"Ooo, there it is!!"

One cherubic, polka doted haired soon to be second year Hufflepuff lead the charge through the international crowds to a familiar shop. It had been ages since she had set foot in Honeydukes, only during a one time excursion for the younger years. Chance conversation with who turned out to be Mr. Flume, the owner, had let Obderedria order sweets through the post if she wanted. But that wasn't the same as actually visiting the magical sweets shop. All of her rainy day money saved up over the summer had been for this trip, it turned out, when the Wintergreen's invited her along to see the TetraWizard Tournament Opening Ceremonies. She hadn't thought she would see Pax or some of the other students for another month when school started September first. Mum, luckily, said she could go and after dropping Obderedria off at the Leaky Cauldron it had been a game of Floo shuffle between the Wintergreen residences.

"Thanks again for inviting me, Pax!!" Obderedria said, overjoyed, for what must have been the tenth time already. The whole village was so lively. There had been the Opening speeches which had been...unique given the other heads of schools. It was readily apparent that Professor Storm was not one of a kind given how the Durmstrang headmaster seemed to be. There were the other booths about, they had gotten free cupcakes from the Magicakery booth, quickly becoming Drea's second favorite spot in Hogsmeade. She still had a half eaten cupcake on a napkin. In the widest end of the village there was the dancing all the older students were doing with what sounded like club music played through bagpipes. And now, of course, Honeydukes. After one bite, wizard candy put the mundane muggle morsels to shame.

"Look, they have a booth too!!" As if a aisle from the store had been moved out to the street, the Honeydukes booth had a wide range of sweets, some that didn't look like they were regular confectionary stocked in Honeydukes the other days of the year.

Pax just beamed when Drea thanked him once again for the invitation. There were only so many times one could say 'it's my pleasure!'. It had been on the cards for a while that Pax would visit his grandfather over the summer and take in some of the Tetrawizard Tournament festivities at the same time, but Phineas Wintergreen's off-hand remark that Pax should bring a friend had been more last minute. Drea had sprung to mind, not only as someone Pax hadn't had the chance to visit with yet, but also as someone who would appreciate an outing to Hogsmeade. Pax was only glad his fellow Hufflepuff was able to make it.

Polishing off the last of his own free cupcake from the Magicakery booth, Pax waved to his grandfather to let him know he and Drea weren't going far, then scurried after his friend towards the Honeydukes booth. 'Oh, brilliant!' he grinned, blissfully unaware that he still had a smudge of strawberry icing from his cupcake on his cheek. 'D'you reckon they brought out some special sweets, like, especially for the Tournament? Maybe there's French and Norwegian and American stuff here for the visiting schools!'

He bounced here and there around the display, even more pepped up than usual. He couldn't help it; it was like there was some kind of contagious energy in the atmosphere that only occurs when there's a big event happening. Pax thought Drea seemed more excited than usual as well. 'Ooh, look here-- "Melody Gum",' he read out from one of the little placards beneath a basket of small, wrapped pieces of bubble gum. 'It says, "The bigger a bubble you blow, the louder the music when the bubble bursts". I never could get the hang of blowing bubbles, mind you,' he admitted.

"D'you reckon they brought out some special sweets, like, especially for the Tournament? Maybe there's French and Norwegian and American stuff here for the visiting schools!"

"Maybe they have. I'm sure they're lovely." Obderedria couldn't think of any foreign sweets off the top of her head but there must be something along the display that was foreign. Before she got to scrutinizing, Pax had already made a discovery.

"Melody Gum? Hey, it's American!" she pointed further down the printed explanation. Gum was seemingly more popular in America, she supposed. Behind the gum between other candies was a sign that made her point more exaggeratedly. "Look-it, first sample of any candy is free!" Normally Obderedria would determine all she wanted to buy and purchase it before eating a piece but if the shop was also passing out free samples.

"Here," she handed a piece to Pax, then one for herself. Unwrapping the gum she found it to be pink and blue, soft like melted taffy. "Blowing bubbles is easy. You just have to chew," in went the gum, making her words sound sloshy with extra saliva, "and, keep a massh by your presshed lips, poke your tongue into it a bit and then blow into it."

She demonstrated, although because she had not chewed the gum for long enough the bubble snapped before it grew to any size. Although that was enough to have the gum, instead of making a 'pop' sound, play a short little trumpet riff.

"That's kind of neat!"

Pax popped his own piece of bubblegum into his mouth and started chewing as Drea instructed. He didn't tend to have gum often; usually he just ended up swallowing it by mistake. This one, he couldn't help but notice, had a much more vivid flavour than the standard muggle fair. He could taste watermelon and grape as if he were actually eating them.

After watching carefully as Drea demonstrated how to blow a bubble, and laughing appreciatively at the music the sweet made when it burst, he gave it a try himself. He had barely blown any air into it, however, when his bubble deflated with the sound of a descending violin chord. The music sounded so disappointed that it was as if it was responding to Pax's poor bubble-blowing ability, and he couldn't help but laugh again.

'I think I need to work on it,' he chortled around a mouthful of half-chewed gum. 'Merlin, I bet my little sister would love this-- pity she's too young for bubblegum. Or, y'know, any kind of gum. I'll need to see if I can find anything to bring back for her.' Poppy had stayed home with her and Pax's parents, since she had a friend's birthday party to go to that afternoon. Pax was a little disappointed she'd miss out, but reasoned it was probably for the best; he didn't like to think how easy it would be for a four-year-old to get lost in a village as crowded as Hogsmeade was today.

'Anything in particular you want to get?' he asked his friend amicably, surveying the booth again while making a concentrated effort not to swallow his bubblegum. 'Are there any kinds of sweets you usually get when you order stuff from Mr. Flume?'

Obderedria giggled. "We both need work. The symphony is sounding very sore." Better than a wasted bubbled sounding like kazoos and vuvuzelas.

"Oh, I just order in no particular order, no one favorite. Sometimes Ice Mice, or Jelly Slugs, Fizzing Whizzbees..." Drea usually ordered on a whim, taste she hadn't had in a while. With the first sample free she would be able to rediscover some tastes and then pick some to stock up on before the school year began and she was able to use the Owlery again. "Maybe even a Cockroach Cluster. It's just nuts, right? Not a real cockroach?" Though it had tasted fine the first time she had tried one.

"Do you have any favorites?" she asked Pax while examining foreign candies, still chewing her gum.

'I don't know about Cockroach Cluster,' Pax replied good-humouredly, pushing his Melody Gum to the side of his mouth for the time being. 'I've never tried it. Seeing as I don't like nuts or cockroaches,' he added with a chuckle. He noticed a bowl of the sweet in question, but studiously avoided looking to closely at it. There were some places that served insects as food, and that was just in the muggle world...

'I have trouble picking a favourite too,' he said, keen not to dwell on the edibility of bugs. 'I mean, there's just so much to choose from, right? Kinda depends on what I'm in the mood for. Chocolate Wands and Sugar Quills, they're really nice. And I guess I never turn down treacle fudge.' He grinned at the thought, and started absentmindedly scanning the booth again, as if talking about those particular sweets might have made them appear in the display.

'Exploding Bonbons are fun too. But it always gives me such a start when they blow up! My sister Poppy had one of mind once, she thought it was just a normal sweet-- her hair practically stood up on end when the bonbon went off. She was like-- inconsolable' (Eirene would like that word!) 'for about an hour after, but then once the shock wore off she started pestering me for another.' He laughed at the memory. 'Mind you, she was a bit young for sucking-sweets at the time. Mum and Dad told her she wasn't to have anymore in case she choked. I think she was a bit insulted about that.'

Ambling over to where Drea was standing looking at some of the new selection, he asked, 'Finding anything interesting?' He tilted his head in thought as he looked over the display. 'I wonder how you can tell if a sweet is French, or Norwegian, or something like that.'

"Really? I had always thought it was just for show, like a Swedish Fish." However, when it came to the wizarding world there were sweets like Ice Mice, Peppermint Toads and Chocolate Frogs that all acted authentic. She decided, for the sake of still being able to appreciate the candy, that she just accept that it was crunchy and an acquired taste.

Pax listed more types of sweets she liked. Obderedria covered her mouth at the story about his sister. "Her hair stood up on end? Oh dear, I hope she was okay. I left one at home after Christmas last year and after another month it exploded out my dresser drawer where I had stashed it." That wasn't her worse wizard candy story though! One visit to Diagon at the other end of the summer had her stop by Sugarplum's and even the courage to enter one of the joke shops. "I like Honeydukes the best though, they aren't as crazy as some other ones like Weasley's. Have you ever had one of their Ton Tongue Toffees? I thought that meant it was thick, I didn't expect," she shivered, "my tongue growing so it looked like a purple anaconda! Mum absolutely freaked when she saw me before it wore off, until I could explain it was just a sweet."

Speaking of Swedish Fish, she doubted those would be the kind of 'foreign' treats available. "I'm not sure how they would label them but--hey!" she pointed to a new discovery. One bowl had a placard colored like a foreign flag. Inside squirming around were animated little animals like the subjects of a box of animal crackers--pigs, donkeys, cows, chickens, and more--but they were made from marzipan.[1]

"It says these are Norwegian. Aren't they the cutest things ever?" Obderedria asked as a marzipan pig peered up at them wriggling its snout. They were cuter than Chocolate Frogs, simply too cute to eat. How anyone would work past the guilt to eat one was beyond her.

1.	looks like these

Pax shook his head with a self-effacing grin at the mention of the infamous Diagon Alley joke shop. 'I'm not brave enough for any of the Weasley stuff,' he said. 'I'd leave that kind of thing to Mairead or Keegan or-- well, any of the Gryffindors, really.'

Drea's discovery of the Norwegian sweets piqued Pax's interest, and he came to take a look. 'Aw!' he exclaimed, feeling comfortable enough around Drea to express an appreciation for cute things. 'Oh, and they're marzipan! Great find, Drea, Poppy would love these.' He grabbed a pick-n-mix bag and a plastic sweet shovel and gently scooped a few up to buy, doing his best not to break any of them in the process. 'I dunno if she'd actually eat them, what with them moving around and stuff, but I guess she could always just play with them instead.

'I wonder what kind of charm they use to make sweets like this move,' he wondered aloud as he slid the frolicking marzipan animals into the paper bag. 'Or... maybe it's transfiguration? I wonder if we'll get to learn how to do that kind of thing.'

Obderedria wasn't sure about being compared with Gryffindors. They would like being standoffish, no, showoff-ish with crazy candy. She tried not to think about it although the toffee had been tasty to lure you into a false since of security.

She too took a bag for purchases and filled it with candy. "I, well, I've come to like magical sweets enough that I think stuff is missing in the muggle variants. It would be cool to be able to do magic like this someday. Maybe animate a gummy worm or a chocolate bunny."

Pax chuckled at the thought as he carefully folded over the top of his sweet bag. 'Merlin, imagine a gummy worm that actually wriggles.' He squirmed a little, but was still grinning nonetheless. 'You could use it for bait. For catching a Swedish Fish.' Spying the treacle fudge, Pax grabbed another bag for himself and tried to refrain from filling it too full. He didn't want to spend all the money he had with him in one go.

'It's a shame they don't always have a booth out here like this, it'd be fun to visit on Hogsmeade weekends. But at least the shop itself'll always be around.' He glanced over to Drea, glad to have someone to pal around at sweet shops with. 'We'll need to go together sometime when we're in third year!' It didn't actually seem all that far off now, what with them almost being second-years.

After one more appraising glance around the booth, Pax nodded to himself. 'Okay, I think I'm ready to buy.' He shifted both paper bags into the crook of his elbow and started sifting through his coin pouch, absentmindedly starting to chew on his Melody Gum again as he did so. 'How about you?'

Obderedria giggled at Pax's thoughts on a moving gummy worm. "I'm surprised it hasn't been thought of already. If we ever learn how it works I might try animating candy like that." Normally Obderedria only practiced her spells so she could pass the test, rarely having the nerve to apply them elsewhere because of her lacking confidence. But here, in the coziest part of the wizarding world she could imagine with a dear friend and some of her favorite treats, she felt like she could enchant one of the winged boars at the school gate to jump off its pedestal and dance a jig.

Sadly, this feeling of power was a fleeting fancy when she came to remember that school was still closed, and technically they weren't supposed to do magic over the summer.

"I can't wait until we can come here as third years, longer than a short visit." Not that she disliked her letters to the Flumes, being one of the few actual pen pals she could count from her mailing list. But there seemed to be a freshness to the sweets having them from the source and not from a box delivered by an owl once a month. "Plus there's the Magicakery and Madame Puddifoot's and the Three Broomsticks."

All locations with the allure of being grown up and having access to such freedoms.

For now, Obderedria was content for however she could stretch her pocket money. Stocking up on several packs of Sugar Quills for the new semester, between free samples and her remaining coins she got a little of everything packed into her own paper bags.

She smiled. "I'm good!" And the two friends went off.