Fanfic / Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce

Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce is a Alternate Universe Fic on Archive of Our Own that's essentially a crossover between Harry Potter and MasterChef, with the main focus on the Harry Potter side of things. While some consider it a Crack Fic, it also has good characterization and emotional weight.

The fic splits off from canon at the start of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry doesn't know why Dumbledore is recruiting a teacher from a restaurant, especially since Gordon Ramsay clearly doesn't like Dumbledore, or the way he teaches. But as becomes clear, there is one thing that Ramsay hates more: incompetent teaching. After hearing Harry's less than enthusiastic descriptions of Snape, he agrees to become the new Potions master.

What follows is a slightly different sixth year for Harry and friends; among other things, in order to take the students' minds off the upcoming war and give them something more positive to focus on, Ramsay arranges "the very first MagicChef Junior competition" at Hogwarts. Ron (who's been getting cooking lessons from his mother) lets Harry and Hermione talk him into entering the competition, and ends up as one of the twelve contestants.

But there is still a war going on, and even something as innocent as a cooking competition isn't completely safe...

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Tropes for this fanfiction include:

• Abusive Parents: Etienne Montmercy is this to his transgender son, Julien, by constantly referring him as his daughter and being incredibly possessive and smothering towards him.
• The Ace: While the contestants are talented at cooking, Arjuna Belaji took this into a whole another level, as she had won many cooking competitions since she was five, and had also won most challenges in MagicChef Junior.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Rose Zeller is this for the most part, and many others, including Lucius, found her really adorable.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Astoria refers to her best friend Arjuna as "R.J". Arjuna eventually adopts this as a pen name under which she writes for the anti-Voldemort resistance movement.
  • Daphne's boyfriend refers to her as his "Laurel", a clear nod to the etymology of her name.
  • Antoinette Montmercy calls her son Julien her "July gillyflower", after an old rhyme she used to read to him. Julien's chosen name is derived from this, and it ends up being a memory trigger for him to break the Imperius Curse his transphobic father put on him.
• Against My Religion: Arjuna's family considers cows sacred, so she refuses to cook with beef. Played for Drama as her ambition to prove herself, in combination with this, drives her to sabotage and cheat in the MagicChef Junior competition, prompting her elimination.
• Amoral Attorney: The Bulstrodes run a lawyer practice and are sympathetic to the Death Eater causes and their shady dealings, and caused their actually-guilty clients to be let off the hook after the first war by drawing sympathy to their parenthood. However, even Europa Bulstrode is disgusted by Yaxley's blatant Kangaroo Court procedures, Insane Troll Logic arguments, and sadism in wanting to condemn a minor to the Dementor's Kiss in spite of its lack of legality, and overall, both Bulstrode parents value law and order over the Death Eater regime.
• Animorphism: In this continuity, Draco Malfoy is revealed to have become an Animagus, being able to turn into a white Turkish Angora cat with grey eyes.
• Anyone Can Die: True to form, many cast members both canon and original end up being killed off. And unfortunately for some MagicChef Junior characters, they aren't safe either from being killed off.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Death's Head Shells release a highly corrosive acid when they go off, and are powerful enough to eat away at the limbs of anyone caught in the crossfire. Professor Vector's right arm is blown clean-off in the Battle of the Astronomy Tower from one of these, and a failed assassination using one causes Lucius Malfoy to require an amputation to save his leg from further infection... alongside having already lost both his arms.
  • Kevin has his right hand Splinched off while attempting to escape to Glasgow, away from the Guilders who wanted to recruit his father.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After the Death Eaters took over Hogwarts, the reality for the Pure-Blooded students are far more grim than they ever realized. Blaise Zabini gives his fellow Slytherins this in Chapter 87 when he realizes they are much more powerless than before.
• Arranged Marriage: As of Chapter 68, Etienne Montmercy is said to be making plans to invoke this for all Hogwarts students in their seventh year before their graduation, and intends to do this to his son Julien, whom he misgenders. In later chapters, this policy leads to extreme tension between characters and becomes an important part of Julien's character sub-plot.
• Artistic License – Animal Care: Chapter 61 makes a passing mention to Rose putting chocolate pudding on her camera lens to take a picture of her cat, as it's his favourite. Chocolate is toxic to cats, so the pudding presumably consists of pet-friendly chocolate substitutes.
• Autism in Media: While she is a relatively minor character, Arjuna's mother, Chaaya Belaji, is heavily coded to be autistic in her appearances, being intently focused on what she likes doing, knowledgeable about topics she's passionate about like history and literature, sensitive to high volumes, and having a tendency to be blunt. A Diagnosis of God confirms that she has undiagnosed autism. invoked
• Bad People Abuse Animals: While the Carrows are nasty Death Eaters who torture children, Alecto winds up killing Astoria's owl Wagtail when he tries to attack her... while she was casting Crucio on Astoria for allegedly teaching younger students spells that weren't on the Death Eaters' curriculum, and both Carrows immediately start mocking Astoria for mourning her beloved animal companion.
• Badass Normal: Beau, Chef Ramsay's servant, is a squib with no magical powers. But he ultimately helped kill Dolohov at the Battle of Hogwarts.
• Badass Pacifist: Astoria Greengrass is a non-certified healer and never has once getting into a physical fight, but that didn't stop her from being a badass to the point she's worthy for Draco to give the Elder Wand's ownership to her.
• Big Sister Instinct: Despite their clear differences in views, the last thing Daphne wanted is to watch her sister die. So, when Astoria told her family she'll run out of their home to live alone, Daphne lashed out at her for saying that because her disregard of her own safety.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Gordon Ramsay's conflict with Dumbledore is essentially treated this way. While Harry is firmly on Dumbledore's side here and Ramsay's sheltering of the students isn't necessarily the best tactic under the circumstances, Ramsay is also very much in the right when he rages that students should not be called upon to fight a war and it should be the teachers' job to protect and keep them from harm.
• Break the Haughty: While Draco Malfoy already canonically goes through this in canon, this fic fleshes out his experiences after being dragged into the Death Eater ranks more. After the Ramsays save his father's life in spite of being ideological opponents, as well as more in-depth discussions with Daphne, Draco aspires to be a better man than he used to be, though he has to express this in roundabout ways due to the Death Eater takeover of Hogwarts, such as telling First Years brought in for Crucio classes to scream to let his classmates off the hook for not having the malice to cast it "right".
• Cerebus Syndrome: What starts out as a Crack Fic of Gordon Ramsay humorously roasting Dumbledore and Snape ends up slowly turning into a Dark Fic of the reality of the Wizarding Wars.
• Cheery Pink: Rose Zeller is an upbeat Adorably Precocious Child, and is associated with the colour pink. She even dyes her hair "a light cotton candy pink" as an adult in the epilogue.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: While watching Titanic, Lucius orders for Rose Zeller to not look at the screen during the scene where Jack does a nude painting of the film's Rose, while Trudy immediately plays this straight by covering 15-year-old Noel's eyes for the scene.
• Covered in Gunge: One of the Magic Chef Junior rounds tests the chefs' skill at making pancakes. As an added incentive, the winner of the round gets to dump pancake batter over three of the judges, with the judge representing the winner's House being spared. Though as a show of good sportsmanship, Dumbledore allows Colin to cover him in batter as well.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: In spite of the fic taking place in Britain for the most part, a few Americanisms have slipped through, such as dates being stated in the American format ("January 3rd" instead of "3rd January"), a reference to "second grade"^note instead of, say, "Year 2" (if English), "Primary [X]" (if Scottish or Northern Irish), or "First/Second Class" (if Irish), the use of the word 'vacation' instead of 'holiday', and a passing mention of a 107-degree fever, which is clearly in the Fahrenheit scale and not Celsius.
• Cure Your Gays: A variation. After being caught in a discussion on the resistance, Etienne Montmercy casts the Imperius Curse on his transgender son Julien so that he'd be open to an Arranged Marriage with a scumbag as a "woman". When Julien breaks the curse at his nonconsensual marriage ceremony, he gets dragged off and imprisoned in the Saeva Ward for "reconditioning" via being injected with the Draught of Despair. It ultimately doesn't work out.
• Dark Is Not Evil: This fic made it perfectly clear that not all Slytherins are evil like the Death Eaters. Not even the ones that were associated with Death Eaters are evil. The Merlin's Kin, consisted of Narcissa Malfoy, Europa Bulstrode, Antony Greengrass, and several other witches rebelled against Voldemort in the final battle.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • For Ron, both story-wise and in-universe. As one of the MagicChef Junior contestants, and the main hope for Gryffindor in the contest, Ron is suddenly a minor celebrity not only in Hogwarts but even gets some outside media attention, for once about something that doesn't even slightly involve Harry. He also gets notably more story focus than either Harry or Hermione.
  • All the twelve MagicChef Junior contestants count as well. While the story doesn't really have a main character as such, the contestants are easily the main focus of the story. There are a couple of Original Characters among them, but the majority of them are minor or at least secondary characters from canon who get a lot more attention and development here, like Colin Creevey, Cho Chang, Hannah Abbott and Millicent Bulstrode.
  • Arguably, Lucius Malfoy in the later parts of the fic. After faking his death to escape Voldemort's wrath, he ends up living at a safehouse with several other people on the run from Voldemort, including Muggle-borns. He undergoes quite a bit of Character Development as a result, and while he never becomes sweet and loving, he does end the fic as a far better person than he was at the start of it.
• Dead Man Writing: Chapter 84's Potterwatch broadcast features Arjuna's posthumous message to the resistance radio's listeners, to remain steadfast in their hope while fighting for a better world.
  Arjuna: To those who defy the Dark Lord – if you hear this, then it's because the Death Eaters either inside or outside the Ministry have caught up with me, and I either am or will soon be dead.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Millicent's tough girl persona makes her prone to this trope, of course.
  • The Greengrass sisters, Astoria and Daphne, also have the tendency to do this as well.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • While her canonical fate is unconfirmed, it's presumed that Millicent Bulstrode survived the Battle of Hogwarts due to the Slytherin evacuation. In this continuity, she's killed in battle by Bellatrix Lestrange.
  • Several other characters have unconfirmed canonical fates and presumably survived the story in canon, but died in the Lack of Lamb Sauce continuity. These characters include Madame Hooch, Michael Corner, Hector Summerby, Eloise Midgen, Sophie Roper, Lisa Turpin, and Oliver Rivers.
• Death Wail: Hannah lets this out twice, the first is when she discovered her mother was killed in an explosion, and the second is when she saw the bodies of two of her own friends, Colin and Millicent, among the others who were killed in the Hogwarts Battle.
• Defiant to the End: Voldemort offers to spare Scrimgeour's life in exchange for Harry's location. He refuses, spits in Voldemort's face, and dies three seconds later.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • In the Battle of Hogwarts, Tonks was killed by Bellatrix Lestrange in canon; in this continuity, it's by Antonin Dolohov.
  • A possible example; in canon, Dolohov was defeated by Professor Flitwick, but it's unconfirmed whether he was killed. In this continuity, he was defeated and definitely killed by Beau and the Belajis.
  • While Bellatrix Lestrange still ultimately dies to Molly Weasley, it's from an unknown "violet curse" rather than a heart-stopping Stunner like in the book-canon or a freeze-and-shatter combo like in the movie-canon.
• Doorstopper: 99 chapters, 356,700 words. Though since the fic encompasses both Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the length isn't surprising.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Gordon at first doesn't know that it was a Hogwarts student who bewitched Katie Bell and compelled her to deliver a deadly curse to Dumbledore. Namely, it's Draco Malfoy's fault that he nearly killed a student. He instead goes Entertainingly Wrong that someone outside the school was trying to hurt Katie.
  • While looking into her Crystal Ball in a Divination session, Arjuna suspects that the omens it shows indicate someone will cheat in MagicChef Junior tournament, but will not win. She brushes it off, believing herself to be talented enough to never cheat, while predicting that either a Gryffindor or Slytherin competitor would. Arjuna herself ends up being the one cheating instead.
• Enemy Mine: Merlin's Kin and the rest of the opposition to Voldemort. They're still bigoted Pureblood supremacists, and they mainly fight Voldemort simply because he threatens their families, but they do provide valuable firepower in the Battle of Hogwarts. Somewhat downplayed in that at least some of them have begun to change or soften their attitudes, at least partly as a result of this unlikely alliance. Lucius clearly considers Muggleborn Rose Zeller a friend, and Draco recognizes the greater ethics of people like Ramsay and Harry, who begin as his ideological opponents. (They don't change; Draco does.)
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A recurring theme; it's shown that even prejudiced and Death Eater-sympathetic characters have redeeming qualities in the form of love for their families. It's even outright stated that Death Eaters with families were more likely than not to be let off in their trials after the First Wizarding War, because they have the love for their family holding them back from going fully batshit obsessed like the Lestranges. In the end, Parents as People is in full force in all the cases that matter, and this love is what motivates them to fight against Voldemort.
• Everyone Has Standards: It's revealed that Gordon took the job at Hogwarts when learning from Harry that Snape was terrible and willing to cause harm to his students. He thinks Dumbledore is incompetent with protecting kids, so someone has to do it right.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: According to Narcissa, by the time Easter of 1998 rolls around, less than a year after the coup, the Death Eater-controlled Ministry is in shambles and about to fall apart by the seams.
  Narcissa: Then there's the running of the Ministry itself… it's completely falling apart! All of the promotions Pius Thicknesse arranged have only come back to bite him, as each position was selected based on political loyalties and blood status as opposed to merit or experience. Diagon Alley has become so unsafe that just about every store has closed their doors. Obliviators are quitting in droves because of how much they've been overworked with no additional pay. Funds have been slashed for the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures so as to support other projects, and as a result dragons and giants are running amok in the countryside. Not to mention the whole mess with the Quidditch World Cup…
• Follow in My Footsteps: Millicent's parents want her to take on their legal business after her graduation as a defense attorney. While Millicent is fine with this as a career path, she intends to help the underprivileged with the job instead of taking rich, shady clients like her parents.
• Foreseeing My Death: In Chapter 81, Arjuna has a nightmare that ends with being encased in "bright, killing green" light. While her initial assumption is that three of her resistance faction members will die, the events that transpire two chapters later end with Arjuna lying dead on the ground.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Snape blows Ramsay across the room for saying this. Ramsay specifies that being hung up by your ankles is no excuse to go after innocent kids, and Snape can't use his war veteran status as an excuse to be a "fucking twat".
• Full-Name Ultimatum:
  • Mrs. Greengrass uses Astoria's full name while scolding her, forbidding her from running away to live on her own.
  • Cynthia Cauldwell uses Owen's full name when Owen disobeys her to fight at the Ministry when the Death Eaters are staging a coup, when she explicitly told him to stay safe at home.
• Groin Attack: Discussed briefly in Chapter 54, when Ron recalls a Chudley Cannons match where the Keeper was hit in the groin with a Bludger while protecting the hoops with the Starfish and Stick technique.
• Hate Sink:
  • The Death Eaters are bad and all, but none has garnered so much hate as much as Etienne Montmercy, an Original Character Hufflepuff Death Eater whose incredibly abusive and transphobic to his transgender son Julien, building a Torture Cellar to prove the theories of Muggleborn stealing magic, and murdering Arjuna, Eddie, and Roger in cold blood.
  • The Carrow siblings' acts are portrayed even worse in here. Amycus in particular has shown no qualms in torturing the students using Cruciatus Curse and is also ephebophilic towards Daphne.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Arjuna risks her life in order to expose the horrific Muggleborn Torture Cellar called the Saeva Ward. She ended up falls into her own demise by Montmercy's hands alongside Roger and Eddie.
  • On a minor note, Owen went to the Ministry Office alone when he discovered that his mother is in danger. He ended up jumping into a Killing Curse that was aimed towards his mother that unfortunately killed both of them at the same time.
• Heteronormative Crusader: While Hogwarts is implied to be a safe space for queer students, the Death Eaters are anything but accepting to those who deviate from the traditional family model of a husband and a wife that submits to him and pops out heirs, and the less said about transgender individuals, the better.
• Hidden Depths: A prominent theme in the story is that there is more to just about everyone than you see at first glance, and judging people based on first impressions is almost always a big mistake.
• In Spite of a Nail: Though a lot of minor and a fair few major details change as a result of Gordon Ramsay being the new Potions teacher, not to mention the MagicChef Junior competition, the main plot beats and the overall story stay much the same as in canon.
• Insult Backfire: When Gordon says that he considers Dumbledore among a special tier of people that he hates, Dumbledore says that he finds it flattering.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gordon Ramsay is not an easy man to work with, especially if you spite him in any way. He's temperamental, stubborn and unforgiving. At the same time, he's unfailingly generous and helpful, he's good with children, and he tirelessly works to better the lives of the outsiders of the Wizarding World. He hates any sort of injustice and unfairness, and will always do his utmost to combat those things wherever he finds them — whether people actually want him to or not.
• Kissing Cousins: It's briefly mentioned that Amycus and Alecto Carrow's father married his cousin when he was 16, and there were plans for an Arranged Marriage between a pair of first-cousins-once-removed.
• Log Fic: Chapter 51 is a transcript of a series of messages sent to Ron, sharing tidbits of their lives with him while he recovers from poison-induced nerve damage at St. Mungo's, as well as updating him on the latest happenings at Hogwarts and the Wizarding World at large. Many of the later chapters have entire sections dedicated to the magic-scrapbook conversations between the MagicChef Junior characters.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Etienne Montmercy seems inclined to think so, as he seems quite insistent that female members of his family (or, well, those he sees as female) to grow their hair out.
  She [Antoinette Montmercy, Etienne's wife] had a strong jaw line and a pointed chin, and although she had in years past worn her brown hair in an elegant pixie cut, she'd recently grown it out to pacify her husband.
• Mama Bear: Doubles as Papa Wolf due to the context; during the evacuation of the Hogwarts students, Slughorn sends a message to their parents about the situation at the school:
  Slughorn: (jovially) I gave every evacuating student a letter to their parents, explaining our present predicament, and as I'd hoped, they have something to say to the Death Eaters about their children's lives being threatened…
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Arjuna's father Rohan is determined to stay loyal to the Ministry, even when it's taken over by Death Eaters. When Arjuna accidentally lets it slip that she's working with the Resistance movements, he is still adamant on reporting her compatriots' "suspicious activity" to the Ministry as his oath demands, though he makes plans to help them get away afterward. However, Rohan does this with good intentions to protect his family from danger, and he makes it very clear that he loves and is proud of Arjuna at heart.
• Mythical Motifs: An implied invocation; Julien writes a message under the pen name 'Caeneus Jove' at one point. The Caeneus from Greek mythology was born a woman, but gets transformed into a man by Poseidon.
• Never Trust a Title: The title of the fic is a spoof of the infamous Hell's Kitchen meme, and at no point in the story does the lack of lamb sauce become a plot point. The quote in the meme is briefly dropped in the final chapter as a gag, however.
• Old Man Marrying a Child: The government-enforced Arranged Marriage sets Daphne to marry Amycus Carrow, her maternal first-cousin-once-removed who's more than twice her age, to her mother Theia's outrage. Fortunately, this doesn't come to pass in the end.
• Only Sane Man: Gordon Ramsay comes across as this among the Adults Are Useless and Sadist Teacher posse at Hogwarts. In fact, he initially refuses to work with Dumbledore because the man is a walking moral hazard. At the same time, the trope isn't played completely straight: Ramsay's safety measures aren't nearly as effective as he thinks they are, and while his inflexible "students should not be fighting wars" policy comes from an honest desire to keep the students safe, it also creates a couple of problems because he doesn't account for the fact several of the students already are involved and that he can't keep them all safe.
• Original Character: There are a few of them in the fic, and some of them like Bridget Jaheem get very important roles, though the author is good about using canon characters whenever possible.
• Out of Focus: Harry, especially compared to canon. He's definitely there; he gets a number of scenes (including the very first chapter) told from his perspective, and his in-universe role hasn't changed — he's still the Boy Who Lived, the super celebrity and the ultimate hero of the Wizarding World who's saddled with the task of ending Voldemort once and for all. But overall, the fic is on the whole a lot more likely to focus on things that happen when Harry isn't around, and most of his investigations and accomplishments take place off-screen.
• Papa Wolf: In general, Gordon acts like this towards the Hogwarts students and comes off as the Only Sane Man of the staff. Harry thinks he's more of an Overprotective Dad and is miffed at his strictness when Ramsay convinces Dumbledore to cancel Hogsmeade visits indefinitely after Katie is cursed.
  • Gordon Ramsay finds out from Harry about Snape making Neville Longbottom test an incorrect Shrinking Solution on his toad. He thanks Harry and later Neville for telling him, then goes to find Snape and chews him out for being a "twat" and a bully. It ends up working in that when Snape is DADA teacher, he's less of a bully in class.
• Parents as People: Chapter 44 culminates into an argument in the Greengrass family which shows this; while Mr. and Mrs. Greengrass place a strong emphasis on self-preservation and are still prejudiced against those of non-magical descent, they still care deeply for their daughters and will always choose them over everything else, regardless of political or House affiliation.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Over the fic, this dynamic develops between Ron and Bridget, largely replacing the Ron/Lavender romance in canon. Hermione gets terribly jealous and dislikes Bridget on pure principle, but Bridget sets her straight: There is nothing romantic between her and Ron because Ron is clearly in love with Hermione. And of course, there's also the small detail of Bridget being a lesbian and not being romantically attracted to boys in the slightest. They remain close friends, though, and the epilogue reveals that as adults they went into business together and started a cafe called the "King's Cafe".
• Pure Is Not Good: On the other hand, it is also shown that not all Hufflepuffs are good. Etienne Montmercy is a Hufflepuff that is extremely loyal to the Death Eaters. And his horrific actions, including being extremely possessive and smothering towards Julien, torturing Muggleborns through horrific Torture Cellar called Saeva Ward, and being responsible for the deaths of Arjuna, Eddie, and Roger has made it clear he's not a good guy at all.
• Propaganda Piece: The Stormer, the Wizarding World equivalent of Der Stürmer, is a tabloid made to create Anti-Muggle propaganda. Most of the characters are understandably pissed by this, although that didn't stop it from causing even more discrepancy between Pure-Bloods and Muggleborns.
• Real-Person Cameo: Besides Gordon Ramsay himself, of course, his wife Tana Ramsay is also featured on the fic and act as a healer for the seriously injured.
• Real-Person Fic: The entire premise of the story is to insert Gordon Ramsay into Hogwarts and see what happens. The author's notes does make it clear that the Gordon Ramsay in this story isn't meant to be the real-life Gordon Ramsay, but "an AU version of his TV personality, shaped to fit within the Harry Potter universe".
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Not surprisingly, Gordon Ramsay is good with these and willingly delivers them to anyone who either annoys him or acts in a way he finds morally reprehensible. The students are spared these speeches, as he is nothing but pleasant and patient with them, but fellow teachers and other authority figures get no mercy.
  • Very surprisingly, Neville delivers a very gentle one to Harry in Chapter 33 when Harry has managed to tick off both Ron and Hermione with his obsessions and impatience. Neville's very sympathetic, but still points out to Harry that he was being "a bit of a jerk".
• La Résistance: Under the Death Eater regime, other than the canonical Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army, and Potterwatch, there's also the Abraxans, a group whose members write and distribute pamphlets with anti-Voldemort messages, or infiltrate the Ministry as employees as saboteurs. Members of this group include Arjuna, Julien, Eddie, Roger, Marietta, and Percy Weasley.
• Sacrificial Lion: When the war starts to hit home, Anyone Can Die, and the death of Owen Cauldwell at the Ministry coup alongside his mother at the end of Chapter 62 is only the first of many.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: There are a few instances of this between Ramsay and Snape, though their approaches to the snark is very different: Ramsay is loud and angry, hurls insults and "The Reason You Suck" Speeches while Snape is softer-spoken and spends more time jeering, mocking and "subtly" hinting that Ramsay is an immature wimp and a coward.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Due to Millicent Bulstrode being conveniently in the area, Fred Weasley survives the explosion which would have otherwise killed him in canon.
• Straight Gay: Bridget Jaheem. While some of her comments certainly make more sense in hindsight after you learn her sexuality, for the most part you wouldn't know she was a lesbian. Hermione gets jealous of her developing friendship with Ron, until Bridget makes it quite clear to Hermione that she likes girls.
• Supreme Chef: This trope is all over the fic — played straight, subverted, discussed and played with. There are a lot of talented chefs in the cast, but the story makes it clear that talent can only take you so far and the real key to success with cooking is hard work and perseverance... only to then twist things around and show that sometimes hard work isn't enough either, and to stand above the rest, you do need a certain amount of talent... plus a fair amount of passion, a good mix of rigidness and flexibility, and not least a willingness to think outside the box and experiment, while still tampering it with some common sense to avoid that the experimentation goes out of hand. Whenever a MagicChef Junior contestant is eliminated from the contest, it's usually because they have failed in one or more of these categories.
• Temporal Theme Naming: Both Julien and Noel's names are derived from the time of year they were born in — Julien in July, and Noel on Christmas Day.
• This Is Reality: Gordon Ramsay brings a reality check after Katie Bell is badly injured by a curse she was compelled to carry to Dumbledore; it happened due to the students visiting Hogsmeade, and that means whoever was out there hurting Katie could hurt any of the other students. Ergo, it's not safe for any of the students to go to Hogsmeade until they determined who cast the curse and how to stop them. The students aren't happy, but it does send a wakeup call to Draco that it was a very stupid and inconvenient means of assassinating the professor.
• That Man Is Dead: When Pansy gets over-affectionate with Draco after the Battle of Hogwarts in Chapter 97, he rebukes her, goes over the horrible experiences he's gone through for the past two years, calls her out for thinking he'd still be the same man he used to be after everything, and tells her, "The boy you fell in love with is dead. And he is never coming back."
• This Is Unforgivable!: Gordon Ramsay tells off Snape in Chapter 3 for nearly poisoning Trevor and ruining Neville's potential love of Potions. He says that it's low to "educate" a child by threatening their pet. Snape is unrepentant, and McGonagall has to break up the fight.
• Throw the Book at Them: When Bridget is under attack by Death Eaters after the Ministry coup, she sets her Kransimir scrapbook on fire and throws it at the nearest attacker.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Millicent Bulstrode started off as kind of a Jerkass due to her brutish demeanor. Overtime, she also developed a very strong bond with other contestants as well. She also is the only Slytherin to participate in the Battle of Hogwarts and unfortunately got killed.
  • After Lucius Malfoy went into hiding in a safe house alongside Rose Zeller, Owen's Grandmother Trudy, Ramsay's squib server Beau, and non-binary wizard Noel Harwich, Lucius starts to open up towards his surroundings and also towards the Muggle world. This helps out defrosting his ice cold demeanor into a much more warm kind.
• Trans Tribulations:
  • Julien Montmercy is, for unknown reasons, given the title of Head Girl at Hogwarts in spite of being a trans guy, but this is the least of his problems, considering everything else that happens after his graduation. For one, there's a sub-plot in the Deathly Hallows-era where his transphobic father mind-controls him into acting his assigned gender at birth to marry him off to someone he's uncomfortable with.
  • Likewise but on a smaller scale, Noel Harwich is a non-binary student who faces being misgendered by others, though in their case, the people who do so are either Innocently Insensitive or eventually overcome their prejudice.
• True Companions: The MagicChef Junior contestants evolve into this. They start out as rivals, but over the course of the contest they develop a lot of respect for each other, and end up becoming close friends who continue to help and aid each other even after several of them are forced to go on the run after the fall of Hogwarts. The epilogue reveals that twenty years later, the contestants who survived the war still keep in touch, and all of them meet up every year at Ramsay's restaurant.
• Wham Episode:
  • Ron got poisoned by the rum at the finale of MagicChef Junior which causes him to be hospitalized.
  • The first half of Chapter 82, with Arjuna discovering the horrific Saeva Ward files and its documentation on torture methods to prove the theories of Muggleborns being able to steal magic.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Arjuna Belaji may only have been 16 years old, but her influence through The Prophet editorial under her pseudonym R.J. Moon has been very inspiring to a lot of people.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: It's Ramsay's Establishing Character Moment. He prepares to cuss Dumbledore out of his restaurant after closing hours... and then sees Harry standing behind him. Ramsay then greets him politely, apologizes for his bad language, and treats him to chocolate.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Death Eater-run Ministry, at one point, puts a toddler in a room alone and when he predictably is unable to take care of himself and starves to death, they gleefully call this proof that the blood of Muggleborns is inferior... despite this being what would happen with any child that young in that situation, and not just one with a Muggleborn mother.
• Your Worst Memory: The Draught of Despair is meant to induce this in the consumer, like a Dementor's effects but all at once.

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