A/N: As usual, none of this is mine. (Gosh darn it, someone tell
Lyria, Sirius decided, hadn’t changed a bit.
Here she was, at a party for him in honor of the fact that his name had been cleared, just sitting there with her scotch pretending he didn’t exist. The nerve of her, really. He approached her with just a little bit of caution and sat beside her. “Miss me?”
Lyria could smell the booze coming from his breath. Or perhaps that was her. “Not in the slightest.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To cart your ass upstairs when you drink yourself unconscious,” she shot.
“Won’t work if you’re out on the floor,” he hiccupped.
“I can hold my liquor, thank you. I got good at it when we split up, you good-for-nothing bastard.”
“You *are* an angry drunk.”
“Damn straight.”
“Well let’s make the evening interesting. I challenge you,
“You’re on, Black.”
~*~*~
Lyria Strider woke up and immediately noticed that her head hurt. Badly. She stood and found that the floor was much farther away than it had been the night before. Strange. She looked up into the mirror and found…
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Meanwhile, just down the hall, Sirius Black was also waking up and feeling strangely squished. Wondering if it was the result of a spell gone wrong, he decided to stop trying to show off while drunk and stood up. Brown hair fell into his face. Brown hair??? He looked in the mirror…
And found Lyria Strider’s face staring back.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
He heard an answering bellow from Lyria’s room and charged down there as fast as suddenly very short legs would carry him. “Lyria?” He stopped, noticing the change in voice and that he was addressing himself.
Lyria – he assumed at least that it was Lyria, despite being his body – had her (his?) face buried in a pillow. “Stop that, you’re going to hurt me.”
“What happened?!?” She shrieked.
“You’re me. And I’m you. I think.” Sirius paused. “Could you not make that sound with my voice?”
“Then brush my hair before you leave my room in the morning.” Lyria stopped, thought about what she’d said, and decided he’d know what she meant.
“What?” He looked lost. Lyria noted that confusion didn’t look good on her face.
“What do we do about this? And how did it happen?”
“Do *you* remember anything that happened last night?” He countered.
“Point conceded. I know we were messing around with complex spells… someone screwed up. So how do we reverse it?”
“Beats me.”
“Well aren’t you loads of help,” she shot.
“It’s strange to watch my body get smart with me.”
“Your vacant look doesn’t transfer well to my face.”
“Look, let’s just… go get cleaned up and then… talk to Dumbledore or something,” Sirius said after a moment. “Wow. You have a really high voice.”
“Not really,” she replied. “I seem to have left a few brain cells in there when I transferred. Good idea.”
“Meet you in… fifteen minutes?”
“It’s going to take you longer than that to figure out how to be me in the morning. An hour.”
~*~*~
Sirius opened the bathroom door tentatively. Okay. Think like a girl.
First, find the basic things he was going to need. There was soap in the shower, and… two bottles of shampoo? No, no, one was conditioner. And the shampoo one was empty.
He pulled open the cabinet and was assaulted by a particularly violent collection of bottles. “Gaah!”
Now what? Think, Sirius. “Accio shampoo!” A bottle flew to his hand. Problem solved. He glanced around the bathroom at the small mess and was going to just use a charm and fix it, but curiosity got the better of him. Try as he might, he couldn’t resist the urge to know what was in his ex-girlfriend’s bathroom.
He picked up a box and dropped it as if it were on fire. Tampons. Oh, God.
He used the cleaning charm. One bottle remained on the sink. Face wash. Ah-hah. Best leave that thing alone and just take a shower with the stuff that was in there.
There was of course the fact that he was about to be washing a female body. His ex-girlfriend’s, to be exact. And while he was very familiar with said body, he’d never taken a shower from inside it.
Well. This could be fun.
~*~*~
Lyria headed for the bathroom. As usual upon waking up, she had to pee… oh no. How exactly did one…?
Handling Sirius first thing in the morning was definitely a new experience. Now that she thought about it, there *might* be advantages to this. Although checking herself out was a little bit awkward, Sirius couldn’t accuse her of harboring feelings for him if he didn’t know what she was looking at when he wasn’t in his body.
Which meant… oh, gross. Sirius was probably prancing around naked in front of her full-length mirror.
She showered quickly and dressed faster. What else did men do in the morning? Shave? She glanced in the mirror, decided it was safer not to, and left to meet Sirius.
~*~*~
Sirius arrived fifteen minutes late.
“What did you do to my hair???” She hissed.
“Why didn’t you shave?” He hissed back.
“Because I didn’t want to slice you to bits! What did you do to my hair?”
“I put it in a ponytail.”
“Did you use a *hairbrush?*”
“Yes, thank you. Let’s go find Dumbledore.”
She led the way.
“Damnit, you have short legs.”
“Now you know how *I* used to feel,” she shot back as they entered the office.
Half an Hour Later….
“Are you serious?!?”
“No, you are. At least temporarily,” Sirius retorted.
“I’m afraid you two had best get used to being like that for now,” Dumbledore said calmly.
Sirius sat down. “Here she goes…”
“That’s impossible!” Lyria yelled.
“I sound like a little kid when you do that,” Sirius said.
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I really couldn’t care less,” Lyria snapped. “Get your ass to the library and start looking for a solution.”
“Me?” Sirius asked.
“Yes, you. It’d be pretty damn suspicious if your body was in the library.”
~*~*~*~
“Thought I might find you hiding out down here,” a voice said quietly behind Sirius. He turned around to find Remus there, smiling pleasantly.
Sirius smiled as well, all ready to ask his friend for help, but then remembered the situation *and* that Remus thought he was talking to Lyria. “Hi. What’s going on?”
“The usual.” Remus sat, taking what he thought to be Lyria’s hand.
‘Oh, gross!’ Sirius forced himself to smile rather than make a face. It *did* explain all of Lyria’s absences lately, though. She’d been running off with Remus… which meant they were probably… Oh, God. “Have fun last night?”
“Yes… you and Sirius should have been more careful, though, you could have made a real mess goofing around with magic in the states you were in,” he said warningly.
Sirius smiled at the irony of it all. “Guess everyone was lucky, then.”
“Very lucky,” Remus agreed, kissing Lyria softly.
Sirius jumped to Lyria’s feet. “Oh no, I completely forgot, Dumbledore wanted to see me… I’ll catch up with you later, Remus.” And he fairly fled the library. He definitely had to talk to Lyria about this… *after* he brushed his teeth.
~*~*~*~
Sirius grabbed Lyria by the arm and dragged her into an empty room. “You and Remus?!?”
“What about us?”
“You’re a… a thing?”
“Yes.”
“How much a thing?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your damn business.”
“I think it is when he tries to stick his tongue down what he thinks is your throat! Are you… do you two…”
“*What,* exactly, is wrong with you?”
“I didn’t know my voice had a snotty tone,” he snapped. “Are you and Remus…”
“We’re close, yes.”
“I got that part, what I’m asking you is – do you… are you sleeping with him?”
Lyria looked over her shoulder, which like the rest of her was currently inhabited by Sirius, and felt her jaw drop. “Of course not! Don’t be disgusting! We’re friends.”
Taking the hint, he turned as well to find
Lyria and Sirius found a new room in which to finish their discussion. “How much do you think they heard?” She asked.
“What do you care? They’re going to think I’m the one that’s… ugh, that’s just sick.”
“Believe it or not, seeing as how I love Remus, I care what people think about him.”
“Are you two…?”
“We’re lovers. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Well under normal circumstances, I’d just feel sorry for Remus, but right now, yes, I have a MAJOR problem with that!”
“Don’t get cute. Listen to me. The whole lovers thing, it’s still fairly new for us… don’t screw it up for me.”
“If you think for a second that I am going to let him get lucky while I am inhabiting your body, you’d better think again.”
“Well perhaps you’d better think of a good excuse.”
“Fine. You’re going to have to have your period this week.”
“Won’t work, that was last week.”
“Well it’s your love life, so why don’t *you* think of something?”
“I’m thinking about getting you a haircut while I’m in your body, how’s that?”
“I’ll break up you and Remus if you even think about it.”
“If you ruin things, I’ll break *you.*”
“Then help me think of a way out of it!”
“For a few days you can buy some time… just… be cuddly. You do have the option of just not feeling like it, which I know is something *you* have never experienced, but…”
“I think you’re making an awfully big assumption.”
“I think I used to be your girlfriend and therefore I know these things.”
“That’s not going to work very long.”
“Well this isn’t a permanent arrangement, is it? We already know it’s a transfiguration gone wrong, probably some sort of switching spell.”
“You already know these things. I’m still trying to get used to your shoes.”
“Don’t get used to them, get *out* of them,” she said impatiently. “Oh, God, I’m starting to sound like you.”
“And it’s scaring me. I’m going back to the library. If at all possible, keep your boyfriend away from me.”
“I’m going to talk to Dumbledore… he used to teach Transfiguration…”
“Fine. Good. Go.” Sirius returned to the library.
~*~*~*~
And yet three days later, there was no progress. In fact, Sirius mused, things were looking worse than ever. Dumbledore was simply out of ideas, the library had been no help, Lyria was getting more and more irritable, and he was having a hard time evading Remus.
Which was exactly what he was attempting to do now with no success.
“Lyria!” Remus called sharply as he walked faster to catch up to her.
‘Damn her short legs!’ “You don’t have to yell, Remus…” He didn’t even know how they acted around each other! This was impossible!
“We need to talk. Now.”
“Does it *have* to be right now? I was going to go find –“
“Let me guess, Sirius?” Remus asked, looking uncharacteristically angry. “Yes, it has to be right now.”
“Alright, then…”
He let Remus grab Lyria’s arm firmly and drag her into a nearby classroom. “Lyria, what is going on?”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“You can’t bear to look at me since the party, that’s what I mean! I mean that you spend all your waking hours with Sirius! On the few rare occasions when you can’t find him, you hole yourself up over massive volumes on Transfiguration in the library! You haven’t *spoken* to me for nearly four days now, and you’re avoiding me as if I’ve caught something highly lethal and immensely contagious!”
“Remus, I don’t mean to –“
“Let me finish. If you’ve decided you want Sirius, I think I at least have the right to hear that from you.” There was a moment’s silence. “That’s it, isn’t it? You and Sirius…”
“NO! No, that’s not it at all, I just…”
“Then *what* is it? If there’s something wrong, Lyria, tell me, please, because I certainly can’t figure it out!”
Sirius could take it no longer. “Listen, there is something wrong. You’re the unknowing victim of a horrible, horrible bout of stupidity on the part of your girlfriend and your best friend.”
“Then you slept with him.”
“No! It’s not about sex, it has nothing to do with sex! I can assure you that there will *never* be anything romantic between Lyria and me *ever!* It ended years ago, thank God, and you have all my sympathy if you choose to carry on with her.”
“You *are* Lyria…”
“No, I’m not. Come with me.” Sirius led Remus up to Dumbledore’s office, muttered the password, and charged up the moving staircase, throwing open the door. “Lyria! Dumbledore! We’re explaining this to Remus, and we’re explaining it to him RIGHT NOW!”
“Remus, honey, maybe you’d better sit,” Lyria sighed, shooting Sirius a glare.
Remus blinked. “Did you just call me…?”
“Just sit down.”
~*~*~*~
An hour and a half of explanation left Remus relieved and yet… well, really rather disturbed. “So… when I kissed who I thought to be Lyria…”
“Yeah that was… not so much Lyria,” Sirius told him.
“Well. That’s… utterly disgusting.”
“But you’re… you’re alright with all this, you know it wasn’t me acting like an idiot?” Lyria asked.
“Yes… I wish I’d known this several days ago, but I think I’ve got a handle on it now.”
“You aren’t the only one who wishes you knew days ago. You’ve been hard to avoid, you know?” Sirius grinned as Remus turned scarlet. “Though I guess it’s really rather cute, you two. Listen, Remus, seeing as how she used to be my girl, once we get all this sorted out, if you want to discuss –“
“Remus does better than you ever did,” Lyria cut him off, which caused Sirius to gape while Remus turned an even deeper shade of red.
“I believe,” Dumbledore interrupted before Sirius could say anything else, “That I may have a solution to the current situation.”
“You like Remus better than you liked me?” Sirius demanded.
“Honestly? Yes.”
“Well considering what you thought at the time, that’s really saying something for Remus, because – “
“
“And why are you so fascinated with my love life, exactly?” Lyria demanded of Sirius.
“Can we focus?!?” Remus demanded. “I’m getting absolutely exasperated with you two!”
“Or else you want Lyria back so you can –“
“SHUT UP!”
“Now boys, don’t fight over me,” Lyria said with a grin.
Sirius blinked. “Could you please not suggest that I want you, especially not using my voice? Because I don’t, and it’s disturbing.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“Something about a solution,” Remus interrupted them again. “Which would eliminate this incredibly bothersome problem you two are currently having.”
Finally, finally, they turned around to pay attention to Dumbledore.
~*~*~*~
“We have to wait until the quarter moon. You realize that’s another three days from now?!?” Lyria yelped.
“It’s the safest solution to ensure a complete reversal,” Dumbledore told them calmly, but Remus was sure he caught a glimpse of amusement in the headmaster’s eyes.
“I’m not going to be able to stand to do this for another three days,” Sirius said.
“Aw, come on, you’ve finally figured out how to brush Lyri’s hair properly. She’s starting to look like her again,” Remus teased.
Sirius turned to him, gaping. “You think this is funny? You, of all people, think this is FUNNY?!”
“Well… it is entertaining, at least from where I’m sitting.”
“It was especially funny when you kissed your childhood friend,” Lyria replied. “I mean, people talk about you two, but…”
“I had absolutely no way to know, though it *does* explain an awful lot… WHAT DO YOU MEAN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT US?!?”
Lyria laughed.
“I think you’d better explain that, or I might just cut off all this hair you’ve been trying to let grow,” Sirius warned.
She glared. “You wouldn’t.”
He conjured a pair of scissors. “Try me.”
“Fine. I’ve heard it said, once or twice, that you two are… a thing,” Lyria said.
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” Remus made a face. “With Sirius? Just… no, not for me.”
Lyria laughed. “Well maybe you won’t be so horribly shy about kissing me in public when you think someone might be looking once we fix all this.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, smiling a bit. “For now I think I’d prefer not kissing, it gets a bit confusing.”
She laughed.
~*~*~*~
The three days had been agonizingly long, but finally, finally, after what seemed to be years of waiting, the complex spells were done and things were back to normal. Lyria’s first action upon that discovery was to launch herself at Remus and kiss him firmly.
Sirius couldn’t resist. “What do you think you’re doing, Black?!?” He barked at Lyria.
“Oh, grow up,” she snapped back at him. “Honestly!”
Sirius looked indignant. “And who are you to tell *me* to grow up, as you’re the one who practically shagged your little boyfriend on the spot?”
“Why, are you jealous?” She snapped.
“Lyria… please don’t *ever* suggest that again,” Remus requested, slipping an arm around her in an attempt to prevent another fight.
“See? No one wants you,” Lyria said snidely to Sirius.
He made a face.
Remus dragged her away, grateful the confusion was ended. Clearly, certain things would never change.
A/N Again: Sorry about the extra note but that’s the only way you get my opinion in these works… so deal. =P I really wanted to write it so that Lyria & Sirius wound up together in the end, as is customary in my works, but they flat out refused to cooperate… plus I kinda felt bad for Remus… so I kept it this way, with the slashy jokes and everything. Let me know what you think!