Errand Work in the Kitchen Solo Finished

IC Date: June 25, 2019, 6:44 p.m.

Bridget quickly made her way down the stairs to the basement, skipping the last three steps. She wasn't necessarily excited about what she would be doing, but she was thrilled about where she would be going. No one enjoyed washing dishes... no one Bridget had met anyways, and she wasn't sure what she would think of people that did.

Instead, Bridget was excited to see the Hogwarts kitchens. She was an adventurer at heart, although no one would be able to guess that was behind her reserved, awkward, shy nature. The truth was that one her favorite things to do was explore, and the Hogwarts kitchens were generally unexplored. She wondered, out of all the students that had attended Hogwarts, how many had been inside the kitchens. She figured not that many, and most of them Hufflepuffs as the Hufflepuff dormitory was the closest to the kitchens.

Her ticket to see the kitchens was to do chores. It was almost summer and exams were over, leaving Bridget with an uncomfortable amount of free time. She had been spending this time reading, but when she heard that she could work around Hogwarts for money, she figured she would pitch in. Besides, it paid 10 sickles, and Bridget had minimal wizard money, her family being Muggles.

She turned down a corridor with walls lined entirely with paintings of food. She had been informed that she needed to tickle a pear in a picture of a bowl of fruit. Her eyes raked across all the pictures--the images depicted goblets of frothy liquids, platters of steaming potatoes, whole roast turkeys, spreads of pies; all the portraits made her stomach, although she had just eaten a fair-sized dinner for a small girl like herself, rumble as though it wanted to consume the painted foods.

Finally, her hazel eyes landed on a bowl of fruit. She walked purposefully towards it and stretched out her fingers to tickle the pear. Fingertips resting right above it, she stopped for a moment. It wasn't because she was weirded out that she was about to tickle a painted pear to get into the kitchens. No, it was Bridget imagining what she was about to see. Would the kitchens be as amazing and different from the Muggle world as the rest of Hogwarts was? Who worked in the kitchens? How many dishes would there be? How big were the pantries?

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the giggles of a group of Hufflepuff girls returning to their Common Room after dinner. Not wanting to be seen and have people stare at her, Bridget tickled the pear... and something strange happened (not that she wasn't used to strange things by now). The pear melted into a bright green handle. She could hear the girls' footsteps drawing closer... they were about to round the corner... Bridget grasped the handle, turned the knob, and stepped through the painting/door into the Hogwarts kitchens.

Closing it behind her, Bridget turned to view the kitchens. It was huge, with five tables placed in precisely the position they were situated in the Great Hall above. There were mounds of pots piled high on the left wall and a roaring fireplace along the back wall. The weirdest thing was a bunch of short (even shorter than her) creatures with thin arms and legs, huge heads, and tennis-ball-sized eyes, wearing an assortment of rags and bustling around the kitchen making food and cleaning dishes. She was suddenly conscious that she was staring and averted her eyes to study the ceiling.

From below her she heard a high-pitched throat clearing. She looked down to find one of the creatures with a commanding face tapping its foot impatiently.

"Are you here to help in the kitchens?" the creature squeaked. Bridget nodded. "Follow me then."

Bridget obeyed, following the creature over to sinks piled high with dirty dishes. The creature explained that she was to wash and dry the dishes, much of what she had already heard on signing up for this job.

She took a deep breath--she wasn't sure if she was about to do would be considered offensive.

"Um, excuse me. I don't mean to be rude, but might I ask what exactly... are you?"

"We are house-elves, and my name is Zolmey," Zolmey the house-elf said promptly, stalking away.

Bridget sat down on a short stool and got to work, using several buckets of soapy water to clean the seemingly endless mound of grimy dishes, cups, and utensils. Some plates had whole wads of food still mashed to them, while others were so clean, she wondered if the student licked the plate.

She would first scrape the food scraps into a waste bin that was charmed to vanish the waste. Then, Bridget would dunk the dishes in the large bucket of soapy water and scrub hard at the grime with a sponge. Next, she would wash the soap off in another bucket full of plain water, finally drying the item in one of the many towels she had been supplied with and stacking it in an orderly fashion on the nearest table (which was just an arms-length away, meaning she could reach it while sitting).

The work was simple but tiresome. Each dish took just under five minutes to clean, and Bridget found herself wishing she had three other people so they could do the work assembly-line style. A while later she glanced down at her analog watch to give her left arm (her dominant arm) a momentary break as it was tired from all the scrubbing. 7:23. She had already been here for almost an hour, and as she glanced over at the neat stack of clean dishes on the nearest table, she felt a sinking feeling. She surely wouldn't pay someone for such little work. She had only done about thriteen plates, two dozen utensils, and 7 goblets.

Bridget got back to work, cleaning faster this time but doing just as good of a job. Twice she had to stand up to stretch her aching back and shake out her cramping arms. The kitchen, as it was in the basement, was fairly cool, but she was sweating, beads of sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Her robe was soaked from water she had sloshed on herself and she had gone through four towels already.

As the minutes ticked by, her orderly mound of cleaned dishes steadily grew in size. Finally, as her eyelids drooped from exhaustion, she cleaned the last of the dishes in her stack and stood up. Now, she transferred the pristine dishes to the cabinets. Many of the house-elves had disappeared to who-knows-where. Bridget wasn't sure what she thought of their employment here--she hoped they got good wages for their work because it sure was difficult.

As she was balancing a large stack of plates in her arms to return to their shelves, she accidentally bumped into the edge of one of the tables. This caused the top few plates to slip off and clatter to the ground, shattering into several large fragments and many small bits. Thankfully, none of the remaining house-elves noticed her mistake as they scurried around to leave for the night. She gulped and quickly strategized what to do. Back in her Muggle home, her mom would just throw away the large shards and vacuum up the rest. However, there were no vacuums at Hogwarts, and besides, Bridget had something better.

She carefully slid the remaining plates onto the table she had bumped into and knelt down, withdrawing her laurel wood wand. She pointed it at the plate, flicked her wand, and said "Reparo". As she had hoped, the fragments flew through the air and resealed themselves into three solid, circular, unbroken plates. Although she didn't know any spells that would help with cleaning plates, she did know several charms that would assist in this sort of situation.

Bridget was aware that although she had fixed the plates, they were probably dirty again. After all, house-elves walked around the kitchen bare-footed, and who knew how gross their feet were. She regrettably carried the three plates back to the buckets and gave them a cursory wash.

A while later after all the plates and utensils had been returned to their respective spots in the cabinets, Bridget moved on to the cups. But there was a problem--most of the cups were supposed to go on the top shelves, and there was no way to reach the top shelves--there was nothing to climb up on (besides the stool which, for her short frame, still didn't reach). How on earth did the tiny house-elves reach the cups? Did they have magic she didn't know about? Bridget resolved to look this up in the library later.

Once again, Bridget resorted to magic to solve her problem. She had learned the Levitation Charm in Charms class this year, and if she accidentally dropped the cups while trying to levitate them, she could always fix them with Reparo. The only problem was that she hadn't really been instructed on how to accurately direct things while levitating them. They had done up and down, and had sent items zoomed around the room, but had never worked on accurately landing things. She took a deep breath. This would be just like classes--trying something new and hoping it worked.

"Wingardium Leviosa," she commanded, moving her wand in an S shape with a flick at the end. The first goblet hovered in the air. She flicked her wand and it went forward, crashing into the wooden cabinet and shattering. She patiently used the Mending Charm to fix it. She continued several unsuccessful times before the goblet zoomed into the back of the top shelf and landed upright. Bridget silently congratulated herself on the victory and set to work on the rest of the cups. It was difficult work, as she had to get them in in an orderly fashion, but it was also excellent practice. She knew all the classes spent in Charms class working on the Levitation Charm had not gone to waste.

The last goblet clattered into its spot and Bridget felt a sense of pride as she glanced around the now dirty-dish free kitchen. She checked the time again and found it was 9:30 and high time to head back to her Common Room. She had worked hard and deserved a good night's rest. However, as she walked out the disguised kitchen door, a miserable thought hit her. All that hard work for one meals' dishes. Although there were a lot of house-elves down there, she wondered if they ever got a break. Bridget settled on looking that up in the library tomorrow, then headed down the hall towards the awaiting Slytherin Common Room.

Bridget Collins exits the thread.

Word Count: 1773 (excluding tags and OOC comments)