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The Muggle Artefacts Museum


Sirius and Remus had their first Muggle Studies class the next day while James and Peter had a free period, which James was planning to spend collecting blankets from the laundry room to bring out to the Shrieking Shack for Operation Cheeremus. “This is gonna be brilliant,” Sirius was saying as he walked backwards, facing Remus, headed for the Muggle Studies classroom. The room was near the library on the opposite side of the castle from Gryffindor Tower, so they’d left early to get there, carrying their parchment for notes. Sirius’s quill was stuck up in his hair, standing straight up like he was Peter Pan or something, his Gryffindor tie tied ‘round his head instead of his neck again.

“Watch where you’re going before you hit a trip step,” Remus said. He had the textbook they would be sharing for the class open across his forearm as he walked.

Sirius laughed and turned about, falling into step beside Rey, tossing his arm about his shoulders as he usually did. “We’re going to know everything there is to know about muggles. We’ll be muggle experts.”

“I’m not entirely sure what we’ll use the information for, but yeah,” Remus answered.

“Well what if one of us gets into politics? We’ll need to know about muggles then.”

“Neither of us are planning to go into politics,” Remus replied. “I’m far too shy and you’re far too loud.”

“I could be a politician,” Sirius answered, “You dunno.”

“You’d end up blown up by MACUSA within an hour with your big mouth,” Remus replied, smirking.

“Bloody hell, is that a smile, Moony?” Sirius gasped in an exaggerated way, jumping in front of Remus and stopping him walking, his hands on Remus’s chest. “It’s been so long! Let me see it again.” Remus smiled again, but this time it was clearly forced, more like he was baring his teeth awkwardly than actually smiling. “Oh bloody hell, no, not like that.”

“Like how then?” Remus asked.

Sirius demonstrated. His was equally forced.

“That’s what I’ve done,” Remus said, doing the same grin again.

“No, no, see your lips aren’t rounded enough,” Sirius said through gritted teeth, keeping his fake smile on as he spoke, “You gotta do it more like -- like this.” He curled his mouth around his teeth so it looked as though he’d had a hanger stuck up in there.

Remus smiled so hard he squinted his eyes like a grimace.

“Oi, it just keeps getting worse,” Sirius said.

“Alright that’s enough, we look foolish,” Remus said, seeing a Ravenclaw girl go by with a funny look on her face as they glanced their direction. “We’re attracting attention.”

“So?” Sirius waved his middle finger at the girl and she turned her nose up and pranced away.

“Sirius!” Remus batted his hand out of the air. “Why do you have to be such a prat?”

“It’s fun being a prat, Rey,” Sirius replied, “You ought to give it a go sometime.”

They reached the classroom and found themselves in a wide open room filled with muggle stuff. The ceiling was hung with dozens and dozens of lightbulbs from various time periods from long cords strung to the ceiling and covered with brightly colored glass shades. Remus stopped to look at a living room set up on a plinth with plastic people posed in actions that would happen on an ordinary muggle day. On the floor was a orangey-brown shag rug and and a chart depicting optimal distances muggles ought to keep from the telly for visual safety.

“Oi, take a look at this,” Sirius said, snort-laughing from across the room.

Remus turned to look and found Sirius was standing at a glass display case full of razors. “Could you imagine, trimming the hair on your neck and face with that?” Sirius pointed at one of the triple-bladed plastic sticks in the case. “Do they want to kill themselves? One slip and --” he swept his forefinger across his throat.

“Well, they don’t have spells to do it,” said Remus.

“Blimey.” Sirius rubbed his hand over the hair on his chin. “Reckon I ought to get one?”

“I like the scruffy hair on your chin,” Remus answered without thinking. He immediately flushed and turned away quickly, hurrying to look at a display in the opposite corner of a muggle man with a thick white beard and funny clothes holding a kite with a flickering lightning-shaped light high in the ceiling, striking a key tied to the kite tail.

Sirius stared at the razors, his hand still on the scruff of his chin and he smiled to himself as his fingers moved over the hair, please with the fact that Remus liked the hair there. After a moment, he stepped over to the diorama that Remus was at. “That bloke has some very fashionable shoes going on there,” he said, snickering and pointing at the old fashioned buckled boots.

“I’ve seen Dumbledore wearing boots rather similar to that,” Remus said.

“Well Dumbledore’s old, isn’t he?” Sirius said, “Probably was friends with this bloke…” he looked at the sign in front of the diorama. “Benjamin Franklin, says his name is. 1706 to 1790. Only a century off.”

“Invented electricity,” Remus read. He looked up. “Well he didn’t invent it at all, did he? Electricity is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Muggles just have harnessed it for their own use. That’s awfully presumptuous to say one invented a natural phenomenon.”

Sirius laughed and they moved on to the next display case - a couple of hello-phones were in a line on the shelf in this case, starting with one that looked like a small desk with buttons and cords a plenty and a headset with great big earmuffs on either side and they progressively got smaller ‘til they had a teal blue plastic phone. “How would you like if we got two of those and used them to call each other?” laughed Sirius.

“Mum had a hello-phone,” Remus said, “She used it to call my grandmum in California before she died. It looked like that one there,” he pointed at a black plastic hello-phone with a big round wheel labelled with numbers. “You stick your fingers in the holes there and pull the wheel about ‘til you’ve put in all the numbers and then you hold that other piece there to your face and you talk and the person on the other end can hear you like you’re standing right beside them, even if they’re a continent apart.”

“Or you could floo them and see them face to face,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes.

“I didn’t say it was a perfect system, only that it works,” Remus said.

The door opened before them and on older witch stood in the doorframe, wearing a plain blue muggle dress with a white apron. “Why hello!” she called, smiling and waving for them to come in, “Hello, my dears! Are you here for Muggle Studies? The class will be starting soon… we’re just waiting on a few more students to arrive… My name is Emily Kotes.”

“Hello Professor Kotes,” Remus replied.

Professor Kotes beamed about the room. “I see you’re taking a look at the Muggle Artefacts Museum. What do you think?”

Sirius pointed at the display case of razors, “How many muggles die using those?”

“Oh it’s very rare, dear,” the witch replied.

Having completed looking about the museum room, Professor Kotes led them into a large classroom that had a series of high counters with stools behind them, one wall was lined with stoves and other muggle appliances and Sirius wondered what all of the devices were used for. Overhead was a plastic replica of a muggle aeroplane and a space shuttle and a mobile of planets labelled Space as the Muggles Know It. Sirius crawled onto a bench beside Remus, who put the textbook down on the counter, opened to the first chapter and started reading over the material.

“Pssst, Rey. What’s that thing?” Sirius asked, elbowing him and pointing to the corner where a contraption stood.

Remus looked over. “That’s a vacuum cleaner.”

“What’s it do?”

“It sucks the dirt up from the carpets.”

“For real?”

“Yeah,” Remus said, “You turn it on and this brush spins at the bottom there, by the wide part on it’d head there, and the brush stirs up the dust and this air tube inside sucks the dust up into that bag on the back. The muggles replace the bag once it’s full.”

“That’s an awful lot of work,” Sirius observed.

“Mum used to say it was her daily cardio work-out,” Remus said.

“Cardio work-out?”

“You know. Exercise. It’s what muggles do to stay healthy.”

“Blimey, I’m going to learn loads in this class,” Sirius observed. “Muggles are fascinating.”

“Mhm,” Remus murmured.

More students started trickling in, a majority of which were Hufflepuffs, and, Sirius noticed, rather conspicuously, there were no Slytherins at all. “Of course not,” murmured Remus when Sirius pointed this out in a whisper, “Why would there be? They hate muggles, don’t they?”

The class began and it proved most interesting. Professor Kotes taught them about muggle homes and the use of electricity. She smiled when Remus raised his hand and mentioned his observation that electricity was a natural occurrence and therefore had never been technically invented and she said, “You’re very bright.”

When they’d finished with the lesson, Sirius led the way back to Gryffindor Tower, chattering a mile a minute about having a light switch on the wall to turn the lamps on and off. “And what if your elecky-tricity runs out?!” he asked, “Do the lights not turn on then?”

“Sometimes the power lines will go down and the lights will stop working for a time,” Remus replied. “Then they use candles.”

“Why not just use candles anyway and save the trouble?”

Remus shrugged, “I suppose because they’d have to light each one at a time with a match and it would take a good deal of time.”

Sirius shook his head. “I’m glad I’m not a muggle. I’d go mad.”

“You already are mad,” Remus replied.

Sirius grinned.

“You’d also cut your neck open with those razors,” Remus said, “Rare or not, you’d be the one who’d do it.”

“Only if I bothered to shave,” Sirius answered. He ran his hand over his chin, “You know, I think I rather like my scruff… Perhaps I’ll keep it a bit.”

Remus smiled.