A Factual Lesson in the Delicacies of Rice Balls

Aito looked up from the workspace as he set down some of the vegetables he‘d found stored away that would be good for adding to the rice. He had expecting another house elf to be entering the kitchens, or a professor as happened on occasion. He had never gotten in trouble for being down here, having no record for causing trouble and his simple desire to make food was something most found odd in a teenage boy. However, so long as he didn’t try to mess with any of the food that got sent up to the tables in the Great Hall, no one seemed to mind his spending time in the kitchens. It kept him busy and he was working on a life skill a good deal of people tended to lack at his age. It was very rare, Aito knew, for another student to actually find the kitchens, let alone venture within like they had been here before. When they did, it was usually some blond Hufflepuff boy searching for muffins, though, that particular student always seemed too shy to actually speak to Aito while he grabbed his muffins and ran.

Despite being a bit surprise by Axel’s appearance, Aito smiled brightly, always welcome to company even if he did tend to be a bit socially awkward at first. He was even more taken aback by the other boy’s introduction and curiosity. This was new, a strange occurrence that had never happened before for as long as Aito had been coming down to the kitchens. Still, he met it with vigor, reaching out a slightly damp hand and slapping it into Axel’s, eyes shining brightly. ”Nice to meet you, Wakefield.” Aito shook the other boy’s hand firmly and then released it, pointing to the large bowl of rice on the counter, and the tray of rice balls. Some of them were misshapen, but the house elves were trying their best. It took a lot of practice to perfect those little triangles of deliciousness. “I’m Aito Bellamy and these, are onigiri. They‘re Japanese rice balls.”

Reaching beneath the counter, Aito grabbed up a wooden cutting board and quickly found a knife. He set them down on the counter, dumped some fresh carrots into a strainer and carried them over to a sink to rinse them off before returning with them. He set a carrot down on the cutting board, lifted the knife, and began chopping, trying to get the pieces as little as possible so they would blend better with the rice. ”We’re doing plain ones and vegetable ones, care to join us?”

”Oh, don’t ask me about Japan. I’ll go on for hours.” Aito warned, though he smiled as he said it. He handed the knife over to one of the house elves to let her take over the cutting of the vegetables. He reached out, dipping his hands into the bowl of water. ”This first, so the rice won’t stick to you. This kind is particularly tricky if you’re not careful, it’ll get all between your fingers and you won’t be able to make a proper onigiri.” The Slytherin warned, digging into the rice again. He held out his hands towards Axel, slowly and deliberately shaping the ride between his palms and fingers. ”Like this… your hands have to be crooked just so, otherwise you’ll end up with something that looks more like a snowball than a rice ball. Not that it would taste any less excellent, it would just be much harder to eat.”

Aito finished the rice ball and wiped his hands dry on a towel before bending down to where his school bag sat on the floor nearby. He shaped a couple more before going back to the vegetables, adding onions and peppers to the carrots before giving the mixture to a house elf to steam. That was something he wasn’t quite good at yet, but he was still learning. His mother could do it with perfection, but then, she had much more practice at it than he did. ”Alright, so… Japan?” Aito asked, turning. His feet moved, taking him over to where he’d set his school bag on a chair, and dug into it, bringing out a brightly colored book whose covered appeared to be on the wrong side. ”Well, you’ve got your onigiri, the basic kind at least. And this… this is the epitome. Manga… It’s kind of like a comic book, but way better.”

”That’s a good one.” Aito nodded towards Axel’s rice ball, genuinely impressed. The fact that it was his first try and he hadn’t ended up with a round one was something in and of itself. The boy showed promise. Shifting his weight slightly from one foot to the other, Aito tossed his book between his hands, pondering Axel’s question over in his head. He nodded to himself after a moment. ”Well, there’s manga for every interest really. You’ve got your school settings, romance, zombies… Sometimes all three rolled into one. You’d probably like something like Fairy Tail or maybe even Bleach. I can lend you one sometime if you -”

”Souffle! Souffle!”[/I] A house elf screamed, running across the room and shoving himself into a cupboard.

“Duck!” Aito shouted, his eyes going wide. He hugged his book to his chest and dove under a table. All of the house elves scattered, running for cover just before an exploding sound came from the opposite end of the room. Bits of goop flew every which way, hot and piping, sticking to walls and the ceiling. The Slytherin grinned, peeking over at Axel, hoping he had covered his head in time.

Aito watched as Axel floundered slightly and he frowned, worried that the other boy wouldn’t find cover in time, but he needn’t have. Just as the souffle exploded, Axel’s wand was out and he was protecting himself with some kind of bubble force field charm. Aito recognized it as something most learned during their second year in Defense class, a good thing for repelling simple jinxes or hexes, but it also made an excellent water float if you were so inclined. Not that Aito had ever tried that out or anything… more than a few times every late spring when the weather got incredibly nice. It was impossible to control though, so he normally ended up soaking wet after having to pop it, but that was part of the fun. However, instead of being impressed with Axel’s wandwork, Aito was thrown a bit off by the boy’s comment about the house elves.

Now, Aito, had a particular soft spot for the little creatures, having spent a copious amount of time with them over the years. They were his friends, even the ones who didn’t see the reasoning behind him trying to teach them how to cook Japanese food when they worked in a British school. They welcomed him among them enough that he had even been allowed into the next kitchen over where things were calmer and he could sit on the floor, playing with the house elves’ offspring. They liked it when he read to them from his manga books and jabbering at him about all the things they had been up to, just like any human child would have. The house elves may have been an entirely different species with magic of their own, but they still had very real emotions and remarkable intelligence.

”They do their best.” Aito stated firmly, coming out from underneath the table. ”It’s Foghorn’s soufflés that explode, he’s older and sometimes gets the ingredients a bit mixed up. It happens really fast though, so it’s safer to run for cover or get away as far as possible instead of trying to contain the explosion and risk getting burned if you don’t catch it in time. It’s better to have a mess than get your face burnt to hell.”

Gazing around the room, Aito’s eyes located one elf who hadn’t gotten completely under cover in time. Her ear had gotten the brunt of a splatter. He reached out, grabbing a towel off of the rack by the sink and wetting it with cold water before crouching down, and gently, placing the towel against the elf’s ear. ”Here you go, Renata. Hold it there while I get the Burn Balm.” Aito left the elf, passing by Axel and reaching up into a cupboard near the kitchens’ door. He pulled out a silver tin and returned to the house elf with it, undid the lid, and helped her rub some of the sticky green salve onto her poor ear. He turned, looking at Axel with a smile. Not everyone was as fond of the elves as Aito was, he knew that. ”I’ll remember to pack one in my bag for you later then. However, you should probably apologize to the house elves… they don’t like being criticized by students. You‘re not Muggleborn, are you? Not that it matters, just, you seem to already have your mind made up about house elves, and typically Muggleborns don‘t.”