Food Therapy

[Daniel Clairoux]

Daniel was starving. There was no other way to describe the horrible clawing feeling in his stomach as he made his way towards the kitchens. He had skipped both breakfast and lunch, and now that it was dinner time he found himself far too distracted at the table of the staff to actually eat anything. There was only one thing to do, and that was to go down to the kitchens and find something to eat, before he just fell dead as a pile of bones after self-cannibalising every inch of his body. Preferring to just making himself some food, he continued on his route towards the kitchens, but slowed as he did so when his nose (which was hyper sensitive given how famished he was) picked up the scent of cookies baking. He narrowed his eyes slightly and he entered the kitchen nose-first. He quickly spotted a young Hufflepuff, judging by the yellow uniform, baking it would seem. She wore mittens on her hands, and a little apron, and upon seeing this, Daniel grinned.

"Hi," he greeted with a small wave, before working his way through the shelves looking for plates. "My name's Daniel, you can call me Danny." He reached up and retrieved two plates, putting them on the counter in the middle. He then conjured himself a pair of mittens, a white apron, and a chef's hat. He put the mittens and apron on, but held the chef's hat out to the girl. "If you're going to wear an apron," he explained. "You should wear the hat too. Be all chef-ey like!"​

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[Emily Hayes-Magonus]

Emily was in a bit of a stump. She missed her family and she wanted to reach out to her brother and she thought she was coming down with a case of the crush, but she didn't want to be experiencing any of it. It was ridiculous. She didn't even really know the boy she was crushing on. Just his first name and that he was a fourth year and that he had helped her pick up her books that one time when she had crashed into him when she was in the corridors. It was awful and she hated it, but she had no one to talk to about it. Normally she would have spoken to her mother, but since she and Ciro both had left, that meant she had no one. She supposed that she could tell some of the girls in her dorm, but they were all so different, so she didn't really talk to any of them. Keye and Ravynn were really quiet and mostly kept to themselves anyway and she didn't know much about the other girls apart from what they would all discuss with each other late at night. She really missed having someone to talk to, she was really going to have to go out and get herself a best friend or something, because this was ridiculous. She'd tried talking to Tressa once, but she was preoccupied by her sports, so there was no point.

Sighing, and fixing her apron, Emily leaned over to look in the oven as she was baking cookies. She did so love her cookies. They looked about done from what she could see. She nodded her head and moved to the counter where he oven mitts were and pulled them over her hands before moving back to where the oven was. Her apron and mitts set was mostly white, but it had little roses in places. She'd asked her mother to buy this set for her before she had returned to school and she was hoping to get a good wear out of this set. She was about to take her raisin cookies out of the oven when she heard someone in the kitchen. It was an adult, a professor she hadn't met yet perhaps? She smiled slightly at him as he walked about the kitchen. "Um, hi?" She didn't really know what to say. She'd never encountered a professor whilst in the kitchens before. Was she even allowed in here? "Um... I can leave if-" He was introducing himself via his first name, so maybe he wasn't a professor? He looked too old to be a student. Emily was rather confused. Was he a librarian maybe? "Emily..." Emily just watched him as he got two plates and she supposed that maybe he wanted some cookies. She smiled slightly, though it was not her usual smile as she simply wasn't feeling overly happy today. She reached out and took the chefs hat from his hands as he held it out to her and placed it on her head. "I don't generally like them, but thank you."

Finally Emily leaned down and took the cookies out of the oven. They smelled great and they looked really good, not that she was expecting that they wouldn't. She waved her hand over them for a moment to cool them slightly before placing them on the counter. "Would you like some?" Emily asked as she moved the plates closer to her and levitated a couple onto her plate and then a few more onto Daniel's plate. "They're quite hot, so please be careful. I don't want you to burn your tongue." She didn't exactly know why she'd said that, she went red as she did though and laughed slightly. "Uh, sorry... I'm used to having younger people or... people with less common sense with me when I bake." She thought about Avie as she said this and immediately felt bad for basically calling him an idiot. He wasn't, he just had very little common sense.
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[Daniel Clairoux]

Daniel smiled at the girl as she seemed to question herself, and shook his head at her. "Oh no, by all means." His hand gestured to the kitchen. "Please stay, no need to leave on my account." He had no idea if she was actually allowed in here, but he assumed she was. He was told that students were not allowed on the cliffs, or the forest, and had a curfew. She was not breaking any of those rules, and even if she was, he was starving, and she was baking. He was sure they could work something out. He grinned as he learned her name, and she accepted his offering of a chef's hat. "Every chef needs a hat, Emily." He readjusted his apron, tightening it a little more, before conjuring his own chef skull hat, a much smaller hat when compared to the one he provided for Emily. After all, she was the Head Chef. "And I shall be your assistant. What do I need to do, Ma'am?"

Daniel's nose wiggled as the scent of cooked dough filled the air. He admittedly did not have much experience with baked goods, but the smell of baked anything was always a pleasant one. "They smell great," he commented, not being entirely sure of the flavour, but by their appearance, he assumed choc-chip, which was fine by him. He watched her as she began preparing the plates, smirking as she proceeded to behave as she were his mother. He snorted. "What makes you think I have common sense?" he replied, sticking his tongue out at her, and plucking a cookie from the plate closest to him. It was warm, but not burning by all means. However, when he bit into it, he discovered the horrible truth - it was a raisin cookie, not choc chip. He looked away for a moment, not wanting her to see his face, as it was not a complimentary one. After a series of facial expressions that showed how much he did not like the flavour, he swallowed hard and put the cookie back on the plate, breathing sharply through his nose. "They're raisin," he mused, slowly looking back at her. "I assumed they were chocolate chip." He ran his tongue across his upper lip, and pointed jokingly to the cookies. "This is why I have trust issues, Emily. They do, however, look amazing."​

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[Emily Hayes-Magonus]

Emily was glad that, whoever this man was, he didn't seem to mind her being in the kitchen. That was good. She'd never gotten into trouble for something in her life and she didn't really want to start now. She smiled at the man and continued with what she was doing. She did have to wonder though why he was here. She didn't know and she really did want to know. Of course she didn't want to come right out and ask him either, that would be rude and she was a very considerate person generally. She thought that maybe she could get to like this man. He was kind. He was young too so he probably understood his students a little more then others would. "You're really young." She actually hadn't meant to say it and as soon as the words slipped out she covered her mouth and gasped. "Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to say that! It just slipped out! Please don't take away my house points!" She had no idea what he was like. She didn't think he looked mean, but who was she to judge? Afterall, Ciro always looked so strict, but she used to have tea with him and his mother made him sleep on his own without her mum, she didn't know the kind of life this man had. Emily gave Daniel the instructions to put the cookies onto the plates and such when he asked her for instructions, though she wasn't sure why he needed to be told to do that. She would have thought that it was kind of obvious, but she wasn't one to judge. Maybe he was like Avie? Maybe his common sense was a little bit lacking?

Emily was quite happy when her cookies were complimented. Though she didn't make them to please others, only herself, she did enjoy it when her baking was praised, who didn't? "I was going to share them with the girls in my dorm, but I guess you can have some." She told him as she continued to fix them up as they were placed on the plates. She then laughed when Daniel mentioned the very thing she had been thinking about not five minutes ago. "You're an adult, isn't it compulsory?" To Emily, it seemed rather silly to have a bunch of adults that had no common sense. Would that not be a bad thing? She didn't know, she didn't make the life rules, but she would certainly have given adults common sense. She had seen what a lack of common sense could do and it wasn't exactly pretty. However, soon Emily was concerned because Daniel had taken a bite of the cookie, only to turn his face was and she thought she heard coughing. She reached her hand out to him to see if he was okay, and he turned back to look at her. "Oh! I'm so sorry! I thought that you would have known! Chocolate chip and raisin look so different for me..." She frowned slightly. She was upset that he didn't like the cookies, but she was even more upset that she had not forewarned him. She was just so used to requests that she'd never had to tell someone what flavour they were before. "I'll make more!" Immediately Emily set about looking for the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies.
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[Daniel Clairoux]

Daniel looked at himself when the young Hufflepuff so bluntly pointed out his age. He was young, kind of. Twenty-two was still considered young these days, although his cousin's daughter had rather rudely told him that he was ancient because she couldn't count his age using just her fingers (and was even more outraged to find she still couldn't reach his age with her toes!). He refused to laugh at her panicking, however, because that would be completely inappropriate. "Oh, you're fine don't worry. You're really young too. It's not like you called me older than the stones in the walls," he said, chuckling. Even if she had have called him that ancient, removing house points would never have crossed his mind. He had the authority to remove house points, naturally, but it still felt a little weird doing so.

Daniel almost snorted at the thought of him having common sense simply because he was an adult. He barely saw himself as an adult, and that was why he frequently went running into situations without thinking them rather often. In fact, being called an adult by Emily nearly confused him, until he remembered that he was an adult, and that meant that he would actually have to attempt to be responsible and serious on occasion. However, he saw no harm here - it wasn't like she was running off into the Forbidden Forest or something, even though he had done the exact same thing when he was around her age. And worse. Taking a deep breath through his nostrils, he swallowed once more, and shook his head at her. "I should have known," he said, trying to calm her. He was the counsellor, for Spirits' sake, he should be bringing comfort to the kids around him, not inadvertently insulting their cooking and making them worry for no good reason.

Daniel moved out of the young girl's way as she began moving around the kitchen once more, and got himself a glass of water. "Can I help?" he asked, not knowing much about baking cookies at all. His parents had never trusted him in the kitchen, and Jonathon wasn't about to trust him to cook either. Corey was usually the one that touch anything they were going to eat, because for some crazy reason, no one trusted Daniel to cook. "I will listen to everything you say. I need to learn how to cook someday, anyway, otherwise I'll starve to death one of these days."​

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[Emily Hayes-Magonus]

Emily calmed down a little when she was sure that Daniel wasn't going to take away her house points. She was quite grateful in fact. She'd never lost any house points, that was something that happened to her brother, not her. Well, she supposed she could stand to lose some, then her brother couldn't call her a stuffy goody-two-shoes. She wasn't really a goody-two-shoes though, she got into trouble when they were at home, well, maybe not all that often, but she did get into trouble. She couldn't remember the last time that she had, but she certainly must have at some point, right? She laughed slightly and shook her head at him. "I wouldn't say that to you, it would be rude!" She shook her head and shrugged. She had originally thought that all of the adults in the school were old and teachery, but this person was most certainly different, most certainly. She was glad that he was okay with her being here though. She didn't want to think that he would take away house points. She smiled at him, apologised profusely for having him eat raisins and the grinned when he said that he would like to help. She smiled happily and nodded. "Of course! Come on, it'll be fun!"</SIZE></COLOR></FONT>

~Some Time Later~​

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Emily pulled the finished cookies out of the oven. The kitchens were a mess, broken plate near the counter, bits of chocolate scattered around, flour all over the room and them, but it had been fun. Emily had to admit she'd not had this much fun in some time. She was grinning despite the flour in her hair and she looked at Daniel. He was still nursing his hand from where she had smacked it with the rolling pin. She'd apologised at the time, but he knew to keep his hands away from the dough. She wrinkled her nose up at him and poked her tongue at him as she shifted the cookies onto the counter. Daniel reached out tentatively to grab another one, but she smacked his hand. "I told you, you have to wait for them to cool down. You can't eat them, they'll burn. Not to mention the chocolate is still melting, let it set." She never had this much trouble with her partners before. Daniel was worse than Avie. "You're worse than Avie! That's saying something."
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[Daniel Clairoux]

The kitchen did not look as it once had, and he suspected that the house elves were hiding somewhere, glaring at them - well, mostly him, he was sure. Emily had been very responsible in the kitchen. Daniel... not so much. But with a few waves of a wand this mess would all be cleaned up anyway, he wasn't too worried. He grinned at the young Hufflepuff as she did the same, and flicked off a bit of dough from his cheek, but he had no idea how it managed to get there. He other hand, however, was still red and sore from being unfairly hit with a rolling pin. He was sure he could knock off a point or too for violence, but he had laughed harder than she had at his shocked reaction to being hit. Besides, she had told him not to touch the dough, and he did anyway when he thought she wasn't looking.

"Okay!" he said, retracting his hand quickly after she hit it, again. "Spirits above, stop hitting me." He chuckled, and folded his arms across his chest in an attempt to keep them occupied from the cooling cookies on the tray. He was not entirely sure who 'Avie' was, however. She had mentioned him a few times through the course of their baking experience, enough to know that he was a friend of hers, and that being described as 'worse than Avie', was not a compliment. He shrugged. "I'm just a very curious person. I can't go anywhere without touching everything, it's how you learn." And how you collect as many scars, bumps and bruises he had over the years. He then took a deep breath through his nose, and sighed. "They smell amazing, who taught you to bake?"​

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[Emily Hayes-Magonus]

Emily shook her head at her new baking student when he got upset at her hitting him. "If you don't wanna be hit, don't touch the food!" She couldn't believe that a person of his age would be so touchy about these things. It was a terrible habit that her mother had smacked out of her as a toddler. Mostly because things could be dangerous and she didn't want her children to be hurt. Especially with hot things. Though Emily's mother was an accomplished witch, she much preferred doing things the muggle way, at least she had when Emily was still only a child and her mother was still teaching. These days she was more readily using magic to get things done. Emily was sure that it was Ciro's influence there. She didn't mind though. Just because she wasn't especially good with magic, it didn't mean that her mother wasn't allowed to use it. It was much easier to hide broken things however, because Ciro tended to fix them for her so she wouldn't get into too much trouble. These days he just tended to make them unbreakable for the duration of her use. Mostly because her mother would wonder why her items were all unbreakable when she hadn't done it before. Emily wouldn't know how to answer that.

Emily smiled when Daniel complimented her and blushed slightly. She didn't hear it as often as people tended to think she did and she always got an overwhelming feeling of happiness whenever she was complimented for them. She loved backing for people and she doubted that feeling would go away anytime soon. "Well, my mum taught me the basics of baking... but mostly it was all through practice. It's not that hard really. All you gotta do is be careful and pay attention!" She told him, looking at the finished product again and thinking about the first time she ever baked something. I'll tell you a secret?" She asked him, lowering her voice as if it was of vital importance. "The first time I baked something... I dropped one of my mum's favourite rings in it. I had to throw them all out... she never did find out what happened to it." Emily laughed slightly at the memory of her mother panicking. It had been a little funny at the time. But thirteen year old Emily was more mature than eight year old Emily. "If she finds out about it, I'll know who blabbed, so you best be quiet!"
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[Daniel Clairoux]

Daniel smiled kindly as her face grew red, probably embarrassed as most people could get when their work was commented on. Fortunately for her, all he had any reason to do was sing her praises, as he baking was very good. He nodded as she answered him, assuming that that was probably what his own mother had attempted once upon a time, before realising that Daniel was much too boisterous to be kept in a kitchen to do anything but eat the food provided. His head tilted slightly as she asked if she could tell him a secret, and shrugged slightly, not sure of what to make of it. He grinned as he heard the secret, however, glad that it was something as innocent as a mother's lost rings during a baking accident. He then nodded sternly, running his finger and thumb across his lips in a 'zipping' action, and 'threw' away the hypothetical key.

"Your secret is completely safe," he whispered back, winking. He had no idea who on Earth her mother was, but she was probably a happy woman with a great daughter like Emily. Watching her carefully so he would have forewarning of her reaction, he checked the heat of the cookies. He smiled once more, like a pleased child that got away with a mischievous deed. "They're cooled!" he sang, plucking one as his stomach reminded him that he was still rather hungry. In fact, now that the room was filled with these delicious smells, he was near famished. He bit into the one he had captured, and hummed quietly. "These are great, Emily!" he announced proudly. "I need to learn how to bake like this. Definitely." He nodded, before finishing the cookie and brushing his hands against each other to release them of crumbs. "So Emily, if you don't mind me asking, what year are you in? You enjoying school?"​

 

[Emily Hayes-Magonus]

Emily was glad that Daniel seemed to be taking this all on board rather well. Most of the time she got funny looks when she was telling people what to do. She didn't do it often though, it was only when she was cooking. She had to be specific after all. Emily turned away to move something when she suddenly heard Daniel exclaim that the cookies were cooled. She turned back and glared at him, but realised that she couldn't really hit him now, he'd gotten away with it this time, but she was going to keep an eye on him, because he was bad. Touching cookies without permission was a hittable offence. "Alright, you got away with that this time, but you be careful, touching my baking is a hittable offence." She told him waving her wooden spoon at him. Emily smiled however when he enjoyed her cookies and she just allowed him to eat it. She rarely at the things she cooked, they mostly went to her friends and other people. Sometimes she sent some to her mother who she was sure was missing her cooking whilst she was gone. "Baking isn't really that hard, honest. You should come and see what I'm going to be baking next thursday!" Soufflé's were really hard, especially in a big, loud castle like this. She would have to try and make sure that people didn't just traipse through here. Maybe she could get here at midnight, surely no one would be around then, except the house elves, but they knew how to be quiet. She smiled when she was asked a question. "Oh! I'm in third year! I do enjoy school mostly, but sometimes I get sad. It's okay though, I bake to make me happy again." She looked over her shoulder and one of the house elves was signalling that it was getting late, so she turned back to Daniel. "I have to get going! You can keep those if you like!"
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[Daniel Clairoux]

Daniel grinned like a cat who finally got his mouse, and took another bite as if to solidify his triumph. And it worked perfectly as he swallowed, and found himself not met with some form of abuse by the young girl. Who knew that touching anyone's baking could end with such a punishment? His hand was still sore. He scoffed however, when she insisted that baking wasn't hard. When spoken by someone as young as her, who was already a very good baker, it seemed a little cheap. He could barely cook, let along actually bake something. "I'll definitely think about doing that!" He could totally clear Thursday. In fact, he doubted he had anything on. He made sure to make a mental note, and to perhaps invite the librarians if they were able - they were such awesome people. He doubted Emily would mind.

He looked at the time and nodded his agreement. It was getting rather late. "Thank you, Emily. Don't worry, I'll clean up here." He retrieved his wand from his sleeve, and flourished it, plates beginning to wash and pack themselves away. "You get going. If you're questioned by someone, just tell them you were with Daniel Clairoux. I'll cover for you." He winked and sent her on her way, before cleaning the kitchen, and leaving (taking the cookies with him to be devoured later).​

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-FIN-​

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