Written for MopCat's cupcake challenge!
I don't own the Harry Potter series or any of the characters, although, I do own the cupcake! (just not the idea of the cupcake =P)
Sirius was sweating. He was covered in a red, sticky substance. He looked like he had been fighting a vicious battle. And lost.
"Sirius, what are you doing?" asked a vaguely amused Remus Lupin, one eyebrow cocked and his arms folded. The marauders hadn't been able to find their friend for hours, but when it actually came down to the fact that it had been hours since they had seen him last, they recruited the help of the Marauder's Map. It was moments like those when Remus was truly grateful they had made it. It was also moments like previously that he had wanted to slap James, who had sent him down to go retrieve Sirius because he was too busy attempting to court Lily Evans to go all the way down to the kitchens.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" he said, petulant, flipping his long black hair out of his face with a toss of his head. "I'm baking a cupcake."
Now more than vaguely amused, Remus asked, "Just one?" He stood there in the kitchens, house elves milling about; Sirius was bending over an oven. "Why don't you just use magic?" he asked, as he took a goblet of pumpkin juice from the many sitting on the table.
"What if I said it was a project for my Muggle Studies class?" he said, looking over his shoulder.
"You don't take Muggle Studies," Remus pointed out. He was actually quite curious now. Sirius wasn't the type of wizard who was keen on doing manual labor while brandishing a wand. "Who's it for?" he asked, taking a sip of his juice, his interest now showing through in his voice.
"Filch," Sirius said, without turning around. Remus spit his pumpkin juice all over the floor and choked, coughing loudly. "F-Filch?" he laughed and coughed at the same time. Several house elves scurried over to clean up the mess. "Sorry, about that," he told them, about to offer to help but they were already finished and back to work.
He returned his attention to Sirius. "Why Filch?"
"Why not Filch?" Sirius said, now stopping his work and turning around. "I figured after all the hard work he does around the castle, he deserves a little treat." Sirius grinned widely. "And I figured I'm the best to give it to him, seeing as I keep his position worth filling. Without me, who would he have to curse at and ramble on about hanging people from their toes in the dungeon?" Sirius' grin grew wider. "It's job security."
"Oh, is that what you're calling it?" Remus grinned back. For a moment, Remus thought indistinctly of Sirius and Filch eating a candlelit dinner together under the starry sky, the disaster of a cupcake between them on the table, both inclined toward each other, leaning in…Remus shook his head comically. Laughing to himself, he asked, "Mind if I join you and make this aménage à trois?" Sirius' grin dropped, and he looked completely confused.
"Huh?" he asked, staring at him, his head cocked to the side, covered in powder.
"Can I help?" he said, smiling to himself.
"Oh," Sirius said, his grin returning. "Why didn't you just say so? Of course you can."
Sirius turned back to his work. He really ought to stop this misbehavior rather than helping it, being a prefect and all, but Filch repetitively tried to catch Remus on his 'monthly visits' out of the castle, and Remus figured he really didn't know exactly what Sirius was up to. For all he knew, Sirius really was just making him a cupcake. Or, trying to.
There was a large explosion from inside the oven, and its contents burst into fire. Remus opened the oven door and drew his wand. He mumbled something under his breath and the flames extinguished, leaving the cupcake as it had been before the fire. "Thanks," he heard Sirius say absently, as he stirred a red, creamy substance inside a large wooden bowl. It still had a couple of large chunks of icing in it, and, Remus saw, an eggshell. "Sirius, what's that?" he said, pointing to the large, white shell.
"Oops, that's not supposed to be in there," Sirius said, reaching his hand in and breaking it into little pieces. The more he tried to get the pieces out, the more numerous they became.
"Oh, give me that," Remus said, taking the bowl from his hands. He reached in and tried to grab the egg shell pieces, but with each attempt they merely grew smaller or slipped further into the icing mixture. 'What the hell am I doing, am I a barbarian?' Remus thought after several attempts to rid the mixture of the tiny white egg shells. He pulled out his wand again and tapped the bowl, and the shells disappeared. Sirius continued to mix the icing.
When the baking of the cupcake was finished, admittedly much quicker and less messily once Remus had intervened, they spread the red icing on top of it. Sirius insisted on adding sprinkles which he pulled out of his bag, and added a heavy coating on top.
"There!" Sirius said triumphantly once they were done. He held the cupcake aloft and almost dropped it. "Maybe I should hold that," Remus said, taking it carefully from Sirius' hands. They had gone through Hell and back to make that simple little cupcake and there was no way Remus was going to let all that hard work go to waste.
"Where to now?" Remus asked Sirius, and Sirius looked back at him like he was thick.
"Filch's office, of course." Sirius and Remus carefully exited the kitchens, as fast as they could in order to not get caught seeing as they weren't really supposed to be in there.
"Filch isn't going to be in his office, he has patrol for an hour before and after curfew," Remus told him.
"Believe me, I have Filch's schedule imprinted into my brain," Sirius said nonchalantly. "We don't want him to actually be there. He'll never take it if he saw it was from me." Sirius had a point. Although, this only made Remus suspect Sirius more. He hadn't seen him put a spell on it or mix anything weird into the icing mix…
They didn't have to worry about being caught out of their beds though, because they still had about a half hour until curfew. Late diners were still walking back from the Great Hall, and those who were off studying and lost track of time were still wandering the corridors with their arms piled high with books they decided to check out. Each of these people gave the pair of them an odd look then looked swiftly away.
"We look like morons," Remus commented after the fifth person stared at them with a bewildered look. "Carrying a cupcake around the castle as if it's the Quidditch Cup," he said loudly.
Sirius hushed him with a finger. "We don't want to draw more attention to us than necessary," he said, walking in a happy little trot. "Just keep it safe." Remus mumbled under his breath.
Once they reached the corridor where Filch's office was located – which Sirius could find blindfolded for all the times he's sat in there listening to Filch – they dropped their carefree gait and walked as silently as possible up to the door. Remus wondered what all the secrecy was about, but not for long. He had never even slightly convinced himself Sirius was simply making Filch a cupcake.
Sirius knelt before the door and bent down, checking to see that the lights were off. He tried the door, it was locked. He scratched his head in concentration, "What was that 'Allah-harmony' thing again?" he said to himself, then turned to Remus for help. Exasperated, Remus handed Sirius the cupcake and took out his wand. "Alohomora," he said as he flourished his wand. The door swung open and he looked pointedly at Sirius.
"What?" he asked, "Did you really expect anything more from me? I usually don't try to get into this office," he said. "And if you ask me, I think it's a little shifty that you know that spell. Aren't you against breaking into things, Mr. Prefect?" He didn't wait for an answer, but marched into the office. Remus walked in after him, muttering something about 'so smug' and 'funny.'
Once inside, Sirius set the cupcake on Filch's desk, directly so that the light from an ugly puke-green lamp on his desk would fall on it once he walked in, and not enough in the center so that Filch might accidentally place something on it before he saw it. Taking out a small piece of parchment and a quill, he extended it out to Remus. "You have to write the note," he said.
"Me?! Why?!" Remus exclaimed, jumping back from the parchment and quill as if it were poison.
"Because I want it to seem like a girl wrote it, and, no offense Moony, but you have the girliest handwriting out of the two of us," he said unabashed. "And plus, he won't suspect you."
Although his ego throbbed dully after that blow, Sirius did have a point. Remus' handwriting was better than Sirius', mostly due to practice. If Sirius had ever written the essays he was assigned for homework, he might have better handwriting, too.
Reluctantly, Remus took the quill and parchment. "What am I writing?"
He thought for a moment. "Dear Filch,"he said. "Wait, no! Dear Argus," he corrected. Remus had only just turned his 'F' into an 'A' when Sirius began again. "You're such a magnificent man," he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone, "that I wanted to express my feelings with extra care." Sirius thought for a moment, seemingly at a loss for how to end the note.
"How about, 'Here's to us, love your secret admirer'?" Remus suggested. Mulling it over for a moment, Sirius agreed. Remus handed it to him and he was about to attach it to the cupcake. "Wait!" Remus said. "Here," and he took back the note and waved his wand over it. "Now put it on," he said as he handed it back to Sirius.
Sirius put the parchment up to his nose and sniffed. "Ambrosia?" he asked, and Remus nodded. "Masterful," he said, bowing to Remus. Both were delighted.
After the note was attached, Remus turned to leave. Sirius grabbed his shoulder. He stuck his hand inside his robes and pulled out James' invisibility cloak. "How did you…?"
"I took it while James was ogling after Lily," Sirius explained. "He wouldn't mind, as long as we're putting it to a good purpose," he grinned. That was true, James wouldn't care as long as they were up to no good.
Sirius didn't throw the cloak over them yet. They still had about another hour. Remus walked over to the large filing cabinet in the corner. One of the drawers was open, and just by chance, Remus spotted Sirius' name. And not just Sirius, but his name too; as well as Peter and James. One big folder reserved for them, while all the others were lettered categories, comprising a section of the alphabet. Remus was sorely tempted to take a peek, when he heard muffled static from across the room.
"I think it's some sort of dark magic detector," Sirius said, his face composed in an expression of awe as he looked down at a little black box emanating an odd frequency and an occasional word. "It's broken though, maybe Filch confiscated it? Or he's working on a special mission from Dumbledore?" Sirius wondered aloud.
Remus burst out laughing. Sirius turned around and stared. "What?" Remus didn't stop laughing. "What?" Sirius said, annoyed.
"It's a radio! A muggle radio!" he said through fits of laughter. "Haven't you ever seen one before?" Sirius' expression did not change.
"No. My parents don't keep muggle things, they think it'll burn them or something," Sirius said.
"Well, we can't keep them at Hogwarts because magic interferes with the waves in the air. That's why it's making that strange noise. It normally plays music. But it's definitely muggle, magic ones look different." Remus was suppressing him laughter.
"Oh," was all Sirius said, and he turned a knob and the sound stopped. But they didn't have time to explore any of the other mysteries of the office, for footsteps were growing louder and louder until they were almost at the door. Remus and Sirius rushed over to the corner and threw the invisibility cloak over themselves just as Filch stormed in, appearing to be dripping wet and resembling a very scraggly wet dog.
"Damn Peeves," he said angrily, cursing loudly and slamming the door just as Mrs. Norris tapered in after him. "Damn Peeves and damn children, and damn this place! So many bad children running about," he wheezed, "so little discipline! If only I could administer the punishment…maybe then they'd learn…" he trailed off, and Mrs. Norris hopped onto his desk. She was a small little thing, barely a year old. "Isn't that right, Mrs. Norris?" Filch asked his cat. Seeming to get a reply, Remus and Sirius shared skeptical looks under the cloak.
"What's this?" Filch mumbled to himself. He looked at the spot on his desk where the cupcake had been placed for several moments, then picked it up carefully. He seemed to treat it as if it were a bomb. 'Which it very well could be,' thought Remus, who still had no idea what was about to happen. He looked questioningly at Sirius who merely gestured to keep watching.
Filch read the card under his breath in a raspy voice and looked at Mrs. Norris. He raised his eyebrows. The apprehension coming off of Sirius was palpable, Remus was surprised Mrs. Norris couldn't sense it. Sirius subconsciously leaned forward, waiting to see if Filch would take the bait.
"It's about time someone showed me some appreciation." Sirius let out a silent breath Remus hadn't known he was holding and Mrs. Norris' head turned. Neither of them moved, and Filch didn't seem to realize her brief preoccupation. She turned her head slowly to watch her master.
Peeling back the paper, Remus leaned forward too. Filch took a big bite of the cupcake and chewed for several seconds. Nothing happened. Was this it? Remus relaxed and Sirius was bouncing slightly where he stood. He grabbed Remus by the neck and made him crouch on the floor, still hidden under the cloak.
And then everything happened at once.
There was a loud, deafening explosion.
Mrs. Norris fell from the desk.
The ugly green lamp shattered as it crashed to the floor, as well as one framed photograph of an ugly woman who looked exactly like Filch, except with longer hair.
Color splattered the entire office. The walls, the desk, the floor, and Filch. A thousand times Filch. A loud swear came from the mosaic of color on the wall, and Filch stepped out from against the wall where he had been forced by the power of the explosion. An imprint of his body was comically stretched out over the wall. Light gray in the shape of a chalk outline of a body where Filch had been standing, his arms flailing, and completely around it and everywhere else, a rainbow. Remus now saw why Sirius had dragged him as low as he could. Otherwise, their outline would have been made on the wall, revealing their position and possibly getting the cloak confiscated.
Filch grabbed Mrs. Norris off the floor, cradled her in his arms and ran from the room, keeping up a constant chain of swears.
He slammed the door behind him just as Remus and Sirius collapsed on the floor in a fit of laughter and the cloak fell off, thereby successfully covering themselves in paint. "Prongs and Wormtail are going to be so jealous they couldn't see the look on Filch's face!" Sirius said, roaring with laughter. Remus laughed harder, smudging his glasses.
Finally composing themselves enough to walk, Remus said, "Let's – let's get out of here." They snorted with laughter all the way back to the Gryffindor tower.
A little sillier than my other fics, but this was fun to write. What'd you think? Review for a cupcake of your own!
Cupcake: you're pimping me out again, aren't you?
Me: Noooo!!! I'd never... (we start the bidding at one review, one review going once!)