Chapter Text
"Take one, pass it on," said Dumbledore, with evangelical zeal.
Sprout removed a sherbet lemon from the candy-striped paper bag and regarded it suspiciously. "What does it do?"
"They're fizzy," said Dumbledore, as though he were announcing they'd just won the lottery, "and they taste of lemons."
Quiet fell gradually over the staffroom as the bag was passed around.
Snape crunched his lemon critically. "Tartaric acid, I think. Wartweed would have needed less sugar to mask the taste."
"Wartweed gives one such terrible wind," said Flitwick, "a Fizzing Charm is a far better solution."
"Much less efficient. Imagine having to charm each sweet individually on a commercial scale!"
Flitwick looked like he was prepared to fight for it. "A competent Wizard would charm the filling by the batch—"
"No, no! No, no, no!" interrupted Dumbledore. "The point is that there's not a shred of magic anywhere in that sweet! The Muggles found a way to do it all on their own."
"They're not as nice as Fizzing Wizzbees, are they?" said Sprout, who had been slowly sucking away all this time. "Though bless the Muggles for trying."
McGonagall was last in line for the bag and refused her sherbet with a firm hand wave.
"I do hope this is a clever lead-in to the first item on our in-service day agenda, Professor Dumbledore?"