draw it in front of your eyes { j e r e m y + }

It was Friday! Finally! Her work day had been long and tiring, filled with incredibly mind-numbing and repetitive tasks. Data entry, mostly. Freya didn't really have the attention span for such drudgery, but it was a very small price to pay for a job that included occasional travel trips with her cousin and somehow counted them as paid work. Overall, she knew that she was very lucky to have gotten it. Tonight, however, she was just excited that the work week was over.

She had apparated to Stoke Newington as soon as she'd tidied up her desk. Sometimes she was tempted to try and navigate the muggle transport system - her more cultured friends told her it was simple, and a fun novelty experience - but she was never quite tempted enough to give up the convenience of getting somewhere immediately. Her alleyway of choice was hidden away from prying eyes and she'd never seen anyone there, but the blonde always used a disillusionment charm anyway, just in case. She tapped this away as she made her way to their favourite pub.

Ordering a pie and a beer (they came in a deal together on quiz night, on the cheap), Freya paid with the muggle money she had specifically withdrawn for this purpose and made her way through the lively pub to their favourite table. She was the first one there apparently, but it wasn't long before one of her friends showed up. Freya got up from the bench to give Jeremy a warm hug.

"Hey Eddie!" she said brightly, using her own nickname for him. "No Danny tonight?" the blonde shot a quick look over her friend's shoulder as if Danny might appear there from nowhere. She took her seat again, rifling through the bag she'd dumped beside her earlier. What had started off as a silly-but-typical Danny idea (muggle pub quiz night sounded ridiculous the first time he'd suggested it) had turned into something of a weekly routine. Freya was pleased with the regular catch-ups with her friends. "Aha!" The blonde pulled out a few muggle notes and slid them to her friend. She leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. "Three galleons and four sickles' worth, as requested."

"T.M.I.F!" Jeremy hollered at one of the other completely useless mail boys as he clocked out for the night, tore off the tie that was pinned to his shirt, and headed to the fireplaces to make his way back home. He took all of fifteen minutes to get ready, four doing a quick rinse and removing all evidence that he had a real job in the shower, two putting on clothes, and the other ten hitting the pipe that was on his dresser before he apparated to the alley behind the pub. Trivia night had quickly become one of the most look forward to events of his week. He'd like to say it was because he loved being around his friends but the fact that it signified the end of a work week and the beer was cheap were definitely important too. Sporting a traditionally ridiculous shirt Jeremy walked into the pub with a giant smile on his face. He had something huge to tell Freya.

He found Freya easily at their usual table and gave her a hug before looking behind him with her. "Hey Tricky... Oh, yeah no Danny, not sure where he's at." And then he looked around her to see if there was any sitting yet. The former Gryffindor so badly wanted to tell her about his strange naked encounter with @Lesleigh Ollivander but suddenly something else occurred to him. Was Ariana here tonight? He looked around and thought to ask Freya but instead he hesitated. Their date hadn't really gone well and honestly he didn't know how to act around her now. Jeremy wasn't the kind of guy who had ever known how to behave around witches but now it was even more. He took a seat at the table, sliding further into the booth in case more of their friends showed up. The trivia night had become a bit of a thing but it was totally casual. Some nights a bunch of them showed up, all of their friends from Hogwarts, and some nights it was only a few of them. He never knew quite what to expect but that was part of the fun, it was like a standing invitation.

When she passed him some muggle currency he leaned back to dig into his pockets and counted out some coins to give back to her. "Plus the two galleons I owed you from last week." He gave her a little grin and passed back the wizarding currency. Putting his elbows on the table he leaned toward her and sort of whispered over the music and the bustle of the pub. "Do you think she'll be here tonight?" He asked, assuming Freya would know exactly who he was referring to.

"Cheers," Freya said, pocketing the coins absentmindedly. Despite being surrounded by muggles, Freya, Danny and Jeremy had never been particularly careful with the whole statute of secrecy thing. Sometimes, when the group was larger, someone would have to remind the others to quiet down when talking about things like Hogwarts, wands, vampires or whatever but for the most part it seemed like the other patrons of the bar didn't really pay attention to them.

When they did the quizzes they always lost, since neither they nor most of their friends were well-versed in things like muggle history or pop culture. The three of them had started doing these weekly meet ups as a joke, after all. By now, the staff knew them by name and Freya had a mild crush on a very cute bartender named Duncan.

"Ari?" Freya asked blankly, completely lacking tact. Their awkward date felt like it had been a hundred years ago, but Freya knew that Jeremy and Ari didn't see each other nearly as much as she saw them both. And it wasn't like Jeremy was out seeing girls all of the time. She supposed he still felt a little weird about it. "Maybe, but I think she's doing something with Prosper," Freya said, a well-natured eye roll accompanying her smile. She was happy for her friend, and she liked Prosper a lot, but that didn't mean she couldn't tease from time to time.

"Why, you bringing a date?" she continued, giving him an additional small teasing look over the side of the glass bottle as she took a sip of her beer.

Despite her bone-deep physical exhaustion (Quinn had put them through the bloody ringer in practice that afternoon), Keela had miraculously gotten a second wind after coming home to an owl from Freya, asking if she was in for trivia that evening. It had been quite some time since she’d last been able to go, and she missed it; not so much the trivia (though it was entertaining) as getting together with friends, especially now that they were more or less scattered to the wind. Freya was at Gringotts (doing well for herself, for certain), Jere was at the Ministry (causing all sorts of trouble, no doubt), she herself was a professional Quidditch player (sometimes she still had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming)… they were all out in the world and doing their own things, which was both terrifying and exhilarating. For Keela it had only been a few months since graduation, but it already felt like a lifetime ago.

Drawing her favorite leather jacket closer against the early-October chill, Keela made her way through the vaguely-familiar streets. They had unofficially established a ‘safe Apparition point’ in an alley a few blocks away from the pub, and she’d followed Freya’s recommendation to Disillusion herself anyways as an extra precaution. The last thing she needed was trouble, especially from the press. Certainly, when Keela signed the contract she knew her life was going to change; but she hadn’t fully anticipated just how much. Not that her personal conduct had been an issue in the past, but going forward she’d need to be especially conscientious. Tonight, though, she’d have a bit of a reprieve, for this particular trivia night was a thoroughly Muggle affair: a Muggle bar in a Muggle part of town about Muggle trivia.

Upon reaching her destination she pushed open the front door and was promptly greeted with a blast of warm air and noisy pub chatter. A quick glance around yielded Jere’s unmistakable mane of wild red hair almost instantaneously, and Freya’s blonde head beside him; grinning, she wove her way through the crowd and descended upon the pair of them from behind, looping an arm behind each of their shoulders and dropping her head down so it was between the two of theirs.

“Bloody good to see you two,” she greeted cheerfully, briefly drawing the pair of them in towards her in a sort of headlock-hug. Upon releasing them, the Irish witch slid into a seat opposite them and beamed, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “How are things? What have we been up to?”

"Prosper." He replied with a roll of his eyes and an obviously jealous shake of his shoulders. Jeremy didn't exactly keep his feelings locked up, when he had them, so his envy was clear in that moment. "What's she even see in that guy?" Besides his perfect hair, interesting accent, obvious intelligence... oh boy. Jeremy tried to put it out of his mind and then she said something that made him smile in a way that only an old friend could. They had that kind of connection that was built over time, through house pride and shared friends and ridiculous outings like tonight. "Yeah, Charlotte Green should be here any moment," He teased, eyeballing the door and then chuckling at the idea his favorite Puddlemere United chaser joining them tonight. In his dreams.

Speaking of one of his favorite Professional Quidditch players Jeremy yelped a little as Keela snuck up on them and then let out a burst of laughter. "No way it's Keela Doyla! Can I get your autograph?" He asked, because that joke had far from played itself out yet. In all honestly he was ridiculously proud of her, sure a little bit envious, but entirely proud. They had all played Quidditch but Keela deserved to go pro, she was great and she had wanted it the most. Her words registered on him as he tilted his head to look up at her and with a smile he spoke. "Oh good, just talking about my imaginary date -- hey wait, can you introduce me to Charlotte Green?" He asked, half-heartedly but secretly hoping maybe she could. Of course she absolutely shouldn't. Jeremy had seen a total of two actual Professional Quidditch Players in real life (subtracting Keela and Finn) and he had accosted both of them.

"Although," he began as one of the waitresses that knew their table brought over a pitcher and Jeremy immediately poured some into three glasses. "I did wake up pretty much naked next to a witch the other day." The beer grew out of control as he poured it, bubbling and fizzing in a way that only Muggle beer did. The wizard was was still learning the tricks to pouring it right and the foam started to waterfall over the side of one of the glasses. He slurped it loudly as he tried to avoid chaos. Leaving a handful of soaked brown napkins in his wake he tried to play it cool and didn't make eye contact. "So there's that..."

"I dunno, but it definitely doesn't start with like, the face," Freya joked, making a wide motion around her own face with her hand. "Or the hair. Or the Frenchness of it all." It was honestly still a little strange to hear Ari speaking in French when they were all hanging out. Mostly she and her boyfriend spoke in english but occasional exchanges still happened, and it seemed so natural for her friend.

Keela appeared before Freya had a chance to do anything but roll her eyes again at the Charlotte Green thing. "It's good to see you too!" She beamed at her younger friend. Freya and Jeremy had classic nine-to-fives, and it made things like this easier to attend. For people like Keela and Finn? Not so much. Still, Freya would occasionally poke her busier friends and remind them to come and sometimes it actually worked. "Yeah, yeah, good," she replied, "mostly working..." Freya placed her bottle down, and swapped it for her fork as she got comfy in her seat again. She hadn't eaten much for lunch, and her hunger made the pie more delicious as she took her first bite.

The girl snorted when Jeremy asked for Keela's autograph. Again. It was still kinda funny to her. "Mm!" she said, through a mouthful, glancing back up at Keela. She swallowed quickly. "Do you want a drink or some dinner?" She motioned to her plate with her fork. "I have pounds," she said, wiggling her eyebrows a little at the last word before turning her attention to her bag. Freya poked through with her spare hand before triumphantly withdrawing a ten pound note and slapping it down on the table, careful to avoid the expanding alcohol spill Jeremy had somehow managed to create in the two seconds she was looking away.

"What do you mean woke up pretty much naked," Freya asked Jeremy suspiciously, copying his man-voice. She bumped him with her shoulder.

Jeremy pretended he didn't hear anything said about Prosper but it was all over his face. He missed his shot. Propser was perfect. The end. Paying attention to the arrival of Keela was easier and he smiled at her, knowing this night was going to be a great one. Every time they came here it was awesome. Jeremy was glad they had randomly decided to stop in that first time. Sure it was a joke and yes they barely knew half of the answers but that didn't make it any less fun. It reminded him of a simpler time, a better time, when they would all hang around the common room in their slippers and blow off homework. He had only been out of Hogwarts for a year and he was already nostalgic.

"Yeah come, sit." He said between slurps of foamy beer after he'd mentioned his strange rendezvous and before Freya could ask questions about it. The booth they always took was huge, one of those corner booths that wrapped all the way around so the people in the middle were one hundred percent stuck but it let a lot more of them sit together. He mopped up a bit more of the mess he'd made before shrugging at Freya and finally responding.

"Quite that, actually." He replied, Jeremy wasn't clever enough to play coy or try to over dramatize the story but luckily it was interesting enough on it's own. "I remember going to a party downtown... and then waking up in the buff the next morning with Lesleigh." He hadn't meant to mention her name but it was too late now and he returned to slurping his beer even though it wasn't really foaming much anymore.

"She stole my favorite shirt."

"Wait, Lesleigh?" Freya paused, pie-loaded fork halfway to her mouth. She gave him a sidelong look, trying to ascertain whether or not he was telling the truth. Usually Danny was the one with the tall tales and Jeremy was the one who just went along with it for kicks. She loved Danny, but with Jeremy she had a much higher chance of getting the actual story. "As in, Ollivander?" The blonde took a bite of her food, then pushed her glasses up her nose a little with the back of her hand.

Swallowing hastily, Freya shook her head. "Not the taco one?" She asked, mock-concerned on his behalf. After a moment, Freya laughed a little at the absurdity of it. "But wait, you went to a party and then...?" She trailed off, waving her fork a little, encouraging him to finish her sentence. "Like when you say you woke up naked, do you mean you two...? Like, was she also naked...?" So many questions.

Keela wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at Jere; and yet, she couldn’t ignore the happy swooping feeling in her stomach. She truly had the best friends. They had been nothing but supportive, and they hadn’t treated her any differently in the month since she’d signed her contract. When they were together it was like they’d never been apart, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The blonde grinned at his request to be introduced to one of Puddlemere United Chasers.
“Depends – can you carry the team and win it all for us tonight?” she teased. She hadn’t even met Charlotte Green yet.

Her expression brightened as Freya brought up the prospect of food. The eighteen-year-old felt perpetually hungry these days, with all the calories she was burning in workouts. She hadn’t quite realized just how hungry she was until Freya motioned to her plate, which was giving off a mouthwatering aroma.

“Ooh, thanks!” she chirped gleefully, picking up the ten-pound note that Freya had just slapped onto the table to examine it. Muggle money was so strange. Though, she had to admit, the idea of parchment-like notes was a good one. They took up a lot less room and were nowhere near as heavy as coins; then again, she reminded herself, Muggles didn’t have the luxury of either Undetectable Extension Charms or Feather-light Charms so Keela supposed they hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter anyways. Merlin, was she glad to be a witch.
“What’s the exchange rate, O Master of Coin?” she asked Freya, digging around in her own coin purse to pay her friend back. “I’m rubbish with this currency shite…”

When Jeremy next spoke, it was a good thing that he was still pouring the beer; if Keela had taken a sip at that moment, she would have promptly choked.
“What do you mean, pretty much naked?!” she demanded, at almost exactly the same time as Freya.

She waited impatiently for him to elaborate, drumming her fingers lightly on the tabletop. It was so unusual to see Jere this… flustered? Embarrassed? Keela was sorely tempted to laugh, but felt a tiny bit guilty about it so she grinned wickedly instead.
“So you were naked, then.”
She reached for one of the beers that Jere had poured, and it was halfway to her mouth when Freya put the pieces together. Keela froze, her pale blue gaze flicking from Jere to Freya and back again. The latter took the lead in continuing the investigation, though, and so the Irish witch quickly took a gulp of her beer before she had the chance to choke on it with these new forthcoming developments.
“Yeah, mate, you gotta throw us more of a bone than that,” she rejoined, flashing him another wicked grin over the rim of her glass.

Jeremy was a strange combination of feelings about the whole event but who better to sort things out with than his besties. On one hand he was a little bit disheartened because he knew they hadn't actually slept together, despite the circumstances, but then again he would of hated if they had and he couldn't remember it. Irregardless there was no reason he couldn't have a little fun with the story, at no one's expense other than his own of course. Jeremy was always the first to make fun of himself. "I was super naked." He said with a smirk and a little wave of his hand motioning toward his flabby body. He chuckled and then continued, "I'm pretty sure she was too. I was sleeping. When I woke up she had my clothes on trying to sneak off..." He took another sip of his beer, slurp really, and then nodded to Freya's question.

"The very same, to both of your questions." Ollivander and the fact that it was his taco Tuesday shirt, the atire was a bit of a legend at trivia night so he felt energized by the fact that Freya had remembered it. He wanted to tell them they'd slept together, even if they hadn't. There was some part of his brain telling him that it would make him cooler but he wouldn't lie about something like this to them. There would be no point, like Danny would of, Freya and Keela would see right through it. Instead he just shrugged, smirked, and continued to slurp his beer. Maybe he'd just be mysterious a little bit longer, stretch it out, it was kind of fun keeping them guessing.

"Master of coin," Freya repeated, looking pleased with herself for a moment before just laughing at the phrasing. She gave Keela an answer, then pocketed the coins they exchanged. She quickly sipped at the bottle of beer she'd bought before anyone had arrived, realising suddenly that she had two drinks in front of her now.

Freya was impatient as her former housemate told his story. Lesleigh had tried to sneak off?? Why?? She waited after he stopped speaking to double check that he wasn't about to say more. "Jeremy Edwards," she complained, exasperated. Freya turned in her seat to look at him properly, pointing her fork at him as she fixed him with a (jokingly) challenging glare. "So? Did you guys have sex or not?"

Just then, a handsome muggle man appeared at the end of their table and Freya dropped her fork right onto her plate, splashing her face with a little gravy. "Oh! Hey Duncan!" she said, a little too brightly. Without even noticing it, the witch instinctively fixed her hair before folding her arms on the table. She smiled, her cheeks red, nodding when the young man double checked that they'd be joining in on the pub quiz as per usual. "Yeah, 'course," she said. He slid a piece of paper and a pencil across the large table and gave her a friendly smile before leaving. As soon as he was gone, the blonde dropped her face into her arms. "Kill me," she said into the table, her voice muffled by her hair.

He heard the tone in Freya's voice and it only spurred him on more. He knew she wasn't actually upset with him, maybe a little frustrated, but Jeremy liked the absurdity of the whole situation. It was entertaining and he wouldn't keep it going forever but he'd let them twist for juuuust a little bit longer. The grin on his face showed exactly how much he was enjoying the situation as she threatened him with her fork, a bit of pie still at the end. He was about to launch into some playfully theatrical response to her question just as the perfect distraction came walking up to their table. Silently he thanked Duncan's impossibly good timing and watched Freya squirm. Her crush on the waiter wasn't exactly well hidden, not even to the clueless Jeremy Edwards, which said a lot.

"Thank's mate." Jere replied without noticing that Duncan had slid the paper closest to Freya and lingered for a moment before moving on. Reaching for the piece of paper and the pencil even though he obviously had the worst hand writing between he hoped they wouldn't remember the last time they'd let him write. The team had lost points because the judge couldn't decipher his chicken scratch. Flipping the page over Jeremy took a quick glance at it and spoke up. "Whatcha' think these numbers are for?" He asked them, turning the page over so they could see the muggle phone number Duncan had written on the back of the paper.

Jeremy was clearly enjoying himself with his painfully (and intentionally) indirect description of events.

“Mmm, a likely story. ‘Sleeping’.” She made air quotes around the word with her fingers, waggling her eyebrows playfully. “Y’know, there seems to be an awful lot of unexplained time elapsed here. Jere, even if you sleep like a rock, I’d have a hard time believing even you would sleep through having a naked lass in your bed.”

No sooner had Freya asked the direct question, though, than a handsome man appeared at the end of the table – and her friend promptly lost her senses. Keela bit back a grin as the older girl preened, and gave the man a cheery wave as he turned to go.

“I’ll do no such thing, you’re precious,” she told her friend, affectionately patting her still-slumped-forward form on the top of her blonde head. She’d seen Duncan a few times before, but had heard about him increasingly ever since trivia night had become a more regular thing.

As she ‘consoled’ Freya, Jeremy flipped over the paper Duncan had slid across the table and commented on the numbers on the back. Keela glanced over at it and frowned.
“Dunno, maybe someone used it for scrap paper? Is that even our answer sheet?” Granted, she hadn’t been to trivia in a couple of weeks, but it didn’t look like the paper they usually got for trivia night…

Jeremy’s interest in the numbers seemed entirely too suspicious, however, and she would not be derailed from the original subject that he brought up in the first place.
“Oi! You’re stalling and you know it,” she told her redheaded friend pointedly. “What else happened?”
She was being more demanding than usual, if only because Jere honestly didn’t seem to be that embarrassed about; in fact, he seemed to be reveling in dragging out the tale.

Freya didn't move for a moment, instead opting to wait for the redness in her cheeks to fade a little before she could laugh at herself. When she did lift her head, the girl wiped the gravy specks from her cheeks and adjusted her glasses again. "I just... can't," she said to Keela, her smile a mix of well-natured embarrassment and humour. She sighed, her honey-coloured eyes lingering on the bar, where Duncan had just returned. She looked away just in case he looked over. Sometimes she got a little caught up in her crushes, but it was a harmless habit. They tended to form only from a distance.

"Hmm?" The girl turned her attention back to her friend. Numbers? Freya plucked the paper from under Jeremy's hand and held it for a moment, almost expecting that he'd been making it up and that it would be blank or actually have a legible note or something on it. "Did he give these to us?" she asked, mystified. Freya rubbed her eyes underneath her lenses and took a closer look. "Should we ask what it means? Do you think it's one of the answers for tonight?" She glanced up at Keela.

After finishing her drink, Freya swapped back to her plate of food. "Yeah Jeremy, what happened?" Freya echoed through a mouthful of pie, copying Keela's tone but not looking up from the note and its mysterious contents.

All things considered, Camm was pretty comfortable in the muggle 'world', having grown up with a muggle dad and all. He didn't join in on these pub trivia meetups as often as he could've though. He always felt slightly awkward with this gang. They were in the same year, sure, but he always saw them as more of Ari's friends than his. With the way the paper has been lately though he figured he could use a break and a beer, and left a note for his housemate that he'd be joining them for the night. He had no idea if she saw the note, or if she'd even be here tonight instead of out with Prosper.

Getting to the pub was no trouble for him, and he was surprised by how crowded it was when he managed to push his way in. He had no idea people actually liked trivia, he just assumed it was something people did to kill time. Still, it wasn't hard to locate Jeremy and his tee shirt, and the two girls that flanked him.

"Hey mate," he nodded in Jeremy's direction in greeting as he approached the table. They weren't really friends in school, Jeremy and Danny being too much of the prankster sorts for Camm to truly appreciate when he was younger, but now that they saw less of each other he didn't mind that kind of energy as much. He smiled at Freya and Keela, hoping it wasn't too awkward of a greeting. He'd spoken to Keela properly once, maybe twice? He didn't really remember and was sure she didn't either.

"What'd I miss?" Camm quirked an eyebrow, not missing the shit-eating grins on everyone's faces and hoping it wasn't one of those Gryffindor things. He leaned over to look at the answer sheet that the trio seemed to be quite invested in, and grinned himself, "Someone already get lucky, eh? Who're the numbers for?"