It was good that her boss was deciding to keep to himself this evening, because he would be more displeased by this conversation the further they got into it. But why would she not talk to a bloke about shitty circumstances when they were literally sitting in it? Knockturn Alley as a whole, and being practically banished to it, was proof of these shitty circumstances, and the White Wyvern was a piece of shit bar that further proved it. There was no reason to be talking about anything positive going on in the wizarding world, because she wasn’t sure that anything would even come to mind. If there was good going on, then she wasn’t aware of it, clearly. No patron at this pub wanted some bright and chipper bint waltzing around… well, no, she supposed that wasn’t necessarily true. That was probably exactly what they wanted, and she could deliver that most of the time—when her boss was around to ensure it. Otherwise, she didn’t really see the point, and would rather just talk to whoever wanted to talk to her about whatever it was they wanted to talk about. If that was the ministry and that it was fucked up, then so be it. It really made no difference to her what the ministry did, as they couldn’t surprise her anymore, but she could still commiserate with whoever wanted to.

“Oh, definitely. Some more contagious than others,” she added, under her breath. That was one of the many things she’d heard over the years, people thinking that lycanthropy was contagious. She was unsure why the man would think that anyone would consider being a Death Eater something contagious, but the comparison was true enough. They kept far enough away from the lot of them like somehow the desire to do dark magic and kill Muggleborns and Muggles was just going to rub off of them immediately. “It is what it is,” she agreed, nodding. That was what she had been thinking for quite some time. Why worry about shit circumstances that were never going to change? She had accepted her hand in life long ago. “That’s what I always say.”

With the way that she presented herself, Miles knew that there was great potential for this one. He didn’t want to press his luck and come across too strongly, thus pushing her away. This meeting was nothing more than that, a simple introduction in the hopes of building a relationship of sorts. It wasn’t like they would become friends as no one in this area had friends, really, but it was more to just have an acquaintance around here. Besides, most people were decent enough to the ones that were serving them liquor for the fact that they held the damn liquor, making this meeting not look overly suspicious. The great thing that the Ministry did was that they easily pissed everyone off. Even those who weren’t completely on Miles’ side, they were against the Minister and could potentially consider joining them if only they disliked the Minister slightly more. Miles felt like he really needed to meet this bloke at times as he was certain he would be quite the interesting man. That was for another time, obviously.

Miles didn’t miss her comment, causing him to smirk slightly. There was only so long people could be kicked while they were done before they got up and rebelled. That time was certainly on the verge of arriving. “At least they were compassionate enough to not take our liquor away. How tragic that would have been,” he commented, lifting his drink before taking a long sip. It would have been real shitty if they had to go to Diagon Alley just to get a drink…hell, it would have been shitty if they weren’t even allowed to drink for fear that the alcohol would incite riots or whatever shit the Ministry could come up with.

She didn’t know what she had been thinking when she had come back to England after being bitten by Greyback. Looking back at it, there had been a hell of a lot of reasons to stay away, far more than there were to actually return. For one, she wouldn’t have had to register with the Ministry, which put her in this shit situation. Secondly, her family wouldn’t even know that she was a werewolf. That meant that her parents would still be speaking to her, and Dorian wouldn’t feel the need to take care of her all the time. She could have just stayed away and communicated by letter so that they didn’t think she was dead and maybe eventually just disappeared altogether. That route seemed better now, but she knew that it was too late to even contemplate what could have been now. She had chosen to return. She had chosen to register with the Ministry. And she had chosen to tell her family which had resulted in her parents now wanting nothing to do with her. It also put Dorian in a situation where he had to choose, though she really wished that he would have chosen their parents and let her just do what she needed to do to survive. Bringing him into it and making him feel responsible for her, however unintentionally since she hadn’t meant to do that, had only made this situation worse. Now it seemed like he felt her hardships as much as she did if not more, and that wasn’t what she ever would have wanted.

A smile widened across her lips at his comment, nodding in agreement. If they took liquor away from her, she didn’t know what she would do. But it did seem like something that the Ministry would come up with… that she was a danger enough to others at the best of times, but if alcohol was involved she would get more violent and have more outbursts as she lost further control over herself. Or something. In reality, she needed it to get through the night, but she doubted that they would see it that way. “Merlin, I don’t know what I would do without liquor. I’d be out of a job and lose my sanity, obviously.” She replied, before taking a swig of her drink. Of everything that they could do, that might actually be the worst. Hell, she’d wear a damn dog collar before she had to be sober all of the time.

Miles could almost look at this bint as being a daughter he wished he had. He had children, obviously, but none of them were as talented or as powerful as this beauty was. She was blessed beyond anyone’s knowledge and he truly did want her to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He hoped people would continue to poke the beast, just waiting for the beast to finally have enough and want to fight back. Hell, he almost hoped that something happened to that brother of hers, his life being taken from the traitors so that there would be nothing holding this beast back from who she truly was. It was vital that she embraced the beast fully if she were to ever become not the embarrassment that she currently was. The woman really needed to stop shitting herself and realize she didn’t belong in that world afraid of change, afraid of seeing the proper way of running society.

He grinned in line with her, glad to see that he was at least slightly reaching out to her, developing some kind of relationship, no matter how little it was. It would start out as a regular patron, an interesting conversation or two, and slowly, he would be invading her mind, convincing her thoughts to change. “They can take away the liquor, but I’m certain we’d find a way to obtain it under the radar,” he responded, intentionally speaking about them as a ‘we’, slipping it into the conversation where most wouldn’t even realize it. “Now, now, they’d find you a job somewhere as the Ministry is all about saving face,” he shrugged, grinning. It didn’t matter what they did. They would always try to make it appear to the majority of society that they were being compassionate in some fashion.

Her boss would absolutely hate knowing that she was having a conversation like this, though she didn’t understand why. They really had differing opinions on a lot of shit, but Amaris would never disagree with him, obviously. She really bloody needed this job, after all, so she would just do what she needed to do while he was around and then do her job how she wanted to when he wasn’t. Like right now, when she saw no point in acting like a simpering bint handing out drinks because in her mind, her boss’s logic about blokes buying more drinks from a bint that they think would actually sleep with them was absolutely absurd. But hell, what did she know? She wasn’t a bar owner, or whatever. Amaris just needed to make sure that she could actually keep this job for a while, and it was going all right thus far.

“Probably,” she agreed, laughing lightly. She would last maybe two days without alcohol and it would be an awful two days. Amaris simply found it difficult to sleep sober, needing to drink enough to forget about her shitty life enough to fall asleep. That was rather depressing, she supposed, but she had found that most people would consider her pretty damn depressing if they knew what she was thinking half of the time. She couldn’t help but scoff at the man’s comment, shaking her head. “They wouldn’t find me a job in the Ministry.” She didn’t add that they didn’t even like her going into the Ministry unless she had to, and that it very clearly stated what she was on the name badge that everyone got when going to the Ministry. Yes, that was always fun when she had ever tried to visit Dorian at work, which had lasted all of… two times, maybe. The Ministry was a place for her to just go when she had to, namely, never.

Knockturn Alley wasn’t all bad, Miles mused. The Ministry forced them all to congregate together, making it much easier to plot when they wanted to. It wasn’t strange to see them together as they were all forced in this area. The Ministry wasn’t exactly the most brilliant as they portrayed themselves time and time again and forcing all the rebels and those they saw as threats into one area was probably the worst idea that they had yet, and they had many poor ideas. On top of that, people didn’t say shit to each other unless they trusted the individual so unless someone was going to take on the look of another, they weren’t going to find shit on them. Of course, impersonating someone was easy, except that Miles was hardly easily fooled, especially when he invaded the thoughts of everyone he came upon, just to ensure that he could. There were certain things that he looked for when he invaded minds and if he didn’t like what he saw, he would easily move out of that conversation.

“Not in the Ministry,” he corrected, wondering if maybe she misunderstood. “They would just find you a job somewhere…much like they sent us all here...I bet the outsiders think we’re getting five star fucking treatment,” he laughed, scowling slightly at the thought. They were supposedly being helped, or whatever the hell the Ministry was sharing with them. They certainly weren’t getting helped in the slightest, being forced to serve the sorry arses of society. It would only be a matter of time, Miles reminded himself as he reminded himself every day. Taking a long sip of his drink, he glanced about to see any other faces before returning back to his drink.

Perhaps she was a bit more worn out from the full moon than she had thought she was, and that was bloody saying something because she had been well aware that she was dead on her feet. It seemed as though she’d completely misheard what he’d said and in fact, she couldn’t even recall what he’d even stated that she’d been replying to. Merlin, this had been an incredibly long night, though obviously not nearly as long as the one previous had been. “Right—sorry,” she replied, tiredly, knowing that she could certainly explain that lack of sleep was apparently short-circuiting her ability to function properly; but then he would probably ask why and that was not something that she needed. Though there was also the possibly that he wouldn’t ask why, as this was Knockturn Alley and people usually weren’t all that curious about others. Regardless, she didn’t feel the need to explain that to him when it wasn’t really his problem to begin with. “I don’t know—if they start getting rid of the alcohol, I doubt they’ll be worried much about employing us,” she replied, with a quiet laugh. If it were to get to the point that they were banning her kind from drinking alcohol, then it would probably be past the point where she was even able to get any kind of job. That would be more along the lines of the dog collar days, which was her amusing way to reference what she considered to be her obvious future.

That was almost the difference between the two groups, in her mind, though she would still argue that they had it worse than her—simply because she had accepted her situation a long time ago. But she knew that eventually she would probably just be treated as more of an animal than a human, until there was probably nothing bloody left of her at all. In contrast, with everything she had heard about Dimitte and trying to get Death Eaters back their rights in some sort of fight for inequality, Amaris would bet that this situation might just resolve itself eventually for them. Before the Death Eaters and purebloods had been the focus of this discrimination, Muggleborns had, but if something remained constant, it was that werewolves would always be on the bottom. Of course, she had accepted that as something that would never change.

As much as Miles wanted to stay and chat with the young werewolf, he knew that his time was coming to an end as he had other things he really needed to take care of. His to-do list was growing by the minute and he had many people he needed to ‘casually’ meet up with, developing relationships that would pay off in the end when they fought alongside each other. He wasn’t so daft as to believe that relationships and loyalty would be built off of one encounter and he had plenty of time to utilize. Staying in any given conversation for a lengthy period of time would look suspicious and he very much knew how to play his cards so that he was deceiving. One thing was for certain and that was that he would definitely be returning to this pub when she was working, and occasionally when she wasn’t, just to appear more casual. It wasn’t as if he were stalking her or something as he had other shit to take care of, but he would keep an eye on the situation and see when he could utilize her poor treatment for his advantage in convincing her to join the proper sider. “No apologies needed,” he shrugged carelessly, not caring one way or the other. “If they start getting rid of the alcohol, down with the Ministry,” he laughed, taking a swig of his drink.

Standing up, he finished his drink in one motion before handing some money over to her. “Pleasure talking to you, sweetie,” he grinned, glancing about the pub once more before returning his look to the attractive witch. “Hope to see you some more; Merlin knows we don’t get enough pretty things to look at anymore,” Miles winked, chuckling lightly. He definitely knew he would be seeing more of her, though he would be intentional with the meetups, bloody obviously, as to not give anything away about his true intentions. With time, this world would see their erroneous ways and with time, he would guide his people back to glory. “Have a goodnight,” he shrugged, nodding at the witch before turning to leave.

There were definitely benefits and problems to working a job like this with her condition, she supposed. One major benefit was that she had all day to recuperate from a full moon, which was what she had been able to do today. If she’d had a job that started at nine in the morning or whatever time normal people went to work, then she would have to drag herself to work after probably getting an hour of sleep at the most and with her body still trying to get used to being back in human form. Having a night job at least meant that she had time to sleep and make herself a bit less useless at work—though a bit was obviously key, since she was still not exactly on the top of her game. Of course, another problem certainly was that she was dead on her feet by this late at night, and she could note that it was at least better than it could be. “Agreed,” she said, jokingly, as she traced the rim of her glass mindlessly. As much as the man might joke, there were certainly ones that wanted the Ministry to go down and she frankly didn’t know how anyone thought that was a remote possibility. They were the governing body, or something, and Durant had gotten himself into power and now who knew what he was going to continue to do with that? There was really nothing to be done about that but just accept it and hope for the best, which was something that she’d gotten quite good at—the former of those, at least, as she really didn’t see the point in even hoping for the best. It made far more sense to just be resigned to whatever it was that was going to happen in the future.

Amaris nodded in thanks as he passed her some money, not even bothering to count it. Most people didn’t exactly have enough funding to even drink on a regular basis, though they managed it, so she didn’t expect the great majority to even tip. It wasn’t exactly great for her paycheck, but she couldn’t blame them when they were making even less money than she was—and that was pretty damn hard to do with her minuscule paycheck. “Thanks,” Amaris answered, her eyes moving about the bar briefly to see that it was dying down a bit and that perhaps the night was coming to a close sooner than she’d realized; it had been a while she’d checked the time, after all. “Oh, I’ll be here,” she added, knowing that it would certainly be the case unless she got fired. Of course, her boss made it clear that pretty bints were a dime a dozen, so she knew that she was quite replaceable if it came down to it. “You too,” she added, before taking his down empty glass and setting into the nearby sink to clean later as the bloke made to leave. She supposed that had been an all right way of wasting some time, and he was easily one of the more normal men that she’d actually spoken to at work; he hadn’t made one suggestive or lewd remark at her or trying to make a move so that was quite a successful conversation, considering. She knew that she would probably not be as lucky the rest of the night, as she saw a regular enter the bar that always made a habit of getting particularly handsy. But she was quite used to that by now, obviously.

-END OF THREAD-