- Rating:
- PG
- House:
- The Dark Arts
- Characters:
- James Potter Peter Pettigrew Remus Lupin Sirius Black
- Genres:
- Character Sketch Suspense
- Era:
- The First War Against Voldemort (Cir. 1970-1981)
- Spoilers:
- Prizoner of Azkaban Order of the Phoenix
- Stats:
-
Published: 08/04/2005Updated: 08/04/2005Words: 1,038Chapters: 1Hits: 678
- Posted:
- 08/04/2005
- Hits:
- 678
- Author's Note:
- I felt like posting Harry Potter fic, just because. My diction became purple as it was written in the midnight hour (my word choice is snotty because I wrote it at one in the morning.) This goes along with my new Remus Lupin = clothes thought, although that formula is about as far as I’ve taken that particular idea and I’m not to sure where it came from or where it’s going. Also, this is totally un-betaed, which means that I am setting a really bad example.
tinker tailor soldier spy
i. tinker
Sirius is a tinker, one who uses his tools with intent and finesse.
Recently he's been tinkering with his motorbike (a gift to himself
after completing school without failing anything), making
it hum on half the diesel the owner's manual claims it needs with
one turn of a wrench, and charming it to fly with a flick and
swish of his wand.
Sirius will tinker with anything until its function is streamlined,
removing unnecessary elements and manipulating the essential ones
so the machine runs smoothly, without interruption.
But Sirius's tools are not only found in his metal box, and he
tinkers with other things too. Engines are not the only things
to be streamlined, he believes, but also bodies and grocery runs
and friendships, all of which can only be improved by a very different
sort of tinkering. The tools he's developed to accomplish these
tasks are not tangible metal that weigh in his hand, but they
still require the same careful steady manipulation to function.
These are the skills he is still honing at twenty, and when Remus
comes into the garage to ask about the groceries, Sirius rolls
out from beneath his motorbike, flat on his back, with a stripe
of oil across his cheek.
ii. tailor
Remus can tailor anything to fit anyone, anytime. Given enough
notice, he can even tailor clothes-- a skill he acquired while
forced to wear garments from a thrift shop in Diagon Alley. Really,
though, Remus is best at tailoring lies to fit awkward situations,
something he's practiced since he was a little boy. He's become
good at it, and now must provide plausible excuses and alibis
for those caught where and when they oughtn't be. More than this,
he needs to develop these lies before the various predicaments
arise, and teach them to the soldiers in the field with efficiency
and care.
No story too sparse; no story too valiant. Sometimes, in war,
implausible (though not impossible) is better, as long as the
enemy spends enough time puzzling out the tale for the storytellers
to do their duties. If the soldiers are lucky, the enemy spends
enough time pondering for them to do their duties and get out
again. Remus stitches his stories together so that the soldiers
can escape. Somebody ought to give the boy a medal on a ribbon.
But they don't. Remus is viewed as frilly haute-couture for an
outnumbered, demoralised group of fighters, someone who sews his
threads tightly and spins yarns like nobody else, ensuring that
nothing gets tangled in knots but spending too much time on the
intricacies and textures of the strands rather than on the tapestry.
But Remus is aware that his is expert stitching, and doesn't care
that he's made the type of earth-toned artwork that most would
rather not hang on a wall. These are the best kind of stories;
the ones that remain uninspected, passed over and ignored. These
are the kind he has spun for his friends and enemies for most
of his life, and these are the ones that work. So when James comes
to him early one morning and asks for a cover story, Remus reclaims
all the swatches he's ever given him and weaves them into a bulletproof
vest.
iii. soldier
James is the quintessential soldier. His knowledge is not of machines
or of stories but rather of those few things that a soldier needs
to know, like how to take a punch and when to duck. He does not
strive to complete wonderful acts but instead does very well within
the rut he has dug for himself, taking orders without question
and then executing them with precision. He is oblivious to many
things, like his newly pregnant wife, who sits in the window and
hopes he comes home. He does not think of such things, of course,
or of people, because he is still playing war games like the ones
he and his friends played at school.
There, the most dreadful thing that ever happened was that he
slipped in the mud and fell flat on his face in front of Lily.
But she married him anyway, so it didn't matter.
So James is a good soldier. He knows everything he needs to know,
nothing more; is obedient and a decent liar. Unfortunately, James
is also accustomed to taking orders, a skill he acquired during
his stint as Head Boy, so when Sirius suggests they switch Secret-Keepers
to Peter, James doesn't realize that this is not a command, and
that he has no obligation to consent.
iv. spy
Peter spies. He's good at it, but then again there's not that
much to be good at. Like Poe's Purloined Letter, he hides in plain
sight, using his utter forgettable appearance to his advantage.
No longer is he gullible enough to believe everything everyone
says. This he learned at school, from his friends the practical-jokers,
along with other essential spy skills, like how to sneak around
and how to make people like him.
Sometimes he wonders whether it was worth it, to become a spy,
because the job holds less intrigue than those Muggle James Bond
films seem to show, and the excitement mainly consists of reading
the paper in the morning, seated in his kitchen chair, and discovering
that some of his collected intelligence has altered the assumptions
of the magical world forever. He is not one of the warriors in
the field, creating and proclaiming these changes, but rather
he facilitates them by knowing the right people and spreading
the facts and the half-truths and the lies both ways, among the
leaders who need to know the news before it happens.
So yes, sometimes Peter wonders whether he ought to have chosen
another profession. But his few abilities are so easily applied
to the one he's already in that it seems a waste to even consider
all the what-ifs and the maybes.
If Peter had possessed different abilities and had acquired different
skills, things would have been different. For starters, he would
have never accepted Severus Snape's whispered offer to finish
his Potions homework in exchange for a small favour to be determined
at a later time.