By the time I closed the apothecary the following evening, I had managed to think about Draco's proposal approximately once every seven minutes.
Which was impressive, considering I'd spent most of the day actively trying not to think about it.
I'd woken that morning with the leather folder sitting on the table in my living room exactly where I'd left it after Draco had gone home.
I'd stared at it while eating breakfast.
Ignored it while drinking coffee.
Opened it again while drinking a second coffee.
Read approximately fourteen pages.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Then very nearly made myself late for work because I'd somehow ended up sitting cross-legged on the floor reading Draco's projections for the Hogsmeade branch despite understanding only about sixty percent of what I was looking at.
It was all just so...
Big.
Yesterday, I'd owned one apothecary.
A successful one, apparently.
I'd had my little shop in Diagon Alley, my owl orders, my regular customers and my increasingly impossible workload.
That had been my life.
Simple.
Busy.
Mine.
Then Draco Malfoy had walked through my door carrying a folder thick enough to be considered a weapon and casually suggested turning everything I'd built into something that could potentially stretch across the entire country.
A second store.
A warehouse.
St Mungo's.
Hogwarts.
National distribution.
A proper brand.
Employees.
Business partners.
Investors.
And terrifying words like gross revenue projections that I was reasonably certain were invented purely to frighten creative people.
It should have been an easy no.
Two years ago it would have been.
Possibly even six months ago.
The apothecary was the first thing I'd ever created entirely for myself, and I'd guarded it fiercely because of that.
But that was the problem.
Draco's proposal didn't feel like someone trying to take it from me.
It felt like someone had looked at this little thing I'd created and said,
Do you realise what this could become?
And apparently I didn't.
Not until he'd shown me.
I finished serving my final customer just after six, locked the front door and turned the sign to CLOSED.
Normally I'd have spent another hour sorting stock.
Possibly two.
Instead, I forced myself to leave.
A horrifying development.
YOU ARE READING
Closest To Heaven That I'll Ever Be
FanfictionWhat would you say if I told you there weren't three members of the Golden Trio, but there were four. I swear it's the truth. There was always another there, in the shadows, always hidden and not known to the public eye. Not known to anyone, actuall...
