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“Minnie, my love! I have so much to tell you!”
Minerva McGonagall was firmly against favouritism. Professors should treat all of their students equitably and especially never favour a student notorious for breaking school rules. Even if he has the highest acumen for transfiguration she’s seen in her decade of teaching. Even if his leadership brought her beloved quidditch team from dead last to winning the house cup three years in a row.
“Mr Potter,” Minerva said, her voice frosty and expression stern. “Mr Filch tells me you set off dungbombs in the dungeons again?”
James waved a dismissive hand, unperturbed by her tone. “Just the one. I needed to get detention with you tonight so I could tell you what happened.”
Minerva lowered her chin to look at him disapprovingly over her glasses. James simply grinned.
“You’ll remember Matilda MacNair has been dating Gilderoy Lockhart for the last year and a half even though Lockhart’s been cheating on her with that Slytherin girl?”
Minerva couldn’t help it, her ears perked. “Ms Zabini, yes I know. Someone finally told Ms MacNair?”
James shook his head, grin widening. “She caught them snogging in the broom closet on the third floor.”
Minerva’s eyes widened but she quickly tamped down her intrigue.
“But get this, she was going to that broom closet with…” James leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “…Marcus McLaggen!”
Minerva glanced at her office door to ensure no one was lurking outside. “Wasn’t Mr McLaggen—”
“Dating Elena Zabini, yes! All of last year, they broke up over the summer, though.”
“So Ms MacNair knew…”
James shrugged. “She insists she didn’t. And according to Sirius who heard it from Rita who heard it from Elena, Matilda seemed very shocked by what she found.”
“What did she do?”
“Hexed Lockhart. Hit him with tarantallegra. So he’s dancing and calling her a bloody hypocrite because she’d obviously come to the closet to snog McLaggen. But Matilda’s denying it, insisting they were looking for a broom McLaggen misplaced.”
Minerva’s lips twitched. “A likely story. What did Ms Zabini do?”
“Got the hell out of there. Even in a jealous rage, no one’s thick enough to hex Elena, the girl’s bloody terrifying. Beautiful… but in a scary way.” James said, still grinning but his eyes were unfocused.
Minerva cleared her throat to regain his attention and he blinked before reclining in his chair. “The perfect Ravenclaw couple is no more.”
Minerva frowned, trying to remember who bet on October being the month Ms MacNair discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her. She’s fairly certain it was Poppy. Damn. They couldn’t have waited one more month…
“Mr Black must be pleased,” Minerva mused, watching James from the corner of her eye.
James straightened abruptly. “Huh? Why?”
“I’ve heard he’s been trying to win Ms MacNair’s heart for a few months now.”
James scoffed. “Who told you that? Is Sluggy feeding you false information? I know you professors have a betting pool…”
Minerva straightened. “The professors certainly do not have a betting pool.” The whole staff was included, technically.
James gave her a doubtful look but didn’t press. “Sirius is not interested in Matilda MacNair.”
“He’s been single for quite a while now,” Minerva continued, carefully watching James’s reaction.
James’s eyes darted around the room. “Well, he’s, y’know, focussed on NEWTs.”
It was Minerva’s turn to scoff. Every staff member knew Sirius Black was secretly dating someone, it was the only possible explanation for his extended period of purported unattachedness. The question was, who?
“Yes, Mr Black has always prioritized revising over his romantic life,” Minerva remarked dryly, her eyes narrowing on her prime suspect. “The two of you are quite close, are you not?”
James’s gaze snapped back to her. “You’re very curious, Minnie. Almost as if… you have money riding on it?”
“That would be unprofessional.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s too bad. Because if you did have money riding on it, I would certainly want to help you out. As Sirius’s best friend and life partner, I’m very knowledgeable about his dating life.”
Minerva and James stared at each other.
“If there were a bet…”
James leant forward eagerly.
“Then I would put my money on the person who regularly refers to himself as Mr Black’s life partner.”
James blinked twice before he burst out laughing.
“Oh, Minnie, oh no. How much did you bet? Everyone knows my heart belongs to Lily Evans.”
Minerva bristled. “Yes, you say that frequently. Yet you spend all your time with him…”
Another guffaw burst from James as he clutched his stomach. Minerva glanced at her window, half expecting the pane to rattle.
“Oh, Minnie. I’m so sorry to laugh. Padfoot and I are platonic soulmates. I mean, there was that one week in fifth after I had a particularly vivid dream… but we don’t discuss that. Who’re the other suspects?”
Minerva sighed and sank back into her chair. “Horace thinks Matilda MacNair. Pomona has Mary Macdonald. Filius has Evan Rosier—”
“A Slytherin!?”
Minerva ignored his outrage. “Albus has Gilderoy Lockhart. And Poppy has Remus Lupin.”
James nodded slowly, his face impassive for each suspect except Rosier. He leant back casually in his chair.
“So if you’re not secretly dating Mr Black, then my only hope is if none of the other staff members guessed the truth.”
With an enigmatic shrug, James began examining his cuticles. Minerva sighed.
“How much evidence would one need to win the bet?” James asked conversationally.
“It can’t be second-hand. And the wager is on him being in a relationship, so really they’d need to start openly dating.”
James nodded, then gave Minerva a fond look. “The things I do for you, Minnie.”
“I don’t want you doing anything for me, Mr Potter,” Minerva replied warily, retrieving parchment and a quill from her desk. “Except to stop setting off dungbombs and to write your lines.”
---
“I can’t date you, Potter.”
James sighed and looked at his best friend. Sirius was leant over a cauldron, ostensibly engaged in their assignment to a degree that would raise suspicion from any teacher with more than a week’s exposure to James and Sirius as desk partners. Fortunately, Slughorn was too busy cooing over Lily Evan’s potion to notice the hiccough cure they were meant to be brewing had long ago been abandoned. A potion that would cause uncontrollable hiccoughs would do far more to serve Sirius and James’s nefarious needs, after all.
“ Fake date, Padfoot.”
“Please don’t beg me, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Sirius! I want to do this for Minnie. A graduation gift!”
“I’d do it Prongs, but,” Sirius glanced over his shoulder at Lily and Remus two rows behind them to confirm they weren’t listening. “It interferes with my wooing Moony plans, as you well know.”
James sighed and attempted to run a hand through his hair but his fingers got stuck in the tangles and he had to reverse course.
“You’ve been wooing for over a year now and have made no progress.”
Sirius huffed and set his stirrer down. “It’s a slow seduction. I think we need to add more gurdyroot.”
James grabbed the gurdyroot and started chopping. “You could just tell him how you feel like a normal person.”
“Has that strategy worked for you?”
“We all know Evans is immune to my declarations, no need to remind me,” James lamented, adding the gurdyroot. The potion started to fizz encouragingly. “But it has worked for you in the past.”
“With people I knew liked me. This is Moony. He’s more like Evans, anyway.” Sirius cast Lily an irritable glance, as if she was to blame for Moony’s ignorance of Sirius’s feelings.
“C’mon. We’ll fool him and Pete, too. Maybe he’ll get jealous and try to steal you away from me.” James nudged Sirius with his elbow, grinning.
“Is this some scheme to make Lily jealous?”
James shook his head. “I’ve resigned myself to pining the rest of my life and not bothering her.”
Sirius siphoned some of their potion into a vial. “No one would believe us, Prongs. Least of all Moony.”
James slapped a hand over his heart and gasped. “Doubting our acting abilities?! After all this time?”
Sirius’s mouth twisted like he was fighting a grin and James knew he’d won. Sirius held out the vial. “Time to test it. Your turn.”
James sighed and downed the vial. There was a moment of anticipation, then James leaned over the side of the desk and emptied his stomach onto the floor.
“Bloody hell, Potter!” Elena yelled from the next desk, drawing Slughorn’s attention.
Over the sound of James’s vomiting, Slughorn scolded them for testing potions he hadn’t evaluated and cast charms that filled the room with orange peels to cover the smell. After he vanished up the mess, James sat on the bench, catching his breath while the rest of the class turned in their potions.
On his way back from dropping off his vial, Remus paused at their desk, giving James only a cursory glance, clearly unconcerned by his sudden bout of illness. Sirius smirked and tried to flip his hair, forgetting he’d tied it back for brewing, so it looked more like he had a neck spasm.
“There’s vomit on your tie,” Remus told him then returned to his desk where Lily was shaking her head disappointedly in their direction.
Sirius scourgified his tie, sending James a dirty look before he pulled his textbook onto his lap.
“I think next time we substitute the sneezewort for chomping cabbage,” Sirius said grumpily, flipping the page.
“We just have to fake it for a week or two.”
Sirius breathed a tremendous sigh. His eyes darted to James’s hair and he wrinkled his nose, aggrieved.
“Run a comb through that bird’s nest first. I have a reputation to uphold.”
---
Remus Lupin awoke with one of the worst hangovers of his life and it was all Sirius’s fault.
Sirius snuck out through the secret passageway to Hogsmeade yesterday and returned with a bottle of Firewhisky. Sirius (and James) ganged up on Remus until he agreed to stop revising and drink instead. Sirius kept goading Remus into drinking by adding absurd penalties to their muggle poker game, insisting they were part of a variation Marlene McKinnon taught him.
Every chirp of Remus’s alarm was like a knife behind his eyelids. He groped for his wand and resisted the urge to fling it at Sirius’s bed, instead silencing the alarm with a flick. He groaned loudly into his pillow.
“I’m going to eat you on the next full, Black.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Moony,” Sirius replied, sounding groggy but not nearly as pained as Remus.
Remus swung his feet to the floor and waited for his churning stomach to settle. Slowly he rose to his feet and when he was certain he wasn’t about to puke, he wrenched back Sirius’s curtains, wanting to expose him to the sunlight scouring Remus’s retinas.
He did not expect to see James in Sirius’s bed, wrapped around Sirius like a vine. James and Sirius were at least shirtless, the sheets covering their lower halves, and blinking blearily at him.
“Er, morning, Moony,” Sirius said. “Didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”
Remus stared at them, uncomprehending. “Find out…”
James lifted his head from Sirius’s chest to gesture to Sirius. “Me and Padfoot. We’ve been, er, dating.”
“What?” Wormtail said, sticking his head out of his curtains, wincing at the sound of his own voice. His eyes widened at the sight of Sirius and James.
“You’re joking,” Remus stated.
Sirius and James shook their heads in synchrony.
Remus narrowed his eyes at James, the weakest link in the Marauder chain when it came to lying, worse than even Peter.
“James,” Remus said, his tone stern. “Tell the truth.”
James’s hazel eyes looked apprehensive, not sparkling with ill-disguised glee.
“Sirius and I have been together for a few months now,” he said. “We’re sorry we didn’t tell you.”
Remus wasn’t sure if James was telling the truth or if he was too just hungover to read him. Regardless, it was too early and his head was pounding and he didn’t have the patience for any of this. Remus turned on his heel and stomped towards the bathroom, letting the door slam behind him.
---
Lily Evans was enjoying a peaceful morning when her grumpiest friend plunked down into the seat next to her.
“Good morning, Remus,” Lily said pleasantly, not deterred by the irritation billowing off him.
Remus grunted and poured himself some tea.
“Sleep well?” she asked, extra chipper for her own amusement.
“I need new dormmates.”
Lily nodded solemnly. “Yes, you do.”
Lily let him eat some breakfast before pressing for details. But before she got a chance, the excited whispers of her fellow Gryffindors drew her attention to the main doors.
Sirius and James had just walked in holding hands.
“What are they up to?” she asked Remus, brow furrowed in suspicion.
Remus glanced at the display before returning his sullen gaze to his plate. “No clue.”
“Is that why you’re so charming this morning?” Lily asked before Sirius and James reached them, Peter trailing behind.
Remus stabbed his eggs with more force than necessary.
“Oi, Potter,” Lily said as Sirius, James, and Peter took their seats. “What are you up to?”
“Good morning to you, too, Evans,” Sirius said, bumping Remus’s arm before reaching across him for the jug of pumpkin juice. “Please allow my boyfriend to have some tea before you interrogate him.”
Lily snorted. “Boyfriend?”
James nodded, not looking at her as he loaded up his plate.
“What’s the scheme?”
“No scheme, Evans.” Sirius was smiling sweetly at her over his glass.
Lily looked to Peter, who shrugged, then Remus, who continued focussing on his breakfast.
“There’s no way the two of you are dating.”
“Please, Evans, you must conceal your jealousy better than that.”
“Piss off, Black. You two could never date. No bed could contain both of your massive egos.”
Peter snorted, sending tea spewing over the plate of toast in front of him.
“Moony can attest we both fit in perfectly in my bed,” James said, finally looking at Lily and smiling cheekily.
Lily looked to Remus but before he could respond, a slimy voice interrupted them.
“So, the rumours are true. Just when you thought a pair of blood-traitors couldn’t get any more perverse.”
Half of the Gryffindor table’s occupants snapped their heads towards the voice.
“Shut the fuck up, Snivellus.”
“Go take a shower, you’re ruining my breakfast, you stinking git.”
“You looking to get hexed, greaseball?”
“Bugger off, you creepy bat. No one likes you.”
“Severus, I will literally castrate you if you say another word.”
Lily waited until most of the uproar had quieted before delivering her threat, her wand held aloft and her eyes narrowed menacingly. Fear flashed in Severus’s dark eyes and he scuttled away, his shoulders hunched.
Lily set her wand next to her fork.
Sirius leaned his head on James’s shoulder, smiling dreamily.
“Just when I thought things couldn’t get better, we find another way to offend dear Snivellus’s delicate sensibilities.”
---
Sirius had spent the better part of the last year establishing himself as the most dateable person in Remus’s life.
He’d stayed single, which was the talk of the school. Lily had snarked there must be no one left for him to date, which was patently untrue, even if you didn’t count Slytherin house (which Sirius did not).
Yet, Remus showed no interest.
In fairness, Sirius expected no discernable difference between an interested Remus and a not interested Remus. Remus’s kept every emotion besides irritation reeled in so no one could get a read on him. The only benefit to that way of life (which Sirius could not relate to at all) was that all that repression led to the occasional dramatic outburst of emotion at an inopportune time. Sirius had been fantasizing about Remus finally snapping like a twig and snogging him—in the great hall, on the quidditch pitch, during Transfiguration—for months.
It would happen, surely. Just as soon as Remus reached his limit.
In the meantime, there was school and quidditch and pretending to date James and pranks.
The last of which was the reason Sirius and James were currently sprinting down the corridor while the sound of fireworks drowned out their footsteps.
The next corner would bring them to the Charms corridor which would certainly lead to detention, so Sirius grabbed James by the arm and yanked him into the broom cupboard.
The click of approaching heels got louder as whoever it was turned the corner.
“We’re dead,” James whispered. Minnie knew to check the broom cupboards.
Sure enough, the footsteps stopped just outside the door.
Just as the knob began to turn, Sirius grabbed James by either side of the face and smashed their lips together.
The door opened and light flooded the tiny space. There was an un-McGonagall-like squeak and Sirius pulled back to see Lily Evans, eyes wide.
Lily gaped for a moment before saying, “Someone filled the dungeons with slime.”
“Wasn’t us, Evans,” Sirius said, putting a hand on his hip and the other on the wall next to James’s head, hoping that looked natural. “Been here. Snogging.”
Lily was staring at James whose mouth was still hanging open.
“Sounds like a Slytherin’s idea of a joke, if you ask me,” Sirius added. “Did you ask Snivellus? Asking the resident slimeball should be step one.”
“Is that true?” Lily asked James, clearly having not listened to anything Sirius had said after ‘snogging’.
James blinked then nodded, giving Lily an awkward thumbs up.
Lily, at a loss, stared for another moment before closing the closet door very slowly.
Sirius waited until her footsteps faded away then rounded on James.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sirius demanded, smacking him on the arm.
“Where’d you learn to kiss like that?”
Sirius stared incredulously for a moment before he burst into laughter.
---
“I’m over the moon, if you’ll forgive the expression.” Sirius twirled his wand between his fingers, his eyes burning holes through the top of Remus’s bent head. “It’s just been great. So great. Indescribable. Honestly, I couldn’t even begin to describe it.”
“Don’t strain yourself on my account,” Remus muttered, not looking up from the essay he was proofreading intensely.
Sirius had been trying to get Remus alone all day to get his true reaction to the whole ‘dating James’ nonsense. It’d been difficult, despite having two classes together. Remus had been unusually quick to leave their shared lessons and filling the dungeons with slime was hardly something Sirius could reschedule.
Fortunately, Remus was predictable. And even if he was avoiding Sirius, that goal wasn’t worth skipping the library.
“It’s exciting, but also comfortable,” Sirius continued, making his voice as dreamy as possible. “It’s the best of both worlds. It’s just… It never occurred to me to date a friend before.”
Remus crossed a word out with too much force, the nib of his quill tearing a hole in his parchment. Sirius repaired it with a quick snap of his wand.
“I don’t know why! It’s such a good idea. Dating a friend. James already knows me so well, you know?”
“Hmph.” Remus tapped his wand against the parchment to dry the ink and rolled up his essay, his jaw tight.
“We’re already so in sync. I know all his secrets already, he knows mine… It’s all so easy, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t just date their friends…”
Remus finally met Sirius’s gaze.
“Do you agree, Moony?”
“Uh-huh,” Remus replied, stony, his bag in hand. He stood, sweeping out of the library without farewell.
Sirius watched him leave, fingers tapping restlessly against the table.
---
Lily refused to believe James and Sirius were truly dating. She spent two days watching them closely. They sat together in every class, whispering and snickering instead of paying attention, but that was nothing new.
The snogging in closets was new. Lily didn’t care for it. The memory of them pressed together in the dark made her skin hot and her jaw clench. It was ridiculous, how far they would go to sell the lie. Whatever they were planning had to be really big.
Lily wasn’t sure what evidence she was waiting for as she spent her lessons staring at the backs of their heads and not paying attention to her professors, but she knew at some point they’d slip up. And she would be ready to expose them.
“Remus. You have to help me catch them.”
Remus looked up from his textbook, annoyed. He glanced to James and Sirius, who were playing exploding snap on the other side of the common room and laughing loudly. “Lily, it’s better to ignore them. Also, I’m revising.”
“Catch who?” Marlene demanded from her seat next to Remus.
“Lily’s convinced James and Sirius are pulling a prank with their relationship,” Peter supplied from the other side of Remus and he smiled at Lily.
“Surely you don’t believe them, Peter,” Lily said.
Peter shrugged. “They always had a weirdly close relationship. I’m not shocked.”
Lily sighed. “I brewed some Veritaserum for Slug Club… I’m tempted to put some in Potter’s pumpkin juice.”
Remus snorted as if he knew Lily would sooner stab herself in the eye with her prefect pin. Lily crossed her arms in irritation.
“Veritaserum, you said?” Marlene asked, ears perking up.
“Don’t even suggest it, Mckinnon,” Remus warned.
“Why not? We haven’t played in ages.”
“I have to revise–”
“I have to catch Potter and Black in their lie!” Lily interjected.
Marlene levelled Lily with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t you see how it could help you catch them lying? Without you having to drug anyone against their will?”
Lily blinked then nodded, a grin spreading across her face. Remus sighed heavily.
Marlene threw down her quill and stood up on her chair.
“Listen up, lions! Everyone below fifth, get the hell out. We’re playing Head of House!”
Several seventh years whooped while the younger Gryffindors sighed forlornly and gathered up their things. Maybe it was Marlene’s winning smile or her intimidating arm muscles, but no one dared argue with her.
Sirius and James grinned at each other and abandoned their game, unsuspecting.
“But Marls,” Mary whined, smiling despite her tone. “I can never keep track of the rules. There’s so many and they make little sense.”
“That’s the point!” Peter replied, grabbing pillows off the couches to scatter around the room.
Marlene summoned her deck of Famous Witches and Wizards cards and grinned at Mary. “Don’t pull that helpless shit, Mary. You won last time, I wasn’t too drunk to forget. Potter! You better have a keg in that den of iniquity you call a dorm!”
James was already halfway up the stairs, having learned the hard way that summoning a keg was a surefire way to get the wind knocked out of you. He called over his shoulder, “Until the day they chuck out the lot of us, the Marauder’s dorm will always have enough alcohol to sink a ship.”
Marlene charmed the deck of cards to float cheerfully above her head while Sirius and Mary passed out drinks. Lily started casting colour changing charms on the pillows Peter had spread out. Remus tucked his textbook away and cast a silencing charm on the portrait hole with put upon irritation.
“Spread out and hands on the walls!” Marlene ordered giddily once James had set the bottle of firewhisky atop the butterbeer keg in the centre of the room. The Gryffindors obeyed, each of them strategically positioning themselves near a pillow or piece of furniture.
“Where, oh where, is the Devil’s Snare?” Marlene yelled.
“Down there!” everyone shouted back, pointing at the floor before taking a drink and jumping onto the nearest object that would hold their weight.
“Let the game begin!”
---
“Dumbledore!” Fabian yelled from atop the coffee table, his red and gold tie wrapped around his head like a blindfold for his eyebrows.
“Please, sir, not the cane!” the Gryffindors shouted amicably before collectively raising their cups to their lips.
“Teacher’s pets, advance!” Marlene declared. Lily and Remus, the only prefects dishonourable enough to play this game, scrambled from their blue and bronze pillows to advance to Slytherin house. While they tried not to tumble onto the floor, Peter drew a new card from the deck floating by his left ear.
“Greta Catchlove! Bugger, what’s this one mean again?”
“Never have I ever!” Marlene shouted from her precarious perch on the fireplace mantel.
Everyone held up three fingers and Peter said, “Never have I ever, passed my potions OWL.”
Most of the room groaned and lowered a finger. Peter laughed and pointed at Marlene.
“Never have I ever… made out with a boy.”
“Traitor!” Lily directed at Marlene with a laugh as she and most of the other girls lowered a finger. Sirius and James also lowered a finger, holding their hands high in the air as they did so and making kissy sounds at each other.
“I see you, Remus Lupin,” Dorcas called from across the room. Remus scratched his brow with his one extended finger and shrugged innocently. Sirius stopped making kissy sounds.
Marlene pointed at James who smirked.
“Never have I ever, gone down on a girl while still in my quidditch uniform.”
This was aimed at Marlene who sighed dramatically while lowering her second finger, but James inadvertently got Dorcas to drop her last finger, her head bowed in shame.
“Trollop!” the group shouted on Marlene’s cue as Dorcas’s shoulders shook with poorly suppressed laughter.
“Down the hatch!” James commanded, and Dorcas emptied her cup.
“Who’s got three?” Marlene asked and Peter gleefully waved his three fingers as he scrambled across the furniture into the next house.
The deck of cards fluttered over to Sirius. He drew what was, inexplicably, an exploding snap card. He scowled at Marlene, wiping the soot off his face, then drew again, clearing his throat loudly.
“Dippet!”
The room erupted into an off-key rendition of Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, everyone drunkenly swaying in synchrony.
“For hitting that high note, Sirius may advance a house.”
“What about my harmonies!?”
“Shut up, James. Remus, don’t think I didn’t see you just mouthing the words!” Marlene added with a laugh. “Down a house!”
With a rueful shake of his head, Remus took one giant step to move from his chair to a pillow in the appropriate quadrant of the common room.
Kingsley, standing on the windowsill holding a curtain for balance, took the next card. “Oooh, Celestina Warbeck.” He cleared his throat.
The room hushed as Kingsley started to hum.
“WHICH WAY, WITCH?” Sirius and Lily shouted in unison. They shared an astonished look, then turned to Marlene for judgment.
“Tie! Both advance a house!”
Dorcas grabbed the next card. “Alberta Toothill!”
There were several whoops and the room chorused, “Tell the tooth!”
“Mary, truth or dare?”
“Truth!”
Dorcas pointed at Lily, swaying slightly.
“You got the vert-serum. Verint– Ver-it-a-ser-um?”
Lily pulled a vial from her robes and Mary held out her drink.
“I diluted it,” Lily assured her. “One drop should only last a few minutes.”
Mary nodded, her grin fearless and bright. Once a single drop of veritaserum fell from the pipette into Mary’s drink, she downed the cup.
“Mary, be honest,” Dorcas said, rather redundantly. “Shag, marry, kill. Dumbledore, McGonagall, Slughorn.”
There were several cackles and several people making retching sounds around her, but Mary furrowed her brow seriously.
“Obviously, I’ll kill Sluggy. I guess I have to shag Dumbledore and marry McGonagall because I can just tell one night with her won’t be enough.”
Dorcas laughed and waved Mary to the next house. Once she stumbled onto a spot on the couch, Mary turned to Remus.
“Remus, truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
“You always pick dare.”
“I like to live on the edge, Macdonald.”
I dare you… argh, Sirius!”
Sirius, in pursuit of the golden snitch flitting around the room, had just catapulted himself onto Mary's couch, forcing her to cling to the backrest. Sirius did not catch the snitch. Mary kicked him vengefully in the shoulder and his hand touched the floor in his attempt not to roll off the couch.
“Bloody – ouch, Mary. Give Moony his dare, dammit.”
“This is why you didn’t make the quidditch team. Move down a house, Sirius.”
Sirius stumbled across the room while Mary giggled.
“Remus, I dare you to tell me the most embarrassing thing you know about Sirius.”
“Moony, don’t you–”
“In fourth year, Sirius smoked literal grass, like from the lawn outside. He thought he was high and rambled about centaurs and danced to ABBA, but weirdly slowly.”
“Moony!” Sirius chastised, but he was grinning.
“Lily, truth or dare?”
Lily, who’d stretched out on a couch with her feet dangling off the armrest, jolted at being addressed. “Dare!”
“I dare you to send Slughorn an owl telling him how much you liked his outfit today.”
Lily groaned theatrically while laughter filled the room. She summoned a quill and parchment, grumbling as she drafted a brief note.
“You forget we have prefect rounds together, Lupin. All alone in those halls… would be a shame if you were to get hexed with no one was around to stop me.”
“I can take you, Evans.”
Lily rolled up the note and tossed it to Remus. “You can mail it for me, after the game.” She turned her ruminating gaze on James. “Potter, truth or dare. Why am I asking? Of course, you’re too much of a coward to pick truth.”
James gasped and clapped a hand to his chest. “I’m no coward! Tru–”
“Prongs, you bloody idiot. She’s going to ask you about our bedroom habits. Remember my modesty!”
James’s eyes got wide as he looked at Sirius, who was now standing by Remus, glaring at him meaningfully.
“Dare!” James shouted.
“No, no you said truth!”
“I did not. Give me a dare, Evans.”
Lily threw her arms up in exasperation, her plan foiled.
“I dare you to admit you’re not dating Sirius!”
“Minister! I demand a penalty! Evans is being sneaky. Minister!”
Marlene had been whispering in Dorcas’s ear and jumped when James called out her official title for the game the second time.
“Er– yes! Azkaban or Dementor’s kiss?”
“Kiss, kiss, kiss!” Dorcas chanted and Lily glared at her.
“Azkaban,” Lily said morosely and hopped from her couch to a pillow Remus had claimed, forcing him to grab her shoulders to keep them both from toppling on the floor. Once balanced, she stretched out a leg to reach the armchair of shame that was facing the corner and sat down.
Remus grabbed the next card. “It’s Smarmy!”
“Won’t you be my potions partner?” the room chanted as everyone scrambled to pair up.
“Remember, you have to stay touching the rest of the game!” Marlene shouted from where she was now perched in Dorcas’s lap. “Lily, where’s your partner? Go down a house!”
“I was in Azkaban! You can’t penalize me!”
“Spoken like someone unfamiliar with the wizarding criminal justice system,” Remus said, slurring his S’s slightly. Sirius, balancing on the same pillow with his arm linked with Remus’s, snickered.
Marlene looked at Peter and stage-whispered, “Is she right? I forget the rules of Azkaban.”
“It’s a safe bet. Lily’s usually right,” Peter whispered back and Marlene waved a conciliatory hand at Lily, who stood on her chair to grab the next card.
“Gwenog Jones!”
Everyone shouted, “Bludger? I hardly know her!”
Lily took a gulp of her drink and grabbed a nearby pillow as the room erupted into chaos, everyone scrambling for something to throw without falling onto the floor.
Lily’s pillow collided smoothly with the back of James’s head, surprising him enough that he dropped Fabian’s arm. James groaned and he and Fabian downed their drinks.
“Lily advances!” Marlene said. “James, to Azkaban for not blocking that bludger! Some captain you are!”
Lily, scrambling to the next house, caught Sirius attempting to deflect a pillow with a textbook. The pillow hit his shoulder, but he somehow knocked the snitch that was soaring by into Remus’s hand. Remus and Sirius looked at each other, then to Marlene who was just as bewildered.
“Sirius gets the dementor’s kiss!” Marlene proclaimed, uncertainty not affecting her confidence. “Who shall be his dementor?”
“Remus!” someone shouted.
“Hardly a punishment,” Mary snorted as Remus tried to scowl at whoever said his name. Dorcas looked up at the ceiling innocently.
“To the closet with you both!” Marlene said, as Remus grabbed Sirius’s wrist with a roll of his eyes.
“Permission to approach the Cackling Stump?” Lily asked, raising her voice above the giggles and wolf-whistles.
“Thou art worthy!” Marlene replied.
Lily climbed across the couch to the butterbeer keg in the middle of the room, awkwardly manoeuvring around Remus and Sirius, who were trying to make their way to the cupboard on the other side of the room using the same couch.
Lily took a swig from the firewhisky bottle sitting on top of the keg, screwed the cap back on, then lay the bottle on its side and gave it a spin.
It landed, to her frustration, on James.
The room filled with childish coos and laughter.
“It’s time for Babbity Rabbity to reveal herself! Hop over to your king and kiss him!” Marlene announced, as if Lily’s hesitation stemmed from forgetting the rules.
James was sitting on an armchair and there was a neat path of pillows Lily could easily take to reach him. His hair was a mess and his glasses were still crooked from being hit by her pillow.
Lily was trying very hard to feel put out but couldn’t summon very much irritation through her firewhisky haze.
She, literally, hopped from pillow to pillow. When she was a couple of feet away, she awkwardly leapt into the chair, aiming to land on the armrest without toppling them over and also not kneeing James in the groin.
James let out an oof as her knee collided with his right thigh but seemed otherwise unharmed. Lily leaned in.
“Wait!”
Lily froze, her lips inches from James’s. He smelt like whisky and pine cones.
James tilted his head to look around Lily and she felt the white-hot burn of rejection.
“Sirius, dearest. Do I have your permission?”
The rejection dissolved into indignation. The stupid prank. She was going to hex this boy.
Sirius and Remus had just reached the cupboard door, Remus’s fingers still around Sirius’s wrist, both of them balanced on a pillow. “No tongue, sweetums!” Sirius declared before Remus yanked him into the cupboard.
“Same to you, honey bee!”
Marlene set a seven-minute timer hovering above the cupboard door, and James tilted his head back with a saucy grin.
“Have at it, Evans.”
Lily narrowed her eyes and heard James swallow. She grabbed his face and hauled him in.
Lily kissed him fiercely. She bit his lower lip and his whole body jerked against hers and his mouth opened a little in surprise. A small noise escaped James’s throat as she curled her tongue into his mouth (fuck Sirius). She tangled one hand in his hair and gave it a sharp pull before she pressed him back against the chair, ignoring the cheers and catcalls behind her.
James’s fingertips were on her elbows, barely touching her. Lily didn’t know if his restraint was because of the alcohol or the prank with Sirius (or, god forbid, the prank wasn’t really a prank and she was actually kissing a taken boy as if her life depended on it), but she didn’t care. She wanted him to break.
She surged forward so her chest pressed against his and she ran her thumb down the trembling line of his throat. James’s fingers tightened around her elbows and she felt rather than heard his groan.
Lily pulled back, vindicated, her eyes on James’s wet lips.
“I win,” Lily said, the cocky words came out as a breathy whisper. She felt her face getting red.
“Congratulations,” James squeaked and Lily’s eyes snapped to his. His glasses were smudged and a little foggy. He had such long eyelashes.
She scrambled off him, taking one more moment of searing eye contact to compose herself, before turning to face the cheering room.
---
“I can’t believe I’m being cheated on right now.”
Remus huffed and cast a silencing charm to drown out the cheers on the other side of the door. “You gave him permission. Are you so drunk you forgot already?”
“Not drunk. Not on firewhisky, anyway. On love, perhaps.”
Remus took a step forward, his gaze intense. “What game are you playing?”
“Head of House.”
“Sirius.”
“I was.”
Remus closed his eyes for a moment and he could feel Sirius’s attention like a spotlight warming his skin. He took another step forward. Sirius stepped back and there was a soft thud as his back hit the wall.
“What are you doing with James?”
“We’re dating.”
“James doesn’t even like blokes.” Remus’s words were heavy with meaning. James and Sirius already had their inside jokes, their mirrors, their own secret language. This didn’t belong to them.
Sirius shrugged and there were just enough dregs of light in the cupboard to glint off his grin. “I’m a lot of blokes’ exception. What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Liar. You’ve been Moody Moony for the last two days.”
“I have not.”
“You have. Normally, you’re only Moody Moony the days leading up to the moon.”
“Stop calling me Moody Moony!”
“Tell me why you’re angry at me!”
Remus put his hand against the wall beside Sirius’s head while mentally reaching into the deep store of patience he needed for conversations with Sirius.
“You’re fucking up his chances with Lily, you know.”
“Pretty sure Evans has her tongue down his throat as we speak, so I know that’s not why you’re mad.”
“You specifically told her no–”
“When has Evans ever done anything I’ve told her?!”
Remus didn’t say anything, trusting Sirius to be incapable of letting silence reign.
“Evans is trying to steal my man. You should be comforting me,” Sirius said, his voice lower than before. He wrapped his forefingers around Remus’s belt loops, letting the weight of his arms tempt Remus forward.
Sirius rolled his head against the wall and his hair brushed Remus’s thumb. “Or kissing the life out of me. You’re my punishment, remember?”
Something shifted in Remus. Anger fell away and there was a plaintive edge to his voice as he whispered, “It’s killing me.”
Without hesitation, Sirius said, “James and I are fake dating so Minnie wins a bet.”
Remus took a deep breath. “Arseholes.”
Sirius tugged on his belt loops the same moment Remus surged forward and their lips met.
---
“Sirius! No!”
Sirius wrenched back and tried to give James an agitated look, but the light from the common room was burning his retinas.
“Betrayal!” James clutched his chest and stumbled backwards, grabbing the open door for balance and swaying with it as it oscillated against his weight. “Obvious tongue! How could you?”
“I’m dumping you, Potter.”
“My heart! It aches!”
Sirius blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light. The party was dissipating and their Minister for Magic was making out with Dorcas on the couch while Kingsley awkwardly tried to tidy up the pillows.
“You’re wearing Evans’s lipstick, you know?” Sirius said when he returned his eyes to James’s theatrics.
“I’ll never love again!”
“James, Sirius told me–”
“Quiet, homewrecker!”
Lily appeared at James’s side, her eyes darting between Sirius and Remus. “What’s happened?”
“You were right, Lily,” Remus said. Lily scowled and Sirius could swear her hair puffed up when she was mad like a cat’s.
“Potter, you lying piece of–”
“You kissed me with tongue thinking I had a serious boyfriend so we’re both terrible people!” James interrupted, causing Lily’s brow to shoot upwards and her cheeks to redden.
“I–”
Lily had no retort and the silence was turning awkward. Remus tugged on Sirius’s shirtsleeve and they both slipped out of the cupboard and up to the dorm. Lily and James didn’t take their eyes off each other.
“Maybe… my behaviour wasn’t… the best.” Lily forced out the words like she was trying not to choke on them. “But you provoked me.”
James nodded, eyeing her warily.
“I wasn’t complaining. About the tongue. I mean– the kissing me with…” James waved a hand to symbolize Lily sticking her tongue down his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Lily took a step towards him, manoeuvring herself into the cupboard doorway so the open door hid her from the remaining students in the common room.
“I think, I was maybe… jealous,” she said, her gaze on the lopsided collar of his shirt.
“Jealous?”
“Yeah. I know how I’ve acted... It’s just you dislike someone for so long it kind of becomes a habit. Even when he turns out to be a really wonderful person.”
“Yeah?” James breathed, stepping closer.
“Yeah. Even though he's a no good prankster who's obsessed with his hair." Lily smiled and reached out to straighten a wayward tuft of James's hair. "And I hadn’t fully come to terms with my feelings, then suddenly he’s dating someone else. It was confusing. And frustrating. And then to see him snogging Remus…”
“Wait, what?” James snapped, stepping back as his eyes widened in horror. “You’re talking about Sirius?!”
Lily watched him with wide, innocent eyes before she burst into laughter.
“So bloody gullible, Potter,” she said before grabbing him by his shirt and pulling him into the cupboard.
---
Four days after Minerva collected her galleons from the rest of the staff, Horace caught Sirius Black and Remus Lupin leaping apart behind a tapestry on the third floor, their shirts only half buttoned. That same afternoon, after winning the quidditch game against Ravenclaw, James Potter soared into the stands to kiss Lily Evans, dangling upside down on his broom like the show-off he was.
Poppy, having already cleaned up on the last three bets, magnanimously told Minerva she could keep the winnings. But Minerva dropped the money pouch on an empty bed in the hospital wing with a sigh.
“I believe in fairness,” she had declared.
Later that night, she patrolled the halls in her animagus form. Not because she could move silently as a cat and she wanted to catch students canoodling so she could win the next bet.
That would be weird.