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The Great Hall was in glorious chaos.
Moments after the Halloween feast appeared on Hogwarts’ four long tables, a sound like popping fireworks jolted the student body one after another down a line down both sides of the walls.
Students’ shrieks of confusion and mild terror were drowned out by a clicking cacophony from above, a monstrous orange shroud that shivered at its edges. Ghosts wove in and out of the rustling swarm as it blotted out the enchanted ceiling, putting out the floating candles with little sizzles one by one until an ochre glow descended over the room.
Finally, Hagrid, surrounded by the remains of papier-mâché pumpkins—Remus had insisted they find an alternative to destroying Hagrid’s prized harvest—pointed up and shouted, ‘Why, it’s bats! Orange bats!’
The only person who reacted to this information was Professor Dumbledore, who stood at the podium with his hands outstretched and cried out, ‘How delightful!’
Prefects shouted. Students sprinted. Teachers sighed. Horace Slughorn ignored the pandemonium and tucked into his pheasant with gusto, tutting about a good feast gone to waste.
There was certainly no one left to pay attention to four pairs of feet as they shuffled their way to the Slytherin table, where several small hands appeared from thin air to snatch at least two dozen pumpkin pasties before shuffling away again.
They tucked themselves straight into a ground-floor alcove that Sirius found their first month. While James whipped the cloak off them and stuffed it in his robes, Peter revealed the pasties where he’d been holding them by using his jumper as a pocket.
For a few moments, the boys didn’t speak as they scarfed down the pumpkin pasties. It hadn’t really occurred to Remus until now, but he was rather hungry. It might have been nice to enjoy the feast before setting the prank off.
He kept that thought to himself.
Besides, the pasties weren’t just warm from the kitchens below, but with the pleasure of a prank well pulled, and you couldn’t get that at any feast. Remus finished before the others and leaned back until he could feel the castle’s cool stone at his back, wrapping his arms around his legs. He liked this part. Now that he was finished, Remus could watch James’s glasses glint as he threw his arm around Peter’s shoulders; see Peter’s cheeks flush with happiness at the other boy’s attention, smile with them as, like always, James’s grin infected Peter, then Remus, then Sirius.
He saw Sirius, too, although lately, looking at Sirius brought a strange sort of fluttery sensation to his stomach. He hadn’t figured out if it made him want to look at Sirius more or less. It had to be more, because he couldn’t stop himself from sneaking glances no matter where they were, whether that be seated behind him in class or tossing paper aeroplanes between their beds or, once, memorably, while standing on James’s shoulders holding a handful of frogspawn. It had taken James weeks to forgive him for that one.
Sirius, with his ink-black hair and those flashing silver eyes, that haughty little tilt to his chin that even James couldn’t tease out of him, those long, slender fingers that danced around him when he talked. Remus’s throat was suddenly dry; the resulting coughing fit caused him to miss the furtive glance Sirius sent his way. He guzzled some of the pumpkin juice they’d filched, only to choke on that too. Just as well that he also missed Sirius’s second, more concerned glance.
Remus finished coughing and forced himself back to reality just as Pete started talking. The fluttery feeling in his stomach calmed, but didn’t disappear entirely; it was always lying in wait.
‘Completely worth dying all those bats by hand,’ Pete was saying, sighing happily as he ate his third pasty.
‘You dyed them all by hand? You were supposed to use the Colour-Changing Charm!’ laughed James.
James was always loud enough to summon an entire staff room worth of remonstrations, but even Remus had a difficult time caring when his eyes danced with mirth just so, as if you were in on every joke even if you had no idea what he was on about. James laughed with his whole body; it made you want to laugh, too.
‘Well…I forgot,' Peter said, looking down. 'I can never remember the incantation anyway. Conolic Veria? Colon Vertus?’
‘Oh, come on, Pete, it’s just Colovaria,’ Sirius replied, rolling his eyes.
Remus cleared his throat. ‘Some of the bats look especially orange to me.’
‘Don’t patronise him,' Sirius said, in that smarmy voice that drove Remus insane, the one that made him sound posh and, ironically, quite patronising himself.
‘They do,’ Remus insisted, because he could see Peter’s lips quirk in a grateful smile.
Sirius replied, but while Remus could see Sirius’s mouth moving, he couldn’t hear his words. When boxing his own ears didn’t dislodge a Deafening Jinx, he turned back towards the hall.
It turned out just fine that Remus couldn’t make out anything being said, because the sight was beyond words.
Incredibly, Filch had managed to funnel the horde of orange bats into the hall wielding nothing but a single large broom and his general hatred for life’s vicissitudes. Corralled into this smaller space, portraits were scurrying through other paintings with their hands over their ears to stop the all-encompassing sounds of clicking and rustling. Every few seconds, a section of the horde closest to Filch would attempt to escape the caretaker’s manic broom-beating and swarm him until the pitch of his curses outmatched their own, and they retreated back into the pack.
The four of them clapped their hands over their mouths to stifle their giggling, shrinking back into the alcove as a poor substitute for the cloak, which James was frantically pulling out of his robes. The motion was hindered somewhat by how hard his shoulders were shaking; his glasses sliding down his nose another millimetre with every quiver.
Peter combed the pasty crumbs up with his wand as James managed to throw the cloak over the two of them as they all stood up. He tried to toss it over Sirius’s head, too, but Sirius’s shoulders were shaking with laughter so hard that it just slid right back off of him.
Looking at Sirius’s grin, Remus’s stomach stirred in that same strange way as before. The fluttering reminded him of, well—he looked past Sirius at Filch, whose curses had ceased to take the shape of human words and were now formless shrieks of rage—and knew what the feeling in his stomach reminded him of.
As Filch finally pushed the orange bats out the door and into the dark night of All Hallows Eve, Remus looked back at Sirius, who was now openly laughing, all the frowning frustration he carried back with him every summer finally wiped away. He didn’t even hear the click of James’s camera, found when he retrieved the cloak, as he joined Sirius in laughter.
Remus didn’t quite yet understand why he had bats in his stomach, but he knew one thing.
He’d do anything to make Sirius laugh like that again.
.