Object: Nose-biting teacups
Optional Prompts: (word) coffee, (quote) 'Green is not a creative colour.' - DHMIS! (word) pancakes
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in the slightest.
Nose-biting teacups were not something Scorpius Malfoy appreciated. They were not something he even thought should exist. And they were certainly not something he would choose to have wiggling around in his pockets. Unfortunately for Scorpius, that was exactly what was going on.
"Hugo," Scorpius ventured hesitantly. "Perhaps... uh... I don't wish to... uh... do this anymore."
"Don't be silly," Hugo replied. "You want revenge on her, don't you?"
"Well, this... uh... seems a little excessive,'" Scorpius replied, determinedly avoiding Hugo's gaze.
"She hung you up by your nose, stuffed you in a tutu, and made you perform ballet with the gnomes for the whole family!" Hugo was already steaming with indignation.
There was a saying that Draco often liked to say: when Scorpius had to face the rage of a Weasley, the Weasley's rage won every time. It was a saying that was mostly—alright, entirely—true. So despite Scorpius's careful plan of looking anywhere but the upset Weasley, he was still unquestionably going to yield. Why was that? Scorpius had forgotten just how loud Weasleys could be and how very worked up they got.
"ARE YOU A WIZARD OR A DOXY?" Hugo shouted. "Don't you dare act like a pushover, Scorpius Malfoy! You have to stand up and show her you shouldn't be messed with! Act like the lion we know you are!"
"But I'm- I'm a Slytherin," Scorpius muttered, slightly bewildered.
"That's not the point. Are you going to get her back or not?"
Scorpius was rather done with the plan. Rose hadn't done anything to him today. And besides what if she started to dislike him after this? Scorpius would probably start crying and then everyone would call him cry-baby Malfoy and then Al would— well, it wouldn't be pretty. But he could feel Hugo's eyes boring into his skull, and well, Hugo was a Weasley.
"Yes," Scorpius muttered.
"Excellent!" Hugo cried. "Let's begin. You have the biting teacups, I have the tripping teabags, and James, hopefully, will have gotten the colour changing saucers. All that's left is to assemble the set up. Let's go."
They made their way back down the dusty road to the burrow, Hugo chatting away, and Scorpius trying to contain the lump of guilt that was already pulsating through his stomach.
"Can you imagine," Hugo was saying, "how jealous Lucy will be. She's been wanting to get Rose back for ages after the chocolate raspberry biscuit fiasco, but Grandma Molly wouldn't let her take revenge on Rose, so she's just been waiting for something to happen. And she missed it!" Hugo burst out laughing.
"When will Al be back?" Scorpius interrupted. Al was the only sane one out of all the Weasleys and Potters and Granger-Weasleys. Even Rose, although Scorpius hated to admit it, wasn't entirely sane. Al was also the only reason Scorpius had come here in the first place and without him, Scorpius was pretty sure he wouldn't survive the night.
"You know that. He's coming back tomorrow around one. You two are so codependent! Merlin."
"Right." Scorpius gritted his teeth and hoped, at the very least, that his new book on "discovering the lesser known uses of lacewings," would survive unharmed or at least with all its pages still intact.
By the time they walked into the driveway, Hugo and Scorpius were covered head to toe in dust so that they rather looked like sand trolls themselves.
"Scorpius?" Hugo asked sounding almost as if he had a cold. "Would you like some fruit drops? They're pear."
Out of all the fruits in the world, pear was Scorpius's absolute favourite. If he had it his way, pears would be included in every kind of dessert that ever existed. In fact, pears would be included in every time of food that ever existed . . . or maybe not.
"Of course," Scorpius said, brightening slightly, and they started up the walkway into the burrow.
Before they could make it into the house, however, they were besieged by James.
"Got the stuff?" he asked. Two heads nodded— one so enthusiastically it sent his hair flying every which way, the other with a resigned sort of bobbing motion— and James grinned widely.
"Excellent," he said, and they stepped through the Gryffindor red door to the house and into the burrow.
It was at that point that Scorpius started to get a little excited. It started at his fingertips, a buzzing finger-tapping kind of excitement and traveled all the way to the tip of his light blond locks. The look on Rose's face! His excitement grew and grew until he had to physically hold his hands together as to stop himself from clapping with glee and anticipation.
He was so excited that he failed to see James snag Hugo's arm, drag him forcefully across the floor and mutter, "How many excitement-producing pear drops did you feed him?"
He also missed Hugo's slightly guilty face, and how he replied, "About six."
"Oh, Merlin, help us all," James said, dragging a forcefully hand through his messy locks.
"What happened?" Scorpius asked. "I do hope the plan is still fine. I'm so excited! So very, very excited!" He was practically bouncing up and down by now.
"Oh, no. The plan is fine," James said, shooting a glare strong enough to melt ice cubes at Hugo. "Everything's fine.", and rolling his eyes, James continued. "I have something a little extra planned. What's the fanciest colour you can think of? Something that's not quite normal— a little extra."
"Green!" Scorpius cried.
"Green is not a creative colour," James returned dryly.
"Red!" Hugo exclaimed as though he had just found the cure to Unicorn pox.
"Perfect!" James replied with equal enthusiasm.
Scorpius crossed his arms poutily and muttered something about 'stupid Gryffindors,' but he took the subject no further.
It was almost lunch by the time the tea set was assembled. Louis, Fred, and the whole of the female cousins—excepting, of course, Molly, who hated anything indoors —had made sure everything was absolutely perfect.
There were baskets of lavender macaroons, vases of enchanted daffodils, and, of course, spread out over the lacy tablecloths and colour themed decorations was the tea set. It had once been Grandma Delacour's and was, without a doubt, the most expensive thing in the whole house.
The teacups were charmed to keep the tea perpetually hot and golden fairies chased each other up and down the porcelain handles. It was Victoire's pride and joy and only something very, very important could have let the set out of her sight.
Fortunately for Hugo and Scorpius, James was about to create that distraction.
"In three, two, one," James whispered through the portable walkie talkie Scorpius was holding. "Now," he whispered unnecessarily for at that moment a huge bang had gone off, leaving the dining room deserted.
Quicker than two chasers diving for the same quaffle, Hugo and Scorpius raced into the room and straight for Rose's place.
It was lucky, Scorpius realized, that each place had name tags because every setting was identical. And then, a kind of horror struck him.
"Hugo," he whispered. "The nose-biting tea cups— they don't match the rest of the tea set!" If the prank didn't go well, Scorpius wasn't sure how he'd be able to cope; after all, he was so excited to see the result he hadn't even tried to get Hugo to hand him a macaroon— Scorpius wasn't a Slytherin for nothing.
For a moment, Hugo looked as though all the books in the world had disappeared, but just as quickly his expression melted into a deep, overwhelming look of relief. "I'm not top of my Transfiguration class for nothing," he murmured, and then quickly waved his wand over one of the wiggling teacups as Scorpius struggled not to drop it.
The dull grey of the teacup melted into a pearly white, and soon, golden fairies were fluttering happily on the porcelain surface.
"Perfect," Scorpius whispered, a smile tugging at his lips as he poured a steady stream of hot water onto the tripping-teabag Hugo had already set in the teacup.
"All we need is the saucer, and we'll be good to go." Hugo said, but he had spoken too soon, for at that moment, Lucy waltzed nonchalantly into the dining room humming slightly.
Scorpius pretended to be a lemon macaroon, but unfortunately, Lucy didn't even start to buy it. Probably because the rest of the macaroons were lavender.
"Now just what are you two doing?" she cried, one hand on her hip, the other outstretched as though she, herself was pretending to be a teapot.
"It's for Rose," Hugo explained, hastily switching out the saucers.
"Oh." Lucy's smile reminded Scorpius alarmingly of Delphi's.
Hugo and Scorpius hastily stowed the rest of the prank material as yet another Weasley ambled into the dining room. It was Fred, and at the sight of them, his complacent expression immediately turned to suspicion.
"You better not have messed up anything!" he cried. "You have no idea how hard I worked and how excited I am for this, and if I find out that—"
He was interrupted by Lucy. "Relax," she said. "They were just hoping for a macaroon. I told them they could have some if any were left over, so scurry along, boys." She shooed Hugo and Scorpius out of the kitchen just as Lily bounced in as well.
"Phew," said Hugo, and they stowed themselves in the kitchen cabinets hurriedly to watch the show uninterrupted.
Predictably, all did not go as planned. In the beginning everything seemed to be going dashingly; everyone sat down at their lace-ified name tags and not even Roxanne noticed the fake teacup.
But then, as Louis poured his coffee— according to him, tea tasted like month old Grindylow saliva soaked in Hagrid's pumpkin mulch. Both Victoire and Dominique agreed he must have been switched at birth— and Lily pulled stack after stack of pancakes out of her purse, Rose did the unthinkable.
"Do you mind if I switch with you, Victoire?" she asked. "I see everyone else all the time, but I'm always at Hogwarts when Dominique gets time off from working in Australia."
"Of course, I don't mind," Victoire said and gracefully got up to trade places.
"Alright, alright," Roxanne said grandly once the seat switching had taken place— Scorpius and Hugo could only stare at each other in horror. "We will do the toast in–" Hugo pointed his wand at Victoire's teacup. "Three-" A silvery spell shot out just as Victoire began lifting her teacup. "Two-" The sugar bowl fell over instead, and Scorpius felt doom settle over him like a thick woolen blanket. Biting his lip, he reached into his pocket for another pear drop, which was, unfortunately, unnoticed by Hugo who was holding his breath as he stared, transfixed at the tea table. "One!"
As a cohesive unit, they clinked their tea cups and drank deeply. Well, everyone but Victoire drank, for at that moment, the teacup had latched onto her nose, and she shrieked in pain, spilling tea everywhere as her skin began changing colors faster than the golden snitch at the last Quidditch World Cup.
"Ouch!" she cried, turning magenta as she stood up and promptly tripped over her chair.
With the solemness of a preacher at a funeral, Lucy pointed slowly to Scorpius and Hugo. "Them," she said, and Victoire let out a scream of fury as miniature fireballs erupted from her hands.
"Victoire—" Dominique began, but the girl in question had just turned an awful garbage green and didn't seem to hear a word being said. Tripping on every other step, she made her way furiously toward the kitchen.
"Run!" Hugo cried, and Scorpius didn't have to be told twice.
"Of all the mishaps," James chortled. "You angered the only part veela that can throw fireballs!"
"We know!" Hugo yelled as they raced through the yard, leaving a trail of dust that plumed behind them like a peacock feathered quill.
"This," Scorpius cried as they ducked under an apple tree, "is so exciting!"
Hugo could only gasp in mute horror as the teacup that was once so firmly grasped on Victoire's lilac nose flew straight for his face.
"Ooooh!" Scorpius exclaimed. "Yay! A nose-biting teacup!"