2. Cupcakes
Rose loved cupcakes. She had told him so a hundred times. When they walked through Diagon Alley before term, admiring the masterpieces of Madam Miel who ran the Candide Candies shop, during desserts at Hogwarts, and whenever they went to Honeydukes on the Hogsmeade weekends. He had listened to her politely while she raved on about the different icings, cream colours and consistency of wheat dough, but honestly couldn´t quite understand what it was that made her so crazy about them.
Today, however, he was glad that she had showered him so often with her declarations of obsession, because he didn´t have to think long on what to get her for her birthday. Being a smart and confident Ravenclaw, he hadn´t even considered buying them, because he had heard Rose lecture him often enough about the secrets of baking and of course a true gift from the heart had to be handmade. Besides, he was a good enough chef when it came to magical cooking, so it really couldn´t be that difficult.
Scorpius entered the kitchen and admired the stack of ingredients he had bought in a Muggle supermarket and that alone was reason enough to be proud. Not that they were very much different from magical ones, but hey...
Putting on his Dad´s ridiculous chef apron (Kissss me, I´m Slytherin. It had the picture of a snake beneath that, happily stirring a cauldron full of what seemed to be a lion, a badger and a plucked eagle. Scorpius found this piece of clothing slightly discriminating, but his Dad had simply told him that it was an ancient heirloom, probably made by Salazar Slytherin himself.
(Yeah, right, Dad.), he set to work with as much enthusiasm as a thestral sniffing fresh meat.
The first sign of danger came when he tried to use the electric whisk. Of course he could have used a simple mixing spell for the butter and sugar in his bowl, but when Scorpius Malfoy had put it into his head to do a thing right he would stick to his plan no matter what.
Rose never said anything about smoke issuing from the beaters.
But he didn´t turn it off, no, not until his butter and sugar became a "homogeneous cream of light fluffiness", as the recipe from the library told him. The kitchen not having exploded so far, he continued as if nothing had happened.
He added eggs without any incident and went ahead to put in some vanilla flavour. It seemed odd to him that his fluffy cream turned slightly blue, but that might be just the light in the kitchen, he thought. Filling the cups in the pan with a spoon proved to be a bit of a fight and he even succeeded to get some cream into his hair, however, in the end he pushed everything into the oven and collapsed happily into a chair nearby.
He watched the cakes for several minutes while he recovered, then decided to take a little walk to regain his spirits. Luckily he remembered to remove the cream in his hair before setting off (it had transformed into a sickening ooze by now, but he still found no reason to be alarmed).
When Draco Malfoy returned from work and entered his house, he was in a serene mood and certainly didn´t expect to be attacked in his own kitchen. He took off his cloak, ready to enjoy some silence before turning to the tedious business of food preparation, and accordingly went to the living room, in direction of his favourite armchair.
Before he arrived though, something caught his eye. And ear. And nose. He thought he had seen something move in the kitchen. He had heard a choked gurgling too. And on top of that a sugary smell of burned rubber filled the air.
Concluding that all in all this was definitely not good, he tentatively approached the kitchen entrance. Everything looked as it was supposed to, except the oven. A huge, black hole stared at him and he stared right back. Briefly wondering what had caused the strange noise from before he registered the front door closing and nearing footsteps. Sadly this distraction left him no time to take out his wand, let alone defend himself, when a slimly lump of brightest electric blue collided with half of his face and sent him flying across the room.
"Gwuuuaarrrgh!" Was all he could utter, because by now the unknown attacker had started something that felt like his face was being sucked from his skull.
"Dad!"
Scorpius came running into the kitchen with his wand held high. He stood speechless for a second, taking in the absurdity of the scene, but quickly gathered his thoughts, seeing that his father was turning slightly purple.
"Relashio!"
The thing let go immediately and made to flee back into the hole from whence it had come without doubt, but Draco was quicker.
"Finite!"
Falling to the ground limply, it disintegrated at once and all that was left was a slightly bubbling blue puddle.
Turning to his son, Draco really wanted to ask him what in the name of Merlin that had been, but all he could muster was a nervous eye twitching and some wild gesticulating.
"Errr," Scorpius replied, trying to decipher his father´s silent signs of panic.
"I´m not quite sure, but I think it could have to do something with my...baking."
"Baking?" He sounded like a toad with a bad cough. "What did you want to make - Devil´s Snare cake with Bubotuber icing?"
"No, actually just normal cup cakes." He thought it wiser not to mention for whom they had been intended. Of course his father knew about his friendship with Rose and they even went along with each other reasonably well, but the name Weasley was still something dangerous to pronounce in his presence, and Scorpius really didn´t feel the urge to find out what would happen if he did so in this situation. There had been enough explosions today as far as he was concerned.
"Maybe I put in too much of something."
He went over to the blackened rest of his ingredient pile and casually scanned the packaging. Draco followed his son´s movements with an incredulous stare, obviously not believing that some fault in dosing could have been responsible for the creation of a blue slime monster.
Just when Scorpius shrugged and was about to say that nothing seemed wrong with the ingredients, his father gave a shocked gasp and snatched the vanilla flavour sachet from the table.
"You used this?"
"Umm..." Confusion written all over his face, Draco shoved the package in question under his nose. Really, why was he getting so upset over-
Oh.
Snargaluff powder.
"I...I thought it was vanilla flavour, really, I-" but he stopped his feeble apology with a look to his father´s face. His eye was twitching again.
"Right. I guess I´ll start cleaning up this place then."
It looked as though Rose would have to survive her birthday this year without tasting Scorpius´ fantastic cooking manufactures. Maybe it was better for her too.
Want a snargaluff muffin in exchange for a review?;)