Chapter 9
Winter turned to spring in a slow, slushy slog, and yet somehow Remus found himself spending a lot of time on the cold, wet Hogwarts grounds. He went for rambling walks and repotted plants in the greenhouse. The smell of dirt and sprouting new growth reminded him of something lovely that he couldn’t quite remember and he reveled in it.
“Ew, wash your paws before you eat Lupin, the greenhouses are not clean.”
Remus hardly flinched at this comment. Either he was incredibly paranoid or Sirius was constantly messing with him because he’d figured his secret out. Regardless, it was too constant to cause more than a a dull pang of anxiety anymore. Besides, he hadn't exactly done anything about it either way.
“I washed my hands in basin in the back, shut up.” Remus said mildly without looking up from his food. “When was the last time you bathed?”
Sirius took a moment to count on his fingers, and Remus rolled his eyes clear to the sky.
“It was this week for sure,” James said.
Sirius was on six, the index finger on his right hand. He pointed to Remus. “Pull my finger.”
Remus stared him down. “I need you to understand I will remove your finger from your hand.”
“You’re not even a little bit fun.” Sirius took a sip from his mug and sighed with satisfaction. “How will I ever live without cocoa with every meal?”
“Can you believe it’s only a month and a half til the summer holidays?” Peter chimed in brightly. Beside him, Sirius scowled and said nothing.
“Can you believe it’s just over a month til exams and the only one of us who’s started studying is Remus?” James asked, slapping Remus on the back.
“That’s why I’ll be the top of our class,” Remus said.
“Nah, Evans has you beat. She can do potions,” James replied.
“I can do potions!” Remus protested. “It’s you who can’t. And it’s not my fault Slughorn keeps pairing me with people who can’t count. You, Mulciber, Snape, Pettigrew…”
Peter flung a grape at him, but missed and struck Lawrence Scabior in the ear. He ducked his head down so he couldn’t be seen past Marlene McKinnon, who was in frantic conversation with Betsy Eckerdt, and waited for Scabior to stop looking around.
“Things have been rather quiet around here, wouldn’t you say?” Sirius asked them with an air of false innocence and the delivery of an old man in a detective film.
“Absolutely,” James agreed.
“It’s been lovely,” Peter said forlornly.
“Didn’t you replace all the pepper shakers at the Slytherin table with capcaisin powder from the potions supply cupboard last Tuesday?” Remus asked.
“Believe it or not, no,” James said ruefully, “though I wish we had. That was Gideon and Fabian.” He nodded up the table at two older ginger boys who were building a log cabin out of sausages.
“So what are we going to do?” Sirius asked. “I mean, we owe them for that nastiness with the Ear-Sealing Jinx, if anything."
“Yes, but who do we owe?” James asked fairly. “We can’t punish all of Slytherin for a few bad actors, right?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sirius grumbled, but Peter was nodding.
“They’ll all come after us if every bit of mischief we manage is directed at them. Got any grudges against Hufflepuffs?” he asked hopefully.
“Nara Steel copied my essay on toadstool identification,” Remus said. “But I think she’s paid for it enough, I got it backward which ones are poisonous and which ones aren’t, I think she killed her test subject slugs. She was crying about it this morning.”
“Ok, leaving Hufflepuff out of it,” Sirius said, steering the conversation back to where he wanted it. “If we want to narrow the prank down, we have first year Slytherin boys. They all deserve a bit of redirection, yes?”
They all agreed on that. Snape in particular had been relentless, but Avery and Wilkes were an issue all their own. And the less said on Mulciber, the better, in Remus’s opinion anyway.
“So what do we do?” James pressed. “Turn their robes to glitter?”
Peter scoffed. “They can turn them back just as quick.”
“Let’s think rationally. What do they love?” Remus asked.
“Hexes?” Peter ventured.
“Blood purity?” Sirius added.
“Hypocrisy?” James offered.
Remus shook his head. “Yes, but we can’t take any of those things away, can we?” As they brainstormed, a group of Slytherin boys walked past their table, venting their frustrations.
“Can you believe the first years?” a boy was saying through a yawn. “All night long, bickering and chattering through the wall, not so much as a silencing charm.”
“I slept in all morning, I was supposed to meet with Syrenna by the lake and now I’m sure she’s not going to go to Hogsmeade with me -”
“Yeah, well, at least you fell asleep,” a third boy interjected. “When they finally shut up, they all snored. All of them! I’ve never had this problem before, not in seven years here. Were they this loud before we went home for Yule?”
“Certainly not,” the first boy said. “They’ve gotten far too comfortable for my liking, all of them.”
The second boy was scowling, scanning the room presumably in search of his jilted date. “They rearranged their beds,” he said. “I heard the little idiots talking about it a few days ago. Bet they were up against the opposite wall before.”
The boys continued grumbling as they walked away, and Remus watched as a delighted grin spread across James’s face.
“Well, maybe we could do our elder Slytherin peers a bit of a favor,” he said.
“How?” Peter asked. “D’you think we can get a sleeping draught for them or something?”
“Or something,” Sirius said deviously. “If they went to all the trouble of moving their furniture and the feng shui still isn’t harmonious, then I’m sure we could make a few minor adjustments. All in the name of inter-house unity, of course.”
“Of course,” James agreed. “We just need to figure out what the optimal furniture arrangement is, then make a plan for how to achieve it.”
“Are we talking on the ceiling of their dorm or the bottom of the lake here?” Remus asked, leaning in.
“Oh, I love the way you think Lupin,” Sirius grinned, and thus the whispered plotting commenced.
“They think they’re so special, don’t they? You’d think there were two first year boys in Gryffindor not six, for all the self-centered, attention-seeking nonsense they pull! I just can’t believe they put pure capcaisin in the pepper pots, it’s so cruel!” Lily was complaining to Marlene, who was nodding sympathetically but clearly holding back a snicker. “Poor Sev still can’t taste anything, I don’t think he’s eaten anything but bread since.”
They were heading toward History of Magic at a lazy clip, having been dismissed early from their previous class. James, Sirius, and even poor Peter had been kept behind to clean up a rather explosive mess of feathers they’d made. For once, it was an accident, but somehow no one believed them. Remus, who had not failed at wandwork like his peers, had left them behind without so much as a look back.
“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Mary said airily, giving Lily a rather pointed look, and Remus chortled behind them.
“You!” Lily said, whirling around. “Can’t you control your friends? Reel them in a bit?”
“First of all,” Remus said, “no I cannot, and you know that. Second, I’m nearly always in on whatever it is they’ve done this time, I’m just smart enough not to get caught. I won’t be reeling myself in either, not when your pet Slytherin hexed my ears shut three days ago. Madame Pomfrey had to cut them open, that hurt more than a spicy omelet. And third, we didn’t do this one.” He left out who had, he could just see Lily marching right up to the Prewetts, hands on her hips and glaring up at them menacingly. Lord only knew what she'd do if they laughed at her.
“Oh, sit on it,” Lily spat, hurrying ahead.
“Don’t go storming off, I was just about to tell you about the dead rat little Sevvy tried to plant in my bag after potions!” Remus called after her, and he saw it land. She flinched with disgust, but didn’t look back. “She’s stubborn,” he commented to Marlene.
“Did he really?” she asked, sounding a little sick.
“What, with the rat? Yeah, didn’t you see? That’s what I tossed in his telepathy tonic yesterday that made it explode.”
“That was you?” Mary was wide-eyed. “We thought it was Potter.”
“Yeah? Well don’t go blabbing to everyone, it’ll ruin poor James’s reputation if people find out he’s not such a troublemaker after all.” Remus rolled his eyes. “This is what I get for giving him all the glory. Everyone thinks I’m a saint.”
“Oh yes, Saint Lupin, patron of sneaks,” Mary said wisely.
“I think that may be Pete, actually.” Remus thought a moment. “I’d be patron of lost causes and problem children, I think.”
Dinner that evening was the time to strike, it seemed. After all, this project didn’t require the level of practice their last concerted effort had. What it required was speed, stealth, and above all luck. The first thing they did was make sure they were seen at dinner by eating as noisily and messily as possible. Remus spilt his pumpkin juice, Peter threw a wet napkin at James and missed, slapping some poor Hufflepuff girl in the back of the neck. Sirius and James dueled with garlic breadsticks, an epic fight to the death in which Sirius collapsed to the floor coughing and sputtering. When they were sure they’d left their mark on the meal, they waited for an opportune moment to initiate phase two.
“Opening at the Ravenclaw table,” Sirius hissed, and Remus lined up his shot, but then a group of Hufflepuff girls at the table between them stood suddenly and burst into a raucous rendition of Happy Birthday. “Abort, stand down!” Sirius whisper-screamed, and Remus shouldered him away.
“I noticed, thanks.” Instead, he aimed between the group of Hufflepuff girls, flicking the finger-sized cylinder in their direction. The moment the stick hit the mashed potatoes on the table, it bloomed into the air like an enormous flower, a blossoming firework of light and confetti.
There was a chorus of oooohs, and around them quite a few people stood to get a better look at the wet-start confetti cannon as it sprinkled glitter and paper onto all four house tables in a shimmering blizzard.
“What was that?” Sirius demanded as they ducked under the table.
Remus shrugged. “It’s her birthday,” he said, sliding under the cloak with the others. “I thought she’d like the confetti.”
“Ladies man,” James teased, and they began the arduous task of crawling out under the bench without uncovering themselves. Pete was almost left behind, but Remus managed to kick the tail end of the cloak up over him at the last second. They kept low to the ground as long as they could, not standing up and risking exposure until they’d left the Great Hall. Hurrying along the wall down the passage to the dungeons, they did their best to keep quiet. Sirius and James kept giggling to themselves, and Peter was obviously fretting, but they didn’t encounter a single person on their way to Slytherin house.
When they’d reached the correct stretch of wall, Sirius leaned as close as he could to the stone before whispering something that sounded disconcertingly like “exsanguination,” and the wall opened before them.
“I still think this is a bad idea,” Peter said, and they all shushed him at once.
James lead the way, having scouted the location with Sirius earlier in the afternoon. After waiting around to hear the password under the cloak, they’d followed the unwary students right into their common room and checked out all their obstacles. The common room was long and dark, the green-globe lamps dimmed with no one there to see by them. The boys kept the cloak over them, making their way down a long hallway opposite the fireplace until they reached the final door – the first year boys’ dorm.
“Smells like sweaty socks and dirty hair,” James said, wrinkling his nose. “Merlin, don’t they wash?” He stepped through the doorway and pulled off the cloak, surveying their target.
“Do they look like they wash?” Sirius asked witheringly. “C’mon, let’s get this over with. Men, to your posts! Pete, do you have the shrinking solution?”
“Snagged it from the second years’ potions class myself,” Peter said proudly, pulling the crystal bottle from deep within his robes and pulling the stopper. "Good timing that they're working on this, I don't fancy trying to brew it myself." He squeezed the dropper from the top to drip a bit onto the bed nearest him. It immediately shriveled to the size of a large dog.
“Bit more,” James said, "you don't want to have to carry all that." Peter added another squeeze of liquid, scooping the bed up when it got down to the size of a cat. They each took their turn splattering potion on the beds and collecting them under their arms until the room was strangely bare then, shushing each other and laughing, they threw the cloak back over themselves and scuttled out of the room.
“Ok, but that’s enough now, right?” Peter asked nervously. "I'm exhausted."
“Oh, Petey boy, what would we do with five dirty doll beds?” James asked. “That's just evidence of our involvement. No, we need to dispose of these. The final phase is in motion.”
“We never make curfew,” Peter said dejectedly.
“We might this time if you quit whinging,” Sirius said, lengthening his stride.
They made their way out into the cool, spring evening. Even through the cloak, the fresh, damp air was refreshing after all the heat and closeness, and Remus could feel himself breaking into a grin. They stumbled along toward the lake, beds in hand, and didn’t stop until their shoes were damp. There was a floating dock out in the water, a spot that was apparently used for swimming near the end of term, but for now was desolate and damp. The boys carefully levitated the little beds out onto the platform. There was only one casualty – Remus sneezed midway through his spell and dunked the bed he’d been carrying into the frigid lake.
“Sirius, you engorge them, will you?” James said anxiously. “I don’t think I have the aim from here, not with my eyes.” He didn’t even look at Remus or Peter – he knew neither of them could perform an engorgement charm yet. “Just don’t hit the dock or we’ll have real problems.”
Sirius focused hard, squinting out over the dark water, and pointed his wand. “Engorgio!” He cast the spell carefully, hitting each bed for the same amount of time until it was at least roughly the correct size again.
“Mum says mending and changing things too much weakens their structure,” Pete said wisely. “I bet when they do manage to get them back, at least one collapses.”
Sirius was still aiming his wand out over the water. “Geminio!” he hissed, and suddenly there were twice as many beds shoved onto the platform. One of the duplicates was hanging precariously off the edge, the legs at the foot of the bed being washed in the gentle lapping of lake water. "Now they'll have to figure out which ones are real if they want to keep them. I can't make copies that last for more than a few days at best, I'm terrible at this."
James and Peter laughed, but Remus was concerned. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” he said as they made their way quietly back to the common room.
“I wasn’t sure how far off the dock was,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Didn’t want to get you all excited for nothing. It's a sixth year spell, cut me some slack.”
Remus gritted his teeth. Sometimes Sirius’s showpony ways were a bit much.