The Shoebox Project/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Where to begin? There's got to be at least one in every installment.

  • How about:

"Sirius said to tell you, if I saw you, that he's outside. If you're killing Snape tonight, tell him Kingsley said hello."
"I don't know why you'd say hello," Remus babbles. "I'd say, I'd say goodbye."

  • The bit with Sirius and Remus researching the history of Hogwarts in the library:

"...and then, then, they talk about the type of wood that they're going to use for twenty-six pages, after which Slytherin has this brilliant idea to build it in stone, so it won't burn down, and then they talk about what a genius he is for six pages and a half, and then Gryffindor has another feast at his castle to celebrate what a genius he is, and then there are a few ballads which are quite good but all the same when you get right down to it, and they talk about Rowena's dress for twelve pages here, and then there is a brief break to discuss the type of pie they made, and then it's back to the dress again. Apparently it was very shocking she didn't want ruffles. Or did want ruffles. I'm not entirely sure because they mentioned ruffles at the very beginning of it all, but then spent three pages on the shocking aspect. How's yours?"


"So tired," Sirius whimpers, prone, from the floor. There is a book slung over his face. His hands are thrown out to the side, and his feet are flopped exhaustedly in opposite directions. "So very, very tired. Eh? What's that? Oh. This one's mostly genealogy. Hufflepuff's great great grandson is staring at me right now. Hello there, old chap. Lovely whiskers. Looks like he's got Peter killed and stapled under his nose."


"Oh dear," Remus says. "I've actually killed you, haven't I?"

  • The Beach Episode where James is heroically engaging in an epic battle with a jellyfish while Remus and Peter look lazily on, too lethargic to care.

"Nevertheless," says James, "I drink from the keg of glory!"
"You should probably be drinking from a keg of antiseptic," says Peter wisely.

  • From one of Remus's letters to Sirius in Part 25:

As her face bore down upon mine I let out a strangled cry of “TULIPS!”

“What?” Amelia inquired, having been thoroughly distracted by my deranged outburst. (And so you see my plan was successful after all.)

"OXFORD," I added. "MONKEYWRENCH. AARDVARK. CHECK PLEASE."

  • From the Halloween incident:

Kingsley looks down at Frank, cradled heavy and unwieldy and strangely poky at one end between his own massive biceps. Half of the Quiddich team is watching on in bemused horror.
"And that," Kingsley says, "is how a Beater can save a Chaser's life midair."
Everyone burst into applause.

  • The evil mistletoe in Part 6 creates some very amusing scenarios, most notably forcing Sirius to kiss Snape.
  • Part Four. Oh my God, Part Four. Peter's attempts at scary-story telling are truly hilarious.

"Anyway, luckily at this point he passes an undertaker's. And- um- outside the undertaker's, there's an open coffin with an old witch inside."
"Eurgh!"
"In the sun and everything?"
"Is it kind of like a pub sign? Corpses Within, style of thing?"
"No! No, it's just, um, a sample."
"A sample? A sample corpse?"

  • The absolutely ludicrous dreams Remus experiences in Part Thirteen, courtesy of all of his Unresolved Sexual Tension with Sirius. Particularly the Wuthering Heights sequence.

"The air is full of the uncanny sense of exclamation points!"
"Cathy!" Heathcliff sighs. He manages to do so with an exclamation point! Remus ponders suicide.

    • And then later:

"I don't even like Dickens!"

    • And a rare, lovely bit of Shakespearean hilarity:

"Do you see, Benvolio?" Mercutio repeats. "There lie our lovers."
"Are you wearing a codpiece?" Remus asks, without thinking.
"It is the very height of fashion," Mercutio says, looking hurt, "not that you would know; for thy concerns have run ever to the dry and dusty, that thou should wear a codpiece on thy brain to display thy most important organ. Wilt not look even once?"

    • And The Importance of Being Serious.
  • Everything about James' infatuation with Lily, and the way he goes about handling it. Part Fifteen does a wonderful job of characterizing his behavior around her, in so few lines as well.

James spends most of his meeting with Dumbledore and Lily boggling at her, mouth hanging open, like a dead fish. She, on the other hand, keeps her eyes coolly in front of her. It's as if he's not even there. It's as if he's not even alive. He might as well be a dead fish, and she's doing a fantastic job of not even acknowledging the smell. At one point, while Dumbledore is going on and on and on and on about their duties, James wants to get up and make faces directly in front of her. That'll show her, he thinks. She won't be able to ignore him then. However, it may not further his assertion that he really isn't a madman.

  • Part 11, in which copious amounts of Gillyweed are consumed and the following conversations take place:

"...we're talking about Evans' breasts. Did you ever see them? Were they wrong? Were they pointy? Did they have delicate bones?"
"Breasts don't have--"
"Were they like two twin stars winking at you from the great beyond?"
"What kind of fucked-up breasts have you been looking at?"

"Your lap is soft like a pillow is soft," Sirius points out. "But let's not talk about that right now. We're talking about your inability to communicate."
"My inability to communicate?" Remus splutters. "My inability? Sirius, you're the one theorizing on the possibility of farting a star into existence!"

"Sirius, you are so high you couldn't tell a conversation from a giraffe."

    • And of course, the molecules.

James: And do you remember that time, with the toaster? It was like that only a hundred times worse and a hundred times longer and less burning and more squeezing.

"I know we missed the bit about Helga and Rowena journeying into the Land of No Man!"

  • JAMES THE RUTTING STAG. That is all.

"Me. Yoooouuuu. Meeeee. Harooun."