Chapter 7
James stepped into his bedroom and nearly gagged on the green fumes with the familiar smell of blazing socks. "Jesus." He pinched his nose to block his nostrils, making his voice sound comically squeaky. "It smells like a bonfire and sweaty arse in here." He spotted Sirius sitting on his bed, staring at the ceiling, and the pipe in his mouth, the culprit of the bitter smell.
"Alright, Padfoot," James sat on the edge of his book, his arms crossed with a moody expression. "I just turned down fooling around with Lily for you, so you better secretly be a redhead with bosoms under that Padfoot appearance," he looked his friend up and down and decided he was probably not, "ordying or something-"
Clearly mentioning death was not any comforting for Sirius, and James was instantly met with a dramatic down-turned face of despair.
"Er." James frowned. "Was it something I said?"
Sirius quickly erupted into an odd high-pitched never ending wail, only stopping for breath every ten seconds.
Instinctively James covered his ears. "Shut up! I hate it when you do that-that thing!" He didn't know how to describe Sirius' bawling. "It's like a bloody siren in my ears! Shut up!"
"Uuuuuuuugh," sobbed Sirius. He made two rather exaggerated sniffs before starting up again. "UUUUU-"
"Like a siren!" James continued, pressing his fingers harder to ears. "Your howling is like the devil calling out to his spawn-" He was suddenly aware of Sirius hurdling into him and now bawling into his stomach. "Nobhead! You've got fluorescent snot on me!" he cried, trying to push his friend off him.
"Uuuuuuuugh-" sniff, sniff "-aaaaaaauuuugh-"
"Seriously, your snot is bright yellow. That can't be normal."
Sirius finally broke away from sobbing into his chest. "Stop looking at my snot, you weirdo."
James tried not to focus too much on the insult of 'weirdo' coming from The Cry-baby. "I'll stop looking at it when your nose stops extracting it onto my Fooling-around-with-Lily shirt."
Sirius decided not to ask James if he had a special shirt for every occasion with Lily. He wiped his dribbling snotty nose on the back of his sleeve, making James squirm considerably. Lying back down on the bed, Sirius mumbled in between snuffles, "She said I was gonna die…"
Focusing on Sirius' words, James looked deeply regretful. "Oh," he whispered, lying back down on the bed with him, "I'm really sorry, mate." He gazed up at the ceiling. "I told Lily to stop with the death threats already-"
"Not Evans, you stupid git."
"Oh." James scratched his head, looking clueless to who he was talking about. "Who, then?" he asked touchily.
"Professor Cockett."
"Cockett! Harharhar…" James trailed off into silence; realising Sirius was not also finding the professor's rude surname as humorous. This thoroughly bothered him; they always had a good chortle about the teacher's name. It was just as funny as the Charms professor's name: Mr. Balls.
"Wait a sec." James backtracked to what Sirius had mentioned Cockett saying. "That woman always makes death threats. Why've you got so worked up about it?"
"Because she said I was going to die alone," Sirius stressed, taking a deep puff on his pipe.
James couldn't keep his eyes off Sirius' smoking instrument. "What are you, a seventy year old crippled pensioner?" He quickly realised he'd just passed on quite valuable information. "Alone?" he repeated.
