The Shoebox Project

Part Twenty-Three: A few good kisses. A few bad ones. A few right ones.

Part Twenty-Three:
A few good kisses. A few bad ones. A few right ones. One picture.

"What's happening, soul brother?" Sirius says, perching rather unsteadily atop a pile of books on Remus's desk.

Remus gazes up at him without much hope. "I'm trying to read," he explains. "I mean, I was, until you sat on my reading material."

"Right," says Sirius, clearly not  interested. "So, are you going to swing by our pre-exam shindig this afternoon?
Going to frolic with us in the beautiful May night under a warm and balmy moon?"
"That doesn't make any sense." Remus heaves a sigh and attempts to tug one of his books out from under Sirius'
rear. "And no. I think I'm going to the library, actually, because I'll panic if I don't look this over regularly, as
you knew perfectly well when you asked me that question."

Sirius regards him mournfully. "Baby, that is not a righteous groove."

"What in the name of all that is holy are you talking about?" asks Remus faintly.
"Moony," says Sirius rather severely, "I am getting the distinct impression that you are not hip to my jive. Are you or are you not hip to my jive?"
"Something is wrong in your brain," Remus says.

"I'm not the one going to the library to celebrate my last few precious hours before I am squeezed between the
iron thighs of NEWT-cramming hell," Sirius points out. "You dig, daddy-o?"
"I'm not the one who's going to have to be squeezed between those thighs," Remus returns. "You're just going to have to be squeezed between those thighs without me." He doesn't look up from an enormous dusty tome, but does add, quietly, in between the flip of the musty crackling pages, "Hep cat."

"No," Sirius says. "It's only funny when I do it."

"Perhaps it's not funny when either of us does it," Remus offers.

"Well then." Sirius swings down from the desk and dusts himself off. "At least we will be unfunny together.

But only for a brief and shining moment, before I leave you to your insanity for my own more preferable madness." He ruffles Remus's hair. "You're not honestly worried about it, are you? You'll be fine. You'll just recite things at the professors until they're forced to give you top marks because all they want is lunch."

"Right," Remus says. "Well, we can't all be natural geniuses like Sirius Black and James Potter. Some of us must work at it."

"Careful about all that dust," Sirius suggests. "Ta. Hep cat. I do not know where you come up with this."

Remus glares at his vanishing shoulders as he saunters off. It is irritating, really, the way he and James can spend the next three days engaged in the most egregious kind of hedonism and then, with only a week left, will still be able to pull outstanding marks on their exams.

It is irritating. It has been irritating for seven years.

Remus suddenly realizes that it will never be irritating again. That's good, surely.

He sighs and closes the book. In about ten minutes, his peaceful, twilit common room will be full of clumped seventh years from all four houses, chattering and drinking and making insecure small talk and doing other things for which Remus has no time. It's nice, he supposes, that they've cohered enough to have a party like this. Just because he doesn't want to be a part of it doesn't mean he doesn't appreciate it.