Quotes
Sirius: Well we are having all kinds of fun here WITHOUT YOU of course. All the livelong day we do nothing but frolic in the sun and dance pastoral dances and sing merry drinking songs, you can imagine, we are sloshed ALL the time without your improving influence. You need to hurry up and get out here mate, else we shall be forced, FORCED I say to get you on the NEW MOTORBIKE and steal you away to our tropical paradise, if by "tropical" you mean "Devonshire" (and I do.) We fly it constantly, it frightens the shit out of birds which you can imagine is exactly what I look for in a mode of transportation.
James has got his head stuck in a window, what the hell
Remus: Ask James' dad if he enjoys the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Please try to pronounce name properly. Name not even funny on its own. Name not even susceptible to funnification.
Sirius: He played that one I like though! The Glen Miller one. The dah-nah-nah dah! dah! dah! dah! da dunnah dunnah, doodle oodle doodley doo, doo doo doo! dah nahnuh doodle oodle doo doodle oodle doo, doot doodle oodle doo doodle oodle doo, and then the same three notes over and over. And then that dead cool guitarist I like, the one with three fingers. So not a total waste!
Remus: Repeat after me, Mr. Black: I do believe in commas. I do, I do.
Sirius: Do I rev your engine Moony? Eh EH do I? nudge nudge wink wink etc ad nauseaum.
Remus: I am not a corpse. Corpses don't eat SANDWICHES.
Professor Dumbledore: But what are you boys doing lying down? It's only a kiss.
Sirius: Oops -- hello Moonytoes! Yes! Hahahaha. All right, you can -- haha -- you can stop now.
Sirius: Sorry, mate, I don't speak pathetic bastard. Come again?
James: It's like -- like being raped by a marshmallow, is what it's like.
James: Bad?! Fucking -- fuck, Padfoot! Fucking fuck!
"I deserve it," Sirius says in a hollow, dead voice. "Please. I offer my head as a receptacle for your vomit."
James: His mind has a dog in it.
"Yes," Remus says. "Yes, that is Sirius' nose between your legs." Lily opens her mouth. Closes it. Takes a deep breath in, turning a fantastic shade of purple.
"I like her!" says Sirius happily. "She can stay. Do you want to play with me? Hey, how about you throw something? Do you want to scratch my ears? Hey, hey, hello!"
"Marauders!" Sirius stares around at them, frankly bewildered. "I feel like I hardly know you anymore! This is not Marauding behavior, this is -- this is -- we ought to be called The Wet Blankets! Well," he amends, "the Wet Blankets And One Very Lonely Marauder, which is not much better."
"Brilliant name for a band, though," Remus says thoughtfully.
Sirius: Do you think if someone farted enough they could make their own star? It's all gasses, innit?
"My inability to communicate?" Remus splutters. "My inability? Sirius, you're the one theorizing on the possibility of farting a star into existence!"
Remus: I'll just remember that I talked for five minutes to a friend who was already sleeping and I was happy anyway.
"No." McGonagall looks down at him over the length of her pointy McGonagall nose into the depths of his pointy Peter soul. He imagines her fingers reaching into him, prodding at his innermost thoughts like jelly, and pulling back out again with a look of extreme distaste. Mr. Pettigrew, your innermost thoughts have left a mess on my nails. He laughs. "Is this funny, Mr. Pettigrew? Do you find the reality of your future life humorous?"
Peter: I like cooking," he says finally. "Mostly toast."
"Is that what funkies your monkey?" Sirius asks. He bats his lashes outrageously in her direction, hoping the meaning is not lost. "Is that what bloats your stoat?"
"I can only imagine your silky, flimsy nighttime wear."
"It gets very little use," Sirius mourns, "as I sleep in the nude."
"He once told me he wanted to 'fight things,'" Lily adds. "As a career."
"Oh," Remus says suddenly. "I get it. I'm rocks."
"Are you wearing a codpiece?" Remus asks, without thinking.
He brushes his teeth for twenty-one minutes and eighteen seconds until it goes away, mumbling "Oh, Cathy my rear end" all the way.
"No urges," Remus insists. "No urges."
"Don't," Sirius says, consolingly. "He's not really embarrassed. Honestly, I think he's just afraid you're going to spill something on Mr. Toodles." He fixes Remus with a sharp look. "You're not going to spill anything on Mr. Toodles, are you?"
"Thanks," Remus says. "Have a good shower! You should maybe lock the door next time! Your duck is slipping!"
"We're going swimming," James says. "Stop being so pornographic. Cousins. What's wrong with you? In any case: we're going swimming."
James: It does seem as if you've found the world's largest leaf for the world's smallest prick. Congratulations, Sirius. I disown you! Disown. You are dead to me. I am eating all your sandwiches, dead people don't need them.
"He does that already," Peter says, munching an apple. " Remus loves his operettas."
"You can hear those?" Remus asks, mildly horrified.
There is a sudden screech from the other side of the campfire, and Remus looks up in a panic to see that Sirius, in a particularly overenthusiastic shove, has just set James on fire.
"I am sorry I am boring," Remus says.
Sirius stares at him. "What?"
"I am sorry I am burnt around the edges and soggy in the middle like these tomatoes," Remus tries to explain. The words are coming out lunatic. The usual bubble of panic at his inability to communicate like a normal human being doesn't rise in him; he only feels worn and dejected, and the seat of his pants are covered in grass stains and chill, nighttime dirt. It's hard to feel wounded pride when your rear has been asleep for over three hours. "I tried to cook them," he says, "I tried, but I'm only good with cheese toasties and unwrapping chocolate."
Remus: That was so incredibly far from being my fault that it is almost painful to explain.
James' eyes dart to Sirius. They've known each other for long enough to communicate wordlessly, eyebrow twitches, lip quirks, a flash of teeth, a nervous tug of the earlobe, a scratch to the side of the nose. To anyone else they're just fidgety boys. To James and Sirius they have just had a lengthy conversation extending far beyond their current dilemma.
He fumbles, opens his mouth, closes it -- James is eyeing him in slowly growing panic, come on, Padfoot, do something! -- and finally thinks to hell with it.
Sirius launches himself forward, and kisses his Head of House full on the mouth.
McGonagall makes a strangled noise and flails at him. Their hats knock together. So do their spectacles. Sirius decides after a panic-filled moment that his point is made perhaps too well, yanks himself back, and gazes ardently at her. She looks, he thinks with great admiration, rather magnificent: bright red, helpless with confusion and probably rage, and yet altogether in possession of her dignity. "I'm sorry, Professor! I just -- couldn't hold back any longer! I love you! And it tears me up inside!" Considering the Deed Done, Sirius grabs James's wrist and flees down the hall, pursued by roars of laughter and a shriek of "Mister Black! Twelve million points from Gryffindor!" floating down the corridor after them.
Sirius: Moo ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Sirius: And for that I am profoundly grateful, Wormtail. When the revolution comes, you will not be eaten. May I go on?
"Can't even keep your clothes on without me," Remus whispers, and promptly passes out.
Gideon Prewett: OUR FIRST SUMMER: We get a job in Hogsmeade. Fabian works hard. I have TWENTY-SEVEN GIRLFRIENDS. They all fight in the streets for my hand. I am in love with about twelve of them.
"James," Sirius says out of the corner of his mouth, "they are going to sign your arm in my blood."
"Damn," James mutters. "That'll wash off."
"Can we get some photos?" Sirius asks perkily, producing, from nowhere, a camera.
"Can I have some of your hair?" James adds, in a very small voice.
"Yes," Fabian says.
"No," Gideon says, at the same time.
"My life is so beautiful," James murmurs, looking as if he might weep.
"You have chocolate on your nose," shiny-hair says. "No, no, I think it is a fantastic statement. Is it a freckle? Is it a food product? You are charming. I am Fabian Prewett, and this is my idiot Gideon, and why, exactly, are you here?"
"'Gideon Prewett Lets ME Touch His Biceps' isn't clever." James polishes his glasses on the edge of a sleeve. "It's sort of sad."
James: I have all the maturity of a seven-year-old in a toilet factory.
Remus: "Good God," he says, out loud. "I am a forty year old in a boy suit."
"Your neck smells like tequila," James informs him
"Good," Sirius says. "So does my mouth, see?" and he huffs in James's face to prove it.
But even more omnipresent than the rhythm of Sirius' jiggling thigh is the knowledge that they are bound to each other in creation. Without even one of the four of them, maps and animagi and legacies disappear. It's the four of them, Remus thinks, the four of them together. It is at once a delight and a sobering thought. It is a wonderful thing to be a part of something larger than oneself, and a terrible thing to be inadequate in the face of it.
They're going off in separate directions. They're two different people. They are, to put it simply, separable.
"For he is Dumbledore, master of all hidden knowledge," says James, a little mocking but kindly too. "Sirius--"
Sirius says, looking past him, "I probably won't leave."
"Thanks," James says quietly.
"I might set something on fire though," Sirius goes on. They smile the same rough way at each other, crooked, raw and hurting: and then James says, "right then," and goes.
Sirius: What's happening, soul brother?
"Moony," says Sirius rather severely, "I am getting the distinct impression that you are not hip to my jive. Are you or are you not hip to my jive?"
"And you never shut up, either," Sirius says. "Except for that time, when you kissed me just now, do you remember that? That was nice," he adds, and then his voice cracks as he says, "I'm going to kiss you, vomit-mouth."
"Sometimes," Remus gasps, "sometimes rocks have urges, too."
Remus's stomach flies into the region of his eyeballs. When he has recovered, he says, as calmly as possible, "You have made me completely brain-dead."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"It's not meant to be. Go away. I am a vile, mucous-leaking corpse."
Sirius: I've got something in my teeth, if you were here I could make you tell me what it is (WITH YOUR TONGUE HAR HAR) but as it stands I just poke at it with my nails and pester James or I did before he said "Shut up shut up shut up you horrible man" and went to sleep. Actually I ought to be trying to sleep too only its impossible with this massive thing between my teeth, I am like the Princess and the Pea, only the Sirius and the Possibly A Bit of Dried Beef, or Then Again, Perhaps a Hair.
Remus: You left a sandwich in your flat before you left. It was half eaten. When I arrived to make sure the plants were not dead-I bought plants and hope you don't mind, or kill them when you return, either; I named them Rupert Brooke and Sylvia Plath-I discovered a new plant, which you have somehow managed to breed from a complicated substratum of cheese, another kind of cheese, a third kind of cheese, four (I think) distinct layers of meat, and the first kind of cheese again, followed by a tomato (this is only a wild guess) and then as far as I can tell a nest made entirely out of bacon. It has grown its very own forest, colonized by sandwich pixies. I hope you're happy. I'm throwing it out, I don't care how the pixies beg.
Remus: I couldn't exactly get out of it, either, as I'd already said yes, and saying no is impossible, as we proved that one time with the prefect's bathroom. And by "one time" I mean "seven."
Remus: Basically this: I wish you were around so I could throw quiche on you.
Sirius: Here's something I can tell you. We're meant to be looking for something, so we've been doing a lot of anti-cloaking work, finding traces of hiding spells and similar, and the other day James's (NOT MY) revelation ritual went awry and left us both transparent. We couldn't fix it for half a day so we were hopping about, panicking, our viscera jiggling about in the open for anyone to goggle at. I can still see my kidneys dimly through my abdomen. IF THAT DOESN'T GET YOU ALL STEAMY I DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL.
Lily: I love you, in defiance of common sense. Come back as soon as you can, please.
Remus: “OXFORD,” I added. “MONKEYWRENCH. AARDVARK. CHECK PLEASE.”
James: I turned myself transparent the other day. I asked Sirius if he could see your name written upon the ventricles of my heart and he hit me with a large piece of firewood. Then he spent the rest of the day as we slowly regained our opaque…hood with an oven mitt in front of his chest, though where he got that oven mitt I have no idea.
It's not that Sirius minds the outdoors. Sirius actually quite enjoys the outdoors. He likes the smell of decaying woody things, the bright clarity of the air, the echo of small animal sounds and leaves shifting and it's all very pleasant, under normal circumstances. But the circumstances aren't normal, and today the woods are making him antsy. "I don't like it," he says again. He has said "I don't like it" at least seven thousand times since this morning, but he can't seem to stop himself. The forest here is odd. The echoes are strange, like they're bouncing off a boundary that isn't there. He doesn't like it! James should know!
"I could kiss you on the mouth," says Sirius. "Ow."
The pain between Sirius's shoulders almost itches; the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. His senses are sharp, fine points, focused in the muggy forest air. What's funny is how often people curse but don’t mean it properly. It makes the moments when cursing really means something, when 'fuck' really means 'Sirius is bleeding and James is frightened and there's a smell like acid and matches and sulfur and dying in the air,' seem smaller, like the trivial adventures of an ant circus. That's a strange thought to think, especially strange at a time like this, but no stranger really than the curious nature of Remus Lupin’s mouth.
"Mustard never killed anyone," he mutters, but of course it's too late, and not as funny as if James had said it. James would have said something else, probably. Sirius would have put a napkin in the sandwich and hid under the counter to watch the sparks fly. Remus would have brought the right sandwich.
"I'm sorry," James says.
"I know you are," says Lily.
"I love you," James says, and:
"We should get married," says Lily.
"I'm sorry," James says. "What?"
"James’s first time with Lily was, it was awful," Sirius blurts out abruptly. His fingers are ranging across the skin over Remus's spine, skin which feels extremely hot and unusually thin. "I’m not supposed to talk about it but he said it was like being attacked by a jellyfish. It was at the beach, probably why he brought up jellyfish at all I'm sure – but can you imagine? Jellyfish. Jellyfish sex, Remus, they had jellyfish sex together and it was so bad I had to talk him down from a ledge."
"Electric jellyfish, maybe," Sirius says. His hand stops moving, his thumb pressed against the inside of Remus's knee. Remus is so tangled up he may never be untangled again. "How about: White Hot Smoking Electric Fireworks jellyfish."
"I -- oh God, I stole a book. I stole a book from the library! It was -- I needed two dictionaries just to understand it, and I couldn't check it out, I couldn't. Can you imagine? The librarian, she's a million years old, and she has this look about her, this I Will Have Your Skull on a Plate look -- so I put it inside the dictionaries and I walked out! I'm going to hell.