#braiding

++++extras

I made an adjustable sprang frame that's much easier to work with! And then immediately started learning double interlinked colorwork, which is much harder and more annoying.

It's kinda like double knitting - you make a green cloth and a maroon cloth, but you switch up which one interlinks in front of the other to make whatever pattern you want (also producing the same pattern in opposite colors on the back of the material). At some point I want to get some good pictures (maybe video?) of the hand- and finger-positions I use to do this kind of colorwork, because it wasn't super intuitive figuring it out on my own.

“Alright Sirius! One or two?” asked James, waving a little play card in his hand.

Sirius twirled his wand in his hand. “Two, I guess?” Remus reached out to still the hand, before Sirius would send sparks all around the room. Again.

“Of course you chose that,” Lily snorted. 

They were playing a muggle game, some kind of variation on truth or dare, but tamer by being focused on “friend bonding” instead of the usual drink and sexy assignments they would think of.

Sirius poked Remus in his hand with the wand, so Remus snatched it from his grip. The smaller boy yelped when he leaned away to hold it out of his reach. 

Sirius reached over him, laughter bursting from his lips, making Remus’ laugh in return.

Their happy bubble burst when Peter yelped: “Yo, lovebirds! Go flirt when it’s not your turn.”

Sirius snorted. “Just when I had him lying under me,” he joked. Then he leaned in to press a chaste peck on Remus’ forehead. Remus ducked his head, but knew his blush was impossible to hide.

Fucking Sirius with his too affectionate theatrics.

“Don’t worry Pads, your task is wingmanning you. Because you just choose the person on your right to do your hair,” James said.

Remus groaned when Sirius smirked. “The chance you’ve been waiting for, Moony. Finally you can touch my sacred hair.”

He rolled his eyes. “As if I would want to touch that crusty bird nest.”

“Oi! You take that back!” Remus raised his hand in surrender when Sirius pointed his wand, which Remus only now noticed had been stolen back, at him.

“Alright, you majesty. My sincerest apologies for insulting your fabulous hair.” His tone dripped of sarcasm. “Now come here so I can ruin it.”

Sirius muttered complaints, but slid from the sofa so he could sit between Remus’ legs.

The black, curling strands had been free all day, so it was all tangled. One of the girls got a brush for him, along with a new packet of brown hair ties.

Strangely, Sirius had been very tense for all his bravado. So Remus tried his best to be gentle, brushing from down to up and holding the hair from above when it was a particularly difficult tangle, just like he’d seen Sirius himself do it.

Around him, the game continued, but Remus had found brushing Sirius’ hair surprisingly meditating, so he filtered out all surrounding sounds.

Remus lost himself for a moment now the hair was out of disarray, letting the soft strands glide between his fingers. If the boy which the hair belonged to hadn't looked up, he probably had just been doing that all night.

“What hairstyle will you do?” Sirius asked. 

Remus shrugged while his fingers carded through the locks again. The flutter of Sirius’ eyes and the content little sigh made him want to do this forever. That being impossible, he chose the next best option. “A braid?”

“You can do a braid?”

“Normal, Dutch, French, whatever you want.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “You’re bullshitting. Since when can you do that?”

Remus stole Sirius’ wand again, gripping his hair when he got up. Then, like nothing happened, he sectioned off a strand of hair with the end of Sirius’ wand to begin his braid. “Since I was like twelve? Used to help my mother sometimes when dad wasn’t home.”

Always dramatic, Sirius fanned himself like a medieval lady. “Just when I thought you couldn’t become more perfect,” he sighed.

The harsher pull that turned Sirius’ head downwards was of course purely coincidental.

That didn’t stop Sirius from rambling on and on about everything and nothing while Remus consistently sectioned off strands to make the braid grow. It started with the fact that Remus was always such a gentleman, holding open his doors (if Sirius thought that was chivalry he had a lot to learn; Remus only ever made sure the person behind him could take the door over. The proper way was to open it and let the other person through it before closing it, naturally.) but somehow ended with some gossip about sevenyearth Ravenclaws at the time Remus had finished the two braids.

Playfully, he pulled the two endings. “All done,” he declared. Sirius looked up again and Remus wanted to kiss his happy lips so badly.

“Already?” Sirius asked surprised. One hand felt over his head, then made grabby hands to get his wand back. “Better go take a look.” Not two seconds later, Sirius’ shard of magical mirror flew right into his hand.

Of course that notified the others, who were doing the limbo(?), of the fact that they were done. The room erupted in confusion from the marauders about his ‘sudden magical ability’, quasi insulted comments from the girls about having kept his ‘magical hands’ hidden and enthusiasm at discovering said ‘magical hands’.

But the best reaction came when everyone quieted down and Sirius settled on the couch again. “You’re fucking perfect, Moony. ‘m going to sleep with this. And then- maybe- I mean if you want to… you could do it again, sometime?”