Sunday, October 9
7:30 PM
The Demon's Head pub, Knockturn Alley

Sunday was the last night he really had free before the next full moon, especially since they were planning to set a 72-hour watch.  For once, he had felt too restless to hole up in his flat, so he'd owled Figaro about stopping by St. Mungo's that evening.

The hospital visit hadn't been pleasant.  Even under normal circumstances, Kurby hated spending any time in St. Mungo's.  Over the past six weeks, seeing Zelda lashed down to a hospital bed so that her arm couldn't hurt anyone had been difficult, but he'd still forced himself to drop in and visit his friend.  But the past couple of trips had become grimmer and grimmer, as the strange spirit that had been possessing her grew stronger and stronger, taking hold over her mind and body.  Tonight, he and Figaro had stopped in to find that the Healers had had her in a potions-induced sedation for two days, trying to buy themselves time before the pentral completely won its battle.

There wasn't anything that they could do, except spend half an hour awkwardly chatting by her bed and then just-as-awkwardly depart.  He'd felt awful afterwards, and he couldn't imagine the kid felt any better, so Kurby had suggested grabbing a drink.

They'd settled on The Demon's Head -- far enough away from most reputable crowds that he wasn't going to run into anyone he didn't want to talk to, but not so dangerous that he'd feel guilty bringing Figaro there.

Kurby grunted as he dropped the lad's drink of choice in front of him.  His own beer in hand, he slid onto the bench across from Figaro, positioning himself so that his back was to the wall.

"There's food comin'," he said curtly. 

Raising his glass of light-colored lager, he took a long drink.  Now that they were here and settled, he realized he had no idea how to make small talk with a teenaged recent graduate of Hogwarts.  There were plenty of young kids who had come through the Werewolf Capture Unit, but with them, the conversation topics had always been fairly defined:  werewolves, how not to die, full moons, protective charms, and how not to personally annoy him.  Here with Figaro, none of those seemed relevant.

Nor did he want to talk about Zelda.

"How's, uh..."  He paused, setting his glass down carefully on the table between them to buy himself a moment to think. 

"How's the newspaper, then?" he asked awkwardly at last.  "Settled in?"

Figaro really didn't have any context with which to cope with what was happening to his mother. All he could do was close it up and put it away. It was different with his Dad in prison because there was their mother between them, the buffer for what should be done and provide consolation. And with his dad, there was an end date. The family was waiting for something that would come. No such buffer existed for the Sellaphix brothers now, and there was nothing to wait for.

Kurby Bagnold was doing everything Figaro suspected should be his own responsibility. It caused him a wretched pit in his stomach every time he thought about how Kurby was the one who'd noticed something was wrong, who got her to the hospital, and who was visiting regularly. That wretched pit, that was shame and there was nothing to be done about it now.

So he did as he was told, made jokes, took all the shifts he could, and tried not to sleep.

By the time they got to Demon's Head, even inexhaustible Figaro was out of steam. He had a red Irish lager condensating in front of him.  He traced paths through the moisture on the glass.

"Hm? Oh, right, s'going good... " he nodded. He was trying to look interested but he trailed off. When he was younger, he and Kurby had more fun together, Figaro happily chatting at him, Kurby tolerantly engaged. Figaro would bait him into harmless jinxes, Kurby would bring him dirty jokes. But relationships change, and as they both grew up, they grew in different directions. Sometimes hard to find something to talk about.

How's school? Good. How's work? Good. How's Frank? Good.

Figaro search for something else to say.  He scratched his jaw line where he needed a shave. "Um, yeah, like, I'm there all the time. Just doing the menial stuff - getting food, cleaning up, deliveries. Started going out with reports or photographers to help carry shit. Thing at Level Two's blown over. Things uh ..." he paused, distracted by a dark thought, then came back to himself, "things blow over. Cuffe shouts about something new every three seconds, so yesterday is already old news there."

He liked how fast things moved there. Never a moment to think or worry. Just always moving forward, actively seeking the next thing.

The kid's update on life at the Daily Prophet unfortunately hadn't lasted very long.  For the most part, Kurby tried to stay well away from the journalistic aspects of the magical world, with only a couple of notable exceptions, but Figaro's description matched his very vague impressions.  Plenty to do, a quick pace, but not very much of importance.  He imagined that Zelda must have been happy that her kid found something to dump his endless energy into, even if his career choice was probably too close to aligning with mainstream society for her liking.

What the hell else was he supposed to ask about?  Hogwarts wasn't exactly a current topic.  He didn't feel like it was his place to nag Figaro about whether he was keeping up with his father's instructions,[1] which he'd passed on soon after getting Rafe's letter.  They'd already covered work.  School was long since over.  He didn't really know much about Figaro's personal life, aside from...

"How's...."  Hell, he felt awkward.  Kurby took a swallow of beer to mask it, and then tried again.  "How's your, uh, girlfriend?" 

Since The Incident,[2] he hadn't seen Moira McBoid at the Sellaphix household.  Granted, he'd been taking care to stop by much later in the day, and to always make a show of knocking before entering, just in case the young couple hadn't gotten the message the last time around.  He didn't really care what the two teenagers did or where they did it, but he also wasn't exactly interested in knowing anything about it.

1.	Letters to Rafe
2.	Sept 28 - Like a Fur Boot

Figaro inhaled his red ale directly into whatever sinus hurt the most. He put his sleeve to his nose and mouth to handle the sinus-ale that was making its evacuation out his nose. Girlfriend?

"What?" he wheezed. "Merlin, I wish."

Figaro didn't have a girlfriend and never in his living days had Kurby ever asked about his past girlfriends before, so why start now? I mean, sure, they could have that conversation, but it was going to be a short one. Was Kurby hinting that he ought to have a girlfriend? Was he taking the piss? Figaro searched Kurby's face but all he saw a terrified thirty-year-old trying desperately to be a proper Supportive 'Uncle', or whatever.

"Bollocks, Kurby, nice of you to bring it up, though." Figaro quipped, still handling having inhaled his beer, so his voice not audibly good-natured. "How about your girlfriend?"