FIC: Egg Nog (G)
Title: Egg Nog
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: One
Characters: Severus Snape, Eileen Prince Snape
Author: delphipsmith
Beta(s): Thanks to my long-suffering spouse, who doesn't really get the whole concept of fanfic but is always willing to give me helpful feedback :)
Rating: G
Note(s): I don't actually know if egg nog is traditional in England; if not, I hope readers will forgive its use here.
Summary: Severus doesn't have a lot of happy memories of his childhood. This is one of them.
"Do you want to help me make the egg nog this year?" his mother says. "For the party tomorrow?"
Severus nods eagerly. His mother is always mixing things but she's never let him help before. He's excited to think that he's old enough to begin learning.
"Well then, we'll start with the eggs." She swings him up to sit on the counter, easily lifting his sturdy five-year-old frame. It's strange to be this far above the floor; is this what the world looks like to grown-ups? He peers down, wondering what else will look different to him when he's this tall for real.
The eggs in the basket beside him are a hundred shades of brown, from a light wheat to a tawny copper; some are all the same color while others are dotted with reddish freckles, the color of cedar or coffee. They're all the same, yet each one is different. He runs a hand gently over the cool shells, sensitive fingertips catching on tiny irregularities here and there, like a secret code.
"Why are they different colors?" He loves asking his mother questions, because she always has an answer. She makes him feel like the world was a thing that could be understood.
"Because they're prettier that way. Don't you think?"
She sets two bowls on the counter next to the egg basket. One is cobalt blue on the outside, the other green as emeralds. "We have to separate them, the yolks and the whites. It's a bit tricky. Watch." She takes an egg, taps it briskly against the edge of the blue bowl, separates the two halves of shell, pours the yolk carefully back and forth between them, allowing the white to overflow the shell and fall into the bowl below, then tips the yolk into the other bowl. He leans over to look. The yolk is bright amber-gold, firm and rounded, a little sun glowing against the pure white of the bowl's interior. In the other bowl the whites are a silky, slithery pool. He wonders what makes it move the way it does, as if it's more than a liquid but less than a solid. He wonders if other things move that way.
"Let's do one together, then you can try on your own." She hands him an egg, its curved oval shape filling his small hand perfectly. She wraps long, strong fingers around his inexperienced ones and together they tap the shell smartly against the rim of the bowl. A crack appears.
"Now, take the egg in both hands…put your thumbs just here, where it's cracked…" she says, guiding his hands as she speaks. "You have small fingers, you'll be even better at this than I am." The yolk is caught in one half of the shell and the white glides down over his fingers and he's fascinated at the cool, smooth sensation. "Gently, now, pour the yolk into the other half. Don't break it…" He watches, enchanted, as the golden circle slides gracefully from one half of the shell to the other, the rest of the white pooling down into the bowl where it merges with what's already there. He tips the yolk into the other bowl, side by side with the first one, and smiles at the two buttercup eyes looking back at him.
"Very nice!" his mother says, her hand warm on his back. "Try it yourself, now."
He chooses an egg, focuses his mind on precisely how it felt when they struck the bowl together, carefully reproduces it. The egg cracks, slithers, pours, and in a moment a third unbroken yolk snuggles beside the first two.
"Well done. You have clever hands, Severus."
He picks up another egg, is about to crack it, then stops and holds it out to her. "This one's bad."
She looks at him in surprise, takes it from him, cracks it over the bin and makes a face at the sight of the contents. "You're right. How did you know?"
He shrugged. "Just did." He picks up another egg, turns it around and around, enjoying the weight and density of it in his hand. "This is what turns into chickens, isn't it, Mam?"
"Yes, sometimes."
He remembers the rooster that chased him and pecked at his arm, giving him nightmares of huge birds with beady eyes like drops of oil, beaks the size of his arm, carving scars into his skin. "Does a bad egg turn into a bad chicken?"
She laughs. "No. A bad egg doesn't turn into any kind of chicken."
He thinks about this for a moment. "So, a good egg can turn into any kind of chicken."
'Yes. Although I'm not sure there's really such a thing as a bad chicken. Animals can only be what they are. It's people that are good and bad."
A few minutes later there are six soft topaz ovals nestled in the bottom of the bowl. Severus looks at them, wondering why the yolks stay all six apart, but the whites go all mixed. Is it magic? He pokes one very gently. It dents ever so slightly, then springs back. Not magic, then. Something on the outside, holding it together? It's all so interesting, how things behave and what they're made up of.
His mother puts the bowl under the stand mixer and turns it on. The slender metal wires spin into a blur, and he watches entranced as the yolks gradually go from gold to honey-color to lemon to cornsilk, magically growing and thickening. At last she switches off the mixer and tilts it back, the yolks (are they still yolks? or have they become something else?) ribboning down slowly from the beater.
"Now what?"
His mother takes out a bag of sugar and a set of metal measuring cups. "Can you measure out two cups?"
"Which one is a cup?"
She nudges his arm with her elbow. "You tell me."
He looks through the metal cups, finds one that has "1" on it. "This?" At her nod, he smiles and then dips the cup into the bag. The sugar makes a whispery, hissing sound as he scoops and pours back, scoops and pours back, scoops and pours back, mesmerized by the way the tiny grains shower down and bounce off one another. A few spill out and fall on the counter and he bends over to squint at them. They have sharp corners, which he supposes explains why they bounce. It looks like sand. He scoops up a cupful and swirls a finger in it. It feels like sand. But when you put sand together with water, it stays sand (he knows this from the times they go to the beach). Sugar doesn't (he knows this from sugar in his tea). He thinks of building sand castles; could you build sugar castles? He wonders how two things can look so much alike, and act so much alike most of the time but not all of the time. Are there rules? Could you know what something would do without knowing what it was?
"Sugar, Severus?" his mother reminds him gently, and he scoops up a heaping cupful and holds it out. "Is that a cup?" she asks with a half-smile.
He frowns, considering. Of course the metal container is a cup, he asked her and she said yes. And he's definitely filled it, it's overflowing...oh. He carefully scrapes the mounded top flat using the handle of one of the other measuring cups, then grins at her. "Yep!"
She laughs. "I'm going to turn on the mixer again, and you pour that in. Slowly, mind."
The mixer swirls and swirls, leaving curving trails in its wake. The motion and the hum of the motor are almost hypnotic as Severus tilts the cup carefully, letting the sugar fall in a gentle rain down the side of the bowl. It sparkles briefly, then vanishes into the pale-yellow yolks. He pours a little more, which vanishes. More, and more, and more, as slowly as he knows how to do, until the entire cup is gone. What's in the bowl takes up more space now, but not that much more, and it looks pretty much just like it did before. He wonders where the sugar has gone.
"Another cup," his mother says, raising her voice slightly over the burr of the mixer. He scoops, levels, pours slowly. After what seems like an hour (but is probably only five or ten minutes), the bowl is nearly half-full of a thick, creamy substance; there is no sign that the sugar ever existed except perhaps a very faint graininess.
"Now for the good stuff," his mother says. She turns off the mixer, opens a cupboard under the sink and takes out three bottles: three different shapes, three different colors, and (as he can immediately tell when she uncorks them) three very different smells.
"I'll take care of measuring out these. The bottles are too heavy for you." She gets from the cupboard a large glass cup with a small spout, marked on its slanted sides with red tick-marks. There is a heavier one at the halfway point and another at the top. Severus tilts his head, unconsciously assessing: he knows, without knowing how he knows, that two of the metal one-cup measures would fit into this glass one.
He watches as she pours from the largest bottle, square and heavy, a clear honey-colored liquid that runs quickly, as thin as - no, thinner than - water, until it reaches halfway between the two heavier tick-marks. The aroma drifts towards him and he sniffs experimentally: caramel, vanilla, pepper, and something that tickle-stings his nose. He closes his eyes, sniffs again and something else floats into his mind...his father's face paints itself on his eyelids, dark eyes crinkled by laughter.
Mostly.
He keeps his eyes closed, enjoying figuring out what's happening through his other senses. He hears the mixer come on, liquid trickling, the sound of the beater changing as the eggs and sugar swallow up this new thing. Silence, then his nose tells him that his mother is pouring from the next bottle. This one is sharper, with notes of burnt sugar and a hint of oranges. He opens his eyes to see dark amber, filled to the third of the eight smaller tickmarks.
"Can I pour this one?" he asks.
She nods, quietly now, an absent-minded expression on her face. "Use both hands, and take your time." The beaters spin, the creamy mixture more liquid now, the graininess vanished, the sweet-sharp odors enticingly rich.
Severus sets down the glass cup and points to the last and smallest bottle, half-filled with a dark mahogany that is not as sharp as the other two, rich with odors of spice and fruit. "That smells like Granny Prince. Except…" He frowns. "Except not exactly."
"Oh, really?" His mother raises a delicate black eyebrow.
He leans over and sniffs lightly - he knows instinctively that this is not something to inhale deeply. Thinks, riffling mentally through things he has smelled and tasted. Finds it. "Granny Prince has more butterscotch."
His mother gives him a peculiar look. "Yes, that's right. This is cognac. Granny Prince is partial to Armagnac."
"Cone yack?" he says, and giggles. "That's a silly word!"
"May you always think so," she says, in a tone he doesn't understand, and gestures to him to pour it into the bowl as she starts up the mixer again. She stops it once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl, and he hears the tiny grating sound of grains of sugar squeezed between spoon and bowl, then sets the spatula aside.
"What now?" he asks.
She reaches into the fridge as he cranes his neck trying to see around her. What is she getting? She turns back, using her elbow to close the fridge door, and sets down four small cartons next to him. He bends over to look at them. He knows this, it's on his oatmeal in the mornings and whipped into soft lusciousness over pudding. "Cream!" he says. "Is egg nog a kind of ice cream?"
"You might say so," she agrees. "Ice cream for grownups." She starts up the mixer again, slow this time. "Can you open those?"
He struggles a bit but finally gets them open. He concentrates fiercely, brows drawn down, as he lifts each container and pours the cream into the bowl. It smells sweet and fresh. "It's like paint," he says. "All thick." Even as most of his attention is focused on not spilling anything, part of him is puzzling over this. Why does the sharp-smelling stuff from the bottles splash so easily, and this doesn't splash at all? Why do some things have smells that bite the inside of the nose while others have smells like a warm blanket?
With a sigh he sets down the last container. The bowl is so full now that the liquid nearly overtops the beater, swinging from one side of the bowl to the other in a rhythmic motion, cresting higher with each cycle. His mother slows it to the lowest speed, then turns it off.
"What now?" Severus asks. It isn't done yet, he knows somehow. It still needs…something.
"Now, it goes into the freezer until tomorrow," she says, covering the bowl with plastic and opening the door of the icebox. "
He tilts the bowl containing the slippery, slithery egg whites. "What about these?"
"Tomorrow," she repeats, taking it from him and putting it into the fridge.
She reads him a story before bed, about a little boy who fights a giant and wins. His father isn't home when he goes to sleep. His dreams are a sea of yellow: buttercup, topaz, goldenrod, cornsilk, cream.
The next afternoon, Severus helps his mother get ready for the Christmas party. He remembers last year, when he was put to bed but lay awake listening to the voices rising and falling and, at the end, singing. He hopes he's old enough now to stay up and be part of it. There is a yearning in him to make happy memories, as if to store them up against a time when there won't be so many. He can't articulate this (he is only five, after all), but it's there all the same.
Finally, after asking a hundred million times (he's sure it was at least that many), his mother laughs and says yes, he can help her finish the egg nog.
She gets the bowl from the freezer and sets it on the counter while he carefully gets the container of egg whites from the fridge and carries it over. She takes it from him and sets it beside the bowl, lifts him onto the counter again, and hands him a wooden spoon. He leans over to see what the freezer has done. The surface is stiff and flat, but pocked with ripples and bubbles. He pokes it with the wooden spoon and the surface cracks, crumbling into coarse shards and chunks.
"Is it frozen, then?" his mother says.
He remembers the golden jellied circles, the cornsilk ribbons, the grainy thick paste, the creamy liquid - now it's become yet another kind of thing! He wonders if cold does this to everything. He's seen ice, crunched it in his teeth. He's seen frozen pork, solid as a rock. He's seen snow. Now this. All of it frozen, but all different. Questions swarm in his head, along with the first vague stirrings of how, maybe, to answer them.
"Yes," he says, and then "No," and then "Sort of."
She laughs, then puts the bowl of egg whites under the stand mixer.
He abandons the frozen stuff in the bowl and leans over to watch. "That stuff is awfully slippery. You're not going to put it in with the ice cream, are you?"
"Watch and see." She turns the mixer to its highest speed and the beater becomes nothing but a blur, too fast for his eyes to follow. Bubbles form, large ones and then smaller and smaller. He watches, spellbound, as the translucent substance becomes opaque foam, then soft peaks of pure white.. It mounds higher and higher, doubling in size then tripling, stiff as frozen snowdrifts, and his mouth falls open in astonishment at the magic taking place before him.
"How does it do that?" he whispers, confident that his mother will know. She always knows.
"It's air," she says.
"Air?"
"Air," she confirms. "Tiny tiny bubbles of air, whipped into the egg whites and held there." She stops the mixer, picks up the bowl, turns it upside down, and he gapes as the white clouds stay right where they are, hanging impossibly in the air.
His mind wrestles with this new concept. How can something that can't be seen, touched, tasted, be so powerful? How can it turn a slithery slippery goo into this beautiful puffy thing that looks like marshmallows?
"Now, we fold it in." She gestures towards the spoon, forgotten in his hand.
He looks at it, then back at her. "Fold like clothes? But with a spoon?"
She nods. "Very gently, that's the key. We've put all that air in, and we have to be gentle so it stays light and beautiful." She scoops a large snowbank of white into the frozen mixture. She wraps her hand around his, on the handle of the spoon, and shows him the motion. "Scoop from the bottom, spread over the top."
After a few repetitions he gets the idea. He folds the snowy egg whites into the sweet tangy creaminess, watching as it infiltrates the heavy frozen mass, transforming it into something light and lovely and festive.
"Done," his mothers says at last. She lifts him down from the counter, then moves the bowl to the table, placing a ladle and a stack of small cups next to it.
Severus frowns, then tugs a chair over the cupboard where his mother keeps her spices. It needs something, he isn't sure what but he'll know it when he finds it. His mother isn't paying attention, busy laying out trays of sausage rolls and pasties. He opens the cupboard, takes out a small bottle, smells it. Not that one. This one? He sniffs. No. This? A warm nuttiness fills his nostrils. Yes!
He goes to his mother, hands her the little bottle. "Here."
She takes it, glances at the label. "Nutmeg!" She looks at him and for a minute he thinks he's done something wrong because there are tears in her eyes, then she kneels and hugs him fiercely. "Severus, how did you know? Your grandfather always loved this - he said no egg nog was complete without a dash of nutmeg." She brushes away the tears and smiles proudly at him. "You're a natural, Sev. I knew you would be."
He looks at her, head tilted and black brows quizzical. "A natural what?"
"Never mind," she says, and ruffles his hair. "There'll be plenty of time for that."