Work Text:
When: November 1971
re·wind (v.ree-wahynd) – 1 .to wind again.
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“Hey, Lupin, did you know the word ‘rewind’ isn’t in the dictionary?”
Sirius shot James a dubious look from the bespectacled boy’s left, a look that James chose to ignore. Instead he stopped before Lupin, his eyes glittering mischievously behind his glasses as he stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for the Gryffindor’s response. Lupin, who noticed the expression on Sirius’s face from his seat, met James’s confident smile and relaxed stance with a raised eyebrow.
“Of course it is,” he sighed dismissively, flicking his morning newspaper back open and taking a sip of his drink. “It’s a word.”
“But it’s a word that’s not in the dictionary,” James replied, unperturbed. “Look for yourself.” Taking his right hand out of his pocket, he tossed a small blue and red muggle pocket dictionary at the boy seated before him; Lupin nearly tipped over his goblet trying to catch it before it landed in his bowl of cereal.
“Where’d you get that?” Sirius whispered into James’s ear, his gaze flickering from the dictionary to his friend.
“Nicked it from Evans,” James murmured back, never taking his eyes off of their subject.
“What is this?” Lupin said warily, rotating the book carefully in his hands as he studied the cover. He gave James and Sirius a suspicious look, clearly believing the dictionary to be some sort of prank, and James couldn’t help but smirk. It had only been two months, and already he, Sirius, and Peter had made a name for themselves. He was ahead of schedule.
“It’s a pocket dictionary,” he answered in a helpful voice.
“I know what it is,” Lupin spat back impatiently. He glanced at the small book in his hand before meeting James’s gaze. “I’m asking why you gave it to me.”
“So you can look up the word,” James answered, his demeanor innocent. He shrugged, sliding his hand back into his pocket. “It’s obvious you don’t believe me. Prove me wrong.”
It felt like an eternity passed before Lupin hesitatingly cracked the dictionary open, holding it at an angle that was unmistakably meant to make sure that nothing popped out at his face. When it was open and nothing had yet exploded or attacked him, Lupin relaxed a little, flipping through the book’s thin pages until he got to R. James watched with calm anticipation, Sirius with growing doubt, as Lupin slowly began scanning the pages, his brown eyes narrowing as they went down the list, finally seeing what he had refused to accept as true.
After a moment of frozen contemplation, Lupin continued to turn pages, going towards the back of the dictionary. The grin on James’s face grew as he patronized, “Rewind is spelled with an r, mate.”
“I know that, I’m looking up ‘wind’ to see if it’s listed under its derivatives,” Lupin explained, scanning the W section now. James silently cheered; Lupin was hooked now.
“How is that possible?” Lupin said softly once he had failed there, more to himself than anyone else. “Rewind is a word, I know it is, so why isn’t it listed in here?”
James shrugged and turned, confusing Sirius slightly as he followed suit. “I guess it’s not a word after all,” James called over his shoulder as he walked away. “Which means you can’t use it.”
A flicker of comprehension lit up in Sirius’s face, and finally the sides of his mouth began to curve up. “That’s right,” he spoke up, stopping and turning to face Lupin now, his eyes dancing. “You’re always yelling at us for using words that don’t exist, and yet here you’ve been using a non-word all this time. You hypocrite.” James stopped a few feet ahead of Sirius, watching Lupin with a smug look he knew would drive anyone crazy.
“‘Non-word’ isn’t a word either,” Lupin gripped, going back to the Rs to look again. “You guys messed around with this dictionary.” When his search came up with no results, Lupin glared at the pair as he stood, rolling up his newspaper and fixing with them an unusually determined look before pushing past them, slamming the dictionary into James’s chest as he left.
James was surprised by the strength behind the blow; he was left temporarily winded before it occurred to him to call obnoxiously after Lupin. “Oi! Where are you going?”
“To find a proper dictionary.”
-------
It was kind of funny to watch Lupin, James mused one day in the common room from his armchair with all the airs of a king surveying his court joker.
“I can’t believe he’s still looking,” Sirius laughed, shaking his head before ordering his pawn to move forward a space. “It’s been a week; you’d think he would’ve given up by now. Not like we could’ve gotten to every dictionary in Hogwarts.”
“Well, we could have,” James pointed out, using his knight to eat the rook Sirius just exposed. Sirius scowled as Peter, who had been seated on the floor beside their chairs watching, cheered the small triumph.
“I’m not that desperate to bother Lupin,” Sirius muttered, leaning forward and cupping his chin in his hand thoughtfully.
“I don’t understand why you guys wanted to bug him anyway,” Peter spoke up after a brief silence in which Sirius warily moved his own knight back. “He’s kind of nice.”
“Sure, sure,” James waved off the comment, immediately moving his own queen forward and demolishing Sirius’s bishop. “He’s a nice bloke, yea, but needs to have more fun. He’s always got his nose in a book.”
Sirius gaped at the board. “You’re cheating!”
“You just can’t play,” James replied smoothly, motioning for Sirius to move.
“But how does making him obsess over dictionaries give him any fun?” Peter pressed, still unable to grasp the concept.
“Well, just look at him!” James grabbed Peter’s head, one hand twisting his hair and the other squashing his cheeks together, and jerked it towards Lupin, who was currently holding three books under one arm, two under another, and simultaneously trying to flip through a gigantic book with his hands. How he managed it was beyond James – he wondered just how good Lupin’s balance was – but nevertheless he smiled and nodded, the spectacle proving his point. Peter, however, was still confused.
“I don’t get it.”
“He’s doing it with some passion!” James exclaimed, throwing his arms up for emphasis. “He’s usually just reading because he has nothing else to do; now he has a purpose!”
“Plus, this should keep him from correcting our grammar every two seconds,” Sirius grumbled as he continued to stare at the chessboard so hard James thought his eyes might pop out.
“Face it, you’re not going to win,” James predicted lazily, looking back at Sirius with an almost pitiful expression.
“I refuse to lose to the likes of you.”
“What, royalty?”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small but hefty dictionary flew across the room and smacked James on the side of the head, knocking off his glasses. “What the hell?” he cried, rubbing his ear as he looked around for the perpetrator, stars dancing in his vision.
Lupin stalked towards the trio, absolutely livid; James might have been on his guard had he been able to see. “Why in the name of all that’s good in this world did you have to point out that stupid little error in the dictionary? Now that’s never going to stop bothering me!” His eyes flashed dangerously, and if James weren’t so amused by the show of emotion in the normally stoic Lupin he would probably be cowering in his seat; as it were, Peter was doing that for him. Instead, he just replaced his glasses on his nose and tossed around a response in his mind.
“I’m sorry?” he said at last in a strained voice, trying not to laugh and failing miserably.
“Like hell you are,” Lupin growled, looking as if he would love nothing more than throw his books one by one into James’s face. “Do you realize that I have spent the past seven days borrowing dictionaries from every muggle-born and half-blood in the school? I’ve poured through every wizarding dictionary available in the library - I’ve even ordered brand new editions, and it’s not in any of them!”
James bit his lip in an effort to shut up, but his body betrayed him, quivering in silent laughter; Sirius was not so cordial and was snickering loudly into a pillow. Peter kept sliding farther and farther away from Lupin, taking refuge behind Sirius’s chair, where most of the anger was thankfully not directed. Despite the amusement felt by two thirds of the accused party, all three jumped when Lupin dumped his five enormous books onto the table, scattering the chess pieces to the floor.
“Hey, our game!” Sirius whined.
“Oh, you were going to lose anyway,” James reasoned.
“Was not!”
“I bloody hate you two,” Lupin seethed before turning on his heel and storming away, muttering madly under his breath and mussing up his hair with an exasperated hand. “It doesn’t make any sense, the word was first used in 1710, 1710, how is it not in the dictionary? It’s recorded in etymology books as far back as 1938, how is it not in the dictionary?”
“See, now he hates us,” Peter complained, peeking out from behind the back of the chair to see if the coast was clear.
“No, he doesn’t,” James assured the pudgy boy as he slowly straightened up and picked up the queen on the carpet beside his foot. “Stuffy Lupin wouldn’t be so emotional if he didn’t love us.”