A/N: Thanks to Chel for being my beta!

Reaching up, she plucked another misshelved book from the shelf. Sometimes, Willow felt like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, working at this bookstore. People picked up books and set them down with little regard for whether it was the right spot or not. It wasn't all frustrating. True, there was an ironic lack of time for reading, but Willow loved being surrounded by books. It felt safe. Maybe it was the musty smell of the older tomes or the general quiet nature of a bookstore. Or, it could just be that the bookstore reminded her of the hours she'd spent in the Sunnydale library, surrounded (for the first time) by a group of friends.

It wasn't a very busy bookstore. This corner of London didn't get the most tourist traffic, but the real book afficionados and avid collectors came, as well as random people off the street. The non-collectors tended to be more careless with the books, but they also had the more interesting questions-- they wanted to know about content, not just copyright dates. Just the other day, she'd had someone in the shop looking for books about ordinary people. It didn't matter what the specific subject was, as long as it was about an ordinary person, no one famous. Willow had suggested a copy of James Herriot's It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet.

Running the store was satisfying work, and like that customer, Willow craved an ordinary life. It had been almost two years since she'd left. When Sunnydale had gone down, she knew it was time to leave the others, to start her own life. Though magic and the supernatural had been a part of her life for so long, Willow didn't want to deal with the demons, the power, and the heartache it had all brought. Sometimes she missed her friends, but a clean break had been essential. They understood that. The Scoobies couldn't fault her for wanting out, no matter how much they personally wanted her to stay.

Ordinary people, with ordinary questions about ordinary books. Willow smiled. The others would think this was terribly boring, but she continued to relish it. Looking at her watch, she noticed it was nearly seven o'clock-- closing time. Walking down the aisles to check for stray customers (you'd be surprised how many get lost in a book and forget the time), she only found one. The man sat on a small footstool, his hand propping open a copy of an old football rule book and his glasses propped up on his tangled black hair. As she neared the man, she saw that he wasn't simply oblivious; he had fallen asleep browsing the book. Gingerly, she tapped him on the shoulder.

The reaction was instantaneous. He jumped up, looking around wildly and reaching into his pocket. Startled by his sudden movement, Willow fell backward onto the floor. Cringing, she put a hand up in front of her. "Calm down, sir. I just came over to tell you that the store is closing."

Focusing in on her, he seemed to relax. "I'm terribly sorry about that. It's not often that I fall asleep in a store. Er, as you may have guessed, I don't react well when I'm startled." He offered her his hand. "Here, let me help you up. I hope I didn't frighten you."

"I think we're in an equal-opportunity startling situation here," Willow said.

"Please, let me make it up you. Can I treat you to a coffee? There's a café just down the street."

"Well..."

"Or are you still on duty here?"

"As it's my shop, I think I can let myself off work a bit early. Give me five minutes to close up, and you're on."

"Done."

* * * *

Willow sat at the table as he ordered their drinks from the counter. It was kind of fun, going out for coffee with a new person. First time a customer had ever wanted to socialize with her, though this was strictly an apology coffee.

He walked over with the steaming mugs of coffee and sat down. "So now that we're here, having our coffee, maybe I should introduce myself. Harry Potter," he said.

"Willow Rosenberg," she said, shaking his outstretched hand.

"So how does a young American girl come to run an old book shop in London?"

"Well, I came over with the help of a friend several years ago. Things at home were... bad. You might call it an explosive situation. In the end, I didn't have a home or a job, and I really needed to break away from my friends. We didn't have the healthiest lifestyle, and I just wanted out. My friend was living here and knew someone wanted to sell the shop. He also knew I needed someplace to start fresh. So, we worked out a deal. I ran the book shop and took a very small salary. The rest of the money I would have been earning went towards paying off the cost of the shop, and last month, I paid off the last part. So now, it's my shop."

Willow realized she'd been having the conversation more or less with her mug of coffee. Looking up at Harry, she said, "What about you? Does everyone who wakes you up in a bookstore aisle get such a charming reaction?"

His cheeks colored slightly, and he said, "Normally I wouldn't fall asleep in a public place like that. For some odd reason, I felt safe enough to drift off in your shop. It's really odd, because I usually have trouble relaxing enough to fall asleep in my own flat."

Willow nodded, thinking about the protective talismans she had scattered around the shop. She wasn't into magic anymore, but she still tried to keep her shop protected. Maybe he was perceptive enough, whether he consciously realized it or not, to feel the difference of magical protection in the air?

"Anyway," he continued, "let's just say that in my experience, when someone catches you sleeping, unprotected, snapping to attention to protect yourself is a perfectly logical step to take. I didn't mean to scare you."

"You startled me, but it takes a lot more than that to really scare me."

"Shall we call it a truce then? Mutual apology? I'm sorry for startling you, and you're sorry for startling me?"

"Sounds fair to me," said Willow, smiling. "So tell me more about you. What do you do when you aren't cruising book shops?

"Well, when I was a teenager, everyone thought I'd be a copper, but after some of the crime scenes I saw, I decided I couldn't go through that on a daily basis. I surprised them all and became an English teacher-- decided words on a page were graphic enough. I didn't exactly have the healthiest adolescence either, so a little normality was fine with me."

"It sounds like we've got a bit in common. Do you ever wonder how you'd have turned out if you hadn't broken away from what your friends expected?"

"I'd say a bit less sane than I am now. I was sort of the leader of our little group in school, and everyone always thought that I had the answer, that I could protect them from anything. I wanted to help people around me, but the burden of that pressure-- it was unbelievable. I didn't want to abandon the friends who were counting on me, so I kept with them for a long time, until I was sure they were ok to deal with the world on their own, without me. It wasn't the greatest time to live in my neighborhood, you might say. Now, things are a lot better, but I know that if I went back, they'd put me back in that same role. They'd all want me to know what to do about everything, and I just don't want that."

He stopped suddenly, as if realizing he was baring his soul to a complete stranger.

"Don't be embarrassed, Harry. It's taken me a long time to realize that it was ok for me to move on. I don't want to go back either, for the same reason. My friends understood why I needed to move on, but all the same, if I came back, they'd see me as the girl they knew, not the girl I've become." She smiled. "We're getting a bit serious here; what do you say we lighten the mood?"

* * * *

Willow smiled as she walked down the street. Harry had been lovely. They seemed to have so much in common, although he wasn't hiding a magical past behind euphemisms like she was. Still, it had felt good to relate to someone. Serendipitous, even, like the world was telling her she'd made the right choice in leaving magic for a normal life. And who knew? Maybe she'd see Harry again soon.

A completely normal life.