Close Encounters of the Coffee Kind

It was a July morning, still crisp at this hour, and Alicia Spinnet was walking purposefully through Diagon Alley. Having run a few errands - she'd just been to the second hand robe shop next to Gambol & Japes and then to Gringotts to set up a personal vault - she decided to head to the Leaky Cauldron for a coffee to kill time before her next appointment, perhaps the most important of the day. She was applying for a part-time job at Flourish & Blotts. True, it wasn't why she'd sat six NEWTs, but it would pay the bills, and for the time being it would suffice.

Many of the stores she had frequented over past summers were now boarded up. As she walked past Fortescue's, she felt a twinge of sadness. That was, until someone collided with her, knocking her flat to the cobblestones.

She barely had time to register the breath being crashed out of her, the stones connecting soundly with her arse, when someone quickly pulled her to her feet and swooped her parcels back off the ground with a flick of his wand, stacking them neatly in the crook of his free arm. A young wizard of medium height and slender build and with hair not quite veering towards either the blond or brown spectrum stood in front of her. "Terribly sorry about that," he said smoothly, but still with a touch of genuine regret. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No, just a little startled," she responded, smoothing down the front of her robes. There was a tear along one hem, which didn't bother her overly. Nothing a simple clothing charm couldn't fix. Tucking a piece of chestnut brown hair that had tumbled free of her bun behind one ear, she squinted up at him. "Do I know you?"

"Awww." His mouth curved into an exaggerated, mocking pout. "Do I make that little of an impression?"

She raised her eyebrows in mild reproach, feeling rather at a loss for words. While he didn't look old enough to own a franchise, he could very well be either Flourish or Blotts, and it would be just her luck if she somehow offended her potential employer. And he did seem rather arrogant. "You're not the owner of the bookstore, are you?" she asked. "If I'm supposed to know you from somewhere, I'm sorry. But you don't look old enough to work in any of the shops here and I don't remember you from any of my classes at Hogwarts."

"You really don't remember me?" The wizard's eyes twinkled in humorous reproach. "Terence Higgs, Esquire. The best Slytherin Seeker of your time at Hogwarts." He tipped an imaginary cap at her.

Higgs? That would explain the arrogance, but make his apology all the more surprising. She had vague memories of a slightly built boy who mocked her good friend Oliver Wood and gloated relentlessly over any of their losses until he was unceremoniously dumped for a septet of Nimbus 2001s during her fourth year. "Not really, no," she said honestly, attempting to step around him. "You seem rather full of yourself though."

Terence placed a restraining hand on her arm. "I still have your parcels," he said.

"Oh." Alicia flushed, then was annoyed with herself. It must be the interview. She wasn't usually this flustered. Among her friends she was always the calm, steady, grounding one - the earth to Angelina's fire and Katie's water. "May I have them back, please?" she asked, pulling herself together. She extended a hand for them.

"Of course I'll give them back to you." Terence, funnily enough, seemed a little hurt, as though he thought that she doubted he would return them, and somehow that affected him. "Eventually. But I'd much rather do the exchange after, say, a glass of wine at our vested establishment." He waved his free hand towards the Leaky Cauldron.

"But since you're giving me something and I'm not giving you anything in return, then strictly speaking it wouldn't be an exchange-" she began, then the rest of what he said caught her. "Oh."

"Ah, though you would be exchanging something," he elaborated, smirking down at her. Though she wasn't given to obvious facial animation in general, Alicia had always secretly admired how well the average Slytherin could nail a smirk. Gryffindors either ended up looking like they had some sort of facial tic or just caught a whiff of something unpleasant. "Your fine company, of course."

Alicia's eyes widened. The last thing she'd expected to happen today was to be come onto to by a former Slytherin - and not a bad-looking one at that. But though he hadn't been unpleasant to her, there was still the general cockiness. "I have a job interview in a little less than an hour," she said. "I can't go drinking wine."

"Coffee then?" he suggested.

"I don't think so," Alicia said. Even though she'd been heading there in the first place, and her reaction therefore made no sense. Well, not much sense. Then, because she found herself feeling rude and a little guilty and something else she couldn't quite place, but that quirked at her oddly, she added, "Maybe some other time. But for now I really should go over my notes and think about what to say during the interview."

He blinked. "You wrote out notes?"

"Yes," she said defensively. "If something's important, I usually write it down. It helps me to organise my thoughts."

"When I need to clear mine, I just do something to distract myself from whatever's on my mind," Terence shrugged. "There's such a thing as too much organisation, you know. Look, you've probably already gone through stuff and thought about what to say, yeah?" As Alicia nodded and started to speak, he raised one hand to cut her off, adding, "And so you don't want to make it too rehearsed, because employers pick up on that sort of stuff. You'd want to sound a bit more spontaneous and animated. No one wants to hire an Inferius, after all." As she paused, he added, "So, how about it?"

"Why?" she asked.

"Why?" Terence repeated, running a hand through his bristly hair. "Because you seem intriguing. On first impressions you're not really a typical Gryffindor. You're not as...loud...as the rest of them. Not as much the type to run around committing daring deeds and trying to make the world a better place and all." He smiled apologetically, as if he was aware that Alicia thought he had been about to say something less complimentary. "And you're rather cute, Spinnet. Don't worry though. I'm not planning on ravishing you or anything like that. It's not my style and anyway, I get the impression that despite appearances, you can take care of yourself if needs be. I'm only asking you to join me for a coffee."

Alicia stood, absently chewing on her lower lip. While his motives were a bit suspect, what he had said before all that did have surprising merit. Besides, it wasn't as if she was in any danger accompanying him. They'd be going a short distance away to the Cauldron, then she'd be leaving him for her interview. "I do want to make the world a better place," she added softly. "I'm just - better at accepting the world as it is, I suppose - and working with that, rather than imposing some false idealisation of what it should be like upon it that would never work in practice."

"A realistic, cautiously optimistic Gryffindor?" He grinned. "I'd hardly have thought that was possible. Though," his eyes drifted towards the boarded up ice cream parlour, "we could probably do with a bit more of that these days."

Alicia nodded. While she wasn't judgemental enough to think that all Slytherins were merely underqualified Death Eaters, she was significantly more suspicious of them than the two other houses not her own. And being a Gryffindor, their rivalry during her school days had encouraged her to loathe them on principle. So it was somewhat of a comfort that Terence appeared to find the sight of the building as unnerving as she did. And then she remembered that while he taunted Oliver and the Weasley twins and body-checked her as much as anyone else on the pitch, he had never once insulted her. At least - not while they weren't playing Quidditch. "Alright," she said slowly. "We can have that coffee. But I only have time for one."

"One it is. I wouldn't dream of you going to your interview with caffeine jitters," he beamed. Alicia reached for her packages, but he said, "Allow me," then pressed a hand in the small of her back as they walked, guiding her towards the pub.

The End