Around the corner, next to the ice cream truck.

March had brought with its arrival the promise and the delivery of an early spring. What started out as a chilly month, still blighted by the winter that had engulfed the upper regions of the country, had turned into something much more pleasant that everyone could begin to enjoy. The heavy winter coats were shed and even in the capital people could be seen in thin cardigans and shorts rather than long trousers no doubt with leggings underneath and fur rimmed hoods pulled down over their faces to keep out the cold. The breeze that leapt off of the river still brought a chill to those that wandered but that did not deter the sun worshippers who flocked in their hundreds to the parks and to the seaside resorts dotted along the south coast. Many of the office workers in and around the capital had made a quick dash home or to a store and changed their clothes for something more summer-friendly before taking to the parks in order to begin that all-important summer tan. Unusually as well, many of the Ministry of Magic workers had taken to the streets for lunch and a time out in the sunshine; and for the first time since joining the ranks, Millie was one of them.

Being hired by the Ministry, even as a secretary had its perks; and the Secretary to the Minister of Magic meant even more were in store. Millie hadn’t taken advantage of many of them, being far too overwhelmed with the job to think let alone spare a thought to testing the waters with the new found powers she had. She was young, many had argued, far too young to do the job she was doing. She had yet to have a major cock up and certainly hadn’t made a disastrous mistake that had caused international relations with somewhere like Russia for example to go down the drain. No, her erratic behaviour and general skittishness upon entering the job had paid off and it was only now when the pre-summer sunshine shone down on London that she was able to consider using some of her perks. Her favourite had been the tweak to her magical signature that allowed her to use magic in and around the Ministry without it being classed as under-age magic. Her second which she was just beginning to use, was being able to leave an intern at her desk and leave for the day - and on a day like this one, she didn’t see any reason why not to indulge.

After a quick change of clothes in one of the bathrooms, Millie burst out onto the street, a beam wider than she’d seen fit to produce all day lighting up her face. After readjusting her bag on her shoulder and making sure her hat wouldn’t get blown away by the wind, Millie made her way down the road and out of Whitehall before the intern had a chance to rush out of the Ministry and bundle her back into the office. She had no intention of returning to the office today. No, while the sun was high in the sky, providing the heat they all yearned for, Millie was going to take absolute advantage. However, she didn’t plan on travelling to a park. No, instead she took to a cafe just over the road from the nearest park. It hadn’t been a long walk down there but her legs had begun to ache once she’d arrived.

Millie stepped over the threshold of the cafe after letting a young woman with a push chair out before her. She strode up to the counter, meeting the gaze of a bored looking redhead that had been, until Millie approached, staring mournfully out of the window. Millie ordered a coffee and a slice of cake, paid the woman and took one of the seats outside which were surprisingly unoccupied. She stuck the umbrella up, collapsed into the chair, dropped her bag onto the floor beside her and lit a cigarette, deciding to throw caution into the wind, assuming that her appearance would suggest age beyond her years - which it seemed to as she received no stares from the people outside, greedily lapping up the sunshine. Millie smiled to herself and pealed a bit of icing off of the cake. She dropped it into her mouth and savoured the sweetness before she too sat back and began to watch the pedestrians that walked the London streets.

It had been much to Nemo’s surprise that, upon exiting the Ministry building, head whirring with thoughts of the processed-to-hell lunch that would surely feel welcome within his arteries amongst the cholesterol that already resided there, that the sun had risen during his twenty-four hour lapse into A blissful Unawareness of the world that existed beyond the walls of his office. It had been quite the rarity, to catch a glimpse of the fair weather skies during the winter months in London. But alas, the sun had arrived, swimming in an as-far-as-the-eye-can-see canvas of blue and white in all its sunshiny glory. To the fair flesh of the Londoners who scampered about the streets, drunk on their love of the light, the sun’s rays may have felt warm - perhaps even blistering. But the former Floridian could feel nothing but the shiver of a cool breeze that had been left behind during winter’s migration. While it was undeniably pleasant, the sight of a warmth that did not quite reach him in the way that it had his neighbors, a photograph would have been equally appealing. He did not dwell on such short-minded thoughts of the weather and its fickle behavior for long, however; his mind had drifted in the direction of a craving that had occurred to him at the sight of the celebration of the warmer season’s arrival. Nemo was in desperate need of a fruity-ass alcoholic beverage. Miniature umbrella included.

After giving his thinly layered jacket a tug closer to his being, so to protect himself from the island’s chill, Nemo set off at the pace of a man on a mission. Though his lively blue orbs danced throughout the crowds that continued to accumulate, retaining every twinkling smile and glint of sunlight that they spied, he had eyes only for the pub that remained only a number of feet between himself and the many small shops that stood in a row to his left. The rusting bell that hung from the pub’s doorway swung and rattled angrily as Nemo stepped indoors once more, alerting the familiar barman of his presence.

He had once been of an average stature, before time had taken its toll. With the curling and bending of his spine, he had fallen to the height of a man’s stomach; reducing him to a size that only just permitted him to see over the bar that he waited. As Nemo planted himself firmly on one of the stools that had been scattered throughout the dimly lit room, the barman’s head was all that was to be seen of him from across the way; with greasy tuffs of hair sprouting from his scalp, and a pair of rectangular spectacles balanced upon the very tip of his crooked nose. Nemo could do nothing to prevent the amused grin that routinely took control of his facial features at the sight of the man before him. He was quite a comical sight.

“Whadya payin’ me for?” the man inquired impatiently. He always had been rather unorthodoxly curt with his customers. “Give me something for the weather,” came Nemo’s reply, without missing a beat. “The weather? What’s it like?” The barman asked with the smallest quirk of his lips. It almost appeared as though he was wresting a smile. Nemo leaned against the bar’s splintering surface, resting his chin upon his loosely crumpled fist, “You Brits think it’s warm out. People are running around like it’s the last day of their lives,” he replied indifferently with a shrug; the laziest upward motion of his right shoulder blade. With no further questions asked, the man turned his hunched back towards Nemo and set to work, clanking bottles against one another with uncoordinated fingers. With every sharp crack of glass striking glass, Nemo flinched; he quite simply could not bear the thought of a good drink gone to waste. Not while it cost him every penny’s worth of his rent to quench his thirsts.

Upon acquiring his multi-colored and impossibly feminine beverage, Nemo produced the money owed from a pocket in his jeans and flicked it across the bar in the other man’s direction. Another month spent in his apartment in the Leaky Cauldron, drowned in a glass of alcohol. But Nemo’s careless expression did nothing to betray the fleeting thought of the likely results of his actions. “Thank you,” he called in a patronizingly sing-song voice as he stood once more, drink in hand, and moved towards the door.

He had yet to appease his howling stomach, which had begun to feel hollow with the introduction of the spirits that he had begun to gulp down as he walked. He slurped unattractively against the glass’ rim, and the lemon that was perched there slipped and slid with each step that he took, causing the fruit to knock repeatedly against his nose. But he continued in the direction of the nearest McDonalds, despite the difficulty that he was experiencing in his attempt to finish his drink. The fast food restaurant had been Nemo’s only savior from the unbearable food that all of Britain was fond of. A bacon cheeseburger was a comfort that Nemo would not have survived without, during the extensive amount of time that he’d spent away from home. The restaurant’s obnoxiously yellow sign stood out like a beacon amongst the foreign lands that Nemo walked – and yet, had become so familiar with over the years - drawing him forward with the promise of grease and ketchup.

As he entered the restaurant with a firm shove of his upper-arm against a swinging door, there was an absence of the tinkling that had greeted him when he had last entered a building. But the chirping of deep-fryers compensated for the door’s lack of noisy distractions. Immediately, he was greeted by the aggravated expression of a young man who undoubtedly desired to be elsewhere. “Welcome to McDonald’s. My name is Oscar, how may I-” The adolescent recited in a flat tone. “Oh, knock that off,” Nemo interrupted before he could continue in that manner. There was no sense in allowing the lad to rattle off the entire restaurant handbook. “Get me a double bacon cheeseburger,” he added with a grin that the teen had no intention of returning.
Grease-drenched paper bag and half-empty glass of alcohol held at his sides, Nemo stomped along in search of a place to sit down and enjoy his meal, for the inhabitants of the previous restaurant that he’d visited had not been so kind as to allow him to sit down and enjoy himself. On the contrary; they had insisted that he leave for the sake of the children who had littered the place, sticky fingers leaving streaks of condiments along the booths that they occupied. Nemo rounded the corner of a near building and grumbled to himself, “Yeah, sure, and I’m the one who needs to 'remove myself from the premises, or be removed by the police'." And it was with the punctuation of his complaints that Nemo found himself standing before the entrance of a dingy café; one which he quickly deemed a suiting place to “chow down”.

“Sir, you can’t eat that in here,” called the youthful voice of the female employee who stood behind the café’s main counter. “You cannot bring another business’ food in here,” she continued when Nemo paid her no mind. Only after he’d dropped his bag of lunch sloppily onto an unoccupied tabletop, and taken another swig from his drink did he turn his attention to the woman. He moved towards her, one arm swinging at his side while the other gently pinned his glass to his t-shirt clad chest. “Look, I wouldn’t have come in here,” he paused, so to look examine with a quick toss of his head the pastel and frill infected location, “I would have just eaten at McDonald’s, but the mother hens who were hanging out there kept insisting that I am presently high. And soon enough, the manager pitched in and the police were mentioned…” He told his tale in a tone of voice that suggested such occurrences were frequent and few between.

The employee was silent for a moment, before leaning forward, eyes brimming with curiosity. “Are you high?” she asked, suddenly no longer accusing; merely interested. A grin split Nemo’s face in two in response to her question. “Only a lil’ bit,” he assured her, while simultaneously gesturing with his index finger and thumb, indicating just how under the influence he was claiming to be. "And this here" - he gave the glass a gentle twirl - "is vodka and something unbearably fruity. But it takes a hell of a lot more liquor than this" - another shake of his glass, this time with enough force to knock the soggy lemon into his drink with a plop - "to get me drunk." Another pause.

“Does this mean that I get to eat now?”

There was never a quiet day in London town, never be naive to think otherwise. In the sunshine there was plenty to see - from the ever so slightly too friendly man selling ice cream to six year olds to the artist leaning up against a tree in the park, his lover’s head in his lap as he sketched out the scene before him. It was from underneath the rim of an incredibly odd hat that a young blonde girl with milky white skin and pink lips watched the world go by. Her index finger was absent-mindedly tracing the rim of her coffee cup, the sides of which had been covered in the foam that lidded the hot drink. As she leaned forward to flick her ash into the glass bowl in the middle of the table she brought her finger to her mouth. She took it between her lips, her tongue flicking out to scrap away the foam before receding once more. She let her hand drop to the table and she replaced the sweet of the sugary foam with the bitter of her cigarette as she brought it to her mouth once more. These practices achieved very little for the moment but she was looking for something, or someone, and was simply biding her time until she found exactly what she wanted.

It was said that Millie did two things more often than anything else: she attracted and found the oddest of people. It was an occurrence so frequent that it no longer shocked her friends when she updated them on the recent goings on in her life - said recent goings on more often than not including a tale of someone fantastical. She had been lacking in great tales recently but the individual that seemed to sway down the road, bizarrely wearing quite a heavy jacket considering the weather, looked fantastical in his own right - if not stoned - and perfect for what she wanted.

Millie sat forward again at the sight of the man, flicking the front of her hat up with her spare hand so as to get a better look. She left the cigarette between her lips and let her hands curl around her cup of coffee as she observed the strange creature and his equally confusing effects that consisted of a McDonald’s paper bag, not exempt from the grease of the fast food chain, and a glass of liquid that had a neon quality about it, plus paper umbrella.

Millie rose up from her chair when the man idled into the cafe and she slowly weaved her way through the outside tables where from the doorway she watched the exchange between the man and the staff. Millie took the cigarette from between her lips and crept inside, disregarding the age old smoking ban that, from a glance around the cafe, didn’t actually seem to prevent anyone from smoking inside. Millie smirked and squatted down behind the man to get a closer look at the oddly coloured drink. After observing for a few seconds, Millie made a swipe for the paper umbrella and jumped out of the way, a grin pulling her lips up into a toothy smile. She then planted herself in front of the man and held the paper umbrella between them, evidence of her explosive goings on earlier having stained the tips of her fingers black with gunpowder.

“Got it!” She declared proudly before whipping her hat off of her head with the same hand that held the umbrella and sweeping down into a bow. Millie rose up again after a second and placed her hat back on her head. She tucked the umbrella into the belt of her blouse-dress and continued to grin wickedly as she introduced herself. “Millie Finnigan at your service, sir. Now, what do I win for my clever extraction of your umbrella - I think it should be called Harold - hm. In that case...what do I win for stealing Harold from you in such a fiendishly brilliant way?" Millie's eyes fell to the McDonald's bag. "I think I deserve a chip if nothing else!”

The strange case of Nemo's vanishing paper umbrella had not gone unnoticed by the lad; he had, after all, specifically requested that the accessory be included in the creation of his beverage. But he found that he needn't search long for the thief who had pinched the item from him, for she had been quick to volunteer said information.

She held a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, one which Nemo had seen in the likes of his own, as well as all those whom he referred to as his ‘acquaintances’ - a word which served in place of one very similar (‘friends’). Surely, she was one of his kind: the species of men and women who had not been crafted with the ingredient normalcy that all others seemed to practice on a regular basis. Nemo tilted his head to one side as his lively blues danced across the plains of the woman's face, and his manic personality took hold of the wheel once more, noting every detail that he could obtain by giving her a once-over; a gesture which would likely be chocked up to the nature of men, and not interpreted as an attempt to read the girl.

But he was drawn outward from his thoughts by her introduction. Millie Finnigan, he mentally repeated the name, memorizing it for later use. When she proceeded to pair a name with the umbrella that she had acquired from his alcohol, Nemo could do nothing to contain the stumbling laughter that erupted from his lungs. Each laugh seemed to intertwine with his last, combining the lot in a chain of chuckling. “Mortimer Omara,” he offered his name, deeming it fit that he return the favor of providing her with a title to refer to him by. “And Harold is a terrible name.” He paused for a moment to take a drink from his glass, smirking at Millie all the while, his dilated pupils never leaving her. “Perhaps I would give you a fry” – he drew out the word, so to accentuate what he believed to be the proper word for the food – “if your trick had actually been brilliant.” He offered her an amused grin, “Next time, leave something in its place.” It was advice from one oddball to the next, if anything.

Nemo plopped heavily in his seat of choice and tore into his sack of food, before gesturing towards the seat before him, inviting Millie to join him at his table. She was undeniably intriguing.