Bubbling Cauldrons and Persuasive Conversations

It was a chilly day but it was just the air for a duel or something of the like. But instead of being outside and sketching idiots throwing spells back and fourth he found himself once again picking himself up from a plate of toast and Pumpkin Juice and literally casting the Imperious Curse over himself and sending himself to work. As painful as the whole thing was it needed to be done and so after picking up a book from Flourish and Blotts to last him the day, Elijah began his descent down to the Apothecary that was near Knockturn Alley.

Elijah stopped outside the Apothecary and opened up the shop. He stepped inside and turned the sign over to open before moving to dispose of his bags in the back room. He glanced over at one of the tables and picked up the letters. He thumbed through them until he saw his name and dropped the rest on the table. He opened it up and took the paper from the envelope. Eli smoothed it out and his eyes scanned the sheet. He swallowed and felt his hand close around the paper, crushing it into a ball. His jaw clenched tight and he took his wand out of his pocket. Eli cast a spell over the ball of paper and watched as it began to smoke and set alight. Just like he wished she would.

After 5 years of nearly living in Diagon Alley, Noah felt like he knew it by heart. In fact, just to prove a point to himself, he would walk through the familiar alley with his eyes closed when he was in a good mood.

Today was not one of those days.

Noah sighed. Work with the DE's wasn't...going well, you could say. It was difficult, keeping such a huge part of his life a secret from everyone at Hogwarts except for a very small group of his fellow student DE's. Who had all proven themselves to be crazed sociopaths, in one form or another. Of course, he was fairly sure he qualified for sociopathy himself. Always shut up in his dorm, studying ahead, because he couldn't afford to fall back on his grades, not even for a bit. Shaking his head, he opened the door to the apothecary, his new new job.

He had a feeling about today....

Angelina walked into Diagon Alley with her hood covering her face, as she hoped no one would spot her. Especailly the ministry. It was a cold day, wrapping her cloak around her thinking it would give her the warmth that she needed. She gazed around at the other witches and wizards beside her, looking at them and asking herself. "What if I was one them, not a Death Eater?" but it quickly came to her mind that she was born and raised that way. There was nothing she could do about it now.

She made her way near to knockturn alley, at the apothecracy. She wasn't looking for anything in paticular, only a place to hide. As she walked to the back of the store, she put her hood down. Hoping no one would notice her.

Remy grunted as she picked up a heavy crate, only to stack it on top of another she had set near the back door of the apothecary. An order had been delivered just moments earlier, and she had paid the man for his services after assuring him that she could handle the task of bringing everything inside. Men were usually quick to assume she would be unable to handle her own physical labour, but having worked on a farm for most of her life, Remy was no stranger to lifting and hauling.

Letting go of the top crate and moving her bare hands to the lower one, Remy braced herself and remembered to lift with her legs, the way Myron had always told her. The oversized sweatshirt she had thrown on over her T-shirt was doing little to keep out the chill, but the movement of stacking and hauling boxes was keeping her warm enough. Despite the fact that she could see her breath, Remy extended her legs and lifted the crates up, moving to the door and lifting the handle with her hip in order to let herself inside.

Once in the apothecary, the temperature was notably warmer. Peeking out from behind the boxes, Remy saw that the store was mostly empty, save for her two student employees and a lone customer, though the raven-haired woman didn't seem to be particularly interested in anything for the moment.

"Oi, Archer," Remy called from behind the crates to the apothecary's newest hire as she maneuvered through the small space that existed behind the counter, "Why don't you make yourself useful and help the customer? Old man Jiggers doesn't pay you to stand around, you know."

Reaching the end of the counter, Remy lifted the crates to the level of the surface and pushed them onto it, her muscles relaxing after the supplies were safely balanced. Brushing her hands off on her faded jeans, Remy's attention moved to Elijah, the more experienced of her workers, but who often seemed as though he were no more than a trainee.

"And Elijah, if that letter you are burning scorches another table, you will be sanding all of them by hand, mark my words," Remy warned, having witnessed this event before. Elijah had a habit of permanently discarding the letters he received, but Remy didn't ask many questions. The answers to what she wanted to know tended to come out in the wash without her having to be overtly inquisitive. Instead, Remy began to take assorted bottles and jars from the crates she had hauled in, setting a few aside and filing others away in their appropriate shelves.

Noah shrugged in response to Ms. Devaul's order, turning tiredly to the customer. He frowned, and his eye twitched as he recognized the face. Angelina Laraine. Joy.

The Death Eaters had come to the Apothecary.

Noah cleared his throat and walked over to Angelina. "Welcome to Sluggs and Jiggers apothecary." Noah said in what he hoped was a normal voice. My name is Noah. Are you here for buisness reasons, or...personal?" He asked, laying his arms across the table. As he did this, he angled his arm so the sleeve fell down, exposing the dark mark on his left arm. The, quick as a flash, he shook the sleve back into place.

((OoC: Elijah is free to notice this, and I suppose you are too Remy...as long as you don't run off to the Order. Your status says neutral, but if your character is sympathetic to the Order I'm afraid you can't see it. It's a big part of Noah's personality and I don't want it revealed so soon.))

((Noah - Remy is actually a death eater as well, though you probably wouldn't know about her because she isn't in the inner circles and serves mostly as an informant. Noah and Remy would likely not have been introduced as death eaters, and it is unlikely that Angelina would know Remy either. I think I will play it that Remy knows who most of the death eaters are (she is a power seeker, after all), but that most of them do not know she is one. Therefore, Remy seeing your dark mark would not surprise her. She would already know.))

Having emptied the top of the two crates, Remy set the empty one on the ground and kicked it toward the back room, figuring she would deal with it later. She then turned back to the other box, which held more delicate vials and tubes, filled with swirling potions of all colours. Though she was not known for being overtly graceful - after all, what use was grace among farm animals? - but she was careful enough with the breakable wares. The box also contained a few jars of slugs, the inventory of rat tails she had ordered last week, and an oversized jar of frog eyes, which still twitched eerily in the container as she set it on a display shelf. Frog eyes were a popular item, as they were required for many potions.

The second crate emptied as well, Remy pulled the wooden thing off the counter and flung it into the back room with its pair. It clattered and splintered upon impact, but that was no matter. It all ended up as firewood anyway; this way, she wouldn't have to make as big a production of breaking it all up for kindling later.

After first seeing that Noah had done as he was told and averted his attention to the customer, Remy took care of unlocking the till. Slug and Jiggers had fallen for her responsible act like so many other employers before them; giving Remy the key to anything wasn't in anyone's best interest, but she was sure to keep that under wraps when applying for the job. It usually took no more than a few weeks to gain anyone's full trust, especially in a community like this one. People trusted blindly, a foolishness that cost them several galleons a week to Remy's pockets; enough to bolster her paycheck, but not enough to draw attention.

Making a scene of checking the till, Remy pulled the drawer open hard enough that a few of the sickles in the end compartment bounced out, just high enough that she could pluck them from the air with her left hand and slip them into her pocket without notice. After a few seconds and a guise of checking the balance, Remy slammed the drawer closed and turned back to get the last of the boxes from outside, a few sickles richer and no one the wiser.

"Elijah, honey, be a dear and help me with these crates?" Remy called affectionately from outside the door, adapting the tone which was most likely to get her what she wanted. Elijah had a soft spot for women, she knew from working with him since August. Although she had yet to see anything in him that made him an object of any particular interest from her - what could a 15 year old offer her that she couldn't get elsewhere in greater abundance? - he did come from a prominent family, and this was not overlooked by Remy. For now, though, what she needed most from him was help with the crates, for she didn't intend to make another trip into the bitter cold.

Elijah lifted the ball of paper up, off of the table and threw it into the fireplace. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up slightly. Having the shop filled slightly more than usual was not something he anticipated. He just wanted to sit with his book for the day because he wasn’t prepared to sit and sketch vials of ingredients until it was time to bugger off back to that goddamn castle. He walked out into the main shop and didn’t fail to notice the sly movements of his co-workers. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Perhaps this was part of the plan - the master plan that he had locked away in his mind.

He heard the cooing voice of his manager and he couldn’t help but cringe a little, remembering why he was more attracted to French women than the English. Simpering witches all of them but he wasn’t picky if he needed something. Quite depressing really but he was slowly learning. Slowly.

Eli leaned against one of the crates and raised an eyebrow at Remy before motioning to them. He knew they wouldn’t be heavy, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t help but wonder where she wanted him to take them. He wasn’t in the mood.
“What do you want done?” he asked dryly.

(( Short and sweet ))

It didn’t take Elijah long to report outside, as Remy had hoped would be the case. He didn’t look particularly pleased to be working, though, and Remy had a pretty good idea why. That letter he was burning was another from his mother, she guessed, having found torn bits of parchment with the same slanty writing about the shop before. Once, she had taken the time to tape together all the pieces – another task which would have been much easier with magic, but weren’t most things? – and she had found out why Elijah usually took to physically destroying the evidence of his relationship with his mother. She seemed like a right wench, that one.

“I need you to help me carry supplies, of course,” Remy responded to his less-than-enthusiastic inquiry, making sure to keep her tone level. Even though he didn’t seem particularly useful now, Remy was careful never to unnecessarily offend those who she might one day seek to gain from. Elijah might not seem like much now, but he would eventually grow into a man and inherit the fortune that his father now controlled. Now if she could get her hands on the elder Krum, that would truly be something. Anyone with a wife like that had to be looking for a mistress…

But enough of those thoughts for now. There was always time for plotting later in the day when the shop got slow mid-afternoon. For the time being, Remy stacked two of the crates on top of one another and pushed them toward Elijah with her foot, doing the same to another two and lifting them into her arms as she had done earlier, feeling the splintered wood scratch the skin of her forearm where she had pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She would have to deal with that once she got inside, but it wasn’t overly painful for the moment.

“These are going into the back room,” she said from behind the crates, peeking her head out from behind them in order to see the boy she was talking to, “They need to be inventoried before we stock them onto the shelves.”

Her instructions given, Remy repeated the process of opening the door with her hip and then backing into the shop, holding the door open for Elijah to follow her.

((I guess this counts as short for me ))

Angelina continued to stay in the back of shop to herself. But eventually she knew one of the employees were going to come up to her and ask her. "Is there anything I can help you with?" So she started to browse.

She came across Veritaserum. It made her remember of the time when her younger sister and she, snuck out of the house to go meet these two boys they had met at a party. The climbed out of the window down the vine that grew along the wall. The two of them met up a diagon alley, where the boys were standing by the broom shop. Angel (Angelina) could remember that nightt as if it were yesterday. It was the last time she was ever happy, and the last time she would have spent time with her sister. Now that she was gone there was no point into buying the Veritaserum. If only that action could bring her sister back and together they would start back life the way it was, it would be great. Her mother then took the Veritaserum and put it in the moring juice, and they ended up spilling out everything that happened. The thought left a warm feeling inside of her as it began to fade away.

She put the bottle back down and continued to browse the shop. Not really caring of what she was looking at. She was just simply scaning her eyes left and right.

Boxes, she wanted him to carry boxes. It was fair but Elijah preferred to sit in the shop and read. He wasn’t interested in manual labour but it had to be done at some point. This was a side job that brought him money. Obviously seeing as he was otherwise in Britain, his paintings wouldn’t bring him in much. He hadn’t exactly made his name in the British art world but he hoped someone would at least mention him at some point. He, however, could keep dreaming because he was stood outside in the cold eyeing boxes with evident distaste. The boxes looked slightly insulted by the glaring but Eli was sure he was just imaging things. Boxes weren’t animated in anyway so it couldn’t work like that.

Obviously though, witchcraft was lost on Remy. She lifted them with her hands or ... well, you lifted with the legs. Whatever, the point was that she didn’t use a wand. She could have done it all by herself if she’d done it in the first place. But instead of adamantly refusing which seemed the more preferred to the alternative, Eli lifted a few boxes into his arms and manoeuvred himself so he didn’t trip up. As fun as blood was and broken bones even better he didn’t particularly want to get injured at work. Remy would offer him no sympathy – not that he wanted it but there was a certain need for comfort that Eli had. He bit his lip and moved the boxes slightly so the weight was on both hands and not more so on one or the other.

“You’re insane.” He accused angrily. “Why couldn’t you use a bloody wand?”

That’s probably what frustrated him the most – the fact that she was being lazy and making him do most of the work. Or maybe it was his pureblood nature shining through and that little voice in his head would whisper to him about how he was lowering himself to common Muggle jobs. Elijah didn’t really have a problem with Muggles but there was always that side of him – his mother’s influence.

Eli stood beside Remy and leaned lazily on the door, almost daring the hinges to snap and let him fall. He didn’t particularly want to get crushed by boxes but he was fine with it either way. “Go in,” he instructed easily. “I’ve got the door.”

((Thought it was about time I posted here))