“I know you do,” Alice conceded with a warm smile. At the end of the day that was all that mattered - not Augusta, not Uncle Algie, not the mutters of those who had disapproved of them marrying so young. All that mattered was Frank, and that they were so in love sometimes the force of it threatened to bowl her over. It was all that had mattered since she had seen him properly that first day of auror training, and it was all that would ever matter. Augusta could disapprove of her for the rest of her life, but as long as Frank loved her, Alice could stand firm against her. “Although I might have to ask you to make us unplottable when we start our own family. I am not having Uncle Algie waking up our baby with his serenades, and certainly not having their first words be ‘Algie’.”
Alice might be angry about Frank essentially ruining her hard work of washing her hair if not for how his laughter made her crack up herself. Alice wiggled her goopy hands in front of Frank’s face as he tried to dodge her assault, and she shook her head enthusiastically. “You are a cold and cruel man who only wants to see his wife suffer as she has to take another long shower where the hot water will inevitably run out to get rid of all this pumpkin,” Alice looked up at her husband with mischievous eyes. “A cease fire only works if both sides agree, darling.”
Alice reached for the bowl full of pumpkin, holding it close to her chest to prevent Frank grabbing any more as he ran away. “I believe that one of the first things we were taught is not to negotiate if a crime is occurring and to take the suspect in, no compromises - and you, my darling, are being a pumpkin terrorist,” Alice scooped up a large handful of pumpkin, flinging it at Frank from across the table. Beaming in delight as it landed on his shoulder, she threw another handful towards him. “Crime deserves a punishment, Mr Longbottom. But now I shall accept your truce…”
Alice grabbed a smaller handful of pumpkin, keeping her fist balled up tightly as she set the bowl down carefully and walked around the table towards her husband. Reaching up with her other hand (though still very pumpkiny) Alice touched Frank’s cheek gingerly with a warm smile, reaching up on her tiptoes to capture his lips with her own. Aware she probably wouldn’t have long before he got suspicious, Alice reached up to shove the pumpkin down his shirt. Roaring with laughter, Alice broke away from him and ran away, hovering in the doorway to the sitting room.
“You’ll never beat me, Frank. I shall be the pumpkin queen.”
There mere mention of their family, their baby, a given that would happen on the not-so-distant horizon, melted Frank’s expression to faintly dazed goo, his eyes lit up at the prospect of a chubby little baby with big eyes cooing, ‘Algie’ again and again to both of their dismay enough to make his chest ache a little. It was alarming, how much he wanted that for them, a happy family that would prevail against the misery the world outside their walls wanted to inflict upon them. A little girl with tiny pigtails, perhaps, or a boy with a beaming smile. Both.
Frank had never wanted anything more or anything less than happiness, in its rawest and purest of forms. He’d always hoped to prove the world wrong with love.
“Algie was my first word,” Frank replied with a dumb, broad smile in place, “We can’t break with family traditions.”
And this, he thought, was the living proof of that, Alice’s devious smile and hoarding of the pumpkin ammunition as if he didn’t have the arm span to reach it. Instead, he cackled, a chest so stuffed full of happiness that nothing else had a hope of creeping in there, as he was splattered with pumpkin guts across his chest and up his neck and declared a pumpkin terrorist.
Really, Frank knew better than to believe in a truce, because he was already sticky and goopy with pumpkin and Alice had that look in her eye she could never hide from him, the one that said she was up to something, but he had been just a little bit of a sucker for her since they’d really met at Auror Training and his smile turned wry at the brush of slimy fingers against his cheek.
It’s a pure reflex to smile into her kiss, like he had every time since the first time she had kissed him, and the curve of her own smile as her hands shifted, telegraphing her ploy even before he felt the slimy handful crawl down his spine followed, jerking away in spite of himself because it was cold and Alice’s laughter was echoing off the walls as she skidded away into the next room.
“The pumpkin queen better be ready to be deposed, there is a pumpkin coup d’etat on the way,” he replied, squirming as he batted at his spine to try and wipe away the crawling sensation down his spine and only succeeding in smearing it further as he skidded after her, the splatters of pumpkin on the kitchen floor a definite hazard that abruptly stole the ground from under him and sent him loudly thumping to the kitchen floor in a breathless heap.
He stared, blinking up at their pumpkin-splattered ceiling for a moment and the thought crossed his mind that they really needed to repaint it before he a heaving breath refilled his lungs and he gave a wheezing, laugh from his prone position on the ground and adding, “The pumpkin coup d’etat might be on hold for just .. just a minute.”
Pushing his way up to sitting he huffed out another laugh and added, delightedly, “That doesn’t count as a win. If anything, the pumpkin won that round.”
