It's my first time. Be gentle...

[Adara Snow]

The kitchen was not at all as Adara had pictured it. Yes, it was small, but that was to be expected, considering the size of his flat, but that was the least of the differences that struck her. Of those few kitchens she had actually been in, she had never seen one that was not staffed. There was no house-elf, nor any sign that there was a house-elf in residence at all. That fact gave Adara pause, but after a moment's thought, she decided that it made sense.

Adara decided to make the best of it. She opened the nearest cupboard to find it stocked with small packages that, upon closer inspection, claimed to contain something called ramen. She had never heard of such food, but since there was so much of it, she could only assume that Emilian had a fondness for it, and worked the package open.

She looked at the contents, but they didn't look any more edible open than they had inside the package, so she turned her attention to the packaging. It had directions on it, but she couldn't make much sense of them. Frustration was settling in rather quickly.

Adara did not know how she managed the mess she made, but she'd opened several packages of the food before discovering that it was dried noodles. She couldn't seem to make it at all appealing, and she was near tears with the effort of trying.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael came into the kitchen and stopped at the sight before him. There was water everywhere, along with some kind of noodles and bits of packaging. "Adara?" he asked, stepping around the mess towards her. "What in the world?" He didn't know what she had been trying to do, but she looked frustrated beyond measure, probably because of whatever the mess was on the floor.

[Adara Snow]

Adara turned from yet another attempt, a plate with a puddle of water in it and a square of the noodles on top. "Oh, Michael!" she said, more glad to see someone than ashamed of her inability, though there were both in her voice. "I wanted to make food for Emilian and myself, but I can not!" Her voice was shaking with the effort of not crying, though her eyes were shining with the threat of tears. "There are directions on the package, but I can not seem to make them work!"

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael's eyes widened as he looked around, cooking? He didn't have the first clue how to do any of that, he didn't even know any cleaning spells to clean the room up, the most he had was to clean up small messes such as crumbs on a bedsheet, he had no idea what to do with what she had done. He came up to her and took one of the packages with directions written on it and read it, but his eyes widened again, "I'm not much help here." He would try though, at least make an attempt.

[Adara Snow]

Michael's declared lack of ability both saddened and relieved her. On one hand, she'd hoped upon seeing him that he would rescue her, and be able to accomplish what she hadn't. On the other, she didn't feel so completely unintelligent for her failure. Adara took a deep breath, trying to regain some composure, and began telling Michael the steps she could recall trying, though she'd tried so many that it was impossible to list them all. "But no matter how long they sit in the water, they are still only slimy on the outside and hard on the inside!" she lamented.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael looked at her in astonishment at how hard she had tried to fix the food. He looked at the back of the package again then up at the plate she had the hard block on. "It says you need a pot," he said, it also said you had to heat it up, but he had no idea how to go about doing that, so he focused on the pot part of the equation. He looked at the picture, thinking it looked similar to a cauldron, and started opening doors, finally pulling one down. "What now?"

[Adara Snow]

Adara looked at the pot, more than a little surprised. "Is that what that was?" she mused. She blinked, then looked back down at the directions, almost excited now that Michael had made that discovery. "It says to put boiling water in it." She lifted her gaze to him, confused again. "The water will not get that hot!" she told him, gesturing toward the sink. "It will come out hot, but that is all." She wished she had her potion-making supplies, and her wand!

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"This is what it looks like on the picture," Michael said, looking at the package again. Boiling water? He looked around, trying to find the thing like they used in potions class to make their cauldrons hot, but didn't see one. He knew, though, that in class, they put the water in first, so he went to put water in the pot and pulled out his wand, the only way he knew to get fire. He aimed it at the water inside the pot and said the spell, causing fire to come from his wand, but it was extinguished in the water before it did any good. "Any ideas?" he asked, looking over at her.

[Adara Snow]

Adara chewed her lip a moment, her brow furrowed. "Well, in potions, we light the fire beneath the cauldron, so perhaps you should put your wand beneath? I will hold the pot while you try," she offered, wrapping her hands around it, since it was so heavy from the water. "I do not know how people manage this alone, it seems so difficult."

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"But the cauldron gets hot," Michael said, watching her warily. It only made sense that the pot would, as well. But he looked around, and couldn't see anywhere for it to be suspended. But there was nowhere he could see and turned his eyes back to the pot in Adara's hands. "Put it back down, I'll do it from the side," he said, not really caring to do any physical harm to her. He was beginning to see why she had gotten so frustrated, the package made no sense.

[Adara Snow]

"You think it does not have a cooling spell on it?" Adara asked, looking skeptically down at the pot. "My cauldrons always did." Not that she had ever touched her cauldrons while they'd been boiling, but it had not occurred to her that all cauldrons did not have such safety spells on them. "If you think so..." Adara glanced aside, looking for a place to set the pot that was not already covered in either noodles or water.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare had heard only low conversation as he'd made his way through the apartment to the kitchen. Nothing to prepare him for what he saw when he walked through the door. There was a mess of sodden noodles and scraps of packaging everywhere, all in various states of destruction, in puddles of various sizes, and in the middle of it all, Michael and Adara, in deep concentration over a pot of water. There was a look of near horror on Dare's face at it all. "What is going on here?" he asked.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael looked up and had a moment of wondering if that was what he had looked like when he had walked in. "It says to boil the water," he said, annoyance and frustration beginning to show in his voice. It wasn't that he had been trying for very long, it was that none of it made any sense. "But there's no fire or anywhere to hang it up!" He had never needed to attempt to cook anything, had barely even been in a kitchen, and it hadn't occurred to him to go and get Dare for help.

[Adara Snow]

Adara was glad for the added help, and launched once more into her list of things she'd tried, including in her descriptions the things she had learned with Michael. "This is a pot, is it not?" she asked. Perhaps Michael had been wrong, and there was something else which would make the water boil. "Should we have used different water?"

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare looked incredulously at the two, only realizing by the sheer confusion on their faces that they were truly serious. He bit down a disbelieving you're kidding, right? and picked his way through the mess, taking the pot gently from Adara's hands. "The water's fine," he assured her, then glanced up at Michael as he turned toward the stove. "Do you guys still want ramen?" he asked, setting the pot down and flicking on the fire. He wouldn't blame them if they didn't, considering how frustrated they both looked.