Dreidel and Cocoa
Newt, as it turns out, plays a mean game of driedel. Queenie is utterly scandalized that he keeps winning the pot, and is even more stricken when he redistributes the foil coins between them once she runs out of chocolate gelt to gamble with.
“Just you wait, Newt Scamander; I’ve got all night to beat you!” She declares, sending the top spinning with a flourish.
He chuckles through a lopsided smile. “We’ll see about that.”
The Goldstien sisters have been slowly eating their way through their winnings, peeling golden foil away from chocolates shaped like coins, one by one. So, the pot of gelt has slowly been diminishing as the evening wears on, but Newt has yet to unwrap even a single piece of chocolate. As if Queenie could be any more aghast.
“I’ve nothing against chocolate,” he explains, “but once you’ve had Spanish chocolate, Hershey’s doesn’t really compare. The best chocolate I’ve ever had was a traditional cuppa in Guatemala, actually.”
“Spanish chocolate?”
The Goldstien sisters share a look. Queenie grins.
“You think so?”
Newt glances between them, suddenly curious.
Tina shrugs. “Well, I would, even if Newt might not.”
“I might not what?”
Queenie stands and makes for the stove. “Tina’s giving you a chance to redeem yourself for being impartial to chocolate!” She sings.
“You skipped out on the last cup of cocoa we made you, remember?”
Newt has the good sense to blush sheepishly.
“Besides, you have Queenie beat—”
“He does not!”
“—but I want to see how well you hold up in a duel.”
Tina thinks she has his technique pinned. Plenty of it has to do with a quick wrist and nimble digits, lightning-fast snaps of his fingers that come from having been bitten by small creatures too many times. He’s very precise. However, there is an irregular scratch in the wood of the table that he seems to be using to his advantage. It does one of two things: it either grounds the top and slows it, or makes it hop. What Tina hasn’t figured out is if he can make the dreidel skip or slow down intentionally, or if the variation is as much of a gamble as getting the top to fall on its shin and gimmel sides.
Privately, she is enraptured by how his freckles seem as copper as new pennies under the light of the menorah.
“Are there going to be any proper stakes in this duel?”
She pauses and pulls her bottom lip into her mouth thoughtfully. “Dishes. The loser is on dish duty tonight.”
“I’ll take that bet.” He flings the dreidel and their duel begins.
Shin, nun, he, and gimmel toss and turn, showing their faces in infinite variations. Newt is distracted by Queenie’s humming at the stove, but Tina knows the recipe by heart: brown butter and spices, cream, sugar, bitter chocolate. Newt’s dreidel spinning has an edge on her, but just barely. She keeps her tricks close to her chest, like her heart, but the longer she plays against Newt, the more those tricks reveal themselves, eventually manifesting as a discreet furrow between dark brows.
Striped yellow mugs float over their heads to settle on the table. Tina doesn’t wait for the cocoa to cool, scalding her tongue with her eagerness. The sweetness and spice of the cocoa is worth the burnt lips and she sighs contentedly. Newt approaches with more caution, eyeing its consistency and swirling the liquid in its cup, bringing it tentatively to his nose to smell cloves, cinnamon, cayenne, and star anise (just a few of the more potent spices) before cooling the surface with his breath and tasting.
“If we were going to poison you, Newt, we would have done it the first night you had dinner with us.” Tina comments dryly.
Queenie looks more amused than anything.
“It’s our grandfather’s recipe.” The young auror explains at Newt’s unspoken surprise.
“You mean our great-grandmother’s recipe.” Her sister corrects.
“Well, sure, but we had to reconstruct it from scratch with a list of ingredients and no measurements! We’ll never know for sure if we got it completely right.”
“Gran’papa seemed to think so.”
“Gramps is almost a hundred years old, Queenie.” Tina quips.
A long, tiny, green finger stretches out from behind Newt’s collar curiously.
“No, Pickett, you know you’re lactose intolerant.”
The flaxen haired Goldstien sister resettles herself at the table, sliding a spoonful of strawberry jam towards the magizoologist.
“I’m never going to be able to convince him to eat properly again if you keep spoiling him,” Newt comments as the bowtruckle climbs down onto the table.
“Pickett saved your life; I think the sweet little string bean deserves to be spoiled!”
Said so-called string bean trills in agreement.
Newt hasn’t landed on gimmel in a while and Tina wonders if it’s intentional or not. She lands on shin and adds her last bit of candy to the pile. Newt spins another shin and adds his remaining chocolate coin. The last of their gelt is in the pot.
“Think your niffler would be jealous?” Tina wonders aloud, observing how the pile of foil-wrapped candy resembles a rather shiny pile of treasure.
Newt’s answer is immediate. “Absolutely. He robbed a spice stall that sold chocolate covered ants, once, in Brazil; it is the only occasion where I’ve seen him bypass something shiny in favor of something tasty. He’ll be very cross when he smells cocoa on me.”
“Ants?” Queenie crinkles her nose.
“Each species tastes a little different, but they’re very tart and acidic, not unlike lemons, actually. North America has a species whose favor is supposedly similar to strawberries. Not so bad as long as you don’t let them bite your tongue.”
The younger sister sticks her tongue out in disgust and pours her cocoa down her throat to drive out the imaginary taste.
Tina sends the dreidel twirling, snapping her wrist at the last moment to send out her best technique. The top makes a smooth half circle before it strikes the rut in the wood and leaps into the air. It skitters and clatters to a stop.
Gimmel.
She can’t help but smile cheekily, “Looks like it’s your turn to do the dishes, Mr. Scamander.”
“So it is,” He says, leaning back in his chair. He raises the cup of cocoa into the air as a toast before taking a hearty dreg. “Cheers to a good game of tops and to the ladies who have given me the second-best chocolate I’ve ever had.”
“Don’t worry, he’s lying,” Queenie mock-whispers to her sister conspiringly, “It’s the best.”
Newt snorts at her. “I’m still better than you at tops.”