Right Down to the Technicolor Kitten Plates

*

Mr. Argus Filch, of No. 57, Unknown Street, Somewhere In The UK, was perfectly abnormal, thank you very much. For one thing, he was a Squib, which was downright unusual, being as his ancestors for about thirty-something generations were all 110% magical. For another thing, he worked as a janitor in a gigantic castle full of kids who all wore depressing black robes. And finally, he was more devoted to his cat, Mrs. Norris, than most house-elves were to their masters. He went so far as to call her his "feline companion," which, in many people's opinions, made it sound like Mrs. Norris was some sort of a whore.

Mrs. Norris was the most goddamn ugly cat ever known to walk this earth. She was most likely older than Filch himself (he was 48) and he never knew exactly how old she was because he found her in a rubbish bin when he was only four years old. She was mousy brown, like Filch's hair, very skinny and peaky-looking, and her fur clumped together so it looked like she was covered in stringy linguini-type noodles. She had large, yellow, lamplike eyes, droopy whiskers, and a lopsided mouth. Most of her teeth had fallen out long ago, so she only ate wet cat food. She had one hell of a temper and took it out on her victims by urinating on their belongings. The only person who had ever said one good thing about her was Filch himself.

Now Filchie truly, madly, and deeply loathed his job. Being as he was a Squib, he had to clean up all the mess the students made with nothing but a mop, a bucket of cleaning solution, and good old fashioned elbow-grease. This just made more of a mess, as his elbows were continually filthy since he never bathed. And those students made one hell of a mess, what with the cauldron explosions, muddy feet from the Quidditch Pitch, regurgitated slugs from backfiring wands, rooster blood daubed on the walls to form threatening messages about an opened chamber, the list goes on and on forever.

So, naturally, it was understood that he was not too thrilled about returning to the castle after spending the summer in his mother's house. (Yes, he still lived with his mommy, even though she was a witch.) Well, thought Filch, it's a bit better than staying at me mother's. She's always after me to get a lady friend. No woman would suit me! I'm too bitter about my job to find a lady friend. And this concluded his thoughts for the day, as he had very little brainpower, and hated to waste it thinking. In fact, there was very little his brain could do. It was much like running a computer on DOS. It just required too much effort to do anything of great importance.

And suddenly, he found himself thinking the next day, he was on the train to Hogwarts, back to the job he loathed so much. He couldn't remember exactly how he got there, but then again, he was quite used to operating on autopilot. He mumbled an un-interpretable stream of speech, through which only the words stupid, kiddlecrumbs, and chains could be understood, and settled himself down on the train seat, completely oblivious to the scenery outside the window even though it was right in front of him.

The next few days before the students arrived passed uneventfully. He dusted the castle from top to bottom, scrubbed the graffiti off the Entrance Hall door, and spent some quality time with the "love of his life," Mrs. Norris. The night the students arrived, he put on his best moldy overcoat while muttering another un-interpretable stream of language with the words fekking, snotrags, kiddlecrumbs, mess, effing, and filth used at intervals. The only beings who heard it were a large fly on the wall, and Mrs. Norris, who understood it perfectly as a result of living with him for so many years.

After making sure he looked his best, which was as if he had just rolled in some mud and wrapped himself up in some shabby animal skin, he proceeded to the entrance hall. He burst through the doors looking generally unhappy and then he saw......Her. The most perfect creation anyone had ever laid eyes on. She looks perfectly divine in that fluffy pink cardigan and matching Alice band.... Oh, what I would give to snog her.... Oh! And look! Her hair is the same colour as mine! Mrs. Norris disappeared completely from his thoughts.

It seemed that Umbridge noticed him too, because she was looking at him with an expression of complete and utter disgust. How can anyone stand to be so dirty? she thought. I should get Fudgie old boy to sign a decree to make him take a shower.

Meanwhile, Filch was still staring mistily at her, and thinking how much he wanted to be with her. Slowly, he made his way up to the staff table. The children then processed into the hall, and once again Filch muttered his un-interpretable phrases. Being satisfied with his own complaints about students, he switched to autopilot.

He snapped out of his state of automaticness when he heard a certain someone give a distinct "Hem, hem," interrupting the headmaster's droning that he somehow knew included his very own list of certain banned items. Very good, very good, thought the janitor, maybe that'll deter them... He looked for the source of the interruption, and noticed Umbridge was speaking. He listened to the speech with rapt attention until the very end.

"There again, progress for progress's sake must be discouraged, for our tried and tested traditions often require no tinkering. A balance, then, between old and new, between permanence and change, between tradition and innovation..."

Filch could not stop himself from wanting to agree with everything she said. True that, tried and tested traditions require no tinkering. Maybe she'll back me with the chains and such. Oh, what a perfect mate for me! He had, again, forgotten Mrs. Norris, and this time also overlooked the fact that he had never so much as spoken with this "illustrious being."

Time passed at Hogwarts, with Filch continually on the case of muddy students. He also spent much time thinking about Umbridge and how best to convey his feelings for her to her. Fortunately for all of Filch's furniture, he also remembered about Mrs. Norris, and spent much time with her, but did not dare to mention Umbridge, for Mrs. Norris had a very foul temper. And this temper manifested itself in her clawing everything that was upholstered, and urinating on anything that was particularly absorbent, such as Filch's favourite armchair. Filch, though, was oblivious to these results of her foul moods and attributed the urinating to her being very possessive of him and all of his belongings.

And he deduced from his continuing espionage of Professor Umbridge that 1) She shared his disdain for Potter and students in general, 2) She shared his taste in Technicolor kitten plates (he had over 37!) and 3) She shared his utter loathing of everything that was gruesome, dirty, or in any way, not completely clean and perfect. And all this deducing took up so much of his brainpower that, much like a computer running on DOS, he crashed. Upon waking up, he smelled how bad he smelled for the very first time. So, from that day on, Filchie resolved to bathe as often as possible and dress as neatly as he could, thereby going against his whole creedo that he had followed since his birth. He hoped she'd notice. And notice she did.

"I see you've cleaned yourself up a bit."

Filch gave a tremendous jump and wheeled around to find the source of that very high-pitched girly voice. He realized that it was Umbridge, and tried his best to add a suave tone to his voice.

"Why yes, I have, Professor. Pleased to finally make your acquaintance."

"Charmed. I noticed you have a," she looked as if she was casting around for a word that was fit to describe Mrs. Norris. "cat."

"Why yes, I do. Her name is Mrs. Norris." He turned around and called, "Come here, my sweet."

Umbridge saw Mrs. Norris and she went into raptures about how beautiful she was. All the meanwhile a very, very shabby rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus was playing inside Filch's head.

"Would you like to come to my office for some tea, Mr. Filch?" inquired Umbridge.

"Of course, I'd be delighted." Filch was amazed at his own cleverness. I'm using such fancy words; I didn't even know I knew what they meant. What he didn't know was exactly that: what they meant. He was merely repeating what other people often said when faced with that one question.

The two proceeded to Umbridge's office, where Smalltalk was made, mainly revolving around the topics of Technicolor kitten plates and punishing students.

"Personally, I think the students here are given too much space to breathe. They need to be controlled, every single last aspect of their lives monitored so closely that we'll... we'll... we might as well............."

"Chain them up?" When Filch saw Umbridge nod in fervent agreement, he continued, "I think we should do just that. Dumbledore, he won't allow me to. He says it's child abuse. I say that's rubbish. There's nothing like a good, painful punishment to teach a student a lesson."

"Amen to that. See this quill?" She held out a black quill that looked rather harmless. "Take it in your hand; write with it."

He wrote out, 'MY NAME IS ARGUS FILCH.' Suddenly, as though someone was scratching them out with a knife, the same exact words appeared in the back of his hand.

"Holy shit, what is that thing?"

"My weapon of choice. It's the one I use on Potter in detention. You know who Potter is, don't you?"

"Yes," said Filch, a dark expression passing over his face.

Umbridge rattled on and on about Potter, and the Hallelujah Chorus started up again in Filch's head. His thoughts ranged from My, how right she is to Gee, I think I'll marry her to I want her in my bed this instant. Forty-eight years of sexual tension had built up inside of him, and he could sense this, so before he could embarrass himself he had to excuse himself, claiming he had much too much cleaning to do.

More time passed, and with the continuous Ministry of Magic decrees and such, Filch found himself feeling more and more important being Umbridge's unofficial boyfriend. He might have well been, being as they made lovey-dovey faces at each other. It was sickening, to say the least. Or at least all the students who noticed thought so, but then again, not many students would even look at either of the two, much less analyze their expressions.

Pretty soon, they started having snogging sessions. If anyone had ever found out, they most likely would have hurled on the spot. Luckily, no one did, except Mrs. Norris. Filch attributed the "accident" to his buying a new brand of canned cat food.

He found various other excuses, such as Mrs. Norris having too much pent up energy and a urinary tract infection to dismiss the state he found his quarters in each day. In other words, Mrs. Norris clawed the furniture to shreds and every last square inch of the place was soaked in cat pee. It took Filchie days to get the smell out.

Even more time passed, and Filch found himself taking long moonlit walks around the lakes with Umbridge. He picked flowers for her. He bought her chocolates. But not once did he reveal to her that he was a Squib. And not once did she ask him to do a bit of magic. Deep in her subconscious mind she knew that something must be awry if Filchie complained about scrubbing one spot for hours. Why didn't he just do a Scouring Charm on it? She dismissed this to the foolishness of men and decided that the spot must have been too stubborn to remove by magic.

Now that Filch and Umbridge were officially going out, he felt very important whenever she issued a decree, like she was an extension of him and it was really he who gave the orders. Thinking about Dolores was now part of his autopilot, and allowed him to go about things more cheerfully than before. The students who noticed this decided that it was because they were suffering the tyranny of Dolores Jane Umbridge. No one knew of the relationship between the two faculty members except for Dumbledore, who was, of course, all-seeing and all-knowing. He never said a thing about it to anyone. Ever. Not even his wife of forty years, Minerva McGonagall.

And the year passed with more detentions, more scrubbing, more phony sweetness on the part of Umbridge to the students. And finally, when Filch had decided that it was just another year on the terms of the amount of pranks pulled at Hogwarts, the Weasley-induced mayhem began.

It was bad. Really bad. So bad, in fact, that poor old Filchie spent three days trying to get all of the fireworks to stop. Nothing he tried worked, though. But the fireworks just sort of faded out somewhat of their own accord. That was just the start. Then came various other horrible, horrible pranks, up until the portable swamp. That was the last straw for Umbridge and the dawn of a new glorious, glorious era for Filch. When he got the Approval for Whipping, it was like Christmas and his birthday had both come early. It was pure heaven. Oh yes, those whips and chains would be in effect in no time.

Filch proposed to her that very night. She accepted immediately, and they lived happily ever after, until Umbridge was attacked by centaurs and put in Azkaban for child abuse.

"Ah well," he told Mrs. Norris afterwards, "I didn't think it'd last if I told her I was a Squib anyhow." Mrs. Norris purred in concurrence, and silently resolved never to urinate on her human companion's furniture again.

THE END