I can’t help from crying
Oh no, boy, you ain’t done nothing wrong
You just make me feel so good it hurts me
Cuz I’ve been without you so long
And now I got a good kinda hurt
I got a good kinda hurt
Oh boy, you make me, you really make me come alive
Friday 12th November 1976
They were caught, of course – just Sirius and Remus. Peter’s quick thinking had got him out of it, and James had run fast enough in time. He wanted to tell McGonagall that the whole thing had been his idea, but Sirius wouldn’t let him.
Their head of house gave them one of the worst dressing downs they’d had in years – made all the worse by the fact that she was clad in her tartan nightie and dressing down, which was not amusing in the slightest, but extremely terrifying. They stood in her office, heads hung, dripping pus until she dismissed them to bed. Twenty house points lost, and detention until Christmas. Ah well.
“You both have an hour free before lunch tomorrow,” she said, as a parting barb, “I expect both of you to report to the dungeons in order to clean up your mess. Without magic.”
Sirius was furious, and after he’d washed went to bed without another word. Pete sat on the end of his own bed, looking pale faced and worried.
“I’m really sorry!” He whispered to Remus, desperately, “I panicked, sometimes I just lose control when I’m scared…”
“S’ok,” Remus replied, tiredly, “It’s only detention.”
“Anyway,” James piped up from his bed, “They didn’t find any of the puffballs we hid, yet…”
James was quite right, and in a sublime twist of fate, the bubotuber-puffballs exploded early the next morning, just as most of the Slytherin students were on their way from the dungeons to the Great Hall for breakfast. So at least the evening had not been a complete waste of time.
“It was you two?!” Lily stared at Remus, amazed, when he told her why he couldn’t meet her in the library before lunch, “Not Black and Potter, Black and you?!”
“Don’t have to act that surprised,” he frowned, “I’m capable of being an idiot as much as anyone else is.”
“No, but I thought you and Sirius were on the outs.”
“Why would you think that?!”
“Oh, something Mary said, I suppose…”
“What did Mary say?” Remus felt a flare of heat shoot up his neck – had Sirius told Mary something? Some stupid slip of the tongue while they were cosying up together?
“I don’t know,” Lily looked mildly surprised, “Ask her, I can’t really remember, I just thought she said something about the two of you not talking. Anyway, if you could please try not to destroy any more bathrooms this year? Gryffindor’s got the lowest house points already, and it’s not even Christmas.”
The surprise corridor attacks had lost twenty more house points from Gryffindor, and an extra night’s detention for Remus and Sirius. James was terribly guilty, but Sirius’s sense of chivalry and honour got in the way, and he still wouldn’t let him confess.
Of course, it was a very different story later that day, when he and Remus were standing outside the cordoned off bathroom, waiting for Filch to arrive with buckets and mops.
