One Day at a Time

The Leaky Cauldron

Tarazet and I continued walking down Diagon Alley, and I decided to change the subject of conversation away from The Daily Prophet article that implied he was an escaped Death Eater. "Do you want to have lunch here?" I pointed at The Leaky Cauldron, which we were walking by at the moment.

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. "Sure."

We stepped into the entry hall, but instead of the general roar of a crowd greeting us, it sounded as though only one family was in the establishment; the start of the Second War was certainly having its affects. A clearly distinguishable woman's voice was saying, "You may be young and confident that nothing is going to happen, but that's now how the real world is, Bill. Diagon Alley is not as safe as it used to be!"

A man's voice: "Don't worry so much, Mum. You act like Death Eaters are going to stroll in here any moment."

The man's attempt at reassuring his mother seemed to have failed, for she replied in a shrill voice, "And if they do? They'd murder all of us! It seems that you're almost forgetting that Death Eaters are not nice people."

In retrospect, Tarazet and I probably should have picked a better moment to stroll into the main room, where the lunch tables were actually located. The woman seemed to have been nervously regarding the doorway to the entry room as she talked, and when we actually walked through the door, it seemed to startle her. She quickly turned her attention back to a red-haired man with a long ponytail, as though almost embarrassed that she had been regarding the doorway so intently. Sitting next to her there was another man, slightly older with a balding patch of flaming red hair, and on the table in front of them were several half-eaten plates of food. The woman's son continued talking in only a slightly quieter voice. "You're going to scare yourself to death before any Death Eaters lay their hands on you." I gave Tarazet an ironic smirk, and he responded by looking at the woman and then rolling his eyes. As though we're going to start murdering random people, he seemed to say. I could easily hear every word as the younger man continued speaking, "Now, I'm on my lunch break from Gringotts, and I want to share a nice, calm, relaxing lunch with my parents. Is that so much to ask?"

The red-haired man opposite of him exhaled and added to the conversation in a rational tone. "Molly has a point. The world is a dangerous place today. You can't trust anybody or anything, nowadays. Constant vigilance, as Alastor says."

Bill replied in a tired, exasperated voice. "And why not? I'm tired of everybody living in constant fear. You-Know-Who is using that fear to keep us caged in and weak. Without that fear he'd have nothing. I mean, Merlin, everybody's too terrified to even talk to their neighbors! Everybody treats everybody else as a potential threat; even Mum keeps regarding the man and the woman that just took a seat as though they could start an attack any second now."

"Bill!" the woman warningly hissed, as though she thought they ought to be talking a bit more quietly.

"No, Mum, I'm tired of it! I'm tired of everybody shutting themselves in!" there was the sound of a scraping chair, and heavy footsteps on the stone floor.

"Bill, what are you doing?" his mother quietly hissed. "Bill!"

I was rather surprised to see the man apparently called Bill suddenly standing next to me. "Hello, I'm Bill Weasley," he greeted me with a devilishly handsome smile and proffered his hand. "How do you do?"

I uncomprehendingly blinked up at him and his outstretched hand. Suddenly something triggered in the back of my mind, and curiously I asked, "Weasley? Are you Ron and Ginny's brother?"

He let out a friendly, booming laugh. "Why, yes I am. How do you know them?"

"I'm their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor," I smiled, partially from the surprise. "Liseli Colburn," I politely shook his hand.

"Mum, did you hear that?" Bill turned back towards the table he had stood up from. The woman sitting there looked rather pale, and gave almost a relieved smile. "Small world! Come on, let's share a table," he warmly beckoned towards the table they were sitting at. Tarazet looked rather displeased at the whole situation, but he silently followed me to their table and took a seat. "Defense Against the Dark Arts, eh? Well, no Death Eaters here, right?" he grinned.

"No, no there aren't," I replied, an ironic smile tugging at my lips.

"So how are Ron and Ginny doing in school?" Mrs. Weasley asked quite warmly, now that she wasn't so nervous.

I smiled at her concerned-mother behavior, and generically replied, "They're doing quite well. I was talking with Ron recently, and he mentioned you," I nodded towards Bill. "He said you do something with…curses?"

"Sure do," he casually replied. "I work for Gringotts."

I noticed Tarazet's face darken slightly, and he leaned back a bit further from the table, as though trying to make himself less noticeable. The red-haired woman jumped in, in her warm manner, "I just realized I never properly introduced myself. Molly Weasley," she offered her hand in a manner similar to Bill.

"Arthur Weasley," the balding man next to her likewise extended his hand to me. With all the introductions going around, he looked expectantly at my brother. Tarazet stubbornly stayed silent, though, which left Mr. Weasley to turn towards me and cheerfully say, "So who's the chap with you?"

"Ah, this is my—" I hesitated. My brother? My friend? My acquaintance? Some random stranger off the street who sat next to me? The Daily Prophet article accusing Tarazet of being a Death Eater had come out only yesterday; did I really want to prove that I associated with him, still? I felt a pang of guilt; at the same time, I didn't want to be Deneb, the heartless, scheming one, and Tarazet was my brother and friend. They would probably discover that, anyway. "This is my brother, Tarazet," I finally finished.

Bill looked as though a bolt of lightning had just struck him, he looked so surprised. He whipped his head towards me and hastily said, "What did you say your surname was? Colburn?" Without waiting for a response he turned towards my youngest brother and said with wide eyes "Are you really Tarazet Colburn?"

There were the beginnings of a sneer on my brother's face as he silkily replied, "If I were you I wouldn't listen to a word The Daily Prophet writes, because—"

"What? No, I don't read The Daily Prophet. I haven't read it since it wrote all of those libels about Harry," Bill interrupted him. "I just mean, you're Tarazet Colburn? You're—you're famous in the industry you know that?" Tarazet blinked at him, the partial sneer frozen on his face. "The banking industry," the red-haired man quickly clarified. When there was no response he added, "I mean, you're the counterfeiter, aren't you?"

"I—" my youngest brother started, clearly unsure what to say. After a moment of deliberation he finally replied, "Yes, I am."

"Genius! Just genius! What you did, I mean," Bill sounded absolutely ecstatic and was energetically gesticulating with his hands. "Of course I don't condone it," he added in only a slightly more somber tone, before breaking into a smile and energetically continuing, "But, just, wow! And when you did it, you had to replicate all of the charms you cast, too! What was it, something like two hundred million galleons?"

A faint pink tinge appeared on my brother's normally pale face and, having known him for as long as I did, I could tell that the faint twitching of his lips was him trying to keep a proud smirk from appearing on his face. "Something like that," he mumbled in a rather pleased tone.

Bill placed his elbows on the table and leaned a bit forward, before saying in an almost conspiring tone, "You know the Goblins never figured out how you did it? Sure, they added a bunch of different types of defensive, identifying and anti-replication charms to the money supply, but they're just taking a stab in the dark. It's amazing! How on earth did you do it?"

"Ah, I don't believe I should discuss that," Tarazet replied delicately, the proud smirk still threatening the corners of his mouth.

"Aw, alright, I get that," Bill looked mildly disappointed, but he still gave a friendly grin as he casually leaned back in his chair.

Mrs. Weasley leapt in in the pause that followed, "I don't know if Ron already told you this, too, Liseli, but Arthur's head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects." She beamed and put a hand on his shoulder. It was almost cute how proud she was of her husband, as though she couldn't help but spontaneously burst out and list his accomplishments.

I smiled indulgently, "That's nice. What does he do?"

"Well, I'm sure you've noticed that there are a lot of items being sold which are purported to defend against Death Eaters," Mr. Weasley explained.

I raised an eyebrow. I had noticed stands selling defensive items, but I had never paid enough attention to realize their goal was to explicitly defend against Death Eaters. "So if garlic wards off vampires, what wards of Death Eaters?" I humorously asked.

He replied with an appreciative laugh. "If you ask the people selling these things, they'll tell you just about anything, as long as it's an expensive anything. Our main goal is to prevent the public from believing them and buying useless, or even dangerous, items."

"That sounds interesting," I said generically. I suppose if he was actually analyzing the objects, it'd be interesting, but it sounded more like boring police work, than anything.

The red-haired man seemed to agree with me for he half-heartedly replied, "It is, but sometime I miss my old job. I used to work at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office." The tone he continued in was energetic, and he started gesticulating with his hands in a manner reminiscent of his son. "It was fascinating, seeing all of the Muggle objects, and how creative they are when it comes to doing things without magic. Did you know they have these devices—airplanes, they call them—which can fly and transport hundreds of people at once? And they stay up in the air, without a speck of magic! It's simply amazing. Oh, here I'm talking your ear off, when you may already know all about them, for all I know," he finished abashedly.

I let out an encouraging laugh, "That's alright. I didn't take a Muggle Studies class when I was at Hogwarts, so I've never heard about air…uh, whatever you said they were called."

"Okay," Mr. Weasley responded cheerfully. "I take it you don't have any Muggle parents either, if you've never heard of airplanes?"

Tarazet narrowed his eyes and coldly snapped, "We're purebloods."

The older man's eyes opened wide in a rather innocent look. "Oh, no, don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against people with Muggle parentage. I know a lot of people are suddenly turning on people who aren't 100% pureblood, but I think that's ridiculous. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Muggles or Muggleborns."

I nodded, and let out a vague sound of consent while regarding Tarazet out of the corner of my eye. Thankfully, my brother was enough of a Slytherin to know when to hold his tongue. "Merlin!" Bill suddenly let out, while looking at his wrist. "It's already past 12:30. I was supposed to go back to Gringotts so the next guy could go on his lunch break. I should run," he hastily added and stood up from the table.

His father regarded his own watch and also stood up, "I should probably be getting back to the Ministry, too."

Mrs. Weasley looked almost left out, and after a second she followed suit, standing up and pushing her chair in. "It was lovely meeting you two," she smiled at us, and with that the three of them strode towards the exit.

As soon as the door swung shut, Tarazet hissed after them in a barely audible whisper, "Blood traitors…"

…

A/N: So this is the continuation of last chapter. Next chapter is going to be pretty action-filled, and Snape makes an appearance, too. Also, I wanted to let you all know that once I get out for winter break, updates will be back to a chapter every two or three days. Anyways, I want to give huge "thank yous" to tibys, grumpirah, Mark Darcy, angelofire and PollyWantCookie for reviewing! On yet another tangent, as a general heads up I'm slowly switching to a new account. I'll finish posting 'One Day at a Time' under this account, but anything else is going to go under that account. (So feel free to bookmark it, if you want *hopeful grin*).