Hermione had gotten through the rest of the box of onions before Jaheet returned. Being smarter than Draco, Hermione had subtly cast a spell to protect her eyes from the onions and so she was not the least teary-eyed when Jaheet entered the kitchen.
Samir pulled his skillet off the stove and gently slapping the back of Draco and Amar's heads. "Behave, you two."
"Hey," Amar said, holding the back of his head with the hand he wasn't using to stir his pot. "What about her?"
Draco snorted. "She's Hermione Granger."
Hermione raised an eyebrow and mouthed 'really'?
"She wasn't the one starting the trouble, Amar."
Amar rolled his eyes but it was lost on Samir, who had already turned to leave.
Jaheet pulled out a large bowl and connected it with a mixing attachment.
"Draco, please finish those dishes. Amar, start up the fryer," Jaheet said, pulling down flours and spices from the cabinets. "Hermione, would you start pouring things into the bowl as I give them to you."
The next several minutes were a flurry of activity as Jaheet nearly glided around the kitchen, measuring things, pulling odd utensils from their racks and directing them all to do one thing or another. It was a very different method than Samir used but still quite effective. Hermione admired the grace with which Jaheet took over the kitchen and how, with barely a word, she sent Amar or Draco off for one task or another. How often had Draco come back here for them to be so comfortable with each other?
Jaheet returned to Hermione who had been designated to slowly add water until the dough became the consistency of a thin pancake batter. Jaheet nodded in satisfaction (to the relief of Hermione) and then called Draco over.
She handed Hermione a ladle with holes in it and then held an identical ladle over the fryer. With another ladle she poured some of the batter onto the first ladle. To Hermione's surprise, the batter did not immediately run through the holes, but sat in the ladle until Jaheet gave it a tap on the pot and several drops of batter fell from the ladle and hissed in the oil. Jaheet continued to tap the ladle until most of the batter had dropped as tiny balls into the fryer. "The only way to make laddu," Jaheet explained, "is to have a boondi ladle." Then, when the dough had started to turn from white-yellow to golden-brown, Jaheet pulled the fryer-basket out of the oil and dumped the fried dough into a waiting bowl lined with paper towels. "We will do this with all the boondi batter," she explained, handing Draco the boondi ladle. "Any questions?"
Draco and Hermione looked at each other and Draco shrugged. "It seems pretty straight forward, Jaheet."
Jaheet nodded. "I'll help Amar prepare the dishes until you two are almost done."
Jaheet left and Hermione and Draco shared another look over their boondi ladles as they tried to figure out where to start. It had seemed simple enough when Jaheet had done it but…
Hermione pointed at the fryer. "Hold yours over there and I'll pour some into it."
Draco followed her advice but then she poured too much and it splashed in chunks into the fryer and they both groaned. As that piece of dough fried, Hermione dunked her ladle straight into the batter but that slopped it everywhere as she rushed it into the oil. When she finally got the ladle to the fryer, none of the batter would come out.
She bit her lip and glanced worriedly at Draco. He set down his own ladle and slid next to her so his bicep pressed against the outside of her arm as he gently held part of her hand and wrist in his grip. "Just a little firmer," he said softly into her ear and she couldn't help the shudder from his voice and body heat at her back. She wasn't sure he was doing it on purpose this time but this was driving her breathing up.
Distracted, she was a little startled when his grip pulled her hand down to tap the ladle hard against the pot. The batter fell in nice little drops like they had when Jaheet had done it. Hermione turned her head up to smile at Draco and found herself for the second time in the space of an hour close enough that she could have kissed him. She gasped, her chest tightening, and she turned away quickly to look down at the batter again, feeling her ears warm.
Draco chuckled behind her but returned to manning his own ladle. After a couple batches, they silently fell into a pattern where Draco would empty the fryers onto the waiting paper towels while Hermione carefully filled each of their ladles full again with the batter. During these exchanges, Draco took every advantage of letting his fingers slide along her wrists or leaning down to whisper something in her ear. Hermione, remembering that things had only escalated when she tried to take control earlier, focused on keeping her blushing minimal.
In between Draco's flirting, the kitchen was mostly silent except the sizzling of oil and gentle clacks of metal from utensils and pots. The smells of this kitchen were different than the more English ones of her family's kitchen but that was what it reminded her of. The silence was comfortable as everyone worked around each other, careful of hot plates or full bowls. Jaheet whisked by, checking over their shoulders at their progression.
She gave them both a smile. "Good. Good," she said as she looked over the batches of boondi. "Cook them a little longer, just a tiny bit firmer and it will be perfect."
Hermione smiled back as Jaheet swept away again and decided it felt like family. Like Sunday mornings when her family would work together to make a full English breakfast before church. They hadn't done it recently as the family traditions had mostly fell apart now that she wasn't part of their lives as regularly but she could remember that feeling and that was how it felt now.
Jaheet was bent over a pot on the stove, stirring and occasionally lifting up the ladle to watch the contents drip down. Hermione smiled fondly. Bless these dear people who made her feel so at ease among them even though they had barely met a few times before. Bless them for taking care of Draco and giving him this safe place.
Draco turned to give her his empty boondi ladle when he caught her expression. "What?"
Hermione took his ladle and shook her head. "These are good people," she finally said. "I can see how they helped you change."
He looked over his shoulder and smiled at Jaheet, who was still watching her pot carefully, before turning back to Hermione. "I owe them everything."
Hermione cocked her head in curiosity.
He saw it and shrugged. "They are the reason I'm not a drunk mess. They showed me what life was like if I believed in something bigger than myself."
She remembered him during the prayer at Thanksgiving. "You are religious?"
"I've adopted Sikhism." He accepted the full ladle she handed to him and then turned away as if he hadn't just dropped a bombshell on her.
She stepped back to the fryer next to him and started tapping the ladle again, her eyes still on Draco. "How did that happen? When did it happen? Do you go to the… the Sikh temple with Jaheet's family?"
"It's a Gurdwara and yes, most weeks."
She noticed he didn't answer her first question. "Draco, how did you adopt Sikhism?"
He didn't look up from his ladle but his lips were pressed together. "It's a long story."
"But a good one," Amar supplied from the stovetop.
They were all interrupted as a loud whirring noise filled the kitchen from Jaheet's food processor. "Amar, if Draco wants to keep the story to himself, you should respect that," she said.
Amar raised an eyebrow at Draco. "So you haven't told your girlfriend yet? Afraid what she might think?"
"Might think about what?" Hermione finally asked. If they were trying to kill her with curiosity it was half-way working.
Draco yanked their baskets out of the fryer and roughly dumped the fried dough out and then slammed them back into the fryer. "Thanks, Amar," Draco snapped. "Really helped me out there."
"What would you be afraid of me finding out?" Hermione asked, glancing down at his left arm, which he kept covered even in the heat of the kitchen.
He followed the movement and then grunted. Turning his eyes away from her. "You know how I told you I was arrested?"
Hermione nodded even though he couldn't see her.
"It was because I attacked Samir."
"What? But you said he bailed you out."
Draco didn't say anything and Hermione filled the boondi ladles with the last of the batter. Draco shrugged and started tapping his ladle again, not looking back at her.
Amar sighed. "You know Draco was a drunk, right?" he asked, placing a plate of food out for the waiter to retrieve.
Hermione glanced at Draco, who rolled his eyes. "Why else would she had been at that AA meeting?"
"Amar, don't-" Jaheet started but Draco cut her off.
"No, it's fine. Amar can tell it."
"Draco was a drunk," Amar repeated, glancing over meaningfully at Hermione. "A mean drunk."
Hermione wasn't surprised.
"One time he had really gone off the deep end. He broke a table and was screaming nonsense at the sky. It was scaring the costumers so Samir went out to talk to him." Hermione felt her heart sink in anticipation. "When Samir did start talking to him, Draco turned and threw Samir into the street."
Hermione gasped.
"He was side-swiped by a car," Jaheet supplied as she carefully started collecting the fried dough into one large bowl now that most of it had cooled. "Samir only had a broken collarbone and some bruises."
"Only," Draco muttered mockingly, jerking out the last of the boondi dough from the fryer.
Draco turned off the fryer and Amar continued. "Draco ran after Samir and a police officer who had seen the whole thing went after him, thinking he was going to attack Samir again."
"You didn't attack the police officer, did you?" Hermione asked. Draco wouldn't be familiar with Muggle law enforcement.
Draco shook his head. "Samir told me not to."
Hermione raised an eyebrow but there was another whir from the food-processor, which, Hermione realized, Jaheet had put some of the fried boondi into. It took several minutes for Jaheet to process about half of the fried batter and during those minutes Hermione wondered how Draco had gone from nearly killing Samir to becoming friends.
"Start pouring these bowls into the sugar syrup on the stove," Jaheet said handing a bowl of the fried boondi to Hermione.
She accepted the bowl but paused, waiting for Jaheet to look up at her again. "What happened after Draco went to the police station?"
"Samir did not find out about it until he came from the hospital to the station fill out a statement about what happened. He chose to drop the charges."
"Right after Draco shoved him in the street?"
Jaheet's smile was fond and a little bit sly. "Well, not without some conditions."
"He brought in a lawyer," Draco said with pride in his voice. "Made me sign a contract about repaying the bail money if I skipped bail or didn't come to AA meetings or… a lot of things, actually."
Hermione turned to see a smirk on Draco's face. Of course the Slytherin in him appreciated it but why didn't he just break the contract and pay the money? She wasn't sure of Draco's financial situation but she was sure he could have done that, especially if he really had wanted to drink again. Hermione glanced at him again, considering.
"I went to AA meetings but they kept talking about a higher power and so I finally asked Samir about his. After several months I decided to adopt Sikhism." He shrugged as if it was simple. Which, of course, it wasn't. It was like telling how to get from A to B and then saying that the subsequent jump through all the letters to H were elementary.
"And that is how Samir managed to get the plague of our restaurant to start harassing us in our kitchen instead of as a customer," Amar concluded.
That statement only made Draco's smirk widen even if there was something a little painful behind it.
Jaheet poured the boondi and syrup mixture out into the bowls again after mixing it thoroughly. It was a lot of dough. If it had been cookie dough it probably would have made eight dozen batches or so.
"All that is left to do is form it into balls," Jaheet told them, demonstrating with a quick couple movements until she had a small speckled ball in her hands that she placed on a platter.
Hermione picked it up easily enough but Draco's seemed destined to become boxes instead of spheres.
After squishing the dough into yet another lumpy block, Draco set it down by Hermione's growing number of varying sized balls and then let out a gusty sigh.
Jaheet leaned over to see Draco's contribution and then laughed.
He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and sent her a humorless smile. "You can fix mine if you want to."
With a quick roll in her hands, the block became a ball.
He followed the motion and then closed his eyes. "Maybe I'll leave this to you two ladies." He wiped his hands on one of the cloths lying next to him and turned away. "I'm just messing it up anyway."
Hermione watched him leave and thought the whole scene a bit melodramatic. It was a dessert.
After wiping her own hands, Jaheet took a step after him. She placed a hand on Draco's shoulder and turned him towards her.
He turned but his eyes were on the ground.
She placed her hand on Draco's jaw and tilted his face up so that he met her eyes. Although Hermione had just done something very similar, this had a different tone to it. Gentle and a little motherly even though Jaheet couldn't have been much more than five years their senior. "Remember," Jaheet said. "'Oh my soul, abide with God, the destroyer of all pain.'" The way she said it made Hermione suspect it was scripture. Jaheet released her hand and tapped his chest. "Yours and Samir's."
His mouth was still flat but Draco stared intently back at Jaheet. "Yes. I remember. 'The True Guru becomes merciful and then all pains and sins are cut.'"
She nodded. "I wouldn't care what shape you make them, Draco."
His eyes slid down to the ground again. "Thank you, Jaheet."
She gently patted his arm.
Draco returned to their work, making many more lumpy blocks until they slowly began to become balls.
The sky was dark by the time Hermione and Draco left and she pulled her jacket tight against her, wishing there had been a moment she could have used a warming spell before they left. Draco was silent as they walked, hands buried deep in his pockets and head tilted up towards the smog-clouded sky where a few stars still sparkled through.
She wondered what he was thinking. He had found a place where he had once again hurt people but they had cared for him anyway. Redeemed him. Maybe she didn't need to worry about him as much as she thought she did. If he had Jaheet and Samir and their faith maybe he wouldn't crumble back into alcoholism like she half-worried. Maybe she just needed to worry about the pain from the empty space he would leave in her life. Could she call him a coward for leaving when there weren't options? No but they didn't know that. It might be late here but she could use her floo maps to jump back to the West Coast for a few hours in a library before it closed there. (What was this about libraries closing at silly hours like nine at night?) Then she would know if there were options and if she had to fortify her heart for him leaving her.
"Draco?" Hermione asked and he looked down, raising an eyebrow.
She reached out her gloved hand and he took it, squeezing her fingers. She smiled up at him and his eyes softened before tilting back up to the sky.
She wished she could stay with him and stare at whatever he saw up in the heavens but she had been invited to the Gurdwara tomorrow and needed to get in as much studying as she could before she had to sleep. Reluctantly she let his hand go when they arrived at the floo and then made the jumps it would take to get to the West Coast.
Thank you to those who told me about the chapters being off. I don't know how it happened and don't have the problem on my end so please let me know if there are any repeat chapters! This is supposed to be chapter 51. Thank you for your help and hope you enjoy :)
Sam
Rajbir kaur: I've emailed you some things to look at but I understand if you are busy right now. Either way, once you get time to read this please let me know if everything is good here? This also goes too anyone who knows about Sikhism and Sikh culture- I would appreciate any help because I don't want to mess anything up. Thank you!
