A fic and some cards
Jul. 5th, 2006 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unavoidedcrisis
shoebox_project when I was unable to sleep the other night. So I finished this:Author:
unavoidedcrisisTitle: The Bird Incident
Rating: PG
Summary: What happens when Sirius is a poor loser while playing a strange Muggle game? Hilarity, I ensure you. Unless you afraid of birds, in which case, I suggest you beware.
Pairing: Mild R/S. What did you expect?
Lily receives a care package from home over the holidays. She lends her new board game to the Marauders, some of whom love it and some of whom don’t really have fun at all.
~For Taylor, the worst Monopoly player who ever lived. And I mean ever~
“Ha! Oriental with a hotel is 550, Sirius!” Peter cried, as Sirius set down his piece again.
“Ugh!” Sirius quickly searched through his tiny stack of bills. “I don’t have it.”
Peter leaned over. “Yeah, you do. You’re gonna have to mortgage a few of these,” he indicated a small collection of deeds. “-but you’ve got it.”
Sirius rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’m going to mortgage the purple ones, that’s 220, and I’ll sell one set of houses for these ones.” Sirius plucked one house each off of
Remus handed over the money with a small smile.
“There’s your bleeding money. I hope you get a paper cut.” Sirius threw a wad of cash at Peter, who grinned at him.
“My turn!” James threw the dice. “Six.” He counted off six places. “Electric Company.”
“That’s mine! Money, money!” Sirius grinned. “Four times the number… twenty-four!”
The others snickered. “Shut it. I can be excited about twenty-four dollars if I want. Considering I’ve only got thirteen right now.”
James handed over the money, still laughing.
Remus rolled the dice, but didn’t get doubles, so he was still in jail, Peter landed on Community Chest, and got forty five dollars from stock sales. It was Sirius’s turn again.
“Come on…” he whispered. A three and a six. “Nine…
“Mine,” James said. “That’s 150.”
Sirius looked at the thirty-seven dollars in his hand. He looked at his meager assets. And he got angry. Sirius threw the last of his money at James, followed by his properties, mortgaged and other wise, and the last three houses he had. “There you go.”
“Sirius- ” Remus started, in a low voice.
“No. That’s a hundred and fifty. That’s what I owe him.”
“Sirius, you’ve got the money, you just have to sell your houses,” James said.
“No.”
“Sirius, don’t be such a poor sport.”
“No. I am out now. You guys play. I’m going to bed,” Sirius said lightly, as he got up and walked to the dormitory stairs.
The others looked at each other, wondering if they should go make sure Sirius wasn’t lying to them and was actually upset.
Like an answer to they’re thoughts, they came a loud crashing above them, followed by angry shouting.
“You go, Moony. Me and Pete’ll clean this up,” James said, motioning to the game.
“Thanks a lot, James. Send me to my doom.”
James and Peter grinned. “You have a way with him, Remus,” Peter pointed out.
“My way, I’d hope,” Remus muttered.
“Wha-?”
“Nothing, James.”
Remus followed Sirius’s path up the stairs.
“Padfoot, stop sulking like a girl and come out and see me,” he called to the bed curtains. Sirius said something rude about what Remus’ mother did on Tuesday evenings, but Remus didn’t quite catch it all, due to bed curtains muffling sounds (a quality Remus liked most of time).
“Fine fine, Padfoot old boy. Sulk all you want.”
“I will.” Sirius made a noise like whuffle and Remus heard him rolling around.
Remus tiptoed forward and peeked through the slit in the drapery. Sirius was lying on his stomach, braiding his long shaggy hair with one hand. He was not facing the side of the bed that Remus was on, and that was the most important fact.
Remus pulled the fabric back and took half a step backwards. With one mighty push from his legs, he leapt forward and landed right on Sirius’s back.
“Agh! Mooooooony! Get off! You are trying to break my delicate spine, you terrible ruffian you!” Remus fluffed Sirius’s hair, and pinched his bottom quite rudely before rolling off of his back and onto the bed next to him.
Remus poked him in the nose. “I am only trying to cheer you up in the same manner you tried to cheer me up last week after you flushed my brand new Potions text book down the privy. Which by the way, you have yet to compensate me for,” he reminded Sirius with another poke to the nose.
Sirius shoved him off the bed. Remus fell through the curtains and landed hard on his tailbone. Remus could hear Sirius’s laughter ringing out above him.
In well deserved frustration, Remus pulled himself up to his full, towering height of ‘moderately tall for a growing boy his age, you know he really doesn’t get outside al lot, he may even be a little stunted from all the sugar’, and pulled out his wand.
“You are going to be very sorry about that in a few moments, Mister Black.”
It was meant to come out menacing, but it sounded sort of comical and Sirius laughed again. Remus got madder than a Flobberworm full of rotten lettuce. He raised his wand with a flourish.
“Pinkificus Padfoot!” Remus said triumphantly.
A bang of orange smoke emanated from among the bed curtains. Remus coughed a few times and waved it away.
Sirius was gone and instead there was an oddly proportioned flamingo sitting in the bedclothes.
Remus almost immediately burst into tears. Not tears of shock, rage or sadness, but tears of pure amusement. Sirius turned flamingo blinked; the picture of stupidity.
“What?” Sirius gone flamingo asked. “Wait, what? No. No you did not just….” He tried to get up off the bed, but in his new form, he just flailed and fell backwards. “Damn Remus what have…! Eughh!”
Sirius/flamingo leapt to his stick like legs and teetered precariously as Remus fell back onto to the bed laughing harder than he could ever remember having laughed before. James burst into the room followed by Lily and Peter and a few other curious Gryffindor students. Sirius the pink bird flung himself onto the floor to hide his festively coloured body from his best friend who would doubtless tease him for a year and a day about it.
“Gah, what? Padfoot, is he hurting you?” James looked around the room, trying to find Sirius, spinning wildly about. “Hey, Black?”
Sirius made a noise that sounded like a “meeeeg…”. James peeked over the laughing Remus to see the Sirius flamingo hiding next to the bed skirt.
“Moony? Is that tropical parrot bird my dear friend Sirius Black?” James asked slowly. He already knew the answer if the shining light in his eyes was any indicator. Remus snickered madly in response.
Sirius drew himself up to the full extent of his new height, about chest height on James as opposed to his normal four inches taller than James. “You listen here Potter, I may be a pink birdie, but I can still kick your-“
“None of it, Sirius m’boy. You are a pink bird, and that is the long and the short of it. This is what you get for being a poor sport,” Remus reminded him, wiping the tears out of his eyes.
“Fix. Me.” Sirius flamingo was fuming, and, James noted, turning a tomato shade of red.
“Alright, alright,” Remus said with much chagrin. “Hold still and don’t you go getting yourself into a flap…”
One big bang of orange smoke later and Sirius was still a flamingo.
“Mooooooooony! Fix this!”
Remus paled and his scars stood out oddly. “I’m trying Sirius, just quiet and let me think.”
The other Gryffindors had left when they saw that the Marauders were going to be in trouble again. No one wanted to feel Professor McGonagall’s fury over one of those pranks. Only Peter, Lily and James remained to lend moral support to their fluttery tropical friend.
“Sirius. Black.” Professor McGonagall was towering the doorway. “Explain yourself.”
Sirius the bird spluttered and choked. Why did that infuriating woman always blame him? Did she ever stop to consider the fact that he most likely did not turn himself into a flamingo? Did that not register with her?
“Professor, I didn’t even-“
She put her hand up to stop him and sighed. “Oh Black, I don’t want to hear any of it. Just… hold still, I’ll turn you back. Although the pink is a bit of a nice change.” She raised her wand, her eyes tired, but amused. “You boys will send me to an early grave. And I mean it this time.” Professor McGonagall said her spell, and waved her wand, but like Remus’ attempt, there was only a puff of orange smoke and one upset flamingo.
“Mister Black… I think it is best if Mister Lupin escorts you down to the hospital ward. The rest of you should quickly find your beds. And don’t worry boys, this is too ridiculous to merit punishment, but I am taking five points from Gryffindor for my time. Where did you learn this spell?”
Remus looked nervously around. “I was experimenting, at lunch today. All it did before was turn the salt shaker pink. I didn’t think it would have such an affect on a person. I’m sorry, Professor, I though it was harmless…”
“Mister Lupin,” she sighed. “I would not have expected such rash action from you. But, as it is not only harmless, but also amusing, I see no other option than to grant you ten points for such inventiveness. Good night.”
Remus would swear later that the only reason she left so hastily was to keep from dying. Dying laughing at the amazingly comical expression Sirius had.
“Moony, you don’t understand how badly you’re going to regret turning me into a giant pink pigeon, do you?” Sirius tottered down the hallway towards the infirmary, occasionally clapping his wing to Remus’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Most likely not at all, Sirius. This is much to entertaining to regret.” Remus thrust his arm out to catch Sirius before he fell face first to the floor.
“What is all this?” came a voice from behind them. Severus Snape had just stepped around the corner. “Lupin… and could this be Black?”
Remus rolled his eyes. This night was getting more and more of a headache. “Yes, Severus, it is.”
Snape stared for a moment at Sirius. Then he burst out laughing. “Oh I wish I had a camera. This is one of those moments you need a camera for, Lupin.”
“Oh I know, Severus… I know.”
Sirius made noise that could only really be described as an ‘anguish noise’. “Moony! You’re… fraternizing!”
Snape snorted in a rather undignified and not at all in character way and disappeared back into the shadow. “I’ll never let you forget this, Black.”
“Oh, of course not, Snivellus, of course you won’t. I really wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Remus laughed because as acidic and biting as it was supposed to sound, it was difficult to take seriously from a great flapping bird the same shade as Granny Ethel’s knickers.(175o)
“Stop laughing, you great knob.” Sirius has no energy left to be smarmy. He was amazed at how sore his little sticky bird legs were getting from all this off-balance hopping back and forth. “Remus…? Moony?”
“What is it?”
“My bird feet hurt. Will you carry me?” the meek little birdy voice didn’t sound like Sirius. Remus’s heart melted. Damn, that boy could be everything. Without thinking twice, Remus scooped up his friend and carried him the rest of the way to the hospital wing.
“Oh heavens, what have you done to yourself now?”
If Sirius was not a bird at this point in time, he would have had to say that that was more annoyed at everyone assuming this was somehow his doing. But Sirius was a bird, and therefore that took the title for most annoying thing of the day. So he responded with the most annoying sarcasm. “I changed myself into a flamingo, Madame. For the colour, really because I’m a big poofter and pink is my favourite.”
Madame rolled her eyes and forced him into a bed. “You stay here. And you, Mister Lupin, do you now how this happened exactly?”
*
The next day, right after the History of Magic class, there was a large traffic jam in the corridor. “Hey, move, come on, get along-” James had to elbow his way out of the room. “Sirius! Are you what’s causing this spectacular mess?”
Sirius nodded dismally while students crowded around him, poking and laughing.
Most of the spell had worn off nicely, but Sirius pride and joy, his shaggy hair that he kept as soft as silk and as tangle free as the no-kink tubing used for oxygen tanks was a mess of fluorescent pink feathery knots.
*
Back in Gryffindor tower, Sirius threw himself face down on his bed. Remus followed shortly. “Padfoot, cheer up. It’s only supposed to be like that for a few more days.”
Sirius’s response was muffled. Remus ran his fingers up Sirius’s back on an attempt to cheer him up. “It’s not so bad, Padfoot, I think you’re over-reacting. It’s just hair.”
Again, Sirius’s response was muffled, but Remus had a feeling he knew what it was anyways. “That’s not a very nice thing to call me. I had no choice but to hex you. You were being insufferable.”
Sirius pushed himself upright and, with mannerisms and tone much like Remus imagined befitted one of the ‘Great and Noble House of Black’, said: “Mister Moony, you will be in a lot of trouble when my broken heart mends itself. I think I might have to do something terrible to you.” He tried to muster up a ferocious glare, but it was rather feeble. Remus kissed him on the nose, which only served to irritate him more. But one look into that kind face and Sirius wasn’t angry about his pink hair anymore.
“Just wait until after the holidays, will you?”
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-06 04:15 am (UTC)I want to copywrite 'anguish noise'
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-06 04:57 am (UTC)heh monopoly and gets turned into a flamingo ^^ silly yet genuis.
heh goku rocks
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-06 06:18 pm (UTC)Oh boy...
Date: 2006-07-07 05:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-07 09:55 pm (UTC)But Sirius as a pink flamingo ("giant pink pigeon" I love) made me laugh SO HARD that the dog came along and stared at me like I was crazy. I love it.
you ROCK.