Part of Elias was sure if left to his own devices, Christmas might pass him by each and every year without him even noticing. But the rest of him still found the festivity of the season enticing, somehow. It was not as though they'd had much, growing up, or at least not much they could afford. But it had always still been a family celebration, and was full of good cheer, and Elias couldn't say that he was too grown-up for it all just yet.

He hadn't leapt at the Irvingly event immediately, though. It was a brilliant idea, and he was entirely sure the charity to the children would not go unrewarded - if it'd been limited to magical children, he might have insisted upon making some toy brooms to donate to the pile of presents under the great tree in the centre of the square - but he didn't much care about the play they were to put on later, and it had been so long since he had taken a day off that Elias wasn't entirely sure he remembered how to go about it.

In the end, he had decided to go, if only to prove that he could. It would be fun, a laidback occasion. A chance to garner some Christmas spirit before the holiday passed by in a whirlwind whilst he locked himself up in his workshop, as usual. To properly hold himself to this decision - and to perhaps get a jump on what ought to be a new year's resolution of being a normal person and actually socialising - he had owled a short note to a friend, essentially a how've you been simply coupled with a apparently I'll be in Irvingly on the 23rd and would be great if I saw you there. Making an effort, for once.

And Elias had just picked up some mulled wine from a stand when he spotted the friend in question not far off. Leander Grantham. "Oi, Le," he called with a brief wave (though being a good head taller than most in the throng didn't make Elias too difficult to miss). Turning back to the stand to ask for another mulled wine, he pressed it into his mate's hands with a grin in greeting.

@Leander Grantham

Perhaps being sociable was not so bad after all: Elias' greeting grin broadened in nothing less than sincerity as Grantham clapped him on the arm.

"That's the one," Elias assured him jokingly as Le addressed him by full name, "well remembered." (He wouldn't be surprised were some old friends to forget him entirely, as bad as he was at keeping up social connections.) But this was easy enough; happily, Le was a good-natured bloke and seemed equally so today. "Glad you came," he returned, echoing the toast.

"Oh, ancient, I tell you," he snorted, at that comment. "Nothing but arthritis and slippers and deafness these days." Well, not really - and arthritis would be a nightmare; Elias did not wish that upon himself for many a year - but they were older than they had been, and time still went mighty fast (broken clock or not). And despite the times he was still a barely functioning adult - Merlin, babysitting his niece had been a terrifying endeavour - the rest of the while, Elias thought he wasn't far off the ideal of a grouchy old man. "How's it treating you, then?" He returned, taking a sip of the still-hot drink, keen to hear what Leander Grantham had been up to these days.

"Oh just the same as always. Working, trying to keep Calvin - my brother - in school. You know how it is." Le knew Elias understood what it meant to be lower class at Hogwarts. Even those that managed to make it to Hogwarts faced innumerable challenges. As a lower class, halfblood slytherin many of Le's housemates had seen too it that he see more than his share of adversity but he'd made it to his fifth year. Calvin was only in his second and he was feeling a restlessness that Le never had. Le had always seen the usefulness and importance of a magical education. Calvin did not.

"I'm going to try bribing him with a broom next. 'Make it to Year 3 and get a broom' sounds like a good deal to me." Of course brooms were Elias' thing but Le was not here to talk shop with him. He could pick up a broom any day. "But he is a Gryffindor." He shook his head as if Gryffindors were hopeless cases and shot his grind a sly grin.

"That I do," Elias nodded, curious to hear more about Le's brother, but agreeing easily enough to that sentiment. Although, he suspected Le had always had it tougher than he had; Elias' whole family had helped out to scrape by, but his parents had done all they could - and more - to see their children through Hogwarts. He certainly wouldn't have been making broomsticks without that, and if he had managed to ease the financial struggle of seeing Tony through his last few years, then Elias was only repaying that debt, and seeing that his brother had just as much chance as he and Ruth had managed to have. And look! Now Tony was a healer. Merlin forbid, but Elias might still be quietly bursting with pride about that.

Le's brother was still much younger. "That would sound a good deal to anyone, I'm sure," Elias put in with a broad grin, as though brooms were truly a universal fascination. (He'd make a note to make a broom sometime for the express purpose of bribing Calvin, if Grantham thought that'd work.) Raising his eyebrows and snorting slightly at the Gryffindor comment, he continued, "and we Gryffindors were always the best quidditch side, in case you've forgotten!" Well, not always, but they had had a bundle of talent and were certainly the house to have produced plenty of professional quidditch talent. "Perhaps didn't have such excellent attention spans..." Elias did admit in a rueful mumble. Slytherins, perhaps, just more often had the gift of focus, determination. You just had to find something to capture a Gryffindor's interests, first.

Hogwarts houses had never meant too much to Elias, either, really. Oh, it was easy to see that Tony had had more Ravenclaw in him than the rest of them, and sharing a common room had seen him and Rue stay just as close as they'd been before, but Quidditch was the field where house had mattered. Well, more than in other places. Elias was no quidditch player: his joking aside, he had never had the competitive drive. No, he'd been the boy to often forget to even catch the quaffle in practices, too busy trying to understand the mechanics of flying. It had consumed him, the one distraction, until he'd be doodling broom plans and prototypes on textbooks and essays, reading up on braking and cushioning charms in his spare time.

"Who's getting old now?!" Elias exclaimed, taking the opportunity to poke fun in return. "You're obviously having memory troubles, mate."

"How is the job, anyway?" He continued. Besides the pressure of Le having to provide for his younger sibling - who would be getting the gift of a broom sometime because Elias knew full well that brooms sold at high prices, and how it felt to have no money at all - the nuisance officer job also sounded like an oddly interesting sort.

His own smile broadened at Le's enthusiasm. He nodded at the elaboration of which areas he ususally worked; knowing the people had to make things simpler. Although Elias imagined there was still no shortage of eventful encounters in such a job as that.

Indeed, management seemed the downside of any job. "Mm, mine's a particularly useless bloke," Elias said, breaking off with a slight laugh; in a trade of his own, he took care of his own business, and had always had the independence of managing himself. Not always necessarily well, though, but still. "Well, 'fraid I don't, really," He added. No, though, despite no real experience of working under a boss, he could imagine it quite well, and he presumed it had plenty of downsides.

He raised his eyebrows at the mention of change. "Change can be good," Elias said lightly, wondering how serious Le might be, whether he had anything in mind. Of course, there was much to be said for stability, too, but Grantham was still a sensible enough sort not to throw everything down the drain.

"Can get plenty of places with those," Elias agreed. Le was quiet, and Elias didn't know what the other man might want to do, but he was fairly certain of the wealth of possibilities. With OWLs - perhaps depending on which, but any at all were the standard for many a place - one could do all kinds of things. These were not, of course, the sort of notions one waited on when there was money to be earnt. Any job would do. Most were bearable, and there was nothing ignoble about working for the pay. Elias had gotten carried away with himself in his schooldays. He'd placed passion far above practicality, and it was a lucky thing that drive had eventually gotten him from a to b, after all. But he'd always been a bit of a dreamer.

Le had taken a different tack; his next remark was evidently a joke. Change or no, he had no objection to jokes. "Now you go too far!" Elias exclaimed, playing along, waving his hand in front of him in a stop motion of exaggerated distress (as fun as it might actually be, if his friend suddenly took up the profession). "Whatever will I do? No, I'm too threatened - I'll give up at once. Try my hand at - at -" He flailed verbally, fishing for a suitable ridiculous alternate career with which to complete his sentence.

"I'm not even sure I know what fwoopers are," Elias confessed mournfully, once he'd caught his breath from a long spell of laughter enough to form a coherent sentence. (Some kind of creature, he thought. Birds, maybe?) He certainly wouldn't know how to herd them. "Perhaps that'll help me, somehow," he snorted, waiting for some equally ridiculous words of wisdom from Mr-tried-his-hand-at-it-before.

Old stock as a shepherd's hook, it was! "Of course!" He exclaimed, like even the joking idea of transforming brooms into anything else didn't hurt him profoundly somewhere in his soul. "You can have my old workshop for broommaking," he jested, clapping Le on the shoulder and trying - in vain - at enough faux-seriousness to finish his thought. "I'll be living a better life, under the stars with a flock of fwoopers."

"Watch out, I'll be holding you to that," Elias exclaimed, slightly hunched over and wheezing, trying to get it together enough to be able to breathe. (Perhaps actually seeing one's friends wasn't a thing he should avoid so often. If all the joking hadn't killed him, it'd have done him good.)

Once he was able to, he straightened up and gulped down the last of the mulled wine, now only lukewarm. "Come on, then," he prompted, grinning at Le and rubbing his hands together for warmth, "let's see what else they have around here today."