Title: A Particularly Memorable Incident

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Chrestomanci

Rating: K

Disclaimer: Chrestomanci belongs to Diana Wynne Jones

Summary: In which Julia and Roger express their feelings with All Hallow's Eve costumes and marmalade. Their parents are not quite as appreciative of their efforts. (A quick account of why Julia and Roger were not allowed to have marmalade in Charmed Life.)

Julia would tell anyone with ears that she made a fabulous angel. She didn't know a girl in all of town that had a dress more perfect than hers, with its white satin and blue velvet ribbons and gloriously rich brocade mantle. She was also quite proud of her small wings that her mother had crafted out of some hat feathers and glass beads. As such, she made it a point to tell absolutely everyone, at least twice, until they could see her coming around the corner and know exactly what the nine year old wanted to say.

Roger found this aggravating in the way that all brothers find their sisters obnoxious. It wasn't that he didn't like his sister, but he was relatively certain at times that he had a genetic disposition against her. Nothing else could possibly explain the random impulses to pull her hair that came upon him regularly.

It was this that plagued Roger, sitting at the breakfast table, eating a slice of toast with marmalade and butter, thinking her to be very silly to wear her nice clean costume to their meal. He himself was wearing a practical pirate's costume, already dirty and prepared to be ruined by crumbs and dribbling cocoa. If anything, the additional stains would make him look far more convincing than he already was.

Roger was also bothered by the fact that the angel costume that his sister insisted on wearing rather made her look like a marshmallow that had been fancied up for a party. With her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, filled with sweet toast, it appeared that Julia wasn't doing anything to change his opinion. Overall, the affect that it had was making Roger want to tease his sister.

As Roger was not in the habit of denying himself anything, he made it a point to do so, early and often.

"Say Julia," he said, still chewing his food, "you do realize that you look like a pastry instead of an angel, right?"

"What?" his sister asked, sharp and irritable within a moment's passing.

Roger smiled slowly, giggling into his cup of cocoa. "You look like you went to a mad confectioner's shop one too many times!" he said, watching his sister go red in the face, looking down at her dress. "See? You've even got ribbon candy at your collar!"

"I do not!" his sister said, turning very red in the face, not unlike a plum. There were days that their comfortable plumpness, inherited for their mother, did them no service and made them look rather silly. (Roger didn't particularly care if he looked like produce since he couldn't see his face. Rather, he thought it would be great fun if he looked like a persimmon or some other such fruit.)

Julia looked appalled. She looked wronged. She looked like a bewildered cow. This made Roger break out into his boyish laughter, snorting cocoa out most ungracefully onto his vagabond threads. He was alright with that though, since it improved his image. There was only one other thing that his sister looked like that caused Roger alarm, in spite of his good mood.

She looked like she might tattle.

Julia inhaled a big gulp of air, looking at Roger as though she would very much like to hit him with one of the tea service trays, but instead opting for the proper authorities to do it for her. This, more than anything that Julia could do, posed a threat to his future plans. Generally speaking, when their parents were involved in their squabbles, Roger was the one who came out worse off, even when Julia was doing the majority of the troublesome activities. (Apparently, being a man had qualified him in his father's eyes as the one who should take the blame for being negligent of Julia's behavior. He found this to be rather unfair, as Julia, much like himself, was not in the habit of depriving herself of her fun either.)

"Mummy!" yelled Julia, looking at Roger balefully. Roger winced, but mentally patted himself on the back. He would evade getting his ears boxed yet again.

Rather than their mother, Euphemia appeared at the door, giving them both a watery eyed look, holding a tea kettle in her hand. "Must you two be so loud?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder and down the hall. "Your mother and father are having breakfast together." There was a brief pause, as though there was something else that Roger felt he should know. (Adults just loved to talk over his head.) "There's business to be dealt with in London today, and your father's trying to enjoy his last couple of hours at home before he needs to get on down to the Parliament building."

Roger immediately balked at this. "Who takes more than an hour to eat breakfast?"

Euphemia was not forthcoming with answers.

Julia did not look convinced. Roger thought that this was likely because his confectionary insult held more importance than their parents' private time. Against the unspoken rules that lay between Julia and Roger in regards to their arguments, Roger hoped that Julia would drop it in favor of a truce.

"Roger called me a confectionary nightmare," she said resolutely, as though this ought to explain everything. Roger, of course, did not appreciate his paraphrasing, as he had never said something so direct.

Euphemia leveled him with a glare, though it was slightly spoiled by her wet eyes, likely irritated from dusting early that morning. "Roger, don't call your sister that. She looks lovely in her angel outfit." At this, Julia puffed up a little, pride assuaged.

"You're right of course, Euphemia," he said, taking a bite of marmalade. It was particularly unfortunate that Roger had inherited a degree of his father's biting humor. It always manifested at all the wrong times. "I think she rather looks a bit more like a pile of over-fluffed fondant."

This comment was not well received. It was instead responded to with a series of calls for both their mother and father while Euphemia looked rather like an animal trapped in a cage. Roger sighed, already feeling his ears ringing from an impending punishment.

Julia had obviously had enough of Roger, and if he couldn't tell before, he certainly could now. He could tell this with some solidarity by the splash of cocoa in his face and the various knots in her handkerchief. Blinking, once, twice, three times just to be sure, he found himself gaping like a fish, wondering if being completely soaked in chocolate made him look like he had beard scruff or just plain silly. Either way, he was getting a defined sticky feeling on his neck.

"We're not allowed to do magic," he said plainly, looking at the lapels of his suit, "or could you not hear that through your candy coated ears?"

War commenced. Marmalade flew. Euphemia very nearly cried. Above all else, Roger was unrepentant, as was Julia. They hadn't had a good row in a week now, and he was happy to oblige his sister with a face full of soggy bread. It was particularly satisfying to watch a spoon catch her in the dress, spreading currant jam on her collar. This was obviously the last straw, as she started tying knots with a fury.

Their arguments were usually quite mild. Food was thrown only on rare occasion, usually when Mary wasn't around to break out into a grumpy mood over the mess she would have to clean up. The fact that Julia was offended enough over her stupid (in his opinion, anyway) outfit to pull out lesser magic was signal to Roger that it would be best to duck out of this fight. Roger was nothing, if not passive about getting into grievous trouble.

With no regard for his personal well being, the chair removed itself from beneath his legs and left him looking up at the ceiling from the floor. Of course from the floor, he could also she all the shoes present in the room, which presently included Julia's black shoes, Euphemia's scuffed boots, and an addition of two pairs of house slippers, one velvet and the other definitely lacy. Dread took him with spindly claws, the kind that made him feel that his stomach dropped to his feet.

"Good morning, Mother. Father." He licked his sticky chin, hoping that being on the floor would keep him relatively safe from harm. It was too early in the morning for his father to do any significant lifting and Roger, being pleasantly plump as he had mentioned before, was not pleasantly light as well.

Roger was gratified to see Julia quickly pull all the knots out of her handkerchief, as though she had been burned by the fabric. He was also pleased to see that her dress was no longer like a pile of sweet fondant. It was instead similar to a candied orange, being completely coated in a thick layer of marmalade.

"Good morning," said Julia, looking very much like she would like to be swallowed up by the earth.

The earth was not forthcoming with the swallowing of children, and instead seemed to shake with each of their father's deceptively light steps around the various sticky spots in the carpet. Roger dared to look up into their father's face, only to find that he rather looked like a stony cliff; deceptively calm looking but promising a fall to your death if one got too close. Their mother was frowning severely and looking put-upon, but he had expected this. (Roger was not quite certain why, but there seemed to be an air of disappointment surrounding the both of them.)

Roger wasn't entirely certain what to say in this particular instance to his parents; "don't kill me" seemed to lack a certain style that the Chant family possessed, but "very nice camellia dressing robe" seemed a tad too trite for the situation. (Not that his father's dressing robe wasn't immaculate. They always looked quite expensive. Roger preferred not to think about what would happen if marmalade happened to get on the trailing hem. Strangely, however, the robe was tied a little looser than usual, as though it had been hastily put back together.)

"I'll assume by the orange stain on the ceiling that you're saying that in jest," said their father in his lightest, most threatening voice. He was raking one thin hand through his perfect hair, swiping away imaginary loose strands. Roger rather thought that his father wanted to throttle them. "So dare I ask what this particular argument was about?"

Julia, after shifting nervously in her seat (there was a gratifying squelch of jam), looked sideways at their parents. "He said I looked like a pile of fondant instead of an angel."

"And then she threw things at me," he said, thinking that his account of things ought to be added. If he was going to get his ears boxed, he at least wanted it to be justified by his being uppity. "With magic."

Their father did not look impressed. As a matter of fact, he was looking even more dour than before. Roger absently wondered if he would be allowed to hide in the tree house for the remainder of the afternoon to nurse his ears back to hearing.

"So you're telling me that you've interrupted ...our breakfast over the costumes that, by the way, you aren't supposed to be wearing until tomorrow night?" asked their father, quiet and poisonous. Both he and Julia looked uncomfortably at the ground, though Roger was at the distinct advantage of already being on the ground. "And that in the process of having your tantrum, you broke an important rule because it sounded like a good idea at the time?"

Roger had never particularly cared for their father's ability to make everything they did sound stupid.

Then again, what they did generally was stupid.

In the end, just as Roger expected, he was told to stand up before he was soundly popped upside the head, leaving a horrible ringing in his ears. To his credit, he didn't flinch when the next one got him on the right side and he fell back to the floor, foot slipping in a puddle of jam. Julia did flinch, but took it well. Roger had hoped she would cry at least a little for getting the both of them in trouble. She had apparently (and disappointingly) decided to be brave today.

Their father, still looking vaguely angry, pointed to the mess. "You will clean that, without magic, and then you will report to me in an hour for a list of lines that you will write. 'Do unto others as you would do unto yourself' sounds rather fitting." He crossed his arms, turning to leave, eyes closed and fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

The thing about messes is that they get everywhere. Walking through the room with your eyes closed when there is a mess present is usually a bad idea, as there was some unspoken rule in the universe that when things are at their worst, it can still get even more dire. Apparently, their father seemed to think the laws of physics did not apply to him. The marmalade puddle, looking rather bright and mischievous in Roger's eyes, glinted merrily a mere step away from one velvet-covered foot. "Wait! Watch out!" is what he wanted to say. Looking back, there were a number of things that Roger would have preferred to say to prevent tragedy from occurring. However, he was made to accept that all that was going to come out was more of a half-hearted cry of warning. It seemed rather pitiful, especially to their mother's more articulate "Christopher!" and mad dash towards their father.

It was a good thing that their father was so thin and light. Roger was relatively certain that he would have fallen a lot harder if he had weighed a couple pounds more. This did not change that his father did in fact fall in a mess of limbs on the carpet, marmalade twinkling merrily from the tip of his house slippers. (While Roger was not sure if it was possible for a pile of processed orange and sugar to be so expressive, he did still feel like he had somehow been wronged by the marmalade.)

Everyone winced collectively while their mother went to go help their father up. There was a great deal of muttering between the two, with their mother making overtures for peace while their father looked a bit like death warmed over, face studiously blank again.

"I don't know for how long," Father began, looking grim, "and I don't know to what extent, but I know that it is going to be a long time before either of you have marmalade again." Looking at their glum faces, he added, "You're out of shape anyway, so the removal of it from your diet is for the best."

Their parents limped out of the room, and Julia and Roger looked at the room forlornly. Euphemia simply placed a bucket filled with wash and a brush in their hands, looking regretful but determined. Roger knew he wouldn't be able to talk her into helping today. They also knew that they wouldn't be given the opportunity to apologize properly to their father before he had to go to London for the day.

"I'm sorry for messing up your dress," he said sullenly, "but I won't take back my fondant comment because you do look like it."

Julia frowned, but nodded. "I accept your apology, and wait for the next chance I get to make fun of you. You rather look like a street urchin instead of a pirate with that chocolate scruff on your chin."

And with that, things resumed their normal flow, with Julia and Roger taking careful snipes at each other over their choices in wardrobe. They found out later through a giggling Mary that their parents never did get to finish breakfast, and that was why they had come down so hard on the punishment. (Roger was curious as to why this would make Mary giggle, but did not press for answers. He wouldn't likely understand anyway.) All the same, the absence of marmalade was sorely noted.

Oh well. They had cousins coming soon to fix that problem.

A/N: Short, random, and pointless. All the same, I was amused in writing it, and I really did want to do a story involving the holidays coming up somehow.