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“Come on, Moony, don’t be such a Scrooge.”
“I am not a Scrooge , Sirius, I just -”
“You are. You’re a Scrooge and you hate Christmas. D’you hear that, Prongs?”
“What?”
“Moony hates Christmas.”
“ What? You monster!”
“No!” Remus threw his eraser at Sirius; it bounced off the other’s head before he could dodge and fell to the floor. “I never said I hate Christmas, you prat.” To James: “Sirius is making unfounded accusations towards me because I don’t want to sing Christmas carols with him.”
“Well why on Earth don’t you want to sing carols?” James exclaimed, scandalised. “Padfoot is right, only a Christmas-hating Scrooge would refuse to sing carols.”
“ Thank you, Prongs.”
“You’re both out of your minds,” Remus said. “Peter, you agree, don’t you?”
“What?” Peter looked up briefly from his transfiguration homework, looking thoroughly harassed. “Oh, yeah. You’re right, you’re right…” he trailed off, frowning at his page and chewing the end of his quill.
“Carols are a quintessential aspect of Christmas!” Sirius argued. “Hating carols is like hating Christmas itself. Wormtail, back me up.”
“Yeah, you’re right, absolutely right...” Sirius shot a smug look at Remus as Peter looked up from his parchment, looking somewhat desperately around at them. “Hey, can any of you help me with this question? I don’t know how I got this answer but I’m fairly sure it’s not right...”
“No,” said James and Sirius in unison. Remus rolled his eyes at the pair of them.
“Honestly, you two. It’s not like you’re doing anything important. Pass it here, Wormtail.”
“We are doing something of monumental importance,” countered James. “We’re harassing you over your hatred of Christmas.”
Peter - having been too immersed in transfiguration to have paid any attention to the previous conversation - looked horrified. “Wait, you hate Christmas?”
“ No .” He glared at James and Sirius, who were snickering. “They’re being obnoxious because I don’t like singing Christmas carols. Now can we please drop it so I can get some work done?”
The four of them were in the common room, by the fireplace. Most of the other students had gone to bed already; besides them, there was just a couple of seventh years over by the window. Remus was fairly sure they were snogging. He was careful not to look too closely.
James was sprawled on the rug by the fire playing with the snitch (Remus was more than a little worried it would get away from James and fly straight into the fire, but it hadn’t happened yet). Peter was poring over his potions textbook, now that Remus had his transfiguration, and looked absolutely distraught. Remus was hunched over said transfiguration assignment, his quill scratching back and forth across the page. Sirius was sideways in an armchair with his head hanging off the arm, staring upside down at Remus.
“So why do you hate Christmas?” Sirius asked, after letting silence reign for what he deemed a reasonable amount of time. It was not a reasonable amount of time. It was barely a minute and a half.
Remus sighed, dipping his quill into his inkpot. “ Carols , Sirius, I hate Christmas carols .”
“Same thing.” He rolled over so that he was on his stomach with his arms and legs dangling off either end of the chair. “So. Tell us, Oh Grinchy One, what’s so wrong with Christmas carols?”
“I - nothing’s wrong with them,” Remus said exasperatedly. “I just - can’t I just finish this?” He waved his parchment at him. “I’ve still got an essay to write after this.”
Sirius shrugged. “Sure. After you tell me why you hate Christmas carols.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“Why are you deflecting?”
“I’m not deflecting.”
“You sort of are, mate,” James chimed in. Remus shot him an affronted look. Traitor. James shrugged, not at all apologetic.
“I’m not deflecting,” Remus repeated. “And there’s no real reason why I don’t like Christmas carols. I just don’t like them. I never have.”
James and Sirius stared at him for a long moment, then looked at each other.
“He’s lying,” said James.
“Definitely,” said Sirius.
“What horrible Christmas carol-related tragedy could have happened to you in your childhood?” James asked, adopting a tone of false concern.
“Maybe he was hit with a jinx while singing carols so that he could only speak to the tune of God Bless Ye Merry Hippogriffs for weeks,” Sirius offered.
“Maybe he was given a charmed Christmas card that sang carols for three months straight,” Peter chimed in. “That happened to me once. It was awful.”
“Maybe he had a twin who was murdered by carolers who kept singing as they killed him,” James suggested, a little too enthusiastically. Remus couldn’t help but picture it: a group of festively dressed people brutally murdering a Remus lookalike while cheerfully singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas. It was almost disturbing how comical he found that.
“Okay, no, none of those,” Remus laughed. “Honestly, you three are ridiculous. Is it so hard to believe that I just don’t like carols and there isn’t some tragic backstory?”
“Yes,” all three of them said as one. Remus rolled his eyes. “Right, well, should have expected that one,” he said. “But trust me. There’s no real reason.”
If he’d expected them to drop it he would have been sorely disappointed. As it were, he had known James and Sirius for far too long to believe for a second that they wouldn’t keep badgering him until he told them what he wanted to hear. As he struggled through Peter’s transfiguration (he really had no idea how Peter had reached the answer he had - it was so far from the right one it was practically a different subject), the other three Marauders continued spitting theories, each one wilder than the first. His personal favourites were that he’d been “kidnapped by goblins who tied him to a chair and forced him to listen to Christmas carols” (Sirius) or that “he once had to fight off a hoard of vampires by singing carols at them until they fled” (James).
Finally, midway through Peter’s “Imperius curse/nonstop carol singing” theory, Remus found he could take it no more.
“If I tell you the reason I don’t like singing carols, will you shut up and let me work?” he demanded.
All three fell silent. They nodded, staring at him as raptly as though he were about to unveil the secrets of the universe. Remus sighed, felt his cheeks warm. He cleared his throat, staring quite pointedly at the wall. “Fine. The reason I don’t like singing carols is… Is because I’m a really awful singer. Alright?”
Silence fell. Remus had the feeling even the couple by the window were staring at him (though later he would remember they’d left at least ten minutes before and realize he was being unreasonably self conscious).
James was the one who finally broke the silence. “That… is such a boring reason.”
“Yeah,” Sirius agreed, sounding rather petulant. “Talk about anticlimactic. We all already know you’re a shite singer.”
“I was hoping it would be something cool and dramatic,” Peter added.
Remus laughed. “Don’t you think I would have told you guys by now if I’d had a twin who was murdered by carolers? Or if I’d been kidnapped by caroling goblins?”
“You never know,” said Sirius. “You’ve never told us you hate Christmas before now. Who knows what else you could be hiding?”
The room erupted into laughter as Remus dropped his face in his hands. “ Carols ,” he groaned, muffled behind his fingers. “I hate Christmas carols .”
But he found, as the fire crackled merrily in the hearth, as his laughter mixed with that of his friends, as Sirius started up a chorus of Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Wolfsbane - he wasn’t really all that bothered. He didn’t even mind joining in - quietly, of course.