Old Reunions

Charlotte brushed the snow from her shoulders as she entered the famous establishment in Hogsmeade. She had always loved the Three Broomsticks and was a familar face to the staff there. She gave a cheery wave to the owner, Rosie, who was good friends with her mother.

"Rosie," Charlotte greeted warmly. "How's the hip?" She took a seat in one of the stools and placed her hands on the wooden surface. After having a chat about the painful ordeal the barkeep went though at Mungo's, Charlotte ordered a mead and wrapped her fingers around the warm glass, trying to warm them. She took a sip, delighting in the fresh flavour and sighed. After her short break she'd be off to the Ministry to try and organise a time with the Head of Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office for a badly needed interview. That would take some time. Charlotte, thinking about how badly she wanted to just go home and soak in the tub, mentally reminded herself that she needed to pop by the store before she headed home. Her husband would kill her if she forgot the leeks for dinner.

Charlotte was in a world of her own that she didn't notice someone saying her name until she finally caught on. She turned and immediately recognised the woman standing before her.

Bridget was dressed to the nines for a night of her favorite game (go from bar to bar getting increasingly more tipsy and intentionally making it clear to every man there that she was good looking and they didn't have a chance with her). She brushed a few errant snowflakes from her hair as she entered the Three Broomsticks. Approaching the bar, she realized that she recognized one of the women seated there. "Well well, if it isn't little Lottie Hunter," Bridget said, facing the woman.

They'd been at Hogwarts together, in the same house, so they'd gotten to know each other quite well over the years, though Bridget hadn't seen her since graduation. They weren't friends, more like casual acquaintances, but it was difficult to go through 7 years of living with someone without learning every little thing there was to know about them.

No sooner had Bridget perched herself on one of the bar stools next to Charlotte than a drink was set down in front of her, which she was informed was courtesy of the man at the other end of the bar. Bridget looked down at him and gave him a cheeky wink, though she did not touch the drink, instead ordering a gin and tonic.

"What brings you here?" she asked. Since they were here, they might as well make polite conversation.

Charlotte smiled at the nickname. She hadn't been called Lottie since Hogwarts and wasn't all that thrilled to be called it now. She smiled at the woman, who, quite frankly hadn't changed a bit. Charlotte could remember on many occasions watching Bridget get dressed up for one date or another at Hogwarts. If Charlotte was being honest, all though sixth year she had envied the girl.

Charlotte turned on her chair to glance at the man who bought Bridget a drink. Shaking her head slightly, she turned back around to face the woman, and caught her wink towards the man.

"Bridget. It's been a while," Charlotte said, smiling still. The two woman weren't exactly friends in Hogwarts, but they were in the same year and house. It was hard not to form a bond after so many years together.

She looked down at the sweet wine she was drinking. "My alcoholism, naturally," she said with a slight smile, suggesting that she was joking. "No reason, particularly. How have you been?" Subconsciously, Charlotte spun her wedding ring around as she talked.

"Just peachy," Bridget replied as her drink arrived. She sipped at it slowly, relishing the taste before her eyes were drawn to the sparkle of Charlotte's ring.

"Gotten hitched, have you? You poor soul," she shook her head regretfully. She much preferred to get the jewelry without the hassle of a husband to go with it. "Go on, who's the lucky bloke?"

Charlotte raised an eyebrow, and then realised that she was fiddling with her wedding ring.

"Yes. Just last year," she said, ignoring the 'poor soul' remark. She was finding married life wonderful though Bridget didn't seem to type to care so much about it. She also had the feeling that she didn't really care about her husband's identity, but asked the question for sake of conversation.

"You wouldn't know him. His name is Liam. We met in Italy." She was well aware that her statements were very short and to the point. She didn't want to overload the woman with what, Charlotte was sure, she'd think was useless information. "And you?" Charlotte asked, though she didn't really need to, as she already expected her answer. "Are you seeing anyone?"

Bridget tossed back her head and laughed at the question. As if she was seeing someone seriously... what a funny thought. "Certainly. There's Christopher on Mondays, Michael on Tuesdays, Rupert on Wednesdays..." she trailed off suggestively. She wasn't actually seeing any of those men, but she did have a rather long list who seemed to be at her beck and call.

"Truth be told, I'm getting rather tired of all of them," she said honestly, sipping her drink once more. Now that she'd conquered them, the challenge was gone and it wouldn't be long until she lost interest completely. "I'm just waiting for a new challenge to come along," she smirked.

Flynn didn't often visit the village of Hogsmeade unless he was called there on business. This was one of those times. Apparently a situation broke out at one of the residences and the Ministry decided that an Auror's presence was enough to break up the domestic.

An hour later Flynn walked out of the home, thinking how best to mend the nasty hole that he sported in his suit. "Barbarians," he muttered under his breath as he walked down the busy street.

He saw the Three Broomsticks not too far off and decided to stop for a quick drink. He was on the clock, but what his boss didn't know wouldn't hurt him. He pushed through the door and had a look around. He hadn't been in there for a couple of years but nothing much had changed. He turned to the bar, and saw a familiar face sitting there, talking to a women with her back to him. He walked up to the two of them.

"Char," he greeted. "Back so soon?" He hadn't seen her since her wedding day, almost a year ago. As far as he knew, she was still in Italy with her new husband. Flynn finally looked down at who was keeping his sister company and concealed his shock when he recognised her. How perfect. How unbelievably perfect.

"Fancy seeing you again," he said, smirking. He really expected to never see the sly brunette ever again, but this was just too good to be true. He'd leave this pub knowing this woman's name, he was adamant about that.

Bridget and Charlotte's conversation was interrupted by a man's voice... a slightly familiar man's voice. Bridget looked up to see none other than Flynn Hunter. Speaking of a challenge... she thought. She grinned as she saw the flicker of recognition in his eye.

She very easily put the pieces together. Flynn and Lottie Hunter. It wasn't too difficult to figure out that they were siblings, though she had to admit that somehow she'd missed that detail about Charlotte's life. She'd always thought that the other Ravenclaw was an only child.

"Indeed. What a pleasant surprise," Bridget replied to him. She slowly looked him up and down as if she was undressing him with her eyes (which she was, but shh...). "Rough day?" she asked nodding to the rather large, singed hole in his suit. She pushed the somewhat frilly drink that the man down the bar had ordered for her towards him, offering it to him.

Charlotte watched Bridget laugh and smiled lightly back. She obviously thought her question was of great hilarity, and Charlotte supposed it was rather a stupid question to ask. She took a sip of mead again, her eyes flicking to the the door of the pub which caught her attention. She recognised the man who entered immediately. He never did wear anything other than a suit, which she found strange, but hey, everything had something, right?

She smiled at her brother, and was about to answer his question when she was stopped by the conversation that went on between Bridget and Flynn.

"You two know each other?" she asked, hoping that by him saying "Fancy seeing you again," he didn't mean it in the way that she thought he meant it, but chances are, they probably were. Charlotte knew that her brother liked to sleep around, and so, apparently, did Bridget. Charlotte wished she didn't ask the question and blushed slightly, focusing her attention on her drink rather than the embarrassment of the conversation before her.

"You could say that," Bridget replied to Charlotte's question. "We had a... business meeting of sorts the other day." She didn't look at her old schoolmate as she responded, instead choosing to continue mentally undressing her brother, which led her back to the question she'd had the first time they'd met. Boxers or briefs, she wondered. Her eyes traveled back up to his face and she quirked an eyebrow at him as if daring him to tell his sister otherwise.

Flynn looked down at the gaping hole of his suit and scowled. What a pain. He cocked an eyebrow at the drink offered to him and shook his head, pushing the drink away in much the same way he pushed the coffee away when they first met.

"Not having much luck with drinks are you?" he asked and ordered a beer instead. Taking a seat on an empty stool, he continued to watch the woman, seeing that she was doing the same with him.

"Yes. A business meeting. All rather mundane. Jacobs is not doing so good, I'm afraid. Poor guy has forgotten how to tie his shoe laces. Funny how that sometimes happens," he said dryly.

He turned to his sister, finally able to get the name of this woman. "How do you two know each other?" Hopefully Char would at least mention the name somewhere in the answer.

Charlotte assumed that Bridget worked for the Ministry as well, as she didn't get around to ask what the woman actually did. That did sound rather dull and boring.

She glanced up at Flynn's question, not sure if it was directed at her or not. He was looking at her, so she assumed it was.

"Oh. Bridget and I were housemates. We were in the same year." She smiled at the woman, and couldn't quite work out the expression she had on her face was, much like she couldn't work out why her brother was smiling so much.

(GM permission)

Bridget smirked at Flynn as he asked his sister a question, knowing that he was finally going to get her name. It would have been easy for her to jump in and answer the question herself, effectively stopping him from getting the answer yet again, but she didn't. It had been a few days since they'd met and she didn't doubt for a second that he'd been drifting off now and then, wondering about her.

As expected, Charlotte gave Flynn the answer he'd been looking for. "Bridget Bryant," she said, extending a hand to him. Giving him her full name was the least that she could do. After all, he had helped her get the ring that was currently adorning a finger on her right hand. "It's a pleasure to officially meet you, Flynn Hunter." Poor Charlotte was probably horribly confused, but Bridget's mind was far more concentrated on her former housemate's brother than it was on Charlotte's possible confusion.

Flynn grinned upon hearing the name Bridget from his sister's mouth. Finally. A name.

Bridget Bryant. It's a pleasure to officially meet you, Flynn Hunter.

Flynn did not expect this. A full name and all. He accepted his drink from Rosie, giving her a cheeky wink to which she responded with a shake of her hand at him. He turned his attention back to the brunette.

"Indeed it is, Bridget Bryant. Tell me, is that with a Y or an I? Bryant?" He was going to do a history check as soon as he was back at the office. This woman intrigued him to no end.

He could tell that Charlotte was looking rather perplexed, but he shrugged it off. He'd explain later if they had a chance to talk. At the moment, however, he was far more interested in getting to know this very interesting woman.

Bridget raised an eyebrow at Flynn and continued to smirk. "With a Y," she replied. No doubt he was going to use his Auror status to do a background check, though it would do him no good. All he would see in her record was a bunch of black lines where information had been expunged. She half wished she could be there when he discovered this, just so she could see the look on his face. "You're not going to find anything," she said confidently as she finished off her drink, still not taking her eyes off him.

Charlotte was watching the conversation back and forth, quietly finishing off her drink. She really had places to be, and though she liked seeing Bridget and Flynn again, she wasn't about to waste her afternoon being the awkward third wheel in their little rendezvous.

"Excuse me," she said quietly. "I must be off. Bridget it was nice to see you again. We should have coffee some time. Flynn..." The look Charlotte gave her brother was level and serious. "Try and not cause too much trouble." She did love her brother but sometimes, even she had to wonder about his behaviour. Then again, if Bridget was anything to go off, the two of them suited each other perfectly.

She gave a small wave and pulled up her collar to brace against the cold chill of Hogsmeade Village.

Flynn's mouth curled in a smile. So... Her record is clean, or wiped that way, he thought although he really should have expected something of the sort. A woman with a gift for obliterating memories didn't get through life with a visible track record.

"That so," he said, wondering if there was anyway he could work around this. Probably nothing that she hadn't thought of already.

His sister standing up caught his eye and he nodded slowly, half curious as to what she meant, but then had to agree once he thought about it. He was a lot of trouble and never the good kind, if there ever was such a thing.

"I'll drop by for dinner tonight, then, shall I?" he called to his sister's back, not sure if she heard him. He was sure that his arrival on her doorstep wouldn't be too much of a inconvenience for the married couple. Besides, he'd be a welcoming refreshment for them, seeing as spending so much time with the one person, in Flynn's opinion, would be worst than death.

He downed his beer, and raised his hand to Rosie for another. "Another of the same or something else?" he asked Bridget with a smile.

If Bridget's eyes weren't deceiving her, Flynn didn't look disappointed that he wouldn't be able to get any more information about her. He looked more like he'd just been handed a puzzle to solve, and he loved puzzles.

"You buying?" Bridget asked with a quirked eyebrow. She didn't usually accept drinks bought by others but she thought that she might make an exception for Flynn. Whether or not he was buying, she intended to have another, so she nodded at the woman behind the bar, indicating that she also wanted another one.

She wondered what had brought Flynn to Hogsmeade in the first place. Judging by the slightly charred hole in his suit, he wasn't there for pleasure (unless he was into that kind of thing). "Doesn't the Ministry have rules against their employees drinking on company time? Or do you ignore those rules too?" she asked as the bartender came back with their drinks, referring back to willingly handing a confidential file to someone who didn't have the clearance to be handling it.

Flynn raised an eyebrow to mirror hers, more out of a reflex than anything else. He nodded, thinking that it was the least he could do. After all, her antics at the Ministry did give him reasonable cause to investigate into a certain shady character, and find a good deal of information against him, to add. He was certainly happy that he had a name to the face he should be thanking now.

"What the Ministry doesn't know won't hurt them," he replied, clearly getting the reference tagged to the end of her sentence. It wasn't as though he had been one hundred percent happy to give that file to the woman, and he certainly wouldn't have done it had the circumstances not been arranged in the way that they had. After all, the file didn't leaving Ministry grounds and it lead straight to Flynn receiving a nice pay-rise for his efforts in apprehending a deceptive character within Ministry official. Win win, in his book.

"So, Miss Bryant, I'm assuming you're a miss, please correct me if I'm wrong, what brings you to Hogsmeade, looking as fabulous as you do."

Bridget couldn't help but laugh as Flynn inquired as to why she was there also. "Oh I see, you're going to try to charm the information out of me," she said. She took a sip of her second drink before continuing. Technically the title he addressed her by was incorrect, but she chose not to correct him*, since it would only cause more questions that she didn't feel like answering at the moment, plus it would give him more dirt on her.

"I teach at the school. Ancient Runes," she said, watching to see what he made of it. She knew that she didn't seem like the type of person who wanted to foster intelligence in the youth population. Truth be told, she didn't want to. She wouldn't have been there if she didn't have to be. "I could ask you the same question, although I don't think that fabulous isn't exactly the description I would use," she nodded her head at the hole in his suit jacket.

*OoC: the explanation of this can be found in my profile.

Flynn gave a casual shrug of his shoulders. If he could get information out of her willingly, than so much the better. He had too much on his plate as it was without the extra hassle of doing an extensive background check on the woman.

The Auror could honestly say that he wasn't genuinely shocked by what he heard or saw nowadays, but what Bridget said, actually surprised him. He placed his beer on the counter, giving her his full attention.

"You're a Professor?" he reiterated, a smile forming on his face. "As in an actual, employed by a school, duty of care, fully fledged wielder of knowledge to the younger generation, Professor?" He truly couldn't believe it.

Flynn glanced down at the scorch mark in one of his favourite suits and scowled again. "Hmm.. That was a rather unfortunate incident involving a couple that were a little too fond of Firewhiskey and flame casting. Night in Azkaban would teach them not to mess with a man's suit."

Bridget rolled her eyes at his reaction and waited for him to stop with his job description. "Minus the duty of care bit, I suppose. I mean, would you willingly entrust a child to me?" She didn't exactly consider herself a guardian of the students, especially not since if one of them had the gall to try to talk to her in the hallway or during a meal, she turned them away by listing her office hours, usually not even looking at the student in question. It was definitely safe to say that Bridget was not a child-friendly person.

"Ooh, Firewhiskey and flame casting... sounds like almost as much fun as tequila and bubble wrap," she commented, making light of the poor couple's plight. She did not envy them at all having to spend a night in Azkaban. She'd visited the prison once (it's a long story) and she had no desire to ever go back. In her book though, that simply meant not getting caught.

"I don't think you should be criticizing my career, Mr. I don't follow the rules. Aren't you supposed to be the one enforcing them?" she asked.

Flynn laughed. "Bubble wrap and tequila," he repeated. "Sounds like a dangerous combination. I think I'm getting too old for that type of behaviour now." He had remembered his own days, early on in the academy, being wrapped in bubble wrap and having the living day lights punched out of him, for the sheer fun by his academy mates. Deceivingly, that stuff doesn't protect against a torrent of fists all that well.

He raised an eyebrow. "Now, now. Let's not pretend that you're not one hundred percent grateful that I'm not straight down the line when it comes to the rules. A lesser man would have had you arrested before now. I, on the other hand, can appreciate a little, bend in the rules, here and there."

"Arrested? Me? What in Merlin's name for?" Bridget placed an innocent look on her face even though she hadn't been completely innocent in a long time. "Last I checked I haven't done anything wrong. Well, nothing too wrong," she amended, thinking of what she'd done the previous Saturday with a Spanish wizard that she'd met in the Leaky Cauldron who had been in town on business. In her mind, she hadn't technically done anything wrong when she was at the Ministry, especially not since the only people who would remember her being there were her and Flynn, and possibly the old woman who worked the desk, but she didn't look like she even remembered the days of the week anymore, let alone who was there on what day.

Flynn raised his eyebrows at the woman's attempt to play innocent. She was far too good at conducted a memory erasing charm to not be guilty of something.

"I am quite partial to my memories, thank you very much, so I don't think I'll bring up what happened at the Ministry. Then again, I am thankful for your... help, in apprehending Jacobs."

He glanced at her, a subject change definitely in order. "So... Ancient Runes. Sounds dreadfully boring. I don't see you as the Rune type." Flynn remembered back to his own Ancient Runes professor at Hogwarts and shuddered. He was a dry old bore.