Chapter Text
“So,” says Sirius as they trickle out of the potions lab. “Drinks?”
James looks around at their little group: Harry, who is still covered in dirt and ash; Malfoy, who shall now and forevermore be known as Draco, whose fine robes are ruined by wrinkles that criss-cross his chest and sleeves in very conspicuous patterns; Lily, whose purple fuzzy pyjama pants are just visible beneath the hem of her overrobe; and Sirius, who still looks a little wan beneath the loud t-shirt and leather jacket he originally donned for pub night.
They’re noteworthy, which is not something anyone really wants to be in wartime; but then again, only if you really look. And it’s pushing midnight now, which means anyone out and about is probably in no fit state to really be looking. Especially if they’re going out for drinks.
“C’mon,” Sirius urges. “To celebrate your engagement? And spontaneous rise to parenthood?”
James looks at Lily.
“Let’s get sloshed,” she decides. Sirius cheers.
Moody yells at them for it, but a Marauder’s solemn decision to get sloshed is final and beyond reproach, and Lily’s officially a Marauder now by pre-marriage (it’s a thing). Sirius pops home to fetch Moony, and James shakes his head at Lily when she brings up Peter, and Harry politely pretends he didn’t hear her ask.
Does James feel strange to be celebrating the lifetime accomplishment of wooing Lily Evans without Wormy, who had to suffer through just as many painful years of secondhand rejection as Moony and Padfoot before Lily finally gave in came to her senses? Yeah, absolutely. Is he still struggling to comprehend the fact that Peter is at all capable of betraying James so catastrophically? You bet. Would he maybe under other circumstances be inclined to invite Peter anyway and try to suss out his loyalties another time? Probably. But James just watched Harry lose his shit over a house elf not one hour ago, and so he decides that in the case of Wormtail, he'd better not risk it.
Pettigrew-related worries aside, they arrive at the Hippogriff’s Head in more or less high spirits, and James fetches the first round of drinks while Lily scouts out a table. Waiting at the bar for their mulled mead, James amuses himself watching Harry and Draco stand stiffly in front of the doorway and look everywhere except at each other.
Moony and Padfoot tumble out of the floo just in time. They’re only slightly dishevelled, and it’s only been about ten minutes they were alone together, so in James’ opinion, they’re off to an unironically great start.
Of course, knowing Sirius, he will have given Moony absolutely no warning about their guests— either because he got distracted with other activities or because he thought it would be funny to leave Remus in the dark; honestly, James would give either reason even odds— and this pans out when they arrive at the booth Lily’s found and Remus stops dead at the sight of Harry.
His wand is out in a flash. “Who the hell are you?”
It draws the attention of a couple of the parties at nearby tables, which is why Lily steps in with a well-placed elbow to his ribs.
After a moment, Remus sighs and stows away his wand. “Would anyone care to explain what the hell is going on?” he says, in a much more reasonable tone of voice.
“Prongs popped the question without you!” Sirius announces, which succeeds in distracting Remus from the presence of Harry and Draco long enough to shove him into the booth while James passes out drinks. Draco somehow manages to finagle his way into a chair at the end of the table, while the others end up in a Padfoot-Harry-Moony sandwich, which Remus does not look at all pleased about. To be honest, James is not quite pleased either, seeing how comfortable Harry looks with Sirius, although he will acknowledge that Harry does, at least, take advantage of his front-row seat across the table from James and Lily to stare avidly and a bit disconcertingly at his parents.
Draco, on the other hand, is staring morosely down at the bottle of mead he’s been handed. Harry, apparently so fixated on James as to follow his every glance, looks over and takes note too.
“Drinks not fancy enough for you, Malfoy?” he taunts. “Maybe if you imperio another barkeep–”
“Shut up, Potter,” Draco says with a wince. “I just think, since we’re celebrating, it ought to be champagne—”
“It’s the mead, isn’t it? Should I have a bezoar on hand?”
James tries to imagine any way at all that such a comment might be intended that doesn't involve poison. He comes up concerningly blank.
“Oh, I’m sure you’d think of something else,” Malfoy sneers. “Always have to save the day, don’t you?”
Harry snorts. “You know, that’s what your father said—”
“Last night, in bed!” Sirius finishes for him. He sounds awfully proud of himself for that joke for one long awkward moment until, with an “eurgh,” he realises exactly what it is he’s just implied.
Harry and Draco shoot him their best looks of utter affront before their bickering resumes. James would pay more attention to it, probably, if he wasn’t already painfully familiar with the utter incomprehensible nonsense the two of them are able to spout at each other. For all he knows, Draco is fabricating tales taller than anything Wormy could have ever come up with. There’s no way that “because founders forbid the great Harry Potter leave one perfectly safe eight year old veela at the bottom of the lake” is a real thing that anyone would actually mean to say.
Frankly, James has more important things to ponder, like why Harry keeps staring at Sirius with that look on his face.
(His fixation with Sirius is absolutely fine. It’s harmless. James does not take it personally. It’s definitely not something he’s jealous of. It’s not like Harry is his son or anything.)
Bless Moony and his unrepentant possessiveness for putting paid to that, though, so that James doesn’t have to: after the bare minimum of oohing over Lily’s finger and admonishing James for being an impatient twat, he turns right around to glare at Harry, who might as well be clinging to Sirius like a lost toddler.
“And who the hell are you?” he demands again.
"Erm. I'm Harry."
"I can see that," says Remus, pointedly eyeing his unruly mop of hair. Then he gives the same exact look at James' head. "Distant Potter cousin of some sort?"
"Not a cousin, no—”
"Although if you were Blacks—" Sirius cuts in.
"And," James continues loudly, "not distant in the way you're thinking of."
He shares a quick glance with Sirius wherein they silently agree to leave it at that, partly because Moony has always enjoyed a good riddle, and also because he would be much more likely to assume it's a prank if either of them just came out and said anything about time travel.
Remus tilts his head and scoots over to assess Harry full-on. After a few minutes, during which James plays sappily with the ring on Lily's finger, Remus leans in and takes an enormous whiff of Harry's neck.
"Moony!" Sirius yelps, scandalised.
"Time travel!" Remus declares. "Grandson, maybe."
“Hey!” James cheers, just as Sirius boos with equal fervour. “What? He got the gist of it!”
“No half-credit,” says Lily, the traitor.
“Honourable mention, at least,” Malfoy suggests; judging by the imperious tilt of his chin, he considers this a very magnanimous offer.
Remus crosses his arms and huffs. "What’d I get wrong?"
"He's our son," Lily explains with a proud smile at Harry, whose cheeks have only just started to drain of the blood that pooled there after Remus blatantly sniffed him, and who now reddens again under her attention. Of course, that's not helped by the fact that Remus immediately proceeds to attach his nostrils to the skin of Harry's neck and inhale.
Again. With gusto.
"Merlin's arse, Moony, we’re in public," Sirius seethes.
“And to think we called you Snuffles,” Harry mutters.
"There's no way he's your son," Remus says stubbornly to James. "He smells like he's never consumed a single teaspoon of capsaicin in his life—”
“Didn’t you say once you don’t think you can smell back more than seven years?”
“—Shut up, Padfoot. And I know for a fact you burn your tongue off at least once a week at home."
"Ah." James can feel his smile wobble. Lily's fingers tighten around his and he remembers that she, while in on the existence and identity of Harry, is relatively in the dark as to the rest of their fates.
"You're right," Harry says quietly. "I don't even know what that is."
Fortunately, Remus doesn't need any more clues than the sad expressions around him to put the pieces together. "Oh," he breathes. He manages to convey an astounding amount of heartbreak in one lone syllable.
Then he frowns and proceeds to sniff Harry yet again.
Sirius reaches around and yanks Moony’s head back by the hair. He looks not a whit bashful about this; worse, Remus makes a little moan in response that James vividly wishes he was not familiar with. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Harry proceeds to turn even redder at that.
It occurs to James to wonder how frequently and fiercely a bloke’s got to blush before you have to start worrying about his circulatory health or something.
Aw, look at him, being a concerned parent and shite! Fatherhood sure comes at you fast.
"You do smell a bit more like Lily," Remus tells Harry, which elicits a smile that’s equally surprised as it is pleased. "But even if you're not a potions bloke yourself, I can usually tell if someone's been raised in a potioneering household; it's a really distinctive smell, and it lingers, so you should—" he finally stops himself. "God damn it," he sighs. "You too?"
Lily shrugs at him as she clasps tighter to James’ hand. “Apparently.”
Remus eyes Harry's neck speculatively, but Sirius' fingers are still threaded through his hair and he doesn't make a move to sniff him again. "I don't understand," he admits. "Who's the muggle who smells like Lily?"
That small but genuine smile turns brittle on Harry’s face, though James reckons he might be the only one to notice; Lily has just gasped and she sounds much more pleased than James is inclined to feel at the moment.
“My parents?” she guesses. “They survive the war?”
It’s a fair fact to celebrate; the Evanses wouldn’t be the first parents of muggleborns, especially muggleborns who have made themselves prominent in the Order, to be targeted. It’s been a couple years now, but he knows Lily still has nightmares about the Macdonald massacre.
“Ah,” says Harry, and then, too quickly, “I was raised by your family, yeah.”
James doesn’t say anything to ruin Lily’s giddy relief, but as he meets Sirius’ eyes across the table he knows he wasn’t the only one to clock that Harry’s smile is still fragile and over-wide.
“Did none of us survive the war to raise you in a wizarding household?” Remus asks hotly.
"Well, I mean, Sirius was my godfather, but of course he was in prison by then—"
"Wait, really?” Lily claps her hands. “Marlene owes me two galleons.”
Remus, meanwhile, is choking on a sip of mead. "Prison?! Was it the— because of Padfoot?”
“Actually, the opposite,” Harry says. “Padfoot’s how he escaped.”
James can’t bring himself look away from the dizzying twitches of Remus’ face as he tries to decide how he feels about that. He catches relief, probably that it wasn’t due to the underaged and unregistered animagery that Moony himself inspired. Worry, then an unwilling spark of curiosity; worry again; and a flash of the Prefect Lupin face that only ever used to come out when Sirius landed himself in trouble. Vain hope, slowly dying out, that it's all a joke.
The suspense and the creeping despair are almost palpable. It’s a relief when Sirius shoves himself to his feet and proclaims, "I think it's time for round two!"
"Make it strong," Remus says defeatedly.
"I'm offended that you had to ask."
**
Once they've all got fresh drinks in hand, Remus turns to Draco. "And who are you?" he asks, much more politely than he'd aimed the question at Harry.
"My distant cousin," Sirius says with a smirk.
Remus raises his eyebrows, tilts his head, and runs his eyes over Draco. As with Harry, they linger on his hair, which is still a shiny white-gold, even in the dim lighting of the pub.
Draco leans back apprehensively under the scrutiny. "Please don't sniff me.”
Sirius guffaws. James finds this rather rich of him considering how very personally he has taken all of Moony’s previous inclinations to smell Harry.
"A Black and a Malfoy?" Remus guesses. It's really not a hard one, what with the hair, which means nobody cheers this time, although Sirius and Draco both nod. "Narcissa’s?"
"My mother," Draco confirms.
Remus's eyebrows rise even higher on his forehead. "Wouldn't have pegged someone like you for mates with a Potter," he says dubiously. "Or vice versa."
The reaction to that is instant and vehement.
"Oh, no, you’ve got it wrong—"
"We are not mates—”
"He wishes we were mates—"
"I wouldn't be caught dead with a Potter—"
"That's not what you said on the train—"
"Forget I asked," Remus mutters, almost lost beneath the clamour of their protests.
“—what I get for magnanimously trying to save you from the likes of a Weasley—”
“—been to his house once, and I was literally dragged there against my will—”
“—only even here together because we got too vigorous trying to kill each other in the wrong setting—”
"Say," Remus attempts to cut in, with no success.
“Like, you don’t understand: tied up and at wandpoint—”
“I was honestly about to turn him in to the Dark Lord—”
“Say,” Remus tries again, and then has to repeat himself progressively loudly, three times, until Harry and Draco finally deign to pay attention to him. "Say, do you remember who won the 1982 quidditch world cup? We could make some good easy money with that kind of insider info."
Harry only shrugs and looks at Draco, who can't answer because his mouth is already occupied gaping like a fish. "You're a professor!" he finally manages to say, sounding dismayed. It's especially funny in his plummy accent.
“I’m a what?” Remus repeats dumbly.
The reminder sends Sirius into fresh paroxysms of joy. "Professor Lupin!" he yells with an undertone of what James would reluctantly have to identify as a purr. "Oh, I can see you now in the tweed, with the elbow-pads—"
"You’re supposed to be setting a good example! A law-abiding role model for—"
Sirius interrupts Draco with a loud scoff. "Moony here's a marauder and a werewolf and a valued member of an underground vigilante crime-fighting organisation,” he brags with equal pride allotted to each descriptor.
“Sirius!” Remus yelps.
“They already know; calm down." He turns back to Draco. "Moony doesn't care about the ministry's laws!"
Harry nods along sagely for a few moments, only to stop abruptly and arrange his face into a scowl. "You say that, and yet! He confiscated the Marauders’ Map from me! Me, the son of Prongs! Just because he thought Sirius was out to kill me!"
"OUT TO KILL YOU?" Remus yells.
There follows a notable pause in the merriment going on at the surrounding tables. Remus winces guiltily while Lily and Sirius blast sheepish and charming smiles, respectively, at the curious faces turned their way until the rest of the pub resume their normal activities.
Harry, once again flushed, tries to avoid Remus’ eyes, but the niffler’s out of the briefcase now. "Erm, remember how he was in prison after my parents died?" he says, which, given Harry's had even less to drink than the rest of them because he's been too busy flirting fighting with Draco, is unacceptably blunt of him.
Remus makes a little wheezing grunt-y sound in confirmation.
"I was framed," Sirius grumbles. "Didn't realise even you believed me guilty," he adds with a reproachful glare at his boyfriend.
“I didn’t!” Remus protests. “I mean, I don’t! I won’t?” He frowns. “I wouldn’t?”
Sirius, ignoring Remus’ temporal crisis, retorts: “Apparently, you did.”
“If it helps,” says Harry, “I don’t think you wanted him Kissed.”
The rest of the table stares bleakly at him for several moments after this statement. Draco has his entire face in his palm. Lily looks like she wants to cry and James is right there with her.
Remus rubs at his eyes. "I think it's time for a round of something stronger," he pleads.
"Didn't we already do that?" Lily sighs.
"Maybe if we drink some more, none of us will be able to remember."
**
Drink some more, they do. And then some more.
Honestly, Remus with his superhuman metabolism should have been the soberest of them, but that doesn’t keep him from getting increasingly disgruntled at Harry’s obvious affection for Sirius. By the fourth round, Remus reverts to his tried-and-true method for overcoming jealousy, which is to say, blatantly groping Sirius under the table. The fact that he has to reach over Harry in order to do so seems not to deter him in the slightest. The fact that Draco lapses into fits of scandal every time he notices this even seems to encourage him.
Remus only finally gets over his possessiveness when he’s distracted by the story of his own future. While Sirius takes unmitigated delight in exclaiming "Professor Lupin!" at every opportunity, Remus himself flat-out refuses to believe he could one day teach at Hogwarts; or at least, not until he learns about the Wolfsbane Potion. It’s Harry who brings it up, but Draco who has to explain the intricacies of it. And then Lily proceeds to interrogate Draco about potions things while Remus cries, and Harry hugs him, and then Sirius is the one tamping down on his jealousy.
Of course, whereas Remus works through his possessiveness by means of public displays of vigorous affection, Sirius likes to dig in and make it hurt worse for everyone. James tries not to psychoanalyse him too much, but the pattern is very much there, and frankly, it explains a lot.
Exhibit A: Sirius leans in close to Harry, which also brings him closer to Remus, and says, loudly enough for the entire table to hear: "So who was it, again, that our Moony here knocked up?"
“What!” Remus yelps, in what is beginning to resemble a pattern for him. “Nobody! What?”
“Oh no,” Harry says, and even though his voice is deep with inebriation, he is firm in this. “I am not answering that.”
“C’mon, Haz, don’t you think Moony here has a right to know?”
“Moony doesn’t want to know,” Harry replies darkly, in tandem with Remus.
Sirius huffs. “Then don’t you think I have a right to know?”
“You don’t want to know either,” Harry repeats.
After one last calculating once-over at his godson, Sirius gives up on him and leans over the table towards Draco. He rests his chin on one hand and bats his eyelashes. “Draco, dear. Oh cousin mine, compatriot of the House of Black.”
“Don’t fall for it,” Lily says.
Sirius ignores her. “You do know you are going to be living with me for the foreseeable future?”
Draco narrows his eyes at him. “Is your flat not Lupin’s as well? I see no benefit to my housing situation in taking your side over his.”
Undeterred, Sirius only sprawls further over the table and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Wouldn’t you like to have an ally here, Draco? Someone who will take your side over Harry’s? You know James and Lily won’t.”
“Oh, but you will?” Draco leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “He’s your godson.”
Sirius shrugs. “You’re my cousin. You’ve got a better shot with me than with Moony here, don’t you think?”
For a moment, Draco eyes Remus speculatively. James can tell he’s not quite sold but James also knows that for a Gryffindor, Sirius can hold his own shockingly well in these little Slytherin social negotiations.
“Go big,” Lily says. “You can do better than nebulous promises of allyship, Draco.”
Draco leans back in his chair, smirking. “Seems like I’ve got an ally already. What can you offer me that girl-Potter here won’t?”
James feels like he should be offended at the way Draco is talking about Lily, but instead he is unexpectedly dazzled to remember, all over again, why Lily— his fiancee! — can now be referred to as girl-Potter. By the time he comes back to his senses, the time for heroic defence of his betrothed against possible slights has come and gone.
“Don’t bother negotiating,” Harry is urging Sirius. “Malfoy’s a pushover without his daddy or his cronies around to back him up.”
“I want my own room,” Draco says. “No sharing with Potter.”
“Then I want details,” Sirius demands.
“You really don’t want details,” Harry interrupts. He is ignored by both sides.
Draco shrugs. “I don’t have that many, really. Opposite sides of the war, you know.” He turns slightly ashy-green at this, though James can only speculate as to why.
“You have a name,” Sirius pushes. Draco nods. “You know when they got together?”
“Sirius,” Remus says firmly. He is also ignored by both sides.
“You know, Draco,” Lily interjects again. “I reckon Remus actually has more to offer you than Sirius does.”
“Neither of you should offer him anything. He’s a tosser.”
“I’m a man of many talents and resources, Draco,” Sirius says. “I’ve a lot to offer, if you’ve a name to offer.”
“Draco,” Remus rumbles in a tone that’s just a few octaves deeper than normal but very much effective. “You don’t want me as your enemy either.”
And finally, Draco wavers. His mouth opens, closes. His eyes vacillate nervously between Remus and Sirius, and then to Harry. “How old would she be right now, anyway?” he asks.
Harry widens his eyes and shakes his head. It’s a set of nonverbal cues that are vastly insufficiently subtle to escape the notice of literally anyone at the table.
“Moony, you dog!” Sirius howls.
“That’s fresh coming from you,” Lily mutters.
“My own boyfriend, a cradle robber!”
“Hey, now. Who’s to say I’m not the one who got cradle robbed?”
“Look at our godson!” Sirius shoves a hand in Harry’s direction. “You must be pushing forty by the time he gets that big, and you’re trying to tell me you knocked up some witch who’s even older than you?” He’s really laying the distraught on a bit thick, in James’ opinion, but Draco appears suitably alarmed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Remus sighs. “I can’t deal with this alone— where’s Wormtail when you need him, anyway? I can’t believe he’d miss out on Prongs’ engagement drinks.”
Sirius stops flailing around like a fainting Victorian maiden; Harry’s smile falls and his fists clench; Draco becomes extremely interested in a spot of grime on the tabletop.
“What now?” Remus asks despairingly.
Nobody answers.
“More drinks?” Harry suggests.
“More drinks,” James agrees.
**
Halfway through their sixth round, Draco slams his glass down and shouts, “Enough! What is with these infantile nicknames? Prongs? Moony?”
Harry snickers. “Says the extremely mature inventor of Potty and Scarhead.”
Draco flushes but wags an unsteady finger at him. “They were befitting my age at the time! Your parents are, what? Twenty? Why are grown adults calling each other Footpads?”
James and Remus crow “Footpads!” immediately, and only laugh harder at Sirius’ answering scowl.
“Your dad once called me Patronus Potter, and he was, like, fifty.”
“What, that time you cast one at that muggle?” Malfoy drawls. “He was… uh, hold on, I was fifteen… he was forty-three, you prick.”
“You what?” Lily asks. “How is that not a violation of the International Statute of Secrecy and the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Wizardry?”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Harry cries. “It was only ‘cause of the dementors!”
“Hence, Patronus Potty.”
“That’s a stupid nickname,” says Sirius.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Harry sighs.
“Says the Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, Gryffindor’s Golden Boy—”
“Don’t forget Undesirable Number One,” chirps Harry with a cheeriness that comes off as aggressively fake. “Oh, and the Heir of Slytherin! And–”
“Can we get back to the aforementioned expellable offences?”
“Gryffindor golden boy is sooo overdone,” James whines.
“You’re only mad we didn’t let anyone call you that,” Remus says with a mostly-fond roll of his eyes.
“Maybe the next generation is just shite at nicknames.”
“Says the inventor of Snivellus,” Harry retorts, rather scathingly.
“He deserved it,” James insists. “He’s a git.”
“He was eleven!”
“Well, so was I!”
“Hang on,” Remus interrupts. “Did you say you were fifteen when Harry became Patronus Potter?”
“Patronus Potty,” Draco corrects.
“Literally nobody called me Patronus Potter. His dad said it one whole time—”
“That you know of,” Draco sniffs.
“Oh, pardon me,” Harry says sarcastically. ”Do share the juvenile nicknames you were coming up with that summer at Death Eater central; I’m sure they were riveting paradog— paragrams—”
“Paragons,” Lily offers.
“Paragons! Of wit."
“You already had a Patronus at fifteen?” Remus asks. He sounds very reluctantly impressed.
“Yeah.”
“A fully corporeal Patronus?”
“Yeah,” Harry says, looking wistfully at James in such a way as to absolve all lingering traces of jealousy over Harry’s apparent attachment to Sirius. “A stag.”
James feels like his heart is about to burst. Lily’s hand slips back into his and her shoulder leans, warm and solid, against him.
“That’s impressive,” Remus says, in such a tone as to suggest that his lingering traces of jealousy over Harry’s apparent attachment to Sirius are not quite so absolved.
Fortunately, Harry’s too drunk to notice; he’s beaming at Remus. “You taught me when I was thirteen.”
"PROFESSOR LUPIN!" Sirius crows.
Just then, they are distracted by the serendipitous arrival of Frank and Alice. Distantly, James ponders the need for more wizarding pubs, for the sake of an anonymous night out. Still, “Longbottom!” he calls, waving Frank and Alice over. “Come save me from Sirius; he’s being a twat.”
“Longbottom?” Draco gapes. “But– but– he’s fit?”
James is really only about as gay as the next guy— although, when one spends so much of one’s time with Sirius and Remus, the odds are actually much higher than he means to intend— but anyway, James supposes Frank is attractive enough for a bloke: tall and muscled, with a shadowed but defined jawline and hair that behaves itself, et cetera. That said, he can’t quite understand the air of shock infused into Draco's exclamation.
“Of course he is,” Harry scoffs. “Have you seen Neville lately? Like, really looked at him?”
Draco produces no verbal response to this; he only continues to gape, though with a faraway look in his eye. Alas, Harry’s quiet amusement is interrupted by Frank’s confused echo of, “Neville? Like my great uncle? When have any of you seen him lately? Actually, who are you?”
All at once, the six of them remember the ruddy great secret they’re probably not supposed to be spreading around. James blinks repeatedly and looks to Harry to respond. Harry glances at Draco, who glares stubbornly back at Harry, who then turns to Sirius for help, which James knows is a mistake because Sirius has always relied too much on his charm and not enough on plausibility when concocting a lie. It’s usually Remus who would be spinning a cover-up, except only when he’s sober, and, alas, Remus is already several sheets to the wind.
James continues to blink. The silence drags on.
Maybe he should have risked inviting Wormy after all.
Lily jerks her hand up from her lap and right into the corner of the tabletop. “I’m eng— ARGH! FUCK! OW!” She shakes it tenderly, notices she has sufficiently diverted the entirety of their acquaintances’ attention, and announces, “I’m engaged!”
Alice shrieks and seizes the proffered, reddening hand; Frank reaches over to slap James heartily on the back; and the rest of their group does a commendable job of being inconspicuous enough that the excitement of Lily’s news continues to distract Frank from his original queries.
Once the Longbottom party has finally moved on to their own table, Harry and Draco fall into a competition over who can tell the funniest story from their school days. Harry makes a good effort with his account of how Padfoot and his Divination teacher inadvertently teamed up to convince Harry he was being haunted by the Grim. What really makes that story great, though, is his description and subsequent impersonation of the professor, which he achieves with the help of two empty mead bottles, Remus’ cardigan, and several disposable serviettes laid together across his shoulders in imitation of a shawl.
“Merlin’s pubes, Potter, you’re such a muggle,” Draco complains in the middle of this production. “You already wear ugly glasses; just engorgio them, you dolt.”
Harry glowers at Malfoy, reaches sloooowly into Sirius’ pocket to borrow his wand, and proceeds to transfigure his napkin-shawl into an atrocious but realistic-looking maroon paisley wrap with coppery beaded fringes. The bottle-bottom makeshift glasses, he leaves pointedly as they are.
Draco follows this up with a truly dramatic retelling, and flail-heavy reenactment, of Harry getting pursued and ultimately hit by a rogue bludger, only to lose all the bones in his right arm. It probably definitely would have been less funny and more concerning were James still sober, but that train has long since come and gone.
“Whoever did set that bludger on you, anyway?” Draco wonders once he’s gotten his guffaws back under control. “Flint took credit for it, but Flint’s a filthy rotten liar, so.”
For some reason, Harry finds this endlessly amusing, and can’t stop giggling long enough to formulate an answer.
Draco scowls without much heat. “Woooords, Potter,” he slurs. Then, “Oh but I hope it was Weasley.”
“Fred and George?” Harry asks, scrunching up his nose.
“No, you imbecile. The girl. You know, the one who got possessed or whatever?”
“You watch it, Malfoy, that was your father’s fault anyway!”
“Calm down, Potter, Mordred’s pants. I know she wouldn’t have done it on her own.”
Harry hiccups and his brow furrows. “She didn’t, though. It was Dobby.”
Draco jerks back with such fervent wide-eyed surprise that he would surely have tumbled to the floor had Lily not grabbed the back of his chair for him. “Dobby? My Dobby?”
“Not for much longer after that,” Harry says with glee, only to fall quiet and sad a few seconds later.
Draco does not seem to notice Harry’s morose turn. “But that means I could have taken credit for jinxing the bludger!” he whines.
“But you didn’t tell him to do anything; he was trying to help.”
“Help?” Remus comments doubtfully.
Harry shrugs. “He thought if he got me injured bad enough, I’d be sent back. So I wouldn’t have to—” he hiccups, then waves his hand around airily. “Y’know, Chamber of Secrets,” he finishes, as if that explains anything.
Amid the quiet bewilderment of the rest of the table, Draco leans back and crosses his arms petulantly. “He was still a Malfoy elf. I could’ve taken the credit.”
“But then you would’ve been the filthy rotten liar,” Harry says, which sends him laughing loudly enough to attract the attention of half the tavern.
Lily sighs as she reaches over to confiscate Harry’s drink. “I think it’s water from now on for you.”
Harry’s face melts into something so soppy even James can honestly claim he’s never looked at her that pathetically. “Yes, mum,” he says, and then bursts into tears.