Author's Note: Written for…
All About You Challenge. Prompt: Write about someone having a bad reaction to the smell of a food or drink.
Dinner Table Challenge. Prompts: Dolores Umbridge, taste
Sweet Surprise
There was nothing Dolores Umbridge enjoyed more than a steaming hot cup of tea after a morning full of trials. Without fail, every day at precisely one o'clock she would lock herself away in her office and pour a cup while she read the daily reports.
Today was different. The trials ran over, for starters, meaning Dolores made to back to her office at one-fifteen and was noticeably short-tempered with her staff. She was entertaining the idea of going home early and leaving Runcorn to run things when she spotted the box on her desk.
It was flat and thin, about the size of the anti-muggle pamphlets they were making outside her door. It had pink and white polka dotted wrap and a large hot pink bow on top. The tag attached read 'From your secret admirer.'
Dolores stared at the box with wide eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been given a gift – the office Christmas party, maybe. She never did find out who got her the frog plushie.
All thoughts of tea and home forgotten, she carefully unwrapped the present, revealing a box of the finest Honeydukes chocolates.
She opened the box hesitantly, expecting something foul to be inside. Honeydukes had been closed down weeks ago and it was near impossible to get proper sweets unless you went into a muggle shop. But there was no trickery that she could readily detect.
Twenty-five perfect bundles of chocolate and caramel and almonds sat before her and the aroma steadily filling her office was intoxicating. It made her mouth water and clouded all thoughts but the ones urging her to devour the whole box. Without a second thought, she selected a chocolate sprinkled with coconut and popped the whole thing in her mouth.
The chocolate coating was irresistible and she was immediately overtaken with a strong desire to quit her job … then she bit into the sweet and a retched-tasting creme filled her mouth. She gagged, spitting the thing out into her garbage pail and the entire box along with it.
"Must have expired," she muttered to herself as she went about fixing her cup of tea.
Meanwhile, hidden in a shop across from the Ministry entrance, two young redheaded men waited and watched anxiously.
Finally, after some time spent there, one sighed and turned to the other.
"Do you think it was the nougat?" he said.
"No," said the other, angrily pulling up the collar of his ordinary muggle jacket. "That blasted coconut creme."