Lifestyles of the Rich and Wandless

Chapter Seven: The Great Chilli Pepper Invasion of '96

Or The Loony Bin is Nearing, Draco...

Draco stared at the roaster. The roaster would have stared back, had it had eyes. It was love at first sight. "Oh, you're beautiful... the handsomest little bastard that walked on this earth," Draco preened, simpering at his reflection. Whoa... hold on a second. CUT! Back up. Rewind. Now, take two... action!

It was love at first sight. Draco had never cooked one thing in his life, not even a marshmallow over a campfire. He had never touched a cooking utensil. Well, there was that incident when he was four, when the ship wouldn't leave the dock, and he had used a spatula to... never mind. Needless to say, it had caused much pain to Draco's delicate... arse, and Draco had never again been overly fond of spatulas.

Yet Draco felt an affinity with this roaster. In his mind, plans began sprouting out of little holes like daisies. He needed to cook with this roaster. He needed to use it... to feel it... Draco scrunched his nose up in disgust. That was a nasty thought. So what if he was being forced to cook anyway? If he hadn't received detention, it would have only delayed his meeting with... with his preciousssss...

"Mine... my own... my preciousssss..." Draco hissed, petting the roaster, stroking it tenderly. Unfortunately, no one heard him. Not even the strange man, who was peeling carrots. Draco cleared his throat. Damn. His pretended insanity had not caused the other occupant of the room to run for the nurse. He would have to be subtle.

Names were already running through his head. He forgot about the bread. Roast Potatoes a la Malfoy. Potatoes de Draco. Drakkie's Special Recipe. Malfoy-Walfoy's Potato Surprise. Oh, he was a genius!

My Potions skills will allow me to create a masterpiece no one will ever forget, he thought to himself as he grabbed potatoes from the bin. What's this? he thought as he picked up a jar of some kind of substance. He sniffed at it. It smelled good. He inhaled more of the marvellous smell. It gave him an airy, fuzzy feeling. He breathed in some more, and a content grin settled on his face. He sniffed some more at the jar, put the cap on, and happily stuck it in his pocket.

"I've got a lovely bunch of potatoes, didididi... potatoes all standing in a row..." He raised two potatoes and did a little dance while saying, "Cha! Cha! Cha!" The other occupant of the kitchens must have been deaf, because he didn't look up. Perhaps Draco's behaviour was normal. "Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head..." This last line, he warbled, as if it were a song by this 'Judicial Wood Pond' Blaise kept on complaining about.

He hummed a catchy little tune as he tossed all the potatoes into an enormous (and it was huge) mixing bowl. Then he remembered how some boys on the train had been mooning about a music group called the 'Spiked Girls' or something like that. They had been listening to it on a Muggle... steereo?

"I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want; I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want," Draco said into a potato, weaving his head back and forth like he had seen one of the boys do. "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends..." He sprinkled the entire bucket of salt (which had been lying under the sink) on the potatoes. "Making friends forever, that's the way it is..." He dumped an entire box of sugar cubes that had been lying around on the potatoes.

"Dun, dundun, dundun, dundun..." he sang, imitating the guitar part, "dun, dundun, dun, dundun, duhneh!" He tossed a pail of water into the... vat, really.

Cream went into the vat. Milk went in after it, along with a slab of margarine. It was followed by a pitcher of iced tea, a bucket of flour, and some leftover banana shake from lunch. A jar of lard and a pan of used oil (left over from the fried fish at lunch) sailed into the vat, leading a long line of orange, grape, apple, and tomato juice.

Draco took a whiff of his jar of substance, sighed elatedly, and peered into the full vat. The potatoes were swimming in a murky, booger-greenish brown liquid. It was beautiful in Draco's eyes. But it wasn't perfect. Not yet, anyway.

He frowned.

Then he frowned some more, and poured in a cup of lemon juice. Still not there... he poured the entire container of lemon juice into the vat.

It was still not perfect.

Perplexed, Draco's unfocused eyes scanned the shelves. And then he saw...

IT.

The magnificent IT.

The IT that would make his concoction perfect.

IT was a giant, economy-sized glass barrel filled with a red powder. Draco grabbed the barrel and pulled it off the shelves with some difficulty. IT fell over, spilling ITS contents into the vat. Draco shrugged. It would have been too late to get rid of IT even if he wanted to take it out.

It was just too bad for Draco. Number one rule in the kitchen: always read the labels. Luckily for Draco and the rest of the school (not to mention the country and maybe the world) the powder wasn't poisonous.

Unluckily, it was worse than poison. See for yourself:

Polvo de Fuego

El Polvo de Fuego tiene 1000 muchos callientes pimientos. Usa 1 mg, no mas.

When translated, the label literally said:

Fire Powder

The Fire Powder contains 1000 very spicy peppers. Use 1 mg, no more.

Smeltings would be on fire by six in the evening.

***

Meanwhile, over in Mother Goose land, the old woman who lived in a shoe was busy feeding her children their porridge.

"But Mama, I don't like porridge," the one named Jack (not the porridge, the child) complained.

"Shush!" The-Old-Woman said. Most people would wonder how she had children at such an old age, and whom she had them with. Not a nice thought.

"Mama, I smell fire..." the child named Mary complained.

"You're wrong, Mary, it's Jalapeno peppers," the one named Encyclopedia-Brown In-a-Shoe said, his nose stuck in a book. Oops. Never mind. He's not there! The child's name was Edgar In-a-Shoe.

"Jalapeno peppers?" The-Old-Woman said. "Well, my friend Sibyll Trelawney informed me last week that I would need to buy air fresheners. I'm off."

***

Now let's talk about Lord of the Rings land. Sam was at home in the Shire, wondering about where Mister Frodo was on his adventures. He sighed. Sometimes he wished he had gone on the last elven ship, back to the land across the sea. Life had been so much more exiting back then...

What was that burning smell? Sam sniffed the air. Hopefully, it wasn't because anything was on fire.

***

And over in Hogwarts, people were eating dinner. But the students of Smeltings didn't even know Hogwarts existed, apart from a small group of three people. And none of those students particularly cared. Draco's potato surprise had landed on their plates, invaded their mouths, and were now trying to permanently take over their senses of smell and taste.

It had looked innocently like the usual slop. As one grieving student would say later, "It even looked like the right colour!"

The Potatoes a la Malfoy had proven to be evil. They were malevolent. They were probably capable of laughing the evil villain laugh. Harry Potter would learn a new lesson from this incident: evil can be created by anyone and anything, even a teenager high on cleaning solvent with a multitude of cooking ingredients.

Draco had been one of the first to take an enormous bite out of his potato. Big D had been the first, though. Of course, no one had started turning red until nearly everyone (excluding a few of the girls, including Blaise) had piled some into their mouths.

Chaos had dressed up in drag and had come in dancing to a Chicago tune wearing a pink feather boa after that. Steam literally poured out of some of the students' mouths. People were screaming and doing strange little dances, fanning at their mouths.

Blaise Zabini seemed strangely amused with this. Especially with Mr. I-am-always-cool-and-collected-with-two-facial-expressions-only-sneering-and-smirking-Draco-Malfoy jumping about with the others.

***

It was only the first Saturday of the year, and Draco had already decided that physical and education should never be put together within a ten word radius. It didn't help that the class was an all-boys class.

Of course, this opinion was based solely on what Draco had heard about that class from others, who had the misfortune of taking it. A.k.a. Muggle-borns. Mudbloods and Potter, to be specific. It had been Potter who Draco had overheard, complaining about gym class.

The teacher wasn't there. Draco rolled his eyes. The first sign of an incompetent teacher. Draco had made a list. The second was an non-understandable accent. The third sign was 'no sense of danger and safety'. This went all the way down to sign number eighty-six: Wears a large wild animal fur coat and carries dog biscuits in pockets. Strange. All eighty-six seemed to describe one certain teacher...

"Hello, all!" The voice was overly cheerful. Draco loathed overly cheerful voices. And he had the strangest sense of déjà vu, as if he had heard that voice before...

"Yeah, yeah," someone grumbled. Wait... that voice was even more familiar...

"You!" Big D gasped.

"Er..." the first speaker said. Wait a minute... what was Wood doing at Smeltings? (Why didn't this Wood show up that last time 'wood' was mentioned?) And with Potter next to him?

"Who?" Potter said.

"You!" Big D repeated.

"Me?"

"You!"

"Me?"

"YOU!"

"Me?"

"YOU, POTTER!"

"Ah... no," Potter said. "My name is not 'Potter'. My name is... Percy." He cringed for some reason. "Percy... er... Percy White."

"And I am Wood," Wood supplied. "Now, White's only going to be here for today, just to help me get started here." He took out a football. "Today, we are going to review the basics of... erm... fut... fout... fuckball?"

Draco was the only one who didn't laugh. Besides Potter. And Wood. "Football," Potter said through gritted teeth.

"Ooh... fuckball..." Big D said.

"Football," Potter repeated. "You can play 'fuckball', Dursley, but the ball's going to be the only thing on this planet which will let you screw it, so enjoy it while it lasts."

Draco's jaw dropped. What happened to innocent Potter? Big D turned red. "Well, White, the ball won't even let you screw it."

Draco had to interfere. "Actually," he said reasonably, "the ball doesn't want either of you. All it wants is me."

Potter looked at him. "So that's where you went," he said.

"Go away, Cedric," Big D said.

"It's Malfoy!" Draco yelled.

"Get moving!" Wood screeched. "Get a ball, and start kicking it around the bloody field! Or do you not understand English? Now, er, White, he was right in saying that you're one of the few willing to help me who actually knows the game, right?"

"Er... yeah," Potter said.

"These people need a demonstration on kicking, I think," Wood said.

"Uh..."

"So we'll have you and..." Wood looked at Draco. "You and Malfoy can try to fight for the ball, you know, in the beginning..."

"Er..."

Wood dropped at ball between Draco and Potter. "All right, kick at it," he said, as everyone scrambled to watch.

They kicked. And missed. The grass was still slippery. Guess what happened next. Draco's poor arse was sore again. And wet.

Everyone rushed away, guffawing, Big D the loudest.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Draco demanded.

"Helping Wood."

"Why?" Draco said.

"He's the new teacher here. Puddlemere United doesn't need him right now, and they require you to do physical activities. Besides, the little blond ferret-faced moron who is exiled here for a year needs to be watched."

Draco bristled at the comment, but said nothing. He needed a wand. The loony bin was nearing. Forget the wand... Draco need his jar of funny substance.