This chapter was completely inspired by this one fic that I read ages and ages ago and watching the Food Network—a lot.
Thanks to Dan Helsing for the review!!!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything dealing with Harry Potter, trust me.
Picture Perfect
Chapter VII:
The Birthday Bake-Off
"Good morning, Harry," Mrs. Weasley greeted him as he entered the kitchen. She sneezed once—twice—three times before groaning loudly. "Excuse me," she bid of him before loudly blowing her nose into a handkerchief.
"Morning, Mrs. Weasley," he replied with concern as she sneezed once again.
The kitchen of the Burrow was void of its magically moving pots and pans, and the brass kettle, dull from lack of its daily cleaning, whistled half-hearted. Mrs. Weasley magicked it from under her handkerchief. It floated across the stove, pouring of its boiling water into a pot of tealeaves.
"I'm sorry, dear, I'm afraid you're on your own with breakfast," Mrs. Weasley said with an apologetic glance. "Arthur's outside feeding the chickens, but I was able to gather some of the eggs before he shooed me in." She sighed heavily, "I was sure I would be well for Ginny's birthday, but…"
"I'll make some Pepper-Up Potion for you, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said in a consoling voice as she entered the kitchen. "You just go rest so you will have enough energy for the party tonight, okay?"
"Yeah, Mrs. Weasley, we'll take care of everything, don't worry," Harry added, taking the small basket filled with eggs and rummaging for a large mixing bowl at the same time.
The Weasley mother smiled gratefully, "Thank you, dears, thank you so much." She turned and made her way up the staircase as Harry started to beat a dozen and a half eggs he was going to scramble. He just registered a congested, "Good morning, Ron," and a bleary, inaudible reply before Ron Weasley, his T-shirt on, the neck of it slightly stretched to the left as though he had attempted to put an arm through the neck hole, entered the normally cheery kitchen (now silent and quite mournful despite Harry's attempt to cheer the stove up by waving the bowl of egg at the pans).
"Morning, Ron," chorus Harry, who had started to scramble the eggs, and Hermione, who was making toast.
"M-m-morning," Ron yawned widely as he stretched his arms. They fell to his side and his blinked hard, now wide awake. "Need help?" he asked.
"Bacon?" asked Harry as he wrestled the pan down, still unaccustomed to using the magical cooking utensils.
"Butter?" Hermione said at the same time as she supervised the bread from next to the toaster that Mr. Weasley had modified (capable of toasting a dozen slices at one time).
Ron nodded as he crossed the kitchen and collected a jar of amber marmalade from the pantry and a slab of bacon, two dozen thick sausages, and a small tub of butter from the icebox. He gave what each individual had requested before settling down to butter Hermione's toast. She then left her post next to the bread, crossing the room to brew a pot of coffee and another pot of tea.
Ron was the first to break the quiet clatter. "I had no idea how much effort went into making breakfast," he observed as he scraped a square of butter across a slice of golden brown bread.
"Well, if you think it's hard for your mother, imagine how the house-elves at Hogwarts must feel," Hermione said passionately.
"Hermione, please, it's eight o'clock in the morning, my Mum is sick, and we may end us having to bake Ginny's cake if Mum doesn't get better. Could you please not get started on spew before I even have any breakfast?" Ron pleaded, looking at the bushy haired girl with exaggerated anguish.
"It's not spew, it's—oh, all right," she gave in huffily as Harry shot her an impatient look. "Was just asking you to consider what they go through on a daily basis."
There was a stony silence, only interrupted by the quiet sizzle of the bacon and sausages that Harry had just tipped into the frying pan.
The front door squeaked open, "Good morning, everyone," Mr. Weasley greeted brightly, dusting off his robes. "Just got through feeding the chickens. Ah, breakfast, excellent."
Harry was scooping up the last of the sausages and placing them in a large platter when the birthday girl herself entered the room.
"Happy birthday, Ginny!" the room chorus, interjected by a now-energetic, shrill whistle from the slowly glowing brass kettle.
"Thanks," she grinned as she embraced her father before settling into her seat.
Ron got to his feet, a crazed grin stretched across his face. He shot up the stairs. Harry, who had finished cooking (the pans sprang to life and started to clean themselves in the frothy suds of the sink), settled down to tuck in when Ron returned with a bright red hat, laden with whirling streamers and exploding balloons.
Ginny groaned loudly.
"You have to wear it," Ron said in a bossy big brother tone not unlike the one that Hermione used in regards to Harry's SPEW badge, "or the Goople Goblins will give you a miserable year."
"I don't believe in the Goople Goblins anymore," Ginny said defiantly, staring at the hat with hidden apprehension.
"But you have to wear it," Ron said, his eye widening dangerously. "It's a tradition."
She stared at his slightly crazed expression, then at the hat, and then back at her brother. Harry smiled a small smile as he watched her slowly, reluctantly placed the hat on her head (the streamers whirled even faster and an especially large balloon popped, filling the air—and covering Ginny's plate of food—with confetti). He would have worn it, too, given the choice between donning the gaudy hat for the day or having to put up with Ron-you-must-follow-this-tradition-or-else-Weasley on such a day.
"You haven't had to wear it since your eleventh birthday," she grumbled under her breath as she tried to clean off the bits of colored paper. "Just because I'm younger than you and my birthday's in summer…" she trailed off, the birthday brightness gone from her face as another shower of confetti fell on her scrambled eggs.
Hermione was preparing a plate of steaming food and setting a pot of tea on a tray as they ate (meals this summer had been oddly quiet due to the absence of the rowdy Weasley twins). She took the tray of breakfast up to Mrs. Weasley (who was recuperating in the bedroom she shared with her husband) before returning to have eggs and toast.
As the group finished the meal, a swarm of owls (Harry counted at least ten) swooped through the open window, parcels tied to their talons, before landing around Ginny, each impatiently waiting for her to take their packages. While the other assisted in removing the parcels, Harry offered bacon finds, cereal, and cups of juice to the owls as rewards. Some immediately took off while other dunked their heads in the cups and helped themselves to the food.
Flump.
Harry retrieved Errol, the Weasley's ancient barn owl, from behind the trashcan underneath the window before setting him on his perch. The lumpy parcel, wrapped in thick paper with a pattern of W's, was removed (Harry strongly suspected it was from the Weasley twins) and the owl hooted in gratitude before drinking a beakful of water from his water tray.
Hermione scribbled something on a scrap of parchment and set it next to the toaster, giving Harry and Ron significant looks before making her way up to Ginny's room, no doubt to brew the promised potion for Mrs. Weasley as Mr. Weasley Banished the presents into the living room for the small party that was to take place that evening before getting to his feet and stretching. "Well, I'm off," he announced, drawing on his traveling cloak.
"Bye, Dad."
"Bye, Mr. Weasley."
"Take care of your mother while I'm gone," Mr. Weasley implored as he exited and Disapperated.
"I'll be up in my room if you need me," Ginny said, brushing a whirling streamer out of her face, before exiting.
Ron sighed as soon she was out of earshot and said, "I guess we better bake that cake for her."
Harry looked at him in surprise, "Oh, I get it, you used the hat as a diversion so that she wouldn't be here when we baked her cake?"
"Yeah," Ron shrugged nonchalantly. "That and because it really annoys her."
Harry started to rummage through Mrs. Weasley's many cookbooks. He finally withdrew a thick book with a smiling lady on the cover. He was slightly taken aback by the fact that the blonde lady holding the cake wasn't moving.
"Ron, why do you have a Muggle cookbook?"
Ron looked at it. "It…I think it might be from Mum's cousin—you know that accountant person I told you about? I think he sent it on Mum and Dad's twentieth anniversary."
Harry nodded, flipping through the book until he came upon dessert section. Baked Alaska, peanut butter cookies, chocolate nut meringue cakes, toffee pudding…
"How about Devil's cake with vanilla icing?" Harry suggested, looking down the list of ingredients from his spot in front of the pantry. "Butter, cocoa powder, flour, sugar…yeah, I think we have all the ingredients here."
"Is it hard to make?" Ron asked worriedly.
"I dunno, I didn't get a lot of baking action when I was with the Dursleys. I mean, I did a lot of cooking when I was little 'coz the Dursleys are, well, the Dursleys, but I never really had to bake anything except maybe lemon salmon."
Ron sighed, "Mum does all the cooking around here. Ginny helps some, but the last time she let one of us guys help in the kitchen, we ended up eating the stuff before dinner time."
Harry did not say anything as he started to move all the required ingredients to the breakfast table as Ron quickly tossed the used plates into the sink. He winced sharply as the plate that formerly held the sausages bounced off the windowsill. Disaster would have struck had it not been for the faucet's quick reaction, shooting out water to cushion its fall before lowering it into the sink.
"Let's get baking!" Ron said, his slightly crazed look spreading across his face once again.
An hour and a half later, Harry and Ron stared wearily at each other after finally sliding the slightly lumpy cake out of the oven. They had wrestled with Mrs. Weasley's old-fashioned mixer, Ron had slipped on some egg yolk and almost knocking the whole table over, and now the kitchen was littered with remnants of their efforts, broken egg shells scattered on the floor, melted chocolate slowly making solid puddles along the table, batter streaked across the table from when Harry accidentally flung the wooden spoon when Errol flew into Harry, prodding him to refill the water tray…
"Well, at least the cake's done now," Ron said bracingly, treading across the room to the pantry, rummaging through it before extracting two jars of icing. "It's Mum's special recipe," he replied to Harry's inquiring look.
"Well," Harry sighed resignedly, putting the pan on the windowsill so that it could cool, "I guess we'll just have to dump it out into a bowl, mix some cocoa into it, and then put it on."
Ron was already upending the jars, generous mounds of icing filling the large mixing bowl. Harry passed a tablespoon of cocoa to him, too sticky and tired to do it himself. However, as he scanned the fine print of the cookbook on the part about the icing, he found himself, once again, pulled into the weird baking business.
"Ron, you have to fluff the icing," he said heavily as he offered to take the spoon from him.
"What?" Ron stared at him, dumbfounded.
"Fluff," he said emphatically, snatching the spoon away. "Fluff, you need to fluff the icing. Sandra Lee says to fluff the icing."
"Wha-what, like, like a pillow?" Ron asked with uncharacteristic sourness. "And who's this Sandra Lee anyway?"
"Like this," Harry demonstrated by folding the sugary concoction, creating air pockets in the mixture in order to ensure a light airy texture.
Ron took back the spoon and followed suit, but in a more vigorous manner. Soon half of the icing in the bowl was plastered on the ceiling. Harry cried in frustration before a spoonful hit his face.
Ron gasped. "Harry," he said slowly. "I am so sorry," he said, his eyes wide with terror.
Harry turned to him, slowly wiping the frosting from his nose. As though triggered by an unseen button, his eyes narrowed then widened, glinting brightly. He slowly, deliberately took a hold an unused stick of butter and smeared in Ron's face. Ron, in retaliation, took the last of the contents of the bowl and dumped it all in Harry's messy hair.
"Death. Of. Ron," Harry growled.
Ron squealed and raced off as Harry took the bowl. Before the youngest Weasley boy got very far, however, Harry had taken the almost empty bowl, turned it upside down, and turned it four, five, six times around on Ron's head.
"My hair!" Ron squeaked shrilly, grabbing the bowl and throwing it to one side, slipping on half a dozen broken eggs that had fallen off the kitchen table. He then took a hold of the can of cocoa powder, aimed, and fired, showering the Weasley kitchen (and Harry) in the powdery substance.
The pair continued, completely forgetting that they were sixteen year olds on the verge of adulthood, reverting back to their five year old selves, grabbing at anything and everything and chucking the contents at each other. Paprika showered the room, Mrs. Weasley's china jumped to one side, watching the spectacle with great caution in case they should be the next victims. Tea bags were strewn around the room as Harry, who was cornered and out of ammo, felt the top of his hair. The slightly hardening icing was still there, a large mountain of off light brown perched on a mound of raven black hair. He scooped it up, formed it into an oozing ball and aimed it at Ron.
Someone cleared her throat loudly.
Harry and Ron cringed as they pulled out of their little world, slowly turning to regard Hermione, who was torn between amusement and great displeasure, and Ginny, who was laughing so hard that she had to hold the doorframe to support herself, standing in the doorway.
"It's time for the birthday picture," Mrs. Weasley's voice came down the staircase, no longer congested and thick. She appeared behind the girls, completely oblivious of the untidiness of her haven as she was trying to figure out how to operate the old Weasley camera. "Everyone get—OH DEAR MERLIN!"
Mrs. Weasley must have accidentally pressed the button that took pictures. The camera flashed and snapped, taking in the scene, Harry's arm still raised in mid-throw, Ron still brandishing a small container of sugar. Ginny collapsed to the floor, laughing harder than ever, desperately gasping for breath. Mrs. Weasley groaned.
"I'm going back to bed," she said weakly turning to go back up the stairs.
"I told you, I already took care of the cake," Hermione said sternly, holding up a bag. "Ginny and I went to the Muggle grocery store and picked one out."
Harry and Ron stared at her. "No you didn't!"
Hermione pointed at the piece of parchment next to the toaster. "Yes I did."
Harry looked at Ron. Ron looked at Harry. They both looked at the room. There was nothing else to do. They winced simultaneously.
Okay, so Sandra Lee didn't really come on to the scene until about 2003, but I had to include her (mainly because she used to scare me and my sister a lot).
Dang, this chapter was a lot harder to write than I expected. It was another one of those chapters where the main idea got lost in the shuffle of things because the Weasley's magical kitchen took over and forced me to put them in as a character of their own. Kinda.
Hmmm…any thoughts at all?? I think there might be two or three chapters left, but it's highly unlikely that they'll be up before the release of DH (tomorrow night, oh merlinnnnnnnnnn!!!), so we'll see. Maybe I'll just leave this fic open for always so I can just keep adding on to it whenever it strikes my fancy…
Quite excited about DH (though somewhat depressed at the same time),
Chikin Wang