“Peter,” James calls from his seated position on his bed, “please tell them the story you were telling me earlier.” He can barely finish his sentence without erupting into a fit of hysteria.
Peter turns his head, unmoving from his reclined position on his four poster bed, but a smirk begins tugging at his lips.
“Oi! Sirius!” James shouts at the closed bathroom door. After a moment without response, James picks up a loafer–Remus’s–and chucks it at the bathroom door.
A muffled inhumane shriek, then the door flies open, “Fuck’s sake!” Sirius walks out shirtless, judging by his hair dripping onto his shoulders, startled out of his usual lengthy nighttime routine. He whips his towel at James, “You look like a bloody nun.”
James throws his pillow at him, though with his blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders and over his head, Remus laughs at the accuracy of the observation.
James turns back to Peter, “Please tell the story,” he begs unabashedly.
Peter sighs but sits up, his legs hanging off the side of the bed, “Alright, but for the love of all things holy, James, do not–under any circumstances–repeat this.” He looks menacingly at the other boys, but fixes his eyes on Sirius, “Especially not you, Black.”
Sirius drops his jaw in feigned horror, “Me? But I would never,” he says, already plopping down by Remus and pulling the book out of the boy’s hands.
Remus doesn’t fight it, instead far too curious at this seemingly outrageous tale.
“So the wonderful back-to-school party last night–before I realized you lot left me,” Peter casts pointed looks at them.
“Oi, I had a Transfiguration test today!” James exclaims.
“Sorry mate, I blacked out before nine,” Sirius admits.
“We know,” Peter, Remus, and James all chime in.
Sirius smiles–infamous smile, that.
“Anyways, I was walking around trying to find you all and then, Mary MacDonald comes up to me, fucking going on about this girl I just had to meet.”
“Bloody hell,” Sirius rolls his eyes, clearly knowing where this was headed.
“So, she’s grabbing my arm, dragging me through hoards of people, telling me this girl is so pretty and nice–whatever,” he pauses with dramatic flair, “It’s Marlene.”
“What?” Remus exclaims.
“But you know Marlene–we’re friends with Marlene. We eat lunch together every day for Godrick’s sake,” Sirius says.
“Yeah,” Peter says, looking around at his friends' faces expectantly, “This tosser was so drunk she forgot that I have not only known this girl for five fucking years, but that Marlene is a bloody lesbian!”
Sirius and James let out wheezes of laughter.
Remus’ jaw drops. “No!”
“We’re around literally ten people who obviously don’t know this–or who in the hell I am–so I had to sit there and reintroduce myself to Marlene bloody McKinnon–and it gets worse!”
Remus shakes his head in disbelief.
“Everybody starts chanting that we should kiss–”
The boys howl in laughter.
“No, no–it gets worse,” Peter shouts over them, “I obviously don’t want to–I’ve already kissed enough girls who weren’t attracted to me in the slightest. So me, not being a masochist, says no, but then,”
“Fuck’s sake there’s more?” Remus says in horror.
Peter nods, lips tightly pressed together, “She bloody eats my face off, the witch.”
All three boys’–even James who is hearing this story for the second time now–jaw drops.
“And so I back away and then Marlene looks at me, like actually looks at me, and yells,” Peter clears his throat and begins in a high-pitched squeal, “Oh my god, I thought you were a fucking girl!”
The boys erupt in cacophonous laughter again, James kicking his feet under his blanket nunnery, Sirius’s head falls back and Remus folds over, hand covering his mouth in utter bewilderment.
Peter continues, eyes wide with the ghosts of the previous evening, “I’m clearly in shock–hurt–but in shock. Marlene just outed herself–everybody is looking at us–and the logical place my mind goes to is to say ‘Marlene what do you mean, you’re not a lesbian!’”
If the theatrical way in which Peter relays this is even a shred similar to how he had actually said it the night prior, Remus is terrified at what is to come.
Their eyes go wide.
“Peter, no you did not,” Sirius claps a hand over his mouth.
Peter clears his throat, folding his hands very posh-like, “She wasn’t pleased, as you could imagine. Hardly see how it’s my fault, given that she just shouted how she didn’t mean to kiss me, a boy, but she fucks off and now I look like an absolute tosser.”
“What did Mary say?” Remus asks.
Peter looks at Remus intensely, “She says, ‘Well Peter, you do look quite girlish tonight.’”
“No!” Sirius shouts.
“The red sweater–”
“Yes James, the red sweater that Sirius insisted I wore,” Peter stares down Sirius whose eyes go wide, “Sirius told me the sweater was all the rage in Muggle fashion–”
Sirius throws his hands up, but laughter bubbles up, clouding his defense, “But I saw David–”
“I don’t give a rat’s arse that David Bowie wore the sweater! It had lace on it!”
“Mate–”
“Don’t even, Black,” Peter shuts him down, though there’s laughter shimmering in everyone’s eyes, “Everybody laughs at me, but I take the high road. I’m a changed man, so I walk away. Go to collect myself, if you will. Naturally, I go to the broom closet and there’s a girl in there.
The boys are sitting at the edge of their beds, all in equal dismay of what could possibly come out of Peter’s lips next. James fights an all-knowing smile.
“I’m fucking going off to the girl for a blumming fifteen minutes about this sweater and the whole Mary-Marlene-lesbian fiasco, and then she looks at me petrified and starts speaking in absolute gibberish. So me, being the brave little Gryffindor that I am think that some Slytherin has hexed her with a Tongue-Tie–”
“Oh God, Peter,” Remus groans, holding his head in his palm.
Peter stares at the wall as he speaks, looking like a soldier post-war, “I get my wand out to cast a Finite, and she starts freaking the fuck out. I’m confused, so I keep telling her I’m trying to help her, but the girl will not stop yelling at me in gibberish.”
He looks at the boys, ensuring that they’re all enraptured in the story–which they obviously are. James wraps the blanket tighter around his head so that only a grinning face is visible.
“She’s causing quite a ruckus and I guess someone overheard,” his voice is barrel above a whisper, “Lily opens the door and sees me with my wand in this girl’s face and the girl bawling crying. She grabs me, throwing me out of the closet,” He once again casts a menacing look at Sirius, “ripping the bloody sweater clean off my body.”
Gasps emit from the room.
“It gets worse,” Peter whispers, eyes stony.
“How? How could this get worse?” Remus shouts.
“Not only has Lily just opened the door and seen my wand in a bird’s face, but now everyone in the party sees me, on my ass–shirtless–and a crying girl in the closet.”
Horrified silence settles in the room.
“I try to explain myself–the Tongue-Tie jinx, the Finite–bloody all of it,” Peter sucks in a sharp breath, “Everyone is looking at me, much like you lot right now, and it’s silent. Then Lily just yells, and I’ll never forget this so long as I live, ‘Peter Pettigrew you good-for-nothing, blithering, moronic, prat!’”
He takes a beat, “The girl didn’t speak a lick of English. She’s from fucking Croatia.”
Sirius yells, falling over on the bed next to Remus. James finally lets out the laughter he’d been holding in throughout the entirety of the harrowing tale.
“Jesus, didn’t I tell you?” James yells to the other two, “Shite had me crying over breakfast.”
“James?”
James turns to Peter, quieting at his solemn expression.
“It’s not over,” Peter says.
“What do you mean?”
“I ran into Lily after lunch and apparently, after everyone got done yelling at me and I went upstairs, mortified, they shut the broom closet.”
James and Sirius’ brows furrow, but Remus quickly catches on, his expression slackening, “No. No way,” he says, mystified.
The other two’s eyes bounce from Remus to Peter trying to quickly decipher this silent understanding.
“The Croatian was in the broom closet until 3 o’clock today,” Peter says, “Apparently the door jammed from Lily nearly pulling in off the hinges,” he adds the last part, his eyes clouded in disbelief.
They all bellow, having officially lost any decorum. Even Peter gives into the humor of it all.
“When,” Peter manages through uncontrollable giggles, “when she got out,” he erupts into another fit of hysterics, “When she got out Lily said she got on her knees and started pleading for her life–” he can’t finish the sentence, too succumbed by the hilarity.
None of them are of sound mind enough to care that their cackling has possibly woken up the entire tower.
“Apparently she doesn’t even go here–her brother goes to Durmstrang and he’s dating some Ravenclaw girl. She went with him to see her off at King’s Cross and somehow got lost and ended up on platform nine and three quarters, she spotted her brother’s girlfriend and followed her onto the train.”
“Oh my god, Peter.” It was the only words that could come out of Remus’ mouth.
“Is she okay?” James says, concern sketched along his face.
Peter coughs, regaining his composure, “Oh she’s fine, Dumbledore got in touch with her parents and flooed her to the Department of International Magic Corp. they got her settled. But not after she told them that she was held at wandpoint by a girl named Peter.”
It is all he can get in before all four Marauders fall into another fit of hysteria–the loudest of all night.
Sirius is wheezing, physically unable to lift his torso up off the mattress he grips Remus’ arm trying to stop laughing long enough to catch his breath.
Peter stands up now, pointing a finger at all three of them, “If you lot ever fuck off and leave me at a party again, so help me, even Dumbledore himself will not be able to stop me from the amount of Avadas that I will cast!”
James, who appears to be choking himself with his blanket at this point, pauses long enough to look at Peter with genuine concern, “Trust me Wormy, I am never leaving you alone around a female again.”
With that, all four boys slowly regained their composure and went about their nighttime routines, but not without sporadic bursts of giggling as they remembered bits and pieces of Peter Pettigrew’s unfortunate encounter with a lesbian and a Croatian.