Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter

Summary: After spending two years in the auror department, the trio decide to retire and aspire to more relaxing careers. Hermione goes off to help the odd pair Neville and Draco with their growing restaurant business, and the two bored Ron and Harry take lessons from Mrs. Weasley on baking. Hermione approaches them one day with an interesting idea for a bakery and all hell's let loose. Slash R/H D/N

A/N: I'm a baking and pastry arts major with the crappiest confidence in my skills and knowledge of the subject. So as a way to make sure I have everything I've learned drilled into my head, I've decided to write a fanfic on it. If there's any hardcore baker's out there I would LOVE your input on whether I've got the facts straight (constructive criticism on this would help improve my less than fabulous skills X.X), just remember there are different methods in producing pastries and breads, and the following chapters are just the methods I've been taught. Also! I have NO clue about the financial aspect of food service management, so I wouldn't mind advice on that if there's anyone out there knowledgeable on the subject :)

Anyway, hope you like this! I haven't popped out any fanfics for years, so I apologize if the writing's not that great…or if I overdid it on the information…

Enjoy!

Chapter One

The Power of Boredom

Making bread was more difficult than they thought despite the main ingredients being only flour, water, yeast, and salt. From what Mrs. Weasley told them, many different types of bread could be produced with just those four ingredients. It all depends on the amount of each ingredient, the type of pre-ferment, the temperature of everything including the room, the mixing method, amount of fermentation, and the type of oven and temperature they would be baked in. In some cases, such as when you're making sourdough bread, it also depended on what region you're in.

They just wanted to eat the bread, end of story.

They were in the kitchen on a warm summer day. The sun was streaming in, warming the kitchen as they sat in a daze at the table listening to Mrs. Weasley explain the complexities of bread. They knew the woman was an excellent home baker, but to have such vast knowledge on just bread itself, they were more than a little terrified. Harry would never look the woman the same again. Ron was traumatized, though he really shouldn't have been since she did have him homeschooled under her direction.

"There are different types of flour," she explained, waving to the bowl of flour in front of her, "we'll be working with bread flour. To be more specific, it's a hard winter wheat type of flour that has a protein content of 11 to 14 percent, the ideal number flour to making artisan bread like Baguettes and Pain Rustique is 11.5 to 11.7 percent, why? Because when you squeeze this flour, it doesn't lump up, nor does it need to be sifted, which means it's tough enough to make bread. Other flours range from hard to soft, hard for bread because of its high gluten content, soft for cakes because of its low gluten content, summer to winter which simply means the type of season they were harvested, and red to white –"

"Mum!" Ron cut in, his head swimming from too much information, "this is all going in one ear and out the other, can we just make the bread!"

"Oh…sorry I got carried away," she laughed embarrassedly, "It'll take a few days to teach you what I know, though," she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Wonderful, what are we going to do today then?" Ron stood from his seat and stretched. It looked kind of funny considering he was in a pink apron with frills, and his hair was pulled back with pins. Harry thought he looked like a girly guy about to belt out a soprano.

"First off, we'll make the pre-ferments for tomorrow's breads," she waved her wand, pulling out several bowls from the counter. "We'll be doing three Poolish, a Biga, and a Starter."

"Poo-lish?" Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing. He tried to hide it by adjusting his glasses.

"Yes," Mrs. Weasley nodded, waving her wand again to bring out her old scales. "Poolish is a wet dough, from that I mean that it has a high water content – a one to one ratio of flour to water. We'll be mixing three of these today and let them ferment overnight so they can be used for the Baguette, Rum Raisin Brioche, and Ciabatta."

"So…what does this do to the bread?" Ron asked hesitantly, hoping he wouldn't get a lengthy explanation.

"First off once it's fully fermented, it's then mixed with the rest of the ingredients" Mrs. Weasley answered instantly, her tone reminding the two friends of Hermione. "In bread all pre-ferments help in increasing the flavor, strength, and shelf life of the bread." She placed an empty bowl on the scale, set it to zero and started piling the bowl with flour. "Each of us will be doing one poolish – four ounces of floor, four ounces of water, and a pinch of the muggle yeast." She nodded to a tiny bowl of very little brown beads: instant yeast.

"What's the difference with poolish and the other pre-ferments you mentioned?" Harry asked curiously, waving his wand to the sink and getting the water to float onto his second bowl on his scale. Once that was done, he mimicked Mrs. Weasley and poured it into his bowl of flour, adding the pinch of instant yeast, and mixing it with his bowl scraper.

"Poolish is a wet loose dough, it gives the bread a more lactic flavor, Biga is a dry hard dough, it gives the bread a more sour flavor, and is also used for bread with low gluten. There's also the sponge, which is used mostly for breads with fats and sugars due to its added strength to the bread. Without it the fats and sugars would have softened the dough too much. Pate Fermente is actually a piece of old bread dough that's added to the next dough, and a Starter is a pre-ferment that uses the natural wild yeast from the flour, it's first fed with a sugar like molasses to get it going, and then it's fed with flour and water every day to keep it in check before using a portion to make sourdough bread…" she looked up at her students who gave are awkward looks, "did you get it?"

"In one ear, out the other, mum," Ron sighed, using his bowl scraper to cut into his half mixed poolish in order to get to the flour hiding under some dough.

"I'll explain them again when we get to it," Mrs. Weasley sighed, scraping dough off her bowl scraper. Over the years she'd grown fond of muggle products like her husband, but more for the practical things like aluminum foil and Tupperware. She pulled out a piece of aluminum foil and covered the top of the bowl. "I'd put these in a shaded cool area so they don't ferment too quickly under the sun," she advised as Harry and Ron repeated her last step once their Poolish was completely mixed. They placed their bowls under the top counter where the sun wouldn't get to them.

They moved on to biga, which was more flour than water, and then their starters which was flour, molasses, and water. Though they complained with their teacher exploding with too much information, they couldn't help the peaceful happiness that came over them as they started mixing bread.

Two years ago they wouldn't have expected to see themselves in the tiny kitchen of the Burrow, learning baking techniques from Mrs. Weasley. They also, even now, wouldn't have expected the woman to be so knowledgeable. Especially on things they'd never once see her do.

They had been taking lessons from her since the start of June, making pastries like pies and tarts to crème brulee and cake. Both weren't really sure why they chose such a hobby, they just wanted to relax.

It had been about three months since their retirement from the auror department. When they started, the only goal was to arrest any death eaters still hiding around. Within a year that task was completed. A surprisingly fast accomplishment in their eyes. Other people, however, would say it was no surprise at all; the trio had been completely dedicated to their jobs to the point where they barely slept and lived on pepper up potions and coffee.

Then the year after that was surprisingly…boring. With the threat of death eaters and Voldemort supporters gone, the wizarding world had fallen into a time of peace. There were barely ever any crimes or murders. The most Aurors were left to do was patrol the streets or go into the muggle police department. As tempting as that was for the trio, they decided they were done with fighting crime, at least for the moment.

It was now time to sit back and relax.

With the earnings and retirement money from their work as aurors Harry and Ron took up a few vacations to the tropics, adventures to the amazons, and even took a few comedic lessons with muggles on snowboarding in the Alps. Ron got into a bit of trouble with the ministry for charming his board in front of his instructors, albeit, the moves he pulled off definitely made the day memorable with the looks on the muggles faces. Hermione, however, used the money to branch her studies out to business.

As much fun as that was though, they were still antsy with boredom.

Not two weeks had passed from staying at the Burrow that Mrs. Weasley noticed them lying on the couch like lazy bums. Ron spread out upside down on the love seat, with his cheek flat on the floor. Harry lying on his stomach on the couch with his butt in the air. They had been discussing their regrets on retiring early for the hundredth time, but didn't have the motivation to go back.

Yep. They were bored. And if they were going to lie around like that, Mrs. Weasley wasn't having any of it.

She was making a fruit tart for dessert that day, so she got them to help her out. She made Ron roll out the dough, sent Harry out to pick the berries growing in the backyard, and set to make the pastry cream and glaze herself.

It was a simple step by step process of baking the tart shell, letting it cool before brushing the bottom with chocolate, filling it with pastry cream, and letting the boys decorate the tart with the picked fruit themselves before glazing it.

Normally Ron would pitch a fit and whine whenever asked to help out in the kitchen. And Harry, though he was a decent cook from years of making meals for the Dursleys, never had any interest in the kitchen, much less baking.

So it was a surprise to her when she saw the smiles growing on their faces as they placed the fruit over the pastry cream. She figured they must have been so bored that this brought some excitement to their lives. She didn't think too much of it at the time.

Then she started to see them from the corner of her eye, heads poking out from the edge of the door as they watched her cook dinner. She found it amusing; they were like little kids wondering what their mother was going to make for them.

The spying continued on for a week. She became more than a little curious to why they were always peeking.

And didn't Harry have a home to go to anyway!

The answer was simple. They wanted to learn how to bake. The fruit tart they helped her with had left an impression on them. They didn't do much, but once the tart was finished, they were hooked. They made nothing into something, and they wanted to do it again.

Boredom was a dangerous thing…

She predicted they wouldn't last one week. She took them under her wing, waking them up at the crack of dawn, and working them all the way to dinner. From the shocked looks on their faces she knew they'd been thinking this was an easy job. They were incredibly mistaken.

Compared to the art of the culinary arts, baking was a science. To make pasta, all you had to do was cook it in boiling water, rinse it and create a sauce with whatever was handy. You toss a pinch of salt here, a generous amount of cream there, and voila, dinner. To make something like a cake though, there was a strict set of ingredients, with a strict set of amounts, with a strict set of procedures. Add the eggs too quickly to the batter and it'll curdle, add too much flour to the mix and it's a rock, too much baking powder and it's the devil's shit. Most important of all, there must be an understanding for such procedures like the creaming method, because if you do fuck up, you'll know how to fix it.

There was also another difference. When cooking and you mess up in the end, you can add a little bit of this and that and make it delicious. When baking and your cake falls in the end, you have to start all over again. From the looks on Harry and Ron's faces when their first cake came out looking like flat gelatin, she knew they had no idea how tough baking truly was.

One week was too long; they weren't going to survive three days!

Then their third sponge cake came out white and springy and the same smiles she'd seen the day they made the tart broke through again. Ron even christened himself the king of all cakes.

She was still unsure of their dedication so she pulled a fast one on them. A Genoise. What made this cake difficult was that it didn't have chemical leavening like baking powder. It relied on the air cells trapped in the batter from the mixing process. They would definitely have trouble with the air if they didn't mix right, and there was the risk of burning their eggs on the bain marie, or double boiler if they didn't pay enough attention.

It took them several tries and many trips to the market, but they managed to conquer the Genoise, and by the time they reached cake decorating, two weeks had gone by. Mrs. Weasley was pleasantly surprised.

She watched them as they measured out ingredients for their Challah as their biga fermented on the counter. She noted the scars on their arms of their past battles against death eaters and vicious magical creatures, and the calloused hands from Quidditch games. She also noted the faint scars and burns of when they cut themselves slicing apples, or touched a sheet pan in a hot oven with their bare hands.

The mark of a baker. They were getting there.

To say she was shocked was an understatement. She was in her office at her house looking over a few notes for her classes when they knocked on her door and pretty much barged in. It wasn't that they had interrupted her on her study time, which was a dangerous situation for the poor devil who interrupted the wizarding world's cleverest and most studious witch anyway. It was that it was Neville Longbottom, and Draco Malfoy standing side by side with no animosity or fear of each other.

Hell froze over.

"Granger," Malfoy greeted with a nod, he wasn't smiling at her, which brought a bit of normalcy to her from this completely unexpected and very otherworldly visit.

"Hi, Hermione," Neville waved sheepishly, knowing how confused the woman must be. "How are you?"

"Er…" she took off her reading glasses and looked from her friend to her old school bully, "a bit lost actually…I…" she sighed, "Malfoy what the hell are you doing here? And with him?" she waved to Neville, "and in here? My office? Hermione Muggle-Born Granger's office?"

The blond man glanced to Neville awkwardly, shifting his weight before nudging the shorter man in the arm.

"You tell her," he muttered, not low enough. Hermione arched an eyebrow and looked to Neville who laughed nervously.

"I guess this is a bit of a shock for you – do you mind if we sit?" he rubbed the back of his head. Hermione nodded and gestured to the two seats in front of her. "Right…" he mumbled. They took their seats. Hermione waited patiently, mentally listing out the reasons why these two were here.

They were friends. A couple? Maybe business partners, Draco had mentioned to the prophet that he would be taking a different route from the political world, actually he pretty much said 'not interested', but what did Neville had to do with his career endeavors? Was it anything to do with careers?

Maybe they were partnering up for some type of business…

What did that have to do with her?

She was studying business – oh right!

"This is going to sound weird, but we – including Draco – need your help with an idea we're trying to put together," Neville started, nodding to the blond who gave a curt nod.

"You and…Draco," she repeated, turning to said man. "And this idea is…?"

"We want to open fine dining restaurants in both the wizarding and muggle worlds in order to introduce a fusion cuisine of said worlds," Draco said promptly.

"It would really help in getting muggles and wizards together and understand each other's cultures," Neville added sensibly, "after the war, some muggles have become aware of our existence, obliviating them has no effect. Hundreds of years ago they would hunt and burn us, but with this new generation which is more liberal and accepting than their ancestors, we can show them that we're a peaceful community just as diverse and accepting as they are."

"That's a very optimistic view," Hermione said gently "but not all muggles are as liberal as you think, and neither are we. The point of the Statute of Secrecy was not only to protect ourselves, but to protect them. What would happen if an adventurous muggle wanted to meet a dragon? There's also the possibility of politicians using wizarding sources to declare war on other countries. We may be in peace, but they're still fighting out wars," she shook her head; "it can't be done."

"All the more reason to use food for peace," Neville persisted.

Hermione sighed. "You mentioned a fusion of muggle and wizarding cuisine. That alone goes against the laws of non-tradable goods. Besides, I think a muggle would freak out if they order something like a Turpis Salad, they'd think they're being poisoned with rotted spinach or something.

"But Turpis just grows that way," Draco frowned. Hermione resisted rolling her eyes.

"We're aware of all of that," Neville nodded, "we're not saying we want to reveal to the muggles everything about our world, we just want them to become aware of our existence, let them know we're friends."

"But – "

"We'll start with the muggles who already know about us. Political leaders, families of muggleborns and half-blood's," Neville went on. Hermione still looked skeptical. "They've known about us, but we've never exposed them to the dangers of our world, it can work out with the muggles who are still ignorant of us, but that's all to come in the far future if this even works, what we want is to bring muggles and wizards at the same table to enjoy a memorable meal."

"What is that your mission statement?" Hermione arched an eyebrow dryly, a little amused. "What do you plan to gain from this? Malfoy, I know this'll help you clean up your image from the war, that's obvious, but you?" she turned to Neville, "I thought you were happy with your herbs and roots shop."

"I am," Neville nodded quickly, while Draco straightened in his seat indignantly from Hermione's assumption. "But…well…it's a naïve dream, but all we want is world peace."

The woman pursed her lips to keep from laughing. Leave it to Neville to say a cliché Miss Universe line. Something was still bothering her, though. She turned to Draco suspiciously.

"You're in on this dream too?" she asked dully.

Draco bit the corner of his lip and gave another of his curt nods. She didn't believe him. In fact she couldn't even believe the two were planning such an idea, and sitting together with no animosity in her office.

"Could you explain to me," she crossed her fingers neatly over her desk. "How on earth you two are working together?"

"Long story," the two men said shortly. Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"Well…why come to me then? I haven't mastered business yet, and I don't have the funds to help you…with anything!" she raised her hands, letting them drop to the arms of her chair as she sat back.

"You're the cleverest witch of the decade, a war hero and Harry Potter's best friend," Neville said smoothly, "you can influence a whole nation if you tried."

"And Kingsley likes you more than us," Draco added unashamedly. Hermione flushed.

"Harry has more influence than me," she said half heartedly. It was hard to say 'no' to friends when they fed her ego.

"You're smarter," Neville rubbed on, knowing her weakness, "and you could help us in management and setting up a plan to ensure that muggle customers aren't scared off by any sign of magic."

"They could sign an oath of secrecy," she mumbled thoughtfully. "Make it all underground and mysterious…like an exclusive club…"

Draco looked two seconds from letting his jaw drop. He glanced at Neville's accomplished smirk. Throughout their whole trip to Hermione's house he'd been arguing that she wouldn't agree to their proposal, but Neville kept telling him it would be fine, he'd have her setting up ground rules by the end of their visit.

"But we can't force them head on with wizarding cuisine," Hermione said in the muddle of her babbling. The pair looked at her inquiringly, "with all the different flavors, it might be too intense and could send them in allergic reactions we will end up liable for."

"If not restaurants, what do we start with then?" Draco asked.

"A sandwich shop?" she suggested hesitantly, "candy shop maybe?"

"How about a bakery?" Neville said suddenly, with a face that could only mean that ideas were rolling. "Wizarding pastries are mostly normal in the muggle sense, we could introduce new flours, sugars, flavors and textures, and unlike a Turpis Salad, nothing will look like it'll poison you."

"I'll contact a few wizard patissiers I know from France to send a team over," Draco said instantly. Both Hermione and Neville held back their opinions of how obnoxiously rich the man just sounded. They exchanged grins.

"A bakery," Hermione said more to herself, "the world's first muggle wizard fusion bakery."

To be continued