Chapter Five

House Arrest

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a house elf, Sirius?"

"Well," Sirius said, just as a number of house-elves scurried past us in a mad rush, "not until today, I hadn't, no."

We watched the uniformed chaos that was the Hogwarts kitchens. It was Friday night and Sirius and I were incredibly fortunate that we were not currently up to our elbows in some kind of grime or filth. Filch was in the hospital wing after an incident with Peeves, and so for our detention, Dumbledore had assigned us to the kitchens to help make biscuits for dinner. Much nicer than cleaning out clogged toilets, I would say.

"You know, Sirius..." I said.

"Yeah?"

"I think you've burned those biscuits."

He scoffed. "Nonsense, I'm sure they'll be delicious."

"Let's have a look, then?" I pulled open the oven, greeted by the warm embrace of heat and ghastly smoke. I coughed, waving it from my face. "Oh, they smell—" I coughed again, "delicious!"

"How did this happen?" Sirius looked frantic, fanning the smoke that emitted profusely from the oven.

I reached over and turned the oven off while Sirius reached in with heat-resistant gloves to remove the charred remains of his biscuits. "What did you do to my beauties, Gracie?"

"Well, if you must know," I said, looking rather apologetic, "I released a small baby dragon into your oven while you were looking the other way, and trapped it inside with no way of escaping."

He huffed, discontentedly, and scraped the black heaps from the pan.

"Meanwhile," I continued, "the dragon only began to grow angry. And hungry, too, might I add. Very hungry. It knew your biscuits would be delicious—"

Sirius grunted a sarcastic agreement.

"And because of his rabid hunger, he decided he could not wait for your biscuits to finish cooking any longer. It was an earnest attempt to assist you, surely. Well... He did what he does best. Breathe fire." I gave Sirius a very friendly, sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "I'm very sorry for your loss, my dear friend, so sorry."

"All right, then," Sirius said, setting down his bare pan and throwing off his gloves. "Let's see your biscuits, then?"

"Ah, just on cue, too!" I slipped on the gloves Sirius had been using, reached inside the oven and pulled out the pan. The biscuits were arranged very precisely, and each was approximately the same as the next, browned and circular. I held the pan up to Sirius. "Beauties, eh?"

Sirius pulled out his wand and pointed it at the pan. "I think it would only be proper to introduce myself, yes? Make a good first impression?"

"If you don't take that wand away from my biscuits, I will set your hair on fire."

"If you can catch me, that is."

"I will catch you and you will be bald."

"I guess we'll just have to see about that," Sirius said, and I watched as his lips very slowly, like molasses dripping from a spoon, began to form words...

"Sirius, if you even—"

"He blinded me," I groaned to Lily, burying my face in my arms. "Almost burned my face off!"

"Where is that oaf of a Sirius, anyways?" James asked, mouth half-full.

Lily commented on James's impressive manners, and they fell off into an entirely separate conversation. I lifted my head, rubbing my eyes.

"I saw Sirius this morning," Remus told me. "He wasn't looking too..."

The doors to the Great Hall opened then.

"Too... fantastic."

"Oh, bloody hell, what did you do to him, Gracie?" James asked, his voice hitting a tone of disbelief that did not completely satisfy my pride or my shame. I wasn't sure what to think of his reaction.

"Oh, he's not that bad," I said, growing annoyed. "It's just his hair. At least he still has some. He practically dared me to! It's not my fault!"

Sirius arrived, sitting down with a plop in front of me, his mass of lion mane hair bouncing around him. He didn't acknowledge the others, or even me, for that matter. He fixed his eyes on a plate and piled it with food.

I watched as he reached for a biscuit, holding it in his hand. He brought it to his mouth, chewed for a moment, and then glanced at me, all very slowly.

"Did you try a biscuit?" he asked.

I stared at him, and then shook my head.

He finished chewing and pressed his lips together. "Mmmh. You really should."

I attempted to decipher his expression, but failed. "I'll pass."

"No, really. You should."

"Nah. Already full."

He looked at me, waiting for me to change my mind, and then shrugged. "All right, well, I'll just have another then."

"You do that, Sirius."

He took another biscuit and ripped a piece off. He plopped it in his mouth and chewed, still looking at me. "You sure you don't want one?"

"Pretty sure."

"Really, I insist."

"No thank you."

He ripped another piece off of his biscuit. "Absolutely certain?"

"Yes."

Sirius threw the piece of biscuit at my face without hesitation. "Finally, I knew you would give in!"

I flinched. "That's not what I meant by yes."

He threw another piece at me. "Did you say yes?"

"No."

"Yes, you did." He threw another piece at me, and then reached for another biscuit.

"No! Stop throwing food at me, Sirius!" I grabbed a biscuit and chucked the entire thing at his face.

"You wasted that delicious biscuit!" He threw another back at my face in retaliation.

"Oh, did I? I'm sorry!" I picked up the entire platter and flung all of its contents at him at full force.

He responded by taking his goblet of pumpkin juice and emptying it on me.

Lily gasped, standing up. "Gracie, Sirius, that's enough, cut it out!"

I wiped the juice from my eyes and grabbed a bowl of something I didn't know the name of, but it was gray and slimy looking, and I thought it would match Sirius's eyes perfectly.

"Please, Lily! Pretty, pretty please."

"I shouldn't even talk to you anymore. I should just forget you exist," she muttered irritably. "Not like you'd care."

"I'm sorry, Lily," I said, "I just got carried away. Sirius was completely asking for it... but I should have just listened to you and stopped. Believe me, I wish I had! I don't want to stay up here when I have an entire Saturday waiting for me!"

Lily looked at me and sighed. "Fine. But I hope you realize how bad you've made me look. I'm supposed to be an example and I can't even get my best friend under control."

"You're not supposed to. I'm supposed to drive you crazy, aren't I?"

"No, you're not. Stop it, I'm just starting to forgive you. Don't make me change my mind."

"Right, okay, I'm sorry. Will you please talk to him for me?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed. "Fine. If I see Howell, I will let him know."

"You're going to see him, Lily. He'll be right outside Hogsmeade. And, I mean, it's Kenneth Howell. A little hard to miss him."

"All right, all right. What do you even want me to say?"

"Tell him those damn professors put me on House arrest—"

"Gracie."

"Sorry, sorry. Tell him they're making me stay in my dormitory, and that I'll talk to him later."

"Okay, doesn't sound too hard." She breathed in heavily and looked out the window. She glanced at me. "Do not try to leave, or I will take your blankets and kick you off your bed so you have to sleep on the floor."

"I won't," I promised. "I'll study Potions and do my homework."

"Good idea. I'm going to go now. I'll see you later, okay? Be a good little puppy while I'm gone."

I frowned and pulled my knees to my chest. "Now you're just being mean, you meanie Bertie Botts beanie."

"I'm doing you a favor, don't forget!" she said, pulling her bag over her shoulder. "Cheer up. I'll get some chocolate from Honeydukes and we can share when I get back. And dry your hair. You'll catch a cold or something."

I'd had to take practically ten showers to get all the food out of my hair. Let's just say, Sirius and I had wasted a lot of food on each other before the professors noticed what was going on. "Okay. Bye, and make sure to have fun with James. Don't lead him on too much."

"I won't." She smiled, and opened the door. "Bye, Gracie." She left and closed the door behind her with a soft click.

I groaned out loud. "I hate you, Sirius whatever your middle name is Black."

"Um?" Sirius stared at the parchment I was holding out to him. "What's this?"

"I wrote you a letter," I said simply. "Your hair looks better today, by the way."

He narrowed his eyes at me and took the letter. "Am I supposed to read this?"

"Obviously."

"Do I have to read it now?"

"Sure."

He unrolled it and glanced over the writing. "This is a lot of writing."

"It's not. Read it out loud or something. I'm not going to sit here watching you read."

"Dear Sirius." He stopped and looked up at me. "What are you, fifty?"

"Shut up and read it, git."

"Dear Sirius. Right now, it is a wonderful, lovely summer Saturday afternoon, and I am spending it in my dormitory, studying Potions and actually being somewhat productive. Well, I was, until I decided to write this to you." He stopped again. "Do I really have to read this out loud? Class is going to start soon."

"No, it's not. Nobody's even here yet. Quit stopping and just get through it."

"Being productive on a wonderful, lovely summer Saturday afternoon is a horrible thing to do to someone. It's the upmost form of torture and I am dying in this dormitory, all alone, in solitary confinement, while the girls in my dorms are out buying chocolate and sending letters and looking at the Shrieking Shack. I'm bored, Sirius. Really, really bored. I don't like studying Potions. Potions smell bad.

"The only reason I'm up here in the first place is because Professor McGonagall decided our little 'altercation' was incredibly immature and inappropriate and that we needed to be alone to ourselves to really think through the error of our ways.

"Well, you see, I didn't do anything wrong, because you threw the damn biscuit at me in the first place. I'm sorry, Lily would get mad at me for the language, but it's true. I didn't do anything to you and suddenly you're all taunting me to try this stupid biscuit that probably tasted like hippogriff arse anyways.

"I mean, maybe I did burn your biscuits the other night because I was jealous, and yeah, maybe that was wrong, but you're the crazy psycho here that decided to light a fire in my face and nearly burn my eyes out. I'm lucky I wasn't burned and you're lucky you have all your hair, let's just leave it at that.

"I am being the valiant, bigger person here because that is who I am, Gracie Hachette the valiant, bigger person. And better, let's not leave that out. I'm sorry I was jealous of your biscuits and I'm sorry I released that dragon on them... or, well, whatever happened there, you know... and I'm sorry you're crazy and decided to kill me over a couple of burned biscuits. Clearly, we both have issues, and I think that if we agree that we're both psycho and therefore must tolerate each other, we will get along so much better. After all, it's not every day you meet someone nearly as psycho as yourself, right?

"And that's it. I call for a truce. I will sign this now. And by the way, I don't know what your middle name is, so, I'll just make one up sometime. But that's just irrelevant. Goodbye now."

He looked up at me, and let out a breath.

"You forgot the last part," I said, taking the letter back from him. "You didn't read the 'Love, Gracie,' part."

"Well, I thought I'd skip over that, since it's obviously a lie and I'm not going to waste my time with lies."

"Sirius Nigel Black, you are ridiculous!"

"My middle name isn't Nigel."

"Fine. Sirius Walter Black. That's what I'm going to call you, Wally."

"Why are you so odd?" He rubbed his temples.

"I have already established that we're both fairly psycho. You're the one that's being odd now."

"Okay, okay," he waved his hand at me, "I accept your truce. Now go away."

I hugged him around the neck quickly and he swatted at my arms until I released him.

A/N: Sorry for the delay, everyone! Life has been incredibly busy and I've had a lotttt of drama lately.. You know. Typical dumb high school drama, sighhh. Anyways, hopefully the worst of that is over, and hopefully I will be back with somewhat acceptable updates for my few lovely readers. You guys are awesome, and thanks for all the reviews, favoriting and etc, I super super super appreciate it! Sorry this one was a bit odd, but you know how Gracie is. And Kenneth will be back! Yus. All right, bye for now, will be back soon. COOKIES FOR REVIEWING