Harmless for the two of them, anyway; Alfred could see this being quite uncomfortable if it wasn't working as it should and was leaving his cheeks their normal color around the girl he had promised to marry, for example. "I suppose she meant it as a matchmaking scheme," he said with a shrug. "And it might be rather effective in that department." Or it might be entirely sole-crushing and embarrassing for some poor young woman whose cheeks gave away how enamored she was with a potential beau, only for his to betray that he hardly remembered her name. Yes, there were many ways in which this scheme could go very wrong, and only a few in which it could go right — and of the ways in which it could go right, only one possibility was really very interesting, which was that a man and a woman who were both fond of each other but not publicly courting yet might be nudged in the right direction. Though if it took magical intervention to get the gentleman to ask to court, they couldn't possibly be very much in love, could they? If it weren't for the interventions of her family, Alfred certainly wouldn't have been sitting around waiting for some trite scheme with magical cookies; he would have married her a year ago, at least.

"Do you think we'll manage to get through the fish course without someone bursting into tears over it?" he asked Zelda conspiratorially, finishing his biscuit.