The Dating Disasters of Sirius Black

The Dating Disasters Of Sirius Black

Part One: Marina Gladlock and Something Blue

Late September, fifth-year Gryffindor boys' dormitory, a Sunday afternoon

Remus Lupin was alone; lying on his bed, on his front and reading as usual, when Sirius burst in.

'Bloody buggering hell!'

Remus had been pleasantly surprised to find a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare in the library and had decided to spend a lazy, indulgent Sunday afternoon re-reading some of his favourites. 'Much Ado About Nothing' seemed rather apt somehow.

'Fucking bloody fuck!'

He tried valiantly to ignore the interruption.

After a tirade of random swear words had escaped Sirius, he flopped down onto Remus' bed, barging him over with his elbow and asked, 'what ya reading?'

'Shakespeare,' he answered curtly, hoping to put his friend off any conversation.

'Eh?'

'I'm not going to explain who Shakespeare is again.'

Sirius huffed and tossed his hair, looking away and trying to appear disinterested. 'You don't need to, I don't care anyway; he's a soppy girly romance writer.'

Remus looked down at the inches-thick ancient tome in his hands, with it's worn pages dusty with age. 'Right first time,' he conceded with only the barest hint of sarcasm.

'Oh, how can you sit there calmly and read of love when the love life of your most loved friend is fraught with tragedy and pain?' He pretended to swoon back onto the bed.

'Tragedy and pain?' Remus raised his eyebrows but didn't take his eyes off his book.

'Most torturous pain,' Sirius insisted.

'Indeed. I take it you've been dumped again?'

'Not necessarily, and it most certainly wasn't my fault.'

'Really?'

'Really. It was James' fault.'

'I can't think how. What did you do? Call out his name at an inopportune moment?' Remus fixed his friend with an enquiring smile.

Sirius gave him a piercing look for that comment. 'No, he pranked me.'

'Fire crackers in your knickers?'

'No, he--'

'Well, whatever it was I bet you deserved it. That... shall we say, incident last week was appallingly mean, even for your standards.'

'He deserved it! And I can't even begin to imagine what could be horrible enough for him to deserve after this.'

'If you must bother me, please explain quickly, or just leave.'

'You have no compassion. What's the book about anyway?' Sirius asked, changing the subject entirely. Remus realised it must have been something far worse than usual that James had done to him.

'It's a play.'

'It's awfully thick,' Sirius pointed out peering at it, 'there must be a lot of broken hearts and tragic misunderstandings and unrequited love and all that.'

'Mm.'

'Oh, talk to me, damn you!' Sirius grabbed him by the back of his shoulders and shook him hard so his face smushed into the pages of his book. 'My heart is broken!'

'I reckon it must be something more important than your heart for you to be this upset.' Remus found that the old book didn't taste at all nice. He lifted his head.

'Can't think what you might be implying,' Sirius said briskly, letting go of him. 'I cannot believe how little you think of me and how little you care. You would have thought that reading all that romantic mush would only have expanded your heart, but no, my feelings are nothing to you.'

'Shakespeare is not romantic mush.'

'Whatever. I will never love again!'

'Did you ever start? You've only been seeing her since Wednesday.'

'Shut up. I will never be able to love again until this curse is lifted.' The anguish in Sirius' voice was starting to make Remus worry seriously that James had vanished his best friend's penis.

'And when will the curse be lifted?'

'In a week.'

'So you'll never love again... for a whole week?'

'Yes,' he replied petulantly. 'Anyway, you were telling me about your play?'

'Was I? Well I suppose if you have your mind off girls for a week I could use that time to try and educate you.'

'...Educate me?' Sirius asked, sounding nervous and horrified.

'Yes, Shakespeare's role was pivotal in the progression of English literature.'

'Oh. Right.'

'And I suppose we could start with this one, as it is a comedy and not too difficult. Though you would love some of the bloodier ones, Macbeth for instance, or Hamlet. No doubt you quite fancy yourself the tortured hero, or rather anti-hero.'

'Huh.'

'So,' Remus sat up, trying to create a serious learning atmosphere, 'Much Ado About Nothing. It's a comedy more than it is romantic, just like your 'love-life', as you like to call it, though 'fooling around with anyone that's available' would be a more accurate description. Somehow actual love never seems to be involved when you-'

'Are the insults relevant to the play?'

'No, you can have them for free.'

'Free? Do I have to pay you for this tuition? I don't do sexual favours, mind, I save them for Professor Mayflower.'

'Hah! She refuses to touch you even with her Dragonhide gloves on. So, the main characters are called Beatrice and Benedick--' Remus was interrupted by a brief snigger which he ignored. '--And they're in love, though they don't realise it. They act out their tensions by arguing and playing tricks on each other. Like you and James, really,' he concluded smugly.

'You lie!' Sirius scrambled to his knees. 'You made that up just to piss me off, that is not in the play.' He leaned close, trying to read from the book.

'Actually it is; ask anyone. So the other characters play tricks on them to help the romance along.' Remus wondered if he told James that Sirius was in love with him, and vice versa, it would actually work in real life. 'Eventually it works and they get married.'

'By your logic that means I'm also in love with Snape and Bellatrix and my own brother and pretty much everyone else in the school.'

'So they get married,' Remus persisted, 'and live happily ever after and have lots of sly, evil, scruffy little black-haired children.'

'I hate you.'

'So you'll leave me to read in peace?'

'No, you promised to teach me about Shakespeare. Anyway, you're dying to hear what horrendous thing I did to make Marina dump me.'

'Go on then, tell me.'

'No, you have to beg.' Sirius sat up, crossing his legs and folding his arms across his chest.

There was a moment of silence where Remus eyed his friend suspiciously and tried not to smile. He had to admit he was starting to rather enjoy himself. So he would have to beg.

'Please Sirius darling, light of my life, and my only purpose in existing, do tell me what horrendous thing you did to your poor, downtrodden, long-suffering girlfriend to make her dump you unceremoniously in a cruel, callously heartless way.'

'You are terrible at begging. And also at sucking up. And 'long-suffering' is hardly appropriate after just four days.'

'Isn't it? I may not have had that particular experience but I am quite sure that there are circles of hell more enjoyable than dating you.' Remus turned back to his book, even though he was secretly dying to see Sirius' reaction to that last statement. He found few things in life more truly gratifying than purposely bruising Sirius' ego. Or James' for that matter.

There was a long pause, before finally; 'that is some of the worst sucking up I've ever heard.'

'Possibly. How about 'it is her loss, the ungrateful wench, that she shall ever cast such a wonderful specimen of manhood aside.'

'Mm, better. 'Wonderful specimen of manhood', I like it. Though you forgot to use the phrase 'stubble-chinned king of sex' in there.'

'I would never slight a woman in such a way,' Remus said gleefully.

'You bastard,' Sirius told him, rubbing his own chin.

'Give it up, Sirius, you have a chin like a baby's bottom.'

'No, feel that bit.' Sirius grabbed Remus' hand and pushed his fingers against the side of his jaw. Remus slid his fingers along the skin. Smooth, though one patch felt slightly rough. The look of hope on Sirius' face was too much.

'That's the leftovers of the scab you had there last week,' he told him, withdrawing his hand.

'Piss off.'

'So she dumped you because of your criminal lack of manly body hair?'

'No!'

There was a long awkward pause.

'I sneezed on her,' he admitted.

Remus sighed deeply. 'While you were...?'

'Talking!'

'Right. Well obviously it's a bit disgusting, but if you didn't do it on purpose...' He left a slight pause for any confessions Sirius might wish to make. 'Then dumping you seems a bit extreme, especially when she was so keen on you. You missed something out, didn't you?'

Sirius looked very sheepish. 'On her favourite shirt.'

'You sneezed on her favourite shirt? Couldn't you just have offered to have the House Elves give it a special wash for you?'

'It was blue.'

'I hardly think that matters, I doubt very much she would have minded less even if it had been green...'

'Not the shirt; the sneeze.'

'...What? You sneezed blue on her shirt? Why would you sneeze blue? You sneezed on her and it was blue?'

'Yes.' There was another long pause. Remus felt that saying anything would cause another fight and then it would never get explained to him. 'James dyed all my bodily fluids blue,' he muttered.

'Oh.' He felt there was nothing much you could say to that. And it wasn't as unlikely as it sounded, seeing that James Potter had been involved. 'How?'

'Dunno. Must have put some sort of potion into my food. I can't find a way to reverse the effects, but he says it wears off in less than a fortnight.'

'I see. This does explain a few things. It certainly explains why you were behaving so oddly in the toilet yesterday; you didn't want anyone else to find out.'

'Yes,' Sirius said sourly. Remus laughed.

'We all thought you had a... very different problem.'

'Well I didn't, okay?' Sirius was scowling viciously at him. 'I didn't have a hard-on, I just didn't want everyone to see me pissing blue!'

'Ah, the situations you and James get yourselves into with all this flirting.'

'Fuck off!'

'Well the sneeze thing could have been worse; it could have been a very different sort of sneeze and it could have been something else she noticed that was shockingly blue.'

'Why did you think I was dating that boring cow in the first place? I knew there was no chance of that happening.' Sirius climbed off the bed, turning his back on Remus.

'You are pathetic. Pathetic, and a complete bastard when it comes to women, though I can't see any point in my explaining what is wrong with your despicable morals for the millionth time. Would it have killed you just not to have had a girlfriend for a week or two?'

'Well who cares? I haven't got one anymore anyway.' Sirius was huffily going through Peter's cupboards, presumably sulking and looking for food.

Remus sighed again and tried to convince himself that it was his scholarly scientific side that was interested in the answer to his next question, and not the sniggering childish side that was overtly interested in bodily functions.

He gave in. 'So... is it?'

'What?' Sirius mumbled, sitting on the floor and half-way through a sandwich that had definitely seen better times and had probably been festering in Peter's sock drawer for days, if not weeks. Remus shuddered just watching him eat it.

He tried not to appear embarrassed. 'Is it blue?'

Sirius however, being the way he was, seemed to think it was a perfectly normal question to ask, probably because it was the first question he would have asked.

'Don't know, I've been too scared to try; thought I might be freaked out for life.' He sounded really angry at the trauma James was putting him through.

Remus smirked. 'And how long's it been?'

'Five days! I'm dying!'

'And possibly more than a week to go. How will you cope?' It was difficult hiding the laughter in his voice.

'I don't know.' He frowned, then a determined look spread over his face. 'I'm going to go to the library!'

'Good.' Remus was inordinately pleased that Sirius was going to use his time productively for once.

'He may have hidden the book with the antidote, but there has to be something equally horrible in there somewhere!' He threw the rest of his sandwich aside and strode purposefully from the room.

Remus groaned, but at least he would get some peace at last.

#

Sirius had been worryingly absent until late Sunday night and hadn't made an appearance at breakfast until late the next morning. Remus knew it was too much to hope for that he'd spent his time studying.

'Feeling better?' James asked, with the hint of smugness that suggested he thought he'd won this round.

'I'm fine,' he was answered shortly.

'Where've you been? You were out late last night and it's not like you to even nearly miss breakfast.'

Remus thought that if James had any common sense at all he would have been a lot more scared. He himself had been half worried all Sunday evening that something ghastly was about to befall James.

'Last night, my dear, I was working on our secret project, you remember, the one you've been neglecting of late, and as for this morning; I was doing a different sort of research.'

'Oh?' James was finally starting to get suspicious.

'Yes. Remus professed himself most interested in the results of said experiment, so I thought it only fair to carry it out directly.'

Remus spat out a mouthful of porridge, which earned him a severely suspicious look from James.

Sirius smiled slowly and with pleasure. 'And James, I'm very sorry; I borrowed your red jumper and I'm not sure that stain will come out.'

'What experiment... what stain?' James' face held the knowledge of impending doom.

Sirius ignored him and turned to Remus. 'Wasn't half as bad as I expected actually and I feel so much better now.' Remus found he couldn't quite keep the look of horror off his face.

'What did you do to my jumper?' James asked through gritted teeth.

'Sirius, you didn't actually--'

'What? It was an accident. I only sneezed on your jumper.'

Remus sighed in relief, as did James next to him who also took a large swig of pumpkin juice.

'A very special sort of sneeze...' The smile on his face spread out even more.

'You... damn, bloody--'

'Potter, you do realise everyone in the hall is staring at you?' Lily Evans leaned down the table and asked him in a sweet voice tinged with great amusement.

Remus didn't dare look up from his porridge because he didn't even want to think about what he was going to see. It must have been the pumpkin juice, he thought, while everyone was distracted by the jumper thing.

'Well if they knew what he's just done it wouldn't be me they were staring at!' he protested. 'I was only shouting because- he did something... something totally, totally--'

'I think they're staring at your hair,' she added.

Remus just knew James was running his hand through it. 'What's wrong with my hair?'

Remus gave in and looked up to his left. Red. Not red actually, more ginger. Kind of... auburny-gold. Quite a similar colour to... He looked back at Lily who was idly tugging on a strand of her own identically-coloured locks, slowly realising the same thing herself. Remus noticed that James' eyebrows were ginger too and his dark-brown eyes had a weird look to them surrounded by red-blond lashes. So presumably the rest of his body-hair would be red too... Of course the punishment had to fit the crime; no doubt it would wear off in a few weeks, but in the meantime James would have to endure a lot of teasing in the Quidditch changing-rooms.

James' eyes were now mad with panic as titters resounded round the hall. 'Remus, do tell me what that vile being has done to my lustrous hair.'

Remus sighed and pulled James' sleeve up for him. He stared at the thin ginger hairs on his arm for a moment, glanced quickly at the triumph on Sirius' face, then slid his vision over to the anger on Lily's face. It was clear from her expression that she was holding him responsible for this new development.

Sirius broke first, scraping his chair back and diving for the door, closely followed by James. Lily followed half a second after, flouncing out of the room looking quite murderous.

Everyone else in the hall seemed very pleased; if James Potter and Sirius Black were arguing with each other then there was no time for them to torture anyone else. But Remus could only sigh and reflect on how difficult it was to get any peace and quiet in a place like this with friends like his, though at least he wouldn't have to put up with any more of Sirius' girl-problems for at least a week.