Dead winter gonna take my life
Got a bad impression from some bad advice, it's a
Cold cut from a hard knock life
27th October, 1894 — The Three Broomsticks

Aubrey was certain of few enough things in life nowadays, but he did know he liked the Three Broomsticks. It had been one of the first places he had visited as a man again; it felt safe, in a way other pubs did not. The food was better. It reminded him of Hogsmeade weekends, and by extension Hogwarts, maybe. He had made a habit it out of it now: on his half-days off, he could hole up here in a corner table by the fire for hours on end quite happily, savouring every last sip of a Butterbeer and keeping an eye on the stray cats he could see out back through the nearest window from time to time, just in case.

If this was peace to him, a familiar comfort, he was struggling to keep it today – there were a group of youths a table or two over from him today. Not young enough to be at school; maybe twenty or so. Something about them reminded him unpleasantly of Urquart. And either they had recognised him as that guy – Aubrey had tried to ignore their laughter, and their muttering – or they were just the Urquart kind of trouble, but they had found a new game. Flicking things at him, mostly; balled-up bits of bread and other bits of food tossed casually at the back of his head. They had landed one in his drink, and another at the nape of neck – he shook the crumbs from his collar, but didn’t dare look at them – and most of the scraps had landed, scattered, under his table and his chair.

One of the maids had come around nearby, sweeping. Aubrey’s face coloured as the broom came into contact with some of the mess. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “That, er – it wasn’t me,” he tried to explain: he might have made messes as a hedgehog, but never as a human. He’d not been in service for all his life and ever thought lightly of making mess someone would have to clear away. (He wished she would leave it, really, and he would clear it up himself, later, when the kids had gone and weren’t here to gloat.)

---

She seemed, if not unaware of the commotion, then expertly serene about it – content to keep her head down and carry on, without letting it bother her. Aubrey had been managing to do that just about, before, but while the maid was actively trying to clean the floors, it made their stupid little game all the more obnoxious.

Aubrey nodded at her, quirking a corner of his mouth back at her acknowledgement that it was not unusual, and that she knew he was not to blame. (He had learned how to handle a knife and fork again, a soup spoon, all that, thank you; he could eat as well as the next civilised person. This was – important to him.)

And he hadn’t been going to say anything else about it, just shifting his chair sideways so that she could work around him without his feet in the way, when one of the youth sent a substantial ball of mashed potato flying towards him, perhaps with the force and the help of a banishing charm. Aubrey dodged it, or it missed him – either way, it hit her squarely. His face fell: he would have warned her, but she was... likely to have felt that hit.

“Entitled brats,” he muttered between them, managing a glare over his shoulder at the group but feeling like he should probably do something more to stop them but helpless as to what. (What he wouldn’t give to be able to shit in their shoes, like the old days.) “Are y’alright?”

---

Aubrey hadn’t learned to contain his reactions quite so well as she seemed able to when it came to anger – it had almost been easier to express himself as a hedgehog, by hissing or curling into a spiky ball or biting people’s fingers. (If those kids’ fingers got anywhere near him, it was over for them.)

Nowadays, though, with some semblance of a human life again, in a less lawless society than the world of Hogwarts pets, Aubrey had to contain himself. Keep his head down, too. Nowadays it tended to surface in a torrent of dark, frustrated muttering – which happened here again, half to the maid and half to himself, as he slid off his chair, pulled out his chair and bent down to start wiping up some of the floor’s mess for her. Her job, maybe, but Aubrey suspected it had been his fault. If they had recognised him, he was a natural target for it. (And he felt bad. There was still a smudge of potato on her shoulder that he hadn’t gathered the courage to tell her about.)

“If I knew a spell to tip their blasted chairs up,” Aubrey muttered, “I might do it. Get their faces right in it for once.” Forwards, into their food. Then they’d see who was laughing.

---

She had smiled at the remark, but did not seem to want to let him help. Her job, he reminded himself – but he had spent too many years as a footman cleaning up messes without those responsible ever offering to help (why would they? they didn’t care) to want to be responsible for making her day that little bit harder. “It’s my fault, I reckon,” he said, quiet, with a slight grimace; but she had touched his shoulder, so he got the point. Stopping what he was doing, he straightened back up and instead just hovered by the chair he’d moved out the way, so that she could get to it with the mop.

“Your job always this nice?” Aubrey asked as he leant there, sympathetic and a little wry. He could not ask if she enjoyed it. He had never met a maid who would have picked her profession out of all the world.

---

Aubrey sat again, pulling up his chair and able to settle his feet beneath him again without squelching in anything. He smiled at her, trying to very profusely admire the slightly-improved state of the floor that from the sounds of it she was battling. “You against all the Butterbeer in the world,” he remarked wryly – and gone were the days when Aubrey had been able to talk to himself without the words coming out. Sometimes he forgot he was thinking aloud.

“There’s a – scouring solution that we use at the house,” Aubrey added, trying to sound more positive – “I can’t remember what it’s called, but it does the trick on most anything. I’m in service,” he explained, in case she imagined the house was his own, and not merely the place he worked. He swallowed quickly: he didn’t usually talk this much in one go.

(He had never intended to be in domestic service again, after what had happened to him. But if venturing out into the wider world again meant encountering customers like the likes of hers, Aubrey didn’t know if he was cut out for it.)

---

“I can send you the name of it,” Aubrey said, only a little sheepishly, “if you like.” But it was hard to be too intimidated by her, even if he wasn’t used to talking to people, because she – well, she was smiling, for one, and had been in service, too.

A lady’s maid was still a higher ranking than a footman – and although Aubrey’s position was butler now, he didn’t feel it in his head. “You were?” he asked, more affable the more his confidence grew (only gradually, and in fits and starts), and curious enough to ask: “Why’d you leave?”

---

“Ah,” Aubrey said, with a nod of understanding. He half-wished he and his siblings were still close, but, well... it was hard to manage when they had spent fifteen years apart, without any sense of what the others had been going through. And Aubrey – well, he was older than most of them, and yet he felt half a life behind them.

“I took the first position I could find, too,” he said, with an understanding quirk of his mouth. “I... I’m thinking of leaving,” he admitted, almost rueful – his first priority had been finding his feet in the world again, and service had been a home as much as a paid position, “but service is about all I know.” (Well, besides Hogwarts.) He didn’t know why he was telling her, but he glanced at her anyway, as if the maid might hold the answers, or some more worldly advice from the other side.

---