The sewing machine from hell

THE SEWING MACHINE FROM HELL

Muttering curses under his breath he sat down in front of it again.

A sewing machine.

He glared at the robes. They needed to be patched back together, it was as simple as that.

Ever since he had resigned from Hogwarts he had been forced to go back to his old habit of going through the full moons without the wolfsbane. This meant that he had to lock himself in somewhere alone where he couldn't hurt anyone - not only because the thought of close he had been to attacking Snape (for the second time), Sirius and even students that one time still haunted him, but because the Ministry would have him promptly put to death.

But being locked up alone as a wolf meant that he bit himself again. So his only choice to attempt to spare his clothes would be trying to hide them in the room (he couldn't exactly go to there naked). That was of course fruitless. The wolf always found them and took out its frustration on them for a while, before going back to biting himself.

Remus sighed deeply and started to put in the threads.

He hated Muggle inventions. They were far too complicated for anyone's good and took too long time to do what they were supposed to do. Of course he didn't know any sewing spell, he cursed himself for that when he desperately tried to get the thread into the eye of the needle.

He missed. He missed again. And again. And again.

And again.

Now the thread started to split up in the end. There was no way it would go through the needle now. Under silence he reached for the pair of scissors (which he always kept within reach when sewing) and cut of the end.

He tried again.

And missed. And missed again.

Remus groaned and wet the end of the tread in his mouth, while glaring at the sewing machine.

He tried again, and missed.

After another three tries he succeeded. Suppressing the urge to jump up and scream out of pure joy to finally have got it right (after all, the Potions teacher had not appreciated it in his 5th year, since she had tripped over a student (James Potter) that time - and the neighbors probably wouldn't like it either. They weren't too fond of him as it was and if they heard him cheer they would probably think that the werewolf had done some advanced Dark Magic or similar.) Remus couldn't say he was too fond of the thought of a mob, so he settled for a victorious smile.

Click.

Darkness. Remus groaned. The little lamp had just given in.

He was starting to get the feeling that the machine didn't really care what its job was and that he wanted it to do it.

Since the machine itself showed that it worked he ignored the lamp. He didn't need it, he could work without it. Right? Right.

Now to the thread that went under the whole thing. He didn't know what it was called, nor did he care. There was the over thread and the under thread. If those were not the right terms for them, who would bother to correct him anyway?

Bitterly he took notice to the fact that he was out of under thread. He had to fix that.

Remus glared at the machine and the robes while he re-did the whole work of getting the over thread through the labyrinth of possible placed to be hooked on to.

Scrumw.

Scrumw!

SCRUMW!!

Remus stared at the evil machine in disbelief. It had stopped. It refused to do its work.

While carefully pulling out the robes he noticed that it was the under thread that had behaved in an odd fashion. It had somehow curled up, in no order at all, and made a big mess on the inside of the robes.

Silently he wondered if the machine had something against him. Maybe it didn't like werewolves. Maybe it didn't like teachers. Maybe it didn't like men. Maybe it had just simply decided to hate anyone who had a job for it to do.

He didn't know which.

All he knew was that it didn't like him.

He supposed that he should have taken it as a sign when he had dropped the sewing machine on his toes (he could have sworn that, while howling in pain, he had broken at least two toes too for that matter) that the machine didn't like him. No. It didn't dislike him. It hated him. Thoroughly. With all that made it a sewing machine. He was sure of it as he fought to get rid of the mess of threads. He even had a feeling that it was laughing at him.

After finally getting the mess of threads cleared out and removed he decided that he was only imagining that the machine hated him.

It was a machine after all. It didn't have feelings. Period.

Scrumw! Scrumw!!

He let out a long line of curses (which he was glad that no kids were around to hear) and removed the robes again to redo the work he had just finished not even half a minute before.

"Remus?" came the voice. "What's wrong?"

No, no kids, just Sirius. Sirius had finally grown up, even if it had been in the harshest of ways. Azkaban had not done him good in any way and Remus wished the old, immature mischief-maker back.

"Sewing," he replied in a forced calm voice.

"Oh."

Pause. The sewing machine seemed to be grinning at him.

"Should I leave for a while?"

"Yes, please," Remus said, not wanting to snap at his friend.

"Okay, I'll be back later then," Sirius said and left, turning into a dog as soon as he had closed the front door behind him.

Scrumw! said the sewing machine in a mocking tone.

Remus glared at it. He was sure that it did, in fact, hate him. Maybe he should go out and get Sirius to help him? Maybe it preferred escaped prisoners from Azkaban to teachers. Maybe Sirius would be able to...no. Sirius didn't know a thing about sewing machines. There was no use to even let him try.

He let out a relieved sigh. He had finally been able to get rid of the mess of threads from the robes. Looking carefully from the sewing machine to the robes he carefully placed them under the needle.

"Please work," he begged the machine. "Please."

The sewing machine did not respond.

Remus hoped that that meant that it agreed to behave, just for long enough to let him finish patching his robes back together. Deep down inside he knew he was too optimistic.

To his surprise it didn't say anything close to the awful noise it had done before. It actually sew...It was behaving! He quickly finished sewing on the patch, and removed the robes from the sewing machine's needle.

Without a sound the patch slowly fell to the ground, landing softly by his feet.

Remus frowned. But it had gone so well...He glanced at the machine. Obviously begging wouldn't get him anywhere, as the under thread had decided not to work with him. And now he noticed that when he had pulled out the robes the over thread had left the needle. Wincing he picked up the patch and sat down in front of the sewing machine again.

It hated him. It really did hate him. He wasn't being paranoid, it did in fact despise him.

After trying to get the thread back into the eye of the needle for a good while (and cut the thread three times) he finally reached for his wand, mumbled 'lumos' and used a piece of string to die it up against the sewing machine, hoping that it was just because it was dark it didn't work.

He was wrong.

It took another minute before he finally succeeded. Before continuing he carefully went through it all again. What could go wrong? The threads were in place, the robes weren't too thick for the machine to handle...no, everything seemed alright. Carefully he placed the robes under the needle again.

Scruwm!

Remus leaned his head back and let out a crying howl.

The sewing machine from hell had taken another victim.