Outfit

It had been a long day. Candy had an eventful last couple of months. She had just bought a new house and moved in- settling herself even closer to the wizarding world. She had also decided to quit Calaveras after the attack and after realizing that things that went on there were less than innocent. Candy had decided that perhaps Hogsmeade was a more appropriate venue for her- since the criminal activity was decidedly less prominent- and had found a nice empty storefront which would be perfect for opening her own bakery.

So even though it had been an eventful month- everything seemed to be improving for the better! Which was, at the very least, a huge relief. She was happy and felt as though she was finally moving in the right direction- which she definitely needed. Besides, Hogsmeade would offer her the school crowd on weekends- which she thought she would like- and get her away from the bustling London life which was always so very stressful.

Today she had spent discussing terms with the man she was renting the shop from, and she had eventually talked him down almost half of what he had originally wanted to let her rent out the shop and Candice had done paperwork. It was time for dinner whenever she had concluded business for the day, and she decided to stop by Singature to get a quick bite and treat herself to a well deserved cold beer.

Candice quickly sidled up to the bar, sitting in the far corner so as to not bother the usual patrons. She ordered something quick- and then asked for a beer. It wasn't long before the tall, frosted glass was sitting in front of her. Candice picked it up and took a long draw from it, then wiped her mouth and sighed. Now that hit the spot. The only thing that could make this evening better would be if Declan was around. But he'd been acting weird since the werewolf attacks- and she was still trying to convince him that just because he got a little furry once a month didn't mean she hated him or that he was a monster.

A few minutes later a basket was set in front of her, and she picked began to carefully rearrange the food within. "Could I get some salt?" she asked- and when it was set in front of her she lightly salted her chips and then picked one up, crunching it happily. "Thank Merlin life is finally coming together," she sighed quietly to herself with a large smile.

He'd never looked forward to Spring Break more, even as a student. It gave him time to think, time to work on his books - which he was now falling behind on, blast it - and time to...well, to think, really. With Ignan's help, in some cases.

That hadn't stopped him from wanting to celebrate the start of the break by getting completely plastered, however. Without Ignan, this time. Neither of them were in a hurry to repeat the Incident. Well, he wasn't. He could only hope that Ignan shared that feeling, because otherwise....blergh. Anyway.

A good way to make sure he didn't wind up running into the older man was to frequent a place Ignan would never set foot in willingly - Signature. It hadn't changed much since the last time he'd been. He did his best not to dwell on the previous time he'd been here and what had happened after.

Thankfully he hadn't been to the bar/restaurant before, so it wasn't difficult to distance himself from that.

It was certainly more...well, modern than the Three Broomsticks. Muggle, you could even say - the windows looking out to the city that didn't exist, the UV effects...and the dancefloor, and well...everything.

That was another reason he was glad Ignan wasn't here. He hadn't danced at all this year, and he certainly wasn't going to do so with Ignan around. A pity he'd never really caught up with wizarding dance music, but he could cope. Club dancing wasn't exactly complex.

He found himself at the far end of the bar - the quiet end, in other words. He wasn't drunk enough to bust out of his shell and leave his sense of shame on the shelf, not yet. He was idly swirling a beer, kind of shut off from the world, when the woman a few stools down spoke quietly.

"Is it?" He asked, eyebrow raised. The action made his glasses slide down he nose, and he paused to correct them. "Might be one of the few who's experiencing that, miss."

Candice was slightly surprised when someone responded to her statement. She turned to look at who had spoken, and saw a man with a strange combination of features. Candy hadn't seen a man with his skin tone with such red hair before, and his manner of dress was... well, nice. And he was so very tall. Candy could tell that even though he was sitting. He was even taller than she was. Which, although not entirely uncommon, just as often as not she was taller than a lot of men she met.

She picked up her beer and took a long drink from it before responding. "It is for me," she told him. "And it's been a long time since I've felt like anything was going my way." She wasn't sure what else to say to him. Candice wasn't accustomed to strangers addressing her when she was out places. Unless they were telling her to get out of the way or asking the time or some other such nonsense.

"Though, if things aren't going so well for you- I'm sorry about that," Candice finally added somewhat awkwardly, plucking at the paper in her basket. "But you're at the right place to put it out of your mind at least." Not that she would ever truly encourage someone to drown all of their sorrows on a regular basis. Luckily advice giving wasn't her profession anymore- but it didn't keep her from wanting to meddle with people.

"Congratulations, then," He said, with no hint of sarcasm - largely because he wasn't being sarcastic. "Maybe it's the surroundings," he mused, to his own beer bottle. "I've gotten used to everyone bitching about their jobs non-stop, you see. Easy to forget some people have good jobs that go well, yknow?"

"Oh, things have been worse, I'm just winding down," he said with a wave of his hand. "Bitching at my beer always cheers me right up!" he added, happily.

He sipped his beer again, hooking his feet into the barstool, and smiled around the bottle top. "Right place, right time," he said. "Alcohol aplenty, beginning of the weekend, and most importantly, it's the Easter holiday so I get a few weeks off to go home." He sighed contently, then paused. "I teach at the school," he said as an explanation, indicating the far wall over his shoulder - then pausing and indicating the left wall instead, as he remembered the school's actual direction. "The teen angst seeps into the walls, I think. Everyone seems to catch it."

Candice nodded. "People always complain about their jobs, it seems. It was important to me to finally find a job that meant something to me. I used to work at the ministry and I was miserable there. I went to Calaveras from there, working as the dessert chef. And I liked that well enough- but after the werewolf attacks and getting to know more about the people who worked there, I decided it wasn't for me. Today I finished up the lease to rent a shop from an old wizard- and I'm going to open a bakery!" A lot of information to give to a stranger, but she felt like explaining her cheer. Besides- she was proud of herself for making the move forward.

She chuckled when he said that bitching at his beer cheered him up. "You teach?" she repeated. That was surprising. When Candice was at Hogwarts all of the staff was older. "You don't look old enough to be a professor," she told him. "You can't be much older than I am! Have things at Hogwarts really changed that much since I graduated?" she asked. It was hard to think that it had. Candy knew that there had been some unrest there- she'd heard in the news about SAWS and student issues and the old headmaster had been fired. But she hadn't heard much outside of that.

Candy continued to munch from the basket, and drank some more of her beer. "I'm opening my bakery here in Hogsmeade," she continued. "So I guess I'll learn more about how Hogwarts is these days when the kids overrun it." Not that she would mind. Candice loved kids- and she even liked teenagers well enough. She supposed that was a good thing, since she really wanted to get married and be a mother some day.

"My name is Candice, by the way," she finally told him. "But most everyone calls me Candy... So what do you teach?" Candy asked. She was monopolizing the conversation thus far, after all. No reason to be totally rude.

"What did you do at the Ministry?" He asked, with a cock of his head. Going from the Ministry to dessert chef seemed an...odd shift. Unless the Ministry actually employed cooks. He'd be the first to admit he didn't know, though.

"Yeah, you'd think that - and that's what I thought too. But I'm actually the average age! The Deputy Headmaster is younger'n me. Might be younger than you. Same with the Potions Mistress, and the Librarian. It's crazy." He shook his head. "That Witch Weekly article might be on the money that Snark hires based off of looks...!"

This beer was good, actually, a nice proper wizarding stout; he could feel it filling him with a fuzzy, warm feeling already. "A bakery? Brilliant," he said, and smiled his full sunny smile. "Not that I need an excuse to raid the desserts anymore than I already do, but still. I'm sure the kids will love it," he told her, beaming.

"My name's Tapendra," he told her, mimicking her style of introduction. "But everyone calls me Tappy, so feel free to. Nice to meet you, Candy," he said, and extended a large hand. "I teach Astronomy. You know, the most boring subject," he said, jokingly.

"I was a therapist for the DMLE," she told him. "Most thankless job I believe I've ever had. I helped with criminal rehabilitation and anger management programs and I also did psychiatric screenings of the aurors and regular meetings to make sure they were mentally fit to keep up with the stresses of their jobs. For the most part everyone disliked me and made no secret about it." She remembered that day that Eddie Pratt had made her cry by being so cruel. "I had only a few friends at the ministry- and I just wasn't very happy."

"I got fired, actually," Candice told him. "The head auror never did like me- Auror Raynor- and she was acting DMLE head, too. I guess I overstepped one too many boundaries by trying to do what was best for people and got canned. It was pretty awful. But I eventually found a new job at Calaveras- I was the dessert chef there for a while. But I found out that a lot of the employees and clientele were... less than savory, and it just made me feel awkward. So I finally said to myself that I should just do what I have always wanted to do- and I decided to open up a bakery. So that's my story," she said with a laugh.

Candy was surprised to hear so many people were younger than he was and teaching at Hogwarts. She wasn't sure how someone could be a professional at such a young age. She remembered that witch weekly article, too. "Maybe so. You'd think the board of governors would look into it to make sure she isn't hiring anybody who's incompetent..." Because it certainly sounded like that might be the case.

"It's nice to meet you, Tappy," she said shaking his hand. And she couldn't help but laugh when he called astronomy the most boring subject. "Gosh- I always thought it was," she said. "I always loved potions and herbology, though. Each kid has their own preferences. I'm sure there's some who love it- there must be if it is still around and people are specializing in it. It's important, that's for sure. When I did my training at St. Mungo's we had to know a lot about the moon phases and where the stars were. That was such a long time ago now, it seems." Candice shook her head. "It's hard to believe in such a short time I went from working at Mungo's, to the ministry, to Calaveras, to owning a bakery."

"Do you like teaching?" she asked. "We used to give our professors hell most of the time. They always seemed to be short tempered and frazzled. I bet it's awful with little kids who have no attention span when you're trying to teach them something like Astronomy... Of course it could never be worse than Professor Binns."

His eyebrows rose, beer stopping at his lips. "A therapist?" he asked, against the glass. Quickly aware his confused tone might come across wrong, he put his beer down and quickly added, "Nothing wrong with that! I just wasn't aware the Aurors had - that they used anything like that." Seemed normal for them to axe it, though. It was probably too muggle. Bastards.

"I'm sorry," he added. "I hope the Bakery takes off. Hogsmeade could use one." The coffee shop wasn't quite the same. He smiled slightly. "I don't suppose you'd deliver to the castle?" Not that he needed that; the heavy castle food was taking its toll on his body even with his original efforts to stop that. He'd taken to swimming laps in the teacher's bath for lack of good jogging weather or space,on top of the workout he did to wake up.

"You'd think that," But you'd be wrong, he added to himself, in a kind of mental grumble. He gulped at his beer again, fairly sure she could pick up on the implied end to that anyway.

He smirked at her comments on Astronomy, though, and shrugged. "There's some. Most of them just kind of sit there and watch the clock. Others just sleep." He chuckled; part of him found quiet pleasure in waking up the sleepers who hated his class. Clapping loudly behind their heads or bopping them on the head was amusing. It shouldn't be, but it was. Ignan was a really bad influence, wasn't he?

"I love it, though it's making me almost regret giving my teachers hell, sometimes," he said. "At least most of the teachers this lot have are interesting. Binns? Don't remind me. He's the only person I've ever met who could make mass execution stories dull." Straightening his back, he did a failing good imitation of the monotonous drone the old ghost had said everything in.

"And thus, she had them all killed...by means of, mm, drawing and quartering. Which is to say, they were first drawn upon the board, and dragged, and then wake up Miss Reid cut into..." He waved a hand. "And so on and so forth. Dropped that class like a stone in 5th year." He quirked an eyebrow. "When did you go to school, anyway?"