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Frustrated, Draco rolled both sleeves up just below his elbows. This required a particular folding back of his button-down shirt sleeves, after the removal of his custom cufflinks (which he tossed unceremoniously on the countertop, cringing from afar when they nearly fell in the unforgiving chasm between the cabinets and the oven), and he already had solid dustings of powdered flour patterns on his trousers.
How could it be this bloody difficult?
He would not admit defeat. He couldn’t. Hermione wasn’t here yet and wouldn’t be for at least three more hours. He glanced at the clock and swore. Alright, closer to two hours, now.
He could do this.
The stupid flan had to bake for 50-60 minutes, once it was prepped and set. That would give Draco an hour to clean both himself and the kitchen before Hermione’s arrival. Ordinarily, a timeline like that wouldn’t be cause for concern (read: near panic), because Draco would have his wand. But he was committed to doing things the non-magical way, if only to show Hermione that he could.
She’d downright scoffed at the idea on Tuesday evening over dinner, and that just wouldn’t do. Draco had booked this weekend getaway that very night, and hadn’t even told her of his plan to do everything - everything possible, that was, which allowed him a Slytherin-esque loophole he did not plan to take advantage of - without magic for an entire two-and-a-half days.
So here he was, scrambling around a non-magical kitchen in a non-magical cottage on a non-magical working farm. A farm, for Salazar’s sake. There was a bloody sheep staring right at him, from across the stretch of sparse grass outside the window to the (extremely adjacent) fenced-in pasture. Draco wouldn’t fence a pasture this close to his kitchen window, if it had been his cottage.
The sheep seemed highly judgmental, too, something Draco was compelled to note in his irritation. He had flour on his trousers, another failed mess in the sink, had nearly lost one or both cufflinks already, and a sodding sheep was judging his (lack of) progress.
Why flan? His annoyance at the whole thing insisted that he didn’t really know. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, and don’t they always?
It was Hermione’s favourite. He knew that much, and had taken diligent mental notes when she’d talked about how her nana used to make it. Her nana had a special recipe that was a pinnacle of Hermione’s childhood, she’d told him with pride. Draco’s attention to this titbit was belated, but his brain had roared into action shortly after she’d begun, and he’d clocked every detail as best he could from there. He would make this for her. Best of all, she’d mentioned it at least two weeks ago. She’d never be expecting it now.
He had the cottage on the farm, and he’d have the flan near perfection in the oven, and Hermione would melt in his arms at his persistence to a thoroughly non-magically magical weekend away together - a weekend Draco hoped would lead to the crossing of a particular physical threshold he'd yet to attain. Ever, with anyone. Who better than with Hermione in this little cottage, after he'd proven his worth as a competent non-magical baker?
If he could only get the fucking flan right. What was he doing wrong?
The cottage had even come with a recipe book, which he’d found once he grew desperate enough. He’d been optimistic, because it was totally and completely well-worn, its pages wrinkled and stained and dog-eared. Somebody loved this recipe book. It must include flan.
It had not.
Even if it had, it would not have been Hermione’s nana’s grand recipe of presumed perfection, but at this point, Draco would take a completed and identifiable flan. She’d give him credit for trying.
That he was even thinking in this conciliatory way spoke to his string of failures thus far. It was not in his nature to aim for second best, but at this point, if second best could be spotted as ‘flan,’ it would do.
He was nearly out of condensed milk. So far he’d broken a half dozen eggs in myriad incorrect locales and dropped a whole vial of vanilla (and holy Salazar, was vanilla expensive. Even to Draco, the price for something so simple was positively egregious) on the floor. At least he’d used what he thought he needed. He hadn’t, but he’d found that out with his next attempt, and he’d been relieved to find a small bit left unspilled in the bottom. His sigh of relief was disproportionate - or perhaps entirely proportionate to his hopes and dreams for the evening.
The single sheep continued to watch him from just outside the window. Draco glared at it. He didn’t care for an audience (unless he was excelling at the activity in question, that was).
And he was not. Neither was he doing a good job faking competence. The sheep chewed with nonchalance, unimpressed.
* * *
The human really was having a difficult time of it. Tibbs had no idea what was going so wrong, being thoroughly uninitiated in the intricacies of human food preparation, but he was a reasonably quick study in human moods. This one was irritated, bordering on angry.
This didn’t concern Tibbs. He was a lovely specimen of five-year-old Black Welsh Mountain ram, with thick wool and horns with admirable curvature. The ewes thought so, anyway. Tibbs was utterly in charge of his world here, and took his afternoon’s entertainment watching through the window at this incapable human destroying the farmhouse’s kitchen.
Ought he to do something, one might ask? No. Tibbs did not concern himself with human things. Humans were for entertainment and occasional shearing. They did dump food and mash in buckets on occasion, but Tibbs and his flock could forage perfectly well amongst the landscape. Days would go by in which Tibbs didn’t see a human at all.
So no, entertainment was the primary goal of humans for Sir Tibbs. He’d wander closer, if he could, but he didn't fancy getting his horns tangled in the fencing. It was quite the inconvenience to detach himself, and it would make him the primary entertainment of the evening. Unacceptable. Tibbs had dignity.
The human did not. This was plain. As Tibbs watched calmly, the human picked up a bag of something from the counter to his left and promptly dropped it. A gigantic cloud of white erupted from beneath the windowpane and the human began to cough and sputter, hacking with his hand over his mouth.
Curious. The white cloud gradually dissipated, somewhat. Most of it seemed to settle on the man, who batted his hands around himself as if fending off flies. That wouldn't work, Tibbs would tell him. Not for long.
* * *
* * *
His hands were slippery, for some reason. It couldn't possibly be the spilled vanilla or the broken eggs. But whatever it was, the bloody sack of flour slipped right through his fingers and exploded on the floor. Draco’s eyes had been wide open, gawping at it as it fell in slow motion. He reached one hand out, uselessly, and received both a mouthful and two eyefuls of white flour for his troubles.
That was it. His temper left him, vacating the premises. The entire kitchen was white, now - at least the parts not actively covered in egg yolk or vanilla extract. He couldn’t do it anymore. He stomped about the kitchen, railing at the injustices of the inflexible laws of baking. The sheep watched him without expression, which only made him fist his own hair in furious defeat. This was no use. It was no use. He couldn’t do it. Where was he going wrong? Where?
How many failures, now? In desperation, Draco glanced at the clock. Maybe he’d have time to clean all this up and pretend he’d never even tried. She didn’t know he was planning it. He could just -
The side door opened and his heart stopped. Staggered, leaped, and then stopped, in order. His girl was standing there, wild flyaway curls around her face and beaming at him. She was moving to set down her small duffel when she took in his appearance.
“Draco? What the hell are you doing?”
She said this with a bemused smile, the kind of baffled curiosity he wished he could feel. But he could feel it through her, he supposed, and he did his best.
Shrugging, he gave a weary glance about. “Trying to bake. I’m not doing very well.”
Hermione made a polite scan of the kitchen and bit her lip. “I can see that. Come here, you.”
She began to dust him off, and Draco thought this failure might not be so bad after all. He’d still have rather succeeded, of course, and if anybody was going to catch him in the throes of failure, he’d want it to be no one but her. Even so -
“I wanted to make your grandmother’s flan. I wanted to have it ready tonight when you got here, and -”
Hermione took a more thorough scrutiny of their surroundings. “What’s all this, then?”
“What’s what?” He tried to follow her gestures, but those encompassed nearly everything. He needed more detail but attempted to look on top of things anyway. It was an old habit.
“All the powder.” She took to dusting him off with more rigour, swatting at his trousers and batting away the residue covering him from head to foot.
“The flour?”
Hermione stopped while bent over to address his groyne (Draco could have had proposed a better plan for this bit in advance, but hadn’t), and looked up, puzzled. “Flour?”
Thoroughly flummoxed, Draco was not soothed when she began to laugh. It was a full-belly laugh, the kind he didn’t much care for being aimed at him. His cheeks began to heat.
“You’re trying to make flan? With flour? Flan is a custard. There’s no flour in flan.”
Draco began to splutter that of course there was, don’t be silly, but of course, she would know better than he would. Was that why every attempt this evening had failed him? He’d been inserting an unnecessary ingredient the whole time?
Now he could feel the bloody flour coating every bit of him: atop his hair, resting just inside his ears, trapped in his sodding eyelashes. His girlfriend was doubled over laughing, and he truly hoped this didn’t provoke her to the point of tears.
Finally, she stood upright. “Alright, now, come along. We’ll de-flour the flan, and then we’ll de-flour you. How about a nice tub together and I’ll clean you right up?”
Draco supposed that would be alright. So long as the sheep couldn’t watch.