bait_backup | If you could see her through my eyes, you wouldn't wonder at all

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If you could see her through my eyes, you wouldn't wonder at all

*For a few days, Amrita could barely feel her feet touching the ground as she worked her shifts downstairs at the Leaky. She couldn't believe her luck, meeting (or re-meeting) Remus: he'd somehow taken a horrible day and spun it into something good, something hopeful. But it's been awhile since they met—in that very booth right over there, which her eyes keep flashing to worriedly--and she's long since started to doubt that he'll owl at all. The pub's near-empty most days, like much of Diagon Alley, so she's been spending a lot of time brooding and washing out glasses that don't need to be washed out, oscillating wildly between hope and despair and inventing less-and-less plausible reasons for the delay until she's driven herself half-mad with it for no particular reason.

It's foolish, but she can't help it, and tonight's no different. The early promise of the night—patrons, laughter, tips—has turned into achy feet and endless one-more-rounds for the only customer in the place, a regular who's neither charming nor a particularly good tipper. Still, she puts on her best smile for him as she refills his drink again and again. Behind it, her mind helplessly worries at itself like a well-picked bone: maybe he'll owl tomorrow morning. Or the next day. Or never. Best give up now. Oh, don't be ridiculous. Maybe he'll owl tomorrow morning.

This is what's galloping through her head like a centaur on uppers as she smiles prettily at the regular, waiting for last call, or for him to leave, or for her headache to simply kill her—whichever comes first.*

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Brain is lovely if cooked well, though I prefer sweetbreads if offal is the game we're playing.

Yuck, no thank you.

*She makes a little face and wrinkles her nose, but her stomach makes a little hungry flip-flop. Offal sounds good. Too good: a great big mass of bloody offal, fatty and cartilaginous and dripping, for her to crunch...

Ugh. That'll be the calendar talking: the full moon's six days away, but she's reasonably sure she's anemic, and the two together...well. She mentally admonishes herself to have conversations with him about subjects other than animal parts, and perhaps finally see about taking that iron supplement, and if she's good she may have her steak very rare.*

Ah. No offal, then. I'll stick to steak.

--Here we are.

*The sign is small but bright, proclaiming itself simply CHEF RINARD'S. Inside business is bustling, with couples leaning toward each other over candlelit tables over burgundy tablecloths that glitter with threaded gold.

Evan releases her hand and holds open the door for her to step through.*

*As she steps into the Chef Rinard's, she feels a peculiar mixture of familiarity and the opposite: on the one hand, she hasn't been anywhere so nice in ages, but on the other hand, she was raised in the lap of luxury and once comfortably frequented places every bit as upscale as this one...and some even more so.

She shucks off her shabby cloak gladly--the robes underneath are years old and therefore gorgeous and luxe, bringing out the green in her eyes--and it disappears somewhere into the very good service of the place.*

Oh, lovely. I've never been here.

There are all sorts of little places like this scattered around the city. I make it my business to know them.

*Evan follows her, handing off his own cloak as well. He turns to the maitre'd.*

Two? Rosier.

*The man nods, picking up two menus penned in shimmering ink and a wine list. With a courteous right-this-way, he leads them, not to a table in the front, but to an intimate nook tucked away into the wall, covered in lush cushions to sit on and lit by its own shimmering golden lantern that casts rippling patterns on the wall as if the light were coming from underwater.*

Goodness.

*It's barely a word: more like a soft exhalation, as she realizes that upscale or no, this place is uniquely beautiful and must've taken some finding. Despite her halfhearted efforts at callousness, she's more than impressed, and it shows. After she takes the seat, she takes the barest of glances at the menu--just enough to ascertain that there is, in fact, steak, and that it costs as much as her take-home in a day, and that she doesn't care in the slightest--and then looks up at him through the dappled light.*

This place is a gem. I admire your taste.

*This is honestly and shrewdly meant: she's been to fancier restaurants, but none as elegant. Or perhaps it's that at the time she was nine years old, in much different circumstances.*

*Evan tries--and fails quite spectacularly, actually--to suppress his self-satisfied smile.*

I'm glad.

*He doesn't even feel the need to gloat that the reservations were exceedingly difficult to get out of the maitre'd on such short notice, much less this table. Her look of awe is more than enough.*

Do you have a wine preference, or should I order?

I trust you.

*She shoots him a look then that's intimate, but sharp, in a wry half-joke kind of way. It's a lie, of course: she doesn't, not yet--but she likes him. And why shouldn't she? She glances over the menu again, having no trouble at all with the French and wondering if she hadn't talked herself out of being able to order sweetbreads. Deciding she has--unfortunately--she comforts herself with thoughts of steak black-and-blue, positively dripping.*

What are you thinking of?

*He certainly gets the joke, and the lie, but it's more of a promise than anything else, he thinks. She could trust him.*

I think a Alsatian Pinot Gris would go nicely with moules mariniere. Then we could go for a bottle of something red to go with dinner. I believe I promised you steak, so a good old-fashioned French Cabernet wouldn't be amiss. The 1961 is particularly good, as I recall.

I'll take your word for it. Spirits are more my area of expertise. Obviously.

Naturally.

*He shuts the wine list and the waiter approaches. In impeccable French, he orders the wine and mussels for them both, and duck for himself.

The waiter turns to Amrita and asks, "And for you?"*

Entrecôte, s'il vous plait. Bleu—-vraiment bleu, oui? Merci.

*It's been three years or more since she's used her French but it comes from her smoothly and flawlessly, thank heaven for small favors. She's ordered a thick cut with a bone in it, almost raw, and doesn't care a Sickle for what he'll think: even considering what's about to arrive on her plate she might just cry with anticipation. But she manages to be fairly opaque about it, considering. The wine arrives and is poured and she raises her glass to him.*

Cheers.

*Despite the fact that he knows she is no longer accustomed to this--indeed, even if he hadn't read her file, he would know that a barmaid would never be used to this--he is, once again, impressed by her recall of the language. She is fitting in as smoothly as he could have hoped.

He lifts his glass, his eyebrows raised, and they clink.*

Cheers.

*After a sip--the wine is an excellent expression of the grape, and has aged well as most wines of this sort do--he sets the glass down and strokes the stem pensively.*

You speak French beautifully. Where did you learn?

*She sips, and closes her eyes for a brief moment, just barely longer than a blink. It's sublime.*

Oh, long ago. I had a tutor...six-foot-tall Frenchwoman with a fantastic lacquered helmet of hair. You wouldn't believe it.

You're joking. Madam DuLac? And her horrible ruler, and her awful long red fingernails?

No! You didn't!

*She laughs freely, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, and for a moment, her scarred palm is just visible.*

Awful. Just awful. Quelle horreur. Did you really?

I did! I did, my parents brought her on when I was seven or so. Wretched woman. I haven't the slightest clue how I actually learned a thing from her. But whatever she did, it stuck. And I use French everywhere for business, it's exactly as important as my father said it would be. It didn't hurt that Father loved how mad she was, too.

My word. How she'd go, souris, cerises, sourires!

*She screws her face up into a cruel but accurate imitation of the poor woman's permanent scowl, and does passably well at her squeaky voice, too. The mussels naturally choose this time to arrive, and she looks up at the waiter coolly--despite having just been a psychotic middle-aged Frenchwoman.*

Merci.

*Cool enough, certainly, but the instant she meets Evan's eyes she bursts into helpless laughter again and the whole thing's ruined.*

*Evan is laughing along with her, remembering the horrible woman and her horrible face; how he had longed to smash it in, and now, how he had forgotten her so completely.*

Did she make you memorize Lamartine? O temps, suspends ton vol! et vous, heures propices, suspendez votre cours! Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices des plus beaux de nos jours!

No one has ever sucked the joy out of poetry quite as well as she.

*She helps herself to a mussel and can't even properly process how impossibly good it is, because she's reciting the second half of the poem along with him, her eyes rolled skyward.*

Agreed. Forget about les sanglots longs. My coeur was sufficiently blessé, believe me.

*He delicately pulls a mussel out of its shell and swallows it.*

I was almost happy to drink down the awful watered-down merlot in the cafés when we went to Paris when I turned eleven, because it meant I'd never have to see her again. For the longest time, I thought she was a demon risen from the deepest hell specifically sent to torment me. It's good to know I wasn't alone back then.

See, I'd always thought she had gotten kicked out of France on account of her being so dreadful, so she was forced to teach French to little pureblood children all over England and wasn't very happy about it.

*Amrita takes a deep draught of wine, and her belly's getting pleasingly warm.*

See, I'd thought she hated me particularly because I had a Marathi accent back then. The fits of rage my r's would send her into...

No, I'm certain she hated all children with impunity.

Although it's strange, I've never been to India. I'm terribly curious about it, though, I just never seem to have the time to travel for pleasure, and we have no contacts there to travel with so we'd have to fly or take Muggle transport. Is it as beautiful as the pictures make it out to be?

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

The parts I've seen anyway, which isn't exactly the whole subcontinent. My great-aunt has an estate outside Mumbai, in Sion. It's beyond gorgeous, built over an old Portuguese fortification.

It's huge, of course. China's much the same, in my experience. You can go a hundred times and never feel you're seeing the same country.

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