FIC: "The Case of the Unspeakable Crime" (PG)

A very, very happy (belated) birthday to wildestranger. I have neither porn nor plot of substance for you, but I hope you enjoy nevertheless. &hearts

Title: The Case of the Unspeakable Crime
Author: archon_mentha
Rating/Warnings: PG, Humor, Sherlock Holmes Fusion (sort of)
Summary: Some crimes are just too terrible to name out loud. Sirius Black, following in the footsteps of his idol Sherlock Holmes, intends to solve this one.
Notes: A birthday fic for the absolutely wonderful wildestranger. This owes so, so much to pre_raphaelite1, both for giving me ideas and beta-reading.

There are two other stories in this series (you do not need to have read these to follow this story, each stands alone). The first was The Case of the Misplaced Satisfaction and the second was The Case of the Obnoxious Customer.

The Case of the Unspeakable Crime


"What seems to be the trouble?" Sirius asked Minerva McGonagall. In a rare act of deference, he actually swung his ankles off the table at Order Headquarters and sat up straight as he spoke.

His former Head of House pursed her lips as she looked at Sirius and Remus. "I hesitate to ask you boys. You may be adults now, but I am not certain you can handle the topic with the maturity level necessary to be of assistance."

If Sirius had conjured a halo to float around his head, he couldn't possibly have looked more innocent. He knew this for a fact; he had spent hours perfecting that look in the mirror. Sadly, he'd never managed to get the halo spell to work, but he would, some day. Bugger all if he was going to give up.

But when Sirius glanced over to see the open, surprised and deeply hurt expression on Remus' face, he knew his own efforts paled in comparison to those of the Master. Remus never had to practice his innocent faces in the mirror, the git; they came naturally. Remus' plaintive, soulful expression had all the subtlety of a mild engorgement charm right to the eyes and was roughly ten times as effective.

"As you said, we are adults now," Remus said mildly. "I'm sure we can handle whatever it is."

McGonagall had been dealing with both of them far too long to be fooled, but even she wasn't completely immune to their charm. "Several books have been stolen from the Restricted Section of Hogwarts' Library."

There was a very loud noise that sounded like a screech-owl fighting a kneazle. It ended abruptly.

"Mr. Lupin! Are you alright? Mr. Lupin!!" McGonagall leapt up to check on the statue-like Remus, but Sirius stopped her with a careless wave of his hand.

"Relax, he'll be fine. Happens all the time. Judging by the particular shade of grey his face turned while making that hideous noise, I'd say he'll probably snap right out of his catatonia in a few minutes. It's the books, you know. He can't bear to see them abused."

McGonagall glanced at Remus with an indecently fond, maternal expression. "Maybe Moody or Kingsley Shacklebolt should help instead–"

"They're frightfully busy just now," Sirius assured. "We will be happy to help, really. What was taken? Signs Your Inferi Have Gone Too Soft and Squishy? Fifteen Dark Potions to Serve with Red Wine and Steak? Ancient Magic: Mud, Blood and You?"

McGonagall shook her head. "No, although I can't help but wonder at the ease with which you recite the catalogue of the Restricted Section from memory."

Sirius had the grace to observe the formalities and squirm, just a little.

"All of the most dangerous Dark Magic books are protected by very strong spells that prevent them from being taken from the grounds. Even so, we checked, and they are all still there. We do think we know who has them," McGonagall finished, "but we cannot spare anyone to go to Italy and get them back."

"So what did they take?" Books on Dark Magic constituted by far the largest and most valuable portion of the Restricted Section.

"I'm afraid the guilty party has taken our entire selection of…erotic literature."

A second screech filled the air, this one even more raucous and abrasive than the first.

Dimly, Sirius could hear someone shouting, "Mr. Black! Mr. Black!!" Then everything went dark.



"This is," Sirius announced when he came to, "a case worthy of the full attentions of none other than the greatest deductive mind that the wizarding world–"

"Mind? What mind?" Remus muttered.

Sirius magnanimously pretended not to hear. Moony would come around…well, he'd better, or he wouldn't come at all.

"The greatest deductive mind," Sirius repeated – he wasn't that good at pretending, so what? "That the wizarding world has ever seen. Moony, have you noticed that you are lying on a blanket on the floor?"

"Yes, I have. So are you, for that matter. Seems rather cruel, even by McGonagall's standards, leaving us for dead like this, don't you think?"

"But Moony," Sirius sat bolt upright, remembering that Remus did not yet know the full extent of the crime. It took every ounce of willpower for Sirius to speak out loud that which had been so horrible that the first mention of it had knocked out even a cold and seasoned detective such as himself.

He took a deep breath. "Moony. I don't know how to tell you this, but…" he swallowed, "they've stolen the porn!"

"The…the…" Remus stammered.

Sirius nodded solemnly.

"This is even worse than I thought." Remus began to go dangerously pale again.

"Have I not told you that I am on the case? All will yet be well, my good Lupin."

"Where are we even going to begin? You don't have even a guess as to who has them or where they are!"

"No, no," Sirius said with a perfectly straight face. "I never guess. It is a shocking habit. Destructive to the logical faculty."

Remus made a sound that bore a suspicious resemblance to a snort.

"I assure you, I do have a plan." Sirius could have told Remus immediately that McGonagall had said she had an idea who the culprit was, while Remus had been passed out, but like any good conjuror, he knew that it simply wouldn't do to let Remus in on workings of the trick too early.

"Let's go, then," Remus said, in what Sirius was forced to consider a very melodramatically resigned manner. Remus was such a drama queen.

For a moment, Sirius was torn between objecting to Remus' blatant management of him, objecting to Remus' lack of support for his crime-solving activities, or objecting to the fact that Remus hadn't suggested they have a nice, quick shag first. They were locked in an office alone after all, lying on the floor with plenty of blankets. Seemed foolish not to use them.

Sirius was no fool. At least, not all the time.



"The first thing to do," Sirius said somewhat later on, at what he judged the appropriate moment, "is to find McGonagall and make her finish giving us the details of the case." He sat up, reached across Remus' lap to his own now heavily-wrinkled robes from which he pulled out a small, dark bottle he'd been carrying for just such a situation as this. Before Remus could object, he twisted it open.

"Ugh, what is that horrible smell?" Remus gagged.

Sirius wanted to answer, but his eyes were watering terribly. He wondered if the Muggle Doyle had ever bothered to smell valerian himself before recommending it as a cat attractant, and he certainly wished he'd never bought the magically strengthened preparation. Doyle's fault, that, too, it was. Irresponsible writers were the worst.

The noble detective's faithful sidekick looked to be on the verge of passing out again, and the detective himself seemed trapped in a hopeless situation, when he felt a pressure on his leg and gratefully looked into the eyes of a very interested kitty.

Sirius managed to get the bottle closed, but the damage had been done. He blinked, and instead of green feline eyes gazing at him in adoration, green but now human eyes blinked at him instead. McGonagall started to rise, putting her hands dangerously high on his thighs and sliding them up in a horribly inappropriate manner.

"Argh! Woman! Woman! Moony, help! Get it off me!" Sirius struggled, but McGonagall's human form was much stronger than Sirius would ever have thought.

"Call me Minerva," she purred, trying to crawl into Sirius' lap.

"He will do no such thing," Remus said grimly, and Sirius wanted to kiss him. Accio, Squirtbottle! Remus called, and a wonderfully large bottle sloshed into his hand almost immediately.

The epic battle that followed was both one of the most horrifying and one of the most wonderful things Sirius would ever witness in his life, although he would never tell the story to a living soul. Not because he didn't want to, either.

When the smoke had cleared – literally – McGonagall didn't ask; she had simply cast a very strong binding hex sealing his lips on the subject. So beautiful was the tale that Sirius might have been tempted to research a way around McGonagall's hex, but Remus had also stepped in and promised that if Sirius did any such thing, his next case would be titled The Missing and Most Precious Jewels of Black. This threat was, in addition to being quite unfair, very effective.

Suffice to say, in the end McGonagall told Sirius everything he wanted to know, and more than a few things that he could've gone to his grave quite happily without knowing.



The criminal turned out to be, as McGonagall had believed, a seventh year Hogwarts student only a few years younger than Remus and Sirius. He proved ludicrously easy to track down, certainly no match for the skills of the estimable Sirius Black. The ease of his capture was depressing, and Sirius would gladly have reached for the cocaine to stimulate his senses, except he knew Moony would kill him for it.

No matter. He would simply have to settle for transfiguring Remus' briefcase into a violin later.

The boy's name was Armand Montserrat and not only was he profoundly embarrassed to have been caught, he was profusely apologetic as well.

"I 'ad every intention of bringing zem back next term," the boy explained, lounging comfortably in his family's summer home in Italy. "I need zem to win ze affections of ze most beautiful girl in ze world. Literature ees ze most precious thing to her."

"You stole books from the library to impress your girlfriend?" Remus set his tea down and asked in a quietly threatening voice that almost distracted Sirius from the case at hand.

"Oui. She will not marry me because she ees becoming quite well known. I do not weesh to 'arm her career, but in ze eyes of ze world zat is just what would 'appen eef she took my name. But I love her, monsieurs, most painfully."

Sirius absently took a glass of exquisite red wine, his second, from a tray offered to him by a house elf. Whatever could be said about Armand's book borrowing idiosyncrasies, he knew how to entertain a guest. "You don't really want the books at all; you only want to impress this girl," he mused thoughtfully.

"Lavinia Zabini," Armand said reverently. Her 'air ees like sunshine, her eyes sparkle like ze emeralds. Her breasts–"

"We get the idea," Sirius interrupted, having recently heard enough about breasts to last him a lifetime. He reached right past the stack of contraband to Armand's own bookshelves and deftly selected a certain tome. He paged through it quickly and then showed it to Armand. "Your problem is quite elementary. Your answer is here." He pointed dramatically to a spot in the book.

"I never thought of zat." Armand said, blinking.

"She'll be begging to have your children. Trust me."




"What did you show him?" Remus asked as they landed back at Order Headquarters, the missing books spelled into a neat little package tucked under Sirius' arm.

"Why, Moony, want to give it a try?" Sirius leered.

Unfortunately, Remus was much too wary a beast to catch so easily. "That depends."

It had been worth a shot. "Actually, it wasn't anything erotic at all. Just Shakespeare: 'That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet'

'Henceforth I never will be Romeo.' Remus smiled. "If he loves her, he will change his name. Well done, Sirius. There may be a method in your madness, after all."

"Rather too much method is my madness," Sirius confessed in a moment of rare honesty. "That is why I need you, Moony. Your romanticism brings colour and life to everything."

"Indubitably."



Additional Notes:

Sirius' words in this portion: "No, no," Sirius said with a perfectly straight face. "I never guess. It is a shocking habit. Destructive to the logical faculty," are a direct quotation from The Sign of the Four by Doyle.

And, of course, 'That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet' and 'Henceforth I never will be Romeo.' are from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Updated 3/15/06: I've just realized that this story is missing key credits. In fact, I've come up with very little at all, just fit others' creations together as I liked.

Many of the elements are easily recognized as coming from Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and certainly from JK Rowling's. However, Lavinia Zabini, Armand Montserrat and her insistence on his taking her name are the creations of wildestranger, who invented them to be the parents of her most wonderful version of Blaise Zabini on communiquills. It was never my intention that anyone think they were my idea - I just very foolishly didn't remember that many readers might not be familiar with CQ.