Written for The Forgotten Characters Challenge: number 18 Florean Fortescue!
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Florean Fortescue smiled as he served up a batch of delicious, magically enhanced, every-flavour ice cream to one of his patrons.
His customer, a little girl with her hair in pigtails, licked her lips as her little hands greedily grabbed hold of the nearly-towering ice cream cone.
"Are you sure you can finish that yourself?" He winked at the girl.
The little girl giggled again and stuck a thumb back at another blond boy in green overalls who was waiting patiently behind her (and examining the many jars of candies and sprinkles that lined the store's walls.)
"That's my brother," she said. "And he's going to share with me."
Florean felt another smile pull at his face. "Right you are love, you should always share."
The girl shook her head. "I don't like sharing." She shrugged and climbed down from the counter. "But mum says I have to and she only gave me enough money to buy one."
"Brothers are irreplaceable," he said fondly, remembering his own long-lost brother Mercutio Fortescue. His brother had a fiery temper and they had long ago lost contact. "But, here, since you don't want to share." He smiled again as he handed her an extra chocolate and frog-ice creme flavoured cone. "Give this to your brother, so you have enough."
"Thank you sir!" the girl gleefully called back over her shoulder as she and her brother dashed out of their store with their ice cream cones in hand.
"You're only young once," Florean thought nostalgically and then took out his wand to polish his serving counter. Perhaps that was why he liked serving ice cream so much, it often came with the best memories and the customers he attracted were often the young, the happy and in-love. Ice cream was very much the place you went when you were happy and Florean Fortescue's specialty flavours of ice cream were sure to enchant and please the taste buds.
He very much enjoyed seeing the young, hopeful faces that wandered in and out of his store, and he smiled again as he heard the little bell at his door go off as another customer stepped in...
"May I help you?" Florean offered with a wink.
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He could serve ice cream all day, all eternity. If there was a heaven, he wanted to serve ice cream there too. And formulate even more flavours and actual Ambrosia (food of the gods). It was a very happy thought indeed.