Harry Potter The Life Of A Chef

Pansy noticed the end of his statement and felt a little better. "I understand, I will keep trying to be… more pleasant." She flushed again. "But I have… what my mother charitably calls a tea tongue." Seeing Harry's look of confusion, she sighed. "I can be rather acrid, only unlike tea, unpleasantly so. Basically, I say mean things."

"I've noticed," Harry deadpanned, making her giggle. "You're trying though, and that's good of you. Just try and be less unpleasantly acrid to the others if you can."

"I'll try," she said softly. She sniffed the air delicately when he took the cover off the pot. A rush of deep savory scents washed over her. The air was rich with hearty tomato and cream, warm and inviting. "That smells wonderful," she said softly.

Harry dipped the tip of a spoon into the sauce and tasted it. "Mmm, I think it's close to being finished. Just needs a bit more salt and pepper and I'll add grated parmesan cheese with the noodles." He wiped the spoon clean and dipped it back into the sauce, then held the handle to Pansy. "Here, try it."

She took it and blew on it gently before tasting it. Her eyes popped open and she licked her lips clean. "That's incredible! It's so rich and creamy!"

"Great!" Harry had a pot of water bubbling away at a fast boil and he threw in handfuls of dried spaghetti noodles. "Now we cook the spaghetti until it's just about done and then I finish it in the sauce with a little bit of pasta water. The starch that cooks out of the noodles really helps the sauce bind to them when you toss them together."

"I never thought cooking was this intricate," Pansy said as she watched the noodles roil in the boiling water.

"It can be. In Muggle supermarkets there are jars of prepared sauce. You don't even have to do anything to them aside from heating them up. Then you throw in some noodles and that's it. It tastes way different though."

"You've spent hours on this," Pansy said, pointing at the large pot of Bolognese sauce. "So much effort to make something that will not last long."

"You like how it tastes though, right?"

"Of course."

"Then that's worth the effort. To me at least." He stirred the sauce slowly, waiting for the noodles to cook. "All I ever want is for a person to smile when they eat something I've cooked. For them to say that they like the taste, that they're happier because they ate something I made."

"How can anyone not say that when they taste your cooking?" Pansy asked sincerely. "I've only had your muffin and soup before and they were wonderful."

"You'd be surprised," Harry said sadly. He shook his head and the sadness disappeared. "But yeah, some things you have to spend a lot of time and effort on it. But the results can be worthwhile."

Pansy looked at the bubbling pot, not quite sure what to say to that. She flinched lightly when Hedwig swooped by and landed neatly on Harry's shoulder. "Your owl is very affectionate."

"Isn't she great?" Harry said proudly. He held his left arm out and Hedwig waddled down the length, resting on his forearm. "She's my first real friend."

"Really?" Pansy took a step back at Hedwig's sudden glare.

"Really," Harry said, patting Hedwig's head, smoothing out her feathers. "I didn't have any and the day I found out I was a wizard from Hagrid, he took me to Diagon and got me Hedwig." Hedwig nuzzled him fondly but when Harry looked away, the owl glared at Pansy once more, narrowing her eyes.

"She eats human food?" Pansy asked when Harry let her taste from his sauce spoon.

"Yeah. I've checked with Hagrid and he doesn't think feeding her different foods owls normally don't eat is too bad. She's never gotten sick as I've seen. She's pretty picky on some things though, adores bacon as you saw." He smiled when Hedwig licked her beak and bobbed her head approvingly. "She's a great taste tester."

Harry strained the noodles and in a separate pot, put them in with heaping ladles of sauce. He added a bit of the pasta water to combine the sauce and mixed the noodles with the Bolognese until the noodles gleamed with rich red sauce and meat. He piled each plate with pasta, including one for Hedwig, and set them on the long table. "Okay, it's ready everyone."

"That smells incredible," Hermione said. "Just like ones we've had at home!"

Harry sat with them but did not eat first, waiting with baited breath while everyone else took bites of the dish.

"Wow, where has this been all my life?" Millicent asked. "This is so good!"

"I've never had anything like this," Sue said admiringly. "It's so rich and tasty."

"This is better than some I've had," Hermione gasped.

.....

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