Little Picnic (Derek)

Work seemed to go on for hours and hours. Aoife had always loved her job but she was just in a mood to run around and be happy, not to be stuck behind a counter, only occasionally serving some ungrateful adult customer. It was a weekday evening so there were no students buying ice-cream and hardly anyone, really. She literally counted down the minutes until her shift was over, glancing at her watch way too often and being disappointed when barely a minute had passed.

Eventually, she was done and after grabbing some stuff from Honeydukes, she was jogging back up to the castle. Dinner was over by the time she got back so she made her way down the stairs to the kitchens. The house elves definitely wouldn’t mind cooking her something up. They might tempt her away from her healthy eating plan with some amazing sheep-shaped cookies like last time, which had just been absolutely brilliant.

The many elves were busy cleaning up after dinner, she guessed. So there wasn’t any bad food out for her to be tempted by. “Hello!” she beamed to the bunch that rushed forward to help her. Of course they asked if miss would like loads of food before she could get a word in. “Can I just have a bacon sandwich please?” Then they got the message and went off to get her bacon sandwich. Bacon made everything better, everyone knew that. Except the twins. Thinking of the twins, she hadn’t seen Lyra much since school started. She’d have to catch up with the girl.

Derek remembered how one time, when he had gone to buy ice-cream for him and his brother, Aoife had told him about the Hogwarts kitchens. She had told him about the house elves and how they would make any food you wanted. And how to get into the kitchens, but he couldn’t remember the details of that bit. He planned on going to find this wonderful place filled with dreams in the form of food. Even though he had just finished dinner, he was still hungry. He was never really full and he could usually eat a lot before his stomach felt like it was going to explode.

It wasn’t hard to find his way down to the basement, but then he came to a corridor and he didn’t know where to go anymore. Then he saw a painting and he remembered exactly what he was meant to do! Tickle the pear! So awkwardly, he reached out and tickled the pear. It was weird but it worked! He managed to get into the kitchens! The house elves Aoife had told him about started asking about what food he wanted so he decided to enjoy the attention and grin widely at them. “I’ll have… margherita pizza and chocolate cake please!” They went off to get his food and he glanced around at his surroundings. Hey, there was Aoife herself! The blue hair was hard to miss. He bounced towards her. “Hi Aoife!” he beamed.

Two things happened at once. Aoife got her bacon sandwich and Derek arrived in the kitchens. Because she couldn't multi-task too well, she had to choose one or the other. Obviously, she chose to tuck into her bacon sandwich and ignore the insignificant first year for the moment. This was a good bacon sandwich. She beamed at Rosey, who had given it to her. "Thank you, Rosey! This is AMAZING!" Bacon was amazing, wonderful and incredible.

Once she had finished about half the sandwich, she turned her attention to Derek who had only just noticed her there stuffing her face. He seemed to be ordering a big meal for himself. "Hungry?" she teased. "Did you not eat enough at dinner?" Aoife wouldn't know if he was even there, since she'd been in Hogsmeade working without food. True, she had devoured a butterbeer ice-cream but that was all. "Oh, and hi! How do you like Hogwarts so far? Does it meet your grand expectations? I'm impressed that you found the kitchens, by the way."

Aoife seemed very satisfied with the sandwich she was eating. Derek smiled at her attachment to it. When his pizza came, he looked just as excited and happy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you little house elf friend!” he beamed. Apparently, the elf’s name was Rosey, but he couldn’t really refer to her as that until he knew her as well as Aoife seemed to. The pizza was amazing - this was some good cooking right here. He had been worried about the loss of his mother’s food when he came to Hogwarts, but this stuff was amazing too. Maybe even better, but he wouldn’t tell his mum that.

“Yes, I am!” he nodded. “Oh no, I ate LOADS and LOADS at dinner! But I’m still so hungry! I was sitting down outside after dinner when I realised how hungry I was!” So he had made his way down to the kitchens. “Hello! Hogwarts is great! I’m in Ravenclaw, everyone is so nice! I met some other cool first-years.” Like that pretty girl, Lily, and the Kaleb geezer in Ravenclaw. Then the Slytherin boy Matthew who was weird and liked fire a lot. “You told me how to find the kitchens, once!” he reminded her. “If it wasn’t for you, I would be upstairs starving to death!”