Truth be told, while his roommate was busy downstairs scrubbing up the soot he'd scattered from the fireplace this morning, Rémy had been back for quite some time, upstairs writing down notes on what he'd discovered snooping in Knockturn Alley that morning. After about an hour, he heard the familiar rumbling of hunger in his stomach, and so headed down to the kitchen to fetch a snack. With the vacuum cleaner running and his back turned, Dylan didn't see him pass through the den.

However, when he exited the kitchen with a banana in one hand, a paper in the other, and a ham sandwich in his mouth, the vacuum cleaner was off. And that was when Dylan Fleetwood turned around , duster in hand, and spotted him on his way back up the stairs.

Rem froze, one foot on the bottom step, and stared. He waved a couple of fingers (the ones not wrapped around food) in greeting. He saw his roommate's eyes narrowed dangerously, saw his fist tighten around the handle of the duster. He also saw the soot spots on the upholstery. He glanced at the stairs, calculating how fast he could get up them, and how fast Dylan could cross the room; it probably depended on whether he was angry enough to jump over the sofa.

Another sidelong glance and Rem bolted up the stairs, sprinting to get to his bedroom and lock the door before he was caught.

After a long morning of cleaning up after someone else's catastrophic mess, Dylan was feeling murderous. Seriously, one false move, and somebody was going to get hurt. That somebody was most likely going to be Rémy Sharp, his irresponsible, thoughtless, and currently absent roommate.

Unfortunately, Rem happened to be the first person Dylan saw in the next five minutes, when his roommate snuck down the stairs to raid their already nearly-empty fridge. Dylan was completely stunned at first, unsure how to react to this situation. He hadn't the slightest clue that his roommate had even returned, much less that he'd been hiding away in his room for Merlin knew how long. Once Dylan had gotten over the initial shock, however, he was instantly furious. Letting go of the vacuum handle he'd been holding with one hand and tossing down the rag he'd been using to dust soot off of the old lady's normally spotless upholstery with the other, Dylan stood,growing visibly redder as he reached his boiling point.

"You... you..." Dylan was in such a rage that it was nearly impossible to form a coherent sentence; a first for the normally very eloquent man. One could almost see his veins bulging and pulsing in his head. Before he was able to finish the insult, Rem had already darted up the stairs with an angry roommate fresh on his heels.

"You lazy, good-for-nothing twat!" he shouted, whipping out his wand and casting a quick Alohamora on the locked door. It popped open with a little click, allowing Dylan to burst into the room looking ready to kill. "Do you have any idea how long I've been cleaning up after your idiotic arse? Do you want Mrs. Potts to kick us out?"

Somewhere in the one and one-half seconds between the door slamming shut and the door slamming open, Rem had grabbed the stool in the corner of his bedroom, turned it upside down, and converted it to a shield of sorts. He now held it in front of him, all four legs pointed toward the door, in a pose usually reserved for frightened housewives and lion tamers at the circus. Either was an appropriate analogy, given the current circumstances.

He spoke quickly, ducking behind the stool for shelter in case any objects started flying. "Now...Dylan, Dylan, Dylan....you know we're supposed to talk about our problems, good roommates don't bludgeon one another to death with blunt words...or blunt objects."

Peering hesitantly over the edge of the stool, he added. "And give Mrs. Potts a little credit! She's a very sweet old lady. I'm sure she wouldn't mind a little wear and tear, as long as we promised to clean it up. And I was going to clean it up, until I saw you....happily bustling away at your work, and figured you had it covered."

Seeing Dylan's face turning approximately the shade of a nice, ripe, tomato, he decided this was not going to work, and changed tacks. He glanced around, finding a leftover soot stain on the bedspread from his impromptu return earlier. "Besides, didn't you try just.....charming it out?"

He lowered the stool for a moment to get at his wand and, with a short swish and a flick, the soot poofed out of the bedspread in a little black cloud that promptly disintegrated into unbeing. "Did you forget you were a wizard in the midst of your enthusiasm for manual labor, or what?"

Deciding that might not have been the best comment, he quickly raised the stool again, looking around the edge at his roommate. "...Don't murder me.""

Dylan paused for a moment, utterly confused by his roommate's words and the lack of logic behind them. "Oh, I see," he said pleasantly, feigning calmness. You thought I was perfectly happy bustling about down here cleaning your mess while you sat upstairs and wrote love notes in your diary, so you decided to just let me continue to enjoy breaking my back for you. You thought that, just because I got to the huge mess you made before Mrs. Potts could see it and have a coronary, that you'd just let me handle the rest of it. I understand perfectly now."

And then, after giving those deceptively calm words a moment to sink in, the erupting volcano that was currently Dylan resumed its flow of lava, directing it entirely towards the man now cowering pathetically in a corner and using his chair as a shield. "You and I both know that you had no intention of cleaning that awful mess up. You've never taken any responsibility towards your own messes before, so why should I expect anything different this time? Frankly, I'm getting rather tired of saving your arse. If I had any sense, I'd leave it for Mrs. Potts to see. And, just to really stick a pin in it, I'd add a giant sticky note with 'Rémy' plastered all over it in great big bubble letters."

Rem's mention of magic caused something in the already angry man to snap. Dylan's desire to use the skills he was taught while growing up instead of magic at times was a touchy subject with the young auror trainee. He most certainly did not appreciate being teased about it, especially when Rem knew perfectly well his reasoning behind his old-fashioned muggle tendencies. And so, because of his roommate's carelessness in mentioning it, Dylan continued his rant, obviously not planning on letting up anytime soon.

"Some of us don't feel the need to solve all of our problems with magic," Dylan spat, still fuming. "In fact, some of us grew up without magic and had to learn how to do things the hard way instead of waving a wand and making it disappear. Some of us also learned responsibility, and how not to take shortcuts. You obviously know nothing about these things."

"I swear, sometimes I feel like I'm living with a child," he muttered, his rage deflating as he ran out of words to yell. Running a hand through his already tousled black hair Dylan turned, continuing to grumble obscenities as he allowed himself to cool off.

The most he could do was stand there and listen, wincing occasionally at the onslaught of Dylan's anger, waiting for his roommate to finish. By the last few lines, Rem was visibly flinching, and his expression shifted subtly from humorously nervous to genuinely hurt. He stood up straight, remaining quiet for several seconds, shoulders slumped as he glanced aside. "I was just joking, you know. Sorry. I really was going to take care of it."

Though he usually tried to be good-natured about these kinds of conflicts, something about the situation had clearly made him uncomfortable, and it showed in his flat tone and the way he refused to make eye contact. He shrugged, muttering, "If you want to think it was that easy growing up 'round magic, fine. I'm going to go....oh, I don't know, probably do laundry."

Without another word, he disapparated to the basement with a pop.

He would have been grumpy at this point, if he hadn't found two feet of suds leaking out of the washing machine. And there it was, still churning along, hard at work on a load of laundry that included both his and Dylan's clothes (because he thought he'd be nice and try to wash all their clothes at once), while simultaneously emitting a growing cloud of soap bubbles. Confronted by this disaster, he forgot to brood.

"Bollocks," he muttered, diving into the mountain of soap bubbles to try and locate the switch to turn off the machine, before Dylan came downstairs and found the mess.

Though his rant was finished before Rem had even considered being offended, it seemed to matter little to his sometimes-sensitive roommate. Sometimes it seemed that the most random utterances on Dylan's part could send the man into a fit, which often proved nearly impossible to snap him out of. Dylan could only guess that he had hit  a nerve with mention of his upbringing; only references to Rémy's past ever seemed to upset him to such a degree.

Dylan sighed, becoming even more irritated as his roommate disappeared from the room, obviously feeling butt-hurt about something he'd said. Angry as he was, Dylan hadn't meant to upset his roommate; he'd simply wanted to express his frustration at being the only responsible one on a regular basis.

While he stood by his words, Dylan knew he'd have to clear this little mess up if there was going to be any peace in the house. There was simply no living with an angsty Rem; he would drive Dylan crazy with his cryptic silence and brooding looks. Besides, Dylan's anger had mostly deflated with the end of his verbal explosion; he'd been bottling up his annoyance for far too long. Bad things tended to happen when Dylan repressed the grievances he needed to voice, and now he was going to have to deal with the consequences of pushing Rem too far.

As much as he loathed to confront his roommate, Dylan knew what had to be done. It would, he thought, be rather like ripping off a Band-Aid or taking an especially unpleasant needle; quick, painful, and necessary. It was with this attitude that Dylan followed Rem to the laundry room with a similar pop... and then, of course, instantly regretted the decision. His roommate was there alright, currently being consumed by a ravenous mountain of suds. It was a mess that only Rem could concoct. Really, his destructive skills were almost impressive sometimes... almost.

"What the hell did you do?!" he yelled, completely stunned and unsure how to react to the chaos erupting around them. His planned response to Rem's sudden exit completely forgotten, Dylan wasted no time in jumping in before the mess could overwhelm them completely.

Thinking quickly, Dylan whipped out his wand and shouted, "Scourgify!" Pleased with himself, he watched as the enormous mountain of bubbles slowly began to recede, revealing his now entirely sudsy roommate. Despite his irritation with Rem, Dylan couldn't help but be amused by the completely ridiculous sight now unfolding before him.

"That's a good look for you," he commented snidely, grabbing a mop and soaking up some of the suds that had gathered on the floor. His anger and annoyance temporarily forgotten, Dylan focused on the task at hand. Mrs. Potts would be home soon, and he was sure that neither of them wanted to know what would happen if the poor old lady walked in on this ghastly mess.

At the sound of his roommate's voice, Rem popped up out of the mountain of suds, white foam wreathing his body like some kind of Saint Nicholas costume. "I didn't do anything!" he protested, bits of soap flying from around his mouth. "Just laundry!" Dylan, quick to act, cast a spell on the soap to get rid of it; gradually the suds vanished, their faint popping dying away until nothing remained save bits and pieces of the mess on the floor. He stared down at the wet stains all over his clothes, wondering where something so simple as laundry had gone wrong.

"I did it exactly like I was supposed to," he grumbled, "started the water, poured the detergent, added the clothes, shut the lid....and it just sort of....spiraled out of control from there, apparently." He ticked off the steps on his fingers to make sure he had them right, still baffled by the explosion of suds. Then, remembering the washer was still running, he turned to fiddle with the dials and lift the lid.

Unfortunately, when he tried to turn the dial to the off position, it didn't work.

"Hey, do you know if soap bubbles have a tendency to short out washing m-" he started to ask, right as the pipes behind the machine burst and started spraying water everywhere. More suds were leaking out of the top of the machine, and now there was water mixed into the mess too.

Surprised, he jumped back - and that was when he spotted the box of wash powder he'd gone out to get that morning, a wizard brand known as Magi-Glo. Suddenly, he had the sneaking suspicion that wizard's wash powder, which was generally used in old-fashioned wash basins, was not meant for Muggle washing machines.

"I think I figured out the problem!" he yelled over the spray of water from the pipes.

Rolling his eyes, Dylan dropped the mop he was holding in order to glance at the box of laundry detergent his roommate had been using. "Let me see that," he grumbled, his eyes scanning the package thoughtfully.

Then, glancing up and raising an accusing eyebrow, he asked, "You do realize you were only supposed to put a pinch in, right? What did you do, pour the whole box in there?" This, among various other incidents in recent months, is why Rem had been all but banned from the laundry room... the same way he had been banned from the kitchen for nearly blowing the place up in an attempt to use the oven. Sometimes Dylan felt like the Susie Homemaker of the house, a position he didn't particularly enjoy holding. A grown man in an apron and elbow length gloves scrubbing pots and pans while dinner baked in the oven wasn't exactly what came to mind when one thought of the word masculine. It certainly wasn't earning Dylan any hot dates, either, but that was a rant for another time.

Unfortunately, Dylan didn't have too much time to investigate what exactly had gone wrong with the washing machine. He had just finished reading the microscopic fine print on the box of detergent- most notably the line that stated 'Absolutely do NOT use in Muggle machines'- when the room erupted into chaos once again. Dylan jumped back, startled, as the pipes behind the washing machine burst, pounding the room and its occupants in a never-ending torrent of water.

"Oh you've discovered the problem, have you?" he shouted over the noise, responding to Rem's epiphany. "Really, your intuition and perception astounds me. How did you ever figure it out?" Dylan was surprised to find that he was still able to muster up a little sarcasm in the midst of such a crazy situation. For once, however, Dylan lacked a concrete solution to their dilemma. "We'd better figure a way out of this mess soon, or we're gonna have to find ourselves a new place to live!"

Folding his arms, Rem turned around, his feet splashing in the water on the floor as he did so. "I did not put in the whole box!" He said defensively, taking the box of wash powder from Dylan's hand and shaking it to show there was still powder inside. "Only half of it!"

Everything in the immediate vicinity of the washing machine was soaked now; his hair was plastered to his head, his clothes were plastered to his body, and the pipes kept spraying even more water into the room. There was at least an inch of it on the floor, he guessed as he stared down at the water pooling around his shoes.

He stood there for a moment, and then he snickered. The snicker turned into the chuckle. And within seconds, the chuckle turned into a full-blown gale of hysterical laughter. "This is awful, but I can't help myself. Alright, um..." He looked around, trying to find some kind of solution to the problem. "We should stop the water first. Do you know how to stop the water in the house? Is there a valve or something to turn it off?"

"What part of 'a pinch' didn't you understand?" Dylan asked, entirely giving up on his futile attempts to mop the mess clean as he sloshed over to his roommate. "Or did you completely neglect to read the package?" He had, of course, already assumed just that, but Dylan felt it was worth asking anyways.

And then, despite everything, Dylan found himself laughing along with his roommate. Annoyed as he was, even he had to admit that this situation was too absurd not to laugh at. Besides, getting angrier wasn't going to solve the problem, and laughing about it made it seem far less serious than it actually was. It certainly relieved a lot of the stress from the situation.

"Merlin's beard I hate you right now," Dylan said with a chuckle, his anger no longer serious. At Rem's suggestion, however, Dylan snapped back into focus, glancing along the wall for some way to end the constant stream of water. Part of him actually hoped, however foolishly, that some emergency shut-off switch would just appear if he looked hard enough.

When it didn't, however, Dylan knew where they needed to go to start looking for such a valve. "Come on; let's go look in the cellar," he suggested, knowing they were only wasting precious time by standing around in the now ankle-deep water. Emergency shut-off valves for appliances like this one were usually always in the darkest, creepiest parts of any house. The basement of this particular flat fit that description better than anything else, and Dylan was sure he'd seen a lot of unmarked pipes and valves the last time he'd dared to venture down there. If they were going to prevent any further damage, the basement was their best bet.