Immediately after leaving the feast, Vinteren headed down to the kitchens to enact the next part of his plan. He paused before reaching the kitchen level of the castle and disillusioned himself, as usual. Then he tickled the pear, checked that the house elves were otherwise occupied what house elves? heh, and quietly grabbed one of the empty wooden bowls and spoons.

The man reached into the interior pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small, plain plastic baggie of what looked like tree leaves. He dumped them out into the wooden bowl, vanished the baggie, and started to crush them up with strong strokes of the spoon. It took a few minutes of hard labour, but eventually the leaves broke down into small, intricate pieces.

Now came the fun part. Erik moved over to one of the long counters, one that happened to be directly below a vent near the ceiling. He hoisted himself up onto the counter, picked up the bowl, and removed the vent covering with a little sneaky wandwork. The man then poked his wand into the little wooden bowl and murmured an incoherent spell. Small blue flames sprang from his wand onto the alihotsy, which let off a light, colourless, but pleasant odour as it slowly burned.

Erik smirked to himself and carefully placed the bowl into the vent. He replaced the covering and proceeded to remove all fingerprints from the area with a little more wandwork. Then he hopped down, also cleaned off the counter and the spoon, and exited the kitchen. Still invisible, but much more pleased with himself.