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Three for three, and that was all the rejection Dora could handle for one evening. After Old Man Prig walked off, Dora downed the rest of her champagne and turned around with a small huff. She scanned the faces in the crowd until she spotted Kit. She crossed the room to her date, who she had not seen since they'd all yelled "surprise", and leaned on his arm. She pouted up at him. "I'm going home, lovey. This isn't my scene." Without waiting for a response, Dora raised herself up onto her toes (an incremental amount considering the height of her heels) and gave him a kiss on the cheek before disappearing into the crowd, heading for the children's room to collect Pansy so she could go home and get drunk and play with a severing charm until Hunter summoned her.

Dora beamed at him before turning and heading excitedly downstairs, taking Toby by the hand. There wasn’t any rush as she’d again forgotten that she had a child to take care of at that moment, but it was exciting, nonetheless. Anyone who didn’t absolutely love getting presents was not someone Dora wanted to meet. Toby’s arrival had been amidst chaos, so she was sure where exactly to look, but quickly enough she spotted a bottle of wine laying on its side and a paper-wrapped item sitting on her buffet. She picked up the bottle and sat it right side up on the buffet, admiring the label that looked like it probably cost a bit more than Dora would normally spend. “Ooh,” she said admiringly. She looked at Toby with a grin, then picked up what she knew to be the book and carefully tugged at the wrapping.

Doc sounded like the name of a dwarf but Dora nodded and repeated “Doc, then.” At least he could speak, that was an improvement. Leo snorted in laughter, not subtly covering it by clearing his throat, and Dora glanced at him, amused. Was he picturing a dwarf as well, or had she missed some inside joke hidden in the man’s meager sentence? “I’m here with my friend, Kit,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder and quickly trying to scan for the tall, dark haired hunk she’d accompanied. Where was he? Hiding somewhere, most likely, since she wasn’t at his side to absorb all the socializing for him. “Not sure where he’s run off to. Probably got scared off by the colorful language,” Dora mused, wondering whether Kit had turned completely red at hearing Rodolphus Lestrange call for his wife’s girly bits or just a tad pink in the ears. “I’m here though, lucky yous.”

Dora enjoyed surprises, at least the nice sort that Toby had in mind for her. Some surprises weren’t all that enjoyable, like finding out that a tropical holiday with your best friend meant having to raise a child for the next 17 years of your life. They were down to 16 years now, if that was any consolation – which it wasn’t. Pansy’s first birthday was only a week away, and Dora had plenty of party planning left to do, which meant she might not have as much time to devote to Toby’s book as she normally might have. She wouldn’t expect to take more than a week to get through a book but Pansy’s birthday party had to be absolutely spectacular, and with her having a full time day job and seeing Hunter quite often in the evenings, she would have very little free time this week to divide between her social life and her private one.

Toby complimented her and Dora beamed. “I know,” she said, trying not too hard to feign innocence as if she hadn’t purposefully curated her entire wardrobe to show off as much skin as possible. She pressed herself up against him with an excited bounce. “Come on, I wanna see what I got.” He could roam around in a towel for all Dora cared, though she hadn’t realized anything had happened with his clothes to make them unwearable at the moment. If she had, she might have offered him something to wear that Fin or Ollie had left at some point.

Having a friend who owned a bookshop was a booklover’s dream, and the fact that Toby gave her free books in exchange for a little shag now and again was the perfect set up. They both got something they wanted and Dora’s library was growing every month. She had actually been expecting to see him when her last book had been delivered, because it had been a week before her birthday and some pre-birthday sexy times would have been nice, but that one had come with the post as many of them did. Post-birthday sexy times were just as good, and now apparently there was something more? “How do I get these personal deliveries more often?” she asked with a flirty wiggle in her hips, trailing a finger across his jawline before heading into her bedroom to get dressed.

She stepped over the shirt she’d thrown on the floor earlier while chasing a naked Pansy out of the room, and then dropped her towel on the bed as she made her way toward her wardrobe. “Which one is it this time?” she asked from inside her closet. Toby had a good sense of what she liked to read, sometimes it seemed as though he was in her head. He did a spectacular job of picking out different authors and genres for her, most of which she ended up loving and inevitably would end up in his shop looking at more of the same. Sometimes Dora even considered that their little arrangement might have all just been a ploy to get her in his bookstore more frequently. He probably had a few witches he kept as regular customers that way. “I really liked the one last time. I finished it in only a few days.” She came out of the closet in a colorful dress, barefoot, with her damp hair hanging wildly around her shoulders.

Their conversation no longer at risk of being overheard, Fishy Lawyer predictably started up on her defense. Dora barely had time to turn to face the woman before she was whisper-scolding her. “Hey, if you can’t get the guy off, I’m sure there’s another lawyer that can. It’s no big deal.” She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the counter, sliding her tea cup over so that she wouldn’t knock it on accident. “What’d he do anyway? Murder? Robbery? Muggle kisser?”