Chapter 3
Severus wasn't completely ignorant when it came to cooking. He might not have spent much time doing the activity during the school year but he had lived in the muggle world exclusively for the first 11 years of his life and if he wanted to live to see the next year of Hogwarts cooking during the summer was a necessity.
He learned first with his mother before she had withdrawn into the shell that she was now. He had once tried to ask his neighbor, a little old lady that lived on the edge of Brenley but was loved by all of Cokeworth. She had given him her cookbook that she used in the roughs of the Great Depression taking in his holey clothes and greasy, knotted hair. The recipes were simple and the ingredients cheap. Margret, (which he found out to be her name) who offered to show him how to prepare the first recipe, was in the middle of mixing the beans in with the rice when her wrist suddenly seized around the wooden spoon in her hand and she fell to the floor. Severus of course screamed and ran out of the house hollering for help. After she was whisked away by the doctor on Queens Road, all eyes were turned to him. The poor scraggly looking whelp from Spinners End who was with the town's grandma when she 'died suddenly'. Everyone in town painted him as a murderer at the age of 8 and he was never trusted by anyone in the town of Cokeworth again. Other than, of course, Lily, but that's in the past.
He had moved his trunk into the staff work room and donned a uniform that William had scrounged up from the lost and found when the dinner rush started. William had given him the recipe book that he used for new trainees, bade him good luck, and rushed away into the sea of customers. He could, of course, do his job as a cook, but when he saw a woman who looked to be university age hacking sloppily at an onion, head rested on her palm, elbow propped on the counter next to the cutting board, his precision-loving mind couldn't handle it.
"What are you doing?" Severus asked, the woman's wrist held in his grip. She lazily drifted her eyes up to Severus and snorted. "Arent you supposed to be in school right now?" She asked snarkily. "Arent you supposed to be chopping vegetables instead of mutilating them right now?" He snapped back. At that, she jerked her wrist out of Severus' grip and started hacking away at the onion once again. "Well," she said sounding angry and Severus knew he was in for a ride. "If my stupid sexist boss hadn't left after promising me the cooks position after I've worked here almost every day for four years, and if this stupid new boss hadn't come in and told me that he 'couldn't hire me in the cook's position because the old manager left no note of that' and" She spit so much venom at the part with William that Severus could feel the hairs on the back of his neck tingle a bit. "if the stupid new cook" Severus made an indignant noise at that "hadn't waltzed in here and stolen my job," the venom once again returned and the knife started at the onion with a renewed pace. "then maybe the onions would be spared, but here we are." She sighed a long drawn-out sigh and looked up at him. She then quickly narrowed her eyes at him and he shifted a bit then remembered himself. 'Why are you in here?" She asked suspiciously looking him over. "I am said 'stupid cook' previously mentioned," He said. She let out a full belly laugh.