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Do You Reckon


Sirius and James were running down the third floor corridor, away from Filch, who the Marauder’s Map showed was coming up behind them, just a couple turns away. They dove behind the tapestry and fell into the darkness of the Trophy Room passageway, tearing the invisibility cloak off and falling to the floor. According to the Map, illuminated only by James’s flashing wand tip, they’d only just made it. Filch was just turning the corner of the hall they’d just left, and Mrs. Norris was with him.

“Damn you!” Filch’s voice echoed just outside the tapestry. James and Sirius covered their mouths to keep from laughing outloud and giving away their position. Outside, Filch was panting and clutching his knees as his old legs burned and looking up and down the empty corridor, wondering where they’d gotten to. “Damn boys! You’re lucky Dumbledore’s done away with chains! I’d whip you raw!” He grumbled and turned away, muttering to his cat all the nasty things he’d do if only Dumbledore hadn’t taken away his devices.

James and Sirius waited in silence, listening for the sound of Filch’s footsteps to fade off entirely before dissolving into out-of-breath laughter. “Blimey for an old codger that Filch sure can run!” gasped James raspily, wiping tears of humor out of his eyes.

“Oh don’t you know it!” Sirius agreed, snorting, “I swear, I might’ve die from running related injuries if we didn’t get here when we did.”

“I’m actually dizzy from that,” James agreed.

“Me, too,” Sirius said, nodding solemnly.

“But it’s worth it,” James snickered. “Merlin’s beard. Filch will never get that cleared up before morning.”

After running too see McGonagall to appeal Slughorn’s decision to schedule detention for his entire third year Potions class, and being denied, they’d agreed they needed to strike back and get revenge on the Slytherins. So it had been off to the library to locate some truly awful spell that they could use to get them back. James and Sirius had spent far much more time seeking some insidious way of attacking the Slytherins than they’d ever spent in studying for homework. But they’d finally found it - or rather James had found it. The spell was brilliant - a transfiguration spell James located in the depths of some old dusty book - and he’d memorized it and the wand motion with a zeal unmatched by any he’d had for anything else - except, perhaps Evans or Quidditch…

Remus had flat out refused to go along to set the spell, saying that getting revenge was just as bad as what the Slytherins had done, and Peter had said he was sleepy and couldn’t they seek revenge tomorrow night? To which Sirius had announced that he at least was going, whether the others wanted to or not - and James had agreed.

They’d snuck down though the castle to the dungeons then, together under James’s invisibility cloak, and James had excitedly cast the spell, turning the carpet before the Slytherin common room doorway into a murky, messy, muddy swamp, complete with cat-o-nine tails and bullfrogs.

“Imagine what all the Slytherins’ faces will look like when they find a ruddy swamp blocking them into their stupid common room?”

Sirius grinned, “Oh to be a bowtruckle on the wall when they do!”

“Still can’t believe that’s a spell,” James laughed, shaking his head. “What good could it possibly serve?”

“No good, obviously, as that’s what we’re up to.” Sirius winked.

“I suppose it’s going to serve the purpose of blocking the stupid gits in!” James said.

“It’s a good one, James,” Sirius said, grinning. “I’m forever in your debt. Those little snotgrass-weasels deserve something horrid happening to them after how they’ve treated Remus.”

“And getting us detention right at the time of the Quidditch game!”

“Bloody gits!”

They walked on through the passageway, carefully avoiding the chasms, until they’d reached the little alcove and Sirius announced he needed a rest before they went the rest of the way back up to the common room, where Remus and Peter were probably still asleep anyway, seeing as it was the middle of the night. They threw themselves across the couches in the little room and James took up a Quidditch catalog they’d left lying on the floor and flicked through it carelessly for a few moments while Sirius stared up at the ceiling, feeling his pulse normalize after the frantic run through the castle.

For some reason, it was this feeling of being tired from running that made him think of Remus. He chewed his lower lip, thinking about the look on Remus’s face that afternoon, on the stairs. It was nagging at him and he couldn’t push the expression Rey had worn out of his mind, he didn’t know why. It just made him want to run back to the common room and see if he was alright.

Sirius sat up and looked over at James. “Hey James?”

“Yeah?” James asked, still staring down at the various items that Quality Quidditch Supplies had to offer by owl post.

“Do you reckon Remus really might be gay?” Sirius asked.

James put the catalog down, “Why the ruddy hell would you say that?” he asked, looking over at Sirius with confusion.

“Well, you know that the duel was basically started because Evan Rosier called him a puffer fish - which is the stupidest slur I’ve ever heard… And so I hexed him and all that, blah-de-blah, you know how that all goes. But then Remus ran off as soon as it was over, like he didn’t wanna talk to us, even, and when I caught him up on the stairs, he was all aflutter and I told him, ‘hey you know what they think doesn’t matter, the people that do matter know you aren’t gay’, right? Like any normal, comforting friend would…”

James nodded. “That’s what I’d say, too.”

“He asked me if it would really be so horrible if he was gay, and I said, ‘no not any worse than being muggle-born’ - ‘cos you know, we’ve got no problem with Lily and all - and I’m like, ‘but you aren’t gay, though, right?’”

“And what’d he say to that?” James asked.

Sirius shrugged, “He didn’t really say anything… That’s when you and Peter came up, though, so dunno if he really had a chance to say anything after that - but he didn’t really say.” He looked at James with a very concerned expression, “You don’t think he really could be… do you?”

James thought about it a moment, “I dunno. I don’t think so but… I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody gay before. I don’t know what they’re like.” Then James said, “Actually, no - he went with Lily Evans last term, remember? He can’t be gay if he went with Evans.”

“But that didn’t last very long before it fell through, did it?” Sirius said.

James shook his head, “Well - no, but --”

“So can you think of any reason why a guy would break up with a girl like Evans for no reason?” Sirius asked.

James could absolutely not think of a single reason why any boy in his right mind, given the chance to be with Evans, would ever, ever break up with her. If he did, then that boy should’ve been promptly sent to St. Mungo’s to see if his brains had been addled. “Maybe she broke up with him.”

Sirius shrugged, “Every version I’ve heard, it was mutual because it was sort of awkward when they tried snogging. Which, by the way, only backs up my case. She’s obviously not the awkward one, she’s made out loads of times with Snape, hasn’t she? So clearly it was Rey. If Rey’s… gay… then… you know… snogging with a girl… well, that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?”

James shook his head, “Yeah… I s’pose…” He looked sort of uncomfortably at the floor. “Well… I reckon if we didn’t realize he was gay ‘til now that it wouldn’t really matter. Three years is a long time and if it was going to bother us then, I guess we would’ve noticed it before. So… I don’t think it really matters whether he’s gay or not. Do you?”

Sirius shook his head, “I don’t give a damn if he is. I just wish he’d have told me before I went and opened my big stupid mouth and made him feel bad about it.”

“Your big stupid mouth is always open,” James laughed.

Sirius grinned over at James, “Shut it, Potter.” He took a deep breath and stood up, stretching. “I wonder what it’s like -- to be gay, I mean.”

James snickered, “What the hell kind of thing to say is that?”

“I mean… how do you know… that you are?”

“I’d imagine when you look at boys and think you’d like to snog them it’s a pretty good indication,” James said.

“Well not all love is about snogging, Potter,” Sirius said wisely, “Sometimes there’s… you know… stronger stuff that maybe leads to the snogging eventually.”

“As long as there’s snogging at some point…” James shrugged. “I mean, I think being gay is something you just sort of know about yourself.”

Sirius nodded, “Yeah, I s’pose so.”

James got up and stretched, too. “You wanna head back to the common room now and get some sleep? We find out who the new Defense teacher is tomorrow now that Veigler’s gone.”

“Yeah, good call,” Sirius nodded, “Let’s go.”

So they headed back on through the passageway, out the trophy room door, and up the remaining flights of stairs to the Gryffindor common room and their dormitory. According to the Marauder’s Map, Filch was down in the dungeons, probably trying desperately to mop up the smelly, awful swamp, so they didn’t bother with the invisibility cloak.

In the dorm, James tugged on his pyjamas and crawled into bed, taking his glasses off and putting them on the nightstand as he curled up under his blankets. Sirius sat down on the edge of his mattress, kicked off his shoes, and stared across the three lumps in their beds - his best mates, the three people on the planet who he’d willingly give his life to protect. His eyes lingered longest on Remus, though, far off in the corner, curled up funny in his bed, hugging the blankets to his chest, looking quite sad even in his sleep, especially with that horrible red scar crossing his face.

It really didn’t matter, Sirius thought, but he really wished he knew the truth about Remus, just so he could stop saying stupid things to hurt his feelings like he’d done.

He pulled the blankets of his own bed up over himself and closed his eyes, falling asleep almost as quickly as his head had hit the pillow.




“Well what the ruddy hell is this?!”

“It’s all muddy!”

“Need a bloody boat to get out of the common room!”

“Gross - and it smells horrid, too, doesn’t it?!”

“UGH!”

“That bastard Sirius Black and his little friends have got to be behind this,” growled Evan Rosier as Severus Snape looked out the door of the Slytherin common room. They couldn’t leave the room, it was several inches thick with swamp out there and already Dimitri Goyle had fallen in and only just barely escaped from the suction that the mud provided. He sat in the common room, coated in drying dirt, scowling. “The lot of them have a good nerve coming down here and setting this!”

“Probably getting us back for the fight yesterday,” muttered Antonin Dolohov.

“Well if they think we won’t retaliate, they’re blasted wrong,” said Evan Rosier. “They’ll be sorry. The lot of them. Mudblood lovers and halfblood filth. Blood traitors.” He spat into the mess of the swamp and turned, angry. “We gotta think up something good.”

Severus Snape stared at the oozing mud as it belched a large bubble. Down the hall, an ocean of swamp away, Filch was desperately trying to mop it up, but his efforts made little effect on the mess. Severus ducked back into the common room, turning to hear the beginnings of a plan already taking shape...