Each Coming Night :: Ginger and Michael
gingerbaines:
The pub was mostly empty when Ginger arrived. The bell over the door clattered into the quiet room as she pushed her way in from the street, drawing the bartender’s gaze. The rush of warm air made her realize how cold it really was outside—it was still early Fall, but it seemed that Winter was already sinking its teeth into London. She could see Michael sitting in the corner across from the still-droning TV set. It was funny, how familiar and strange he looked to her; she recognized him here as easily here as she would have in the Ravenclaw common room, but he looked tired. So did everyone, these days, though.
She walked to the bar and stood between two well-worn stools. The bartender gave her a sour look. She had been planning on ordering a cocktail, but decided it was a little too much trouble this late at night, “Whiskey neat for me and another round of whatever he’s drinking.” She tilted her head towards Michael, but there was no one else in the pub that she could have been referring to.
The man grunted in response. While he fixed the two drinks, she turned to look at Michael again. He seemed completely absorbed in whatever he was reading and must have been for hours before she walked in, if the several empty glasses were pushed to one side of the table were any indication. She heard the bartender slide the drinks across the wooden bar towards her, so she turned around and handed a wad of cash to him. He gave her another look and started to count it out, but she waved her hand to say that he could keep the change.
“He’s had a few.” The bartender said this to Ginger like it was a piece of sage advice. She smiled and nodded before grabbing the drinks and walking over to Michael’s table.
She had thought he would look up when she didn’t answer his request for her to move, but Michael wouldn’t tear his eyes away from his book. She saw now that it was some heavy tome with minuscule print. She wondered briefly what it was about but couldn’t make out any of the text from where she was standing.
“Is that any way to greet an old school mate who’s just bought you a drink?” She smiled and placed his beer in front of him on the table. Before he could answer, she slid into the booth across from him with her own drink. She was never this brazen or forceful normally, but she knew she had to sit down before he could politely send her packing. Everyone wanted to talk, they just needed to feel safe enough to say something. And what could be safer than sharing a drink with an old school mate? This was just one of the things she had learned to weasel information out of people. She was proud to be good at her job but also a little horrified at how easy it had become.
She shrugged off her pea coat and was unwrapping her scarf as she continued, “You look…” She was going to say well but that wasn’t really true, “You almost look exactly like you did the week before OWLs. It’s a little nostalgic.”
She piled her coat and scarf in the empty space next to her and then smoothed her skirt over her thighs before taking a sip of her whiskey. She smiled at him warmly—she was thinking about how nice it might have been to actually run into an old friend at a bar instead of tracking him down after she had happened to see him working at St. Mungo’s. But Ginger had never been very good at keeping in touch. And she needed to know what had happened to all those witches and wizards who had been admitted to the hospital that week.
It could have been the dim lighting, or the multiple pints of beer, or even the lack of a proper night’s sleep - however he sliced it, Michael’s eyes stung from pouring over the thick volume that sat on the barroom table. Having bewitched it to look like an old encyclopedia to a casual bystander, it would seem utterly uninteresting to the untrained eye. To his own however, it contained a repository of knowledge, a compendium that detailed known toxins of the wizarding world. Whether it was Bloodroot or Baneberry, Angel’s Trumpet or Hemlock, the book had them all described in graphic detail. The book itself would have been horrific if not for his own recent first hand experience at the effects of such ingredients, experience that only served to further complicate the young man’s perusal of such an authoritative source. The book was supposed to have answers. All the answers. Yet, with each minute spent pouring over the minuscule script, the former Ravenclaw felt his wits draining from him. Nothing that the book described seemed to remotely capture the abject terror his patients demonstrated, the slow but insidious way the life drained from their bodies under the eyes of the Healers trying to save them. It was horrific. It was frustrating. It was absolutely and completely demoralizing to the dark haired lad who was still a few months away from becoming recognized as a fully-fledged Healer.
With this lingering resentment building with each page he turned, Michael found the person’s insistence at standing perched directly above him grating. He’d expected that his gentle chiding would’ve produced the expected quick apology and he’d once more be left to his own devices, with naught but his book and another few pints as company. Instead, he found himself glaring under his brows up at the woman, unable to discern her features. With her auburn hair being the only notable feature that blazed through the backlit scene, Michael squinted and scowled in her direction before his expression broke.
“Godric’s beard - Ginger Baines, as I live and breathe! And with two glasses in hand, no less,” he said, eyes wide and mouth agape at the appearance of his former housemate and friend. As the girl slid into the booth opposite him, Michael found himself transfixed by the figure that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere - and with another pint, no less! Gratefully, he accepted the foamy glass and slid the vessel across the table to join the flock of its fallen brothers as he continued to grin with incredulity. “Make yourself at home,” he offered, sweeping his arm toward the seat that she’d already occupied before nodding down toward his collection of study materials and dirty glasses. “I certainly have.”
His classmate’s appearance was a welcome break for the young man who took the opportunity to tuck a torn piece of parchment between his current pages and toss shut the heavy cover. With his eyes freed from their confines, his dark ones found the remnants of his last pint, scooping up the glass and finishing it before turning his full attention back to Ginger. “O.W.L.’s,” Michael repeated, his mouth trying out the sound of it like one would a foreign language. “Bloody hell - ‘s a lifetime ago. You make it sound like I spent the entire week in the library. At least I bathed - don’t think Goldstein could say the same,” he said with a chuckle, the memory of a hectic week spent staring at books much like the ones currently on his table flashing through his mind. “If I recall, you spent most of the week two seats down from me yourself.”
Leaning back in his seat, Michael grasped the newly arrived beer and nodded towards the woman. “Cheers,” he said quickly, tucking into a sip of the beverage before letting his arm fall slowly back to the table. His fingers traced the coaster the beer sat on, their paper edges already frayed from use, as his eyes narrowed. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, Ginger - I mean, it’s been, what... 4 years? To what do I owe the pleasure?”
