Magical Hogwarts

Perdita had slept in and it had thrown her off-kilter. Usually an early riser, it was just after nine in the morning and London had been awake for hours. She'd been exhausted lately and the weather hadn't been helping her out much. It seemed like it was never summer in the capital. It had been drizzling all night and the sky foretold of more rain. There was a stiff breeze making it seem more like autumn than anything else. And it irritated her.

Her strides were long as her Dalmatian, Pongo, trotted merrily beside her. For such a big dog, he was surprisingly gentle and he knew the way to the coffee shop well, judging by the way his tail wagged. After her breakfast (and one of those overpriced doggy cupcake things), they were off to the park for an hour or two, just to get a bit of fresh air.

To ward off the early summer chill, Perdita wrapped her cardigan around her, her glossy dark hair swinging in the breeze as her the soles of her trainers echoed, taking a left and then crossing the road. The streets weren't so lively on a Sunday morning and Perdita was thankful. She didn't have anything she needed to do today. Her list was already checked off. She might pop into Waitrose on the way home for a cheeky little choux bun but apart from that, the world was her oyster.

The bell of the coffee shop door tinkled to announce her arrival and she smiled at the barista. "Hi, good morning," she greeted them. "Could I have an espresso, one of those little dog treat thingies - yeah, the one with the bone on top - and a croissant, please?" As if on cue, Pongo politely sat down as they waited and she frowned when informed there weren't any more croissants left.

"Really?" Perdita asked, her eyebrows furrowed to crease her forehead. "At 9AM on a Sunday?" The barista, unperturbed, simply shrugged and carried on, as though French pastries weren't as rare as unicorns. Just sold the last one, apparently, and it was the person in front of her in the queue's fault.

Her bright eyes studied the figure and her frown deepened because she was wearing a very familiar leather jacket. Perdita had worn that leather jacket once upon a time, too. Then it clicked into place. Leather jacket, red hair, homeless appearance - Charlie's girlfriend was the croissant stealer and she looked up at the coffee shop ceiling, hoping for some sort of divine strength to help her out.

"Of course," Dita whispered under her breath. Details of their last meeting were sparse but she knew she didn't like the other woman, for no reason at all, except for the fact that she and Torrence had history and she'd taken the piss when Perdita had asked for ice in her wine.


@Honey Bea Flume

Honey had made her way downstairs to the kitchen intent on making tea and toast; she had already refilled the kettle and flipped it on before discovering Charlie didn’t have any bread. It took a few more seconds for Honey to remember the bacon sandwiches of the night before, the perfect way to almost end the evening. The perfect end had also happened–she had stepped over her discarded jeans in the hall–but that didn’t help her current situation. She couldn’t very well be mad at Charlie for not seeing far enough into the future to buy extra bread– or, she could, but he was still asleep so it wouldn’t really do her any good. She wasn’t about to cook for herself and she didn’t want to go home; there was a coffee shop down the road, and that would have to do.

She pulled on her jeans, tucking the front of her borrowed t-shirt into them before sitting down on the bottom step to pull her boots on. Her jumper wasn’t immediately obvious, so she shrugged on Charlie’s jacket from the hook on the wall, tugging her hair out from under the collar as she yawned. Fishing her coin purse–purple for pound sterling–from her bag and scooping up Charlie’s keys, she let herself out semi-quietly, locking the door behind her.

After backtracking (only once) after taking a wrong turn, Honey found the coffee shop. She ordered a pain au chocolat and a mocha, tacking on a croissant and a latte after another minute. She yawned as she stepped off to the side to wait–she’d asked for the pastries to be warmed up and there were several people in front of her waiting on coffee–sticking both hands in the pockets of her jacket.

It took her a second to place her, the woman who had just come in–and she didn’t love that look the dog was giving her–but when she turned to face Honey, she knew. She was great with remembering faces and while she was usually rubbish with names, for the Duchess, Honey could make an exception. (Unless she needed to remember the woman’s actual name–in that case, she was sunk.) It seemed like it clicked for her, too– Honey smiled sweetly, hugging the jacket tighter around her, hands still in the pockets.

They had last seen her at that bar, when the Duchess and Torrence left in the middle of Honey buying drinks, even after she had made herself look like an idiot for ordering wine with ice. (She might have still been a little annoyed about the whole situation–never mind the wine.) “Morning,” she said cheerily, willing her hangover to cooperate with the fake mood she was trying to put on.

Perdita needed to tread carefully. She didn't want a repeat of the last time because she'd made a spectacle and it still haunted her at inopportune times, like when she was brushing her teeth or she saw a flash of red hair. Embarrassing, really. She was twenty five now and she really needed to start acting like it. In fact, because she was such a grown up now, she managed to offer Honey a brief smile rather than her go-to snarl.

If anything, Perdy was more dismayed that this was another coffee shop she had to add to her list of no-go areas, lest they end up doing this again. "Hello," came the curt reply. It was taking every single fibre of her being to not be her usual self. Besides, how long would they have to endure each other's company? Five minutes? Her eyes glanced past Charlie's bit of totty to the barista, who was moving at a snail's pace.

It was too early for this nonsense and on a Sunday, for fuck's sake.

"Honey, isn't it?" Perdita asked politely. She only remembered because she'd thought it sounded like a stripper's name and the irony was not lost on her. By her foot, Pongo attempted to sniff at Honey's feet, shifting instead to snuffle at her borrowed jacket. Perdita reacted quickly, wrapping her fingers around his lead and pulling him away gently. The dog hated Charlie that time they'd crossed paths years ago and she was worried for a repeat offence, lest he remember the scent.

"Sorry," she laughed lightly. "He only usually does if someone smells interesting," Perdita commented absently and with another smile. Pongo gave the other woman one final sniff before sitting back down patiently, his tail curled around his legs elegantly.

Another minute passed. Perdita didn't like small talk, she never saw the point in it but lo and behold. "Bit far from home, aren't you?" The taller woman commented, head tilted. Scotland was almost five hundred miles north of the English capital and childishly, Perdita couldn't help but feel as though Honey was encroaching on her turf. She wasn't of course - that was just plain daft - but it nettled her, nonetheless. After all, she didn't own the city. Her ancestors, however, had at one point. London was big enough to never see anyone she knew ever again but as of late, the frequency of people popping up became more and more.

Hello, she said, and she seemed so pleased about it, too. Honey kept smiling, glancing at the dog as the Duchess looked behind her. She liked dogs, but she didn’t want to seem too interested in this dog, specifically.

The Duchess remembered her name—she felt so honored—and Honey nodded. “Aye,” she said, in time for the dog to start sniffing her feet, then moving higher. Honey pulled a hand from her pocket, about to try and pet the sniffer, but he was pulled back before she got the chance. Okay— bit of an overreaction, but whatever. Honey slid her hand back in her pocket, remembering then that it was actually Charlie’s pocket. She hugged the jacket tighter around her.

Honey shrugged off the Duchess’s apology, missing what was probably some sort of insult. “It’s fine.” She owned a sweetshop; her clothing was probably permanently infused with the smells of sugar and spice (and she couldn’t help but tack on everything nice in her head as she thought about it). Never mind she was only wearing her own shoes and jeans; the t-shirt and jacket were both Charlie’s, so whatever was interesting about her smell was probably his doing.

And she figured that was it for them. Honey wasn’t one for polite small talk outside the shop, and it  was too early to really get into it with some woman Charlie used to shag once upon a time. But no: Honey was a bit far from home, wasn’t she? She raised her eyebrows. If she was about to call Scotland lovely again— “My boyfriend lives here,” she said, as if this might be new information for her.

And then because she could (and the Duchess had provoked her): “I’m thinking about moving, actually.” The moving ‘here’ was heavily implied, but she wouldn’t mind if the Duchess decided to interpret it as moving ‘in’.

Perdita glanced over at the barista who seemed to be moving at a glacial pace and she wished she could just leave. She couldn't, of course, she'd paid for Pongo's puppy cupcake thing but what wasn't the point. The Dalmatian gave Honey one last courtesy sniff before plonking himself down and Perdy gently stroked one of his velvet ears.

She was fine with small talk usually but she remembered that she'd made a tit out of herself the last time she and the redhead had crossed paths and she wasn't stupid; they didn't like each other but both seemed to be too polite to call it quits. The person in front of them collected their coffee and left and she shuffled closer along the line before she blinked.

Boyfriend, Honey had said. If she was trying to stake her claim, she might as well piss on Charlie like a cat. "Oh right," Perdita stated quickly, tapping the side of her head as though she'd forgotten. As if the leather jacket and the bedhead didn't give it away already. "His fridge still empty?" She asked conversationally, despite being at Charlie's precisely once and she definitely didn't sleep over. Nor did she see the contents of his refrigerator. Actually,  she didn't even know where he lived nowadays. It was catty and childish but she'd really wanted that croissant.

But talk about shocking things. As if on cue, she arched her eyebrows in mild surprise. She didn't know what was worse; Charlie settling down or adding another person she needed to avoid to her ever-growing list. Was she jealous?

Maybe, maybe not. Perdita was in a very different place now and she was currently entangled in another situationship, so she wasn't keen on dwelling on her past. Though, she'd admit, her nose was pushed out of joint by the news. Her bright eyes scanned Honey's face again and she noted her expression. Well, when in Rome~

"How exciting," Perdita replied, head tilted. "About time, too," she went on. "How long have you two been dating now?" The taller witch asked. "I wonder why it took him so long to ask," she mused. "But then again, all that stuff in his past," she went on, waving a hand through the air as though to encompass everything. "It's bound to shake the foundations," she went on mysteriously. "Oh but you must pop into Liberty if you're redecorating," Perdy continued. "The fabrics make superb curtains."

The other woman asked after Charlie’s fridge; Honey had never seen it empty (especially compared to her own) as long as she had been around with a reason to look into it (whenever she started staying for tea in the morning). What a weird thing to ask. “No,” she said anyway, letting that imply whatever the Duchess wanted.

She opened her mouth to answer how long it had been—a year—but she was interrupted before she had even started. She wanted to know why it had taken him so long to ask— never mind that he hadn’t asked at all. She had an answer for that one, though: it was probably because the last time he’d done it, he had ended up married and divorced after an embarrassingly short amount of time, but yet again she was interrupted before she could get a word in. And there it was, all that stuff in his past. “Exactly,” she agreed, resisting the eye roll. He hadn’t asked and besides, Honey didn’t want to live in London. (She would only realize later that she hadn’t thought she didn’t want to live with Charlie just not in London; she didn’t need to have that little crisis in a coffee shop, with her.)

Honey didn’t get to say anything clever about how he must be really out of his depth now—the foundations—by not dating hags (present company most definitely included) but she had already moved on to talking about curtains, of all things. She resisted another eye roll, but just barely. At least the barista announced her warmed breads, and Honey moved away to grab the paper sack, continue waiting for the coffees.

But she couldn’t let her have the upper hand. “I only agreed so I’d have an excuse to get rid of those curtains,” she said with a little conspiratorial laugh as if to ask men and their ugly curtains, am I right? She had exactly zero opinions on curtains except that she liked them blocking out the sun when it was up at four in the morning, but she thought she would find out what the fuck Liberty was, anyway.

She thought she might make a joke about needing to decorate the nursery, but that seemed a bit too much like tempting fate, so she got as close as she could to the topic without directly putting that upon herself. “It’s such a nice neighborhood to raise a family, don’t you think?”

Perdita could feel herself bristling. She'd flat out decided to dislike Charlie's girlfriend for no other reason aside from the fact that he had one. As usual, her little twisted games of trying to poke a bear had backfired and now she was annoyed instead. Typical. If that wasn't karma, she didn't know what was. And the redhead picked up her stolen croissant. Perdy dutifully stepped forward as she followed the queue.

Charlie's girlfriend laughed and Perdita gave a smile that didn't quite meet her eye and she fought valiantly to maintain it. Her cheeks began to hurt as she bit down on the sides of her tongue to keep herself focused before she felt herself nodding.

Hell hath frozen over. Moving in and kids? Her bright eyes glanced down to Honey's left hand surreptitiously, just in case she'd missed something, before back to her face. "Absolutely," she agreed. She didn't know the girlfriend well enough to figure out if she was pulling her strings but Perdita had met enough girlfriends to know when she was being made fun of because she was usually the one doing it.

"Beautiful and quiet houses and the schools are superb," she went on. Deep down, it wasn't Perdy's cup of tea. There were too many of those hipsters running around and organic coffee tasted the same as regular coffee, so she didn't see the need for the price hike.

"So you're not worried, then?" The taller witch asked, head tilted curiously. "Leaving him alone while you're working? I assume you'll still be working," she pressed Honey. She owned that little sweet shop in Hogsmeade, if her memory served her right. Perdita had a vendetta against it, simply because the one time she'd entered the shop as a teenager, she'd chipped a tooth on a bar of chocolate.

"Hell of a commute for you," she went on. "Not to mention him touring for months," her eyes widened, hinting at the fact that she'd be dealing with a baby all alone and her partner inevitably being unfaithful because that was what rockstars did. And his girlfriend would know that. Wasn't she complicit in the breakdown of Charlie's marriage? Perhaps that was someone else.

"But you'll be too busy to worry about that," she went on as her coffee was ready and she reached out to take it.