November 15th, 1891 - The Three Broomsticks

The good thing about being friends with healers was that their work schedules were odd, so sometimes Noble could see them in the middle of the day on what was a workday for most middle class people. (Well — Ford and other Ministry workers, at least. The bulk of Noble's friendly acquaintances seemed to be Ministry or Hospital workers, and he could not begin to describe the schedules of other people.) The good thing about being a potioneer was that, as he was essentially his own boss, Noble could do what he wanted in terms of his own schedule. And an unfortunate part of being an adult was that it became difficult to arrange conversations with one's friends of the opposite sex. He didn't want to have people, especially not women, over in the house that his entire family lived in — especially not when they were planning a wedding — and his workshop was too private for that to be comfortable. Balls and other events were too public, and too incidental.

This was how he ended up sitting in a booth across from Tilda MacFusty at the Three Broomsticks in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Noble took a sip from his pint after they engaged the usual pleasantries. He'd asked her to meet to catch up, but he didn't know where to begin — he'd been having a hell of a time for the past few months, (and, really, ever since his father had died,) but he couldn't exactly catch her up on any of that. Did that mean he should just lead with why he wanted to talk to her?

There had to be more pleasantries first. He was desperate for some way to make up for his September sins, but he couldn't just lead with that. Especially not when verbalizing his thoughts would make everything more — real. Once things were said, he owed some action to the dead.

"My sister is getting married — Verity, that is — to a lawyer," Noble said, by way of continued brief small talk, "But I suppose that's my only news. Has anything new happened with your family?"

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Tilda MacFusty

  

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set by Bee

The cold weather had firmly descended upon the village of Hogsmeade, and Tilda frankly hated it. The dampness just made it easier to slip on the marble foyer of the hospital at the beginning of her shifts and threatened to make her an occupant in one of their many vacancies of the various wings. Tilda had been determined to see that not happen. Ever since returning from the Sanditon resort disaster, the cloud she'd found herself floating on was a rather interesting one. On one hand, not being able to see Eugene every day had been absolute torture, especially during the days when the ward was slow. She'd even found herself wandering to other wards to see if they needed extra hands. The busy days weren't much better, seeing as she had only wanted to speak to him afterwards.

Setting up any sort of Floo connection would have only caused suspicion. The advantage of her living in the Hebrides was that her family's large property afforded them some small luxurious moments alone. Those had been among her favorites, wrapped in his arms and chatting softly about this or that. It honestly didn't matter what they were chatting about, though - she would spend as long as she could, her hands in his, tracing the lines in his open palm with her fingers as she listened to him talk about work, or little Theseus.

There would be no such meeting today, but she found herself eager to talk to Noble all the same. It had been quite some time since they caught up, and she had been looking forward to a chat - though, with the way things were going with Eugene, Tilda figured she and Noble could talk about the benefits of eye of newt and she'd be happy as could be (actually, Tilda liked talking about the merits of potion ingredients and she imagined Noble, being the potioneer he was, wouldn't mind either).

She'd opted for a piping hot cup of cocoa - something that she rather enjoyed despite her aversion to the gloomy weather - and she took a sip of it now, enjoying the bit of peppermint they had put in it in lieu of the upcoming holidays. "Mmm!" she responded, eyebrows raised as she looked at Noble over the rim of her cup. "My congratulations, that's quite exciting." Though by the looks of it, given he hadn't opened with the statement when they had first sat down, perhaps there was more to the story. She eyed him curiously, but said nothing further as he shifted the conversation to her, answering with a lift of her shoulders. "Nothing too new, I suppose. Da's still working away with the dragons and Ma patches him up as needed." She gave a little laugh here. "A bit of the same story, really, but they're doing alright. Da hates it when it rains, it puts some of the creatures in such awful moods sometimes, dragon or otherwise."

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   Noble Greengrass

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Exciting. That was the way this was supposed to feel — although Noble didn't think he would feel excited even if he actually trusted it — and he suspected that he was going to have to learn to fake it better. The look Tilda gave him certainly suggested that; it was fine if she knew that he wasn't entirely thrilled with the match, but if the general public started to guess that Noble had doubts, then they would have doubts too.

He grinned at Tilda over his pint glass when she talked about her family, but suspected that he couldn't just leave the wedding at that.

"You should have an invite — soon?" he said, "I'm not sure when Mama and my sister are getting them out, but I think they've been working on them." Since this was to be a proper wedding — if it actually happened, which, again, Noble lacked faith — then he was going to have to invite friends. He'd bring it up to Mama later. He could give her a short list.

Noble was much happier talking to Tilda about her own family, and grinned again before he continued. "I can imagine. The rain puts me in a bad enough mood, and I get to go inside. Are you busy with the Hebrides as well as the hospital, or can your Ma handle it?" Tilda was part of what Noble privately considered to be one of the mot interesting families in Britain; this was still not the point of his wanting to talk to her, but he could have chatted about adventures in Scotland for most of the afternoon and been pleased.

Sometimes that was what Noble thought he wanted: adventures and bravery and a life people talked about. He knew he was never going to get it, though, and maybe the spotlight wasn't even suited to him — so it wasn't worth thinking about. He could make things up to the dead from the Sanditon another way.

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set by Bee

"As I understand it from my rather limited knowledge on the subject, weddings take a lot to plan, so there's no rush." She said easily; limited would be an understatement, seeing as she hadn't attended anyone's wedding in....quite some time, actually. Whether that was a comment on the way her life was going or not, she quickly brushed the thought out of her mind and came back to the present.

She grinned back at Noble. "Oh, I'm much the same, I dislike the rain almost as much as Da." Not to mention the weather made her hair even more....unmanageably voluminous than it already was. "Ma can handle herself, but on my days off I tend to help her if she needs it." She chuckled. "She doesn't spend all her time patching Da up — they work together and then she often leaves early to visit some clients." It seemed to work for her parents though, and Tilda enjoyed hearing about her parents' days when she came home.

"Ma always likes to tell me about the various children she treats. She leaves them wide-eyed at the stories she makes up of dragons and the beasts in their picture books." Tilda laughed. And then, Da just usually tells her how the dragons were that day, which usually saw her want to visit them, and they would head down together once more before the family turned in at the beginning of the evening.

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Noble grinned at her, charmed by even the allusion to stories of dragons. "I'm sure her clients end up playing pretend dragon-keeper more than most children do," he said. There was something about the MacFustys lives that seemed idyllic to him — as long as he ignored things like their reputations — (although Tilda's family was better off than that other branch) — and the whole thing where her brother accidentally killed a person.

"I must confess I'm a little jealous of your mother," Noble admitted. "I hardly ever see my clients." Most of his business was conducted by owl, because — well, because it was easier, and because he didn't have the time to act as a courtier all-over magical Britain. It would have been a waste of his time. This had never bothered Noble before, but lately he was thinking that his talents would be better put to a different use — because he owed the Sanditon dead something, because clearly things were going wrong with his life generally, because hiding in his workshop by himself was starting to lose some of its appeal.

So, talking about clients — about the difference between himself and people who actually healed anyone — that edged them closer to the reason he'd wanted to catch up.

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set by Bee

Tilda laughed at his response; he wasn't wrong. It wasn't uncommon for her to walk down to the local village and see children playing dragons and prisoners trying to outrun one another. "On more than one occasion I've had to dodge the village children whilst running some of my errands." She confirmed with a nod of her head. She caught the slightly wistful note when referring to his clients, and her expression dropped slightly as she raised her cup to her lips to take another sip.

"She has a few more liberties than I would; plus she has the time and the simple fact that they're often all located within apparating distance of one another." It was easy for Ma to apparate between properties as opposed to all of Great Britain. She studied him a bit closer. Perhaps it was the light, but did he seem slightly...strained? Tilda couldn't put her finger on it, but years of attending to her patients, plus trailing her mother on house calls all lent to giving her a nagging feeling this might be more than a customary 'how-are-you?' between friends.

She set the mug on the table, her eyes still on him. "Did you wish you had more time to do so?" She prodded gently, lacing her fingers together on the table, her head tilted slightly.

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Noble grinned. It was easy to imagine Tilda being apprehended by little Scottish children; he was sure they had fun with her. He nodded at the description of her mother's business-model, too — it made sense that it would come with more liberties than healing through the hospital, but even the hospital offered far more patient interaction than Noble was used to.

It wasn't that he was necessarily after increased interaction with patients, either — Noble didn't entirely know how to describe what he was looking for. It was just that he kept having dreams where sodden corpses dragged him into the sea, and he had to do something to quiet them.

He shouldn't have expected to be able to lie to Tilda all afternoon, and hadn't really intended on it, either. Noble heaved a sigh and took a sip from his pint. "Sometimes I do," he admitted, "I wanted to be more — independent? — than a healer's career would have offered, but sometimes I'm not sure I made the right choice."

Certainly this feeling had sprung anew after Verity's kidnapping, and after the Sanditon. It was a feeling that he ought to be giving back, in some unnamed capacity. Making sleeping potions for neurotic debutantes, beauty tonics and generic antidotes, the occasional abortion potion — that wasn't quieting his dreams.

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set by Bee

Tilda could easily understand Noble's desire for a more flexible schedule. While they did usually have a set schedule for the hospitals, ultimately they were at the mercy of their patients; at least for Tilda. If one of her patients needed something on one of her days off, Tilda dropped whatever she was doing and headed into work to administer whatever they needed. It wasn't the most reliable schedule, especially if one's patient was terminal or needed more attentive care. But knowing that he thought he might be searching for something more piqued her interest.

She'd always wondered what it would be like to have followed in her mother's path, concentrating her client base and not being at the hospital so much. Or potentially cutting out both and being even more independent. But while Tilda was very much someone who gained energy from being around people (not necessarily talking to them), the hospital was a good place to be. It tired her out in the beginning to the point where she herself had questioned if she'd chosen the right path. But ultimately, she felt content with the pace things went at.

"What makes you think you haven't made the right choice?" She asked with a slight furrow in her brows. She'd always thought of Noble as a great deal more content in his current position as a potioneer. Plus, with a family as large as his, she thought it might afford him more free time to spend with them, which Tilda herself could more than understand having come from a family with as large an extension as hers did.

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He should have anticipated that he would be asked more about this flight of fancy, and Tilda didn't even have as much of a stake in it as some people — his family, for example — would. Noble shrugged. "I guess it's one of those weeks where I make a lot of beauty potions for bored debutantes," he said. That wasn't untrue, and the beauty potions for bored debutantes were not his favorite part of the job, but it had never caused him real frustration. The real problem was his lingering guilt and his dreams of corpses, but he couldn't explain that — not in The Three Broomsticks, and not ever.

"Sometimes it doesn't feel like the — academic use of my talents I'd envisioned," he elaborated with a wry smile. That was true, too. Noble wasn't really experimenting, wasn't really doing anything inventive — he would test potions on himself at times, but that was a quality check. He wasn't actually creating anything new.

And another secret, beyond that — he'd become a potioneer in order to establish independence as a middle class man early. With the Greengrass finances in the state they were in, and without Daff in his life, there was no reason for Noble to pursue independence the way he had when he first left Hogwarts. He was never going to find it.

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set by Bee

Tilda frowned in sympathy. There was nothing like catering to the masses of orders of beauty potions that would discourage her from her work. She didn't necessarily think she was held in higher esteem than Noble, but if one went into the field of potions and herbology for the purposes of making another's life better - sometimes the more vain parts of the job could get tiring. Requests of 'Oh, but you mustn't make my nose too large!' and 'Dear, I swear I did not have that mark on my face before!' were enough to make even Tilda roll her eyes at times. There must be another purpose for healing than that.

"I can understand that," She said in earnest. Noble was a talented Potioneer - if she was being honest, she thought his talents would be better suited elsewhere than making beauty potions for debutantes. There was good money in it, for they'd pay a pretty penny. "Although a healer's career can be quite demanding, so if you wanted independence, it might still not be a good choice." She added. Even now, she was at the beck and call of her departments heads - if they needed her, she'd likely have to go in the middle of the conversation.

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Noble nodded. Tilda was right, he knew — healers had to report to the hospital for up to a day or two at a time, and Noble got to set his own hours and hide in his workshop. He'd invested a lot of time and a great deal of money in becoming a reputable potioneer, and now he was thinking about throwing it all away. (They couldn't afford it.) But when he decided to become a potioneer, he'd never expected to be walking around carrying the weight of all this guilt with him.

"I won't be able to decide anything until next year, anyways," Noble said, with a sigh over his pint. Healer internships started in the fall, to let Hogwarts students get their exam results. This all made sense, but it meant he was going to have to wait ages before making a decision.

But maybe that was what he wanted.

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set by Bee

Tilda pressed her lips together in an expression of sympathy. She felt quite fortunate that she had never been the type to waffle about her career choices, but then perhaps it was because that was what was expected of her at the time. She had always been a rather maternal creature, looking back on it. The time she made her family throw a funeral to a fly she'd accidentally killed was testament enough for that. But regardless of origin, she sympathized with Noble, and reached out to give him a gentle pat on the hand.

"Perhaps that'll give you some time to think," She responded, withdrawing her hand to grasp her cup and raise it to her lips. Perhaps it was a healer's instinct or a desire to see him at least somewhat happier, Tilda leaned forward unconsciously to study him further. She'd hoped that he might have felt a bit better after, but instead he looked quite...conflicted. "Is there anything else troubling you, Noble?"

She didn't want to pry into his life too much; they were friends on a first name basis with each other, but that didn't mean she thought she was entitled to every one of his thoughts. But if there was more on his mind than just a career change, she found herself wanting to help in any way she could.

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   Noble Greengrass

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He wanted to tell her. No, that was wrong — he wanted to tell someone, some bit of it. That the family was broke, that he'd been involved with Daffodil Potts and now everything was broken, that he was responsible for the disaster at the Sanditon and that he still wasn't sure there was anything he could have done differently that night. He wanted to tell her, but obviously he couldn't.

"No," Noble said, "That's all."

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   Tilda MacFusty

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set by Bee

Except it wasn't all, and Tilda could tell. Jaw tightening, she resisted to urge to pick her drink up and chuck it at Noble's head like she would Lach or Quill when they were being equally as transparent but stubborn. It wasn't her place to force the subject with him, and yet she still felt the urge to do just that. She could feel her lips twitching into a purse, but fought it by smiling at him. "Alright," she nodded, raising her drink to her lips instead of in the air to use her friend's head as target practice.

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