StarblazeAndSolaris SAS SolStar

Sol: I'm not sure where this came from, but it began pretty plot-less and kind of grew one, if you can call it that.

Star: No, I'm pretty sure you can't. Ladies and gents, this started off plot-less, and most assuredly remained that way.

Rating: K, we think.

Genre: Friendship, &, depending on what Star reckons, humour.

Disclaimer: We would not be sitting in Sol's room, freezing vital body parts off due to the lack of heating if we were JKR. Instead, we would probably be somewhere in the Bahamas, writing official books on a hot beach.

Mud, Mates and Marauders

Remus Lupin felt disgusting. He looked disgusting. He smelt disgusting. He could hear the sheer foulness of the disgusting dripping off him, in foul, disgusting globs. He sighed, wiped some of the mud from the back of his forearm with an equally muddy hand, and sighed again. It was only his second month at Hogwarts, and already he was a nobody, while everybody else was a somebody. However, he was only a nobody to some people – unfortunately, that did not include the Slytherin Quidditch team, led by one Lucius Malfoy. Remus sighed for a third time, and greeted the Fat Lady with a soft smile.

"Good afternoon ma'am. How are you?" She smiled down at him from her frame.

"Good afternoon young Remus. I'm doing splendidly, but from the look of your robes you aren't doing quite so well! You really should take a shower, you know, before you catch a chill. Password?"

"Flibberty-gibbet," he replied quietly, smiling his thanks for her advice. The portrait swung open, and he climbed inside, chuckling inwardly at the Fat Lady's final advice.

"Don't forget to send the elves your laundry as quickly as possible! It will stop it staining, you know!"

"What's up with you, Lupin?" Remus froze in the motion of pulling the portrait shut, trying not to drip mud on the plush carpet. He had not realised that any of the other boys in his year were in here. Most of the school was out on the quidditch pitch, or still travelling back to the castle, celebrating Slytherin's loss to Ravenclaw in the first match of the year. He finished pulling the portrait closed, then answered the question quietly, turning away from the common room towards the boys' dormitory stairs.

"I slipped."

"Yeah right. Even you aren't that clumsy. Come on Lupin, cough up." Remus shut his eyes briefly in exasperation. He was still dripping with disgusting filth, and all he could think of was the lovely hot shower awaiting him in his dorm.

"I told you, I fell. Excuse me, please." His voice remained quiet and even, and he started to walk towards the staircase.

"No, Lupin, the truth, please." An imposing figure was now between him and the stairs, and Remus could feel his patience slipping away.

"Please, Black, at least let me have a shower before you interrogate me." Black rolled his eyes at the tired boy, and stepped to one side. Remus almost let out a sigh of relief before he remembered himself and schooled his expression again. Stepping forward on light feet, he climbed the stairs, but paused halfway up.

"Black, why are you following me?" Black flashed his white teeth in a blinding smile.

"I want to interrogate you once you've had your shower, yeah? But if I stay down in the common room you will find a way around it. You always do when someone wants to talk to you." Remus gaped for a moment, before he pulled his face into a mask of indifference.

"If you say so."

He shrugged and continued to climb the stairs until he reached their dorm. Black followed him in, tailing him to his trunk, then breaking off to take a seat on Remus' bed. Remus unlocked his trunk and pulled some clean clothes from it, before locking it again and heading to the bathroom. He dropped his clothes on the toilet cistern and turned to lock the door, jumping as he realised that Black was standing right behind him.

"Excuse me! I would like some privacy, please! I need a shower!" He raised his hands to chest height in case he needed to push Black physically from the room, but to his relief Black turned on a heel and left, leaving the door wide open. Through the doorway Remus could see that Black had taken up residency on Remus' bed again, and was staring at the bathroom door intently. Remus pushed it shut with a sigh, and locked it. He paused a moment, then pulled out his wand and tried to remember the charm he had read about last week. With a frown, he flicked his wrist.

"Collo - colloportus!" There was a faint squelching sound, and Remus smiled happily. He had not expected it to work, after all. He was only a first year. He quickly shed his filthy robes and clothes, stepping happily into the hot spray of a shower. He drew the curtain across, and began scrubbing at the filth ingrained in his scarred skin.

Ten minutes later, and Remus was content that he was completely clean. He had even gone so far as to wash his hair twice, and soap and scrub the rest of his body three times to get rid of all the grime. Pink-skinned from the heat and the rough brush, he stepped out of the shower and quickly dried his hair to prevent it from dripping down his back. In under a minute he had dried the rest of his body well enough to slip his clean clothes on, and sling his new robes over one arm. He moved to unlock the door, but remembered the charm he had tried earlier, and groaned.

"Err… finite incantantem!" he tried, pleased when another squelch could be heard. Checking that he had everything, that none of his clothes were out of place, and that his hair was acceptable, he pulled the door open and actually gaped in surprise at what awaited him.

"Will you look at that, he actually scrubs up quite nicely. He resembled a mud monster more than a human when he first came up here. I nearly died of fright." Remus shut his eyes tightly, and opened them again. Nope, it was real. Black was still lounging on Remus' bed, but now he was accompanied by Potter, who had his head at the foot of the bed and his muddy shoes on the pillow, and Pettigrew, who was lying on his back on the floor with his (also muddy) feet propped on the duvet beside Black's stomach. The three continued their conversation as though he could neither hear nor understand them.

"Really Sirius? Scared by little ol' Lupin, of all people? I thought you were sorted into Gryffindor for a reason."

"James is right Sirius – Lupin is hardly a dark creature. Or does his pale, skinny face haunt your nightmares?" Potter and Pettigrew laughed at that, and even Black let out an appreciative chuckle before he swung his legs off the bed over Potter and stood up, so that he was beside Pettigrew's head on the side nearest the bathroom.

"So, little Lupin, are you going to tell me why you were dressed ready for Halloween two weeks early?" Remus took a deep breath to control himself.

"I told you before, Black, that I fell. The game had just finished, and I slipped on the grass on the way up to the castle. Now excuse me please, I would like to start the Charms essay." Black took a step backwards, and Potter had to scoop up his jaw from where it had fallen onto the duvet before he could speak again.

"Blimey! I think that's the most I've ever heard you say, Lupin. Why is that, anyway? Surely Charms cannot be more interesting than spending time with your friends? You know, talking and stuff, like normal people. Or insulting people, like Sirius here, because his ego needs the help."

"Hey!"

"Shuttup Sirius, you know he's right. Well Lupin? Why do you spend so much time working, instead of talking?"

Remus said nothing.

"Come on Lupin, we know that you can speak now, so come on and put that voicebox to good use."

"Yeah! Wait, Pete, what's a voicebox?"

Pettigrew rolled his eyes, and Remus bit the inside of his cheek in an effort not to do the same.

"It's what you use to speak with, James. It's inside your throat."

"It's really called a larynx."

Black, Potter and Pettigrew stared at him, and Remus was forced to bite again on his cheek to avoid smiling at their rounded eyes. Apparently his good sense had decided that today was the perfect time to take a holiday.

"Lupin spoke… voluntarily!" Pettigrew's shocked murmur seemed to jolt Black and Potter out of their frozen states.

"So he did! Lupin! Here! Sit! Talk!" Potter rolled off Remus' bed and crossed over to him, grabbing one of his arms as Black took the other, and between them they pulled him to his bed and forced him down on the covers. Pettigrew even removed his feet and sat upright, moving to kneel so that he could see Remus over the edge of the bed.

"Now, young Lupin, use that lovely manly lareenoax of yours to talk to us!" A moment passed in which nobody spoke, then:

"Blimey Sirius, are you batting for the other team now? He'll think you only want him for his body if you keep it up like that!" Remus mentally winced, and edged away from the other boys arranged around one side of his bed, but Black seemed to take it completely in his stride, winking cheerfully at the smaller boy as he replied dramatically.

"Shh! Don't tell him! But you are completely right, I wish to take Lupin's stunning, straggly body and cover it with my own, and hear him cry my name using his gorgeous, deep laxyrine." Turning to a now terrified Remus, he continued, "Will you join me under this rosy quilt to engage in lovemaking for the first of many times, my manly sex slave?" Remus cringed visibly this time as Black threw himself onto the bed before Remus, making them both bounce, and clasped his perfectly manicured hands to the other's knee. Potter and Pettigrew were clearly biting back guffaws as they waited for Remus' reply.

"Um… not that I'm not flattered and all, but no. Your hair is too girly. And you have manicured nails." Potter and Pettigrew blinked once, in unison, before literal howls of laughter escaped them. Potter joined Pettigrew in rolling on the floor, laughing so hard that tears escaped from their eyes. Remus looked down, unnerved, into the deep grey eyes of Black, and was surprised to find that instead of being cold, they were shining with mirth, and from the movement of his jaw, Black was also fighting off gales of laughter. Remus noticed that whenever his jaw tightened, so did Black's grip on his leg, so he attempted to correct this issue politely.

"Black… could you please remove your hand from my thigh? It is making me somewhat uncomfortable." Clearly this was the wrong thing to say, as the dissipating hysterics from the floor of the dormitory returned full force, and Black broke out into wild, barking laughter.

"Merlin, Lupin -" gasped Pettigrew from his place on the floor, halting as his slightly chubby body was once again wracked with laughter.

"We never knew you had a sense of humour!" finished Potter. Remus smiled uncomfortably, and used forefinger and thumb to lift Black's hand off his thigh and drop it closer to its owner. He scooted up the bed to the headrest and reached over to pull his charms text book from his bedside table. He had just flipped it open to the correct page when it was yanked from his grasp and instead Remus found himself with a lap full of a determined Black. He sighed. First Malfoy and the Slytherins, now this trio of marauding nuisances.

"Come on Lupin, you can't just abandon a conversation like that! It's rude, doncha know. Besides, I still don't know what happened to make you the mud monster from the dark ages earlier, and you promised to reveal all your secrets once you got out the shower."

Remus froze, uncertain, his face blank and all his muscles tense. He was certain that he had promised no such thing, but he could not remember exactly what he had said to Black earlier when trying to kick him off his trail.

"Alright Lupin, you've had a moment to get your story straight, now drop it and tell the truth. None of that 'I fell over' nonsense that you were harping on about earlier." Black's voice broke through his reverie and he sighed.

"I suppose I did sign up for interrogation, didn't I?" His voice, though quiet, was clear and firm. If he was going to have to relay the entire embarrassing affair to his dorm-mates he would at least do so in a dignified manner.

"Yup! So spill!" Potter and Pettigrew were being unusually quiet, but when Remus glanced over at them he found it was because they were staring intently at him, legs crossed and elbows resting on their knees in identical poses. He sighed yet again and began to speak, tilting his head back to face the roof of his four-poster in order to avoid seeing his companions' faces.

"The Ravenclaw-Slytherin game had just finished, and as you know, Ravenclaw won. I came down from the stands about twenty minutes after the game ended, and slipped on the bottom step, which was quite muddy. I was in the process of standing up again when I was hit by a spell, which knocked me off my feet again. For a second time, I tried to stand, and a third, and so on, but each time I was tripped or thrown so that I kept landing in the mud. Eventually I became tired of this, so I put up a shield around myself and tried to walk away. When I got to the corner, I found out that Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin team were taking out their… distress at their loss on myself and another first year, a Ravenclaw. I cast a second shield, but in doing so mine fell away. That spell is quite difficult enough without trying to maintain multiple castings. It is, after all, a second year spell. The Ravenclaw thought that his attackers had given up, and ran straight to the castle, but Malfoy and the others decided that since I was already a little dirty, I might as well be coated in the stuff." Remus fell silent and finally allowed his gaze to return to the other boys. Surprisingly, Potter, Pettigrew and Black were all sporting similar expressions of anger, frustration and admiration. Remus kept his gaze level until Potter spoke, his voice serious.

"Not only is that the most I have ever heard you say in a day, but what you did was really brave, Lupin. That's worthy of a Gryffindor."

"Kind, too, to help that kid," added Pettigrew.
"Malfoy's going to get it though. Come on Pete, James, Lupin, we need to get some ideas together for our revenge prank." Remus blinked in surprise at Black's vicious tone and words.

"What? Why?" he asked him. Black simply looked at him as though he had lost his mind.

"Malfoy attacked not only a helpless Ravenclaw, but one of my dorm-mates and friends. He's going down!" Remus blinked again, unable to hide his shock. Black considered him a friend? What was he supposed to do? Was there a protocol for this sort of thing?

"Um, Black… my friends call me Remus," he said quietly, offering his hand and clenching the other one into a fist to prevent himself from shaking. Black's expression went from determined and mischievous to delighted.

"Then, Remus, you have to call me Sirius. The blond bimbo is Peter, and the one with a bird's nest for hair is James. Welcome to the team." Black, or Sirius now, grasped his hand firmly and dragged him down on top of him in a warped hug, so that Remus' legs were still trapped beneath them both. Peter and James grinned at each other and joined them in the dog pile, laughing as Sirius and Remus tried to fight their way out from under each other's weight as well as the other two boys.

"Come on Remus, we need to plan our revenge. It'll be brilliant!" Remus smiled at Peter's enthusiasm from where he lay, now sprawled on Sirius' stomach and under James' torso.

"I take it I'm to join your marauding from now on?" he asked, laughing as much as possible under the weight of the gangly teen.

"You're a marauder now Remus, with more brains than Sirius and Pete here put together."

"Hey!" cried Pete his indignation spoiled by his growing grin.

"That's good enough for me," wheezed Sirius from the bottom of the pile. "Now you and Mr hedgehog-hair up there shove off and let me breathe, there's good lads."

Finis