when they became villains [draco malfoy] {book 2}

218

Believe it or not, Draco had never before in his life cooked anything. Ever. At all. He had never even made a bloody sandwich. The closest he had ever gotten to assembling food had been at the Hogwarts kitchens where he put together cake, whipped cream, and either berries or more chocolate. Growing up with house-elves attending to all his needs both at home and Hogwarts, he had never needed to cook anything. 

Imagine his stress when one afternoon his son told him that he wanted to bake a cake with his dad.

Draco did not have the heart to tell the little boy there was something his praised daddy did not know how to do. Hell, his own ego prohibited him from even acknowledging he could be so atrocious at something that should've been so simple. That's why he had agreed to cake. And he decided the best way to treat it would be like concocting a potion. 

Sending Teddy off to play, Draco spent the following two hours interrogating Vinnie, his house-elf, not just on every smallest detail of the recipe, but also on the exact whereabouts of all the tools he would be needing. By the end of it, Draco had five parchments full of detailed notes and he was fairly confident in what he was going to do. Turned out... the reality of baking a cake was much more complicated than any potion he had ever made.

Draco tried not to show it, but he had no doubt there was flour stuck to the back of his sweaty neck. In fact, by the time they were almost done, the entire kitchen looked much like a tragic accident. As if a snowman had been murdered. One that was actually a dalmatian because it wasn't just flour and sugar everywhere, but also chocolate.

Notes scattered among the ingredients on the table behind them, both Teddy and Draco had crouched by the oven, staring through the glass door at the batter they had just placed inside to bake. It was illuminated by a faint orange light and their view was restricted a little by a dotty sticker which Draco had no idea why it was there. 

"How long will it take?" Teddy asked from beside him and Draco turned his head to look at the kid. 

There was a smudge on the little man's chin from when he had been eating raw batter, and there was some flour on his bright blue eyebrow. The shirt Teddy had been wearing was completely ruined, which explained the extra cloth elves always had around their waists when cooking; but there was no reason to ponder on it as Draco would just get the kid another one. 

"40 minutes and 25 seconds," Draco answered and looked back at the charm he had set on the white wall at the other end of the room to show a timer. Currently, there were 39 more minutes and 57 seconds left, meaning the cake had been in for 28 already. 

Vinny had told him during the initial questioning that it would take around 40 minutes for the cake to be fully ready but Draco hadn't liked the answer. 'Around' was a very uncertain term anywhere from 5 minutes more or less which, from potion-making, Draco knew was a hell of a long time for everything to go completely wrong. So he had demanded an exact time measurement. Vinny had repeated that it took around 40 minutes, and it was a partial nervous breakdown and a good 3-minute speech on the relevance of time later that Vinnie sighed and gave Draco the exact time. Forty minutes and twenty-five seconds. Like the elf couldn't have simply started with that...

"Forty?" Teddy groaned and then sighed dramatically. "That's so long!"

Draco reached out to ruffle the boy's head. As hard as it still was for him to grow used to the fact it was blue (like it had been for the past two years), he never could quite resist ruffling it. Though Draco did have to admit that the colour did fit Teddy's personality - never had he met anybody more vibrant and active. 

Sometimes Draco liked to imagine what it would look like with Teddy going to Hogwarts, sporting his favourite choice of hair colour - whether the Sorting Hat would decide to put him in Ravenclaw simply for fashion and colour coordination purposes. Draco wouldn't have minded Teddy being in Ravenclaw. It wasn't just that everyone in the house was universally recognised as smart, but he also knew, from his school days, exactly what their common room and dormitories looked like, and there, truth be told, truly was nothing more enchanting.