Sunday, July 5th – 2:00 P.M.
The Leaky Caldron


The transition from muggle London back to the familiar wizarding world seemed more jarring to Eha this Sunday than it usually did. Sitting in the corner of the Leaky Caldron, Eha contemplated the old pub’s dirty windows, ancient settings, and tired cupboards, and came to the conclusion that the shock came from a sudden lack of color, in comparison.

Eha had spent the morning attending Sunday service at the Dormition Cathedral in central London with Papa and Peeter.  It had been a very long time since she’d last been to church – well over two years, in fact – and she’d forgotten a lot, including how painful it was to stand up for such a long period of time. Still, it’d been a nice service, and it brought her a certain amount of peace that she’d tried and failed to carry with her to this lunchtime reunion.

It wasn’t that Eha was nervous to see Raizel – quite the opposite, really. It’d been several months since she’d seen her older friend, and they had a lot of catching up to do. But thinking of Raizel made Eha think of Baghdad, which made her think of Heydar and Aalyiah. That made her nervous.

Across the room, a portly wizard who was already half-drunk this early in the day tried to chill his drink with a freezing charm and missed, filling the room with an icy air. Eha shuddered – the cold did nothing for her mood – and she tugged the green scarf more firmly around her shoulders. She was dressed more conservatively than her usual style, in plain blacks and grays from her gloves to her boots, all except for this scarf, which she’d worn around her head during the service. Oddly, being so covered left her feeling almost exposed, especially when she was sitting alone.

Hearing approaching footsteps, Eha glanced up. Her face spread into a grin and a bit more of her bad mood evaporated. “Rai,” she said, standing to greet the woman with open arms. “It’s been too long. How are you?”

Raizel wasn't going to complain about not having to work on a Sunday.  It was one of the few tiny things that made this soul-sucking confinement to London slightly bearable -- if anything could make the punishment easier to swallow.  Being stuck in the underground offices of the goblin bank, expected to slave away at paperwork and complete any menial task she might be assigned from eight in the morning until nearly dark, was nearly enough to make her wish that her beastly employers had chosen to simply terminate her contract.  Even death or losing digits were almost preferable to this.

But at least there were small benefits that mitigated the torturous sentence.  Sundays off.  Warm weather -- if the punishment had happened in December, Raizel doubted that she would have lasted the better part of a week.  And, too, being stuck here gave her the opportunity to connect with former colleagues and her even rarer friends.  It was a bit ironic to think how many of them had ended up in London, though the chance for reunions was far from her long list of complaints.

She'd last seen Eha a few months ago.  It had been under very different circumstances -- in a very different location -- but as the Cursebreaker swept into the restaurant and scanned over the patrons, she spotted the younger woman almost immediately.  Smiling widely, Raizel headed directly for her table.  With a laugh, she returned her friend's hug, leaning to kiss Eha on the cheek in greeting before stepping back again.

"I was going to say that it feels as if it's been very little time at all," she replied, flashing her a devilish grin.  "We will have to find someone to buy us drinks, if only for old time's sake."

Eha's question was deserving of a far more precise answer, but it wasn't one that she particularly wanted to get into at the moment.  Raizel arched her eyebrows, tilting her head to the side in a partial shrug as she lowered herself to sit in the unclaimed chair, sweeping her skirt out of the way. 

"I've been well," she said matter-of-factly, and then made a face.  "Aside from being confined to London, but I can't expect that they'll keep me here for very much longer.  I must drive them nearly as mad as they drive me."  That was another one of the small, minute benefits that she kept in her mental tally.  At least Charisma Aldridge and the other Gringotts employees had to be equally unhappy about her presence as she was at being stuck with theirs.

"And you?" she asked, giving her younger friend a genuine smile.  "Are you in London for good now?  I can't imagine it's as exciting as anywhere else that you've been -- or as temperate," she added, wrinkling her nose as she glanced across the room.  "Is there a chill in here?"

"Aside from being confined to London, but I can't expect that they'll keep me here for very much longer.  I must drive them nearly as mad as they drive me."

"I certainly hope so. I can't imagine being stuck in those Gringots halls forty hours a week." Eha shook her head. Raizel, working a desk job. It was hard to even wrap her brain around it. Half the time, it was impossible for her to separate Rai from the warm wind of the middle east, constantly moving and somewhat abrassive,  but passionate and welcoming all the same. "Why did they call you back, anyway? You're great at treasure hunting. We didn't cause too much trouble, did we?"

Eha settled back into her chair, glancing pointedly at the server to come take their order before returning her gaze to Rai. “Me, here for good? Looks like it, at least for the next couple of years. London’s no Baku. But then again, it’s no Moscow, either. You want to talk about immoderate weather, that’s the place to turn up. Never should’ve taken Yekaterina’s offer to visit for Christmas…”

She trailed off as the server bustled over. He'd gotten the full blast of their neighbor's cooling charm and was shaking snow from his shoulders and hair. He flicked his wand distastefully at the fallen ice until it evaporated, then turned to the two women with a polite greeting and asked what they'd like to drink, and if they'd like a menu.

"Butterbeer for me, from the tap if you would. What about you, Rai?" Eha tapped her chin, contemplating the price of food in the Leaky Cauldron as compared with the likeliness that it would be any good for lunch.

“Anyway," she said as the waiter left with their drink orders. "I can’t complain. I spent a long time away from London. By the time I was really getting into the Drumstrang social circles, I didn’t even come home for the holidays. It’s a nice change. And the fact that I’m not living with my parents is a plus, and with Auror training starting up...I won't have much time to think about the rest of the world. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. What about you? Any chance of getting back out in the field sooner rather than later?"

"Why did they call you back, anyway?  You're great at treasure hunting. We didn't cause too much trouble, did we?"

Raizel gave a nonchalant shrug, suddenly intensely interested in the drink prices posted behind the bar.  "No, not too much trouble," she said nicely, flashing the younger girl a quick smile.  "It is just routine."  She gave a flutter of her hand, showing that the line of inquiry was both unimportant and not something she was particularly interested in discussing at the moment.

The waiter showed up in the middle of a self-contained snow flurry, and Raizel eyed him distastefully.  With an psychosomatic shiver, she waited impatiently for the man to finish freeing himself of the ice and inquire after their order.

"The same," she said, waving her hand dismissively again.  That was unimportant; she did not particularly want Butterbeer to drink, but the chances of finding any of the beverages that she might want here in this London pub were slim.  At least it would lend some protection against the unseasonable chill that the Leaky Cauldron seemed to prefer.

She listened intently to Eha's speech, shifting to face her as she spoke.  Raizel would readily agree that going home was usually pleasant, but that was usually qualified by the fact that home was her flat back in Tel Aviv and not anywhere close to London.  Although Auror training -- the blonde Cursebreaker blinked, not bothering to hide her look of surprise as she gave the witch an inquisitive look.

Her interest quickly faded at the last line of questioning.  Raizel shrugged, leaning an elbow on the table as she transferred her gaze past Eha to the other patrons once more. 

"Oh, I think it will happen soon," she said, tritely and noncommittally.  "Either way, it is no problem.  But Auror training?" she repeated, glancing at Eha with an arched brow.  "Here in London?  At the Ministry?"  She pressed her mouth shut thoughtfully, then gave her a bemused look.  "That must be interesting.  What made you decide to do that?"

"Here in London?  At the Ministry?"

"Do you know anywhere else that would teach me to hunt dark wizards?" Eha chuckled, but her expression grew more serious as Rai's line of questioning continued, she grew quiet. Her expression pensive, she pulled her elbows from the table and leaned back in her chair, twisting the tassels of her scarf around one gloved finger. Underneath the black cloth, the old potion burn scars itched terribly.

"It's because of him," she admitted finally. "You know. Zamon."

Just saying the name tasted foul, and she was glad when their drinks floated over from the bar, settling in front of them without a single drop. Eha had never told Raizel the full reason why she was interested in Zamon, not even after the curse-breaker had caught her trying to break into the man's Baghdad estate. Hell, she'd never told anyone the full reason. The only man who knew the full story was on the lamb, and probably wouldn't recognize her if he saw her.

But Rai knew more than most. She knew that Eha detoured into Baghdad specifically looking for Zamon, knew how deep his corruption as a wizarding official went, and had found Eha punching walls in anger after the full revelation. She didn't know everything. But she knew enough.

"I want to be the one that gets that bastard," she said, hands curling around her mug of Butterbeer. "I want to drag him out in front of the ICW and show the entire world exactly what he is, what all of them are. I'll ferret out every last one of them, and I'm not going to stop until every last one of them gets what they deserve."

She took a long drink then, letting the sweet foam of the Butterbeer wash the ashiness from her tongue. Once it was gone, she set the mug back down and sighed. "Sorry. Didn't mean to get so dark there. You probably don't need anything else to depress you, being stuck here."

Bitterness dripped from the name as Eha spat it out.  Raizel's brows knit as she regarded the younger woman, wrapping her fingers tentatively around the frosty handle of her drink.  The warm lights and slightly chilly interior of the Leaky Cauldron seemed several lifetimes removed from the adventure in Iraq -- the gritty sand and hot, scalding sun; the bright colors and noisy shouts of the suqs. 

She had gone to Baghdad with one determined purpose in mind.  Benny was dead.  Topuluk, still under the leadership of a man that she had once known, was not a group that was flushed out easily.  Business had brought them from Turkey, and so it had brought Raizel as well.  It had been pure chance that she had happened across the younger woman, though perhaps less than chance that their purposes had aligned so well.  Raizel had never asked why Eha had been so intently interested in the Iraqi wizarding official that had been hosting the gathering, but then, she had never explained why she was so interested in Gözde and his men.

Even in London, it seemed, the past could still cast a shadow over their present encounter.  But Eha shifted topics just as quickly as they'd stumbled onto this one:  "Sorry. Didn't mean to get so dark there. You probably don't need anything else to depress you, being stuck here."

The Cursebreaker snorted, and then tilted her head to the side in a half shrug.  "Hakol beseder," she said mildly, giving a wave of her hand.  "It is OK.  There are a few worse fates than living in London."

It would have been easy to take the opportunity that had been presented: to laugh, to joke, to offer up all sorts of awful alternatives, or to confide why she was really not quite as bitter at being stuck here as she might have been otherwise. But Raizel studied the soon-to-be trainee with thoughtful attention, her expression carefully guarded.  The encounter in Baghdad had been enough to convince her that, desperate to know or not, there were far safer matters to be interested in than the men of Topuluk.  Her friend, it seemed, had not walked away with the same lesson. 

"Have you heard anything of him since January?" she asked, the words nonchalant even as she kept her gaze carefully fixed on Eha.  She did not repeat the name; even here in the heart of London, leaving it unspoken felt safer.  "Anything of his business dealings?"