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“There you are, Greengrass – the keys to the castle.”
Alder Fortescue dropped the keyring into Daphne’s open palm with a muted jingle, the light sound contrasting starkly with his biting sarcasm. He was a severe man, older than Daphne by a margin, and seemed to have very little in common with his late father – Daphne still offered him a beatific smile regardless.
“Thank you, Alder – you have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Here’s hoping I never do,” he bit back, expression dour. “No idea what Father saw in this place – enough money to build an empire, yet he wasted his life away on a ruddy ice cream shop. A damn waste, it was. A damn waste.”
He shook his head and stalked off down the alley, heading towards the juncture which connected Diagon to Knockturn – Daphne did not stare after him for long enough to see him make the turn, instead refocusing her attention on the shop before her.
Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour.
She let out a nostalgic sigh as she surveyed the fading lettering above the shop door, recalling the many sundaes she and Astoria had shared while Father attended to business in the alley when she was a girl.
Obviously, those days were long since over now – Father was under house arrest under suspicions of collaboration during the war and Mr. Fortescue was, of course, dead. Daphne didn’t particularly want to think about that – in order to avoid further reflection on the past two years she stepped forward and turned her new key in the lock.
Click!
The front door swung open and Daphne coughed as a cloud of dust blew into her face – if anyone had been inside the parlour since Mr. Fortescue died, it certainly didn’t show. She withdrew her wand and started casting vanishing charms, dispelling the dust until she was content that she could walk inside the building without giving herself an asthma attack.
The inside seating was… well, she thought that there really wasn’t a word to describe it other than ‘sad’. The booths were cobwebbed and dusty, with the plush cushions on the seats ravaged by doxies, while many of the free-standing tables and chairs had been knocked over and broken. There was also a scorch mark behind the counter which Daphne could only assume had been made during the raid where Mr. Fortescue was abducted – all in all, the place had rather lost its charm in the wake of two years’ abandonment.
Daphne would have to change that.
With a sigh, she moved around the back of the counter and unlocked the door to the backroom, where what most would call the real magic of Fortescue’s took place – Daphne did not count herself amongst them, but that was beside the point.
She slipped into the backroom only to find it not much at all like how she had imagined it – two enormous vats occupied a good chunk of the floorspace, while several cauldrons of varying sizes lined the walls. The only other fixture was a battered desk, with a dog-eared notebook splayed open on its surface.
Curious, Daphne closed in and picked up the book, rifling through its contents – her heart soared as she recognised the scrawl from her brief correspondence with Mr. Fortescue prior to his death and she realised that this was no ordinary book. No, what she held in her hands was a collection of every last one of Mr. Fortescue’s ice cream recipes.
“Oh, baby,” Daphne whispered, running her hand reverently over the page which detailed Mr. Fortescue’s process for making neapolitan ice cream. “Yes!”
With any luck, Daphne Greengrass’ Ice Cream Parlour would be just as successful and bring joy to just as many children as Mr. Fortescue did before her.