FIC: Halloween Mayhem IX [Harry Potter, Marauders]
Chapter Nine; Please Play Nicely
"Are you sure Lily is okay with this, Prongs?" Peter asked doubtfully. His hands were beginning to ache from the amount of wringing he had made them do over the past few days. These aforementioned days, it seemed he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. It was driving him nuts, and his nerves were beginning to play up. James seemed to have no such worries, though.
"Of course I am!" the bespectacled boy replied flippantly. He withdrew his head from the corner he’d been peering around, a dreamy grin on his face. "We’re mates now, remember? We’re even partners in crime for this operation. Surely she won’t mind us keeping an eye out for her."
"Oh, is that what you’re calling it now?" asked an icy voice.
James jumped so high, Peter got the impression he could have leaped right over his head.
"Lily!" James exclaimed, clutching at his heart as he looked at the redhead with the sternly crossed arms that had suddenly appeared behind him. "What are you doing here, weren’t you just about to go talk to Shara?"
"Us working together is not an excuse for you to stalk me, Potter." Lily said, jabbing a finger at his chest. "If you want to help me, then stay away. Having you two skulking after me all the time while I’m supposed to strike up a casual conversation is not helpful."
"But Lily, I thought we -"
"Get lost, Potter, or I’ll deduct ten points from Gryffindor for harassing a Prefect!"
James retreated with his tail between his legs, and a squirming Peter in tow.
Sirius sat slumped against the bathroom wall, his head resting back against the cool tiles. His eyes were wide and staring, but he was hardly aware of the ceiling and walls occupying his vision. This was the second time within a week that he was sitting on the ground with his back against a wall, feeling miserable. But this time James was not with him.
He wanted to get angry. He was supposed to get angry. It was how he coped with things. Sirius Black did not take... well, anything, lying down. He fought back when he was attacked, he rebelled when he was oppressed, he broke the rules when they limited him, he hexed people’s arses when they annoyed him. When life punched Sirius in the face, Sirius punched right back. Preferably with no questions asked. Anger first, regret... what regret? Fuck regret!
But now... even when he managed to find a spark of anger, he couldn’t get it to flare up. Something choked the embers before they could come alive.
Remus... my friend.
Sirius wanted to get angry, but he couldn’t. Oh, he could pretend he was. He could even make himself believe he was, under the right circumstances. He still had a whole lot of pent up frustration left. But without true anger to fuel that part of his personality, the misery was rapidly gaining territory.
I can’t deal with this... Sirius realised, his Adam’s apple bopping up and down on the rhythm of his convulsive swallowing. The ceiling became a simmering blur, even though he blinked his eyes rapidly. That’s why I keep on running away. That’s why I’m hiding.
He had tried to keep the thoughts out of his mind, to keep his head empty for as long as possible, but eventually the thoughts and feelings simply slapped him in the face to get his attention. And unfortunately, life had slapped Sirius in the face so often that out of sheer self-defence, he had had to insert a rule into his psyche that forbade him to use the kind of counter-measures he usually took against life, against himself.
Not to say the ignorant treatment had been a failure, though. It had worked fine as long as enough had been going on to distract him. Act like you don’t care. Just have fun and ignore everything else. And when it doesn’t let itself be ignored, kick it until it goes away. Under normal circumstances, it worked like a giggling charm, or so Sirius always told himself.
This time, however, there was a problem: the thing blocking his view on blissful ignorance was his band of friends, and he could not kick them. Sirius himself would be the first to admit that he cared about nothing in life but himself and the Marauders. Kicking his friends would equal kicking himself, and he didn’t allow himself to do that. Never mind the fact he had already broken that rule and was starting to violate it even further by mentally kicking himself for what had happened. It was all his fault, after all. By now, he realised that he had been the first to screw up. He had gone too far, so it was his own fault Remus had gotten mad, punched him, and called him...
Sirius clenched his eyes shut, drew his sprawled legs up to his chest and rested his face in his knees.
"Don’t think like that, stop it, don’t think like that, don’t think like that..." he mumbled in a choked voice, trying to drown out the voice in his head that sounded so much like his father, telling him he was a worthless son and was finally getting what he deserved - and the voice of his mother, sneering that he was a Black, would always be a Black, and should just stop trying to deny it.
Then he realised just how pathetic he was acting, found a tiny flint of anger, and straightened abruptly, banging his head against the wall and welcoming the pain.
Oh mother, father, you did a truly fine job of fucking your oldest son up in the head.
Sirius didn’t like having to do in-depth soul-searching. He didn’t like it at all.
Theoretically speaking (because taking it personally was simply unbearable), he should be able to end the madness in two ways. The first option was to forgive Remus everything, take the blame entirely onto himself, grovel at Remus’s feet and hope for the werewolf’s honour and compassion to do the rest of the work. The second was to decide it was all Remus’s fault, clear himself of all blame, get truly and deeply furious at Remus, and act accordingly. Neither option was available, however, and he just couldn’t bring himself to break down the barriers preventing him from taking either route... yet? As it was, he was unable to give up on either of the two most important things in his life - his sense of self-worth and his friendships - and he dreaded the day he might be so far gone that he would be forced to do one of those things just to stay sane.
So, even after having debated, theorized, plotted, tried and tried and searched the present for any other way into the future, for so long his lower body had gone numb from sitting still on the cold floor, he was still stuck in the agonizing stretch of in-between.
And Remus probably doesn’t even care...
Sirius suddenly yearned for the black hole at the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey. Knowing that was a bad idea, though, he instead focussed his attention on the bag of supplies he had brought with him into the bathroom. The problem with the stench-absorbing paint would keep his mind occupied for a while. And it would be a lot less messy than his previous train of thought.
When Sirius got back to the dorm that night, he felt as sore in the head as the dejected James looked. He had no answer when his best friend tiredly asked him for an explanation of his recent self-contradictory behaviour.
Remus had been dreading Wednesday, when he would have the entire midday off with no homework to do, because he had been spending all the time not claimed by Lily or McGonagall in the library as of late. And when Wednesday came, his fears were confirmed.
He ascended the stairs to the boys’ dormitories with lead in his shoes, knowing that he would have to go up, but fearing a possible confrontation with his dorm mates. His friends. The Marauders. The guys he had truly and utterly screwed up with.
Not for the first time, Remus wondered if his pride was really worth the risk of losing his friends over. It felt like a very Sirius thing to do, and as much has Remus liked Sirius, he was well aware of the trouble the Sirius-approach could cause. The situation they were all in now was a prime example. Remus was beginning to think that while having one Sirius around might be bothersome to the point of gastric ulcers and nervous breakdowns (if Remus hadn’t known better, he might have attributed the curse on the DADA position solely to Sirius), one Sirius and another person acting too much like him would make the position of test subject for Death Eater torture practice look like fun in comparison.
Remus was well on his way to thinking himself into a doom and gloom state when he arrived at the topmost landing. He stopped to listen for any sounds behind the closed door and already wanted to groan at the voices he picked up before he really heard what they were saying.
"- can’t honestly expect results already?" a voice that was definitely Sirius’s said disdainfully. "If girls are anything like us men, they’re not going to spill all their secrets as soon as you’ve said your mutual ‘Hello’s."
"This coming from the greatest misogynist this side of the equator." James shot back.
"Oh, don’t get me started on women, Mr. My Brain Was Taken Over By My Dick, Please Come Cure Me, Lily Sodding Evans!"
"Guys, please!" Peter’s squeak came even faster than James’s insult to Sirius’s manhood. But James hated to have to disappoint his admirers, so Remus wasn’t entirely surprised to find that this time, his common sense triumphed over his obsession with Lily. What did surprise him, however, was what James said next. Who on Earth could they be talking about?
"At any rate, no successful contact has been made yet -"
"So you do realise women are a dangerous alien species?"
"- shut up Sirius - but we’re not about to give up this early on -"
"‘We’? Are you sure about that ‘we’ part? Because ‘we’ implies two people working together, and usually voluntarily, instead of -"
"Shut up, Sirius!"
"Shut up, Sirius." Sirius mimicked in a high, nasally voice.
"As I was saying," James resumed loudly, as not to give Sirius any more opportunity to interrupt. "We’re not going to give up on trying to get Shara to talk to us, even though she didn’t respond to -"
The door was blasted open before Remus’s brain had even caught up with his ears.
"Leave Shara alone!" he shouted at Sirius, James and Peter, who were still mid-yelp.
"R - Remus!" James spluttered, nervously adjusting his glasses, which had almost fallen off his nose. "What - How - w - b -"
"I said, leave Shara alone, that’s what and that’s how. And that’s final!" Remus said, using the voice Lily had taught him to use when confronted with dense opposition while fulfilling his tasks as a Prefect. I involved speaking slowly and carefully, but with a sharp, forceful edge as not to give one’s victim the impression that they might get away with doing anything other than what they were told. He was therefore quite surprised James was able to come up with a rebuttal.
"Look, Remus, I can explain - we’re trying to help you. We’re just trying to get Shara to open up to us so we can -"
"I don’t want your ruddy help!" Remus exclaimed, momentarily losing control over his voice. So they really thought he would never be able to get a girl without their help. That apart from being their source of midnight adventures and hard-to-get resources, he wasn’t at anything, wasn’t worth anything.
"But Shara’s brothers -"
"What about them?" Remus snapped, distaste mingling with his anger. James always had to butt in on everything he did, he was most likely fishing for an excuse now.
"They’re tall and broad-shouldered and heavy and aggressive and Hufflepuff’s beaters and aggressive, and -"
"Oh, please." Remus said, looking at James in disgust. "You think I hadn’t noticed? So, they’re big and strong, so what? I’m Prefect, dimwit. I help Shara with her school work and protect her from getting mauled in the halls. Nick and Cain like me."
That was not entirely true, but James didn’t have to know that, and besides, Remus had good hope that one day, it would be.
James stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. "But..." he managed to squeak.
"No buts. I don’t want you anywhere near Shara, you’ll only mess everything up. Stay away from her."
"Fine by me." Sirius muttered from his bed. He had been watching the exchange with narrowed eyes the entire time, making faces and muttering insults under his breath. Peter was trying to hide behind one his own bed poles, and failing miserably.
"Bloody Hell, Sirius, if you’re not going to help anyway, just stay out of this!" James snapped. He turned back to Remus, his patience all but spent. "And you, when are you going to get over this stupid new phase of yours? You’ve made your point, so for Merlin’s sake let go of it already!"
Remus suddenly remembered exactly why all the trouble he’d been going through the past week was worth it.
"I think you still haven’t quite understood me." he said, forcing his voice down to an icy whisper. "Leave Shara Carter alone, or I’ll start deducting points from Gryffindor to make up for all the times I let you guys off the hook."
He flung his book bag onto his bed and left Gryffindor Tower. He didn’t know where he could go or what he might do, but he had to get away before the full range of his emotions would show on his face.
This time, Lily was the one peering around a corner.
"Lily?"
And the one getting the fright of her life, too.
"James!" She clutched at her heart and she looked at him with wide eyes. "I - I mean, Potter! What are you doing here?" Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "Are you spying on me again?"
"No Lily, I’m not spying on you..." James sighed, running a hand through his hair uncertainly. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to let this chance to get closer to Lily go to waste. But... even in secret, for Remus’s own good, it didn’t feel right to James to go against his friend’s express wishes. Especially since he’d already made such a mess of things by accusing Remus of trying to make a move on Lily. Contrary to popular belief, James was aware of the fact that Lily was not ‘his’. Oh, he would never admit to it out loud, but he knew, alright. And when it came down to it, he couldn’t risk losing his existing friendship with Remus for a chance to start one (however meagre it might be) with Lily Evans.
"We’re aborting the plan." he confessed, making Lily’s jaw drop.
"What?! But why? After going through all this trouble..."
James made a helpless gesture with his arms. "Remus walked in on us while we were talking about it, and he... well, he forbade us from coming near Shara, and basically told us to sod off." He didn’t mention the fact that Remus had turned Prefect on them. Lily did not need to know how much the Marauders’ position had weakened since their fall-out with Remus.
Lily had gone very pale. "Did he find out I was involved?"
"No, I don’t think so..."
"That’s good." A small sigh of relief escaped Lily. Then she said, obviously flustered: "I mean, of course it’s not good that he found out, but at least one of us will be able to continue helping him, right?"
"Yeah... right." James muttered. Too bad that wasn’t a relief to him at all.
An awkward silence fell.
"Well..." James said, scraping his throat.
"Yeah... Okay... So, this was it?" Lily said, almost reluctantly. "Are we going to go back to the way things were before?"
James opened his mouth to protest, to plead, to anything, but no words came to mind. Lily shot him a sideway glance.
"I think I’ll keep the rule that says that if you bother me, I’ll immediately deduct points."
Now James knew the perfect thing to say, though: "But Evans, that’s not fair!"
With James’s latest plan shot down, not much happened anymore while the days went by, and Halloween was approaching faster and faster.
Every time James tried to talk to Remus, Remus would simply up and leave. When James got enough of it, on the tenth day after the Remulear Meltdown, as James, Sirius and Peter began referring to the incident where Remus first punched Sirius in the face, Remus surprised him with a display of swift reflexes as he dodged a veritable volley of petrificus totalusses. And, subsequently, by actually carrying out his threat to start deducting points from Gryffindor. As James started to complain that that was against the rules, because Remus had only said to stay away from Shara, another ten points were taken, and the game of I Can’t Hear You And I Can’t See You So Sod Off Before I Deduct Points started to get serious.
When he was not off trying to pester Remus into talking and/or listening to him, James tried the same thing with Sirius, with much the same results. During one of the scant moments they were not arguing, Sirius commented that it was a pity none of them were a Slytherin prefect, as they could have emptied Slytherin’s hour-glass completely with the ‘game’ James, Remus and Sirius were playing. But the next thing to leave his mouth was a bitter remark about how he almost wished he had simply gone into Slytherin as his family had wanted him to, just to be rid of James’s whining, so all James’s hopes of finally getting Sirius to talk went sailing out the window. Again.
Between Sirius and Remus, though, things were much better. They took to simply ignoring each other’s existence, even going as far as knocking over the other’s goblet of pumpkin juice, pouring the contents into aforementioned other’s lap, because they supposedly did not know it was there (Remus), and allegedly not noticing they hit the other with a bat-bogey jinx, as they were aiming for a Slytherin (Sirius).
Remus kept following McGonagall’s tutoring lessons, and progressed steadily. There was hardly a doubt that he would be able to conjure amaryllis flowers by Halloween. Lily’s lessons also continued, but they were not nearly as successful, as both Remus and Lily either felt awkward or distracted at any given moment. Upon Remus’s urging, Lily resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to teach him all he ‘had to know’ before Halloween arrived - but she still kept trying to cram in as much theories about human interaction and field practice of boy-girl activities as possible. James asked Lily to tell him if anything interesting happened, but there was simply nothing to report. When James still kept coming to her, Lily started deducting points. James felt like the whole world was against him.
And Peter was, as usual, stuck in the middle of it all. His nerves were on end twenty-four hours a day, an increase he hadn’t thought possible in the first days after his return from the Hospital Wing and his discovery of Remus’s secret feelings, because he had felt like his nerves were already on end twenty-four hours a day then. He was the one to hear the rumours that the infamous Marauders had disbanded, that Remus had abandoned them, that the remaining three had repudiated him, that they were preparing to sacrifice him to some or other heathen god on the evening of Halloween. He was the one serving as a scapegoat for Sirius to vent his growing frustrations on. He was the one who didn’t get any compliments anymore from James, even though his ‘shifts’ had doubled in frequency. He was the one whose grades dropped dramatically because Remus was no longer there to help him with his homework. He was the one losing all the structure and safety, however questionable, he had known in his years at Hogwarts.
And one day, he just couldn’t take it anymore...
Chapter One: Take Your Positions!
Chapter Two: And Lose Them Again...
Chapter Three: Regroup ASAP
Chapter Four: This Is Called A Collision
Chapter Five: I Did Warn You Guys - That Hurts
Chapter Six: We’ll Be Playing Blind Today
Chapter Seven: Bet You Didn’t See That Coming
Chapter Eight: Somebody Tell Me I’m Dreaming
Chapter Nine: Please Play Nicely
Chapter Ten; Surprise, Surprise
"Are you sure Lily is okay with this, Prongs?" Peter asked doubtfully. His hands were beginning to ache from the amount of wringing he had made them do over the past few days. These aforementioned days, it seemed he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. It was driving him nuts, and his nerves were beginning to play up. James seemed to have no such worries, though.
"Of course I am!" the bespectacled boy replied flippantly. He withdrew his head from the corner he’d been peering around, a dreamy grin on his face. "We’re mates now, remember? We’re even partners in crime for this operation. Surely she won’t mind us keeping an eye out for her."
"Oh, is that what you’re calling it now?" asked an icy voice.
James jumped so high, Peter got the impression he could have leaped right over his head.
"Lily!" James exclaimed, clutching at his heart as he looked at the redhead with the sternly crossed arms that had suddenly appeared behind him. "What are you doing here, weren’t you just about to go talk to Shara?"
"Us working together is not an excuse for you to stalk me, Potter." Lily said, jabbing a finger at his chest. "If you want to help me, then stay away. Having you two skulking after me all the time while I’m supposed to strike up a casual conversation is not helpful."
"But Lily, I thought we -"
"Get lost, Potter, or I’ll deduct ten points from Gryffindor for harassing a Prefect!"
James retreated with his tail between his legs, and a squirming Peter in tow.
Sirius sat slumped against the bathroom wall, his head resting back against the cool tiles. His eyes were wide and staring, but he was hardly aware of the ceiling and walls occupying his vision. This was the second time within a week that he was sitting on the ground with his back against a wall, feeling miserable. But this time James was not with him.
He wanted to get angry. He was supposed to get angry. It was how he coped with things. Sirius Black did not take... well, anything, lying down. He fought back when he was attacked, he rebelled when he was oppressed, he broke the rules when they limited him, he hexed people’s arses when they annoyed him. When life punched Sirius in the face, Sirius punched right back. Preferably with no questions asked. Anger first, regret... what regret? Fuck regret!
But now... even when he managed to find a spark of anger, he couldn’t get it to flare up. Something choked the embers before they could come alive.
Remus... my friend.
Sirius wanted to get angry, but he couldn’t. Oh, he could pretend he was. He could even make himself believe he was, under the right circumstances. He still had a whole lot of pent up frustration left. But without true anger to fuel that part of his personality, the misery was rapidly gaining territory.
I can’t deal with this... Sirius realised, his Adam’s apple bopping up and down on the rhythm of his convulsive swallowing. The ceiling became a simmering blur, even though he blinked his eyes rapidly. That’s why I keep on running away. That’s why I’m hiding.
He had tried to keep the thoughts out of his mind, to keep his head empty for as long as possible, but eventually the thoughts and feelings simply slapped him in the face to get his attention. And unfortunately, life had slapped Sirius in the face so often that out of sheer self-defence, he had had to insert a rule into his psyche that forbade him to use the kind of counter-measures he usually took against life, against himself.
Not to say the ignorant treatment had been a failure, though. It had worked fine as long as enough had been going on to distract him. Act like you don’t care. Just have fun and ignore everything else. And when it doesn’t let itself be ignored, kick it until it goes away. Under normal circumstances, it worked like a giggling charm, or so Sirius always told himself.
This time, however, there was a problem: the thing blocking his view on blissful ignorance was his band of friends, and he could not kick them. Sirius himself would be the first to admit that he cared about nothing in life but himself and the Marauders. Kicking his friends would equal kicking himself, and he didn’t allow himself to do that. Never mind the fact he had already broken that rule and was starting to violate it even further by mentally kicking himself for what had happened. It was all his fault, after all. By now, he realised that he had been the first to screw up. He had gone too far, so it was his own fault Remus had gotten mad, punched him, and called him...
Sirius clenched his eyes shut, drew his sprawled legs up to his chest and rested his face in his knees.
"Don’t think like that, stop it, don’t think like that, don’t think like that..." he mumbled in a choked voice, trying to drown out the voice in his head that sounded so much like his father, telling him he was a worthless son and was finally getting what he deserved - and the voice of his mother, sneering that he was a Black, would always be a Black, and should just stop trying to deny it.
Then he realised just how pathetic he was acting, found a tiny flint of anger, and straightened abruptly, banging his head against the wall and welcoming the pain.
Oh mother, father, you did a truly fine job of fucking your oldest son up in the head.
Sirius didn’t like having to do in-depth soul-searching. He didn’t like it at all.
Theoretically speaking (because taking it personally was simply unbearable), he should be able to end the madness in two ways. The first option was to forgive Remus everything, take the blame entirely onto himself, grovel at Remus’s feet and hope for the werewolf’s honour and compassion to do the rest of the work. The second was to decide it was all Remus’s fault, clear himself of all blame, get truly and deeply furious at Remus, and act accordingly. Neither option was available, however, and he just couldn’t bring himself to break down the barriers preventing him from taking either route... yet? As it was, he was unable to give up on either of the two most important things in his life - his sense of self-worth and his friendships - and he dreaded the day he might be so far gone that he would be forced to do one of those things just to stay sane.
So, even after having debated, theorized, plotted, tried and tried and searched the present for any other way into the future, for so long his lower body had gone numb from sitting still on the cold floor, he was still stuck in the agonizing stretch of in-between.
And Remus probably doesn’t even care...
Sirius suddenly yearned for the black hole at the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey. Knowing that was a bad idea, though, he instead focussed his attention on the bag of supplies he had brought with him into the bathroom. The problem with the stench-absorbing paint would keep his mind occupied for a while. And it would be a lot less messy than his previous train of thought.
When Sirius got back to the dorm that night, he felt as sore in the head as the dejected James looked. He had no answer when his best friend tiredly asked him for an explanation of his recent self-contradictory behaviour.
Remus had been dreading Wednesday, when he would have the entire midday off with no homework to do, because he had been spending all the time not claimed by Lily or McGonagall in the library as of late. And when Wednesday came, his fears were confirmed.
He ascended the stairs to the boys’ dormitories with lead in his shoes, knowing that he would have to go up, but fearing a possible confrontation with his dorm mates. His friends. The Marauders. The guys he had truly and utterly screwed up with.
Not for the first time, Remus wondered if his pride was really worth the risk of losing his friends over. It felt like a very Sirius thing to do, and as much has Remus liked Sirius, he was well aware of the trouble the Sirius-approach could cause. The situation they were all in now was a prime example. Remus was beginning to think that while having one Sirius around might be bothersome to the point of gastric ulcers and nervous breakdowns (if Remus hadn’t known better, he might have attributed the curse on the DADA position solely to Sirius), one Sirius and another person acting too much like him would make the position of test subject for Death Eater torture practice look like fun in comparison.
Remus was well on his way to thinking himself into a doom and gloom state when he arrived at the topmost landing. He stopped to listen for any sounds behind the closed door and already wanted to groan at the voices he picked up before he really heard what they were saying.
"- can’t honestly expect results already?" a voice that was definitely Sirius’s said disdainfully. "If girls are anything like us men, they’re not going to spill all their secrets as soon as you’ve said your mutual ‘Hello’s."
"This coming from the greatest misogynist this side of the equator." James shot back.
"Oh, don’t get me started on women, Mr. My Brain Was Taken Over By My Dick, Please Come Cure Me, Lily Sodding Evans!"
"Guys, please!" Peter’s squeak came even faster than James’s insult to Sirius’s manhood. But James hated to have to disappoint his admirers, so Remus wasn’t entirely surprised to find that this time, his common sense triumphed over his obsession with Lily. What did surprise him, however, was what James said next. Who on Earth could they be talking about?
"At any rate, no successful contact has been made yet -"
"So you do realise women are a dangerous alien species?"
"- shut up Sirius - but we’re not about to give up this early on -"
"‘We’? Are you sure about that ‘we’ part? Because ‘we’ implies two people working together, and usually voluntarily, instead of -"
"Shut up, Sirius!"
"Shut up, Sirius." Sirius mimicked in a high, nasally voice.
"As I was saying," James resumed loudly, as not to give Sirius any more opportunity to interrupt. "We’re not going to give up on trying to get Shara to talk to us, even though she didn’t respond to -"
The door was blasted open before Remus’s brain had even caught up with his ears.
"Leave Shara alone!" he shouted at Sirius, James and Peter, who were still mid-yelp.
"R - Remus!" James spluttered, nervously adjusting his glasses, which had almost fallen off his nose. "What - How - w - b -"
"I said, leave Shara alone, that’s what and that’s how. And that’s final!" Remus said, using the voice Lily had taught him to use when confronted with dense opposition while fulfilling his tasks as a Prefect. I involved speaking slowly and carefully, but with a sharp, forceful edge as not to give one’s victim the impression that they might get away with doing anything other than what they were told. He was therefore quite surprised James was able to come up with a rebuttal.
"Look, Remus, I can explain - we’re trying to help you. We’re just trying to get Shara to open up to us so we can -"
"I don’t want your ruddy help!" Remus exclaimed, momentarily losing control over his voice. So they really thought he would never be able to get a girl without their help. That apart from being their source of midnight adventures and hard-to-get resources, he wasn’t at anything, wasn’t worth anything.
"But Shara’s brothers -"
"What about them?" Remus snapped, distaste mingling with his anger. James always had to butt in on everything he did, he was most likely fishing for an excuse now.
"They’re tall and broad-shouldered and heavy and aggressive and Hufflepuff’s beaters and aggressive, and -"
"Oh, please." Remus said, looking at James in disgust. "You think I hadn’t noticed? So, they’re big and strong, so what? I’m Prefect, dimwit. I help Shara with her school work and protect her from getting mauled in the halls. Nick and Cain like me."
That was not entirely true, but James didn’t have to know that, and besides, Remus had good hope that one day, it would be.
James stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. "But..." he managed to squeak.
"No buts. I don’t want you anywhere near Shara, you’ll only mess everything up. Stay away from her."
"Fine by me." Sirius muttered from his bed. He had been watching the exchange with narrowed eyes the entire time, making faces and muttering insults under his breath. Peter was trying to hide behind one his own bed poles, and failing miserably.
"Bloody Hell, Sirius, if you’re not going to help anyway, just stay out of this!" James snapped. He turned back to Remus, his patience all but spent. "And you, when are you going to get over this stupid new phase of yours? You’ve made your point, so for Merlin’s sake let go of it already!"
Remus suddenly remembered exactly why all the trouble he’d been going through the past week was worth it.
"I think you still haven’t quite understood me." he said, forcing his voice down to an icy whisper. "Leave Shara Carter alone, or I’ll start deducting points from Gryffindor to make up for all the times I let you guys off the hook."
He flung his book bag onto his bed and left Gryffindor Tower. He didn’t know where he could go or what he might do, but he had to get away before the full range of his emotions would show on his face.
This time, Lily was the one peering around a corner.
"Lily?"
And the one getting the fright of her life, too.
"James!" She clutched at her heart and she looked at him with wide eyes. "I - I mean, Potter! What are you doing here?" Suddenly her eyes narrowed. "Are you spying on me again?"
"No Lily, I’m not spying on you..." James sighed, running a hand through his hair uncertainly. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to let this chance to get closer to Lily go to waste. But... even in secret, for Remus’s own good, it didn’t feel right to James to go against his friend’s express wishes. Especially since he’d already made such a mess of things by accusing Remus of trying to make a move on Lily. Contrary to popular belief, James was aware of the fact that Lily was not ‘his’. Oh, he would never admit to it out loud, but he knew, alright. And when it came down to it, he couldn’t risk losing his existing friendship with Remus for a chance to start one (however meagre it might be) with Lily Evans.
"We’re aborting the plan." he confessed, making Lily’s jaw drop.
"What?! But why? After going through all this trouble..."
James made a helpless gesture with his arms. "Remus walked in on us while we were talking about it, and he... well, he forbade us from coming near Shara, and basically told us to sod off." He didn’t mention the fact that Remus had turned Prefect on them. Lily did not need to know how much the Marauders’ position had weakened since their fall-out with Remus.
Lily had gone very pale. "Did he find out I was involved?"
"No, I don’t think so..."
"That’s good." A small sigh of relief escaped Lily. Then she said, obviously flustered: "I mean, of course it’s not good that he found out, but at least one of us will be able to continue helping him, right?"
"Yeah... right." James muttered. Too bad that wasn’t a relief to him at all.
An awkward silence fell.
"Well..." James said, scraping his throat.
"Yeah... Okay... So, this was it?" Lily said, almost reluctantly. "Are we going to go back to the way things were before?"
James opened his mouth to protest, to plead, to anything, but no words came to mind. Lily shot him a sideway glance.
"I think I’ll keep the rule that says that if you bother me, I’ll immediately deduct points."
Now James knew the perfect thing to say, though: "But Evans, that’s not fair!"
With James’s latest plan shot down, not much happened anymore while the days went by, and Halloween was approaching faster and faster.
Every time James tried to talk to Remus, Remus would simply up and leave. When James got enough of it, on the tenth day after the Remulear Meltdown, as James, Sirius and Peter began referring to the incident where Remus first punched Sirius in the face, Remus surprised him with a display of swift reflexes as he dodged a veritable volley of petrificus totalusses. And, subsequently, by actually carrying out his threat to start deducting points from Gryffindor. As James started to complain that that was against the rules, because Remus had only said to stay away from Shara, another ten points were taken, and the game of I Can’t Hear You And I Can’t See You So Sod Off Before I Deduct Points started to get serious.
When he was not off trying to pester Remus into talking and/or listening to him, James tried the same thing with Sirius, with much the same results. During one of the scant moments they were not arguing, Sirius commented that it was a pity none of them were a Slytherin prefect, as they could have emptied Slytherin’s hour-glass completely with the ‘game’ James, Remus and Sirius were playing. But the next thing to leave his mouth was a bitter remark about how he almost wished he had simply gone into Slytherin as his family had wanted him to, just to be rid of James’s whining, so all James’s hopes of finally getting Sirius to talk went sailing out the window. Again.
Between Sirius and Remus, though, things were much better. They took to simply ignoring each other’s existence, even going as far as knocking over the other’s goblet of pumpkin juice, pouring the contents into aforementioned other’s lap, because they supposedly did not know it was there (Remus), and allegedly not noticing they hit the other with a bat-bogey jinx, as they were aiming for a Slytherin (Sirius).
Remus kept following McGonagall’s tutoring lessons, and progressed steadily. There was hardly a doubt that he would be able to conjure amaryllis flowers by Halloween. Lily’s lessons also continued, but they were not nearly as successful, as both Remus and Lily either felt awkward or distracted at any given moment. Upon Remus’s urging, Lily resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to teach him all he ‘had to know’ before Halloween arrived - but she still kept trying to cram in as much theories about human interaction and field practice of boy-girl activities as possible. James asked Lily to tell him if anything interesting happened, but there was simply nothing to report. When James still kept coming to her, Lily started deducting points. James felt like the whole world was against him.
And Peter was, as usual, stuck in the middle of it all. His nerves were on end twenty-four hours a day, an increase he hadn’t thought possible in the first days after his return from the Hospital Wing and his discovery of Remus’s secret feelings, because he had felt like his nerves were already on end twenty-four hours a day then. He was the one to hear the rumours that the infamous Marauders had disbanded, that Remus had abandoned them, that the remaining three had repudiated him, that they were preparing to sacrifice him to some or other heathen god on the evening of Halloween. He was the one serving as a scapegoat for Sirius to vent his growing frustrations on. He was the one who didn’t get any compliments anymore from James, even though his ‘shifts’ had doubled in frequency. He was the one whose grades dropped dramatically because Remus was no longer there to help him with his homework. He was the one losing all the structure and safety, however questionable, he had known in his years at Hogwarts.
And one day, he just couldn’t take it anymore...
Chapter One: Take Your Positions!
Chapter Two: And Lose Them Again...
Chapter Three: Regroup ASAP
Chapter Four: This Is Called A Collision
Chapter Five: I Did Warn You Guys - That Hurts
Chapter Six: We’ll Be Playing Blind Today
Chapter Seven: Bet You Didn’t See That Coming
Chapter Eight: Somebody Tell Me I’m Dreaming
Chapter Nine: Please Play Nicely
Chapter Ten; Surprise, Surprise