Ch 4.
8 PM Gusteaus'
"I need two tartar plates and fresh toast."
"Yes Marco!" One or two voices replied back, the choir of sizzling, broiling, and steaming partially drowning it out.
"Yes Marco, yes Marco. I keep hearing most of that from Severus's mouth when I'm supposed to be hearing it from all of you. So stop wasting time, or get out."
"YES MARCO!" a now much firmer and louder call came out.
The temporary head chef stared evenly at the staff as they buzzed at top speed all around the kitchen. It had been this way for almost two weeks, and in that time Severus had overheard several of the other commis chefs and some stagiaires from cooking schools complain about Chef White whenever they could. Chef Marco never bothered Severus though; he simply looked over him from time to time and then gave a nod and went to the other stations.
"When are you going to start cooking?"
"You put it in a pan until it's ready; not too difficult, so why isn't it finished yet?"
"If you take this long to make food for your family then your wife's cheating on you and your children hate you."
"If this was for your date, she'd be in the bushes with the waiter. So unless you are into that sort of thing, get back to pounding some meat."
All of these invectives and other similar phrases where uttered in a calm and firm manner by Marco. Most of the kitchen earned at least one of these grillings, but Severus was spared. It was mainly because there was no reason to; he worked fast and kept his food at a consistently high quality. Chef Marco never had a reason to give him a hard time, thus Snape had nothing but respect for and held no grudge towards Chef Marco. He did however hold nothing but contempt for the dunderheads that could not meet the appropriate standards of a Three Star Michelin kitchen.
"You, you're fired. Get out!" Marco said to one of the commis who had somehow managed to burn an omelette. The stunned young man looked in shock for a moment before stiffly turning around to leave.
"Wait!" Marco said and called him back. He then dipped into his pocket and wrote on a piece of paper.
"Give this to Horst on your way out." Marco said and turned to a confused Severus who looked at him curiously.
"That was a note for him to get the money for today's hours. He may have cooked like shit, but he did put in the hours at least. Always pay your kitchen staff; even the worst chefs in the worst kitchens deserve their pay. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir." Severus nodded once with conviction. Marco returned the gesture and that was that.
Time seemed to fly on by as the clock rung ten, the restaurant closed, and with that Severus left for Hogwarts to get back to his dorm. Tomorrow was Monday and he had potions class in the morning. Overall, the weekend was a rather nice one.
##################
Morning came and with it Severus made his way to his potions class. He went to sit down in his chair and immediately a torrent of mud exploded from his seat, caking him in what had to be muck from the lake outside. The Slytherin and Gryffindor class exploded in laughter as a horrified Lily rushed over to help him clean himself up. Severus graciously took up her offer to help; his half a year in the kitchen was giving him a new appreciation of just how essential swallowing your pride, accepting help, or letting others jump in was.
Severus glared at the most likely suspects, and sure enough Potter and Black were grinning back in triumph for their prank. Lupin, the newest Marauder, looked in his book; too embarrassed to even raise his eyes. Pettigrew, their rat faced tagalong laughed along with Potter, but became quiet once Snape's eyes hung on him.
Cold fury was on his face and revenge was on his agenda. He walked up to Potter and past a worried Lily and an increasingly irritated Slughorn until he was face to face with Potter.
"This shirt is also my work uniform. It will be impossible to clean by nightfall. Because of this, I will have to miss work. How am I supposed to feed my mother now?" Severus said and pulled at the muddy shirt beneath his used but presentable robes. Potter and Black were taken by this revelation, amusement at Snape's misfortune fading at the news. Lupin's eyes left his book in shock while Pettigrew looked to his other Marauder's waiting to see how they would react.
Potter appeared to be shocked and dismayed by the consequences for his actions, but only for a moment.
"Oh get bit Snape, it's just some mud." He dismissed the incident with a shrug.
"Ah, so I suppose a lack of food and shelter on my part as consequences for this is of no concern to you." Snape fired back.
"Up yours you wanker. We just mud bombed you, we didn't get you fired!" Black said and immediately Snape's eyes lost their coldness and a triumphant smirk of victory replaced his scowl. Sirius was confused for a moment until he realized what he just said. He looked towards his best mate, and then they both looked worryingly at Slughorn, who made his way to the two.
"Detention for the four of you and five points deducted."
"Four of us? Sir it was only me and Padfoot that made the prank." Potter reeled in dismay.
"He's right professor, Moony and Wormtail had nothing to do with this!" Black added in.
Both Black and Potter jumped to defend their friends, sending them reassuring gazes while glaring at Snape for tricking them into a confession. They knew it was Snape's fault that they were being given detention when just a moment before they would have walked away scot free.
"Go get cleaned up Mr. Snape, and then return to class." Slughorn called out, slowly settling back into that mask of joviality that he so liked to wear.
"I'll go help!" Lily said and left with him.
Once they were outside, Lily quickly gave him a tight hug, causing the young boy to squirm.
"Geroff Lily, I'm muddy and dirty!"
"I don't care!" Lily said and broke the hug and looked into his eyes.
"I thought you were going to pick a fight with them, and I hate when you lose your temper like that. Sev, I'm proud of you for what you did." Lily said to him and made the young man blush.
After they cleaned his robes, they both decided to skip class. They both doubted Slughorn would protest too much if they give him the excuse that the mud was hard to remove. So they sat there by the lake, beneath their personal tree, looking at the water.
"You sure we won't get in trouble for this?" Lily inquired; she didn't expect Sev to skive class like this.
"Slughorn's asked me to cater to his club party next week before Christmas break. I doubt he'd want to lose his chef right before an important social gathering." Severus said with a smirk, relishing the small but consistent power he could wield with his cooking.
Lily smiled back and they both leaned into each other's shoulder and enjoyed the view. All in all it looked like it's going to be a good day. Then an owl came to them with a letter.
"What's it say?" Lily asked, looking over his shoulder as he was reading.
"It's from my mother… apparently she's pregnant." Severus said with a pause, his face totally unreadable.
"That's a good thing, right." Lily added looking at his friend in concern by his silent reaction.
"I think so, but it's more of the fact that she wrote this from Japan… where Chef Gusteau is."
"But why is she writing from there if your parents live in Cokeworth?" Lily asked and then it hit her. Her eyes grew wide in shock as she looked at her friend, realizing that his home life just became even more complicated. She gave him a comforting hug that he gratefully accepted.
"I think I will be staying at Hogwarts for the hols Lily." was all Severus could say as the pair spent the rest of the time in silence.
After the rest of his classes were over, he would get his spare uniform from his dorm and wash the one on his person, and then go to work. His work was relaxing and it brought him joy.
He needed that joy now most of all.
Author's note.
I've decided to do that promotion thing, where in the last pages for a comic they show panels from others to advertise it, for my original story.
BALADA: When Death did not exist nor yet Eternity.
Extract from the book "Confessions, an Admirals tale volume I"
For the past three years I had been a sailor in the Imperial navy, since that was what the state wanted of its citizens whether they were willing or not and despite my titanic efforts to avoid the whole war, fate had other plans for me!
Before the war I was running a medical transport business and one day my ship was boarded by a pirate raiding party from the Republic and like any sane sentient with half a brain I immediately surrendered and asked for parole, which was a fancy way of saying: 'If I do not fight you and surrender all my goods, you will do me the honor of not introducing my brain to your axe'.
It worked out for the most part, the aforementioned Republicans seemed alright ,about as alright as killers and thieves and God knows what other kind of madmen and women from one of the most savage dictatorship know to the galaxy could be.
It was only myself and Akanthos that day and I am grateful for the fact that none of the women who sometimes served on my ship where present.
Thrust me, those Republicans may look like pleasant fellows, with they're silky long hair, pointy ears, shiny skin, and deep beautiful eyes and absolutely gorgeous humanoid anatomy( just because I don't like them, doesn't mean I can't admit they're pretty!) but that's the only good thing about them.
Though I am not saying that their particular brand of savagery was worst that the one practiced by the Empire or Federation oh no, we all had an equal timeshare in that, theirs was just of a different flavor, that's all.
And to be hones as individuals they were pretty decent fellows.
That is if you're not they're rivals, of which the Imperium or Empire as it was called back then (and is still used in battle cries) found itself at that particular moment in time.
As they looted our ship taking anything they could: pills, syrup, cushions, fabric and fabric samples for footstools (seriously what kind of pirates steals stool samples?) at one point they opened the crates that contained bottles filled with medicinal alcohol.
Alcohol that was to be specifically used externally and only externally!
And pirates being pirates they immediately opened the bottles and started drinking it, granted the alcohol was put into recycled wine bottles, but unlike what the press would want you to believe, we did not intentionally put them in those bottles in the faint hope that pirates would pop out of nowhere and start consuming them, but rather the fact that the bottles were cheap, at the ready and reliable for our purposes and since our venture was a small one we needed every penny we could skim!
So I tried frantically to warn them, because honestly who deserves a slow and painful death? But my pleas fell on deaf ears, mostly from the fact that they did not speak Imperial Standard and I was not familiar with their language, that and the fact that at that point in time the two of us where both tied and gagged in a corner of the room, made my chivalrous intentions doomed to failure.
Well not a total failure, the by then half drunken pirates where having a good laugh at how the two of us where moaning and struggling with the ropes and gags as we tried to stop them and one of our viewers liked out impromptu mime show so much that he decided to reward me with a good kick in the chest that made me collapse to the ground and elicit a bout of laughter from his comrades.
A moment later the rest of our adoring audience joined in to let me know just how much they 'appreciated' me and they appreciated me a lot!
It only lasted a few moments but it was like hell, but even so I wanted to stop them from consuming the alcohol.
And to those of you who did not spent their youth studying medicine, the reason medicinal alcohol is not used for consumption is that there is the danger of it containing methanol, which is a very poisonous type of alcohol, why just 10 ml of the stuff can render you permanently blind and 30 ml can kill you!
Now don't misunderstand, every bottle of medicinal alcohol is purified before being released to the general public, but the main problem with our stock was that we where transporting it to a purifying facility! And with those idiots chugging it down their throats like it was ice tea on a beach you can guess what followed immediately after.
Now, I was not to fond of them back then and my opinion over the years has not changed by much, but even if they where a cutthroat band of thieves and murderers, who if they could they would have sold both me and Akanthos to be some plantation owner's slaves or worst playthings, but as I said before a slow and painful death in which you become blind, you're insides burned, every muscle in your body spasmed and intense pain jolted throughout your body was not something I would wish on anyone, not even them!
So I laid there on the floor waiting for the inevitable and when it came it was truly horrible, a great scream of agony erupted from every pirate, forming a hellish choir that could be heard from all over the ship, as one by one the poor souls had their fates sealed.
As the grotesque scene unfolded around me, a sudden flash of light and a great boom came from my left, I turned my head to see what had just happened. Much to my horror, I discovered that one of the pirates in his pain induced frenzy had fired an arrow into one of his comrades, incinerating the poor or fortunate taffer in an instant.
This made all hell break loose or rather more of it, as the pirates started firing their bows and swinging their sword and maces around causing an inferno of fire, water, ice, wind, earth to engulf the corridors, of my ship and the pirate's ship.
Akanthos managed to get hold of a broken bottle and cut his bonds free and bless his souls he dragged my beaten and bloodied body to the sleeping quarters, where we locked the doors and waited for the carnage to end.
After a few minutes of what can only be describe as a wall of horrid sounds, silence fell and after untying me and waiting what seemed like an eternity, we armed ourselves with the axes that our ship had in case of fire outbreaks, opened the doors and cautiously peered out to have a look.
What we saw was something out off a horror movie, bodies laid everywhere, blood, excrement, and piss pouring out from them, the walls where filled with scars from the weapons discharge and a foul smell of death permeated the entire hull.
We continued our little journey throughout the ship, driven by a curiosity, which when you stop to think about it was borderline suicidal, but to our luck every pirate had consumed the alcohol.
After a few minutes we located the captain of this pirate crew and after a few gentle prods from my axe, we could finally relax.
I thought that the worst was over and gave out a breath of relief, when all of a sudden the ship shook violently. Akanthos and myself gave each other a look of worry, we both hoped that the warp sanctuary had not been damaged, when all of a sudden the sound of footsteps echoed throughout the ship as the door before us was blasted open and armed warrior poured in.
Much to our relief it was the Imperial Fleet who had boarded our vessel, the cavalry had arrived! A little late for my taste, but that's big government for you!
And I must say the look on their faces was priceless, behind me there was a corridor filled with battle scars, dead pirates all about and there I was bruised and bloodied, standing atop of the pirate captain with a bloody axe in hand( courtesy of my prodding of the corpse a moment ago to ensure that he had expired).
At that moment I felt like I was on cloud nine, but unfortunately for me, news of that incident spread far and wide, word of Captain Metternich who single handedly killed 50 pirates with his bare hands became the talk of the local subsector.
After that a bunch of reporters came to cover the story and Akanthos being the sly business man that he was, charged them heavily for each interview, thus things where looking bright for us!
We had gotten out of a tight spot alive, we now had a very healthy sum of money to help our business expand and we were small town heroes in our neck of the woods (something the ladies appreciated) it was a small piece of heaven, but regretfully it did not last.
For a certain Commodore James Crackerjack had heard of our little adventure and the brainless glory hound immediately showed up a few days later and demanded I transfer to his command, the fact that I was a civilian and my trade was 'potions making' which by law protected me from drafting since I worked in healthcare was completely ignored by the tosser and despite my best efforts to get into his thick skull, the idiot ignored logic and reasoning and continued to press the issue.
Under normal circumstances I would have walked away, but remember that he was not some regular loony but a loony with a license to kill from the state, that and old James was not only a fool, he was a fool with a fleet of a hundred warships behind him and so much to my horror, they gave me my uniform, slapped a couple of golden buttons on my collar to show that I was now officially a Captain and thus I was dragged into the fleet.
Akanthos was ignored in all of this, that much was owned to the fact that sentients tend to only acknowledge the apparent leader of a group when that group allegedly does something impressive, so I somehow managed to convince Old Mad Jack to let him go on the grounds that he was my underling and he had to make sure my businesses' where looked after, him being an aristocrat and having some semblance of a brain nodded and let it be so and I was glad for that, I mean no sense in both of us going to hell I suppose.
So that's how I found myself being torn from a safe place, a newly minted Captain, given a ship which I christened 'The Vampire's Vengeance', with a crew that consisted at the top of the following: first officer Lieutenant James 'Butcher' Centengu, Logistics officer Sergeant Alega 'Baker' Sovorovda, and finally science and engineering officer Lieutenant Lloyd Colomas 'Candlestickmaker' Firebark and with this we were sent to fight in various mini wars and full blown wars over the years leading up to the Great War.
And that my readers, is how my inglorious career began, with poisoned drinks, crazy luck, a lot of pain, and my personal favorite stupidity and the eternal question of why such a combination exists and what it has against good and honest folk and me of course.
Metternich per Pelasgiamus, Freelance Potions Maker