Off Day [Felix]

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December 4th, 2028

Flossie’s nose was scrunched up as she observed the pallet of imported candies that currently blocked the front door to her store. This was…inconvenient. Mostly because the door opened outwards, meaning the boxes stacked in front of it were preventing it from being opened. Had this been New York, there would have been a back entrance for fire safety. She was ashamed to admit that Honeyduke’s only had the one, singular front door. And now she was stuck inside it. For her, that didn’t really matter all that much. There were ways to get outside, which began with finding the missing pot of floo powder she kept somewhere and ended with her jumping out of one of the windows on the second floor. Or she could wait for someone to come along and let her out. The store was due to open in a few hours as it were, so it would happen eventually.

In the meantime, she had taken to staring out the front window of the shop, intently glaring at anyone that walked by on the other side of the street. So far, no one had seen her. In the early morning hours, if they did look, all they would see was a stack of boxes that had been delivered and what looked to be a floating head in the window. Just her luck, really.

Practically climbing up onto the window display to make herself more visible, Flossie eventually gave up after twenty minutes of no success. Sliding down, she let her face push up against the cold glass that protected her from the winter air outside. Candy wasn’t exactly a Christmas gift of sorts, but she still had customers this time of year. If anything, the previous year had taught her a lot about candy buying trends in the UK. The amount of customers that traveled to buy was astounding. Which was why she had made such a large order this time. Now she was stuck because of it.

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

With how much he was at the ice cream parlor, Felix didn't always have the time to venture into Hogsmeade. That held true even since his oldest sister, Flossie, had bought Honeydukes, which was a bit of a shame, really. Honeydukes had always had a good selection of sweets, and having the business in the family was ideal. There were more possibilities for ice cream flavors that way, and it was because of an idea for a new flavor that Felix had come from London to ask Flossie for her input early on a Monday morning. Monday mornings weren't prime times for ice cream or sweets, in general, so he imagined that he could catch his sister before she got too busy with her tasks for the day.

Outside of Honeydukes was a generous shipment of some sort, Felix saw when he Apparated onto the high street. Initially, it made him assume that he had shown up before Flossie herself, until he caught sight of her through the window of the shop. She looked almost like a mannequin on display, except she had her face up against the glass. It wasn't that she hadn't gotten to work, he realized then; she was already at work.

Briefly, Felix wondered why Flossie was in the window like that. If she was in there, then what was a pallet of something doing sitting in front of the door? She would have brought it inside instead of leaving it in front of the entrance. The gears in Felix's brain kept moving, and he recognized that his understanding of the order of events that had occurred prior to his being there had been wrong. Flossie hadn't neglected such a large shipment. Whoever had made that delivery must have blocked her in.

From a physical standpoint, Flossie didn't look ill or injured, so that wasn't a concern. It wasn't an emergency "time to break the window" sort of situation, but Felix knew his sister couldn't exactly run a business with a delivery in the way of the only door to the outside. Knowing her, though, she had tried to do things herself before asking for help.

Felix then moved close enough to the window so that Flossie hopefully would be able to hear him through the glass. "Floss," he called. "Can you hear me?"

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[florence violet fortescue]

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Dying inside her candy store didn't sound like the worst thing in the world. She'd be able to get an incredible sugar high before eventually collapsing. Obviously that was a tad dramatic and she had escape options that didn't include keeling over in a mountain of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, but the thought still ran through her head nonetheless. Eventually she was going to have to figure out some sort of plan here. For the time being, acting as a window decoration sort of suited her. Hopelessly staring out onto the snowy streets of Hogsmeade, safe from the nip of the morning air, yet jailed by jelly beans and licorice ropes.

She almost fell asleep in that spot, a few deep blinks that only caused a couple of seconds to pass but felt like they had been enough to have full length dreams. It was so realistic, she could have sworn she could hear Felix talking to her. Eyes snapping open, she realized she was staring at her brother, who was on the other side of the window. "Oh!" she exclaimed as she hopped to her feet, putting her well above where Felix was because she was standing on the display unit. "The delivery person blocked me in!" she yelled through the window, her breath leaving a nice circle of fog on it. Merlin, it must have gotten colder out since she got in early this morning! "Can you-" she started to point at the boxes that were in front of the door. "Can you move them, please?" This was probably how the poor animals felt in zoos, locked up in their little cages so muggles could point and stare at them as they happily walked by. Not like Felix would be able to get into the shop without doing that though. This worked out perfectly.

Sliding away from the windowsill and towards the front door, Flossie pressed herself against the door once more. It opened a tiny bit. Had it been a little more than this, she could have bent her arm around and used a spell to move them. But with the way it was, she could barely squeeze her pinky finger outside. "I'm stuck in here!" she repeated, mouth pressed up to the gap.

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

Flossie seemed startled by his presence at first, but she got up and replied to him. As Felix had suspected, she had been blocked from getting out of the shop because of the pallet. She asked him if he could move the boxes for her, and he nodded. "Yeah," he yelled back through the window. "I can do that!"

Felix moved towards where the delivery was positioned outside, while Flossie moved towards the door from inside the shop. She was able to open the door just enough to speak to him and say that she was stuck in there, but she wasn't able to open it any farther than that.

"I've got it."

With the sheer size and likely weight of the boxes when taken as a whole, Felix knew for a fact that he wasn't going to be able to lift the pallet manually. The majority of his muscles came from scooping ice cream, and he wasn't particularly "muscular" at all. Luckily, that was what magic was good for. He didn't need to be a bodybuilder to get the pallet far enough from the door for Flossie to be able to open it.

Ready to take action, Felix pulled out his wand from inside of his coat and pointed it at the wooden pallet. He wasn't going to lift it too high up, especially without knowing how fragile Flossie's delivery was. "Wingardium Leviosa," he cast, taking his time to gesture as subtly as he could and without any sudden movements so that he could control the path of the pallet. He lifted it just enough so that it was up off the ground, then he glanced behind where he stood and took a few measured steps backwards, moving the pallet with him. Once he was sure that there would be room for Flossie to open the door all the way, he lowered the pallet back down to the ground.

"Okay," Felix called out to his sister as he held his wand at his side. "See if you can open it now." That didn't solve the problem of getting the delivery inside, of course, but they had to take it in steps.

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[florence violet fortescue]

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Peering through the crack she had made in her open door; it sounded like her brother had heard her. ”Brilliant!” she called back to him before running back over towards the window display so that she could watch the entire process go down. Pressing her face and palms up against the glass again, she waited. Felix produced his wand and cast what looked to be a simple levitation charm on the pallet. With his own steps, the entire delivery moved with him. Flossie excitedly hopped against the windowpane before turning around and heading right back to where she had been only moments earlier. Popping open the front door to the shop, she felt the resistance completely gone.

”Freedom!” she exclaimed, her voice echoing onto the quiet High Street. Completely forgetting that it was incredibly cold out, she hurried over to Felix and gave him a big hug. ”I owe you one. Thought I was going to die in there for a moment.” Not really, but her excitement couldn’t be contained right now. ”Now to see what was so important that they had to block my front door…”

Pulling her own wand out, she levitated one of the boxes on the top down onto the ground, and then made a small incision along the packing tape. One satisfying tear later and she had both arms of the cardboard box opened and had begun rummaging around with the contents inside. ”Really? Acid pops?” Flossie said aloud, her tone incredulous. ”But I didn’t put in an order for them…” Now she was confused. Barely anyone bought acid pops, so they were almost always in stock. She brought another box down next to the original and repeated the process. More acid pops. Biting down on her tongue to keep herself from slinging vulgarities, she stepped back to observe the entire situation again. ”Don’t suppose you know someone that likes these, do you?” she turned to face Felix. It was certainly a headscratcher.

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

Understandably, Flossie was overjoyed by her newfound freedom, even though it wasn't very likely that she had been trapped inside Honeydukes for long. In spite of the fact that it was December and definitely too cold to go outside without additional layers of clothing on, she raced outside to embrace Felix, who chuckled. "You're lucky it was me and not Vas," he teased Flossie, unable to help himself. As a Squib, Vasilia would have had no other option than to move everything manually, which would have taken much longer to accomplish.

Upon seeing that the delivery was a shipment of Acid Pops that she hadn't ordered, though, Flossie's joy dissipated. It wasn't just one parcel of Acid Pops, as it turned out. There were at least two, based on Flossie's opening them. Naturally, Felix had to question if the entire pallet had been filled with Acid Pops.

"Don't suppose you know someone that likes these, do you?"

Flossie didn't sound thrilled, and Felix wasn't sure if anyone really cared for the taste of Acid Pops. He didn't know who had thought up the concept of lollipops that would cause physical damage to one's tongue, but people did still purchase them, apparently. Daring someone to try one was about all they were really good for, though, and that was probably how any money got made from them.

"No…" Felix replied to Flossie's question slowly, thinking it over. "But I could incorporate them into a new flavor."

While he'd had one flavor in mind when he had set off for Hogsmeade, Felix knew that the best way to deal with a surplus ingredient was to incorporate it into an ice cream flavor as if that had been the intention all along. Flossie had Acid Pops to get rid of. He had ice cream to make. Targeting younger customers wouldn't be too difficult, and Acid Pops—from the standpoint of the magical world—weren't so dangerous as to require a warning. An Acid Pop flavor wouldn't be the weirdest one they had ever sold; they still did well with the blood ice cream that Vas had dreamt up. The combination of cold ice cream plus the acidity of the Acid Pops would make for an interesting experience.

"Obviously, we'd need to get these to the ice cream parlor," Felix noted. Doing that right at that moment wasn't convenient for him, however, and he doubted that it was for Flossie. "Have you got room to store them for now?" he checked, because that was also a burning question—no Acid Pop pun intended. They would have to find somewhere to put them, whether that was Honeydukes or the ice cream parlor or even their mother's house. The alternative was for Flossie to stand outside Honeydukes in the cold and hand out free Acid Pops to passersby all day. "I think I could melt the Acid Pops down," he explained. "Or I could do ice lollies. The consistency might be better…"

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[florence violet fortescue]

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”I’ve seen her move some mighty heavy boxes before,” Flossie countered her brother. Their poor sister was stuck doing things the normal way, which on occasion wasn’t too bad. Personally, she didn’t want her own arms to lose all of their muscle mass (in which there was barely any to begin with) just because she liked flinging everything around with magic. ”But its definitely faster this way. My other option was hopping out of the second-floor window. Could you imagine what the neighbors would be saying of me?” As if they didn’t talk already about her. The Flume family, whom she had purchased the candy shop from, were strange enough as it was. She was basically a sunbeam of life bursting through the rather dreary mountainside of Hogsmeade. Personally, Flossie found the energy fun. It balanced out Jimbo Blishwick down the street with his silly little pizza restaurant quite nicely.

Her brother offered up the idea of making a new ice cream flavor out of the excess acid pops and she grimaced at the idea. Wouldn’t too much of them melt down the rest of the ingredients? She didn’t really know how the candies were made – or maintained in their lollipop form – but she knew they didn’t sell well. If no one bought them in their current form, why would they get it as ice cream?

Felix continued to ruminate and then mentioned turning them into ice lollies instead, and it was like a lightbulb went off in her head! That made a lot more sense to her as well. ”I’ve got plenty,” she responded about the storage space. ”Let’s get the rest of these inside and check them over to make sure they aren’t anything else. Because if these are all the same, I’m still waiting on another order today…” And then maybe there would be an issue with space in her store. She could worry about that when it happened though.

Lifting her wand up, she quickly flicked it at the remaining boxes and they levitated with a happy bounce into her shop. ”Let me know if you see an invoice anywhere. I need to find out who sent these and if it was me who made the mistake, or the distributor.” Unfortunately, there was a chance that she accidentally checked off ten boxes of acid pops instead of one. Mistakes tended to happen when she ordered stock without double checking what she was getting.

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

There was storage space for the onslaught of Acid Pops likely awaiting them, Flossie replied, which took away one potential hiccup. The other problem, as Flossie brought up after that, was that the boxes either were or were not full of Acid Pops. (For his sister's sake as well as his own, Felix hoped that all the boxes weren't just filled with sad, acidic lollipops.) The only way that they would know without a doubt would be to open everything and find out. Checking each of the boxes would take some time and effort, but it wouldn't be too bad if both of them were working simultaneously.

After magically bringing everything into the shop, Flossie told him to keep an eye out for an invoice. That would give them a better idea of what they were dealing with, and there was bound to be one somewhere.

"Alright," Felix replied. He held the door to Honeydukes open for his sister, who was probably going to turn into an ice lolly herself if she didn't get back inside. "Let me know which one I should start with, Floss," he told her. "I can stick around for a while. There's enough ice cream ready for today, so that's not a problem." Establishing how they were going to keep track of the shipment wouldn't be too hard, though they would need to make sure not to get it confused with the shop's inventory until it was clear what Flossie planned to sell.

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This whole situation was so strange. If she knew any better, she’d say it was some sort of prank being pulled on her. She would never, and she was very serious about using that word when it came to work, order this much in bulk at one time and especially not for one specific candy. Even when she took over Honeydukes, there hadn’t been a delivery this large. That more had to do with her purchasing the business and all of its current stock, in which magical candy rarely went bad, so she was set from the get-go once the Flumes handed over the keys to her. Then obviously it all came back to the fact that she would also never order this many acid pops at once. That was simply illogical. Whatever the case was, the two of them were going to find out fairly soon here. The invoice was bound to be shoved into one of these boxes…

Felix had propped the shop door open and with that, Flossie wiggled her wand and off the boxes went, one by one, into the store. She realized this was sort of a bad idea about halfway through when it looked like walking around all of them was going to be an issue and stopped the procession. ”From the first one I suppose. I don’t really see any reason to jump around at this point.” she called out to her brother as she let the currently levitated box fall gently to the ground and started walking towards the door as well. ”Feel free to move things around in there too. It’s going to be a bit of a squeeze once they’re all inside.” She’d rather not freeze out the entire store. No one wanted frozen solid candy. That was a tooth shattering waiting to happen!

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

Flossie instructed him to start with the first box. That would have been easier to do if the boxes were labeled by number, Felix thought, because then they could reference what they had and hadn't opened without putting much thought into it, but going around and marking numbers on each of the boxes would have wasted more time. From a logical point of view, though, he knew to which box his sister had referred. "Feel free to move things around in there too," she added. "It's going to be a bit of a squeeze once they're all inside."

Felix was ready to go into the process of going through the boxes with an "assembly line" mentality. They would have to do something to make sure that it was still possible to walk around the shop, whether that was breaking down or vanishing unneeded boxes—or moving full ones into the cellar once they had been checked. "Let's see what we can do," Felix chuckled. He began with the first box, the one that Flossie had mentioned.

To the best of his ability, Felix began to sift through the first box, using his wand to do it instead of having to do it with his hands. There was no invoice there, but there were plenty of Acid Pops. Once he was sure that he hadn't missed anything, he called out to Flossie, "Just Acid Pops here." And on to the next.

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OOC: You can do a slight time jump if you want so they're not literally going through every box. 😅

[florence violet fortescue]

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The boxes and boxes of Acid Pops had taken hours, despite being more of the same. A single crate of Chocolate Frogs appeared halfway through the assembly line, hidden under a layer of Acid Pops. That alone created a feeling of hope inside Flossie, as she then felt compelled to look through the rest instead of writing it all off as bust. This had easily become the strangest delivery day had ever had. Of course, there were a few customers here and there, which only caused her to stop what she was doing to in order to allow them to peruse. It only reminded her that she really needed to get an employee or two to help her. Felix’s assistance had been immense throughout all of this, and he really hadn’t needed to stay when he definitely had other things to do.

”I think we can fit that last box in too,” she said as she stared into her storage area. Had she been able to magically expand the room, she would have done so already. With this many boxes of Acid Pops, she was going to be running a four for one deal until the end of time. Never again was she going to need to order more. Merlin, if she ever had children and they took over the store, they probably wouldn’t need to either!

”I’m still going to contact the distributor though. If they want this back because they messed up, they can absolutely take it. And they’re doing all of the work of getting it back out,” Flossie added as she put her hands on her hips and stared at the floor to ceiling stacks of Acid Pop boxes. She could only laugh at the situation now because it was honestly hilarious. The worst part of this, aside from having thousands of lollipops that no one but masochists enjoyed, and being stuck inside her shop by the delivery, was that she’d had to move her entire storeroom around to make space. It was insanity.

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[felix valentin fortescue]

December 4, 2028

Having to call in to the ice cream parlor to let the employees know that he wasn't sure when he would be back had made Felix feel like a bit of an ass. He had explained the situation to ensure that they knew that he wasn't just skiving off work, though he hadn't done that in his life. Likewise, he also made clear that it wasn't an "emergency", as such, unless one counted the chances that the Acid Pops might simultaneously erode everything in sight, including his sister. It was "yell at whatever idiot had screwed up" bad, as opposed to "call in Mediwizards" bad.

Without his own ice cream work on his mind, Felix was able to devote himself to working his way through his share of the boxes Flossie had ended up receiving. When it was all said and done, they had dug their way through a lifetime supply of Acid Pops and one lone crate of Chocolate Frogs that had filled Felix with the false hope that they might find something else worthwhile. It was enough to keep him going, though, so he supposed it had been worth it.

"I think we can fit that last box in too," Flossie commented as she assessed the storage space that she had remaining. Felix, looking at it, guessed that she was right. There would be just enough space to squeeze in that final box, though it was harder to tell if anyone would be able to get all those boxes out of there ever again.

That would be a problem for a future Flossie, Felix thought, though it sounded like she really wasn't planning on taking up that task, either. She said that she was still going to contact the distributor. "If they want this back because they messed up, they can absolutely take it," she decided. "And they're doing all of the work of getting it back out." Flossie placed her hands on her hips, and Felix knew she meant business.

Since it was confirmed that she had been crowned queen over a land of Acid Pops, Flossie seemed to be able to relax a little. Felix wasn't sure that he could feel his arms after the combination of magical and manual labor he had just performed, but he could exhale. The experience wasn't the worst they had been through, and it was in those kinds of moments that Felix was reminded of how much he truly enjoyed working with his family.

"You shouldn't have to put your business on hold just because someone somewhere else didn't do their job," he agreed. "I would suggest a Howler if I were you, but it probably wouldn't reach the person responsible." Felix didn't want his sister to scare some poor employee who hadn't had anything to do with the Acid Pops. "Or you could hire some Hogwarts students part-time and pay them in Acid Pops?" he joked.

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Felix had a point: sending a strong letter, a Howler even, would absolutely get her point across. The last thing she needed only a few years in was getting taken advantage of by the distributors. The Flumes had decades of bargaining power and a relationship with the candy companies. Flossie had nothing, despite having the notoriety of the Fortescue name and the guarantee from the former owners that she was the best person for the job. The big wigs didn’t give a damn about her. They were all looking at profit, and sometimes even offloading old product. She didn’t think this was on purpose, but she found it difficult for them to accidentally dump this much on her at once, especially when her records showed she hadn’t ordered this amount.

”Do they finally like them or something?” She didn’t know if there was some sort of trend going on, especially now that most had phones that could work in the area. That had been a strange adjustment for sure. The amount of aspiring social media ‘stars’ that came into Honeydukes and bought hauls of candy to try. They were always asking her to try and get orders of international candies. Most of them didn’t understand that the import costs would make them so ridiculously expensive if she tried to get them without ordering as large of a pallet as today’s screw up.

As for liking Acid Pops, there was only one girl that actually came to mind, who was always wandering in on Hogsmeade weekends and asking for the vilest of flavored candies. Usually the ones that had bugs inside them or looked like parts of animals. Most of those went untouched for months, until this girl scrounged up enough pocket change and burned through it all in one go. Flossie didn’t understand that at all. ”But I guess I could use it as an incentive if I can’t send them back. For the Howler, does mum still have spares lying about in the hutch in the kitchen? I remember there being a thick stack of them in one of the drawers…”Flossie was positive that she wasn’t nearly mean enough for a Howler to work effectively. But she’d certainly give it a shot if Felix thought it was the correct move.

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December 4, 2028

Flossie didn't sound too thrilled with his idea of paying students in Acid Pops. Felix hadn't been serious about it to begin with, but he figured it was worth a shot. "Do they finally like them or something?" she asked him about the lollipops. They were vile, though that seemed to be intriguing enough to kids of a certain age demographic. The downside was that they were probably too young to work at Honeydukes. There were a lot of aspects in which the magical and Muggle worlds didn't align, but child labor was generally frowned upon in both.

"But I guess I could use it as an incentive if I can’t send them back," Flossie decided.

As for the Howler, she sounded more intent on going through with that. She questioned if their mother still had spare Howlers in the kitchen. "I remember there being a thick stack of them in one of the drawers…" she added.

"Er, yeah, probably?" Felix assumed. Between the flat above the ice cream parlor and their mother's house, they must have been somewhere. The Howlers hadn't gotten much use over the years, Felix imagined; he hadn't really been on the receiving end of them, and he was the youngest of the three children. If their mother still sent any, it was likely for reasons similar to why Flossie wanted one.

"It's a shame you couldn't just enlarge the envelope and send them all back with the Howler," Felix mused. "Send them an acid green Howler full of Acid Pops."

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Speaking of the Howlers...did they expire? The charms placed on them had to depreciate at some point, she assumed. These sorts of things weren't made to last forever. A mental image of a dying, almost uncharmed Howler letter tearing itself apart inside her mother's hutch drawer was sort of hilarious, and would be, if it wasn't for the fact that she was supposed to be angry at this entire situation. "I don't even know if they sell singles of them," Flossie groaned. She didn't need a whole pack of the letters. That was pointless for her. Yelling and screaming wasn't in her DNA at all. Sometimes that came back to bite her, but rolling with the punches and being professional looked far better than doing the opposite. The last thing she needed was to have a target on her by the candy salesmen. She knew they talked to one another. That was the magical world in a nutshell. Everyone knew everyone else.

Felix suggested it would be better if all of the boxes could be shoved into the Howler when sent back. Now that was an idea she could get behind. "I wish...but I need to call them first and figure out what happened. I still think it's an error on their part. No sane person would ever order this much." Essentially, it was a lifetime's worth of Acid Pops.

Flossie tried rubbing the stress out of her forehead as she stared back in the direction of the store room. This was going to be a headache for a long time, she could already tell. "Anyways..." she exhaled, "Thanks again. You really didn't have to spend your time off doing this." She understood how rare that was. Being in this sort of business granted very few breaks, even with hired employees.

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