The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

Bradley Scamander's Excellent Birthday Party

"Why are you wearing two party hats?" Tonks asked, leaning against the table, holding a plastic kazoo in one hand and straightening her own party hat with the other. 

"To cover my ossicones," Bradley replied.

"Your ossi-what?" Tonks asked.

"Horns like a giraffe has got!" Bradley answered and he blew his own plastic kazoo at her. 

Tonks giggled, then screwed up her face and she had a pair of ossicones sticking out of her pink hair. She grinned at the amazed expression on Bradley's face. 

"Remus! Sirius! Look! Tonks can become a giraffe!" Bradley called.

Sirius was just coming out of the kitchen with a gigantic bowl, filling it with popcorn that was streaming from his wand with little popping noises as each kernel exploded from the tip and dropped into the bowl. He looked at Tonks and laughed, "At least she hasn't got the neck. Our friend Lily's sister -- now there's a woman who looks like a giraffe..."

There was a loud slurping sound, like someone eating a messy bowl of spaghetti, and Bradley let out a howl of laughter.

"Yes, exactly," Sirius said, appraising Tonks's newly enlongated neck, "That looks precisely like Petunia!"

Remus came out of the kitchen, then, levitating a tray of tall glasses containing butterbeer floats with colorful bendy straws sticking up out of the foamy ice cream tops. "Oh Merlin's messy hair-do!" he cried, seeing Tonks, "What on earth are you doing? Put your neck right before you get stuck like that!"

Tonks laughed, "I won't get stuck," she said, and she moved her long neck so that it curved like the top of a question mark and her hair hung in a pink curtain.

Remus looked entirely unsettled as Bradley and Sirius laughed.

The fireplace flashed and James Potter stepped through, a big red-paper wrapped gift in his arms and followed closely by Lily and then Dora. James blinked at Tonks as he stepped up to the coffee table her and Bradley were kneeling beside and dropped the package in front of Bradley. "Alright, Tonks?" he asked.

"Doesn't she look like Petunia?" Sirius asked.

"Sirius!" Lily scolded - but she looked at Tonks's neck and turned pink, hurrying out to the kitchen with a box that she was carrying, clearly trying not to laugh.

Sirius grinned wickedly as he plopped the bowl of popcorn down next to the package James had put down.

"That isn't very nice to say!" Dora said, finishing Lily's scolding for her.

"But it's true!" Sirius exclaimed, "Have you never met Petunia? She has an unusually long neck, thanks to --"

James stomped on Sirius's foot discreetly.

 "She does, though, doesn't she?" Sirius whispered to James, who smirked, looking down at the popcorn like it was the most interesting thing on earth to avoid his mother's eyes and nodded back.

Another slurping noise filled the apartment as Tonks put herself right and Remus looked extremely relieved, the big tray of butterbeer floats landing safely on an end table.

In the kitchen, Lily was unboxing a birthday cake - chocolate frosting with bright yellow frosting letters on top which read Happiest of Birthdays Bradley! Lily reached into her purse and pulled out a birthday candle she'd magicked into the shape of a giraffe, and stuck it into the cake, along with eight yellow and orange striped candles.

"Well he ought to love that," Remus said, coming back into the kitchen behind Lily. 

Lily laughed, "I had a feeling he might." She looked at the cake, frowning, "Oh the giraffe isn't straight --" she reached to righten the crooked candle.