(About 4:30 in the afternoon)

There was still a healthy does of green grass in the late afternoon but their color had grown old and grungy.  The mare seemed oblivious to the less than ideal grazing conditions as her thick but nimble lips skillfully separated the still green blades from the already dead ones and drew them into her mouth.  There seemed to be just enough long, untrimmed grass along the backside of the Three broomsticks to keep the mare occupied for at least an hour, buying Deaglan just enough time to slip into the pub and warm himself up with a nice cup of tea by the fire. 

Deaglan's appearance was, quite often, as out of place here in a wizarding village such as Hogsmeade as it was in the heart of muggle London.  But, the faded, warn wool trousers and patched pile wool jacket were both worn with pride.  Each worn thread and hand sewn patch was their own testament to some story or some adventure. 

While the old man's travel-wary appearance wasn't, exactly, common place in the village, it wasn't exactly unfamiliar, either.  All-wizarding villages, such as Hogsmeade, were much easier places to set up shop for a few days to try and peddle his most recent creations.  Most of his wears were easy enough to offer for display in London but, well, the wands couldn't just be set out for display alongside the spoons, hair pins and tippers.  Whenever possible, Deaglan tried to swing by Hogsmeade at least once - if not twice a year. 

"Just a pot of black tea," he ordered.  The table closest to the fire was already occupied by a rather interestingly dressed young fellow.  The fads of the younger generations seemed to get stranger and stranger by the year.  But, the promise of a warm, crackling fire was almost too good to pass up. 

"It's promising a blustery night out there," Deaglan offered the young man as he lowered himself in his chair, shifting so his back was to the fire.  His brogue was heavy, well deepened with age and travels.  "Hasn't started yet, no, but she's threatening.  But, weather only makes a fire warmer, don't it?  Been here long?"  He asked the fellow.

The weather was the last thing on Ari's mind, though it might contribute to his mood.  Diagon Alley wasn't his first choice of stopping-place, either... too near the school.  Clearly framed in the shop's front windows, towering in the distance, brooding over him just as he brooded over it.  It had been his entire world-- a tiny cosmos wherein Ari truly belonged, yet it had betrayed him.  Just as the teachers he'd trusted had betrayed him.  The friends who'd laughed with him within its hallowed corridors...

His face held the lost, hungry look of desperation.  It was a fairly common expression for those who found themselves suddenly freed of the terror of Azkaban and thrust back into the world whose back had been turned to them.  Lost... slightly fearful... yet contemplative as he stared at the every-present castle through the window.

He wore a black robe, the hallmark of the new release.  Two galleons and a brand new robe: these were the gifts of the Ministry, when they set you back to the Outside, their only responsibility to your future-- other than the babysitters who made certain you didn't set a toe out of line on pain of being returned to Azkaban.  Ari was assigned a cell at Bridge House: a cot, and two warm meals a day.  They expected him to be grateful.

The black robe was opened up the front, exposing a black, leather jerkin which laced up the front over a white, bell-sleeved undershirt, black dragon-hide pants that were once skin-tight over lean muscles but now strained less than they might have-- he was still twenty stone lighter than when he'd been shut away in that god-awful place.  He could fix the problem-- vanity tempted him to shorten his height in order to add muscle-mass to his lean frame, but then they might guess he'd overcome the injunction against using his metamorph gifts.  That simply wouldn't do: there was nothing on earth that would provoke Ari into handing the Ministry anything more to control him than they already had.  Even if the gift was utterly useless to him in his current life.

The clothes exposed by the loosely-hanging black robe might be considered slightly out-of-date, though not obviously so.  As a young man, Ari's tastes were already eccentric, so the clothing might not have been considered "fashionable" even then, in circles which tended to be aware of fashion.  They'd been chosen to make a statement, of course, and while not fashionable, they had been cool, daring, rebellious.  Now, he paid them little mind, as they were his only possessions.

He leaned back in his chair indolently, draping one arm over the back of his chair, sliding his leather-clad legs out straight in front of him and crossing pointed black boots at the ankle.  He looked away from the window and down at the table, where he played with a galleon, spinning it with his fingers and watching the fading glow of sunset glint off its golden flanks.  Lost in thought, he didn't even glance up when a gust of blustery wind heralded the entrance of a new customer.  What did he care?

At the sound of a voice, though, he caught the galleon between his fingers to halt its spin, glanced up without curiosity and stared for a moment before answering.  His face was blank, uninterested, but not cold: slightly bleak, his eyes dead and empty.  He rolled the old man's words over in his head, while his stare took in his patched and faded attire.   He was talking about the weather... Ari glanced outside, saw the clouds looming, and somehow his mood darkened even further though it seemed impossible.

'Been here long?'  He forced his eyes away from the window and the scene in the distance and back to the old gent.  "Here?" he asked, his voice still rusty from a decade of disuse.  "In Hogsmeade, you mean?" he asked, his voice as blank of interest as his eyes, but Ari had been raised to be polite to oldsters.  "No.  Try to avoid it, if I can."  He sighed and slipped the galleon into his vest pocket, dropping his hand to the table again to rest on his hours-old cup of tea.  It still held the cold dregs: dark, reddish-brown, now, having steeped in its leaves far longer than intended.  He curled his hand around it as if intending to take a sip, glanced into its depths and frowned slightly as if only just now realizing he'd been nursing the same cup all day.

The serving girl delivered the old man's pot of black tea, set the tray down on his table, carefully removed the steaming pot, laid out a spoon and saucer, topped it with a single cup, and hefted the tray back onto her shoulder, sending Ari a glare of disgust before turning to leave again.

Deaglan was hardly one to judge a book by its cover - if books had ever really been his cup of tea.  Through the years, he'd seen the most pathetic, lost and lonely men dressed to the nines without a thread out of place.  He'd also come across the happiest of men with nothing but rags on their back and miles of wear etched in their face who'd claim they were the luckiest person alive.  Life, time, experience could all throw nasty mean curve balls at you without the slightest warning.  Everyone could trip and fall in the mud sometimes. 

Curiously, but without any criticism, Deaglan considered the man opposite him.  Finally, Deaglan followed the lad's line of sight out of the window and up towards the castle.  The dark grey of the base of the castle's stone towers silhouetted almost ghost-like against the overcast sky - most of the castle's roofline was shrouded in cloud cover.  Those impressive, tall towers had been such a far cry from the old, crumbling ruins he'd grown up amongst in Ireland.  Even now, there seemed to be something rather unbelievable about the place. 

When Deaglan looked back to the young man, it was impossible to gauge what emotions or memories the castle was triggering in the lad.  "Been looking at that sight for over eighty years and it still hasn't lost its grandeur." Deaglan leaned back as the pot of tea was placed on the table in front of him.  Were it later in the day, he might have considered adding a splash or two to the tea but, for now, he settled for a spoon of sugar and a drop of cream.  "Remarkable, no?"  Deaglan asked.  He could remember trying to relay the stories from school to his friends back home when he left school for breaks.  Somehow, try as he might, his descriptions had always seemed to pale in comparison to the reality. 

"What house were you, if you don't mind me asking?"  The cup of tea cradled in Deaglan's hands, he slid his chair back and turned it so the warmth of the fire lapped at his sides. 

The fellow's answer to Deaglan's question was, definitely, curious.  The young man seemed to be here of his own volition and all indicators pointed towards the lad having been there for quite some time.  There was nothing that gave the impression the young man was in the hamlet against his will.  "What has brought you into town, then?"

'Remarkable, no?'

"Haha, yes," Ari laughed mirthlessly, a polite sound from his mouth and nothing more-- no smile, no laughter touched his eyes.  His hands curled more tightly around his cup as if he expected the dregs to warm them.  Both thumbs fiddled distractedly along the rim.  "Remarkable.  The Hallowed Halls of Hope-- the wit and genius of even the meager-est student nurtured and fed: both Wizards-born and Wizards-bred."  His eyes were distant as if he were quoting... perhaps only himself.

The quiet old man asked his house and he hesitated, but pride drove him to answer regardless of caution.  "Slytherin," he nodded, lifting his cup slightly as if in sour toast, wondering if even that tiny bit of his history would draw judgment.   "Ahhhh... I'm here for a job," he admitted, glancing furtively toward the serving girl who snorted derisively and pretended to be busy scrubbing a table furiously with a bar-towel and ignoring him.

His eyes slid back to the old gent.  "I have no family who'll claim me, you see.  Part of my parole: I'm required to find sustainable employment, if I've no one to support me."  He stared hard at the man, waiting for the reaction.  Would he glance away guiltily, suddenly find his tea very interesting and skip out as quickly as he could?  Or would he find pity there?

Which would Ari prefer?

Ari's step-mother had written to him-- when he was allowed to receive owls-- and asked how much he needed to be shut of the place.  She didn't quite understand that he couldn't simply buy his way free of Bridge House, and she disliked the thought of a Rintala working like a commoner.  His father was curiously silent on the matter, and his mother evaded questions about him.  Ari suspected that, yet again, he'd disappointed his old man-- or perhaps his grandparents, which was really the same thing-- and that his silence was the same old cop-out.  He took note that his step-mother's offers of assistance did not include a place to stay while he got back on his feet, and had politely declined her generosity.

He chuckled, his gaze relenting, and this time a spark of amusement lit his eyes as he looked away from the stranger, used the toe of one boot to drag an empty chair toward him, then propped his feet on its seat with a double-thud, crossing them at the ankle again and leaning back in his chair.  He toyed with the rim of his cup again, running the tip of a finger around the edge.  "Another cup!" he barked, suddenly and inexplicably in a better mood, as if he'd heard a good joke... or come to a decision.

The serving girl muttered, 'Bout time, and shoved the bar towel in her apron pocket to scurry off after more tea.

Ari's eyes swiveled back to the old man, showing more animation than they had in weeks, alight with curiosity.  "And you?" he asked, a bit less respectfully than before, but the abject despondence was gone from his lean frame and voice.  "What brings you to this piss-pot of humanity?"  His voice was light and joking, though his words belied resentment.  He hated Hogsmeade; hated the ever-present view, the weekend cheeriness and comeraderie of the students, the bustle of shoppers...s

Whether or not the young man's current appearance was the result of an unfortunate 'stumble in the mud' or not, the longer Deaglan sat there, opposite the lad, the more deep seated bitterness there was to read in him.  The lad laughed, but there was no earnest humor to the laugh - it was hollow, empty.  Again, bitter.  Rubbing a well-weathered and wrinkled hand over his prickly, grey-stubbled chin, Deaglan looked through the window towards the castle.  "It's funny?" he asked. 

The bitterness continued with the man's words - a curious collection of comments.  "The meager-est of students?"  Who, specifically, was this fellow referring to?  Well, regardless of the target - Deaglan remembered his Hogwarts days well enough.  The rabid blood supremacy that had plagued the school during the sixties and beyond hadn't been quite as rampant back in the days between the muggle wars - but cultural supremacy was no stranger to people like him.  There were plenty, during his school days, who would have said the same about him.  "They didn't think much of the likes of me being there, either." 

Slytherin almost seemed cliche.  Replying with, "Gryffindor here," seemed equally cliche.  But, didn't most cliche's have some element of truth to them, don't they?  "I'm not sure how I would have done living underground.  How you serpents and those badgers managed seven years without sunlight is beyond me." 

The situation was starting to make sense.  Parolee.  So - this man's name was, likely, on the 'no-sale' list pinned up in Deaglan's wagon.  The young man was staring at Deaglan, presumably watching for a reaction.  Was he hoping for one, as well?  Deaglan lifted his cup of tea and took a casual sip, taking a deep breath.  He'd plopped himself at the young man's table; it was unlikely the lad came in here to get advice from a strange old man.  But, the man claimed to be here looking for a job.  Given the way the wait staff were treating him, it was unlikely he'd find one here - not at the rate he was going.  The lad barked out at the serving girl and Deaglan shook his head, unable to keep his thoughts to himself.  "Hmm - you don't give much of an impression of wanting the job.  At least not that I can detect.  Don't think she thinks so, either." 

"Same as you.  Looking for business," Deaglan answered, ignoring the interesting assessment of Hogsmeade.  Bitterness could cloud any man's eyes to the benefits of a place.  "Business is easier here, since I don't have to hide my wears.  It's harder to sell the wands on the streets of London and the competition's a bit rough in Diagon.  I can usually sell a handful here in Hogsmeade."