Spellpunk in Diagon Alley
22 November 2011 @ 9pm

In the chilly lamplight outside of Spellpunk's subtle surface-side entrance, Figaro Sellaphix was in an animated argument with two fifteen-year-old witches. They had him on the ropes, the older wizard clearly flustered while the pair of them were linked in arm and taking turns piping in.

"You're both crazy! There's no way he -" Figaro began, crossing his arms tight.

They interrupted him, grinning, saying something that made him laugh mirthlessly.

"Ha ha, right, very funny. Let's all laugh at the - no. No, that's not what I'm saying - "

The girls laughed and whispered to each other.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school? It's Tuesday."

The taller of the girls held out her hand.

"Fine. Fine, but that's only because I'm a nice person.  You're both very wrong, but since I'm nice, I'm letting you win. No, that's right, I'm letting you - just -"

Figaro held up a finger, then thrust his hand into his shockingly yellow plaid jacket pocket. He handed them something. As the laughed and strolled away, he turned and saw the figure of Fauna Blake approaching.

He waved. "Help, I've been robbed," he said with a grin as she approached.

Fauna apparated nearby, wrapped in her favorite mustard yellow cloak, her warmest and coziest leggings, and a gray plaid skirt, also cozy. Not club wear, but who cared? It was trivia night. And she'd brought her victory hat.

She stopped and scanned the queue outside the club, putting her hands in the pockets of her cloak and swinging her arms a bit. There was Figaro, doing his nervous chatter thing (she could tell even from a distance) with two young witches. He'd shown up! His atrocious yellow jacket took on a sickly gleam under the streetlights. Fauna chuckled to herself. No brr-shiver-I-forgot-my-coat this time! She crossed her arms, nervous for a moment as she thought of that day outside the bookstore when she'd arrested him.

Figaro handed one of the girls something and they walked away. She glanced at them curiously and moved towards Fig, lifting her hat off and setting it back on her head as if to say hey, check it out.

The cap was a lovely light gray wool, and it would have looked like any other hat if not for the silver dragon handles jutting from the sides.

Yes, she was wearing the goblet of fire atop her head. Not actual fire, but it might, it just might be enchanted to look like flames came out of it if she waved her wand a certain way.

"What happened? Did you start trivia without me? Are we losing?"

She widened her eyes in mock alarm, hesitated, then gave him her most awkward of Fauna hugs. Her arms lightly encircled him, she patted his back twice, and then pulled away with a searching look.

He didn't hate her! Did he?

Eek. Fauna's hug was bad. Figaro was trying to pretend nothing had happened - how else did you deal with the absolute shitshow of that fateful, explosive first week of November? Fig had no idea. He'd spent time plenty of time being angry, ashamed, confused, betrayed, apologetic and none of it made him feel better. Fauna's lukewarm hug, eh, it was a physical manifestation that she'd maybe been feeling all of that, too.

He hugged her back and gave her a skeptical look. She looked back at him. She'd asked him a question. Oh right, the girls. He wanted to tell her to just forget about the robbery, but that would mean talking about it.

"No, they wanted me to sneak them in so I made this bet with them, and ... you know, never mind. Nice hat."

He smiled and reached up to try one of the handles. It was knitted.

"Did you make this?"

Fauna blinked. She didn't know, but whatever! She was used to seeing Fig launch into nervous chatter around a gaggle of girls. People in general. She was just trying hard not to think about the word robbery. Should they talk about it? Should she apologize?

Fauna didn't know. She was the type who would apologize when someone bumped their head on the low beam of a house that wasn't even hers, but now that it really mattered, she hesitated.

An apology meant she'd done something wrong and wouldn't do it again. She'd done her job, and it had felt wrong. It had felt shitty, definitely. It had felt ridiculous, making him sit there, doubting him, doubting herself, for eight hours. But that was the job, and feeling and knowing were different things. If she were better at her job, maybe he would have been out of there in less than an hour. Maybe she wouldn't have needed to question him at all.

"Thanks!" She smiled hesitantly, glancing around the queue in half-constant-vigilance mode, half-Fauna-nervous mode. Her housemates, all fellow Auror trainees, had stared at her in confusion as she'd left that evening, and for once not at her hat. Meeting Fig for apology drinks, she'd said, and a chorus of huh? had bid her farewell.

"My mum made the normal cap part of it, actually. I borrowed it years ago for the Tetrawizard tournament, to cheer on the champions. I just added the handles and uh... well, you'll see. I mean, when we win?"

Her eyebrows raised up, her voice lilted up, did he hate her? Did he? He'd never hid anything nasty behind niceness before, which gave her hope. She cared a surprising amount considering that they'd only recently become friends again, but despite everything, despite his big mouth and her questionable questioning skills, any annoyance or anger she'd felt had completely faded, leaving behind a huge heaping of Awkward. For her. She was looking for clues that it wasn't so easy for Figaro, former suspect.

This was way worse than their previous Apology Drinks after the whole Pants on Fire bit. Way worse! They were both trying desperately to talk about hats. If only they could just talk about hats. Figaro couldn't help but keep looking at Fauna skeptically. He crossed his arms and scratched his neck, never great at hiding what he was thinking.

The line to get in was moving annoyingly slowly. Maybe those girls were holding things up with the bouncer. He didn't particularly want to have a discussion in public. Well, he didn't want to have it at all, actually. She was looking at him, looking at him for something.

"Do you, um, want to, uh, talk about it?" he asked leaning towards her a little, unhappy to ask the question. He didn't want a lecture - Merlin's bones, he'd had his fill. And he didn't want to apologize. But he also hated this feeling, seeing Fauna so incredibly uncomfortable.

He looked unhappy. Oh no, he looked unhappy. Of course he looked unhappy. She started to cross her arms too, then pretended like she was brr-shiver cold and hugged her arms instead.

"Um," she glanced at the front of the queue. So slow.

"Okay," Fauna took a deep breath and inched forward, conscious of the gazillions of trivia-obsessed young adults behind and in front of them.

"I just wanted to say," she bit her lip. "That I'm really sorry."

She glanced into his eyes, then glanced away, then glanced back, reminded of when she'd kept apologizing while also trying to arrest him in the alley next to Whizzhard Books. Mistake! She shouldn't have apologized then. She wasn't completely sure she should be apologizing now, for doing her job. But she felt sorry.

"How everything went down was um, really awful. I could have handled it better. I feel terrible. I hadn't wanted to, you know," she lowered her voice, "arrest you, but I had to rule you out, and then you panicked and I got pissy and it's all so dumb, and er, I'm surprised you're here, like you're here," she gestured at him. "Trying to be nice to me when I'm..."

She drew in another breath and held it. Fill in the blank! An Auror. An arsehole. An arsehole Auror. A bad friend.

Figaro wanted to say so much. There'd been a couple weeks to process things, and even with Talisha Crowe and his mother and (holy shit) his dad yacking at him from his shoulders, he still didn't really 'get' what happened or why Fauna did what she did. But he'd kind of become okay not understanding.

He couldn't think about it without getting turned around. It was stupid of her to arrest him, he felt tricked. He was an idiot about it and made it harder than it had to be, but maybe she deserved it? And he'd done everything possible to prolong the questioning and put her in a horrible position, but between the two of them hadn't he been the one in the horrible position.

Figaro realized he was cringing and hadn't said anything yet. What did you say when someone apologized? Not something that happened to him very often. Merlin, he just wanted Fauna to feel better. He hated that she was upset.

He remembered Fauna'd kind of put herself out there, laid it all on the line: twice. Inviting him out and now addressing the elephant. So he tried a smile, and he was good at that.

"It's fine. Fauna. I'm fine, you're fine. We're all fine."

The smile faded as he tried to think, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm not angry. Really. We should just forget about it?"

The line was advancing, whatever was bottlenecking the queue was unstoppered.

There was no I forgive you. There was no I understand. There was just it's fine and let's forget about it. Maybe that was enough. She  reminded herself she wasn't apologizing for her (okay, maybe a little bit), she was doing this for him. Figaro said he just needed to forget about it and not talk about it. She hoped that was true.

"Okaaaay," Fauna said very slowly, watching his face and waiting for the long drawn-out cringe to return. It didn't.

"If you're sure? There's nothing I can....?"

Do or say.

Fauna showed her wand to the doorman, received the purple stamp on her hand, and followed the crowd inside, feeling a mixture of confusion and relief. Relief that they didn't have to talk about it. She just couldn't believe he had nothing to say. It was better he didn't. No, it would only fester. No, it was better this way. Figaro was who he was and he didn't hold grudges. He hid from serious talk sometimes (a lot of the time), but his friends knew where they stood with him and he didn't hide his feelings.

Maybe he really wasn't mad?

"I'm buying the first round of drinks," she raised her voice over the din and went to the bar. He'd find a table away from the nutty trivia types, and they could drink and forget and possibly answer a trivia question, if only so she could show off her ridiculous hat.

As Fauna waited for the drinks, she glanced up at the stars shining in the enchanted ceiling, just like at Hogwarts. Everything had felt simpler then. They'd just been two students in the same house, in very similar stages of their lives, learning and messing up and learning again.

The bartender handed her the special of the night. She blinked.

"Two goblets of fire!" The bartender smiled.

Fauna stared at the huge goblets. A foggy sort of smoke wafted up from the rims. She couldn't tell what exactly was inside, but she bet it burned.

"We also have the grindylow, dragon's breath, and golden egg. And a few others, if you answer the questions correctly."

"Um, great!"

Um, uh oh!

Fauna in her goblet hat made her way back to the table, one goblet in each hand. Even from several steps away in the dim light of the club, her wide eyes projected that yes, she'd made another mistake.

"I mean, can you tell there's a theme?" She set the goblets on the table and took a seat across from him.

Fauna smiled, encouragingly. After him!

Fauna seemed reluctant to accept Figaro's uncharacteristicly brief response, and for a moment he thought maybe they should hash it out. But presently the topic was shelved and they were into the club from the cold. It was poppin' for a Tuesday and Figaro noted as much.

"Go home, ye drunks!" he said loudly. Fauna and Figaro split off, Faun to grab drinks and Fig to get the table. He was curious to see what Fauna would choose for them both to drink - Spellpunk's standard fair was more eclectic than the Leaky, Death & Co, or Old Brick. He peeled off his yellow Badger Pride jacket revealing his lucky Falmouth Falcon's jersey.

A wizard who looked to be in his mid-twenties and had an enormous handlebar mustache was setting up the trivia leaderboard. The logo of the TetraWizard Tournament that had been everywhere that year, all over school and in the Daily Prophet was drawn in chalk large, and he could see that the rounds would be clumped into tasks. Figaro couldn't help but look around. He'd been a champion. Shouldn't that mean free drinks or something? He'd covered the event for the school paper; his chances were good. Lost in thought, he didn't notice Fauna until she was back at the table with a pair of atrocious drinks.

"Whoa! Fauna, that's a win," he said, clearly delighted by the gimmick that threatened to have them both heaving something sparkly later on. He slid the cup towards himself and moved it in a small circle to stir up the drink. It frothed and sparked.

Fig lifted the goblet, said in toast, "to my guts, may they stay inside me," and took a brave sip. His face went sour and he coughed. The same steamy froth came out of his nose.

"Raspberry."

Fauna took a sip from the goblet, already chuckling at Figaro. Not so bad! The froth tickled her nose, that was all, and oh shit - the drink burned down her throat. Their guts had no chance of survival that night.

"I predicted it," she coughed. "It burns."

Groups were settling in at other tables, most participants already drinking, and a few looking very serious about trivia night. One group was looking over a roll of parchment almost as large as the terrible transcript from Fig's questioning. What could they possibly be reviewing? Notes? Fauna had no notes. She definitely did not own a Tetrawizard Trivia notebook. Her purse was full with notes for work, and her slim, slightly dented Social Life? notebook.

"How was your party?" Fauna cleared her throat, finding her voice after all the burning. "You went pub hopping?"

She raised her eyebrows, curious. "Er, you can think of this as an extended party, I guess. Except we're pub sitting. Club sitting? Sitting in a club," she smiled, starting to revert to her natural dorky banter.

Sad, that she and Abby had half-started the multiple birthday party idea and then hadn't ended up attending. Raine had implied that it had been interesting, but that could mean many things.

"Mate, you're not even drunk yet!" Figaro laughed, leaning on his elbow. She was rambling. Maybe that was good. Back to normal?

"No, it was wicked. Everyone was there."

Then his eyes widened. Had she heard?

"Faun, Sasha brought a muggle," Figaro looked wild-eyed perplexed. From all accounting, Fig'd been the last one to figure it out. "They were mates from school, before Hogwarts. Anton. I don't remember much after Thumbs, but he and Bevans, look don't quote me, but eh..." Figaro nodded.

Suddenly Figaro slammed his hand on the table. "Oh! OH!"

He'd just remembered! The monumental awkwardity of the previous thirty minutes had been so distracting he'd forgotten the sodding headline news.  He kept tapping the table rapidly and then got his other hand involved and after two or three riffs, he leaned forward cupping his hands around his face.

"My dad's out. They let him out. I dunno, some deal or something." He sat back and lifted his eyebrows. "Yesterday."

What did she think? Fig had assumed everyone would be stoked, but. He suddenly felt a pang of worry that Auror Fauna wouldn't be excited that a convicted felon got out of Azkaban early. He watched her face carefully, as he did, slowly moving the goblet of fire closer to his face. She had to be happy for him, right? But maybe all she remembered about his dad was that all Fig ever did was complain about the grouchy letters and having to take Runes over, and then how messed up he was after. What must she think of Rafe? Shit, maybe he should have eased into this announcement a little more chill.

Fauna smiled and waved the froth from her drink up towards her face like one of those fancy sorts who sniffed wine before drinking it. It was the fumes! The fumes made her act drunk before she was properly drunk.

She only had a moment to consider Anton, the muggle, when Fig started smacking the table. Was he drunk already? How? Oh right, Anton was Sasha's friend, the muggle with the familiar name, from Facebook, who sometimes replied to Sasha's messages with amusingly inappropriate gifs that flustered Sasha and made Abby laugh, and it was nice really, to be in the know for once, but Figaro was having a crisis and...

His dad was out. Fig's dad. Who? Oh. The reason why Fig did not want his last name bandied about Level Two.

"Wait, what?" Her eyes widened. "From Azkaban?"

Runespoor smuggling. He'd been arrested a year ago. Two years ago. 2009. Sounded about right. Level Two had found runespoors washed up near the Thames earlier that month. It never seemed to end. Fauna blinked, doubting it was a coincidence. But Fig's dad was out, and that was good! Wasn't it? A very slight, tentative smile crept up her face, then faded as she noticed his watchful expression.

Fauna glanced away, remembering the winter of 2009. It had been her last year at Hogwarts, she'd been cry-studying for her NEWTS, trying to ignore the dumb werewolf rumors, and deciding, with Fig's help actually, to break up with Devlin. Fig, meanwhile, had been sitting near the common room fire, scowling at letters from his family, complaining about Runes, distracting his friends to distract himself. They'd never really talked about his dad. She didn't talk to him about hers.

She leaned over the table, pushing her goblet forward a few inches. Her hands curled loosely around the stem.

"Is that good?" Fauna winced. "I mean, are you glad? I mean," she paused. "Are you okay?"

Her mouth almost eased into a smile again, but not quite.

Figaro's face was purely incredulous. He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow and then began to nod slowly.

"Um, yes, Fauna. It's good thing and I'm doing well. Thank you for asking?" He broke into a true smile and shook his head.  She was just trying to be nice, he realized. Nothing about the situation was simple and it would have been a mess if Figaro wasn't elated and she'd wanted to celebrate. But no, this was good. Everything was good.

He slid his goblet over to clink hers. "Yeah, I mean. I haven't seen him since he went in. And yesterday I come home from work and he's just ... there! The old man had cleaned my flat, ambushed me with booze, and we just talked until he had to get home and uh, spend time with Zelda."

Over by the chalkboard, the two hipster hosts were starting to get attention, asking for team names and explaining the rules. A small chalkboard appeared on all the tables, including between Figaro and Fauna. 

"Not sure how or why - they're not saying - but next weekend we're going up to surprise Frank." He took a drink and ran his hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. He looked as happy as he said he did, and he was. Everything was going to be different, and he knew it wasn't going to be easy, but that whole part where Rafe was gone? It was finally behind them.

Fauna let out a sigh of relief. She belatedly raised her glass to clink with Fig's, and smiled, catching on to his enthusiasm.

"He cleaned your flat," she chuckled. "How bad was it?"

Such an indulging parental thing to do. She did wonder for a second how his dad had gotten in, then reasoned he must have had a key. Family, after all!

"...We just talked until he had to get home and uh, spend time with Zelda."

Mrs. Sellaphix, she chastised Raine in her head, only to realize it was just Fig, calling his mum by her first name.

He looked so happy. Fauna studied him over the chalkboard on their table, wishing that she could borrow his happy-go-lucky nature. He let go of grudges. He focused on the present and looked to the future with optimism. Of course the whole Sellaphix family was going to surprise Frank at school. They had worked it out. Of course he was okay. He was doing better than okay.

"Um, Huff and Puff," she called to the host asking for team names. Um Huff & Puff appeared on the scoreboard. Come on! Did the host not see her having a serious conversation?

Perhaps it was only serious for Fauna, fighting back a pang of emotion. She thought of Fig, glum and scowling in the common room. She thought about his dad, fresh out of Azkaban, happy to be home, happy to be with his kids.

"Fig, that's really great," she smiled and nodded, trying not to act as awkward as she felt at that moment. What was wrong with her?

"I'm glad you're all back together again."

She sipped at her drink. "So, it was just... like normal, after two years? You talked, and could talk to each other like usual?"

Fauna sounded somehow hopeful and incredulous at the same time. Had Rafe Sellaphix seemed like the same person? Had Azkaban changed him?

"What? No! It was weird as hell!" Figaro laughed.
 
The blackboard was filling up with other team names. Goblets of Fire Whiskey. Krum's Chums. Gryffindorks. Dragon Ticklers. Stephanie. Among others The hosts were beginning to read the rules, making terrible puns the whole time.

Figaro leant them only a half an ear while explained to Fauna. "Zelda's already ratted me out to him, so he was all up to date. I'm a foot taller, he's thirty pounds lighter. Really really weird but feelings are terrible so we talked."

The Sellaphixes were not a family with a strong tradition of confronting feelings in a direct or productive way. They were a family who preferred a laugh or getting on with it, depending on who you asked. Figaro and Rafe the former, Frank and Zelda the latter. The Blakes - or at least Fauna - seemed to take a different tack. Why was his short, earnest, laced up Auror friend being so strange?

He kept his smile but prodded, "what's wrong? Why are you being all ... flinchy?"