bad day//OPEN

Vincent had thrown himself into his studies and had pretty much given up on really interacting with anyone this year. The people that considered themselves his friends were starting to catch on already. It was different than last year. Last year, he was just too much of a mess to really focus on how he should be acting around other people in regards to his lycanthropy. Despite what people said, he often assumed that people thought of him as he thought of himself. To everyone else, it would seem a ridiculous concept, but his mind was made up.

He had promised his friend, Lydia that he would go out to the next Hogsmeade weekend. His conscious was a little too strong for his liking, so he was forced to comply with his promise. He shoved his pockets as he wandered into the little village by himself. Vincent didn’t really have a set destination, so he just found himself wandering around, aimlessly. He was walking with his head lowered, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone when he came to a stop.

Looking up, he realized that he stopped right in front of the Three Broomsticks. Glancing around him, he shrugged and pulled the door open, swiftly stepping inside. “Sorry,” he said, coming to a halt right before he ran into a group of girls. A blush immediately crossed his face when the girls all exchanged a look and began giggling. He furrowed his eyebrows and stepped aside to allow them to pass, resisting the urge to roll his eyes as they continued to giggle at him…for whatever he had done that was apparently funny.

Shaking his head, he took a few steps into the establishment to take a look around. Most of the seats were already taken, but there were a few stools left at the bar – may as well grab one. “Erm…butterbeer please?” he asked as he slid onto the stool at the end of the bar.

Sometimes Holly came to the Three Broomsticks for more than just a butter beer. Sometimes even she, who preferred to hide away out of sight, to remain unnoticed, became lonely. The Three Broomsticks was her solution to that. When Holly began to wonder where everyone was, what they were doing with their lives, she would wander down to Hogsmeade - usually by train, for she maintained a distrust of apparation and the floo network - and sit in the bar and look for someone who looked like they needed a friend as much as she did. Those were usually the people most willing to talk to someone like her.

Today, Holly had not found anyone that looked particularly lonely when she walked into the little tavern. She sat at the bar with a tankard of ice cold butter beer clasped between her hands - it had to be ice cold. Holly never cared for hot butter beer. The rest of the guests at the bar and at the tables behind her chattered away, already involved with one another. Holly never had been very good at breaking into other peoples' conversations. It was like there was a block in her mind. If they were talking to someone else they clearly were not going to walk to talk to her. Only lonely people ever seemed to want to talk to her. But then, perhaps that was because she only ever approached the lonely.

Holly was about half finished with her butter beer when someone plopped down in the seat beside her. She jumped slightly and turned to look. Holly honestly was not sure what to think of the boy. He looked... rough, to her. At least on the edges. And sort of weary, and a little flushed, and Holly could not quite place a reason. He looked like a nice enough boy.

"Hello," she greeted him with a light smile. Whoever he was, he was alone, and that meant she could talk to him, right?

The bartender smiled at Vincent and slid the cold butterbeer down the bar. He put his hand out just in time to keep it from toppling over the edge of the bar. His eyes widened, terrified that he had almost let it go crashing to the ground. Some people down the bar were laughing at what had almost happened, so he just lowered his head, feeling the blush rising in his face again. Vincent was just a bit of a mess right now. Maybe going into Hogsmeade, especially by himself, was a bad idea. Maybe he should just leave and head back up to the castle. Lydia would probably give him a hard time, but she’d get over it eventually. He was surprised that she hadn’t come to the little village, too. A social butterfly like her? Knowing her, though, she probably got in some sort of trouble with the head boy or something.

Right when he was about to take a sip of his butterbeer, he heard a quiet voice greet him – or at least he thought they were talking to him. He lowered the glass, gently setting it back down on the bar in front of him and turned to look at who he thought was speaking to him. Vincent found himself surprised to see the woman smiling at him. The fact that a stranger was talking to him made him nervous. After everything that had happened, he’d grown to be really paranoid. It usually ended up being in vain, though.

Vincent forced himself to swallow his nervousness and offered a smile back to her. “Hi,” he said, before taking a sip of his butterbeer. He stared ahead as he desperately tried to think of something else he might say. His eyes widened as he realized that his mind was coming up blank. He glanced back at the woman for a moment and realized that she looked a little familiar. “Um…I’m Vincent,” he said, extending his hand to her.

Holly laughed gently and laid her hand in Vincent's. Her fingers were small and very thin against his palm, and her skin the color of milk. Holly, in many ways, was the model of the dainty maiden. She would have been utterly useless defending herself and she appeared quite pathetic beside the hulking boy she had chosen to speak to. Holly, though, had other talents to rely upon in her day to day life. A charming smile and a certain unexplained confidence with strangers was part of what kept her alive.

"Holly Fontaine," Holly answered gently. She gave Vincent's hand a soft shake. He seemed very strong, to her, something she admired. Even envied, at times. Holly knew she could have been strong too, if she tried, but in truth she was not sure what she would have done with such strength. Holly simply was not a physical person. "I've never seen you here before. Do you come often?"

Then again, Holly was not the most frequent of customers herself. She recognized most of the crowd in the bar room, but they were all frequent customers, in here almost every day at a very predictable time that just so happened to be the same time Holly usually arrived at the Three Broomsticks. Relying on the train to take her from place to place made sure Holly maintained a very orderly schedule. When the train ran, she arrived. Never before, never after, never in between.

Vincent’s eyes flashed down to the woman’s small hand in his. She seemed so delicate to him – from the paleness of her skin, to the size of her hand, to the tightness of her grip on his hand. It always made him nervous to be around people that were this delicate – or even seemed this delicate. Even though he usually had a pretty good handle on himself, he was always afraid that he was going to hurt the other person. Talking to someone that he didn’t know really set Vincent on edge. He had trust issues to say the least.

“Holly Fontaine?” he repeated, tilting his head to the side, after he released her hand. The name really rang a bell in Vincent’s memory and he furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to think about where he may have heard it. He looked back at her when he thought of something. Hadn’t Tobias mentioned some Holly to Vincent in his last letter? “Sorry, this is kind of weird, um…you wouldn’t happen to know a Tobias Maddoxx, would you?” he asked curiously – hoping that she would say yes. He would feel like a complete idiot if she said no.

“Oh,” he said, shrugging his and shaking his head,”Not really, I guess. I mean…I usually come here on the Hogsmeade weekends when my friends make me go.” Vincent was beginning to regret his decision to come out by himself on this particular Hogsmeade weekend – by himself at least. He had surprised even himself by coming, despite having promised that he would. “Um…do you come here often?” he asked, making an attempt at adding to the conversation a little bit.

Yet another bright smile broke the surface at the mention of Tobias. She twisted her hands together around her tankard, nodding eagerly and setting her sheets of dark brown hair swinging.

"Mmhm," she answered him cheerfully. "Tobias is one of my best friends." She could say that easily, even though they had not known one another all that long. Holly did not have another friend to compete for that spot in her life. "I haven't seen him in a while. Do you know him?" He tilted his head at Vincent.

"I come here all the time. The butter beer isn't the same anywhere else." As though to prove her point, Holly picked up her drink and tipped it to her lips. The ice cold butter beer slid down her throat and chilled the entire cavity of her chest. She suppressed a shudder. Holly adored that feeling. "So you're a Hogwarts student? What are you studying?"

Holly had always wondered what it would be like to be a student at one of the other schools of magic. Beauxbatons had been nice, but she had not done well, and honestly Holly regretted that. It would have been so interesting to be accomplished with magic in some small way. Any way beyond cleaning and cooking.

A small smile crossed Vincent’s face when the woman mentioned that she was very close with Tobias. So it was definitely the woman that he thought it was. Tobias had mentioned her to Vincent several times before. He’d apparently saved her from some thugs awhile ago and he’d just become sort of attached to her. “Yeah, I’ve known him pretty much my entire life. He’s kinda family,” he said with a shrug, allowing the smile to grace his features a little while longer. Tobias was one of the main people that had kept Vincent from going off the deep end after he had been bitten. After all, his family had completely rejected him, so Tobias was definitely the next best thing. “He’s talked about you a couple of times,” he said with a nod.

Vincent furrowed his eyebrows slightly at the woman’s question. What was he studying? “Um…you know…the usual subjects,” he said, turning a bit more towards her as he thought about his classes,”Potions, Transfiguration, Charms…that kind of thing.” A silence fell between them and Vincent began to feel the awkwardness – or maybe it was just him. He always seemed to make things really awkward, but he just couldn’t help it. That’s just how he was apparently.

He thought back to Tobias’ last letter, trying to think of something that the two of them might be able to talk about. “Ah…so Tobias mentioned you own a pet shop?” he asked, more than relieved that he was able to come up with a topic of conversation.