Upholstery Should Be Made of Sterner Stuff (wellymuck Day 02/03)
Title: Upholstery should be made of sterner stuff
Rating: PG for language
Length: 3080
Prompt:
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
- e. e. cummings
and
the weather in spring is rather finicky -- be sure to wear layers, with at least one good jumper!
Author's notes: Seventh year. Very silly ^_^ Title and odd allusion misquoted from Julius Caesar. Remus is butchering Mark Antony's speech.
Sirius was distraught.
“The sofa!” he wailed, pointing an accusing finger at Peter. “The sofa!”
Peter, who had been unlucky enough to be sitting on the aforementioned sofa when it went the way of all flesh (and furniture) merely wheezed at him through a cloud of feathers.
“Wormtail!” Sirius said. “You have slain the great sofa! Ne’er shall I know its equal!”
Remus, who usually liked Lily Evans, had never so fervently wished her out of the world. For if there had been no Lily, James Potter would not currently be doing unspeakable things with her in the prefects’ bathroom, and he himself would not be forced to deal with this situation.
“Erlp,” Peter wheezed. “Stuck!”
“Such is the desert of foul treachery,” Sirius said, and cast himself backwards over the nearest surviving chair. Remus glared at him, and started trying to untangle Peter from the mass of splayed legs, rusty springs and torn upholstery.
“Ow!” Peter yelped. “There’s a spring poking into my arse!”
“Likely to be the only thing which ever pokes you in the arse, o slayer of innocent sofas.”
“You’d be the expert on arse poking, would you, you useless poof?”
“You words cannot wound me, Wormtail. Already I am struck to the quick by your deeds.”
“Well, when you’ve finished bleeding to death,” Remus snapped, “could you give me a hand?”
Sirius sniffed. “Have you no heart, Moony? Think of the memories enshrined in the very weave of those fair cushions.”
“I’ll enshrine you, you wanker! Get me out of here.”
“Shut up,” Remus muttered at him. “Can you get your ankle out?”
“No. And shut him up first.”
“Right.” He stood back, and eyed the sofa regretfully. He was pretty certain it was already beyond repair, and what he was about to do would finish it entirely. It did seem a shame. He might lack Sirius’ passionate devotion, but he had good memories of that sofa. There had been many a prank planned there. It had been the arm of that sofa he had hidden his tears in when he realised his friends knew his secret. He had slept there a good many times, not only when he couldn’t be arsed to walk upstairs, but in those horrible days when he couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as Sirius. He had had his first, and last, kiss there.
“I can’t feel my toes! I’m going to get gangrene and die!”
“Good riddance!”
“Shut up!” Remus said and lifted his wand. “Wingardium leviosa!”
The remains of the sofa rose serenely, trailing guts of stuffing and raining springs. It hung in the air for a moment, groaning, and Peter scrambled clear.
Then, with heart-breaking slowness, the sofa disintegrated, crashing down to the grounds. Springs ricocheted off into the air, and a thick tangle of braid landed in the fire. Down billowed up around them.
It settled in time for him to see Sirius regarding him with an expression of absolute betrayal.
Then a hearty voice bellowed, “What the fuck have you wankers been doing without me?”
“Peter attacked the sofa,” Sirius said, still glaring, “and then Remus killed it!”
“I did not kill the sofa!”
“The sofa?” James said, sounding horrified. “Our sofa?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Peter said defensively.
James pushed his way through the gathering crowd to stare down on the wreckage. “Our sofa,” he said again.
“What a shame,” Lily said, pushing through to stand beside him. “I have good memories of that sofa.”
“Been shagging on it, eh, Evans?” Peter asked and then quailed as both James and Sirius glared at him.
“This is more than a shame,” James said. “This is a tragedy. Did you have to kill it, Moony?”
“It was a mercy stroke,” Remus said. “It was already dying, and it was trying to take Wormtail with it.”
“Hmm,” said James, glaring at Peter again.
“I am not dying for the sake of a sofa!” Peter protested. “Even that sofa.”
“It’s just a sofa,” Lily said, folding her arms. “Don’t you think you’re all overreacting a little?”
“Just a sofa?” James echoed. “That sofa, I’ll have you know, was a sacred trust.”
Lily looked sceptical.
“No,” Sirius reassured her. “It was. It was handed into our possession at the end of our second year.”
“By the Prewitt brothers,” Remus added, with a sigh. It had been almost five years ago. How had the time gone so fast?
“I remember them. They were almost as bad as you lot.”
“Speak no such words!” Sirius cried, sitting up. “They were as far beyond as as we are beyond these lowly aspirants gathered here at our feet.”
Lily looked at Remus. “What has he been reading?”
Remus shrugged.
“Generations of pranksters have gathered on that sofa,” James said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Think of all that it has seen, the moments of sheer inspirational genius that have occurred on those holy cushions.”
“Potter, do I have to remind you that you are now Head Boy?”
“Some things are beyond mere mortal titles,” James said, picking up a chuck of arm and clutching it to his chest. “The sofa has been taken from us, laid low in its prime.”
“All I did was sit on it!”
“And by the looks of it, it was on its last legs anyway,” Lily said. “It must have been badly damaged already or it wouldn’t have collapsed like that. It’s probably taken years of abuse.”
“I lost my virginity on that sofa,” Sirius said dolefully. “That sofa is imbued with my DNA.”
James cast the arm away with an undignified squeak. Remus willed the floor to open and swallow him whole before anyone noticed he was blushing. Peter said, “Aaargh,” and then, “Who?”
“None of your business,” Sirius snapped, shoving to his feet. “You, Mister Pettigrew, have done enough tonight. I bid ye all farewell. I go now to mourn the sad, sad day.”
And with that he stalked up the stairs. Remus could hear the door of the dorm slam from down here.
*
The next morning he was woken by an agonised howl of outrage.
“What the fuck?” James muttered, sitting up and groping for his glasses.
Remus shuffled down further under his own blankets. The bell hadn’t gone yet. It was pissing it down with rain. And it was a Sunday.
Not to mention the fact that he’d barely slept last night. There had probably been an equal amount of his DNA in those cushions, and the more he had thought about those memories, the harder he had found it to sleep. Bloody Sirius and his skewed sense of nobility.
The dormitory door burst open, and Sirius stumbled in, eyes wild.
“They’ve taken the sofa!” he cried. “The sofa is no more.”
Then he crashed out again.
A few minutes later, they gathered in the common room. Sirius, whose howls had woken most of Gryffindor, had vanished.
There was indeed a new sofa in front of the fireplace. It was a perfectly pleasant sofa. It didn’t have any peculiar stains. Its upholstery wasn’t torn to rags. It lacked that peculiar, and if Remus was honest, unpleasant, scent of musk and sulphur and wet dog.
He had never, he thought savagely, seen a piece of furniture so lacking in character.
“Alas,” Lily said dryly. “The sofa is dead. Long live the sofa.”
James prodded the top of the new sofa gingerly. “Um.”
“Is anyone going to sit on it?” Peter asked sleepily.
There was a long, heavy silence.
Then the portrait hole creaked open, and Sirius scrambled in, whistling. Before him floated a damp tangle of cloth and splinters.
“Look!” he said, grinning widely. “The House Elves gave it back.”
Remus didn’t want to know how he had managed that. House Elves were notoriously obliging, but they had a few blind spots when it came to broken or tormented furnishings. Sirius had his methods, though.
“What are you going to do with that?” Lily demanded. “You can’t sit on it.”
“This sofa,” Sirius said, nudging it fondly, “deserves an honourable end. I intend to give it all its due.”
“I come to bury the sofa,” Remus murmured, “not to praise it.”
Lily gave him a hard stare.
“Bury it?” James echoed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I don’t think you want to bury it, lads. We can do better than that.”
“James!” Lily protested.
“Oh?” Sirius said, pausing in the middle of the common room. “Go on.”
And so James began to explain.
*
“You’re going to have to take your jumper off,” Sirius said. “The vestments won’t fit over it.”
“They’re not vestments,” Remus pointed out. “They’re transfigured curtains. And I am not taking my jumper off. It’s freezing out here.”
“Just a crisp spring breeze,” Sirius said airily, waving a begloved hand in the air. “You can’t give the service in a jumper, Moony.”
“Particularly not that jumper,” added James.
“What’s wrong with my jumper?”
“It has spots,” Peter said.
“And stripes.”
“And it’s yellow,” Sirius said. “Now get it off. Before the rain starts again.”
Remus hesitated a moment too long before he started to run. He had only taken two steps when Peter, executing the unstoppable Pettigrew Plunge, hit his knees. Remus staggered, yelling for help, and found his jumper being dragged over his head.
James took off at a run, mauve and yellow wool bundled into his arms, and Sirius hurled the vestments over Remus’ shoulders.
He emerged, with some difficulty, to find Sirius beaming at him proudly. “Got your sermon ready, Moony?”
“I still don’t see why I have to give the service at all.”
“Be reasonable, Moony,” Sirius said. “It’s hardly as anyone’s ever going to mistake me for a vicar.”
Remus looked at him. Sirius grinned back, lean and dishevelled. The wind had tangled his hair into gleaming curls and brought colour to his cheeks. If Sirius had ever been still, the curve of his lip might seemed cruel, or the line of his brow haughty. But Sirius was never still.
He had been staring too long, so he said hurriedly, “That’s because vicars aren’t supposed to look like girls.”
It was a weak, unworthy insult, and he wasn’t surprised when Sirius ignored it, cocking his head thoughtfully. He was staring at Remus, eyes intent.
“What?” Remus said, checking the vestments for unintentional indecency.
“I miss the sofa,” Sirius said gloomily.
“I’d gathered,” said Remus, relaxing.
“There were things,” Sirius murmured. “Things I did on that sofa that I may never do again. Things, Moony. Things.”
Remus, who could remember exactly what most of those things entailed, was lost for words.
“Never again,” Sirius said wistfully. “The sofa is no more.”
“Can things only happen on that particular sofa, then?” Remus asked, and then risked injury trying to kick himself.
Sirius opened his mouth to reply, and a fanfare rang across the grounds, startling the birds from the trees. Remus saw a flicker of shadow as the giant squid emerged and then fled.
“Good old Wormtail,” Sirius yelled, hands over his ears. “There’s your cue, Moony.”
He headed towards the lake at a run as the fanfare settled into the slow dirge of the funeral march. Remus raced after him, curtains flapping around his legs. Damnit, he still hadn’t thought up a sermon.
He made it to the lake edge just as the music died. The whole of Gryffindor house was gathered on the strand, row by row. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected Professor McGonagall to be there, or Professor Dumbledore in a deckchair.
They all turned to face him expectantly, and he gulped and set in shoulders. He was a Marauder. The Prewitts had left that sofa to him just as much as the other three. If he had to improvise, well so be it.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, and nearly jumped as Peter cast a Sonorus charm and his voice boomed out. “We are gathered here today-”
“That’s the wedding service!” someone yelled from the back.
“Ten points from every heckler!” James bellowed. “Have some respect!” Then he glanced guiltily at Dumbledore. “Er.”
“Quite so, Mr Potter,” Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. “The loss of a good sofa is much to be mourned.”
“We are gathered here today,” Remus repeated firmly, “not merely to mourn this most noble seat, but to pay our respects to the great and ancient traditions it encapsulated. This sofa was no mere footstool, no simple seat. This sofa was the Chair of Gryffindor!”
“Hear, hear!” Sirius boomed as Lily dropped her face into her hands in despair. Remus glanced over at them and faltered.
Sirius was wearing his jumper.
Lily looked up in time to scribble desperately on a piece of paper. She lifted it into his line of sight as he lifted his hands, calling for quiet.
It read Mark Antony.
Right. He could do that.
“Friends, Gryffindors, countrymen!” he cried, avoiding McGonagall’s gaze. “Lend me your ears.”
Skip a bit, Lily scribbled.
“The evil that men do lives after them,” Remus said hurriedly, lowering his voice and glaring at the first second year he could spot.
Kingsley Shacklebolt stared back blandly.
“The good is often interred with their bones.”
PP = B? Lily scrawled. U will O him Choclate.
“Pettigrew hath told you the sofa was unsteady.”
“Oy!”
“No heckling!”
“If it were so, it was a grievious fault,” Remus added, folding his hands. “And grievously hath the sofa answered it.”
He turned to look at the sofa, mounted on a mound of branches, its supporting raft bobbing on the water’s edge, below a ragged sail, and let out a great sigh.
“Come I to speak at the sofa’s wake. It was my friend, faithful and just to me.”
Cut it short. 1sties getting restless.
Remus ceased butchering Shakespeare with a sigh of relief. He knew what he wanted to say now.
“This sofa,” he said, “has borne the weight of many generations of Gryffindors. It has marked their secrets and never let them slip. This sofa has seen adventure and daring and despair, and remained unshaken. This sofa, my brethren, has loyalty woven into every thread. Has there ever been so Gryffindor a seat - one so loyal and enduring? Mourn it well, for you mourn the best in yourselves.”
Oh, shit, Linda Jeffries was actually crying. Linda had neither cried nor smiled in three months. She couldn’t be crying over a sofa.
Lily had her arm round the other girl, but she glared at him and mouthed, “Finish it.”
Remus lifted his wand. “I so commend this sofa to the flames. Ashes to ashes on the count of ten. One…”
“Two!” James joined with him, brandishing his wand.
“Three!” And that was half the house. “Four. Five. Six.”
Everyone was bellowing it now. “Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Incendio!””
Remus felt the spells billow past him, the air blurry with magic.
Then the pyre went up in a pillar of flames. Above the shrieks of the younger years, he heard the sixth and seventh years roar, “Flaventio!”
The wind came howling from behind them. It knocked Remus to his knees and sent the raft flaring out over the lake, trailing smoke and sparks.
He could hear Sirius whooping behind him, and the ear-piercing shriek which a young Lily Evans had made her best defence against the Marauders. Dumbledore was applauding. He couldn’t pick out the individual words of the rest of the House, but he let the noise roar over him like the wind.
*
Later, smoke smeared and hoarse, they made their way back to the common room. Sirius was still wearing the mauve and yellow jumper, and Remus was still in his vestments, though they were turning back to curtains along the hems. He was aware of every brush of Sirius’ elbow against his ribs as they shoved back through the portrait hole.
It had taken him six months to forgive Sirius. Now, after a year, it seemed that Sirius might finally have forgiven himself. Remus still wasn’t sure what that meant - whether it was merely elbows in ribs and time of the month jokes or whether it might be the beginning of things on the sofa again. For the moment, he’d take what he could get, and try to live for the moment.
The new sofa sat gleaming before the fireplace.
James stopped dead. “Y’know.”
“Y’right,” Sirius said, pursing his lips and nudging Remus.
He’d often thought his life would be a thousand times easier if he spoke James-and-Sirius.
“Yeah,” James said, and turned away towards the back of the room. He selected a towering wing chair and seated himself, with a slightly self-conscious air.
Sirius went for the sagging armchair next to it, dragging Remus with him. It did its best to engulf them, and by the time they’d struggled free Sirius’ hand was curled comfortably around his thigh.
“But-” Peter said, standing where they’d left him. “The sofa.”
“I reckon,” James said, folding his hands behind his head, “that’s someone else’s sofa now. We’ve had our day.”
Peter trailed over to join them reluctantly. “Who’s going to get it, then?”
“We’ll see,” James said thoughtfully. “Depends who’s got the nerve to approach it first. Ten sickles on David Featherby.”
“Kingsley Shacklebolt,” Remus said, his mouth muffled by Sirius’ neck. How had that happened?
“Nah,” James said. “He’s too quiet.”
“But devious,” Peter said, perching on the edge of a rocking chair.
“It’s always the quiet ones,” Sirius said happily.
“How would you know,” Remus muttered. “You’ve never been quiet in your life.”
“No,” Sirius murmured in his ear. “But I’m a great admirer of the things a certain quiet one can do with a sofa.”
James and Peter were pointedly not listening, so Remus muttered into his ear, “I’ve never done anything perverse with a sofa. On one, maybe.”
“If you ever do, can I watch?”
Remus choked on that. James had started whistling.
Oh, bugger it. “If I do,” he whispered, “you can join in. Now shut up and behave yourself.”
Sirius flopped backwards, grinning, and, inevitably, Remus went into the depths of the cushions with him. Sirius cackled in his ear, and announced, “Sofas! Pah. Who needs a sofa? Sofas are for boys.”
Remus put his hand over his mouth before he could embarrass them both further, trying, and failing, to pretend he was alone in the chair. He was smiling too hard to fool anyone.
Rating: PG for language
Length: 3080
Prompt:
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
- e. e. cummings
and
the weather in spring is rather finicky -- be sure to wear layers, with at least one good jumper!
Author's notes: Seventh year. Very silly ^_^ Title and odd allusion misquoted from Julius Caesar. Remus is butchering Mark Antony's speech.
Sirius was distraught.
“The sofa!” he wailed, pointing an accusing finger at Peter. “The sofa!”
Peter, who had been unlucky enough to be sitting on the aforementioned sofa when it went the way of all flesh (and furniture) merely wheezed at him through a cloud of feathers.
“Wormtail!” Sirius said. “You have slain the great sofa! Ne’er shall I know its equal!”
Remus, who usually liked Lily Evans, had never so fervently wished her out of the world. For if there had been no Lily, James Potter would not currently be doing unspeakable things with her in the prefects’ bathroom, and he himself would not be forced to deal with this situation.
“Erlp,” Peter wheezed. “Stuck!”
“Such is the desert of foul treachery,” Sirius said, and cast himself backwards over the nearest surviving chair. Remus glared at him, and started trying to untangle Peter from the mass of splayed legs, rusty springs and torn upholstery.
“Ow!” Peter yelped. “There’s a spring poking into my arse!”
“Likely to be the only thing which ever pokes you in the arse, o slayer of innocent sofas.”
“You’d be the expert on arse poking, would you, you useless poof?”
“You words cannot wound me, Wormtail. Already I am struck to the quick by your deeds.”
“Well, when you’ve finished bleeding to death,” Remus snapped, “could you give me a hand?”
Sirius sniffed. “Have you no heart, Moony? Think of the memories enshrined in the very weave of those fair cushions.”
“I’ll enshrine you, you wanker! Get me out of here.”
“Shut up,” Remus muttered at him. “Can you get your ankle out?”
“No. And shut him up first.”
“Right.” He stood back, and eyed the sofa regretfully. He was pretty certain it was already beyond repair, and what he was about to do would finish it entirely. It did seem a shame. He might lack Sirius’ passionate devotion, but he had good memories of that sofa. There had been many a prank planned there. It had been the arm of that sofa he had hidden his tears in when he realised his friends knew his secret. He had slept there a good many times, not only when he couldn’t be arsed to walk upstairs, but in those horrible days when he couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as Sirius. He had had his first, and last, kiss there.
“I can’t feel my toes! I’m going to get gangrene and die!”
“Good riddance!”
“Shut up!” Remus said and lifted his wand. “Wingardium leviosa!”
The remains of the sofa rose serenely, trailing guts of stuffing and raining springs. It hung in the air for a moment, groaning, and Peter scrambled clear.
Then, with heart-breaking slowness, the sofa disintegrated, crashing down to the grounds. Springs ricocheted off into the air, and a thick tangle of braid landed in the fire. Down billowed up around them.
It settled in time for him to see Sirius regarding him with an expression of absolute betrayal.
Then a hearty voice bellowed, “What the fuck have you wankers been doing without me?”
“Peter attacked the sofa,” Sirius said, still glaring, “and then Remus killed it!”
“I did not kill the sofa!”
“The sofa?” James said, sounding horrified. “Our sofa?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Peter said defensively.
James pushed his way through the gathering crowd to stare down on the wreckage. “Our sofa,” he said again.
“What a shame,” Lily said, pushing through to stand beside him. “I have good memories of that sofa.”
“Been shagging on it, eh, Evans?” Peter asked and then quailed as both James and Sirius glared at him.
“This is more than a shame,” James said. “This is a tragedy. Did you have to kill it, Moony?”
“It was a mercy stroke,” Remus said. “It was already dying, and it was trying to take Wormtail with it.”
“Hmm,” said James, glaring at Peter again.
“I am not dying for the sake of a sofa!” Peter protested. “Even that sofa.”
“It’s just a sofa,” Lily said, folding her arms. “Don’t you think you’re all overreacting a little?”
“Just a sofa?” James echoed. “That sofa, I’ll have you know, was a sacred trust.”
Lily looked sceptical.
“No,” Sirius reassured her. “It was. It was handed into our possession at the end of our second year.”
“By the Prewitt brothers,” Remus added, with a sigh. It had been almost five years ago. How had the time gone so fast?
“I remember them. They were almost as bad as you lot.”
“Speak no such words!” Sirius cried, sitting up. “They were as far beyond as as we are beyond these lowly aspirants gathered here at our feet.”
Lily looked at Remus. “What has he been reading?”
Remus shrugged.
“Generations of pranksters have gathered on that sofa,” James said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Think of all that it has seen, the moments of sheer inspirational genius that have occurred on those holy cushions.”
“Potter, do I have to remind you that you are now Head Boy?”
“Some things are beyond mere mortal titles,” James said, picking up a chuck of arm and clutching it to his chest. “The sofa has been taken from us, laid low in its prime.”
“All I did was sit on it!”
“And by the looks of it, it was on its last legs anyway,” Lily said. “It must have been badly damaged already or it wouldn’t have collapsed like that. It’s probably taken years of abuse.”
“I lost my virginity on that sofa,” Sirius said dolefully. “That sofa is imbued with my DNA.”
James cast the arm away with an undignified squeak. Remus willed the floor to open and swallow him whole before anyone noticed he was blushing. Peter said, “Aaargh,” and then, “Who?”
“None of your business,” Sirius snapped, shoving to his feet. “You, Mister Pettigrew, have done enough tonight. I bid ye all farewell. I go now to mourn the sad, sad day.”
And with that he stalked up the stairs. Remus could hear the door of the dorm slam from down here.
*
The next morning he was woken by an agonised howl of outrage.
“What the fuck?” James muttered, sitting up and groping for his glasses.
Remus shuffled down further under his own blankets. The bell hadn’t gone yet. It was pissing it down with rain. And it was a Sunday.
Not to mention the fact that he’d barely slept last night. There had probably been an equal amount of his DNA in those cushions, and the more he had thought about those memories, the harder he had found it to sleep. Bloody Sirius and his skewed sense of nobility.
The dormitory door burst open, and Sirius stumbled in, eyes wild.
“They’ve taken the sofa!” he cried. “The sofa is no more.”
Then he crashed out again.
A few minutes later, they gathered in the common room. Sirius, whose howls had woken most of Gryffindor, had vanished.
There was indeed a new sofa in front of the fireplace. It was a perfectly pleasant sofa. It didn’t have any peculiar stains. Its upholstery wasn’t torn to rags. It lacked that peculiar, and if Remus was honest, unpleasant, scent of musk and sulphur and wet dog.
He had never, he thought savagely, seen a piece of furniture so lacking in character.
“Alas,” Lily said dryly. “The sofa is dead. Long live the sofa.”
James prodded the top of the new sofa gingerly. “Um.”
“Is anyone going to sit on it?” Peter asked sleepily.
There was a long, heavy silence.
Then the portrait hole creaked open, and Sirius scrambled in, whistling. Before him floated a damp tangle of cloth and splinters.
“Look!” he said, grinning widely. “The House Elves gave it back.”
Remus didn’t want to know how he had managed that. House Elves were notoriously obliging, but they had a few blind spots when it came to broken or tormented furnishings. Sirius had his methods, though.
“What are you going to do with that?” Lily demanded. “You can’t sit on it.”
“This sofa,” Sirius said, nudging it fondly, “deserves an honourable end. I intend to give it all its due.”
“I come to bury the sofa,” Remus murmured, “not to praise it.”
Lily gave him a hard stare.
“Bury it?” James echoed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I don’t think you want to bury it, lads. We can do better than that.”
“James!” Lily protested.
“Oh?” Sirius said, pausing in the middle of the common room. “Go on.”
And so James began to explain.
*
“You’re going to have to take your jumper off,” Sirius said. “The vestments won’t fit over it.”
“They’re not vestments,” Remus pointed out. “They’re transfigured curtains. And I am not taking my jumper off. It’s freezing out here.”
“Just a crisp spring breeze,” Sirius said airily, waving a begloved hand in the air. “You can’t give the service in a jumper, Moony.”
“Particularly not that jumper,” added James.
“What’s wrong with my jumper?”
“It has spots,” Peter said.
“And stripes.”
“And it’s yellow,” Sirius said. “Now get it off. Before the rain starts again.”
Remus hesitated a moment too long before he started to run. He had only taken two steps when Peter, executing the unstoppable Pettigrew Plunge, hit his knees. Remus staggered, yelling for help, and found his jumper being dragged over his head.
James took off at a run, mauve and yellow wool bundled into his arms, and Sirius hurled the vestments over Remus’ shoulders.
He emerged, with some difficulty, to find Sirius beaming at him proudly. “Got your sermon ready, Moony?”
“I still don’t see why I have to give the service at all.”
“Be reasonable, Moony,” Sirius said. “It’s hardly as anyone’s ever going to mistake me for a vicar.”
Remus looked at him. Sirius grinned back, lean and dishevelled. The wind had tangled his hair into gleaming curls and brought colour to his cheeks. If Sirius had ever been still, the curve of his lip might seemed cruel, or the line of his brow haughty. But Sirius was never still.
He had been staring too long, so he said hurriedly, “That’s because vicars aren’t supposed to look like girls.”
It was a weak, unworthy insult, and he wasn’t surprised when Sirius ignored it, cocking his head thoughtfully. He was staring at Remus, eyes intent.
“What?” Remus said, checking the vestments for unintentional indecency.
“I miss the sofa,” Sirius said gloomily.
“I’d gathered,” said Remus, relaxing.
“There were things,” Sirius murmured. “Things I did on that sofa that I may never do again. Things, Moony. Things.”
Remus, who could remember exactly what most of those things entailed, was lost for words.
“Never again,” Sirius said wistfully. “The sofa is no more.”
“Can things only happen on that particular sofa, then?” Remus asked, and then risked injury trying to kick himself.
Sirius opened his mouth to reply, and a fanfare rang across the grounds, startling the birds from the trees. Remus saw a flicker of shadow as the giant squid emerged and then fled.
“Good old Wormtail,” Sirius yelled, hands over his ears. “There’s your cue, Moony.”
He headed towards the lake at a run as the fanfare settled into the slow dirge of the funeral march. Remus raced after him, curtains flapping around his legs. Damnit, he still hadn’t thought up a sermon.
He made it to the lake edge just as the music died. The whole of Gryffindor house was gathered on the strand, row by row. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected Professor McGonagall to be there, or Professor Dumbledore in a deckchair.
They all turned to face him expectantly, and he gulped and set in shoulders. He was a Marauder. The Prewitts had left that sofa to him just as much as the other three. If he had to improvise, well so be it.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, and nearly jumped as Peter cast a Sonorus charm and his voice boomed out. “We are gathered here today-”
“That’s the wedding service!” someone yelled from the back.
“Ten points from every heckler!” James bellowed. “Have some respect!” Then he glanced guiltily at Dumbledore. “Er.”
“Quite so, Mr Potter,” Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. “The loss of a good sofa is much to be mourned.”
“We are gathered here today,” Remus repeated firmly, “not merely to mourn this most noble seat, but to pay our respects to the great and ancient traditions it encapsulated. This sofa was no mere footstool, no simple seat. This sofa was the Chair of Gryffindor!”
“Hear, hear!” Sirius boomed as Lily dropped her face into her hands in despair. Remus glanced over at them and faltered.
Sirius was wearing his jumper.
Lily looked up in time to scribble desperately on a piece of paper. She lifted it into his line of sight as he lifted his hands, calling for quiet.
It read Mark Antony.
Right. He could do that.
“Friends, Gryffindors, countrymen!” he cried, avoiding McGonagall’s gaze. “Lend me your ears.”
Skip a bit, Lily scribbled.
“The evil that men do lives after them,” Remus said hurriedly, lowering his voice and glaring at the first second year he could spot.
Kingsley Shacklebolt stared back blandly.
“The good is often interred with their bones.”
PP = B? Lily scrawled. U will O him Choclate.
“Pettigrew hath told you the sofa was unsteady.”
“Oy!”
“No heckling!”
“If it were so, it was a grievious fault,” Remus added, folding his hands. “And grievously hath the sofa answered it.”
He turned to look at the sofa, mounted on a mound of branches, its supporting raft bobbing on the water’s edge, below a ragged sail, and let out a great sigh.
“Come I to speak at the sofa’s wake. It was my friend, faithful and just to me.”
Cut it short. 1sties getting restless.
Remus ceased butchering Shakespeare with a sigh of relief. He knew what he wanted to say now.
“This sofa,” he said, “has borne the weight of many generations of Gryffindors. It has marked their secrets and never let them slip. This sofa has seen adventure and daring and despair, and remained unshaken. This sofa, my brethren, has loyalty woven into every thread. Has there ever been so Gryffindor a seat - one so loyal and enduring? Mourn it well, for you mourn the best in yourselves.”
Oh, shit, Linda Jeffries was actually crying. Linda had neither cried nor smiled in three months. She couldn’t be crying over a sofa.
Lily had her arm round the other girl, but she glared at him and mouthed, “Finish it.”
Remus lifted his wand. “I so commend this sofa to the flames. Ashes to ashes on the count of ten. One…”
“Two!” James joined with him, brandishing his wand.
“Three!” And that was half the house. “Four. Five. Six.”
Everyone was bellowing it now. “Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Incendio!””
Remus felt the spells billow past him, the air blurry with magic.
Then the pyre went up in a pillar of flames. Above the shrieks of the younger years, he heard the sixth and seventh years roar, “Flaventio!”
The wind came howling from behind them. It knocked Remus to his knees and sent the raft flaring out over the lake, trailing smoke and sparks.
He could hear Sirius whooping behind him, and the ear-piercing shriek which a young Lily Evans had made her best defence against the Marauders. Dumbledore was applauding. He couldn’t pick out the individual words of the rest of the House, but he let the noise roar over him like the wind.
*
Later, smoke smeared and hoarse, they made their way back to the common room. Sirius was still wearing the mauve and yellow jumper, and Remus was still in his vestments, though they were turning back to curtains along the hems. He was aware of every brush of Sirius’ elbow against his ribs as they shoved back through the portrait hole.
It had taken him six months to forgive Sirius. Now, after a year, it seemed that Sirius might finally have forgiven himself. Remus still wasn’t sure what that meant - whether it was merely elbows in ribs and time of the month jokes or whether it might be the beginning of things on the sofa again. For the moment, he’d take what he could get, and try to live for the moment.
The new sofa sat gleaming before the fireplace.
James stopped dead. “Y’know.”
“Y’right,” Sirius said, pursing his lips and nudging Remus.
He’d often thought his life would be a thousand times easier if he spoke James-and-Sirius.
“Yeah,” James said, and turned away towards the back of the room. He selected a towering wing chair and seated himself, with a slightly self-conscious air.
Sirius went for the sagging armchair next to it, dragging Remus with him. It did its best to engulf them, and by the time they’d struggled free Sirius’ hand was curled comfortably around his thigh.
“But-” Peter said, standing where they’d left him. “The sofa.”
“I reckon,” James said, folding his hands behind his head, “that’s someone else’s sofa now. We’ve had our day.”
Peter trailed over to join them reluctantly. “Who’s going to get it, then?”
“We’ll see,” James said thoughtfully. “Depends who’s got the nerve to approach it first. Ten sickles on David Featherby.”
“Kingsley Shacklebolt,” Remus said, his mouth muffled by Sirius’ neck. How had that happened?
“Nah,” James said. “He’s too quiet.”
“But devious,” Peter said, perching on the edge of a rocking chair.
“It’s always the quiet ones,” Sirius said happily.
“How would you know,” Remus muttered. “You’ve never been quiet in your life.”
“No,” Sirius murmured in his ear. “But I’m a great admirer of the things a certain quiet one can do with a sofa.”
James and Peter were pointedly not listening, so Remus muttered into his ear, “I’ve never done anything perverse with a sofa. On one, maybe.”
“If you ever do, can I watch?”
Remus choked on that. James had started whistling.
Oh, bugger it. “If I do,” he whispered, “you can join in. Now shut up and behave yourself.”
Sirius flopped backwards, grinning, and, inevitably, Remus went into the depths of the cushions with him. Sirius cackled in his ear, and announced, “Sofas! Pah. Who needs a sofa? Sofas are for boys.”
Remus put his hand over his mouth before he could embarrass them both further, trying, and failing, to pretend he was alone in the chair. He was smiling too hard to fool anyone.