It's Midnight and I'm Still Not Famous
Ick guys, I don't feel good at all because my left wisdom tooth is coming in and it is not fun, let me tell you. But thanks to Red Wine and Withering Flowers I now love James, so expect more James fic from me. Narcissa's intuition comes from one of Danelle's original story, so that goes to her. It was a chilling, lovely dialogue, go read it at her fictionpress account. This is canon for all of my works, go fig, and it is how I write my journals.
Disclaimer: Don't own all the lovely characters mentioned, though I'd love to. Especially beautiful Sirius, hilariously funny James, and singing-Love-Shack!Frank Longbottom.
The Library is always silent this time of night. Sometimes I think the whole school is always awake at night. It's amazing what you see if you have the Map, everyone in the world is walking around at three a.m. I mean, honestly. Narcissa Black never sleeps, she's always wandering around somewhere, there's this fourth year Hufflepuff named Amanda something that's always in the Library, right next to the R's, there's Snape brewing something in the Astronomy Tower that has to be done every half moon, not to mention Astronomy classes themselves always running around at midnight. And when Lily has PMS she has this corridor on the seventh floor that she walks all night long, muttering to herself, and there's these two six years, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, they're always playing some funky sport in the courtyard every night on the 13th. and Then there's us. . .Sirius, Remus, Peter, and I, running around usually even when it's not full moon nights. Dumbledore's all over the place, I'm surprised he never catches us. Teachers seem to be the only ones who are asleep.
It's not really that often that I'm sitting in the Library, writing out my thoughts; I mean, usually I'm out with Sirius or Remus or Peter and we're having fun out somewhere, or snogging with Lily or something. But hey, it's my seventh year, you know? This is my last chance to do anything at Hogwarts, and I've done so many pranks and so many tests and I'm sort of sick of it. And they're always telling you to do stuff, like McGonagall's been on all of us since fifth year to get serious about our Auror training, only Remus can't and Peter doesn't want to. I tried talking to Lily about it earlier but she's sick again and obsessed with her homework—she's had a bad cold all year that keeps hanging around, Remus thinks it might be a bad flu but Remus is a medical type anyway, he should be a Healer. Or a doctor, which is a Muggle Healer, and sounds really funny but Sirius thinks is hilarious. Sirius loves Muggle things, mainly to make fun of them, and Peter's Muggle-born so that's no end of amusement for him.
I've been best friends with Sirius forever, I don't even remember how we met. I think my earliest memory of him is beating him over the head with his toy broomstick when we were three. What a memory of a best friend, eh? Lovely stuff all around. But honestly, we've been friends so long that I think he half-lives at my house. Well, now he does live at my house, but that was only last summer. Sirius has these family problems. His family's all for Pureblood Pride and Muggle-Born Muck and his mum's obsessed, it's hilarious. Or at least it would be if she weren't shouting: "TRAITOR! FILTH! SHAME OF MY FLESH, ABOMINATION TO THE NAME OF BLACK!" at Sirius every time he comes near her. I would laugh, but it is Sirius's mum and it's a little too close for comfort there. Me and Sirius should have been brothers, Remus says we're twins sometimes even though we look nothing alike.
I've got the map open beside this piece of paper here, just checking it to make sure everything's clear. That Amanda girl is two bookshelves over, she never moves but she's always here. I think she reads, I would peek through the bookshelves but I can't because the books would bite me. No, seriously. I'm in the creatures section, don't underestimate the Hogwarts Library.
There's an old Muggle saying that goes something like "It's midnight and I'm still not famous", and I really don't understand it. Lily quotes it at midnight, when I'm with her at least, and then she kind of smiles and says that I'm famous. I really don't know what she's talking about. . . I'm not famous, not like Celestina's going to be someday with her songs and all, not like Dumbledore. I mean, there are first years that don't know my name. Lily says sometimes that she has intuition, and that the big difference between intuition and Divination is that intuition is never wrong. I think she got that from Narcissa Malfoy, because Narcissa and I used to talk way back in third year, she never slept then either. Narcissa's a great believer in intuition, she was always telling me things about people like how they're going to have an unhappy marriage or how they're in an abusive relationship or how they're secretly sadistic. I'd tell her that I didn't really want to know, but she'd roll her eyes and tell me that I'm going to die young.
"Why?" I asked her once, and she rolled her eyes and smoked a bit before she said: "Because you're too vibrant to live for long," in this really annoyingly enigmatic way, all condescending and stuff like I was the one who was stupid when she's the one failing Potions. I told her she's failing because she falls asleep in there, and that she should sleep at night, and she threw a cigarette at me.
It's really funny, you know everyone by the time you're seventh year, or at least the other seventh years. Like Arthur Weasley has a crush on Molly and Lily says they're going to get married, it's the sort of thing Narcissa would say. I think they talk a lot too, they both hang out in the Library, Narcissa draws and Lily mopes. Or at least she hangs out in the Library when she mopes. But I really do know everybody, and all the little rumors, like the way that Rita Skeeter that annoying Hufflepuff says Sirius and Remus are screwing each other. Sometimes I want to punch her in the face and I'd do it if she weren't a girl. Remus rolls his eyes but Sirius makes it worse, sitting on Remus's lap and batting his eyelashes while girls are hanging off his every side, thinking it's so hilarious. God, I wish I was that charismatic.
Everybody in the world likes Sirius Black, I think. He's just really, really likeable. He makes people happy and special and pays special attention to people and cares about people. Girls just swoon over him, I asked Lily why once and she went all dreamy and said that he had deep eyes. What the hell does that mean? Deep eyes? I told Sirius and he was rolling on the floor laughing, composing awful poetry about his eyes, gasping: "Tell me more about my eyes" between laughs until the whole dorm room (who, admittedly, is only us four) was rolling with him. Lily rolled her eyes at me when I told her, though I'm not really surprised because girls never understand why they're so funny. They're so serious all the time, it's hilarious.
Sirius thinks the best food in the world is breakfast cereal, even though Peter says they're pencil shavings in disguise and Remus says they're like hamster chips. I don't really care one way or the other, I had it a couple times and it's not that great. But the way Sirius eats his, it's all soggy and gross. Mum bought it for him over the summer, and he would take a bowl and just drench it in milk until it was almost dissolved and half drink it down, it was so disgusting. Remus and Peter would sleep over every weekend or so and we'd all stay up all night Friday night, laughing until milk snorted out our nose and Sirius would get us beers and Cokes. Mum always made us go out in the backyard when we were in partying mode, because the back yard is fenced in, and we would explore Dad's old shed and look at old copies of the Oracle and laugh our heads off at all the crazy-stupid stuff we would do. Like when Sirius took Cassandra, our ancient, really dignified Kneazle, and started singing to her: "Smeeeeeelllllyyyyy cat," and she would give him this really offended, dark look and stalk off. That was so hilarious then, I don't know why. Now it all seems really stupid.
Hah. But I guess that's just the way things work when you're sixteen. Lily wouldn't come over much, she called my house 'the bachelor pad' and us 'the party bunch', so we'd have to fly over to her house instead. Which was all okay, because Sirius has an ongoing love affair with an enchanted Muggle motorcycle that he bought last summer, so we'd all fly over and freak out her sister, who hates magic, scare her parents, and generally make Lily tear her hair out until I was called to pacify the situation by snogging her senseless. After that, she always seemed in a better mood.
Um. Anyway, it's about five am now and tomorrow is not Saturday, it's Friday. By the time I get back to the dorms, everybody will be taking showers and Sirius will be singing, as usual, making everybody wince. He found a Muggle radio last year in my Dad's shed and insists on singing very loud, very bad renditions of Muggle songs in the shower, subjecting us to such horrors as: "Yoooooouuuuuu'rrrrreeee so VAIN! You probably think this song is about you, you're so, you're so VAIN!" (imagine him hitting a high note here) "I BET YOU THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT YOU, DON'T YOU, DON'T YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU????" And if you can add in some yowls, screams of terror from other innocent showertakers, and Frank Longbottom counter-singing: "LOVE SHACK, BABY LOVE SHACK," at the sink to try to drown him out, there you have the boys dorm morning routine. Oh, ack. I've got to run before the showers are all taken.