Delicious Irony (And Other Acquired Tastes): Chapter Ten
I have come to the conclusion that all fanfic writers are liars.
Not intentional liars. No, it's like some horrible joke the universe likes to play to make all fanfic writers liars. We say we're going to have something done by a certain date, and then Real Life has to pop up and go, "HAHA, I'm still here, you cretin! YOU ARE MY BITCH," and then proceed to mess up all fanfic-related plans.
But HUZZAH, it's here, it's done, it's not as good as the original, but I tried! I'm still rather pleased with it (oh how I adore flustered!Remus), so I hope you will be too.
Delicious Irony (And Other Acquired Tastes)
Authoress: chelime
Rating: R
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.
xXxXx
Remus stared out at the lake, following the large, dark spot that said the giant squid was hovering just beneath the surface. He thought back to that one day in Fifth Year when Lily had shouted to the entire class that she’d rather date the giant squid than ever go to Hogsmeade with James Potter. And now, just two years later, Lily and James have had their first date and have a second one slotted for that evening. Remus contemplated how quickly minds could be changed, how easy it was for a person to look past what they’d been seeing for years and see something different.
But those thoughts were leading Remus back to the boy sitting next to him, and those thoughts, he had recently found, were like mental quicksand.
“Are you going to talk anytime soon, or are we just going to sit here until my nads shrivel up and die? It’s bloody cold out here.”
So much for not thinking about Sirius. Remus heaved a sigh, his eyes flicking over to Sirius’s scowling face before focusing back on the lake. “I’m sorry, I was just…trying to gather my thoughts.” Of course, the thoughts I’ve been gathering are not the ones that will help me at all in this conversation. Bugger.
Sirius cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you all right? You’ve been more squirmy than usual lately. It’s rather detrimental to my ego, you know.”
“I am not squirmy!”
“No, you really are. See? Look, there goes your face, all squirmy, like you’ve just eaten a Cockroach Cluster.”
“Just…just shut up, Sirius,” Remus sighed, turning his face away to concentrate on the lake once more.
Sirius was silent for a moment, a moment in which Remus became supremely concerned about Sirius as the boy had never before quieted on demand. The silence broke with an irritated, “What’s up with you?”
“I…oh, bugger.”
Silence reigned again.
“Moony?” Bugger. Bugger and disaster. “What’s wrong?”
I am having completely inappropriate feelings about you. Sometimes I think about you when I touch myself at night. I want to shag you. I want you to shag me.
Of course, Remus couldn’t say any of these things out loud. Which begged the question: What could he say?
“I don’t know, exactly,” Remus said carefully.
“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
Remus winced. He hadn’t a clue what he was doing or where this conversation was going, but he did know that he was mucking it up quite fantastically. Best to just get on with it. “This…this prank, it needs to end. Now.”
Sirius let out a groan. “Not this again. Moony, come on, everything’s fine, and we’ve only got three days left anyway, so-“
“No. It’s over, Sirius. I’m not going through with this-this charade any longer.”
Sirius gave him a look of such utter perplexity that almost made Remus wince again. “What crawled up your arsehole and died?”
And now came the part of the conversation that could really only end in tragedy.
There was nothing for it. No turning back now. Remus had to tell Sirius. He had to.
“Sirius, I-“ He floundered a bit, trying to find the words that had been on the tip of his tongue for the past few days but had never made it past his lips. Oh, damn it all to bloody, bloody hell. “I fancy you. Rather a lot.”
Something in the back of Remus’s mind screamed, Go drown yourself in the lake, you bloody ponce! Now!
But Remus had always been the kind of person that needed to know how a story ended.
xXxXx
…adding a drop of doxie venom daily and keeping it at room temperature will allow the potion to remain potent for a maximum of 72 days…
Peter picked up his quill and scrawled in the margin of his parchment: doxie venom-drop a day. 3 days.
Just three days. Three days until he executed Operation Frame James With A Rather Nasty Prank To Get Rid Of Lily “Yoko Ono” Evans (he had tried once to abbreviate it, but felt that it was a bit too much trouble to call it Operation FJWARNPTGROLYOE, and he couldn’t call it by any other name because he had long ago learned that he wasn’t as creative as James or Sirius in that department and relied on descriptive titles to remember their pranks).
A book thudded down on the table in front of Peter.
“Hello, Peter. Already getting started on our project?”
I should have my head examined. It was a severe lapse in judgment that made me agree to work with her. “Um, just a personal thing. I’m finished with it though, so, um, let’s get cracking on the Herbology assignment.”
For three hours, the pair worked steadily…but not as steadily as Peter would have predicted. Lily, it appeared, was easily amused-she took great pleasure in pointing out odd plants to Peter and wheedling absurd facts about the plants out of him.
As Lily packed her things up, she smiled at Peter. “This was a lot of fun. I’m sorry I’ve got to run-I promised McGonagall I’d give her my report tonight.”
“Yeah…yeah, I had fun too,” Peter replied, and was surprised to find he actually meant it.
“I think one more of these sessions should be enough to wrap up the project, don’t you?” She stood up, slinging her rucksack onto her shoulder. “We made great progress tonight. All thanks to you, of course.” Lily gave a self-deprecating grin.
Peter glanced at their note sheets, complete with tables and diagrams, and nodded. “We did, didn’t we? How about we meet same time tomorrow? Get it out of the way and all.”
“Sounds great. I’ll see you tomorrow then, Peter.” And with a little wave, Lily was gone.
Peter slid their note sheets into his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. As he stuffed his books into his rucksack, he thought idly, She’s not so bad, once you get to know her…
xXxXx
“Oh.”
Oh god, oh god, someone kill me, Remus thought a bit hysterically. Just one little Avada Kedavra, that’s all I’m asking for.
“How long?”
Hell, it doesn’t even have to be Avada Kedavra, just drop a rock on my head or something, I don’t really-“What?”
“How long?” Sirius repeated, sounding a bit hoarse.
“How long what?” Remus asked stupidly.
“Bloody-how long, you prat! How long have you fancied me?”
“Oh. Um. I’m-I’m not sure, really. Not before this prank started though, I swear.” Remus felt himself getting hysterical again. “Actually, do you know, I think-I think maybe this, this fancying thing isn’t really, you know, fancying. I suspect hormones are behind it because, well, I didn’t-I never-I didn’t fancy you until I started getting regular snogs from you, so you see, that’s why we’ve got to stop the prank because then I’ll stop fancying you and everything can go back to normal.”
For Merlin’s sake and a bucket of shrivelfigs, Remus thought in exasperation, can I ever just not be a complete twit?
“Well, uh. Whatever you think is best.” Remus almost winced with how utterly detached Sirius’s voice was. He’s disgusted. He’d disgusted and he hates me. Bugger.
The two sat in silence, Sirius staring out over the lake and Remus waging an internal war with himself. Sirius cleared his throat after an increasingly uncomfortable minute; Remus jumped.
But whatever it was Sirius had been about to say appeared to have stuck in his throat. He kept coughing and taking deep breaths; he was making Remus very panicky with all his attempts at speech.
“Do you hate me?” Remus blurted out after Sirius cleared his throat for the seventh time.
“What? No, of course not, you stupid twat.” Remus felt the air go back into his lungs. “It’s just…I’m surprised. And a little confused.”
“Oh,” said Remus.
“But no big deal, right?” Sirius said in an obvious effort to look on the bright side of things. “Like you said, it’s just hormones. So you just…just need to go find someone to use all that snogging energy on that, you know. Is like you. Er.”
“Yeah,” said Remus. “Right.”
“Look-bugger, I’m not handling this very well, am I?” Remus wanted to say no, but decided to be prudent and stay silent. “I don’t hate you, and I’m not grossed out or anything. So we’ll just, we’ll stop the prank, say, ‘Happy early April Fool’s’ to everyone, and then everything will go back to normal. Like you said.”
“Right.”
Silence once again fell over the pair. Remus pretended to be interested in the water beetle that was now skating over the lake.
“It’s really unexpected,” Sirius suddenly said; Remus jumped again. “I mean, I never thought-I figured, we’re mates, right? It’s just-you-it didn’t seem like a possibility. Am I a complete prat for thinking like that?”
“No, no you’re not,” Remus answered. “Well, no, all right, we’re both prats.”
“Yeah. S’pose we are.”
Remus was beginning to hate silence. He wondered vaguely if it was time for dinner.
“So that’s it,” Sirius stated. Remus wished he would give some sort of warning before speaking. “We should, we should head in for dinner now. Announce our prank and all. I’m bloody starved anyway.”
“Yeah, er, to the Great Hall then, shall we?” Remus said, leaping to his feet.
“We shall,” Sirius answered with a grin. There seemed to be a certain forced quality to it that did not escape Remus’s notice.
As the two trekked back to the castle, Remus wondered how long it would take for things to truly get back to normal between him and Sirius, because he didn’t know how many more of those forced smiles he would be able to bear.
Chapter One: Misconceptions and Consequences Thereof
Chapter Two: A Rather Complicated Situation
Chapter Three: The Kind Of Plan That Never Fails
Chapter Four: The Stealing of James Potter's Thunder
Chapter Five: Plotting Solo for a Change
Chapter Six: Provocation and It's Appeal
Chapter Seven: Bursting the Metaphorical Bubble
Chapter Eight: The Nervous Game
Chapter Nine: Hot and Bothered
I'm curious: what are your thoughts on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie)? Who else squee-d like a moron when they saw the door-lean-of-LUST? Because the look on Lupin's face was more like, "Hi, Harry, I'm the mistress of this house and I bugger your godfather every night," than, "Hi, Harry, I'm just your godfather's friend, no lustiness in this pose whatsoever."
Not intentional liars. No, it's like some horrible joke the universe likes to play to make all fanfic writers liars. We say we're going to have something done by a certain date, and then Real Life has to pop up and go, "HAHA, I'm still here, you cretin! YOU ARE MY BITCH," and then proceed to mess up all fanfic-related plans.
But HUZZAH, it's here, it's done, it's not as good as the original, but I tried! I'm still rather pleased with it (oh how I adore flustered!Remus), so I hope you will be too.
Delicious Irony (And Other Acquired Tastes)
Authoress: chelime
Rating: R
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.
xXxXx
Remus stared out at the lake, following the large, dark spot that said the giant squid was hovering just beneath the surface. He thought back to that one day in Fifth Year when Lily had shouted to the entire class that she’d rather date the giant squid than ever go to Hogsmeade with James Potter. And now, just two years later, Lily and James have had their first date and have a second one slotted for that evening. Remus contemplated how quickly minds could be changed, how easy it was for a person to look past what they’d been seeing for years and see something different.
But those thoughts were leading Remus back to the boy sitting next to him, and those thoughts, he had recently found, were like mental quicksand.
“Are you going to talk anytime soon, or are we just going to sit here until my nads shrivel up and die? It’s bloody cold out here.”
So much for not thinking about Sirius. Remus heaved a sigh, his eyes flicking over to Sirius’s scowling face before focusing back on the lake. “I’m sorry, I was just…trying to gather my thoughts.” Of course, the thoughts I’ve been gathering are not the ones that will help me at all in this conversation. Bugger.
Sirius cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you all right? You’ve been more squirmy than usual lately. It’s rather detrimental to my ego, you know.”
“I am not squirmy!”
“No, you really are. See? Look, there goes your face, all squirmy, like you’ve just eaten a Cockroach Cluster.”
“Just…just shut up, Sirius,” Remus sighed, turning his face away to concentrate on the lake once more.
Sirius was silent for a moment, a moment in which Remus became supremely concerned about Sirius as the boy had never before quieted on demand. The silence broke with an irritated, “What’s up with you?”
“I…oh, bugger.”
Silence reigned again.
“Moony?” Bugger. Bugger and disaster. “What’s wrong?”
I am having completely inappropriate feelings about you. Sometimes I think about you when I touch myself at night. I want to shag you. I want you to shag me.
Of course, Remus couldn’t say any of these things out loud. Which begged the question: What could he say?
“I don’t know, exactly,” Remus said carefully.
“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
Remus winced. He hadn’t a clue what he was doing or where this conversation was going, but he did know that he was mucking it up quite fantastically. Best to just get on with it. “This…this prank, it needs to end. Now.”
Sirius let out a groan. “Not this again. Moony, come on, everything’s fine, and we’ve only got three days left anyway, so-“
“No. It’s over, Sirius. I’m not going through with this-this charade any longer.”
Sirius gave him a look of such utter perplexity that almost made Remus wince again. “What crawled up your arsehole and died?”
And now came the part of the conversation that could really only end in tragedy.
There was nothing for it. No turning back now. Remus had to tell Sirius. He had to.
“Sirius, I-“ He floundered a bit, trying to find the words that had been on the tip of his tongue for the past few days but had never made it past his lips. Oh, damn it all to bloody, bloody hell. “I fancy you. Rather a lot.”
Something in the back of Remus’s mind screamed, Go drown yourself in the lake, you bloody ponce! Now!
But Remus had always been the kind of person that needed to know how a story ended.
xXxXx
…adding a drop of doxie venom daily and keeping it at room temperature will allow the potion to remain potent for a maximum of 72 days…
Peter picked up his quill and scrawled in the margin of his parchment: doxie venom-drop a day. 3 days.
Just three days. Three days until he executed Operation Frame James With A Rather Nasty Prank To Get Rid Of Lily “Yoko Ono” Evans (he had tried once to abbreviate it, but felt that it was a bit too much trouble to call it Operation FJWARNPTGROLYOE, and he couldn’t call it by any other name because he had long ago learned that he wasn’t as creative as James or Sirius in that department and relied on descriptive titles to remember their pranks).
A book thudded down on the table in front of Peter.
“Hello, Peter. Already getting started on our project?”
I should have my head examined. It was a severe lapse in judgment that made me agree to work with her. “Um, just a personal thing. I’m finished with it though, so, um, let’s get cracking on the Herbology assignment.”
For three hours, the pair worked steadily…but not as steadily as Peter would have predicted. Lily, it appeared, was easily amused-she took great pleasure in pointing out odd plants to Peter and wheedling absurd facts about the plants out of him.
As Lily packed her things up, she smiled at Peter. “This was a lot of fun. I’m sorry I’ve got to run-I promised McGonagall I’d give her my report tonight.”
“Yeah…yeah, I had fun too,” Peter replied, and was surprised to find he actually meant it.
“I think one more of these sessions should be enough to wrap up the project, don’t you?” She stood up, slinging her rucksack onto her shoulder. “We made great progress tonight. All thanks to you, of course.” Lily gave a self-deprecating grin.
Peter glanced at their note sheets, complete with tables and diagrams, and nodded. “We did, didn’t we? How about we meet same time tomorrow? Get it out of the way and all.”
“Sounds great. I’ll see you tomorrow then, Peter.” And with a little wave, Lily was gone.
Peter slid their note sheets into his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. As he stuffed his books into his rucksack, he thought idly, She’s not so bad, once you get to know her…
xXxXx
“Oh.”
Oh god, oh god, someone kill me, Remus thought a bit hysterically. Just one little Avada Kedavra, that’s all I’m asking for.
“How long?”
Hell, it doesn’t even have to be Avada Kedavra, just drop a rock on my head or something, I don’t really-“What?”
“How long?” Sirius repeated, sounding a bit hoarse.
“How long what?” Remus asked stupidly.
“Bloody-how long, you prat! How long have you fancied me?”
“Oh. Um. I’m-I’m not sure, really. Not before this prank started though, I swear.” Remus felt himself getting hysterical again. “Actually, do you know, I think-I think maybe this, this fancying thing isn’t really, you know, fancying. I suspect hormones are behind it because, well, I didn’t-I never-I didn’t fancy you until I started getting regular snogs from you, so you see, that’s why we’ve got to stop the prank because then I’ll stop fancying you and everything can go back to normal.”
For Merlin’s sake and a bucket of shrivelfigs, Remus thought in exasperation, can I ever just not be a complete twit?
“Well, uh. Whatever you think is best.” Remus almost winced with how utterly detached Sirius’s voice was. He’s disgusted. He’d disgusted and he hates me. Bugger.
The two sat in silence, Sirius staring out over the lake and Remus waging an internal war with himself. Sirius cleared his throat after an increasingly uncomfortable minute; Remus jumped.
But whatever it was Sirius had been about to say appeared to have stuck in his throat. He kept coughing and taking deep breaths; he was making Remus very panicky with all his attempts at speech.
“Do you hate me?” Remus blurted out after Sirius cleared his throat for the seventh time.
“What? No, of course not, you stupid twat.” Remus felt the air go back into his lungs. “It’s just…I’m surprised. And a little confused.”
“Oh,” said Remus.
“But no big deal, right?” Sirius said in an obvious effort to look on the bright side of things. “Like you said, it’s just hormones. So you just…just need to go find someone to use all that snogging energy on that, you know. Is like you. Er.”
“Yeah,” said Remus. “Right.”
“Look-bugger, I’m not handling this very well, am I?” Remus wanted to say no, but decided to be prudent and stay silent. “I don’t hate you, and I’m not grossed out or anything. So we’ll just, we’ll stop the prank, say, ‘Happy early April Fool’s’ to everyone, and then everything will go back to normal. Like you said.”
“Right.”
Silence once again fell over the pair. Remus pretended to be interested in the water beetle that was now skating over the lake.
“It’s really unexpected,” Sirius suddenly said; Remus jumped again. “I mean, I never thought-I figured, we’re mates, right? It’s just-you-it didn’t seem like a possibility. Am I a complete prat for thinking like that?”
“No, no you’re not,” Remus answered. “Well, no, all right, we’re both prats.”
“Yeah. S’pose we are.”
Remus was beginning to hate silence. He wondered vaguely if it was time for dinner.
“So that’s it,” Sirius stated. Remus wished he would give some sort of warning before speaking. “We should, we should head in for dinner now. Announce our prank and all. I’m bloody starved anyway.”
“Yeah, er, to the Great Hall then, shall we?” Remus said, leaping to his feet.
“We shall,” Sirius answered with a grin. There seemed to be a certain forced quality to it that did not escape Remus’s notice.
As the two trekked back to the castle, Remus wondered how long it would take for things to truly get back to normal between him and Sirius, because he didn’t know how many more of those forced smiles he would be able to bear.
Chapter One: Misconceptions and Consequences Thereof
Chapter Two: A Rather Complicated Situation
Chapter Three: The Kind Of Plan That Never Fails
Chapter Four: The Stealing of James Potter's Thunder
Chapter Five: Plotting Solo for a Change
Chapter Six: Provocation and It's Appeal
Chapter Seven: Bursting the Metaphorical Bubble
Chapter Eight: The Nervous Game
Chapter Nine: Hot and Bothered
I'm curious: what are your thoughts on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie)? Who else squee-d like a moron when they saw the door-lean-of-LUST? Because the look on Lupin's face was more like, "Hi, Harry, I'm the mistress of this house and I bugger your godfather every night," than, "Hi, Harry, I'm just your godfather's friend, no lustiness in this pose whatsoever."