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Thought It Would be Fawny


“I can’t believe I’ve let you talk me into this, I must be absolutely mental,” said James.

Sirius grinned. “I can’t believe you let me talk you into it, either. But it’s going to be absolutely brilliant.” He held his wand aloft. “Go on then.”

James said, “If I end up caught - or worse, speared by one of Hagrid’s ruddy crossbows - you’re gonna be in big trouble ‘cos I’ll haunt you every bleedin’ minute of the day.”

Sirius’s eyes twinkled, “Ghost-James might be an improvement on you.”

“How?”

“Well you’d be incredibly low maintenance. Ghosts don’t eat for one.”

“They could eat ghost food.”

“Ghost food?”

“Yes.”

Sirius snorted. “Alright whatever.”
Remus spoke up from the bed, where he was flipping through several textbooks, collecting all the correctly pronounced spells for their adventure, “Actually, while they cannot physically eat, they do enjoy floating hear to spoiled food - the molding gives off strong fumes that could be interpreted as sort of tasting - the sensation is… sort of similar, at least.”

“So they just chuck it into their mouth holes and then what?” Sirius asked, confused. “Can a ghost take a poo?”

James honked with laughter, doubling over.

Peter couldn’t help but laugh, too.

Remus shook his head, “No, Sirius, ghosts cannot take poos. They sort of fly over the rotted food with their mouths open, like a whale catching kelp...”

Sirius rubbed his chin, distracted by the new question, he asked, “What if a bloke were to die while on the loo and he’s -- he’s mid push -- wouldn’t his ghost, then, be taking a poo… for all eternity?”

“Bloody hell, Sirius,” Remus smacked his forehead.

“These are the pressing questions of the universe, Moony!” Sirius announced. “These are the sorts of things they should be teaching us here!”

“Yes, whether a ghost can take a shite or not!” Remus shook his head in absolute frustration.

Sirius’s mouth quirked in amusement and he clapped with glee. “Guys. Moony just said shite.”

Sirius!”

James cleared his throat as Remus turned red. “Oi. Are we doing this or are we going to talk about the bathroom habits of the paranormal?!”

“Alright, alright -- blimey, guy can’t even ask a question ‘round here anymore… Go on Prongs -- change over. Let’s do this.”

Wally and Dexter were in the common room, waiting for the other first years to get their textbooks and hoping Remus would come down to help with the homework since Lily Evans wasn’t there. Wally was staring across the room, unfocused, his stuff in a stack before him, untouched, as Dexter fuddled over a parchment, erasing some marks he’d just made with a pencil and blowing off the dust. He still didn’t like using quills. (“You have to dip them every 5 seconds,” he complained, “Why not just use an ink pen?” To this, Lily Evans had shrugged and replied, “Dunno, just part of the charm of Hogwarts, I suppose - loads of magic, no concept of -er- modern conveniences like ink pens.” Dexter had shook his head and said, “Someday, I’m gonna invent a self-inking quill and make loads of money.”)

“Wally, you alright?” Dexter asked.

Wally blinked at Dexter, as though surprised to see him there. “What? Oh. Yeah - yes, sure yes.” He cleared his throat and grabbed the top textbook off his stack of them and flicked through it t the assignment and turned to look down at it, his eyes unmoving still.

Dexter whispered, “I miss Ollie, too.”

Wally looked up at the mention of Ollie’s name and he said, “They said he won’t be back ‘til after the holidays, but where is he going to go? Both his mum and dad are dead!” Wally looked near to tears as he said it, “He’s all alone wherever he is and -- and I hate that.”

Dexter frowned, “I’m sure he’s not alone… Dumbledore will have made sure… surely…”

Wally’s eyes turned back to the textbook.

“What… in the bloody hell…?” it was Frank Longbottom’s voice and the two first years looked up.

Coming down the stairs was a very large… reindeer? It had great big antlers and it picked its way down the steps with its hooves ‘til it reached the bottom and trotted a way in and stopped in the center of the room - every eye turned upon it - and it flicked its tail, looking about at them as though it belonged there and they were all the intruders.

“Whoaaaa,” Dexter whispered.

Wally stared at it in disbelief.

Frank stood up.

“Merlin’s beard Frank, be careful!” Ali yelled as Frank started shuffling his way ‘round the couch, staring at the stag as he moved closer. The stag looked at him - twitch, twitch went the tail.

Suddenly, Sirius appeared at the head of the stairs, wearing his stocking cap, and he shouted, “OH DEER!!”

Frank looked up at him as Dexter started laughing loudly at this exclamation. Half the common room started laughing along with him as Sirius slid down the banister to the end and grabbed onto the deer’s antlers. “Knew I should’ve locked the blasted door…”

“This… this is yours?” Frank asked.

“Yeah, ain’t it a bitch when your desk just gets up and walks away???” Sirius asked.

“This… you transfigured… you transfigured your desk into a deer?” Frank stared at him, “Whatever for?”

Sirius stared at Frank, “I mean, it’s Christmas. How else do you decorate if not with deers? Blimey your dorm must be boring.” Sirius grinned as Dexter’s eyes went quite wide and Wally stared up, gaping at the deer.

“But… but why would you change your desk into a deer?!”

“Thought it would be fawny,” answered Sirius without skipping a beat.

Frank’s eyebrows went up.

Doen’t you think so, Frank?”

Frank stared.

“Oh c’mon, Frank, don’t be so staggered.”

“Stop that.”

Sirius grinned. “Sorry, not trying to start a roe.”
Luckily, that one was obscure enough Frank didn’t get it.

“Does he fly?!” Dexter suddenly asked, bouncing in his seat with excitement. “Father Christmas’s deers can fly!”

Sirius grinned, “Does he fly!” There was a glint in his eye. “Of course he can! We’re wizards, little bean, anything can fly if you want it to...” The stag shook his head frantically -- but Sirius was far too excited about the idea (why hadn’t he thought of it?) and he had the charm out before Prongs could scramble away… “Wingardium leviosa!”

Suddenly Prongs was airbourne, his nose glowing off the ceiling as he rose very quickly, bumping into the stucco with his antlers and he kicked his legs as though he were swimming through the air.

Remus and Peter were peering over the stairs, “Oh bloody hell --” whispered Remus, smacking his forehead as James scrambled through the air below. He jumped up and ran down the stairs, “Sirius!” he said, “You musn’t levitate things that ought not be levitated, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Sirius grinned. “Oh Moony, don’t be so commandeering.”

But he lowered Prongs to the ground gently.

After the test run in the dormitory was successful - they slowly moved into phase two of the Sirius’s desk is a deer prank in which they made it somewhat common to see Sirius running through the castle after a stag with bits of parchment speared onto the antlers, shouting after it. “There goes Sirius with his desk again,” Dexter would mutter as they ran past.

Sirius also bewitched random suits of armor throughout the castle to be overly found of ballroom dancing so that people would be walking along the corridors and suddenly this big suit of armor would come crashing over and grab hold of them and start humming The Waltz of the Flowers and swing them about the halls, and shrieking they would dance and dance until someone was able to pry them away from the bitterly disappointed knights hands.

The armor that wasn’t bewitched for that were set to work in other ways - either singing modified Christmas carols or else shouting randomly inappropriate things to passersby. “Big nose you’ve got there!” or else, “Blimey thought I saw a hag but now I see it’s just you!”

There were spells on the mirrors in toilets set to distort the reflections in funny ways - stretching a nose or tripling the size of somebody’s eyes or making them look shorter or taller or skinnier or fatter or even invisible, where the reflection wouldn’t show you anybody was there at all.

In classes, Sirius would raise his hand and the other students would groan, knowing he was about to ask something stupid… he had an arsenal of ridiculous questions always at the ready:

“Professor, what’s your favorite colour?”
“Professor, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
“Professor, are there pigs that really can fly? Has anybody ever verified that they don’t fly at night when we aren’t looking? Like the mooncalves with their dancing?”
“Professor, why isn’t chocolate considered a vegetable? It’s made from a plant - from beans, isn’t it? Aren’t plants vegetables? Perhaps we should serve chocolate as a side dish?”
“Professor, I’ve been wondering, if a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to hear it - does it make a sound?”
“Professor, if you were suspended by your ankles say and somebody says to look up - do you look at the floor or the ceiling?”
“Professor, why are trousers called pairs when it’s only one? What about scissors?”
“Professor, if a cannibal ate a clown, would it taste funny?”


Remus shook his head as they walked between classes one day, people still snort-laughing because Sirius had driven Professor Kettleburn mad with questions about whether you could bake cookies on an ashwinders’ back. “Where the hell do you come up with this stuff from?” he asked, nudging Sirius.

“They just come to me,” he replied.

“So you just have ashwinder stove hot plates in your head floating about?”

Sirius shrugged, “Scary place, my head.”

“I reckon it must be bleedin’ terrifying in there,” Remus said.

One day, Sirius wore a sombrero to his classes and people stared at him in the hallway warily, confused by what in the hell Sirius Black was wearing, a sentiment that Professor McGonagall actually spoke out loud. “Mr. Black, what is that thing upon your head?”

“That would be a hat, Professor,” he said as one of the extruding bits of straw from the edge of the hat poked James in the eye.

“But - but why is it… a sombrero, Mr. Black?”

“Minnie, Minnie, Minnie…” muttered Sirius, shaking his head, “Oh deer, Minnie… Why not?”

“Because it is impractical and --”

“Covers my head, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but --”

“And that’s the point of a hat, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mr. Black, that is the purpose of a hat, but --”

“What good is it being incredibly good looking as I am and look as spiffing in anything as I do and not wear brilliant things like sombreros? What’s the point in being cool if you can’t wear a sombrero about all day?”

And Sirius wasn’t the only one of the Marauders marauding.

James bewitched a couple of random doorknobs about the castle to work similarly to a portkey in which somebody would reach to open the door to their classes and crack -- they’d find themselves holding the doorknob of a random classroom across the castle.

Peter found a spell to set in a doorway so that anyone who passed through would suddenly forget what it was they’d gone in the room for. He put that one at the end of the stairs to the dormitories so that people would constantly be walking into the common room and standing there looking about with a confused expression on their face, trying to figure out what they were doing there.

Remus, at Sirius’s insistence, reluctantly bewitched poor Professor Binns to speak in garbeldegook all day and nobody could understand a thing he was saying. The funny thing about that one was that Binns never noticed it and alf the students in the class said it was an improvement to his usual droning and it gathered a crowd once word got out and those that didn’t have a class with Binns that day - or at all for a lot of them - fought over standing room in the back of Binns’s class.

Sirius and James made a joint effort convincing Dexter and Darcy into beliving that one of the Prewett brothers had been bitten by a rabid rabbit and was thereby changed to a “werebunny” and they sold them snargaluff pods they’d plucked from Herbology class and snickered evilly when they saw the pair of them walking about with their snagaluff pods hanging from strings ‘round their necks to ward off the vicious mighty werebunny.

Nobody in the castle knew when they might fall victim of a prank - when it might start raining gumballs from the ceiling in the Defense corridor, or else the carpet might become akin to a trampoline in the Charms hall. Chairs would suddenly be impossible to get up from, desks magicked to the ceiling. One morning they got up to find the entrance hall had been magicked into a great big indoor skating rink with loads of random ice skates strewn about on the stairwell. And everyday things would be subtly rearranged - Christmas trees in the Great Hall would be in slightly different places than they’d been the day before, and one day all the desks in every classroom in the school had been magicked to have antlers like James’s sticking out of them.

The days following the attacks therefore became uncertain - but only because nobody knew when a prank would be pulled, when a joke would be told, when they’d discover what the bloody Marauders had done next -- for every time they did something, they left a mark: the words itinerarium maraudentium would be scrawled in red somewhere on the scene of the crime or else Sirius would be shouting the words. People found themselves laughing, smirking, smiling, giggling, chuckling…

And despite all the detentions the staff were constantly doling out to Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter, they couldn’t help but marvel at the phenomenon as spirits lifted throughout the castle.

“Ahh look at that,” whispered Sirius one evening when the Great Hall was a buzz with talk, people trying to guess what the boys might do next, stealing glances their way and laughing at the ideas that others had for pranks.

“Smiles,” said Peter, grinning and looking about, too. “Everybody’s smiling again.”

Sirius nodded and James’s lip quirked up with pride.

“Mischief managed,” smirked Remus.