Easter was not Ashleigh's favourite holiday. She wasn't religious, for a start, and didn't even particularly enjoy the seasonal food that everybody else seemed to gorge on. Ashleigh usually received a very nice (very expensive) chocolate egg from Aisling which would then last her several weeks. Even Sunday lunch with her family, a tradition Ashleigh usually enjoyed, had been a little tense.
Monday, however, was Ashleigh's to do with as she wished. What she had chosen to do, after a morning of her usual household chores, was to visit Flourish and Blott's. She had no particular book she needed - if she had, she would have ordered it by owl and had it delivered - but Ashleigh could almost always find something absorbing in a bookshop. Today was no different. She was just reading the first paragraph of Hymns and Arias (the biography of Welsh soprano Llinos Howell) when she felt a sharp pain reverberate through her shoulder. She inhaled on a hiss, the impact seemingly travel all the way to the tips of her fingers.
Looking first up and then, more logically, down, she spotted the errant book. She was reaching for her want to return it to its proper place when she heard the apology behind her. "I should think so," she said, turning. She'd expected to see an employee who'd attempted the shelving spell with a little too much enthusiasm. Instead, she saw a young man obviously not in Flourish and Blott's uniform. "What were you trying to do?" she asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt (for now) that his intent hadn't been the injury of fellow customers.