FIC: Halloween Mayhem VII [Harry Potter, Marauders]

[omnicat]

Chapter Seven; Bet You Didn’t See That Coming

Wormtail wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. Lily was trying to get Remus to seduce her, but Remus... well...

Lily was trying to make him ask her to dance, but all he had managed to do so far was stutter. To save the situation, she turned the tables and asked him for a dance.

That got him talking.

"No, really, that’s very kind of you, but I couldn’t. My mother always taught me not to swim or run or dance within half an hour after a meal."

"Dinner was two hours ago."

"Well, I ate a lot more than usual today. You dragged me away from lunch and I missed breakfast, so I was really hungry."

"Remus, please..."

Remus sighed in defeat. "It’s not fair, you know. Your puppy eyes are much better than mine."

Lily laughed. "They’re actually kitty eyes. Much more effective than puppy eyes."

"Kitty eyes then. Alright, I will dance with you." Resigning himself to the inevitable, he let Lily take his hands and place them in the appropriate positions with merely a: "You are sure this is absolutely necessary, aren’t you? You’re not just trying to get back at me for being such lousy company by letting me do things I’m extremely uncomfortable with?"

"Remus," Lily said gently. "you’re one of the nicest people I know. I enjoy your company immensely. This -" She flicked her wand, and a soft tune began to play. "- teaching you to relax, introducing you to romance the way a girl likes to see it - this is a gift. I want to see you use your charm to your advantage and convince the girl you like what a wonderful person you are." She tugged him along in a dance. Remus felt ready to faint, but pulled himself together before he could give her the wrong impression and insult her.

"Thank you, Lily." he said softly. "You don’t know how much it means to me to hear someone say that." She looked like she could guess. "I don’t know how I can ever repay you."

"I’ll be satisfied if you did your best to try and master what I am teaching you. So stop making faces, Remus. I understand that you’re nervous, because you’ve never done this before. But then try to at least appear calm and collected. You’ll see that you’ll make friends much more easily when you seem self-confident. And once you get used to the situation your nervousness will simply disappear."

A laugh escaped Remus at the irony of what Lily was saying, a bitter laugh, because he knew that in his case, he had to get used to it over and over again every month, after the wolf had torn him apart and he was left to piece himself together again. But when Lily said it, the prospect seemed much less daunting, and instead almost something to look out for. Being so often shown how much your loved ones cared for you was a rare and precious thing. As long as you had loved ones, at least...

To ward off the excessive seriousness that threatened to overtake him, Remus asked: "How do you manage to explain all the time you’re suddenly spending with me to your friends?"

"Oh, I just tell them it’s got to do with our Prefect’s duties. No big deal."

"And what about... Severus?"

"He doesn’t know about this, and as far as I am concerned, he never will." Lily said with a touch of frost in her voice, never taking her piercing green eyes off of Remus’s face. "Speaking of friends... are you and Potter and Black still..."

Remus nodded mutely, his curiosity about the state of Lily’s friendship with Severus Snape pushed to the back of his mind by his own problems. He regretted what had happened, and was was still going to happen. He wanted to give up on his foolish pride even more badly than he wanted to run away from Lily and her well-meant tutoring. But to give in to the urge to curl up into a little ball in a corner and cry would be cowardly. He couldn’t be that weak. His ‘pride’ was the only form of dignity he had left, so he would just need to learn to face life and bear it. It would be hard and full of disappointments, but Remus knew one thing for sure: he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in the state of seclusion he had been in as a young boy, and he couldn’t expect any more of his friends to pop up from a hole in the ground (or, more realistically, from behind the dormitory door, armed with pillows), latch onto him like leeches and forcibly drag him out of his shell. He wanted more from life than leftovers and charity, and if he wanted to get that, he needed to learn to go out and take it.

"They don’t always treat you that well, do they?" Lily asked tentatively.

Remus looked at her with a carefully neutral expression. "They’re not all that bad, you know. Most of the time." he said. "They don’t mean half of the things they say or do. It’s just... hard to talk to them, sometimes. Not like with you."

The ‘Code’ Sirius and James insisted on upholding (probably so that they would not constantly have to keep tabs on the two other, less unstoppable Marauders) had never seemed very effective to Remus when it really came down to it. It was supposed to be used in all sorts of distress, but in practice came down to a hotline for detentions, Slytherin-related issues, post-full moon depression and problems with homework and such. Solutions would usually be found through physical means or academic support, the alternative involving appropriate (or inappropriately large, depending on how you looked at it) amounts of chocolate or butterbeer and firewhiskey. Real emotional support was not something any of the Marauders was very good at.

Lily smiled wryly, but the wary look in her eyes remained. "That seems to be the problem with a lot of boys. Their need to be macho makes them unable to be honest with themselves. And others."

Remus chuckled. "And of course I’m not nearly as macho as James and Sirius. So that’s probably where the hitch is."

"Hm. I doubt anyone could match the arrogance of Potter and Black if they tried. You’ll be alright, though. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and your heart is in the right place. Where did you learn how to dance this well, by the way?"

"Huh?" Remus promptly tripped. "Oops."

Lily sniggered and helped him up. "We might have to come back on the dancing part later. Good thing there’s not a dance being held at Halloween, right Remus?"

"I’m sorry. It’s unladylike to have to take care of your crappy dancing partner."

"On the contrary, it’s all us girls tend to do when in male company. And don’t call yourself crappy."

Lily stopped the music, which had begun to become annoyingly repetitive, and set up a different scenario. She wanted to make sure that he would be prepared for anything he could possibly encounter, she explained, and would continue doing so until he could deal with it without feeling awkward. Charming their robes back to normal, she asked Remus to ‘take her out for a walk’.

"Just be a gentleman, like you normally are, and you’ll be fine."

"Alright." Remus offered her his arm with minimal awkwardness, and Lily laced her arm through his, pleased.

"Now imagine that I am Shara -" She flicked her wand and an enlarged moving picture of the blond girl appeared before her face, floating there like a mask. "- and you are taking me out on a date. Where would you take me?"

"Uhm, Hogsmeade?" Remus offered, the corners of his mouth and one eyebrow twitching as he watched the illusion Lily had conjured.

"No duh. Be more specific."

"The Three Broomsticks?"

"How about you ask her where she wants to go?"

"You’re not trying to turn me into one of those blokes who are henpecked by their girlfriends and only do what she wants him to do, are you?"

"Why, of course not! What gave you that outrageous idea?" Lily said jokingly.

"Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you seem the type to have been a bra-burning feminist if you were a Muggle, or your dislike for macho men, or..."

Shara. That would do it. Evidence as substantial as a name would be enough to convince even James. Now if only Wormtail knew a way to explain everything he’d seen and heard to James without causing a bloodbath...



Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. "Good thinking, Wormtail. Better let me break the news to him."

They trudged up to their dormitory. Once there, Sirius abruptly threw the door open and bellowed: "HA! TOLD YOU SO!", surprising James enough to make him fall off his bed.

"Sirius!" Peter exclaimed, shocked.

"Sorry, I just couldn’t resist."

"What the Hell?" James stammered, sitting up.

"Remus is not after Lily Evans, but after a girl named Shara... Carter, I’m guessing. Fourth year Hufflepuf, pale blond hair, eye colour undetermined, not particularly pretty but with nice cleavage, very quiet, rather boring over all." Sirius said, digging deeply in his mental archives.

"Lily is safe?" James whispered. When Sirius nodded, he slumped in relief and rolled onto his back with his hands over his face. "Oh, thank Merlin."

To Sirius, who rolled his eyes, he sounded like he had just received word that his execution had been cancelled. James tangled his hands in his hair and stared at the ceiling, a grin slowly forming on his face. Then suddenly, he jumped upright and punched the air, shouting: "YES!" Sirius humoured his best friend as said stag-animagus made a victory dance through the dormitory, cheering all the while. It soon began to get on his nerves, though.

"Alright James, you had your way." he said. "Can you stop acting like an idiot now?"

Toning down his wide grin, James complied by ending his dance. He enveloped Peter in a crushing hug and spun the small boy around, lifting his feet clean off the ground for a moment. "Thank you Wormtail, thank you! You wouldn’t believe how grateful I am. What did you find out? Tell me everything."

Sirius began to speak before Peter’s praise-induced-euphoria clouded mind could make him answer. He told, careful not to put too much emphasis on how intimate Lily’s actions were, about what Wormtail had observed. Though it still did not seem to sit entirely well with James that Remus was so close to Lily, his face lit up and a small smile formed on his lips as he heard how she had acted.

"That’s my girl." he muttered. Sirius gave him a weird look and raised a sceptical eyebrow, but his friend motioned for him to go on. James was particularly interested to hear what Remus had said about them.

"That’s great." he said once Sirius had recounted it, with some help from Peter to repeat the exact phrasing. "That means he’s not mad at us anymore. Or not so mad that he won’t listen to reason, at least."

Sirius mouth set in a grim line. "Hm." was all he said.

James went on: "I guess I should apologize, huh? He was kinda right, after all... My accusations were false." He ran a hand through his hair uncertainly. "Yeah. That’s what I’m going to do." Turning to Sirius, he said: "And I’m sorry for having been such a pain the last few days. Forgive me?"

"I know what you’re like." Sirius muttered with a shrug. "Evans messes with your mind. You don’t even realise it most of the time, so I can’t really blame you."

"Thanks, mate." James said with a sarcastically saccharine smile. "Glad to know you’re so optimistic about my mental health."



"Hey, Remus?"

The pale boy looked up warily, at the figure standing in the doorway, his toothbrush still in his mouth. It must have occurred to Remus that James would be able to forcibly stop keep him from leaving if he wanted to - like Sirius had done the other night - from that position. So James smiled in what he hoped was an endearing, assuring way, and leaned on the doorpost so nonchalantly that nobody in their right mind could find his stance threatening.

"Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened downstairs. You were right, I was being paranoid."

Remus stared at him, his brow creased in thought. He turned back to the mirror to finish brushing his teeth, rinse his mouth and put his things away, the gears in his head churning almost visibly all the while.

Then he said: "So you’ve been spying on me." James’s cheeks coloured as Remus looked him straight in the eye. "You wouldn’t say that if you weren’t completely sure I’m not trying anything with Lily."

Ouch. Yes, it was true, his infatuation with Lily Evans bordered on obsession, James realised that, but hearing his friends say it stung nonetheless.

"Yeah, okay, you caught on." he admitted reluctantly. "Like you said: I’m hard to get through to, sometimes."

Remus shook his head. "Sometimes you guys make me wish I could keep a sneakoscope on me, just to make sure nothing fishy is going on behind my back."

"Are you mad?" It was best to ask Remus that outright, as he usually didn’t let it show if he was. His recent outbursts had been quite shocking.

"How did you do it?"

"We asked Peter to follow you around in his rat form."

The werewolf looked at him with an unreadable expression for a while before he spoke. "I see." He sounded relieved, though not quite happy. "No, I’m not mad. I can’t say I hadn’t expected it."

"Can you forgive me for thinking you were after Lily?" He had better, because James did not enjoy having to humble himself to the dust like this. Even if it was for a friend’s sake.

"I was never mad at you for that."

James smiled gratefully. "You’re the best, Moony. So, we good?" He held out his hand.

"No." Remus said bluntly.

James was flabbergasted. "What? But -"

"I never said I was not angry. Just that your paranoia was not the cause."

"Then what is?!"

"You think on that." Remus said and walked past James, to bed.



"It’s probably because I snubbed his girl. Implied she wouldn’t want him." James had concluded the next day.

He, Sirius and Peter were sitting by the fire in the Gryffindor common room. A stony faced Sirius was quickly gaining a lead on him in their daily contest of ‘who can get the highest marks with the least amount of effort’, because James was having a bit of trouble focusing his attention on his homework. Peter was sweating all over his Transfigurations essay, continuously sending pleading glances to Sirius and James. He would usually ask Remus for help, but as he was not with them, his silent pleas remained unanswered. And when James said that out of the blue, he became even quieter.

"I mean, what else could it be?" James continued. "The fact that I don’t blow my top each time one of you talk down on Evans and our relationship doesn’t mean he wouldn’t when it came to that Shara girl. He’s always telling us to treat everyone as a potential Marauder, right? Fair and equal and all that."

"That’s a nice thought." Sirius muttered from behind his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook. "We’re equal to the likes of Snivvelus to him."

James frowned in concern, but decided not to react to that comment. The dog-animagus had been in a sombre, brooding mood all day. And come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed to be quite himself last night, either. It was best to let him be for a while when he was like this. It would pass.

"The strange thing, though... Remus never gets mad. So why would he now? We made fun of his lack of a love life before and it never had this effect."

"There’s a saying in the English language. ‘The last straw.’ Ring any bells?" Sirius said.

Ignore it. Just... ignore it, James told himself. No matter how good it would make you feel, punching him will not make him snap out of it faster. But damn... Sirius couldn’t possibly be right in his unpleasant remarks. Okay, so they put some straws on Remus now and then. One would think, though, that accepting such a bad case of furriness without hesitation, and turning into Animagi to make up for the fact that they hadn’t been able to gain an Order of Merlin by being the ones to find a cure for lycanthropy, would count as the donation of a metaphorical cart with which to carry the haystack. And what would Sirius know about that, anyway?

"Did Remus tell you something you haven’t told me?" James asked quietly.

Sirius looked offended at the implication that he was keeping secrets from his best friend. "No. But I have a brain, you know."

"Merlin Padfoot, what is it with you today?"

"Nothing." Sirius snapped.

"Don’t give me that crap, Sirius. You’re just as bad as Moony sometimes."

Sirius sent him a smouldering look before turning back to his book. He refused to look at or answer to James after that, and James was not in the mood to make a scene just to press the issue. He looked at his own homework and abruptly shoved it away. He’d do it later. Thoughts of Remus had been bothering him all day, and now Sirius was bothering him as well. He wanted to solve at least one of the puzzles called His Friends before having to think about homework. And since Sirius seemed to even moodier than he’d thought, that left Remus. At least he had sounded like he’d been talking according to reason.

Alright then. What could have made Remus so mad? Sirius had basically said that he’d never be able to get a girl, and then he himself had repeated the sentiment. And why not? Girls were, as far as they were able to tell, only interested in fraternal relationships with Remus. He never made a hit with anyone, and until three days ago, he had never seemed particularly interested in the other sex. So naturally, they had been surprised. Maybe Sirius was right after all: maybe they had reacted like that once too often. But James really was concerned about the results Remus would meet, and he understood Lily’s reason for wanting to help Remus. Even if he didn’t... like... it...

That’s it! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before?

James laughed out loud.

"I know!" he said, jumping up. He looked at Sirius and Peter excitedly. "Lily is busy preparing Remus for Halloween, so why don’t we make sure Shara is ready as well? Ah?" He spread his arms, a wide grin on his face. "That’s sure to show Moony that we support him and his decisions. Well, what do you say?"

Looking confused and flustered, Peter said: "T - that’s a great idea, Prongs."

James turned to Sirius, eyebrows raised in expectation. Sirius scowled and pointedly looked down at his book, sagging lazily in his chair.

"Sirius?"

No answer.

"Sirius!"

The same result.

"Oh come on Padfoot, is this really necessary? I know you’re cranky, but this is Remus we’re talking about. Remember him? He’s the friend with the furry little problem you insulted a few days ago and who has refused to have a normal conversation with either of us ever since."

"Don’t remind me." Sirius snarled, slamming his book down on the arm-rest of his chair and jumping up so he stood face to face with James. "If you want to want to help him get his girl then fine, but don’t think I’m going to help too. I’ve done my share. Now leave me alone."

"What?" James said, utterly confused. "Sirius, what’s gotten into you? You were the one who insisted on proving Moony’s innocence, so why the sudden -"

"I did that for you, not for him. I’m not doing anything to help that prick."

James stared at him with wide eyes. "Sirius..."

"Don’t ‘Sirius’ me." the dog-animagus raged on, beginning to get really riled up. "He insulted me, the dirty hypocrite, and I’m not taking it."

"But you insulted him first!"

"I’m not taking it!" Sirius repeated so loudly, heads were turned. He snatched up his Defence book, rolls of parchment and quills. Shaking off the hand James put on his shoulder, he stomped off in the direction of the dormitories.

At the bottom of the stairs he paused briefly, turned and yelled through the common room: "Did anyone here see my screwdriver?"

He was answered with a variety of mumblings to the extent of "No, sorry." and "What’s a screwdriver?".

"Okay, fine." he snapped, and stomped up the stairs.

As he stared after his best friend, James, for some reason, got the feeling that this was how the other Marauders must feel when he threw a fit over Lily. It was infuriating. How did they put up with him?

 

Halloween Mayhem
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
[Written for the 2006 Halloween Fanfic Exchange.] Remus goes for the girl and involuntarily causes wide-spread chaos. He’s not pleased. Neither are his friends. Tempers flare, and flare... Will there be a last one to laugh?