Lunch Break || Open
Rita loved her job. It was rare that she preferred to spend any time at all away from the busy offices of the Daily Prophet. The smells, the noise, the hustle, no part of it did anything but make her feel at ease. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fathom eating lunch at her desk like so many of her coworkers did. To her, eating and work should always be separate events. In addition to which, what if she got crumbs on her newest article? Or in her ink pot?! No, it was untenable, she couldn’t do it. It was far better to go out for lunch every day.
An added benefit to going out was the possibility of overhearing someone’s gossip-laden conversation. It was rare that she heard anything good, and so far nothing had been article worthy, but that didn’t mean she never would. To give herself the best chances, she liked to go to the Leaky Cauldron. It was often busy at lunch, so she would try to find a table near a large group of people -- ideally a two-top which had had one of its seats stolen by said large group -- and spend her lunch break alternately trying to hone in on individual conversations, and scanning the room at large trying to pick out keywords. Even though nothing had come of it yet, it was good practice.
But today when she walked in, she realized almost immediately that finding any table at all would be more difficult that usual -- every single table had at least one person sitting at it. She stood for a few minutes, looking around the room constantly and hopefully, but no one stood. Eventually, she had to accept that it was unlikely anyone would be leaving soon, so she reviewed her options. There were other restaurants in Diagon Alley, of course. But if the Leaky was this busy, she couldn’t count on anywhere else being less so, and anyway, the staff here knew her order. Perks of being a regular customer. Eventually, someone would have to leave, so she could just continue to wait. The problem there was that she didn’t have unlimited time for lunch, and there was no way to know how long it would take for someone to leave.
The third option seemed to be her only one, so she walked quickly across the room to a table with only one person at it, preparing to ingratiate herself with them using her most charming self.
“Pardon me, I’m so sorry, would you mind terribly if I sat here and had my lunch? I’d never normally ask, it’s just that I’m on lunch from work and haven’t lots of time to wait for it to clear out a bit, you understand, don’t you? You’d be an absolute doll and I would be so very grateful.”











