 Bathes in Maple Syrup | Dancing Lobster | Mrs. Charlie Weasley | Seneca's Beard | That's So Fetch
Tamara's lips parted slightly, her retort already forming, but she caught herself before the words spilled out. Oh, he was insufferable. The smugness in his voice, the casual way he dismissed her suffering as if it were some minor inconvenience rather than an all-consuming, bone-deep agony—Merlin, she hated British winters, and now there was another British man who was not far behind on her growing list of dislikes.
She huffed, her breath once again visible in the icy air, and leveled him with a flat, unimpressed stare. "Right. A warming charm," she echoed, her voice dry. "Because clearly, I need spellcasting advice from a same man who thinks strolling at a glacial pace through a busy alley is an acceptable pastime."
She didn't need to be told how to manage the cold. She knew warming charms. She knew plenty of charms. But pride, as always, was her fatal flaw. She had refused to cast one because it would feel like admitting defeat, like accepting that she wasn't as tough as she wanted to believe. And now, this complete stranger had the audacity to call her out on it.
Tamara squared her shoulders and stepped past him, but not before muttering under her breath in Spanish—just loud enough to be heard, but too low to be fully deciphered. Something about 'old men' and 'dust for brains.'
And yet, despite the bitter cold, despite the fact that she should be moving forward without a second thought, despite her knowing better, she couldn't quite shake the irritation or resist the urge to send a nonverbal and wandless Trip Jinx his way.
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