Disclaimer: I'm not JKR, but I did write this fic!
Red by Rockinfaerie
Last Night of Fifth Year
Jet black curls tumbled into the white marble washbasin. He pulled sections of his hair taut, and with a flick of his wand cut them. The sixteen-year-old boy staring back at him in the mirror was smiling. Gradually his hair grew shorter, and decidedly neater.
He looked through the doorway. As Remus was not present, the others had decided to mark his bed as their new refuge. Peter sat on the floor, his back against the absentee's pillow, which he had garnered for his own comfort. James saw that he was absorbed in one of his comics. Sirius half-lay above him, his eyes closed, his head supported by the narrow, wooden bedpost.
Peter’s head lifted from its reclined position, and on seeing James’ appearance he let out a small cry.
“What the devil are you doing!”
James turned back to the mirror, closely inspecting his freshly cut hair. He rubbed his hand through it, noting the inevitable lack of soft strands to hold on to. His eyes fixed on his reflection, he picked up his wand again, casually trimming any remaining excess lengths.
He ran his finger along his cheek. The incision had quickly healed, and he was glad to see that there was no trace left. He saw that his expression had become dark at the thought of him, and he quickly put that particular person out of his mind.
“Quidditch,” he readily replied. This was the usual excuse he used when any action was questioned.
He stepped back, admiring himself. He had done a good job, he had to admit. He tidied the hair from the floor and the sink, quickly tossing it into the bin.
“We had fun,” he muttered.
He gave his new hairstyle a vigorous run-through with his towel, and then let it remain, hanging around his shoulders. He proceeded to brush his teeth, glancing at his reflection every time he lifted his head.
Peter’s voice drifted into the bathroom again.
“Ha! You don’t cut your precious hair because of Quidditch! Anyway, Quidditch season’s over, and we’re going home tomorrow, in case you’ve forgotten!”
James spat into the basin. Trust Peter to see through that thin guise. He would play Quidditch when he returned home… must they always question him?
He always thought of home with some reluctance. It was not a bad place, but it remained oddly unfamiliar to him. As glad as he was to see the end of History of Magic classes, he would miss the team, and Hogsmeade visits.
Above all he would miss those new moonlit expeditions “ unforgettable times when his mind became so much simpler, relying on sense of smell and sound rather than total dependence on his imperfect sight.
With one last glimpse of himself, he left the comfortable seclusion of the bathroom.
“C’mon, you didn’t answer us…” came a tired voice from the bed beside him. Sirius still had his eyes closed. His uniform was crumpled from his curled up position on the bed. His tie hung loose around his neck, and his own rather long dark hair hung about his eyes. James decided to engage in conversation with his exhausted friend.
“Your head still hurt?”
The previous night had been a lively affair, to say the least. Such was the tradition of this celebratory end-of-O.W.L.s night that even the strictest teachers turned a blind eye to most activities. The drinking pursuits of fifth years in general had not been unsuccessful, and Sirius’ apparent headache was testimony to this.
Sirius rolled over, and raised his forefinger above his thumb, nodding slightly. James handed him a glass of water from the windowsill, and Sirius accepted it gratefully.
“Congrats on you and Florence, by the way,” said Peter, his voice drifting up from the floor. He looked up from his comic to see Sirius’ reaction.
Sirius looked blearily at Peter. Gradually he understood his words.
“What? No. Florence? No I did not! I definitely did not!”
His words had become livelier now, and James grinned at Peter's enthusiasm in annoying Sirius.
“How much do you remember about last night, Padfoot?”
James leaned against the bedpost to ask this, staring across the room at the window. The sun was setting. Streaks of puple, orange and red swam across the horizon. Dust in the air around him was cast in light. His body was bathed in brief warmth as the remains of the day shone through the windowpanes.
He heard Sirius’s voice from behind him.
“I mean, did I? Florence, I mean… I can’t remember that bit.”
James lifted his hand and trailed it along the curtain that draped down the side of the bedpost. Peter handed him a toffee, which he accepted. He faced Sirius, who had now raised his head slightly, his eyes squinting up, blinded by the setting sun behind him.
“You cut your hair,” he said in bewilderment.
“And I can’t possibly think why,” added Peter sarcastically. “Any guesses, Padfoot?”
Peter was smiling cheekily. James turned his back on Peter. He supposed he had guessed why he had done it. But it wasn’t just her. He had been meaning to do it, he had. She merely served as a “ a reason “ though he would never admit it.
Sirius lay back, his eyes roving the canopy for an answer, his right hand scraping his locks back onto Remus' pillow.
“Um, your hair… someone told you to get rid of it, or something…”
Peter nodded, urging Sirius to reach his conclusion. He had climbed up to the bed now, and there he sat, his legs stretched out in front of him. He reached for the bag of Honeydukes toffees on the floor, and was only content whan he had gathered several into his lap, carefully unwrapping each before popping them into his mouth.
Not quite longing to hear his friends reach their conclusion, James went to the bottom of his own bed, where his trunk had opened, reminding him to pack. He let his towel fall to the floor as he studied the state of disarray in his space of the tower dorm. The closet had been emptied that morning, and now various types of clothes, books and Quidditch-related possessions formed heaps on his bed, the floor, and bedside locker.
Each object was ready to be sorted into his trunk. Abandoning earlier half-formed notions of neat packing, he approached these things with indifference, half-throwing each piece to the bottom of the case.
The other two still discussed his motivation for cutting his “beloved Prongs-hair”. He was sure Peter knew, and why didn’t he just say it? But Peter was waiting for Sirius to realise, and Sirius was still so out of it that he resorted to the original explanation that it had been about Quidditch, in spite of Peter’s rapid attempts to dispel this idea.
The door opened. It was Remus, returning from his end-of-year Prefect meeting. James raised his hand in salute, while glumly sinking to a sitting position on the trunk.
Remus leaped carefully over Peter's empty case in the middle of the floor, and made his way to the alcove under the window, where he had left his clothes the previous night. He picked up a creased shirt from the floor and, not recognising it as his own, raised it to James, indicating to it with a flick of his chin.
James nodded to claim ownership, but scrunching up his nose pointed at Sirius. Remus, his eyes widening in sudden recollection, grinned, and stuffed it into Sirius' trunk.
Grabbing at his bed for support, James stood up, laughing at Sirius' attempts to push Peter off the bed.
On seeing not one, but two people in his bed, Remus made full use of his authorative voice.
"Off my bed!"
This jesting order had gotten Sirius’ attention - "You sound like my father!"
With his abrupt movement he had became aware one more of his headache. With a groan, he crawled towards the other end of the bed as Remus pulled Peter off. James ran over to grab at his legs in an effort to drag him, but Sirius was too resistant.
It was not yet midnight, and Sirius would not be forced to go to his kennel, no matter how tired he was.
Peter, happily sitting on the floor again, watched as Remus began to fill his own battered suitcase. James, failing in his attempts to free up Remus' bed, bounded to a standing position on the headboard. His hand hooked to the wooden post, he swung around it in a pirate-like fashion, forging an innocent gaze at inanimate objects in the room. Sirius growled at this invasion of his recently claimed territory, insisting that James was only making his headache worse. James didn't want that, did he?
Abandoning his ignored requests for sympathy, Sirius' words returned to this seemingly forgotten "Florence occurence".
“Remus, you’ll tell me. Did I do anything… unusual last night?”
Remus laughed. He lifted his bag from the floor, and leaning over his suitcase, dumped the bag’s contents in.
“Unusual? You vomited on yourself, for a start… is that unusual?”
Sirius’ eyes widened in surprise at this blunt remark. He was beginning to look slightly ashamed, and didn’t appear to want to know the answer to his next query,
“What else…?”
James leaped to the floor and ran across it to Sirius' bed. Sirius' duvet had escaped from the mattress, and from under it James retrieved a neatly folded shirt. He put the shirt on Sirius’ naked bed, and gesturing to it told him,
“There’s your shirt. The house-elves left it here this morning.”
James wandered back over to Remus’ bed, and looked down at Sirius, who was now sitting upright. James, his finger on his chin in a mockingly thoughtful expression continued,
“What else… You attempted to fly “ but that’s not unusual “ and you definitely did something with Florence. It's a bit vague, but when we found you, you had crashed out on her shoulder.”
Sirius buried his face into his knees.
“She was pretty disgusted with you, by the way,” added Peter, “And James gave you his shirt, but I don’t think he minded! I think you were still drunk this morning; I've never seen you this hungover!”
James' thoughts drifted to the unwanted attention he had recieved from those annoying girls; the ones who always seemed to wander after him and Sirius in packs. Why couldn't he ever attract the intelligent ones?
Remus dropped a pair of rolled up socks into his trunk, which was quite neatly filled.
“O.W.L. night,” he mused. “I suppose everyone has their story to tell...”
Sirius looked at Remus inquisitively.
“Not that I did anything out of order,” he clarified quickly, his hands up in the air.
Peter laughed. “Oh no, Remus is a good boy!”
James watched the battered suitcase close as he sat back down beside Sirius on the bed. He had always thought Remus’ was far more comfortable than his own. His eyes travelled to the window again. The sky had grown dark. Pinpricks of light had been scattered across the black mass that rose up beyond the Quidditch pitch.
His hand had grabbed it before he even thought about it. It was the Golden Snitch. He had forgotten to put it back in the storeroom. He realised sadly that there was no question of taking it home.
“Good catch!”
Peter’s praise did little to cheer him up this time. Sirius let out his bark-like laugh.
“Oh…” he looked positively jubilant, and his light eyes were now clear. “I know who made you cut your hair!”
“He cut his hair...” Remus repeated, mystefied. He had been the last to notice.
The fatigue set on by two weeks of exams had squandered any attempts to pull a second all-nighter. Yet by the time their lively spiritswere quenched, it had been dark for many hours.
They had sat and talked mainly. There was reminiscing about the year gone by “ the highs, the lows, and the boring, in-between times. James absorbed every minute of it. It seemed that the year had flown past them, and he had not seized his chance to catch it.
It was the last night of fifth year.
They now considered themselves men.
As James did the last of his packing, Sirius’ deep snores echoed through the tower dorm. Out of habit, he rubbed his hand through his hair, and was slightly disappointed to find such a small amount. As he was just about to close the trunk, he caught sight of his Quidditch robes.
He moved silently towards them, so as not to wake the others. The bright red was highlighted in his dim wand light. He quickly extinguished it, and gathered his playing gear close, its familiar smell evoking memories of victorious past matches.
Smiling, he placed them carefully on top of everything else.
This is "Red" of the Hogwarts Colours Quartet. Already up: "Green".