Arranged

Caius kneaded the back of his neck, gazing at the tea shop dubiously. Why had he let his mother heckle him into this, again? He was eighteen, for Merlin's sake! There was plenty of time before he needed to worry about marriage, of all things.

'Just a few dates,' his mother had said. Cai wasn't stupid. They weren't just dates, and his mother was daft if she thought he'd believe otherwise.

Sighing, he finally went inside the shop. Seating himself at a vacant table, he proceeded to fidget as he waited for his arranged date to arrive.

Madam Rose's Tea Shop, seriously? Alice though as she entered the shop with a frown. Not that she didn't like place, it was nice, but it seemed a bit. . . clichéd for a date. For some reason, it reminded her way too much of Madam Puddifoots, even if they were completely different.

She shook her head and tugged at her skirt. She didn't have to like the place, she didn't have to like the boy, she didn't have to like anything. She was only doing this for her siblings, only because they asked her to accept, only because they thought she could actually meet someone who'd be good for her. She was not doing it for her parents, not because they wanted her to find a "suitable boyfriend". She was doing this for herself.

Alice spotted him at a nearby table, alone, obviously. Well, he was pretty cute, seemed charming, and she supposed that was a nice start. Ignoring the little voice inside her head that reminded her all purebloods - or most - were raised to seem charming, she made her way towards him.

"Hello," she greeted with a small voice, fighting the urge to run away from there - but she'd run away from the one in France, she wasn't going to again. The ex-Hufflepuff couldn't believe she was actually nervous.


(ooc: sorry for the late reply!)

Cai rose smoothly from his chair as he noted her approach. "Hi," he returned, offering his hand for her to shake a bit awkwardly. "I'm Cai. Um... Caius. Raske. Hi."

He winced a bit at his own stammering. He probably sounded like an idiot - he certainly felt like one. It wasn't as though he knew how he ought to behave on a date, having only been on one before. Pulling out her chair for her (he did know proper etiquette), he helped her be seated before returning to his own seat.

"So," Caius cast his gaze about the shop in search of a topic. "Nice little... place." Actually, the place made him a bit uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to say that aloud.

Alice shook his hand and smiled, "I'm Alice Poots, it's nice to, uh, meet you." She could tell he was nervous, which made her feel slightly better. But only slightly.

"Oh, no, it's okay, you don't-" she started to say when he pulled out the chair for her, but closed her mouth and sat down, knowing boys preferred doing that, it made them feel needed or something of the type. At least, it was what she'd read in that magazine during her fifth year at Hogwarts, when she was getting ready for her first date. Back then, she thought she'd be less anxious, more prepared, as she got older. Seemed like that wasn't the case. "Thank you," she thanked him and watched him go to his seat.

Nodding, Alice looked around once more. "Yeah, it's really uh, nice," she agreed and thought of a way to keep the conversation going, "Do you come here often?"

At her query, Cai gave a small, sudden smile that would have been the equivalent of a surprised laugh in somebody else. A hand came up to knead at the back of his neck. "Um, no, actually..." he glanced about the place. "Not at all. My mother, or I suppose maybe yours, chose the location. I've never been here or... any place like it, really."

The man slouched back in his seat before he remembered that such poor etiquette would certainly be unallowed. So, he straightened in his seat, posture painstakingly correct. A waitress approached and Caius allowed Alice to order before ordering himself.

"My mum - mother says you're a teacher," he began by means of trying to hold a conversation. "At Hogwarts. Must keep you busy. Can't imagine learning with so many people in the same room. Don't students get distracted a lot?

"I, uh, learned at home, myself, but I do work as a groundsman at Durmstrang." Caius gave a wry chuckle. "I avoid inside the castle between classes. It's worse than Lazarus Square on market day."

He was prattling, he was certain of it, but what else was he supposed to do? It wasn't like he could tell, Oh, yes, by the way, my family isn't really just a long line of successful landowner and small-time craftsmen, we're actually some of the best bounty hunters in Europe. We just don't like people to know that. That just seemed a bad idea all around, so inane awkward chatter about jobs and the bizarreness of formalized education would have to do.

"Ah, must have been my mom, then," Alice muttered with a small, nervous laugh. She'd been here, once, a long time ago, with her mother - and it seemed like the exact place her mother would pick for a date. How nice. The fact that her mother - or his, as she wasn't entirely sure it had been her own - had chosen the location for her date made her feel like a little kid, whose parents had to pick the day, time and place for the playdates, or those girls who were way too young to date and their mothers had to supervise the whole thing.

After ordering something small, she wasn't really hungry and didn't think eating too much would make a good impression, Alice corrected him politely, "Librarian, actually." For the first time, it made her embarrassed to say that. Must have been why her parents had told his she was a teacher. Having their child working at Hogwarts was a good start, but Librarian still wasn't good enough for them. Obviously. The thought didn't upset her - she had no hope they'd change. "I'd be an awful professor, don't think the kids would ever take me seriously," she commented, "But um, yeah, living life at the Library keeps me busy enough, most don't believe it, but it does." She continued, "As for the students, they always get distracted. I may not be a teacher, but two years ago I was still one of them, a student at Hogwarts. And, honestly, they'll never change."

"Really? Homeschooled? That's interesting," Alice nodded, though she couldn't imagine spending everyday with her parents, no one her age, no crowded breakfast tables, no corridor drama. Nothing of the type. "Oh, yes, my mom mentioned you worked there. Is it nice?" she asked, chuckling at his comparison to Lazarus Square.

The ex-Hufflepuff didn't know why she was trying to impress him, trying to say all the right things. She didn't have to impress anyone, she didn't even want to be there. And, in the end, she was just making a fool out of herself, because by trying to impress him she was getting nervous.

Cai leaned forward just a bit, interest piqued. "Librarian? Now, that is a job I can understand. All those books - it must be brilliant," he opined. "I think I have at least half of the books from our library back home memorized.

"For the record, if any of my instructors had looked like you, they would have had much less difficulty getting me to pay attention," Cai remarked. He took a bite of his food, chewing thoroughly.

"Durmstrang? It's not bad. Filled with my kind of people, really. Well... for the most part. It's on this small island, of course, but it beautiful. And cold, but that pretty normal for those parts. I hear Hogwarts is nice, itself."

Alice smiled genuinely, feeling slightly more comfortable when the topic changed to books. She was a librarian, after all. "It is. It's a nice job. I thought it'd be pretty much getting paid to sit in the library and read the whole year, though, so I was a little disappointed when I found out there's much more to being a librarian than doing just that," she told him, "But I've probably read nearly a quarter of the Hogwarts library during my days there, which is a lot, you have no idea how big that thing is, and there's always a little free time at the end of the day, so I can't really complain about not having a chance to read."

"What's your favorite book?" she asked, hoping to find out more about him.

The ex-Hufflepuff could feel a blush spreading through her cheeks and chuckled, hiding her face in her hands for a second, before looking back at him. "Well then, too bad they didn't," she answered with a small embarrassed smile and decided to continue on the topic of homeschooling. She'd always wondered what that was like. "So, what's homeschooling like? Doesn't it get boring after a while?"

"Cold, yes, my sister always complains about that. I'm sort of glad I live in the UK, even though it's cold it's not nearly as much as the Russian winters. But Durmstrang seems interesting," she said and grinned at the mention of Hogwarts, "Well, it's just beautiful. And loads of fun - secret passages, stairways that move, portraits with shortcuts. . . Plus, it's been my home pretty much my whole life now, nearly ten years, actually. There's no way I couldn't love it."

Caius listened as she spoke of her work in the library, noting how she had settled more comfortably into the subject. So books were her happy place. The man could certainly relate to that.

"Favorite book?" Cai echoed thoughtfully. "Probably Muligens å Drømme. It's an allegory about a kind of utopia. Monster of a volume. I'm not sure what other languages it might be translated into. And your own?"

He gave a small grin as a flush blossomed across her face. "Well, I don't really have anything else to compare it to. Boring, apart from lessons, it was not. There was always something we were doing. If it wasn't studying, then it was physical training, if not that, then helping with... chores, I suppose you could say. I was frequently bored, but never because I lacked something to do.

"It is rather interesting," Caius agreed. "I haven't explored as much as I should have liked. There's rumored to be an assortment of interesting sights, however."