[G.Hall] Exploding Crumb Cakes

[Jac Shaw]

((arb title I know but it just came to me))

Diner had been fantastic as usual and dessert was coming along soon. Jac had been sitting alone for that meal as no one wanted to be around her. She couldn't understand why and had thought on it long and hard for the time she had before dinner. Perhaps it was that she smelled? She had checked and didn't so it couldn't be that. Perhaps it was her pitch black curly hair that hung loosely around her face? But people should be used to her changing her look, why should this be so different?

As soon as the food had arrived it hadn't mattered why people seemed to be avoiding her, she dug in and had a good meal. She was in the mood for something sweet but wasn't sure what. I'll just have to wait and see what there is to offer, she thought looking up and down the cleared table. It always astounded her how efficient the house elves were, even when it was just her in the kitchen they were quick and did the job right. Not like her and her potions essay. She knew she could do the essays well but she just didn't want to give Vance a reason to suspect that she was cheating. He'd never believe she wasn't, that was just how it was and Jac could live with it.

All manner of puddings appeared on the table before them (and some first years still gasped in amazement, even after nearly nine months of seeing it every day). The variety was always too great for her to choose so Jac sat for a while, quiet, and looked up and down the table space immediately around her, contemplating the apple crumble but wanting to not be hasty. She put her hands together and buried them in her lap, looking up and down the table.

[Antoinette Rouge]

Antoinette was sitting a bit father down the table, her hand suspended in midair. It looked a bit odd, but in truth, Antoinette was in a great personal battle. To her left was the chocolate layer cake with a topping of rasberry sauce. To her right was the staack of chocolate chip cookies. Directly in front of her was a nice big bowl of blueberries and strawberries, floating in a ginormous pile of cream. Originally, Antoinette had been going for the berry/cream, because at least she could pretend that was healthy. Unfortunatly, her eye had been snagged on the cookies, and the smell of the sauce on the layer cake was wafting towards her. Her hand was paused, mid-snatch, because she was stumped.
Antoinette tried to tell herself that whatever she didn't get tonight, she would get tomorrow. But her instinct was arguing, nearly screaming that she ought to just take them all. Luckily enough, Antoinette will was stronger then that, and wouldn't let her take all three. Unfortunatly, that left her where she was: stumped.
"Bloody hell." Antoinette muttered, as she leaned forward to grab the cookies, only to pause, glancing at the berries.

[Jac Shaw]

"Bloody hell"

Jac turned her head to see the blond Gryffindor she had met not two days ago sitting a way away from her. She leaned her check bone on the palm of her hand and stretched her arm over the table, watching her hand floating in midair. She watched her for a moment, watched her think about what pudding to have and smiled as she was going through a similar dilemma. Yet after a moment, a cookie was picked up and the fun was gone.

Jac slid down the table to sit next to Antoinette and smiled at her. "Not exactly what I would have gone for but not a bad choice, if I may say," Jac chirped playfully, leaning on her hand again. In front of Jac was a crumb cake and Jac picked a crumb off the top of it with her unoccupied arm. She put the crumb in her mouth and smile at Antoinette.

[Antoinette Rouge]

Antoinette smiled ruefully at the other Gryffindor. "I'm normally a bit speedier with descisions, but to be perfectly honest, dessert is just too much for my little brain." She shook her head, taking a bite of the cookie.

"Mhm." She murmured, enjoying the bite immensely. Antoinette smiled as she saw the other girl snatch a crumb from the crumb cake. "Keeping your options open, I see." She said, her blue eyes twinkling. Taking another bite of her cookie, Antoinette tucked her blonde hair out of her face. After several moments of contemplation, she had decided that it hadn't been a very large cookie after all: there was still room for cream and berries. And berries are good for you, so, really, it was all right.

"If you don't hurry, there won't be much dessert left at all." Antoinette said to Jac with a smile. It was true: all done the table, first years were diving into the meal as though it might just be their last. "You'd think they hadn't been fed in days." She observed, waving her spoon vaguely at a group of crazed Hufflepuffs.

[Jac Shaw]

Jac chuckled mildly. “I’m sure that’s not true,” she said slowly, her smile wide, and after a moment she added, “I’m sure your brain isn’t little at all.” She laughed again, still leaning on her hand. She picked another large crumb off the cake in front of her and put it in her mouth. She felt slightly drowsy but remained cheerful and smiling, brown eyes bright.

She watched the satisfaction on the Gryffindor’s face as she ate more of the cookie and smiled. Jac liked Antoinette as she was always happy and happy shiny people always made Jac happy. She enjoyed being happy and was finding that there was less and less to be happy about these days, with fewer paintings to chat with and more and more of her friends diving into their books with the approaching N.E.W.T.’s.

“Hmm?” Jac mumbled when she heard Antoinette speaking and lifted her eyes to meet hers. “Oh,” she said realising she actually had heard her. Looking down the table at a group of first years Jac laughed loudly. “You’d think they’d’ave gotten used to it by now.” Pushing herself up, Jac sat straight and faced the crumb cake. It seemed as good of a choice as any and besides her few pickings it was untouched.

Sniffing, Jac shifted her fringe out of her face and took hold of the cake spatula. She began to cut into the flat cake, through the thick layer of crumbed biscuit on the top when all of a sudden and with no warning the cake began to quiver and shake. Jac frowned, her hair turning grey, and she quickly lifted her hands above her head, leaving the spatula half in the cake. The cake continued to shake and a deep rumbling noise issued forth from inside the cake.

“I didn’t do anything,” Jac said defensively, looking worriedly at Antoinette as though she might be behind the cake’s behaviour.

[lara]

Lara walked down to the Great Hall slowly, taking her time. She loved having her free period right before dinner. She would take a long, well-deserved nap before going off to eat her fill. After all, it was hard work forgetting where you were going and getting spells wrong, causing your partner to blow up. She had apologized profoundly to the Slytherin girl, but by the look of her singed eyebrows, she wasn't going to forgive Lara anytime soon.

She bounded down the stairs, missing the last one and failing on her knee. She laughed as she got up, she was so stupid, and she knew it, but until their was a potion or charm that could make her smarter, Lara wasn't going to worry about it. Come to think of it, there probably was a potion or charm that could make her smarter, but she doubted she could perform it correctly with out burning of her hair until she was bald. Again, she had told that Slytherin that she had the perfect shaped head for being bald, but the look in her eyes was completely unforgiving.

She walked, skipped, into the Hall and headed for the Gryffindor table, almost taking a seat at the Ravenclaw tabled. She giggled as she took her correct seat next to a girl she had never met before with curly black hair. She starred at the table. "Oh!" Lara said, she eyes lighting up. "Are we having cakes and puddings for dinner?" She asked the girl, hoping that she would say yes. "What will we have for dessert then?" She asked a blond girl that seemed to be in conversation with the dark hair girl. Lara hadn't realized she had missed dinner completely.

She looked at the girl. She looked familiar. "Are you related to Jac Biggerstall?" She asked the girl. It was almost scary how her face looked like Jac's, but Lara had only ever seen Jac with bright orange hair, or light hair. Maybe this dark haired girl was Jac's cousin.

[ Obviously, it is Jac, but Lara doesn't get it. Hope you don't mind that I played that Lara already knew Jac! ]

[Jac Shaw]

The crumb cake continued to tremble and shake and Jac gave Antoinette a worried look, her brow creased. She didn't know what was happening but slowly dropped her hands to her lap. She stared at the cake for a second before someone began to speak to her. Looking up, Jac saw Lara and her brow smoothened and a smile came to her face. She had not seen the clumsy girl in a while and it was always nice to see another bright and smiling face, even if they didn't know it was you.

Jac laughed and put her hands in front of her face, to hid it. She changed her hair back to it normal colouring and quickly opened her hands with an added, "boo!" just for effect. "Hiya Lara," she said cheerfully, the shaking cake between them forgotten. "Actually, this is dessert," Jac said informatively. With a snort of a laugh, Jac asked, "d'you miss supper?" She laughed and threw her head back. "Ray, Ray, Ray, you are a scatterbrain."

She sighed contently. "Actually," Jac said, smiling at Antoinette, "Anti and I were just trying to figure out why this Crumb Cake is ... well, doing what it's doing." Jac pointed at the quaking cake with a spatula sticking out of the end. "It started doing that as soon as I started cutting meself a slice. Not the foggiest idea why though." Jac looked from the one Gryffindor to the other. "Any ideas?" she asked hopefully.

[lara]

Lara made a face as the girl covered her face. Weren't they a little old for hide and seek? However, Lara got herself ready to run and dive hiding under the staff table the second the girl started counting. However, she didn't count. In a split second Lara saw the girl's hands go down and Jac appear between them! Lara gave a little shriek and peered close to Jac's face. It was Jac. Lara laughed. "Wow!" she said. "You're really good at that Jac!" she laughed at herself. How could she be so dumb?

"Oh." Lara said. She had missed dinner all together. She felt her stomach rumble. Could she eat dessert without eating dinner? At her house she wasn't allowed dessert if she didn't finish dinner. However, Lara doubted that her mother was going to find out. "Oh well, I must have fallen asleep. I don't remember." Lara shrugged and plopped a large spoonful of Tapioca pudding onto her plate and started eating it with a fork.

Lara smiled at the other girl, Anti, Jac had called her. She had seem her in some classes before, but didn't know her name. Lara wonder what she was "anti" about? Looking at the cake, she squinted. "Is it alive?" Lara asked, her mouth full of pudding. She swallowed hard. "Maybe you made it mad, cutting it all up. I wouldn't like you to cut it all up." Lara said, though she doubted it was really alive. She smiled, "Perhaps we should just eat it really fast before it has a chance to do anything to us!"

[Jac Shaw]

Jac laughed at Lara. She was a cutie pie and Jac could help but laugh when she was around her. She had fallen asleep and missed supper, poor thing. Jac wasn't sure that she had ever missed supper, except for the weeks she had spent in the hospital wing but those didn't count as supper was always brought to her. It made choosing what to eat a whole lot easier to do as it was chosen for her but she didn't mind at all. Sometimes some of her friends would sit with her at supper time and they would chat and laugh. Those were good times even though she might have been hurting.

Lara thought the dessert might be alive but Jac highly doubted it. If she didn't know any better she would say it had been jinxed for just such a person as herself to come along and tamper with it. "Hmm," was her reply to Lara's statement of eating it quickly. She would rather not. Jac would rather poke it and see watch happened. Picking up a spoon, Jac slowly brought it to the Crumb Cake and poked it. Suddenly it exploded, bits of crumb cake splattering everywhere. It was all over the three Gryffindor's sitting around it. It was in Jac's hair, on her face and cloths.

As it exploded Jac gasped and sat up straight because it made an almighty bang! that scared the living day lights out of her. She opened her eyes, caked in ... well, cake and dropped the spoon to move her hands to her face and wipe away the cake. "Not exactly what I had planned," she said, looking at the cake on her hands. She contemplated eating it but knowing for sure now that it had been jinxed she dumped it on the cake covered plate in front of her.

[lara]

Lara watched as Jac thought about her suggestion. She actually thought about it! Lara was used to people throwing her ideas away like old cheese! Granted, they were usually absurd ideas, but it felt good every once and a while to actually have one considered.

"I don't think that a good idea." Lara said as Jac picked up the spoon, but she was too late and Jac poked the cake. Lara was on a roll today. It hadn't been a good idea. Lara covered her face with her eyes as a loud BANG echoed off the stone walls. Almost everyone in the hall stopped eating and looking up toward the three Gryffindors, who were covered in cake. Lara uncovered her eyes. her arms had cake all over them, as did her hair. She shook like a dog, crumb cake flying everywhere, hitting the person next to her. "Sorry." she said with a smirk, and brushed it off the boy.

Lara looked at Jac. She was covered in the cake, Lara's mouth broke into a wide smile, and then she laughed. She laughed loud, it was hysterical. "I told you it was possessed!" She laughed, cake falling from her hair as she jiggled.

[Jac Shaw]

Jac looked at Lara, bits of cake in her eye lashes. She was laughing. Actually laughing. The more Jac heard Lara's laughter, the more Jac began to realise how silly she must look with cake all over her. She smiled as she scraped more cake off her face. Lara continued to laugh and Jac began to laugh along with her. It was mighty funny, an exploding cake and getting it all over herself was such a Jac thing to do it was laughable.

Scraping the cake off her hands again, Jac began to run her fingers through her straight hair. "It's pretty gross," Jac said, looking at the pale coloured cake moosh on her hands. Wiping it off on the plate and grinned broadly at Lara. "You don't look so great yourself," she chuckled, noticing the cake in her hair too.

[lara]

Lara made a face through her laughter at the mush Jac scraped off her face. She didn't even feel the cake on her own face, or in her hair or on her robes.

"What!?" Lara said, diving for her bag and pulling out a mirror. She looked at herself. The slight vain girl looked horrified. She had spent all morning getting her hair to curl perfectly! Now, bits of crumb cake stuck to the curls. She pouted, flicking a large crumb from her eyebrow. "It's not funny." She said. Glancingly in the mirror again, she broke a smile. "Ok, it is." She began to laugh again. "What do you think was wrong with the cake?" she asked Jac.

[sorry, its bad, not in a Lara mood.]

[Jac Shaw]

When Lara pulled out a little mirror and check herself Jac couldn't help but laugh. It was such a girly thing to do but it still amused her greatly. Jac remembered her mother's wise words of warning against men that carried mirrors around with them. Arrogance was never an attractive quality to have and seeing it before anything began was the best course. A mirror was a dead give away but Jac wondered if it was so in this case. Jac didn't think so but made a note to ask her mother when she saw her again.

Jac shrugged, her hair caked in ... cake. "Spose it was a prank with much love from one of the Slytherins," Jac eyed one of the muffins Antoinette had been eating. The one she was eying was topped with Crumb Cake and she picked it up. If she couldn't get a normal piece this would suffice. She bit into the muffin and smiled at Lara. "Can't let a bit of hexed cake stop us, can we?" she chortled.