Why?”
“You haven’t seen him with any girls down here? Or have you heard of any girls from your house meeting him?”
“I wish,” says Snape. And now he does put his wand away. “That I could make your life even worse by saying yes, but…I don’t want to hurt you on false pretenses. I haven’t seen Black down here. In fact, I just saw him go up to Gryffindor with the werewolf.”
“Run, Peter,” says James, as he sends a spectacular bat bogey hex at Snape’s ugly prejudice face.
“Why don’t, we, just, confront, Pad, foot,” pants Peter. They ran from the dungeons to the tower in under two minutes.
“Good, idea. Let’s, go.”
They don’t move. They continue to lean against the wall, panting. Quidditch isn’t exactly a sport you need great lung power for.
“Let’s go,” says James as soon as he can properly breathe. Peter follows him through the portrait, through the common room (where they don’t see hide nor tail of Remus or Sirius), up the Boy’s Staircase, and to the door marked for Seventh Years.
It’s locked.
“Why…?” James looks at Peter like he might have the answers.
Peter gasps and grabs the front of James’s robes. “They have girls in there!”
“Those bastards!” James is excited. “Alright, Peter.” James reaches into his pocket and pulls out his invisibility cloak. “We’ll go under this, sneak in, and surprise attack them.”
“I love the way your mind works,” says Peter, getting under the cloak with James.
“Me too. Alohomora.”
They slip into the room as quietly as two boys hidden under a cloak could manage. They stay still for a second, in case they’ve been caught, but when no one descends upon them in a fury, they move as a unit further into the room.
When they turn the corner around James’s bed is when they see Sirius. He’s sitting on the edge of his own bed, wearing boxers and socks and no shirt and a rather goofy looking smile.
James and Peter stop their tip-toeing and freeze when the door to their bathroom opens and Remus steps out wearing the same outfit as Sirius, right down to the silly grin. Remus walks towards Sirius and he stands up as Remus gets closer.
And then James watches, as Sirius and Remus, kiss.
He watches their lips slip and slide together. Watches Sirius’s tongue lap at Remus’s bottom lip before it’s sucked into his mouth. Watches Remus’s long, very male fingers stroke Sirius’s dark hair. Watches Sirius’s own very male hands travel the length of Remus’s bare back and then slip under his boxers and grab his arse and pull him tighter against his own body.
James and Peter grab each other’s arms in vice-like grips of horror.
Finally they stop snogging and Sirius sits back down with a satisfied sigh. His hands, still under Remus’s shorts, sneak around his hips to his front. Remus moans and Sirius hands come up to rub his sides. They can’t stop looking at each other. “I need you, Sirius,” says Remus. He sits down in Sirius’s lap and rubs and grinds against Sirius’s thighs.
“Fuck, fuck, Moony,” growls Sirius. And when they stand again, and start to remove each other’s boxers, is when James and Peter run the hell away.
“Padfoot and Moony,” says James, once their safely outside the dorm room.
“Moony and Padfoot,” says Peter.
“Sirius and Remus.”
“Remus and Sirius.”
“Black and Lupin.”
“Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, Prongs! Prongs! Did you see the same thing that I saw or was I hallucinating?”
“I saw it,” says James. He’s going to be dreaming about for a long time. The image of his two best friends getting ready to have sex with each other is something he’ll have to kill himself to get rid of. “No wonder he’s been so happy. He’s-” He can’t say it out loud. Then he sighs. “You know, it doesn’t really surprise me.”
“You know.” Peter turns so that his side is against the wall and he’s looking directly at James. He smiles. “With what’s going on with the girls, they kind of have the right idea.”
James raises his wand. “Don’t touch me.”
After dinner, where disaster almost struck because Peter said “Pass the penis” instead of “Pass the peas” to Sirius and almost blew their whole Just Act Cool plan, James decides to confront Sirius and Remus in the common room.
He sits down on the table in front of the sofa they’re sharing and takes a deep breath. “I wanted to find out who you’ve been having sex with Pads, so Peter and I went invisible and snuck into the room earlier where we saw things that almost made us burn our eyes out. Now, why are you having sex with Moony and not me?”
Sirius opens his mouth, then closes it. “What?”
“Obviously you’re having sex with Moony because you can’t…do it…with a girl…oh. Wait, you kissed him.”
Remus looks back and forth between the two. “I’m confused.”
James looks at Remus, and completely misses Sirius’s wild Be Quiet hand movements. “He only kisses people he loves.”
Remus’s cheeks turn bright red and he nods his head. “Prongs, I’m going to help you.” He stands up and marches over to Lily.
James and Sirius stare at each other and have one of their silent conversations that they’re so good at. After a couple of seconds, James smiles and punches the now blushing Sirius in the arm. But before they can have a real conversation, James is pulled off the table by Lily and snogged to an inch of his life.
“What happened?” whispers Sirius, laughing, as Remus sits down.
“I told her that James said he was going to forget waiting for her and have sex with you. And you know what they say about going Black?”
Sirius grins at him. “What do they say, Moony?”
Remus grabs Sirius’s hand and leads him upstairs where he not only tells him, but shows him too.
Author: Nyxty
Rating: R or NC-17 (LOTS of mentions of sex!)
Summary: James tries to find out who Sirius is having sex with after all the girls of Hogwarts go celibate.
Word count: 4, 617
Disclaimer: Not mine!!
A/N: This is just something silly I wrote. It's mostly from James's POV.
James Potter is one frustrated man. And horny. And not Stag Animagus horny. Teenage boy horny.
“Lily?” says James into Lily’s neck.
“Yes?”
“It’s kind of crowded in the common room. Don’t you agree?”
There’s a pause where James feels Lily’s neck pivot sharply against his lips. “No. Not really,” she says.
James swallows and pulls his head back so he can see a close-up, blurry form of Lily’s face. “But, don’t you…or wouldn’t you like to go be alone somewhere?”
The two fiery green blurs that are probably, when less magnified, Lily’s eyes darken slightly. “Why?”
Grinning like mad, James drags one long finger around the outside curve of Lily’s breast. Because he can, (he hopes he can). “I really want to…I mean, I think we should…”
“Have sex?”
James nods. Leave it to Lily to cut straight to the point.
“Urgh,” grunts Lily, throwing James’s hands off her.
“What?” He can practically feel the atmosphere take a drastic turn for the worst.
“I am so sick of you boys,” she says. “Is sex all you can think about?”
“I don’t know. Who else have you been talking to?” James glares at her, completely red in the face and fired up.
“No one, James. Get a hold of yourself.” Lily sweeps her small hands around the cozy, and packed, Gryffindor common room. “Us girls talk. We share stories. About our boyfriends.” She jabs her lovely manicured finger into James’s chest. “And we’re getting pretty sick of the conversation constantly reverting to sex.”
“Well…”
Lily stares at him. “That’s your explanation? Well?”
“Well,” says James again. “We’re men!” Lily makes a ton of disgruntled, affronted, and aggravated sounds. “No, listen! You should hear Sirius-”
“And my existence on this planet is that much better because I don’t have to listen to Sirius Black say anything,” snaps Lily. “Please tell me, where did you plan on going to be alone with me?”
James shrugs, though his answer to that question has been on the tip of his tongue since he discovered his tongue, since he discovered what he’d like to do with his tongue. “Your room,” he says, smiling coyly. James has this fantasy of lying in Lily’s bed, surrounded by everything Lily, and just constantly inhaling.
To James’s amazement, Lily smiles back at him. “You’ve never tried to get up to my room?” she asks.
“No. I’m not a pervert, Lily.” James knows that right now he should make a face showing just how appalled he is that Lily even suggested such a dreadful thing. But, he’s too caught up in feeling ashamed that he never attempted a Girl’s Dorm break-in to muster the strength.
Lily kisses him. It’s a slow-cooking type of kiss. A lazy Sunday kiss. “Sometimes you surprise me, Potter,” she whispers.
James giggles, because he’s secretly a girl, and kisses her back. “Why do you say that?”
“Boys aren’t allowed up on our side. The stairs turn into a slide if you even try it.”
“What kind of cracked-up magic is that?” James turns to look at the girl’s staircase as if it’ll transform simply because a member of the male species is looking at it.
“That’s smart magic,” says Lily.
James turns back around to face her. “You can come up to my room,” he says, not one to lose track of a subject.
Lily laughs, and it’s pitying and hollow. “Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Why?”
Lily’s finger charges out and points across the room. “That’s why.”
The target of Lily’s pointing is an armchair over by the fireplace that is currently occupied by Remus Lupin. Remus is serenely reading one of his many textbooks, without a care in the world, holding his book around the gangly pile of Sirius Black lounging smack dab in his lap. Sirius is rubbing his hands up and down Remus’s chest like an overgrown cat, but he’s looking at James and making obnoxious kissy faces.
James can’t stop the explosion of laughter that escapes him. “Go find a girl, mate,” he shouts.
“Go find a room,” Sirius shouts back.
“We’re trying,” says James. Whoops.
“James Potter,” yells Lily, catapulting herself out of James’s arms, off of the couch, and on to her grounded feet. “Have you even taken in a word of this conversation?”
Man, I love the way Lily’s skirt… “What?” James bends his head down and shakes it roughly. “I mean, yes I have been listening. We’re trying to find a place to go be alone.”
“No,” says Lily. She sounds like a mother explaining to a child that the first letter of the alphabet is definitely not Q. “I’m trying to tell you that I am not having sex with you anywhere inside this castle! Or-” she adds when James makes the bad move of opening his mouth. “Anywhere on the grounds or in Hogsmeade. It’s not happening, James!”
James clears his throat. “Not ever?”
Lily sighs, marking pale tracks with her fingers through her thick red hair. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re waiting till we get out of school.”
“We are?” A bit of James’s hope is slashed off, stepped on, and kicked to the curb.
“I refuse,” starts Lily. And she begins the patent Lily Evans’s Strut of Fury. “I refuse to ruin my reputation as Head Girl, and as a respectable Gryffindor, by getting caught sneaking in and out of unused classrooms with you.”
“But-”
“That is my final word, James.” Lily stops her pacing to lean down, her scary green eyes boring into James’s skull. “Deal with it.”
James can’t deal with it.
No one, except the girls, girls plural, is dealing with it. Girls plural because every other consenting sixth and seventh year Gryffindor lady turned into copycats and jumped aboard the Lily Evans Bandwagon of Celibacy.
The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws also thought it was a stand-up, moral idea and started to reject their boyfriends’ advances too.
The Slytherins didn’t even bother to pretend they joined this new trend. Now they only laugh at the rest of the Hogwarts population’s obvious sexual frustrations.
“This isn’t fair,” moans James into his plate.
“Prongs,” says Remus. He grabs a rather messy chunk of James’s black hair and pulls his head up and away from its eventual coating of pudding. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset at not getting something you’ve never had in the first place.”
“It’s the principal,” says James. “I’m upset on principal.”
“What does that mean?”
James looks around frantically and then grabs an apple from a basket of fruit sitting in the middle of the table. “It’s like this. Here’s a juicy apple. I love this apple and I can’t wait to see what it tastes like. But, out of no where, Voldemort comes along and puts a curse on my apple so that I’ll never be able to eat it ever, but I still have to look at my apple everyday and wonder.”
“Why don’t you just eat another apple?” asks Peter.
“I don’t want another apple! I want this one!”
Peter leans in and looks at the apple in James’s hand. “It’s got a worm hole, Prongs. It’s probably rotten.”
“That’s…wow,” says James, putting the apple back. He takes a look around the hall, to make sure he’s not alone in his suffering. His heart lifts slightly when he sees a group of seventh year Ravenclaws prodding morosely at their own plates of pudding, just like he is.
But his moment of elation is dashed by a snorted giggle.
James spins around and watches Sirius eat three cheery spoonfuls of Owl O’s, smiling and bopping his head and humming to himself.
A behavior, during these dark times, that can only be described as Highly Suspicious.
The situation goes from Bad to Just Please End It All Now. Julia Townsend, a seventh year Hufflepuff, decided to one up Lily and refuse to kiss her boyfriend in public.
Lily fired back with refusing to kiss James at all.
“Why am I being tortured?” moans James, rolling on the floor in his dorm room.
“You’re going to be OK,” says Sirius, flipping a page of his comic book. “It’ll all be over soon. You’ll pull through.”
James stops his tortured writhing and rolling, and sits up. Just over the foot of Sirius’s bed, James can see Sirius half lying against his headboard, looking casual, and comfortable, and content, and everything James isn’t.
“What’s going on?” asks James.
“Hmm?” Sirius barely looks up from his comic book.
“Why aren’t you depressed and in agony like the rest of us are?”
Now Sirius does look at him. “Should I be?”
James pushes his glasses up his nose. “You should be the King of Depression!” He scrambles to his feet and moves to stand next to Sirius. “Your always sneaking off at strange hours and coming back smelling like sex, and, and sperm.”
“Sperm?” Sirius raises his arm and buries his nose into his pit. “Smells like Midnight Breeze to me.”
James makes a ton of disgruntled, affronted, and aggravated sounds. “You know what I mean.” He plucks Sirius’s comic book from his hands and glares at him. “No one I know of is even getting snogged, so why are you so happy?”
“Oh Prongsy,” laughs Sirius. “Kissing is for girls.”
“What?”
“I only kiss people I love.” He quirks his perfectly shaped eyebrow, in a manner a little too chipper for James’s liking. “What else you got?”
“I know you’ve had sex before. And you can’t be having it now. I also know, Padfoot, from eyewitness accounts, that you’re a horrible actor. Tell me your secret!” James doesn’t know what answer he’s looking for. But, if he’s feeling grumpy and hot and bothered, Sirius should be feeling that way too. That’s what they’ve always done. Since they first met on the train seven years ago. They never let the other suffer alone.
Sirius does that irritating smirk thing again. He brings his right hand up and wiggles it in front of his face. “Besides Padfoot,” he says. “It’s a man’s best friend.”
“Oh come on,” groans James. He lets his frustration out by throwing Sirius’s comic book at his face and flopping his heavy, Quidditch trained body over Sirius’s legs. “I’ve been doing that in between classes. Did you think I wouldn’t have thought about doing that?”
“You didn’t think about checking a mirror before you left the dorm today,” says Sirius, trying fruitlessly to pull his legs out from under James. “If I can recall what I saw coming down the stairs, it was a messy haired boy wearing a fuzzy sweater vest on top, and, to finish the outfit, Wormtail’s saggy underpants on the bottom.”
James, ever the limber show-off, does a kind of somersault roll and releases Sirius’s legs. “Still, when it comes to getting off, let it be known I don’t leave a stone unturned!” How’d they get off the subject of Sirius’s curious normalcy, thinks James. “So, if we’ve both increased the hours given to wanking, why is it that I still feel like twice baked shit, and you’re humming? Humming happily.”
Sirius shrugs. “I guess I’m just better at it then you.”
The last thing James needs is a challenge, so he made himself forget all about Sirius’s apparent expertise at self-pleasuring, and focus on more important things.
Like getting Lily to fucking stop the madness.
And when that didn’t work, he went back to dwelling on why Sirius Black is every synonym for happy.
James is in the library of all places. Now that he has no girlfriend to snog he’s become one of those library visitors he and Sirius always make fun of. He’s at the library with Remus. Remus is one of those people they always make fun of.
Remus is also the perfect person to try his latest theory out on.
“Moony?”
“Yes?”
“I have a non-academic question for you.”
Remus takes a second to finish copying something he’ll forget he copied tomorrow before he turns his full attention to James. “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me an academic question, so why even specify?”
“Alright, just answer me this!” James closes his eyes. He’s not here to be angry with Remus. “Are there any whores in Hogsmeade?”
Remus’s eyes go through five different variations on widening. “I can’t believe you, James. I…no, this is something I would have never ever thought you’d do.” James is about to question what he did that is apparently so appalling when Remus pretty much explodes. “You want to have sex that badly that you’re going to just go behind Lily’s back and find a hooker? After all the years of chasing her? After she-”
“Remus!” screams James, grabbing Remus’s face. He shakes Remus’s head roughly. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”
Remus pulls his face away from James’s grip and rubs his red cheeks. “Then why did you ask me if there were whores in Hogsmeade?”
“Everything is fine Madam Pince! Remus was having one of his episodes.” James smiles his smile that always gets him out of trouble and pats Remus gently on the head. “I asked you because I think Padfoot is sneaking out to have sex with random whores in Hogsmeade every night, and, I’m scared that he isn’t sanitary anymore. You know, he’s riddled with diseases now.”
Remus laughs, furthering James’s decent into insanity. “Prongs, there are no whores in Hogsmeade. They’re not going to allow whores to set up shop in an area children frequent. And even if there are, and even if Padfoot is visiting them, I’m sure he’s wearing condoms.”
“But you don’t think he is, do you?”
“No, Prongs. I don’t.”
Damn. “It was still a good theory.”
Remus picks up his quill again, and puts it down. “A theory about what?”
“About why Padfoot’s not going crazy like the rest of us blokes!”
“I’m not going crazy.”
When is Remus going to get it, thinks James. “You’re different, Moony. You’re brainy. You don’t need sex to survive.” James can’t imagine Remus having sex. As far as he knows Remus doesn’t think about sex, Remus is practically a eunuch.
“Might I point out,” says Remus, pompous, arrogant Remus. “That you were surviving just fine before without sex.”
“Can we please focus, Remus? Focus on my theory that Padfoot is having sex somewhere, with someone.” James isn’t buying Sirius’s I’m Good At Wanking line of dog shit for one second. He’s seen Sirius wank off. It wasn’t impressive. Actually It was impressive.
“Hmm,” hums Remus. He has his chin in his hand, his fingers drumming awkward beats across his upper lip. “Who could Padfoot be having sex with?”
“Oh Remus,” says a sweet voice to James’s left. He turns, looks, and all he sees is red hair. Luxuriant red hair waving to and fro, to and fro. “Remus,” says Lily again. She’s leaning over the table so she can reach Remus’s face. “You’re getting ink all over you mouth.” Remus laughs as Lily cleans him up with her wand. “Hi James,” she says, sitting down and facing James.
And now there is no one else on the planet to James Potter but Lily Evans. “Hi,” he manages to say.
“So, James.” Something about the word ‘so’ is making James feel nauseous. Lily looks at him and clears her throat. “I don’t think we shou-”
“No! Oh my God! No! Lily! No!” James leaps from his seat knocking it, the one next to it, a pile of books, a small table, a first year, and another chair over in the process. “Why are you breaking up with me? You can’t! Please! I’ll do anything! ANYTHING!” James drops to his knees. His hair has reached levels of messy previously unheard of. “I don’t need sex, I don’t! You want to remove my cock? I’ll let you. I’ll get rid of it. It’s gone. It’s gone! Just give me another chance!”
“I don’t think we should study together anymore,” says Lily.
“Oh.” James licks his lips. “You aren’t dumping me?”
“No.” Lily laughs. “And I won’t make you cut off your cock. How would you pee?”
“Like a girl,” says Remus. He has half his face hidden behind a large book. Probably hiding his smile. The traitor.
With the least possible noise, and the highest level of coolness, James turns his chair right side up and sits down. Madam Pince seems to have been so irate because of the noise that she’s gone into convulsions on the floor and has yet to demand his removal. “Who are you going to study with then?”
Lily Evans is known for saying whatever she wants to whomever she wants. A look of stricken horror has never crossed her face. Until now. “Sev,” she says quickly.
“Sev…erus Snape?”
A shadow falls over James like a creeping storm. “Do you know any other people your girlfriend calls Sev?”
“Listen James,” says Lily. “Until this war between us girls is over, I can’t be alone with you. It’s too tempting.”
James wants to say something, but all he can do is look back and forth between his gorgeous girlfriend and the reincarnation of death.
“So…I’m sorry, James.” Lily bends down like she’s going to kiss him on the forehead.
“The war, Lily,” says Snape.
“Oh!” Lily springs away from James. “Wow, how stupid am I? I almost caused my own defeat!” She giggles. “I’ll talk to you later, James. Remus.” James watches Lily walk away. Snape begins to turn, but stops and smiles down at James. A smile on Severus Snape’s face is another sign that the end is near.
“Thank you, Potter. From the bottom of my heart,” he says. He saunters away towards Lily.
James turns in his seat, facing Remus. “Is it unmanly to cry?”
Remus shakes his head. “Let it out.”
The next morning Severus Snape sends James a cake (probably laced with poison) and a Thank You card (probably cursed). Neither was touched, but they did officially draw the line.
James has had enough.
“This meeting,” announces James to all of the sixth, and half of the seventh, year Gryffindor boys arranged in a corner of the common room. “I have called this meeting so that we can come up with ways to end this nonsense before Snivellus sends me to an early grave!”
Peter raises his hand. “Shouldn’t we wait for Remus and Sirius?”
James sighs. “I told them to be here at seven! I don’t see what they’re possibly-” James stops talking when the portrait swings open. In strides Remus looking haphazardly put together and out of breath.
“Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs, slinking past James to sit next to Peter. “I ran here. I…I haven’t been myself lately.”
James frowns at him. “We’re with you brother,” he says. Then he looks at the now closed portrait. “Where’s Sirius?”
Remus shrugs. “Thought he was here already.”
James knew he should have either followed Sirius around and made him be on time, or told him the meeting was at six. Sirius’s mental clock seems to run an hour later than everyone else’s. “We’ll start without him. Now…” James grabs a quill and a piece of parchment and looks expectantly around the small group. “Who has any ideas?”
The portrait door slams open, with a loud protesting sound of anger from The Fat Lady. And then the singing starts. “Gooood morning, staaaaarshine! The Earth saaaaays Helloooo! You twinkle above us, we twinkle beloooooow!” Sirius comes twirling and stamping over to the meeting area, singing at the top of his lungs. “Hey, Prongsy! Sorry I’m late.” James stares at him. Just stares like he’s never seen another human being before. “Listen, I got to run up stairs and brush my teeth,” says Sirius. He giggles. “I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth.” Sirius looks over James shoulder and winks at someone that James can’t turn around fast enough to see. It’s either Marlene McKinnon who is laughing at Sirius from across the room, Hector Waters, a sixth year, who is also laughing at Sirius, or Remus who is trying not to laugh at Sirius.
“Potter?” Frank Longbottom pulls at James’s sleeve.
“Wha’?”
“Tell us, what Slytherin is Black getting it on with?”
Frank’s question leads James, and Peter, to do something they never thought they’d ever do in their entire lives.
Talk to Severus Snape.
“We’re only here to talk to him, right?” asks Peter, trying to keep up with the taller boy’s long strides.
“Only talk.”
“We’re not going to kill him, right? Because that would be wrong, Prongs. Wrong.”
“Yes, yes. Not going to kill him.”
Peter nods. “I’d say let me do the talking, but…well, I’m kind of scared of him.”
James stops and puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “We’re all scared of him, Wormy. He’s the anti-Christ.”
“What are you doing down here, Potter?” Snape stops dead in front of them.
“How are you, Sniv-er-Snape?”
Snape takes his wand out and raises his eyebrows.
James puts his hands up. “We’re just here to talk. Not to kill you. I promise.”
“He did promise. I heard him,” squeaks Peter.
“Talk about what?” asks Snape, not putting his wand away. “Talk about how you’re blowing your chances with Lily? Not that I mind.”
“No.” James grits his teeth. “I, actually, I have a question for you.”
“What is it? I’ve got places to be. Your soon to be ex-girlfriend to see.”
“James,” hisses Peter.
“It’s ok. I…have you seen Sirius down here?”
“Black?”
“Yes, because there are so many people in the world named Sirius.”
“No, I haven’t. Why?”
“You haven’t seen him with any girls down here? Or have you heard of any girls from your house meeting him?”
“I wish,” says Snape. And now he does put his wand away. “That I could make your life even worse by saying yes, but…I don’t want to hurt you on false pretenses. I haven’t seen Black down here. In fact, I just saw him go up to Gryffindor with the werewolf.”
“Run, Peter,” says James, as he sends a spectacular bat bogey hex at Snape’s ugly prejudice face.
“Why don’t, we, just, confront, Pad, foot,” pants Peter. They ran from the dungeons to the tower in under two minutes.
“Good, idea. Let’s, go.”
They don’t move. They continue to lean against the wall, panting. Quidditch isn’t exactly a sport you need great lung power for.
“Let’s go,” says James as soon as he can properly breathe. Peter follows him through the portrait, through the common room (where they don’t see hide nor tail of Remus or Sirius), up the Boy’s Staircase, and to the door marked for Seventh Years.
It’s locked.
“Why…?” James looks at Peter like he might have the answers.
Peter gasps and grabs the front of James’s robes. “They have girls in there!”
“Those bastards!” James is excited. “Alright, Peter.” James reaches into his pocket and pulls out his invisibility cloak. “We’ll go under this, sneak in, and surprise attack them.”
“I love the way your mind works,” says Peter, getting under the cloak with James.
“Me too. Alohomora.”
They slip into the room as quietly as two boys hidden under a cloak could manage. They stay still for a second, in case they’ve been caught, but when no one descends upon them in a fury, they move as a unit further into the room.
When they turn the corner around James’s bed is when they see Sirius. He’s sitting on the edge of his own bed, wearing boxers and socks and no shirt and a rather goofy looking smile.
James and Peter stop their tip-toeing and freeze when the door to their bathroom opens and Remus steps out wearing the same outfit as Sirius, right down to the silly grin. Remus walks towards Sirius and he stands up as Remus gets closer.
And then James watches, as Sirius and Remus, kiss.
He watches their lips slip and slide together. Watches Sirius’s tongue lap at Remus’s bottom lip before it’s sucked into his mouth. Watches Remus’s long, very male fingers stroke Sirius’s dark hair. Watches Sirius’s own very male hands travel the length of Remus’s bare back and then slip under his boxers and grab his arse and pull him tighter against his own body.
James and Peter grab each other’s arms in vice-like grips of horror.
Finally they stop snogging and Sirius sits back down with a satisfied sigh. His hands, still under Remus’s shorts, sneak around his hips to his front. Remus moans and Sirius hands come up to rub his sides. They can’t stop looking at each other. “I need you, Sirius,” says Remus. He sits down in Sirius’s lap and rubs and grinds against Sirius’s thighs.
“Fuck, fuck, Moony,” growls Sirius. And when they stand again, and start to remove each other’s boxers, is when James and Peter run the hell away.
“Padfoot and Moony,” says James, once their safely outside the dorm room.
“Moony and Padfoot,” says Peter.
“Sirius and Remus.”
“Remus and Sirius.”
“Black and Lupin.”
“Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, Prongs! Prongs! Did you see the same thing that I saw or was I hallucinating?”
“I saw it,” says James. He’s going to be dreaming about for a long time. The image of his two best friends getting ready to have sex with each other is something he’ll have to kill himself to get rid of. “No wonder he’s been so happy. He’s-” He can’t say it out loud. Then he sighs. “You know, it doesn’t really surprise me.”
“You know.” Peter turns so that his side is against the wall and he’s looking directly at James. He smiles. “With what’s going on with the girls, they kind of have the right idea.”
James raises his wand. “Don’t touch me.”
After dinner, where disaster almost struck because Peter said “Pass the penis” instead of “Pass the peas” to Sirius and almost blew their whole Just Act Cool plan, James decides to confront Sirius and Remus in the common room.
He sits down on the table in front of the sofa they’re sharing and takes a deep breath. “I wanted to find out who you’ve been having sex with Pads, so Peter and I went invisible and snuck into the room earlier where we saw things that almost made us burn our eyes out. Now, why are you having sex with Moony and not me?”
Sirius opens his mouth, then closes it. “What?”
“Obviously you’re having sex with Moony because you can’t…do it…with a girl…oh. Wait, you kissed him.”
Remus looks back and forth between the two. “I’m confused.”
James looks at Remus, and completely misses Sirius’s wild Be Quiet hand movements. “He only kisses people he loves.”
Remus’s cheeks turn bright red and he nods his head. “Prongs, I’m going to help you.” He stands up and marches over to Lily.
James and Sirius stare at each other and have one of their silent conversations that they’re so good at. After a couple of seconds, James smiles and punches the now blushing Sirius in the arm. But before they can have a real conversation, James is pulled off the table by Lily and snogged to an inch of his life.
“What happened?” whispers Sirius, laughing, as Remus sits down.
“I told her that James said he was going to forget waiting for her and have sex with you. And you know what they say about going Black?”
Sirius grins at him. “What do they say, Moony?”
Remus grabs Sirius’s hand and leads him upstairs where he not only tells him, but shows him too.