Late afternoon on Tuesday, August 7
Inside Hopworts Brewing Co.
Arch 22, Druid St
Bermondsey, London

The size of the book club had ebbed and flowed over the past year, but there had been a good turnout today: nearly a dozen of them, come together to discuss an Argentinian short story that was close to seventy years old. 

The discussion had been good and lively, and had run the gamut from Argentinian politics in 1946 to a brief interlude about the power of the people to the parable’s connection with interpretation of theory today. It wasn’t long after the clock struck four that their little club was beginning to filter out, off to school or work or wherever it was that called them.

Saoirse had already started to collect the empty mugs and plates, so Pollux left her to it. Instead, he stepped behind the bar, where a collection of newly-washed glasses that he’d left to clean themselves during the meeting were waiting to be put away. With a wave of his wand, the glasses formed a floating profession, levitating themselves to make their way one by one from the drying rack to a nearby shelf behind the bar.

“Got a minute for a quick drink, Pol?”

Pollux looked up to see Naleda, who owned the vegan sausage shop next door. He flashed her a bright smile, flicking his wand to divert two of the floating taster glasses so that they flew directly to them.

“I do,” he agreed amiably, plucking them out of the air as he turned back towards the tap handles. “What’ll do ye?”

Naleda arched an elegantly shaped eyebrow at him as she settled onto a stool, setting her copy of Bestiario down on the counter. “Oh, whatever you’re after,” she said airily. “You know better than I do what’s on, don’t you?”

Overhead, a loud rumbling sound set everything in the pub to quivering. Used as he was to the freight trains passing overhead, it didn’t take Pollux long to find his balance. He filled first one glass and then the other,

”Slainte,” he offered her, sliding one of the two tasters across the counter to her.

Naleda flashed him a smile and they both drank, taking a moment to savor the sudden quiet after the departure of the passing train.

“So —“ he’d started, when movement near the door caught his eye.

There was still about an hour until Hopworts would open officially for the evening. Pollux had opened his mouth to say so when he realized who it was that had stepped inside.

“Niobe!” Pollux blinked in surprise at his sister, too surprised to even use his usual nickname for her. Niobe was a fairly regular visitor to his brewery, but almost always much later in the evening and only very rarely alone. What was she doing here so early in the evening, and with no sign of her girlfriend in sight?

"Hi there, Pol," Niobe Thursby, a Bajan-Irish witch of thirty-six years and a notable journalism career, took her time sauntering over from through the cheese shop. She seemed to be in good spirits. She had her hair wrapped for a long day out in the countryside, chasing down interviews. Her long arms were bare and she carried more than a couple cases and bags all hanging from her shoulders; she hadn't stopped at home.

Niobe knew Naleda only so far as she ran the sausage place down the way. Niobe suspected she fancied Pollux and was content to allow it without her interference.

"And you," she acknowledged politely as she set her things down at the bar. Niobe treated Pol's brewery as home, like their parents' kitchen almost, just with hundreds of strangers passing through by the week and muggle trains constantly rolling overhead.

"Why the shock, then?" Niobe quizzed him. "Is there a ghost trailing me?"

"What, says ye?" returned Pollux, who was very suddenly intent on busying himself by organizing everything in sight. "Catch yourself on!"

His task was made more difficult by the fact that there wasn't really anything to neaten: the area around the till had already been cleared in preparation for opening tonight, the glassware had been just put back, and there were only so many times he could wipe down the wooden bar before the varnish itself began to wear away. Busily, he quickly occupied himself with folding his cleaning rag into a perfect square, taking care to make sure that its corners matched precisely.

The rumble of another freight train, this one passing in the opposite direction, at least saved him for having to engage in conversation for another moment.

"Well, I'm off." If Naleda was aware of any awkwardness between the siblings, she didn't show it as she set her empty glass down on the counter and rose to her feet. "I've got to get the shop back open. Good to see you, Niobe," she added, giving the other woman a smile. "Thanks for hosting again, Pol," she added, tapping twice on the bar by way of thank you before she headed for the door.

His neighbor's departure at least gave him something new to clean. Pollux scooped up the empty glass and began to wash it by hand, holding his breath as he turned the faucet on and began to scrub it under the warm water.

"What's the craic?" he asked his sister, completely nonchalantly keeping his entire focus on scouring every inch of the offending taster glass. "I wasn't expecting you by tonight."

"Pollux..." Niobe ventured, her voice almost a purr. Naleda had gone, leaving Pollux acting funny.

She had surprised her brother. He was top to bottom sheepish in his round-framed spectacles and cuffed trousers. How many times had Niobe been chastised for not minding her own business - not enough as the habit had not been broken.

"Hosting what, Pollux? Why do you look like that?"

Gaining nothing immediately but the image of a man washing a glass,  so Niobe turned and scanned the tasting room for some clue of what had Pollux acting so intentionally casual.

"You're not serving muggles again," she scoffed, not being serious.

His sister's question cut to the point quicker than Sectrumsempra.

"Muggles?" Pollux gaped at Niobe as if she'd just said a dirty word, his eyes nearly as round as the spectacles framing them.  "Here? In my tasting room?"

The question of what or whom he had been hosting were left forgotten as hurt at the unfounded accusation radiated off of him. Pollux looked as shocked as if his favorite sister had just accused him of plotting to resurrect Voldemort and hex the Ministry into submission. Everything about his body language conveyed that if there had been Muggles here, it was a complete surprise to him as much as it would have been for anyone else.

Niobe turned at the hurt in Pol's voice to find him looking like a martyr in a stained glass window.

"I was joking but look at that wee face," Niobe said with a gasp. She set down her things at once, took another glance around and Apparated to the other side of the bar with him. She was a head shorter than he was but didn't seem to remember that.

"You've learned nothing!" she said in a sharp hush. "Oh, Pollux, you've learned nothing. You've worked so hard!"

She accented the final word by flicking a finger at his face. "And you're going to balls it up," she added in a whisper.

Oh, Niobe had no evidence. None at all. She could be wrong and she'd regret not being supportive and assuming the worst, but the man always seemed to find a way to self-sabotage.

For all that she'd already lost a finger to it, his sister had no notion of personal space, whether it belonged to man or beastie. Quick as a wink, she'd reappeared on his side of the bar, her scolding finger threatening his face.

"What am I bolluxing up, then?" Pollux protested. Any pretense of cleaning now heartily abandoned, he raised his hands in the air, objecting to his innocence with vigor. "I've done everything the Ministry has asked, haven't I?"

It was an exceedingly sore subject: back when Hopworts had first opened, it had been shut down very quickly after The Incident[1] had caught Level Three's ire. It had taken many months and far too many inspections to convince the Ministry powers-that-be that Pollux and his co-owners were indeed taking the Statute of Secrecy seriously. Since then, though, there'd been nary a peep: as anti-neighborly as it seemed, he'd been exceptionally careful every time he thought a Ministry inspector might come calling.

"We've charmed the entrance," he informed his sister loudly, counting off on his fingers. "We've made the building unplottable. There's no spells allowed in the street, and no apparating from anywhere except the back patio. We've installed all the anti-Muggle charms they've wanted on the place. In Godric's name, they're working so well that Naleda's even complained that she's losing business!"

1.	The Incident

It was often a bit of a rush between cleaning up after their book club meetings and opening for the night, and so Saoirse had set about her task with a singular focus after the guests had left. She'd used her wand to collect all of the dirty dishes and plates,  letting them hang unobtrusively in the air until her boss finished his usual mingling and the path to the sink was finally clear. Next, she'd scoured all of the surfaces and begun to set out each of the little menu stands on the barrels and tabletops, but even when she busied herself by putting them out by hand, there was only so long she could reasonably delay.

There was also only so much she could pretend to ignore, especially when Pollux's volume was increasing with his level of indignity. Huffing a sigh, Saoirse snuck an impatient look over her shoulder. There didn't really seem to be a point in not interrupting if her boss and his sister were going to have a fierce row right in the middle of the brewery.

It didn't take her very long to decide. With a flick of her wand, she sent the dirty dishes floating over in the direction of the sink. Then, quick as a flash, she too apparated to the opposite side of the bar to intercept them, right next to the two quarreling siblings.

"Alright, hey, Niobe?" Saoirse said cheerfully, using her elbows to reclaim a bit of space back from Pollux. She not-so-secretly admired her employer's sister, who struck her as fearless and a bit cool and not at all afraid to get herself dirty when she dug in the mud against those in power. "Ah, sorry, Pol. I don't suppose you could back up a bit there, yeah?"

Pollux's vehemence he'd been wrongly accused did give Niobe reason to doubt her conclusion. In her professional life, she had no reason to cling to things unsupported, but with Pol and others, there was some pride attached that made backing down sticky. Not her best quality.

"That's grand-!" she'd begun to say when they were interrupted with a pop. Saoirse, who was a decade younger than Niobe, and half a foot shorter, was intervening with pointy elbows. Niobe regarded her cooly and retreated only just enough.

"Oh, hi there, Saoirse," Niobe replied without true kindness. She was one of Pol's more recent hirers and Niobe liked her well enough as did Foy. "Has Pollux had muggles in here?"

She was asking Saoirse but looking at Pollux not ready to drop the topic.

"Muggles?" Saoirse echoed, as cheerfully careless as if her employer's sister had asked after her weekend.

She knew to be careful around potential Ministry agents -- by now, such caution had become second nature, even without Pollux's warnings -- but in Saoirse's eyes, Niobe was about as far from the magical government as one could get. She was about to give an honest response when by chance she turned to summon the soap and caught sight of Pollux, who had moved out of her way but looked as though he were going to bore a hole in the back of her head with the desperate force of his gaze.

"Oh, sorry," she amended as she switched tactics, as smooth as a freshly poured pint. "No, sorry, he hasn't. He never would. We don't serve Muggles in here."

Taking advantage of the workspace she'd claimed for herself, the witch blithely set to her task. With a flick of her wand, the sink began to fill up with warm water. The soap fluttered slowly over from the shelf to join the hovering dishes, which floated above the bath as they all waited their turn.

Saoirse was on message, if a little too practiced. Pollux tried not to squirm as he met his sister's gaze, raising his eyebrows as if to say 'I told you so.' He'd never quite figured out the trick of lying to Niobe, but refusing to back down from his stance seemed to be a good part of it.

"Is that enough for you now?" he asked, very pointedly. "I didn't realize you were after a job with Magical Catastrophes, Nibs."

He'd left his copy of Bestiario sitting on the counter. As unsuspiciously as possible, Pollux scooped it up and tucked it out of sight under the hardwood, doing his best to reclaim his proper sense of bustling authority behind the bar. For perhaps the first time that day, he could feel a sense of empathy for the unnamed narrator in the short story that their book club had been reading earlier, who had also had his personal dwelling twice invaded for no reason at all.

"Now that we're through all that, if you've dropped in for a pint, there's plenty of seats thonder," he informed her, jerking his thumb towards the bar stools on the opposite side of the bar. "What'll do ye? I think there's been a new cask put on since the last time youse were in."

Quick Saoirse was loyal to Pollux, or smart enough not to allow herself to be drawn into whatever the Thursby siblings were fighting about, or both. Niobe resolved then to make better friends with her. Nothing about Pollux's firm denials did anything to alay Niobe's suspicions, but by battering him, she'd got the door bolted against her.

The deliberateness of how they both returned to normal business made Niobe roll her eyes.

"Done enough for now," she said, equaly as pointed. She saw him clear a red paperback off the counter, reclaim his space, and very transparently banish her across to the other side. She walked this time to avoid the rude 'crack' of a salty jump.

The offer of beer was a diversion (not an olive branch), but if she didn't accept, she'd have no pretense to stay other than being fond of him.

"Whatever's good," she deflected choosing. All the beer was good here. She'd returned to her things on the customer-side of the bar.

"What're ye reading?" she asked, apparently abandoning her terrier-chase. "Did I see Naleda with the same one? Little book club or?"

She wiggled her shoulders at such a tidy little thing to do.