He's in love with rock'n'roll, woah
He's in love with gettin' stoned, woah
He's in love with Janie Jones, woah
He don't like his boring job, no
And he knows what he like to do
He knows he's gonna have fun with you
You lucky lady!
Sunday 31st October 1976
The 1976 Hogwarts Halloween feast was so terrible that Remus’s first order of business immediately afterwards was to get as drunk as humanly possible.
It wasn’t terrible in any outward kind of way, of course. The food was delicious, as usual – a glorious golden hog roast with apple crumble covered in goopy yellow custard for pudding. It was just terrible for Remus. Sirius wasn’t rude, or cold – he wasn’t even trying to avoid Remus. It was exactly his dreadful dedication to normality that made it so awful. He smiled. He laughed. He joked. He called Remus ‘Moony’ without a trace of shame. Remus had no choice but to follow his lead – after all, he’d promised not to tell.
Mind you, he hadn’t the first clue how you would tell somebody a thing like that.
“Oi, James, has Sirius ever sort of got into bed with you and then you sort of ended up touching quite a bit?”
Oh god, what if he had?! There was also Lily, of course, the most sympathetic person Remus knew after James – though the thought of talking to a girl about that sort of thing was mortifying. Mary was the most sexually experienced person Remus knew – and he absolutely, one hundred percent, could not talk to her about Sirius.
Not that she’d have been upset. As the party got into full swing (Remus knocked back three shots of whisky as soon as the opportunity presented), Mary descended from the girls’ dorm dressed to kill in a very tight red dress, which made even Remus stare for a few seconds. Roman Rotherhide of Ravenclaw was first to offer her a drink, and the two spent the rest of the evening entirely absorbed in each other, in one way or another.
Remus skulked by the record player for a bit, deliberately putting on the most abrasive, least danceable records he could find. The Stooges’ We Will Fall, swiftly followed by Sister Ray, then some Captain Beefheart for good measure. Eventually he was overpowered by a group of fourth year girls, who ganged up on him clutching David Cassidy and Bay City Rollers LPs. After that, he devoted himself to the punch bowl.
Sirius was having a good time, obviously. He and James were gregarious hosts, as always, making the rounds like the good pureblood heirs they were. The common room kept filling up as students came from all over the castle, and it got so warm that Remus ended up taking a bottle of Witches Brew he’d topped up with whisky, and sitting alone by the open window chain smoking.
Marlene approached at some point, to see if he was ok, and to ask if Sirius was seeing anyone else, now that he and Mary were over. Remus scowled at the hopeful look in her eyes and told her he didn’t give a shit. She frowned, but left him alone after that.
At about nine o'clock, things got really hazy. The last thing he remembered was Peter and Desdemona’s pitch perfect performance of Paradise by the Dashboard Light (trust Peter to like Meatloaf, out of all the muggle music in the world). Remus vaguely remembered smiling stupidly as the pair of them flung each other about the room, red and sweating but having the time of their lives, belting out the duet at the top of their lungs.
You gotta do what you can
And let mother nature do the rest
Ain't no doubt about it
