Writing Prompts Week 2 Tinder Date...

She walked in...I spotted the lilac rose on her lapel instantly, the nervous part of my psyche buckled, just a little, I considered grabbing my own matching rose and throwing it behind the bar before she noticed. I could just to say make her out through the crowd, but only her head and shoulders.

I was still new to this online dating stuff and to say I was having second thoughts would be a massive understatement. Tinder, bloody Tinder...This was no way to meet a person that you could potentially fall in love with. Everybody knows that only weirdos join these online dating sites, people like...Oh! People like me, the realisation of just how low I had fallen sunk in.

I took a deep breath and scanned the crowd that she was surely making her way through now. I caught my second glimpse of my companion for the evening, she was walking with a cane and was wobbling left and right every-time she took a step. she stopped, reached in to her bag (a unicorn print schoolbag obviously meant for a 7 year old) She pulled something from the bag, I squinted as i tried to make out this object of great intrigue.

She lifted the mysterious item towards her thin, pale unimpressive lips and took two quick puffs, she then replaced the cap of the inhaler and slipped it back in to the bag in one fluid motion.

She spotted me standing at the bar and our eyes met, although that's not strictly true. My two eyes met her one good eye, the other was staring off at a bizarre tangent and appeared to be fixed on the jukebox in the far corner, clearly, she had a lazy eye I thought.

"Hello, I'm Hermione, like the one from Hogwarts"

She said this in the most nasal voice I have ever heard outside of a comedy sketch. She ruffled her fingers through her hair, but they got a little snagged in the knots of her unkempt, crazy cat-lady styled do. Unfortunately the snagging caused her to dislodge her wig slightly. I gasped audibly then tried to compose myself again.

We took a seat at a scarred, greasy surfaced table, looked over the menu chose our food and ordered wine. Finally we embarked on small-talk.
"So what do you do Hermione" I asked.
"I work in a library by day and I'm a superhero by night"
She answered laughing hysterically, Now I say laughing but maybe snorting would be a more apt description. Yes our Hermione was quite a character.

She told me that her weekends were split between volunteering at a cat shelter, working a few hours in a comic book store and visiting her sick Mother. She caught me staring at her apparent, lazy eye, she quickly explained that it was actually a glass eye from an incident with a firework when she was a child. In the interests of (as she had put it) full disclosure, Hermione explained that the she wore a hairpiece from serious burns to her scalp and she had a wooden leg after running into a bonfire to escape the aforementioned rogue firework.

I quizzed her further on what was her favourite thing to do when she had a day off from work. She told me that she put on a wedding dress that she just happened to keep in her wardrobe and danced to 1940's wartime jazz songs.

This was too much for me. I simply had to tell her, even though I was sure it would embarrass her but I simply couldn't go on with this charade for a moment longer.

"Hermione", I spoke a little too loudly, and slightly abruptly.
"Yes Harold" she all but wheezed at me, a quizzical expression on her face.

I dropped to one knee, whipping the ringbox from my pocket...She was absolutely perfect.
"Will you marry me?".

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