Chapter Text
January 1st, 2:41 AM. Some vague city in the UK that I won’t name as to avoid geological inaccuracies.
We’re in the living room of a townhouse. More people are crammed in there than are probably strictly legal. Empty cups and dollar store confetti and laughter are strewn about the room. Someone shuts off the TV, bringing the noise in the room down almost imperceptibly. The lights are very, very dim. It’s all around a good time.
Except for one corner near the door, where a small group is gathered.
Four boys are huddled awkwardly by the base of the staircase, behind a girl with an iguana curled around her bicep. They all face another boy standing on the stoop with remarkably greasy hair that gleams under the low glow inside.
Greasy Guy and Iguana Girl are arguing rather passionately. Three of the boys look furious, threatening, and disbelieving respectively. The fourth looks…vaguely uncomfortable? Greasy Guy’s face contorts as he gags at the sight of the Fourth Boy’s dinner propelling itself out of his body and, thankfully, onto the stairs behind him rather than the people below.
Ugh.
The other three boys watch, petrified, as the iguana (with more speed than one might expect from it), makes its jerky way down Iguana Girl’s arm and reaches out one stubbly limb to rest it upon Greasy Guy’s hand. Greasy Guy shouts and flings his hand to the side, throwing the iguana onto the floor a few feet away, where it rests, looking dazed but otherwise no worse for wear.
This is apparently the last straw for Iguana Girl, who smashes her cup across Greasy Guy’s head. The plastic cracks. Questionably brewed drink everywhere. Cheers from the boys.
Wow. Yeah. You know what? Let’s rewind.
----
December 31st, 10:57 AM. The same Vague City as before.
“I’m bored,” Sirius whines, and Lily and Marlene both whip their heads around. Marlene presumably because she is also bored, and she and Sirius can always think of something fun to do. Lily because any situation involving a Bored Sirius and a Bored Marlene will not end well.
“We’re having a party in twelve hours,” she says, attempting to quash the brainstorming of something fun to do before it begins.
“I’m bored now,” says Marlene.
“You are actually five.”
“What, five feet taller than you?” With a shriek, Lily launches herself at Marlene. Or she would have, had she not had one very asleep Dorcas with her legs on her lap. So she settles for a sad little swat at Marlene’s arm. It goes about as well as expected.
“I have an idea,” says Sirius suddenly, and Oh No.
“Oh, yes,” says Marlene, with a look on her face that says it’s more likely than not that someone in the house will be in the emergency room within the hour.
“I propose a bet.”
Lily exhales a little. Okay. A bet. She doesn’t have much experience with Sirius and bets; for her first year at Hogwarts, she and the girls had hated James, and by extension all of their friends. They had hated Severus, and by extension her (except for James.) But it’s a bet. Bets are dumb. They involve stuff like trying to eat the most discount Christmas candy in ten minutes or asking a random stranger for a kiss. How bad could it be?
Oh, Lily.
“What kind of bet?” Dorcas is awake now.
“What about whoever can get a stranger to let them in their house?”
“Whoever can get a stranger to let them in their house what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sirius!” Marlene is affronted.
“What?”
“You need a second part to the bet!”
“A second- have you walked into a pole recently, Marls?”
“Oh, my,” Dorcas says, jumping in before the conversation turns unsavory. (Their arguments never last longer than an hour or two and there are only two ways for them to end. Either Marlene and Sirius wind up laughing on the floor, having forgotten what they were arguing about, or Peter bursts into tears.) “Sirius, you’ve been doing bets wrong all these years!”
“Oh, please do explain, Professor.”
“You need another clause. Like, if Sirius gets someone to let him into his house before Marlene, Marlene has to- to-”
“Buy an iguana!”
Silence.
“Sirius,” Lily begins, very much regretting her previous assessment of bets, “what the fuck?”
“Dorcas has a cat. You had that magazine cutout of a water buffalo we taped to your dorm wall before you noticed and tore it down. It’s only fair that Marlene should get a pet.”
“But why an iguana? Why not something more normal? Like a fish?”
Ah, Dorcas, the eternal voice of reason. Until it comes to spiders, that is.
“Oh, Dorko, didn’t you know? James has a rather...tragic history with fish.”
“Oh, please do explain, Professor,” Dorcas mocks, no doubt irked by the nickname.
“Alright. Imagine little James. A darling little child-”
“A horrid little thunderstorm of a spoilt brat, probably.”
“Probably,” Sirius says good-naturedly, and continues. “He had anything and everything he ever wanted, save for the sweet, sweet embrace of company.”
“Sirius, it is a very good thing that you are not a writing major,” Lily sniffs with the infuriating air of someone who knows they’re quite adept at something you’re not.
“Oh, shut up and let me talk, will you? So James, having determined a sibling an impossibility, began to beg his parents for a pet. He didn’t have to beg long, of course, and was soon the proud owner of a beta fish named Jerry.”
“What the fuck kind of child names their fish like it’s a middle-aged accountant?”
“James, apparently. But it wasn’t long before Jerry began to wither away, right before our dear Jammy Boy’s eyes.”
Get used to the weird nicknames. They aren’t going anywhere soon. Or at all.
“He held a proper funeral in his bathroom, of course, and Jerry was sent off with a magnificent swirl. But then Jimmy was lonely again, and so he was gifted another pet, this one of the eel variety.”
“Oh, no,” says Dorcas, who is getting a good idea of what’s next to come.
“He doted on it and spent time with it every day. Kind of sad, no? The obsession with something you can’t even touch? But you can just imagine Jimbo’s horror when he found that this eel appeared to be suffering from the same affliction as Jerry.”
“What’s that, James’ presence?” Lily snorts.
“You laugh, Evans, but fish after fish he went through, all with the same outcome until there was no possible conclusion for him to come to but that his care was like silver to a werewolf. Eventually he gave up on owning any pets at all.”
“But then he met you!”
“Fuck off, McKinnon.”
“Sirius, it sounds like it might be more beneficial for the group if you lose the bet.”
“I would not be averse to owning an iguana.”
“Then let’s get this bet started!” Dorcas has been corrupted.
Lily buries her head in her hands. “I’m going now, for plausible deniability.”
----
“Welcome to AllPets,” says the Bored Teenage Employee sitting at the pet store’s sole cash register. Lily Evans smiles, nods, and doesn’t break her stride towards the food aisle. She doesn’t glance over at the glass terrariums full of all manner of scaly beasties. She doesn’t do a double take when she sees two dark-haired figures-the very same ones that she watched make a very stupid and not entirely sober bet the past night-hunched over peering into one of them. And she definitely doesn’t forget her previous determination to avoid them, because honestly, what is happening.
“Marls? Sirius! Both of you, what on God’s green earth do you think you’re doing?”
“Buying an iguana.” Sirius sounds as though he’s explaining something to a particularly stupid child.
“Do you have a brain?”
“Never have, never will,” he says with a grin.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Weren’t you the one who asked us what we were doing?”
Lily, to her own horror, sticks her tongue out at them.
“Mature, Lils,” Marlene snickers, and Lily calms herself by envisioning the lizard- oh, no, iguana, crawling into her hair and messing it all up.
“You’re off buying a lizard because of a bet and I’m the immature one?”
“Well, Lily,” Marlene says, a grin that means No Good plastered all over his face, “what are you doing here?”
“I am buying food for Dorcas’s cat. The one, you might recall, she got under normal, responsible, mature circumstances.”
“Uh huh. And what’s Dorky’s cat’s name?”
Fuck.
“Monsieur Flufflefoot,” Lily mumbles.
“Oh, sorry, couldn’t hear that. What was the name of that normal, responsible, mature cat again?”
“Monsieur Flufflefoot,” Lily says a little too loudly, making the Bored Teenage Employee shoot her a strange look.
“That’s interesting. Hey, Sirius, stop gawking at the spiders, you aren’t getting one of those. What do you think of the maturity of Monsieur Flufflefoot’s name?”
“So Sirius lost the bet?” Lily says before Sirius can add his two cents.
“Indeed. I’m desolate, as you can see,” he says, beaming “See you tonight!” She waves it off with what might have been (if one was particularly foul-minded) for a crude hand gesture. But we all know that she’ll be there.