RP: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back Date: December 9, 2001 Characters: Anthony Goldstein and Alicia Spinnet Location: The Leaky Cauldron Private/Public: Public Rating: TBA Warnings: None Summary: Anthony's at the bar. Careful, he doesn't handle liquor well!
Anthony Goldstein was tired and in an unusually bad mood. Normally happy and polite, it had been a struggle not to snap at Tom when he'd misheard his order the first time. It's not his fault, Anthony had to remind himself. He didn't cause this mess. Closing his eyes to rest a moment while he waited for his food, Anthony picked up the firewhiskey he'd ordered, and took a sip. Ouch! The burn going down his throat made him tear up at the corner of his eyes, so he opened them, blinking back those tears before anyone noticed.
Anthony couldn't help but think about what Stephen, Terry, and he had talked about at the Lighting Ceremony. It was true, wasn't it? Things hadn't been this bad since they were seventeen, and he was hoping they had seen the last of the hardship brought on by people with strange ideas about superiority and treating those who were different. The fear these people instilled manifested itself in Anthony's job. Just today, he'd had to help a toddler who had managed to squeeze himself halfway through a crack in the kitchen ceiling, looking for a place to hide "just in case," he'd said to Anthony. The boy was a halfblood. A harmless accident, perhaps, but instead of seeing cases like that twice or three times a week, he was seeing three or four a day. And though the accidents weren't life threatening, it became draining work when the department had not expanded to adapt to the growing caseload. It had just been a bad day, and Anthony wanted not to think about it anymore.