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Mouse Ears


It was two days after the Moon and nearly October. It was hard to believe that the boys had already been at Hogwarts for nearly an entire month. Sirius thought that fifth year may just be shaping up to be the fastest one yet. He reckoned they would all be driven mad by the teachers dropping not-at-all subtle hints about the O.W.Ls that Spring. McGonagall’s favorite new thing to do was to wave her wand and send Sirius’s feet off the desk and remind him how important it was to score well on his tests. “This is not the time to be shirking about, Mr. Black. This year could very well determine what you do with the rest of your life! Do you plan on being a hoodlum into your adult years?”

She’d been quite angry when he replied, “It’s my only ambition, Professor Minnie,” and had promptly scheduled a counseling session with him to plan for his future.

“Tough luck, mate,” James snickered as Sirius tore up the little parchment with the date and time upon it, shaking his head, “Guess you’ll be having to actually take some notes in class.”

Sirius snorted, “Please. That’s what my Moony’s for.”

Remus looked up, “What am I for?”

“Taking notes.”

“Oh?”

“And snogging,” Sirius confirmed, and he put his arm around Remus.

Remus smirked, “Well. As long as I’m good for something, I suppose.”

“Yeah, you could be utterly and completely useless,” Sirius said, laughing, “Like Peter.”

Peter looked up, “I get the snacks,” he said.

“That’s right,” Sirius said, “You do. Blimey, I guess even when you’re Peter you can still serve a purpose.”

Peter’s face burned red as the other boys laughed - but James made a point to put his arm about Peter’s shoulders. “It’s alright, Pete, he’s only taking the mickey out of ya. You know you’re an integral part of the Marauders. We’d be broken without ya, mate.” He smiled warmly at the smaller, pudgier boy.

Peter smiled back at James - though he wasn’t entirely sure Sirius hadn’t meant exactly what he’d said.

“OH! The Mickey!” said Lily Evans, who’d been walking with them between classes, “That reminds me! I have presents for you from Disney World. I’ve been meaning to give them to you for ages.”

Sirius had grinned, “I do like presents.”

These presents left some room for debate, however. Lily remembered to bring them down to the common room that night and plopped four pairs of Mickey Mouse ears on each of the Marauder’s heads as they sat about the fire, after Sirius had kicked the first years out of the way. Remus looked about at the other three with the big round mouse hats on their heads and laughed. “You lot look like absolute idiots,” he said to Sirius and James. He smirked at Peter. “Looks a fair bit natural on you, Wormtail.” He winked.

The boys all laughed.

“What the bloody hell am I to do with these, Evans?” Sirius asked.

“Wear them,” she said.

Sirius guffawed, “When? With my mouse costume? Do people wear these everyday in Floreeka?”

Several of the first years snickered at Sirius getting the name of the state wrong.

“Florida,” Lily corrected, “And --” she was about to say no, only at Disney World, when she realized it would be far more fun to mess with Sirius Black. “-- only the most fashionable ones wear them everyday. Models and such. Punk rockers. John Lennon has a pair. There’s a picture of him wearing a Mickey Mouse T-sirt, very famous. You know if he had the shirt, he had the ears...” She shrugged, “But if you don’t want to be like John Lennon, then I suppose I could just send them back…” she reached for the ears.

“Oi now,” Sirius said, grabbing them to hold them on his head before she could take them, “I didn’t say that, now did I?”

“I mean if you don’t like them…” she smirked, “Or… or you think you can’t pull off the look…”

James smirked, too, sneaking glances out of the corner of his eye at Sirius, who was busy ay adjusting the ears so they sat toward the back of his head at a bit of an angle. “I can pull off anything Lennon can!” Sirius said. He looked at James, ”Do I look as fabulous as the Beatles?”

“Yeah, fabulous is definitely the word for what you look,” James laughed.

It was in this manner that Sirius Black walked about Hogwarts castle for an entire day wearing Mickey Mouse ears before Remus quietly made them disappear just before dinner because he couldn’t handle all the people staring at them in the corridors.




Just before dinner, Sirius came up to James in the common room by the fire, nudging him. “Oi, Potter. I need to talk to you.”

James said, “So talk…” without even looking up. He had a book open on his lap called A History of Famous Captains of Hogwarts Quidditch Teams and was thoroughly engrossed reading.

Sirius glanced at Remus, who was at the other end of the sofa, reading over Peter’s Charms paper to be sure he’d gotten everything right, Peter looking on nervously and chattering now and then about what he meant here or there and asking if he’d gotten certain things right. Remus’s business and distraction with Peter was exactly why Sirius had chosen this moment to bug James.

“Not here.”

“I’m busy.”

“James… ferfuckssake.” He leaned closer, “It’s about my arm. Please.”

James slid a marker in on the page of his book and tossed it onto the coffee table, stealing a glance at Remus, who looked up as he rose, but Peter was jabbing at the parchment begging for an answer to a question he was asking, and Remus could only watch as Sirius and James slipped out the door of the common room and into the hall.

Sirius hurriedly dragged James down the corridor to the toilet, made sure nobody was in there by peeping under every stall, then locked the door and set a charm over it so their voices could not be heard through the crack at the bottom. He turned on James, “It needs a new bandage… I tried changing it myself yesterday and it was really hard and -- well, it hurts a lot more today and I can’t even begin to do it alone. Can you…?”

“Of course, mate, you should’ve asked me yesterday, too,” James scolded.

Sirius shimmied out of his Gryffindor sweater-vest and chucked it on the floor (he hated that thing but Professor Minnie had insisted on him wearing it to her classes at least) and he unbuttoned his oxford and rolled back the cloth from his chest and arms… He knew the moment the cloth peeled away that something was bad.

James let out a gasp.

“What? What is it?” Sirius asked, nervous.

“Bloody hell, no wonder it hurts…” James stepped closer gingerly. “Merlin’s beard, Sirius…”

Sirius twisted his neck as far as he could but all he could see was that his bicep was swollen and there seemed to be a funny sort of… almost furry bruising…

James backed him up to a mirror and Sirius cringed. The halfmoon where Remus’s teeth had sunk into Snuffles’ flesh had turned almost blackish-blue with bruising and crusted up with thick scabs. But the skin all around it was pale blue, fading into regular flesh color after a bit. Tiny black hairs stuck up around it, too, as though that part of Sirius’s arm were caught in a limbo between Snuffles and Sirius. There was a funny sort of yellowy pus seeping from the wound itself, also, from under the scabs, thick and goopy - not like regular pus. Sirius literally felt like he might throw up at the sight of it…. And then he literally did throw up at the sight of it, leaning over one of the sink basins.

“Oh mate, you need to see Pomfrey about that, it’s positively disgusting,” James stared at the thing, not daring to get any closer.

“I can’t see Pomfrey, what am I supposed to tell her happened?” he asked, groaning and wiping his mouth as he turned on the faucet, staying leaned over the sink, his face pressed to the mirror’s glass.

James shook his head, “I dunno mate but that’s really bad… I mean, I doubt very much whether that’s normal.”

“It looks part Snuffles,” Sirius said, carefully not looking at it again, afraid he’d be sick once more. James on the other hand couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from it - like it had hypnotized him. He just kept staring at how absolutely disgusting it was, his nose crinkled up, yet fascinated nonetheless.

“Maybe that’s how your body’s fighting the… the werewolf venom.”

Sirius shivered.

“Did you check the library earlier for whether the bites affect animals?” James asked.

Sirius looked down at his feet. “No.”

“Whyever not?”

“I don’t bloody dare to James, I’m fucking terrified!” Sirius answered and he smashed his fist against the mirror hard enough James jumped in surprise. “James, what happens if I change? What happens if next full moon I go just as moony as Moony?” he looked at his mate, and James saw genuine terror in Sirius’s eyes unlike any he’d seen in years.

Last time he’d seen that look on Sirius Black’s face, they’d been first years and Sirius had woken from a nightmare and they’d been sitting in the common room by the fire as Sirius Black confessed to James that his mum used the unforgivable curses on him as sport at home… It sent chills up James’s spine to think of that night, and made him wholly respect just how frightened Sirius was now.

“If I change… James, how am I to protect my Moony from eating his own flesh if I’m bloody next to him eating mine?” tears filled Sirius’s eyes. “I can’t save us both and frankly if I’m only gonna save one of us it’s ruddy not going to be me.”

“Well you can’t alter what’s going to happen, so worrying about it and not taking care of yourself isn’t going to help. I mean, how are you to protect Rey if your arm falls off?” James said pointedly, nodding at the horrid-looking wound. “You need to see Pomfrey.”

Sirius closed his eyes.

“Sirius, it’s not an option.”

“Not tonight, though,” Sirius said firmly.

“Sirius --”

“James, I haven’t even told him yet! He’s not finding out by me rushing off to see Pomfrey because I’m afraid my arm’s fallin’ off!” Sirius said. “He’s going to freak out and I need to tell him gentle as possible - or else he’s never goin’ to forgive himself for it.”

James made a face.

“I’ll tell him tonight. After dinner.”

“And then you’ll go to Pomfrey? Tonight? After you tell him?”

“Sure.”

“Swear it.”

Sirius sighed, “James, I swear it.”

James didn’t trust it. He reached in his robes pockets and produced the Marauder’s Map and held it out. “Swear it on the Map.”

There was no document in the entire world that would be a more solemn oath for the Marauders than to be required to Swear it on the Map, and Sirius stared warily at the blank parchment.

“Do it, or I’ll know you’re lying about going tonight and I’ll bloody go tell her myself,” James threatened.

Sirius stuck out his hand - the opposite arm of the bite - and he put it on the parchment and stared James in the eyes. “I solemnly swear I’ll go to Pomfrey after I talk to Remus,” Sirius said thickly.

“And you’ll talk to Remus when?”

Sirius sighed his palm still on the parchment, “Tonight.”

When he lifted his palm, there were the insults:

Messer Moony would like to register his opinion that Messer Padfoot is utterly insane.
Messer Wormtail agrees with Messer Moony and thinks Messer Padfoot ought to be tested by a professional.
Messer Padfoot points out that insanity is the spice of life and ought not be considered a poor trait but rather a grand one to aspire to…
Messer Prongs would like to remind Messer Padfoot that this is exactly the sort of thing a madman would say to get out of being mad.
Messer Moony would also like Messer Padfoot to know that he loves him even if he is a madman.


Like James’s magic with Evans, Remus’s magic had seemed unable to leave Sirius insulted without a bit of a consolation prize. This had happened every time Sirius had tested the map.

“How can I do this to him, James?” Sirius choked. “It’s going to break his heart.”

James frowned. “Dunno.” He took a deep breath, “Here. Let me bandage you up at least.” He motioned for Sirius to turn about and raised his wand to get to work at it.




James was keeping on top of the case of the missing Lucy Minchum. “They still haven’t found that little girl,” he said at the Gryffindor dinner table. He lowered the Daily Prophet and looked about at the other three. “Minchum’s got the clearance to appoint even more dementors at Azkaban and they’ve replaced the guards in the Ministry with dementors, too.”

Sirius shivered at the thought of dementors.

“He’s hoping the introduction of the dementors will help secure the holding cells better and erase the opportunity for supporters of You Know Who sneaking in to let captured death eaters free like they’ve done.” James said, “That’ll certainly help. I’m glad the wizengamot finally gave Minchum his clearance to do it. He’s been talking about that since the elections. If they’d just listened to him in the first place, then Lucy Minchum wouldn’t be missing, would she?”

“Reckon they’ve searched all the death eaters’ houses? My mum was kidnapped and at the Lestrange house. They could’ve done the same with Lucy Minchum.” Peter looked around at them.

“I’m sure they thought of that, Pete,” Remus murmured. He looked over at Sirius, who was being strangely quiet through all of this, and put his arm around him - Sirius liked it when Remus put his arm around him in public, it never failed to get a response. But this time, the response it got him was a strange jolt and a wince with a sharp inhaled hiss of a sound… like pain. “What? What’s the matter?” Remus dropped his arm quickly away.

Sirius shook his head.

“Liar,” accused Remus, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Really.”

James raised an eyebrow at Sirius across the table and mouthed, you swore on the map.

Sirius closed his eyes a moment.

“Padfoot…” Remus’s voice was gentle and pleading.

Sirius stood up, “We gotta talk Rey,” he said sadly.

Fear filled Remus’s eyes, “What about?”

“Just… come along, please.”

Remus got up, abandoning barely touched dinner, and followed Sirius out of the Great Hall.

Peter looked after them in concern. “Sirius’s arm?” he asked.

James nodded.

Peter turned back to dinner, but even he was nervous enough for his mates that all he could do was push about his peas and carrots with the end of his fork - not hungry.




Since she had finally remembered to give out her Disney World gifts, Lily wanted to be sure that everyone got theirs. She waited at the foot of the dungeon stairs, in the shadow of a door frame down the hallway that led to the little boat docks, watching for Severus Snape. She listened to loads of boring Slytherin conversations - mostly about who’d hexed who in the courtyard and homework discussions… Finally, she saw the green-and silver tied boy she wanted.

“Pssst -- Sev-ver-russss!” she called, and he looked about until he spotted her and stepped over in her direction.

Lily promptly put the mouse ears on his head and handed him the keychain she’d got him. “I got these in Florida over the summer and I’ve only just remembered to give them out.”

Severus Snape looked utterly out of place with the Mouse ears on his head. He stared at the keychain in his hand for a long moment, turning it over in his palm. His dark eyes moved to hers after a moment and he stared into the green-ness of them.

“They’re silly, really, you don’t have to wear them or anything. I just didn’t want you to think I hadn’t thought of you,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said flatly. He reached up and tugged the mouse ears off, looking at them in his hand. Those things would be buried deep in his trunk, he thought. No way could Evan Rosier or any of the other Slytherins ever witness Severus Snape with Mickey Mouse ears on his head. No, that visual was one that would be left never to be seen again. Lily Evans alone would ever know what that looked like.

Lily stood there awkwardly before him. “Well. Anyway. We best be getting up to dinner…”

Severus nodded.

“I’ll… I’ll see you,” she said, and she scampered away.

Severus held onto the keychain and mouse ears, his fist closed around the little trinket, and he brought his hand up to lay it across his chest, right over his heart.