Edgar Bones

It wasn’t that Edgar minded having to work on a Saturday. In fact, it was almost welcome. Since the war ended, everything had been either gruesomely silent—like his still flat at night, while he neglected sleep and waited for a foe’s footfall that would never come; or the inside of his head, blessedly, while he kept his hands and schedule full all day with distractions—or else blindingly loud with small talk and forced smiles and forced normalcy and forced calm. 

What was it he minded? All the options, all the apparation powers, all the Floo-ready fireplaces in all the world—he could not find one that would allow him to concentrate. He’d started in his flat, working at the kitchen table. (Too quiet.) His backup option, the Ministry, proved too full of others like him, working overtime on their part-time busy work, crammed into cubicles like it was any old Monday. (Too loud, small talk too probable.) 

Going back home wasn’t an option. And at this early hour, even The Leaky Cauldron was likely to be overflowing with the late breakfast rush: tourists and sleepers-in; teenagers and weekend retail shift workers. It felt foolish to spend even more time searching for some perfect place to get started...

...so Edgar went with the closest thing to a happy medium, or at least the nearest-by version of it he could think of. 

The pub was four doors down from the far-more-famous Leaky Cauldron and, for all Edgar knew, it didn’t have a name. 

Whatever was left of the sign over the door—which looked like it had once taken the brunt of a blasting curse, or at least several violently-bad paint jobs—was unreadable; the glasses were mostly clean, but definitely unbranded. It lacked polish and shine and homeyness, sure...but it was well-lit without being bright, and lived-in without being loud. The only other patron was an elderly wizard, slumped over pleasantly on his stool at the bar, his head rocking gently along to a throwback song crooning from the charmed jukebox. 

Edgar slid into his choice of a booth—tucked into the room’s far corner, topped by a copper reading lamp. He accepted a water when a dreamy waitress passed by and made the offer. But he held off on ordering anything else; he did fine these days creating reasons to procrastinate, without the help of day-drinking. 

Finally settled enough to concentrate, Edgar put his head down and did just that. The next minutes—or hours, or seconds, he wasn’t paying attention—lurched by. Edgar was in his own little world, surrounded by fileboxes and portfolio pages; half-scribbled memos and painfully-detailed to-do-later lists. His water became a tea became an espresso, but otherwise Edgar accelerated on auto-pilot, finding speedy comfort in the repetitive red tape of the DMLE’s paperwork. 

By the time he finally blinked and re-encountered reality, Edgar wasn’t sure how much time had passed; just that he’d gotten three extremely painful things off of his to-do list and was feeling cautiously optimistic about the rest of the day. 

“Let me guess,” he said, flashing a smile when he realized that someone now stood at the end of his table. “You’re here to kick me out of your best booth unless I order a drink that isn’t water or water-based?”

Frank & Open Hogsmeade Village

The double stroller was a lifesaver now that the twins were old enough to walk but couldn’t handle long distances. He had taken them to run errands and that turned into the detour of the two toddlers shrieking happily while he took the contraption for a jog to clear his head. The news was a lot to take in - if only from being able to immediately recognize that the majority of the Longbottom’s funds went toward their cottage and making sure their children would have some sort of savings if the Lestranges ever followed through on the apparent death wish they had for him and Alice. If anything, it was unsettling to see the family name listed among others that had no shame in flaunting their wealth when he and Alice’s joint savings account wouldn’t have even filled ¼th of the other families’ vaults.

“Ice cream,” Siri’s voice earned a low chuckle from Frank, his thoughts focusing back on the twins. “Hogsmeade doesn’t have ice cream. So we’ll have to settle for lollipops instead. Just don’t tell Neville.” He had been about to move the stroller when someone stopped short in front of him, earning indignant groans from his children before he could speak up. “Girls, that’s not how we excuse ourselves,” He grimaced then continued with a shake of his head. “Don’t mind them. They take their sweets seriously. I think it was their way of saying be careful they were behind you.”

"I accept that very polite apology,” said Edgar, keeping his voice loud enough for the twins to hear, and tossing Frank a wink for good measure. Only after the little ladies were otherwise occupied did Edgar lower his voice—to that hushed, adults-at-work-here timbre he remembered being so maddening during his own childhood, and afternoons spent eavesdropping shoulder-to-shoulder with Amelia at the top of the stairs—and lean in slightly, the corners of his mouth tugging into a grin all the same. 

“Between you and I, theirs was actually the most pleasant near-collision I’ve had all day,” he added, an easy laugh rising as punctuation. “Ministry’s so overcrowded these days,” (Was that true, or was he just too irreparably used to the eerie, deserted nightshifts he’d clung to during the war?) “That I’m lucky if I get a grunt or blink from someone about to run into me. Or over me, or from behind me...the foot traffic doesn’t have much direction anymore, other than chaos.” 

He waved a hand around, a mess of fingers and emphasis loosely recreating the unpredictable trans-cubicle freeway. “The lasses are far from a lost cause, is all I mean. Though...” Edgar paused for another laugh, one that came more easily this time; he pushed a hand through his hair and reminded himself: this is Frank; this is your friend; this is not office small talk; fucking unclench. 

“If I know anything about kids, I’m sure they’ll be leagues and leagues calmer and better behaved after they get that belly-full of candy.”

Where: Diagon Alley Who: Minsi & open

Minsi darted down an alleyway clutching the bag that she had just lifted off someone. It wasn’t her fault that the woman had been stupid enough to leave it unattended on the table. She was practically begging for someone to take it, especially since it was an expensive looking bag. If she hadn’t been the one to take it than she was certain that someone else would have. Coming out of the alleyway and into Diagon Alley proper, she disappeared among the crowd of people shopping. Spotting a table near a restaurant, she made her way over to it and put the bag down on the table and started to quickly go through it, looking for money and anything else that she could use. Pulling the wallet out she started to go through it, hoping for a decent amount of money.

Feeling the sudden prickle that someone was watching her, she turned an spotted someone watching her. Whether they knew what she had done or not was unimportant. “Looking for my sunglasses,” she lied with a smile. 

Edgar had his hands full today—both metaphorically and literally speaking. His bid to ‘take it easy’ had left his to-do list longer than ever before; if he ever paused long enough to be honest with himself, he’d have realized it was by his own neurotic design. It was like this that Edgar made his way down the twists and turns of Diagon Alley: with his head full of ceaseless, contradicting thoughts and his arms overloaded with files, scrolls and various other decommissioned once-magical artifacts hastily laden into thin cardboard boxes. 

Truth be told, the dark-haired girl outside the cafe first caught his eye because she seemed a lot like Edgar, at least at the moment—with one too many things to do, or at least one too many things to keep track of. 

“Oh, no,” Edgar answered without thinking twice; without even having yet properly realized it was him the girl could be speaking to. His helpful instincts kicked into overdrive—after even the past few weeks of collecting dust—instantly and eagerly. “Do you think you dropped them? I’m happy to help you look. It’s a madhouse here today.”