fic: Pure body, pure blood and a barbecue; a lunch-time tale by Lily Evans
Title: Pure body, pure blood and a barbecue
Characters/Pairings Sirius Black, James/Lily, Severus Snape
Genre: You’ll see
Word count: 1748?!?!?!
Author’s Note: We like vegan food, we don’t like vegan ‘tude. alohachary1851 wrote bits of James and Sirius, the bit in Potions and a bit at the end. dorasolo deftly wrote Lily, Snape, a majority of this, actually. We both entered crack territory and laughed most heartily.
She is standing in the backyard of James Potter’s house, watching with extreme amusement as Mr. Potter tries to impress her by firing up a Muggle grill to make steaks. He holds up the tongs at her as if to say “Look at me, I’m bloody great at this!” even though the only way he’s ever grilled a steak is by wand, and Lily Evans secretly believes the steaks taste like absolute shite when prepared by magic.
Lily shakes her head imperceptibly. Luckily, as long as he resists the urge to charbroil the meat into a charcoal mess, it’s fairly difficult to ruin.
“Now, the secret to a good steak is that you’ve got to take it off the heat before the level of done-ness you want.” James says, rather loftily.
Sirius surveys the meat on the grill, “So, which one’s yours then, that sort of shriveled beef jerky one? Oy, Evans, James is massacring his meat!”
A brief squabble erupts as Sirius lunges for a set of tongs. James snorts and shoves Sirius away from the grill, “Mine’s this giant one, naturally. Big, juicy-”
“-and tender.” Sirius finishes.
“Tender like a woman,” Lily offers, weakly. Sirius gives her the thumbs-down.
Truthfully, Lily is just hungry, and when she’s hungry she tends not to consider her words as carefully as she does normally. She blurts the first thing she can think of, horribly unrelated, to diffuse her bad joke. “You know, Severus is a vegan.”
James removes all the meat from the grill and put it on a plate, with some degree of dexterity, before he agrees, “Yes, he is a cretin, carry on, my dear,” slowly, because it’s clear that he thinks he either has not heard her correctly or has no idea what she said.
Sirius, already seated at the patio table, in the middle of chewing carrots rather obnoxiously, asks “Is that the highest ranking of sniv- pansy?”
It dawns on Lily that maybe not all people are familiar with vegans, or the level of obnoxious pretension that can be involved with veganism. “Where you don’t eat meat, or um, things that come from animals. Eggs, cheese, you know.”
“Why in the name of Merlin’s ruffled pantaloons would you not eat meat? Or eggs? Or cheese?” Sirius spits out a wad of bright orange carrot, almost as if the vegetable offended him, right onto his plate.
“He’d tell you something along the lines of ‘pure body, pure blood,’” Lily answers, one eyebrow quirked in a very fetching ‘and now I will tell you a story’ arch.
-*-
Narcissa Black was getting sick and tired of Severus Snape being so greasy all of the time. Sure, he did her homework sometimes, and sure, she helped him by telling him all the tips and pointers she read in Witches Weekly about skin care. Sometimes, she even said it sincerely without any of her Black family haughtiness because really, nobody could come up with a better potion for menstrual cramps than Severus Snape.
Of course, she told him it was regular monthly migraines, because you just do not say “period” to Severus Snape. That’s just wrong.
“Severus, I’ve been reading,” she says at lunch, daintly wiping her mouth with a linen napkin that she brought from home. The wooden ring on the holder has the Black Family Crest.
“Oh,” he says, trying not to appear to interested, and succeeding because Severus is never too interested in anything other than Potions (and Lily Evans).
“Become a vegan,” Narcissa announces, quietly, but emphatically. “Purify your body.”
Severus puts down his spoon and looks mournfully at his third bowl of stew. “I suppose I do have the discipline to alter my lifestyle,” he states, in a monotone. “But what is a Vegan?”
Narcissa explains it to him going on the description in the magazine alone; she is not a vegan herself because their house elf is lovely at preparing meats. And her skin is perfect.
At this point he’s willing to try everything and anything because he is rather oily, and for some awful reason Sirius Black’s skin is perfect and James Potter seems to have only the lightest smattering of acne compared to the doxy sized pustules Snape gets on his nose.
He swirls his spoon around, poking at the beef cubes, and stares off into space. In his mind’s eye, he is walking down the halls of Hogwarts, nearly a foot taller, tossing out perfect curses, but more importantly, tossing a glossy mane of hair untainted by oil. In this daydream, his nose is two sizes smaller, too. No pimples. Lily is hanging onto his every word, clearly only wearing her robes and knee socks...
“Who knows,” Narcissa sing-songs loftily, drawing him reluctantly back to the present, “maybe it’ll purify that blood of yours, too!”
Back to reality. Snape scowls. “Yes, yes. You’ve been most helpful. I think a more disciplined attack is the way to go. Purity is key.” He scurries off from the lunch table, with a customary swish of his too-big black robes, leaving his stew bowl right on the table, rapidly cooling, for the House Elves.
Guster Goyle eats his leftovers, no problem, and shrugs. “My blood’s already pure,” he points out, despite Narcissa’s distasteful grimace.
`*`
It takes approximately three days for Severus Snape to jump wholeheartedly into veganism. He sidles up to Lily at breakfast and informs her, while she is trying to pile as much yolk as possible onto her bread, that she is taking her chances with cholesterol AND with finding a chicken fetus when she eats an egg.
"Let me get this straight,” she says, swallowing her sandwich, “You 'Avada Kedavra'd' a spider for me last week, but today, this very day, you will no longer eat an egg. Because it might be a chicken fetus?"
“It’s not pure,” Severus states, haughtily, shaking his head. “Pure body, pure blood.”
“Have fun with that,” Lily says, shaking her head right back at him. She understands him less and less these days and wants to spend less time with him when he’s being so peculiar. “I’m going to the library. Remus and I have an essay due for Transfiguration and tonight we’re on patrol together, so I should get started.”
She leaves, and Snape glowers. It’s also very clear that she’s wearing a skirt and a sweater under her robes.
~*~
A week into the vegan lifestyle and Severus finds himself very hungry during that morning’s Potions class.. His already sallow skin was, as the simmering brew in his cauldron revealed, even sallower. He felt better, or as better as one can subsisting on the steamed spinach and fava beans the House Elves prepared for him at breakfast.
Then, just as suddenly as his most recent addition of nettles to his potion, so came the rising pressure within his bowels.
‘No, you are stronger than this.’ He thinks to himself, and forces himself to concentrate on slicing reeds exactly three centimeters. The cauldron bubbles. Suddenly, it seems all cauldrons are bubbling, releasing their gas harmlessly into the steam filled classroom.
“Can I use some of your left over nettles, Severus?” Lily asks. “Hello? Nettles?”
Severus looks up, stiffly. No sudden movements. “Yes.” He clips, and puts his knife down forcefully. “If you’ll excuse me.” Turning on his heel, he walks briskly past Professor Slughorn with a quick mumbled “Going to the boys lavatory, sir.”
Severus does not hear Sirius’s response “Wrong one, Snivellus! Lady Loos are the other way!” or James snorting into his cauldron, suppressing a laugh. He only hopes that he can make it to the toilet in time, produce flatus and return back to Potions.
“Severus?”
Severus jumps and then relaxes when he sees its Narcissa. Too relaxed. He is however filled with relief that the anxiety causing flatus silently passed. “Narcissa, I must... be going back to Potions.”
Narcissa pauses, “I- have you gone vegan? It’s really working for you, Severus.” She’ll keep it at that because even she realizes there are lies too big for her to tell. She sniffs. Trying to suppress disgust, she asks “I’ve been getting headaches and was wondering if, in your spare time you could produce a potion for that?”
Another one goes, the hissing kind. Severus clears his throat. “Yes, Narcissa, I’ll see what I can do.” He turns and goes at a near sprint back to Potions. ‘Pure body, pure blood. Pure body, Pure blood’ he reminds himself. He thinks this to himself again, although more miserably, when he sees his lunch is eggless noodles and a heaping plate of string beans.
~*~
It is week four of his vegan diet, and thankfully the horrid gas phase has passed, no pun intended. Though it did not come without a multitude of other embarrassments. Severus recoils while remembering the last time in the library with Lily, his stomach gurgled so violently that she dropped her quill, startled. When she had asked him what was wrong, he muttered something about purity of will in addition to purity of body and blood.
Exasperated, she had moved tables, clearly thinking about how ridiculous he was. Little did he know, she not only thought he was ridiculous, but she was worried that other people might think she had the noxious bean gas.
All of the Slytherins that were remotely friendly to him took to complimenting him on his skin, which bothered Severus, because as far as he could tell, there was no discernible difference. But still, he felt good. Maybe the pure skin part was last on the list of benefits of a vegan diet, or maybe his diet was compromised by the overwhelming presence of beans and beans caused pimples. The house elves were at a loss about feeding him anything other than beans.
~*~
“Are you saying,” Sirius interrupts Lily, “that the reason he ran out of classes fifth year was because he had to fart?”
“Christmas,” James stutters. “This is like Christmas.”
Sirius presses with more questions “Has he been on an all bean diet since? How does this vegan diet explain looking like he took a shower in bacon grease?” The questions persist and soon it’s two word sentences “No meat? Butter? Beer? Butterbeer?”
“I don’t know,” Lily answers truthfully, “I haven’t spoken to him since fifth year. I have no idea if he ever stopped eating beans.”
The boys nod, and finish their steaks. Lily thinks they’re too quiet, and that soon they’ll be up to no good.
True to form, two days later, Severus Snape receives a package by express owl containing nothing but bacon.
Characters/Pairings Sirius Black, James/Lily, Severus Snape
Genre: You’ll see
Word count: 1748?!?!?!
Author’s Note: We like vegan food, we don’t like vegan ‘tude. alohachary1851 wrote bits of James and Sirius, the bit in Potions and a bit at the end. dorasolo deftly wrote Lily, Snape, a majority of this, actually. We both entered crack territory and laughed most heartily.
She is standing in the backyard of James Potter’s house, watching with extreme amusement as Mr. Potter tries to impress her by firing up a Muggle grill to make steaks. He holds up the tongs at her as if to say “Look at me, I’m bloody great at this!” even though the only way he’s ever grilled a steak is by wand, and Lily Evans secretly believes the steaks taste like absolute shite when prepared by magic.
Lily shakes her head imperceptibly. Luckily, as long as he resists the urge to charbroil the meat into a charcoal mess, it’s fairly difficult to ruin.
“Now, the secret to a good steak is that you’ve got to take it off the heat before the level of done-ness you want.” James says, rather loftily.
Sirius surveys the meat on the grill, “So, which one’s yours then, that sort of shriveled beef jerky one? Oy, Evans, James is massacring his meat!”
A brief squabble erupts as Sirius lunges for a set of tongs. James snorts and shoves Sirius away from the grill, “Mine’s this giant one, naturally. Big, juicy-”
“-and tender.” Sirius finishes.
“Tender like a woman,” Lily offers, weakly. Sirius gives her the thumbs-down.
Truthfully, Lily is just hungry, and when she’s hungry she tends not to consider her words as carefully as she does normally. She blurts the first thing she can think of, horribly unrelated, to diffuse her bad joke. “You know, Severus is a vegan.”
James removes all the meat from the grill and put it on a plate, with some degree of dexterity, before he agrees, “Yes, he is a cretin, carry on, my dear,” slowly, because it’s clear that he thinks he either has not heard her correctly or has no idea what she said.
Sirius, already seated at the patio table, in the middle of chewing carrots rather obnoxiously, asks “Is that the highest ranking of sniv- pansy?”
It dawns on Lily that maybe not all people are familiar with vegans, or the level of obnoxious pretension that can be involved with veganism. “Where you don’t eat meat, or um, things that come from animals. Eggs, cheese, you know.”
“Why in the name of Merlin’s ruffled pantaloons would you not eat meat? Or eggs? Or cheese?” Sirius spits out a wad of bright orange carrot, almost as if the vegetable offended him, right onto his plate.
“He’d tell you something along the lines of ‘pure body, pure blood,’” Lily answers, one eyebrow quirked in a very fetching ‘and now I will tell you a story’ arch.
-*-
Narcissa Black was getting sick and tired of Severus Snape being so greasy all of the time. Sure, he did her homework sometimes, and sure, she helped him by telling him all the tips and pointers she read in Witches Weekly about skin care. Sometimes, she even said it sincerely without any of her Black family haughtiness because really, nobody could come up with a better potion for menstrual cramps than Severus Snape.
Of course, she told him it was regular monthly migraines, because you just do not say “period” to Severus Snape. That’s just wrong.
“Severus, I’ve been reading,” she says at lunch, daintly wiping her mouth with a linen napkin that she brought from home. The wooden ring on the holder has the Black Family Crest.
“Oh,” he says, trying not to appear to interested, and succeeding because Severus is never too interested in anything other than Potions (and Lily Evans).
“Become a vegan,” Narcissa announces, quietly, but emphatically. “Purify your body.”
Severus puts down his spoon and looks mournfully at his third bowl of stew. “I suppose I do have the discipline to alter my lifestyle,” he states, in a monotone. “But what is a Vegan?”
Narcissa explains it to him going on the description in the magazine alone; she is not a vegan herself because their house elf is lovely at preparing meats. And her skin is perfect.
At this point he’s willing to try everything and anything because he is rather oily, and for some awful reason Sirius Black’s skin is perfect and James Potter seems to have only the lightest smattering of acne compared to the doxy sized pustules Snape gets on his nose.
He swirls his spoon around, poking at the beef cubes, and stares off into space. In his mind’s eye, he is walking down the halls of Hogwarts, nearly a foot taller, tossing out perfect curses, but more importantly, tossing a glossy mane of hair untainted by oil. In this daydream, his nose is two sizes smaller, too. No pimples. Lily is hanging onto his every word, clearly only wearing her robes and knee socks...
“Who knows,” Narcissa sing-songs loftily, drawing him reluctantly back to the present, “maybe it’ll purify that blood of yours, too!”
Back to reality. Snape scowls. “Yes, yes. You’ve been most helpful. I think a more disciplined attack is the way to go. Purity is key.” He scurries off from the lunch table, with a customary swish of his too-big black robes, leaving his stew bowl right on the table, rapidly cooling, for the House Elves.
Guster Goyle eats his leftovers, no problem, and shrugs. “My blood’s already pure,” he points out, despite Narcissa’s distasteful grimace.
`*`
It takes approximately three days for Severus Snape to jump wholeheartedly into veganism. He sidles up to Lily at breakfast and informs her, while she is trying to pile as much yolk as possible onto her bread, that she is taking her chances with cholesterol AND with finding a chicken fetus when she eats an egg.
"Let me get this straight,” she says, swallowing her sandwich, “You 'Avada Kedavra'd' a spider for me last week, but today, this very day, you will no longer eat an egg. Because it might be a chicken fetus?"
“It’s not pure,” Severus states, haughtily, shaking his head. “Pure body, pure blood.”
“Have fun with that,” Lily says, shaking her head right back at him. She understands him less and less these days and wants to spend less time with him when he’s being so peculiar. “I’m going to the library. Remus and I have an essay due for Transfiguration and tonight we’re on patrol together, so I should get started.”
She leaves, and Snape glowers. It’s also very clear that she’s wearing a skirt and a sweater under her robes.
~*~
A week into the vegan lifestyle and Severus finds himself very hungry during that morning’s Potions class.. His already sallow skin was, as the simmering brew in his cauldron revealed, even sallower. He felt better, or as better as one can subsisting on the steamed spinach and fava beans the House Elves prepared for him at breakfast.
Then, just as suddenly as his most recent addition of nettles to his potion, so came the rising pressure within his bowels.
‘No, you are stronger than this.’ He thinks to himself, and forces himself to concentrate on slicing reeds exactly three centimeters. The cauldron bubbles. Suddenly, it seems all cauldrons are bubbling, releasing their gas harmlessly into the steam filled classroom.
“Can I use some of your left over nettles, Severus?” Lily asks. “Hello? Nettles?”
Severus looks up, stiffly. No sudden movements. “Yes.” He clips, and puts his knife down forcefully. “If you’ll excuse me.” Turning on his heel, he walks briskly past Professor Slughorn with a quick mumbled “Going to the boys lavatory, sir.”
Severus does not hear Sirius’s response “Wrong one, Snivellus! Lady Loos are the other way!” or James snorting into his cauldron, suppressing a laugh. He only hopes that he can make it to the toilet in time, produce flatus and return back to Potions.
“Severus?”
Severus jumps and then relaxes when he sees its Narcissa. Too relaxed. He is however filled with relief that the anxiety causing flatus silently passed. “Narcissa, I must... be going back to Potions.”
Narcissa pauses, “I- have you gone vegan? It’s really working for you, Severus.” She’ll keep it at that because even she realizes there are lies too big for her to tell. She sniffs. Trying to suppress disgust, she asks “I’ve been getting headaches and was wondering if, in your spare time you could produce a potion for that?”
Another one goes, the hissing kind. Severus clears his throat. “Yes, Narcissa, I’ll see what I can do.” He turns and goes at a near sprint back to Potions. ‘Pure body, pure blood. Pure body, Pure blood’ he reminds himself. He thinks this to himself again, although more miserably, when he sees his lunch is eggless noodles and a heaping plate of string beans.
~*~
It is week four of his vegan diet, and thankfully the horrid gas phase has passed, no pun intended. Though it did not come without a multitude of other embarrassments. Severus recoils while remembering the last time in the library with Lily, his stomach gurgled so violently that she dropped her quill, startled. When she had asked him what was wrong, he muttered something about purity of will in addition to purity of body and blood.
Exasperated, she had moved tables, clearly thinking about how ridiculous he was. Little did he know, she not only thought he was ridiculous, but she was worried that other people might think she had the noxious bean gas.
All of the Slytherins that were remotely friendly to him took to complimenting him on his skin, which bothered Severus, because as far as he could tell, there was no discernible difference. But still, he felt good. Maybe the pure skin part was last on the list of benefits of a vegan diet, or maybe his diet was compromised by the overwhelming presence of beans and beans caused pimples. The house elves were at a loss about feeding him anything other than beans.
~*~
“Are you saying,” Sirius interrupts Lily, “that the reason he ran out of classes fifth year was because he had to fart?”
“Christmas,” James stutters. “This is like Christmas.”
Sirius presses with more questions “Has he been on an all bean diet since? How does this vegan diet explain looking like he took a shower in bacon grease?” The questions persist and soon it’s two word sentences “No meat? Butter? Beer? Butterbeer?”
“I don’t know,” Lily answers truthfully, “I haven’t spoken to him since fifth year. I have no idea if he ever stopped eating beans.”
The boys nod, and finish their steaks. Lily thinks they’re too quiet, and that soon they’ll be up to no good.
True to form, two days later, Severus Snape receives a package by express owl containing nothing but bacon.