Three days later and Sirius was still singing the Muppet Show Theme Song under his breath.
Bilius Weasley looked over at him, pausing to wipe his brow with the back of his wrist and catch his breath after having chased a gnome about a garden for an easy ten minutes of strenuous running. The witch kept her garden at a steady 26 degrees celsius even in the middle of March and Bil could feel beads of sweat working their way across his forehead.
"Oi, what the bloody hell are you singing over there?"
Sirius paused in humming and looked up. "What? Singing?"
"Yes, singing - you've been doing it all morning."
Sirius paused, thinking, then shrugged, "Am I doing that outloud? Sorry mate."
Moments later he was back to it. "Oi! Sirius. You're doing it again."
"Sorry, sorry! I've got this bleedin' song in my head."
"Let me guess," Bilius said warily, "Queen?"
"Nah," Sirius smirked, "Kermit the Frog."
"Come again?" Bilius looked at Sirius with raised eyebrows.
"Yeah, yeah, it's brilliant -"
"An actual frog?"
"Well no he's made of felt, see --"
Bilius stood facing Sirius, gripping a gnome he'd just rooted out by the ankles, and stared at him with a concerned expression. "You got heat stroke or something, Black?"
Sirius spent the next twenty minutes telling Bilius Weasley about the Muppet Show that he'd watched. Bilius chuckled, thinking it funny that they'd watched "children's programming" as he called it, but he did promise to give the show a go when Sirius persisted that he not knock it 'til he'd given it a try on for size. "You'll see," Sirius said. "I was a skeptic too until I'd watched it. Had me rolling. There's this bear that's a stand up comedian - funniest damn bear I ever heard."
"You realize how weird that sentence is, yeah?" Bilius asked. "Anyone else but you and I'd swear they were mad. You, I already know you're mad."
Sirius let out a barking laugh.
But even Remus was humming the music - possibly because of Sirius, like a contagion, but still, he was doing it just the same.
At Uni, Remus sat in the library working on a paper about the administrative responsibility of a school to serve the students who attended with a proper education and how it ought to be a school's objective to work with students with "conditions and disabilities" that might limit their ability to learn according to what a school's rules might dictate. The paper had Remus rather fired up - he found his topic to be terribly relevant, especially given his situation with the full moon nights, and he hoped that it might ignite some talk about the University's policies when he presented it. He cited the open enrollment policy and flexibility of Fallengunder School, although he knew the school wasn't certified by the Magical Board of Education at the Ministry.
Students of a particular educational administration should be provided with an environment that aims to keep a student on track to completing their educational goals. Intelligent students who are not shirking their own responsibilities to meet the requirements set forth by the administration ought not to be punished by circumstances that limit their ability to perform menial requirements. For example, while many students cannot succeed in carrying a satisfactory or more level in their lessons without attending, should I be capable of exceeding expectations but struggles with attendance, I should feel safe in the academic environment, and so supported by my university, that I ought to be able ---
He wondered when he'd stopped writing about a theoretical student and started writing about himself. Waving his wand, he disappeared nearly half the paragraph in frustration.
Sirius Black suddenly slid into the seat opposite Remus.
"Pssst, excuse me, smarty-pants boy, don't we have a class together or something? Can I borrow your notes? The dog ate mine." Sirius grinned.
"What are you doing here?" Remus asked.
"Aw c'mon, you're not even going to pretend for a moment like we're fellow students, huh?" Sirius grinned, "Bit of role playing never hurt anybody..."
Remus stared at Sirius for several long moments.
"Would you rather play a different game?" Sirius whispered, leaning closer. "I could call you Professor and beg for a change to fix my Troll grade?"
"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" Remus glanced around the room. Nobody seemed to have even noticed Sirius was there.
"I'm on my break. We were working in a yard down the road from here and I thought I'd stop in." Sirius grinned. "You're right predictable, you know? I came here and I said to myself - self, where on this university ground might my husband be? and self, I said, the library, that's where. I got directions over here from some lass out on the pavement and I walk in here and there you are."
Remus was torn between being annoyed by the interruption to his concentration and touched that Sirius had hunted him down for his break. "Did you eat already?" Remus asked.
"I'll be alright."
"You don't have any sickles for food do you?" Remus asked, sighing, "Bought a record with your lunch money again, didn't you?"
"I'll just eat double at Prongs's tonight is all. Evans is making that stroganoff stuff again."
Remus shook his head and reached in his jumper pocket and pulled out his coin purse. "Here, I've got enough for you to get yourself a sandwich or something... I'm not hungry myself, the moon and all --"
"I'm alright," Sirius said, shaking his head, even as Remus shoved the purse at him.
"No really, eat something," Remus persisted.
"Moony?"
"What?"
"Why don't you want me here?" Sirius asked. He leaned forward so his chin was on the desk and he looked up at Remus with grey eyes that looked such a lot like the sad puppy eyes he was capable of giving in his Snuffles form.
Remus rolled up the parchment he'd been working on. The paper was due in less than two hours. But with eyes like those... One couldn't exactly tell Sirius completely off. There was little hope for it. "I'm sorry. I do want you here." He put his hand down on the table, sliding it across and holding it out to Sirius, a peace offering. "Shall we start over?"
"Alright." Sirius cleared his throat. "Oh Professor," he said in a simpering tone, "I completely forgot my homework today, it seems my very, very, very bad dog ate it. There must be something I can do to keep from failing your class!"
Remus stared at Sirius for a long moment, then, "I can think of a few things that might... raise your grade."
"Oh please, Professor," Sirius said, grinning because Remus hadn't shut him down for it, "Please, I'd do anything for you to bring my grade up."
Remus cleared hi throat, "Anything?"
"Oh yes Professor, positively anything."
Remus nodded, and he glanced around the library, then turned back to Sirius, leaning in so that his whisper could only be heard by his husband. "Downstairs there's a room of archived copies of the Daily Prophet. Go find the section marked off for back issues dated 1762, Mr. Black."
Sirius's eyes searched Remus's with an excited curiosity. "And what happens when I find the section marked off for back issues dated 1762, Mr. Lupin?"
Remus murmured, "Do you want a better grade or not, Mr. Black?"
Then, his smirk growing slowly across his face, he stood up in a jerky, stop motion sort of manner.
Remus raised his eyebrow.
Sirius laughed, his mouth flicking into a bigger smile before it settled back into amused questioning. "1762, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay." Sirius turned and darted for the stairs. He paused at the top and glanced back at Remus, who winked and gave a little wave. Sirius grinned, then ran down the stairs.
Remus shook his head, "Idiot," he muttered, then he turned back to his text books and wondered how long Sirius would look for the 1762s before he realized the paper only dated back to 1886.
"I've had a brilliant idea and you're going to be so excited about it, I can't wait to tell you." Lily greeted Sirius thusly the moment he stepped out of the floo. She grabbed his hand and practically pulled him to the kitchen of the Potter cottage. "Are you ready?"
Sirius nodded, "Fire away, Lilith."
"The new moon is the night before Remus's birthday."
Sirius grinned. He already knew where this was going. "Yes. A thousand times yes."
Lily laughed, "You don't know what I was going to say."
"That we ought to do Magique Amore on Renus for the new moon on the night before his birthaversary," Sirius said.
Lily laughed, "Okay so you do know what I was going to say."
"And I say yes in return."
She smiled. "Okay, good. I think it'll truly work this time. Finally. " She pushed from her mind Professor Laurie's persistence that she needed to work on loving her enemies - thinking about loving Remus was much easier and something she really wanted to do - compared to thinking about any number of death eaters she could name off with anything less than hatred. She clapped her hands together, "So I was thinking you and I make a night of it. We'll have chocolate and ovaltine and wear jumpers and sit out in the Howling House and read."
"Minus the reading it sounds grand."
"Remus would be reading."
"But we're loving Remus, not loving what Remuses do."
Lily laughed. "I would think the plural would be Remai."
Sirius said, "Although right one of him is quite enough... I'm rather pisser at him. You want to trade my plural Remai for your multiple Jame?"
"Never," Lily laughed. "What did Remus do that you're willing to trade him in for?"
"He made me think I was about to get checked out harder than a book on holiday at the library but the Daily Prophet wasn't even being published in 1762."
"I'll pretend any of that sentence made actual sense."
"It did, I assure you." Sirius leaned against the counter and drew a deep breath. "Oh blimey I love your stroganoff. I'll eat at least four dishes of it."
"You always do," Lily laughed. She smiled, thinking of the first time she'd made it and the confusion Sirius had over what it was and how it had warmed her up from the inside out just like her mum's always had. It made her exceedingly happy that Sirius Black, of all people, loved it. She wasn't sure exactly why it was that Sirius's love for her mum's stroganoff seemed like the perfect living memorial for her mum, but it really did.
Sirius suddenly stood upright, "Hang on."
"What?"
"The night before Remus's birthday? The 9th?"
"Yes," Lily answered, and she turned to stir the pot of noodles on the stove, looking over her shoulder at him.
"We'll have to be on about it either early in the day or else after the Muppets."
Lily laughed, "Oh yeah, the Muppets."
"Yeah. I am NOT missing the Muppets, Lilth... it's been three days and I haven't stopped thinking about them."
She shook her head, "And you who were so reluctant to watch it to begin with."
"I mean, they're fucking PUPPETS." He shook his head, then grinned and leaned forward, looking out the window, "Prongs out there fooling around with his balls?"
"Yes he is." Lily answered straight-faced, not giving Sirius the satisfaction of reacting to his dirty mouth.
Sirius smirked, glancing out the window to see James on his broomstick in the yard, dodging the self-beating bludgers that were flying at him, and reached into his pocket. "I think I shall go outside and have a cigarette. He'll laugh at my joke, even if you don't."
Lily watched Sirius skip through the garden and run across the field, turning into a dog part way there and barking like a maniac as he raced through the grass to where James was, leaping from the ground and catching one of the bludgers. James was shaking his fist and, muffled through the glass, Lily could hear him shouting "get back here with that!" as he shot off after Snuffles on the broomstick, a bludger chasing after him, knocking him about the shoulder as he swept after the dog.
Lily shook her head, "Absolute idiots. That's what they are. The lot of them."
"Even me?"
Lily turned about to find Remus had arrived at some point. Lily laughed, "I dunno, what's this I hear about you checking Sirius out in the library?"
Remus laughed, "What kind of tosh did he tell you? I just sent him off into the stacks looking for something that didn't exist so I could get a paper done. I'm sure he made it sound dirty."
"He makes everything sound dirty..." Lily murmured.
Remus stepped over and grabbed a spoon, dipping it into the stroganoff sauce to steal a taste, and his eyes caught the streaking black dog and the following broomstick so that he paused in the motion of raising the spoon to his mouth.
"What --?" he gestured at the scene he was taking in outside.
"Sirius wanted to go play with my husband's balls."
Remus choked on the bite of stroganoff.
"I'M HERE! I'M HERE!!" Peter came running into the room, carrying a large bag and put it on the table, "And I've got your delivery, Lily!"
"Oh thank you Peter!" Lily said, turning 'round and looking in the bag, "Excellent." She went to the counter and lifted the head off a cookie jar shaped like a Dalek that James had found at a muggle shop one day when he was bored, and she reached in and took out a coin purse.
Remus raised an eyebrow, "Interesting choice of a bank."
"Nobody would ever look there for it," she laughed, and she opened up the purse. "How much do I owe you, Pete?"
"Four galleons, three sickles and a knut," he answered. "They were running a sale and I got your twelve inch parchment sheets for half off."
"Brilliant!" Lily smiled, counting off the coins. She dropped the coins into his palm. She turned to the bag, pulling out a pile of parchment, a couple ink pots in shining bright green and pink colors and finally a large, bright pink journal, which she grinned at. "Oh this is positively perfect. Thank you!"
"Yeah! It's the brightest pink they had, just like you asked for."
"What's with all the pink?" Remus asked, "You're usually more of a natural tones sort."
"Oh these are for your husband," Lily answered, laughing.
Remus shook his head, rolling his eyes, "I really ought to have guessed."
Suddenly the door burst open and Snuffles came bounding through, bedraggled and soaked, hair hanging in great stringy clumps. "What in the name of Merlin --?" Lily asked.
James was laughing as he stepped in and slammed the door shut as the dog run out to the living room and Lily could hear him barking. "He took a fall in the duck pond."
There was a popping sound in the living room, then, "TELL THEM THE TRUTH YOU BASTARD!"
James grinned, shrugging. "Fall might not be precisely the word he would use."
"I SHALL NEVER BE WARM AGAIN!"