Closest To Heaven That I'll Ever Be

17. Signed, Sealed, Delivered...

Draco hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said he was eager to get started.

By eleven o'clock the following morning, I was halfway through reorganising a delivery schedule behind the counter when the fireplace at the far end of the shop suddenly flared bright green.

I glanced up automatically.

A woman stepped neatly out of the Floo, brushed a faint dusting of soot from the sleeve of her fitted charcoal-grey coat and paused for a moment to take in the shop before making her way towards me.

She looked to be somewhere around my age, perhaps a year or two older, with glossy dark brown hair pinned into a low twist at the nape of her neck and a few softer strands framing her face. Her clothes were smart without being severe: a pale cream blouse beneath the coat, tailored black trousers and polished ankle boots that clicked lightly against the floorboards as she approached. A slim leather satchel hung from one shoulder, and there was something immediately composed about her, as though she was used to walking into unfamiliar places and knowing exactly what she was there to do.

But it was her face that caught my attention.

Warm brown eyes. Soft features. A wide, easy smile that reached those eyes immediately rather than appearing because politeness required it.

She looked familiar.

Not I definitely know this person familiar.

More irritatingly vague than that.

Like someone I'd passed in a corridor a hundred times or seen sitting several tables away in the Great Hall without ever learning her name.

"Are you Miss Dumbledore?" she asked. Her voice was bright and pleasant.

"I am, yes." I was still trying to work out where I'd seen her before.

Her smile widened. "Wonderful. I'm Isabella. I work for Malfini Industries."

That made me blink. "Malfini?"

"Yes." She gave a tiny laugh, clearly accustomed to people reacting to the name. "Mr Malfoy's company. He asked me to stop by and deliver these personally."

She reached into her satchel and withdrew a thick cream envelope, sealed neatly with dark green wax. I still had my notebook tucked against one arm and a Muggle pen in my hand, so she placed it carefully on the counter rather than trying to pass it to me.

"He also asked me to apologise profusely that he couldn't bring them himself," she continued. "He'd planned to, apparently, but Miss Greengrass called for him this morning and he's been pulled away for the afternoon."

Something very small and rather stupid twisted in my stomach.

Astoria.

Of course. His girlfriend. The girlfriend whose dinner he'd missed the previous evening because he'd stayed at my house until late talking about televisions, Potion suppliers and whether Hermione's accidental transformation into a cat was the funniest thing either of us had ever witnessed.

I immediately ignored whatever that feeling had been.

"Oh, perfect." I put my pen down and picked up the envelope. "And honestly, he didn't need to bring them himself. I never expected him to."

Isabella smiled politely.

"I'm sure he's far too busy to be running around after someone as simple as me anyway."

The words escaped before I thought about them.

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. Not judgementally. Almost curiously.