FIC: Halloween Mayhem I [Harry Potter, Marauders]
Title: Halloween Mayhem
Author: Omnicat v''v
Rating: T
Genre: General, Humor, Angst, light Romance. Deals mostly with the Marauders’ frienship.
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: All seven Harry Potter books.
Warnings: Light swearing, minor physical and magical violence.
Pairings: As of yet unrequited Remus Lupin x ‘Girl who likes Amaryllis Flowers’ (not an OC). Allusions to James Potter x A History of OFCs and Sirius Black x A History of OFCs. Brief Sirius Black x Dorcas Meadows. Suspected Remus Lupin x Lily Evans. Hints of future James Potter x Lily Evans and ‘hints’ of future Remus Lupin x Nymphadora Tonks.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and everything related to him belongs to J.K. Rowling. That’s not me. ‘Amaryllis Girl’ (Shara Carter) doesn’t belong to me either; she is the property of whoever holds the copyrights to Teknoman/Tekkaman Blade.
Summary: [Written for the 2006 Halloween Fanfic Exchange.] Remus goes for the girl and involuntarily causes wide-spread chaos. He’s not pleased. Neither are his friends. Tempers flare, and flare... Will there be a last one to laugh?
Author’s Note: This story is set during the Marauders’ fifth year, before the Snape/Whomping Willow incident, but after Sirius, James and Peter manage to become Animagi and the creation of the Marauders’ Map.
Chapter One; Take Your Positions!
"Are you sure she’ll be there, Lily? I’ve checked the Transfiguration classroom and her office as you suggested, but she wasn’t there."
"Yes, I’m quite sure."
"Are you sure she’ll be alone?"
"Yes, Remus."
"Are you really, really su-"
"Remus, how many confirmations do you need? Tell me, and I’ll give them to you in advance."
Remus hung his head in shame. "I’m sorry, Lily." he mumbled. "I’m just... nervous, that’s all."
Lily shot him a sideway glance as they descended to the sixth floor. She lowered her voice so the small group of second years they passed on the stairs wouldn’t hear her. "Did one of you get into trouble again?"
He looked up wide-eyed, startled from his thoughts. Lily’s face looked worried.
"Trouble? Oh, no, none of us has gotten caught lately - not that we’ve been doing much wrong anymore, of course! Hehe, he. Ahem. No... there’s no reason for concern about our detention records, Lily. The matter I want to discuss with her is more... personal."
That didn’t seem to set Lily’s mind at ease. Quite the opposite, in fact. In his distracted state, it took Remus a moment to realise what she must be thinking.
"Oh!" he stammered. "Oh, no, nothing is wrong with me or my mother either. And Bunny is doing fine. That’s not the kind of personal I meant."
Although he didn’t blush, Lily had gotten to know her fellow Prefect well enough in the months since their appointment to realise that his expression was different than usual. Remus Lupin was a boy prone to look awkward, ashamed, guilty, uncomfortable or otherwise out of place, though Lily could never figure out why. But he never blushed. His pallid face was always just that; pallid. This was a new expression, one Lily had never seen before, and she immediately labelled it as ‘Remus Lupin Expression #089: blushing face’.
He let his gaze drop to his feet when Lily’s eyes widened, mentally preparing himself for the worst, and almost collided with a suit of armour.
"But Remus, I thought your grades were fine!"
Remus didn’t know whether to sigh in relief or groan from embarrassment at the uncalled for loudness of her exclamation, so he did neither. She looked perturbed enough on her own accord, at any rate.
It must be James... she doesn’t get it because he’s such a bad example. "No, Lily. It’s not that either."
"Remus... I’m running out of guesses here." Lily sighed, running a hand through her shoulder length hair. She shot him a quick, tentative glance. "If you don’t have to see McGonagal for your grades or your mother or the guys... then what are you so desperate to discuss with her?"
"Look, Lily - I’ll tell you once I’ve actually done the talking to her bit, okay?" Remus tugged at his collar uneasily. "That way you won’t have to worry about the outcome either, because you don’t know what the possibilities are."
Lily studied his face for a while before she spoke.
"All right. But once you get back to Gryffindor Tower, Mr Lupin, I want to hear all about it." she said, wagging her finger at him sternly.
"I promise." Remus said with a grateful smile, and added under his breath: "Gossip queen."
"Ah! I am not a gossip queen, Remus Lupin!" She slapped him playfully, and they covered the remainder of the distance to the teachers’ lounge chasing after each other. Still chuckling, they slowed down when they rounded the last corner to catch their breaths. Lily turned to Remus and squeezed his arm reassuringly.
"Whatever it is you want to do in there, good luck. And remember - a promise is a promise."
Remus nodded, smiling weakly. "Thanks, Lily."
She waved and sped off.
Remus took a deep breath, readjusted his collar, stopped - I must be mad, doing something like this - reminded himself of his goal, gathered up his courage, and knocked.
"Come in."
McGonagall looked up when he closed the door behind him. "Mr Lupin. What can I do for you?"
Remus scraped his throat. "I - That is... I - er..." Damnit Lupin, are you a weremouse? After taking a deep breath he looked McGonagall straight in the eye. "This may sound strange, professor, but I came here to ask you if you could tutor me for a few weeks."
As expected, McGonagall’s eyebrows shot up above her square spectacles. "Tutor you? That is indeed surprising, as you are ahead of what you should know and be able to accomplish in my class. And I seem to remember Mr Black telling Mr Pettigrew off once for accepting extra tutoring because, and I quote: ‘Marauders do not, never, ever, collaborate with teachers’."
"Well, it’s... there’s actually only one thing I’d like to learn. How to conjure... certain objects from thin air."
McGonagall’s eyes narrowed. She put her quill away and screwed the lid onto her ink-well before looking at him sternly. "A reasonable request, Mr Lupin, were it not coming from you. Frankly, your record works against you. Lately you have been suspiciously lax in your prefect’s duties."
Almost wincing, Remus remembered the the fight Sirus and Severus Snape had gotten into a week ago; Sirius and Severus had stood facing each other, wands drawn and with their intentions written plainly in the angry contortions of their faces, and Sirius had told Remus to either look away or give him detention. Remus had only been saved from having to decide by the appearance of Alice Longbottom, a sixth year Prefect from Hufflepuf.
"So I will have to ask you exactly what you want to use this advanced skill for." McGonagall finished, snapping Remus back to the present - which was hardly less stressful.
"Flowers." Remus blurted out, before he could lose his nerve. "Amaryllis flowers. They’re her favourite, but they don’t grow anywhere near here, so importation spells don’t work."
McGonagall looked stunned. Remus ducked his head, biting the inside of his cheek. Don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, you’re just trying to impress a girl, perfectly normal for a guy your age even if you do hold a potentially deadly secret, he told himself. He missed the peculiar expression that crossed McGonagall’s face.
"Mr Lupin?"
He looked up. McGonagall seemed to be sizing him up. "Is there a time limit?"
Though he hadn’t exactly expected her to laugh or send him away saying his plan was ludicrous, it was still hard for Remus to believe his own ears.
"Two weeks. Until Halloween." he squeaked.
McGonagall nodded curtly. "Then I suggest we start with something more simple than a flower. Like chocolate. Then maybe move on to stuffed toys, and finally flowers. Flowers are particularly difficult to conjure up correctly, but I’m sure you’ll be able to do it, Mr Lupin."
Remus was only barely able to prevent his mouth from falling open. It occurred to him that his strict, unyielding Transfigurations professor had once been a teenage girl herself.
"Don’t stand there like a stranded troll, Mr Lupin. We have work to do."
Though he found it hard to imagine what kind of girl.
"Screwdriver..." Sirius peered under the bed. "Ooohhh, screwdriver..."
He bounced off of his bed only to dive headfirst onto James’s. He crawled over to the edge and peered underneath this bed too.
"Where are you, screwdriver? There’s an immensely beautiful machine in the making just begging to get its screws screwed in and out by you."
He bounced on to Peter’s bed, knocking the pudgy boy over and spilling ink all over his Potions homework, and pauzed momentarily, snatching the rolls of parchment from Peter’s grasp.
"You’re still working on this stuff?"
Peter made a pained face. "I can’t figure out what those other uses of moonstone are! Could you help me?"
"No way, I finished that nonsense a week ago, I’m not doing it again."
He threw down the parchment and bounced back to Remus’s bed on the other side of the room, using the other beds to get there. Peter whimpered pitifully as he tried to save his crinkled and smudged work.
Not having found his screwdriver, Sirius flopped down, crumpling Remus’ bed sheets, and called out: "James?"
No reply. But the silence did make him aware of the suspicious noises that could only come from the Gryffindor boys’ bathrooms, particularly on Marauder Hours. Sirius remembered he’d seen their ‘Keep Out, or Face Our Wrath’ sign (decorated with enchanted stick figures performing various forms of gruesome torture) on his way up. And now that he thought about it, there was a funny taste to the air.
"OI, PRONGS! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?"
"Exploding dungbombs filled with paint." came the faint reply.
Sirius was impressed.
"Not too shabby." he mumbled. He somersaulted backwards off of Remus’ bed and strolled out of the dormitory. After a quick peek inside the bathroom to check out James’s equipment, he kept his extremities on the stairs. Unlike James, he didn’t wear glasses, after all, and he didn’t like the thought of getting untested concoction in his eyes.
"Getting anywhere yet?"
"The kitchens, maybe," James grumbled. "I’m starving. But so far I haven’t been able to find any paints that don’t absorb and nullify the smell."
"You don’t happen to have my screwdriver in there, do you?"
"Not me. Didn’t Moony borrow it the other day?"
"What does Remus need a screwdriver for?" asked Peter, who wandered over to them, having given up on trying to restore - let alone finish - his homework.
Sirius smirked and stuck his head around the doorpost to catch James’ reaction. "He wants to fix the Wireless so we don’t have to always listen to what the girls are listening anymore."
He quickly withdrew his head again. A misleadingly innocuous sizzling sound was all that warned them for the explosion that followed. Crystal shattered, tin clattered, ingredients squashed and James screamed. Sirius howled with laughter.
He came stumbling from the billowing black dungcloud, coughing and looking positively horrified. "Fix the Wireless?! How can he - uchah, uchack - do that to me? My second best friend!"
Sirius let out a last bark-like laugh before. "Using muggle equipment to sidestep the magic is an ingenious idea. I for one plan on thanking him if he gets it done. If I have to listen to Celina Warbeck till the wee hours of night one more time I think I’ll go -"
"Where is he?" James looked like a stereotypical demon, black with soot, hair straight on end, frothing at the mouth and wide-eyed. "If I get my hands on him I’ll - I’ll - I’ll take his screwdriver away! I’ll hide it somewhere he’ll never find it again and then I’ll hex him so badly he’ll never be able to come near the Wireless again!"
"Hey! You will not do anything with my screwdriver!"
But James wasn’t listening. He stormed into their common room, looking like... well, looking more like the madman he already looked like.
"Where is he, where is he?! If I find out he’s tampered with the Wireless I swear I’ll..." he kept muttering as he tore sheets off beds and peered under them, threw the lids off of trunks to Summon ‘iron stuffs’ and kicked the circular rug in the centre of the dormitory aside. Sirius could have told him he’d already looked in all those places and then some, but decided against it and took out his camera instead. The new heights of insanity Lily Evans managed to push James to ever since she’d first used her new Prefect’s authority to dock points from him were unprecedented. Maybe it was because James and Lily had already been at war with each other for years before James finally lost his head completely, but none of James’s other crushes had ever caused such extreme reactions, and Sirius was determined to record every twitch and fleck of drool, before the mania died away again and James would return to his ‘normal’ romantic routine. Even if the scientific research didn’t go anywhere, it was something he couldn’t deny the posterity.
The flash jolted James back to his senses.
"Huh?" he said, blinking his eyes. "Where’s Remus?"
"Not here. Fancy looking for him?"
"Sure..." Still dazed, James wiped his glasses on the rim of his shirt and followed Sirius down the stairs. Peter followed them, as usual more or less unnoticed. On the way down, they encountered Lily Evans, who was on her way up. Sirius hardly spared her a glance, but James went into immediate (and by now quite predictable) Evans-overload.
"Lily, darling, have you finally realised you are made for me and decided to make your negligence towards my feelings up by treating me to a naked massage in the privacy of my four-poster?"
She casually slapped him across the head in passing.
"Oi, Evans, you’re not thinking of going where I think you’re going, are you?" Sirius said casually, not bothering to stop his lazy downward sauntering.
"That depends, Black. But with your level of brain-activity in mind, I doubt it."
"You have a point there; my superior way of thinking could very well have bypassed your simple motivations without realising it."
"Ah yes, ignorance is bliss, they say. You must be on a permanent high."
"Indeed. Though it is still beyond my grasp why I haven’t been appointed God yet."
"Try the madhouse, I’m sure they’d love to have you as their God, there."
At this, Sirius finally stopped to look back. "Evans, that one was old! You already used it last Friday during Charms. What’s wrong with you?"
Lily’s frozen back looked caught. "Nothing."
"What are you up to, Evans? That’s the boys’ staircase you’re walking up, in case you hadn’t noticed." Sirius said, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Lily turned around to him with a defiant look in her eyes.
"What I am doing is none of your business, Sirius Black. I am a Prefect, in case you’d forgotten, and as such I have as much right to be here as you do."
"Padfoot, leave her alone, don’t you see we have business to attend to?" James said as he trotted up to Lily, arms outstretched. "My sweetheart, let’s get -"
"Away from me, you filthy pervert!" Lily finished with her wand between James’ eyes.
Any other, saner lad would have taken the hint. But let’s not forget this is fifteen-year old James Potter we’re dealing with.
"But Lily, what can possibly be filthy about the physical manifestation of our love? Your body and mine, entwined together for a heated dance, skin to - ack!"
With a pang, James was suspended in midair. Upside down. Sirius couldn’t help but laugh. Lily let out a strangled scream of frustration and stomped off.
"Evans, seriously, what are you up to?" Sirius called after her, managing to keep the snickers out of his voice. James continued his upside-down protests.
Lily halted. "Raiding Remus’ personal belongings, to find out what he is up to. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?" she added as an afterthought.
"Uhm, no. We were actually asking ourselves the same thing. So you don’t know where he is either?"
"Oh, I know where he is. I just don’t know why he’s there."
"Pray tell, your majesty, where is ‘there’?"
"He’s with McGonagall."
"...say what? Why?"
"My thoughts exactly." And with that, she ascended the final flight of stairs and disappeared into the fifth year Gryffindor boys’ dormitory. Sirius stared after her, wracking his brains for any possible reason Remus could have to visit McGonagall.
James broke through his ineffective train of thought. "Oi, are you just going to leave me hanging here or what?"
"Oh, right... Wormtail, when I say you can, lift the spell." He grabbed James securely around the waist. "Now!"
‘Now’ turned out to be at least 45 seconds later, by which time Sirius’ hold had slackened already and that which he’d hoped to prevent - James falling head-first onto the stairs - almost happened anyway, taking Sirius with it. Cursing Peter, he managed to put James down without any injuries, after which he was joined in his profanities by his messy-haired friend, while Peter squealed his apologies.
"Curses, I was only joking!" James groused. Sirius raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I was!"
"Suuuuure..."
James scowled and looked up at their dormitory door, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "She’s inside there, isn’t she?"
"I wouldn’t try anything right now, Prongs." Sirius said, shaking his head. "You really got her riled up this time."
"Yeah, who knows what she might do to you." Peter added.
"Besides, we were looking for Moony, remember?"
"We found him, didn’t we? He’s with McGonagall." James replied carelessly.
"Exactly!" Sirius said, hitting the palm of his right hand with his fisted left hand. "And we have to find out why."
"Why bother? Evans is already on it."
"Prongs, he’s our friend!" Sirius burst out, beginning to lose his patience. "So what if Evans is curious about him, we have to stick by him when he’s in trouble."
"I wonder why she’s interested at all." James muttered darkly, like he hadn’t heard the entire second half of what his friend had said. "Hey, you don’t think she fancies him, do you?"
The idea was ridiculous. So ridiculous, Sirius let out a bark-like laugh, despite his annoyance. "Fancy Remus? You must be joking."
"I’m not joking! What if it’s true? They do spend an awful lot of time together..."
"Well obviously! They’re Gryffindor’s prefects!"
"Exactly! What if they develop some kind of romantic attraction toward each other?"
Peter beat Sirius to saying it: "James, you’re being paranoid."
James scowled. "Well, if that’s what you think of me, I’m going to play Quidditch. Alone!" He drew his wand, a malicious smile on his face. "Accio broom!"
A horrified shriek arose from their dormitory before the door burst open and James’ broom emerged.
"POTTER!"
James plucked his broom from the air and headed off, smirking.
"James! Hey, James!" Sirius called after him. "Prongs!" He turned to Peter when he got no reply. "Can you believe this guy?!"
Peter shook his head, not knowing what to say. Sirius raged on for a while, making Peter cower and wish he could turn to his rat form then and there, before calming down. He took a deep breath, mumbled something about karma, and pasted a big, goofy grin on his face which he turned to Peter, scaring him even more.
"What do you say? Let’s go find Moony!"
"A - are you sure?" Peter squeaked.
"Of course I am! We can’t let him stay with McGonagall, who knows what he has to endure even now."
"But what if he wants to be with McGo-"
Sirius looked at him oddly. "What are you saying? He’s a Marauder, there’s no way he would voluntarily spend time with a teacher."
Peter mumbled something.
"What was that?"
"N - nothing."
"Nonsense. Tell up." Sirius barked, making Peter flinch.
"I said: Maybe he has a crush on McGonagall!"
That idea was even more ridiculous than the idea of a girl fancying Remus. But this time Sirius did not laugh; he was too disgusted.
"What in the world gave you that idea?!"
The pudgy boy blushed to the very roots of his hair. "Well, I - that is, it’s not like - I, uhm..."
Sirius flinched away from him. "You sick, sick mind!"
Peter’s eyes almost bulged from his head. "But - I didn’t say - I was only five!"
"Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know." Sirius said, rubbing his temples. Now that he was forced to think about it, he had to admit that it was a possibility... even though the mental imagery did make him slightly nauseous.
Remus wasn’t exactly known for his romantic endeavours with the young Hogwards witches. Though they flocked around him in numbers that made Sirius, James and the few Casanovas that would still try to best them see green with envy, they seemed to be more interested in him as ‘a friend’. Whenever Sirius complained about the fact that Remus had all these girls for the taking and didn’t do anything to exploit the opportunity, he would explain that the only reason they hung around him was that he was such a good friend. Apparently, he was polite, funny in a way that was delightfully civiliced for a teenage boy, a good listener, great at giving the kind of advice that was hard to come by if you were female and didn’t have any older brothers, but no boyfriend material. Sirius thought Remus was not nearly as displeased by this as he should be, and had even wondered if his friend might be homosexual.
He doubted that, though. Remus’ shyness when it came to girls probably had the same cause as all his other anti-social quirks. But even if he was one of the most dangerous Dark magical creatures in existence and as such doomed to a life of prejudice and resentment, that didn’t mean he could just turn his back on girls his own age and look to the likes of McGonagall instead!
Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut, trying to get rid of the disturbing images. Okay, so Remus would never do that. He was probably serving some kind of detention. But the Marauders had an agreement to always tell the others when they got themselves into trouble; it was part of their pact, one of the things that made them such close friends. Evidently, Remus hadn’t taken the Two-Way mirror with him, as Sirius and James had used it during their last (separate) class, and neither of them had seen Remus since.
It could only mean that Remus was being noble. Sirius made a face. Remus had been forbidden to act in any way selfless for at least a month, after an anti-Slytherin campain gone wrong that landed him in solitary detention with Slughorn every night for a week. It seemed the Marauders would have to up the punishment they had set him in return.
An adamant glint was in Sirius’s eyes as he looked up. "We’re going to save Remus from himself."
Chapter One: Take Your Positions!
Chapter Two: And Lose Them Again...
Chapter Three: Regroup ASAP
Chapter Four: This Is Called A Collision
Chapter Five: I Did Warn You Guys - That Hurts
Chapter Six: We’ll Be Playing Blind Today
Chapter Seven: Bet You Didn’t See That Coming
Chapter Eight: Somebody Tell Me I’m Dreaming
Chapter Nine: Please Play Nicely
Chapter Ten; Surprise, Surprise