The Baby Food Debacle of Number Twelve

All props thanks to JKR. Jiggy the House-Elf is partly my own creation.

If Remus Lupin knew any more about Muggle history than he did, he would have considered himself a contemporary of the Boston Tea Party organisers, and would have congratulated himself on the immensely rebellious act. His particular rebellion, on the other hand, felt all the more childish - a feeling not helped by the pictures of babies and teddy-bears on the cardboard box in his arms.

He grimly regretted not having done any strength training as his unfit muscles ached beneath a box that a stronger man could have carried with no effort at all. He wondered what people would say if they were to see him now: lugging a box of baby food off a muggle bus which had stopped beside a dirty industrial park by the Thames, looking like either a dispossessed homeless person, a pederast or a large-scale kidnapper.

And, with a pained exertion, he heaved the box and its contents into the river.

THREE WEEKS EARLIER

"You lot are so lazy," he exasperated, as Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black and Mundungus Fletcher lay on the ground in the library in varying states of intoxication and stupor. "Tonks I can understand: at least she works a real job. Not like you two scabs." He shot this last remark with a significant amount of venom at Sirius and Dung, who were leaning against each other and passing a bottle of Firewhiskey around.

"S'not my fault," Dung said with a very insincere look of remorse on his face. "What, wif the economic climate being what it is at the moment, and such."

"Dung, don't try and pretend that you've ever played a part in the legitimate economic climate. You, Black: you're home all day, why don't you ever clean up, or cook, or anything?"

"I uhho," Sirius mumbled, and Remus felt exasperated that he would be so lazy as to not even bother using consonants.

On the ground beside his feet, Tonks let off a soft snore, and Dung looked over with a paternalistic kind of smile. "Aw, look at 'er, all tuckered out after her day off work."

"You mean she wasn't even at work?" He poked her with the toe of his shoe, and she woke with a snort. "Get up, you lazy thing, and go make me dinner."

"Shan't," she said insolently, "shan't be used as the tool of the patriarchy."

"Well, in a minute I'll beat you over the head with my tool of the patriarchy if you don't get up and do something."

"That came out sounding worse than you prob'ly would of liked it to," Dung pointed out.

"Shut up. That's it, I've had it with you all. I've been doing all the housework around this place for the past month, and I've had it! Groceries! Cooking! Cleaning! Paying Dung's bail! Well, stuff you all for a joke, you can do all the housework from now on. Accio kitty!"

From the kitchen, a large terracotta jar came flying into the room and almost knocked him down flat when it collided with his stomach. Wincing, he reached in and pulled out a handful of galleons. "Here, Tonks: you're the only person allowed out of this house who I can trust with money. You can go buy us food for the week."

She stared at it, and lazily picked a coin up. "Can't we just order in?"

"No, because last time we did that Sirius' mum scared the poor Muggle delivery boy away." He kicked her again softly, and indicated to the door. "Now, go earn your keep."

Remus knew he had reason to be suspicious when Tonks called everyone into the kitchen the next morning with an extraordinarily pleased-with-herself look on her face. She had her hair tied in a ridiculous red and white polka-dotted scarf, and she was wearing the world's stupidest frilly apron around her waist. Sirius and Dung were loitering in the back of the kitchen, both looking like they'd just woken up."

"Well, I've called you all in here today because i some people /i ," she said with a pointed look at Remus, "don't think that I can be responsible for feeding you lot. But that's just not true."

"We haven't even seen what you've bought yet."

"Wingardium leviosa. The point is, I realised something yesterday: Muggle food is far cheaper than stuff you buy in wizarding shops, and while the current exchange rate is what it is, I thought I'd go get us some stuff from one of those Muggle supermarkets." At once, eight giant boxes levitated into the air, and with a swift flick of her wand she had them drop softly onto the massive kitchen table. "Daft places, those."

"Very good. So, what did you get?"

With another flick of her wand, she ripped the tape off one of the boxes, and proudly flung the lid open to reveal tiny little jars of pastel coloured mush. Remus picked one up, and examined it. "For infants six to twelve months... you bought baby food?"

She nodded, very pleased with herself. "That way, we don't have to cook or clean up! We can just eat out of the jar and toss it in the rubbish! Isn't it a great idea?"

"That's really fabulous," Sirius said, inching forward and pulling another jar out of the box. "Wow, apple custard! How did you know that's my favourite?"

Remus stood there, his jaw agape, as his housemates picked through the box. He was almost surprised that she hadn't bought bibs and dummies while she was out, or a pack of nappies: given the recent laziness of his housemates, he wouldn't be at all surprised if they were too gormless to even bother going to the bathroom. "This is unbelievable..."

"And the best thing is, we can wash the jars and use them for cups, if we run out of any of the utensils in the cupboard."

"Tonks, this is by far and away the laziest thing you've ever done. Lazier than when you covered your vomit up with newspaper and hoped I wouldn't notice--"

"Oh come on, I was drunk!"

"--lazier than when you put a chair under the door handle as the sole means of keeping me in the cellar during the full moon... you know what? Screw yourselves." He picked up his wand and reached for a set of robes draped over one of the kitchen chairs. "You can all do buggery-fuck-whatever you want with your lives." And with that, he disapparated out of the kitchen with a flourish, leaving his housemates to stare at the spot where he'd just been seconds before.

Dung patted Tonks consolingly on the shoulder. "'E's just jealous 'e didn't think of it first."

He really didn't ever want to resort to these measures, but unfortunately necessity ruled that he would, at some point, have to stoop to this depth. The front door in front of him was impeccably painted, the knocker immaculately polished, and he hesitantly knocked on the door, almost hoping that the occupant of the house would be out.

Unfortunately, his half-hearted prayers weren't answered, and moments later a much older woman with perfectly styled short hair, expensive-looking blue robes and pearl earrings answered the door. Remus thought he could see the look of disappointment on her face when she recognised him.

"Oh, it's just you."

"Hi, mum. Erm... how are you?"

"You're as dreadful at small-talk as I am. Come inside." She held the door widely for him, if not invitingly, and he stepped into the perfumed entry of her house. "I suppose you'll be wanting a place to stay. What, those terrible cretins over at your last place kicked you out?"

"No, actually, I left of my own volition."

"That desperate, are we?" She flicked the light in the room with a jerk of her wrist, and at once a room filled with lush furnishings and a thick carpet came into view. "What did they do this time, use your trunk as a toilet again?"

"Nobody's done that to me since I was fifteen, and no, actually."

"Hmm." She impressed upon him a cold, regal gaze, and he noted that she was leaning her full weight against an expensive looking chaise.

"Mum, you smell of vermouth."

"Oh, I had friends over before."

"It's eleven in the morning." He dropped his robes on the ground, and she let off a soft shriek.

"You'll dirty my new carpet!"

"It's not like I don't wash my robes, or anything."

She shot him a dirty look and picked them up, as if they were contaminated with the ebola virus. "Yes, well."

"So look, can I stay or not?"

"Well, I suppose you can. But you'll need to make yourself scarce when my bridge friends come around on Wednesday."

"Fine."

"And you'll have to talk to Jiggy about cooking for you: Healer Goodman has put me on a strict diet."

"Jiggy?"

At once, a beleaguered looking house-elf wearing a primly laundered handkerchief around its waist as a loin-cloth appeared from the kitchen, a martini glass in its hand. Remus wondered as to the ethics of coercing house-elves to act as bartenders, but felt the issue was best left not raised at all. "Jiggy has made his mistress' required marti--"

"Medicine, thank you. Remus, this is Jiggy."

"I figured that much." He held his hand out to the house-elf, who looked at it reluctantly. "Nice to meet you."

"This is the one mistress speaks to Jiggy of; the wastrel son who has no job."

Remus suddenly felt an urge to kick the wretched little thing. "Shall I put my stuff up in my old room?"

His mother's face suddenly looked guilty, and she fiddled with her pearls nervously. "Er... actually, that's my new shoe room. That tatty little wardrobe of mine couldn't hold it any more. You'll have to sleep on the lounge. But only if you put the plastic protectors on and have a shower first."

"Fantastic."

Over at Number Twelve, Tonks, Sirius and Dung were lounging on the grass outside, eating their stupid chocolate pudding made for toddlers out of their stupid little jars.

"This is brilliant," Tonks said. "I never realised what a kill-joy Remus is. No wonder he doesn't have a girlfriend."

"I did tell you lot about the one time at school that Remus had a girlfriend, didn't I?"

Dung and Tonks rolled over to look at Sirius most interestedly. "No! Tell us!"

"He broke up with her because she wanted to give him a hand job. Not that he didn't want it, or need it, because if there was anyone ever to suffer a severe case of blue balls it would be him. He just didn't want to mess up his perfectly-laundered school robes."

Tonks snorted. "What a loser!"

"I know. Peter and I wanked off into his socks for a while after that just out of spite." Sirius lay back, enjoying his little recollection. "He blamed James for a year."

"Did he leave any of 'is clothes 'ere?" Dung sat up, a scarily determined look on his face.

"All of them." At once, Sirius and Dung were up on their feet and marching determinedly back into the house.

"That's really disgusting, you know..." Tonks said, her voice trailing off as she fell asleep in the sun.

"Mistress says the lazy one is to get up!"

He was poked awake by the business-end of a broom, and he sleepily opened his eyes to see that pestilent little house-elf prodding him. "What?"

"Jiggy has been told by mistress to make you get up and go do something with yourself for the day!"

"Like what? Haven't got any money to do anything with."

The poking suddenly became hitting, and he brandished his arms weakly to stop the onslaught. "Lazy swine! No-good layabout! Insufferable half-breed!"

"Go away!" He reached blindly about for his trousers as his attacker continued. "I'll go away in a minute, just let me put some bloody clothes on!"

Jiggy stopped only long enough to allow Remus to do up his fly: with one final blow, he sent the broom straight into Remus' shins, and Remus fell to the ground with a bellow of pain.

Their seventeenth night without Remus passed without incident, apart from Tonks nearly breaking her wrist after she fell over a pile of empty jars on the kitchen floor. The place was now starting to have a distinctly compost-ish smell about it, but the inhabitant's nostrils were by now well-inured to the stench.

"And you know what else I hate about Remus?" Sirius burped and dropped his ninth empty jar on the ground. "I hate how he's... shit. How he's always so up himself."

"Yeah," Tonks said half-heartedly, "so up himself. Like there's a pole up there, or something." But even as she repeated this insult for the hundredth time in the past fortnight, she thought how much of a sham it was. For all his prissiness, Remus had been remarkably decent to her and the others. He never so much as raised a single word of complaint whenever she came stumbling into his bedroom to vomit on his curtains after a big night, and she knew that Remus had tried to keep Dung's latest worm infestation a secret, out of the decency of his heart. She sighed as she spooned another mouthful of glutinous, yet powdery, rice pudding into her mouth, the taste of the artificial sweetners making her feel a little nauseous.

"It's the full moon tonight," Sirius said. "Good, I hope he's found people as willing as we were to mop him up in the morning. I hate him. God I hate him."

"I miss him," Dung whined drunkenly.

They all nodded thoughtfully in assent.

"Really, mum, the chain and collar are a bit much, don't you think?" He strained at the magically-enchanted leather around his neck, and looked at his mother, who was standing at the entrance to the garden shed.

"Well, I wouldn't want you to break any of my antiques up in the attic," she responded. "Just call out when you want Jiggy to come get you in the morning."

"Don't I even get the hose if I get thirsty?"

Remus' mother rolled her eyes, and summoned a water bowl with an inch of dirty-ish water at the bottom of it. "Don't be too loud, I'm having the De Vere's over for cocktails in an hour." And with that, she locked him in the shed.

For the first time in his life, Remus had a longing for the sweet, maternal voice of Walburga Black's painting.

"Tooonks..."

She opened her eyes to find herself on the floor of the bathroom. She couldn't remember falling asleep in there, much less getting in there in the first place. "What?"

"Tonks, I'm hungry." Sirius leant against the door frame, scratching his lean belly as his oily hair hung over his face.

"Mmm, go eat something then."

"There's nothing to eat, though."

Tonks wondered when Sirius had perfected his toddler-like whine. She couldn't imagine the Dementors putting up with much of his rot. "What are you talking about? There's a whole box of baby food left."

"That stuff tastes like arse. I want real food."

"Sirius, do you want real food, or do you want Remus to stay away for good?"

He looked extremely pensive as he considered the options. "I'll eat the baby food, then."

He left her alone, and she decided - in her nauseous haze - that something must be done of the situation.

Dear Remus,

Please, please, please consider coming back home here. We really miss you and Dung's worms are coming back and he won't stop itching them.

Love,

Tonks.

Dear Tonks,

Of course he's going to keep itching them if you don't wash his bloody sheets.

Love,

Remus.

ps. NO.

Dear Remus,

I hate you, we all hate you, and we never want you to come back.

Love, no, HATE,

Tonks.

Dear Tonks,

Good.

Love,

Remus.

ps. You're so mature.

Though his volley of owls to Tonks no doubt served to keep his spirits entertained during the days, Remus realised that he could no longer stay at his mother's home. It might have been the scrubbing spells his mother used on her chaise every morning after he woke up, or it might have been that paranoid, pestilent house-elf tailing his every move. If he were a nicer person, he might have brought Jiggy back home for Kreacher to have company, but he wasn't, so he spent his days thinking of ways to trap Jiggy and release him into a forest far, far away.

Then one morning, the ball dropped for him when his mother, with one of her stupid pointy heels, kicked him awake and insisted that he go hide in the shed for the day so the antique experts could appraise her furniture.

"But you don't even need the money!" he protested, as she locked him, once again, into the dirty old garden shed.

"Yes, well, one can never have enough," she shouted through the shut door.

Remus sat stewing in the darkness, and focused his energies on moving back to the house without losing his dignity.

Tonks had no idea how the squirrels got inside (though she strongly suspect Sirius, when going out to do a wee, had something to do with it). All she knew was that she didn't much like the little shits fighting over the rubbish on the kitchen floor.

She sank into a kitchen chair and wept for her hygiene and health.

It took Remus all of five hours to come up with a painstaking strategy to win his way back into the household while establishing respect for himself. It then took him another ten minutes to realise it was a dreadful plan, and another five minutes to realise that once he took away their money and their food, they'd likely accept him back with open arms.

So with that he bid farewell to his mother's house, and the irritating little elf within it.

The house was relatively quiescent as he broke in that morning. Remus was impressed with his ability to not wake Mrs Black's portrait - no easy feat, given the mountains of debris covering every inch of floor or counter space. He saw no sign of Sirius, Dung or Tonks in the kitchen, the sitting room and the entry parlour. Even the cloak cupboard - Dung's favourite napping place, once the murderous robes had been cleared out - was empty. He could smell the rotting remnants of pureed vegetables and creamed rice, and almost threw up when he realised that one of the jars on the floor was not full of bananas and cream, but rather vomit - rather artfully aimed into the jar.

He could hear snoring coming from the top of the steps, and he cautiously ascended the staircase, his ears pricked for more sounds. When he reached the top, he wondered if a cyclone had, perhaps, ripped its way through the entire house: the walls were coated in some kind of brown grime, and he could smell the unmistakable odour of Hippogriff dung from the carpet, but only partly cleaned up.

He opened his bedroom door softly, almost expecting to hear the sound of rubbish being scraped along the floor, but it opened with ease and when he poked his head in he was almost shocked to see it in the same state in which he'd left it: pristinely clean, with the floors spotless. The only sign of disturbance was Nymphadora Tonks asleep on his bed, wearing one of his old shirts.

Were this three weeks ago, he would have throttled her for being a parasitic little clothes-stealing whore, but the last few weeks had imbued in him an immense amount of compassion, so he idly patted her on the head as he left his meagre belongings on the ground. She stirred a little in her sleep, and pulled his blankets in closer to her.

When she woke up from her nap that evening, she knew something was amiss. For instance, the smell of the rubbish from downstairs hadn't wafted up and burnt her nostrils: the distinct lack of unpleasant odour set off the alarm bells in her mind. She slipped out of Remus' bed quietly, and peered her head out the door to find a shocking lack of mess, filth and rubbish on the second floor's landing. Below, she could hear scrubbing sounds coming from the kitchen, and she gingerly walked down the stairs, hoping not to disturb her most helpful new intruder.

She surreptitiously poked her head into the kitchen to find Remus bent over the kitchen floor with his shirt sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the stone with an old-fashioned brush and soap. He looked up at her and smiled mildly, wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead.

"I'm sorry I called you lazy and useless. Clearly if I had the foresight I would have used harsher invectives against you."

"This is really... thanks."

"It's no problem. Have a look in the pantry."

She tiptoed over the wet floor and past a rag that seemed to be wiping all the counters over as if controlled by an invisible hand, and opened the pantry door to find it stocked with food: real food, as opposed to food that came pureed, reconstituted, powdered and synthetic in little glass jars. "I... wow, this is fantastic." She turned to him, a broad smile on her face. "What happened to all the baby food?"

"It has since been disposed of, and will never be mentioned in this household again," he said quietly, standing up and wiping his hands on his dirty shirt front. "Sad to see it go?"

"Mm, not really. In the end, it made Dung's digestive system revert back to that of a toddler's."

"I saw the evidence when I cleaned out the bathroom before. I hope this means that you lot will start to take the initiative around here in terms of housework now?"

She nodded, and touched him on the shoulder lightly. "Thanks. I do appreciate all you've done." She took the brush from his hand. "Why don't you go upstairs and have a shower and put clean clothes on?"

"God, I'd love to. I just want to have a hot shower and put something warm on; a jumper, pair of thick socks--"

"Erm..." She hesitated, her mental image focusing reluctantly on the current state of Remus' socks. "You mightn't want to do that."

the end.