Like Father, Like Son

by Veritas Found

HMC. Morgan has always taken after his father, at least in the dramatics department. It really shouldn't have surprised Sophie the day she opened his nursery door to find…this.

Title: "Like Father, Like Son"

Author: Veritas Found

Rating: K+ / PG / All Ages

Characters/Pairings: Howl Pendragon, Sophie Hatter-Pendragon, Morgan Pendragon; Howl x Sophie

Summary: Morgan has always taken after his father, at least in the dramatics department. It really shouldn't have surprised Sophie the day she opened his nursery door to find…this.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Notes/Warnings: Book verse. Post-CitA, pre-HoMW. Just a little ficlet. I reread HMC over break for some much-needed stress relief, and this idea wouldn't leave me alone – especially when one of my friends reminded me of Morgan's reaction to being a "useless human baby" instead of a kitten.

"Like Father, Like Son"

"Good night, Sophie! I'll see you in the morning!"

Sophie smiled warmly and wished Michael well as she waved him off. He closed the door to the flower shop with a heavy thud in his eagerness to return home to Martha. They had been married the previous summer, though they had only moved a street or so away in their desire to stay close to the family. Though Michael had completed his apprenticeship, he still assisted Howl with various spells and Sophie in the flower shop. They were still a few years from starting their own family, as Martha wasn't quite finished her own apprenticeship, but they were content to wait and spend the time growing together.

The eldest Hatter – now a Pendragon – sighed happily as she flipped the sign in the window and turned down the lights. She surveyed the shop once, satisfied that anything else could wait until morning, and crossed from the shop to the moving castle. There, she found Howl busy at the workbench, probably on another spell for the King, with his fair head bowed and green eyes fixed in concentration. She walked up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder as she bent to kiss the crown of his head, and he looked up with a gleaming smile.

"Hullo, you," he said, spinning 'round to stand and greet her properly. She laughed at his eagerness and pulled back. "Busy day?"

"Not so bad," she said. "After the past couple months, it was a relief to return to the simple shop life. Enjoy your spells?"

His grin was only slightly guilty at the reminder of the djinn and the trauma of the past months, but he was quick to smother it with another kiss.

"The King will always find use of me, one way or another. Say, I forgot to mention. Abdullah's home is almost complete, and Flower-in-the-Night stopped by for you. They want to add a garden, and given your experience in the flower shop she wanted to know if you'd care to help?" he asked, and she blinked at him.

"But you and Suliman are the ones who created the flower field in the Waste," she said. "Why not ask you?"

"My thoughts exactly, and exactly what I demanded to know!" he said, huffing as he rolled his eyes. Knowing her husband as she did, she decided to not perceive the statement as an insult towards her and more his own perceived slight to his personal vanity. "So we're all heading over tomorrow to inspect the property. And possibly tea. I was a bit distracted trying to keep Morgan from popping out the door at the time, so I may have only caught half the message."

At the mention of their son, Sophie laughed and pushed him back to his workbench. He did his best to look affronted, but they both knew the other well enough to catch their tricks. She headed towards the stairs, throwing over her shoulder as she went, "Sounds lovely. Now, speaking of Morgan, I'm going to check on him, then I'll start supper."

"Hopefully he's still asleep," Howl called, and Sophie waved him off before making her way to Michael's old room. They had converted it to Morgan's nursery shortly after Michael had left the moving castle, though as the first few months of his life had been spent on the run from a djinn Morgan was only just getting use of it. Honestly, out of all of them he was the one having the most trouble adjusting. It seemed he had enjoyed his time as a kitten, and he often took to squalling fits with a gusto clearly inherited from his father at things he found himself unable to do. Howl had offered to turn him back, but Sophie had quickly squashed that idea. If Morgan found being a human so disagreeable now, how much worse would it be when he was older and had spent even more of his life as a cat? He would simply have to learn to cope, she had said. And besides: at least he had only taken after his father's squalling. There were worse ways to express himself, Sophie had reminded him forebodingly, and Howl had had the decency to look sheepish at that.

She paused when she reached the door, her hand stilling on the handle as a nauseating stench hit her nose. She only briefly wondered at the condition of his nappy. After all, the stench was familiar, but not in that way. Closing her eyes and cursing the day she decided living happily ever after with a wizard was a good idea, she pushed open the door. Her eyes landed on her son, and it took only a moment for the vein above her eye to pulse in an exaggerated twitch before she opened her mouth and released a bellow of her own.

"HOWELL JENKINS!"

Downstairs, at the workbench, Howl's hand shook furiously with the strength of Sophie's roar. The powder he'd been measuring out scattered haphazardly over the paper, ruining the spell he'd been procuring for a Porthaven sailor, and he sighed dramatically as he swept it off the bench and deposited it in Calcifer's flames. The fire demon grinned a purple-lipped grin at him.

"Uh-oh," he said, voice crackling in amusement, "she used your proper name."

"I know," Howl groused. There was no slithering out of it when Sophie was mad enough to use his given name instead of the chosen one she'd married into. With a martyred sigh, he stood from the bench and disappeared up the steps in a swirl of mauve sleeves. He reached the nursery, and his eyes widened in a mix of amusement, pride, and terror.

Sophie stood just inside the door, her arms folded tersely across her chest and her best glare leveled on him. Across the room, Morgan sat in his crib. His face was scrunched in silent wails, his entire body quivering with the force of the tantrum he was either about to throw or currently throwing, and his eyes were locked on a stuffed toy that had fallen to the floor. There wasn't anything entirely surprising about that, though. What was surprising – in a good and bad way – was the green slime that covered every inch of the room. It matted his hair to his sticky head. It drooped from his nose and splooshed onto the slimy blankets. It fell in great gloops down the legs of the crib and pooled around it on the floor. It drifted menacingly toward the door, covering the floorboards and rugs and bringing the stuffed toy with it. Morgan's mood only darkened as it floated further away, and the black shadows along the walls grew larger. His seemed to be a quiet sorrow, however, and Howl supposed they should at least be thankful the deafening wails that accompanied his own tantrums were lost to their son. He turned to Sophie, ready to quip and slither his best way out of the anger clearly on her face, but one look at her and he realized he was grateful she didn't slime as well.

"Now, Sophie dear, look here –" he started, but she stalked past him and pointed to the crib.

"Your son needs you," she said, and he blinked at her.

"My son? I seem to recall him being our son, as you seemed to be a willing, happy participant in his creation and –" Howl started, and Sophie stomped over to him and poked him roughly in the chest.

"When he does this, Howell Jenkins, he is your son, and I'll have no part of this slime! He doesn't get it from me, and I'm not cleaning it!" she poked him to enunciate each seething word, and in a huff she turned back towards the stairs.

"No, I suppose if he got it from you I'd be dodging weed killer again," Howl quipped, and Sophie paused at the top of the steps. He gulped, suddenly afraid of the terse set of her shoulders and quivering way her hand held the wall. It was, after all, very easy to sometimes forget Sophie was quite the formidable wizard in her own right, given…well, that she wasn't him.

"He's not to come downstairs until Morgan and the room are clean," she said to the steps. "No supper until it's done. And if he tries, set him on his face."

"Sophie!" Howl whined, but when he tried to follow her the stairs did just as she'd asked and flung him forward face-first. He yelped painfully, but Sophie continued to the kitchen. Howl crawled back up the steps, wincing the whole way at the smarting line across his forehead. He could hear Calcifer's cackles coming up the stairs, but they were nearly drowned by the wails that had finally escaped their – his – son. He flopped against the wall, rubbing his forehead and smiling down the stairs.

Well, he had said happily ever after would be hair-raising. Perhaps he should have allotted for a bit more slime in the bargain, too.