The stove was his baby. It was a gas stove because he believed electrics were for pansies and he really didn't want to spend two weeks charming it so it would work like he'd done with the TV and DVD player. With the amount of magic he and Hermione used on a daily basis they kept the electric appliances to a minimum. At any rate, the gas stove he'd bought to replace the one that had come with the flat (despite the fact that they were only renting) was top of the line. He couldn't create with inferior means right? Hermione wasn't convinced, but she couldn't talk since she'd bought her Porsche only days before he'd bought his stove.
Harry had been pressed into learning how to cook at a very young age and it had taken him a couple of years after moving out of the Dursley's to truly enjoy the meditative qualities cooking had. Since then, his stove had become his sand garden. And whenever Hermione got it into her head that she wanted to cook, she made a litter box of that sand garden.
Or at least she had in the past. It was up to him, his job as the dutiful boyfriend, to teach her how to cook. It was only fair to repay her services as driving instructor earlier that week. Hermione said that she woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweats from that day, but he thought she was exaggerating to get a pity snog of which he was more than happy to oblige and then some.
"This," he said laying a loving hand on the range, "is a stove. The oven is beneath. The tools with which you will need are thus." He pulled out a drawer ignoring the super heated death glare Hermione was sending him. "Spatula," he instructed holding up the instrument at her huffy eye roll, "whisk, tongs, long fork -"
"Is that what it's really called?" Hermione asked with a skeptically raised eyebrow.
"Well - I dunno. That's what I call it because that's what it is," Harry replied, glancing at the utensil in his hand before replacing it back in its drawer.
"Now are you finished pointing out the obvious and teach me how to use this thing or are you going to stand there all day and show me what a teaspoon is?" Hermione asked with a sigh, leaning back against the counter adjacent to the stove.
"Well, I figured you were already well acquainted with teaspoons. You are Ron's friend after all," he teased with a grin, reaching over Hermione's shoulder and pulling out a shoe box from a cabinet above the sink.
He opened the lid and Hermione's eyes lit with a feral glow. Inside was a messy pile of recipes collected over the past couple of years from magazines, newspapers, Mrs. Weasley, hastily scribbled notes from demonstrations on the telly, Mrs. Granger, and even one called "Shit on a Brick" from Tonks which he vowed never to touch but was too polite to turn down. "Harry," Hermione breathed, leaning around him to get a better view of the contents. She licked her lips and darted a glance up at him before riveting her eyes back on the box. "If you'd just -"
"No. You're not getting your grubby mitts on my box."
"Please! It'd take just a couple of hours and I could have all your recipes written on four by five index cards and indexed and cross referenced by course, calorie count, main ingredient -"
"Hermione. I let you categorize my underwear drawer, the toiletries, the books, the DVD's, the CD's, the furniture even for Merlin's sakes. There is no way you will ever touch my recipe box. And I've charmed it to keep it that way," he added pleasantly, dropping a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. "Now do you want to learn how to make bread and butter pudding?"
Hermione sighed softly and nodded, stepping away from the temptation Harry and his recipe box presented. "Only if you promise that I can actually make this."
"If the same Ron who couldn't even toast bread could make this, you can make this," he replied stepping over to the charmed ice box and pulling out ingredients. He cracked three eggs into a bowl and stepped back from the stove gesturing for her to take his place. "I'll read the instructions and supervise. You do all the work."
"Sounds familiar," she murmured with a saucy smirk as she stepped up to the stove. "Why'd you crack the eggs?"
"Cheeky," Harry replied with a grin and a shrug. "I didn't want to wait for you to pick out the shell."
Hermione grumbled about being perfectly able to crack eggs without getting shell in the yolk, but Harry ignored her.
He hovered nearby, keeping a close eye on the proceedings while Hermione measured the milk, cream and salt to boil with a vanilla bean, her brow furrowed with the same concentration she gave her research. "Careful you don't scramble the -" Harry spoke up just before she dumped the boiling milk and cream into the bowl of eggs and sugar she'd just finished whisking. Instantly they had very soggy and very cooked eggs.
"Sorry," Hermione grimaced, glancing up at Harry's grin.
"It's ok. I bought a whole dozen eggs for this. We'll just start over," he replied patiently.
Hermione carefully cracked another three eggs before spending ten minutes picking out invisible bits of shell. "Hermione. Hermione, love, leave - leave the egg alone," Harry growled wrestling the bowl away from her.
"Harry - don't!"
"This is not funny," he sighed from behind a veil of egg yolk and egg white dripping from his fringe.
Hermione looked up from where she was doubled over laughing and burst out into a fresh belly laugh. She was completely incapable of replying.
Harry grumbled wiping the slime off his glasses and evanesco'd the mess away with a fancy bit of wandless magic. "If I thought bread and butter pudding was going to be this messy I would've suggested teaching you how to make toast."
"But toast wouldn't have been this much fun," Hermione replied wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing his clean chin in apology for laughing so hard.
Harry replied with a non-committal noise, looking down at her warily.
"How about this: you leave the driving to me, I'll leave the cooking to you, and we can teach each other different things," she suggested with a wicked glint in her eye.
That suggestion revved his imagination into overdrive, but eventually his mind came back to the Porsche and how freeing it must be to be out on the open road going a hundred miles per hour, the wind in his hair. Until he attempted downshifting in his daydream. Yep, there went the engine and the transmission and his chances at Hermione ever trusting him to drive a car again.
Harry sighed.
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