abracadabra. [tag; seth]

I wanna reach out and grab ya.

February!

Already! Christmas seemed like an awfully long way away indeed. A bit of a blur, really. She kissed a perfect stranger on Christmas Eve, hit a bar on Christmas Day and somehow, managed to get herself a date in between then and New Year's Day. Maybe things were looking up for her after all. Last year had been rough. She wasn't sure how she could go from having everything she'd ever wanted to just losing it, seemingly overnight. Annoyingly, she should have seen it coming. Everyone else did. Logan had. He'd planted that little seed of doubt with the "are you sure it's what you want?" speech. At the time, she'd said yes but looking back, she really should have listened to him.

Still! Madeline  was very happy to be working away in the kitchen. Valentine's Day was coming up and it was always crazy busy this time of year with lovers wanting cute little cookies and sweet little cakes for their significant other. It was kind of adorable watching love struck teenagers from Hogwarts wander in at the weekend. She sort of missed the thrill of having crushes. She felt as though she'd somehow outgrown everything.

The radio was on and was playing some sort of catchy pop tune as she bobbed her head to the beat, deftly filling another muffin tray with red velvet cupcake batter, surreptitiously licking a red spot of batter off her index finger before sliding the tray into the oven and closing the door with her hip. As usual, Maddie was covered with flour, despite wearing the regulation apron. Her long blonde hair shone and glittered underneath the lights because there was vanilla sugar sprinkled on her curls. There was a smudge of cake batter on her left cheekbone, chocolate sauce on the knee of her jeans and jam on her wrist. Madeline Fletcher was a great baker but she wasn't entirely neat.

Another beep caught her attention as she removed a tray from the oven. "Ack! Grr, oof," she hissed as she burned her thumb on the hot tray, leaping around as she sucked the damaged appendage before realising the time. Break time. Excellent. She needed to get outside.

It was a little after one in the afternoon as Maddie left the kitchen. She'd tried to get into the spirit of things by wearing a holiday jumper. Shrugging on he overcoat and belting it around her slender waist, she pulled her beanie hat down over her ears and grabbed the paper bag she'd bought this morning and set aside for now. "I'll be back in a bit," she told everyone but they weren't really listening.

Once outside, the cold air hit her like a slap in the face and she instantly recoiled. Wrinkling her button nose in distaste, she pulled a face before stepping outside. Snow was quickly becoming a seemingly permanent fixture in Scotland. Paris, too. Honestly? She didn't mind. Both places looked equally stunning. Crunching over the frozen cobbles, she sat herself down on a bench and opened her bag to extract a fat but delicious sugared doughnut. The hit of sugar was just enough to prevent her from flagging in a spectacular fashion. With nearly frozen fingers, she took a bite and did a happy wiggle in her seat, only to drop the treat.

"Ah, poo," she grumbled as it left her face and rolled down her coat, catching it just in time before it hit the floor. The result was sparkling sugar caught on her full pink lips as she'd just applied lip balm for the cold weather. She was such a dolt.

Hearing laughter, she looked up to see three young boys. Raising her eyebrows, she took another bite of her doughnut. "Ca I helpf yuh?" Madeline asked, her face full of doughnut as she chewed but the boys just laughed and made some snowballs and then the penny dropped. The tallest one, she imagined the Hellish ringleader, threw the first one and it hit her right in the chest, causing her to scream as she jumped up, her precious doughnut had now gone wayward. "What was that for?!" The tall blonde screeched to the boys' laughter. "Stop!" She whined as all three proceeded to lob snowballs at her.

She didn't even do anything! With a squeal, she raised her hands in front of her face to try and protect her but to no avail. She was outnumbered and she didn't really want to get into a fistfight with an eight year old boy but at the moment, she wasn't really above having a go of it. "Pack it in, you little buggers!" She yelled but they continued as a portion of an ice slid down the back of her collar and slowly down the back of her neck, causing her to squeal again as the snow started to fall from the sky. She couldn't believe it. Three pre-pubescent rats had gotten the better of her. Again.

Unless he was at work, Seth wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of robes. He'd been raised in a pureblood family and worked at the Ministry of Magic, so he supposed this could come as a surprise to most people who knew anything about wizarding culture at all -- but they weren't his thing. Flowy and large and always getting in the way. He was glad his sister understood him in this matter, much to their father's distaste. The two younger Stantons preferred things that were casual, that they could move in -- things that made them look rather nondescript and normal as opposed to blustery, entitled Ministry robots. Seth held a certain disdain for most of the administration in the Ministry, but he knew that that stemmed from his resentment of his own kin.

All that aside, he couldn't help but to be in a pair of black robes for his hour-long lunch break from the Department of Magical Games and Sports today. Or any other day of this monotonous job, for that matter. He'd apparated to Hogsmeade where he knew there'd be some good grub and was absently strolling down the snowy street, listening to his dress shoes crunch into the layer of ice underneath the new powder. He didn't really care for the snow. He didn't hate it, but he much preferred mild weather -- anything extreme made his actual craft of choice more difficult. It was hell to hike up your heart rate in freezing cold weather and it was hell to do it in weather that made you feel like you were going to incinerate. Seth sniffed, one hand jerking up toward his chiseled, handsome face to itch his nose. Nice. His fucking snot was even crystallizing in his nose. Bodily fluids freezing was a clear indication to him that it was too damn cold. Weren't there blanket spells for this?

Distantly, he heard shouting and shrieking. His thick brow furrowed and he lengthened his stride, jerking to a halt when he reached the apparent scene of the miniature crime being perpetrated by miniature criminals. One eyebrow arched and Seth had to stifle a grin. It was amusing, anyway, he couldn't deny that -- but the poor girl was clearly grappling for control of the situation and wasn't able to grasp it. He supposed he wasn't used to that so much anymore. Aline wasn't the type to let anyone walk over her or get under her skin like this, but he knew that he couldn't give everyone as much credit as his older sister.

He could see that so far, his presence had gone unnoticed by the boys, and he used this to his advantage. He stepped forward, lunging down to grab the pack leader by his collar, and ever-so-slightly lifted him off the slick pavement, leaving just the toes of his shoes touching the ground. "Didn't your mother teach you that that's not how you treat a girl?" This was sickeningly amusing to him in a way -- even he'd slipped up a few times with being a gentleman. It wasn't an easy task, especially when girls could be so fucking stupid when they had their heads up their asses about some guy.

Seth had no intention of hurting the little bastards, but he wasn't above teaching them the lesson they clearly needed to be taught. It didn't hurt that the blonde before him was very attractive and seemed like she was on her lunch break, as well -- the last thing she needed was a battalion of little cretins imposing on the only time she got off from work. He thought that he might've even recognized her, but that could be something he addressed in just a moment after he scared the kids away. Seth heard a strangled noise escape from the now squirming form in his hand, and he let up, setting the boy down and using his narrow shoulder to turn him to face forward. "Now, why don't you run along and pick on some other smelly little jerks and leave the pretty chef alone, huh? Get. Get out of here."

He released his hold, bending down toward the sidewalk to gather up some snow in tightly-packed balls. The look in his eyes was a little priceless, but Seth remained stagnant, managing to maintain the straight, intentionally-intimidating face until they all turned and booked it away from the bakery. Strong arm stretching backward, he threw the snowballs at each of the three boys (and hit them all on the mark) as they ran off. Attention was turned back to the blonde and he raised both his eyebrows this time around, curiosity piquing. "You alright? Hope you're not scarred for life. Little shits."

Madeline was getting pounded. And not in the good way. Sadly, this wasn't the first time that she'd been a part of an unprovoked snowball attack. Did she have "I'm a pushover" tattooed on her forehead? It was true, though. The baker did tend to roll over and die. It was probably why she'd made oh so many mistakes in the past. This would never happen in Paris. The kids there were far more polite and interested in better things. Not like this little yobbos.

Shit, it was getting worse.

They weren't giving her time to react. Snowball after snowball hit her slender body, covering her in powdered snow that stuck to her coat. Some went down the back of her collar, sliding slowly and uncomfortably down the back of her spine and she could feel it burning a trail on her pale, warm skin. Thank goodness she didn't work with children because she had no authority whatsoever. The only thing she could do was curl into a ball and pray that they got bored soon and left her alone. How pathetic. Had she been cooler or grown a pair of balls, she would have thrown one back at them or laughed it off. Now it was a full blown war.

The torment stopped and she winced, turning and her honey coloured eyes widening in surprise to see an older boy pick up the ringleader by the scruff of his neck like a rag doll. The child's henchmen promptly stopped lobbing snowballs and looked on helplessly. Maddie was torn between telling the handsome stranger to put the boy down and enjoying the entire thing. Unfurling her long legs from the foetal position, she started to shiver as the wind whipped up. She was cold and now very, very wet.

As he let the boy go, the tall blonde instinctively recoiled, fully expecting another snowball. It was unusual to watch. He was tall, undoubtedly. Broad. Handsome. Commanding. He apparently had some sort of presence about him and Maddie turned bright pink. Why did she always meet someone gorgeous when she looked like a badger's arse? Her cheeks and nose were pink now. Her perfect golden blonde curls were wet and had lost their bounce, causing them to hang lankly around her pretty face. There was powdered sugar on her nose and on her coat from that bloody doughnut and her hat was now wonky. Great.

Feeling horribly embarrassed, she watched as he chucked three snowballs and they all hit the target perfectly. Was he a Chaser? Some sort of famous Quidditch player? He looked about her age but he also looked popular so it was no surprise that she didn't know who he was. In school, Madeline…wasn't exactly popular. In fact, she was frequently dumped into the rose bushes by boys as a laugh. Yeah. Hardy-har-har-har indeed.

Then he looked at her and she forgot her own name.

Her eyes were as wide as saucers as she gawped at him, openly this time. "Wow," she whispered, sounding awed. "Hot," she blabbered. He was hot. But she wasn't meant to tell him that. Promptly, her blush darkened and she wanted to die a little. "I mean --" she stammered, swallowing hard and fast as her mind tried to play catch up. "Er," she hesitated. "Fine. I'm fine. I think. Thank you," she told him earnestly, looking up at him as she mentally battered herself for being such a dolt. "Really. Thank you," she told him again as she hastily brushed snow off the bench next to her on the off chance that the hottie wanted to sit. Not that he would. Duh.

Despite herself, she managed a lopsided grin. "I don't think I've ever had a knight in shining armour before," she told him. That was true. The only person who tended to save her when she was in trouble was her brother and that didn't count, surely. Her large eyes watched the boys scamper off and not once did they look back. With a shaking hand, she brushed back her went hair and smiled at him again. Was he meeting his girlfriend for lunch in the Three Broomsticks? "I am so sorry," she told him, softly and gently as she stood to her full height. He was still taller.

"I never meant for you to get involved in…whatever the Hell that was," she said with a frown, scratching the back of her head before adjusting her damp hat. "Is there any way I could thank you?" She asked him, her eyes wide and imploring. There must be something. If they were in school, she would have asked if she could do his homework for him. How lame.