How do I even?

Tifanie was stressed and her habit had always been to read when she was stressed out.  Unlike some, she wasn't drawn immediately to the fiction section of the store.  She had no intention of escaping into a fantasy world.  When Tifanie was stressed, her footsteps led her to the non-fiction section.  Toward answers and solutions.

It had been almost a year since she moved to England, and there was no sign of Calli here.  Although she wasn't listed as dead in any of the Ministry files Tifanie had managed to borrow, there was no suggestion of where she might be.  There was at least one sighting of her with Claudia, and that was Tifanie's lifeline.  Claudia had been an Auror, which meant all those rumours about Caelani being a Death Eater might not be true.  But Claudia was missing as well.

Her fingertips trailed along the spines of the books in the Magical Creatures section. Tifanie was barely paying attention to what she was doing until one of them, pushed the wrong way into the shelf by some hasty customer, closed its pages around her knuckles.  Startled, she let out a yelp.

It had been a long week, to say the least. Keiran was doing better, but that meant for Oliver that the older man wanted more time off. And for the moment, Oliver was the only one working the floor and keeping track of the stock. He had put a charm on the door that set off a bell sound like one might find in Muggle stores, so he would know when someone walked in. He wasn't going to stay in the back when someone walked in and could wander unsupervised.

So he was stocking off and on throughout the morning, and had only sort of glanced around the end of a shelf to greet the brunette when she entered. A little while later, a surprised cry met his ears as he passed by the section designated for texts on magical creatures. Oliver halted, leaning back and lookingdown the aisle before dropping his box at the end where nobody would trip over it. Then he rushed over and thwapped the book on the nose, forcing it to open up.

Oliver reached out, moving her hand away and frowning darkly at the book. He turned towards her, looking down at turning her hand over so he could make sure she didn't need any help. "Bloody thing," he muttered, releasing her and pulling his wand out of his shoe.

Summoning a pen and paper he wrote a note asking people to replace the books with care. Turning his gaze on her fully for the first time, concern pulled at his eyebrows. "You alright?"

She recognised this man. Oliver Connolly, he appeared in Ministry files in association with the Order of the Phoenix. And he worked in a bookshop? It seemed incongruous. Perhaps he was their intelligence agent or some such thing.

"It's fine," she smiled. "My own fault. I should have been paying more attention."

If she hadn't been taken by surprise, she wouldn't have called out at all. Tifanie was an auror, and if she couldn't take care of a book, what use was she? But she was not entirely at odds with playing the damsel in distress if it meant she got to be rescued by this charming prince.

"Sorry to disturb you, if you could show me the history section?"

"I've been known to get distracted with my own thoughts in a bookshop or two, myself," he told her with a slight smile, pressing his shoulder against one of the shelf's safer racks. Just as he was preparing to push off and continue with the stock that needed to go out, she spoke again and he lifted his eyebrows.

It wasn't that he minded so much as he didn't often have people asking. Then again, he and Keiran hadn't exactly been running the ship around here for that long.

"Sure," he agreed simply, nodding once.

Stepping around her, he glanced over his shoulder to ensure that she was following though he wasn't sure why he imagined she wouldn't. She seemed nice enough, and he didn't picture her as the undercover Death Eater type, regardless of his recent re-joining of his own faction. He may not have trusted Nick - at least, he didn't yet - but he wasn't about to immediately assume anyone else was anything they might not be.

So he led the way over to the section in question before turning towards her and walking backwards a few steps between the stacks. "Were you looking for Muggle texts or magical ones? We've begun carrying both."