A Matter of Property

Disclaimer: HP is not mine.

"You've always taken Snape's side, because he fancies you!"

"And you've always been against him just because James felt him like a rival for Lily Evans! A really stupid reason to hate someone, don't you think? No, I take that back: since when can you think?"

The other three Marauders looked at each other, concerned: Sirius' voice was rising in anger, as well as Angela's, so they could hear them from the nearly twenty meters that separated the two groups from each other. Despite the fact that Sirius and Angela had had a lot of quarrels, like any other couple, this one was different: they both looked angrier and more serious than ever before.

"Really, Sirius, I thought you've outgrown this sort of childish behavior, but I suppose it was too much to ask of you."

"Do you have to act like someone's old spinster aunt? Don't you have any sense of humor at all?"

"I'd rather have no sense of humor than having someone killed because of it!"

Sirius scowled and paled. He knew what she was hinting and did not like it at all. "It was an accident!"

"So you said over and over again," Angela replied coldly, "and finally I believed you. But right now, I'm starting to doubt it, you know."

Sirius felt his blood boiling. She had no right to say those things, least of all when Remus could hear them. Those two months after the Prank had been the worst in his life and the thought of living something like that ever again terrified him - Remus' forgiveness had been awfully hard for gaining and James' not much easier. Remus did not need to be reminded about that and neither did Sirius! "You know what, Peters? You may as well go and snog Snivellus if you love him so much."

"You know what, Black? His name is Severus and yes, maybe I should do just that!"

Angela was furious. When she had started dating Sirius, she had believed that he had changed - that the Prank had made him grow up, but no, he still could not tell the difference between humor and cruelty. She herself felt that the least that Sirius could do after almost killing Severus was to leave him alone, but no, that was too much for Sirius Black, the king of I-Am-Forgiven-so-Nothing-Happened. Even worse than his complete lack of remorse was the fact that he did not care that, once pushed over the edge, Severus could break his vow to Dumbledore and tell the whole school what Remus was. No, that isn't true, she thought. He just doesn't seem to realize that one more joke after all that cruel prank-free time could push Severus too far. Dear Merlin, I'm dating a guy who insists to stay a child. Well, Angela certainly did not feel the urge to act as if she was Sirius' mother. In her desperation and anger, she cried, "Grow up, Sirius!"

He looked at her and by the expression of his face, she could tell that he was furious. "We were never right for each other!" he snapped. "You and your Ravenclaw rubbish about growing up and being serious, you wouldn't know a joke even if it bites you in the nose - "

"Don't you dare insult me, you Gryffindor big-headed foolish - "

"It's over between us!" he bellowed.

"Great, I was just going to say the same thing!" Angela roared back, turned around and left in angry long steps.

James, Remus, and Peter looked at each other. "Wow," James said, "no tears and no begging him to stay with her. I knew that this girl is really something. Just like my Lily-Flower."

Remus and Peter just looked at each other and sighed.

The next morning saw Severus Snape completely bald, with grease dripping from his scalp, and Sirius Black snogging Cassandra Jennings, a Ravenclaw who shared a dormitory with Angela and was considered her friend - a former friend now.

In no time, the whole school was buzzing with the news that Black and Peters, the couple that had seemed like it would last at least till the end of the school year, had split up. The guesses varied from Sirius finding out that Angela was snogging another guy, too, to Angela finding out that Sirius wore the Dark Mark and that he was, in fact, just like the rest of his family. The most popular version, was, however, the rumor that Sirius had stopped drinking the love potion that Angela had secretly given him, and was now returning to his old collecting habits.

It was barely their third class, and Angela was already furious. People would not stop shower her with sympathies for losing such a hot guy and, which was worse, losing him to her own dorm mate. Others were constantly trying to lure her into sharing the real reason for the breakup. Some of the girls were trying to mock her for the loss - like it is such a great loss, Angela thought angrily - and she had already lost forty points for Ravenclaw because of tlosing her nerves and cursing them. Cassandra would not take her eyes off her, hand on her wand, as if she expected to be attacked, and Angela constantly had to fight the urge to do just that, just because of the horrified expression on Cassie's face. And in her History of Magic class, grinning smugly at her, was the reason of it all. She gritted her teeth at him. It is not over, Black, she thought. Who the hell do you take me for? One of those silly little dolls who burst in tears just because you've decided to deprive them of your sympathies? Or the others, who are heartbroken, because His Royal Highness has punished them by dating their best friend? Oh, you're so mistaken, Sirius. You'll be sorry for this, I swear it! The problem was, she could not think of a punishment cruel enough for him.

The idea struck her when the class had almost ended and she herself barely could stay awake. Almost all her classmates had started drowsing and she was just contemplating the appealing thought of taking a brief nap and asking Remus for his notes later. Then, the Idea came and it was so brilliant that Angela suddenly found herself fully awake. Of course! That was it! The only problem was that James would suffer the consequences along with Sirius, as well as Peter. Well, they were both old enough to take care of themselves and besides, that would learn them to work harder. Angela was just starting to smile brightly, when the second Idea came and the grin almost split her face in two. She shot Sirius a glance full of such triumph that he felt it through his nap and suddenly sat upright, looking at her. Before he could send her a gloating grin, she beat him into it. Her eyes were flashing with such joy that Sirius was suddenly fully awake. What the hell does that mean? She was supposed to be crying and begging me to come back to her, not grinning like she's won the Quidditch Cup.

Angela could read his thoughts word for word and that made her smile even wider. Sirius Black was going to be awaken quite roughly - literally and figuratively speaking. Fortunately, she still knew the password for the Gryffindor common room...

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Early the next morning...

"AAAAARRRRRRRRRHHHH!"

James, Remus, and Peter sat bolt upright in their beds, looking at each other with bleary eyes and asking, "What's going on?"

They looked around, expecting to see the castle burning or at least the floor covered by thick fat cockroaches, but there was nothing alarming.

"AAAAARRRRRHHHH!", the sound came again, from the bathroom.

The three Marauders looked at each other. "Sirius," they groaned.

"If this is one of his pranks, I'll curse him into - " James started and then fell speechless at the sight of the figure that emerged from the bathroom. Peter gagged, and Remus goggled.

Sirius silently turned aside, so all three of them could see the inscription graved in red, pink, blue, black, orange and so on colors in his face. In big, fat, motley boils, it said, "PROPERTY OF ANGELA PETERS". The message ended with Angela's signature - a big red AFP with a twiddle that consisted of nine boils in all colors of rainbow.

James looked dumbfounded and then started laughing so hard that he had to lean against the wall to prevent himself from falling out of his bed. Peter only kept blinking at the flashes that were now illuminating Sirius' face, because it turned out that the boils could sparkle.

"Blimey, she's good," Remus breathed reverently.

"She's good? She's good!" Sirius yelled. "She turned me into a clown, in case that you haven't noticed!

That only made James laugh harder. "Well, you did humiliate her in front of the whole school," he said. "I mean, snogging her own dorm mate in front of her obviously wasn't the smartest move - "

"Stop laughing, Prongs!"

"I'm not. I'm not," James assured him, trying his best to put a serious face. "Let's fix the damage."

Unfortunately, all their efforts had no effect on Angela's punishing charm. The Marauders had not really expected them to - after all, Charms was Angela's best subject anyway. Finally, Sirius put James' Invisibility Cloak over his head and went to the infirmary - only to hear that Madame Pomfrey could not deal with the problem either.

The day continued to worsen steadily. People were openly gawking at him and congratulating Angela for her genius. If yesterday she had been only the last poor girl, dumped by the Great Sirius Black, today she was treated like the bloody Queen of the bloody England. Ravenclaws, awfully proud that one of their own had outsmarted the renowned prankster Sirius Black, did not even mind the fifty points that this feat had cost them. Guys were whispering among themselves about how hot she was, girls, who had insulted her the previous day, stood far from her way and each time when Sirius tried to approach her and hex her into something uglier than Filch, she turned around and walked away, so he could not follow her without looking like a puppy following its mistress, and that was something that he would never, ever do, not while he had "PROPERTY OF ANGELA PETERS" written in gay boils all over his face.

Unfortunately, it turned out that this day could become even worse. When Sirius returned to the common room, it was to find a scowling James looking at some parchment.

"What's going on?" Sirius asked.

James pushed the notes into his friend's face. "Read!"

Sirius blinked. "What am I supposed to read, it's just a blank parchment."

"Exactly, a blank parchment. Remus swears that those are his History of Magic notes. It seems that someone made a spell on the parchment to open for Remus and Remus alone. Which means that we have to go to the library to pass the annual exam that is in less than three days!"

Sirius paled under his boils. "But that's impossible! Who's the last person who's touched these notes?"

James gave him a sarcastic look. "Can't you guess?"

Sirius could. "MOONY! How could you give her your notes after all she did to me?"

"It was before!" Remus defended himself. "Yesterday, she said she wanted to collate them with something in her own notes and I gave them to her. What reason did I have not to? Your boils did not appear until this morning!"

"Excellent timing," James concluded sarcastically. "Well done, Padfoot. You mess up things with your girlfriend - "

"Ex-girlfriend," Sirius corrected him.

" - ex-girlfriend, and I'm the one to pay for this."

"Why did she close it for everybody but Remus?" Sirius asked, his curiosity prevailing his anger for a moment. "I mean, why didn't she just charmed it to refuse revealing its contents to me?"

"Because she wants you to fail the exam," Remus explained, "and she knows that if James or Peter read these notes, they'll tell you the basic things."

"But won't you tell me the basic things, too?"

His werewolf friend sighed. "It's not that easy, Padfoot. If I start reading the notes aloud, the parchment just becomes blank. We already tried that. I can tell you some things, but just by memory."

"Which means the library," Sirius sighed, "and yet other bunches of people staring at me. When will these bloody boils disappear?"

The boils disappeared four months later. Although Angela and Sirius were back together long before that, she refused to Vanish them and just let the charm weaken and disappear by itself. As a true Ravenclaw, she had more than one goal with this and she had a full success: first, she taught Sirius Black that if he wanted to have a relationship with her, he would have to treat her properly and not like one of his numerous ex-girlfriends, and second, she turned him from the most sought guy at Hogwarts to the most avoided by the girls: after all, if Angela was ready to cause such a thing to her own boyfriend, who could predict the fate of the girl who would try and steal him away from her? It was, plain and simple, just a matter of property.