Mischief Managed Year Two Part One: The Poisoned Truth

Chapter Forty-Six- A Familiar Figure in the Moonlight

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Sirius was immensely relieved to find Remus sitting in his bed reading. The swot looked up when they entered, a single eyebrow raised in question as Sirius and Peter heaved James through the door jam and unceremoniously dumped the twat on the floor.

"Careful with him," Remus exclaimed in alarm.

"He's heavy," Peter complained, following James to the ground.

"And the bloody wanker deserved it. Plus the floor is carpeted," Sirius added, glad they had several hours for James to calm down before the curse wore off.

"Still," Remus chided, and before Sirius could stop him, or even realize he had the capability to, the git was calmly saying "Finite Incantem."

"Oh, why didn't we think of that?" Peter asked pleasantly, not seeming to realize the irate James that would follow. Or perhaps Peter had correctly expected the wrestling and pillow chucking would be directed primarily at Sirius. They had discussed undoing the curse but had only considered the Reparifos spell which they hadn't learned yet.

"Because you two are bloody morons!" James hollered, predictably throwing himself at Sirius' legs and knocking him over, the two commenced tussling on the ground.

"You bloody wanker," James cursed, jabbing his elbow into Sirius' gut.

"You daft cow," Sirius retorted, trying and failing to pin James down.

"Well, you're a gormless mangy minger!"

"Well, you're an airy-fairy knobhead!"

"Oh yeah well you're a barmy--"

"Hm, can someone explain to me what happened?" Remus cut in, probably at a good time. Sirius could feel the insults becoming more hurtful but wasn't quite sure how to stop escalating them when bloody infuriating James was doing so as well.

"Well, Patricia got asked out to the Yule Ball and James made an arse of himself laughing and teasing her," Sirius recited proudly, earning a painful elbow from James. "It was funny!" he protested as Remus just shook his head.

"Oh, James," was all the most mature Marauder said.

But the taunts and teasing on the way back must have gotten to James more than Sirius realized since his mate went a bit red around the ears and got off the ground with as much dignity as he could muster, pointing an accusing finger at Remus. "Well, at least I wasn't ditching my best mates and canoodling around with someone else."

Remus went from looking startled to looking bemused. "I did what now?"

"Peter saw you!" Sirius shouted quickly, jumping on the attack-Remus bandwagon. The Black heir wasn't even really upset by it...not a whole lot anyways, it was just in good fun. Remus shook his head again and sighed, a deep long sigh that made Sirius feel a bit bad and notice just how pale the lad seemed at the moment.

"What Peter saw..." Remus explained slowly as if they were small children needing to be talked down to in such a dramatically slow tone. It left plenty of time for Remus to come up with an excuse, Sirius realized. However, he didn't think his friend was doing so this time. The infuriating Marauder was far too calm, and it was not like he had known they'd be questioning him about this. "Was me escorting an Abraeselt student to the East Courtyard, which they couldn't find."

"Ow!" Peter exclaimed as Sirius hit him over the head relatively gently.

"You moron, you slowed us down for nothing!" James laughed, though there was a slight edge to his tone.