The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

Wicker Furniture

The morning Sirius and Lily were meant to go shopping for a birthday gift for Minnie, James cornered Sirius in the hallway of their flat.

"Oi, I need you to do me a favor."

Sirius raised his eyebrow. "Prongs, if it's to try to tone myself down so that Lilith is able to resist my magnificent, glorious self - you'll have to understand that I simply cannot turn all of this -" he waved his palms up and down the length of his torso, "- off. It's a deeply attractive animal magnetism that calls people of every gender to knock-knock-knock upon my door... I can't control it. I've tried, and it is just simply not possi--"

"Will you shut up? Blimey, you do talk a lot of hippogriff shit don't you?" James rolled his eyes.

Sirius grinned.

"Look, listen, be serious a -- no don't make the joke, alright? Be serious a second. Seriously."

"I'll - do - my - best," Sirius said slowly, trying to suppress himself, poorly.

James said, "Try to figure out what sort of -- of things Evans would like."

"Things?" Sirius's eyes twinkled.

"Stop - serious, remember? ...and yes, things. You know. For the house."

"Things for the house."

"Furniture and such."

"I have an idea, why don't you tell her about the house and let her furnish it with you?" Sirius asked.

"It's going to be a surprise," James replied. "But it has to be perfect."

Sirius sighed, "You know whatever you put in there, Lilith is going to adore it anyway. You could fill the place with rocks and she would say it was the merriest little place ever there was."

"Please?"

"Chairs made from thorny vines so that they went pricking you in the arse every time you settled yourself onto a surface," Sirius continued. "Lilith would find it charming."

"Sirius..."

"The floor, it could be molten lava, so that you needed to perform acrobatic feats each time you moved from one surface to the next - fly upon a trapeze to cross the living-dining room - and she would oooh and ahhh at the creativity of your brain...."

"Will you please just --"

"Or even - Merlin's nuts save us now - WICKER FURNITURE."

James stared at Sirius.

Sirius shuddered. "Wicker furniture, Prongs. Even that most terrible, horrid abhorrent affront to the art of furniture making... Lilith would still love it. Because you gave it to her."

"Are you finished?"

"Yes. I suppose I am."

"Good."

Sirius said, "You'll owe me for this."

"You're going shopping anyway, you're not stepping a toe out of line of what you'd be doing anyway. You're just reporting back to me," James argued.

Sirius sighed as though James was taxing him a very great deal. "Prongsy," he said, "I'll be made to look at CURTAINS."

Sirius kept his mission discreet, as requested -- for exactly five minutes.

"What do you think about these?" he asked, half wrapping himself in a display of full-length curtains on a display in the shop they'd gone into. He coiled the fabric around himself as he spun. "Are they fabulous?"