for cassandra, who hated being addressed as anything other than 'cassie' or 'andra', it was a regular day in august, standing behind the counter of the pharmacy she had started working at when the war had begun

diagon alley was unusually busy that day, and cassie was glad that her shift in the room that smelled of chamomile tea and herbal pastilles for a common cold would be over in less than ten minutes

and even though she doubted that anybody would bother to come in during those, she continued stacking small glass vials onto the shelf behind her; you wouldn't even believe how many people managed to stab their eye or swallow an entire rosequartz one minute before the kräuterhexenhaus closed

the pharmacy's name was german, and cassie loved the sound of brits attempting to pronounce it correctly, they mostly already failed at the 'ä'

after patiently waiting until six, she closed and locked the cash register, tugged off the lavender apron she was forced to wear and threw it over the coat rack in the back, before turning the 'open' sign in the frosted glass window over to 'closed'

"fucking finally," she huffed out in an exasperated breath while locking the door, hastily though careful enough to not break the bloody old key that she had had to replace at least twice

due to the war that was currently troubling the wizarding world, the short lady that owned cassie's favorite cosmetic store had decided that it'd be safer to not work in diagon alley anymore

nowadays cassie was forced to buy her dark red hair dye in a muggle drug store down the road, a terrible tragedy considering that the non-magical dye turned out a dark ginger instead of burgundy

but at least she met old friends like you; the two of you had been bestfriends in elementary school and hadn't seen each other in years, thus both in desperate need of conversation

with her great geographic knowledge of london, cass had dragged you along into a nondescript cafè to catch up

"any men making your life worse?", she grinned as she sipped her tea