BETTER THAN WEIRD

the maurauders, if they'd been *nsync. look, i just write what they tell me to.


Remus stared at the Chinese-motif tunics in obvious dismay. "You know," he said conversationally to the dressing room at large, "when I gave up that job at the amusement park, I thought I'd never have to look as stupid as I did in that werewolf costume ever again."

"Stupid?" Sirius leaned over from his high makeup chair, eyes round. "How can you say we look stupid?" He gestured down at himself, resplendent in dark purple crushed velvet genie pants. "We look like right bloody prats, Remus, we don't look stupid."

"We look like complete twatting gits, we don't look stupid," James said at his reflection in the mirror, squinting and smoothing the cheap satin of their vests over his hips. Sirius laughed and James grinned back, flashing all his teeth.

"Maybe you lot do," Lily remarked from her teacup of lemon-and-honey, "but I think I look smashing." Nobody said otherwise, seeing as Lily really did look quite good. She took in the silence in pleasure and went back to her tea.

Peter tipped his head from side to side and stretched. "Someday we won't have to wear the silly costumes," he said dreamily. "Someday we'll be the ones calling the shots."

Nobody said anything to that, either.

...

"There's no reason you should be getting this wrong," Snape said for the third time that hour. "We've only got two days to get this perfect. You should all be doing it without even thinking about it, at this point."

Sirius bared his teeth at Snape and loped to the other side of the stage where James was frowning to himself, stepping and trotting out dance moves in his expensive trainers, criss-crossing from one moving walkway to the other. "That little shite is starting to try my nerves," Sirius growled, jumping easily onto one of the walkways. James glided past on the other and they jumped and switched places, James turning and jogging back towards him.

"He's only doing his job," James huffed, lunging in spurts to keep up. "We really should know this stuff by heart, mate. Lily's got it all down —"

"Lily's a better dancer than some of us," Sirius said, voice sharper than he meant it to be. "And Lily gets extra training from you." The end of his walkway came up and he leaped off; James stopped running and stared, sweat dripping from his nose as his walkway took him into the distance.

...

"So how's it feeling?" Sirius asked. There was a moment of nothing and then Remus turned his head, blinking slowly; his pupils were dilated out and his face was pale, drawn.

"Not so bad, now," he said, then shifted his punctured, bandaged leg like he needed to prove it. "Doctor gave me a few shots, Lily keeps me well supplied with tea and party rings —" he gestured at a cup and a plate of icing-covered cookies, "— nothing could be better."

"Really?" Sirius grinned, and Remus groaned.

"No, not really. It aches like bloody hell and my teeth hurt from the biscuits and I'm tired of being in bed and eating soup all the time. I want to be up, Sirius, filming the vid with the rest of you and...and having meat for supper. Soup!!" Remus threw up his hands in despair.

Sirius sat down and rubbed Remus's thigh through the coverlet. "Let's order up a plate of roast beef for you, then," he said. "If the doctor fusses, you can tell her it was for me."

Remus's eyes lit up and he clutched Sirius's arm. "With puddings?" he asked breathlessly. Sirius smiled and picked up the telephone.

...

"No, I haven't much talked to James about the album." Lily gave a brittle smile and re-crossed her legs. "Because, you know — James made his own album and it was marvelous, but that was James. I'm not him."

"Of course not," the reporter smiled blithely. "But you were both in the same band all this time and you were in a relationship together —"

"I'd rather talk about my album, if it's all the same to you," Lily smiled back, ice behind it, and the reporter's eyes lost a little of their smugness.

"Um," the reporter demurred. "Um...James collaborated with a lot of people on his album — The Weasleys produced five of his songs and he's going on tour with Narcissa. Are you planning to work in tandem with any big names?"

"I don't like to plan things like that," Lily said, thawing a little. "Things happen when they happen for me, I don't go about looking for the next big thing and then trying to get them on my record." She paused for a moment, then said, a little archly, "It's all about the music, for me, not the publicity."

Years later, when Lily was pregnant and she and James caught a snippet of the old interview on some sort of retrospective special, he would remark that her comment wasn't entirely fair to him. Lily would scoff and say, "what makes you think i was talking about you, anyway?", but of course she had been.


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