It was dark outside, but the work still wasn't finished. James looked at the clock to find it was almost eleven and shook his head. He and Sirius were working on "Aunt Estrella's" dilapidated house that would need more than a week to fix. They had barely made a scratch and it had been almost five hours. James was absolutely amazed that they had actually succeeded to this point, especially without magic. He glanced at the dull table that was still caked with who knew what after he'd spent three hours trying to clean it and hideous wall behind him, the bright purple covering the peeling yellow wallpaper he wasn't allowed to remove. 'How does she expect you to do that?' Sirius had asked, rolling his eyes after taking a look at the wall and pretending to fall over dead, nearly waking up Estrella. He laughed at the thought, then glanced at the wall and immediately stopped.
"It's hideous," he said as loud as he dared, watching the end of one paint roller hit the floor with a splash and roll toward the kitchen. It wasn't that he didn't know he'd get in trouble for it, he just flat out didn't care. The slimy trail it left on the faded orange carpet reminded him of the fire slugs they had been advised about in Herbology. At the moment, he'd give just about anything to have even Binns back, compared to the situation he was now in.
"Why did she do this to us?!?" Sirius groaned, climbing more than halfway into one of the cupboards near the floor, coming back out, then crawling into the next one.
"Well, at least you don't have to paint!" James answered, throwing the one and a half paint rollers into the bucket and splashing a puddle of purple all over the wall. He stood up and kicked the paint roller head at the far wall, which miraculously stuck and didn't move until several hours later. Sirius retreated from the cabinet, holding what appeared to be a sponge, grabbing a mouse and sending it on its way through the hole in the wall. He threw the sponge into the sink, plastic and all, and groaned again.
"You have no idea!" he replied. "Every single thing in the bloody kitchen! Crud..."
"What'd you do now?" James asked, peering into the sink and expecting to see something quite abnormal.
"I didn't do anything! I'm just saying, CRUD! That's what I call this special recipe of hers." He leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling for a second, then looked at James. He had taken another look at what was in the extremely dirty water and had to hold his breath to keep from waking everything in the house up. He had a hard time believing it was, or had ever been, food. It was black, crusty, and stuck fast to the pan, not to mention giving off a putrid smell.
"That's... disgusting," James commented, choking back laughter.
"What's so funny?" Sirius asked, looking unhappily toward the mess that awaited. "I'll paint if you..."
"If I do that? I don't think so. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Padfoot. Do it yourself." He snorted and went back to the pan, using half a bottle of dish soap on it, hoping it would take it off. "Did you do the rest of the dishes?"
"Yeah, all that I've found, anyway. I'm gonna kill that freak," he said simply, shaking his head. He began to search the drawers and came up with a steel butcher knife, then began to stab the thick crust without mercy.
"You better be careful or..." James began, but it was too late; the knife blade broke and remained stuck in the offensive substance. He started laughing as Sirius struggled with it and, after nearly two minutes, finally got it free.
"What now?" he asked, chucking both pieces of the knife back in the drawer.
"Dunno. It's a start, I guess." He turned away and went back to the soon-to-be purple room, staring at the strange sight of the sponge stuck to the wall.
"A start?!? Prongs, it... has... layers!!!" Sirius exclaimed. "I'm surprised it didn't get up and walk across the table while it was at it!" James started laughing so hard that he fell down, narrowly missing an unwanted encounter with the paint bucket.
"Use magic then," he told him, picking up a roller and starting on the wall again. He grinned at the thought of Peter doing such a thing, wondering what he'd really end up doing.
"I'm not getting expelled for trying to break the Curse of the Killer Crud!" he raged, growling like a mad dog at the would-be food on the pan.
"Whatever. Just trying to help."
"Fine. You go back to your ugly purple wall and I'll go back to..."
"What? Did it move or something?"
"Probably," Sirius said, running his hand through his hair and instantly regretting it. "Just one thing: it's not coming off!" James had to hold onto the nearest bookshelf to keep from falling down. How could it not come off? He'd been working on it for nearly an hour now and had used pretty much everything he could think of.
"It isn't? Just leave it then. What's she going to do, murder you?" An interesting thought occured to him, but he pushed it away, just like he would have done the pan of mystery substance if it decided to come and visit.
"Yeah, most likely. She's a psycho, Prongsie, in case you haven't noticed."
"Well, like you said, it's a special recipe."
"Yeah, whoever made it is too special for their own good. I should get the ingredients and feed some to the Slytherins..." Sirius looked thoughtful for a second.
"They'd know who did it. They always know."
"So? It'd be worth it, wouldn't it?" he asked. James turned and stared back at him, then began painting again. "Fine. I'll settle for Malfoy and Snivellus then."
"Not a bad idea... Maybe Remus can help a little. He's always complaining about how we never let him help, so there's his chance. However, I'm not asking her for anything."
"Right. Maybe we can get Peter to make it and clean it up, tell him it's really fun and easy. He'd believe it. We'll have Crabbe and Goyle test it to see if it works and, if it does, what it'll do."
"They'll never know what hit them!" James pictured the look on Snape's face when he started eating a pastry that had a note addressed to him from Lily Evans, apologizing for the Marauders' behavior. Then he saw the look on his face when he took a bite and found that it tasted like something rotten from the owlery.
"You know..." Sirius said, staring at the pan, still completely caked with the burnt concoction.
"What? What do I know?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. However, do you have that invention of yours with you?" James looked momentarily confused.
"What? The Blob?"
"Stop calling it that! It's the equivalent of corrosive acid. I'll do those two walls if you put some on the Crud. Deal?" Sirius grinned and looked like he had just realized it was Christmas.
"Make it two and a third and I'll do it."
"Done. You have to take it off, though, since you're the only one who knows how."
"Fine, but I get the floor tonight," James announced, remembering the lumpy, bug-filled mattress he had had an unpleasant encounter with earlier that evening.
"Have it. I'll sleep in the closet tonight." He remembered the many cockroaches and unidentified insects crawling around in it, over the old, stale clothes, under the table filled with termites, around the obstacle course of high heels and tennis shoes, through tunnels made inside disgusting moldy food, so disintegrated that it was impossible to give an expiration date or, sometimes, even a name.
"Good luck and have fun."
"Oh, I will. Trust me."
"Good. Don't forget to write from the mental hospital when you wake up twenty years from now complaining about invisible bugs crawling in your bed."
"I won't. Oh, and one more thing: if you do anything noticeable to the pan, sink, or any other thing, living, dead, or inanimate, in, on, or part of the kitchen other than the Crud, we'll be finding out how fast that thing of yours eats through skulls," Sirius threatened him. James smirked. "Yes, Prongs, that means the cat, too."
"You're no fun! I thought you hated that cat!"
"I do, but not enough to be skinned alive by that demon."
"Whatever. Do you think it can kill faster than the Crud?"
"Give some to Snape and we'll find out. It prob..." Sirius said, but stopped with what he hoped was a horrified look on his face.
"What?"
"It moved! The entire pan moved!" James turned white and looked like he was going to faint. Sirius turned and left the room, then picked up a paint roller, laughing at the look on James' face.
