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June 20, 1979
3:24 p.m.
Of all the things Remus expected to greet him at the doorway with he got home after a particularly stressful day at work, an adorable (if not overweight) white rabbit hopping onto his foot, preventing him from actually entering the flat definitely didn’t even crack the top twenty.
The rabbit stared up at him with unblinking red eyes, pink nose twitching.
Remus unabashedly stared right back, eyebrows slowly raising higher on his forehead with each passing second.
The rabbit finally got bored of him and hopped along down the hallway towards the stairs.
Remus sighed as he watched the rodent disappear down the first step.
It was very tempting to follow after the rabbit, who had seemed quite keen on escaping whatever it was being subjected to inside the flat, but the thought of a nice hot cup of tea, a good cuddle with an overly excitable boyfriend, and some bad muggle television made him stay.
“Hey Pads,” Remus started, still staring at the retreating rabbit, “Is there something you want to—”
He was cut off by a flurry of motion, a too tall top hat, white gloves, and was that a plastic wand? A quick jab in the arm with the offending stick proved that it was indeed a plastic wand. Remus was then manhandled into the living room.
“Padfoot, I still have my shoes on, what—”
Lily grunted absently, nodding sharply to Remus, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she attempted to balance two cards to add to the precarious pyramid in the middle of their living room.
With a strangled noise, Remus redirected Sirius to the kitchen.
“Sweet Merlin, those aren’t Exploding Snap Cards, are they?” Remus hissed, clutching onto the lapels of his boyfriend’s cartoonish suit.
Sirius slithered out of Remus’s grasp, flopping into a nearby chair with a smirk.
“No worries, love, just some regular muggle—”
There was a small explosion, followed by an enormous amount of swearing, coupled with a, “No worries darlings, Lily’s got everything under control. I’ll have your carpet looking good as new in no time.”
Remus glared down at Sirius, who merely shrugged.
“Hey if our carpet could survive New Year’s Eve Incident of 1978, then I do believe it can survive anything,”
“I can’t believe you two,” the werewolf clamoured about to fix his tea. He seriously debated putting something stronger in his teacup, but it was far too early for that. Speaking of something stronger though… “Hey Pads.”
“Yes, my beautiful shining beam of moonlight?”
“Are you drunk?”
“I do believe the proper term would be ‘right pissed’.”
“It’s barely half three!”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Lily countered, poking her head in. There was a distinct charcoal smear on her forehead.
Being in the Marauder’s dormitory for seven years made Remus less afraid to see the state of his living room.
“You can barely tell I mixed Exploding Snap cards with muggle ones.” Lily insisted, poking at the slightly charred carpet.
“I must say, your intoxicated magic skills are much better than our dear Prongs’s.”
“Thank you!”
“Which brings me back to the question of why are you two ‘right pissed’ at half three on a Wednesday?”
Sirius opened his mouth, with obvious intentions of explaining exactly why they were ‘right pissed at half three on a Wednesday’ accompanied by just enough gross exaggeration and potentially glitter judging by the small badly hidden bags he had taped to the inside of his forearms.
Remus, deciding he’d rather deal with cold tea than having to charm glitter out of their flat for weeks, quickly slapped a hand over his boyfriend’s mouth.
“It’s quite simple really,” Lily began easily, leaning back against Sirius’s usual chair with half a bottle of wine in her hand. “First there was the discussion of the guest list—do you know how many members of James’s extended family want to come to our wedding from India?”
Remus, who was trying not to blush because Sirius had started licking his hand at random intervals, realized that the redhead wasn’t asking a rhetorical question, and was waiting for an answer.
“Er, sorry Lily, exactly how many people want to come?”
“Two hundred and forty-eight.”
Remus snorted lukewarm tea up his nose.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she said, staring into the bottle. “That is ridiculous, right?”
“Yes—ow—absolutely, of course. Bloody ridiculous.” Remus blinked away the tears that sprang up and wriggled his nose to try and stop the pain.
“So then Black starts going over my list, which has about ten people on it because my family’s muggle and all, and I don’t trust the lot of you to act muggle for the better part of a minute, let alone an hour, then—”
Sirius used Remus’s temporary distraction to break free and pirouetted away to the space near the fireplace, ridiculous costume-tux wrinkled, too tall top hat looking far too attractive, etc.
“Then we start talking about shite siblings who won’t attend our weddings, then obviously, we need wine, so off to the wine and cake tasting I had Wormtail line up for us, which led to more deep conversation—”
Remus raised a hand.
“Wait, there’s cake?”
“Oh, yes! Don’t worry, darling, I saved you a piece of every kind, it’s in the fridge.” Lily smiled, wine stained teeth looking rather endearing.
“Continue, please.” Remus stood up and went off to the kitchen to resupply. He followed along with Sirius’s epic tale of deep wine-induced dialogue, which somehow led to the measures he would take to helping Lily’s muggle relatives attend the wedding.
“Muggles love magicians, Moony.” Sirius said in all, well, seriousness. “Obviously, if I want Prongs and Evans to have the second best wedding ever, I have to impress the muggles with magic.”
“But Pads, you’re a wizard. Magic is kind of what you do.”
“Yes, I know that! I mean muggle style magic, with card tricks, and never ending ribbons, and pulling rabbits from hats!”
“You mean the rabbit that ran out of the door the second I opened it earlier.”
“Bugger!” Lily swore. “I paid good money for that!”
“Never fear, Evans, the rabbit always returns to the hat. Bathsheba will return to me. They will help me impress your muggles and make this wedding amazing.”
“Pads, you do know that Lily is right there, listening to you explain your grand plan.”
“Well obviously. I needed someone to help me practice after we went to all the trouble of buying a book on magic tricks. She promised to forget and be completely shocked when the wedding actually comes round. Evans even has her surprise-face ready, show him!”
Lily did her best impression of being surprised. It was actually quite good, aside from the wine bottle balancing precariously in her lap.
Remus sighed.
“As long as that’s sorted,” the werewolf kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, nestling into the squishy cushions with his cup of tea firmly in hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Sirius flailed around for a moment or two.
“Wait, you—you’re actually—don’t move!”
“Black! Show him the card thing, show him the card thing!” Lily bounced up excitedly.
The wizard immediately brandished a deck of half seared muggle cards.
“Pick a card! Any card.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Remus shovelled the last of the cake into his mouth, washing it down with the remaining dregs of his tea as he plucked the eight of hearts from the deck.
5:19 p.m.
“I still can’t believe you pulled that trick off,” Remus side glanced his sobering boyfriend. “Admit it, you did some of your sodding wandless magic shite.”
“I admit to nothing!” Sirius said smugly, suave demeanour broken by an obnoxious yawn. “I can’t believe you refused to let me saw you in half though. It’s perfectly safe!”
Remus rolled his eyes.
“I’m sure it is. Though I am genuinely sorry Bathsheba didn’t return to your hat. I hope the amount of glitter you threw everywhere to distract from that made up for it.”
“It did, actually.” Sirius took off his top hat and put it on Remus’s loose curls. “Your turn to be the magician.”
“I don’t think I’d be very good at it, I’m not very good at slight-of-hand tricks... or wandless magic.”
“You’re plenty good with your hands, Mr. Moony. I can neither confirm nor deny the use of wandless magic in the creation of those tricks—well, aside from the juggling bit.”
“I knew it!” Remus half shouted, trying not to wake Lily, who had taken over the entire couch and was snoring lightly.
“Evans could do it just fine though, bloody natural that one.”
“With Prongs’s flying skills and Lily’s dexterity, their future sprog will definitely be a seeker.”
“Don’t let Prongs hear you talk like that.”
“Talk like what?” James stepped out of the dying green fire, brushing the ashes from his robes. He paused, staring at the empty bottles of wine and his blissfully sleeping wife snoring away. “Padfoot! You said you were going over the guest list and possibly cake testing! What is this?”
“With guest lists come wine, my dear deer Prongs.” Sirius stood up and clasped his brother’s shoulders. “My job here is done. Looking forward to the wedding mate!”