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3pm

It seemed Anna was finally starting to settle into her new routine.  The little cottage she had rented in Hogsmeade was really quite charming.  Of course it wasn't the brownstone she owned in London, but every time she entered the home she had bought with Wilton she was flooded with a million thoughts of what might have been.  It was easier to give into a more simple existence.

The Three Broomsticks was relatively quiet, as it was nearly every Monday.  She had just cleaned one of the last few tables that had been occupied by the late lunch crowd.  Taking a look around she noted that the other two tables where patrons were seated were currently busy sipping very full glasses of various drinks.  None of them, however needed her attention at that moment.

Moving to the bar, she stood near the end so she could keep an eye on the patrons.  She offered a small smile to Bethan, fighting the slight awkwardness she felt around the young woman.  Last year she had spent quite a bit of time trying to get her to make an appearance in Anna's old office in Hogwarts.  The few odd looks she had received from those who knew her as a former healer and counselor weren't lost on Anna.  After all, how does one go from a counselor to a waitress in just a few short months?

"I suppose it'll be quite till supper," she offered, trying to make a little small talk.

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Author's Note: Being this is set at the Three Broomsticks, if anyone would like to pipe in as a patron just drop me a pm before doing so.

Ever since the new waitress had started, the intrepid barmaid, who had nothing better to do than mix drinks and attempt to lick her own elbow, had been watching her out of the corner of her eye, suspicious. She didn't think she was being obvious about it, and nobody had called her out for snooping, so she felt like quite the adept spy... if you can call trying to place someone's face 'spying.' It was difficult to place someone's face out of context, especially after you hadn't seen them for several months, and Beth was half convinced that her new co-worker was... the old Hogwarts head shrink?! Was that even possible? She was sure that she must be wrong, but every time she looked at the woman she felt a tinge of recognition – her brain really seemed to think that this Anna was the same person she'd spent the better part of her final spring term at Hogwarts avoiding. Thinking it was her gave Beth an odd sort of satisfaction. If she was working as a waitress then she'd clearly messed up as a shrink, or a counselor, or whatever it was she did... otherwise, why would she take such a lame gig? And Beth, always the hero in her own mind, was the brilliant creature who'd denied her services and had saved herself from being worked on by a hack! Ha! Ha ha! Muhahaha! Or something.

With that said, she didn't really mind her. As long as she didn't try head-shrinking her out of the blue then Bethan had no reason to be anything but pleasant to her. With things going so slowly Beth had managed to get all of the glasses and dishes she was responsible for cleaning done and put away, and she really didn't have any more official duties to take care of in the meantime. Popping into the kitchen and eating when it wasn't her break was generally frowned upon, even when she claimed she was 'testing it for poison,' so she was stuck behind the bar for now, playing with one of the little drink brollies she liked so much. She wouldn't refuse company right now no matter who it was. She was half inclined to pop into the dining room proper and crash someone's lunch date.
 
”I suppose it'll be quite till supper.”

“I can make some noise, if you like,” Beth suggested teasingly, shooting her coworker an impish little grin. “I don't see how it'll help the boredom, though.” She continued fussing with the tiny umbrella, opening it and closing it, milking the thing of every ounce of entertainment value it possessed. “Do you reckon this might be of any use to a snail in a monsoon?” she asked, opening and closing, opening and closing. The boredom had officially gotten to that point.

“Do you reckon this might be of any use to a snail in a monsoon?”

Anna gave a small smirk at the image of a snail with an umbrella that popped into her mind.  It seemed that when she worked the hours from 3 to 5 in the afternoon dragged on during the week.  It usually meant the mind wandered and one dwelled on things like pondering what a snail might do in a monsoon.

"Perhaps...or one could use it to dress a snowman up like it's going to the beach," she responded.  "I think two of the could be fashioned into quite the fetching bikini top.  It could start quite the trend...snow people will line up along the shores across Europe."

It sounded like something she might have done back in her days at school.  She could have seen sneaking out one night to build entire snowman families along the lake complete with hand crafted bathing suits.  Looking back it was a pity she hadn't thought of it in her teens...it would have given the professors something to ponder when they looked out their windows the following morning.

"So..." she said, trying to figure out how best to keep up the small talk, "how long have you been working here?"

“It doesn't snow much where I live,” Beth sighed, twirling the little umbrella, now open, around and around by the toothpick. Her eyes were focused on the colorful paper top, watching the pattern repeat over and over as it spun. “If you're gonna be making a bikini, it figures that you should make your man out of sand, isn't it?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, still captivated by the pretty spinning umbrella, not sparing a look at the waitress she was addressing. “Sand we've got plenty of. But if you jump in the water this time of the year then you're an idiot, even if you are a snowman. But me? I won't swim whatever the weather is. I hate it,” she explained, blurting out every thought she had as she was thinking it. She was coming off as particularly familiar, despite the fact that she didn't have too much of a relationship with the new waitress yet. 'Too familiar' was the only setting Beth had other than 'totally ignore,' however, and her days fleeing from the shrink were long gone... if she really was the old shrink. She still hadn't officially decided.

”So.. how long have you been working here?”

“Let's see...” Beth pondered, finally putting the umbrella down and twisting up her lips in thought, her brow crinkling. “Well, I got my NEWT marks back in June, got the official rejection from the Ministry in July, then I spent a few weeks wishing I was dead... so I started, hmm, around August? So that would mean, what? Maybe five months, give or take?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose as she contemplated the figure she'd come up with. In a somewhat softer voice she looked Anna in the eye and muttered “Too long,” rolling her eyes and producing a tiny snort, a subtle smirk finding its way to the corner of her mouth. This was not the future she'd had in mind for herself. She never imagined adulthood would involve so many miniature umbrellas.

Looking the waitress in the face only brought up that nagging question, however. Now that she had her close she tried studying the woman's face again in a less than subtle manner. “Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked, not bothering to pause and wait for a response before she rambled on. “Are you that shrink? You know the one. That was you, am I right?” she asked, grinning broadly and feeling clever.

Anna gave a small, understanding nod at Bethan's indication that she had been at the Three Broomsticks 'too long.'  For Anna this was temporary until she figured out what to do next.  She could walk into nearly any Wizarding hospital and probably find some position that would be much more suited to her experience.  However, she wasn't convinced that life was for her anymore.

Can I ask you a personal question?  Are you that shrink? You know the one. That was you, am I right?

She was about to respond, but Bethan just continued on without waiting.  Anna had figured it was only a matter of time before the younger woman asked about her past.  Bethan was pleasant to talk to, but Anna was sort of noticing that having a verbal filter wasn't one of her strong suits...not that it particular bothered Anna.

"Yes....that was me," she said.  "I was probably the most avoided staff member at Hogwarts.  Which I suppose comes with the territory of that particular job."  She leaned against the bar with with a slightly sad half smile and then added before Bethan could ask the obvious follow up question, "My personal life got too complicated and I wasn't able to truly focus on the students.  I ended up taking the position here while I try to figure out what exactly I'm supposed to do next."

With a slight chuckle she said, "I suppose one never truly figures out what they want to be when they 'grow up.'"

“I know what I'm gonna be,” Bethan responded just about immediately, grinning in the way that only a naively optimistic teenager could. “It's not this, I'll tell you that much. Don't get me wrong, like. I like the job, and I like the money even better, but if I have to do it much longer I'm going to off myself,” she snorted, a smirk on her lips that suggested she was teasing, and not actually admitting to suicidal ideation. “I'm... what do you call it?” she paused for a moment to think, sucking on her teeth. “Stir crazy. You know?” One thing was becoming abundantly obvious – Anna needn't have worked as hard as she once had to try and herd Bethan into her office. All she really needed to do was stand in her vicinity and she would have gotten an earful any day of the week.

“Why'd you want to become a shrink in the first place?” Beth asked her, genuinely curious. She wouldn't want to do a job if it made everyone on the planet hate her. She didn't mind if the right people hated her, but she was too social a creature to be stuck in a career that scared people off. Then again, the job did involve a lot of talking, and talking was one of her strengths. If she was just a little bit better at actually listening then she might have made a decent shrink herself. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for her hypothetical patients' sakes) she was just too stunted in that area to ever find success. “Do you like crazy people or something?” Everyone had their 'thing.' She supposed liking crazy people was a real possibility. Beth, for instance, enjoyed violence. Also puppies... just not together. 

Anna couldn't help returning Bethan's smile.  She could remember the carefree, optimistic days right after graduation.  The entire world had been open to her.  She had spent a year dreaming and traveling, finally free of her purist parents.  It wasn't long before she had decided she wanted to study healing, and for most of her professional life she hadn't questioned that decision.  As she grew older though, and learned how the world worked, her optimism for dreams had faded a bit.  It was nice to be able to experience a bit of that excitement again vicariously.

“Why'd you want to become a shrink in the first place?  Do you like crazy people or something?"

"Not exactly," she said with a laugh.  "I like helping people....I spent a lot of time traveling and trying to find temporary work that would make some use of my healer training.  A lot of times I would be asked to lend my services at wizarding orphanages and I found myself spending more and more time talking to the children and getting to know them.  I wanted to be able to do more then heal the physical ailments,s o, I starting studying psychology and eventually the focus of my career just shifted naturally."

With a sincere smile she added, "It's natural to be a bit stir crazy at your age...If you get the chance to do something you always wanted to do, whatever it is, take it before you decide on what you want to do for the rest of your life.  You'll find it gets considerably harder to do as you get older."

“Orphanages, huh?” Bethan asked, pausing to consider what she was being told. She didn't think about orphanages much – they just didn't tend to come up very often during her chats with half-inebriated patrons at the bar. It made sense that orphans could use a healer, given that they were, well... people... but she'd never really stopped to consider that careers in orphan tending even existed. She'd been set in her ways for so long that she hadn't really taken time to explore career options outside of her area of interest. She didn't think she'd have to. “I'd be shit at working with orphans,” Bethan admitted shamelessly, punctuating that admission with a brusque laugh. “My brother's got two kids, right, and one's a baby. Little girls. I'm not even allowed to mind them. He won't let me.” There was a certain kind of confidence in the way she admitted this, as though she was proud of her complete lack of trustworthiness. Her tiny, twisty little grin was back on her lips again. It was seldom gone for very long.

"It's natural to be a bit stir crazy at your age...If you get the chance to do something you always wanted to do, whatever it is, take it before you decide on what you want to do for the rest of your life. You'll find it gets considerably harder to do as you get older.”

“Well, I want to be an auror. That's it,” she replied, spouting off the answer in a way that had become second nature. “That's what I'll do as soon as they'll let me, but in the meantime I'm going to pull pints until my fingers turn blue, like, because what else is there?” She really didn't have any better ideas. When you really had your heart set on a particular future, even a future as elusive and difficult to achieve as the one Bethan had picked out for herself, trying to see yourself anywhere else wasn't easy. She didn't want to picture herself doing something different! She'd grown up hearing that she could do or be whatever she wanted, and she wasn't ready to cast that optimistic outlook aside just yet. “There really aren't any jobs that are like that, and I'm not crazy about traveling or nothing,” she admitted, shrugging. She was a homebody, plain and simple.

“Did you always want to be a healer, or did you just decide one day?” she asked. She realized that most people weren't like she was, latching onto an idea early and not letting go for any reason. Figuring out how other people went about this whole “adulthood” thing might be key to figuring out why hers was going so badly.

“Orphanages, huh?”

Anna tucked her hand behind her ear, pondering how strange it must have sounded.  It wasn't like one made a great deal of money working in those sorts of facilities and it wasn't exactly a career path.  At the time though, it had been exactly what she was meant to do during what seemed, in hindsight, to be a much easier time.

"At the time I was trying to have something that resembled a professional life while still being able to travel across Europe with...," she paused for a moment, pondering what to call Wilton.  Legally she was still bound to him, but at this point one could argue it was merely a piece of paper that kept them joined and nothing more.  "...my ex."  In some ways it felt good to say it.  They had tried last year to make another go of their marriage, but nothing had ever come of it.  It was time to stop pining.  Eventually she was sure she would have to take some action to truly be free of him, but at least she was giving him the proper label at this point.  He hadn't acted the part of her husband nor she his wife in well over a year.

“There really aren't any jobs that are like that, and I'm not crazy about traveling or nothing."

With a smile she responded, "I didn't necessarily mean travelling...Just don't look back and regret not doing something when you were still relatively free of all the responsibilities."

It was refreshing in some ways to see someone so sure of what they wanted to do with their life.  She hadn't been like that...although once she found her passion for caring for people it certainly stuck.  It was funny, she probably would have said something similar to Bethan at Hogwarts, but it would have come from an 'authority figure.'  Perhaps if nothing else she could give a bit of advice in a non-threatening way now.

“Did you always want to be a healer, or did you just decide one day?”

"Honestly, I wasn't sure at first," she said.  "I was sent to visit a relative of my uncle's wife who was a healer when I was about your age.  I worked for her for a while and then started training shortly after.  I haven't ever regretted it...even if I'm not doing anything with the training now."

“I've got to tell you the truth,” Beth started, using her 'brutal honesty' voice – which bore a rather striking resemblance to her 'insulting others' voice. She forged forward, however. Honesty was usually the best policy and, where Beth was concerned, often the only policy. “I hate healers. I always have. I just can't stand them,” she admitted bluntly. “That's why it makes no sense to me, wanting to be one. That would be like wanting to be... oh, I don't know. Satan?” she offered, chuckling briefly at her own tendency toward melodrama. Dramatic or not, she really believed it. Out in the wider world Beth was a perfectly obnoxious ray of sunshine, grinning and chatty and ready to face the day... but stick her in a healer's waiting room and she was a completely different girl. Outside of that context she was fine, even in a healer's presence, but this conversation could have gone very differently in a different setting.

“If the auror department won't hire me, I don't know what I'll do,” she admitted, giving some thought to something that, for the most part, she preferred never to think about. A few months ago such a prospect had seemed entirely inconceivable, but from behind the bar at the Three Broomsticks, with the apron of an employee tied around her waist, it didn't seem quite as impossible. Her face took on a distinctly glum cast as she contemplated this, her jaw tightening. “I'm not working here for the rest of my life, I'll tell you that much. I'll go mad. Well, I reckon I'm half mad already, but any madder and they're going to have to stick me in the back so I won't scare the customers.” She released a sigh through her nostrils. “I know they'll hire me. They'd be dumb not to.”