Love Bites (Harry Potter: Official Dragon Tamer, Part One)

Seeing is Believing

"It... it is," I stammered, and Draco drew back immediately.

"Really?"

I nodded.

"I mean, I've had friends over and vice versa, but, honestly, we've usually just ordered takeaway or tried to cook something together, but I've never thrown a dinner party like this or anything," I added hastily.

He rolled his eyes again and started back towards the kitchen, tugging gently on my hand.

"Come on, then."

"It already smells wonderful," I told him, breathing in the savoury scent of the chicken stock simmering on the stove.

When I'd first moved in, I'd assumed that Draco's pristine kitchen, with its sleek white lines and stainless appliances, was mostly for show.

I was wrong.

Draco loved to cook.

And he was pretty damned good at it, too, so long as he was allowed to use magic.

Any Muggle that he'd dated, apparently, thought he was a hilarious mess in the kitchen because without the use of magic to help stir and chop and keep foods warm under stasis charms, Draco was, apparently, just as clueless as I was — he'd tried to cook me a meal "Muggle-style" once to prove his point, and we'd both ended up collapsed in giggles as the steak burned and the veg got cold, and the potatoes had turned into lump-hard, dry bricks and we'd ended up ordering takeaway.

However, with the ability to use magic firmly in place, Draco could whip up meals from a simple fry-up for breakfast to a veritable culinary delight that would have been right at home in any restaurant I'd ever been to.

A cleaver was busily chopping two whole chickens into serveable portions, and I could see a pie tray in the oven.

I went to investigate, but Draco cleared his throat and held out two onions, two carrots, and two celery stalks.

"You can dice these," he instructed, gesturing at a second cutting board and knife that were floating across the kitchen to a bare space on the counter.

"It's for the mirepoix... basically the Holy Trinity of French cooking," he explained, seeing my confused expression. "So they need to be diced, carefully, into fairly even pieces. Obviously, they don't need to be perfect, but the distribution of taste and the aesthetic look of the dish is vastly improved if they're the same size.

"Just pretend you're dicing the sloth brain for the Draught of the Living Death like you did in Sixth Year, and you'll be fine," he added with a smirk.

Because, of course, he knew I'd had Snape's help to thank for my Potions success that year.

I sidled up to the counter and began dicing the onion first, smiling gratefully over at Draco as he floated a bowl over to me.

"They'll be added at the same time, so you can just put them all in there."

Draco returned to a large pile of knobbly-looking roots that reminded me of Mandrakes and began peeling them deftly with a small knife.

I hadn't realised I'd been watching for so long until Draco looked over at me, long fingers still working to turn and shave at the root vegetable as easily as though his eyes were still trained on it.

"Harry," he teased, "Are you going to help or just watch me peel the celeriac?"

"I just like watching your hands," I mumbled, returning to dicing my onions.

Carefully.

"Well, it's dawned on me, now that you're helping, we might finish dinner well ahead of schedule and we might have time for you to watch my hands do much more interesting things before your cousins arrive, so focus, will you?"