She went downstairs for her shift at Honeydukes. The people who were buying candy from her (mostly the sweet little children) wondered why she looked half-worried, half-sulky. She wished she could have been much nicer to her customers, but, as she said to herself, even Shakespeare had his down days…Finally, the gray-haired employee was working with her on her shift named Raymond came to talk to her. He was looking like he thought that she had a problem there or something.

"Something wrong?" he said.

"Oh…umm…no." Celeste sighed.

"Here. You can have some of our best chocolate," offered the other Honeydukes employee. He took a bar off a shelf. "Don't you know? Employees can have two pieces a day with no cost." He laughed. "Then they have to start paying up like normal customers do. You haven't had any yet today."

"Oh, thanks, Raymond," said Celeste. She took her chocolate gingerly…then she remembered Snape and how he had accidentally eaten his own Love Potion Chocolates today. What if…

"Don't worry," said Raymond cheerfully, as if he had been reading Celeste's mind. "I haven't poisoned it or anything, you know." He smiled at her and got back to his shift, leaving Celeste to eat her chocolate and wonder why she cared so much about Charlene. Maybe it was because she and Charlene used to be such friends, and now Charlene was sleeping with people she hardly knew and got mad when Celeste voiced any worries about it; it seemed almost as if they were drifting apart or something.

"Yo! Hey, nice laaady!" called a little boy's voice. It was another customer. Celeste realized that he had been calling for a long time until she had finally responded to his need for the candy.

"Sorry, terribly sorry," said Celeste hurriedly as she went to help the customer. She tried to smile at the little boy, who was still staring at her like she had just gone mad or something. Celeste ignored the look on his face and said, "What would you like from Honeydukes today, young man?"

"I wanna lollipop," said the little boy. "Make it extra juicy."

"Uhhh…" Celeste looked at Raymond, but he was busy helping an old lady who Celeste was quite sure would never say something like, "I wanna lollipop." Anyway, she looked back at the little boy, who was now watching her impatiently. "All right…what flavor would you like to buy?"

"Chocolate," said the little boy.

"Sure you can," said Celeste, who was just eager for the little boy to leave. So she got a chocolate lollipop off the lollipop tree and gave it to the little boy, who looked at her angrily and left, but not before he had pulled the wrapper and sucked on his lollipop. Celeste sighed heavily.

"You know," she said to Raymond, "some kids can be real brats."

"They're just kids," said Raymond pleasantly. "Maybe something was just on his mind, maybe something was bothering him. You can't say a kid's a brat from one encounter."

"Everybody's a critic," said Celeste, feeling tears in her eyes. "Even you, Raymond."

Raymond sighed. "Celeste…you can't do this. I thought you said nothing was bothering you. Why do you cry when I'm just saying you can't call one of our customers a brat?"

"Severus wouldn't have said that," Celeste said tearfully. She realized the problem was that she missed her boyfriend, really badly. "Severus would've agreed. He always does."

"Who's Severus?" said Raymond blankly.

"He's my boyfriend!" Celeste said so loudly that half the store jumped. "And I-I love him!"

"Y-your boyfriend?" said Raymond. He sighed. "Oh, Celeste, is that where you stayed last night when our basement had a leak?" He looked at her. She looked back at him sharply.

"Yes, that IS where I stayed," she said. "And what business of yours is it, may I ask?"

Raymond smiled kindly. Too kindly, Celeste thought. He pushed her toward the stairs. "All right, Celeste, why don't you have the day off? You can do makeup hours later, if you want."

"Oh…but…Raymond, I…" Celeste protested.

"No, no, go on, it's fine!" said Raymond, still smiling. "Don't worry, Celeste, go on…You can come back to work when you're ready." He shunted her off. Celeste looked at him strangely before going all the way up to her apartment, only because it was no use arguing with Raymond.

Charlene was in the bathroom, so Celeste was alone, alone to think by herself. And it was a long time before Celeste realized something very embarrassing: the reason Raymond had left her have the rest of the day off was that he had thought she was with child! And all because she had slept over at Snape's house, just once. Could you get pregnant in only one night, anyway?

Well, how can you help him? You sure acted like you slept with Snape, said that annoying voice. Celeste decided not to listen to it…but she somehow knew that it was right.