It was clear upon arrival that the pub was much busier on the weekends than it was during the week.  A small crowd was scattered throughout the tavern, a mix of regulars and visiting shoppers who'd stopped in after a morning about in Hogsmeade.  From the sound of it, the first in a doubleheader of Quidditch matches was about to begin over the Wireless; most of the people present were either trying to wrap up their bills before the game started so that they could avoid the rush at the Floo, or loudly placing bets and laughingly making predictions about the results.

No one in good faith could claim that Raizel had avoided The Three Broomsticks in the weeks since the misadventure with the dybbuk.  Since then, she had been certainly busy -- aside from her regular duties, there was the Morocco trip to put together, and the Hogwarts visit to prepare for.  But somehow, she had managed not to go out of her way to return here, to see the place where the old man had died or to speak with the young woman who had been her accomplice during the incident.

But now she was back again, and in the thick of it.  There was something comforting about the busyness of the crowd.  The bar was mostly occupied, but there were still places available at some of the scattered tables.  She chose one near to the counter, and then began to watch like a sparrow hawk for Bethan Ellis.

She had never heard the girl's name directly -- there hadn't been time for introductions, in the rush of everything that happened and then in the strain of the endless questions at the Ministry that had followed -- but the Daily Prophet article about the old man's death had cited it, surely enough.  Along with Bethan's identity, the article had mentioned a great many more things: most from her, or about her, in describing the tragically horrible incident and how Bethan had bravely done her best to fend off the dark creature.

At least Bethan wasn't hard to spot.  Raizel caught sight of her in the midst of everything, and then proceed to make pointed eye contact, continuing to stare straight at her until the girl finally noticed.  Once she did, the Cursebreaker signaled for her to come over.

"Can you talk?" she asked impatiently, looking her over as she arrived.  Never mind that it was the start of what was sure to be a busy afternoon at the Three Broomsticks; in Raizel's mind, employment responsibilities were something that could be foisted onto other people or abandoned altogether if the stakes were high enough.  "It's important."

Beth had been looking forward to the Puddlemere-Tutshill match all week. Growing up in the Ellis household, it wasn't advisable to be anything but a Tornadoes supporter, so there had never in her life been a time when she wasn't decked out in blue on match days, whether she was attending or otherwise. She couldn't go all out when she was working, since there were standards when it came to what she was and was not allowed to wear to work. Luckily, however, she had a Nana who loved to knit for her modest, comfort-loving granddaughter and, as a result, Bethan was sporting a super soft jumper in the team colors. In case there was any confusion, she also had a metal lapel pin in the shape of the team logo stuck on the outside of her apron, declaring her allegiance without question. Some of the pub-goers had given her some grief for it already, but she'd given them grief right back, and so far she hadn't had her life threatened. The wireless had already been switched on to the proper station, and she was excited to spend her shift eavesdropping on the broadcast. She'd be there a while, so she hoped it would be a long match. Maybe she'd get lucky and the snitch would take a detour. Either way, she was in high spirits.

Today, over two weeks after the dark creature had infiltrated the Broomsticks, her face off with the Dybbuk was the last thing on Bethan's mind. She'd thought about it since, of course – it came up at least once a day, including on her days off - but right now she was busy being a different kind of hero and trying to process as many tabs as she could before rabid quidditch fans had her head. She wasn't doing table service today – it was busy, so they had waitresses on, thank Merlin – but she was busy enough without the extra tasks. Needless to say, her attention wasn't really focused anywhere beyond the bar. Raizel's eyes may have been on her, but so were a dozen others. It wasn't until a large group was clearing out through the fire that she even had a clear enough view to notice her sitting there. Her eyes lit up with instant recognition, and she threw the witch an oblivious, half-focused smile. She hadn't expected to see her back here again anytime soon.

It took her even longer to notice she was being summoned. She wasn't really supposed to leave the bar when the pub was busy, especially when there was other staff on the floor, but as soon as she had a free second she slipped out, under the guise of adjusting the volume on the wireless unit. “Hiya!” she greeted her, just as brightly as ever, “Didn't expect to see you around here so fast. I realized you never got your drink last time, but you didn't pay for one, either, so I didn't think you'd be too hurt over it,” she remarked. “I'll comp you one anyway. Just tell the girl,” she continued, prepared to walk away and get back to work.

”Can you talk? It's important.”

“I can, a bit, but you'll have to sit at the bar. I've already been gone too long,” she explained, gesturing toward an open stool with a jerk of her head, already starting back that way. “Match'll be starting soon, so you'll have to talk fast. It gets loud in here and, besides, I wanna hear it.” Could anything be more important than Tutshill v. Puddlemere?

The barmaid came and went in a flash, jabbering just as enthusiastically as she had upon their first meeting, and Raizel was left staring after her as she departed, her nostrils flaring as she huffed out a breath.  It was hard to stay annoyed at Bethan Ellis, but irritation was nevertheless creeping within her.  She had expected the girl to treat the situation with the gravity that it clearly deserved, not be more worried about some plagues-cursed Quidditch match.

Raizel clicked her tongue against her teeth, pressing her mouth into a thin, unhappy line, and then pushed herself to her feet.  Short of giving up on this whole thing now, the young witch hadn't given her much of a choice besides trailing in her wake.

"If it gets too loud, then you are going to have to listen harder," she informed her back, with the same tone that she might have used to chastise her younger brother.  Giving an indignant huff, she gathered her satchel again and flounced over to the bar.

It took a bit of maneuvering to get to the open bar stool, but after a pair of well-placed elbows, the men on either side gave her enough room to slide in.  Raizel folded her arms over the counter and sourly ordered a wheat beer from the employee who was working the taps. 

A few moments later, she had positioned herself better on the stool, elbows leaned on the bar and cupping both hands around her drink, the five fingers on her left hand and the three good fingers on her right splayed against the cool glass.  As perturbed as she was, it was hard to stay annoyed at Bethan now that she had received the free drink.  She had liked the bar girl upon their first meeting.  She was young, entertaining, and enthusiastic; she could perhaps be slightly forgiven for not treating the situation with the seriousness that Raizel felt it deserved.

Very well.  She could perhaps be patient with the barmaid, provided she did not have to be patient for very long.  Raizel waited, trying not to look too disapproving as she waited for the girl to break free and come close enough so that they could talk again.

Judging by the number of patrons present, the dybbuk had obviously not had much of a dent on the Three Broomstick's popularity.  The bar staff were beset by order upon order, and the Cursebreaker was forced to remind herself that it wasn't Bethan's fault that it took far longer than she would have liked to gain her attention again.

"It's very busy," Raizel observed stiffly, her voice only a bit sharp as she eyed the crowd at the bar.  The middle-aged wizard on her right was edging a bit too far into her space again, talking enthusiastically to his friend.  She positioned her elbow pointedly to remind him that he ought to stay within his personal boundaries.  "I'm glad to see that what happened didn't scare customers away."

Perhaps the reason that Bethan wasn't treating the situation with gravity and undiluted respect was because, frankly, she wasn't really aware that there was a “situation” occurring. How was she to know whether or not the witch's supposedly important chat was actually important? Everyone in pubs had an elevated sense of their own importance – she knew that well. Everyone wanted their drink how they wanted it, when they wanted it, with no deviations. If there had been any other patrons in the pub on the day that dybbuk got out then they probably would have been sitting there impatiently, asking for refills while she was in the middle of lugging a corpse around. Now that she was back to the grind, working a busy shift, she couldn't really mess around. Though sometimes it didn't seem like it, Beth was employed there, which meant she was supposed to do work when there was work to be done. That was why it took her a bit before she was able to make her way over to the blonde at the bar, looking as mildly flustered as she felt.

It didn't feel like very much time had passed because she'd been busy, so when she was met with Raizel's impatient mug, it didn't occur to her that she might have been the cause of it. She almost asked if she could take her order, but caught herself, her eyes falling on the drink she already had. Her pause afforded her enough time to remember that 'important conversation' that she wanted to have, which had slipped to the back of her mind while she'd been making the drinks that others had ordered. Running a hand over her hair, the blue clad barmaid leaned forward on the bar to be sure she could hear properly above the din.

”It's very busy.”

Bethan snorted. “You don't say,” she remarked drolly, letting her eyes wander for a moment, taking in the density of the crowd. It had been worse before. The evening shift was often busier than this, but not always so loud. Quidditch fans just took up more space than your average drunkards, she supposed, but they drank just as much, which was really what concerned her. Her eyes were still drifting as  Raizel continued speaking and, though it wasn't intentional, she only seemed to be half listening. She was making a ridiculous, bug eyed face at someone in the dining room who looked like he was staring at her, and you just didn't get that opportunity every day. She was mostly listening, though. Kind of.

”I'm glad to see that what happened didn't scare customers away.”

Her head snapped back to look at Raizel again, though it took an additional second to wipe that kooky look off of her face. “Yeah, we've got customers, like. We always do,” she replied, giving the vaguest response on the planet. “That's why if you're gonna talk, you should talk quickly. I've got things to do and all.” Starting with small talk hadn't been a good reminder that this was supposedly serious business.

The Cursebreaker's jaw set as she eyed the girl standing opposite her.  Any patience that she had managed to muster had very quickly vanished, and this whole endeavor seemed as ridiculous as the face that Bethan was now pulling. 

"You saw the article in the newspaper," she said shortly.  An extra emphasis on each hard consonant made her accent sound even harsher.  Obviously there was no reason to make the fact into a question; the Daily Prophet article had seemed to her like mostly a celebration of Bethan Ellis, and from what she had seen of the barmaid so far, the girl liked very much to celebrate herself.  "The Aurors think that old wizard died on his own.  They're not looking into it."

Which was ridiculous in her mind, but that was evidently what Aurors did.  They Didn't Look Into Things.  It had been the same when her brother had died; the Aurors in Jerusalem had treated his murder like an inconvenience more than anything else.  Maybe that was why she felt so frustrated with the situation now; why she cared so much about this old man whom she hadn't known, but who appeared in old photographs and who had been murdered by a creature who came out of a strange old music box, and who didn't seem to have anyone else in the world that cared at all.

Feeling like the only one who cared was a very lonely place to be.  The past year had been a miserable one, with first Benny's death, and then her grounding in London, and everything that had happened since then.  This wasn't something that she could talk to Akiva about, not when the witch had so much in her own personal life to deal with, and all of the other people that she might approach were far too tied to the Ministry.  Tackling something like this again on her own in the middle of everything else was starting to feel a little daunting.

Which was why she had come to this girl.  Confronting life and death together in the face of something like a dybbuk should have been at least a bonding experience, but Raizel was starting to doubt that very much.  She eyed Bethan's face, as if wary that the girl were going to dissolve into another ridiculous expression.

"Don't you think that what happened was a little suspicious?" she pressed, her chin already set stubbornly.  "Even knowing only what we saw?  He didn't just die; that man in the cloak came here to kill him."

“Course I saw the article,” she replied with a grin, standing up a little straighter at the mere mention of her fifteen minutes of fame. She'd been charmed by the gratuitous bit of reporting that had shown up in the Prophet, so she'd never stopped to read it for details that didn't pertain to how brilliant she'd been. It was the first bit of evidence she had to support her argument that she wasn't just some dumb bird who wasn't bright enough to work outside of food service. People were proud of her! She was proud of her! Why would she ruin everything by critically scanning the article for flaws? She wanted that article to hold up. If one part of it fell apart under scrutiny, what would that mean for her? Her pride had taken a dizzying hit since she'd left school the previous summer. One more hard knock and it just might be a KO.   

”The Aurors think that old wizard died on his own. They're not looking into it.”

“Well, I told them what I saw. I told them everything I knew – a few times, actually,” Bethan explained a tad brusquely, satiating the urge to cover her own back. She couldn't help becoming preemptively defensive, given the tone this witch was using. It sounded like she was blaming Beth for the way the Prophet was choosing to report this thing, which she couldn't have had less to do with. She crossed her arms firmly across her chest, looking Raizel in the face, a hint of a challenge in her eyes. What was she trying to say?

”Don't you think that what happened was a little suspicious? Even knowing only what we saw?  He didn't just die; that man in the cloak came here to kill him.”

“Well, it's suspicious alright, but I'm not going to say he came here to kill anybody, because that's a big accusation – not that I don't believe he's some kind of evil,” she explained. A loud eruption of laughter came from the back left corner of the dining room and her head snapped that way for a moment, but it didn't hold her attention long. “They know the bloke didn't actually kill anyone, but they also know he brought a dark creature into a place of business, like. So they've got to find him, right? For possessing a dark creature, and then for releasing it. Dead man or no, they know they've got a criminal to track down.” She may have been a bit naïve, but she really did believe that an auror's job was to... well, to do their job! If there was a bad guy to track down, that's what they had to do. Otherwise, why have aurors? She'd romanticized their role to an almost absurd extent and it was sometimes difficult for her to remember that aurors weren't superheroes. “They'll get him,” she said confidently. How could they not? 

Raizel's eyebrows rose higher and higher as the girl spoke.  This was not how she had envisioned things going in the least, this unacademic non-curiosity about the tragedy that they'd both witnessed.  Nothing that Raizel had seen so far had convinced her that the Ministry was taking the murder seriously.  There might be good Aurors in London, but that didn't mean that the good ones had time to do everything.

The barmaid seemed completely uninterested in what she had apparently deemed a non-murder.  And unless Raizel revealed more than she wanted to -- like the fact that she was in possession of the music box -- there was no evidence she could give to sway her otherwise.  This appeal was going to reach a dead end very quickly.  Clearly unhappy, the Cursebreaker huffed out a breath and switched tactics. 

"Do you think the Aurors will have time to find him?  If all they think he did was release a dark creature -- the newspaper didn't even call it a dybbuk," she said scornfully.  That failure had been mostly her fault, since she hadn't spoken up more to defend the identification, but the fact that the British Aurors hadn't known for themselves had not impressed her.  "Why would they waste time tracking him down?  They'll never get around to it."

Bethan Ellis was still very much a mystery to her.  She had a steady wand in a crisis, but she was also very young, easily distractible, and very much desired to be the center of attention -- not the sort of person that would be easy to lure into a grand conspiracy.   Raizel eyed her as she took a quick drink of her beer, mostly to stop herself from saying anything unpleasant.  From what she had observed, curiosity was not a driving motivation for Bethan Ellis.  But perhaps there were another that she could use.

"You said yourself he was coming here for ages, and you didn't know anything about him.  Don't you think it will be hard for the Aurors to find out, too?"  That logic was shaky, but Raizel pressed onwards nonetheless; perhaps the barmaid's sense of self would overrule it.  "Maybe we could help.  Put things together for them, so that the investigation will go more quickly.  That one that came seemed like he liked you very much," she added quickly, raising her beer to take another sip.  "And he seemed so busy.  I think he would appreciate it, if you did more to help."

It wasn't that Bethan was uninterested in this murder – in fact, she was more interested in this murder than she'd ever been in any murder ever... which, frankly, wasn't saying too much, because it was the first murder she'd ever been specifically interested in at all. It was more that Bethan wasn't entirely sure that it was actually a murder. She was interested, though! The thing was, she was also convinced she had all of the facts, and was basing all of her assumptions on some made up idea of how the auror department worked - assumptions which she'd developed sometime during her childhood, which were based entirely on whims and hearsay. Needless to say, her perspective on this whole thing was a little bit wonky. She wasn't more curious because she hadn't yet figured out that there was anything worth being curious about!  She didn't know why the cursebreaker seemed so grumpy over this.  And why was this supposed to be important again?

”Do you think the Aurors will have time to find him?  If all they think he did was release a dark creature -- the newspaper didn't even call it a dybbuk. Why would they waste time tracking him down?  They'll never get around to it.”

“But it's their job,” Beth countered, looking and sounding perplexed, her forehead scrunched and her lip quirked in a confused little grimace. “That's what their time is for, right? They're aurors.” What else did aurors do if not look into crimes committed in the wizarding world? This was fresh! Recent! It had to have their attention, didn't it? “They can't just blow this off! It wouldn't be right! This is the Three Broomsticks, not some back alleyway somewhere! There could have been kids in here, isn't it? And don't say there weren't, like, cause that's not the point,” she huffed, growing cross at the very idea that the aurors might not be doing what she was convinced was their job. Raizel didn't even need to do the riling up for her – Beth was fully capable of getting her own knickers in a twist. She was gifted with the skill of talking herself in circles and exhausting herself, much like hyper puppies had the gift of chasing their own tails until they fell asleep in a heap.

”You said yourself he was coming here for ages, and you didn't know anything about him.  Don't you think it will be hard for the Aurors to find out, too?”

“It's not the dead guy they need to track down. I reckon they know exactly where he is,” she snorted, with a faint shake of her head. “If they lose track of him, we've got a whole different problem on our hands, and you know they'll be taking that one seriously.” She was clearly teasing a bit (if the sneaky little grin on her face didn't give it away). She was listening, though. If this witch thought the aurors weren't doing their jobs properly, Bethan wanted to know why. “What're you trying to say, exactly?” she asked. Why beat around the bush?

”Maybe we could help.  Put things together for them, so that the investigation will go more quickly.  That one that came seemed like he liked you very much, and he seemed so busy.  I think he would appreciate it, if you did more to help”

“Huh. Is that a fact?” Beth asked, her grin growing in size as she thought back on the auror who'd come poking around after the whole dybbuk ordeal. She'd been completely smitten with the bloke – in the most platonic way possible – and she hadn't even seen him do anything (well, nothing more heroic than squatting over a corpse, anyway). “What do you reckon I could do? You know I don't have access to their files and that. I'm not opposed to helping, but seems like the best I could do is pull them a few pints at the end of the day, like.”

The list of things that they could do was likely long and enumerated, but not all of the options on it fell under the realm of the strictly legal.  Raizel had been trying hard not to push her luck at Gringotts recently, but the old wizard undoubtedly had a bank account that was now sitting stagnant, and there were still questions surrounding the ill-gained music box that she'd appropriated from the crime scene.  Those were investigative strands that she'd likely be better served to keep from the young barmaid, at least for now.

But in the meantime, there was plenty that Bethan could assist with as well.  The Daily Prophet article had only had wonderful things to say about Hector Harrison.  A war hero, a philanthropist: nothing seemed like it would inspire some shadowy figure to track him down and murder him.  There had to be more to the story, and with any luck, the indomitable Bethan Ellis would be able to help her put the pieces together.

The Cursebreaker gave an airy shrug, doing her best to look noncommittal at the prospect of aiding the Aurors in their investigation.  "Well, plenty of people here in Hogsmeade know you," she said matter-of-factly, as if widespread knowledge of Bethan were the most natural thing on the planet.   "I imagine that they would be more likely to talk to you than to the Aurors.  Maybe we can ask around town, see what they're willing to tell us about him.  Or see what else we can find out on our own -- he lived near here, yeh?"

“Yeah, he lived right in the village, though I couldn't tell you where,” Bethan explained, glancing toward the windows at the far back of the dining room, like she expected one of the houses in the distant hills to light up and declare itself Hector's. She could barely even see out with all of the heads in the way, but it didn't stop her from looking, leaning forward on the bar as though she believed it might actually help. She gave up quickly, though, stepping back with a defeated shrug of her shoulders.

“Everyone knows him. There's not a person who's come through asking about the whole thing who hasn't said they remember seeing him in town and that.” All things considered, the chatty girl hadn't learned nearly as much as one might have expected. Most of the patrons she'd run into were able to offer a tidbit or two – something along the lines of 'He bought a cauldron at my son's shop once' or 'He had a handsome pet owl, didn't he? Or was that Merle Harrison from Barra?' People weren't very quick to say anything particularly interesting about dead people. She was sure that if she tried digging a bit she could come up with some more information, but most of the time the little bits and pieces she picked up were so boring that she'd just changed the subject.

“Well, what are we trying to find out, exactly? You wanna know why someone would kill him? I don't know how I'm supposed to go questioning his neighbors about that without getting stared at like I'm mad,” she admitted. “I'll talk to whoever you want me to, though. I just need a better idea of what I'm supposed to be saying.”

This was much closer to the reaction that she had wanted.  Raizel found herself warming to Bethan Ellis once more.  It might take the girl some time to get down to business, but if she were a willing co-conspirator in the Cursebreaker's mini-investigation, then she was more than happy to tolerate her short attention span.

"Yeh, why someone would kill him."  Why someone would kill him with a dybbuk of all things, and particularly one that had been intentionally trapped and stored away in an old music box.  Even beyond the circumstances of a death that she was convinced was murder, Raizel was quickly becoming intrigued by the old man's life as well.  Who had wanted him dead?  And what ties did he have to the Muggleborn wizard that Jacoba Schlagenweit had identified in his picture?[1]

"I just...don't think that it is right not to now."  She gave an uncomfortable shrug to Bethan, not really happy with the feeling of uncertainty, and dug into the leather satchel that she usually carried.  A few moments later, she'd retried a folded up newspaper from several weeks before.

"Here.  Look."  She unrolled it, found the article, and jabbed her finger at the last line of the article: The HHUUG Foundation will be hosting a black tie event in Harrison's honor on January 30.

"You see?"  She met Bethan's gaze, searching, trying to determine if the barmaid would be willing to make this leap or not.  "They're hosting a party for him next weekend.  You'd think that people who knew him should be there, yeh?  If you can get the night off, then maybe we can go and see what they say."

1.	Three Miles Up Currahee

“You're asking me to get a night off so I can go to a fancy funeral at something called the Hug Foundation?” Bethan asked incredulously, her brows darting inward. That was basically her worst nightmare all rolled up into one pretentious night – she couldn't help contorting her face into a disapproving grimace, unwilling and unable to hide her true feelings on the matter. And it got worse! “Black tie,” she said, taking the paper right from Raizel's hands and looking at it up close, as though the words might change into something preferable under scrutiny. They didn't. She released a frustrated, bull-like snort through her nose. “So not only are you asking me to take a night off to go to a Hug Funeral, but I need to wear dress robes? Come on!” She looked genuinely pained now, gripping the front of the bar with both hands and whining pitifully and  dramatically, like she was trying to get out of doing something for her mother.

And then, all at once, her face changed. She quit gripping the bar, her eyes widened, and she smiled her huge, familiar smile – the smile she knew full well was endearing, and which had worked about as well as puppy dog eyes for most of her childhood. “How's about this?” she asked, sounding far more perky than she had even a second ago. “How's about you go down to that funeral thing and then tell me all about it, like?” she asked. She didn't really think the cursebreaker was some idiot, but she figured pitching the idea was worth a shot. She'd been forced to put on a dress less than a month ago – she wasn't ready for a reprise. Plus, she wasn't sure how polite she could be toward weepy mourning people, seeing as she tended to ostracize herself anytime she was faced with misery. And who knew how seriously this organization took its name? If anyone tried touching her, she couldn't promise she wouldn't bite. Everything in the world suggested that this was a terrible idea. All she was doing was trying to prevent a catastrophe! 

Trying to convince the girl to go along with her plan was starting to seem like a Sisyphean ordeal.  Every time they made headway, it felt as though something slipped and then she was left to try and convince her all over again.  Of all the sticking points, though, she had not been expecting the gala in Harrison's honor -- which had struck her as a rather romantic, dashing, and exciting affair -- to be one of them.

"Yeh, I can go by myself," she agreed, doing her best to sound dubious.  "But the people there are not going to be as interested in talking to me.  They'll want to talk to you -- after all, you were the one who nearly saved him."  Flattery hadn't hurt with Bethan so far, so Raizel was quick to return to the tactic.

This whole conversation was incessantly frustrating.  Were they really arguing over whether or not Bethan was willing to attend a fancy party?  For someone who had seemed so eager to launch into danger a few weeks ago -- and who clearly enjoyed telling the story of her adventure over and over and over again to anyone who would listen -- the barmaid did not seem very interested in leaving the comfortable corner that she'd made for herself here at the Three Broomsticks.  If Raizel had been in her shoes, resigned to a life of taking orders and delivering free baskets of complimentary peanuts, she would have leapt at any chance to escape it.  Had she misjudged this girl after all?  Was Bethan more satisfied with her lot in life than she made it out?  Did she only care for adventure when it sought her out?

Raizel wasn't certain.  But the girl was still so young.  When she had been Bethan's age, she must have been just out of Beit Gaddol -- probably in the process of serving out her two years in the Army, after she'd chosen to enlist.  Back then, to be fair, she'd been considerably less interested in doing anything of note; she had mostly spent her days being resentful of the discipline that had been forced onto her life, and longing for the carefree days at school when it didn't matter if she did nothing at all.

The Cursebreaker sighed.  Perhaps she should be a little more forgiving.  Although she felt certain it would help if she didn't feel like she were fighting the young barmaid every step of the way.

"Do the dress robes really matter that much?" she asked with a frown.  "You don't care at all about why he died?"

“I don't reckon I need to be there to talk to some of these people,” Bethan insisted dismissively, still in full on 'get me out of this' mode. She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded rapidly a few times, as though she were hard at work convincing herself that what she was saying was the truth. She didn't deny that she was awesome and worth talking to, but she'd fight to prove that she didn't need to put on a damned dress to do it. “If they won't talk to you, like, you just tell them, you tell them – 'if you want to meet the witch from the paper, go down to the pub in Hogsmeade and talk to Beth' – and then I'll talk to them.” It seemed simple enough to her. After all, who didn't know the old Broomsticks? And that way only serious people would come seeking her out, not just nosy people looking to hear the story in her own words. She didn't think anybody without good information would bother going out of their way to talk to her – unless they were lonely old folks who lived down in the village, in which case she didn't much mind chatting with them anyway, especially if they were interesting and came down during the slow parts of the late afternoon.

”Do the dress robes really matter that much? You don't care at all about why he died?”

“Hey!” she said defensively, “Hey, don't go putting words into my mouth like that. I never said that and you know it,” the barmaid grumbled, crossing her arms even tighter and throwing Raizel a narrow eyed look. “I just don't fancy dressing up. It's not comfortable and it's not fun and, if you ask me, it's just too much work. And on top of that, I really can't stand funerals and that.” She released a deep sort of sigh through her nostrils. All she could picture were hoards of smartly dressed people, crying. She wasn't sure why she imagined there's be hoards, since old Hector hadn't seemed the sort to make friends very easily. She didn't mind the hoards, really. It was the crying that got her.

“You know, last time I got the night off and put on a dress I was doing someone a favor, like, and it was miserable. The one good bit was the open bar,” she explained, uncrossing her arms as she relayed the tragic tale. “But I'm still pissed off about the food. If I'm going to put on a dress and go spend the night surrounded by people I can't stand, I want to be fed. I don't want to be paying for street meat out of my own pocket five hours later,” she griped, turning her head toward a bit of commotion on the far side of the bar, which turned out to be nothing. She turned back, but did not yet look any more excited about the prospect of attending Hector's grand funerary blowout. “That's the new rule I'm making for myself. If I'm putting on a dress, I'd better be getting a meal.” 

This entire conversation had seemed a constant back and forth, as if she were trying to chart a course between the Scylla of Bethan's disinterest and the Charybdis of giving too much away.  Evidently, though, the barmaid had managed to get them back on course by herself this time; she'd gone from fussing herself out of things to arguing herself back in it.

Frankly, Raizel wasn't going to complain.  If that was what it took to convince the girl to cooperate with her -- to get her engaged in the mystery of Hector Harrison's death, so that Raizel had cover when she went poking around -- she'd happily sponsor her for a dozen free meals.  Apparently, the two paths to Bethan's heart went through her ego and her stomach.  The Cursebreaker was willing to do what she could to stoke them both.

"Of course there will be food."  She gave a fluttering wave of her hand as if to say 'Obviously.'  "If there isn't, then I will buy you dinner afterwards."  A fair trade off, in her mind; she somehow doubted that Bethan would demand fare of the most expensive quality.  Even if the event turned out to be a bust, they could grab something cheap off the street afterwards and Raizel's pocketbook would hardly be put out. 

She'd barely touched her drink through all of this conversation.  Now that it was almost to a close, leaving it untouched felt rather irresponsible.  Raizel glanced at the beer, and then raised the glass to take a long sip, finishing as much as she could before she set it down again.

"I'll find out what time it starts at and send you word.  Can you apparate?" she asked Bethan with a frown.  Not all witches and wizards could, and even those that were licensed didn't always like to.  "Or do you want me to come and get you?"