Death, and Other Origin Stories
Chapter 28: A Potion for Joy
He didn’t remember falling into the dark and quiet of sleep, but suddenly his three mates were cheering loudly as the clock struck midnight above the mantle, yanking him from the deep pool of a sickly unconsciousness, his mouth tasting like saw dust and stale tea. Another blanket had been tucked haphazardly around him.
Bleary eyed, he sat up with baffled incredulity to see a half-dressed James slinging an uncoordinated arm around Peter and wetly kissing his ruddy face. Remus was just wiping his mouth from where he’d been drooling on the arm of the sofa when James was suddenly grabbing him.
“What the—” was all Remus managed in his exhausted stupor before James screamed “ Happy New Year ” at full volume and pressed his spiced mouth onto his, Sirius wolf whistling loudly. His shirt was unbuttoned and his face was flushed and his smile was big and bright. He smelled of cinnamon, vanilla and star anise. Like his skin might taste of it.
“I am not drunk enough to let you snog me, Potter!” Sirius shouted in warning, pointing the empty bottle of rum at James with one wavering hand and reaching for a cushion with the other.
“ What —” Remus repeated, dazed and confused in his exhaustion, wiping his mouth of the lingering bitterness of the spirit, realising just how sloshed his friends had gotten during his unintended nap.
Grumpy and tired and annoyed, he was suddenly feeling both isolated in his sobriety and somehow betrayed by their drunkenness.
“It’s New Years!” James was yelling in justification, launching himself at Sirius. In his inebriated foolishness, he miscalculated the distance and the force with which he lept and the two of them tumbled off the winged back chair with a loud thud and near hysterical laughter.
“C’mon, Lupin,” Peter was saying with a lopsided smile, swaying where he stood, his hand outstretched. Remus whinged and grimaced as Peter pulled too hard in helping him up, his hip aching something awful.
Sirius managed to worm his way out from under James and stumbled in an inelegant attempt to run to the stairs, James in hot pursuit, socks slipping comically on the wooden floor, shouting the benefits of platonic kissing.
Slowly, with aching bones, Remus shuffled his way to the stairs, listening to James yell dire threats of intimacy to the cackling admonishments of Sirius.
Remus toppled into bed with a graceless exhaustion, pulling his duvet tightly around his chilled body. Another wrestling match had commenced and James could be heard making exaggerated smooching sounds over the wheezing, cataplectic laughter of both Sirius and Peter.
And Remus, much against his will, felt an endeared smile break through his maudlin irritation as Sirius finally admitted defeat. James had whooped in victory before grabbing Sirius’s grimacing face and performing, what could only be described as, the least desirous snog Remus could possibly imagine.
