The front door was just far enough open to re-align the last few now that his newest acquaintance was safely sleeping on the sofa. She'd been working hard for the past hour like an obedient puppet, but he could feel her exhaustion through his mind, and time was marching on. The experiment had been successful.

Time to sleep he thought, releasing control, and drawing his wand back in. Unwittingly, it was in the nick of time, as one of the many clocks on the wall exploded as it reached the hour. It nicely covered the click of the lock as the door shut behind him.



Cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo!





"Eurrrghh!"

Theta Pepper had moments in the morning where she really regretted her love of clocks. When she left home for Hogwarts in her teenage years, her father would freeze them all until just before he set off to fetch her and her sisters from the train, for some peace and quiet. Theta loved them though, the ticking was very comforting and the mechanics were glorious. However, the cuckoo clock, she would charm before bed, so she didn't hear it go off all night.

Therefore, it was unusual to both hear it at six in the morning, and also for her to wake up on the sofa of the little flat she had once shared with Ruby Flickwick, until her flatmate had gone back across the Atlantic in search of something else in adult life than London's wizarding world.

Her head pounded, and she lifted it from the sofa cushions as another of the clocks rang out six in the morning with persistent cheeriness of its dainty little bells. Her face itched, makeup still on it, and she was still fully clothed. Her mind was groggily trying to remember getting home, or how an evening had finished, when she sat up properly and blinked at the room.

"Argh!!"

The living room of the flat was quite small, as the rent in London was very steep. Theta was still keeping up the payments until the minimum contract ended, and she could look to find somewhere with Chris, or move in with more friends. But this morning, in the dim morning light, Theta could see that it was rather full indeed.

The floor was covered in milk bottles full of milk, perfectly arranged in neat rows.

From the doorway to the sofa, from the kitchen to the hallway to the bedrooms, every inch of carpet had a milk bottle full and capped with a foil top of different colours, indicating the type of cream. Silver for full fat, red and silver stripe for half... Somewhere near the door were even milk bottles full of orange juice.

This had to be some kind of elaborate prank. She must have drunk far too much out with friends. Chris had been at work, some urgent research that he couldn't get out of, which Theta understood, some spell research was time dependent and could be better cast at certain times of the month and year according to planetary alignment. She had met friends, and oh dear, her aching head could not remember much past them leaving the Rover's Return to head off to somewhere else. Where had they gone? Where was everyone else.

"Is there anyone here?" She called out, wondering if someone was asleep in her room. No answer came, so she nervously slid her feet down to the floor between bottles and shakily navigated across the carpet, lifting her feet up and clasping furniture and walls to be sure she didn't topple over.

She peered into her bedroom, and saw her empty bed and then yet more milk bottles. Same for Ruby's old room.

"How many?" She asked herself incredulously, and took a rough count. Hundreds, and hundreds, all neat little clear bottles stamped DAIRY CREST all over her flat. What on earth had she been up to last night? Tiptoeing round them to the door, she stacked the orange juice ones up against the hallway wall to try and get the door open. In the hallway outside the flat was no sign of anything unusual. The door was locked from the inside. Baffled, she looked back into the flat and then out into the hallway again before shutting and locking the door once more.

The bottles had felt cold to the touch, so they couldn't have been there for long, unless they were charmed. She fumbled for her wand, and tapped some of them at random to try and find any charms on them, but found none. These were proper Muggle bottles of milk. Stacked on the kitchen table were a set of plastic crates.

Reaching the windows in the living room she drew open the curtains and looked out into the road. To her astonishment, right outside was a milk float, empty. She looked through the glass from the float to the floor and back again. No sign of the milkman.

"Oh Merlin's buttocks!"

What on earth had she drunk last night that had made her steal a milk float, drive it home, unload all the milk and lay it out on the floor. Or if it wasn't her, who?!