Titles

Sirius glanced up from his book as Harry walked in. The disgruntled look on the younger man’s face made him look a bit more closely.

“Ehhhh – what’s up, pup?”

Harry rolled his eyes at the high pitched voice. Ever since he’d introduced Sirius to muggle cartoons he’d been bombarded with the older man imitating the various characters. At the moment they were working their way through Looney Tunes and it seemed Bugs Bunny was the flavour of the month.

“Seriously?”

“I’m always Sirius.”

“You’re fucking hilarious, you are.”

“S… ok, pup. Seri… ” Cough. “What’s going on?”

Harry just glared at his godfather.

Remus strolled into the room.“What cartoon is he annoying you with now, cub?”

“Bugs Bunny,” Harry growled.

Remus heaved a sigh as he dropped down onto the couch. “I told you you’d regret it.”

“Oh come on! They’re great!” Sirius protested. “So much potential for mayhem and chaos we could adapt.”

“…….”

“…….”

Sirius huffed at the two silent and unimpressed faces turned his way and slouched down into his chair, folding his arms like a sulky child.

Remus cleared his throat pointedly and turned to Harry. “Ignore him. So what happened?”

Harry kicked the side of the fireplace in frustration. “Well. You know how I was going to the bank to get a couple of things sorted? Right. So Shivsharp called me aside and said there was a notification from a couple of lines becoming available and they needed me to do another inheritance test…”

“…and?” two voices chorused.

“Aaaaaaand. It seems that the Hufflepuff line has become active again so they were testing everyone as they came in who was of age to inherit.”

“So you’ve got the Hufflepuff line now as well?”

A sheepish nod.

“Well, that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“No…” Harry replied hesitantly.

“Lord Hufflepuff-Gryffindor. It’s not tooooo bad a sounding name.”

There was only silence from Harry.

Remus and Sirius both looked at Harry…looked at each other…looked at Harry again and asked almost simultaneously.

“…and?…” “Did something else happen?”

A silent nod.

Two pairs of eyebrows rose in unison at him.

Harry nodded sheepishly. “Hufflepuff wasn’t the only line…”

“Another one? That’s not common for two major lines to become available at the same time.”

“So obviously it’s this other one causing all this angst?”

“ummm…”

Two faces looked at him expectantly with Sirius continuing the questioning. “It can’t be that bad, can it, Lord Hufflepuff-Gryffindor?”

“That’s not funny, Sirius.”

“Huff-Griff?”

“NO!”

Remus jumped into what was quickly beginning to escalate off into a tangent. He could see Harry was getting good at side-tracking Sirius to create a distraction. “So what was the extra line that’s obviously upsetting you?”

Harry mumbled, “Smthglsan.”

“What?” the older men looked at each other.

Harry walked over to the window. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I’m going to use it anyway. And it’s all bullshit really. I mean I know that a lot of the old tossers on the Wizengamot put a lot of stock in these things but they don’t really matter in the greater scheme of things, do they? No! It’s more important about who you are and what you do and what kind of person you are…”

As two mouths opened to ask a question Harry continued to steamroll over the both of them, noticing out of the corner of his eye that both Kreature and Dobby sidled into the room to see what the commotion was. “…I mean there are so many defunct lines these days anyway. It seems that you can’t sneeze these days without hearing that someone’s picked up this lordship, and someone else has pick up that lordship. It’s new Lord this & new Lord that virtually every day so it’s not really that big a deal anyway…”

Remus’ & Sirius’ eyebrows were virtually lost in their respective hairlines by this stage at the sight of Harry babbling away like he never, ever, ever did. There was also a faint look of panic about him so they were both really intrigued by now. Whatever it was must have really given him a shock.

“Ok – stop. Harry! STOP!!”

“Just tell us, cub. You know that whatever it is we’ll deal with it. Together. Like we always do.”

The silence was heavy now. Harry looked back over from where he’d been directing his gaze out of the window to see the bulbous (more than usual) two pairs of house elf eyes focussed on him. Remus was trying to look supportive and Sirius just looked stunned (and maybe wondering if he’d turned into a pod person). That was certainly a bit of Hermione-worthy babble.

“Just tell us,” came at him again. Softly this time.

“Slytherin.”

“Ummm…pardon?”

“Slytherin…all right? …Slytherin! Slytherin! Slytherin! I’m now Lord Slytherin, Lord Hufflepuff AND Lord Gryffindor. It’s a bloody mouthful alright. My monogram’s going to look like a bloody muggle eyechart! How the fuck am I supposed to decide which one to use when? And the order? What order am I supposed to use? How do people decide this anyway? How the fuck am I supposed to work out which one’s more important? Which one’s more useful and in what circumstances. That’s why I’m happy to just use Potter. It’s quick, simple, effective. No pretentiousness about it. Just Potter, ok? I’m happy with Potter. I don’t really want any more than that.”

There was a full minute’s silence and a bit of an eyebrow war between the two older men before Sirius sighed. “Come on, pup. You know and we know it’s all bullshit but it’s useful bullshit and if you want to do all those things you want to get done then these lordships will help you do that.”

Two earnest faces looked at him with Remus nodding in agreement and the house elves stared adoringly at him, looking for all the world like they wanted to start worshipping him even more than usual. Harry groaned in exasperation as he turned to leave the room. “Fine. I’m going.”

“Lord Hufflepuff-Gryffindor-Slytherin,” teased marauder 1. “You can be Lord HaGS for short.”

“Nope. Lord Gryffindor-Slytherin-Hufflepuff,” came from marauder 2. “Lord GaSH for short.”

“Lord GaSH? No No No. I know! It’ll be – drumroll please – Lord Slytherin-Hufflepuff-Gryffindor.”.

And with that pronouncement both the marauders stood and, along with two house elves, turned and bowed low to Harry who had momentarily paused at the doorway to look at them in disbelief before continuing out,

“Lord SHaG!”

“I hate you all!” floated back down the hallway.