Yes, it has been ages since I written something DMHG. It has something to do with the fact that I can't seem to do stuff fast enough (look 'procastinator' and 'lazy' under my profile). But I couldn't resist writing a Christmas oneshot. They are such a cute couple, and they so deserve one. So there.
Enjoy this. You have to wait a year before I will churn out another Christmas oneshot.
Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Cooking
"This is a disaster," I told her.
Her only reply is to glare at me.
"This is a disaster," I repeated firmly. I look around us and it only reaffirms what I just said.
We are both standing in the middle of the kitchen in our flat, me and Hermione that is. We have just finished our third argument for the day, but what they were about I don't exactly remember. All I know is that we are in the midst of a battlefield, doing what the both of us were worst at—cooking.
Baking, to be exact. Most of the time we can make decent pasta, and Hermione makes a mean (canned) mushroom soup, but baking? It was completely beyond us.
No wonder we are both so skinny.
The kitchenette, as I said, was a disaster. The hand-painted tiles were covered with flour. The messy tables were splattered with gooey mixtures of dough, butter and colourful icing. One of the two wooden stools was upset, and three or four batches of failed baking extraordinaire lay forlornly in the bin.
It'sexactly the sort of the situation where colourful strings of words started coming out of your mouth.
We both stare at the exact same spot of the floor, where six out of the dozen eggs we fought over splattered. The yolk oozes out of the eggshell, fusing with egg white. Hermione turns to look at me.
"Don't look at me," I said stubbornly. "I'm not doing the cleaning up."
She shoves the broom at me. It was funny, how her brown hair was standing up like that, and I am tempted to laugh. However, as I know the consequences that will come along with it, I humbly accepted the broom (not the one for flying, the one for cleaning), preparing to sweep up the mess.
How do you sweep up a pile of broken eggs anyway? It doesn't make sense. It is physically impossible to accomplish such a task. After pondering for a minute or two I decide it does not matter. Hastily I threw the dishrag on the floor and covered the mess. Done.
You may ask, why the hell are we baking if we are so bad at it? I would like to inform you that none of this was my idea. It all started when we were invited to the Weasley's Christmas party, and were asked to bring some sort of food. That was fine. We could very well buy one of those classy looking cakes in the bakery, instead of making something. But unfortunately, Hermione insisted that we bake something by ourselves.
"It would be more meaningful," she said.
And I stupidly agreed, so here we are. Three hours worth of culinary produced no results. We went from marzipan to logcakes to mince pies then down to the basic of basic—cookies.
I went back to the island counter, where Hermione is trying to decipher the recipe book while bashing the dough. I smirk, knowing that the woman before me probably has more trouble with this sort of literature than with any other books (And she read heavy things like the Twenty Centuries of Elf Wars and Politics, mind you).
She gives up a minute later, and chucks the book to me.
"Read it," she orders. I obey, arrogance written all over my face.
My poise crumbles faster than our cookies.
I realised after fifteen seconds that I have problems reading it too. But I am determined not to let it show. Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking will not stump me.
"Add," I say aloud, "a pinch of salt to 300g of normal flour and a stick of butter." There is more than one type of flour?
She does so, and waits for me to read the next line expectantly. I look down at the recipe book confidently.
3 tsp nutmeg, it says.
What is tsp? Is that teaspoon or tablespoon? Oh what the heck. It doesn't make much difference, does it? Just pick one. The more the better, right? That's my (and the goblins) philosophy.
"Add three tablespoons of nutmeg to the mixture, and mix until fine," I say with a flourish.
Hermione picks up a bottle with brown powder and pours it out carefully onto a silver spoon. As she does that I try to read the next squiggly lines of instructions. It is in pig latin to me. I decide to make it up as I go.
"Add half a cup of brown sugar and add three eggs. Then beat the concoction. Oh, and add it a packet of chocolate chips," I informed her. "Those are my favourite."
"Concoction?" Hermione asks suspiciously. She grabs the book and scans the paragraph quickly.
"Draco," She gasps in horror. "Three teaspoons, not tablespoons! And you haven't followed the recipe!"
She glares at me. My girlfriend's eyebrow is disappearing above her hairline.
"How could you!" She yells.
"This wouldn't happen if you didn't insist on baking!" I yell back.
"It's Christmas, Draco!"
"Well, check your dictionary darling. Christmas Eve isn't defined by burning the kitchen down and making inedible, unidentifiable food."
"That was once!"
"Once is enough. I know I'm rich and everything, but you can't go burning down houses like—"
"Wait!" She motions for me to be quiet, sniffing the air.
I shrug nonchalantly, hoping she won't yell at me again. I smell something too—wait—it smells slightly sweet, pungent, burnt—
Burnt.
"The cookies!" We exclaimed as we dashed to the oven.
Hermione puts on the oven mittens and pulls it out hopefully. For a second hope glimmers in my eyes too. But that was before I peer down at the baking tray.
Are cookies supposed to be charred like that?
"God, it's still smoking," Hermione said depressingly. She chucks it into the bin, which is an annoying cheerful yellow plastered with smiley faces. Grey whirls of smoke is coming out from it.
We went back to the island counter, where a bowl of sticky cookie dough sat. The batter dripped from the wooden spoon sadly.
"Perhaps we can improvise," I suggest. Hermione silently agree. I know she is thinking about the burnt cookies.
I dip the wooden spoon into the dough, prodding it. I lifted the spoon out, and then grudgingly gave it a taste. I spat it out almost immediately.
This is a classic example of what reflex action is about.
"What is wrong?" Hermione ask, frowning.
"Very, very salty," I struggled to say as I chugged down a glass of water. Something tells me the worst has yet to come.
"Oh," Hermione studies the batter carefully. She looks rather pretty doing it, I might add. "Maybe if we add it lots of sugar it won't matter."
I highly doubt so, but its better restarting over again.
Just so you know, I never trust that stupid Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking. I can summarize all three hundred and twenty eight pages of it for you. One, chuck in random ingredients. Two, bash the dough. Three, pop it the oven and hope for the best. Caution: Recipe may not work.
We dump loads of sugar in it and I stir madly. We have gotten to the stage where we decide the recipe book is useless. I start to throw in random objects in it. Peppermint, walnuts, butterscotch, vanilla, and of course chocolate chips.
"Draco," Hermione asks in a voice such that I freeze during mid-action. "What are you doing?"
I wonder what I am doing wrong. "Er, throwing it stuff?"
"Ron is allergic to walnuts."
"Who cares?" I say, shrugging. "I never really forgive him for asking you out anyway." I threw in even more walnuts instead. Take that, Weasley!
"You have to learn to be the bigger man, Draco," Hermione tells me dryly. "That was two years ago. Now take those out."
I refused. "He did it on purpose. To torture me."
"Take it out."
I sigh. It was worth a try. I begin to pick through the batter and take out the walnuts one by one. Hermione sits down beside me and pick out the walnuts from the batter. We sat together in silence for a minute.
Now thisis nice. And kind of sweet. The two of us just sitting here, baking. Granted, the imagery isn't exactly perfect, but what more can I ask? The best thing is, she isn't yelling at me anymore.
"Couldn't we just leave one walnut in the batter?" I attempted to make conversation. It fails. She looks at me with scorn in her eyes.
"You know, every time we have this nice perfect silence, you just have to ruin it, Draco." Hermione snaps.
"It's not my fault! Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking recommends putting it in!" I argued.
"Since when is Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking right?" She retorts.
"She must be! She's a five times best selling author!" I reply, quoting off the cover of the book.
"We have been using this bloody book all afternoon, Draco. Now, tell me again, since when was she ever right?"
Hermione does kind of have a point.
"Okay," She finally announces, "I think we can make the cookies now." She whips out the cookie sheet and places it on the tray. The both of us spend five minutes pouring the batter into round blobs. It is exactly what it looks like. Blobs.
I take the tray and place it into the oven, setting the timer to six minutes. We both pray for the best.
"When they start baking, they won't look like blobs anymore. It will spread out to form nice round cookies," Hermione says knowledgably. It is the only thing we learn this afternoon, apart from the fact that you should never mix Butterbeer with baking soda.
We stare at the oven for another five minutes and forty three seconds before the timer goes off.
Ping!
Hermione walks slowly to over and puts on the oven mittens. And then, after drawing a deep breath, she pulls the tray out. Nothing exploded so far. That is a good sign.
Please Merlin, let this batch be okay. I will not ask for anything else more than a hundred Galleons in the future.
We both look at the tray, shaking.
It's amiracle.
There they were, a dozen of round, unburnt, nice looking cookies. It really is a miracle.I believe in Christmas after all!
I eagerly place the cookies on the cooling rack (the only batch to make it so far), waiting for it to cool.
"What the hell," I say impatiently."Just take one now."
Hermione and I each take a cookie, grinning. I took a bite, savouring the taste. And then--
Oh god, it tastes like shit.
I look at Hermione, whose eyes have already begun to water. The cookie in her hand has a missing piece. Oh no, she's going to kill me. I brace myself.
To my surprise, she just laughs.
"At least this is an improvement to the last five batches. So much for Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking," She smiles. "Now let's re-do again."
"Okay," I say a little more good naturedly. The expression on her face when she ate the cookie was priceless.
She takes out a packet of flour, and without measuring, pours it into the mixing bowl.
"You aren't following the recipe." I tell her, shocked.
"That book is useless." Hermione replies. I don't contradict her. Instead I watch her crack two eggs and douse a generous amount of chocolate chip into the flour.
Some people may ask, how the heck did I end up with this woman. Sometimes I wonder too. She is bossy, and we argue all the time. She can't bake to save our lives. We can't cook anything beyond canned mushroom soup.
Of course sometimes I had my doubts.
But then I see her right now. She is standing in the middle of our messy little kitchen, staring quizzically at the bowl in front of her. Her lovely brown hair is flying everywhere, some of them are sticking out in all sorts of direction. There is flour up to her elbows plus some on her face. The cheesy blue-checked apron she is wearing is splattered with batter. And I still think she looks lovely.
That's when you know that you love someone, I guess.
That is also why, in a moment of spontaneity, I kiss her.
"We are not under the mistletoe you know," Hermione says mock-seriously, but she is smiling. "The mistletoe is at the above the kitchen door, there."
"I don't need a mistletoe to kiss you," I reply, smirking. "Now let's just clean up the mess, get ready for the party, and run opposite to buy a box of Famous Amos cookies."
She doesn't argue this time "Okay," she tells me, and I instinctively pick up the broom. I see her staring at me, amused.
"Draco, you are a wizard," she sighs. "You can do this."
She takes out a long stick from her apron pocket. With a wave of her wand, the kitchen is clean again. I have completely forgotten about my magic ability in the midst of the Betty-Crockiness.
"You couldn't tell me this when I was cleaning those eggs up?" I splutter.
"I saw you hide it under the dishrag."
"Oh." She knows she won this argument.
The both of us strolled out of the kitchen hand in hand. Just to make sure she gets my point about the mistletoe thing though, I wait until we pass the doorway before I kiss her again. She enjoys it as much as I do.
"Happy Christmas," she says breathlessly as we break the kiss.
"Happy Christmas."
I decided not to tell her about the gift I bought her under the Christmas tree in our living room. She won't be too pleased to find out I bought her Betty Crocker's Guide to Marvellous Baking Edition Two, you think?
What do you think? I think this was absolutely sweet. Haha gotta love Draco though.
This story is inspired by the disaster that happened in my kitchen last Sunday.
Now Review. And a Happy Christmas!