Stickdick Pencil
Remus returned to the dormitory with no explanation, not for his absence nor for his sudden penchant for turtleneck sweaters. James, in a moment of astonishing tact, said nothing, and Peter followed his lead. Remus spotted Sirius frowning at him several times when he thought he wouldn’t be spotted, but that was to be expected. Sirius was irritatingly perceptive and doubly persistent.
One relatively quiet afternoon a few days before break the four of them worked through a thick stack of homework together in the common room. Remus felt a bit like he was drowning in parchment, and not for the first time he wished for the simplicity of muggle composition books. He’d explained them to James once, and in the end they both had broken hearts.
“You mean you just write in blank books? Do you turn in the whole book when you’re done?” James had asked, astonished.
“Oh goodness no, you just pull out the pages you’ve written on and put your name on them. If there are a lot you stick them together at the corner. But that way your notes are all in a little book and you don’t have to go digging around hoping to find them among the rest of your parchment.
“Muggles are geniuses,” James had groaned, still digging in his bag for his own transfiguration notes. “I’m snapping my wand and joining them.”
Today, it seemed, there would be no wand snapping. They had a paper due in magical theory that felt mind-meltingly difficult. Peter had cried twice, James had bitten off the end of his quill and gotten a mouthful of feathers, and Sirius was gritting his teeth so hard Remus worried he may end up with a mouthful of bone dust.
“If the prefix of the spell is Latin, the rest of the spell should just be Latin,” Sirius spat, speaking for the first time in hours. “Who is chopping up words from different languages and cobbling them together.”
“The English,” Remus said accusingly, glaring round at them all.
“You’re English,” Peter said, and Remus threw a crumpled draft at him.
“I’m Welsh, moron.”
“Don’t look at me,” Sirius said crossly. “The Blacks are French.”
“Because that’s something to be proud of,” James said darkly. "Besides, don't you live in London?"
“What did you mean about the English chopping up words?” Peter asked Remus, trying to wipe a smudge of ink from his nose and making it far worse.
“Well, English is made up of bits of other languages,” Remus explained. “Like these spells, see? You might have a Latin prefix and a Greek root, or vice versa.”
“Putain, je déteste la langue anglaise,” Sirius muttered, and Remus grinned.
“A dwi'n ffycin casineb y Saesneg,” he replied cheekily. "I can understand a little French."
“Can’t we speak English?” Peter whined, and Sirius and Remus laughed.
“I’ll speak English for you if you do my paper,” Sirius offered grandly.
“Speak whatever you bloody want,” Peter sulked and went to back to his copy of Magical Theory in a huff.
Slughorn, though jovial, had a mean streak a mile wide, demonstrated most frequently by his selection of potion-brewing pairs and quadrants. It was on display fully in their next potions lesson when he paired Remus and Peter with Lily and Snape. Though Lily seemed to like Remus and was utterly indifferent to Peter, Snape hated them both with such venom it was a little embarrassing to watch.
Remus was surprised to find that he didn’t hate Snape, exactly, not like James and Sirius seemed to. He found him irritating, like a rash or bug bite, but generally harmless, and he felt sorry for him. There had to be a reason he never really seemed clean, seldom smiled, and had some of the most faded robes Remus had ever seen. Remus’s robes were secondhand too, but his were roughly the same color as everyone else’s. Snape’s, for some reason, were not.
“Quit staring and cut up the dandelion root, Lupin,” Snape spat as he grated a block of fermented gillyweed into their cauldron.
Remus couldn’t help himself. He made a little high-pitched mimicking voice as he began cutting the dandelion. Definitely irritating like a rash more than a bite. Peter snorted, and Lily glared at him.
“Really, Remus,” she said reproachfully.
He fought the urge to mimic her too. She had demonstrated a penchant for hitting over the course of the semester. Snape ignored them both, looking pleased that Lily seemed to be agreeing with him. Peter, who was to be bisecting flobberworms, was too invested in their conversation to focus on his own task and nicked his knuckle, the little wound bleeding heavily across his cutting board.
“Oh, lovely, human blood in the potion,” Snape said sarcastically. Lily gave him a look and vanished the blood while Remus dug around in his bag.
“Here Pete, give me your hand.” From the small first aid pouch he kept handy near the full moon, he pulled out a stiptic pencil and dipped it into the ceramic dish of water they’d set aside for the potion, then applied the pencil tip to the little wound. The bleeding stopped almost immediately.
“Amazing,” Peter whispered, flexing and straitening his fingers. “Is that some kind of potion?”
Remus wasn’t entirely sure. Potions were a weird overlap of science and sorcery, and he wasn’t sure what muggle science could be defined as sorcerous, so he just shrugged. “It’s called a styptic pencil. My ma uses them to stop the bleeding on small cuts, and I think da has one for when he nicks himself shaving. It’s just a stick of alum, we use this stuff in here all the time.”
Snape threw up both hands. “Alum and blood in the potion? I give up. Come on Lily.” He stood and stormed over to join Mulciber. Lily rolled her eyes and stayed.
“He’s kind of right, we should at least ask Professor Slughorn if we should restart,” she told them. “but you couldn’t pay me to work with Mulciber by choice. I think he just ate a flobberworm.”
They looked over at Mulciber, who was indeed making a face as though something slippery was in his mouth. Peter gagged.
Slughorn advised that they replace their water and worms, but that the potion should be fine. He also loudly praised Remus’s use of alum to stop bleeding. “Ten points to Gryffindor, my boy!” he said jovially. “Alum is the main ingredient of anti hemorrhage poultices and canker sore potions. Excellent application of knowledge!”
“Nerd,” James whispered from his cauldron beside theirs, and Lily stuck her tongue out at him.
Their potion was passable, and not having to work with Snape anymore was a plus, but Remus felt nervous, as he always did, coming between him and Lily.
“So you just carry a stick dick wherever you go?” James asked Remus, and beside him Lily exploded with laughter.
“He just carries what?” she giggled, her cheeks red.
“Isn’t that what you called it, Lupin?” James asked, confused. “Stick dick?”
“Styptic,” Remus said, fighting to keep a straight face and failing miserably. “Like stip tick.”
James’s cheeks colored, and Sirius began howling with laughter beside him. Even Mary and Marlene giggled from the other side of their cauldron, though they were both blushing hard and trying to pretend they weren’t paying attention.
“You thought Remus stick dicked Pete’s hand, then?” Lily said in a mock-haughty voice, and then Peter and Remus were laughing too, until Slughorn dismissed them to leave for their next class. James’s face was beet red, and Remus got the impression that he hadn’t expected a joke like that from Lily.
As they left the classroom, Lily and Snape walked together behind Remus.
“They were saying horrible things about me, weren’t they?” Snape demanded. “How could you just laugh along like that?”
“No, of course not Sev! They were just being stupid, it was funny.” She flapped a hand dismissively at him. “Did Mulciber really eat that flobberworm or was he just joking?”
Snape ignored her question. “I don’t understand how you can sit there and smile with them when they’re being terrible.”
“Not everything is about you Severus,” she said. “We were joking about Lupin’s styptic pencil.”
“Oh, so now it’s we,” Snape said angrily. “Fine, if that’s how it is.” And he stormed off past Remus.
Lily took a few steps to catch up with Remus. “Heard all that, did you?” she asked, sounding a little tired.
“Guess you didn’t want to tell him about my stick dick pencil, huh?” he asked her, and she gave a hollow little laugh.
“Remus, if I so much as implied anything about any genitals I think he’d drop dead right there. I know you’re not a fan of him, but I think you wouldn’t wish that kind of guilt on me.”
“It’s from old French,” said a surprising voice from Remus’s other side. “Stiptique, though it’s unclear if that one came from Latin or Greek,” said Sirius. “They both have a version.”
“Why do you know that?” Remus asked, a little awed.
“Why do you know what styptic powder is?” he replied. “It’s all about upbringing.” He grinned at Lily, who rolled her eyes at him. “That’s why Miss Evans knew James had said something dirty.”
Lily blew as raspberry at him, but Remus noted that she didn’t deny it.
As Sirius hurried to catch up with James and Peter, Remus turned to Lily. “Why do you put up with him? He clearly doesn’t respect you.”
Lily bristled. “Of course he does. He’s my best friend.”
“He didn’t listen to a word you said just now,” he argued.
“But you sure did. Mind your potatoes, would you?”
Remus shrugged. “It’s your funeral, I guess.” He walked away, following after his friends. A chill washed over him, and he suddenly hoped that it wasn’t really her funeral.