Delicious Irony (And Other Acquired Tastes): Chapter Two
Delicious Irony (And Other Acquired Tastes)
Authoress: chelime
Rating: R (not until later, though, and so far it's only for language)
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.
Summary: A misunderstanding leads Remus and Sirius into playing a brilliant joke on the entire population of Hogwarts. Really, that’s all this is. A joke. And Remus is okay with that. Maybe. RLSB SLASH.
The Gryffindor common room is filled with a dull roar of conversation as students prepare each other for next day’s classes and fill each other in on that day’s gossip.
That is, until Remus Lupin stomps through the portrait hole.
“Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger.”
Remus Lupin in a foul mood is such a rarity that a hush immediately falls over the Gryffindor students. Sure, it was quite commonplace to see James Potter pace menacingly around the common room, occasionally chucking things into the fireplace and muttering about a certain Ms. Lily Evans, and the students were quite accustomed to Sirius Black’s towering rages in which someone, usually Severus Snape or, if he was in a really foul mood, his younger brother Regulus, got punched. They’d even been privy to a few of Peter Pettigrew’s snarling fits, in which the small, slightly rotund boy would begin listing all the things he found stupid-“Stupid ink pellet, stupid vanishing stair, stupid Potions essay, stupid fringe…” et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. The only time the students of Hogwarts had seen Remus Lupin in a foul mood was back in his Sixth Year, when there was some big falling out in the entire Marauder troupe, the details of which the student body had, surprisingly, never learned.
So it was that every eye was on Remus Lupin as he crossed the common room and disappeared up the boys’ staircase.
The Gryffindor students held their collective breath. They heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, heard a door being opened rather forcefully.
And when the door slammed shut, the Gryffindor common room became filled with a very lively roar of conversation, and none of it was to do with classes.
xXxXx
“Sirius, are you here? Oh god, you had better be here, Sirius.”
“Sirius is unavoidably detained at the moment, please leave a message and he’ll get back to you as soon as he can.”
“Sylvie?”
A blond head peeked out of Sirius’s bed curtains. “Ello, Remus. Sorry. But we are rather busy right now…”
“No, no, it’s all right, I’ll go. Sorry to, er, interrupt. Right. Cheerio, Sylvie, give my regards to Sirius-“
“Hang on a tick, Remus-Sylvie, darling, untie me, please, there’s a good lass-wotcher, Remus!” Sirius’s head had joined Sylvie’s outside the bed curtains, and it was grinning broadly.
“Er, hello there, Sirius. Sorry to intrude. I’ll go now-“
“You sound rather flustered, Messr. Moony. Sit. Sylvie was just leaving, weren’t you, poppet?”
Sylvie pouted for a moment, then gave a pseudo-dramatic sigh and smiled good-naturedly. “Yes, I suppose I was. Pip pip.” She gave Sirius a thorough kiss, winked cheerfully at Remus, and was gone.
Remus managed to feel a vague sort of amazement at Sylvie’s composure after being caught half-naked in Sirius Black’s bed, a place she had sworn-just that morning at the breakfast table, in fact-she would never go again.
“So fess up, Moonykins. What’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“My knickers aren’t in a twist,” Remus said grumpily. “My knickers are-actually, I’d rather we leave my knickers out of this one, thanks.”
“Your knickers are a hot topic at this point in time, my dear boy.” Sirius snickered. “I assume that’s what this is about? A Ms. Marly Jenkins, affectionately referred to as ‘Tarty Marly?’”
“I’m afraid that Marly Jenkins only plays a part of this rather complicated situation,” Remus said mournfully. “A big, loud-mouthed part of this situation, but only a part nonetheless.”
“Ah. Well then. As I get the feeling that this is a long and undoubtedly amusing story-for me, at least-why don’t you sit yourself down and tell ol’ Paddlebrains about it, eh?”
“I can’t sit for this. I couldn’t possibly sit for this. Oh god, this is insane.”
“Oooooh, this is going to be good, isn’t it? Come on, Moony, tell me tell me tell me-“
“Quiet, you insufferable prat, I’m trying to collect my thoughts here, they’re rather scattered at the moment and it’s scaring me.”
“A scatterbrained Moony? Oh dear, that can’t be good. Are you feeling feverish? Shaky? Headachy? Merlin, you’re not going to vomit, are you? How many fingers am I holding up, Moony, how many fingers?!”
Remus blinked. Sirius had scrambled out of his bed and slapped a hand against Remus’s forehead, causing, Remus was sure, permanent damage to his once-organized thought process, and an incalculable number of fingers were looming right in front of his eyes, making him rather dizzy.
“Could you, er, back up a bit? That’s better. Three fingers. See? I’m fine. Or, I was fine until you manhandled me. Ouch. I’m going to have a lump on my forehead tomorrow morning.”
“Well you scared me, talking about scattered brains and whatnot. Ergh. Moving on. I’m going to sit down, and you’re going to tell me about your ‘rather complicated situation’ whether you’re sitting or not. So. Go.”
Remus puffed out a breath, wringing his hands and looking slightly ill. “Yes, well, there’s something you should know about me before I begin recounting the alarmingly misconstrued details of tonight’s events.”
“Oh good grief, don’t tell me you’re a vampire too?”
“What? Of course not, you daft git-”
“Are you dying?”
“Why in Merlin’s name-no, I don’t want to know. Look, Padfoot. Just-just shut up, all right?”
“Shutting. Please, Moony, the suspense is killing me.”
I suppose, Remus thinks, I should have thought this out a bit more before saying anything. Because, Remus believes, this is not the kind of thing you can just blurt out. Unfortunately, he can’t think of any other way to force himself to tell Sirius. In for a penny… “Yes, yes, all right. Well, uh, you see, I’m kind of…gay.”
“You’re kind of what?”
“Padfoot, you know what I said. Don’t make me repeat it.”
“Sorry it’s just…well actually, no, it’s not really all that surprising.”
This statement, however, is a bit surprising to Remus. “…It isn’t?”
“Well, it’s not like I ever actively thought, ‘Remus must be gay,’ but, well, it just makes sense, is all. It explains why you looked like you were going to ralph when I told you about Tarty Marly. And I always did find it hard to believe that you could be that squeamish around girls.”
As nice as it is that Sirius isn’t doing any of the various things that Remus imagined he would do (punching him, for one, as Sirius was prone to do upon hearing something he didn’t like, or doing something embarrassing like hexing him in a way reminiscent to that of the infamous “Mrs. Severia Snape” prank of ’76, which would allow Sirius ample opportunity to indulge in his favorite pastime of telling Remus he is a girl and calling him Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock), his reaction is still rather unnerving. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you, er, are you okay with this?”
Sirius stared at him. “Moony, I’m okay with you turning into a snarling, out-for-my-blood werewolf once a month. This seems a bit superfluous in comparison, doesn’t it? But to answer your question,” Sirius went on as Remus opened his mouth to speak, “yes, I’m okay with it.”
Remus deflated. “Oh. Well. That’s good, then. I’m glad.”
“Now, I’m assuming this has something to do with Ms. Jenkins…?”
“Ah. Yes. Ms. Jenkins. Well, she found out.”
“Did she now? Huh, seems she is a bit smarter than she looks. Well, I can understand why that would be a problem. I mean, seeing as how you only just told your best mate about it, I’m assuming you don’t want the whole school to know about it, which is undoubtedly what will happen the minute Tarty Marly steps into the Great Hall for breakfast tomorrow morning. We could, of course, put a Tongue-Tying Curse on her, but she’s probably already told all of Ravenclaw, the stupid bint, so-”
“Actually, that’s not the worst of it.”
“It isn’t? Well, out with it, man! This situation obviously calls for a Plan of Action, and my brain can only work so fast to come up with something.”
“I know, I know. Well, er, Marly thinks I have a boyfriend.”
“But you don’t!” Sirius adds, in a very small voice, “Do you?”
Remus blushes horribly. “No!”
“Just checking, just checking, you’ve got so many secrets you’re like bloody Fort Knox, you know. Sneaky little werewolf. So you don’t have a boyfriend, but Marly thinks you do. But why, exactly, would she think that?”
Remus mutters something that sounds vaguely like, “Cossack Tollderid,” which makes no discernible sense to Sirius.
“What?”
Remus takes a deep breath, expelling it slowly. His puffed out cheeks amuse Sirius greatly. “Because I told her I did.”
Sometimes, Sirius realizes, talking to Remus is like smacking yourself in the head with a Beater’s bat. Over and over and over again. “I’m sorry. I think you’ve lost me. Why, exactly, did you tell her that?”
“Well I didn’t mean it like that-I was being sarcastic when I said it, anyway, it’s not my fault she didn’t pick up on it!”
“Sarcasm is not something that Marly would easily pick up on, Rem. She wouldn’t even understand what that word means, it’s not in the tarty dictionary. Really, you give people too much credit sometimes.”
“Like you?” Remus mutters scathingly.
Sirius decides to tactfully ignore this comment. “So, you employed your infamous sarcasm as a weapon, and this time it failed you. Serve you right, using your arsenal of obnoxiously large words against me all the time, positively dripping with disdain. Anyway. Who does she think he is?”
“Er, well, you must believe me when I tell you that I did not give her this name, and neither did I hint at it.”
“The same way you didn’t hint at having a boyfriend, eh?” Remus’s icy glare does nothing to diminish Sirius’s lecherous grin. “Come on, Moony, who is he? Who’s been branded as ickle Moonykins’s boyfriend?”
“Oh dear. You really want to know, do you?”
“Moony, Moony, Moony, of course I want to know! You know me, always sticking my nose in other peoples’ business-”
“And other peoples’ privates-”
“Aha! See? Again with the sarcasm. You must stop doing that, Moony, it’s already gotten you into trouble. Now out with it, man! Who is your love muffin?”
Remus coughed. “Ah, well, his last name rhymes with ‘Ack.’”
“And his first name…?”
“Er, rhymes with ‘Smirius.’”
He could see the whirring cogs in Sirius’s brain come to a screeching halt as he reached the inevitable conclusion.
“Oh,” Sirius says. “Er, what?”
Oh dear, Remus thinks.
Chapter One: Misconceptions and Consequences Thereof
Authoress: chelime
Rating: R (not until later, though, and so far it's only for language)
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.
Summary: A misunderstanding leads Remus and Sirius into playing a brilliant joke on the entire population of Hogwarts. Really, that’s all this is. A joke. And Remus is okay with that. Maybe. RLSB SLASH.
The Gryffindor common room is filled with a dull roar of conversation as students prepare each other for next day’s classes and fill each other in on that day’s gossip.
That is, until Remus Lupin stomps through the portrait hole.
“Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger.”
Remus Lupin in a foul mood is such a rarity that a hush immediately falls over the Gryffindor students. Sure, it was quite commonplace to see James Potter pace menacingly around the common room, occasionally chucking things into the fireplace and muttering about a certain Ms. Lily Evans, and the students were quite accustomed to Sirius Black’s towering rages in which someone, usually Severus Snape or, if he was in a really foul mood, his younger brother Regulus, got punched. They’d even been privy to a few of Peter Pettigrew’s snarling fits, in which the small, slightly rotund boy would begin listing all the things he found stupid-“Stupid ink pellet, stupid vanishing stair, stupid Potions essay, stupid fringe…” et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. The only time the students of Hogwarts had seen Remus Lupin in a foul mood was back in his Sixth Year, when there was some big falling out in the entire Marauder troupe, the details of which the student body had, surprisingly, never learned.
So it was that every eye was on Remus Lupin as he crossed the common room and disappeared up the boys’ staircase.
The Gryffindor students held their collective breath. They heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, heard a door being opened rather forcefully.
And when the door slammed shut, the Gryffindor common room became filled with a very lively roar of conversation, and none of it was to do with classes.
xXxXx
“Sirius, are you here? Oh god, you had better be here, Sirius.”
“Sirius is unavoidably detained at the moment, please leave a message and he’ll get back to you as soon as he can.”
“Sylvie?”
A blond head peeked out of Sirius’s bed curtains. “Ello, Remus. Sorry. But we are rather busy right now…”
“No, no, it’s all right, I’ll go. Sorry to, er, interrupt. Right. Cheerio, Sylvie, give my regards to Sirius-“
“Hang on a tick, Remus-Sylvie, darling, untie me, please, there’s a good lass-wotcher, Remus!” Sirius’s head had joined Sylvie’s outside the bed curtains, and it was grinning broadly.
“Er, hello there, Sirius. Sorry to intrude. I’ll go now-“
“You sound rather flustered, Messr. Moony. Sit. Sylvie was just leaving, weren’t you, poppet?”
Sylvie pouted for a moment, then gave a pseudo-dramatic sigh and smiled good-naturedly. “Yes, I suppose I was. Pip pip.” She gave Sirius a thorough kiss, winked cheerfully at Remus, and was gone.
Remus managed to feel a vague sort of amazement at Sylvie’s composure after being caught half-naked in Sirius Black’s bed, a place she had sworn-just that morning at the breakfast table, in fact-she would never go again.
“So fess up, Moonykins. What’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“My knickers aren’t in a twist,” Remus said grumpily. “My knickers are-actually, I’d rather we leave my knickers out of this one, thanks.”
“Your knickers are a hot topic at this point in time, my dear boy.” Sirius snickered. “I assume that’s what this is about? A Ms. Marly Jenkins, affectionately referred to as ‘Tarty Marly?’”
“I’m afraid that Marly Jenkins only plays a part of this rather complicated situation,” Remus said mournfully. “A big, loud-mouthed part of this situation, but only a part nonetheless.”
“Ah. Well then. As I get the feeling that this is a long and undoubtedly amusing story-for me, at least-why don’t you sit yourself down and tell ol’ Paddlebrains about it, eh?”
“I can’t sit for this. I couldn’t possibly sit for this. Oh god, this is insane.”
“Oooooh, this is going to be good, isn’t it? Come on, Moony, tell me tell me tell me-“
“Quiet, you insufferable prat, I’m trying to collect my thoughts here, they’re rather scattered at the moment and it’s scaring me.”
“A scatterbrained Moony? Oh dear, that can’t be good. Are you feeling feverish? Shaky? Headachy? Merlin, you’re not going to vomit, are you? How many fingers am I holding up, Moony, how many fingers?!”
Remus blinked. Sirius had scrambled out of his bed and slapped a hand against Remus’s forehead, causing, Remus was sure, permanent damage to his once-organized thought process, and an incalculable number of fingers were looming right in front of his eyes, making him rather dizzy.
“Could you, er, back up a bit? That’s better. Three fingers. See? I’m fine. Or, I was fine until you manhandled me. Ouch. I’m going to have a lump on my forehead tomorrow morning.”
“Well you scared me, talking about scattered brains and whatnot. Ergh. Moving on. I’m going to sit down, and you’re going to tell me about your ‘rather complicated situation’ whether you’re sitting or not. So. Go.”
Remus puffed out a breath, wringing his hands and looking slightly ill. “Yes, well, there’s something you should know about me before I begin recounting the alarmingly misconstrued details of tonight’s events.”
“Oh good grief, don’t tell me you’re a vampire too?”
“What? Of course not, you daft git-”
“Are you dying?”
“Why in Merlin’s name-no, I don’t want to know. Look, Padfoot. Just-just shut up, all right?”
“Shutting. Please, Moony, the suspense is killing me.”
I suppose, Remus thinks, I should have thought this out a bit more before saying anything. Because, Remus believes, this is not the kind of thing you can just blurt out. Unfortunately, he can’t think of any other way to force himself to tell Sirius. In for a penny… “Yes, yes, all right. Well, uh, you see, I’m kind of…gay.”
“You’re kind of what?”
“Padfoot, you know what I said. Don’t make me repeat it.”
“Sorry it’s just…well actually, no, it’s not really all that surprising.”
This statement, however, is a bit surprising to Remus. “…It isn’t?”
“Well, it’s not like I ever actively thought, ‘Remus must be gay,’ but, well, it just makes sense, is all. It explains why you looked like you were going to ralph when I told you about Tarty Marly. And I always did find it hard to believe that you could be that squeamish around girls.”
As nice as it is that Sirius isn’t doing any of the various things that Remus imagined he would do (punching him, for one, as Sirius was prone to do upon hearing something he didn’t like, or doing something embarrassing like hexing him in a way reminiscent to that of the infamous “Mrs. Severia Snape” prank of ’76, which would allow Sirius ample opportunity to indulge in his favorite pastime of telling Remus he is a girl and calling him Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock), his reaction is still rather unnerving. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you, er, are you okay with this?”
Sirius stared at him. “Moony, I’m okay with you turning into a snarling, out-for-my-blood werewolf once a month. This seems a bit superfluous in comparison, doesn’t it? But to answer your question,” Sirius went on as Remus opened his mouth to speak, “yes, I’m okay with it.”
Remus deflated. “Oh. Well. That’s good, then. I’m glad.”
“Now, I’m assuming this has something to do with Ms. Jenkins…?”
“Ah. Yes. Ms. Jenkins. Well, she found out.”
“Did she now? Huh, seems she is a bit smarter than she looks. Well, I can understand why that would be a problem. I mean, seeing as how you only just told your best mate about it, I’m assuming you don’t want the whole school to know about it, which is undoubtedly what will happen the minute Tarty Marly steps into the Great Hall for breakfast tomorrow morning. We could, of course, put a Tongue-Tying Curse on her, but she’s probably already told all of Ravenclaw, the stupid bint, so-”
“Actually, that’s not the worst of it.”
“It isn’t? Well, out with it, man! This situation obviously calls for a Plan of Action, and my brain can only work so fast to come up with something.”
“I know, I know. Well, er, Marly thinks I have a boyfriend.”
“But you don’t!” Sirius adds, in a very small voice, “Do you?”
Remus blushes horribly. “No!”
“Just checking, just checking, you’ve got so many secrets you’re like bloody Fort Knox, you know. Sneaky little werewolf. So you don’t have a boyfriend, but Marly thinks you do. But why, exactly, would she think that?”
Remus mutters something that sounds vaguely like, “Cossack Tollderid,” which makes no discernible sense to Sirius.
“What?”
Remus takes a deep breath, expelling it slowly. His puffed out cheeks amuse Sirius greatly. “Because I told her I did.”
Sometimes, Sirius realizes, talking to Remus is like smacking yourself in the head with a Beater’s bat. Over and over and over again. “I’m sorry. I think you’ve lost me. Why, exactly, did you tell her that?”
“Well I didn’t mean it like that-I was being sarcastic when I said it, anyway, it’s not my fault she didn’t pick up on it!”
“Sarcasm is not something that Marly would easily pick up on, Rem. She wouldn’t even understand what that word means, it’s not in the tarty dictionary. Really, you give people too much credit sometimes.”
“Like you?” Remus mutters scathingly.
Sirius decides to tactfully ignore this comment. “So, you employed your infamous sarcasm as a weapon, and this time it failed you. Serve you right, using your arsenal of obnoxiously large words against me all the time, positively dripping with disdain. Anyway. Who does she think he is?”
“Er, well, you must believe me when I tell you that I did not give her this name, and neither did I hint at it.”
“The same way you didn’t hint at having a boyfriend, eh?” Remus’s icy glare does nothing to diminish Sirius’s lecherous grin. “Come on, Moony, who is he? Who’s been branded as ickle Moonykins’s boyfriend?”
“Oh dear. You really want to know, do you?”
“Moony, Moony, Moony, of course I want to know! You know me, always sticking my nose in other peoples’ business-”
“And other peoples’ privates-”
“Aha! See? Again with the sarcasm. You must stop doing that, Moony, it’s already gotten you into trouble. Now out with it, man! Who is your love muffin?”
Remus coughed. “Ah, well, his last name rhymes with ‘Ack.’”
“And his first name…?”
“Er, rhymes with ‘Smirius.’”
He could see the whirring cogs in Sirius’s brain come to a screeching halt as he reached the inevitable conclusion.
“Oh,” Sirius says. “Er, what?”
Oh dear, Remus thinks.
Chapter One: Misconceptions and Consequences Thereof