outfit

 It was the evening before Christmas, but unlike the muggle children's story, things weren't exactly silent and peaceful. The streets of Hogsmeade were teeming with life. Every where you looked, people were laughing, talking, singing carols, and generally frolicking in the snow-covered wonderland. Teagan herself had been skating for the past hour or so, and while it had been a lot of fun, she was ready for a break. A cocoa break to be exact.  After all, what other kind of break was there, when one had been playing out in the cold? For sane people, hot cocoa was the only answer.

 The brunette worked as quickly as was was possible, the cold making her fingers slower and clumsier than usual, at undoing the laces of her skates, eventually pulling them both off and replacing them with her grey ankle boots. After zipping these up, she retrieved her gloves from the pocket she'd stuffed them into and pulled them on as she got up and began threading her way through the crowd, uttering the occasional 'excuse me' when necessary.

 Once she reached the nearest booth, she dug a few knuts out of her pocket and plunked them down on the counter. "One hot cocoa," she told the gentleman minding the booth, smiling politely at him before adding, "Extra whipped cream, please." Because what good was cocoa without the whipped cream on top?

It had been a relatively good evening thus far, as Isaac ducked back out of the Hogshead after making sure his parents had both made it seemingly safely home to Portree by making use of the floo network.  So far his father hadn’t suffered another episode since the one in November that had put him in a Muggle hospital for several days, and he was hoping that would continue until at least after the holidays.  The outting had seemed to be good for both of them, his father perhaps more coherent then he had seen him in months and his mother seeming to relax for the first time in even longer then that.  He had promised to see them the following day for dinner before the left, and had planned to head to the school to retrieve something from his chambers before returning to his cottage outside Largs.

The brief trip inside had warmed him a bit, but he had passed a hot cocoa stand earlier and intended to get a cup for the walk back to Hogwarts.  As he approached the booth he caught sight of a familiar profile, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.  With all of the recent work on his book he had found himself making more frequent trips to Diagon Alley and Scribbulus where Teagan worked.  She tended to greet him at the shop with a bright smile, and was always helpful and willing to humor him with a brief conversation.  To Isaac she seemed to be one of those people who were rarely without a smile.

"One hot cocoa," he heard her say as he approached. "Extra whipped cream, please."

“Whipped cream simply makes everything better,” he said with a grin stopping next to her at the stand, laying a few out his own knuts on the counter, and looking at the man behind the booth.  “Hot cocoa with extra whipped cream for me as well, please.”  Turning back to Teagan he added, “It’s nice to see you, Miss Murphy.  Have you been enjoying the Winter Festival?”


Polyvore Set

 Teagan turned, distracted in her pursuit of fine, heated beverages by the sound of a voice that was becoming increasingly familiar. "Professor Fraiser!" Her smile widened as she greeted the man. Lately he had become something of a frequent customer at Scribbulus, and she quite enjoyed talking to him.

  "I didn't expect to see you here." Not that it didn't make sense - he worked at Hogwarts, after all, which was only a stone throw away from the village where the festival was taking place. How many weekends had she spent in Hogsmeade while in school? It was just odd to see him outside the shop. In his 'natural habitat' as it were. "I guess it really is a small world. It's nice to see you, too."

 The brunette collected her cocoa from the man behind the booth with a quick word of thanks, and took a sip. Ahh, that was good. She didn't think there was anything else that had quite the same warm, cosy effect as hot cocoa on a freezing cold winter's evening. "I'm glad to see you understand the value of whipped cream," she told Isaac, grinning. "Not everyone does."

 Have you been enjoying the Winter Festival?

  Teagan nodded, looking out at the snow covered streets and at the people milling around there. "Oh, definitely. It's been a lot of fun, and everything looks so pretty! London tries, with the lights and everything, but..." she shrugged, "It's not quite the same, without the snow."

With the streets of Hogsmeade a lot more crowded then they usually were, he had been surprised to find a familiar face so the phrase ‘small world’ seemed to make perfect sense.  He’d passed a few students earlier in the evening, but they had been quite content to simply give him a nod and go about their business.  During the holiday break he found himself welcoming the break of the responsibilities of being ‘Professor Fraiser’ and just take a few moments to catch his breath.

“It’s one of those simple things in life I think,” he said in reference to the whipped cream.  “And really it just makes things like hot cocoa little more fun.”

He could remember as a child whenever he would have a bad day his mother would always sneak an extra spoonful of whipped cream onto his dessert plate with a bit of a knowing smile.  As he grew older it quickly became one of those little indulgences when he was actually home for visits and the habit it seemed had quickly stuck with him.

"It's not quite the same, without the snow."

“No, it’s really not,” he said.  “Growing up on the coast we didn’t see a lot of snow this time of year, but my mother’s family is from Inverness and there weren't too many Christmas’s that weren’t white when we went there.  I have a difficult time getting into the spirit of the holidays without the snow, to be honest.  It just seems like they should go together.”

Of course when had been traveling seeing the people bundled up and eventually the snow meant he was home.  Snow in the Amazon or the Sahara was impossible, and he often found himself completely unable to believe that it was December until he reached home.  It was one of those comforts, like whipped cream that hadn’t been readily available for a few years.

“Are you planning to go to the bonfire?” he asked after taking a sip of his own drink.  “I think on a night like tonight it would go well with the drink of choice.”

 There was something about drinking hot cocoa on a cold winter day that made it feel like it traveled down her throat and straight into her bloodstream, sending golden tendrils of chocolatey goodness surfing through her veins and warming her from head to toe. Forget orange juice, this was what liquid sunshine tasted like. Add the whipped cream on top and it was perfect. She grinned at the professor from behind her cup.

 "Not just things like hot cocoa," she pointed out, stepping a little ways away from the booth so that other patrons could approach the counter. Teagan didn't want to hold up the line. "Whipped cream makes pretty much everything more fun. It's a good thing it's so fattening, or I know I, at least, would eat it all the time, until I got sick of it. And that would be a shame," she shook her head. "Whipped cream should never be allowed to lose its charm."

 So he'd grown up on the coast? Little by little, the pieces were falling together and Teagan was seeing more of the jigsaw puzzle that made up Isaac Fraiser. It was always exciting, making a new friend. Sort of like adventuring, going out and mapping uncharted territory, but with people. It wasn't quite as exciting as actual exploration probably was, but it had the added benefit of guaranteeing you were able to hang onto all your extremities. Well, unless you were trying to figure out the very wrong person...

 "I grew up near Dublin," she told him. "A little tiny place called Glasmór. We didn't have a lot of white Christmases there, but when we did..." The brunette sighed, clearly picturing it in her mind's eye. "It was magical. Not Hogwarts magical, but like...fairy tale magic, you know? All white and pristine. But me brother Seamus," the brunette went on, slipping deeper into her Irish accent as she always did when speaking of home, "used to say t'was like the world was one big powdered donut."

 “Are you planning to go to the bonfire?” Professor Fraiser asked, sipping his drink, and Teagan nodded, grinning widely. "Oh, definitely. Wouldn't miss it! I hear they're doing s'mores. You ever had them?"

He couldn’t help grinning a little as he noticed her accent growing a bit thicker as she spoke of her home.  There was a very honest and genuine quality to Teagan he had picked up on rather early on, and it was something one didn’t often find in other people.  It seemed most operated on a very superficial level and it was refreshing to find an acquaintance that did not.  He also chuckled a bit at the powdered donut analogy.

“I know what you mean about that sort of fairytale feeling,” he said.  “When I was traveling I wouldn’t see snow until the holiday break.  There’s so much peacefulness after it snows…and I suppose seeing snow made me actually feel like I was home.  I don’t know what it is…maybe it’s the nostalgia of all the mischief I managed to get dragged into as a kid.”

He’d gotten dragged into more then he cared to admit sometimes.  Usually despite his best attempts at trying to avoid those situations he was able to get talked into some scheme or another.  Saying no was simply something he had never managed to be good at no matter how hard he tried.

"Oh, definitely. Wouldn't miss it! I hear they're doing s'mores. You ever had them?"

“It’s been a while,” he admitted.  “I had a friend on this one research team I was a part of who was obsessed with them.  Of course in the middle of the Amazon it’s nearly impossible to keep chocolate and marshmallows so whenever supplies were delivered we’d usually have to make them that evening.  We usually had them with cocoa there too…only in that part of the world it’s traditionally prepared cold.”

 "Mischief, eh?" Teagan's eyebrows rose, her lips curling up in a grin against the rim of her styrofoam cocoa cup. "I didn't know professors were allowed to have mischief. Even," she added, giving her drink a stir to mix the last dregs of whipped cream in, "when they're not yet professors."

 Her tone was teasing and her expression impish, but the sentiment was more than a little true. Back in school, she'd sort of pictured her teachers as having always been exactly the way they presented themselves to their students, just...shorter, as children. It was odd to get to know one and realize that they really did have a life outside of the classroom after all.

 And not just an ordinary, ho hum, same-old-same-old sort of life either, at least not if Professor Isaac Fraiser was one to judge by. The way he oh so casually slipped into conversation references to his travels (and not in that pretentious, condescending way some people liked to use when speaking to a girl who'd never been further from her Irish hometown than Hogwarts, either) painted a picture completely different from any she would have imagined, if called upon to create a back story for her professors when she'd been at school. Those staid, foreboding persons she pictured having learned about their areas of expertise sitting in a library poring over musty old tomes as thick as her head, breathing in more dust than air. Teagan certainly hadn't pictured them traveling around the world and studying it first hand.

 Had she gotten them all wrong? Or was Isaac Fraiser just an exception to the rule? An interesting thought to ponder, and one that only made the handsome professor that much more intriguing.

 "Why do they prepare it cold?" she wanted to know, brows knitting. What was the point of cold cocoa? Sure, the Amazon was hot and all but...well, if you served it cold, you may as well just hand out chocolate milk. "I've heard they add a little bit of chilli powder to it in some places, to give it a bit more spice. Have you ever tried that? I'm not sure how I feel about the idea." The bridge of her nose wrinkled slightly. "But I've pondered experimenting, just to see."

Isaac chuckled, his eye lighting up a bit when she teased about not think of professors as having every got into trouble.  With a smirk he said, “That’s a common misconception actually.  You’ll find all of the professors have some sort of skeleton in their closet.  After all, why do you think we’re so good at managing to catch naughty students in the act of rule breaking?”

He was joking a bit, but there was some truth to the statement.  He knew most of the good hiding places on the grounds of Hogwarts.  If he hadn’t been convinced so often to go seek them out then he was quite certain they would still be a mystery to him.  There was also a part of him that didn’t particularly fancy being like the professors he remembered from school who were always so distant and unreachable.  He was supposed to be there for the students and to him that didn’t just mean being someone who droned on for hours on end and had nothing more to do with the students after class was finished.

She watched her for a moment as her nose wrinkled a bit as she contemplated cocoa being serviced cold and with chili powder.  The fact that he found the action endearing catching him a little off guard as he took a sip of his own drink, even if it was not the first time he had thought that about her.  He reminded himself quickly that his personal life was confusing enough at the given moment and tried to push that thought aside once more.

“Once,” he said in reference to the trying cocoa that contained chili peppers.  “It’s actually not bad, just different.  Usually the mixture isn’t sweetened with a lot sugar so it’s a little on the bitter side and the chili tends to bring out the flavor of the cocoa making it more intense and less harsh.  Having a bit of a sweet tooth though I always preferred it this way.”  He took another sip of his drink almost to prove the point to himself.

“I think it was usually served cold because of the heat in the jungle.  While I was there drinking something hot aside from my morning coffee was simply the furthest thing from my mind,” he told her.  “I’d rather have my cocoa as a holiday treat on a cold night by a fire.”

Without really taking the time to process the question or how it might relate to the earlier thoughts he had ignored he asked, “Would you mind some company on the walk over to the bonfire?”

 Teagan couldn't help grinning at the chuckle her teasing elicited. You could tell a lot about a person by listening to their laugh, and she decided Professor Fraiser had a nice one. "So what you're saying is, professors were the bad kids in school?" She asked, eyebrows raised. "I need to tell my brother Seamus he has a new career path open for him then." He hadn't been the only trouble maker out of the Murphy children - Teagan thought all her brothers had gotten into one kind of shennanigan or another. But Seamus was definitely the most mischievous.

 "So what sort of skeletons are hiding in your particular closet?" Teagan wanted to know, fiddling with the fringe that trimmed her bright red scarf. "Sneaking out after curfew? Hanging some poor boy's underthings on a flagpole? Did you put a tack on your professor's seat? I bet that one would come back to haunt you," she grinned, releasing the fringe and taking another sip of cocoa. Yep, still delicious.

 And, speaking of cocoa, oo he'd tried the chilli powder thing! It was so handy to have such a well traveled, cultured friend about. He knew such interesting things. "I've got a sweet tooth, too," she confessed, although she'd been told that it was less of a sweet tooth and more of an addiction to chocolate. But whatever, it was so yummy, who could blame her? "So what other weird cocoa combinations have you tried?"

 Would you mind some company on the walk over to the bonfire?

 The brunette paused, cup raised to her lips again, and peeked up at him. "I'd love some, actually," she informed him after a moment, a pleased smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she reached out to loop her arm through his. "If you don't mind accompanying me."

“Yes, it would have been a nasty lesson to learn about karma if I had been the sort of place a tack on a teacher’s seat,” he told her with a smirk.  “Most of my own trouble making involved sneaking out of the dorms and coming to the rescue a couple friends who were constantly trying to outdo one of the school bullies.  Of course my rescue attempts were usually what gained the notice of the staff landing me with the detention while they got to go off and plan the next round.”

Not that detentions ever stopped him from repeating the process the next time trouble was stirred up.  He had been blessed, or cursed depending on how one looked at it, with the constant need to step in whenever those situations arose.  With a slight shrug he added after a sip of cocoa, “I think I know just about every good hiding spot on the Hogwarts campus.  But, don’t let on to the students or my rounds will become a bit more difficult as I’m sure they’ll find new ones I’ve never even considered.”

Now that he was in his third year of teaching it wasn’t so strange to be wandering the halls of the school as one of the adults in charge.  The memories of simpler days were not longer constantly at the forefront of his thoughts, which at times was a relief.  There were still moments though when he found himself shaking his head at how it was he had ended up teaching.  It had certainly never really been a part of his plan.

"So what other weird cocoa combinations have you tried?"

“I’ve been pretty boring aside from the chilies when it comes to cocoa,” he said, leaving out some of the other things he’d been convinced to try.  The majority of the time it would have been seen as insult not to try the delicacies those he was there to study would offer.

Teagan’s arm looped through his and Isaac glanced at her with a grin.  Part of him suddenly wished he had known she would be there that evening as he would be brought a long the gift he had found in Largs a few days earlier.  He had planned to owl it to her tomorrow and he decided to allow it to remain a surprise as they began to walk towards the bonfire.

“It would be my pleasure actually,” he said.  “So, what are your plans for tomorrow?  I assume probably a bit family dinner?”

 "Why am I not surprised you played Knight-In-Shining-Armor in school?" Teagan asked, grinning. It totally fit. Isaac Fraiser just oozed chivalry. It was one of those things that was pretty high up on her growing list of Reasons To Like Him. In a strictly platonic way, of course. Mostly. "Remind me to keep on your good side, just in case I need a friend to bail me out some day," she teased.

 "I'll be sure to keep that secret safe with me," she assured him, pantomining zipping her lips and locking them, when he told her not to let on to his students. And then blushed a few moments later as she realized how very first year that gesture was. Sigh. Oh well. Too late now.

“It would be my pleasure actually,” Isaac said, grinning down at her as they walked towards the bonfire. “So, what are your plans for tomorrow?  I assume probably a bit family dinner?”

 She nodded. "Yes, we're all going to my grandmum and granda's," Teagan told him. "The whole Murphy Clan. It's going to be chaos." The brunette shook her head, sending her hair bouncing, but smiled. "Good chaos. We haven't been all together in a long time. It'll be nice to catch up. What about you?" She turned an inquiring glance up at him. "What do professors do on their vacations? Inquiring minds want to know. Or...you know...just me," she admitted, shrugging and laughing a little. "I'm a bit nosy."

If a day ever came when he could have an encounter with an attractive member of the opposite sex without being reduced to blushing it would be a miracle.  When she mentioned the Knight-in-Shining-Armor thing he felt his cheeks burn a little trying to hide it behind a sip of cocoa.  There had never been any ulterior motives behind his actions, they had simply been what he always felt was the right thing to do.  He also quickly pushed aside the thoughts of the one time he had failed to be the one to supposedly come to the rescue.

“I suspect that you won’t be on my bad side any time in the near future,” he said glancing at her with a wink.

There was the thought that his action could be taken as flirting.  He reminded himself it was strictly platonic flirting.  Harmless really.  They had bantered and teased a little at Scribbulus over ostriches, this was no different.  Aside from being out in Hogsmeade and the fact that her arm was still looped through his.  The outing in Berlin a few nights earlier had left his mind a bit of a mess and he just couldn’t add to the confusion.

He caught the action of her miming zipping her lips and he laughed softly.  Her personality was a bit infectious and he was a little relieved he didn’t seem to be the only one whose cheeks gave them away.  He gave a slight nod when she mentioned going to her grandparents, making a note to send her gift to Ireland not London.  He had been doing a little digging with the question about tomorrow, and he filed the information away.

" What about you?  What do professors do on their vacations? Inquiring minds want to know. Or...you know...just me. I'm a bit nosy.”

“Well, tomorrow I’ll be in London in the afternoon visiting a friend and then I’m supposed to be heading to my parents’ for dinner,” he told her.  “I think my mother has invited all of my extended family on my father’s side.  My vacation has actually been fairly tame…I’ve spent some time writing.  I think spending a little time away from the school has helped me clear my head a bit.  The change of pace tends to help sometimes."