FIC: Halloween Mayhem III [Harry Potter, Marauders]

[omnicat]

Chapter Three; Regroup ASAP

"Are you sure there’s nothing going on with you guys?" Lily asked, sending sideway glances towards James and Sirius at the breakfast table.

"Yes, quite." Remus answered icily.

"Would you mind telling me where Potter and Black got those spectacular bruises from, then? As far as I know, black eyes don’t spontaneously pop up with no reason. Even in the wizarding world"

"Well, in fact, I know of this one jinx which causes victims to receive a punch in the face every time they utter a certain trigger word..."

"Such a spell would still have to be cast by someone." Lily pointed out. She’d wonder about how and why he knew such a jinx later.

Remus shoved a stack of pancakes into his mouth, took plenty of time to chew and swallowed thickly, before answering in a flat voice: "Me."

It took a few seconds before his words - well, one word - sank in, and then Lily’s mouth fell open. "Wha - But Remus... why?"

"They -" Remus avoided her gaze. What could he answer to that? Now that the grim satisfaction had ebbed away and his own knuckles were aching, he felt highly immature. But then he remembered what they’d done to make him act like that, and he scowled. "They ticked me off. They really ticked me off."

Lily watched him carefully, biting her bottom lip to keep from saying something along the lines of ‘They finally turned on you too, huh?’, because he seemed honestly upset. Oh, he was trying to hide it, of course, but Lily was an observant girl; she knew that anger was only a cover-up for him. Remus didn’t have an angry bone in his body. He had to use prosthetics.

"They must have done something really bad, then." she said, placing a tentative hand on his arm. He stiffened and looked away as far as he could without sitting backwards in his chair. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"Not here." he mumbled, standing up. Lily nodded in understanding. He led Lily out of the Great Hall without another word, pointedly ignoring James and Sirius as he passed them and they put down their cutlery to stare after him. Severus looked at them sharply when they walked by the Slytherin table, but Lily motioned for him to relax. Agreeing the greenhouses would be deserted enough until class started in half an hour, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks and trudged through the wet grass. Halfway there, Remus suddenly spoke up.

"Sirius traumatized me into telling him why I was seeing McGonagall and then they laughed at me for it."

"For letting yourself get bullied, by them, into telling?" Lily said indignantly, hurrying to catch up with Remus’ slightly longer strides.

"No... for the reason I was seeing McGonagall."

"Oh. Then I suppose you’re not very keen on telling me either." Lily hoped she’d managed to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Her little raid the previous day had gotten her nothing but a guilty conscious and a lot more questions, some revolving around pink lace knickers and stuffed rodents. She still believed it was her right to know whether her fellow Prefect was in trouble or out to cause it, but she felt bad about not trusting him enough to wait.

Damn Severus and his crazy theories... The opportunity had been so perfect, so tempting, and she had allowed her doubts to take over and make her give in. Lately, Lily didn’t know who to trust anymore; Remus, who kept so many secrets but was always kind, or Severus, who was Severus - and friends with the likes of Mulciber.

"No. But when I make promises, I do so because I intend to keep them." Remus ground out, and stopped dead in his tracks when he realised what he’d said. He really was a pathetically good boy... Now he was beginning to see why Sirius always tried so hard to change that in him. Remus scowled. But of course Sirius would be the cause of that feeling.

Lily had stopped next to him, and he could already feel the heat of her gaze starting to burn into him.

"Promise me you won’t laugh."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "I promise."

"Swear it."

"Okay, I swear."

"On your mother’s grave." Remus demanded, knowing that her mother was one of the most sacred things in Lily’s life.

"On my mother’s grave, I swear it. But no creepy Unbreakable Vow stuff, alright?"

"Naturally." His voice didn’t sound natural, though. After taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth, looked up at Lily, and froze. The redhead watched in concern as all the blood left his face. Not that there was much there to begin with, but it was a worrisome sight. Remus’ sickly appearance gave one the impression that he could keel over dead at any moment, which gained him the sympathy and teddy bear treatment of all females too old for him to date, and an ever-present concern from those his own age who weren’t somehow scared off by it.

"Remus, are you alright?" She stepped towards him, but he backed away, one hand raised aversively.

"I’m fine, don’t worry. It’s just..."

With his eyes firmly on the ground between his feet and trying with all his might to make himself believe that he was not talking to another person, he said: "Listen carefully, because I don’t think I’ll be able to tell you - or anyone - this again. I went to McGonagall yesterday to ask her to teach me to conjure flowers from thin air. I want to know how to do that so I can surprise Shara Carter with a bouquet of amaryllis flowers on Halloween. I want to do that because... I’m in love with her." He let out a breath that could have been his last and scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for something he couldn’t think of but made him cower nontheless.

There was a medium-sized silence before Lily spoke.

"That’s all?"

"Huh?" Remus’s eyes snapped open and shot right to Lily’s face. She looked at him with both her eyebrows raised.

"After all the fuss you made about it, I thought you had some dreadful secret. This is... rather anticlimactic."

Remus deflated. "Oh."

Seeing his crestfallen look, Lily quickly added: "I mean, of course it’s not something trivial and common, but it’s not... eh... something I’d expected you to make such a fuss about." she finished lamely.

"Make a fuss about it?"

"Oh, come on Remus, you were acting like you were being led to your execution."

"Oh." he said again.

Lily grimaced and mentally smacked herself. Great move, Einsteinette. Depress him even further, why don’t you? Just because it’s not something as dreadful as what Severus keeps saying it is doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal to the poor bloke!

"Okay, let’s try this again, shall we? Ahem. Oh Remus, that’s wonderful!" She hugged him, hoping he’d go along with the play. Luckily, after a moment of tense silence he sighed and patted her on the back.

"Thanks, Lily."

She withdrew and smiled at him. "I’m sorry. I really think it’s great. Shara Carter, you said? She’s a fourth year Hufflepuf, isn’t she?"

Remus nodded, almost, almost blushing.

"You sneaky devil." Lily poked him in the ribs. "Is that what you wanted to keep quiet so badly? I must admit, there have been times I thought I’d never live to see the day. This is wonderful. So tell me, how long has this been going on?" She hooked his arm through hers and led him to the greenhouses.

"G - going on?"

"How long have you, you know, been in love? This plan obviously hasn’t occurred to you overnight."

"Oh... well, uhm, I - I don’t know, really..."

"Let me put it this way: when did you first notice her?"

"Uhm... I guess on Platform 9 ¾, at the beginning of second year."

"That long?!"

"Well, she’s hard to miss, isn’t she? I mean, you’d think she was a Malfoy, what with the colour of her hair and her complexion, and Malfoys attract attention. And her eyes... have you ever seen eyes like that? So... big and, and... is it blue? Or purple, or green? They’re so unique, it’s almost like they change colour depending on the light. And they match her complexion, did you ever -" Remus stopped as he noticed Lily’s not-quite-suppressed sniggers. She pressed a hand to her mouth when she saw him staring at her in a vain attempt to stop giggling. "What’s so funny?"

"N - nothing."

He looked at her pointedly.

"Oh, don’t be like that, Remus. It’s nothing, just... yesterday you’d rather die than admit this - that you’re in love - and now you start babbling about how pretty you think her eyes are."

Remus made a sour face. "I thought that was the entire point about being in love? That, and doing stupid things to impress the object of your affection."

"What? Oh no, that’s not it at all... Well, maybe it is a little bit, but not entirely."

"Really? Oh... that explains a lot. I’ll tell James that. Maybe he’ll be a bit less annoying if he knows how you think about the matter."

"You will not!" Lily exclaimed, horrified.

"Why wouldn’t I?" Remus shot her a sly glance and pulled her along on the last few yards to the greenhouse they’d be having Herbology class in in a quarter of an hour. "I thought you hated the way he treats you."

Lily stammered, but no actual words came out. He was right, her reaction didn’t make any sense. But for some reason, they felt like they made sense, which confused her. And not in a good way. She scowled. "You are not speaking to Potter at all, Mr Lupin. Or had you forgotten what it means to give someone a black eye?"

They stared at each other with narrowed eyes for a moment until they simultaneously burst out laughing. "Alright, that’s a draw." they said in unison. They sniggered and settled their backs against the doors of the greenhouse, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

"So, seriously. When did this start?"

Remus sighed and ran a hand through his light brown hair, his gaze on his feet. "Must have been about a year ago... It was around this time of year, I remember I was in the library doing research for one of Kettleburn’s essays. She came up to me and asked me if I could help her with a problem she had with her Transfigurations homework. I wondered why she hadn’t asked Sirius or James, who were notorious for their prowess in Transfigurations - much more so than I am. Turned out she was afraid to ask Sirius or James, because they were... well, because they were Sirius and James. So she turned to me, because I was less intimidating, and it felt like it just... clicked. At least, to me. We’ve talked once in a while since then, but nothing more." He shrugged, looking sheepish.

Lily was performing complicated Arithmancy calculations in her head, digging up everything she’d ever heard about, and seen of, Shara Carter. Apart from her unusually pale complexion, which had given the poor girl some problems with the more obnoxious Slytherins because they did resemble Malfoyish traits quite a bit while her family was far from pure-blooded, it was hardly a remarkable girl. Next to no detentions, quiet and with an air of content calmth, rather shy.

It didn’t surprise Lily that this would be the girl to finally draw Remus from his shell. They matched. Well, apart from the content and detention-less parts; Remus was an angsty teen whose mischievous streak was sometimes grossly underestimated. But upon further comparison, it also didn’t surprise Lily that Remus was reluctant to risk the vapid bond they seemed to have by trying to become closer to her. Carter’s content aura was quite consistent; Lily had, as a prefect, kept an eye on the girl during a period of disturbing encounters with her (and everyone else’s) Slytherin bullies, and the thing that had surprised Lily most was how little effect their taunts and threats seemed to have on her good mood. She seemed unable to get truly depressed. It was quite possible that Shara Carter seemed so content with her current relationship with Remus that it robbed him of his hopes that she might be interested in something more. Oh dear.

"Have you ever dropped hints for her?" Lily asked. "Like offering to help her with her homework more often, or carrying her books, or buying her a little something when you meet in Hogsmeade - why are you looking at me like that? Don’t tell me you’re not the type of guy to do something as sweet as that."

The part of Remus’s face that wasn’t occupied by his wide eyes was very pale. "I - of course it crossed my mind, but... that would have been so obvious!" This confirmed Lily’s suspicions; Shara was oblivious, and Remus was scared that an attempt to become more intimate would ruin things. Something stirred in the redhead. Something matchmakerish.

She raised an eyebrow and said jokingly: "And conjuring flowers for her on Halloween is not ‘obvious’ behaviour? Your reasoning astounds me, Mr Lupin."

"Yes, well, I - I decided to stop being a wuss and give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, then at least it’ll be over with once and for all." Remus said, trying to sound like his insides did not twist into a triple knot at the very thought.

A wide grin appeared on Lily’s face. "That’s such a good idea that I don’t even care it must have been inspired by Sirius Black. I’ll help you."

"Huh? Ick!"

She hugged him, instantly making him look around for any sign of James. The fact that James had dropped Herbology and was as such not likely to see this decapitation-inducing move did little to dispel Remus’s fear, for he knew that Sirius and James carried the Marauder’s Map on either of their bodies at all times.

"Lily, what are you doing?!" he squeaked.

"Let’s start with that - your reaction to physical intimacy. Such a squeamish attitude won’t do if you’re going to snare yourself a girlfriend." Remus blanched at the thought of what ‘treatment’ of this supposed flaw would entail, and wished his mother had not thought him that it was wrong to use any kind of force against a girl, even if it was to save your neck by getting her off of you. "No wait, let’s not start with that." Remus could have died of relief. "That absurd shyness of yours is far more urgent. You’re shaking like a leaf and have been looking ready to faint ever since we left the castle. How did you ever think to approach Shara if this is how you react to a simple talk with me?"

The arrival of Professor Sprout and several of their fellow students saved Remus from having to answer properly. "It’s not that simple, Lily. Look, I’d rather not have this become common knowledge, so could you please not mention any of this in public?"

She disentangled herself from him, noticed their audience, and took the hint. She looked at Remus with an adamant glint in her eyes as they moved to the side to allow Sprout to open the doors to the greenhouse, and whispered: "Fair enough. But don’t think you can avoid me, Remus - during my next free period I’m seeing McGonagall to reserve an empty classroom for us to use as a private testing area."

As they filed into the greenhouse, Remus suppressed the urge to groan. First he was crazy enough to ask McGonagall for help, and now Lily, too, had joined the ranks of the tortmentors-through-helpful-gestures-he-could-not-refuse-without-being-unforgivably-rude. He wished he’d never learned what ‘female’ meant.

But then he remembered the way the light shone off of Shara’s wavy hair on a lazy summer’s day, and imagined what it would feel like to run his fingers through it while she looked at him lovingly, and he felt like kissing both Lily and McGonagall for being so sweet and attentive.



There was a suspicious murmur floating about at the start of the next period. Whenever James tried to listen in, the murmurers would suspiciously fall silent, look at him oddly, and start giggling. The most he was able to determine was that the subject of murmuring was not one of their recent stunts, not even an older one that had resurfaced. It was highly suspicious.

"I wish you hadn’t let Wormtail get beaten up like that." he told Sirius from the corner of his mouth. "He’d have found out what those herbology girls are whispering about without any trouble."

Sirius merely raised an eyebrow. At the end of the period he lagged behind and told James not to wait for him. Seeing the way he waggled his eyebrows at a black-haired Ravenclaw girl whose name currently escaped his grasp, James complied, shaking his head in amusement. When the Ravenclaw stumbled into the Great Hall fifteen minutes later, still looking flushed and ineffectively trying to cool herself off with her waving hand, James was all but surprised and went back to sending covert glances at Lily Evans, who was giddily talking to Remus a little ways down the Gryffindor table.

The fact that Sirius himself did not return started bugging him another couple of minutes later, though. He reluctantly ceased the movement of his head between the direction of Lily Evans and that of the doors (he’d looked like he was following a tennis match) and went looking for his friend.

His mind was already forming plans of retaliation should Sirius’s absence be caused by Slytherins, and plotting out escape routes should a teacher have somehow snatched his friend up for immediate detention. One of the two had to be the case; this was Sirius One-Track-Mind Black he was talking about. Therefore, what James found was not what he had expected.

Sirius was sitting on a table in the now abandoned Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. His hair stood slightly on end and there were traces of lipstick around his mouth and ear, but he looked otherwise unscathed. Troubled and pensive, yes, and maybe a bit pale, but unharmed. Nothing like he would be if he had been attacked or taunted. Unless it was something really serious... James’s insides froze as he thought of all the things this could mean, considering the current state of affairs in the wizarding world. He knew Sirius’s younger brother Regulus had taken to hanging around a group of shady Slytherins who openly bragged about becoming Death Eaters once they were out of Hogwarts; what if something had happened to him?

"Sirius?"

Sirius started. It seemed he had been quite engrossed in his thoughts.

"Are you alright?"

"What? Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?"

James gave him a Look, copied straight from his mother’s face. Sirius shook his head - like a dog shaking water from its coat - and stood up.

"It’s nothing, Prongs."

"Oh, don’t give me that crap, Sirius. First Moony, now you..."

Sirius’s mouth twitched. "Girls really are a pain, aren’t they? Alright then... she said I’m a lousy kisser."

James’ eyes narrowed. "That’s all?"

"Yes."

"I don’t buy it."

"Why, thank you." Sirius said sarcastically, before turning more serious. "Prongs, if word of this leaks out to the rest of the Hogwarts witches, my reputation -"

"She didn’t look like she’d had a lousy snog when she came down." James interrupted.

Sirius stared at him with a blank look. "I... made the kissing part up to her." he drawled meaningfully. James studied his face carefully. His friend didn’t look entirely honest. But then again, Sirius was such a good and frequent liar, how should James know if he was, say, trying overly hard to look like he wasn’t lying, because he realised how skilled he was at deceptions and that James would remember that, and really was telling the truth so he wanted to make sure James would believe him. Er - wait, hold on, come again?

"Are you sure nothing more is going on?" James asked uncertainly.

Sirius looked him square in the eye. "Yes. She took me by surprise, that’s all. That mess with Remus last night, and again this morning... it, you know, it unsettled me more than I’d realised."

Well, at least that much was true. In a way.



Sirius kept a close eye on Remus for the remainder of the day. Though the werewolf persisted in ignoring his presence, he must have felt Sirius’s eyes burning into his back. They had one class together, after which Remus left for the library to do his homework. Not putting it past Remus’s foul mood to deduct points from Gryffindor for alleged scheming of pranks if he followed him there (which, admittedly, was one of Sirius’s main reasons for visiting the library), he instead used the Marauder’s Map. This tactic worked when Remus went on his Prefect patrol shift too. Sirius kept an especially close eye on everyone to come near Remus for longer periods of time.

When his friend (though to his own dismay, Sirius felt an uncomfortable twinge in his heart at the word he normally used for his fellow Marauder so casually) returned to Gryffindor Tower late that night, he cleared the map and went down to the common room under the pretence of wanting to look for a quill he seemed to have lost. As expected, Remus ignored him and headed straight for the staircase to the boys’ dormitories. Sirius jumped up from his spot by the fire and blocked his path.

"We need to talk, Remus."

"Oh?" He seemed unimpressed. "Would that be about your apologies, by any chance?"

"No, I -"

"Then I’m not listening." With that, Remus brushed past Sirius. The latter quickly blocked the entrance to the staircase, though. Remus glared at him and tried to shove him out of the way, but Sirius shoved him back.

"What the Hell do you want, Sirius?"

"I made a good deal today." Sirius said casually. "You know Dorcas Meadows from Ravenclaw, don’t you? Well, a while back, she told me she had a bet going with a friend of hers, about who would be able to kiss the more popular bloke. I refused at the time, but today I found out that bet is still running. Which came in very handy for me, because I was able to ask something from her in return. She told me some interesting things." Sirius carefully studied Remus’s expression for any reaction, but it seemed the latter was developing quite a poker face. "About something that happened during Herbology this morning."

"Just like you to treat a girl like that." Remus said coolly. But had his eyes widened just then?

"You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe James isn’t as paranoid about Evans and others competing for her affection as I thought he was." Sirius persisted.

"Let me through, Sirius." Remus hissed.

"I came this close to telling James about it immediately after I’d heard it."

"That’s nice, but I don’t know what you’re talking about, so let me through!"

"I see." Sirius’s expression darkened. "Very well, I’ll be direct then. Are you trying to seduce Evans?"

 

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?