Little Cakes PV Emma & Cec Errand

Potions always bored her. There was no delight in learning about concoctions that could easily be screwed over even after hours of preparation. Perhaps it was just her opinion, but she had stirred the wrong way numerous times. Her eyes frequently met the door, essentially picturing herself running out of the lecture. She didn't want to be there, nor the last one out when it came time to meet up with friends or retreat to the four dormitories. Before she could silently suffer any longer, the magic word snapped her back to reality and she accumulated her things, hastily walking out the door. Slytherin had to be a very strong house to survive in the dungeons.

Finally, an errand Emma could enjoy. It was without a doubt most errands wouldn't be able to surpass this one. What could be better than dessert decorating? There was no constructing items for different professors or cleaning their classrooms for a quick profit if magic could be used. Even the school ambiance put her into leisure as she made her way up the Grand Staircase, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her lips. The sound was much more satisfying than traditional music played throughout classes. The task sounded too good to be true, but she couldn't wait to get there to begin decorating and later, possibly even devour them later.

Foot after foot struck the Staircase, almost threatening the steps to change its position before she approached the ground floor. Refusing to hide the smile, Emma sauntered through the doors, putting last class behind her... it was presumably why she wasn't doing too bright. She found Ruthie almost instantaneously like a light bulb radiating in the dark and picked up her speed. Making her way to the designated table, she shifted her bag to one shoulder and prepared to toss it on the bench. Calling from the end of the table, she waved dramatically, "Ru! Am I that late?" 

Setting her bag down, her eyes met the pans filled with treats. Everything looked so good, the opportunities were endless. A rainbow of colors mingled with neutral tones of frosting. Every color imaginable, from pink to even brown, had been arranged. No one wanted a coffee-colored cupcake, even in the flavor was chocolate. Emma hadn't even gotten to the sprinkles yet. It was like a cake decorator's utopia, and she could definitely play the role. Today was all about creativity, not really anything else. 

"And what are you making for us today?" She asked, impersonating a baking show host as she spoke into her fist. The great thing about creativity was that it just happened. There was no picture in her head to base her project off of. Emma didn't know if it was a better idea to go the fancy route, or just like her imagination run wild. While her version of "fancy" considered many things like grays, whites, and neutral-toned colors, it wasn't something that represented her. Finally, inspiration struck and her art block had been solved.

Word Count » 506

She was fiddling with the spatula when she heard Emma's voice come storming down the hall. Ruthie turned her head to see Emma waving at her rather dramatically. But that was one of the things she liked and, indeed shared with the third year: a certain flair for drama. "Emma!" She beamed as she got up from her seat and went over to hug her friend and Captain, "Not that late. I just came straight from Charms is all." It really hadn't been that far of a journey, especially compared to something like astronomy which lay at the very top of the school.

Emma settled in close to her, leaving her bag nearby. It was nice, Ru had to admit, to leave one's school things off to the side for the day. As Ruthie banged the spatula on the side of piping bag, she heard Emma ask in a surprisingly formal tone what she was intending on making today. "Well, today we will be making little cakes," she replied, "if I can get this little nozzle thing onto the piping bag." Clearly, unlike Emma, she was not fit for a baking show. Or, just baking in general. It seemed like such a homely thing to do. Ruthie was a child of the outdoors and task such as this felt very disorienting.

She had eyed the petal piping tip near the baking tray and put it close to her, but first she needed to remove the ruffle pipping tip that was already on the piping tube. With her thumb and index finger, she tried to turn the tip loose while her other hand kept hold of the loose end of the tube, but the tip proved to be exceptionally stubborn. Her teeth gritted together and her eyes pulled into a squint as she applied pressure to the nozzle. But her thumb slipped up onto the tube and in a second, the blue frosting she had scooped in there so furiously spilled out onto one of the baking trays and the table edges in a fairly spectacular fashion.

Eyes wide, she looked over to the older girl, and said, "Maybe the ruffle piping is best for cupcakes." Resigned to this design choice of retaining the current piping nozzle, she put the piping down in front of her and reached over for some napkins to wipe down the baking tray. After all, they were sharing all this equipment, not just together, but amongst all the students. It wasn't their fault that her attempted at Ravenclaw-inspired cake would end up botched from the first get-go. Thankfully the cake itself seemed to be unscathed.

As she cleaned, she looked about to see what other decorations she might use--what seemed as the safest alternative. "Do you bake much at home?" she asked her companion, hoping she might be more experienced in this kind of home economics. Emma had seemed sort of stuck by the materials and colors they had in front of them, until only a few moments ago if her expression was any hint. Perhaps she might have ideas--or knowledge on how to change a piping tip. Ruthie, more comfortable on a cliff than in a kitchen, hoped her friend might lend some direction.

WC: 540 + 508 = 1048 (Errand complete!) | For @Emma Hill

Cecily was late, again, but after three years of her apparent inability to keep time, this wasn't a shock to anyone. In her defense, though, she had a reasonable excuse this time! Ruthie had sprung this event on her at the last minute. She knew that she shouldn't agree-- she had homework to do, letters to write, assignments to complete. But as soon ad the word "cupcakes" escaped her friend's lips, Cecily was in. There was no way she could resist food, even if she ever wanted to. She hadn't baked in years, at the very least not since she left for her first year at school. And so here she was, running late per her style, having spent the past hour desperately trying to finish an essay for History of Magic. She had just one paragraph left when she knew she should've started making her way to the Great Hall, but she couldn't just leave one paragraph left; she knew she would never get the motivation back to finish it. So, at the expense of a few minutes, she scribbled out the conclusion to her essay-- which was poorly written anyway, so a haphazard ending really didn't detract all that much from the overall quality-- shoved everything back where it belonged, and hightailed it down what seemed like every flight of stairs in the castle to make it to the Great Hall somewhat, sort of on time.

Finally outside of the room, Cecily took a moment to get her breath back and regain her composure after her wild race down the stairs. At the very least, she was making attempts to be less late, if not technically "on time". After a few deep breaths, the Ravenclaw quickly pushed the solid door open, and surveyed the mass of people that had shown up to the errand. Frankly, the amount of students that had made time to decorate cupcakes was unsurprising; it seemed like a love of food was a common theme around the castle. Small groups congregated throughout the room, which looked remarkably different when it wasn't set up for meals. Instead, the typical cutlery was replaced with spatulas and scrapers, and plates and bowls made way for baking sheets full of undecorated cupcakes and a truly spectacular array of colorful frosting. As she made her way to where she could see Ruthie and fellow third-year Emma, already looking like they were having a blast, Cecily glanced over the shoulders of those nearest to her. The sheer amount of creativity in this room-- wow. Between the wide varieties of frosting, nonpareils, piping tips, and candies, no two cupcakes looked even remotely the same.

Cecily grinned and waved as she approached her friends, who were already hard at work on their first cupcake-- or, on the baking sheet, rather. Cecily laughed as Ruthie decorated the tabletop with brilliant blue icing. "Hey guys! How's it going over here?" The Ravenclaw greeted the two girls and looked pointedly at the mess on the table, absolutely not acknowledging her lateness. She had been here the whole time, for sure, ready to let her creativity run rampant and make a masterpiece out of these baked goods.

WC: 533
@Emma Hill @Ruthie Greer

When it came to the basic stereotypes, Emma was definitely a combination of the two. Once summertime rolled around and she was out of school, she became more of a stay-at-home kind of girl, unwilling to burn herself in the golden sun unless it was to swim indoors at the local recreation center several miles away. Despite bearing her love for physical activity, sometimes it was just delightful to step away from all of that and unwind with family in the living room. Evening basketball games had been moved to make room for family time. It was remarkable how intense watching entertainment programs could get, arguing that the Hills could have surely defeated one of the families and claimed the prize to themselves. 

Rolling up her sleeves, the brunette clapped her hands together and grabbed one of the piping bags. Her white spatula had been tinted with stains of blue and red to represent her house and her favorite color. She tried her hardest to divide the two colors as evenly as she could to get a satisfying result. She was no baker, but it was something other than the traditional way to pipe frosting. Despite there being a bit more blue than red, she still managed to find some pleasure in performing the task. She gave the bag a few twists before taking it in her hand, old memories returning back to her as she bent down.

The brunette refused to hold her laugh in as she watched Ruthie fiddle around with the baking tool. Part of her simply wanted to scoop up and consume the blue frosting. At this rate, the girls would be fishing for extra blue frosting. It was needless to say, the color was a favorite amongst them. Its color was appealing, but the taste was undoubtedly much more pleasant. Setting down her bag, she grabbed an empty one and handed it to Ruthie. Although there were better, and more efficient ways of cleaning up the mess, where was the fun in using magic? Between laughs, she managed to get out her message."It's okay, at least it's just frosting."

The third-year couldn't specifically remember the last time she got to sit in the kitchen and bake. There had been no baked arranged in her new home, but it was still up to Emma and her family to make new memories. She really wanted to get back into the hobby, but there were other things to do. She had grown out of it. "Mmm, not much recently, but maybe two years ago?" She responded, a familiar voice sounding not too far away. She didn't mind that Cecily was late, Emma had a bad habit of showing up "fashionably late" to events that were much too important. She couldn't say a single word, so she smiled brightly and waved at Cecily. 

"Just working up the nerves to pipe the icing on. How are you guys decorating your cupcakes?" She asked, using both hands to pipe a spiral on the bland cupcake. It was nowhere near perfect, but there was still enough to make a least a dozen more. She wasn't afraid of failure, bring on the cupcakes!

WC: 530 + 506 = 1,036 // Errand Complete!

Cecily should, in Ruthie's opinion, be glad she missed the great frosting squirt of 2020. The older Prefect had a certain proclivity for showing up late, but Ruthie suspected that might serve the blonde in more ways than she might know. Still, Ruthie was glad when Cec showed up even if she was alerted to her presence by a clear laugh. Ru looked up to find Cec looking over her mess. At that, she could feel her cheeks flush ever so slightly. Still, Cecily's greeting seemed warm and bright. "It's going," Ruthie replied, "But I think Emma is certainly better at this than I am. You probably are too. Bake much?" She didn't know much of Cecily's background, but it wouldn't be hard to beat her mess no matter if she hadn't baked at all at home.

But Cecily wasn't the only one laughing. Emma let out a lough laugh as the frosting had escaped the piping bag. "Thanks," she replied as she took the empty piping bag from Emma's hand. It was nice to have help on a task like this. Emma was kind about her mishap, which was about as much as she could hope for.

Emma said she'd not done much baking recently, but had years ago. Perhaps she grew up with it? Ruthie raised an eye. She knew there were people that did not live along the seaside--probably most people--but still it seemed so foreign from what she knew. "I've never baked anything in my life," Ruthie acknowledged as she shuffled more frosting back into the piping bag. It was time for round two on icing.

But first, she tamed a fly-away hair before acknowledging Emma's question. "Em," she began, unsure, "Maybe some of those beads would be good. What about you all?" She pointed with the piping bag towards some round sliver sprinkles in a wee cup. They seemed like a safe choice. Silver went with everything, didn't it? Maybe Emma and Cecily had elaborate cupcake dreams--maybe they were creative--but Ru was just winging it. So putting the pipping bag atop her cupcake, she squeezed and watched the frosting come out in a sort of spiral across the top. It was hardly clean, but kind of a squashed, uneven spiral. Still, she couldn't help feeling this was progress.

For @Emma Hill & @Cecily Quinn | Apologies for quality. Quarantine brain is in effect.

Cecily surveyed her options, trying to let the bright colors and shapes spark a bit of creativity. She always had trouble with inspiration-- it never came to her when she needed it. It was why she could never be a creative writer. (Well, that, plus the fact that she wasn't particularly good at writing to begin with.) If someone asked her to just sit down and write, or draw, or even sing, she would have no idea what to do. More often than not, these attempts ended in her making a few colorful marks on the page before getting distracted and abandoning the project forever. A lack of artistic creativity was something she had always hated possessing, and it seemed like this flaw would very soon shine through in this event.

Something Ravenclaw-related was, of course, the obvious choice here-- one it seemed that Ruthie and Emma had already fully embraced. Alright, so she could do that too, she just had to...um...think of something...unique. Which was exactly her least favorite thing to do. Get a group of friends out of a pinch? Cecily was your girl. Paint an abstract rendition of your personality? Well, the Ravenclaw would already be running in the other direction. But Cecily put on a smile and looked closely at the bare cake in front of her. What could she make out of frosting and sprinkles? It wasn't like she was about to create a Van Gogh or anything. But of course there was something she could do with this empty pastry; she just had to think of it.

Things she liked, things that she could convey onto a cupcake. Hmm. Her home. Ireland. Her family, their cozy little cottage. Playing in the fields, with her brothers, flying on a broomstick. Flying...wait, that was it! Cecily knew exactly what she needed to do. She was going to make the official cupcake of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.

As she reached for a shade of blue that hadn't already been claimed by the two girls next to her, Cecily was grinning for real. This was going to be the epic-est cupcake in existence-- well, in theory. Practically, it would probably look like a smush of blue with some doodads on top, but that wasn't going to stop her!

"I used to sit in the kitchen while my mother baked cookies. I would pretend to help, but really I was just sneaking bites of the dough." Cecily laughed at the memory. She could practically taste the sweet, buttery taste of the cookies pre-oven-- just the thought began to lighten her spirits. Suddenly, she couldn't wait to see her mother again, to curl up by the fireplace while the sugary scent of sweets floated through doorways. Sure, the treats at Hogwarts were over-the-top delicious, but there was just something different about those pastries you stole a little too much uncooked batter from, the ones you could watch rise through the window in the oven door, the ones you got to taste while they burned the roof of your mouth and you watched, laughing, while your brother downed a glass of milk to cool it down. There was something different.

Just as there would be something different about this cupcake, Cecily accepted, as she scooped the fluffy icing into a bag, trying to remember how she'd seen her mother do it in the past. She had to push the frosting down to the bottom, but be careful not to squeeze it everywhere, and then-- what was she forgetting? Oh, right! She was lucky enough to learn from Ruthie's mistake as she twisted the top of the bag to keep the frosting inside. Now, Cecily had frosted a cupcake exactly once in her thirteen years of existence, and, well... it was no prize-winner. She didn't have much higher expectations for this pastry, which was why she gasped in surprise as she moved the bag in a spiral motion on top of the cake and the end product looked vaguely cupcake shaped! It still was nothing she would ever see in a cookbook-- she had a long way to go before it was anything amazing-- but it was a respectable second first attempt.

WC: 700 +533 = 1233
errand complete!

Admittedly, Emma didn't really have something to base her cupcake off of. If anything, she was simply taking her two favorite colors and putting them on the pastry, silently hoping they would melt down into a spotty purple. She was sure about the colors, but as for the design- She had no clue. There wasn't much on the table that could sketch her interests. Arranging the ornamental beads into a ball wouldn't get far, not until her clumsiness took over and her fingers took a nice dip in the icing. It was an evasive method to get a quick taste of the topping. 

"I wish they'd do more errands like this," she began. "Making things in general, I mean." Sometimes, well really all the time, it was nice to step away from the tasks from professors. If prefects began giving out more errands like this, she would probably contribute more time doing those rather than traipsing around the castle with seemingly nothing to do.

The only color she could picture going well with her creation was yellow; the essential primary colors she'd learned as a child. Now apparently something learned in her toddler years was a fraud. The bright color was way too intense for her liking. Nevertheless, she took several miniature silver beads and dropped them on to the cupcake. Temptation pulled her to a few of the silver sprinkles. A true cupcake was never perfect without a few sprinkles on top. Pinching a few metallic sprinkles, a few crushing under pressure, she dropped them on to her creation and looked down on it with a smile. Something about it just seemed incomplete. There had to be something she could add, only to make it stand out in a good or bad way. 

Her mind began wandering back to years ago to her old home, where baking was relevant and magic was seldomly used. Though her father was never keen on the idea, it was the mother that pushed her to participate in other things besides magic. "The first time I ever baked, my mother put me in charge of the oven... I was eleven." She shared, the stench of burned goodies tickling her nose. Now, they were in a new home, with new memories, and the old memories and traditions slowly depleting as time passed on. The next thing she needed to learn how to do was cook. Emma just hoped she burn the house down.

Stratching her head slightly, she was struggling to gain artistic insight. Thankfully, she had two senior students with her who would be able to fill in the gaps. Maybe they had childhood cookies of being indoors cooking or baking. Maybe they didn't spend every waking moment outside. Maybe that was normal.

Ruthie listened eagerly to her companions, hoping they might have useful insight. This was something she had come to associate with both Cecily and Emma. "The dough must be the best bit," she commented on Cecily's story of stealing dough at home. Memories of baking were pretty much nil, but she imagined the dough was the best bit if it was worth stealing.

Cecily had scooped frosting into a piping bag with a kind of grace Ruthie knew she'd likely never have. Skillfully she twisted the top of the piping bag. "Ohhh," Ru let out, "Cec, that's so clever! If only you had been here earlier." While she couldn't turn back time, she could learn from her mistakes. She knew she start twisting the top of piping bags moving forward throughout this errand. Cecily's frosting wasn't perfect--as perhaps Gris would have wanted--but it was certainly better than anything Ruthie might make.

Ruthie was still admiring Cecily's cupcake when Emma pipped up about this type of errand. As someone always looking for new errands to make, Ruthie nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I hate cleaning," she said, "I like errands that are different, where we use other skills or get to be creative." She thought back to Women's Day. That had been nice: seeing folks work on their posters and cards. Helping Katrina plant a tree had been particularly fun, and she'd love to play on the natural theme for future errands. But really, anything beat cleaning.

Ruthie reached for the sparkle baubles and dropped them on top of her blue frosted cupcake. There seemed to be a kind of Ravenclaw theme going around, which only seemed appropriate seeing as that was what they were. It didn't stand out as a good cupcake, but it was edible, which after all was the entire point (even if Gris said not to eat the cupcakes). Setting it aside, she took a new cupcake, fresh and ready for her second attempt. Hopefully, this one would be less dramatically disastrous.

Her nose turned up, she was considering her next color as she listened to her Captain. "You were responsible for a whole oven?" Ruthie asked incredulously. She couldn't imagine that responsibility at her age, even if it was literally watching an oven. Watching puffins were no problem, but an oven seemed ominous. Meanwhile, a sort of lilac color jumped out at her. She'd take this and shove it into a clean pipping bag, trying to emulate Cecily for good measure.

For @Emma Hill & @Cecily Quinn