Just a little something extra

After the disasters of the fourth day of the bet, Remus wasn't sure what to expect on day five. He knew it wasn't that his friends were stupid, they just didn't think things through properly before they dove into whatever they were doing.

They had pretty much given up yesterday on their trip to the park. The cleaning and washing had taken up far too much of the day. On the bright side, they were getting through the list of tasks at a rather rapid pace. They were sloppy and lazy about some of the jobs, but they were at least attempting them all.

The last thing he had heard James and Sirius discussing before he had retired for the night was the meal they were apparently going to cook for the household the following day.

Remus and Peter had not specified on the list as to what the meal should be. Sirius and James were welcome to keep the task as simple as possible with a plain meal. From what he had heard of the discussions this was not going to happen. They were planning an early morning trip to the supermarket again, this time with a plan for how to do things properly. Then they were going to return and prepare what sounded like a feast big enough to rival the first nights at Hogwarts. Remus had tactfully suggested they stick to one course, but James was insistent they have three as a minimum.

Remus was keeping his fingers crossed that at the very least one of the courses was edible.

James and Sirius returned from their second shopping trip with even more bags of food than they had the first time around.

"You do realise we've now got enough food to last until Christmas?" Peter pointed out.

"Not the way you eat," James teased.

Remus started to pick through the bags to see what was inside. Sirius caught him being nosy and slapped his hands away.

"Did you spend all the money?" Remus asked worriedly. "What if there's an emergency or something?"

"We didn't spend all of it," James assured him. "There were loads of special offers and we took advantage of as many as we could."

"What sort of offers?" Peter asked.

James grinned widely and opened one of the bags. "Well, this was the best one. If you buy three boxes of cereal you get a fourth one free."

"We don't need any cereal," Peter said.

"But it was on offer!"

"You do know that most of these offers are just a con to make you buy more?" Remus pointed out. "Like when they show you the price for what two of something costs, while making it sound like it's cheaper, it's actually the exact amount of two of them bought separately."

Sirius pulled the ridiculously long receipt from the pocket of his jeans and scanned it quickly. "Moony's right. They weren't cheaper when you buy more than one at all."

"How much money do you have left?" Remus asked. "Please tell me you have enough to at least last us until the end of the holiday?"

James and Sirius shuffled their feet and looked anywhere but at Remus.

"I'll go floo my dad and ask him to send some muggle cash," Remus finally decided. "And I'm going to keep the money somewhere safe, in case we need it for an emergency."

"There's no need to do that," Sirius argued. "We won't need it. We're all set now with everything we need."

Peter dug into another of the bags. "What made you think we need a pack of nappies?"

James rubbed his nose. "We thought we'd be helpful and stock up things for your family when they return."

"But nappies?"

"For your little sister," Sirius explained.

"She's eight years old!"

"So?"

Peter pulled the bag of nappies out of the bag and threw them at Sirius's head. "Were you wearing nappies when you were eight?"

"Er… no."

"Then why do you think my sister would be?"

"Are you sure she's eight?"

"Yes!"

"She doesn't look eight."

"She looks older than eight. Everyone says so, including you when you met her earlier in the summer."

"Okay, enough chatter," James declared, clapping his hands to get everyone's attention. "It's time for the loiterers to depart and the chefs to get to work."

"Chefs?" Remus asked with a snort of laughter.

James pointed at the door and Remus and Peter left them to it.

James closed the door behind the others and turned to Sirius. "I don't know about you, but I'm sick of that pair laughing at us. This meal is going to be perfect, or else."

Sirius waved his hand airily. "You worry too much. This cooking lark is going to be a snap. I mean, let's face it, house elves can cook, so how hard can it be?"

James pulled a book down from the shelf on the kitchen wall. "This time we follow the instructions on everything."

Sirius took the book out of his hand and put it to one side. "I thought maybe we could give this meal our own special flair."

James yanked the book back and opened it to the recipe they had chosen the previous evening. "I'm not letting you muck this up for us. This is the fifth day of the bet and we won't have time to do this all over again if it goes wrong."

"Nothing will go wrong."

"As long as we follow the recipe."

"You worry too much."

"You don't worry enough."

Sirius huffed and hopped up onto the counter. "Fine, have it your way. We'll follow the stupid recipe, make the boring muggle meal and won't try to do something different and special for our best friends."

James cast a longing look at the recipe book. "What did you have in mind?" he asked. "Nothing too drastic?"

Sirius brightened and jumped back down from the counter. "This is going to be the perfect meal." He grabbed the book one final time and tossed it to one side. "I'm going to teach you things you'll never read in a stupid muggle book."

-o-x-o-

Remus and Peter were taking advantage of the sunshine to fly on their brooms on the garden, tossing a quaffle back and forth. They were also taking the occasional sneaky glimpse inside the kitchen to see how their friends were getting on with their cooking.

"Is James wearing my mum's apron?" Peter asked as swooped past the window.

"Yeah," Remus replied. "The one that says 'kiss the cook'. I don't know about you, but I think I'll pass on that one."

Peter chuckled. "Do you think they've figured out how to turn on the cooker yet?"

"No idea. But at least if they don't know how to turn it on then they won't be burning the house down."

Instead of laughing, Peter looked worried. Remus could tell he hadn't even considered the possibility that James and Sirius might cause some serious damage to the place.

"Your parents do have a smoke alarm, don't they?" Remus asked.

"I don't know. Do you think we need one?"

"James and Sirius are loose in your kitchen."

Peter started to turn a little green and he cast several nervous glances towards the window. "Do you think it's too late to persuade them to make a salad or something?"

"Let's not worry about them," Remus suggested. "We've got our wands if they do something really stupid."

An hour later James and Sirius came out into the back garden.

"Are you going to join us?" Remus called from high above the ground.

"That would be using magic," Sirius pointed out.

Remus swooped down in a large arc, ruffling the hair of both Sirius and James as he passed. "I think we can make an exception just this once. Go grab your brooms."

They did just that, clearly relishing the idea of doing some magic after their enforced abstinence.

With no neighbours nearby they made the most of the privacy and played for nearly an hour. They tossed the quaffle about until the moment Peter noticed smoke billowing from the kitchen window.

"What's gone wrong?" Sirius wailed as they raced towards the house.

"Did you follow the recipe to the letter?" Remus shouted.

"Not exactly."

"Then I think I can take a fairly good guess as to what went wrong."

"I told you we should have stuck to the instructions," James complained.

"You aren't blaming me for this," Sirius called back. "You could have insisted."

Remus hopped off his broom and with his wand in his hand he led the way into the kitchen.

"Maybe we should call the fire brigade," Peter suggested. "The muggle fire station is just down the road."

Remus pointed his wand at the cooker and turned it off. "No need for that. It's just smoke."

"That's okay," Sirius said in between coughs. "We were making smoked salmon for one of the courses."

Remus would have made a smart comment in response to that, but he was too busy trying not to choke on the smoke as he opened the window wider to let in some air.

"It's all gone wrong," Sirius said after the smoke had cleared and the ruined dinner was thrown out into the rubbish bin. "Muggle stuff is supposed to be easy. Why can't we do it?"

"We should have used the recipe," said James for what had to be the hundredth time since they spotted the smoke.

"You think?" Peter snapped.

"Hey," Remus stepped in, trying to act as peacemaker before someone said something they would later regret. "Not all muggles can cook fancy stuff. And you don't have to make anything fancy to win this bet. All you have to do is make something plain and simple by following a recipe. Just think of it like a Potions class. One little deviation from the instructions and ka-boom!"

"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you Moony?" James teased.

Remus grinned. He knew his Potions skills were poor to say the least. "While you and Sirius always do fine, so you should do well with cooking like muggles as well. It's logical. If you can follow a Potions recipe, you can follow a muggle recipe."

"Except we've screwed up and the food is all ruined," Sirius pointed out. James arched an eyebrow at Sirius. "Fine, I screwed up."

Remus reached for the discarded recipe book and flipped through the pages. "Okay, let's see what you can make with the ingredients you still have."

It didn't take long to find something simple for James and Sirius to make, and under the close supervision of Remus and Peter they got back to work on making dinner for the four of them.

-o-x-o-

"Is it good?" Sirius asked nervously as Remus took his first taste of the vegetable hotpot.

Remus had to admit it was delicious, even with the additional herbs Sirius had added to the recipe, despite James insisting they don't deviate this time.

"So we can cross another one off the list?" James asked hopefully.

"Yes," Remus agreed. "You've managed to cook a meal like a muggle… eventually."

Sirius ran to the list and crossed their latest task through.

"Maybe tomorrow we can dazzle our dates with our amazing culinary skills?" he said.

"Or maybe you can take your dates out to eat in a nice restaurant?" Peter suggested.

"They need to find dates first," Remus pointed out.

"We have it all planned out," Sirius declared. "Tomorrow we're going to go into town again and we won't come back until we have dates."

"Don't forget your sleeping bags then," Peter teased.