Experimental Toast // The Bar

[halftwinkly]

THEN: Arthur made a brilliant discovery.

AND THEN: Arthur had tried to make toast. Literally, produce toast, on a plate. No matter how hard he tried, screwing up his face like someone trying to remember an answer in Trivial Pursuit, he couldn't even create a crumb. However, he could put bread in the toaster and have it come out as perfect toast, even after he noticed the toaster wasn't plugged in.

NOW: Arthur is in the Bar. Well, sort of. The Bar, on the basis that she isn't stupid, has put him in a little side room with tiled walls and floor. There are a number of objects in the room. Right now, Arthur is looking at a piece of bread very hard.

"Abracadabra!"

The bread explodes into croutons.

"...Oh dear."

There's a pile of similarly dispatched bread in a bowl next to him. The squid might like it, later on.

Comments

[missnicegirl]

"Well... anything," she says, shrugging. "How about cake?"

[halftwinkly]

"Okay! You know, I'm really good at making cake." Even Arthur's enthusiasm cannot quite get over the enormity of this lie.


"Well. Pretty good. All right. I'm all right at making cake. Can you make cake?"

[missnicegirl]

"I... have made cake!" says Matilda, because she is a fundamentally honest person. "Not as often as I've made toast. But more often than I've made popsicles."

[halftwinkly]

"What about pancakes?" Arthur's trying to think of something he's made with reasonable success in the past. "I'm not bad at pancakes."

[missnicegirl]

"Pancakes are a good idea," she decides. "But they need plates. You've got plates, right?"

[halftwinkly]

"I think so." Arthur opens a cupboard and produces two plates. "And there's honey too."

Still holding the jar he asks, "Er... How should we do it?"

[missnicegirl]

"I have no idea," Matilda says cheerfully.

She gives the plates a considering look.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur folds his arms, gnawing on the lolly stick absently.

"I suppose you could try just asking, but that didn't work very well for the ice-lolly. Maybe if we try starting out with flour and then sort of work up to thin air?"

Conveniently, there is a bag of flour in one of the cupboards.

[missnicegirl]

"Sounds like a plan," she decides. "Let's try it."

[halftwinkly]

Arthur rips the bag open and dumps some out on his plate eagerly.

"Right." He itches over his eye and leaves a smear of flour. "Do you want to try first?"

[missnicegirl]

Matilda beckons some flour onto her own plate; it forms a smallish pile. She watches it for a moment. Nothing happens.

"Maybe not."

[halftwinkly]

Arthur tries to move the flour like Matilda does, but when it becomes clear only a few grains will move at a time, he scoops it into a pile with his fingers.

"Alohamora!" There's a puff of flour and a smell of toast. He thinks for a moment. Then puts his hand over it and squinches his face up. The flour obediently liquefies and flows out from under his fingers.

"Oh..."

[missnicegirl]

"Hmm," says Matilda.

She frowns at her flour and tries to remember back to when making a glass fall over was her single all-encompassing ambition.

Be pancakes, she thinks. Pancakes pancakes pancakes pancakes pancakes. Please be pancakes. C'mon, be pancakes, be pancakes...

Nothing continues to happen. But she can give it time.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur squints at what appears to be liquid flour. He hadn't known flour could be liquid. Well, pancakes were kind of liquid flour but with eggs and cooking.

"Is adding eggs cheating?"

[missnicegirl]

"I don't think there's rules," she says absently, which may not be wholly wise.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur beckons over some eggs and cracks them into the flour. Then he gets a fork and stirs it together. What results does not look like pancake mix. Well, if there aren't any rules, it should just make everything else come together, shouldn't it?

"Expecto patronum!" He points at the mix. It disappears, leaving a clean plate. "I wonder where it's all going."

[missnicegirl]

"Maybe disappearing stuff goes to the same place appearing stuff comes from," Matilda suggests.

[halftwinkly]

"Well then, at least there's pancake mix there. Sort of. I bet you could call it back cooked." Arthur looks at his hand and the clean plate. "Do you want to try it?"

[missnicegirl]

"Huh," says Matilda. "Sure."

She abandons her pile of flour and looks at Arthur's empty plate instead.

And suddenly, pancakes!

[halftwinkly]

Arthur looks delighted.

"Brilliant! Oh, well done. What do they taste like?"

[missnicegirl]

"Only one way to find out," says Matilda.

But as it happens, they taste like pancakes.

[halftwinkly]

Arthur tries one as well.

"Do you think you could do that again? Because maybe where ever it is knows what pancake mix is like, it knows how to make it for itself."

[missnicegirl]

As usual with Matilda's magic, there's no magic word or elaborate gesture or flash of light. She just looks at Arthur's plate, and it has another pancake on it.

Then she looks at hers, and it also has a pancake on it. On top of the flour, alas, which responds to this indignity by foofing out all over the place.



Matilda giggles.

[halftwinkly]

"Let me try..." Arthur stares at his plate. "Expecto patronum!"

A pancake appears. He picks it up and tries it. "...I think it got confused. This is a strawberry that looks like a pancake."

[missnicegirl]

"Try abracadabra again," she says, more to see what will happen than because she expects it to work right.