Stealing Sheep

STEALING SHEEP

CHAPTER 7: Kiss and Tell

"Dude, you look like crap!""

James shot an annoyed glare at his so-called 'friend' and pushed a hand through his unruly hair in disgruntlement. He'd had a Hellish night of not sleeping, weird dreams when he finally had got some shuteye, and his bacon this morning had been burnt. The Gods must hate him.

"So how'd you sleep last night? Have any...dreams?"

His head snapped up at Sirius' tone of voice. What did he know? He wasn't implying anything, was he? He couldn't know anything. No reason to panic. However, the fact remained that it was Sirius. He never said anything unless it: a) annoyed someone; b) was funny; or c) would get him out of detention. He was grinning madly and nudging Peter, with that twinkle in his eyes, the all too familiar twinkle that did not bode well. "What?" James said. "No dreams at all last night. None. Dream-free sleep for me. Why? What's this strange fascination with my dreams all of a sudden?"

Sirius winked at Peter then said the only thing that could have possibly made James' day get even worse. "Oh, no reason. It's just that you were sleep talking last night." At his suddenly pale face, Sirius leaned forward conspiratorially, just to be even crueller. "Very entertaining."

"I- I can't remember." James' eyes bulged and his face had drained completely of blood; he was panicking. They knew. If they knew it meant they would tease him and annoy him endlessly and he'd end up killing them and be sent to Azkaban and become some crazy Dementor's bitch! It'd be horrible! That was James' perfectly logical reason for panic. He refused to acknowledge the one niggling voice at the back of his head that whispered that if they knew, it meant that it was all real. He had dreamt those things; he had felt those things, all the things that he'd tried in vain to block out. That scared the shit out of him. "What did I say?"

"You moaned a bit and sighed a bit but there was one very intriguing thing you said- what was it, Wormtail, my friend? - 'Please, my dear, will you...?'"

"'Marry me,'" replied Peter in a garbled response as he shovelled porridge into his mouth.

"Yes! That was it! Then it was..."

"'I want to have your children.'"

"And you can't leave out the-"

"Darling, I love you."

Remus paused as he lowered himself onto the bench next to James. He had just arrived for breakfast still foggy from a night of running around the school torturing unsuspecting portraits, and he was definitely not on the ball. He frowned in a strange mixture of amusement and worry as he glanced at his friends, trying to work out if he'd just heard what he thought he'd heard. "Erm...sorry, do you two want some alone time?" He wiggled his eyebrows with a grin, unable to resist teasing.

Sirius stuck his tongue out then grinned. "We were just reminding Romeo here of a certain night time liaison with a ravishing redhea-"

"What!" James spluttered and flooded red.

"-When, I believe he uttered the words 'Be mine, my glorious beam of sunshine and bear my numerous scruffy-looking brats.'"

"Are you out of your mind?! It wasn't like that! I never said that. Scruffy-looking?!" James stormed in outrage. He might have been a bit...lovey-dovey in his dreams but he most definitely hadn't gone that far! He refused to believe that his dream-self was that cheesy! "I totally did not say that! Trust me, I know what I said. I remember every damn word!"

"AHA!! So you admit it then?" Sirius grinned.

"Dammit."

"Don't worry. I can crack the best of 'em."

Remus speared a pancake as he said, "Sorry to interrupt this rather touching display of...whatever the Hell it is a display of, but, well, Prongs, you may as well spit it all out now."

"Spit what out?"

"The dream. Maybe we can help."

Sirius leaned forward eagerly. "Yeah, tell us all the sordid details. Did it involve fish-net stockings and leather whips?" He blushed at the looks he gathered and tried to backtrack furiously. "...'Cos, you know, that would be really...horrid."

There was a silence for a second as they stared with equal amounts of horror and amusement. "Oo-kay," said Remus. "Moving swiftly away from that- interesting- mental image, tell us about the dreams."

James sighed and buried his heads in his hands. "I can't. Its too...embarrassing."

"Dude, its us," Sirius pointed out, most intelligently.

"I suppose. But let's go to the hideout. I can't tell you here." He cast a suspicious look over his shoulder.

Remus followed his gaze, with eyebrows raised in scepticism. "Who's interested in your bizarre dreams? McGonagall?"

"She may be, the saucy minx. What?" Sirius was all wide-eyed innocence at their disgust.

The hideout was a secret room that was remarkably useful as there were spies everywhere, after all. It was a place where they could forget about trying to hide their friend- and marauder-ship and plot and scheme to their hearts content, even though day by day it became more and more obvious that they did in fact have some bond. They had actually found their hideout hidden beneath the castle, only accessible from outside the turret, and the secret password was sneezing. Yes, they had found it only due to a happy coincidence when Peter had got a steaming cold. Sirius had nicknamed him 'The Human Sneeze' and spent all day teasing him about looking like Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer after he'd got a few Firewhiskeys down him. When Peter had inadvertently discovered the secret door and the special sneeze password by- well- sneezing, the jokes stopped immediately and little Wormtail was proclaimed 'The Almighty Sneezer' and was worshipped for- ooh- at least a minute.

Anyway, a few sneezing spells later they got settled and James' moment had come. He took a deep breath and began, forcing himself not to blush. "Well, it started about a couple of months ago. I know you think they're only dreams but they're so real...It's seriously starting to freak me out. The first ones didn't scare me; I just thought it was normal teenage boy stuff. As for the dreams...number one was just a normal dream- it was nice, but normal. She was in it but we just talked and talked and laughed and she hit me. Hard. It was great fun. The second one...well, she was screaming at me again. The third one was just petrifying. We kissed- and I mean the full-Hollywood-fireworks-violins-shooting stars- kind of kiss. Can you imagine? This girl that I've barely even spoken to is suddenly the leading lady in my own personal romantic comedy every night. No, actually some times it was a bit steamier and a lot less funny than a rom-com; it was quite weird, in fact. Then it got weirder. You remember that night with the tapestry? I saw it happen. In a dream. I suppose as a kind of premonition."

"What the-!" Sirius interrupted but was silenced by a few angry glares.

"Then there was last night. It was the worst and the best of them all. In the others I saw it from her perspective, which, let me tell you, was freaky, but in this one, I was me again. I felt...sad and old. Like twenty-five or something." He paused to scratch his head, as he recalled the dream. "I have the feeling that in my future I'm gonna be really bitter about something or other and, incidentally, develop a liking for something called 'Guinness'. Anyway, I saw her and it all went away. For a moment. There was this idiot- tall, blond, athletic," he sneered with disgust. "And he was all over her! I wanted to rip the bastard's throat out. Then all these Deatheaters came and we had to escape...to the Ministry, I think. Can't really remember getting there that well, I was so pissed off. Well, to cut a long story short, we argued and somehow ended up in the Minister of Magic's office."

"Hey, did you see that famous green cap they pass on? Apparently, it's never ever left that stand on his desk- what's wrong?" Sirius stared suspiciously at the guilty look on his friend's face. "What did your dream-self do to that magical hat of destiny?"

James sighed and tried to prepare himself for their reactions. "Erm...well, we kissed. Well- I grabbed her, but then she grabbed me and it was kind of- frantic. And, well, in the destruction, the hat left its perch. Sorry."

Sirius looked distraught.

"Wait a minute," said Remus, holding up a hand. "You said 'the destruction.' What does that mean? Did the Deatheaters find you?"

"Er..." James felt himself going red and desperately hoped they hadn't noticed. "Well- see- we kind of got a bit- erm- carried away?"

Remus' eyes went wide with realisation after a split second of puzzlement. His mouth dropped open then a huge grin spread over his features. "MY GOD! You didn't!" he exclaimed.

"What?" The slowest of the group, Sirius and Peter, chorused.

Remus laughed out loud. "They did it on the Minister of Magic's desk!"

James sighed in resignation. Fate must be laughing its arse off right alongside his hysterical friends. With its capricious guffaws seemingly echoing inside his head, he had the strange feeling that he was the punch line of some cosmic joke.

"Prongs! This is absolutely fan-bleedin'-tastic! Best news of the century! Fantastic!" Sirius jumped up and down with delight.

"Fantastic? Fantastic!" James leapt to his feet with a sudden burst of anger. "What's fantastic in knowing that in my future I get it on with that cold-hearted, miserable, goody-two-shoes ICE QUEEN?!"

"Did you say 'get it on'?" Sirius sniggered. "Okay, love machine."

"But you melt the ice," Remus said softly, a sparkle in his eyes.

"What?"

"Lily might be indifferent to you now, but you know that she won't stay like that. I don't know what triggers it, but you're meant to 'get it on'- and you will."

"But how do I know its not just a-" James froze as he belatedly processed what Remus had just said, what name he'd just said. "You said 'Lily'! How do you know its Evans? It's not Evans."

Sirius smiled indulgently as if to a small child and patted his arm soothingly. "Who said anything about Evans? Remus said Lily. Now, there are a number of Lily's not of the Evans variety in this school- dated one last year, in fact. Good kisser. Brunette. Bit clingy. But I digress, it was you who said Evans."

"Damn."

"Yup. Oh, don't beat yourself up about it. It was obvious anyway."

James' head shot up in shock. "What?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Come on! 'Goody-two-shoes'? 'Ice Queen'? Who else could it have been? Especially since you've fancied her for years."

"I have not!"

"Come off it! We all knew. Anyway, even if that wasn't the case, we'd still know." Sirius smiled smugly at his helpless friend.

"How could you know?"

Sirius rolled his eyes once again. "Well, it is hard to miss when you're going 'Lily, oh, yes, harder baby!' then at the other side of the room she's going 'James, don't stop, never stop' etc. It doesn't take a genius to work it out. I mean, even Peter figured it out without any lengthy explanations."

"Hey!"

"One-" James held up his index finger. "I did not say 'Oh, yes, harder baby.' Two-" He held up another finger then let them drop to his side. "She's dreaming about me, too?"

The relatively clever ones grinned while Peter remained oblivious in the bubble of his own stupidity. "Prongs," Remus said. "She's going through the same as you-"

"-Maybe you should talk to her-" Sirius interrupted.

"-Get it out in the open-"

"-And maybe-" He grinned. "-Get it on."

James was still shell-shocked. She was having the dreams too? God, how embarrassing! But she always acted so...aloof and detached. Maybe, she had a hidden layer of passion, fire, loveliness...Actually, he knew that she did from the future memories that still invaded his sleeping hours and made him hot under the collar just thinking about it. She was and Ice Queen, untouchable, unmoved by anything. And, he thought bitterly, that was what would finally get him. The fact that she was so cold but with him she was a furnace that he couldn't resist. He remembered the other night, when he'd watched her sleep, curled up on the sofa, before scuttling off to desecrate the tapestry. She had looked so peaceful, so warm and inviting that, to his amazement and horror, a slow uncoiling of desire had started low in his gut and hit him harder than ever. Of course, he'd felt a vague stab of longing for her hundreds of times since he'd first seen her at the Sorting Ceremony seven years ago, but never had he experienced a desire that violent and bottomless. That had and still did scare the Holy shit out of him. "Get it on? With her? I don't think so! I wouldn't touch her with a ten foot barge pole!"

"Well, be that as it may, you better get used to the idea because that prophetic dream says otherwise," Remus wisely commented.

"But she's so...so...she was nice to me the other day! Can you imagine? Her being nice to me?" He was astounded by it even now. "She's so bloody annoying. I can't stand-"

Sirius' head jerked up and excitement shone in his eyes, alongside realisation. "Wait and minute, wait a minute, wait a minute." They all stared at him, expectantly, and waited for what he found so important as to call a halt to James' rant. "Does this mean that you've seen Evans naked?"

James just glared at his friend, not quite wanting to admit that he hadn't but he really wished he had.

Remus was watching quietly and had apparently come to a conclusion. "Prongs, I'm sorry to tell you this but you like her- no, you're attracted to her. It's obvious. Why else would you deny liking her so vehemently when two weeks ago you didn't give a damn?"

Ruffled by what Remus had said, especially since two weeks ago he had given a damn, he just hadn't wanted to be jibed for thinking Evans had a hot ass, James jumped to his feet, intent on denial. Unfortunately, he was still ruffled, his mind still lingering on the thought of her really nice... "I don't like her! I'm not attracted to her! She simply delectable- DETESTABLE!" He flushed and died in embarrassment.

"Freudian slip," Sirius chimed in. As they all stared in surprise that he knew the name 'Freud', let alone pronounced it correctly and used it in the right context, he grinned smugly. "I'm an intellectual."

After a quick round of hysterical laughter and a hurt-looking Sirius threatening them all with physical violence, they calmed down enough for Remus to impart some more wisdom. "Mate, like it or not, it seems that you and the delectable Miss Evans are in it together. So it get used to it. Oh and you'll have to go talk to her about it, of course."

"What?" James was incredulous. "You mean to say you're telling me to stroll up to the girl that I've been sharing embarrassing, sordid, kinky- basically PORNOGRAPHIC- dreams with- this is the girl who thinks I'm scum, who, when I'm near, acts as cold as an Eskimo's private parts- and you want me to go up to her and say 'Hey, so I dreamt we got it on. Fancy a quickie in the broom cupboard?'"

"That about sums it up," Remus said, grinning. "Apart from the 'quickie' thing. I reckon that'd get you walloped."

James groaned. "Do I have to? Is it really necessary? Can't I just carry on being oblivious and ignoring it all?"

Remus' stern face cut down all of his friend's hopes ruthlessly. "No. You must conquer your fears. Confront Evans."

"Okay, then," James said dubiously.

"So you'll do it?"

James nodded, wondering what he'd got himself into. That was when he had the strange, sudden, gut-wrenching feeling that this thing he was starting was going to end up with someone tearing out his heart and fandango-ing all over it.

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