Chapter Text
"Truth or dare, Remus?" said Sirius Black.
Remus Lupin sighed and grinned at his best friend, who pushed his dark hair out of his face and took another swig of Firewhisky. Now...what should he do? Remus wondered. On the one hand, Sirius's dares were notoriously awful, but he himself was very private and dreaded what truths his friend would try to unearth.
"Dare," he finally decided, and immediately regretted his choice when he saw the evil grin spread across Sirius's face.
"Good luck, Moony," muttered their other best friend, James Potter, who then leant back against the sofa and oh-so-casually attempted to put his arm around Lily Evans, then shrank away when greeted with a scathing look and a contemptuous flick of her long red hair. Poor James, Remus thought. He was so crazy about Lily, but she didn't seem to see that and always just brushed his advances off like irritating flies. Although James normally didn't show it, Remus knew it hurt him.
"Yeah, you're gonna need it!" Wormtail, aka Peter Pettigrew, the fourth Marauder, added, sniggering and looking to Sirius for the doubtless humiliating and degrading dare that Remus was about to be subjected to-
"I can't think of anything," Sirius said suddenly, looking down at the floor. "James, you give him a dare instead."
"What?" James looked astounded, and Peter with him. Remus was sure his own surprise showed clearly on his face, too. "But you're practically famous for your dares, mate! How the hell can you not think of anything?"
"I don't know, maybe I'm just tired," Sirius snapped back, drinking more Firewhisky. "Give me a break, okay?"
"All right," James muttered. "Jeez!" He looked to Remus for support, but he just shrugged. The last six years had taught him it was better not to worry about why Sirius did the things he did - it would only give you a headache. James then looked to Peter, who nodded and gestured as if to say he was on James's side. Ugh. Remus liked Peter well enough, but sometimes he just came across as, frankly, pathetic, and this got on Remus's nerves. Sirius and James were sometimes (well, usually) annoying, but at least they had backbones and minds of their own, which Peter didn't seem to. He worshipped the ground James walked on and he was too goody-goody to even have a Butterbeer in the common room, let alone drink the Firewhisky James had also brought back from Hogsmeade the previous day. The four Marauders and Lily were all now legally of age, along with most of their year, but they doubted that their professors would be very happy with them drinking in school.
"Okay, I have one for Remus," Lily announced, sitting up straight and looking around. Despite it being nearly one in the morning, the Gryffindor common room was still fairly full of people - the exams were over and the holidays were only two weeks away. "I dare you to kiss the prettiest girl in this room."
Not exactly an original dare, but Remus didn't know what to do. He'd only ever dated two girls at Hogwarts, and them only briefly. He just wasn't interested in dating and rarely noticed girls for their looks. No, that wasn't true - he did register that certain girls were pretty, but it didn't really affect how he felt about them. The two girls he'd dated - Mary Macdonald, a friend of Lily's, and Sarah Corner, a shy Ravenclaw girl who was in his Arithmancy class - weren't particularly beautiful, or at least, that wasn't why he'd gone out with either of them. They were nice, and he had liked them, but he hadn't been interested in them in the way he knew he was supposed to be - the way James liked Lily, and Sirius- well, actually, Sirius had never seemed that interested in seriously dating girls either - he was extremely popular with them, but only ever really flirted, joked about or had the occasional brief fling. It was odd, Remus thought, that he'd never noticed this before.
"Remus?" Lily waved her hand in front of his face, and he realised that he'd lost track of what was happening.
"Sorry," he murmured, turning his attention back to the problem at hand. Then a simple solution presented itself. Hoping James wouldn't kill him, he leaned forward and quickly kissed Lily on the cheek. "Done."
"You're sweet," she said, laughing, "but I'm really not the prettiest girl here. I mean, look at Melanie Spinnet, or Jenny Prewett, or-"
"I think you're the prettiest girl here," James told her, again attempting to put his arm around her. She pointedly leaned away, but laughed fondly at him and accepted the Firewhisky he offered her. Huh. Remus had noticed recently that Lily seemed to be warming a little more to James - maybe because he no longer picked fights with Severus Snape every five minutes? Who knew - James's longtime crush might have a future after all. Certainly she was spending a lot more time hanging around with the Marauders than she had in previous years.
"Seriously though, Remus," Lily said to him, staring straight into his eyes, "who do you honestly think is the prettiest girl in our year?"
"Um...I guess I don't...really know," he stammered, unwilling to tell his friends of his tendency never to notice beauty, for fear that they would think he was weird. Lily raised an eyebrow, but let it go, moving on to her next victim.
"And what about you, Sirius?" she asked, leaning over to the corner of their little circle to get his attention. "You've been very quiet tonight, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Sirius replied shortly, "just tired."
"Okay, so who do you think is the prettiest girl in the year?"
Remus turned to look at Sirius to see his response and was startled to notice the faint expression of panic that crossed his friend's face at the question. Why would Sirius Black, the notorious flirt, have any problems with seeing beauty in girls? Maybe he was worried about offending Lily? But surely he knew that she wouldn't care?
"Um..." Sirius replied, seemingly uncomfortably, "well, like you said, there's Jenny, and Melanie, and Jia Chang's pretty too, and..." He trailed off.
"Fair enough." Lily shrugged, flicked her hair back over her shoulder, and turned to James. "And you?"
"Ah, Evans, you know none can ever compare to your beauty in my eyes," James told her dramatically, reaching out to playfully pull on a strand of Lily's hair. She half- heartedly batted his hand away, laughing.
"I'm going to bed," Sirius said abruptly, and got up to go back to the dormitory, leaving his friends staring after him, mystified.
"What was all that about?" James asked the air.