#desert microfics

They all thought it was complete bollocks, surely. Magic is indubitably amazing. It can produce a myriad of miraculous effects, sure, but how was a magical egg supposed to be able to tell if someone was trans or not? Surely it was much like one of those silly muggle mystery box things — pure happenstance and luck. Surely. Right? None of them seriously expected the little beige ovals to be able to reveal any hidden truth of themselves, but when each and every one of their eggs cracked open to release a pretty pastel blue, pink and white mist, it was like something fundamentally shifted inside each of the Marauder's very core. They were all filled with a sense of knowing so deep, so certain, that there was absolutely no question about it — for binary to nonbinary, from full to the brim to the complete freedom from it, none of them were cis after all. And what a marvellous group discovery it was.

Who better to test their newest prank idea on than Hagrid? He was a willing victim, too, as the Marauders were very proper and polite about the whole thing. How were they to know their glitter bomb would explode so far and wide from their planned close-range circumference from the handle of the half-giant's umbrella, that it would coat not only the man himself, but the innocent class of Ravenclaws diligently following behind Professor Sprout, as well the garden they were supposed to study? Turns out magical glitter is a massive pain in the arse to get rid of, or maybe that's just Marauder magic for you. In any case, the four mischievous crimson and gold-clad culprits now stand at the Headmaster's office, and try their best to keep a straight face as they're lectured on the dangers of unsupervised spell testing, in addition to being given a whole month's worth of detention for their miscalculations. One would think that would discourage them from further such attempts, but everyone in that room knows they're a lost case at this point — their thrill seeking Gryffindor dispositions are not so easily tamed. And if their school record suffers a bit for it, well… So be it.

Whoever thought setting up a portkey at King's Cross that landed you directly in the middle of a secluded wizarding nudist beach had some serious thinking to do, because what the actual fuck?! Weren't wizards supposed to be smart?! You'd think with the whole magic thing their brains would maybe work to foresee such oversights as things like this, but apparently not!! Apparently someone thought magically teleporting into a crowd of bubble headed wizards who'd all chosen to spend their quarantine at a rocky beach in the nude, while you yourself were fully clothed and laden with suitcases would be a grand idea. Sigh. It was going to be a long two weeks.

The marauders were so used to being pranksters themselves that they ended with a sort of blindspot when it came to being victims of pranks done by other people. Should Sirius have questioned it when Mary told him to meet at the edge of the Forbidden Forest because she simply had to show him the flower she'd recently discovered whose petals apparently brightened one's under-eye bags instantly? Should James have questioned it when Lily told him she had a surprise (wink wink) waiting for him if only he'd meet her behind the quidditch pitch after class? Should Peter have questioned it when Alice told him she had a special limited edition wizard's chess set delivered for his upcoming birthday, but that she was much too impatient and that if he wanted to do the honours of breaking it in with her before the celebration, he just had to go over to Hagrid's hut to pick it up? Should Remus have questioned it when Marlene told him Professor Sprout had an inkling they'd been misusing that one corner of the left-most greenhouse to grow their special herbs, nearly begging him to quickly double check their wards were still intact and undetectable? Well, considering the four boys now found themselves bound together within a circle of fairies, their consciousness slowly slipping from their grasp as they gravitated towards each other in what could only be described as cuddle puddle in a secluded courtyard… The answer to all those questions would be a resounding 'yes'.

How do you tell a Healer you got injured by falling in a pothole because you were chasing your best mate after a night out to make sure he didn't get himself in any trouble but you obviously had to do it with the assistance of your Invisibility Cloak because he couldn't know you were lowkey babysitting him but you also forgot that just because you were invisible didn't mean you suddenly got floating ghost powers and it may have escaped your mind that that meant you were indeed still susceptible to the laws of gravity and now you had what was possible a broken ankle and a very cross Sirius Orion Black sitting with you in the St. Mungo's Accident & Emergency waiting room? Well, James was about to find out.

In a galaxy far, far away, Remus Lupin was the only human among what felt like a society made by and built for were-animals. He knows there technically were other humans out there—there had to be—but it wasn't exactly something to be mentioned in polite conversation. Not to mention the fact he knew he was maybe the first human to be allowed to privilege to attend Hogwarts. But it got lonely, when every full moon he had to scurry off to the Shrieking Shack, the only safe place in and around the school for a human, warded to prevent him from encountering one of his classmates in animal form. He knew all the signs of a were-manifestation—the hunger, the hair, the changing pupils, the sleeplessness, the chills—and, every month, he was disappointed not to find of them in himself. One time, as a child, he'd convinced himself he was starting to feel the tell tale signs, but turns out he merely had a cold. He'd been inconsolable. But alas, even coming from a long line of werewolves—his bloody name was Remus Lupin, for fuck's sake—he was bound to forever be an outcast: a hairless, fangless, clawless, tailless, boring old human. Poor thing.

Listen, maybe going to a wizarding sex shop on April Fools' day looking for the fabled "Legendary Capillary Critical Removal" manscaping potion was not Remus' finest idea, but he was desperate, okay? How was he to know it was going to make him hairless as a plucked chicken everywhere?? When he heard Sirius' keys jingle-jangling at their door, he'd been maybe even more horrified than when he'd been while he was trying to keep his werewolf status hidden from his classmates back at school. And what did his menace of a flatmate do when he saw him trying to escape into the hallway bathroom? If you guessed "laughed his bloody gloriously luscious hairy head off", you'd be correct.