Chapter 3 - Now Serving.

A/N - Forgive me, I wrote this before supper.

Thirty-eight minutes later, Severus came downstairs. He'd made sure to be exactly 13 minutes late, knowing that it would drive Hermione absolutely insane. Smirk comfortably in place, he turned into the kitchen and arched an eyebrow at his former nemesis.

Hermione didn't even bother to look up from her book.

Well.

He cleared his throat, waiting for the inevitable babbled apology and her hasty retrieval of his supper.

Hermione didn't move.

"Miss Granger?" He infused his words with all the sarcasm he could muster. Given his expertise, every phoneme dripped with derision.

"Get it yourself," she said calmly.

Excuse me? He thought. Who is this woman and what has she done with the real Miss Granger?

"Excuse me?" he said. He wisely chose to keep the second half of his prior thought to himself.

"I finished my meal -" she glanced at the clock on the wall, "six minutes ago. If you'd wanted to eat with me, you should have been here then. You can get your own supper." Her nose then buried itself back in the pages of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

He stood there a moment, not sure whether to continue what would probably be a pointless round of verbal badminton or just ignore the silly girl -- even if she was no longer a girl.

The recent revelation of her surprisingly voluptuous development made him feel temporarily disoriented and he intensely disliked that feeling. Her churlish manner with him now was nothing like the overly eager student he'd known and that was equally unsettling. With a brilliant and oh-so- typically male deduction, he decided that his discomfiture was her fault and her appalling lack of manners must be due to it being her time of the month.

Conveniently ignoring the small and decidedly unwelcome voice that quietly reminded him of his rudeness in being intentionally tardy to supper, he pulled his wand from his sleeve.

Hermione roused herself - barely - from reading and said, "You can't use that here."

Her tone was bored and he had half a mind to chide her for being such a poor hostess. In fact, her entire demeanor so far, except for the brief moment of tenderness she'd shown in discussing her parents' bedroom, had bordered on sullen.

Snape ignored her and, giving a swish and flick, directed his wand to the counter where he planned to conjure a lovely roast duck in cranberry glaze.

Nothing.

No spark, no flash and -- more alarming -- no duck. Not even a feather.

Hermione sighed audibly and turned a page.

Grinding his teeth, the tall and now quite hungry man turned back to the table and managed to choke out, "Perhaps, Miss Granger, you would be kind enough as to enlighten me regarding the sudden failure of my wand?"

Choosing to ignore the opportunity to make a tasteless double entendre from his poor choice of phrasing, Hermione shrugged and said, "Professor Dumbledore warded the house against magic. He said something about charms that could detect even the smallest trace of magical activity and that Death Eaters would be using those to find you. So your wand won't work. No magical potions, no house elves, no floo, no apparating. Nothing."

Wonderful, he thought. The most she's said since he'd arrived and it was Dumbledore-related bad news. That's redundant, he told himself; anything Dumbledore-related must, by definition, be bad news.

Noticing the smirk on Hermione's face, he asked, "And I suppose your abilities have not been similarly constrained?" He was chagrined to realize that his question sounded decidedly whiny.

"Oh no," she said, the very picture of equanimity. "I'm not able to perform any magic either. Of course, I've lived as a Muggle so it's not really that much of an inconvenience for me." Unlike Snape's tone, the tenor of her words was the very definition of snarky.

Before he could launch into a diatribe regarding her behavior thus far, his stomach interrupted, registering its loud complaint at having been ignored.

Hermione's smirk deepened and she had the temerity to close her book and cross her arms. She pushed back from the oak refectory table and reclined slightly in the wide-slatted ladder back chair, rearranging her body into a pose of casual indifference in complete contrast to the obvious interest on her face.

A headache began to take root in the base of Snape's skull, where the muscles had been as rigid as well-cured concrete for the better part of the day.

Absentmindedly rubbing the base of his neck, he looked around the tidy kitchen, trying to decide where best to begin his search for comestibles. The room lay across the back of the house, and included a fairly traditional arrangement of counters, cabinets and appliances. A comfortable eating area was separated from the kitchen by a counter with cabinets above and below.

The placing of the kitchen in the back of the house allowed for a substantial number of windows, providing a view of the neatly landscaped back yard. The wall behind the dining area was nearly all glass, except for a door in the far corner that led out of the house. An oversized window over the kitchen sink was set so that it jutted out from the back wall, allowing a variety of herbs and plants to grow on glass shelves contained in the window, much like a small greenhouse. The effect of all the glass gave the area a feeling of more space than its actual square footage. The natural light from the - Snape glanced at the shadows creeping across the lawn - south facing window also provided a warm light that further cheered the space.

Despite the obvious and incorrect assumption of Miss Granger, Severus Snape did indeed know his way around a kitchen. The comparison of Potions crafting to fine cooking was frequently made and it was an apt association. The best sauciers, patissiers, and chefs de cuisine were as precise, as demanding and frequently just as temperamental as Hogwarts' Potions Master, and a man with a palate and nose as finely-tuned as Snape's was a natural for the kitchen.

Deciding that the first order of business was to determine what ingredients were available and, as his stomach requested noisily, what could be cooked quickly, Snape opened the refrigerator door. He relished the look of surprise that registered on Hermione's face as he pulled the door open and surveyed its contents.

"Surely, Miss Granger, you aren't surprised that I am able to recognize standard kitchen appliances?" he drawled. "Some wizards are quite comfortable functioning in the Muggle world." He didn't add the "so take that, Miss Snarky Britches" that had accompanied the comment in his mind. His childishness surprised even himself sometimes.

Well no wonder the girl's pants were loose, he thought; there was virtually nothing edible in here. A bottle that contained barely more than a mouthful of milk, a jar of mustard, a knob of butter, a shallot (a shallot? Does she even know what to do with a shallot?), some shredded cheese that appeared to be Swiss, and a tomato that was about 8 hours past being usable. Opening the lower bin revealed a lemon that was well on its way to mummification - fortunately for Snape's sensitive nose, it had long since passed the malodorous state of decay - three eggs of indeterminate vintage, and a bottle of champagne. He was relieved to note that at least the champagne was stored correctly, in the least frigid part of the appliance and lying on its side.

"Miss Granger, what could you have possibly eaten tonight? There is virtually nothing edible in here. Surely you didn't concoct some divine repast that left only this .wasteland?"

Finally, it was Hermione's turn to look uneasy. She mumbled something which she was sternly requested to repeat "so that it may be heard and understood."

"I heated a frozen dinner in the microwave," she huffed.

Opening the freezer and removing a package, he said, "So I missed an opportunity to enjoy (here he paused to dramatically clear his throat) 'Tender beef tips, in a creamy white wine - Dijon sauce, served with roasted red-skin potato wedges and crisp green beans?'" Snape turned the box over. His hand was nearly as large as the box. "Oh, and such a generously-sized meal at 240 grams; surely there were leftovers?"

Hermione's subtle blush became slightly more pronounced but she said nothing.

"Pity." From his tone, it would appear that Snape had managed to reclaim his title of Master of Sarcasm.

He put the small box back into the freezer and surveyed the room. Deciding that the most logical place to store mixing bowls would be under the longest expanse of counter, he opened the first cabinet next to the refrigerator. Behind the measuring cups, a sifter and a colander, he found a bowl to suit his purpose. He placed the three eggs inside the bowl and crossed to the sink where he poured cold water over them.

Leaving the bowl on the counter, he turned toward Hermione and asked, "Where do you keep your dry goods?"

She was a little taken aback. "Do you mean flour and spices or potatoes and onions?"

"I'll want to know where all of that is kept but for now, I'd like to find an onion and a few potatoes. If you have any that haven't petrified, that is."

She pointed to a closet next to the door that he'd entered through. "We - I mean, I keep mostly odds and ends in there, but there are some root vegetables that shouldn't be too old."

He crossed to the door and opened it. A few wicker baskets at his feet contained some smallish potatoes and a handful of onions. Relieved to see that none of the potatoes had sprouted, he took what he needed and returned to the counter.

It was only a matter of time before Hermione's curiosity got the better of her. She drifted over to sit on one of the stools that had been tucked under the counter on the table side of the room. She craned her neck to see what he was going to do with the bowl filled with water and eggs.

"Miss Granger," he began, his tone exactly as she'd remembered it from seven years of lecturing. "Do you know how old these eggs are?"

She silently shook her head. That was a reaction neither of them were accustomed to; Snape made a note to mark this day in his memory.

"Do you know how to tell whether an egg is still edible?"

"No, sir." Her tone returned to the respectful interest that had been so familiar to him and so absent so far this evening. That alone forestalled him making a snide comment about her culinary ignorance.

Slipping into the comfortable role of teacher, he lectured: "If an egg is fresh, it will sink when submerged in water, resting on its side. As the egg ages, air passes through the shell and expands an air pocket at the wider end of the egg. After approximately one week, the wide base of the egg will rise in the water, causing the egg to float vertically. The egg will still be edible." Snape slid the bowl closer to her. The fat end of the egg was breaking the surface of the water as the rest of the egg remained submerged. Professor Snape continued: "As the air continues to permeate the shell, the material contained within will continue to evaporate. At approximately two weeks of age, the narrower end of the egg will float. After three weeks, the egg will float on the water and is, at that time, no longer fit for consumption."

While he'd been speaking, Snape had located a fork, cutting board, knife, two pans, and had snipped sprigs of parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon from the window garden.

After removing the eggs from the water, he quickly washed the potatoes in the water and then rinsed the bowl. Putting the larger of the pans on the stove, he set the flame first to high, and then backed it down slightly. As the pan heated, he diced the potatoes and onions into precisely and evenly sized cubes, his movements as deft and sure here as in the Potions lab. A pat of butter hit the hot pan with a loud sizzle and was quickly followed by the onions and potatoes. He gave the pan a few quick shakes, mixing the ingredients to his satisfaction, then added a few pinches of salt and cracked some pepper over the combination. Setting a lid on top of the pan, he turned to the eggs.

Three eggs were quickly cracked, seasoned with salt, pepper and the herbs, and the last of the milk (after a careful sniff determined that it hadn't yet turned) were expertly whipped together into a froth. Another pan on the stove, another pat of butter hissed its way into a liquid state, and the egg mixture was poured into the pan.

As the eggs began to set, Snape checked the potatoes to see that they were nearly done by piercing a cubed potato with the knife and lifting it from the pan. As the potato released its grip on the knife, he nodded to himself. Turning back to the eggs, he lifted the pan, gave it a quick flick with his wrist and the omelet was perfectly flipped.

Snape paused, looked around the kitchen thoughtfully and then opened the cupboard to the left of the sink. Taking one of the plates he'd expected to find there, he tried not to smile. For the oddest reason, he was pleased that the contents of the cabinets and cupboards were organized very much as he'd have done.

He turned the stove off, sprinkled the Swiss cheese and the few remaining chopped fines herbes into the center of the eggs and folded the omelet from the pan onto his plate. He scooped the potatoes and onions from their pan and, plucking a fork from the drawer beneath the plate-filled cupboard, walked to the table, sat down and tucked in.

Note: the floating egg test is frequently used. Here are some links: and both reference the test but the American Egg Board () neither agrees nor refutes this test, saying only that floating an egg in salt water cannot determine freshness. They counsel reliance on the date stamps on the carton or by cracking the egg open and examining it.