The last thing Alice was going to look at was a pineapple, because that was what she'd named during class, and she knew that the ratio was present there. It was getting late, though, so she hurried down to the Kitchen with her parchment and quill and ruler.

.. did she even have to find a pineapple? She KNEW the ratio was there.

Hadley wouldn't know.



ALSO.

THE ICE CREAM MACHINE. It was like RIGHT there, so she was going to get ICE CREAM, because it was good. And yeah.

Figured. Cat just nodded the certain nod that one would nod when you had a mutual acquaintance with someone but didn't really know each other. She was good at nodding, better believe it.

"I'm starting to think that there isn't a person in this whole school who hasn't at least heard of him." Which was actually kind of scary when you really thought about it. It made Cat extra grateful to belong to the group of people West Odessa called friends. WOO. Go Cat. Winning.

"Have you gotten many packages from home?" Cat was definitely asking for another one VERY soon. She liked to make food, but she liked it a whole lot better when other people made food FOR her.

...

Oh, more hugs hehe. Forrest was startled at first again but he wasn't awkward this time because QUALITY FOOD and hugged her back after an instant. This was amazing. They managed to enter the kitchens! He GRINNED and then GRINNED some more and dashed right into the little hole that the portrait opened for them.

"You--u waittt until I checkkk," he called out for Kahlan, his voice echoing in that little passage because really, if this was a trick he would feel horrible for dragging her into it too.

After a few seconds--it was a short passage, yay--he found himself staring at the kitchens and it elicited a sharp gasp of wonder from him. "It's kitchens really Kahlan!" he yelled into the passage with all his might and stepped out of the passage to let her come too.

Kitchens. He kept grinning like a fool. Kitchens. He couldn't believe it. KITCHENS!

Where to start?

After he bolted towards the kitchen, Kahlan almost made a move to follow him into the kitchens before he told her to wait outside. First she didn't really understand why, but she listened to him anyway, waiting for the all clear. Finally getting the all clear, she also dashed down the small corridor, stopping right before she would've run straight into Forrest.

"Wow" she finally managed as she looked around the kitchen. They had finally managed to get to the one thing that had been their goal the entire time, they were finally going to eat.

Now there was just one more problem to solve.

"So what are we going to eat?" she finally asked, looking around the kitchen.

Wow indeed. Forrest directed her foolish grin at her and just kept blinking as he took his surroundings in.

Okay so there were only three house elves, but he didn't really feel uncomfortable noticing that because he had never seen the pre-broke Hogwarts era. He shrugged to himself, though he was sensitive enough to feel sorry for them. He kept silent for a while as he tried to spot something delicious to stuff into their mouth but Hogwarts did look broke.

"I dunno," he admitted after surveying the whole area with his eyes, and shrugged to double the effect. "Reckon we should ask them?" He nodded towards the three house elves with his head as his smile had vanished completely and was replaced with incertainty.

So their original idea of the kitchen might have been slightly off... now they could tell just how broke the school was from what they could see around them. In fact, by now Kahlan had basically forgotten about how hungry she was when she noticed there were only 3 house elves.

3 house elves????!!!

How in Merlin's beard had they expected those 3 house elves to manage to take care of the entire school???

No wonder the food was terrible.

Not that she'd ever admit it to the house elves.

"Um yeah" she told him, before walking up to one of the house elves. "Um... excuse me? Um... is there anything here we could eat?" she asked.

Nerida took another bite of her ice cream and swallowed before speaking to Eliza."I will she will be glad to hear that, she loves ice cream. Though one time she tried, pickles and cookies and cream ice cream. Gross!!" She took another bite licking the spoon clean!

She chuckled and nodded."Sounds good! Yeah it is. Yeah, please come talk to my friends make them understand...For now there is enough ice cream...For now we might just devour it..."

Nerida's eyes matched the excitment in Eliza's eyes, "Yes!! So pretty and it was just so awesome!!!" Hearing the clink of Eliza's spoon against the bowl she realized Eliza was almost out..Looking down at her bowl she realized she only had one bite or two left. "Totally I mean I have heard people complain but get real I mean we are living here!!" she said with a big nod to match Eliza's big nod. She looked over was Toddles there. She took another bite as she finished looking.

"Her name is Sky! Yeah sure, we should probably find the thing." She ate the last bite of her ice cream sad. "RIGHT! It was so cool!!" She looked towards the freezer..."Do you want to get more ice cream before we go to find the cat, we could take it with us!"

Laura walked into the kitchen it was time for Ice-cream and pancakes, she needed some more, and she might as well make them herself, she was sure she could do it, she was about to start when she saw Nerida. "Hey Nerida, do you want some ice-cream and pancakes?" Laura looked at the girl that was standing next to her. "Hey Eliza, it's been awhile since I spoke to you would you like some?" Laura then turned back to Nerida. "Your list of potential boyfriends is growing, I have 20 names on there now."

Tired of standing, Penelope pulled herself backwards up onto an empty counter and sat down, still facing the other girl and letting her legs hang over the side. Yeah, this was better than standing for too long. Definitely. And she, too, nodded. "That's probably true." Most, if not all, of the people in the school had at least heard of West. Or at least it definitely seemed that way.

She shook her head at the next question though. "No, not really." Mostly because she didn't exactly have one. Or...well, maybe that wasn't necessarily true, now that she thought about it, depending on how she looked at it. Hogwarts was sorta a home to her, and so was Atticus' place, and since she'd stayed at the home with Ascanius during summer and Christmas, she'd started to consider that place one too... But either way, they weren't the typical idea of home most people had, so the answer was still no anyway. Her "family" never sent anything.

Eliza crinkled up her nose at the description of that food experiment. "Ack!! I bet that was awful! Cookies and pickles?! Ewww!" She was glad she hadn't tried anything like that lately. She was a little adventurous with food sometimes, but thankfully she'd not made anything that nasty in a while. But she had had her moments, that was for sure.

She was glad that Nerida was just as happy about the ice cream, the unicorn, and the staff versus student match as she was. It was nice to get to talk to someone who shared so many interests. "I know, the least we could all do is pick up after ourselves. We have to do it at home, so why not here? At least...I'm guessing most of us have some chores at home, right?" Maybe there were some kids who didn't have any, but she wasn't one of them. Her parents weren't strict, but they did ask her to do some things to help out every now and then and that totally fine with her.

Thinking of the little lost blue cat, Eliza felt energized. She had a mission to search, save, and protect! Just then, before Eliza could answer about the ice cream, Laura came to the kitchen and joined them.




"Hi Laura!" she said cheerily. "You're so right! It's been too long!" She really had been meaning to meet Laura here sooner and somehow she'd gotten distracted along the way, probably with the copious amounts of ice cream she'd been eating. "Yunno what? Pancakes DO sound pretty good right now! With ice cream on top! We were just about to go get some more and then we were going to go find Nerida's cat Sky cause she's missing! Isn't that terrible?" She thought Laura would probably want to help them look. She'd always been a nice girl, as far as Eliza could tell, so a missing cat sounded right up their alley. If only the cat was an alley cat, they may have found her already. She chuckled at her own current wackiness and started thinking about her next flavor of ice cream.

But wait, what was that Laura had said to Nerida? "You have a list of TWENTY boyfriends?! Woah!" Eliza could scarcely believe it. Probably because she had no personal experience with any of that yet and could barely imagine having one boy to like, let alone twenty. She was a little sheepish about the topic, but with all the ice cream and her enthusiasm for finding the cat, Eliza felt bold enough to get in on the girl talk. "Can I know some of them?...And...d-do you really like that many? Like like them I mean?" she asked, wanting to be included in whatever it was that girls their age were supposed to be talking about. She didn't really know for sure... Which meant she needed to investigate!

Nerida nodded a disgusting look on her face as well, "Yes lets just say never mention pickles or ice cream in the same sentence or you will be covered with...Gross stuff." Hopefully Eliza knew what she meant by that, because thinking of when she mentioned made her want to give out some gross stuff.

She nodded, finally someone who had to do chores, everyone she had talked to had house elves or their parents did the cleaning...Well their mum did. "I know right!! I have chores, they were tripled especially when my mum had to stay in the hospital when she had...When she was sick." She didn't want to say the c word it might jinx it and it might come back. They were only tripled due to her sister rebellious ways and her three older siblings leaving for wizarding university.

Nerida smiled and said "Hello oooo those sound yummy! Sure Pancakes sound good right now!" She laughed as she heard how her and Eliza had sounded the same in their response.

If Nerida hadn't had already eaten her ice cream...She probably would have choked. 20 names on the list... Woah she moved fast. "No, shes trying to find me a boyfriend. She is determined." She gave a nod over to Laura, "20 boys, do you think I can do the spell that I used to win our duel on them?" she let out a laugh as she joked around with Laura.

Hearing Eliza she turned, "Yeah, trust me I do not need 20 potential boyfriends...No I don't even know any of them...This is all Laura." Putting emphasis on the word this.

Apparently, the 3 house-elves were too busy to answer her question. Forrest shrugged, trying to keep his light mood but really, everyone'd feel sympathy for them. They were obviously working hard to prepare food for the entire school and--Forrest's stomach curled into a knot. And they were rude enough to actually bother them with food! It was obvious these poor creatures were working hard to provide them the best and--

He reached out for Kahlan's arm. His face has got paler, and he looked utterly confused. "I think--we sh--should leave."

With a big grin the second year old stood in the kitchen, she had just cut the duck meat to pieces and she was really proud about it. The duck she had ordered, yes, she had ordered a duck and the duck had been delivered with the owl post! And the duck was no longer recognizable as a duck, it just looked like normal meat, like a chicken! She was convinced that she had done her work good and that a certain person wouldn’t recognize it! She grinned again and looked in the cooking book she had found a few days ago in the library.

Just when she had cut the meat in pieces and had put it into a bowl she heard how the door opened behind her. Daichi had promised to help her with cooking, not knowing WHAT he was going to make. But… as long as he didn’t knew what he was doing it was no problem right? And… she had promised him that she would let him eat a duck sometime!

After tickling the pear on the portrait to gain access , Daichi entered the kitchen with a curious expression on his face. He looked around the huge room and now that he thought about it he didn't think he had ever been in this place in all of his Hogwarts years. It looked pretty empty without the House-Elves didn't it?

"Hey Sonea" he waved at the little Slytherin who he saw standing further away. He walked towards her and noticed that a bowl was standing on the table. Meat. His stomach growled at the sight of it and he licked his lips.

"What are we going to make? "

“Oh, hi Daichi, thanks for coming! I need a extra hand to help me, and because the food at Hogwarts is so bad I wanted to make something! And… because I needed help I thought that you wanted to help me so that you can also eat something delicious and not so bad as the food in the great hall!” She smiled at Daichi and looked around her, searching for a apron she could give to Daichi. She herself wore a pink apron with pink flowers and hearts, EVERYTHING was pink. The apron she gave to Daichi was also pink but instead the flowers and hearts he had a cookie pattern, also pink, of course…

“We are eh… making something… like a chicken!” She grinned widely at Daichi and pointed at the apron, “come on, put it on! I’m sure that it would suit you!” she looked at the apron she had given Daichi and sighed. “I wished that i had some pink highlights in my hair, they would look so pretty while I’m wearing this apron!

Ohhhh, gross stuff? Eliza was pretty sure she knew what that meant, and giggled about it. "No I certainly wouldn't want any of that going around!" She preferred to steer clear of it when she could...In fact she herself hadn't been sick enough to do that this year and she was pretty thankful. No flu or anything!

Eliza nodded about the chores, cause she definitely had some of them to do. Not tons, but enough to make her understand and appreciate a clean house. Her face softened and her hyper-activity slowed slightly at Nerida's next words. Her mom was sick? In the hospital too? Wow...I hope it's nothing too serious, she thought, worried. With her kind hazel eyes searching the girl for any signs of distress, Eliza asked "Sick? Is she better now?... I can imagine chores would get a little backed up if my mom couldn't do them for a while. But my dad chips in a lot too and I could try my best to help." She didn't want to make Nerida too sad if she didn't want to talk about it, but if she did want to, over a bowl of ice cream with a fellow Ravenclaw was probably the best way to do it.

Eliza giggled again about the list of boys. She wondered who they were, but she'd just have to wait for Laura to spill the beans. "Oh really?" she said, still laughing. "How long has she been searching for you?" That was a pretty nice thing for a friend to do, in her opinion. Yet at the same time, she hoped when she wanted a boyfriend or...or you know, liked someone, she would just know which person it was without needing to think too much about it. And feeling even more brave than before, she asked "Is there anyone you'd like it to be?" She raised and eyebrow and smirked at her playfully. Maybe she could get better at this whole boy talk thing, if she practiced. Plus Nerida was older than her so maybe she'd have some pointers, or at least some information that Eliza didn't already know.

She glanced back to Laura to watch her get started on the pancakes. She bet they would taste pretty good and since there wasn't much that could go wrong with them, they could probably make a whole lot of them to share! And then after that they could add some ice cream to them and THEN they could go find Sky!

She gave Laura a curious look and felt her eyes dash to the girls' list - hoping she'd let her see it soon. And what was that about a spell? She looked back to Nerida and asked about it. "You...you used a spell? Which one?" She wondered why it might work on boys, and why they thought it was such a funny suggestion. Her mind immediately when to silly things like silencing charms and immobolizing ones, so that they couldn't talk back or run away from you - but that just funny to imagine. She'd never really want to do that to anyone, that she knew of at least.

She needed help from him? Someone actually wanted HIS help?

Daichi blushed a little bit at the idea. It had been a long time since someone had come to him for help. It had always been, Dylan. Dylan had always been the one to go to first well HAH!

Looking away from the meat in the bowl, the Slytherin EYED the PINK apron that Sonea gave him. Seriously, couldn't he get something more...manly? He didn't complain out loud though and took the girly apron from her to put it on.

Ugh this was so uncool...good thing it had cookies on it cause he liked cookies. After putting on the disgustingly PINK apron, the Prefect looked at the meat in the bowl again. Like a chicken? he had no idea what that meant but whatever, it looked delicious and he couldn't WAIT to try it!

He was still thinking what it would taste like when he heard Sonea's voice saying something about her hair. Pink highlights? He raised an eyebrow at that. WHY would anyone want to have pink highlights in their hair?!

"You know, i learned a spell in my , i think it was my fourth year. It's called Ristaris and it colors a person's hair in any color they want" he answered. "I can help you with making some pink highlights and don't worry i got an O in my OWL for Transfiguration" Meaning Outstanding so she didn't have to worry he was going to accidentally blow her up or something. Heh.

Oakey sat in the Kitchen holding his empty paper bowl and plastic spoon on his lap waited for Alexa. How Ariana would maim and/or seriously injure him if she found out he was willingly hanging out with the little Gryffindor Girl she despised more than puppies. Which Oakey also found terrible, and was still working on making her love Killer Shadow.

Right anyways he's been putting off this for too long. He wanted to test some of the soft foods in the Kitchen that Toodles had worked hard on. He set his bowl and spoon down on a counter and moved over to what looked to be a large pot Mashed Potatoes. It looked fine, smelled fine, and...no no taste testing it yet.

This would be easier if he could speak with Toodles.

"I'm here! I'm here!!!"

Lex rushed into the kitchen, not tickling the pear as quickly as she needed to. Hopefully she wasn't late, this was ICE-CREAM they were talking about, she didn't want Oakey to quickly take a spoonful then disregard it. She wanted the WHOLE bowl, the whole of Oakey's bowl because he was being nice enough to let her use it. Aidan was probably up in his Common Room...the walk...it wasn't worth it...not even a little.

"Did I miss anything?? Where's Toddles??? Did you get me chocolate flavour?????" But then she saw the empty bowl.

He hadn't gotten her anything. Meeeh, good thing she knew where the candy machine was. She could get some for herself.

"Shouldn't you duplicate those so you can taste the ice-cream too? Or am I the only one testing?" Questions, she had lots of them.

TIRED.

She was tired. Ok.. and needed refueling like now cause Dylan just worked her hard at practice and she just felt like she could die. So, she was off to snack on some veggies and maybe some sweets but veggies mostly.. sweets meant harder workouts if captain found out and she was not a fan of that. No sir she was not.

Anyway... into the kitchen she dragged herself noting that surely someone would be in there and she rolllled her eyes hearing the voice of no one other then Alexa Cambridge. This trip needed to be quick before she got a headache too.

Though she stopped and BLINKKKED at the only other person she saw in the kitchen... clearly the only one Cambridge was talking to......

The head boy... the Hufflepuff... the boy that she hadn't seen in days..... her boyfriend!

Uhm


We'll

"hello stranger..s" .... Right? And why was he with lex.. What was she up to? Did she slip him a potion... Did you Cambridge? !?!

Laura looked at Nerida and smiled. "Yeah it would be funny if you used that spell on them." Laura giggled and then Eliza was talking about it. "I could show you the spell if you want." Laura smiled flipping the pancakes up, she was going to enjoy eating them. "Just a warning though the spell isn't very nice."

Laura then heard Eliza talking about the list. "Oh I can do one for you if you want." Laura giggled. "I like trying to find boys for my friends." Laura winked, it would be awesome to find a boy for Eliza to date, it would be funny, she didn't think Eliza wanted a boyfriend yet though.

Laura turned around and put the pancakes onto a plate and then she put ice-cream on them, there were three each for them. "Come on girls, grubs up." Laura smiled as she sat down and started to eat hers. "I have ice-cream before everything because it's awesome and you need it." Laura giggled. "We should send the charms Professor some it might cheer her up." Laura winked at Nerida.

Nerida mentally slapped herself why did she say that, everybody always felt sad for her when she told them about her mom...She smiled a bit before answering, "Yeah shes better now but we won't know for sure until five years have passed thats when the healers and the muggle doctors will know for sure that the cancer is gone. Though now she is back to her normal self, well without the hair and she is a lot skinnier...She likes the second part and she misses her hair though she is thinking about taking one of those hair growing potions but she doesn't know yet." Wow she felt better, she hadn't spoken to anyone other than her family about the whole thing, she was happy she did.."Thanks for letting me talk about it, I have never really talked about it."

She perked up as the three girls got to fun stuff. "Yeap, and I have to admit she is quite good at searching.".....Laura was good at something...Was there a first??!! "Only a couple days I believe.Right Laura?" Just to double check with the puffer. She chuckled and blinked, anyone she wanted to be on the list. Well she did but Laura was not getting him on the list he didn't even go to Hogwarts. "Not here." She said without even thinking.

Well since she said it she might as well elaborate. "He doesn't go here, he lives in my neighborhood he goes to this rich kid wizarding school-really boring my parents tried making me go but I wouldn't stay to go to it! ANyways back to the subject hes trying to convince his parents to let him come his sixth...or was it his seventh year here. So if he does you will have to remind me to let you meet him! Though to be honest I don't think he knows I exist." And Nerida was not a subtle person when it came to him, she mumbled around him and she became shy...She was NOT a shy person..EVER! So you think we would take the hint.

OOOOOOO!!! Laura was starting the pancakes. She loved pancakes especially the dessert pancakes her mum makes, yummy!

She laughed as Laura agreed with her on using the spell. She grinned a big grin, Eliza wanted to know about it eh... "Its this spell that makes a person dreadfullly sick....Though ithasthepossibilitytokillyou." She mummbled the last part as she spoke to Eliza. Listening to Laura and Eliza talk about the boyfriend list she added, [B]"Hey yeah when Laura finds us all boyfriends, we should go on like a triple date and if we realize we don't like them excuse our selves to the bathroom and either sneak out the front door or find an escape route in the bathroom!" She giggled as she finished her crazy idea!!

As Nerida sat down and started to take a bite out of the pancakes and ice cream the blonde burst out into laughter as Laura reminded her of what they she did to the charms professor! "Ahhh....We...should..tot..ally...do it!.." She managed to let out in between laughs.

While she watched how Daichi took the apron she grinned, he was so easy to manipulate and to let him do things she wanted! She only needed to smile at him, look cute and innocent and tada! He did what she wanted! She even had been able to let him wear a PINK APRON! She was really brilliant! But now that she looked at Daichi, she needed to say that he looked really cute with the pink apron, but that was not so strange, pink WAS a cute color so she helped Daichi now that she had offered him to wear this! She looked secretly at the meat she had brought with her and grinned, how would Daichi respond to her when he had tasted the meat and when he would discover that he had eaten a duck? She was sure that he would like it, but she wasn’t so sure about his reaction, would he be sad of happy if he had learned that eating duck was not bad at all…

Oh, did Daichi knew how he could make her even more pretty than she already was? But… was it safe? She eyed Daichi hesitating, not sure if he was making fun of her, like she did with Daichi… She didn’t worried about his ability’s for USING the spells, she already knew that he was good at them, but she was afraid that he would make her hair blue, or… yellow… or, RED!! NOOOO! She didn’t wanted that? She would be SO ashamed if that would happen! No, she needed to make sure that he was not planning to do something nasty to her so she folded her arms and looked at the older boy.

“If you want to help me, I will be SOOOOOO thankful and then I will LOOOOOOVE you for it, but if you are making my hair blue or something else like pink than I will tell Dylan that you have bullied me!” She blinked a few times with her eyes and tried to look innocent and just a little nervous, she didn’t wanted to offend him if he only wanted to help her and didn’t wanted to something else. And, she wanted that Daichi would eat the duck, so she needed to act this way!

Oakey moved to the fridge and found a few pies, these were Pies that Nashville had made probably, but pies were pies and Oakey needed to test these too. So he pulled out two. A Blueberry, and a Pumpkin pie both look good, but probably filled with Sugars. Oakey was almost startled when he heard Alexa make her presence known. Luckily, YES, luckily Oakey fumbled the pies onto the counter before they dropped to the floor. "Yes, you are." Oakey gave Alexa a weak smile. What were her questions again? "Ummm, No, Probably cleaning if he's not cooking, and I left my Bowl and spoon over there." He pointed his finger to the counter he left his empty bowl at, next to the Mashed Potatoes. "Just remember to scourgify them like you said you would." He was forgetting something. "Oh and eat the Ice Cream sparingly, you'll get a bad Brain Freeze if you eat it too fast." Everyone he has seen eating this stuff was doing so like savage Werewolves.
Strangers? Who? What? "Ariana!" forget this testing for a second! he had a girl he needed to hug. "Ariana, Sorry I've been so busy." Detention, NEWTs, Quidditch, and that Note he was passing around to the Teachers and Staff. He wrapped her up into his arms and kissed her cheek. "Oh um you want to help Alexa, and I test some foods?" They can get along here. They'd have to...please.

Her first action was walking over to the ice-cream machine and smiling at it. Such a lovely machine that brought her happiness, the kind of happiness you didn't get just anywhere. Siiiiigh. She was about to hug the machine when he went on talking. Toddles was off cooking or cleaning? "Isn't he meant to be helping us with the food testing?" Or had she heard that part wrong when she was asking to tag along? She had been bouncing quite a bit when she was to be listening...

Lex grabbed his bowl and hurried back to the machine, getting so much that the bowl nearly crumpled under the weight. MMMMMMMMMMMM, ice-cream.

"Relax dude, I'm a pro at eating this stuff." She said before sticking her face down in it. Had to get rid of the excess before she could start using the spoon.

Oh? More voices? Sounded like........Lex lifted her head from the bowl in time to see Oakey giving Ariana a kiss on the cheek. She wrinkled her nose. "Pda's frowned upon Headboy, especially by me." This had nothing to do with the Headmistress' rules, it was for her own sanity. "But yeah! Join us Logan! Right now we're testing the ice-cream!" She grinned through the ice-cream that was now covering her entire face.