The Dating Disasters of Sirius Black

11

Part eleven: Remus Lupin (again) and a Game of Chess.
Late October, Sixth year Gryffindor boys' dormitory, Saturday evening.

Remus stared glumly up at the canopy of his bed. He'd shut the curtains around him, but hadn't yet bothered to charm himself some silence, because he was rather interested in the loud discussion going on at the other side of the dormitory.

After a while, the argument had started to get rather repetitive, and yet again James was reminding Sirius of his recently-won team captaincy, of how this had been his first match in charge, of how important a win it had been, and so why the bloody hell had his best friend not been there to watch it?

Sirius, of course, had no decent excuse, or at least not one that he could tell to James, and his constant evasions were obviously just making James angrier. Remus knew he should possibly try and help Sirius in some way, but then, as far as Remus could work out, Sirius should have had time to catch the end of the match, and he was deeply suspicious himself of Sirius' absence at dinner and for most of the evening.

Peter slid in through the curtains, sitting next to Remus at the head of the bed and folding his arms.

'Thought you'd charmed the noise out?'

'Nah, just didn't want to have to take sides.'

Peter smiled. 'Yeah, it's like listening to your parents argue, isn't it?'

'I am always there for you,' James was screaming, 'through all your shit recently, and you can't even do one thing for me? One thing you actually enjoy, and you can't be bothered to turn up!'

'I was there at the start,' Sirius protested, 'I just had to be somewhere--'

'And you don't even have the decency to tell me where!' James yelled back.

'Do you think they'd stop if we told them they were arguing like a married couple?' Peter suggested.

Remus managed a small, rather false smile. 'James might shut up if we pointed out that he was obviously the wife.'

'Yeah--'

'If you were just shagging some girl,' James accused loudly, and Remus winced. 'Of course I wasn't!' screeched Sirius. 'How could you think that!'

'James is definitely the woman,' Peter whispered.

'Or some bloke,' James added. 'If I find out you were--'

'I was not shagging anyone! Some things are more important than shagging!'

'Oh, was it a family problem, if it was you could--'

'Stop that! Stop suggesting I have family issues every time something's wrong! You're worse than fucking Dumbledore!'

The door slammed suddenly and they looked nervously at each other.

'Which was that?' Peter asked, the pushed his head through the curtains to see.

'Remus!' James yelled, and Remus shrank back against his pillows.

'What?' he asked cautiously as his bed-curtains were wrenched open.

'You definitely didn't see him at all?'

'Not until he turned up in the common room after dinner,' Remus replied meekly.

'If he was up to something he should tell me,' James barked, eyes wild with anger, before he too whirled round and stomped out of the room.

'Well if that's over, I think I might head back to the Quidditch celebrations,' Peter said with relief and he stood up to leave.

All Remus could think was, 'Some things are more important than shagging', and he was suddenly very nervous.