All The Magic We Made (Sebastian Sallow x Fem!OC)

In Which I Am Basically Santa Claus

"Too much?" I say sheepishly, the four hundred pastries I baked laying on several trays before me.

"Perhaps just a bit, miss," Blinkey says.

The house elves have let me bake my own midnight treat tonight in the kitchens. I was chatting with them, and somewhere there I must have gotten distracted, because I used the wrong flour—a weird magic type of flour that multiplies whatever it makes.

"It is for simplicity, miss," another elf, Batty, explains. "Three times a day we must cook for hundreds of students, miss."

The logic is sound, what can I say. If I was cooking three times a day for a school full of ravenous kids, I wouldn't feel like carefully preparing each individual pastry either.

Me, I tried baking a batch of four pastries, which was already pushing it, but Blinkey and some of the other house elves agreed to share with me. But I suppose the flour multiplies everything by one hundred, because I ended up with this crazy number of pastries.

At least they turned out good.

"Is there any way you guys can send this up as part of breakfast tomorrow?" I ask.

"Afraid not, miss," Blinkey says. "The breakfast table is all filled up for tomorrow."

"Darn," I say under my breath. Then, I feel like the little lightbulb you see in cartoons appears above my head. "Do you guys have some really big baskets I can borrow?"

With the help of the house elves, I fill up four baskets with as many pastries as I can, although I still have quite a few left over that I need to carry in a cloth bag. Once all my pastries are stashed, the house elves give me a little cart to wheel them out of the kitchen.

I quietly creep through the halls, relying on the paintings' warnings about staff and prefects patrolling. Finally, I reach Ravenclaw tower. I grab one basket of pastries and begin braving the long flight of stairs.

The Common common room is always closed after curfew, but each house common room has at least a few night owls still up and about late into the night. I've heard that the Ravenclaws in particular are partial to their late night study sessions. Maybe they'd like a treat to accompany them.

Once I reach the common room door, I need to take a moment to catch my breath before knocking. The door creeks open and a student peeks her head out the door as I'm brushing the hair from my sweaty forehead.

"Hi!" I say with my best bright smile, undoubtedly still flushed from my grand adventure up the stairs.

"Hello?" the girl asks cautiously.

"I'm Isla," I say, holding out a hand—even though it's ignored. I don't really blame her; she looks like she's only running on pure caffeine. I wouldn't have much energy to be friendly either.

"Yeah, the new fifth year," she says. Is that what everyone knows me by? "Wrong common room."

I shake my head. "No, no, I was just wondering if you guys wanted a snack."

"Pardon?"

"A snack." I hold out the basket of pastries. "I made a little too many tonight."

"A little?" She raises an eyebrow as she looks down at the basket. To be fair, there are about a hundred in this basket.

"Maybe more than a little," I laugh. "Would you like this basket? I figured you guys would appreciate a treat with all the late night studying you're doing."

She pauses, almost looking like she's analyzing the situation and wondering what the hell I'm on. Then, she smiles a little. "We would, thank you." She takes the basket from me and disappears back into the common room. That is my cue to be on my way.

When I get back to my cart of pastries, I'm about to continue pushing my cart to the next common room when I hear a high pitched cackling. Peeves appears before my eyes, a wicked grin on his face.

"HA! The new fifth year wandering, hmm?" he mocks. "Lost, are you?"

"Hey, Peeves." I smile at him, taking out a pastry from a basket. "Want a pastry? I made too many."

The poltergeist seems to falter a little, probably expecting me to jump in surprise like I did the first time. But joke's on him; he already startled me once before, and I'm rarely surprised by the same thing twice. "A pastry?"

"Oh, wait, I'm sorry." I furrow my brows, tilting my head. "Are you able to eat? You know, since you're not exactly..."

I gesture to his ghostiness.

"I..." Peeves seems to gather his bearings, his grin back on his face. "Yes, Peevsie wants a treatsie. Watchy, watchy, or else Peevsie will snatch them all from under your nose. How? A mystery!"

True to his word, he snatches the pastry from my hand and cackles as he flies away—though it's not quite as loud, obnoxious, and intentionally authority-attention-drawing as it was previously.