It had been October when he had first glimpsed her. The third, to be precise, as Cyrus Westerman always was—at least where dates were concerned. With his affliction, he could not afford to let the calendar get away from him, for the best outcome of doing so would be a stint in Azkaban.

Of course, he had not been certain. Rather than a true familiarity, it had been only  an echo of one, fleeting, as she had left the main room of The Hog's Head quite swiftly, and Cyrus, torn, had not pursued her. He had seen her again on the fifteenth, this time from behind; on the twenty-ninth from across the road; and then not at all in November, for he had not had occasion to visit the Head (largely because he was avoiding the potential of her).

But the turn of the year had seen him resolved: if the young maid was, indeed, who he believed her to be, Cyrus owed it to her to...do something. After all, her fate had been in his hands, and he had squandered it.

So he had watched, here and there, throughout January, and by the fifth of February was altogether certain that the Head's "Leila" was his own Miss Scott, a witch he had not seen in half a decade, and had never anticipated seeing again. Now, as he sipped at his ale from his vantage point by the dirty front window, Cyrus knew he could watch no longer. As her petite frame moved from the door to the back room to proceed up the stairs, the healer followed, his chair scraping against the wooden floorboards as he stood, abandoning his lunch, to peruse her as quietly as the creaking of the stairs would allow.

Reaching the landing with the quiet chatter of downstairs behind him, he hesitated and then—

"Miss Scott."