In the kitchen of the Leaky Cauldron, Cedric pulled on the dragon-hide gloves he had barely used for anything useful and slid the baking sheet out of the oven.
The gloves were almost too good.
A thin layer of hide killed the heat completely while leaving his fingers free to move however he wanted.
He liked them more than he liked most people.
He liked the kitchen too.
It looked like a collection of relics from the last century, but magic changed the equation.
Even the smartest twenty-first-century kitchen he remembered from his previous life could not match a fully automated setup that answered to a wand.
One flick and an entire meal appeared.
The problem was the menu.
Everything that came out was English.
Acceptable in a pinch.
Not something he planned to live on forever.
When he finally built a kitchen of his own, French would be the floor.
Anything less felt like settling.
That was future talk.
Right now he carried sixteen thousand two hundred Galleons of debt—twelve thousand on the wand and four thousand two hundred in student loans.
Dreaming about kitchens was a waste of time.
Eating was not.
A deep, charred aroma filled the room.
Cedric and Noir, perched on his shoulder, both stared at the sheet of dark green leaves.
He peeled off the gloves, picked up one piece, and snapped it between his fingers.
The sound was not crisp.
Biting Cabbage had that texture no matter what you did to it.
Only a freeze-dryer might have forced real crunch out of the leaves, and he did not have one.
Still, the result looked decent.
Slow roasting over low heat had pulled most of the moisture out.
Hand of the Artisan had done the rest—heat and salt measured with the kind of precision that turned mediocre ingredients into something worth eating.
Compared with the high-heat stir-fry from earlier, this plate was in a different league.
Eye of Insight confirmed it.
[Roasted Biting Cabbage]
Effect: Grants status [Magical Activity E] for ten minutes.
Host gains an additional 10 enhancement points.
Better numbers across the board.
Higher-grade status, longer duration, more points.
The implication landed cleanly.
Cooking method mattered.
The same ingredient could yield more if he found the right preparation.
Every new material was a puzzle: lock in the best recipe first, then harvest every possible point.
“Recipes,” he murmured, and put a piece in his mouth.
Salt was fine.
Bitterness still sat underneath, stubborn.
Blanching before roasting might pull some of it out, but the leaves were thin.
Push the heat too far and the interior would turn to cardboard.
He ate several more pieces while he thought.
Ten points settled into the system.
The bitterness was still there, but the points made it easier to ignore.
Noir was losing its mind.
The crow’s eyes never left the baking sheet.
If it had not still been a little afraid of him, it would have buried its entire head in the leaves and started pecking without pause.
The roasted cabbage smelled better than anything it had tasted in the room upstairs.
“What’s that smell?”
Ron, the landlord, had come to check that the boy was not burning the place down.
He stopped in the doorway, nostrils flaring.
The fragrance cut straight through whatever kitchen magic he usually relied on.
“You make this?” He crossed the floor in three strides and stared at the sheet like a man who had not eaten in days.
“Can I try one?”
“Go ahead.
You lent me the kitchen.”
Ron did not wait for a second invitation.
A clean fork floated into his hand.
He speared a leaf and put it in his mouth.
His eyes went wide.
“This is… damn.”
He said it loud enough for the empty pub to hear, then kept going.
Fork after fork.
No pause, no manners, just pure need.
Noir lost whatever remaining composure it had.
The crow shrieked, wings flaring, ready to launch itself at Ron’s head and start plucking what little hair remained.
Cedric caught it by the body before it could commit murder and shoved a piece of cabbage straight into its beak.
Noir ate it in three frantic pecks.
Its eyes glazed over with the exact same stupid bliss currently painted across Ron’s face.
Cedric felt no surprise.
The first time Hand of the Artisan had turned a plain roast into something that hit like a drug, he had looked the same way himself.
Out in the woods, alone, chewing rabbit that suddenly tasted like it had been prepared by a chef who charged more than most people earned in a year.
The effect was the same every time.
People who had never tasted it before simply had no defense.