InsaneJournal

Fie, bunnies, fie.
I love reading longfic (provided it's good). I hate writing it. I'm awful at it, I plan it faster than I write it so I lose steam and lose interest and it never gets past a couple thousand words.

Which is why I really hate when I get a plotbunny. Even (and/or especially) when it's a slightly hilariously cracky one. Like this one.

So there's a murder in the Department of Mysteries. Obviously they don't want much attention so they request it be a quiet investigation, and since Pepper has both homicide experience and a (somewhat vague) link to the DoM through Aloysius he gets assigned. At this point there would be a dry, yet humorous scene in which he is told that the crime scene is classified, the corpse is classified, duty rosters are classified and details on the suspects are classified, though eventually they'd negotiate authorisation for the most relevant details.

The corpse is horribly mauled, and brief investigation points to another Unspeakable. Pepper drags Aubrey out after him and they find him at his flat, where a skirmish ensues. The Unspeakable is acting strangely, almost insane, and during the fight he only seems to be casting a couple of spells, neither of which Pepper recognises, and though one hits him it doesn't seem to have any affect - though he doesn't have time to reflect on this as unfortunately he then manages to hit the suspect with a stupefy that knocks him out a window and sends him falling to his death. Oops.

The case is tied up and a brief hearing about the death deems him not at fault and though they don't Obliviate any knowledge Pepper picked up he does have to sign a contract saying he won't share any of it. Because it's Sekrit k. (Aubrey probably does too, come to think of it.)

It's weekenderish time. Pepper spends Saturday night at a club, sleeps in the next morning, goes to see Aloysius, stays fairly late then goes out again.

Cut to Monday morning. Pepper misses the 8am briefing. (My instincts, btw, are to make Millicent the head hit wizard, even though the timing would mean that this takes place during the war. Eh, c'est la vie.) He eventually stumbles in about 9.30 and is at first apologetic - he was buzzed all night and went out to work it off and had a few too many drinks and slept in. Mill comments that she was about to send Aubrey around and he looks at Aubrey with a :/ thoughtful face; he seems sluggish and grumpy though and after snapping several times she asks if he wants a couple of days leave to deal with what happened, which he accepts.

For the next few days he has increasingly weird behaviour. When people visit him during the day he answers the door like he's just been woken up and seems displeased about having them around. After several days he still hasn't been back to work and on Saturday evening Aubrey wanders around again - he catches him seemingly having just got out of bed and pushes his way in. The flat smells strange and there seems to be a cache of blankets up on top of a cupboard, but Pepper is sort of pissy at him for pushing in so his attention's mostly on the whole being growled at thing and Pepper being all threateningly up in his personal space, which is kind of scary, and yet, since it's Aubrey, also kind of sexy. Pepper mostly just seems kind of amused at the fear until he picks up that Aubrey's kind of turned on and pushes him up against the wall to molest him a bit. Or a lot. Y'nno.

After the molestation and all they go out to the pub across the road for a couple of pints. Some big guy gets all up in Pepper's face and Pepper's all >:| WHAT YOU DOIN MAN. *stares down* He slinks off back to his table and they continue drinking though not too long after Pepper says he's going to walk around for a while, maybe visit Jo, and wanders off.

On Monday he's still not back at work. They get forwarded a weird case from the Muggle police where a body's been found with strange wounds and Aubrey and RandomSpareHitwizard1 go to check it out.

Aubrey's reaction is "oh, fuck" - it's the guy Pepper glared down in the bar on Saturday night. It turns out his body was found about two miles away and time of death is, of course, Saturday night. Aubrey takes this information to Mill who asks Jo if she saw Pepper that night, she says he came by about one am and no, he didn't say where he'd been. Actually he didn't say much of anything *coughnudge*. They're left with over three hours covering the time of death during which Pepper had no alibi, after nearly having a fight with this guy who's now turned up with crazy powerful bite and scratch marks to the back of the neck, shoulders and around the throat. Which is, you know. Unsettling.

(I think there would be a miniscene here of Aubrey pulling Jo aside wanting to know if there was anything, you know, different about Pepper. In the boudoir. For investigative purposes, obviously. Jo is all "um wtf is going on?" Aubrey is uncomfortable talking about this.)

Aubrey and the other guy head back to Pepper's flat, where there's no answer, so they break in. He's not home and everything's been arranged strantely (I'd have to do research to figure out the specifics, but it looks like he's been sleeping on top of the cupboard and there's meat of some kind sitting in the kitchen going decidedly off.

I guess they would then manage to find Pepper who is acting really weird and get him into custody and aloysius would have to go over the dead unspeakable's research to find out that he'd been looking into a way to mess with the spirit of a person's animagus form and find a way to reverse it. Somewhere in there there'd be stuff about how he's mad stealthy and stalks people, I might've had him stalking one of the other chars for a while, and can jump up and scramble over walls and shit - basically playing up on the natural abilities of the animagus form even while in human shape. Pepper's, incidentally, is a leopard with melanin mutation aka black panther. There would probably be some hijinks with people talking to Pepper while he's in his cell before they fix him and have all the wrapping up shit, and then at the end I was going to have someone reading a book about leopards and finding out that they apparently particularly like canines and have some reference to the meat in the kitchen and AWKWARDNESS but Pepper's allergic to dogs so that doesn't quite work. But I'm sure there would be a highly amusing psuedo-twist of that nature to tie it up - or possibly Aubrey asking Pepper if he was more Pepper or more kitty-cat when they shagged and Pepper, well... I wouldn't say dodging the question, because that implies trying to hide your subject change, and I feel he'd be more like "lol" and walk off.

As you can see, all the interesting stuff has been written out in my head already. This makes actually writing the story sort of boring to me. Therefore, imagine that ^ that plot was presented in a lengthy and well-written fashion, with wonderful verbalosity and an engaging narrative voice that is humorous when appropriate and steeped in mood-giving properties when needed.