pleasure to burn [open]

A tryst was not the intended venue of the day, though appearances might have suggested otherwise to observers. Madam Puddifoot’s was a rendezvous for young lovers, generally speaking, and Christabel, much to her mother’s chagrin was not exactly an object of high affection around Hogwarts. There wasn’t a line of strapping young suitors a mile long knocking on her door and though, quite the hopeless romantic, she couldn’t say that she was devastated over it. Youth had so many things that she had the privilege of experiencing and though love was something that she wanted for herself, she wasn’t in a rush to find it. The notion that good things came to those who waited stuck in her mind. Instead, Christy’s destination had been chosen for an affection for teas and the present desire to drink it.

With her satchel hung delicately over her shoulder Christabel made her way through the bustling crowd on High Street managing to slip past the masses to get to a quaint building just off to the side. Unlike some who might have found the place obnoxious with the frilly décor and the pairs of enthralled couples so wrapped up into their own affairs that they could scarcely give another person the time of day or so much as a glance, she found it to be charming. Young love was something that she believed in celebrating, thought that it should have been revered and cherished, but then Christy was hopeless, full of luster with romantic notions. Venturing in, taking a respectable glance around, Christabel found an empty table, one of the very few left actually and was soon joined by Madam Puddifoot, the smile on her face bright and welcoming.

”Would you like to go ahead and order, My Dear, or would you like to wait on the other member of your party?” No one could blame the plump woman for assuming that Christy wasn’t alone. Returning the smile, though Christy’s held a faint note of sadness in her admittance she replied, ”I’m alone actually. May I have a peppermint tea, please?” The apologetic look on the owner’s face said it all- offered condolences that Christabel was surrounded by something that she didn’t have herself. It would have been easy, with a look like that, for any girl to become discouraged but Christy simply broadened her smile hoping to convey that she was quite content with the way her life was at the moment. She had never been one for complaints. As the woman scurried off to fetch her tea Christabel lowered her satchel to the ground at the side of her chair, doing her best to keep it out of anyone’s path in such a cramped place, and retrieved the book that she had started on reading for probably the twentieth time, Fahrenheit 451. A novel that if her parents discovered she was reading they would shun muggle anything was taboo in her household. The tea arrived shortly after she was into the first couple pages, which Christy was sure to make eye contact with Madam Puddifoot when she thanked her. Going back to her reading she would sip on her tea, gingerly.