Teapot of the Orient

Part 10

Getting a feel for the vampire lifestyle was not the only thing Blondie had used the coffin for. It had also had the bottom cut out before being placed over a door on the floor. As for the ribbons, it became evident that Blondie had used them to find his way back when he had gone exploring the many hidden passageways with its many crossroads, and he had left the other end in a room that resembled a laboratory, because it was a laboratory. A neat row of pickled, green brains captured Sirius' interest.

"I was just wondering where to get brains to test my hypothesis with" he said, unscrewing one jar and sniffing, thinking that if he'd ever need a perfume to complement a Halloween costume, he knew where to find it. "Eau the Lobe"

Meanwhile, James was opening drawers at random.

"Here are some bags if you need something to carry your Eau the Le Cerebreux with" he said. "Le paper or le plastic?"

"Paper! Think of the ozone layer!"

James tossed him a folded paper bag and closed the drawer. "Speaking of things that are bad for le ozone layer" he said as he went to inspect the large corpse in the middle of the laboratory. It was dark and shriveled like the mummies you saw in muggle history museums and it was kept upright in a large glass cage. A large cross hovered above it that was attached to the arms and legs of the undead with ribbons, literally making it a very dark marionette although its movement resembled that of a drowned victim slowly sinking to the bottom of an ocean. The arrangement was so drenched in dark arts it emitted green light, enough to make the skin burn if you stood too close. James backed away some. Sirius still seemed to find the brains the most interesting thing in the entire laboratory.

"III ain't got nobo-ody, and nobody cares a-for- a-me"

He scatted merrily as he packed the brains and some skulls along with them in the environmental friendly paper bag from Wizards' Waitrose.

"Igor!" James shouted.

"Froderick!" Sirius shouted back and then the obligatory pop-culture reference was out of the way.

"Large stiff in the middle of the room. Care to take a look?"

"Is this some sort of a pick-up?" Sirius put the bag on the counter next to a small radio before inspecting the zombie puppet.

"And also a dead body"

They scanned all surfaces for off-switches and anything that could serve as an off-switch. Sirius found next to a microscope a small notebook with fuchsia spirals and picked it up, hoping there was something helpful in the margins. But he had been mistaken in thinking the notebook had belonged to Grizelda Hobgoblin. The draft for Roadtripping with Revenants 1: Urges was written in various colours of ink and every 'i' was dotted with a crescent and this triggered a memory of Blondies' presentation notes he had seen when they had done a presentation together back when the professors still chose the pairs. Hopping up on the counter with the intention of reading the first couple of pages "ironically", Sirius quickly found himself absorbed in the weak plot and compelled by the flat romantic lead.

"Just what does she see in Victor?" Flick. "This story is so stupid-" Gasp. "No!"

When he didn't gasp at the dramatic turns he chortled at the more intimate scenes. Finding this distracting and unhelpful, James snatched the notebook from him and nobly cast Avada Kedavra on the entire draft, making it an ex-draft.

"Could you focus please?"

Sirius hopped down from the table. "Oh I see. You need my detectivy expertise, do you?"

"No, I need you to remember the time your mum attached dark ribbons to you to make you clean your room or something, and how she did it"
"I never had to clean my room. We had house elves. Although one time when I tried to do a Frankensteins' house elf I had to have blancmange for a week" Sirius shivered at the memory, staring emptily before him. "And wash my hair with soap"

"Wow le evilness" said James. Sirius glared at him.

"I lost my hmmm" He took a deep breath. "Can't even say it"

"Right, well, did you use ribbons?"

"No but you saw the brains didn't you?" Sirius went to fetch the bag. He picked up one of the jars. "They're green and tiny"

"Yes. Yes they are"

"And maybe your brain is green and tiny too, but most wizards don't have green and tiny brains"

"I assume it's not because some… chemical reaction"

"House elf brains. Miss Hobgoblin liked to collect them. But one jar was empty" Sirius put the jar back in the bag and fetched the empty jar that be had been left behind.

"Maybe someone took it" said James.

"Why would someone take only the brain and leave the jar?"

"To make it seem like there's a house elf somewhere"

"Exactly"

"Maybe somebody used the brain for something here and didn't need to bring the jar somewhere"

"Let's assume for arguments' sake that you're wrong"

"You want to look for house elves, but if Miss Hobgoblin died, why would a house elf hang around?"

"Because they're crazy, and maybe it was told to. They will do anything. I once told one to go jump off a bridge"

"Well, since you're such an expert, where do they hang out?"

"In convenient eaves dropping locations"

Sirius threw the empty jar on the floor. Shards of glass and drops of brain juice bounced like a firework, rapidly turning the laboratory into a place where it was not suitable to be barefoot.

Then they left the lab, Sirius taking the paper bag with him. But they didn't go far. Out in the dark corridor, they stuck their see-ears, which looked like rubber ears, onto the iron door so they could see into the lab. Then they waited. Nearly a minute passed. Then the zombie stopped moving before at last the cupboard doors beneath the radio opened and a house elf tiptoed quietly out of there, constantly looking around herself to make sure she was alone- they assumed it was a 'she' because she had a bow on her head, but it was a blue bow so they couldn't be entirely sure. The pillowcase she wore had a flowery pattern, but like most ladies, Miss Hobgoblins had probably just liked flowery patterns. When the house elf was convinced nobody was hiding inside the lab, she fetched from the cupboard beneath the sink a bucket and a rag to swab the mess with, resembling a Cinderella of the elf world. Watching her clean wasn't particularly interesting. The small barrel organ inside the cupboard in which she had been hiding, however, was interesting. Occupied with the swabbing as the elf was, she had no chance to defend herself against the stunning ray that seemingly out of nowhere hit her right in the chest and sent her falling flat on her back like a timber faster than you could say mop.

"I thought that was the radio" said James, taking the barrel organ from the cupboard and giving it some test turns with the roller, to make sure it really was connected to the zombie.

"I knew radio 2 wouldn't have a 'barrel organ special'" said Sirius.

Because they couldn't see if anything they had done down here had affected the situation on the graveyard, they exited the lab yet again and ventured into the cold and dark corridors, taking the barrel organ, the brains and the guiding ribbon with them.