second year - festivities
Sirius walked into the bathroom to check out his reflection in the mirror not expecting James to rudely intrude and take a hand to the hair he'd just managed to perfect.
"JAMES!" he yelped "Do you know how long I spent doing it this morning?! I didn't give you permission to touch it"
"Sorry but I don't care" the other boy shrugged, backing out the bathroom looking highly amused “It’s not like you actually washed it…”
“Piss off”
“Or brushed it”
“Now that is a blasphemous accusation!” he gasped, actually quite offended that his best friend would suggest such a thing
Sirius took great pride in brushing his hair every morning - his nasty bed hair was one of the only things he’s ever been ashamed about really because his mother had always said it made him look homeless. Out of all the things Walburga had lectured him about it was very odd how that was the thing that stuck but oh well.
“All you do is get out of bed, adjust it a bit in the mirror and call it a day”
“Well at least I don’t go around sporting a head of hair that looks like a bird has made their family in it” he glared at his best friend, who had just run a hand through his hair, pretty much proving Sirius’ point
“It’s charming”
“It’s ragged”
“Could say the same for you” James sniggered into his hand ducking away as Sirius lunged forward attempting to take him down
“Careful Black, don’t want your hair to be more ruined more than you already claim it is”
“You know what Potter, you just don’t appreciate the effort I put into making sure that my luscious locks are silky as can be, whilst still having plentiful volume”
James shot a hand out, grabbing at his head, luckily Sirius saw it coming and dodged out of the way, however he should’ve know better because James’ reflexes were chaser quick and so he immediately took another swipe this time succeeding in giving Sirius’ hair a more rumpled look - one that took half the smoothness out his hair.
Sirius tried yanking at his hair in retaliation but James managed to slip away the little snake. Maybe he should've been in Slytherin (he didn't really mean that)
"HAH! I'm untouchable!"
”You can’t just do whatever you want to me! Ever since you won that quidditch match your ego has inflated by ten fold" Sirius followed him out, slamming the bathroom light off.
"You” he pointed at Sirius “ were the one who told me to obliterate them"
Well sure he had! The whole lot of them didn’t even deserve to play on the pitch. And of course he was gonna be a bit more competitive after the interaction he’d had the night before James was set off to play his first ever match.
It had happened on his birthday, after he had bumped into Regulus. It wasn’t a rare occurrence, Sirius saw his brother wandering the halls quite often being at the same school and all, but this time they had actually come face to face. Not that much came from the interaction, Regulus wished him a happy birthday, Sirius said thanks. And that was that. Civility was apparently what they were going with now. It made him feel a bit nauseous actually.
Anyway, after that he had told James to obliterate them in quidditch the next morning, otherwise there would’ve been consequences.
"And you did rightfully so.. But that doesn’t mean you can do anything you want!"
“Oh get over it it’s just your hair” Peter’s muffled voice called out - almost half his body was underneath his bed trying to locate Merlin knows what.
Sirius shot Peter’s arse a look and hoped the other boy somehow saw the extreme offence he had taken from his comment "I am extremely dashing, graceful, and refined! My hair needs to be pristine Peter"
"Do dashing, graceful, and refined people trip up on their own robes and fall down the stairs?"
"Moony" Sirius whined looking at the smug boy in betrayal "You promised you wouldn't say anything!"
"Just slipped out I guess" Remus sniggered
James gasped, whirling around to question Remus “When did that happen?!”
“Two days ago”
Sirius flapped his arms out at him “Shush Remus I thought you were on my side!”
He gave the other boy a pointed look for some kind acknowledgement - please be on my side - but he just shrugged.
Ugh.
“Anyway Sirius there is nothing wrong in taking pride in myself for winning the match" James started pulling his blue and grey dragon socks on "and I told you a few weeks ago it will get Evans to start talking to me!”
Ugh.
“But James” Sirius carried on “You do know that your match was ages ago now? Yeah?”
“The statement still stands” James sniffed, acting offended
“Plus it’s the holidays you’re not gonna see her for a while” Remus pointed out, trailing off with a tired yawn.
“Dream on mate, dream on” Sirius clapped a hand to James’ shoulder, laughing a little at his little crush that had developed on Lily Evans.
If a Christmas shooting star comes to bless them, Lily's love is what James should wish for
* * *
When Remus had decided to go to the Potter mansion in the afternoon of Christmas day he had not been expecting to be utterly spoiled in every way possible.
James’ parents had hugged him longer than his own father had ever done just upon entry, they had given him his own slippers to make sure he didn’t have cold feet walking around the house, for some reason they had an empty coat hook reserved just for him (with his initials engraved!) right next to Sirius’ one, and they had offered him all kinds of food at every opportunity they saw fit.
Remus had heard about Mrs Potter’s famous mince pies, but why had he not heard about Mr Potter’s mouth watering chocolate croissants!!
And oh he didn't know who had made it, but the hot chocolate was just…divine. He couldn’t’ve pretended to hate it even if his life was on the line.
Remus spent the first half of the afternoon thanking everyone for their presents (which he had already opened that very morning with thankfully no matching pyjamas in sight), including Mr and Mrs Potter who had sent over a tin of biscuits and a blue dressing gown for him, and including Lily who he sent a thank you note to with James’ owl for gifting him Shakespeare's classic: Macbeth.
Afterward, he and the rest of the marauders sat around the dining table eating apple slices Effie had chopped up for them whilst simultaneously listening to James give a verbal replay of his first quidditch win to his parents who hadn’t yet heard all the details.
“Then, he whizzed past me and I knew who he was going to pass to, because this guy was being really obvious with his targets, so to get the ball I cut in front of him, leaned to the left reached out my arm grabbed the ball one handed and without even having to fly with it I shot it into the hoop”
“One handed interception woah! Nice” Mr Potter nodded, impressed
“Yeah I was really proud of that one!” he beamed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose
“And what happened afterward?” Mrs Potter asked taking away their little plates
“Furham caught the snitch! And we won!”
“And this is the point where he claims that Evans actually gave him the time of day” Sirius interrupted eagerly
“Sirius!” James exclaimed, turning a little red “I claimed nothing! I know she looked at me! We locked eyes and everything!”
“Is this the infamous Lily Evans?” Effie smirked at her son “Go on tell me more…”
And of course James was more than happy to oblige, rambling on about her hair and her eyes, and her personality…. And… well Remus didn’t know what else, he didn’t really want to listen to James explain away all of what Lily Evans meant to him. Over the last month she had started cropping up in a lot of their conversations, paired hand in hand with an excessive amount of very public re-tellings of James’ first ever win because apparently the story was meant to impress her or something?
“It’s been a whole bloody month Remus! Tell him to quit it out”
He groaned… James Potter wasn’t going to listen to him!
Mary slung an arm around his shoulders “You’re too pessimistic, you’re friends after all… maybe just lightly” (“heavily!” Marlene added) “suggest…”
“I’m not suggesting anything!”
Well not with his words anyway… he’s been eye rolling at the famous recount for a while now. At this point he’s just learnt to tune it out.
“Come on Lupin! You’re my friend” Lily pushed on “Our friend, surely you can do something”
“Look you’re not the ones sharing a dorm with him, I’ve had to listen to the story double the amount of times you’ve had to. I’ve already made it clear to him that I’m disinterested in the topic to the point where he’s even started teasing me about it, he’s aware that it’s annoying, but he won’t stop so trust me when I say that there’s nothing I can do!”
“You can tell him that I don’t like it” Lily suggested plain and simple.
“Yeah it’s quite obvious he’s only doing it to get Lily’s attention” Marlene nodded
“Well he’s succeeded but in all the wrong ways” Mary snorted
Well… it was an option… but he didn’t want to be responsible for breaking the poor boys spirit
“I’m not your bloody owl, tell him yourself”
Remus was just scared that he would be dragged into the whole ordeal more than he wanted. If James knew the extent of his and Lily's friendship then he'd probably be forced to start playing matchmaker.
No thank you.
The second half of the afternoon had also been very James focused yet thoroughly entertaining as Mrs Potter had decided to get out and look through a scrappy little red book with their ‘family’ pictures stuck in.
“If a stranger came and looked at our family scrapbook they’d think baby James was the only member” Mr Potter chuckled.
That's when everyone rushed over.
It made Remus wonder if his mum had something like that kept in the house somewhere, he didn’t particularly remember either of his parents carrying a camera on them in his earlier years, but it would’ve been nice to know if there were at least a couple of photos of some nice memories that he may have forgotten.
Peter did, have a family photo album that is, but he mostly just complained that his sister’s childhood photos took up more space than he did in it.
“My photos only really started coming in when I was about eight or nine…”
Sirius huffed quietly. Remus assumed his family didn’t have any photos - not photos like the Potters’ ones anyway.
"He was such a cute baby!"
Mrs Potter gushed, peering at the little moving picture that depicted a young James grabbing the glasses' off of his dad's face and clumsily shoving it on his own smaller one - it had teetered on the edge of his nose for a second before sliding right off.
"What went wrong?" Sirius smirked at the now twelve year old boy sat next to him
"Piss off" James shook his head obviously trying to suppress a smile but failing miserably whilst everyone else snickered
"Language" his mother scolded him in a way that reminded Remus of McGonagall, her voice stern but her eyes twinkling, a small smile playing on her lips.
After a few more pages and a few more laughs, they had all somehow gotten very intrigued in a chess match between Mr Potter and Peter, both of whom were incredibly talented players. Apparently Mr Potter was the only one who had ever beaten the younger boy in chess, and so in their first game of the holiday everyone had made a big deal of it, with James conducting interviews and Sirius making up his own fanfare as the two were introduced and sat down.
Everyone, even Mrs Potter, was rooting for Peter to win.
And when Peter lost, everyone demanded a rematch - especially after Peter’s complaint about having to break in his brand new pieces.
However, much to Peter’s dismay and Mr Potter’s glee, there had ended up being no rematch after all their arguing because everyone had gotten too distracted by the sudden snowfall starting to coat the back garden in a beautiful, sparkling white.
As a result the marauders and their guardians spent the rest of their afternoon, fighting each other with snowballs, making snow angels, and building a very very glorious snowman and even playing a teency joke on James’ dad.
The sun was just about starting to set when Mr Potter fixed the carrot onto the Snowman's face - it had been a collective effort, one that had been knocked and run over too many times to count by a few rambunctious kids...
No clarification needed.
All that was left for the snowman were the finer details
“Now for the buttons!”
And as Mr Potter turned away to collect the buttons, James snatched the carrot off of the snowman and dropped it down Sirius’ jacket who, to his credit, only flinched a little bit and had very quickly turned his face back to something neutral just as Mr Potter turned around to see the carrot missing
“Where’s the nose gone?” he knitted his eyebrows together in confusion at the mystery of the disappearing vegetable
“What do you mean dad?” his son questioned innocently “You never put it on”
The older man looked between them and the snowman suspiciously for a few seconds before shaking his head and trudging back inside to get another carrot
“Pete!” James hissed urgently to the boy sitting down on the floor who up until now had been playing with the snow, picking it up and letting it fall through his fingers “Give me some snow to fill in the nose indent!”
Peter grasped a little bit, got up from the ground and shoved it into James’ palm. He had only just finished filling the dent in when Monty came back out clutching another carrot.
He put it on.
He turned away.
This time Sirius grabbed the carrot and stuck it down James’ shirt.
“Right who took the carrot!”
“What do you mean Monty!” Sirius said with such genuinity “You never put it on”
“I’m not that gullible”
“Well do you see a carrot lying around here somewhere?”
“Empty your pockets thieves”
Everyone did
“EFFIE! DARLING! CAN YOU GET ME THE BAG OF CARROTS PLEASE”
And so she did.
And so he put another one on.
This time he didn’t turn away.
Remus looked at his friends. He looked at Mr Potter. And then he gathered some snow.
He could have thrown the snow ball at Mr Potter, but feeling nervous about it, decided to instead put all his power into throwing the ball into a bush a couple of metres away when the man was busy handing a coal button to Peter.
“I think I saw a gnome” he blurted out
“Where?” Mr Potter looked straight at him.
Remus pointed over to the bush where he threw the snowball. Mr Potter turned away to look at said bush.
Peter yanked the carrot off the snowman and shoved it down his own jacket.
“Hm, well it isn’t bothering u- WHO TOOK THE CARROT?!”
Afterward, they had all laughed about it over a mug of hot chocolate.
The last few hours of his stay definitely took a toll on his hearing though.
"Moony now's your chance" Sirius whispered to him while James was in the bathroom
The boy had gotten a guitar for the holiday, exactly as he had asked.
And it was actually quite exciting at first, the smooth curved instrument was certainly beautiful, and certainly capable of producing beautiful sounds but as soon as it's new owner started playing it, Remus had started to wish that the guitar had the magical ability to whack itself over James' head. Worse yet, the boy was infatuated and spent pretty much the entire evening strumming chords that were probably made up.
"Steal that guitar and destroy it before we have to spend the rest of our lives listening to that awful sound"
It was a tempting proposal…
He sighed "I'm not gonna do that"
"Listen to the awful sound or destroy the guitar?"
"...What do you think?"
"Good decision Moony!" Sirius clapped a hand to his shoulder "Get started with your hands while I'll get you a hammer "
"I'm not destroying the guitar, Sirius! Destroy it yourself if you want "
"Nah Effie and Monty would never forgive me"
"And you think they’d let it go if it was me?” he gestured to himself “The boy they met.. Uhm when? Today?"
"I mean yeah they would! Just look at you! You're an angel" the other boy waved a hand in his general area
"They'll forgive you quicker than they'll forgive me because for one I’m not an angel and for two. Mr and Mrs Potter adore you"
"You look like one, an angel. And trust me Moons” (moons now?) “ it would help you get away with anything… except from maybe calling Effie and Monty ‘Mr and Mrs Potter’ I mean you have got to stop doing that"
“What? Being polite? I thought you posh boy Sirius Orion black the third would love me for it”
“Don’t snap at me”
“I wasn’t snapping at you”
He wasn’t! If Sirius couldn’t take a sarcastic comment or two that was his own fault.
“You said it with hostility”
"Sure, whatever you say"
They sat without another word for a few moments, only the dull sound of Sirius’ foot impatiently tapping against the carpeted floor breaking the silence, until…
“You missed your chance” Sirius mumbled as James sauntered back into the room, sliding his glasses up his nose and then rubbing his hands together as if he had just had some sort of mind-blowing brainstorm session in the bathroom on how to create a brand new composition from hell with only the power of a few strings to aid him.
Remus would rather not listen to another musical disaster, so a bit stiffly he got up from his seat, slapping his hands down on his legs regretting the words coming out of his mouth.
“Anyone fancy one last snowball fight?”
He didn't really fancy going out in the cold again.
* * *
Mr Potter apparated Remus home and waited outside the door with him as he scrabbled under the flowerpot for the spare key. He let himself in and gave a last thank you to James’ dad for everything today, including the basket of treats that Effie had (very last minute) pushed into his hands, insisting him to come again soon. He then waved goodbye and just as Remus was gently shutting the door he saw Mr Potter apparate away with a loud crack.
He set the basket down on the creaky side table.
Predictably, it creaked.
The hallway was quiet and cool, mostly dark with only a distant hazy glow inching out from the half open door at the very end
The fire must be on then.
He took off his coat, scarf and gloves and opened the front door again to shake off the leftover snow just outside so that he wouldn’t create a watery mess for him to clean up later. Once he had shut and locked the door, hung all his stuff up and took his shoes off, setting them neatly next to his father’s ones, he followed the dim light to where his mum was sitting in Lyall’s grand armchair by the fireplace.
She was laying sideways, her head resting on the right arm, her knees bent in toward her chest so that her whole blanketed body could fit. Her eyes were open, blinking slowly, entranced by the softly dancing flames in front of her. As soon as she noticed her son walk in, Hope's head turned to look and smile at her little boy. She shifted and sat up, patting the space next to her to indicate that Remus should sit down.
"How was it?"
It had been good. Great even.
"Really enjoyed myself"
She smiled even wider at that and then patted the space next to her again.
And so Remus sat down while his mother wrapped her arms around him, the warmth of her hug brighter than any fire could ever produce.
The size difference between the two was no longer very big. Twelve year old Remus only needed a few more months of growing to officially be taller than her.
After a few minutes like that, Hope took her arms away and patted her lap to tell Remus to lie down and place his head there. Almost immediately she started stroking his head, every once in a while combing through his hair, twirling his curls, probably braiding by the feels of things but eventually she laid her hand there to rest.
Still.
Silent.
The comfortable weight of it almost made him fall asleep, but as he blinked hard to try and stop himself dozing off he realised whose chair they were sitting in.
“Where’s dad?”
“Outside” she mumbled, sleep hanging off of every syllable
“Doing what?” he twisted his neck a little awkwardly to look at her.
She just smiled enigmatically and jerked her head towards the direction of their garden “Let’s go see”
Lyall, weirdly enough, was building a snowman, and at the sight of his wife and son he beckoned them over to join.
Before doing so, Remus quickly ran back inside to get his shivering mother a blanket so that she could wrap herself up a little more and when he returned the three of them got to work on making the head, frozen fingers patting down frozen snow. Once completed, Lyall drew out his wand (which he didn’t do often) and somehow transfigured a plain pebble into a thick purple scarf that Remus had the honour of draping around the neck they had just finished building.
Hope smiled widely at the display of magic, for she didn’t get to see it as often as she wanted to. Remus matched her expression because even though he'd been at magic school for over a year now, wizardry had never ceased to amaze him.
It was a happy memory
One he would’ve liked to keep a photograph of - one to put in the family album if they had one.
His father fixed the carrot nose on, which made Remus laugh a little thinking of earlier, and then he laughed even more when his mother took a bite out of the nose, grinning at him with the twinkle in her eye he hadn't seen for a while.
She stepped back to stand next to her son, crunching down on the small piece of carrot, admiring their work.
Their work...
Remus slid an arm around his mothers waist, side-hugging her and leaning into her a little bit.
She hugged him back, resting her head on top of his.
They watched Lyall for a few moments, hearing just the ever so tiny sound of snow being pattered down onto snow - he was securing the nose after the bite had made it fall out a little
He looked beyond the snowman, into the pitch black and wondered how everyone else had spent their Christmas days.
Eventually he looked back at the snowman and found himself wishing for white Christmas every year.
He sighed “Merry Christmas Mum”
“Nadolig llawen cariad”