[THD & DDC] [Honeydukes] tell me something sweet to get me by {Donnie}

August 2001

Ducking into the cool refuge of Honeydukes Sweetshop, Astoria let out a small sigh of content at the pleasant aromas. Despite the hour the little shop was nearly empty for the moment, save for the young woman working the counter and a handsome dark-haired man who looked to be a few years Astoria’s senior.
Hogsmeade was quite a distance from Arne, but the trip was well worth it for Astoria. For whatever reason, Honeydukes chocolate in particular was second-to-none in alleviating symptoms not quite severe enough to warrant taking one of her potions, but too bothersome to simply ignore. Any chocolate was better than none at all, she had found, but the small Scottish sweetshop’s seemed to have the most appreciable effect; unsurprisingly, she had long-since developed a predilection for it. If there was a single upside to her condition, she had often mused, it was the liberty it gave her to consume as much chocolate as she so desired – with only minimal judgment.

She made her selections fairly quickly (she got almost the exact same thing each time, anyways) and brought her collections to the counter, gathering them neatly into a small pile. While the counter girl – whom she belatedly realized was the young shop owner herself – rang up her items, a small tub of chocolates marked for individual sale in front of the register caught her attention. After only a second’s deliberation, she reached in and withdrew a small handful, unabashedly adding it to her tiny mountain of candy along with her payment. These were perfect for the “emergency” supply she kept in her handbag, which she’d been running low on anyways.

Thanking the shopkeeper, Astoria turned to leave but paused, frowning slightly in thought. Was it Ice Mice or Peppermint Imps that Draco liked? Perhaps she should pick up a few of them as well; they had planned to meet for tea in a few days, after all. Despite feeling perfectly well at the moment, she unwrapped one of the individual chocolates and popped one into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully as she drifted to the far side of the shop, perusing the display along the wall. Was it… toffee flavored? Odd, she hadn’t noticed a sign saying the chocolate was flavored. Perhaps she had missed the notice that it was assorted candies…

Curious, she dug into her handbag to retrieve the wrapper and the rest of the individual candies she’d purchased – but stopped abruptly as her tongue began to tingle. Astoria froze, her pulse suddenly loud in her ears. Was she allergic to whatever this piece of candy was? To the best of her knowledge she wasn’t allergic to anything, though…

Before she could even decide whether or not she needed to panic, her tongue quite suddenly no longer fit in her mouth. Her green-hazel eyes widened in horror and she let out a cry of astonishment as her tongue began to swell rapidly, making a descent towards the floor. With an audible gasp she dropped her bag of purchases and instinctively reached up to cradle the end of her tongue with one hand and root around in her handbag with the other, unable to think of anything for the moment – including how absurd she likely looked – except to not let her tongue touch the floor of a public place. Ugh.

Donnie was torn between feeling vexed and absurdly happy. Turns out he'd gotten more than he bargained for in his new secretary. Lorin was a fierce wildcat, and it was something both frustrating and a little pleasing to be bossed around by a girl barely out of her Hogwarts uniform. Donnie loved strong women, so he was more happy than not to find that his new and temporary flatmate wasn't going to just cave for his unhealthy whims.

Today, she had insisted that both of them needed to get out of the apartment. She'd threatened to beat Donnie out of his own place with a broom. Rather than suffer that particular indignity, he opted to visit his old flame and good friend Honey at her shop in Hogsmeade. He had a bag of her fanciest chocolates for Lorin and a drinking date with Honey later planned when a slight commotion erupted behind him.

He turned, wand out, to see a girl not much older than Lorin suffering from a tongue engorging charm. "Ah, magairle!" He groaned, swearing as he rushed to her side. "Now, now darlin' just take some deep breaths fer me." He quietly chanted the reversal charm. Slowly, her tongue began to shrink back to a normal size.

"Keep breathing," he instructed her in his warm and calm voice. "This will only take a moment, then you'll be right as rain." He stayed close, in case something went wrong but her tongue stopped shrinshrinking once it was back to it's normal size.

As he watched, he was able to take in a few details about the younger woman. She was wealthy, most likely pureblood. She wore an engagement band on her finger, so betrothed. Donnie quickly racked his brain and came up with her family name without trouble. "How are ye feeling now, Miss Greengrass?"

Well… so much for not causing a scene.

One would think Astoria would have learned to keep her wand in a more accessible location by now – especially after her unanticipated run-in with the bum in Knockturn Alley, from which Draco had needed to help bail her out. Astoria was a quick study, but this particular lesson hadn’t seemed to sink in just yet. Perhaps now it finally would.

Just as her slender fingers finally closed on the handle of her wand from within the bowels of her handbag, the soft rumble of a masculine Irish voice met her ears. Astoria glanced up in surprise and found herself face-to-face with a handsome dark-haired man – and the sensation of a slowly-shrinking tongue. Her right hand still clutched her wand while her left – now free of its burden – slipped into the pocket of her robes to be surreptitiously wiped off.

Had Astoria not experienced embarrassing moments in public many times before (like passing out in the middle of the Great Hall), she might have disintegrated on the spot for humiliation. While she wasn’t completely absolved of the emotion, – she could feel some color creeping up into her normally-alabaster complexion – she was able to pull herself back together with relative ease. The reassurance he was calmly providing certainly helped.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised that the older man knew who she was; her engagement to Draco had caused quite a bit of talk, and not just in the Pureblood circles, though nearly a year had passed. Once she was certain her tongue was back to its appropriate size, Astoria offered a small polite smile and inclined her head slightly.
“Well enough now, thank you. I am much obliged, mister…?” she trailed off, inflecting the last word. He knew her name already; she’d like to know his.

Astoria paused briefly to allow him to answer before furrowing her brows gently, resuming her search for the wrapper of the troublesome chocolate. She was wary, now – had all of the chocolates been compromised? She sincerely hoped not.
“Have you ever seen that happen before? I have always bought chocolate from here without issue…”

Donnie smiled kindly at the young woman, pleasantly surprised at how she seemed to remain calm despite what even Donnie would consider the rather harrowing sensation of your tongue swelling uncontrollably. His smile morphed into a playful grin as she asked after his name. "Nah, no need ta be so formal. Donnach, or Donnie if ya prefer." He gave her a polite incline of his head, his eyes friendly but sharp, taking in everything he could. As an former Auror, old habits died hard. "We've never been formally introduced, but we've occupied tha same room at a few Ministry balls and charity functions." He paused for a moment before adding, "Congratulations on yer engagement." He wasn't sure how happy the woman was to be marrying into the Malfoy family, but he felt it would be strange to not acknowledge it since he obviously knew who she was. Since it was no longer his concern, he didn't keep tabs on the activity of every supremacist Pureblood family, but he knew enough about the politics that there was a fair chance that Miss Greengrass had little choice in the selection of her future spouse.

"Do ya happen ta still have the chocolate wrapper on ya?" His curiosity was peaked. "Mayhaps that could give us a clue as ta what happened?" There was a chance that Honey had somehow mixed up her recipes, but he seriously doubted in. In all the years he'd known her, she'd never once flubbed a recipe, especially not one destined for her shop. "And yer not allergic ta anything? No problems in the past?"

One carefully-manicured eyebrow went up. No need for formalities? She came from a very old and very stubbornly traditional family – why wouldn’t she be? Clearly he meant well, though, and so she replied with a bit of tongue-in-cheek.
“Well, then, I expect you’ll next tell a cat not to bat a glass off of the edge of a table, Mr. Donnach.” Her lips twitched with amusement in response to his congenial grin.

Astoria tilted her head slightly as she listened and dipped her head again as he offered her congratulations. She felt a brief fluttering sensation in her chest, like she did every time she remembered she was engaged.
“That’s very kind, thank you,” she replied, observing him curiously. He looked on her with concern – not pity – and warmth… but at the same time she felt that she was being analyzed when he looked at her. Not in a judgmental manner, though: like a man well-accustomed to assessing his surroundings. His overall demeanor struck her as one highly in-tune with everything going on around him; not to mention his projection of utter calm during her minor incident just a few moments prior.

“You work for the Ministry, then? What is it that you do?”

At his inquiry about the wrapper, she nodded and reached into the left pocket of her robes – where she always stored her wrappers and other various articles of litter until she could dispose of them properly. The lack of consideration that some people had in that regard was, quite frankly, appalling. She produced the wrapper and passed it to him wordlessly, retrieving the other intact candies from her bag in the meantime to scrutinize those.

“And yer not allergic ta anything? No problems in the past?”

She glanced up at that, as his last question nearly made her laugh out loud. She typically dreaded being asked after her health; apparently, this Mr. Donnach was one of the precious few that didn’t seem to know about her chronic illness. Or, at least, if he did, he did not allude to it.
It was oddly refreshing.

Her lips curled into an amused smile.
“Not to my knowledge, thank Merlin. And no, not like this,” she confessed. Astoria glanced back at the counter, pressing her lips together briefly.
“I am loath to cause more of a fuss… though I feel it would be remiss not to inform Miss Flume, especially since I have not had the slightest trouble with any of her confections to-date.”
‘I do hope there is nothing more sinister at play.’
She nearly said the last bit aloud, but opted to keep it to herself at the last minute. All had been more-or-less quiet since the end of the Second War – with the exception of the terrible illness that subsequent November, of course. But the terrors at Hogwarts that had pervaded the news for months – from September until just a few months ago in February – had stirred up some hardly-settled wariness and suspicion.

Donnie chuckled at her quip, and he bowed his head in acknowledgement of the point. "Ya have got me there," he replied with a grin. "I used ta work fer them. Magical Law Enforcement, Auror division." He gave a slight shrug. "I got too old ta be traipsin' around in tha cold after hooligans, so I retired. I do arithmency work now. Freelance, but I do get ta pop inta the Ministry every now and again." Of course this was not entirely true. He did do arithmency work, but he was still very much employed by the Ministry, but as an Unspeakable in the Brain Room. As the title implied, he was hardly free to discuss his occupation with anyone not in the know already.

He took the wrapper, slowly turning it over in his hands. It looked like the standard wrapper at a glance, but having dated Honey he knew the inventory of this place better than most. There was something off about the wrapper. Maybe it was the color, or the font of the writing, but it raised Donnie's hackles. He took out his wand and whispered a counter charm. Slowly, like paper being burned away, the wrapper lost the more creamy colors of Honeydukes and took on the much more garish tones of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes shop. Donnie gave the wrapper another once over but it seemed like that was the only secret it was hiding.

The former Auror held the wrapper back out for Astoria to investigate herself. "Here's the culprit. One of the Weasley confections. Probably meant ta get a student out of ah class by way of an infirmary trip." He looked around the shop, but it was fairly empty. From his experience, if the pranksters had stayed to watch their chaos unfold, they wouldn't be hard to find. But the only other people in the shop at the moment were an older couple perusing the spun sugar confections. "Likely, someone charmed this ta look like a Honeyduke's chocolate and then left in here ta cause havoc."

Donnie frowned slightly. "I'll tell Honey. I know she wouldn't want anyone thinking her candy could hex ya." He saw that Astoria was concerned, and he didn't want to leave her worried. "Honey's an old friend of mine, so I'll help her sort through her stock." He cocked his head a little, smiling. "Would ya care fer a hot drink? It's been an age since I had a butterbeer in Hogsmeade."

“Too old?” the witch queried, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Forgive my impertinence, but I can scarce believe that.” Indeed, he looked far too young to be anywhere close from ‘retiring’; though she acknowledged that being an Auror was considerably more taxing than the average job, and that it was likely a shorter career duration than most. And a change to Arithmancy, of all things – talk about a complete career change. She nodded along politely as he spoke.
“I rather enjoyed the subject, myself.”

She watched, intrigued, as the ex-Auror removed the illusion from the pesky sweet’s wrapper, for which she promptly reached out in a silent request.
“A clever prank,” the brunette murmured, turning the brightly-colored paper over in her fingers, “but a foul thing to do to such a well-respected shop. I do hope you’ll not have much trouble in sorting this out.”

He assured her that he would speak with Miss Flume herself about the matter. Astoria nodded.
“I should be glad to write her and assure her no harm has come of it.”

At his polite offer of a butterbeer, Astoria hesitated briefly. She’d sent their House Elf, Pompey, home nearly a half-hour ago after insisting that she was quite capable of purchasing her sweets without a chaperone (apparently not, but Astoria was not about to disclose that). From her absurdly antiquated family perspective, it would be unfathomable for her to accompany this Donncha to the Three Broomsticks; not only was she young and unmarried, but she was betrothed and without a chaperone. The abject horror of it all…

It took her only a few seconds to decide she didn’t care in the slightest. She hardly believed Draco would take issue, anyway. Merlin knew what he did in his line of work most of the time… but she trusted him. And – from what she had come to know of him – the sentiment seemed mutual.

“I could certainly do with a butterbeer,” she replied amicably. Astoria waited, poised, for a moment while the older man had a word with whomever was behind the counter. He returned quickly, and strode forward to hold the shop door open for her. She drifted outside with a “thank you” as she passed the Irishman, and together they embarked on the all-too-familiar route to the Three Broomsticks.

Donnie put a hand over his heart, dramatically wounded. "Do ya think I be but a lad fresh outta my short pants?" He teased with mock affront. His eyes lit up when she said she enjoyed the subject. "Did ya, now? I rarely find people who actually liked it. I personally found tha interaction of numbers and magical phenomenon quite fascinatin'." Despite his rough accent and equally rough exterior, Donnie was unusually intelligent. There was a reason he was in the Brain Room.

He did not rush Astoria's decision, but his smile was wide and genuine when she said she would accompany him. Donnie wondered fi he'd catch any trouble from her family if they caught wind of them doing something as scandalous as speaking to each other in public, but if she didn't mind then he wasn't going to make a fuss. He wanted to keep close in case the simple prank was not as much of an accident as it seemed, but he also thought it would just be nice to have some company. This way Lorin couldn't say he hadn't made a good faith effort in getting out.

A quick word with the young gentleman behind the counter and a hastily scrawled note to Honey, and he was holding the door open for Astoria to walk through. He was looking forward to a nice drink and an unusual drinking companion.

[[end]]