memorize the lines and try to work within the frame [dennis]

“Yeah?” Dennis offered London again, and Edith raised her eyebrows before taking another drink. Setting her glass back on the table, she nodded once. She wasn’t sure if she believed him quite yet; there had been instances last time where the whole thing felt ethereal, almost, like everything was just clicking and as soon as she questioned it, something would go all wonky; it was so fragile. And then, by the end of the night -- the start of the morning -- the ease, the connection, the otherworldliness was gone. She was half expecting that to happen again. “Okay,” she agreed, deciding to get her hopes up anyway. There were plenty of pubs and plenty of things that Edith was still second guessing about herself; it’d probably be some time before she ran out of things to say.

Edith shrugged and stifled a laugh. Good question. She might have said the same about all of his previous questions to buy herself some reprieve from answering them. Was it too early in the conversation to turn things back to him? She couldn’t remember now the overall progression of things, though she was pretty sure everything was pretty serious, pretty quick. She wasn’t a stranger anymore to hearing uncomfortable truths -- from Dennis, from everyone -- and she wanted to commit it all to memory; she wasn’t going to turn around and write anything; it wasn’t like that. It felt important, even if it was something so trivial (Edith from five years ago disagreed with her descriptor) as education, she didn’t want him to add it to the list of things he regretted telling her.

“Yeah,” she agreed again. She didn’t want to draw any similarities between his decision to go back to Hogwarts and her decision to go to the Ministry -- likening anything to the MInistry seemed like a bad idea -- but she knew exactly what he meant, too well. Until the bit about school breaks, that is. Things hadn’t really started going to shit for her until after Hogwarts; she found herself almost grateful that she had graduated before everything happened almost as quickly as she found herself a bit upset that she had wasted so much efforts on her studies just to have all that happen anyway.

He wasn’t looking for career advice -- not that Edith had anything of use to offer anyway -- and she didn’t need to reiterate her whole career selection process. She had pretty clearly laid that all out in the article and she was fairly sure he had read it at least once; it couldn’t be more obvious that she also had no idea what she was doing with her life, career or otherwise. Maybe he was stalling; Edith was certainly familiar with that tactic, but she’d rather not bring every thought back around to her relationship and her own stalling tactics. So it was a fine line to tread: part of her wanted to offer some sort of help — she had six NEWTs — but another part wanted to tell him to fuck it and drop out; most of the jobs that cared about those scores were ones she didn’t think really suited him anyway. Ministry stuff, mostly. Jobs that had to answer to authority, that sort of thing.

But then she realized she didn’t really know what he liked to do, if he had any sort of plan before everything shifted. They hadn’t dwelled on the future much when they had last talked, had they? She had mused about photojournalism or some shit but she couldn’t remember if that had led anywhere — it probably hadn’t. No, everything they had said was pretty firmly rooted in the past. That’s sort of what she was making her living on now, she supposed. Past problems, no future solutions.

Christ, her thoughts were getting really off track; the fireplace whooshed again and her delayed reaction to it brought her thinking back front and center. “Yeah,” she agreed one more time, blinking drink and sleep from her eyes. She picked up her glass and nearly drained it, taking her eyes off Dennis just long enough to search for the waitress, who was helping some other table. Edith sent out a mental plea for some attention before refocusing on Dennis over the rim of her glass as she finished off her drink. “I’m assuming I’m not interrupting any grand study plans tonight, yeah?” She raised an eyebrow; her lack of confidence in the future wasn’t enough to drown out the big nerd way of thinking. But she smirked, after a beat; “Would you be drinking this much by yourself?”

Even as he trailed off, Dennis felt a little stupid. It embarrassed him to imagine that she might read naivety in his words, might interpret things to mean that he thought a couple of good grades might just fix everything. For the most part, he didn't believe that his school grades mattered much at all.

Dennis hated Hogwarts. He hated it from the eerie depths of the great lake to the ugly stone monument that bore his brother's name etched into its surface. So why was he back here? The teenager's gaze lingered on the empty glass balanced in between his fingers as he turned the concept over in his head. He spent a lot of time reminiscing and overthinking but he'd never quite mastered the art of clearly understanding himself. He didn't try too hard to, either. Anytime he surfaced and became aware of how much time he spent dwelling on his feelings there was immediate resistance; delving too deeply didn't seem like a very masculine or grown up thing to do. Still, this one didn't seem particularly complex. He was back at Hogwarts because it was familiar.

As much as an old, magical building could, Hogwarts knew Dennis Creevey. The teenager had never quite believed that his relationship with the place was entirely one-sided - and in the magical world, you could never be entirely sure about that sort of thing anyway. Wouldn't know where to start, he'd said. It was mostly true; the wizarding world didn't seem quite as straightforward as he imagined the muggle one to be when it came to job hunting. But Dennis had history with Hogwarts. He hated it, but he knew it. It wasn't just fear of not knowing where to start once he was out in the "real world", but perhaps rather a fear that there wasn't really a place to start at all.

Wow. He was really getting distracted.

"Yeah," he repeated, the word clearly filler, blind to the amount of times that they'd used it to fill the gaps in their sentences in the past ten minutes. When she asked him about homework, Dennis felt an out, and followed it. He exhaled shortly through his nose, a tiny snort. At her next words, his crooked smile was an echo of her smirk. "Ah... Probably not," he admitted, flicking his eyes back up to meet hers. The teenager did his best to shake off the moodiness that seemed to lurk at the edges of every topic of conversation they approached, tried to relax as he leant back against his seat. Somewhere he noted the strangeness of it all; the novelty of feeling comfortable talking, juxtaposed against the fragility at each turn. He smiled instead.

A part of him felt uncomfortable with her talking about his schoolwork; it underlined their age difference in a way that he didn't like. Everything they talked about was a bit like that though; her candidness regarding their conversation and how it had impacted her, the topic of her boyfriend and his family... There was always a risk that the flow of their conversations might become stuttered and awkward. Dennis wished he had another drink to sip on as he made himself stop fiddling with his glass and rest his hands on the tabletop instead. He internally shooed away the stray thoughts, focussing instead on the smirk on her lips.

"Maybe though," he amended after a moment, the thought of going back to the Gryffindor tower alone with his thoughts reminding him just how appealing alcohol was. Dennis probably wouldn't admit that with someone else, but with Edith - especially now, after the drinks they'd already had - it just seemed funny. Drinking alone: kind of pathetic, but in a funny sort of way. Ha, ha. "What about you," he teased lightly, dropping his voice a little, as if to keep their conversation hidden from the waitress, who was nearby, "No search party out tonight?"

“Yeah,” she repeated, not sure if he was agreeing with her or telling her she had assumed incorrectly. At this point, she figured, it didn’t really matter. Probably not, for drinking this much, apparently. “Right.” She supposed she should feel bad about what that implied, that he was only drinking at such a quick pace because of her, but she also knew that they wouldn’t really be having a conversation if that wasn’t the case. Edith would have downright avoided him had she been sober, though she made a mental note now to make an effort if she saw him again, sober or not. Despite the brief moments of awkwardness around every corner of conversation, he was, once again, making her feel comfortable. And it was almost like it was familiar this time. Almost.

She raised her eyebrows as he changed his answer, and it sounded a little closer to the truth. He had been planning to drink alone here, anyway, until she had turned up -- just like he had probably been planning to do that night in London. She probably needed to stop crashing his nights of drinking alone -- by planning ahead for the next time? Drinking alone, together.

He returned the question with a lowered voice and she leaned in to answer, arms crossed and resting on the table. “Maybe.” Definitely. It had seemed like the easiest way to kill a few hours while serving the double purpose of not letting her thoughts dwell on Hogwarts for too long. She snorted, leaning back against her seat at his next question. “Maybe it’s just not a very good search party,” she offered, reaching out a hand to turn her empty pint on the spot.

Edith was sure Elias was worried, even though she had included the ‘I’m fine’ line in her note to him earlier; it was probably reasonable, at this point, considering the handful of unpleasant visits she had received at her office; there had been an offer of some Ministry assistance, protective wards or whatever, but accepting help from them after only needing their help because of what she had written about them hadn’t seemed like the ‘Gryffindor’ thing to do.

“Really though,” she elaborated after a minute, “I was here for work, delayed because of work, sounds reasonable enough.” She shrugged her shoulders as she offered a lopsided smile. She had already mentioned why she was there, hadn’t she? “Until my 9:13 portkey, anyway.” She held Dennis’s gaze for a few more seconds before glancing down at her wrist to check the time; it was nearly nine, and she was pretty sure there wasn’t another portkey tonight. Not a legal one, anyway.

Hands back in her pocket, Edith leaned back and idly twirled the handle of her wand over on itself. “I, er,” she frowned in his direction, “Probably need to get going.” It wouldn’t do her any service to miss her trip back home. “When you’re in London,” she started again with less of a frown, really only barrelling ahead with her question because she was about to leave, “We should do something. Drinks I guess? Maybe something not quite so…” She trailed off, figuring he would catch her drift that it’d be nice not to have all their conversations rooted in such serious matters. “If you want.”

For a fleeting moment, Dennis wondered what a very good search party would look like in the wizarding world. The image of people marching through a patchy forest beside a small country town sprung to mind, but he had a feeling that adding magic to the mix would change the picture drastically. After all, Dennis hadn't recorded his temporary address with any officials when Edith had found him at that muggle hostel a year and a half ago; there were obviously ways to make the process of finding people more easy. The whole thing made his skin crawl just a bit. It dug at the uncomfortable associations he had with Edith and her former job. He tried not to let his smile falter.

Work. Right. Well she had been delayed because of work, so it wasn't really a lie. Oh, And then the drinking of course. Did her boyfriend know she was an alcoholic? He almost cringed internally at the word again, before brushing the thought away quickly. He nodded dumbly in response, feeling like he should say something but not really knowing what to say as she'd held his gaze. Who had she interviewed? He wanted badly to know who it was, but either wasn't brave enough or articulate enough to ask the question in a natural way right now. It felt too forced to broach. Maybe he just wasn't drunk enough.

She announced her intention to leave. "Oh, yeah," he said quickly, this time with an of course neatly wound into his tone, as if he'd been waiting for her to announce her departure the whole time they'd been speaking. His disappointment was undermined by a bit of guiltily-recieved relief. Dennis mumbled something about getting back to school as he nodded again. He busied himself by shifting the backpack beside him, wrapping a hand around one of the straps. Ready to go.

Drinks? "Sure," Dennis said after a beat, glancing back up, still a little awkward despite his inebriation. Something not quite so... Edith didn't finish her sentence, so after a slightly uncomfortable pause, he spoke. "...Karaoke?" he joked, the image of him ever singing in front of someone so ridiculous it almost couldn't form itself in his head, "or that shitty Star Wars movie?" He offered a crooked smile with the suggestion. Attack of the clones probably wasn't on at the cinema anymore, but whatever. It was such a muggle thing to bring up in a conversation like this - in a place like this - and to Dennis it felt like comfortable ground.

Edith nodded one more time, on the brink of offering an apology for leaving, stopping herself because she had been the one to interrupt his evening, after all. “Yeah,” she settled on instead, reaching for her backpack as he reached for his. “Yeah?” she said again, this time confirming that he was actually agreeing to whatever she had suggested, forgetting that she had actively tried not to sound too desperate roughly an hour ago.

“Ha, yeah. Karaoke.” Fat chance. Edith was definitely more the ‘lay on the floor listening to sad songs’ type than ‘croon for others’ entertainment’ type, but that didn’t seem super relevant. But she paused, wondering what kind of music Dennis liked. It was a pretty basic fact about someone, music taste. It was usually one of the first things she tried to find out about a person, and was a pretty solid reason for not wanting to spend time with someone. They had skipped that, though, and she was okay with it; she didn’t want a reason to not spend time with him.

She grinned, taking her hand off her backpack to swipe a strand of hair off her face. “God, it was shitty.” She assumed he meant the most recent one, though really Episode I could fit the bill, too. “Dunno if I can make myself watch it again.” She laughed; she had already seen it twice, but she was only willing to admit to once. “But it’s London, I’m sure there’s somewhere specializing in shitty movies.” She didn’t want to stop and have to think about logistics, but she didn’t have a television and even if she did, that didn’t seem like much of an option either.

Time was working against them, though, as opposed to the last time when it seemed like there was nothing but time to spare. Edith glanced down at her watch before her hand was on her bag again, this time to pull out a receipt -- overdue library book fine -- and a pen. She wrote down her address in fairly legible handwriting -- had her penmanship award in year four come up as proof of the ‘big nerd’ thing? -- and slid the paper across the table, just narrowly missing a spot of condensation. “For London stuff,” she clarified, as if they hadn’t just been discussing it, her hand still outstretched and touching the receipt. She was expressly not getting her hopes up, but she also wasn’t going to force him into getting a drink with her, like she had tonight.

She withdrew her hand and grabbed her backpack again, replacing the pen and pulling some change. She hadn’t noticed the waitress leave the bill, but then again she was really only interested in the waitress when she was bringing more drinks. “You can get the next round,” she said, already pulling out enough of her random coins to cover everything. Sickles were inconvenient and Edith really didn’t mind getting rid of as many as possible, especially for such a good cause.

Edith did her best to not stand up too quickly; she was moderately successful and only needed to blink back the alcohol for a few seconds. “Right, I’ve really got to be going.” Again, she nearly apologized and again she stopped herself. She glanced at her watch again before looking back at Dennis. “Er, I’ll see you.” It was pretty reminiscent of how they had parted ways last time, but she supposed there had been less truth behind the ‘see you’s then, too. She smiled, not yet replaying their conversation a hundred times over, and held his gaze for a few more seconds before heading for the door with -- she glanced at her watch again -- four minutes to spare.

Dennis smiled, almost relieved that she'd taken the Star Wars joke well. Then again... was it a joke, really? He didn't know what to do with her other than drink. The teenager didn't exactly have a lot of experience with these kinds of things. Occasionally he would dip into the social world of some of the other students in his year, but he was always invited to those things, he never had to do any of the inviting himself. With Dean or Clem, there was - or, had been for at least one of the two - more casual hanging out rather than organised events. What did adults do when they spent time together? Drink, a voice in his head answered quietly. Well, that would be easy enough to fall back on.

In any case, it felt nice to talk about muggle stuff with someone again, even if it was as casual as a pop culture reference or an acknowledgement that things like cinemas even existed. That was reason to smile, he thought. Times were changing, and a lot of younger witches and wizards were being exposed to things outside of the wizarding norm, but they were still mostly stuck in a decade long past. What did wizarding families do for entertainment without televisions? What magical equivalent was there for something like that?

The teenager followed her gaze as she checked her watch. He really needed to get his own one fixed. The woman across from him rifled through her bag as Dennis awkwardly pulled his own backpack onto one shoulder, wondering what she was doing, and if he should say something. He kept silent as she slid the bit of paper across the wooden surface, sparing only a moment to check what she'd written before he pocketed it hastily. It occurred to him straight away that she didn't really need to give him her address; he was sure it would have only taken her a moment to remember where she could address a letter to.

Dennis Creevey,
Gryffindor Tower.

It reminded him of a different note written on the back of a receipt.

"Sure," he said, then after a beat added, "I'll let you know." Knowing Luna, there was always a chance that the meeting would be cancelled or rescheduled or forgotten. Initially, the former ravenclaw had offered to meet him here in Hogsmeade; he'd had to try and explain how desirable a plausible excuse to leave the castle and its nearby town was without sounding desperate. Dennis was never quite sure if she understood  what he was saying, but she hadn't pressed it. If it got cancelled, maybe he'd just go anyway. He already had permission to be out of school for it anyway.

The young man got to his feet as she did, sliding out from the table a little clumsily. He adjusted the backpack on his shoulder, his gaze drawn momentarily to a loose shoelace before he made himself look up again. His thoughts were a little scattered and disjointed, mostly thanks to the alcohol. "Yeah," he said again, trying to sound less limp and more energetic as they parted ways. By his approximation, it was only semi-successful, but he managed a more convincing smile than before. "See ya." He raised a hand in a static wave as he stepped back, his thoughts retracting to the immediate future and the task of returning to the Gryffindor Tower.