Desserts and Pastries
Draco rubbed his eyes, resisting the urge to yawn in public. He felt utterly drained and absolutely exhausted. His fingers were rough and dry, and there was a small bit of skin peeling at his fingertip, just below the nail. He’d woken up early the day of Astoria’s funeral, unable to rest properly anyway, and gave his bathroom a thorough cleaning before taking a shower and putting on all-black formal dress robes.
Draco spent the entire service wishing he wasn’t there. The memories and emotions that kept crashing like waves against ocean rocks had him irritable. He wanted to get up and do something- move. The entire ordeal had left him so twitchy and restless that he decided to apparate to the nearest market and stock up on as many baking materials as he could. He did everything in his power to breathe slowly, to stop the trembling and push everything from the earlier events of the funeral out of his mind. When he arrived back at his flat, he felt a small rush of exhilaration at the prospect that he would now get to organize everything he’d purchased. He spent the next two hours sitting at his kitchen cupboard and placing everything in meticulous order.
Then, he could finally clean less and bake more.
A lot more.
It started with those from-scratch Soft, Decadent Brownies that he’d wanted to make for at least a few days, now. The aroma that floated throughout his flat made it feel a little less sad, plain, and boring than it actually was. Draco had so many new utensils to clean, and so many more to remove price stickers from. He was getting a rush out of it, so much so that he moved on to a simple carrot cake, next. Easy and Moist Carrot Cake. Then Lemon Meringue Cupcakes.
Before Draco realized it, he had at least four desserts and pastries made fresh and sitting on his kitchen counter with a stasis charm. Draco had no room in his kitchen, and he surely could not eat all of the food he’d made himself.
Draco began going to church again. It was his Priest, Father Swain, who had convinced him. He spoke to Draco at the funeral, and as successful as he was in avoiding all such thoughts and memories of what happened during the day, he was still losing more and more sleep over everything throughout the long, mind-numbing nights. The only good thing he’d gotten out of it was deciding to go back to church.
And, he could bring his desserts, too.
The first Sunday Mass without Astoria threatened to weigh heavily on Draco. He had grown used to having her next to him while he held her hand, a fuzzy feeling overtaking him as he registered her warmth every time.
He sat alone, now, and it hurt to think of what he no longer had. Absently, he wondered if the ginger woman who always looked back at them was wondering where Astoria had gone. Draco vaguely recognized her and knew it was because of Hogwarts, but she didn’t seem like the friendly type, anyway, so Draco and Astoria had never approached her. Draco turned his head 45 degrees to see her staring back. They both promptly looked away. Despite all of this, he kept his head held up high and thought of the tray of Traditional Bakewell Pudding that he’d brought, which was sitting on a table in a reception room to be eaten by his fellow church members after the Mass.
Draco felt like he’d been given a breath of fresh air, going back to church and having found a way to control the overflow of desserts that he continued to make. He continued this for four weeks. There was another funeral, and Draco refused to learn whose it was, he simply made more pastries. Then his pastry-making continued for at least 3 Sunday Masses after that. They were a massive hit each and every time. Draco had come to get to know several Muggles who swore that his pastries tasted “as though they were made with magic”. He simply smiled and thanked them. Then, he offered them another. Take some home, he would offer, and when they asked about a recipe, he’d say they were a family secret. He knew this was a flat-out lie, and that they could probably find Draco’s precise book at any store, but they were Muggles. They didn’t need to know anything. He found that the lifted weight allowed him to ignore the knocking that still occurred on his door, even if it had grown from every few days to every day at 6:00 pm. Things were good. Everything felt okay, for a while.
Until they spoke about death, one Mass.
The service itself was rather kind and uplifting, Draco supposed. Or at least, he would like to think it was. See, by the time they had mentioned Thessalonians 4:13, he was already halfway to losing the plot.
“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.”
And, well, Draco supposed he has no hope, because there he was, his right hand clenched in a fist as he tried to force away the tears that welled up in his eyes and tried to not make his suddenly erratic breathing not so loud. He was trembling and there was some terrible force squeezing at his heart. And besides, he thought, what ever happened to “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”? Father Swain had told him that during her funeral and Draco supposed it had been a way for him to say that it was okay to cry when he was. He supposes he must have been wrong, and there was no hope, no hope.
Draco jumped at the feeling of a cold hand on his shoulder, turning to find a heavily lipsticked old woman with white, curly hair and large purple earrings dangling from her ears.
“Are you alright, dear?”
Draco swiftly stood up and left, not caring if everybody saw him or recognized him, nor did he care that the Mass wasn’t even over yet.
Draco spent the next week holed up in his flat, again.
He stayed in his bed day in, and day out. He suddenly didn’t feel much like baking, which was just as good, anyway. He was running out of flour and sugar, and he didn’t have instant coffee or lady fingers, which he’d learned two weeks ago he needed to make Rustic Italian Tiramisu.
The flat seemed to have a grey tinge to it, now that Draco wasn’t always running around to clean, wash, scrub, or bake anything. The knocking got annoying again, and walking around was tiresome, anyway.
It was on Friday when Draco had to get out of bed and go to the kitchen to finally respond to the gnawing hunger that made his stomach ache.
There wasn’t much food in his icebox, but there were frozen meatballs and jarred sauce. There was also a loaf of bread on the counter. At least it was something. Draco felt himself shake with hunger and sway from lightheadedness even as he prepared his meal. The sizzle of the pan was only slightly therapeutic. Draco tried to cheer up by thinking about cleaning the pan and the jar and the plate and the spatula, but any solace that would’ve been provided just didn’t quite reach him as he allowed his psyche to get swallowed up by what could only be described as pure grief.
Then, the knocking began.
And, oh, something about that knocking made Draco freeze, staring wild-eyed at his door.
Silence encased the room for several moments. Draco dared that door to go off making noise again.
It did. In a flash Draco was standing inches from it, fists shaking. Do it again. I dare you.
The next knock was abruptly cut off by Draco’s own pounding.
The silence that followed was now thick with tension. Draco, panting and with his nostrils flared, his blood rising quickly and fueling his manic rage, pounded again.
“What do you want from me?!” He shouted, the vibrations pulsing through his fist. “Huh?! What do I need to do to stop hearing things?!”
Draco paused, cutting himself off with a sharp gasp. His forehead landed on the door with a resolute thud, and he pounded again, and again, and again.
“Is this what you want?!” He couldn’t stop. He didn’t care if his neighbors heard and complained, he didn’t care that his voice felt raw and that his stomach was churning with disappointment that Draco hadn’t eaten the meatballs in the kitchen.
He didn’t know when he ended up crouched on the floor against his front door, fist still pounding, though it got weaker and weaker as his body was overcome by sorrow.
“Go away, go away, go, away! Stop it!” He felt like he was going mad. He wished he’d never met Astoria so that he didn’t need to deal with her loss. He wished he didn’t have such an awful life, that he had never done the things he did when he was younger. After all, this was all his fault for starting it, wasn’t it?
He spent Saturday contemplating whether he should go to church the next day. And he didn’t decide on it until the next morning when he arrived at its grand double doors despite the lethargy that tugged at him and the odd sense of unease that had decided to accompany him when he awoke.
One of the frequent volunteers of the church, a Muggle mother of four with voluminous and short brown hair and a plump figure, gave Draco a wave as soon as he entered. Her name was Maggie.
“Draco! Good to see you again. How’re things back at the old bakery?” She chuckled at her own joke of calling Draco’s flat a bakery, giving him a soft elbow to the side. However, her expression faltered as she eyed Draco.
“No sweets today, love?”
Draco masked his surprise at the realization. How could he forget to bring pastries to the church? What was he thinking? Everybody looked forward to his desserts every Sunday Mass. It was something he could live for, something that gave him meaning. It was something about him that wasn’t absolutely awful. That uneasy feeling returned. He swallowed it down.
“Not today, Maggie. I’ve run out of flour,” he responded, schooling himself and giving her a curt smile. “Next Sunday, I assure you. I’ll stop by the market during the week.”
Just as quickly as her expression had faltered, it had perked right back up into its grin, fully displaying her slightly crooked and yellowing teeth.
“Oh, yes! We look forward to it! Oh, go on inside, the service begins in a few minutes.”
Draco made a mental note to return to the market immediately after service, and that was precisely what he did, the guilt at having forgotten the church’s pastries gnawing at the back of his mind.
As Draco meandered through the aisles, he mentally listed off everything he would get today, thinking of the various desserts he’d gone marking off in his book. At one point when reaching up high for baking parchment, he was bumped into by a man in black with ginger hair. Draco made an oomph sound and glanced to his left just in time to see the man walking away. Prick, Draco thought sourly.
He continued on his way, however, adding things he knew he needed and some things he was curious about applying to his baking. While in line to pay, that feeling of unease and discomfort came back. He supposed it was his sordid thoughts trying to intrude again. So, he allowed the prospect of all the new recipes he would try to float through his mind, taking place of any grief he had been feeling recently. He thought about his Flaming Traditional Baked Alaska, which required the utmost precision and focus. Which he was going to make, hopefully soon. He paid and thanked the cashier as he did so, hoisting his bags into his hands and making to leave the store so he could get to his alley and his apparition point.
However, as he turned the corner of the alleyway there was a sudden profound lack of air he realized came from a cloth being held over his mouth. His back was suddenly pressed against a warm body. His stomach dropped, overwhelming dead filling his senses. Then there was a sharp prick like a needle in his neck, and the world went black.