Artichokes - the Saga Continues!

[dolorous_ett]

Well, from now on every time I need helpful advice, I'll turn straight to my Livejournal! All that feedback about the first part of my artichoke story was so helpful that I found myself doing quite a lot to the second part of the tale, just to avoid having to implement any of the changes suggested for the first!

I'm not super-confident about this section - again, concrit and feedback of any kind are much appreciated. I've spent too long thinking it over on my own - can't tell any more if it's basically OK, or if it's just flawed in ways I haven't spotted.

 
The table was laid with elegant silver, fine china and damask napkins, with an elegant Runic place card for each guest. Draco and the guests took their seats (Hermione thanked her lucky stars that she had insisted on studying Ancient Runes at Hogwarts), but Pansy remained by the door, where a tense, hissed conversation was taking place with someone on the far side. Finally, with a muttered "Have it your own way", she sat down, and majicked away one of the place settings with a flick of her wand.
"Narcissa," she said with a rather tight smile at Hermione. "I would so have liked you to meet her but her health… well, you know how it is."
"That’s a pity," said Hermione. "I notice there aren’t any other female guests."
"Ah yes, of course," said Zabini, with charming insincerity. "Dear, dear, where are my manners? Ceridwen sends appols and all that - sick mother… nothing serious, but all the same… sure you’d understand…" He looked her straight in the eye, daring her to call him a liar.
"Urgulanilla’s too ill to come. Not well at all. Sick as a dog in fact. Very sorry…" said Crabbe, staring at his soup plate, and rubbing the back of his neck with vigour.
Hermione gulped, took a deep breath, plastered a sweet smile on her face and turned to the other guest.
"And Madam Snape?" she said. "What’s keeping her away? Nothing too serious, I trust?"
Snape’s expression of outraged fury took Hermione completely by surprise.
"I have no wife," he finally said, after a long, charged pause. "As you are no doubt perfectly well aware."
"Elves!" cried Pansy quickly. "First course! What are you waiting for?"
A pair of house-elves, dressed neatly in their best monogrammed antimacassars, came bustling in, bent almost double under the weight of a magnificent silver soup tureen.
"I do hope you like Turtle Soup," she said to Hermione with a smile.
"You really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble," said Hermione, reaching for the broad spoon in the innermost layer of the cutlery. Was that a moue of disappointment that Blaise Zabini turned to share with the master of the house, as she passed the first test of Pureblood etiquette, or was she letting her nerves get the better of her? And was it her imagination, or did she hear a faint "tsk" of disappointment from behind the door?
She had noticed when she sat down that the wine had been served in Self-Fulfilling Goblets, enchanted to top themselves up magically whenever emptied. For this reason, she curbed her impulse to grab hers and down the contents in one gulp, contenting herself instead with a cautious sip of her soup.
***
Turtle soup proved to be clear, aromatic and delicious, and Hermione set to with a will. There was a nasty moment when she abruptly remembered a clipping from the scandal pages of the Daily Prophet Ron had sent her with his last owl, about how Professor Snape’s highborn fiancée had eloped with a spotty youth who worked as a conductor on the Knight Bus, but she managed to stop short of spluttering consommé all over the table.
Snape had never been kind to her at school, but she had certainly not meant to humiliate him. During the soup and the devilled badger brains that followed (rich, soft, exquisitely seasoned lumps that melted in the mouth - much nicer than the name had led her to believe), Hermione did her best to put matters right. She complimented Snape on his latest monographs on combining anti-analgesics and emetics, and met only with surly silence. She enquired politely after his Hogwarts colleagues, to learn that, after a serious of incidents ("foolish mollycoddling: potion-making is simply not a suitable occupation for the cowardly and incompetent"), he had been offered the choice between a compulsory sabbatical in Tibet studying meditation techniques, or instant expulsion. He had taken the sabbatical, but with ill grace; and Hermione’s account of how much good Harry’s spell in the lamasery had done his post-traumatic stress disorder was not kindly received.
Hermione was saved from causing worse offence by the arrival of more house-elves bearing platters of larks’ tongues, served on a bed of blanched Devil’s Snare. She took up the silver tweezers traditionally used in the best Wizarding circles for larks’ tongues, and picked away at her dish (tasty, but rather fiddly and surprisingly tough) while listening to Draco Malfoy speaking with great authority and at some length about Quidditich, Quidditch brooms, Quidditch tactics and the Holyhead Harpies - who in his view had been good for nothing since they first allowed women to get involved. Hermione, who was fond of Quidditch, attempted a few questions, which he answered in an indulgently absentminded way, in a voice more suitable for a small child. Hermione wondered whether she should be offended, until she noticed that his manner with Pansy was not so very different. Come to that, he was not particularly civil to Crabbe, either. Still, now she was going to be a part of Geraint’s life, she was going to have to make an effort with his family, and her efforts were not in vain: after several questions about the famous Slytherin Quidditch victory in their seventh year, she was rewarded with a faint, thin smile, before he turned to tug Zabini’s sleeve and direct his attention to the hysterical sight of a house-elf who had become entangled while attempting to carry away the remains of the Devil’s Snare.
Since Hermione was so determined to fit in and not cause any upset, it was perhaps fortunate for her that four more house-elves came in before she had a chance to intervene, staggering under the weight of a vast, silver covered dish, which they placed on the table with a flourish.
"Now here’s something you’ll never get with those M- I mean, here’s a real treat for you, Hermione!" said Pansy brightly. "Roast haunch of young hippogriff - first of the season - reared especially for us, fed on nothing but pedigree chinchillas and long grain rice - not like those awful Montagues, all they can afford are the culls from Hagrid’s litters…"
While she was speaking, one of the house elves swept off the cover with a flourish, to reveal a mouth-watering roast, studded with cloves, star anise and some other spice that gave the surface a strange, oily, rainbow-coloured sheen. He whipped out a carving knife from the folds of his antimacassar and swiftly cut enough slices to feed twelve, so fast that the knife was a blur in his hands, while the other elves served the roast potatoes and six kinds of seasonal vegetables. Then they picked up their comrade - now purple in the face, choking silently on the floor in the grip of the Devil’s Snare - deposited him in the upturned dish-cover and carried it out between them.
"I know," said Pansy, following Hermione’s shocked gaze, "but what can you do? You just can’t get the staff nowadays."

Blaise Zabini turned towards her.
"Pansy’s been telling me all about your whirlwind romance!" he said. "Too crushingly romantic - just like the books my poor dear mother used to read. Now, please, you must tell us absolutely everything," he continued, leaning confidentially towards her. "How did you meet? Which of you popped the question? What do his parents think - such lovely people - have you met them yet?"
As they munched their way through enough roast hippogriff to feed a family of twenty in Nubia, Zabini kept up a running series of questions in an ingratiating, solicitous voice, black eyes lively in his smooth, handsome face. He appeared to be genuinely captivated by her story of their love snatched from the doors of death, and equally fascinated by all that she could tell him of Muggle life ("So your parents are dentists? How utterly fascinating. Is it true they use drills and hammers?").
All through the hippogriff course he asked and she answered, pleased to be able finally to contribute something to the conversation. As a result, it took Hermione longer than it should to have done to notice that all Zabini’s artless questions were framed in terms calculated to show her up as a mercenary gold-digger of questionable morals, and her parents as ludicrous simpletons. Once she had spotted this, it was difficult to miss the playful glances of delighted horror he kept exchanging with Draco. She avoided his eye and gave short answers, but he either did not notice or did not care. Finally, faced with a wide-eyed, innocent enquiry about whether Essex girl jokes had any foundation in reality, Hermione lost patience.
"Why, Blaise, I’d no idea you took such an interest in Muggle things!" she said sweetly. "Why don’t you visit my parents’ surgery one weekend? They’re fascinated by our world - my father loved the owl Pansy sent me - and I know he’d love to tell you all about it. Bring your wife if she can get away - I’m sure there’ll be enough room in the bungalow for both of you."
Zabini bridled, huffed and subsided into an appalled, sulky silence.
She thought she might have heard a choked snort from Snape, but when she turned to look at him he was staring morosely into the bottom of his Self-Fulfilling Goblet. He caught her glance, glowered at her and took another swig of wine.
Across the table, Crabbe cleared his throat.
"’Scuse me," he said though a mouthful of Hippogriff and caramelised parsnip. "Did you say your pa liked the owl? I thought Muggles hated owls."
Hermione looked in him in surprise: he had barely spoken so far, except to ask for second helpings.
"Of course we don’t hate owls," she said. "Most of us live in towns, and we hardly ever get a chance to see them, that’s all. My dad had never seen a live eagle owl before, and he was over the moon - said he’d never seen anything so beautiful."
"Eagle owl, was it?" said Crabbe with interest. "That’d be one of mine - I’ve gone into owl farming, y’know. I bet it was Otto. Missing left primary, very nice markings, a bit on the dark side?… it might’ve been Ulli, or even Gretel, but they’re more long-haul birds..."
After five minutes of intense cross-examination, Crabbe had made a positive identification of Otto the owl. By this point Malfoy was looking fractious, and Zabini was yawning delicately behind his hand.
"Really, Vincent!" said Pansy sharply, as Crabbe paused to draw breath. "Hermione’s a Mu- … a professional cursebreaker - she doesn’t want to hear about your silly old owls."
"Well, what else can he talk about? It’s not like he left school with any other qualifications, is it? Care of Magical’s the only OWL he left school with… as it were," said Malfoy, delighted with his own wit. Zabini sniggered appreciatively. Crabbe blushed and hung his head.
"Not at all," said Hermione encouragingly. "It must be fascinating to run an owl farm. What breeds do you keep?"

Pansy’s shoulders slumped, and Snape let out an audible groan. Crabbe, on the other hand, beamed at Hermione, and launched into a interminable description of life as an owl-farmer, with digressions into the merits of human-imprinted owls versus wild ones (wild ‘uns are a lot harder to train but they don’t try to mate with your head in spring), the best kind of owl for work in the desert (scops and burrowing owls don’t mind the heat, but a barn-owl’s a classic, one of those’ll get you anywhere) and an endless series of anecdotes about his favourite birds.
Under cover of Crabbe’s enthusiastic monologue, Hermione had no need to do more than smile and nod as they worked their way through the mahogany-smoked viper (which she correctly flaked off the bone with her fish-knife, to Blaise’s palpable disappointment and her own much better concealed triumph), and the roast peacock in its feathers that followed it. By this time, the food was starting to bother her. The exotic nature of the dishes was not a problem - when she was trapped in the pyramid with Geraint, they had been hungry enough at one point to give serious consideration to eating a six-thousand-year-old mummified crocodile; besides, no curse-breaker who was squeamish about what they ate managed to survive past their first meal at the Goblins’ high table. But Nubia was a poor and barren country: Hermione’s usual supper consisted of flatbread, chickpeas, lentils and goat’s milk, and the rich food was beginning to have an effect on her insides.
The pumpkin and nasturium sorbet that followed, though far too sweet for her taste, went some way to ease the discomfort, and she hoped very much that this signalled the end of the food. But it seemed that there was one last treat in store.

As Crabbe was telling her all about Henry the Great Grey Owl, who had strenuously resisted all attempts to breed it until it unexpectedly laid an egg, and Blaise was regaling Pansy of with an account of what Evadne Greengrass had said to Zacharias Smith about Millicent Bulstrode, another bevy of house-elves came tripping in, bearing more plates. Several had welts on their hands or necks from the Devil’s Snare, and all were sporting cuts and bruises.
"Aha!" cried Blaise gaily, with a playful glance at Hermione. "We are honoured! Aggressive Artichokes - straight from the Malfoy greenhouse, if I’m any judge!" He exchanged a laughing glance with Malfoy. Across the table, Professor Snape took another swig from his goblet, and stared morosely at his plate.
In front of her, nestling in a bed of exotic leaves and drenched in aromatic oils, sat a large, plump, golden artichoke. It looked so ripe and tender that Hermione almost thought she could see its flanks moving up and down.
She looked up, and realised that everyone was watching her. She reached for innermost knife and fork in her now depleted table setting.
"Well," she said. "You shouldn’t have bothered - and I’m so full - these look almost too good to eat…" and lowered her fork to the tawny scales of the artichoke.
The artichoke appeared to flinch out of the path of the fork, and rolled unharmed to the side of her plate. Hermione blinked, attempted to regain her composure, and stabbed down with her fork at the prone vegetable.
The artichoke let out a shrill wail, rolled out of the path of the fork, snapped upwards, and Hermione felt many sharp, pointed little teeth meet in the fleshy part of her palm. She shrieked, and dropped her fork.
"Oh dear," said Blaise, turning laughing dark eyes on Draco, "now she’s made it angry."
"They should’ve told you," said Crabbe. "You’ve got to peel off the petals of the Aggressive Artichoke, disarm it before it wakes up. Have to use your hands - they’re very sensitive to metal. Why didn’t you tell her, Pansy? How’s she going to catch it now, eh?"
He pinned down his own artichoke with one large, meaty hand, while the other grasped its snout, and wrenched it firmly backwards. The plant convulsed, and went limp. He ripped off the leaves, which he dipped into a bowl of rich, smoking blood-red sauce in the centre of the table.
"There!" he said with a reassuring smile at Hermione. "That’s the way to do it. Quick and simple." He scraped the insides of one of the leaves off with his teeth. "M’wife always says it’s like waxing a leg - quicker you do it, the less it hurts." He caught Draco’s eye, blushed and fell silent.
The golden globe on Hermione’s plate shifted and gave a little whimper. Hermione looked at it, her already uncomfortably full stomach roiling at the prospect of having to strip the petals off a living thing and then devour its quivering insides. Sensing weakness, the creature cocked its snout at her, and snarled.

I hope the font doesn't go all wierd on me this time. No idea what that was all about.

Other news: I'm going to have my name in lights - a publishing company has accepted my introduction to a dictionary, and they've sent me the proofs. I wrote this introduction about 6  months ago, and went through so much stress that I vowed Never Again, but with a bit of judicious editing and all nicely typeset it looks surprisingly plausible. I'm feeling quite smug.