Sirius is not allowed to rock the boat

"This is ridiculous," Lily said.

"It is unorthodox," Remus agreed, mostly because he felt like it was his turn to do so. James had given up trying to console his girlfriend ten minutes into detention since she argued with every point he tried to make, turning it back around on him and starting the fight anew. Peter had picked up the slack at one point, but quickly caved under Lily's ire. He was now feigning great interest in the work in front of him, scribbling something illegible whenever Lily turned his way.

And Sirius—well, Sirius was still making smart remarks every chance he got to urge her on, since he was never going to be in a position where he actually wanted to calm Lily down—but at least the comments were becoming less and less frequent.

"Only—well, McGonagall has tried everything else," Remus reminded Lily, repeating a point that both the professor and the Head Girl had made previously. "Maybe she thinks this will work better than sorting beetle eyes or descaling the school's cauldrons."

"More like she's hoping that this will keep you lot out of her hair until the school year's over and you're gone from her life forever," Lily retorted.

"That makes sense," Sirius said. "After all, you're here with us, aren't you? If I were to choose one student at Hogwarts that I wanted to keep busy and out of my way, you'd definitely be near the top of my list."

He didn't look up from his parchment, which he was busy filling. Sirius was a master at multitasking, at least when it came to dishing out insults when also doing productive work. Or planning a prank whilst taking notes during a lecture. Or fighting a duel with the Slytherins and trying to keep the teachers from finding out. Or, actually, really anything destructive or entertaining that required him to keep up the appearance of innocence at the same time, something which became exponentially more difficult as the years went by and those around him got to know him better.

"Do shut up," Lily said witheringly.

"Me?" Sirius asked. "I'm not the one who's been whinging since we got here. I want to claw my ears off. I'd rather listen to a Fwooper with a faulty Silencing Charm than you."

"You should do your work. You're the one that got us into the mess in the first place."

"Of course it was my fault," Sirius said derisively. "No one else is ever to blame. But what I don't understand is that if I'm to blame, if it was all me, then what were you doing in that hallway in the first place?"

"Next time I won't help you no matter how much you beg," she exploded.

Sirius turned to James. "Can you get her to stop? She's your girlfriend, don't you have any control over her? Is she going to natter all night long? Dear God, I've been actually doing my work just to drone her out."

James looked pained to be pulled into the middle of it. "Is it too much to ask for you both to stop and let us alone?"

"McGonagall did say she wasn't going to let us leave until we'd finished," Peter added fervently.

"Sure, take his side," Lily said, not wanting to come out of her snit.

"Lily, please," James begged. "Now's not the time. We do need to get some work done. There's plenty of time for recriminations tomorrow."

"Or even after exams," added Remus.

"McGonagall will go spare if we come back and we haven't done anything," Peter piped in.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sirius said, having deflating a bit when he realized that his friends weren't going to back him up in his fight against Lily. He dropped his shoulder to relax and picked up his quill again, though he was twirling it around his fingers rather than using it properly.

"Padfoot," James groaned.

"I don't," Sirius repeated. "I've done work. I'm not sure what you lot been up to, but I've been a good boy and started my punishment. See?"

He held up his list, which had about seven inches of writing so far.

"You have a lot on your list," Remus noted. He frowned, taking a good look at the document. "Actually, you do. How do you have so many?"

James snatched the list out of Sirius' hands.

"Oi!" Sirius cried. "No copying."

Looking over the parchment, James whistled lowly. "I don't even remember half this stuff," he said.

"Maybe you weren't around for all of them," Sirius said primly.

Lily scoffed. "Come on. No one believes that."

Peter peered over James' shoulder and started to read the list as well. "I don't remember all these, either," he said.

"Why would you?" Sirius asked. "We don't spend all of our time together."

"Just ninety percent of it," Lily interjected.

"But I don't remember these," Peter repeated, waving a vague hand at the list.

"I don't follow you around all day. I do do some things on my own." Sirius put just enough emphasis in the statement to make Peter flush, but not enough to shut him up.

He tried to snatch the list back from James, but James pulled his hand back in time, passing it behind him to Peter.

"Real mature, Prongs," Sirius said. James ignored him, knowing that if it were Peter's paper he'd snatched, Sirius would probably be halfway down the hall by now, trying to keep it away from their friend.

He tried to feint to the left, but James wasn't the captain of Gryffindor's Quidditch team for nothing. He blocked that attempt, then both of Sirius' hands, wrestling him down to the ground when Sirius started to squirm.

"And you think I'm the instigator?" Sirius asked Lily from their compromising position on the floor. "Your boyfriend's obviously the one who drags the rest of us into trouble. Why, we might be model students if it weren't for him."

"Oi!" James protested, letting Sirius go and sitting up himself. "I am not. Were you not just bragging, three seconds ago, that the rest of us weren't around you all constantly, leaving you plenty of time to get into mischief of your own?"

Sirius dusted off his robes and climbed back into his chair. "Yes, well, not even your girlfriend believed that. I'm not even sure I believed that, and I'm the one that said it."

Glaring at Sirius, James called to Peter over his shoulder. "Go on, read some of them aloud. Prove this git wrong."

"Er…" Peter turned the parchment around several times so that it was facing the right way up, and unravelled it. "'I was not allowed to bring a broomstick to Hogwarts in first year,'" he read. "'I will only wear the official approved Hogwarts robes to class. I will only wear the official approved Hogwarts robes on Hogwarts grounds.'"

"You're just listing Hogwarts rules," Lily said scornfully. "That doesn't count."

"Er…" The other three boys exchanged guilty glances, while Sirius proudly fully proclaimed:

"Wrong again, Evans. I was explicitly forbidden from both things."

"What? You were never." Lily was usually one of the first in line to believe the worst of Sirius, but even she was having some problems with that one.

"You maybe don't want to challenge him on those things," Remus said, under his breath.

Peter, meanwhile, scanned through the items until he found some that weren't general rules of behaviour for the civilized man.

"Er," he said, "this one's more specific: 'I am forbidden from enchanting my classmates so that icicles form in their hair.'"

"Are you going to challenge me on that one?" Sirius asked, practically daring her to do so.

Lily lifted her chin slightly in defiance. "No need, Black. I remember that one. Vividly."

Sirius smirked and said, "Right. I remember now, too."

Beside them both, James groaned. He had burrowed his head in his arm and looked to be about two seconds away from start banging it on the desk.

"'I am not allowed to incite Peeves into tormenting the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher so much that he tries to quit at the Hallowe'en Feast," Peter continued to read, oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. "'I will not rock the boat.'"

He blinked a second later, when the words he'd read filtered through to his brain. The others, in the meantime, were so startled that they burst out laughing before they could catch themselves.

"What?" Sirius demanded, a bit peevishly. He was jiggling his foot impatiently underneath the desk and was scowling openly now that Lily wasn't glaring at him.

"It's just," James said between guffaws, "you? Stop rocking the boat? I mean, I know it's a list of things you aren't allowed to do and, Merlin knows you don't really mean to stop doing them. But still! The idea of it..." He dissolved into chuckles again.

"It's absurd," Lily said succinctly. Even she couldn't contain her mirth, the corner of her mouth slipping upwards despite herself.

"Absurd is right," Remus agreed. "It's just not you, Sirius. Not even to joke about something like that."

"Are you sure you read that right, Pete?" James asked.

"I did," Peter said, a little indignantly. He thrust a finger to the offending line on the paper, even though the others were too far away to read it themselves. "See? 'I will not rock the boat.'"

Lily had finally managed to control herself. "I don't know what you're thinking, Black. Professor McGonagall isn't going to be pleased when she sees how lightly you're taking this."

"Don't worry, Lily," Remus said. "Professor McGonagall knows Sirius. This won't bother her. Much."

"Besides," James added now that he'd finally stopped laughing enough to do so, "I don't think Dumbledore would ever want anyone to stop rocking the boat, even if it did manage to keep you out of trouble. It's the antithesis of everything he stands for."

Sirius folded his arms across his chest. "I'm not trying to slip anything past her, nor am I trying to disappoint Dumbledore, which you would see if any of you gits bothered to read the line properly instead of going off on half-casted theories about what I meant."

"I did!" Peter protested again.

Sirius finally managed snatched his list back out of Peter hand and looked very haughty while doing it.

"It says that I will not rock the boat as in, I won't stand up in a rowboat, cause it to rock and capsize. It does not imply a single thing about my relationship with the status quo here at Hogwarts."

"You did what? You stood up on the rowboat? What on Earth possessed you to do that?" Lily demanded.

Sirius smoothed out the parchment on his desk a couple of times with his fist, taking care not to smudge any of the ink that was still wet. "Well, yes. I was very young and innocent back then."

Remus snorted. Sirius sent him a rather nasty glare and then repeated: "Very young and innocent."

Adeline Boutin, Sirius decided very early on in their mutual acquaintance, was incredibly annoying. He sincerely hoped that they would not be put into the same House at the Sorting, because the more time he spent with her, the more he realized that he just might have to break down and use some of those curses his family was so fond of just to shut her up.

Currently, she was sitting opposite him with her arms crossed, her lower lip jutting out in a manner he was sure she meant to be intimidating, but really just made her look like a two-year old about to throw a tantrum.

Sirius had his own arms crossed over his chest, though he didn't think she'd figured out yet that he was mimicking her. She obviously wasn't Ravenclaw material, not with that lack of brains. He tried to decide where she'd be placed instead. Hufflepuff, maybe—hopefully. She was unpleasant enough to be a Slytherin, if it weren't for the fact of her parentage.

Finally, Adeline realized that Sirius wasn't going to be stunned into submission by either her stare or pose, so she tried speaking instead.

"I don't believe you," she said snottily.

Russell Horton, the fourth member of their boat, was currently sitting at a perfect distance between Sirius and the edge of the boat. He'd moved there about halfway through Sirius' tale, unconsciously backing away in fear before freezing, probably realizing that further away from Sirius meant closer to it.

"Believe him," Russell said. "He'd know; he's a Black."

If the show of cowardliness hadn't already done so, the fact that he lumped Sirius in with the rest of his family would have made Sirius write him off completely. That was another boy Sirius hoped he wouldn't be stuck in the same House with.

Beside him, the only halfway decent fellow he'd met so far, James, was doing his best not to snicker at the pair of them.

"I'm a Potter," he said, his mouth twitching slightly. "I know what's going on, too."

James knew what was going on all right, even though they hadn't coordinated it in the train ride over. The next time they would, Sirius decided then and there, but even without coaching, James was playing along just fine. The part of Sirius that wasn't taken up with trying to figure out how to get Adeline to believe him was currently trying to figure out the best way to get himself into Gryffindor, the house James said he wanted.

"I don't believe either of you," Adeline said even louder and more obnoxiously. "Any of you. Any of your stupid stories. You're just trying to scare us. Hogwarts is a school. It doesn't have any monsters living in the lake!"

"What would you know?" Sirius asked. "You didn't even know Hogwarts was a school until a month ago."

Adeline stuck her lip out again. "That doesn't matter. I do know that you're a mean, nasty liar. And I know what Professor Gatiss said, about people who'll pick on me just because I only just became a witch and my parents don't know what magic is. And he's the Deputy Headmaster. I'm going to tell him what you said. I will. He said I shouldn't let anyone treat me like that and to let him know if they did. And you're going to get in big trouble. Both of you."

Beside him, James suddenly stopped holding back his laughter and sat up straighter. "We didn't mean that. We're not trying to, I mean—I would never—never—" He continued to sputter, more because of the accusations than the threat of getting in trouble.

Sirius, however, was angry. She wasn't going to make him back down, accusing him of Muggle-baiting like that.

"I'm not a liar," he said fiercely. "I can prove it, too."

He stood up roughly, ignoring James at his side who was saying, "What are you doing?"

"Sit down," Russell said, clutching desperately at the wooden seats while his face took a slightly green tinge.

"No," Sirius said even as he put his knees back onto the bench to balance better. "Adeline doesn't believe me, so I'm going to give her proof."

"You're going to fall in," James said, pulling at Sirius' robes. He had a pretty good grip, so Sirius had to jerk away to get closer to the edge to keep James from pulling him back properly into his seat.

Adeline, however, didn't express any concern. Her expression hadn't changed from the annoying pout she'd affected early on in their conversation. She wasn't going to back down.

Neither was Sirius.

The only problem was, he didn't have the slightest idea of how to summon sea creatures. There were several in the Hogwarts lake, he'd heard. His cousins had talked of the kelpies and sea serpents over the summer. His uncle had regaled Sirius with one of his favourite stories from school, when he'd actually met the mercheiftain of the Hogwarts' colony.

"Hey," he shouted down in to the water. "You!" He splashed the surface to see if that would do anything.

"Will you please sit down?" James practically begged, still trying to get a hold on Sirius' clothes. Sirius debated whether or not to kick him out of the way, ultimately deciding not because, this incident aside, James was shaping into being a decent bloke and Sirius didn't want their potential friendship to start on a bad note.

He kicked towards Adeline instead.

It was, perhaps, lucky for James that he wasn't able to hold on to Sirius properly. After kicking out, Sirius wasn't able to restore his balance and a second later he toppled over the side into the surprisingly cold water.

There was general shouting and noise coming back from the boat, but Sirius wasn't able to make out specific words. Sputtering, he started coughing, almost swallowing more water. He was kicking and flailing, trying to keep his head above water, but the boat, which was still upright, was rocking enough to send small waves that kept dunking him.

Sirius knew how to swim, although he wasn't very good at it, but before he could remember how to work his arms and legs to get him back towards the boat, he found it all unnecessary.

He was being lifted out of the water already.

By something that was underneath him.

Even as Sirius panicked, he was too used to magic to lose his head completely. He took a deep breath—just in case—and held on tight. And panicked a little more when he wrapped his arms around the thing and felt the backside had sticky, uneven knobs that he figured out later were suckers.

He was being lifted by a giant tentacle.

Another couple tentacles were curled up on the boat's ledge, but strangely enough, they seemed to be steadying the boat, not trying to pull it down into the depths like Sirius' relatives had threatened. Even still, Russell let out a shriek when he saw them, more frightened for his own safety than the boy who was already in the water.

James was staring at him with wide eyes, a grin slowly spreading across his face when he realized Sirius was all right.

The tentacle deposited him back into the boat, and Sirius scrambled back to his seat.

"I told you there was a big bloody monster living in the lake," he managed to bite out at Adeline before his teeth started to chatter.

The giant tentacle waved jauntily.

Adeline just harrumphed.

"Your first day?" Lily asked when his story was finished. "You got in trouble on your first day?"

"I'm not sure it counts," James said. "We hadn't arrived at Hogwarts yet. We hadn't even been Sorted yet; it's not like McGonagall could take points."

"And it's not like I got detention for that one," Sirius added. "Just a stern talking to about boat safety and how I was lucky the Giant Squid was there and how I was lucky that the Giant Squid is one of the friendlier denizens of Hogwarts grounds, and how I couldn't and wouldn't always be so lucky if I didn't smarten up in the future." He paused and took a breath. "Or something along those lines."

"Then why is it on the list?" Remus asked, sounding truly puzzled.

"What do you mean?" asked Sirius.

"If you didn't get into trouble, really, if you didn't get detention, if McGonagall only told you to try to be safer in the future, why did you put it on your list?"

"Two reasons." Sirius counted them on his fingers. "Firstly, I was expressly forbidden from standing up in a boat ever again. Thus making it something I've been forbidden to do at Hogwarts. Secondly, I'm trying to keep things in order, and if I start quibbling to myself now on what I should and shouldn't count, then I'm afraid I'll forget something vital later on and have to worry about whether I've added it already or not. I don't relish having to read through three scrolls to see whether I've added something or not"

That was met with silence all around. Sirius sat up straighter, not having expected that reaction.

"What?" he demanded, wondering what fault they'd found with his reason.

"You're… what?" Remus asked slowly.

"I'm doing a lot of things. You'll have to be more specific, Moony," Sirius said.

"You're doing these in order?" Remus clarified.

"More or less. I mean, not exactly in order. It's not my life story that I'm writing," Sirius said. "But I've pretty much confined it to my first week so far. There might be some that've slipped in from the rest of that September; I don't remember the order of thing exactly."

Lily, however, was peering over at Sirius' list in horror. "You have dozens listed already," she exclaimed.

Sirius put his quill down and regarded her in bemusement. "Yeah, I know that. What is your point?"

"You're starting from first year, you've only just reached the Welcoming Feast, and look how many things you've listed already."

The others started to realize Lily's horror, except for Sirius who grinned maniacally.

"Just trying to be thorough, like McGonagall requested," he said.

"Forget long night," Lily moaned. "We're going to finish our NEWTs before we finish this!"