Pucey's Patisserie was a small, out of the way bakery on a side street in London. Not many people knew about it, but Adrian Pucey wasn't bothered by that. He hadn't opened the bakeshop to get rich—his family had enough money. He'd wanted peace, and he'd found it in pastry. And coffee, of course, because he didn't believe a person could truly enjoy their pastry without coffee. He did all right—had some regulars, kept his books solidly in the black—and he'd finally perfected both his apple pie and his lemon drizzle cake. He was happy, finally, for the first time since the war had started, and he was finally starting to heal.
And then his past strolled into the bakery one day, asking for vanilla scones and coffee with cream and turning his life upside down.
Adrian Pucey had always had a bit of a thing for Oliver Wood. It wasn't a particularly well-kept secret in the sense that it wasn't terribly juicy—most of Hogwarts had a bit of a thing for Oliver Wood, but he was too devoted (read: obsessed) with Quidditch to notice. The farthest Adrian's thing went was refusing to foul the Gryffindor team, leading to his being benched his fourth year (fifth year? Whatever year Black had escaped from Azkaban; it had all started to run together after a while). They'd lost the game, of course: Potter was a better flyer than Malfoy and he'd had a better broom.
Still, Adrian had been rather glad he hadn't had to play that game. Oliver had been on the team since his second year and never managed to win the Quidditch Cup, and a lot of people felt that someone that devoted to the game might as well get to have the honor for his last year. Potter's being on his team was as much a liability as it was a blessing; kid had a bad luck streak a mile wide.
After Oliver graduated, Adrian hadn't seen him—it made sense, of course. Oliver had gone on to fly for Puddlemere United, and then the war, and then… then there was the bakery, trying to get his life back together, all of that.
At the end of it all, he supposed the most surprising thing was that it was vanilla scones and not butterscotch.
Adrian was only paying half a mind to the customers at the register—he had three cappuccinos and two lattes and four breves, honestly, who even drank those?—but then he heard a familiar Scottish accent asking about the availability of vanilla scones and another damn breve, what was wrong with these people, and Adrian looked up with a sinking feeling of dread because whatever else he'd managed to do, his greatest achievement was staying completely out of the magical world, which was why he'd found a place on the most Muggle street in all of effing London, Oliver Wood, so why did you have to come in here and screw all of that up I was finally happy, damn you but what he said was a surprisingly professional:
"Lemon blueberry scones today, sorry, but there are some slices of pound cake if you're interested. I'm a bit behind on the drinks so it'll be a bit of a wait but I can make a breve, yes."
"Right, I'll have a couple of those scones and a medium breve, then, please, no rush; I've got loads of… Adrian Pucey?"
"Hello, Wood," Adrian said, with a probably manic smile as he rang up Oliver's scones and his stupid breve. "Er… how are you?"
"I… um… all right, yeah. And you?"
"Doing well."
They stood in painful silence for a moment before Oliver suddenly shoved a plastic card at him. "I… eh… yeah, I'll just be paying… for the scones…" he trailed off weakly.
Adrian swiped the card.
Adrian swiped the card again.
And again.
"Er… it's saying it's declined," Adrain said apologetically. "Is it…" he lowered his voice. "Is it one of the new ones from Gringotts, the ones that are meant to work like Muggle credit cards?"
"Yeah," Oliver said, "but it shouldn't be faulty, I mean, it's Gringotts, and I know I have money in my account, so…."
Adrian snorted to himself. "I imagine the captain of Puddlemere United would not have such issues, no," he said, his tone gently mocking. "The problem is that this place is 100% Muggle."
Oliver blinked. "I… should've guessed that. It's Muggle London. Hang on." He fumbled in his wallet, pulled out another piece of plastic. "This one ought to work."
It did, and Adrian pulled out two scones, added Oliver's cup to the steadily-rising pile, and started brewing espresso.
Oliver Wood came back the next day, but at a different time. Conveniently, a time at which the place was completely dead. Adrian was sweeping behind the counter, but put his broom aside when Oliver walked in.
"Bit strange to see a broom being used that way," Oliver commented lightly, and Adrian smiled.
"We can't all have high-risk professions," he answered in the same genial tone, "and anyway I wasn't anywhere near as good as you."
"No fouls, though," Oliver said thoughtfully. "You never had any fouls."
Adrian paused. "Slytherins had… have—and not unfairly, I know—the reputation of being lying cheating dirty snakes, and I… I liked winning. I liked being the best. But it was never worth it to me to realize my ambitions through dirty practices. The Hat almost put me in Hufflepuff, but I begged for Slytherin. My dad, you know."
Oliver nodded but didn't say anything. They all knew that most of the second generation of Death Eaters were not much more than scared children trying to live up to parental expectation—Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy had made sure of that.
They stood in awkward silence for a moment before Oliver said, "So. A patisserie. I've gotta say, that's kind of swanky for a little shop in the middle of Muggle London."
"Yeah, I know. I liked the alliteration."
Oliver blinked. "You picked a smarmy name like this because you liked the alliteration?"
"Yep. That and my mother made the sign and didn't listen when I said I wanted it to be called Pucey's Pastries."
The other man laughed. "Fair enough."
"I still don't have vanilla scones," Adrian said apologetically as Oliver's laughter settled around the room.
Oliver waved him off. "Nah, it's good. I just had a hankering for them; they're not my favorite or anything."
"What is?" Adrian asked before he could stop himself.
"Bread pudding. My grandmother used to make it with butterscotch; it was fantastic," Oliver answered with a fond smile on his face. "'Course, I also like anything with cinnamon but that's a bit of a lesser love."
Adrian tried not to think about how carefully he filed away that information.
Two weeks later, the Drink of the Week was a butterscotch latte and Oliver Wood came in three times, during the dead zone that was two o'clock, ordered a large one, and chatted until the entire thing was gone, about Hogwarts and Quidditch and Muggle music (which Adrian played in the shop and which Oliver loved) and everything else under the sun.
And because Adrian was a Slytherin and practical, whatever else he might be, they talked about what Oliver would do when he couldn't play Quidditch anymore, and that was when Adrian realized Oliver Wood had grown in ways he never could've imagined.
"When we were at Hogwarts I probably wouldn't have been able to imagine a life that didn't involve me playing Quidditch—I honestly would've rather died playing than reach a point where I couldn't. But… the war, you know, made me realize there are bigger things than games. I still love Quidditch, always will, but I could coach without being upset. I could leave it, I think, sometimes, and hell if that wasn't a horrifying realization to come to. I was obsessed with it since I was five but… after the war I started volunteering at St. Mungo's—you get to be a pretty good field medic when you play as much as I do, pick up on things when the mediwizards are trying to fix your injuries or someone else's, and my NEWTS weren't bad. I wouldn't mind going on to be a Healer, at some point, or some kind of emergency responder with the Aurors. I love Quidditch, but it's not my life now, you know?"
Adrian did know. "My dad wanted me to take over the family business." It was, incidentally, developing racing brooms. He assumed (correctly) Oliver did not need to be told that. "But after the war, it seemed so stupid to… so many people died. People I'd known all my life. I couldn't… it was like I couldn't breathe at home, and my mother kept trying to set me up with all these daughters of her society friends and I just… our house-elf taught me to bake, when I was younger. Mippy. She died my last year of school, when the Dark Lord started rising again and… that summer all I could do was cook. It drove my dad mad, but… it felt like a way to honor her memory and after the war I took it up again. Still drives him mad, you know, but it's all right—I've got a younger sister; she'll be much better at broom development than me, and if Dad leaves it to me I'll pass it on to her as soon as I can. I don't want that life. I know it sounds stupid but I've been so much more peaceful here, finally getting the crust right on an apple crumble than I ever could have been trying to boss around a research and development team."
Adrian realized dimly that they were holding hands but he didn't remember when that happened. It felt nice, though. Warm, comforting. For a moment, he felt more whole than he had since he first hung the sign outside the shop.
When they fell into love together, it happened so naturally that Adrian wasn't really sure how it happened at all, but he was fairly certain that the butterscotch bread pudding he'd made had something to do with it. He was even more certain that he'd finally, finally found his peace.