Boys Will Be Bugs

Chapter 23: Pink Floyd

"It's punk. You know, rebellion and anarchy and stuff." Remus let James peer at his badges on the jacket he was wearing, explaining to him and Sirius who Led Zeppelin was. It was the end of the school day, which had posed little difference to last year, except for slightly more advanced topics and practices. It wasn't until third year that they'd have more curriculum options, like Astronomy and Care of Magical Creatures. Everyone was already looking forward to third year, despite having only just entered second, but there was a subtle air of impatience in every lesson as students desperately worked towards a curriculum they deemed more interesting and more useful. Turning birds into water goblets was neither interesting nor useful in anyone's opinion.

After they'd returned to their dorm room and Remus was allowed to take off his uniform, he quickly changed into his "punk" get-up, with a part of him very much hoping that his friends would ask about his ripped jeans and the band logos he was displaying. Luckily for his ego, they did, and he held his head up high as he explained to them about this new movement that was sweeping the nation. Although, by his attitude, he almost gave off the impression that he was solely responsible for punk even existing in the first place, as if it was him that discovered the movement. In the eyes of his pureblood friends, he essentially did. This did nothing to make his sense of superiority any less subtle.

But his friends didn't notice that. They wanted to know more, especially Sirius. James liked the look of the outfit and wanted to try on the badges, but Sirius was more interested in what punk actually meant, which Remus tried to describe as best he could, relying mostly on his aunt's own words.

"It's embracing being outcasts to society. Saying fuck the Ministry and stuff."

"What's wrong with the Ministry?" asked Sirius. "They run the whole wizarding world in Britain, they can't be bad." Remus couldn't go into the details of why the Ministry was bad because he'd be there all day, and besides, he didn't know how to explain exactly why they were bad because he didn't have the words yet. There were technical terms that he didn't understand. All he knew about was their anti-werewolf laws, the stuff that affected him, but he didn't know the ins and outs. Certainly not in a way that he could explain to someone whose whole family probably worked in the Ministry in the first place.

"They're bad because they're society, and society is oppressive." Though Remus didn't have all the words, he still had enough words, and they made him feel very clever being able to use them, as if he was an adult who knew things his classmates didn't. And Sirius was drinking up everything.

"Why is it oppressive?" he continued to ask, the tone of his questions straying away from confusion to plain curiosity, as if he viewed Remus as an intriguing encyclopaedia, urging him on. Remus put his hands on Sirius's shoulders.

"Because society is like your family. Society is..." he thought exactly what society was, and why it related to Sirius's family. He knew there was a connection, but he was still new on this whole society thing. He needed to ask aunt Selene more questions. "Society is what stops you from being yourself. It's disapproving about everything and you have to fit in, but fitting in is crap, which is why punks hate society, and they rebel against it by wearing different clothes and listening to music that also hates society." He didn't know if his explanation was correct, but he knew that society was the key word on why he had to hide that he was a werewolf. Why he had to hide that he was trans, why he had to struggle to be called the right name and be seen as a boy. Why people wouldn't like him if they knew who he really was. He tried to get as much of this through to Sirius as he could without actually giving anything away.

"I'll show you." Remus thought now was as good a time as any to let Sirius listen to Atom Heart Mother Suite, because even though it wasn't really the type of music that Remus thought sounded punk (the bands Selene had showed him had lots of guitar and lyrics that were hard to make out over all the yelling, while his Pink Floyd album wasn't like those bands at all; listening to it felt almost like you were floating), he thought it would still explain to Sirius what he was talking about. And what better time to do it than at midnight when everyone else was asleep, and Remus and Sirius could sneak down to use the communal record player? Sneaking out of bed when you weren't allowed to was definitely punk. It was against the rules, and rules— as it stood— were society. Remus told this to Sirius as well.