Mimiona's Disclaimer: I'm going to try to write in pig-Latin. He-tay haracters-cay on't-day elong-bay to mbrella-Uay ofederation-Cay!
Mimiona's Disclaimer part 2: That was "The characters don't belong to Umbrella Confed..." In case you didn't get that.
Ekaterina's Disclaimer: Yo! Okay, so we own only the OC characters, in other words, the characters not created by Rowling. Thanks for reading!
Mimiona's Note: Okay, for those who have not guess this yet, I am the one who was previously Author 1...In response to Rose-chan-chan's review, I changed my name to Mimiona, the Gryffindor! O.o If that's confusing, live with it, or ask me to change it. Also, we made a few changes to the previous chapters, adding in page breaks and spaces between lines and all that, so it's easier to read. But if you've already struggled through it, I apologize for any confusion. See? I can be mature...Kind of...Heehee, earlier, I just felt like writng in pig-Latin :D Sorry if I did that wrong, I just randomly decided to...And in her review, Rose-chan-chan called me scary. Do I really seem scary? :( I am offended. Don't judge a book by it's cover, young miss ;) So, I hope you're enjoying the story so far...Now that we're on spring break (yay!), we can most likely publish a whole lot of chapters this week :D ...So, enjoy, and review ;)
Blossom's Note: I was previously Author 2, but my pen name is now Blossom. I would like to express my gratitude to all of our readers and reviewers! Enjoy!
Ekaterina's Note: Um, Mimiona, I already assured Rose-Chan that you are quite a cheerful person, so no worries there. :) Hiya everyone, I am Ekaterina the Slytherin. With the numbers, I was Author 3, but I can be referred to the one who hosted the tea party if that helps. I think our notes are getting waaaay too long, I find them fun, but if you guys find it troublesome then please tell us. Thank you very much for reading! 3
"Oh, Merlin, oh, Merlin, Merlin, Merlin," Lily mumbled, pacing a circle in the now clean kitchenette. "What am I going to do? What are we going to do?"
Alice shrugged. "I have no idea. We're probably going to lose."
Lara frowned. "I think we should do something. Why don't we-"
"Bake a cake!" Nadia interrupted. "Just something! We'll get more credit if we actually have something."
Lily stopped pacing and grinned up at Nadia. "Sounds great. We'll bake a cake. But, for a main dish...?"
"I'll find the recipe for the cake." Lara said, and rushed up to The Book of Recipes, and began flipping through it.
Lily jumped up. "Perfect! Alice, you help Lara bake the cake. Be careful, you don't have another try. We have an hour before lunch. Nadia, you help me see if we can save the chicken," she ordered.
"Ma'am, yes ma'am. Sounds like a plan," Nadia smiled. She walked over to the chicken to see if saving it was possible, and said, "Lily, there's no way. We haven't got a chance! It's just...burned!"
Lily followed Nadia to the chicken. "There must be some way! Nadia!" she begged.
Nadia sighed. "Okay, Lily, why don't we start by trying to cut the most burned parts off, and throwing them away?"
"I knew I could count on you to find a way! Let's do it!"
As Lily and Nadia struggled with the chicken, Lara and Alice were having just as much trouble- deciding on which cake to bake. Lara was for baking a chocolate cake, but Alice kept reminding her that almost all of the judges didn't like chocolate.
"But Lara, Blossom, Mimiona, and Ekaterina don't really like chocolate! I mean, I know that Amber's-"
"But Alice, how can they NOT like chocolate it's just crazy they don't! It's just so...unbelievable!" Lara said, her eyes bulging out of her head so that it gave her a countenance similar to that of a frog.
"Lara, they don't. They just don't!" Alice said persistently, poring over a vanilla cake recipe. "Hey, how about this one?"
"No, no, no, no. Why would we make a vanilla cake?" Lara asked, grabbing the book and turning to the chocolate cake recipe.
"All the judges like vanilla cake, that's why!" Alice said, sighing.
"But I don't," Lara said. "Let's make chocolate cake."
"But then we'll definitely lose."
"We'll know in our hearts that we won."
Lily whipped around. "Lara, did you really just say that?"
Lara faced her sheepishly. "...Well, we will!"
Nadia turned to Lara impatiently. "In our hearts isn't good enough, Lara."
"Besides, we have no more chocolate, thanks to someone!" Lily said sensibly, glaring at Lara.
"Hmph! Well, fine! Vanilla cake it is!" Lara said in a disappointed voice.
"Okay, Alice and Lara, get to work, time is running, and it won't wait for us! Forty minutes!" Lily said.
Alice jumped. "Time is running? Wait, no! Time, slow down! Wait for me!"
"Enough with this silliness and now let's get to work!" Lily ordered.
"Lily," said Nadia tentatively. "Calm down. We're gonna lose, anyway, so let us girls have some fun."
"Who says we're gonna lose?" demanded Lily.
"I do," Lara and Nadia said at the same time, and grinned. "We do," they said together.
"ARGH! You two are plotting against me or something!" Lily said, her voice slowly rising.
"Crud, she wasn't supposed to figure that out until later?" Lara stage-whispered as she dumped flour into a big bowl.
"Calm down, Lily, and chill. Look, I say that we're gonna lose because, one, this chicken is beyond any repair unless we use magic and that is against the rules. Seeing from your refusal to cheat, I take it that you won't go against the rules either. Plus Dumbledore will know if you do that. And two, we have not enough time to make another dish. We might as well just serve this...chicken...and this...soup... along with the cake," Nadia said logically. "I might be able to repair the chicken a bit, but... the soup... Well, think of something that will work."
"Fine, then. It'll have to do!" Lily muttered. "On with the cake!" She shouted and ran over to help. "Okay, so a cup of sugar..."
"Hurry! The baking time is supposed to take twenty minutes. That means we have less than an fifteen to make it!" Lara said, and the girls hurriedly got to work.
"All right," Lily muttered, staring at the recipe. "Umm, we need eggs-"
"Check!" Lara exclaimed proudly, holding out a carton of eggs with both hands. "How many do you think we need?"
"More than three, less than five," replied Alice promptly.
"Sooo...four?" Lara asked.
Nadia nodded. "That's what the recipe said."
"Well, couldn't you have just said four?" Lara asked.
Alice considered it for a moment, then replied, "I could've, but I wanted to make sure you still knew simple logic."
Lara glared at Alice, who was staring at her with innocent wide eyes. She opened her mouth to say something nasty, but Alice realized what was about to happen, and gave her the "look". The "look" was Alice's secret weapon, and was used only in case of emergencies. It was actually only a puppy face, but anyone who saw it was immediately reminded of a little puppy begging to be petted. Lara sighed, and decided to let the matter drop.
"Oh, thank goodness," Alice said in a relieved tone. "Had you said what I think you would've said, the Glorbs might have come. Glorbs are attracted to ominous presences and negative atmospheres, you know."
Lily raised an eyebrow, but continued reading off of the list.
"Okay, next we need sugar. Where on earth did that measuring cup go?" she muttered. Nadia sprang up from her seat.
"I'll look for it!" she exclaimed, eager to help. "You take care of what's next on the list."
Lily smiled. "Thanks, I appreciate it, but we need that measuring cup for practically everything on that list. Why don't we all look for it?"
At this there was some loud grumbling from Lara, but it was ignored. Alice waltzed off dreamily, saying she was going to go look for Death. The search was taken up energetically, but after a few minutes, the three girls were slightly exasperated and frantic: they were running out of time.
"Oh, come on!" Nadia groaned, dropping into a seat beside the stove. "We've looked almost everywhere a measuring pot might be, and it's not here!" At this point Alice foxtrotted back into the room, holding a very disgruntled Death by her paws.
"Have you checked the strange places?" she asked.
Nadia snorted. "Oh please, where would it-" she was cut off by the sudden emerging of the measuring cup from the freezer. "Why would it be in there?" asked an amazed Nadia.
"That's not the only thing in here, Lara's purse is in here too." Alice said absently, fighting with Death over a stray shrimp that had not been cleaned up, apparently.
"No, Death, that'll make you sick!" Alice cried.
Death hissed, and tried to scratch Alice, which shocked her.
"Death, did the Glorbs get to you?" she exclaimed. Death ran under the table and stared out with his her great yellow eyes. Alice ran into a gloomy corner and began cultivating mushrooms. (A/N: ;D)
"WHAT?" Lara roared, and promptly rescued her purse from its ice-cold prison. "I've been looking for this for days!" she exclaimed.
Lily was getting impatient. "Okay, now can we please get on with the rest of the ingredients?" Without even bothering to wait, she rattled off a long list of ingredients. "Okaynowthatwe'.Didyouguysallgetthat?Okay,'sseehowgoodourmemoryis!"
"NO!" chorused Nadia and Lara. Even Alice joined in.
Lily crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. "Well, I'm not repeating that. If anyone else wants to, they can."
"Fine!" Lara exclaimed. "Give me the list!" Lily passed the list over to Lara. After one glance, Lara's jaw dropped.
"Lily?"
"Yes?"
"What language is this in?"
"Arabic, why? I thought that it would be good practice."
"Well, pardon me, miss honor student, but not everyone in this world is familiar with the language spoken in Arabia." Lara said through clenched teeth.
Lily sighed. "Well, I guess I have no choice but to read it then. But hang on a minute, I'm thirsty."
Lily took a drink of milk from a bowl that was conveniently next to her on the floor. Two seconds later, she fell to the floor with a solid thud.
"LILY!" shrieked Nadia. She rushed over and kneeled by Lily. "Omigosh, omigosh, omisgosh, are you all right? What on earth just happened?"
Nobody moved for a minute, before everyone minus Lily (who was unconscious) ran up to Lily, and tried to see what was wrong.
Alice recovered from her fit of depression, walked over, and said, "It must have been something in the milk. Let me see if I can tell what it is." Alice held the bowl up to her eyes and studied it carefully, smelled it, then put it to her lips and drank it.
"Knockout powder. I'm sure of it," she said with a hint of satisfaction.
Lara looked at the bag of "all-purpose flour" that she was holding, one of the few ingredients that she had been able to make out from Lily's breathless speech. The label read "KNOCKOUT POWDER" in large, bold letters.
"Oops..." Lara said apologetically. "Sorry, don't know how I missed that."
Alice looked at Lara in agreement. "Yeah, I don't know either."
Nadia looked suspiciously at Alice. "If it's knockout powder, then why aren't you unconscious?"
Alice laughed. "Oh, that! Well, my radish earrings protect me from that sort of thing."
Lara gaped at her. "You're kidding, right?"
Alice solemnly shook her head.
Lara continued gaping at her. "You have got to get me a pair of those."
"Sorry," Alice told her apologetically."You have to be accepted by the community of WSSFC for one of those."
"What does that stand for?" Lara asked curiously.
"We Support the Society of Flubber Chickens."
Everyone stared and there was an awkward moment of silence.
Lara was positively fuming as she shattered the silence, "Sirius. It had to be Sirius. That awful, bloody, good for nothing, parasitic, physco, filthy scum off my shoe. He wanted us to lose to badly that he put knockout powder in our kitchenette! AAAAHHHH! I'm gonna murder that ^$%^&(*)#&^" [consider her swearing so much that we would rather not listen]
"Don't worry, Lara, darling. The cuttlefish in his freezer will be attacking him anytime now. Anyways, I finished the cake!" annoucned Alice with a cheerful smile.
"Cuttle...fish? Freezer?" Lara stared at Alice as if she had grown another head. "You finished...the cake?"
Nadia was sitting by a pot on the stove, "I decided that the chicken was good enough to make a sort of Americanized chicken satay. Instead of a creamy peanut sauce, I used walnuts. Luckily there were enough herbs and spices to give it a nice flavor...it kinda-sorta hides the burnt taste."
Lara looked around in a daze. She was utterly befuddled, Lily was still lying on the floor, a gorgeous cake was being plated and decorated by Alice, and the chicken satay was being neatly plated by Nadia. Death was sitting in a corner of the room licking who knew what off the floor.
"I think... I think I've lost my mind..." said Lara faintly. She sat down next to Lily and massaged her temples.
By this time Nadia had moved on to what, in some alternate universe, might have been soup. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she took the gloppy white liquid and poured it down the drain. No thestral would be threatened with Lily's leftover attemps at cooking. Looking around for what she might use, she grabbed some ciabatta bread that she had found in a cabinet and began to prepare a light toast flavored with crushed garlic, cilantro, and a gently drizzle of honey. Hopefully they would get at least a bit of credit for trying. She glanced around, there was only about ten minutes left to put together whatever she could.
Sighing, Nadia grabbed the leftover ingredients from what might have been their french cooking, and began to stir fry some vegetables together. Alongside the stir fry she quickly created a soft dough in which she stuffed some of the vegetables in. She started to plate the stir fry and placed the small vegetable buns in the center.
"Five minutes left, huh..." Nadia muttered under her breath. She walked over to Lily and Lara.
"OI! Get your lazy arse off the ground right this moment! Thank me, your wonderful savior who actually know how to cook! I turned your complicated (but delicious sounding) French lunch into an Asian one. Except for the cake. Its out of place, but Alice did a smashing job on it!"
Lily remained unconscious while Lara looked at Nadia bewilderingly.
"Nadia? Look... Pretty lights..." Lara said, sounding dazed.
Nadia shook her head, she would be glad when this competition would be over.
General Author's note: Hey, this was a reallllly long chapter...Not as much Lily/James interaction as we might have liked, but, we promise you toooooooons of fluff for the next chapter! So keep reading, okay? Love you all.