It was just after dawn, and the sun was starting to peek between the buildings and light up the streets outside. A mist still clung to the city, and the haze turned gold as the sun hit it. Birds tweeted sweetly, and in the dark distance the sounds of the awakening muggle city echoed over the rooftops. Outside the wizarding street was quiet, serene as the wizards slept-

"Mince!"

The curse broke the silence - not that its originator had been being all that quiet in the first place.

Dion picked up the pot he'd dropped, turning it over in his hands and examining the dent in the bottom. The kitchen was a mess, which he was trying to rectify. The idea of cooking for himself and whoever got up at a reasonable hour had made sense about half an hour ago, but as he was quickly finding, the kitchen was fighting back. Just like everything else in this house did.

He tried to open the cabinet they'd piled the pots in, and the door stuck; he tugged harder and it swung open, making him stumble backwards and almost knock over a pile of plates.  He sighed, and went to put the pot away - only to have the door slam shut again.

He hadn't even gotten to cooking yet, which might have been a good thing. Half the ingredients sat out on the central table, the others sealed behind cabinets that'd been enchanted with an apparent hate of humans.

"You're going to open," he informed the cabinet, with deadly seriousness. "Or I'll get my wand out, and then you'll be in a world of pain. Understood?"

The cabinet sat there for a long moment, and then slowly creaked open.

"Thank you," Dion said, and put the pot away. The cabinet shut quickly again, and he couldn't help but feel watched as he went back to trying to clean the kitchen up.

As the sun's rays streamed in through the curtains of her attic window, clanging below made Fauna's eyes pop open. One would think that an Auror Trainee would be a tad concerned, but all Fauna did was stretch and let out a jaw-cracking yawn. She slowly got out of bed, donned her fluffy bathrobe over her pj's, and slipped into her cupcake slippers. Then she padded down the stairs with the grace of an overstuffed puffskein, tilting her head at the curious scene before her.

Cooking! Dion was cooking! A sleepy grin spread across her face. Gestures like this more than made up for the chore chart he'd inflicted on his roommates (or tried to, against the growing resistance movement in the house). Fauna let out a chuckle when the cabinets revolted, alerting him to her presence.

"They open for me," she leaned against the high counter facing the kitchen, her fringe sticking up in odd places. "I don't know why." Maybe the cabinets were sexist. Maybe it was because she didn't threaten to draw her wand at the first sign of disobedience. More likely, it was because she rarely cooked, and the kitchen was used to the house elf more than it was used to humans.

"What are you making?" Fauna wondered in a hopeful tone, resting her elbows on the counter and glancing over the ingredients, almost all of them lined up neatly like mini-Aurors. The outlier must be a Pratt, she thought, pushing the syrup back into line.

Dion jumped a bit, and looked over his shoulder. Evidently, he'd been so busy contemplating cabinetocide he hadn't heard her enter. He cleared his throat, feeling a bit silly. Mind you, he wasn't the one wearing cupcake slippers. His were perfectly sensible slippers; the fluffyness of them just made them more comfortable.

"Hrmph," was all he said to her statement on the cabinets. He'd never gotten them to cooperate willingly, yet. He didn't mind the elf - but sometimes a man wanted to make sure he knew what went into his breakfast. And cooking was relaxing!

Well, usually it was.

"I'm making pancakes," he said, voice so full of deadly seriousness he might as well have been giving Raynor a report on his weekend activities. The fact he coupled this with turning around, revealing his completely fictional apron, did not help. The apron did not say 'Kiss the Cook'... but only because he had turned it around and worn it backwards.

"Pancakes," he continued, "With eggs and french toast. Or - that was the plan, anyway." He looked at the long line of ingredients and rubbed the back of his neck; his deadly seriousness melting somewhat as he gave in to the awkward. "Do you, um,  want to help?"

Dion in an apron, wearing fluffy slippers, and talking like he was concocting a potion to save the world, only caused Fauna's grin to widen. An ambitious quest!

She glanced around the lower level of the house when he wondered if she wanted to help, as if the house elf would appear and offer his services. No such luck. Because he asked in a such a nice, awkward way, and because she really wasn't that mean (simply well aware of her faults with cooking), she offered a shrug and glanced at him uncertainly.

"Are you sure you want my help?" Fauna joked, but moved into the kitchen area with him, glancing at the ingredients, and then opening cabinets. They swung out with ease.

"Um..." she decided not to comment. "Do we have one of those boxes? You know, the kind with pancake mix already inside?"

She slanted him a sheepish look. It would be easier! If not, she was just going to focus on the french toast. French toast was nearly impossible to mess up.

She was joking; still, Dion's moment of hesitation was quite geninue. Fauna's cooking wasn't very - it was - it wasn't exactly world class, he thought, corrected by his ever-polite brain. So something that wasn't...wasn't very dangerous to the house would be ideal to have her do. He shouldn't ask her to try and steambroil anything, for instance.

"I'd like your help, yes," he said with one of his lightinging-fast smiles. "If you don't mind, that is. We don't seem to have any premade ingredients, so -" he waved at the long line of bottles, boxes, eggs and bowls. "I'm having to make it from scratch..."

He paused for a few moments. "I've got a book," he said, holding out the old, yellowed pages like a life line. "So, let's see..."

Walking to the central table, he put the book down, his finger running down the page as he read the instructions. It was a visible change; with Fauna's help and book on how to do this properly, Dion straightened up, his jaw set. When he turned to her his tone was his usual assured, commanding one.

"We need 5 eggs, beaten - there's a bowl and whisk right there," he gestured. "You do that, and I'll start on the flour?"

Fauna smiled back, noticing his initial hesitation. At least he was alert and in a positive mood at the crack of dawn. A few of their housemates, like his brother, might consider that annoying, but Fauna was just glad about the prospect of pancakes!

She shrugged off her bathrobe and flung it onto a chair, where it would stay until someone (and by someone she meant Dion or the portrait above the stove) reminded her to pick it up later. Underneath, she wore a tank top and pajama pants with yellow hamsters on them. Fauna moved to the sink and washed her hands.

"Alright," she said agreeably. She'd beaten eggs before, and imagined this might be like cooking with a very... masculine and self-assured Akiva. Wait, somehow that didn't work.

Fauna took the eggs out of the fridge and set up a space on one of the counters, beginning to crack open each egg and let the goop fall into the bowl.

She glanced at him with the flour, and noticed that the seams on his apron showed. Fauna blinked at it, still holding a cracked egg in her hand. It must be on purpose. He was the type who polished the buttons on his Auror trainee uniform.

Aha! Brett and Dax's jokes must have affected him.

"Uh, Dion? You've... got that apron on inside out," she informed him with a sympathetic smirk.

Because she was distracted, she looked down to find egg shells floating in the bowl. Minus 100 points for Hufflepuff! Fauna looked startled, and stealthily tried to scoop it out with her finger, then a spoon, all the while casting glances at Dion to see if he'd noticed.

As Fauna cracked eggs, Dion looked at the book again and found the cup measures, lining them up in a perfectly straight line from largest to smallest. Then he began to fill them. Dion, rather predictably, treated this as he did in potions - he filled them to the exact lip of the cup, and then carefully took a knife, smoothing out the power's top so it was exactly at the top of the measure. Each one was perfectly measured in this manner, the extra carefully returned to the bag it had come from so as not to waste anything.

He was in the middle of this when Fauna pointed out the seams. He paused in the act of measuring the sugar, looking down at the exposed seams. Normally - as Fauna was obviously picking up on - having an exposed seam wasn't something he'd put up with.

"It's, uh, Dax's," he said, finally. It wasn't exactly a lie - it was their apron, technically, as so didn't belong to either twin - but he hoped that would convey that the apron had a potentially embarrassing phrase or image on the front, as Dax's clothing and possessions tended towards. Usually because Dax put them there himself.

"It invites people to kiss him," came a reedy voice. Dion jumped, spilling the halfcup of sugar, and looked around - his eyes finally falling on a portrait over the canning jars. The woman inside was looking particularly snide this morning.

Dax's. Uh huh. Fauna jumped, but not as high as Dion, when the portrait pointed out the obvious. She took that moment to successfully scoop out the offending egg shell, and then cracked the fifth egg into the bowl. Dumping the shells into the rubbish bin, she found a fork from the silverware drawer and returned to her spot at the counter.

"Yeah, that sounds... dangerous to wear," she tried not to laugh. "Because, you know. The house elf might take it as some kind of order and come over here and kiss your hand."

She wrinkled her nose slightly at the thought. Fauna blamed Dax for her urge to continue talking about a subject that Dion found so distasteful, he'd worn the apron the wrong way!

Using the fork, Fauna began breaking apart the eggs, sending him another amused look, while the portrait let out a delicate cough.

"Oh, sh-" A few specks of egg splattered onto her front.

"Perhaps you should have worn an apron as well, my dear," the snide voice spoke again. Fauna frowned at the portrait, and brushed at the front of her top. It would wash! Today, she'd face her adventures with laundry once more!

"Oh god," Dion said, at the mere thought of the tiny mummy they had in place of an elf snogging him. He'd never be clean again if it did that. The mere thought was enough to make him want to take a very long shower. He directed this feeling towards the painting of Madame Radford, who just sniffed loudly at his glare.

Fauna dropped an egg and Dion sighed, rubbing his forehead as he drew his wand. He didn't say anything other than the spell name - Scorgify - and cleaned the egg off Fauna's shirt.

He still didn't say anything as he undid the Silly Apron and handed it to Fauna. Then he stalked to the portrait and matter-of-factly turned it to the face the wall. "After all I've done for you-" The woman started to protest, but her voice was muffled quickly.

"Right," Dion said, turning back to the table of ingredients. True to Dion being Dion, what he wore to cook was a waistcoat and shirtsleeves. With what appeared to be a pocketwatch's chain looped across the front.

"Sorry," he added, as he went back to mixing the flour. "She seems to turn up a lot when I'm - when I'm doing something. Especially in the mornings." Nothing broke his focus during his katas than her shrill voice.

"You don't have to-" but she accepted the apron, held it in her hand like a foreign object, then shrugged and put it on. Fauna would probably need it more than he did. Plus, she wouldn't mind as much as Dion if Dax came downstairs and started making snogging jokes later in the morning, because it would give her an excuse to remind him he'd gotten caught snogging Brett in an office cupboard. Fauna would not be surprised if Radley was still finding tasks for him to do as payback!

"I guess because most everyone else is still asleep," Fauna replied when he commented on the portrait's proclivity for bothering him. The portrait might also be under the impression that she'd found a kindred spirit, judging by Dion's outfits, which looked more formal than Fauna's formal-wear.

Since the portrait was still making muffled comments, Fauna drew her wand and casted Silencio at it.

Once she was through beating the eggs, she moved to the book to see the next step. Cinnamon! She found the little jar and the measuring spoon, poured the right amount, and then cupped her hand underneath to catch any stray specks.

"Which bowl?" Fauna turned around and cinnamon flakes drifted into her hand. At his direction, she dropped the cinnamon in and hovered by the open book.

"Do you like living here, though? I mean, despite the portraits and the weirdness," Fauna glanced at him.

An odd, sudden question, but she wondered sometimes. His 'house mum' behavior had not earned him many favors so far. Fauna liked to think she and Dion were good friends, however much he let her be and mutual awkwardness would allow. Butt Brett and Dax were also close, Fauna and Grace were close, Fauna was close to Brett, and they all bonded over their disdain for the chore chart Dion had so lovingly crafted for them.

"As usual," Dion said with a roll of his eyes. It wasn't as unkind as one might have expected, though; he was used to Dax catching up on sleep on the weekends. It wasn't hard to imagine the others doing the same...which was why Fauna's presence was a pleasant but unexpected occurrence.

He smirked when she silenced the portrait, going back to his elegantly measured cups and starting to measure out the tablespoon amounts of other ingredients. That was what that bloody witch got for her comments and her - her tendency to turn up at awkward moments!

He pointed to the right bowl when she asked, then took the cinnamon himself, measuring the powder carefully.

The odd question made him pause - and spill the cinnamon a bit, which he quickly tried to catch with his hand.

"Err," he said, as he guided the extra cinnamon back into the little bottle. He wasn't sure what answer she wanted, so after a few moments he gave in and, for once, spoke his mind.

"I like it. It beats home by a long shot." He smirked as he started pouring the ingredients into the big mixing bowl. "Even if I seem to wind up doing half the work..." He paused to dodge a poof of flour. "It's...err. Fun." He grumbled incomprehensibly for a moment. "Even with all the peeping paintings." He smiled slightly. "What about you?"

"Only half?" Fauna shot him an amused look.

"It is fun," she agreed, glad to hear he was doing alright, and able to understand the gist of what he was saying. She was well versed in inarticulate-awkward speak.

"It's kind of like... the Hufflepuff commonroom, but with a few Gryffindors. And we get our own rooms." If you didn't count the peeping portraits. "Well, I have my own room." She'd lucked out there.

"The only real drawback is when we're all fighting for the loo or when one of us wants peace and quiet. Living and working together, we're always kinda there. But it's nice to have people to talk to, especially about Auror stuff, you know?"

Fauna could not imagine complaining to her mum, who would only worry, and she couldn't very well reveal Level Two's secrets to her other friends, even if at this point most of her knowledge revolved around filing papers.

"But," Fauna hesitated, keeping her eyes on the recipe in the book. "There is this one housemate. He makes a ton of noise, really early," she risked a glance at him, managing to keep a straight face. "Banging cabinets, bothering the portraits."

Fauna shook her head, and let out a sigh that sounded more like a breathy chuckle. "Inconsiderate."

Then a grin spread across her face, ruining the act. "And the snoring!" 

Which was likely Dax's fault, or even one of the portrait's. Dion didn't need to know she knew that.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s like the common room but minus the annoying people or first years turning your pets into things.” Not that the pets here were in any less danger. But Figaro only showed up every now and then. It wasn’t perfect but it was a considerable improvement over the little jerk playing Exploding Snap at 4am!

Dion smiled slightly. “I’m glad we all moved in together,” he admitted. “It’s a lot – it’s easier with the others here, isn’t it. I don’t think any of us could be Aurors if we’d stayed home.”

He seemed to realize he’d been speaking his mind and he flushed slightly, muttering an apology as he went back to mixing. Her joke didn’t help and he glanced up with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t make a ton of noise on purpose,” he muttered. “Besides, it takes that to get you lot out of bed!” He added. “Especially Dax and Brett. They both sleep like they’re dead!”

Fauna had to agree. At the house, she didn't need to protect her pet rat from well-meaning but wacky first-years! Just pizza crusts.

She looked at Dion questioningly when he apologized, as if admitting that enjoying the place was somehow bad. Though perhaps she couldn't blame him when her next move was to poke fun at him, and he answered with a muttered retort.

"I know," Fauna said lightly. "I can't really complain anyway, when you're cooking," said the one wearing the apron.

"I'm sure I have plenty of... habits, too." Like her habit of leaving her bathrobe draped anywhere but the hook by the bath, her toothbrush by the kitchen sink, and laughing really loudly and obnoxiously when she thought other people weren't home - which had probably woken up a housemate at least a few times.

Fauna glanced back at the recipe, actually reading it this time, and just sort of stood there, a line of confusion appearing between her brows. It said to 'make a well' in the middle of the flour mixture so they could pour in the milk and other ingredients. Make a well? What the-? She hated cooking!

She moved toward the cabinet, remembered what she was looking for, and moved to open the fridge, retrieving the milk. She took her time pouring the milk in the cup. Fauna glanced at Dion, sending him a mental nudge to look at the book and start the 'make a well' thing. It had to work!

Dion smirked slightly. "Oh, we all have habits. It's the toothpaste boogers that bug me, honestly." He paused a moment, and quickly added, "Those lumps of toothpaste that get left near the drain. Dax calls them that and it's an - it's an accurate description." Because he obviously needed to explain him using childish slang. After all, there was obviously a proper name for those things. He just didn't know what it was.

"To be honest, though - Dax would be the worst if he wasn't my brother," he said. "He's - I'm sorry about him. And his tendency to leave his briefs in...odd places."  So far hanging off the main hall's chandelier was the spot that took the cake, though. How had he even gotten that up there? Dion didn't know. He did know this topic was making him oddly talkative.

"Bernie seems to be settling in, though," he said, silently wishing he had a pet. Pets had been a luxury both of the twins had been denied as kids - the house was too small for anything other than the family's owl. And their owl had not been a pet so much as a tool...in every sense of the term. He still had a small scar from where the old thing had bitten him. Stupid bastard.

Fauna's gesturing was only partially effective. Dion looked at the book, an eyebrow raised as he mixed.

"Damn," he said, putting down the big mixing bowl. "I need the mixer from the pantry - here, make the well. I'll be right back." He pushed the bowl towards her and darted out of the kitchen, his steps loud on the thin staircase that led down to the pantry.