The Shoebox Project

Part Ten: April, '76. Fifty-seven dung-bombs, one great operative mission

Part Ten:
April, ’76. Fifty-seven dung-bombs, one great operative mission, and five documented pranks.

"Cheer up, mate," Sirius says, trying his best to be consoling. "It could be worse!"

James cracks one eye open, narrowed and bleary and, Sirius presumes, full of thwarted love. The little circles under
his eyes, the dark twist to his lips, the wild tangle of his hair long uncultivated, gives him the air of a complete lunatic. Sirius supposes that's what love does to a bloke: fills him up with false promise, false hope, the occasional grope here and there, and leaves him with nothing at all in the end but the desperate need for a wash. Still, a good friend would never mention the smell.

"It's no use," James groans. "It's no fair. I didn't do anything wrong. I saved him, and this is the thanks I get?"

"You're the perfect hero," Sirius soothes. "With or without trousers. Not many can say that, I'll tell you, and if she doesn't recognize what she has when she has it--"

"Let's kill Snape," James interrupts. "We can hide the body. It doesn't matter anymore, she threw grapefruit juice in
my face. I've no one left to please, nothing left to hide -- let's just do it. We can cut his body into little pieces and no one will ever be the wiser. No one will ever know he's missing. People will thank us."

"Only one problem with that plan." Sirius grins. "Finding somewhere big enough to hide his nose."

"We could put it in my sorrow, which is as boundless as the ocean," James says.
"You've got to stop having firewhiskey for breakfast, mate," Sirius says.

"Eventually that stuff'll kill you."

"Makes me stronger," James mumbles. "Besides, look: I've finally got real stubble. Now that it doesn't matter what I look like, since there is no one on this earth worth impressing anymore. You do realize you lost me my girlfriend?"

"Yeah, I suppose. It's lucky for me no one else is willing to sink low enough to be your best friend."

"Remus is my vice-best friend," James says. "If you were killed, he would be instated and probably do a better job."

"He'd never do it," Sirius points out.

James hates to admit that this is probably the case. "He's not bloody-minded enough. Who would blow things up with you, I'd like to know? Who'd make the walls transparent in the prefects' bathroom? Who'd put hippogriff manure in people's shoes? Well, Peter," he admits as an afterthought, "but he wouldn't be nearly so good at it. Admit it, mate: you're stuck with me. Explosions and gratuitous nudity are all you have left. We're back to the good old days."

"My life has no meaning," James bemoans gloomily.

"Yes," Sirius insists, "yes, it does. I bet you don't know what tomorrow is."

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," James mumbles into his elbow. "I don't care what tomorrow is.

It's just as bad as today only I get to dread it first."

"No." Sirius is trying to be patient. On the one hand, Evans is a fool. If you believe any idle Slytherin gossip then by default, you are a fool. On the other hand, she's been a fool just in time. Damned if he's going to let James turn into a whining consumptive broken-hearted noodle-head just because it appears he wants to turn into a whining
consumptive broken-hearted noodle-head. Sirius knows better. Sirius knows he can't possibly want to slip into unattractive misery for all time.