"Step four," Charlotte read. "Add something more."
On the table lay three cake pans, a thin layer of lumpy brown batter on the bottom of each.
"Do you have it?" I asked Charlotte.
"Of course." She patted her pocket. "Go see if your dad is still minding his own business."
I am his business. "It will make him suspect something is up. Just add it quickly."
"Go stand at the door at least, Albus. Your luck is very bad."
"Is not."
"Is."
And wouldn't Bat Cat choose that moment to call, "Are you two about done in there?"
Charlotte pulled a face. "See?"
"We're halfway, Dad!" I stomped to the door, swiping at the flour on my clothes, and opened it a crack, making wavy hands behind me at Charlotte to add the damn stuff. "Why are you asking, Dad? Are you hungry? We've just had breakfast and you don't even eat cake."
Bat Cat was lying stretched out on the sofa now with his feet elevated on an upturned cushion. He raised the book he had been dozing under to look at me with one batty eye. "It doesn't take this long to bake a cake, Albus."
Yeah. True. We've been at it forever. "You've probably not done it with Charlotte, then."
Charlotte called, 'Hey!' behind me. I ignored her. "We're about to put it in the oven. Whyyy are you asking? Do you want tea? Are you bored?"
He was absolutely not bored. He was just being a nosy dad. "Tea would be lovely, thank you."
Tsk. Did he think we would be quicker if he added to our workload? Well, I had offered. "One minute." I banged the door shut. I opened it again. "When Percy babysits he doesn't nag every five minutes."
"Oh? I should pay him less."
I was about to close the door again when Charlotte barged past me with a porcelain teacup rattling on a saucer. "Here you go, Uncle Severus." She placed it neatly on the coffee table with an air of 'there!', dug his favourite oatmeal biscuit out of her pocket, set it on the side of the dainty little saucer, and then turned smartly on her heel to march back.
It might have been more impressive had she not been sporting every ingredient we've used somewhere on her person. Hogwarts's ghosts would kill for the lovely white pallor of All-Purpose Flour. Not that I looked any better. I watched Bat Cat's face crumple into a picture of mirth and hastily pulled the door close behind us, praying he would at least throw up a silencing charm; I've known Charlotte for five years and in none of those had she ever been impressed when laughed at.
"Let's get it done, Charlotte!" I said loudly. "What's next?"
I silently mimed a pouring motion, wiggling my eyebrows, hoping she'd get it, and she nodded, holding an empty vial up. Yes!
"Step five. Bake the cake in a pre-heated 350*F oven for twenty-five minutes," Charlotte read out loud. "Ah, no, Albus. You forgot to pre-heat."
"Me!"
"It's fine. We'll just put it on and wait five minutes—I'm sure it will be enough."
But that wasn't the end of our latest troubles. On inspection we found the oven only went up to two hundred.
"It's Celsius." I groaned. "How to convert it?" No way was I going to ask the teacher next door or he'd find a way to incorporate it in a lesson.
Charlotte didn't know either but was less bothered. "We'll put it on two hundred. It will be close enough," was her solution.
I looked at her floury face, at the three pans waiting to be baked in midst of a gooey mess… and thought, fuck it. "Okay. Do it. And put the cakes in already, why not? Dad! Time twenty-five minutes for us!"
He called an affirmative. Did he sound funny? He'd better finish laughing before he came in.
We still had to make the icing but we decided to take a break and sat in front of the oven to watch our cakes rise.
"Did you really put it?" I asked again, making sure. "In each pan?"
"Yesss."
"Did it do anything funny?"
"The pans jumped."
"They did?!"
"I don't lie."
"Of course you do."
She giggled. After a moment I joined her.
Feeling the press of time now, we took it out when it smelled nice, the aroma of dark chocolate filling the kitchen. I burned my thumb, but Sleepy Bat woke and fixed it for me. Magic! "Thanks, Dad. You can cancel the alarm and go back to sleep, nothing except my finger burned, the house is still standing, we put the oven off, and we'll clean now. Unless you want to come scour it for us?"
"I wouldn't dare scour Louisette's kitchen," he said and flopped back on the sofa. "This place isn't Hogwarts."
It sure wasn't. Hogwarts could take any spell you threw at it and then some. This house was beautiful but I kept waiting for something to break if I touched it wrong.
"Look, Albus," Charlotte said when I returned to the kitchen. "We need to be quicker. I want it to be finished before Maman returns. But that's not all. Look at this."
Together we bent over and peered at the three cake pans. I soon saw what she meant. They were vibrating. No, not vibrating—that was tiny little jumps.
"Oh. No way will they miss that. Especially not Dad. Maybe the icing will make it stop?"
"No, no. We have no time to make it and still clean, and what if it doesn't? Icing is goopy. I've thought about it, and we need something sticky. Let's use jam? Jam between the layers and maybe jam on the plate also. We can dust some cocoa on top…"
"If it's strawberry jam, sure." There was nothing sweeter than strawberry jam and I figured a little extra insurance couldn't hurt.
It was. I let Charlotte jam the cake up while I cleaned. No, I wasn't being bullied or oppressed, it was me being sensible. Charlotte had probably never cleaned anything in her life and I wasn't going to be the one to teach her.
When Charlotte's parents returned, a three-layer dark chocolate cake stood proudly in the centre of the kitchen table… slowly wobbling to the side. At least it wasn't jumping. The kitchen was spick and span, we had both changed our clothes and scrubbed the visible bits, and Dad had finally been allowed to join us.
"The two of you baked this?" Aunt Louisette asked, not hiding her surprise. I don't know where she managed to fetch the surprise from, cakes certainly didn't come out of any respectable bakery like that. "All by yourself?"
"All alone," Charlotte crowed, looking proud as punch.
"Without killing each other," Dad added under his breath. I sent him a warning squint. For my effort, he raised his voice, "Is it your birthday tomorrow, Louisette?"
"Not for a month still, Severus. I really should get you a calendar for yours."
"Hm."
I evaded his eyes.
Charlotte fluttered her lashes at him.
"I'd think twice before eating that," Suspicious Bat told Aunt Louisette and Uncle Alain.
"You might be right, cousin," Uncle Alain mused, frowning at the offering now. "Our children made this. Our children." He prodded it experimentally with a finger and it slid some more. "It could explode…"
"It will not!" Charlotte snapped, highly offended. She wasn't faking it either. Masterful. "Put that bezoar back, Uncle Severus—why do you even have it? Look! Albus and I will eat first!" She smartly cut two thick slices and plopped them on plates, passing one to me with a fork. "Eat, Albus!"
It smelled heavenly despite its appearance, all chocolate and strawberries, but now that I had a closer look it was obviously quite dry. Charlotte's liberal application of the jam might just be its saving grace. Ha! I knew it was too much flour! Still, there was no way I was going to not eat this. I would eat it even if it was dryer than the Sahara. Living with Bat Dad meant there was never a day when pranks were fine and this was probably my last chance this millennium.
"More for us if they don't want it," I told Charlotte, playing my bit, and speared off a big piece, stuffing it into my face before anyone could think to stop me.
Huh. It tasted better than it looked. Not bad at all. Charlotte's was a daintier bite, all while scowling at her parents. I could practically hear her brain from here. How dare they imagine she would spike their cake with something! She! A dutiful daughter!
"All right, darling," her mum laughed. "I'm sorry we doubted you. What a lovely cake for a first try! You two are absolutely amazing," she said and started plating more slices, sharing it out.
On my third bite, something rippled through my skin, and my feet suddenly started to ache. I looked down to find they were elongating. And that was when I saw Bat Dad accept a plate from Aunt Louisette and stick his fork into the dark offering.
"Dad! No!" I reached for him and boinged into the air, vaulting over the kitchen table in an amazing leap, aided by my overlarge feet, to barrel into him. He staggered back under my attack and our plates and cakes scattered in opposite directions, his fork flying straight up. "Don't eat it!" I yelled into his shocked face.
"Aww, Albus, you spoiled it!" Charlotte complained. I saw out of the corner of my eye her parents hurriedly putting their plates down, untouched. But I didn't care for that, the only important one was currently holding on to me so that I didn't jump all over the place… and he looked furious.
"Did you eat any?" I asked him.
"I did not."
"Oh, thank goodness!"
Behind me, Charlotte bounced and touched the ceiling, calling: "Look, Maman!" She boinged and touched the top of the kitchen cabinet. "Look, Papa!"
"What's the meaning of this, Albus?" Angry Bat hissed, his batty black eyes burning with the wrath of a thousand pissed-off demons.
I would have answered, but it was my face's turn to stretch, and when I opened my mouth I emitted a raspy cough, "Hraah!" I tried again. "Hraaah!"
It was echoed behind me and I twisted to see a kangaroo-faced Charlotte boinging and barking all over the place. Her dad shook his wand out and zapped her immobile before she boinged into the door.
Spoilsport!
"Not in the kitchen, Charlotte, dear," he said. "Let's get you outside."
Or not.
I 'hraahed' questioningly at Angry Bat.
"I should take you home," he ground out through clenched teeth.
"Hraah."
"Oh, Severus. Let the children have their fun," Aunt Louisette said and extricated me from his grip. "Come, Albus, the two of you can bounce outside. Do you know how long this will take?"
"Hraah."
"Do you think you'll grow a tail?"
"Hraah!" Ooh! I hope so!
It took until sundown. Charlotte and I bounced all over their orchard to our hearts' content. I can't remember when last I had this much fun even if we did not grow any tails. If I ever became an animagus, kangaroos were going to be high on my list of favourites, I tell you!
By the time we were done, Aunt Louisette and Uncle Alain had figured it out and explained it all to Dad and he had lost most of his ire. Each year on April fool's day the three Princes pranked each other. Charlotte had been adjusting the calendar for the last week, keeping it behind by a day so she could get her prank in first, and they never suspected. Which they were quite proud of, as told in Charlotte's happy letter to me the next day. They should be, she had been saving this since their holiday in Australia close to a year ago. According to her Australia's version of Zonko's Joke Shop was upside down but I'll probably never be allowed to see it. They never suspected the two of us would prepare anything with Bat Dad watching us either, and would definitely have fallen for the cake had I not stopped Dad.
"I'm not impressed," Dad said when he was massaging life back into my jumped-out legs back home. I was lying exhausted on our own couch and keeping my fingers crossed under me that he would not ground me for life. He asked, "How did you ever think I'd be fine with being pranked?"
"I didn't! You weren't supposed to be pranked at all, come on, Dad, I don't have a death wish. That's why we thought of a cake—you never eat cake." He never did. He found sweet food abhorrent and always passed his share on to me. Frankly, it worked out fine for me and I had no urge to convert him to the sweet life."And we added jam! Why did you even want it now? Were you sick?"
"Why do you think?"
"I honestly have no clue. Why?"
"It was your first cake."
"…"
"…"
"I'll bake you a new one tomorrow."
"No, thank you."
"Don't worry. We used up all the Kangaroo Hop Drops—it won't have anything crazy in it."
"No need."
"I can make it savoury!"
"Go to bed."
"I can't walk an inch. How does a marmite cake sound?"
"Goodnight, Albus." Bat Dad levitated me to my room and dropped me with a bounce on my bed, not bothering to follow.
"Charlotte says the French make olive cakes!" I called. "With ham and cheese in!"
"Go to sleep!"
The End.
Thanks for reading!
