the smoothie stand
a/n: written for morsmordre's shipping week. prompt: banana.
It was a hot summer day, and Severus, Gellert, and Modesty were all bored senseless. Unfortunately for their parents, entertaining two toddlers and an eight-year-old was much easier said than done.
"Why don't you go play outside?" Les suggested.
"It's too hot."
"Maybe we could go swimming, then,"
"It's too cold."
"Do you want to sit around and watch TV all day?"
"There's nothing on."
Barty sighed, brushing Gellert's discarded shorts off the couch. "Do any of you want to do anything?"
"Yes."
Les pulled out her laptop and put in a search for things to do. "Does anyone want to make s'mores?"
"It's too hot."
Before anyone else could complain, Barty cut in. "Why don't you start a lemonade stand?" he suggested. "Then you'll have some money and can stop asking us to buy you things."
That got everyone's attention. Gellert wanted to buy a shredder to get rid of his pants forever, Severus wanted to buy out the store's supply of cheesy crackers, and Modesty's crayons, growing worn-out from her artistic endeavors, could stand to be replaced.
"That settles it, then," Les put her laptop away. "I'll help make the lemonade, and you three can go out and decorate your signs."
-x-
The good news was that Modesty, with her brothers' help, was able to create an eye-catching sign for their budding business. The bad news was that after scouring the kitchen for fifteen minutes, Les was forced to conclude that they were out of lemons.
"How are they supposed to have a lemonade stand with no lemons?" she wondered aloud. They had pretty much everything else - apples, bananas, oranges - but no lemons.
Then it came to her. They didn't have lemons, but they did have enough fruit variety that they still had something to sell. Maybe instead of a lemonade stand, they could sell fruit smoothies.
"Change of plans," she told Barty. "Tell them we don't have any lemons, so we're going to have a smoothie stand instead."
With that taken care of, the couple got to work making the smoothies. With five different varieties, they figured that was a nice stopping point to see what their customers actually liked. Once Modesty wrote down the types of smoothies and their prices, they officially opened for business.
-x-
Among their first customers were Ella and her family (although Draco and Sev had to be discouraged from disappearing into the backyard together.) The children couldn't hide their grins as their first proceeds dropped into the box. "Thank you," they chorused as they continued their walk down the street.
"Take these!" Gellert tried to offer them a bonus gift of a pair of little shorts, but Ella informed him that they all had enough pants, thank you very much. He settled for throwing them into the neighbor's garden.
Les just pretended she didn't see them. It was too hot for there to be any hope of Gellert wearing pants.
After a few minutes of pointedly looking at anything that wasn't her son's pants, Les found a welcome distraction in Maisie. "Don't lick those," she told Amycus, whose tongue was about to plop into a smoothie.
"Hello, Aunt Maisie," Modesty said with a smile. "Would you like a smoothie? They're a dollar each."
"I'd love one," Maisie said, handing her three dollars. "Amycus would too. And I think Alecto could use a little fruit in her diet."
"No, I can't!" Alecto said, except she was eating a cookie, so it sounded a little more like she said, "No pants!" Gellert yelled, "Yeah!" in agreement.
"Alecto, sweetheart, the seven bags of fruit snacks you had don't count as fruit," Maisie said.
She did eventually decide to accept a smoothie, even if Amycus had to hold it up to her mouth with his tongue. By now, Les had learned that it would be easier to ask what the caterpillar tongue couldn't do.
Still, she couldn't complain, especially when Maisie left them a generous tip. At least this was going well so far.
-x-
After about an hour, the children had made about twenty-five dollars. Severus was already speaking longingly of the cheesy crackers he was going to buy, only to be interrupted when Scabior wandered up to the smoothie stand.
"Hi!" Sev greeted him. "You wanna smoothie? It's a dollar."
Scabior thought for a moment. Then he picked up a cup and wandered away with it.
"Hey!" Severus called. "You's gotta pay for that!"
The little snatcher just kept walking. Severus was about to chase after him, as his cheesy cracker money was at stake, but a new problem had just presented itself. A leaf had just dropped into one of the smoothies, and it wasn't unaccompanied. "What's this?" a little voice demanded.
Little Mary Lou was probably about to trample someone's garden with her ride-on leaf machine, but unfortunately, the smoothie stand had attracted her attention. Modesty, who thankfully didn't seem to recognize her, said, "It's a smoothie stand. They're a dollar."
"I don't have a dollar!"
"Well," Les knelt down to the little girl's level. "Why don't you go and ask your mother for a dollar? I'm sure she'd be glad to..."
"But I want one now!"
Les knew that Mary Lou's mother would gladly give her daughter a dollar if she only asked. The little girl probably knew it too. However, this seemed unacceptable, and Mary Lou made her dissatisfaction known by accelerating, slamming her leaf machine into the stand. Smoothies sloshed everywhere, dripping all over the signs and spilling into the grass as Mary Lou pedaled away.
"That little brat," Barty growled.
"Mummy?" Modesty frowned, looking at the wreckage. "What do we do now?"
"Do we get to eat cheesy crackers?" Sev asked.
"Not just yet," Les told him.
-x-
Barty was all for marching down to Jeanne's house and telling her to control her tiny terror, but his wife stopped him. She wasn't about to let the antics of an out-of-control three-year-old put a damper on their day. However, Severus now had frothy pink glop in his hair. And most of the surviving smoothies had leaves in them.
When they propped it up, Les discovered that the colors on the sign had all mixed together and bled down the paper. At that point, her husband said, "How about we pick this up tomorrow and I'll go yell at the little heathen?"
"Of course not!" Les handed him a few overturned cups. "Hasn't anyone told you that if at first you don't succeed, try again?"
"No, but I have had Modesty suggest I shove my problems in the leaf machine,"
"Well, I don't have one of those, so I guess we'll have to make do."
With a little help, Les managed to clean everything up and prepare it for future customers. She sucked the smoothie residue from Severus and turned the hose on him to get the rest. Modesty produced a new sign while they worked, this one even featuring illustrations of the fruit they used in the smoothies.
"It's only three o'clock," Les observed. "I bet we'll double our money by dinnertime."
And Severus grinned in agreement, even if everyone knew he wanted to maximize the amount of cheesy crackers he could buy.
-x-
Les may or may not have had to call every single one of her friends besides Ella and Maisie, but business definitely picked up after their grand reopening.
Yes, little Harry chattered away, managing to engage Cam, Les, Barty, and Modesty before abruptly leaving them behind to talk to the people across the street. And yes, Les placed a sugar-free smoothie on the table saying, "This is for Credence. Don't sell it to anyone else," only for it to disappear as soon as she turned around.
But by the time they closed for the evening, they'd made forty-eight dollars - sixteen each. That meant that Modesty could purchase a jumbo box of crayons in every shade she could think of, and Severus could buy several boxes of cheesy crackers.
But there wasn't quite enough money for Gellert's pants shredder. It seemed another fundraiser would soon be in order...
-end-