October 4, 9:00 PM

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Her first month working at Hogwarts had been interesting to say the least. She had met some staff members that she enjoyed spending time with, and a particular one that she thought was a deliciously gorgeous ice queen. The ice queen and the intimidatingly tall Egyptian man were among her favorites to be around, but sometimes they could be somewhat uptight. They were only a month in, and to avoid burnout from working too hard without breaks, Mai decided that it would have been best to get them to spend a night relaxing and having fun. It was also a good way to get to know her coworkers outside of a work environment.

It hadn’t been too difficult to convince Aileen and Tapendra to go to Signature. Maiko had never been here before. All she had to do was tell Aileen that she didn’t know very many people who’d go out with her, and simply invite Tappy. It was easier than she expected—Mai thought she practically had to drag them to the club. It felt nice to wear something that wasn’t work clothes, and she felt a bit more like herself among friends than ‘professional.’

“Mes amis, ‘ow late are you willing to stay up?” She asked, looking around the club. It was so bright and fancy. So many things were happening around her, and the seer felt almost overstimulated. On the rare occasion when Maiko went out to drink, it was usually at a much smaller, more casual place with a rustic feel. This place felt so modern and strange; it was overwhelming.  Once she had a few drinks in her, she knew she’d feel much more comfortable, and perhaps a bit more uninhibited than usual.

“Does the staff usually come here?” She asked, looking around. The name had piqued her interest, but now that she was actually inside, she wasn’t so sure about it. However, Mai was determined to have fun. “What are their best drinks here? Merde, I’m asking too many questions.”

Tapendra, unsurprisingly, had not been hard to get out of his tower. He needed to blow off steam, and frankly he rather liked Signature. It was muggle enough to make him feel more at home, even if he liked the Three Broomsticks. And the music was... standable. Wizard club music didn't quite follow the trends of the stuff he liked, though.

What surprised him was the fact Aileen had agreed to this. Either Maiko had some dirt on her or the woman was able to cut back more easily than he gave her credit for.

He glanced at her as they headed in, adjusting his coat and then shrugging it off. The night air was cooling rapidly, but inside the club was warm and bright. Admittedly, taking off the button-up coat revealed the t-shirt underneath, but the ladies could just put up with it. Both of them were probably aware of his lack of fashion sense at this point anyway. And, well, it was 9pm on a Sunday night. Maiko was just lucky she'd found him wearing somewhat nice jeans.

"As long as you two are," was his non-committing answer to Maiko's first question, as he drew his wand and cleaned off his feet. In reality, he was willing to stay up fairly late - he slept in a series of short bursts anyway, so it wouldn't be difficult to just stick to his usual schedule.

Of course, he wasn't factoring in the hangover.

He looked around. It was a Sunday, so the crowd wasn't as bad as it usually was. He gestured for the other two to follow him, since Maiko was clearly new to the place.

"Not too many of them, no," he said. "They usually stick to the Three Broomsticks. As for drinks - depends what you like. I hear the bartender does pretty decent Cosmos." It wasn't actually called a Cosmopolitan, but Tappy'd be damned if he was going to memorize another name for what was essentially the same drink. "Try their Highballs, though. Especially their Screwdrivers."

Aileen returned Tapendra's glance by shaking her head at his casual attire. It was an ingrained habit, like waving hello, rather than genuine irritation. She followed him with Maiko, somewhat amused by her numerous questions.

"I'm not the one who has to contend with first-years, or counsel students in the morning," she replied with a shrug. "Though if I stay out too late, Abby will never let me hear the end of it."

By this point Aileen was certain she'd mentioned her extremely energetic younger sister to the extremely energetic counselor. Perhaps the similarities had encouraged her to accept Maiko's invitation tonight. That, and she'd felt a bit sorry for her when she'd said she had no one to hang out with and had never even been to Signature before. As long as Maiko didn't hit on her, Aileen could handle a few drinks out.

She was used to Signature, though less used to its energy late at night. Classy and a little hoity-toity suited her just fine, and at least she wouldn't have to worry about how clean the glasses were or if someone was going to randomly try to pull her up on a table to dance. Because that was a terrible thing when you were a certifiable stick-in-the-mud. Aileen hadn't always been, but it would take more than a few Cosmos to bring that out of her.

Which was what she ordered when they sat down at the bar.

"This is actually an important occasion," Aileen joked with a smile. "We've survived the first month of the school year. The first task of the tournament. What else?" She glanced between the two of them, curious to hear what they would toast to when the drinks arrived.

Mai pointed to Aileen and simply said,  “I’ll ‘ave what she ordered.” Might as well try something that she knew others liked. Maiko didn’t want to have the first drink she tried at Signature to taste like polyjuice potion. She made a mental note to try their highballs and screwdrivers later, though she wondered why the name for a muggle tool was also the name of an alcoholic drink. Maybe somebody muggleborn named it, or maybe someone named it who thought that screwdriver sounded cool.

“Are you kidding me? I don’t counsel anybody in the morning. There are ‘ardly any students who like to get up before breakfast to talk to me.” Which she thought was good, considering that Mai would rather have her time in the morning to relax and avoid thinking about everybody’s problems. Even if students came to her early in the morning, she had a feeling that on her crankier days she might tell them to make a freakin’ appointment, which wasn’t very counselor-like.

She grinned when Aileen said it was an important occasion—they had survived a month of work, the tournament, and.. “Well, I suppose we also survived staff room tea.” Mai joked. "And Tappy 'ere survived teaching class as un petit cheval."[1]

1.	a small horse

Tapendra had a Screwdriver, smiling happily when the barkeep even put an orange slice in it for good measure. After all, what was a Screwdriver without one? He licked his lips.

And had to stop to glower at Maiko for her comment. He wasn't 100% sure what she'd said, but he had a very good contextual guess. "Why can't we just forget about all that?" He asked, mournfully. "It wasn't even that funny." The ability to fly had been rather nice, he'd admit. He almost wished he'd been able to magically keep that aspect of it.

He picked up his glass. The easiest way to get that topic changed was to change the topic, after all! "All true," he said, agreeing with Aileen. "We've also survived the new students in our classes, the new professors....both ours and theirs. And, let's not forget..."

He raised his glass. "No more Snark."

With that, he took a long gulp.

Smiiiiirk went Aileen at Maiko’s joke about the ‘petit cheval’. She took her cosmo and raised it high at Tapendra’s last statement, agreeing wholeheartedly.

"Very true," Aileen glanced at Maiko. "Be grateful that you never had the lovely experience of meeting her. I don't say that just because I'm related to the new Headmaster."

It was probably cruel, certainly tasteless, to toast to the absence of the missing (possibly dead) Headmistress. That didn't stop Aileen from snarking about Snark. She'd hated her, and didn’t feel as reluctant to admit it in this less professional setting.

"I've long suspected there must be something in that staff room tea. But at least we've suffered no ill effects.” Aileen paused to peer over Tapendra’s shoulder. “Nope. No wings, no tail. One of us is safe,” she smiled innocently, taking a drink.
 
He wasn’t going to change the subject that easily. If luck would have it, Maiko would chime in, or he’d be so surprised by the use of her word ‘nope’ that he’d fail to come up with a rebuttal.

“Tapendra, ‘ow could I ever forget? It’s not every day that I get to see a ‘orse teaching astronomy.” Maiko’s eyes sparkled mischievously, she not-so-secretly loved to tease the professor, even if he was so big that he could probably throw her across the room. Mai snickered at that mental image, but tried not to make it too obvious.

The counselor was pleased to have never had to work under the infamous Snark. Maiko had heard nothing but negative things about the headmaster, and from what she had seen, Herschel was a very qualified replacement. Maiko was about to take a sip of her Cosmos, when she made the connection that Herschel and Aileen were related. Her green eyes widened and she looked at Aileen in shock.

“Wait—is—is the Headmaster your father?!” She exclaimed, “Or your uncle, or something?” She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t made the connection before; Reid was a fairly common surname. But in the magical community, if you shared the same surname, chances are, you were related. Mai glanced at Tapendra, and back at Aileen, hoping that if Aileen made up some sort of bizarre story, Tapendra’s expression would be able to reveal her lies.

Tapendra glared at his Screwdriver, wondering why he'd agreed to this. Sure, it was a nice break from grading papers. Yes, he rather liked Signature, even if the music wasn't very good. And he was ready to admit he rather liked the two women who he was with.

But still. Women.

He turned and followed Aileen's gaze, looking over his shoulder for a moment as she checked for a tail. Perhaps in other circumstances he wouldn't have said anything, but this was Aileen - an opportunity to make her squirm was too good to pass up.

"Been keeping a close eye on that, have you?" He asked, dryly, sipping his drink and not to subtly leaning his shoulders forward. "Good. You can let me know the moment something seems out of order."

As for Maiko's sputtering, he shrugged and drank again. "They're family," he confirmed, before Aileen could. "It shows."

Aileen was just about to sputter a bit at Tapendra's response, when Maiko sputtered, and Aileen turned slightly to blink at her. It was funny how both Tapendra and Maiko seemed to pay so little attention to pureblood family drama, but still, this wasn't how things were supposed to go. Why was it that every time she tried to make fun of Tapendra, someone turned the tables on her? Not fair. Not fair at all.

She shot him a look when he answered for her, raising her eyebrows in a way that said his comment had better be a compliment.

"Uncle," she told Maiko. "My father's older brother."

"I'm not surprised you didn't know," she shrugged, trying to downplay it. "We've just recently started getting to know each other this year, so you won't see us planning family reunions in the corridors yet." That was enough of an explanation, she hoped.

"How are the drinks?" Aileen sipped at hers, pretending interest in the answer.

“I’m sorry, Tappy, but your backside is not anything impressive. I’ve seen better--”  She glanced at Aileen deviously, and very pointedly  tried to look at the female professor’s own butt. “Mmhmm. Much better than Tapendra’s.” Her eyes glinted mischievously. She wasn’t attempting to flirt with Aileen, but she just wanted to make her twitch a little. Although Mai had been confused about the whole Herschel-and-Aileen relationship, obviously the subject of butts was much more important to Maiko.

She finished her drink fairly quickly, and decided to order—what was it again? The muggle tool. “I’d like—“ She motioned towards Tappy lazily, “That thing. The dinglehopper. Dillydacker. Screwdriver.” Oh, that was it. Screwdriver! After ordering her second drink, she gave Aileen a nod of approval. Of course she was enjoying the alcohol. Half of her felt like drinking on  a Sunday night was not the best idea, but the other half of her simply did not care.

Tapendra stared at Maiko in a mix of confusion and embarrassment. He wasn't - well, he wasn't particularly confident in his looks, swaying between feeling good about himself and being entirely too conscious of his awkward nature, so her comment didn't help. In the end, he sent a slight scowl her way and turned back to his drink, draining it to the bottom and then chewing on the ice.

"Of course," he said between crunches, sighing, his tone and the slump of his shoulders giving away the fact he was sort of lying. In reality, it wasn't the drinks that were the issue...

He let his breath out. He was usually the cheerful one, and Merlin be damned, he wasn't about to let himself wallow in annoyance and depression!

"The students are taking to the Tournament well, it seems," he commented, after a few moments. "The differences in education are playing havok on my lesson plans, though. Are yours faring any better?" He directed that at Aileen, cocking his head to the side.

Aileen shot Maiko a mildly annoyed look, and refrained from shifting in her seat, instead tapping her fingers on the side of her glass for a moment as her two colleagues downed their drinks.

Clearly, Aileen had the superior posterior, but Tapendra’s wasn’t so bad (not bad at all, if she was being honest). He seemed just as uncomfortable by the comparison as she was, however, and changed the subject.

“It seems to be going fairly well,” Aileen nodded, feeling a twinge of sympathy that Tapendra was struggling, though she couldn’t say she was surprised. He had a hard enough time incorporating muggle astronomy into the Hogwarts curriculum, so she could only imagine the resistance from other schools.

“Professor Maras and I aren’t butting heads as much as I thought we would,” she paused, half-expecting Maiko to comment on her word choice. “The material doesn’t differ too much; it’s the way we approach it that can differ. She uses more traditional methods than I do – a lot of memorization and drills.”

Sipping at her drink, Aileen raised her eyebrows at the counselor. “I trust Maiko will warn me if any of the students plan to revolt."

Evidently, her coworkers were not as fascinated by the subject of derrieres as she was, and Mai decided to let it go, at least while she was still sober.  Her eyes darted from Tapendra to Aileen as they spoke-- it was unfortunate that he was having difficulties with the other professors, and she gave him a silent, sympathetic look. She didn’t have any classes to teach, and as of yet, she hadn’t really interacted with any of the foreign students or any of the foreign professors. She hoped that she would be able to make up some reason to go see them soon-- and Mai was interested in meeting with some of the faculty from Beauxbatons.

When Aileen said the word ‘butting,’ the immature part of Mai showed when she grinned deviously, though she made no comment. Her body language said it all-- the unfortunate wording had amused her.

“Aileen, I can’t promise that I’ll warn you when students revolt.” Maiko took a sip of her drink, “I do need to keep things confidential.” Of course, if students were going to be a danger to themselves or others, she would have to talk about their situation-- but she would go to the Headmaster first. “Also, it might be to watch you two fend off students. They wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

Tapendra laughed, a short, snarky sound. "If the students revolt, we won't stand a chance, don't fool youselves. They'd be running the school and descend into little uniformed monkeys within a week." He sipped his drink. "I at least could barricade myself in the Astronomy tower long enough to escape. You two...not so much."

Aileen probably had the best chance, realistically. After all, the students would probably strike when she wasn't around...

He remembered something, and abruptly he snapped his fingers, pointing at Maiko. "I needed to talk to you," he said, eyes narrowing in a dramatic fashion that indicated the alcohol was starting to have an effect. "Y'need to stop stalking students. It's disturbing." He smirked, then added in a more serious tone, "No, anyway. Sash - Schlagenweit says you've been following him around." He sniffed. "You're making him worse, woman."

As Maiko and Tapendra joked about the impending revolt, Aileen couldn’t help but smirk at both of them. “Escape from the tower, Tapendra? You must be forgetting that you no longer have wings.”

She murmured that last part under her breath, so he might not have heard.

As he changed the subject, she finally ordered a second drink, arching an eyebrow at his tone. “Woman?” Aileen repeated with a roll of her eyes.

“Surely he’s exaggerating,” she glanced at Maiko curiously. “He’s a bit protective of Sasha.”

Of course, he wasn’t the only one, though it would take more than a few drinks for her to admit it. She paused, realizing she’d already slipped up by calling the student by his first name. Damn alcohol.