Harry Potter, True Colors

Title: True Colors [Lily, MWPP]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for black eyes and thrusting.
Summary: McGonagall attempts for some group understanding and communication.
A/N: True Colors is a leadership activity we do at RA training every year, and our director would tell us the story about the people getting married every year. I bet it’s even true.

a crash course in colors:
Green: Inquisitive, Witty, Original, nonconformist
Blue: Harmonizer, sensative, genuine, peaceful
Orange: Impulsive, eager, optimistic, physical
Gold: thorough, punctual, rule-follower, stable

True Colors

“I’ve noticed,” McGonagall said at the beginning of Transfiguration, “that many of you have trouble communicating with one another, to the tune of many hurt feelings and several black eyes.”

James glared at Lily through his puffed up face, and Lily sniffed disdainfully.

“So we’re going to do an activity that will help you learn more about yourselves, and thus give you a better look at the…” McGonagall hesitated as though she found the words distasteful,
“…at the big picture. Please break up into groups three or four.”

“Well, does she want three or four in a group?” Peter fretted, waving his hand in the air, but McGonagall ignored him as she began passing out papers.

“Oh, just get over here,” Sirius said loudly, reaching over and jerking Peter’s desk towards his.

“Don’t be so rough, Peter’s only asking,” Remus admonished quietly, lining his desk up exactly equidistant between Sirius’ and James’.

“I think I’ve done this before,” James sighed. “And I could pass those papers out much more efficiently.”

“Our circle isn’t exactly co-centric!” Peter announced. “Sirius, don’t you want to move slightly to the left?”

Sirius opened his mouth, but after a reproachful glance from Remus slid his desk over slightly. Peter looked relieved.

“This looks like a silly test to me,” Sirius whispered loudly to James when the papers finally reached them.

“I don’t see ‘badass’ as an option in any of these word choices,” James replied. “I don’t feel this quiz will accurately represent your personality, Sirius.”

Remus laughed as Sirius stuck out his tongue and reached over him to punch James in the shoulder.

“Guys, I don’t think we’re supposed to talk during the test,” Peter shushed them.

“Maybe we should just take the quiz now,” Remus cut off both Sirius and James as they were about to respond.

They all bent over their papers. Sirius scrawled dark circles around his answers without much thought before Peter pointed out he was supposed to number them, not circle them. Remus, after breaking up the argument, quietly finished his, while James seemed to labor over each choice, often asking the others if he seemed more ‘curious’ or ‘competitive’. Peter read the directions at least five times before he would commit to a single answer.

“What do we do after we add them all up?” Sirius called to McGonagall.

“Are we supposed to add them up yet?” Peter looked concerned.

“I’m getting to that, Mr. Black,” McGonagall assured him. “Please sit quietly until others are finished.

“Why doesn’t she just make an utterly impossible request,” James snorted without looking up, and Remus laughed some more.

McGonagall circled the room again, looking at each student’s result before handing them a half sheet of paper which was one of several colors. Stopping beside the Marauders, she handed Remus a blue sheet, Peter a yellow sheet, James a green, and didn’t even look at Sirius’ answers before handing him an orange one.

“I’m Orange,” Sirius announced, and James rolled his eyes.

“I think we could see that,” James pointed out. “Clearly I’m Green and Moony is Blue and Peter is Yellow.”

“Gold, actually,” Peter added quickly. “It says Gold right at the top.”

“Witty, charming, spontaneous,” Sirius read, interrupting everybody, “bold, fraternal, they’ve got me pegged!”

“No kidding,” Remus peered at Sirius’ paper. “It also says you view any kind of tool as an extension of yourself.”

“I think it means you view everything as an extension of your tool!” James replied, making Remus choke with laughter while Sirius’ face turned red.

“I’m idealistic, imaginative and sincere,” Remus read. “A natural peacekeeper.”

“Does it say insufferable poof?” Sirius asked, nudging his desk towards Remus to read over his shoulder.

“You’re making the circle uneven!” Peter exclaimed.

“Why don’t you read yours next?” Remus waved a hand at Peter placatingly.

“I’m Gold,” Peter announced primly. “I’m loyal, and dependable and prepared and thorough and sensible and punctual and faithful and stable and…”

“Good lord!” Sirius interrupted. “Do you have to read every bleeding word on the page?!”

“I’m being thorough!” Peter snapped. “It says I’m supposed to be thorough!”

“Why don’t you read yours, James?” Remus rubbed his forehead with one hand.

“Green,” James said. “Analytical, calm, inventive, investigative…it says I need to respect teachers before I can learn from them.”

“I think that explains quite a bit, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said crisply as she appeared behind James suddenly, making him jump.

“It certainly explains why his OWLS were so high in this class,” Sirius put in with a charming smile. McGonagall rolled her eyes and moved on.

“I’m blue!” Remus called over to another group. The other three swung their heads to see Lily, his fellow Prefect, waving a green paper back at him.

“How about that?” he said, turning back to the others and ignoring James and Sirius’ scowls. “Lily’s a Green like you, James.”

“MY sheet doesn’t say Greens are stuck-up, prudish, anal-retentive GITS,” James retorted, one hand reaching up to rub his bruised eye subconsciously.

“Now that you all have had a chance to find out about yourself,” McGonagall called everyone back to order, “I want you to hold up your papers. Look around and notice what color your classmates are.”

She paused as thirty-some-odd papers waved in the air like so many technicolored palm trees.

“On your sheets you find some suggestions for understanding the behavior and needs of other students,” McGonagall continued. “I would like you to take these seriously, so that future understandings may be stopped before they begin.”

McGonagall glared openly at Lily and James in turn. They glared right back.

“I have a story I feel is relevant,” she announced to the class.

“I once had two Prefects who despised each other. Couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without one of them casting a hex. I administered True Colors to their class, and do you know what happened to them?”

“He murdered her and all was peaceful?” James asked hopefully.

“They got MARRIED, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall nearly shouted at him.

“They came a better understanding of each other’s needs and concerns and they fell in LOVE and they lived HAPPILY. EVER. AFTER.”

James and Lily stared dubiously at McGonagall for a moment.

James looked at Lily. Lily looked at James.

James gave a tentative smile. Lily smiled back sweetly.

Then she flipped him off.

James retaliated with an appropriate hand gesture and Sirius joined in with some symbolic thrusting on principle.

McGonagall gave them all detention.