Mira gazed into the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, head tipped slightly to the side as she studied the latest broom released. It was sleek and beautiful looking, the wood dark and shining. The bristles were perfectly clipped and the footrests shone bright gold.

It wasn’t the physical make-up of the stick that drew her attention though. It was the charmwork. It took someone who really knew their stuff to put one of these together, especially as they were made today. She rarely watched Quidditch, but she’d seen what they could do. Part of it was the innate magic of the flyer, but the mechanics they took for granted was in the charmwork embedded in every fiber of the broom.

It was fascinating.

"It's out?" Rose exclaimed, gloved hands pressing against the glass, her nose following a second later. She'd known the Flame 3000 was coming out at the beginning of the year, but she hadn't thought it'd be so soon.

Bright green eyes turning to the other person just outside the shoppe, Rose blinked. "I know you," she said, palms still pressed against the slightly foggy glass.

Mira's lips curled slightly, blue gaze shifting from the woman's face to her hair, to the brightly colored gloves and knit cap she wore. "I think you do. Though is our connection eluding you as it is me? Just on the tip of your tongue?"

"Mmhmm," Rose said, eyes narrowing as she tried to sort out the where and why she knew the women before her. "Oh!" Pushing back from the glass, she smiled brightly. "You work at the Ministry!"

"I do," Mira said, smile curling her lips in response to the shorter woman's. "And you..." Her eyes narrowed as she thought, tried to connect the dots. Colorful. Was apparently fascinated by brooms. Was at the Ministry for...

She smiled brilliantly then, gloved finger pointing back. "And you are Euan's Harpy, yes?"

"Did he call me that?" Rose asked, a small smile turning her lips. "I suppose other people might have taken that the wrong way, but I think I know what you meant. I am a Harpy, after all."

The blue eyed woman's name was on the tip of her tongue, and she continued to shuffle through her memories to find it. "I remember your eyes, more than anything. They're very memorable."

Mira smiled and finally just held her hand out to the shorter woman. "Mira Montgomery, again," she said by way of re-introduction. "And Euan really didn't call you that. He's too much of a gentleman to try without blushing terribly. I just remembered watching you in the League Championship last year, is all... Rose, yes?"

"Rose, mmhmmm, that's me," Rose said, shaking Mira's hand. It felt a little too formal, but to each their own. "Do you play?" she asked, nodding her bright head towards the window.

Mira blinked a long moment before laughter slipped from her. "No, not at all. I'm no good at anything that requires a modicum of athletic ability."

Her blue gaze drifted to the window again. "I was just admiring the brooms for their charmwork. You realize that every single one has to pass through a witch's or wizard's hands before it's sent out to be used? Some of the lines produce them in factories, but the charmwork is still fantastic... but these? These right here are handmade," she said, voice reverent. "The charms... the magic in these is done by a Master."

Rose's gaze went back and forth between the broom behind the glass and Mira, eyes slowly widening in amusement. "I guess I never thought about the charmwork," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "but yeah, it looks like it would take a lot of work. Do you charm... or something?"

Mira straightened again, light color in her cheeks and a tiny smile on her lips. "I study charms at Oxford, is all. My Mother and twin are on the Ministry's Committee for Experimental Charms though, and my elder sister works a cosmetics charm lab." She tipped her head, eyes bright. "You could say it's a bit of a family passion."

"I was horrible at charms in school. I have a hard enough time apparating. Took me four times to pass the test." Grinning, Rose cocked her head to the side. "You go to school and work at the Ministry? When do you have time to live?"

"I ... I," Mira paused, a tiny frown furrowing her brow. With her capstone due at the end of the semester, her incessant research and the application she'd been working on for the Committee, she hadn't even been getting to her beloved Chelsea's games. "... well. My sister has enough fun for both of us right now?"

She crinkled her nose and shook her head. "You know, I haven't even been to a Chelsea game in weeks. It's a sad state of affairs when I can't recall being there last."

Her blue eyes were intent when she looked up, spotting just the little shoppe that had come to mind. "Come on," she said resolutely, slipping her arm through Rose's and tugging her down the walk. "Lets get ice cream. That's living. Or it's a start at least," she said, grinning over at the Quidditch player.

Rose would never turn down something sweet with a pretty girl, and she smiled as she returned Mira's gaze. "Ice cream is a start, but you can't live vicariously. It's definitely not as fun."

"I usually don't, you know. I usually go to every football game Chelsea plays in London, but it's just that I'm in my last year of school and it all got busier, faster than I thought it would."

Mira glanced over then, curiosity lighting her features. She recognized Rose from school now that she'd have several minutes to think on it, but the little woman had been younger and in a different house if she remembered correctly. Besides their chance visit in the Ministry the spring prior, she'd not seen her since then. "You know my life story now... what about you? How do you know Euan?"

"He ran into me in the park," Rose said, "and then we just..." Shrugging her shoulders, she moved a bit closer to Mira as a particularly cold blast of wind blew into them. "He works too hard."

Mira nodded. "Yeah, I haven't seen him in ages and we work on the same floor. I'm not particularly good about getting up from my desk, but I don't see him in the tearoom as often as when I first started there." She wondered what Rose had meant to say, that she'd not finished, but didn't want to pry.

"If anyone needs to live a little, its Euan. I've been meaning to drag him to a football game forever as it was our deal for him getting me to a Quidditch match." The last was said a bit ruefully given her company.

"I've been telling him that for ages, but it never seems to sink in. Maybe we should double-team him," Rose said, eyes brightening at the idea.

As they pushed through the door to Fortescue's, Mira pulled her gaze away from the colorful buckets full of ice cream at the front to her companion. "What did you have in mind?"

Rose considered the ice cream flavors in front of her, trying to think of something. "Oh!" Turning, her hands wrapped around Mira's upper arms in her excitement, "we should kidnap him or something! Get him in the middle of the night and just take him someplace fun. We'd have to make sure he had the next day off, though," she added, frowning.

The sudden movement, Rose grabbing her, had Mira blinking, but the completely outrageous, rash idea had a grin lighting her features. Cassie might even want to come, though she wasn't as easily excited about these kinds of things. She'd probably tease her for making new Huffle-friends as it was.

"I do have access to everyone's schedules, you know," she said, grin widening. She was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet then. "I could find out, and we could ..." she grinned, absolutely thrilled with the idea Rose had come up with; she'd never kidnapped anyone before. "...kidnap him."

The fact that her idea wasn't thought as ridiculous only made Rose more excited. "Kidnapping it is. He won't know what hit him. Three girls in his room in the middle of the night? Yeah. Definitely more life than he's allowed himself to have," she finished with a grin.

She knew he'd been through so much since Halloween, losing his mum like he had, and although he said he was alright, Rose worried. She wanted to see him smile again, and if Mira was as devoted to that cause as she was, it was a win-win situation.

"Three? Did you read my mind or were you thinking of someone else?" Mira queried, pointing to the blackberry flavor and nodding her head at the server before turning her attention back to Rose. "Though, I don't know that Cassie would be very excited about kidnapping an Auror Trainee anyways. She's only met him the once at your game last summer."

"I just assumed. You said she had fun for the both of you, seemed only fair to let her in on the fun you'd be having," Rose said, green eyes flicking back and forth over the different flavors. "I'll take the pumpkin juice and the caramel apple," she told the server before turning back to Mira. "Whether she comes with or not, I think it's a rather brilliant plan. He'd never see it coming."

"For an Auror, he's not nearly suspicious enough of his friends," Mira said, tiny grin curling her mouth when she glanced over at her companion.

"Not many people are," Rose said, knowing she was probably included in that group.

"Perhaps just a Slytherin trait then." Mira's eyes were bright as she caught Rose's gaze again, but her thoughts turned to Harry and his own views on the Houses, hers in particular.

Her nose twitched and she pushed the thoughts away as she and Rose settled into one of the booths. She supposed it was a bit odd to be taking time and having ice cream with someone she'd only met once prior, but Rose seemed very friendly and not at all awkward about it which suited her just fine. Most of her family and friends were entirely too stuffy about it.

"Where do you think we should take him? Or shall we just have a slumber party in his room?" Her brow furrowed slightly as she took a lick. "Not that I know where he lives. And I'm probably being presumptuous considering he and I only see each other in the tearoom at work."

Rose laughed at the turn of phrase Mira had chosen - where should we take him - before shrugging her shoulders. "His room is a little small for a slumber party, but we could get him there and then take him elsewhere. We could kidnap him to my flat. He's been there before and it hasn't really been used for a while."

"No?" Her brows quirked up in question, curious now. "Do you have a ... a bloke?" It didn't seem to fit the little, bright woman, to be tied to someone like that, but she could be wrong.

"I did for a night last week, but no, no bloke," Rose answered, a smile blooming on her face when she thought about her night spent with Andrew. "I've just been staying somewhere else lately. A lot lately, actually."

Smiling, tongue licking along her spoon, she nodded towards Mira. "And you?"

"A bloke" Mira blinked. "No.. no not at all. Not even for a night, not for a really long time." Her nose crinkled. "Longer than I'd like to think about, really." She'd never been like her twin, craving the slide of bodies all the time, but now that Rose mentioned it ... Mira hadn't realized it'd been that long. Long enough where she had to think about it.

Shaking her head slightly, she focused back on Rose. "But you're with a friend then? I live with my twin, though with our schedules, we don't see each other all that often sometimes."

"A friend and her family... and her family's family. And a dog," Rose answered with a smile. "I spend more time there than at my flat, I suppose. I pop back in for clothes, but a lot of them are there now, too."

Shrugging her shoulders, Rose leaned across the table. "Not even for a night? Is there no one around that you find bedable?" Rose hadn't realized how badly she'd missed a body against hers until she'd had it again.

The face that sprung to mind at the last question startled Mira and she knew her skin had tinted pink with her thoughts. She could feel the warmth, but she pushed the thought firmly away, tiny smile curling her lips when she met Rose's gaze again. "I guess I just don't think about it that much. I get so caught up in other things, that I forget, but it catches up with a person at some point, I suppose."

Twirling her spoon in her ice cream, Mira took a thoughtful bite, savoring the flavor before adding, "and you, you're living in a circus. And then your bloke for a night." A smile lit her eyes. "Doesn't sound half bad."

"I like the circus. I think I'd fit in," Rose said, flipping her hair a little as she grinned at Mira across the table.

"I think you might too," Mira agreed, smile curling her lips as she reached out and tugged on a lock of Rose's hair.


SUMMARY: Rose finds Mira ogling brooms at Quality Quidditch Supplies, they have ice cream and plot to kidnap Euan.