A/N: Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all who celebrate!
This is a gift-fic for Butterflies765, a wonderful Wampus housemate/teammate and writer. It's both incredibly domestic and also a little wild, but I hope you enjoy it!
Prompts:
(pairing) ScorpiusRose
(word) exhilarating
(dialogue) "What did I tell you?" / "Not to open the presents before Christmas" / "And what did you do?" / "Opened the presents before Christmas"
The soft calls of birds from outside the frosty windows announced the arrival of morning as Rose sat up in bed, stretching gently. Beside her, Scorpius snored noisily, fast asleep despite the loud whispers from outside their door.
"Come on in!" She called loudly.
With a slam, the door opened and the twins flung themselves onto the bed. Scorpius finally woke up, emitting a loud cry of "Hey!" as Molly landed on his legs.
"It's Christmas!" said Emilia, grin wide as she bounced on the end of the bed.
"We have to open presents now!" Molly added.
Rose glanced over at the clock once again just to confirm the time. Her husband grumbled quietly about how 7 am was an unacceptable hour for such a rude awakening before picking Molly up by the armpits and dragging her to sit beside him.
"Now, Molly?" He asked, winking at Rose.
"Now!"
"If you two go wait by the tree now, we'll be there in a few minutes." Rose said.
Before either of them could retort, Scorpius gave both of them his most stern look and they scrambled off the bed excitedly chatting about the gifts they wanted to be under the tree. Rose finally stood up, moving to raise the blinds all the way. She turned to Scorpius, who let out a gigantic sigh as he threw on a shirt.
"We're never going to get another Christmas where we can sleep in, are we?" Scorpius inquired, as if they hadn't been doing this for the past four years.
"No, and you know it. We signed up for this," She said, moving to lay a gentle kiss on his cheek. "I promise we'll get some time alone when everyone comes over later. In the meantime, I have a lot of food to prep still and we need to give those two their presents."
Despite the exhaustion that would likely make up the majority of their evening, Rose found the feeling of Christmas morning exhilarating because of her children. It was easy to get caught up in their abundant joy over the prospect of new objects. Perhaps the overwhelming materialistic aspects of the day weren't exactly beneficial to anyone's mental health, but Rose wasn't going to let that get her down when Emilia and Molly were sitting in the adjoining room quivering with excitement.
"You're excited?" Scorpius asked as she shoved socks on her feet.
"Of course I am, dear. Now come on or they'll take apart the whole tree." She said, leaving the room without allowing him any time to respond.
The girls let out shrieks of joy at the emergence of their parents. Rose sat down on the couch as Scorpius levitated a few boxes towards Emilia and Molly. When he came to sit beside her, she felt one of his hands come to rest on her leg.
"I… there's something I forgot to mention." He whispered to her as the girls took out the toy brooms that had been so carefully wrapped in paper.
"What did you do this time?"
"You know those presents that came a few days ago from Albus?" Scorpius said.
"Mum! What's this button do?" Emilia said, and Rose was distracted by trying to explain that they couldn't play with the toys in the house.
It was a good half hour later that she finally turned to Scorpius again to find out what he'd meant about the presents from Albus.
"What did you do?"
"Well…you told me..." He looked around as if someone was going to pop out to save him. The girls were busy waving plastic wands at one another, shouting out pretend curses.
"What did I tell you?" She said, knowing the answer already.
"Not to open the presents before Christmas." Scorpius said sheepishly.
"And what did you do?"
"Opened the presents before Christmas."
"Scorpius! Albus is going to murder you!" She hissed, as quietly as possible so that the girls didn't notice the argument they were certainly about to have. "He made it very clear in the attached note that opening them before the 25th could have absolutely grave consequences."
It wasn't clear what those consequences were, exactly, but Albus Potter was never if not explicit in his descriptions of how things like presents were supposed to play out. Rose accepted long ago those consequences may be anything from playful anger from Albus himself to actual curses or hexes.
Scorpius, at least, had the audacity to look ashamed with himself.
"I know, I just… I needed to make sure it wasn't actually dangerous. I know he doesn't even want them opened until he's here, but…"
"What sort of big surprise is it? And what have you unleashed?" She said.
"I don't know! Nothing happened! It's not even sinister items, it's simply some food he got on his trip to Taiwan a few months ago. And I don't think the food is cursed, Rose. Nothing's happened yet."
"If the box itself wasn't hexed, then I'm certain he's going to hex you the minute he shows up."
They left the conversation at that for the time being because Molly accidentally hit Emilia in the shoulder with her plastic wand while Scorpius tried to reassure Rose that nothing terrible was going to happen now that Albus' gifts had been opened before their time.
Rose all but forgot Scorpius' mistake until Albus Potter himself showed up at 3, the last person to arrive. She opened the door and was met with the face of a man who knew he'd been betrayed by his closest friend.
"Where is he?" He demanded.
"Not even going to bother with a hello?" Rose asked, deflecting his anger.
"Hi, Rose, where is your dunce of a spouse?"
"Albus!" Scorpius arrived, moving to try to hug his friend - but Albus refused.
"Scorpius, explain to me how I was notified by the package spell I put on those boxes that they were opened three days ago?" said Albus.
"I can explain -"
"You're incredibly lucky I arrived when I did. It'll be much easier to prevent the inevitable fiery disaster this night is about to become with me around."
"Albus, I need you to explain what you mean about that particular disaster, and Scorpius, dear, I'd love it if you stepped back inside so we can all get out of the freezing cold."
They did as she directed, and then Albus was pacing back and forth in the hall.
"The pixies won't be able to wield their revenge on you if I'm here, I won't let them."
"Pixies?" Scorpius said.
"You don't recall that particular group you pissed off back in sixth year?" asked Albus. "I know you didn't intend to, but it really hasn't served you well. Normally I tell you not to open gifts before Christmas day because of principle, this time it's because it legitimately had a curse on it."
"I…" Rose trailed off, shaking her head and glaring at Scorpius with all of her might. Of course he'd mess something up this terribly when there was legitimate danger.
"They got ahold of the packages before I could get them to you, and apparently put some sort of curse on it that will cause your tree to erupt in flames. Fortunately, I've dealt with this particular breed outside of that one time in sixth year, and I know the reverse spell. I put the packaging spell on them just to make sure you'd follow my directions and avoid having the curse go off prematurely." said Albus. "Clearly it didn't."
They stood there for a few minutes in silence. Rose found she couldn't quite process the fact that Scorpius remained a strong enemy of a particular group of pixies she barely remembered at this point; that misadventure had not involved her. From the look on his face, Scorpius couldn't quite believe something so serious would happen to them this many years after the initial incident.
"You didn't send an owl?" Scorpius finally asked.
"I was in Maine, sorting out a different situation with some particularly ferocious rodents in the middle of the woods. I figured you listened to my instructions." Albus shrugged, face returning to a slightly more normal shade of red. "I'm going to go cast that reverse spell on your tree, and you're going to never open my presents ahead of time ever again."
Albus stormed off in the direction of their sitting room to take care of the tree, and Scorpius moved to stand right beside Rose with a little huff of breath. She wanted to laugh in his face at the ridiculousness of the situation.
"This is not the turn I thought today would take." He said.
"You're telling me," Rose replied, "I told you he'd be angry."
"Should we…"
"You're going to apologize to him for that the minute he's in the same room as you again. For the time being, I think you should come into the kitchen with me and help finish setting up the counter."
Scorpius did not refuse her offer of giving Albus a few more minutes to calm down and finish with the tree, following her into the kitchen like a puppy who knew they'd been bad. Rose couldn't help but chuckle a little at his downcast appearance. She started placing spoons in bowls, and was in the middle of casting a washing spell on the full sink when Albus came in.
"I'm sorry for simply barging in like that. Needed to uh…"
"This isn't your fault anyway, Albus, don't say that," Scorpius started, and Rose hummed Christmas songs to herself to tune the rest of their conversation out.
When the mob had finally settled down at the table after rushing the kitchen, Scorpius looked at her, and then looked at everyone else.
"To inflammable Christmases." He said, and Rose finally let out the laugh she'd been holding in since the whole ordeal began.