Part Three; Late September, 1975
Apr. 17th, 2012 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shoebox_projectLate September. 1975. It begins with a perfectly innocent note -- as perfectly innocent as notes ever are, in any case -- and spirals out of control. Needless to say, it's over a week of fun.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; found in Sirius Black's History of Magic Textbook
From Sirius Black to James Potter; hurled at his head during History of Magic.
From Sirius Black to James Potter; stuck in the twigs of his broom.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; hidden with his dirty socks.
From James Potter to Remus Lupin; upon his plate & salvaged from jelly at the breakfast table.
From Remus Lupin to James Potter; nestled inside his glasses case which he never has cause to use, anyway.
From Sirius Black to Remus Lupin; falling out of his underwear in the early morning.
From Remus Lupin to Sirius Black; found perched on the bristles of his sadly neglected hairbrush.
From Sirius Black to Remus Lupin; rolled up and stuffed into a stalk of celery at dinner.
From Remus Lupin to Sirius Black; sitting next to his also sadly neglected toothbrush.
From Peter Pettigrew to James Potter; passed none-so-discreetly during Transfiguration and nearly resulting in a mass beheading executed by one Minerva McGonagall.
From Sirius Black to James Potter; most greasy inside his jar of hair gel.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; on his desktop table along with a vial of Flea-b-gone.
From Peter Pettigrew to James Potter; passed again none-so-discreetly during History of Magic and noticed by everyone save the Professor.
From Sirius Black to James Potter; in his bedside drawer beside his copy of BUSTY AND BEWITCHED, the September issue.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; stuck up his left nostril while sleeping.
From Peter Pettigrew to James Potter; yet again none-so-discreetly during Charms.
From James Potter to Peter Pettigrew; levitated in his direction and spending an inordinate amount of time tickling his nose.
From Peter Pettigrew to James Potter; more incompetent and public shoving.
From Sirius Black to James Potter; clipped to the back of Lily Evan's beige bra.
From Lily Evans to James Potter; handed coolly to James Potter over lunch.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; in his muffin at breakfast, nearly causing a serious choking accident.
From Sirius Black to James Potter; taped to the bedpost at the foot of his bed so it is the first thing he sees when he awakens.
From Peter Pettigrew to James Potter; during Herbology, in reference to a very rare form of poison ivy, landing him in detention for general unsubtlety.
From Sirius Black to Peter Pettigrew; chucked at his head over dinner.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; all alone in his empty underwear drawer.
From Sirius Black to all; hung up on the door of the boys' dormitory as a general warning to all.
From James Potter to Sirius Black; pinned to the collar of his shirt to serve as a makeshift tie.
The following note from Sirius Black to Remus Lupin is passed in a very sneaky fashion during History of Magic, along with the following collection of notes.
Receiving no answer beyond the sudden rigidity of the Moony back in front of him, Sirius Black is forced to write the following two notes. He passes them along as well, to keep the first note and the evidence in question company.
After a long time of watching the immobile, rigid Moony back, and squirming impressively in his seat, Sirius sees Remus' shoulders hunch and the tip of his quill can starts bobbing just over his right shoulder. Remus' response slides with paper-slick intent across the floor, nearly escaping the blockade of Sirius' toes.
Sirius' handwriting becomes blotchily impassioned; or, rather, impassionedly blotchy.
Before Remus writes the answering note he dares a glance backward. Sirius is slouched in his seat, his face a warning storm. Remus is lucky Sirius isn't wrapping his notes up in rocks and chucking them every-which-way.
Remus takes a deep breath and tries to keep his hand steady enough to write. He holds the note behind him, hand low, fingers cold.
Having snapped his quill, Sirius works with an old ballpoint pen found on the classroom floor. He scratches out his answer hurriedly and flings the crumpled up ball of scrap paper forward. The distinct lack of aim sends the note directly into Remus' neck, whereupon it rolls down beneath his collar and Remus spends the next five minutes trying to fish it out of his trousers.
Remus' valiant efforts to remain calm go unnoticed.
Figures.
Sirius' less-than-valiant efforts to turn purple do not go unnoticed.
James leans over and asks him if that vein in his forehead is going to pop out yet or what.
Sirius is not amused.
But Peter is.
Never before has Remus indulged in such blatant impertinence during class before.
His class notes are lacking. He will never know the very important formative years of peace talks between the Goblins after their eight hundred and second war.
He writes his note to Sirius dutifully, though his left eye is twitching.
While Sirius is writing his next note the Professor kindly asks Remus if he is well.
It's Remus' turn to go a violent shade of purple. Sirius uses the distraction that ensues to lean forward and shove the note onto Remus' desk.
Remus is not best pleased.
Sirius abuses exclamation marks without a second thought as to their well-being.
Remus fights off the desperate urge to comment on Sirius' over-punctuation.
Sirius is running out of paper.
Remus' folds are growing messy, and his sentences terse. This is a grave warning sign that he is truly upset. Sirius is too busy attempting to get the ink stains from his snapped quill out of his nose to notice. (It is most unfortunate to be comically enraged.)
James once again asks Sirius if that vein should be checked up on by Madam Pomfrey and Sirius is once again emphatically not amused.
Peter still is, however, and James nearly falls out of his seat trying not to laugh.
Remus' sentences grow ever shorter. Danger is nigh.
Remus is again tempted to comment on the questionable reasoning behind using both a question mark and an exclamation point together at the end of the same sentence.
There is nearly a great tragedy with the following note, as a sneeze almost knocks it off course, into an innocent bystander's lap. Swift thinking on Sirius' part nearly impales his stomach on his desk, but he rescues the note from certain danger.
The lesson continues to the second round of peace talks between the goblins and more goblins and angry goblins and goblins that drool overly much.
More exclamation points and capital letters. Remus ponders a career in editing.
Sirius wonders if getting up right now and punching Severus Snape's nose into teeny-tiny smithereens would get him expelled, and just how worth it that unwise course of action would be.
Conspiracy theories gnaw away at Sirius' insides.
At last, the damning word ridiculous comes into play. James does fall out of his seat this time, leaning over to read the formidable collection of notes by Sirius' right elbow.
Sirius figures it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it: the dread Meeting After Class is suggested.
The tables are turned. Doom impends. Remus quails.
But says yes anyway.
The class is full of fidgeting.
And the Goblins have seventeen more peace talks before they again go to war.
Sirius is waiting when he gets out of class, shifting twitchily from foot to foot with an expression of noble suffering in the face of terrible betrayal on his face. This is going to be hard for Remus. Everyone knows he can't stand up in the face of a confrontation, but his friends most of all. There's a pinched wrinkle furrowing the center of his brow.
"All right," Sirius says angrily, folding his arms tight across his chest. "The point is you should have just told us you had to study with him."
Remus' face tightens, self-chastisement unreadable across his features. "All right," he agrees. "All right."
"Well, why didn't you--" Sirius starts, and then blinks. "Say what?"
"All right." Remus holds up his hands, pressing his books against his chest with his elbows. "I said all right. I should have told you I had to study with him, so you and James could have interrupted us every two minutes, and I could have blown the entire dungeon up." A slight flicker of wickedness replaces the worry lines tugging his scars over the bridge of his nose and the angle of his chin.
"Yes!" Sirius says, with great vehemence that seems somehow misplaced. "Yes, you should have." Some part of him suspects that he has been tricked, and he does not appreciate it.
Remus is watching him, injured innocence writ large across his features.
"And--and you shouldn't have--thrown that last note so hard!" he adds, feeling stupider by the minute.
"I thought you looked rather dashing, nearly snorting it up into your nose like that." Remus pauses, licking his lips. Relief shows in the backs of his eyes, dark, the color of murky mahogany. "At least, you and James aren't the only ones with good aim, you know."
Sirius twitches and glares, but without real feeling behind it. "You should have been a Beater."
"Don't be silly." Remus fusses with his collar, scratches the back of his neck, and shifts his shoulders back to comfort, all while keeping an impressive number of books steady against himself. "I didn't enjoy fishing that first one out of my underwear, either. Let's just say we're even."
"Fine," Sirius says, deflating. "I'm hungry anyway."
Remus closes his eyes, fingers easing against bindings, relaxing against pages. "Then let's go eat. If," he adds, "Peter's left anything over for us."
"Doubtful," Sirius says with a barking laugh. He slings an easy arm around Remus' shoulders--and then freezes. "Hang on, aren't we in a fight?"
Bugger.
Remus nearly says it. His shoulders definitely say it.
Bugger.
"Not anymore?" he ventures. "We've been very mature. We've definitely resolved the issue at hand."
"Yes!" Sirius says, immensely relieved. "Maturity being our middle name. Our collective middle name. Sirius and Remus Maturity Black-Lupin. What's for lunch I wonder?"
"Peter's leftovers," Remus replies, and nearly leaks relief all the way down the hallway.
From Lily Evans to All; wrapped up in James Potter's invisibility cloak.
