Loneliness Is An Art

It was a cold day.

Beyond his fingerless gloves, buried somewhere in the cavernous depths of his pockets, Albus could feel the blood circulation in his hands slow down. They were white, probably bluer round the edges if he chose to ever unearth them from his pockets, he knew. The snow wasn’t far away. A week maybe, two at maximum. Then tiny bits of downy fluff would descend from the heavens, buffeted this way and that by the breeze and settle down, gently, on the ground, varnishing the entire village with white. Just the way he remembered Hogsmeade.

A stray bit of laughter drifted down the road. Moments after the joyous sound died out, two people came up the winding pathway, jackets and coats pulled tight, stumbling and clutching at one another, faces bright with cold and mirth. The girl had a cap drawn over her head, wispy strands of black escaping, fluttering rebelliously this way and that. The boy reached out a hand, and tugged the cap off, tangling his fingers in the girl’s locks, mussing them up. The girl shrieked, then face twisting into a roguish smirk, shoved the boy down among the autumn leaves. He landed with a thump, pulled a contorted scowl then proceeded to tug at the girl’s ankles till she too fell with another shriek; screams and curses soon converted to giggles and there the girl sat, brushing lint off his shoulder and fussing with the boy’s collar till he quirked a lopsided grin at her: two grown-up kids sitting in the dirt and smiling at each other like the world couldn’t matter.

It took Albus several fragmented seconds to realize that he had been standing there, motionless on the road, staring at them for the past few minutes.

His shoulders tightened; a second later, he was pushing open the door of the nearest building, hand pressed hard against the frosted glass. He hardly paid mind when the owner, a bloated woman with a saccharine-sweet smile asked for his order; thoughts absorbed in the last session with du Hunt, where his offensive had been drawn and pulled and strained to breaking limits. The idea for his last spell had flittered into his mind while on a visit to the Ministry, he was itching to just drop everything, go home and bury himself in the theory (and that woman needed to stop smiling, or maybe he’d find if the Blood-Curdling curse really worked better on diabetics after all), but he had made an appointment. He was to meet his futu-…..the person trapped in this farce of a legislation along with him.

Sipping his diluted Earl Grey (one flick, one flick and that smile would evaporate and the woman would be screaming and he didn’t even have enough energy to muster sufficient guilt for that thought anymore), he leaned his elbow to the side, looking outside. A faint ringing sound caught his ears: the boy and girl wrestling on the High Street outside had just walked in. Their hands were lightly brushing.

Albus closed his eyes.

The initial inferno of Mira's anger had subdued slightly. The flames that had licked her brain during the meeting at the Ministry were gone but their heat remained. It was more of a lava now, running under her skin, not noticeable from the outside but constantly there below the surface. Some way, somehow, Elijah Krum would pay for this. With this knowledge secure in her mind, Mira headed out to meet the infamous Albus Potter.

By some awful coincidence the pair had agreed to meet on a day that the Hogwarts students were visiting Hogsmede. Mira could barely walk down the street without being run over by overly-enthusiastic third years on a Honeydukes sugar high. She refused to believe that she had been so horribly, annoyingly, naive and cheerful when she had been thirteen. A young boy ran past Mira, splattering her leg with sludge from a nearby puddle.

Only a few minutes later Mira successfully entered Madam Puddifoot's tea shop. Looking around, Mira shrugged off her coat and hung it on a peg by the door. The restaurant looked exactly as she remembered it, candles lit despite the full sunlight, flowers on most tables, the delicate smell of roses and powdered sugar filling the air. Everything about it was sickly and delightfully sweet, leaving even Mira unsure if she enjoyed or despised it.

The place certainly held memories - years of dates had taken her here as well as countless lunches with Athena when they grew too cold for the streets. Like everything else about Hogwarts, history haunted every crack and corner.

Mira's eye caught Albus's and she weaved her way through tables to seat herself across from him. Strangely, Mira couldn't find herself too angry with Potter. While he might have been her unfortunate partner in this situation, there was no emotional attachment to him in either love or hate. He just was. Before greeting him Mira called "A tea please!" to a passing waitress. She settled into her overly cushioned chair, crossing her legs.

"So, what exactly are we going to do about this?" she raised her eyebrows humorously, staring across the table at the man who might just be her future husband.

((OOC: I didn't see this had been replied to, either  And when I did, I lacked time and muse. Weeell....... Better late than never ))

Exhaustion. So, so much of it. On one hand, Albus wanted nothing more than to just flop down on bed, huddle beneath a heap of blankets and never emerge. Step out of this desperate rat-race of a world for just one, one second. Sleep. Fitfully, without dreams and subconscious desire. Sleep.

But on the other hand, there was restlessness. Stupid, ridiculously large amounts of it stirring in his bloodstream, unable to let his mind rest, making his feet tap against the floor endlessly and without peace. He had to get working on the Rebel plan. The breech of Hogwarts had changed the entire political scenario; now there was anger against the school Governors as well as the Ministry, and some were getting too shaken up by the recent werewolf furore to even consider creating more chaos by revolt against the Ministry at this point. He couldn't let that happen. Then there was du Hunt, and his experimental spells, and her demand that she accompany him on her next visit to Marie, her French associate. He wasn't a fool. He knew there was going to be a catch, a side-job slash task he was going to get dragged into. And he had to stay prepared for it. Then there was his sister, unruly black hair spilling over the snow white pillow, still sleeping like a log back home. She knew nothing of what he was involved in. To her, he was just Albus. Sweet, reserved, boring old Albus. It had to stay that way.

His right hand rose up, a swift jerk of a movement, and rubbed the bridge of his nose; with slight bit more force than necessary. Then there was this. This demand for marriage and broodmares.

"So, what exactly are we going to do about this?" The woman asked, in a voice nor too high, nor low. Pretty enough. Blonde too. Smart by the looks of it. Didn't matter. She wasn't rash enough, moody enough, self-righteous enough, redhead enough, Jack-enough. And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, that last thought was precisely: the icing on the big, fat, unappetising wedding cake.

"We, Miss Anderson, are going to pretend as if this joke of a legislation never existed." No matter how perfect the mask, how crisp the words; the undertone of tiredness was threaded through each and every syllable and could not be undone. His finger tapped a continuous, relentless rhythm against his paisley-printed tea mug. "I have no intentions of getting married any time in the near future. The Ministry can, quite unfortunately, go and hang itself."

And that much, no matter how hard Albus wished it to be, would not be enough explanation for a Slytherin. And his to-be partner was a Slytherin. She would ask for plans, methods on how exactly he proposed to evade the Ministry law without getting persecuted. He was not a man of split-second decisions, he considered the highs and lows of everything before even thinking of committing himself. Didn't matter again, he still took one now anyway. He was tired of fear. So the words escaped his lips, clear-cut and concise and undeniable. "Blame it on me. Tell the Ministry if you wish, that you have no issues with the law but your partner is refusing to comply. They don't have any legal ground to convict you then."

And when they came for him?

A tiny, wearied shadow of a smile tugged briefly on his lips.