10pm, 3rd of October, 2011
Calaveras, Diagon Alley

Barnabas Cuffe, in red velvet and faux manticore, found himself in the most peculiar company! Never had their been gathered a trio as interesting as these three. Their party, of course, comprised of Barnabas Cuffe (no introduction needed), Xiomara Hooch (yes, that Xiomara), and Tulojow Nagde (legend). And Hooch had just gone to bed.

The remaining pair had the best table in the club. Of course. Cuffe had just finished regaling his two happenchance companions about the Minister Bagnold's tour around the country in 1988, and what the Minister was like after a few glasses of Zinfindel. At which point, Xiomara Hooch had excused herself for the night.

"Bagnold. Incomparable. A bit - eh, you know? Rest her soul."

He toasted his own glass of red wine in the air. She wasn't dead. He was just hoping she was having a restful eve.

"I, eh," he mused to himself. Then he went silent and swiveled his head. He gazed at Tulojow, who had aged more gracefully than he had. She was not vain, so he knew her black hair was not enchanted to be so dark.

"We haven't got old, have we?"

Millicent Bagnold.  Now there was a name Tulojow hadn't thought about for years. 

With a chuckle, Tulojow lifted her glass of wine to bid Xiomara a fair evening before taking a sip.  "Would you mind?" she asked, tugging her bear-claw pipe out of her coat pocket and lifting it slightly in Barnabas' direction.  At his consent, she filled the bowl with the tobacco and herbal mixture from her pouch and touched the end of her wand to it.  It had been a long day on her feet moving along Ministry corridors and her knee was killing her. 

"Old Bagnold and I never saw eye to eye," Tulojow admitted.  Though that had been a common theme during her tenure as an Auror.  "Do you know, I got called into her office on no fewer then three occasions?" Her office.  It had, indeed, gone above Level 2.

Because, yes.  That was its own answer to Barnabas' question, wasn't it?

"Well, you look old.  Do you feel old?"  Tulojow grinned cheekily, relaxing comfortably into her chair.  "I might have a potion for that."   

A lithe young witch and a suave young wizard ambled by their table, arm in arm and Tulojow had to laugh. 

"I stand corrected.  We have gotten old."  She pointed with her pipe after the young pair.  "I bet, if you stumbled into them, they wouldn't even be offended.  They'd find it adorable." 

Barnabas widened his eyes, in that mischievous way he did when he saw a morsel of a lead. Tulojow Nagde, an inside source on Ministry division? If only he'd known decades ago. Of course, there was always space for connecting old with new. How did Level Two get on with Glass these days? He'd have to ask.

But Tulojow had affirmed he was old! He cackled in his clear tenor.  His gaze followed her after the Bright Young Things on their way to their next party.

"Indeed they would, I'm sure of it. Probably wouldn't even know who we are."

He wasn't bitter about it. Young people (not as a rule) were usually too self-concerned to take an interest in the goings on that Barnabas covered in the Daily Prophet, and Tulojow, well she kept a low profile, didn't she? She caught the eye, but how few would know the witch they were looking at and her decades of capers?

"I feel..." he considered dramatically, twirling a hand in the air as if to prestidigitate the right word, "patinaed. Seasoned like the cast iron cauldron of the great potioneer in the sky. If I've become at all feeble, why, it's a badge we've earned to finally know a thing or two those Bright Young Things do not."

"Oh, speak for yourself, Mr. Antique," Tulojow chided with a broad grin before sipping her wine.  "You may be an ancient relic that's been forgotten by these youngsters, but that doesn't mean we all are." 

Though the darkened ambiance of their venue did much to mask the various purveyors in a cloak of mystery, Tulojow was certain she could recognize half of the faces of the younger set.  And, a handful of the Ministry crowd. 

"You might have fallen to the back page, but I've stayed hip and relevant, thanks to hot cocoa and blackberry cobbler."  Tulojow cast a mischievous grin at Barnabas before taking a long draw off of her pipe.  Or perhaps, that was just wishful thinking.  She remembered all too well how quickly she'd forgotten her teachers after she'd left school.

She chuckled and nodded her head.  "I'm afraid I feel more like a rusted cast iron pot that someone left out in the desert sun some odd years ago," she said, lifting her leg and tentatively stretching her creaky knee.  "But, you are still a spring chicken, my lad.  We could still wipe the floor with them.  If we wanted to." 

"How are the youngsters still treating you down at the printing press?  Any exciting exposés or celebrity gossip in the works?"

Tulojow was as cracking as a whip! Her easy humor delighted old Cuffe who always had a taste for the dry. He didn't burst forth in great peals of laughter, but his face showed his amusement and admiration nonetheless.

He toasted their longevity and potency that could only come therefrom.

"Oh, bah, bah" he said his voice low and his head shaking. Shoptalk, he loved it. He enjoyed putting on airs of a humble general of sorts, a captain of some massive, sturdy vessel just doing the Good Work.

"One step ahead, as always. Steady the course," he said. He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his wild grey curls. "I'm proud to say we have the best in the business. Cartwright, Thursby, Groust - our heavy lifters. On the front lines of this Dementor business. Nasty business," he said.

"You must have seen that kind of action," he said gently, inquisitively.

"Heavy lifters with integrity," Tulojow commended, with a subtle nod towards Barnabas. 

Journalism was a powerful and commanding profession, one that Tulojow sometimes felt was still underestimated.  "We all seem quick to repeat the old adage that the quill is mightier then the wand but, somehow, the wand still manages to enjoy more respect.  I suppose that's our love affair with instant gratification." 

"Still no word on what has the soul-suckers riled up?" Tulojow asked.  As far as she could gather from inside the Ministry, there were leads and suspicions but nothing solid.  It was unlikely the Prophet knew more then they did, but not unheard of. 

Slowly, Tulojow dipped her head.  "I have, indeed.  All too frequently - but I remember the first time I experienced them.  You, my dear, are probably too young to remember it."  Oh, Tulojow knew she only had the old newsman beat by a few years but, in this case, it was a vital few years.  "Summer of 1945 - I'd just left North Dakota for the first time to start school.  They were rampant in the States, between Grindelwald and the war.  The bombs had just been dropped in Japan and they were flocking.  I'm sure they were here, too." 

Tulojow took a slow sip of her wine.  "They are never the harbingers of good times, are they?"  She smiled at Barnabas before reaching out to pat his forearm.  "But I, for one, have faith in this lot.  I know they will do better then we've done in the past.  I can feel it.  Can't you?"

There was something deeply genuine about Tulojow Nagde, an authenticity and sincerity that Barnabas would be hard pressed to recall in another. Perhaps Millicent Bagnold, but she had been noting like Tulo.

Barnabas himself was somewhat tamed by her openness. He noticed it, and was at peace with it. He'd never seen a Dementor, not up close. He'd seen them in a horrid formation high in stormy clouds over Surrey, once. It had been enough to chill him to the bone and keep one eye on the sky every time he went outside.

"I can't tell if they follow sorrow or bring it with them. Perhaps, one then other," he said a more soberly.  He gave considerable thought to her evaluation and hopes of the current generations, the witches and wizards in their prime or just entering it. It was hard to compare. Every decade brought its own dark days.

"I must be honest: I couldn't say," he said. "Despite the name of our storied periodical, I find myself rarely engaged in far off prediction and divinations of the heart. I toil in the recent past, and the Just Around The Corner. And endeavor to make a little when we can. Tip a pendulum. We're a ship on river."

"Perhaps both," the older woman offered, with a glance towards Barnabas.  "My people have long since believed the circle to be sacred for there are very few elements of life that have such definable beginnings and ends.  Seasons.  Life.  Day to night and back again.  But, then, we also believe that every creature brings its own strength and purpose to the world.  I've tried to guess those creatures bring but have yet to figure it out." 

Tulojow sipped her wine and watched, contently, as a pair of witches took a seat at the bar and ordered a pair of pearlescent shots that were disturbingly shiny, given the low light of their current venue.  With decisive, perhaps emboldening, nods to each other, the witches downed the drinks and dissolved into conspiratory giggles.

The older witch chuckled and shook her head, remembering the days when her own tastes were that adventurous.  With a sparkle of mischief in her eye, Tulojow nudged Barnabas lightly with her elbow and discretely tilted her chin in the direction of the bar.  "I bet you could still handle one of those," Tulojow offered, brightly.  Then, the sparkle of mischief reaching her grin, she added: "The drinks, I mean.  Not the witches." 

"Indeed," he agreed. There was shocking little known about Dementors, perhaps because so much of their recorded history was unspeakable. Where they came from, their nature? A question for seekers not newsmen. Their archives were filled with more than a few photos of the beasts, by now, and their illustrator was getting quite good at their sucking maws.

Cuffe turned a little in his seat to see the what concoction Tulojow was referring to and he turned back his expression changed swiftly to a subdued mania.  "Madam Nagde, I am unleashed!"

He snapped his fingers and a few fleet gestures was enough to set the bartender to action for Calaveras's VIP guests. It wasn't long before a server set down a pair of interlocking shot glasses, swirling with iridescent youthful folly. Barnabas slid them apart and lifted it to regard it in the light.

"Dare I ask what this is?" he said, either the server or his companion having the option to answer.

"Madam Nagde, I am unleashed!"

"That, I'm sure, will be a magnificent sight," Tulojow laughed as she leaned back against the booth cushion to watch the seasoned journalist order a pair of amusingly potion-like drinks

Oh.  Somewhere in the back of Tulojow's mind, a cautionary voice was trying to claim that the follies of youth were hazardous for the more advanced in age.  A fair number of years had passed since she was twenties and could rise to a full day's work after a night of drinking anonymous concoctions. 

Luckily, she was also a seasoned healer.  Years of serving as a school's healer could leave one familiar with a healthy variety of anti-hangover potions. 

Tulojow shrugged, admitting her own ignorance about the drink.  The server simply offered a coy, knowing grin and the drink's ever-unhelpful name before moving on to the next table. "It's an Angelic Eclipse.  Best take it slow."

"Best take it slow," Tulojow repeated, casting a grin at her aged company.  "Lest we break a hip, I suppose.  I won't judge if you choose to tip toe in."  She, on the other hand, had no intentions of doing so.  She tipped her head back and downed the silky concoction. 

The mixture had an oddly cooling - chilling - effect on her throat, not unlike accidentally swallowing an ice cube.  The punch of the alcohol was paired with a subtle, though distinct sense of euphoria that wasn't entirely unlike a mild case of Woodstock.  But, as her mind acclimated to the new sensation, she could hear sounds in the back of her mind - sound that evoked both comforting and enticing memories. 

"Parrots.  I hear parrots.  And waterfalls - and, I think, drums."  Her eyes slid, curiously, towards her companion. 

"Take it slow!" Cuffe cawed as Tulojow downed the concoction like she was twenty-two and living for the night. Of course, he had to follow her down that rabbit hole.

"Here's to no tomorrows," he said, then tossed it back.

Cuffe watched for Tulojow's reaction as his own effects bloomed from the inside. She described the sensation of an island getaway. He'd been himself to Barbados before and once to Cyprus. He laughed when his own eyelids grew heavy and he almost felt a breeze in his wild grey hair.

"This, yes, this is very peculiar. I fear I am having a prophetic vision." He wasn't at all afraid, of course. Only an expression.  He'd always wished he had the gift of Sight - what better for the Daily Prophet to know what was coming around the corner? But alas, he was firmly planted in the present mundane.

That didn't stop him from letting the Eclipse inspire him.

"I see ... " he touched two fingers to his third eye, "...why I can see our obituaries, burning with a fiery ink on the great newspaper in the stars. I see them from my catamaran... I think they are all going to miss us."