Hi!
I loved writing this one, I have it in store for quite some time now. Tell me what you think about it!
As usual, I'm French and have no beta so mistakes are my own.
Enjoy!
Mad Cow
Two weeks suspension, without pay. He didn't care. He almost smiled at his boss when he mooed his displeasure at him. Again.
It was worth it.
/
It was the end of the day. He let a frustrated sigh escape him. It was enough for Bones, his temporary assigned senior Auror, to glare at him. Paperwork, he'd done paperwork all week long. It was the big boss's retaliation for his last stunt. (A minor prank, really, it wasn't his fault if Dawlish panicked and couldn't find his way out on his own. He was an Auror, for Merlin sake! Being mobbed by a gaggle of thirteen years old girls shouldn't have been so hard. Yes, he was polyjuiced as Robbie Williams at the time, but still. He should just have signed the autographs and moved on. Who in his right mind would try to curse muggle teenagers in the middle of London?)
Sirius wasn't particularly fond of paperwork. He was even less fond of doing it next to Dawlish, who's brains cells quality hadn't improved in the process. He seriously questioned how the idiot became an Auror in the first place. And how did he keep his job? The man did curse kids, muggle kids, in broad daylight, for goodness sake! So now, they were on paperwork duty, under the supervision of senior Auror Bones, who was in a particularly bad mood. She'd been injured during a raid, and was chained to her desk for a month. Having to babysit on top of that gave her the irrepressible need to shit rainbows all over their faces.
Nineteen days left. They would share her sentence until the healers cleared her for active duty. Sirius was still a trainee, on the very verge of being thrown out despite his duelling skills, brilliance at stealth and infiltration, and tactical mind. He was promised to a great future in the corp, if only he could show the proper respect for procedure and deference to his superiors.
Blindly following stupid orders, licking asses, being proper, was exactly how the white sheep of the Black family wanted to live his life.
So, now, he was diligently filling endless piles of paperwork. No, he was definitely not enchanting the parchment forms to suggest to their future readers to scratch their balls, say some nonsense loudly, draw on their hands, immediately procure a full litter of ice cream to eat very publicly, fart, profess their undying love for unicorns, send poems to random people, squat twenty times, call their bosses mum three times in a row, brush their hair, change their robe colours to a bright yellow… All wandlessly because, why not? He couldn't take his wand out anyway, because people were watching him warily. After only sixth months on the job, James and him had acquired quite a reputation already. His brother in all but blood seemed to have calmed down recently. He didn't. Being paired up with Dawlish would have that effect on you.
The man was impossible to respect. It was so easy to run circles around him, it was pathetic. To be fair, Sirius was an expert at it, and Dawlish really was incompetent.
So, that Friday evening, at 5:02 p.m., Sirius sighted. Bones, at the end of her rope too, opened her mouth to tell him to shut up, again. Only, she was beaten by Head Auror Owen Ackerman, who came by to gloat at the trouble maker. Seeing him slouched on his chair, badly scribbling on the D-405.7 form, he delivered a well-rehearsed and pompous sermon.
Sirius listened distractingly, all the while sketching a cow with a striking resemblance with his superior. To complete his drawing, he wrote MAD COWEN in flowery letter under it. When the git left them, ordering him to stay at work until he finished the whole pile in front of him (and Sirius knew it would take him, at least, four more hours to do it all), Sirius pushed it away. He was good to start the form all over again.
Bones caught it. Finally cracking her stern mask, she chuckled.
"If only." He heard her whisper under her breath. Dawlish didn't catch it, too focused on getting ready to leave, his own pile neatly done in a corner. Sirius noted that his load was less than half the amount he'd been given. Bootlicking had its perks, he assumed. He wouldn't try it, though.
"Your command is a wish." He cheekily said to the witch. Her stack was still respectable, so chances were that she'd keep him company for a while. He resolved to make her smile again today.
"All words, Black." She answered, when the third wheel cleared the area. "Ackerman barks, he doesn't moo."
"I can make him!" Sirius exclaimed, indigent.
"Really?" She rose an eyebrow. He was hooked. She knew it.
"Wanna bet?" he answered unable to stop himself. Her smirk showed him that she got him right where she wanted. He liked that about her, that she could take him at his game whenever she fancied it.
"If you lose, you'll have to volunteer for another month of paperwork. And send a bouquet of roses to your mom for Valentines." Sirius winced. High stakes. Backing down never entered his mind. He'd just have to find something equally rewarding to throw back at her.
"If I win, you'll have to go on a date with me. And send the bouquet to my mum too." It was her turn to wince.
"Anonymously. I can't…" she negotiated.
"One date, and an anonymous bouquet." Sirius conceded.
They shook hands, and the deal was done. Their corner of the bullpen empty, they cast a silencing charm to chat in peace while writing reports and filling forms.
Sirius spent the entirety of his week-end planning on how to turn his boss into a cow. The bet was to make him moo, but if he could go a bit further, well, all the better. He couldn't ask for help, because James was taking care of his parents, and Remus was on another pointless mission for the Order.
He would manage, he was a big boy after all, and it wasn't his first rodeo.
Monday morning, Sirius was smiling when he entered the Auror's quarters, bright and early. Spring in his steps, he went straight to the coffee maker to make himself a cup. The night shift eyed him suspiciously but couldn't fault him.
"What's make you so happy?" One of them asked.
"I got a date." He simply answered, making a second cup.
"At least one of us got laid this week-end." His neighbour grumbled. Sirius ignored him. Let them believe what they wanted. He sat and waited.
The date hadn't happened yet, after all. But it would. He'd win the bet.
When Amelia came by, he thrust his second cup in her hand, exaggeratingly charming.
"Maybe you want your coffee Black today?"
She huffed, but took it anyway.
"It won't work, you know." She said a minute later, when the bustle of the day made overhearing difficult.
"Watch the magic happen." He grinned, taking the first parchment on the new pile on his desk. He spent a few hours creatively filling the compensation amounts for wrongful detention, mainly mistaking knuts for galleons, or distractingly adding a zero now and then. It wasn't much, in the grand scheme of things, but the poor lads would at least get something. At the corner of his eyes, he saw Moody sniff at his coffee and shake his head.
Once the big boss arrived, as fashionably late as he thought his status owed him, phase one activated.
More than half of the Aurors in attendance, and their Head holding his own cup while hovering over his underlings, started to moo every time they tried to talk.
"So, is Saturday alright?" He wiggled his eyebrows at Bones.
"They are all mooing." She pointed, going back to her parchment.
"Ackerman included. You never said I couldn't make others moo. What kind of Auror doesn't check their food and drinks in wartime anyway? Moody surely did."
Amelia rolled her eyes. Sirius rose.
"Watch out for Cowen." He said, before going to the coffee maker. Then, he very ostensibly took a spoon of sugar, spread it in his mug, and took a sip. Soon, he was mooing too, very loudly. It sounded like a laugh, if one were to care to interpret his form of communication.
On his way back, he accidentally brushed past a very red Head of Aurors trying to yell properly but failing spectacularly. He wasn't even back at his desk that the big boss's head suddenly elongated and the rest of his body loosely changed to resemble the shape of a cow, black and white dots added to his cloths.
It only lasted for a dozen minutes, but Merlin, it was twelve glorious minutes. Ackerman was running around on four legs while his panicked assistant tried to help him. It took those affected all this time to find out how they had been bewitched.
Sirius simply switched the sugar with his own stash. Even with his obvious cue, it took them more than twelve frekin' minutes to figure it out. And those were the ones that were supposed to protect magical Britain from Voldemort? Sometimes, he wanted to bash his head on the walls. Instead, he looked at Bones.
"So, Saturday at twelve thirty?"
"Fine." She acknowledged, not meeting his eyes. Sirius could see the ghost of a smile at the corner of her lips, though. He wanted to whoop in joy, but knew better. She wouldn't appreciate it, and he wasn't going to give himself away that easily to Cowen.
"BLACK!" Ah, the literal cowboy found his voice again. "IN MY OFFICE, NOW!" The melodious voice resonated in the packed room.
Bones grimaced in his direction. Of course, he was the main suspect. They found no proof he was the culprit, even if he was, but since when the pesky need of actually having proof before deciding someone was culpable stopped the Aurors to do what they wanted? Ackerman hated him, and he defiantly refused to bow down. When James chose to do things behind the boss's back, Sirius kept doing it front, left, and right.
So, naturally, this would be pinned on him.
After an hour of mad screaming, empty threats and posturing, Sirius was dismissed.
Two weeks suspension, without pay. He didn't care. He almost smiled at his boss when he mooed his displeasure at him. Again. It would do that, for twelve minutes every hour, until they found the antidote.
It was worth it. They could fire him, even, he didn't care. He got a date. Bones was more important than any stupid job.
Besides, Ackerman didn't even realize that he just reduced the paperwork sentence by two glorious weeks.