A/N: I wrote this for Procrastinator-starting2moro because she asked sweetly. Tied up!Remus was inspired by Tied up!James in her "Obsessive Lily Disorder." This was intended as a one-shot, but after Pips read it (thanks babe!) she insisted there be more. So it's now officially a two-shot.
Thank you again to my wonderful readers and reviewers! I don't think I say that enough and I feel I really should.
Oh Merlin what was she doing here? She couldn't do this. She couldn't do this, but she had to. Gryffindor courage be damned, anyone would be afraid to open that door. Her heart beat painfully in her chest, her palms sweated like they did the fist time she kissed James, but this time it was a different sort of fear, not the fear of losing her heart but the fear of losing a limb. Or something. Maybe her sanity.
Lily took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It was just a door. Nothing in that room beyond could hurt her. She was almost positive of that. She had been searching for James for almost an hour. He wasn't in his room in the Head's suite nor in the Gryffindor common room nor on the Quidditch pitch. The last place Lily hadn't looked was the room beyond, the room Sirius, Remus and Peter shared.
Her hand shaking only slightly she turned the handle and opened the door swiftly, jumping aside in case the entry had been booby trapped. The room beyond was silent but that didn't mean much.
Lily peeked her head around the door then slipped inside. She gasped and gagged at the nearly overpowering corn crisp smell. What was that?? "Oh Merlin," she gasped running to a window and throwing it open. She coughed sucking in deep lungs full of fresh air. How did boys live like this?! Did she even want to know what caused that smell? Unless they were boot legging illegal corn crisps, which she doubted any of the boys to be that industrious or obsessed with crisps to do so, it had to be something else. And . . . was that an underlying hint of wet dog? Were they keeping animals in here? She whimpered softly.
"You can do this, Lily," she whispered to herself, easing herself back inside and shutting the window.
With one glance at the relatively tidy if smelly room she realized her quest for James was at another standstill. He and his Marauders were nowhere to be found. She was tempted to check under the beds just to be on the safe side but decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Lily clapped her hands over her mouth stifling a scream at a loud thump from the closet to her left. There IS something living in here! she thought with a soft sob. And I'm alone and the rumor about the boys having a zoo in here is true and whatever they have in there's going to eat me and they'll find my masticated corn crisp smelling corpse lying in the boys' room and I'll never be able to have James's babies and -
She shrieked when the closet door swung abruptly toward her and instinctively jumped onto the nearest bed. "Remus!" she hissed only relaxing when she saw who had fallen out. "You scared the piss out of me."
"Mmmff mfmmf mmfffm MMMMMMM!"
She frowned down at him noticing how trussed up he looked. He was bound in ropes from head to toe looking like a mummy with a red bandana in his mouth. "Remus, what happened to you?"
He glared up at her, not even bothering to answer that question. He hoped it was rhetorical.
"Well?"
Remus rolled his eyes. Lily could be the brightest person he'd ever met in his entire life, but sometimes, just sometimes, she missed the forest for the trees.
"OH! I'm so sorry!" She leapt off the bed and knelt next to a relieved Remus, turning him over to undo the knot on the bandana. "What happened?"
"They jumped me. I'd barely even gotten out of bed and I was headed for the shower when they ganged up on me with these evil little glints in their eyes. My first thought was `Oh Merlin, don't drop the soap!' but then they tied me up and shoved me in the closet," Remus gasped. "What time is it?"
"About half eleven."
"I've been in that closet for nearly three hours trying to open the door. I think when you opened the window the wind and all the jiggling I did finally got the door to open."
"How did you know I opened the window?" Lily asked, thoroughly confused. She took out her wand and began working at his bindings.
"I could smell the fresh air through the cracks in the door. It was quite refreshing actually, thank you."
"Speaking of smells, is Sirius boot legging corn crisps to firsties?" Lily asked freeing Remus's shoulders and upper arms.
"Er, no. That would be the smell of a few very old and very dirty socks."
She paused and looked at him, slightly horrified. "Do I want to know how many you consider a few?"
"Do you?"
"Do I?"
"Probably not . . . ok, do you want a count by year?"
"Merlin's beard," Lily whispered in horrified awe. "How many?"
"Fifty by my count for this year. I think. James and Sirius go through socks like most people go through tissue."
"But how come James's room doesn't sme - he hides them here doesn't he." It wasn't a question.
"Yup. Under my bed I might add."
Lily sighed and tossed away the last bit of rope that bound Remus's hands. "Well if this . . . relationship James and I have progresses to a point where we're sharing a living space, that little habit's going to stop."
"Especially since I'm going to be setting up wards wherever I live to prevent James or Sirius from hiding their dirty socks in my flat. And thanks for the rescue," Remus replied sitting up and rubbing his wrists.
"Any time. Do you know where James happened to go after he trussed you up like a Sunday roast?"
"No, they didn't say. Or actually Sirius said, `This is for your own good Moony' and the rest you know." Remus stood and offered a hand to Lily. They sat on his bed in a moment of comfortable silence. "Why do you need to see James?"
Lily shrugged a shoulder or more like rolled it in a faintly embarrassed, trying-to-affect-nonchalance sort of way. "I think more to keep him out of trouble. It's been pretty quiet around here the past couple of days and it makes me nervous."
"And you miss him."
"And I - kind of . . . miss him," she sighed. "Pathetic isn't it?"
Remus grinned. "No, it's kind of sweet actually. But you're right; it has been awfully quiet around here. I'd hear James and Sirius whispering in those mirrors they have, but as soon as I'd get close enough they'd get quiet and Sirius would give me this glare like I'd killed his mother . . . ok, maybe that's not such a great analogy."
"Remus? Other than Sirius, are there any animals in here? Because when I opened the door there was this wet dog smell . . . unless it was you . . ." Lily trailed off sheepishly, a blush turning her cheeks pink.
Outside the Marauders, only Lily could make him chuckle at his lycanthropy. "Um, no. It wasn't me." It wasn't his job to tell her about Sirius, James and Peter's illegal animagi abilities. No, that was a fight between her and James he'd already bought ringside tickets for.
The door to the boy's room swung open with a suddenness that had Lily and Remus starting on the bed with a bit of guilt. "Step away from the girl Moony," James walked over and wrapped a possessive arm around Lily's shoulders. "I worked too hard to win her. You're going to have to try a different carnival because this prize is mine."
Lily elbowed James in the ribs to which James grunted and clutched at his side. "Merlin Lily, was that an elbow or my wit because it was sharp!"
"What're you doing out, Moony? You were supposed to stay in the closet," Sirius said with his hands on his hips and his foot tapping.
"Excuse me if I wanted to get out of a closet that I'd been standing in for three hours for no apparent reason," Remus replied rolling his eyes. "Why'd you wrap me up and stick me in there anyway?"
"We didn't want you to follow us," Peter spoke up.
"Then why didn't you just say `Hey, don't follow us'?" Remus asked with exasperation.
James, Sirius and Peter looked at each other. "He's got a point," Peter murmured.
"To tell you the truth that really didn't come up in the committee meetings" Sirius mumbled. "You were committee chair of `Moony Distraction' Prongs, how come you didn't think of that?"
"Because then this way we were guaranteed he wouldn't follow us," James replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I could've given you my word you know."
Sirius, James and Peter all looked at each other and laughed disbelievingly. "Remus you're a Marauder, we never trust each others words," Sirius spoke up as soon as he could talk.
"Boys!" All eyes swiveled to Lily. "Please. Before you get into a fight about this, where did you go?"
"Er. Lily, you can't come," James said very reluctantly as he backed slowly away from pointy elbows and quick to hit hands.
"And why not?"
Peter, Sirius and James all looked between themselves with extreme discomfort. "Weeell, it's like this - Prongs, you tell her," Sirius said grabbing the sleeve at Peter's elbow and backing slowly away.
James glanced over at Remus and grabbed Lily's hand dragging her outside. "Lily, it's Remus's birthday on Monday," he began quietly, glancing every so often at the boys inside the room who were talking and laughing, Remus seemingly having forgiven and forgotten, "and since we have tests for Transfiguration and Charms, which I know you two will hole up in the library to study for tomorrow, Sirius, Peter and I decided to throw Remus a little surprise party. But the place we set up is off grounds. Do you really want to risk breaking the rules like that?"
Lily looked up at James, deeply touched. "James, that's so sweet that you'd do that for Remus and know that we, and by `we' I'm including you in that, need to study." She glanced back inside then up at James. This was the side she rarely saw in him even after they'd started dating. This James, who was concerned about his best friends and would do anything for them, was the one she fell in love with. Merlin she wanted to snog him. "I'll go with you. Bugger the rules."
The look in James's eyes was intense and curled Lily's toes. "Do you know how hot that is?"
She smirked, yanking down on the front of his thick sweater. "How much time do we have?" she murmured, her lips barely brushing his.
"About half an hour," he grinned dopily.
"Perfect." She closed that remaining distance and kissed him softly. "I missed you today."
"You did??" he asked like an over eager puppy. Lily could practically see his cute little bum wag.
"I did."
"Get a room!" Sirius called out tossing a dirty sock at them.
"See you in half an hour boys," Lily murmured with a wicked smile on her face, pulling a dopey looking James by his sweater and closing the door.
Sirius snorted. "He's a minute man if I've ever seen one."
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