Rosie Pendlewick jingled.

It wasn't such a bad thing, really, but it did add to the general cacophony of the Three Broomsticks, where mugs clangled and keys jangled, wands hissed and the pot over the fire bubbled and burped at odd intervals. Voices blended together in high pitch scratches and low rumbles, accented murmurs and clipped shouts. The tinkling, twinkle of bells emanating from the waitress, slipping into the sound without jarring, was accompanied by an admittedly inane hum from her lips, drifting well below the chatter of the many people assembled there in their finest, chatting animatedly, shaking hands and waving for more, pulling their lips back in different variations of the same sort of smile. But despite the gentle chime accompanying her every movement, Rosie Pendlewick was no light-footed fairy. Oh, she certainly moved as though she were walking on eggshells, gliding and skimming across the floor—and smashing every one of those eggshells into an unrecognizable white powder, crunched in abject entirety beneath her utter lack of grace with only the muffled, crackling protest of the doomed to mark their smooshing.

The jingling, for a moment though, was paused, as Rosie was deep in animated, fascinated conversation with an elderly fellow in maroon robes and a striking patchwork tophat, pushing his glasses up his nose with a spindly finger while his others wrapped around a quill, taking notes. "She must be intense and compelling," Rosie was saying, hands flying to her skirts as her bright eyes widened and her voice lowered as though sharing a precious secret. "The best heroines always are." She hummed again, lost in the tune for a second before arriving at a decision. "A dragonkeeper! But someone's stolen them!"

The elderly wizard—an old writer who enjoyed sitting by the warm fire had had these chats often enough to know she'd forget them all as soon as she left his table—chuckled,  "Stolen? A passal of dragons? However did they manage that?"

Rosie wasn't the least bit repentant of her story line. "They lured them away! In the night! With…oh dear." She bit her tongue, the picture of concentration. "With pumpkin juice and pickled porkchops."

"Pumpkin juice and pickle porkchops?"

"Oh yes. Dragon delicacies, you know. Of course it took quite a bit--they had to bring in barrels and barrels of the juice! And they had spiked the soup that evening, with a terrible sleeping potion. The Draught of Living Death!"

"Oh dear! All this for dragons?"

"Well it was for one dragon in particular, you see. She was going to lay eggs. Special eggs!  The first of what could be a whole new breed of dragon!"

"I see!"

"Oh yes, and they—"

"ROSIE."

The scarecrow-like blonde 'eeped' quite audibly at her boss's beckon, scrambling to her feet and knocking over the gentleman's inkwell in the process with a flailing hand, and quite nearly taking out his mug, which he had wisely opted to rescue before she had the chance. "Oh, oh I'm so sorry I—"

"No worrie dear." He patted her distressed hand, and a with a quick charm, cleaned the ink up. She knocked it over rather often since he'd started coming to the Three Broomsticks while she worked—he'd quite perfected the spell.

Relieved, Rosie placed an affectionate, perfunctory peck on his papery cheek, and turned to the pot to scoop up the bowl of soup she'd been sent to fetch in the first place. In her rush to get back to work, she whirled on her heel—and promptly tripped over her own feet, sending the entire contents of the bowl over some poor patron. She squeaked in  horror, "OH! Oh I'm SO sorry!"

Johann was dead on his feet. His efforts not to touch sleeping potion were continuing, but this week he'd tried to lynch Hamilton at the office twice in an hour, and had hidden in the Ministry library for an hour in a dark corner trying to get his head together again.

It was days before Christmas, and he had to go to Hogsmeade, which was packed shoulder to shoulder. To make matters worse, his often forgotten stomach was beginning to get rather vocal these days, sending him to the nearest place he could smell food - The Three Broomsticks.

Inside, it was just as busy, and Johann's stomach rumbled, enjoying its new found attention from its owner. He quickly scanned the crowds for familiar faces, missing the waitress coming the other way until the soup drenched him.

"OH! Oh I'm SO sorry!"

Its a funny thing when a crowd suddenly sees something that makes conversation stop. Certainly that's what happens when leek and potato soup dresses a lanky translator from the Ministry. Then the giggling began.

Johann wiped the soup from his eyes and blinked in horror as the warm, thick, gloopy soup ran down him and plastered his hair. Impressive trajectory, soup.

"Right." Was all that Johann managed, before he licked his lips and shrugged. "At least its something I like to eat."

Another wipe of his face and he could see clearly enough at the girl who must have been carrying the soup, and the chuckling around them became infectious and he cracked a grin beneath the soup which was now plopping onto the floor with sharp snapping sounds from the height.

"Don't suppose you're as handy with scourgify as you are with your soup aim?" He asked.

“Oh! I—” Rosie blinked, clearly giving his question considerably greater due consideration than he had likelyintended her to. Her brow wrinkled in concentration and she bit her lip as she gave the question careful thought before admitting reluctantly, “I—well no actually. I’m much better at soup.” She looked earnestly at the gentleman, clearly in great distress over this fact, but determined to try, and fumbled in her robes for her wand—Spellotaped, from the last time she dropped it—promptly bobbled it because she was terribly nervous, managed to get a good grip on it again, and very quickly and with one eye closed in hope, mumbled, “Er—scourgify.” There was a bang, some sparks that were slightly off color, but the soup, for the most part, went away. And if there was a lingering scent of singed lemons, well, given who had cast the spell, that was the more fortunate of possible side effects.

Rosie, for her part, practically beamed with relief, immediately whipping out a damp handkerchief and with absolutely no regard for personal space, went about dabbing at the soup remains. “Oh that wasn’t so terrible!” She chirped, inordinately pleased, and began chattering with good cheer, and as usual with Rosie, didn’t stop. “Much better than the time I tried evanesco, which really ought to have not done what it did but it did and there’s not much to do about that. Luckily we had a spare set of robes for the poor dear fellow to change into although I wish I knew what had happened to the first pair, or really what happens to anything when you cast evanesco. I wonder if you could find them somewhere? If they go somewhere I mean, if perhaps somewhere there is a vast pile of evanesco things" She giggled, "Perhaps some poor muggle's cottage! Where robes and messes appear! Of course that's the going, there was also the coming in that particular case--it smelled quite strongly of broiled cabbage and I haven’t the faintest idea where that came from, I mean I know some people are fond of it and I DO like a good sauerkraut but it smells, well, quite unfortunate during the process and the poor fellow it clung to him for days—You are astonishingly symmetrical,” Rosie put the handkerchief in her pocket and clapped her hands to the tall fellow’s cheeks—though she, being a stretched scarecrow of a person herself, skimmed barely an inch below him—unless he were fast enough to bat her hands away, with an expression of absolute scientific  fascination, “Has anyone ever told you that?” She hummed to herself, a habit she did when she was thinking and nodded abruptly, as though having decided something, “Might be the posture.”

And then for the briefest of moments, her warm blue eyes went blank, and when she blinked, she suddenly lookedquite startled and greatly dismayed, “Oh my goodness you have soup on you! Are you quite alright?” She fished in her pocket for the handkerchief she had just ptu away to dab again at the poor fellow’s clothes.

The witch obliged with a bang and a spark, and the most of the soup seemed to be cleansed from his clothes, even if did smell a little lemony instead of of leeks now.

Without warning, but a huge grin on her face she started to dab at him to try and remove what remained. Caught off guard Johann stumbled half a step back, found himself against the edge of table which was dripping with the soup still, and was stuck.

“Oh that wasn’t so terrible! Much better than the time I tried evanesco, which really ought to have not done what it did but it did and there’s not much to do about that. Luckily we had a spare set of robes for the poor dear fellow to change into although I wish I knew what had happened to the first pair, or really what happens to anything when you cast evanesco. I wonder if you could find them somewhere? If they go somewhere I mean, if perhaps somewhere there is a vast pile of evanesco things. Perhaps some poor muggle's cottage! Where robes and messes appear! Of course that's the going, there was also the coming in that particular case--it smelled quite strongly of broiled cabbage and I haven’t the faintest idea where that came from, I mean I know some people are fond of it and I DO like a good sauerkraut but it smells, well, quite unfortunate during the process and the poor fellow it clung to him for days—You are astonishingly symmetrical,”

Johann was amused and fascinated by her ramblings, and also had a strong sense of deja-vu[1] as she clapped her hands to his cheeks, causing him to jump.

“Has anyone ever told you that? Might be the posture.”

"Not quite like that, no." Johann managed to respond at last, reaching up towards her hands to remove them from his face, but she pre-empted him by continuing to fuss about his soup state.

“Oh my goodness you have soup on you! Are you quite alright?”

Johann managed to wriggle free from the soupy table behind him and held a hand out to her waving her handkerchief at him in the middle of the pub.
"Its ok, I can do it, you got the worst... why do I smell lemony?" The skinny Ministry worker sniffed the arm of his jacket suspiciously, and then cast a few hasty scourgify spells on himself, sure he'd not get everything, but near enough.

"I don't suppose you have any more soup?" Johann asked cautiously - an then held out his hand again in defence, "Not over my head - to eat this time!" A witch at a nearby table cackled at their interchange. He seemed keen to keep Rosie, not that he knew her name yet, at arm's length for a moment until he was sure he was in one piece, still entirely dressed too.

1.	All The World's Inn