Almost instantly, Melinda could feel her cheeks heat up. Viktor was charming, but what really affected her was the sincerity behind that charm. Though it felt like a minor lifetime, it wasn’t even five months ago that a charming Quidditch player had swept her off her feet with compliments and flirts the like she had never heard before, and barely two months since she had given up trying to fix what had been broken… and two weeks since she had acknowledged the broken heart it had left her with. Granted, that acknowledgement had made it possible for her to start mending again. She didn’t know Viktor, but from what little she had read about him, from what she had seen of him in the shop and experienced today, the only things he really had in common with Oliver was that he was male and a professional Quidditch player. “Well, obviously you’ve never heard me sing, but I forgive you,” she said, her smile grateful and appreciative of his compliment; it wasn’t his fault that she’d been a fool before, right?
She frowned slightly at his admission of never having experienced high tea. “Sounds like your hosts have neglected some of the mandatory experiences when visiting England,” she said with a small smirk. “True, I may be biased, but I think it’s something everyone should try at least once.” And if you went to the right places, you could get quite the artistic experience at a very low cost.
Her smile brightened at the mention of Tsvetanka – the way he spoke the name made her think that she would truly mangle it unless she practiced. “It’d be my pleasure,” she assured him, “and I’ll feel better knowing the cakes are appreciated rather than just tossed out because I couldn’t possibly eat that many myself. “If the shop’d been open, I would have put them out as samples, but I like this better.”