The urchin didn't ordinarily appreciate getting told what to do, particularly from the boss's daughter. And if Mrs. Gallagher had been keeping up her neversweat ways, she would have simply refused. It wasn't like it was the lady's work inside the store that was set to be ruined, not after Charley had spent all morning on those arrangements alone. She must have caught Charley in a good mood, or it was just that the boy stunk that bad.

Raising her chin, Charley looked the boy square in the eye, giving him a narrowed glare. He was not going to cross this threshold, not if there was anything she could do about it. "Oh, he's stayin' right where I can see him." She jerked her chin to the side, farther from the shop walls. Into the street if he had to, the urchin would hardly blink if he got run into, or over. "Be a good lad an' follow the nice Potts lady, lest ya wanna smell my boot."

Just a week before, it would have felt wrong for Charley to stand at the door of the Potts shop in guard. They'd been her enemies as the only competitor to Montague's in Hogsmeade. But give her a new job, and a reason to keep it, and the urchin could be its newest, most vicious, defender. She had a wand up her sleeve and didn't even need it.

She raised her arms, fingers in claws, and stepped toward the boy with every ounce of menace in her body. Sometimes the streets were like a stage, only far more entertaining for an urchin as well. She'd growl if she had to, whatever it took to make the stinky boy back off or fall in line. Whichever he chose made little difference to Charley, he'd been doomed from the moment he walked up with a weed in his arms. "Go on then an' shift yerself, Stinky. Don't get clever, neither, 'cause I'm gonna be yer shadow."

Charley would move when he did, following him and his stinky offering the source of the woman's good smell. Whatever it was better be worth it for all the gagging she'd have to put up with on the way.

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