Honeydukes welcomed a strange customer that day. He did not look short of money,
yet the basket in his hand remained empty after he had made a circuit of the shop.
"May I help you?" Mrs. Flume approached him attentively.
Honeydukes' guiding principle was to have every customer fill their pockets with sweets and take happiness home. She would never allow a customer to leave the shop looking disappointed.
Brian breathed in the sweet air and turned his gaze away from several marshmallows fighting one another:
"Oh, thank you. I was wondering whether you sell any sweets that make people feel regret after eating them?"
Honeydukes lived up to its reputation. Besides its juicy signature fudge, the Coconut Ice looked very tempting too. Even the sweets sold primarily for eating looked distinctive enough, but magical sweets were far livelier than ordinary ones.
They were all housed in display cases of suitable sizes, either constantly transforming-from little dragons into rabbits,
then from rabbits into Occamies-or giving off steam and the aroma of mushroom stew, or floating as lightly as feathers above lemon juice.
In short, they freely displayed the entertaining parts of their inventors' minds to every customer, the imagination wrapped in sweet wrappers stimulating the senses of everyone in the shop.
Browsing such a wondrous sweetshop should have been an experience one lost oneself in without realizing it, but Brian had failed to enjoy his shopping this time. His grandfather had been absolutely right-"Brian, doing things with a goal in mind spoils the experience of living. When you cook, don't think about how delicious the finished dish will be. Enjoy throwing in seasonings at random. Even if you end up making a lump of pitch-black sludge, I'll eat it."
But his grandfather had not kept his promise in the end-because