WHO: Scarlett Rabnott and Derek Dobbs
WHAT: A run-in in Diagon!
WHERE: ...Diagon Alley!
WHEN: MMm! Before her official trade!
STATUS: Comments!



Scarlett was not the type of girl to take leisurely strolls simply because of a sunny day, but she found herself in Diagon Alley doing just that. Wandering without a destination and finding it to be quite relaxing. The tension she’d had in her neck, shoulders, and back since joining the Wimbourne Wasps was nearly non-existent as her talks with the management in Caerphilly had gone far better than she could have ever imagined. Scarlett thrived on the challenges she would face if they did decide to go her route; taking the spot of the legendary Griffith Kirkham after his long, mostly glorified days was a task that not many could hold on their shoulders. But, Scarlett believed she could handle it and she felt quite secure in the spot.

Though, if she felt so secure, she probably wouldn’t have stopped at magazine stand to peer through the various quidditch magazines for the latest rumors. She was happy to see not much was being said about the Catapults except for a little snippet that she believed alluded to her, but who knew if they meant something else with their play on words. Her eyes scanned the higher shelves and she made her way around the side to take a look at the hanging rags. She should probably pick up Snitch!, they were usually the most reliable of papers, and was that Derek?

She pulled into herself, shoulders scrunching as she took a step toward the back of the stand. Scarlett should have supposed that there was a possibility she would run into the man at some point as the wizarding world was relatively small. She ran a hand through her tangled hair, thinking that this accidental run in could have timed itself a little better as she gazed at him through the breaks in the shelving.

Derek was even less for going out these days than he had been before, something he chalked up to the post-fever depression he'd sunken into, but no one could resist the call of Edward Pennifold. He likened it to the equivalent of the mutant but adorable offspring of a baby deer, rabbit, Krup, and puffskein. His friend was currently in an unintelligible (thus, how Derek knew it was serious) fluster about someone with an axe having recently menaced his offices, but there didn't seem to be anything Derek could do as a Hit-wizard.

In a last-ditch effort to calm him down, Derek dragged him to the nearest place where books lived, which proved to be quite a big mistake because it was Obscurus Books. When Edward spied a volume of some heretofore unheard of author that he swore up and down (and quite violently) had been poached from Calliope, Derek appropriately deemed the situation unsalvageable.

"Edward, I'm leaving you," he called out warningly, stepping over the threshold of the shop and into the street. "Edward, I am actually walking away right now."

When his friend didn't follow or even acknowledge him, Derek assumed he was instead seeking out the manager of the place to very menacingly jab his finger in the unsuspecting and possibly undeserving face, and went on his way.

With no real destination in mind, he wandered up the alley, stopping and browsing where he pleased. It wasn't until he thumbed idly through the morning's edition of the Prophet at a newsstand that he suddenly felt eyes on him. Immediately tensing, Derek waited a beat before jerking his head up in said direction.

Blinking, he felt his head cocking to the side as he met the stare head-on, one brow furrowed. "Erm…"

Unfortunately for Scarlett, she had a tendency to get lost in her thoughts, but not in a way that could cause her issues on the field. In real life, yes, but on the pitch her rapid fire thoughts kept her in tune with what was going on in front of her, on the back field, above her and below. There were no crowds to worry about, no score to keep track of: she was a Keeper, there weren’t supposed to be any goals made past her. So it took her a moment to register the fact that Derek had looked up and caught her staring, more than a few moments actually, and when her mind finally got over the fact that he really was as beautiful as she remembered him being, she was finally able to snap to attention.

A strangled sound escaped her and Scarlett ducked away, eyes shutting in utter embarrassment. Well, not only had she openly gawked at the man she had a one night (and morning) stand with while hiding behind a newsstand, she’d yelped and disappeared when caught. It could only go up from here, now couldn’t it? Scarlett was far from an optimist, but her desire to set her eyes on Derek again won out against her deeply flushed cheeks. Not only because of his beauty, though that certainly was a factor, but because she had thought about him since New Year’s and had also been sure she was never going to see him again. Her expression brightened slightly, still embarrassed, but now glad that she’d been spotted.

Peering out from around the edge of the stand, Scarlett’s hand curled around the wood as if pulling away the veil.

“Hi, Derek,” she said, remembering how much she had enjoyed his name rolling off her tongue.

Having established she was not a person of nefarious intent, his stance immediately relaxed, but his brow went from furrowed to inquisitively raised. The staring, though others might regard as startling, wasn't what struck him as unusual about the situation, since it was not exactly an infrequent occurrence for Derek, so he (could now, many years later, say with relative soberness) had grown somewhat used to it. Nor was the general fact that he had run into someone he was faintly acquainted with, as that happened regularly in places like Diagon Alley. No, what he found unusual and slightly uncomfortable was the unfortunate repetition of 'this was the last woman I had sex with' cycling over and over in his mind.

It was the sort of thing a grown wizard of twenty-five liked to think he had grown past.

"Hello, Scarlett." He smiled, but it was somewhat bemused. He studied where she stood for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder. When Derek turned back, his expression was politely puzzled as he rubbed a hand across his stubbly jaw. "Do you often find the back of newsstands more interesting than the front?"

“I...” she looked back toward her hiding spot to find that there was nothing of interest to lie about doing. She had simply attempted to hide away from him and had done a poor job at it and her ears heated up at her lack of excuse. “Don’t usually, no. They’re not very interesting at all.”

Scarlett dropped her gaze in an attempt to keep herself from growing redder by the second and her eyes locked on the pile of Quidditch Witch that were stacked by her feet. She maintained a neutral expression as a small, printed version of herself performed a swift double eight loop to defend all three goals during what she believed was her first match with the Wasps. While startled that she had actually managed a cover of some sort (her publicist usually barged down her door when this sort of thing happened), Scarlett found her heart skipping because she didn’t particularly want Derek to know who she was.

Well--He may know that she was a player, he seemed like the observant type, but he had not made mention of it during their short time together and she had enjoyed that. Since entering the professional world of quidditch, Scarlett had felt like her every move had to be scheduled and determined by some higher force. Her move from the Pride had not been of her own accord and for the past year she had been under the heavy fist of Bagman and the Wasps. It was something she did not appreciate or agree with and it only made her desire to capture the keeper position on the Catapults more intense. At least Carys Parkin didn’t seem like the boorish braggart that Bagman was.

She stepped forward and in front of the stack of magazines in an attempt to keep the anonymity. Scarlett straightened her shoulders, unsure what to do next as there was no undeniable pull forcing their lips together this time around.

“Are you meeting anyone?” she asked. Feeling bold because it was not as if she hadn’t seen this man naked before, Scarlett added, “Or could you spare a few minutes to walk with me to,” her eyes darted up and over his shoulder as she could not recall any store other than Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley, “...the Menagerie?”

She did have a dog, at least.

Her first question had an unexpected laugh bubbling up inside him. Derek tried valiantly to contain himself, but a small snicker escaped anyway at the thought of Edward and his current predicament. He was actually quite sure the two of them had discussed lunch plans at some point but, well—that most likely wasn't happening.

"I was, but," he waved his hand dismissively. Idly, he wondered if he would be escorting Edward away in an official capacity.

Privately hoping that was the case, he brought his attention back to Scarlett thoughtfully. Derek had had no desire to step outside today, so had rather been forced into this excursion. But business-like Edward always cheered him up, and there was the undeniable fact that his friend had him easily reverting to his school days, which was an fanciable turn of mood after the last few weeks Derek had had. His mood had already begun to improve, so he might as well try making some moves that would turn the day enjoyable, mightn't he?

Just because he hadn't really thought he'd see Scarlett again didn't mean a chance encounter between them had to be awkward. And Derek was always looking for an excuse (honestly, an excuse, as he could never own up to doing so of his own volition) to buy Rhett Butler a treat, besides.

"I've got time enough for a jaunt," he said agreeably. Stepping aside, he gestured forward.

She hadn’t planned any further than asking to be accompanied, so Scarlett found herself forgetting how to walk for a split second before nodding her head in a graceful manner toward Derek. Starting down the pavement and toward the Menagerie she tried to imagine what a more sociable girl would be doing in this moment, that there was probably some hair tossing, flirting, flouncing about on the tips of her toes. More sociable girls probably weren’t noticing the nooks and crevices of Diagon Alley and imagining how good it would feel to be crushed by Derek up against the brick.

Scarlett felt her neck get hot at the thought and she scuffed her foot. “I’m not a very good conversation starter,” she admitted, finding being honest more appealing than attempting to be facetious.

When she got lost in her thoughts about their New Year’s night she never imagined Derek to be one of those blokes who turned stupid for the ditzy girls Scarlett despised in school. Perhaps it was because she was crafting him in her mind to be what she hoped he would be, or was, as she had not planned on seeing him again and with that concern the thought that maybe running into him again might ruin the memory of what she deemed to be a perfect evening crept into her mind. She wanted to hold on to that, but she also couldn’t find it in herself to walk away (as she was prone to do in situations that did not please her).

They neared the Menagerie and Scarlett decided to be honest. She looked up at Derek and smiled impishly. She’d forgotten how tall he was. “I don’t actually have anything to buy here.”

Derek didn't stop outright, but his steps did slow as he turned his head to look at her. Her expression was decidedly up to no good, which had him raising his eyebrows in a dubiously sceptical manner. "Didn't you?"

Admittedly, the last time he had seen Scarlett, there hadn't been a lot of opportunity for talking, but he hadn't thought there was anything strange about her. Derek wasn't a sparkling conversationalist either, and wasn't sure he ever had been. More, as a teenager, he'd simply enjoyed running off at the mouth a lot, which didn't allow for many awkward silences. Or any sort of silences, really, as just about everyone of his acquaintance then would attest to. Now, he'd all but lost the habit of making any sort of conversation, even the running-off-at-the-mouth variety, but he didn't mind it. For a lot of years, that method was how he warded off unwanted conversations with anyone from strangers to co-workers to his family. Slowly, he supposed, that was starting to change, but he doubted he'd ever become a chatterbox again.

So companionable silence certainly wasn't something he objected to, but Derek was puzzling over Scarlett's last comment too much to let it slide by. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he look forward again. "Just poke at the fuzzy animals in cages, then?"

Confidence! She had confidence! Why was it so hard to portray that when it came to men, to him? She had certainly appeared confident during their midnight late-night rendezvous, so why on earth had she concocted the silly excuse of going to the menagerie? She should have just told him she wanted to snog his face off again, because that’s all she really wanted...

That wasn’t true. At least---she wasn’t sure.. Derek seemed like a funny bloke, he’d most definitely made her laugh, and he was handsome, bright---Scarlett couldn’t get past how her defenses, the sturdy walls she’d built up for so long, had come crashing down so easily once in the presence of this man. She was far from a woman who placed men on pedestals, she was usually far, far, far from that, but---the mystery of it all was what made Derek so...she sighed internally at her word usage, but entrancing.

Merlin, she could never speak these thoughts aloud. What would all her Slytherin sisters think of her?

Scarlett pushed her hair over her shoulder and managed to look back up at Derek after momentarily darting her eyes away to figure out what the hell was going on with her. Perhaps he was part veela, a thought that had passed her mind before. That made her feel better, the idea that she was struck by him for reasons she couldn’t control.

“It was a poor attempt to try and keep your attention,” she admitted, silently cursing her cheeks for feeling hot. Her eyes held out for as long as they could, but with the flushing of her face she looked away again. “I don’t have the energy of a New Year’s firework display to help me this time around.”