Dates, Pranks and Marauders

Chapter VII- A Very Sirius Date (Part I)

'Your date is in five minutes. Aren't you going to get ready?' Remus asked as Sirius read some Muggle magazine while playing loud Beatles music on the record-player that he had brought from home.

'I was born ready,' Sirius told him, performing an air-drum solo with flair.

'Oh, don't give me those sorts of lines. Why do you listen to that old stuff anyway?'

'It's not old. Besides, it's really good,' Sirius stated, still singing along to Revolution and now playing air-guitar. Remus walked over to the record-player and took the stylus off of the record.

'Hey! I was listening to that!' Sirius protested angrily.

'You need to get ready. I don't think that Susan will be very happy with you if you show up late and in your condition. Have you even brushed your hair at all today?' Remus nagged at him like an old woman.

'No, I haven't,' Sirius said resignedly, getting lazily off his bed and walking over to the mirror. He swiftly ran his hand through his hair in one motion, then went to find his cloak.

'Is that really all you're going to do?' Peter asked him timidly.

'Yep, I'm perfect,' he said with perfect confidence, bidding goodbye to Peter and Remus and leaving with one minute to spare. James and Lily were gone, and he really didn't know or care where they were. Alright, well, maybe he cared a little. You know what? He cared a lot, but he really wasn't going to dwell on that. After all, Susie Nugent was waiting. She may not have liked large animals, but at least she was cute.

****

'So,' Susan said coldly, 'you finally showed up. I thought that you weren't coming.'

'I'm right on time,' Sirius declared, pointing to his watch.

'You were supposed to be early,' she said, crossing her arms in the doorway.

'I show up on time. I told you seven o'clock, not six forty-five, not seven-o-five. Can we just leave now?' he asked her, getting annoyed.

Sirius held out his arm to her, but instead of taking it, she just looked at it, sniffed, and brushed past him down the stairs. Sirius stared after her for a moment, cursed silently at his bad judgment, and followed suit.

'Well don't go on our date without me!' he told Susan's back, catching up to her. 'You don't even know where we're going yet.' Susan stopped on the step to wait for him, then sniffed again. That was really beginning to get annoying.

'So, do you want to know where we're going?' Sirius asked, hoping silently to get her to stop her cold revenge. She sniffed yet again in reply.

'Can you stop with that already?' Sirius asked, no-longer hiding his frustration. 'It's kind of creepy, really.' She now glared openly at him. It seemed that no matter what Sirius did, Susan Nugent just got angrier.

'Well,' he began, ignoring her entirely, 'we're going into Hogsmeade.'

'How?' she said, still looking perfectly indifferent, bordering on loathing. 'It's not a Hogsmeade weekend. Or didn't you know that already?'

'What is wrong with you? I'm trying to make you have a good time tonight. I don't really like you, and you certainly don't like me- though I can hardly see how that's possible.' He posed for the invisible audience at this last remark. 'Anyway, can you just stop with the glaring and the loathing and the sniffing?' Man is that creepy when she does that he added as an afterthought; he didn't think it wise, however, to test her patience again. With that he ushered her out of the portrait hole irritably.

'Just where are you going dears? Astronomy tower, I suppose?' The fat woman in the pink silk dress asked them, winking.

'No!' they both said, a look of horror plastered on their faces.

It was very awkward for a long time afterwards; Susie Nugent refused to speak to Sirius, no matter what he said, and he refused to make eye contact with her or touch her in any way. Sirius had never had a date like this, he was used to the girls lining up to get to go with him, and here was Susan, glaring...and sniffing. He really was beginning to wish he had stayed back with injured Moony and boring Peter.

When they had reached the statue of the one-eyed crone and stopped, Susie scoffed.

'Now what?'

'You're really getting annoying. I've done this hundreds of times. Please just be quiet again. I like you better that way.' Sirius walked purposefully towards the statue with his wand out.

SMACK

Sirius' progress was stopped short as his face collided with something very solid and very hard and very invisible.

'Cor!' he barked, rubbing his reddening face, and looking very angry indeed.

'Did you just run into that statue?' Susie smirked.

'No! Maybe you didn't notice the bloody wall round the thing!' He gestured angrily to the very innocent-looking statue, 'See for yourself.'

Susie held out her arm and walked towards the statue, making the journey very easily indeed, and with a complete void of invisible walls. She touched the statue several times, as if to demonstrate to Sirius just how easy it was to get to the statue, a look of mock wonder on her face. Sirius tried again to walk towards the statue.

SMACK

'Damnit!' he cursed loudly again, banging his clenched fists against the invisible wall. 'This is James' doing!'

'That's just silly. Do you expect me to believe that your best friend would charm a statue so that only you wouldn't be able to touch it? I don't believe that at all. You're just acting like a prat, and I don't think it's funny in the slightest, Sirius Black,' Susie said cheekily.

Sirius mouthed angrily at her, it looked as though he had to exercise a lot of self-control not to hit her.

'Let's just go, alright? It would be my pleasure if you would join me for a moonlit picnic, Susan Nugent,' he said as politely as he could through bared teeth.

'Fine, but where are you going to get any food? You've made me miss dinner with all of your foolishness and time-wasting, now I'm hungry,' Susie said, vengeance caking her voice.

'Aha! That I can do for sure. Right this way.' Sirius held out his arm again, but Susan just scoffed again and waited for him to lead the way. 'Alright then, let's just go.'

****

James, Lily, Remus, and Peter laughed loudly as Sirius smacked into the wall for a second time. This charm had been Remus' idea, and as it only affected Sirius, it made him look like an even bigger fool than he already did on his own. The four of them had sat huddled in a corner beneath James' invisibility cloak, watching the fun, and thanks to Lily's silencing charm over the cloak, they could laugh as heartily as they wished.

'Damnit!' They heard Sirius shout angrily as he pounded his fists furiously against the invisible wall.

'I wouldn't want to be that wall right now,' Lily said simply.

'Oh, you have no idea. I've been on the wrong end of Sirius quite a few times,' James said, smirking as he recalled several brawls that had begun as innocent arguments over quidditch.

'Sirius hit me one time...' Peter trailed off, wincing at the memory. 'I told him he was a prat and he punched me on the arm.'

'He doesn't hit hard at all, you're such wimps,' Remus stated.

'That's easy for you to say! You don't feel pain!' James exclaimed, waving his arms wildly beneath the cloak, hitting the other three in the process.

'Shhh! I think he's going to hit it again,' Remus said as Sirius gave the wall another swift kick before he stalked off with Susan Nugent.

'Oooh, what are we going to do next?' Lily asked excitedly. She was really starting to get into the whole pranking people thing, and she was very good at it. In fact she was becoming downright maniacal; it was really quite frightening.

'It sounds like he's heading over to the kitchens,' Remus began.

'Hey, we could charm that painting so he can't get in there either!' Peter suggested eagerly.

'No, if we do that then the plan won't work. Sirius might just give up, and then we can't do the best part,' Remus said. 'Regardless, we'd better hurry or he'll beat us there.'

****

'I do hope you'll be able to get us in here. Or perhaps there'll be another invisible wall?' Susie said snottily. Sirius didn't really feel like honoring her with a reply, so instead he just tickled the pear on the still life that was the entrance to the kitchens.

'After you,' Sirius said properly, bowing her into the kitchens with a very smug look on his face. Susie stalked past him huffily, and crossed her arms.

'Ah! Mr. Black, Mr. Black! We is not seeing you in such a long time. What can we gets you, sir- oh and miss as well!' A particularly homely house elf had seized Sirius round his feet, practically dragging on the ground. He shuffled away quickly, and then bowed deeply to the both of them. Susie looked disgusted at the appearance of the house-elves, and nervously backed up towards the opposite wall.

'Come on Winkle, I was just in here this morning! Did you all really miss me that much between then and- what is wrong with you now?' he snapped, seeing Susie's look of horror.

'Oh,' said Winkle the house-elf, his ears falling drastically and his eyes drooping. 'We is very sorry that we is offending you, we is just- we is just-just...' Poor Winkle then burst into loud gasping sobs. Sirius wheeled on Susie.

'Now look what you've done!' The house-elf cried even harder. 'No, no, not you, Winkle, that was directed at miss over there,' Sirius explained, now kneeling down next to the elf and helping him to compose himself. 'Look, d'you think you could give us a picnic basket, er- kind of quickly. I think that the miss over there is terrified or disgusted by everything she sees, and it looks like you fall under the category of 'everything.''

'What, sir? I is not understanding, what does sir mean, Mr. Black?' Winkle squeaked, drying his eyes on his tea-towel toga.

'Er- she's,' Sirius lowered his voice, 'she's really frightened of you.'

'She is frightened of us, sir?' Another elf piped up.

'Yes, so if you could perhaps hurry, then I'll just take her out of here...' Sirius trailed off as he saw what the house-elves were now doing.

'Miss no need be frightened,' Winkle said uncertainly, as he and a large group of elves surged towards Susie. 'We is very friendly, we is not hurting you miss.' Susie shrieked as the elves went towards her, and fortunately for her, Sirius caught her as she fainted.

'Is- is miss alright?' Winkle whispered to Sirius. 'Is she fainting, because of- of us.'

'No, not at all, Winkle,' Sirius said jovially, propping Susie up against the wall, 'She just has, er, low blood sugar, and she needs lots of food.'

'Oh! We is taking care of that, sir, we is surely taking care of that,' a second elf piped merrily, before the whole lot of them bustled off to prepare a extra-large, over-stuffed basket for Sirius and the miss. If Sirius hadn't been in such a good mood about Susan's timely fainting, he probably would have seen a group of elves talking upwards to an invisible source. However, instead, he was having a nice long laugh about Susie's fate.

****

'Could we see that for a moment?' Lily kindly asked a particularly skinny elf.

'Oh, certainly, Miss Lily, why is you wanting it?' the elf asked curiously, talking to Remus, Peter, James and Lily under the Invisibility cloak.

'We just want to make sure that its extra good for them,' James said sinisterly, fighting the urge to laugh maniacally in sweet revenge.

'OK,' smiled the elf, bobbing his head merrily, before skipping off in another direction.

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN