Operation Attraction

Sirius didn't know if he wanted to start tearing his hair out or throttle James more. It was James who got him into this whole mess by insisting on the poem, but Remus was being so bloody clueless! During Herbology, the Marauders had been separated by Professor Bloom, who decided they needed to actually get some work done rather than plot pranks or make fun of each other. Sirius was paired with Adam Zeller, a likable enough Hufflepuff, if a bit slow, but Sirius nearly groaned aloud when he saw who Remus was partnered with.

The Hufflepuff girl who had a crush on him. Kathleen Abbott. Figures. And they got the station right next to his, too.

So while Sirius was trying to repot the brightly colored flowers whose stems were slithering around his hands and up his arms, he had to listen to Kathleen chatting at Remus. Flirt. Sirius consoled himself with the fact that at least Remus was paying more attention to his flowering snake-vines than to Kathleen, but what if Kathleen's chatter convinced Remus that it meant she had sent the poem? Sirius growled, and Adam looked up, startled. The snake-vine must have thought the growl was meant for it--Can plants think?--because it immediately started removing its feelers from his arm. Remus looked up from his own plant, which was behaving itself, and grinned at Sirius. Sirius's heart started pounding in the wake of that grin.

"Having a bit of trouble?" Remus murmured softly enough that Professor Bloom didn't hear and take off points for talking to friends instead of working with partners.

"Of course not," Sirius replied automatically, rolling his eyes and grinning back at Remus, who chuckled.

Unfortunately for Sirius, Kathleen saw that her partner's attention was not on either herself or their assignment, and immediately began trying to rectify the situation. She started with getting Remus's attention back on the snake-vine ("Oh, Remus, it's starting to crawl up my hands! How did you get it to behave for you?"), and then progressed to blatant flirting ("Wow, Remus. You have such a way with plants. Do you like to garden? I do."). Remus, polite as always, merely answered her questions, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. Probably on all the pretty plants. Ah, Moony. Always fascinated with the things, Sirius thought fondly.

After a few more attempts to get Remus to open up to her, Kathleen finally stopped chattering and started repotting, proving herself to actually be fairly competent when she wasn't being an obvious flirt. Sirius mentally breathed a sigh of relief, and went back to working on his snake-vine, which was again crawling up his arms.

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Days passed, as did weeks, and Remus still had no clue as to Sirius's feelings for him, so Sirius was getting desperate. He'd tried helping Remus with homework from his worst class (Potions), hexing Snape even harder than usual when the Slytherin made his typical snide comments about the health of Remus's mother (not that Sirius minded hexing Snape), staying with him in the hospital wing after the full moon instead of going back to bed like James and Peter (the full moon had been a Saturday night), and talking to him about all sorts of random things whenever he could. Hell, he'd even tried actually studying with Remus! And still Remus was clueless.

Remembering Remus's reaction to the first poem, eventually Sirius tried writing another one. He used up parchment after parchment, filling them all with scribbles of words of love and devotion, only to be subsequently crumpled and burned. Finally he concluded that he just wasn't meant to write any more love poems. Sirius was getting frustrated.

Several days later, when Remus and Peter were downstairs in the common room doing homework, Sirius was in the dorm, pacing. James was sitting on his bed, watching his friend pace with growing annoyance.

"For Merlin's sake, Sear, if you really want him to know, just tell him," James snapped as Sirius walked by his bed for the fiftieth time that evening. Sirius simply shook his head and continued pacing.

"I can't, James. Not yet. What if he doesn't believe me?" Sirius said anxiously, letting out a huge sigh before pausing momentarily in his pacing. Then he just turned around and went the other way, and James sighed.

"Well then, why don't you write him another poem, to show him you're, ah, serious?" James grinned, and Sirius glared at him.

"Let's just stop with the bloody name thing," Sirius advised, eyes narrowed at the grinning James. "It got old when we were seven. And I'm not going to send him another bloody poem. The first one was hard enough."

"The first one wasn't that bad," James pointed out. "Remus seemed to like it well enough."

Sirius frowned. "I guess he did," he conceded. "But he might not like the next one, and besides, I don't like writing poems. I've already tried writing more, and they were...not very good. Besides, I have another idea."

"What is this other idea, O Sirius?" James asked, curious.

Sirius stopped pacing and grinned. "You'll just have to wait and see along with Moony."

James rolled his eyes, smiling as he got up and clapped a hand to Sirius's shoulder. "Let's get down to the common room and do our homework before Moony comes barging up here to nag us and finds us plotting," he advised, walking towards the dormitory door.

"Not that he would think it out of the ordinary, coming up here and finding us plotting," Sirius remarked as he followed James. "You must admit, my dear Prongs, we do plot rather often."

"So we do," James replied congenially as he walked down the stairs, Sirius right behind him. "But our plotting usually consists of ways to embarrass Snivellus or the other Slytherins, not ways to get one of your best friends to fall in love with you."

"We plot ways to get Evans to fall in love with you," Sirius pointed out as they reached the table Remus and Peter were doing homework at. James was about to reply, but Remus looked up.

"What's this I hear about plotting?" Remus asked, setting down his quill. Peter also looked up.

"We were just discussing the various things we plot," Sirius replied before James could do more than open his mouth.

"Meaning the ways in which we could embarrass the Slytherins?" Remus asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling slightly.

"And ways to get Lily Evans to fall in love with Prongs," Sirius said, causing James to throw him a dirty look. "All of which have failed dismally," he added.

Remus laughed, and James glared at both of them. "Some friends you are, always making fun of me," James complained.

"Aw, but what are friends for, Prongsie old buddy?" Sirius replied, reaching out and tousling James's hair so that it was even more messy than usual. He just grinned and laughed when James's glare intensified as the bespectacled boy tried vainly to smooth his hair back down, a sharp contrast from fifth year, when he was forever trying to make it messier. He probably noticed that it didn't impress the lovely Miss Evans, Sirius thought, and snickered.

"I don't know why I put up with you," James began, but Remus interrupted him.

"Because no one else will put up with you," Remus pointed out dryly, and Sirius snickered again. James glared at them again, but then threw up his hands and chuckled.

"But we all have to put up with Sirius," James said, plopping down in a nearby armchair, and it was Sirius's turn to glare.

"It's not that bad," Remus interceded, and Sirius's eyes widened a bit. James blinked.

"Well...if you like drooling puppies, I suppose," James replied.

"I am not a drooling puppy!" Sirius exclaimed, but it was a token protest. Maybe Remus...

"I happen to like puppies," Remus said mildly, causing Sirius's heart to flutter madly in his chest, then added, "But I could do without the drool."

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The next day, during the free period Sirius had when Remus was in Ancient Runes with James and Peter was doing homework in the common room, Sirius went up to the dormitory, running his hand continuously over something in his pocket. Once in the relative safety of the dorm room, Sirius carefully brought out a packet of seeds he had begged off Professor Bloom, who was delighted to see someone "other than young Mr. Lupin" showing extracurricular interest in her subject.

"Lupines. Perfect," Sirius whispered. Despite lupines being a Muggle plant, Professor Bloom still had seeds, and was gracious enough not to ask what he wanted them for, though she did wink at him. He got out his wand and opened the packet, carefully pouring the seeds into his palm. He closed his eyes and whispered an incantation, and when he opened his eyes again, he was gratified to see the seeds had become a bouquet of fully-grown purple lupines. He whispered a spell to keep them fresh for a long time, conjured a golden ribbon that matched Remus's eyes, and left the bouquet carefully propped on the pillows of Remus's bed. He left the curtains open so Remus would be sure to see the flowers next time he went in, and left the dorm, making his way over to Peter and joining him in doing homework.

That night, when the four Marauders had finished their homework and were plotting pranks while playing chess in a corner of the emptying common room, Remus announced, "I'm hungry. Does anyone want to come to the kitchen with me?" He and Sirius had just finished their chess game, with Remus the winner.

Peter and James, who were currently engaged in a chess game in which James was losing spectacularly, shook their heads no, but Sirius, eager as always to spend some time alone with Remus despite having just lost a chess game to him, enthusiastically agreed. "Honestly Padfoot, with how much you eat, I'm surprised you're so thin," Remus teased, and Sirius mock-glared at him. Remus laughed. "I'll go get the Map and the Cloak. They're in your trunk, right James?" James nodded, still intent on the game, and Remus went upstairs. Sirius stayed seated, butterflies and heart flutterings reappearing as he waited for Remus to discover the flowers.

Several minutes later, Remus came back down, silvery Invisibility Cloak folded over his arm, folded blank sheet of parchment in one hand, and a bouquet of purple lupines in the other. His face showed astonishment mixed with pleasure as he walked over to the Marauders' corner, stopping and waiting for James and Peter to look up from their chess game. Sirius, who had been watching Remus since he came down the stairs, nudged James and pointed to Remus with his chin.

"What is it, Padfoot? Can't you see I'm bloody busy...oh," James said as he looked up and noticed the flowers in his other friend's hand.

"I found them on my bed," Remus said quietly, but with an undertone of happiness that made Sirius want to shout with joy at the fact that it was he who made the young werewolf happy, and he who would hopefully continue to make him happy forever. If he lets me, that is. And if he ever figures out that it's me who's been sending him this stuff!

James glanced over at Sirius, who nodded almost imperceptibly, smiling shyly. Remus, absorbed in his flowers, didn't even notice. "Wow," James said, grinning. "Those are lupines, aren't they?"

Remus nodded, flushing. "I wonder how whoever it was knew that it was my favorite flower..."

"Well, we at least know it was a Gryffindor now," Peter piped in, and the other three looked at him. "You said you found them on your bed, and only a Gryffindor would be able to get into the common room, much less into the dormitories."

"Heh. You're right, Pete," James said, clapping Peter on the back, who beamed when James praised him. "Guess that means the Hufflepuff's out then."

Sirius, knowing the Kathleen Abbott the Hufflepuff was never in, only rolled his eyes, then stood up. "You should leave those here," he told Remus. "We wouldn't want to crush them or something while we're under the Invisibility Cloak."

Remus nodded, smiling, and carefully placed the flowers down on a nearby table. "Let's go then," Remus said, and Sirius nodded. He waved jauntily to James, who acknowledged him with a wave of his hand, mind obviously back on his chess game.

The two boys left through the portrait hole, then, making sure they were far enough away from the Fat Lady so she didn't see, swirled the Invisibility Cloak over their shoulders and disappeared from sight. Remus unfolded the parchment, tapped it with his wand, and whispered, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." From the point where his wand touched the parchment, spidery lines branched out and formed words, then became the Map that was one of the keys to the Marauders' success as pranksters.

"Filch in the trophy room with Peeves and his cat on the fifth floor. Perfect," Remus whispered, and with a tap of his wand and the words "Mischief managed", the Map went blank, and Sirius and Remus set off for the kitchens.

They made it through to the portrait of the fruit encountering none except the Fat Friar, the Hufflepuff ghost, who just floated past, not noticing a thing. Sirius reached out and tickled the pear, which let out a high-pitched giggle and turned into a door handle. They took off the Invisibility Cloak, opened the door, and were greeted by a chorus of, "What can we get for sirs tonight?" Sirius and Remus grinned at each other and entered the kitchen, where they spent the next hour or so pigging out on chocolate cake and several other things made out of chocolate, which Sirius was always careful to ask for, knowing his Remus's strong love for the stuff. He was rewarded with several happy smiles from the young werewolf.

"This has been a good day," Remus said as he was finishing up with a chocolate bar.

"Yes," Sirius agreed, watching Remus lick melted chocolate off his fingers. "A very good day, indeed."