Munchies

Jack silently crept into the kitchen. He was hungry, and he was short on food in his secret stash. Jack took out from his shirt pocket Piceloe, his rat, and set him on the floor. He then crouched and whispered, "Ok, now, if you see any cooks, come right back, if not, then don't. I'll know when to come." The rat appeared as if it nodded and disappeared inside. no noise was heard except the pitter-patter of the rodents feet. Jack grinned and slithered through the doorway. He was amazed at how much food was there. He ran up to a plate of kidney and steak pie and ate half of it. He was loving it. He heard someone walking through the kitchen and dashed into a cupboard, to far away from the door.

Imperium Squad duty was probably one of Amelia’s least favorite obligatory tasks at Hogwarts. The idea was that members of the Imperium Squad – which were fewer and fewer every semester, it felt – would walk Hogwarts castle between the hours of 9:00pm and 2:00am on their appointed nights of the week. Tonight happened to be Amelia’s night.

In Amelia’s opinion, this was a colossal waste of time. Most of the time, she found nothing. People who were interested in breaking rules were also usually interested in not getting caught, and had learned how to keep themselves out of sight when these rounds were happening. When she did stumble across a few of the less intelligent rule breakers – usually first or second year students – they either scattered upon seeing her, or ended up having a long-drawn out verbal argument with her that never ended well for them. It was a trying experience, to say the least.

Amelia had already walked most of the upper floors of Hogwarts and was now in the dungeon area. She disliked this portion of rounds, mostly because it tended to include Slytherin students who were more prone to arguing or, on occasion, drawing their wands when confronted. The Ravenclaw girl was easily frustrated by this, seeing as she didn’t like having to confront them any more than they liked being caught. Amelia actually went out of her way to avoid having to deal with many people – she chose her path each night based on which parts of the castle would most likely be empty at which times – and when she was unlucky enough to meet people, she tried to keep their encounters as brief and painless as possible.

Taking the last step down to the dungeon, Amelia looked down the corridor and saw, much to her dismay, a figure disappearing behind the portrait door she knew belonged to the kitchen. She knew this because she too had been the person sneaking into the kitchen late at night, having missed dinner because she tended to forget simple-minded things like eating when she was studying.

Quickly, Amelia moved silently down the corridor to stand just outside the door to the kitchen. Inside, she could see a dark-haired boy shoveling food into his mouth at a counter just inside the door. Although it would have been far easier to just keep walking, the boy had been foolish enough to leave the door open, which in Amelia’s opinion meant he hadn’t been smart enough for her to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Here goes nothing… Amelia thought as she stepped into the kitchen in what she thought was going to be a quiet way, but instead, someone had left a tray of silverware just inside the door, and it rattled ostentatiously when she brushed it with her foot, sending whomever that boy was dashing out of sight as Amelia made sure to maintain her balance.

Perfect, just perfect… Amelia thought angrily as she looked up to see the boy gone. Here was yet another opportunity it just walk away and leave him be, but now she was committed.

“I know you’re in here,” Amelia called out loud enough to be heard throughout the kitchens, “You may as well come out.”

Jack slowly crawled out of his cupboard, keeping his head low, though it was a pretty dead givaway that he was from Ravenclaw, considering he decided to dye his hair purple for the week. He kep his face lowered and picked up Piceloe, also. He hadn't really considered who the voice bellonged to, nor did he care really. Just as long as it wasn't a professor threatening to take away house points. That would suck. He scratched the back of his head and shifted from foot to foot, nervouss of what was going to happen.

"So, what's my punishment?" He asked weakly. Jack shoved the black rat inside his Robes pocket. He slowly stopped fidgeting, and waited for the persons response.

After making her declaration of presence, Amelia had pulled out her wand from her waistband, holding it out in front of her in case whomever the boy had been got any funny ideas. More than once Amelia had had to confront a student who thought he or she could take on the willowy Ravenclaw girl, but for how slight her appearance was, she made up for it with knowledge. She hadn’t been sorted into Ravenclaw for nothing, and she had more of an edge than most; her father was a spell researcher, and as such, had been using Amelia as a beta-tester since she was old enough to get a wand of her own.

A few seconds passed before Amelia saw movement to her left and saw a boy crawling out of a cupboard. What had originally looked like dark hair had turned out to be purple, and Amelia immediately recognized him from Ravenclaw tower. She had never met the boy before, but it was hard to forget someone with such shocking taste in hair dye. She seemed to remember the purple being a relatively new choice, perhaps it had been green last week…

The boy looked nervous, which to Amelia meant she could lower her wand. Nervousness and brash action rarely went hand in hand, and the boy wasn’t holding his wand. Instead, he had picked up a rat from the floor and was now cupping it in his hands, apparently familiar with the creature. Amelia had never been able to determine what people saw in having rats for pets; they were hardly useful creatures, more of a nuisance really. Amelia had Aurora, whom she would consider a pet and a confidant, but still, she served a purpose; the eagle owl carried Amelia’s post, which most often travelled between Hogwarts and her parents’ home, or to wherever Raoul was staying.

As she had anticipated, the boy’s nervousness manifested itself in the boy’s words as well as his posture, and he admitted defeat far quicker than Amelia would have guessed he would. Ravenclaws were usually some of the easiest to deal with when it came to confrontation – they were logical enough to know that they had done something wrong, and that there would be a natural consequence of that – but still, this was proving exceptionally easy.

“Well you’ve broken policy,” Amelia began slowly, not having prepared something just yet. She had expected to have to explain herself or debate with the student, as had happened so many times in the past. The fact that this boy had been so willing to admit defeat was throwing her off.

“So to start, I’ll need your name. I already know you’re in Ravenclaw,” Amelia stated, figuring it was probably best to put all her cards on the table right away.

JAck looked up, his eyes with a mad glint to them. He knew he shouldn't have dyed his hair purple. The girl didn't look much older than him, and she looked Ravenclaw. He thought about ways to stall his punishment, and they all seemed pretty foolproof. The only problem was she was also a ravenclaw, wich meant she would probably figure out what he was doing. Instead, he reached into his robes pocket, and took out a rather broken Twix bar. He brought it with him when he came back from Summer break, and he always carried around at least one candy bar, in case he was hungry during class or something.

Jack tossed the Twix at her, and said, "What house aare you in?" He hopped up on the counter of the kitchen and swung his legs lazily. He waited for an answer from her, anything to make her stop thinking about punishments for a second.

Apparently the boy’s submissive tendencies were fleeting, because when he looked up at Amelia again he looked a little like he was crazed, but mostly, he looked angry. It was a natural reaction to being caught doing something outside the rules of Hogwarts, one Amelia had encountered many times, but the redhead was having a difficult time getting a consistent feel for the boy standing across the kitchen from her. He hadn’t said much yet, and she didn’t have anything on mental file about him, so she was being forced to think on her feet and go on the offensive without much in her arsenal. It wasn’t an ideal situation.

When the boy reached his hand into his robes pocket, Amelia immediately raised her wand defensively in front of her, expecting him to pull out his wand and start something. Instead, he produced a small rectangular object with shiny gold wrapping and threw it at her. Amelia had never been particularly good at any activity that required hand-eye-coordination, so the chances of her being able to catch it were slim in the first place, but because Amelia didn’t recognize the object, she immediately threw up a shield charm in front of her, making the object fall to the floor about three inches in front of her.

When the projectile was lying harmlessly on the floor, Amelia let the shield charm fall and stooped down to pick up the rectangular object. The wrapper said “Twix”, and although Amelia had never heard of a Twix before, she gathered from the nutritional facts that it was a muggle candy bar. What is he doing? Amelia wondered, looking up from the candy bar in her hand to the boy, who was now sitting on the countertop, still not having answered her first question. He was stalling, and Amelia didn’t want to play these games.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Amelia said impatiently, not wanting to compromise, but giving up which house she was in wasn’t that large a concession, “if you answer my question, I’ll answer yours. What is your name?” Amelia repeated, clutching the unopened candy bar in one hand and her wand in the other.

Jack raised a questionable eyebrow as she ast up a shield charm. She probably wasn't muggleborn or half-blood, or else she would know what the Twix was. He grinned slightly and motion with his fingers how to open the wrapper. "You know that's edible, right? Yumminess food?" He asked, pointing to the candy bar. Jack then pondered her compromise, and then answered, "Ok, ill go with that, but I want to ask a different question. What is your name?" He asked it nonchalantly. He honestly didn't care, but he could do with a little tricking. And, if she wasn't raised in the Muggle world, he would be able to pull it off.

"My name is Chuck Norris." He said with a grin. Jack looked beside himself and stuck his finger in a pastry and licked off the frosting. He then waited for her answer.

“Yeah, I got that,” Amelia snapped back at the boy when he patronizingly told her that the candy bar in her hand was edible. She could read, afterall, but she wasn’t about to ingest something given to her by someone she was attempting to report for being out beyond curfew. In these types of situations, the accused rarely had the best of intentions, so Amelia was far too skeptical of the boy’s motivations to eat anything he gave her, especially when he threw it at her.

This situation, which had stared out so promising, was quickly going downhill. The boy had seemed so ready to turn himself over to her, but now he was putting up a fight that Amelia could have done without. Maybe there was something to the professors who claimed that the Cruciatus Curse was the way to go. Of course, it was an unforgivable, so Amelia had never willingly used it on another person before, but one had to admit that it would certainly be more effective than making polite requests.

The purple-haired boy seemed to consider her offer of compromise as though he actually had a choice in the matter – he didn’t – and finally agreed to it, but with a small stipulation. He wanted her name instead of her house. A slightly more personal tidbit of information, but Amelia had never been particularly guarded about her identity. There was the fact that if he knew her name, he would be able to ask around to their peers for information about her – a hunt that would surely bring up everyone’s favorite nickname for her, The Ice Queen – but Amelia wasn’t overly concerned with what this boy or anyone else thought of her. At this point, she just wanted to go to bed.

She was ready to agree to his alteration of the plan, if only to get this over with quicker, but before she did, the boy offered up what he claimed to be his name. This might have worked, but for the fact that Amelia had been a prefect or imperium squad member since her fifth year, and part of that position involved viewing the roster of students enrolled in the prefect’s own house. Amelia didn’t know who Chuck Norris was, but her photographic memory of that roster told her that there was no such person by that name in her house.

“I think in order to change the rules, you need to play by them,” Amelia scoffed in an accusatory tone, crossing her arms across her chest, “You can’t expect me to be accommodating to your requests if you are just going to jerk me around.”

“Your name isn’t Chuck Norris,” Amelia said, more plainly stating her objection to what he had just said, “I don’t have the foggiest idea who that is, but I do know you aren’t him. There is no one from Ravenclaw by that name. Now you can either tell me your real name and get us both out of her quicker, or I can find another way to get what I need,” Amelia said, not without threat. Her impatience was showing full force now, her arms crossing tighter across her chest.

Jack grinned. He just loved ticking people off. It was one of his favorite past-times. His favorite target was his stepdad though. the drunk barely understood some of Jacks slaps at him, and when he did, he would bellow like an elephant and chase Jack across the blocks, ignoring the neighbors shouts and comments. He felt it would be funny if he did that, but she was a wizard, and Jack had no idea what she had up her sleeve.

"Ok, ok, just, calm down. I will tell you."

He said it soothingly, the grin still visible on his joylite face. He just wished he hadn't left his wand in his dorm. He had chosen the least likely night anyone would be in here, but of coure, someone had to be here. Jack swayed his arms around, but he really skimmed his pockets lightly for any means of excape. His hand brushed across a small lump, than he remembered; The Instant darkness powder. He hid his grin, but his eyes showed triumph.

"My names Jack Kubin. "

He said it, than immeadiatly thought better of it. He should'v said the name of someone he knew in Ravenclaw. So he wouldn't get busted. His hand still rested on the powder, just as a precaution.

Amelia could feel anger tightening its grip upon Amelia’s usually logical self, threatening to make her do something both she and Jack would regret. The stupid grin that spread across Jack’s face when he saw how impatient she was getting only added to her fury, the kind she and so many other redheads were known for, and Amelia fully exemplified the stereotype. The annoyance she was feeling with the purple-haired boy was beginning to morph into something more dangerous, so for his own sake, the boy had better start saying something other than, ‘Calm down,’ which had exactly opposite the desired effect.

He was stalling for time again, and Amelia wasn’t having it. His fidgeting also suggested he was up to something again, and Amelia wasn’t sure that if he went into his pockets again, that it would be something as innocent as a candy bar that he produced. The grin that so annoyed Amelia was still stretched wide across his features, and his eyes, previously showing slight nervousness at being mostly cornered, flickered and then changed to something that was much more worrisome to Amelia: victory.

Her guard heightened by her observation, Amelia uncrossed her arms and gripped her wand more tightly, raising it slightly so that if her housemate tried anything, she would be ready for it. Although he didn’t seem altogether threatening – he hadn’t even gotten his wand out yet, and he had purple hair for Merlin’s sake – Amelia wasn’t taking any chances anymore. She knew that look, and whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t something she wanted him to take the opportunity to capitalize on.

With her wand on him, the boy’s tongue seemed to loosen, and once again he provided a name. This time, though, when Amelia ran down the mental copy of the House roster, she found that there was indeed a Jack Cubin listed as a Ravenclaw student in the fifth year. This was likely the reason Amelia wasn’t more familiar with him; they wouldn’t have shared any classes, and he didn’t exactly seem the type she would spend her time with, if she in fact spent any time with anyone, which she didn’t. But even though he had given her a plausible name this time, Amelia was still hesitant to believe him. He had lied once, who was to say he wasn’t doing it again?

“Okay, Jack,” Amelia said, using his name in such a tone as to suggest that she would be using it for convenience, but that she wasn’t totally sold on it, “I’m going to need to escort you back to Ravenclaw Tower. I will be documenting you for being out of the dormitories after curfew, and the headmaster will decide which punishment he finds most fitting.”

“Now come on, so we might both have a chance to get some sleep tonight,” she said brusquely, gesturing to the door behind her with her wand-free hand.