Foreigners in Hogsmeade ((Jez))

[Anastasia Castlerock R4]

The jingling coins in her purse made Stacey a very happy young lady today. ‘Very’ being the operative word in the past sentence as very little upset the teenage girl so she was usually always happy if sometimes bored – Stacey simply wouldn’t allow misery into her life. It was an unconscious decision she’d made ever since people had given her that look when they heard her parents were divorced and she was living with her father and her mother had started a whole new life: she’d married and had her own children. And Stacey would be quick to reassure them she had the perfect life, which in her eyes she did. Everything she wished for was granted; she had her ways of ensuring that. And should anything sad – or unfortunate, sad was such a strong word - happen, she could cheer herself up almost instantly since she knew she had the solution – she’d go out and buy something new, eat something new, try something new! She was completely self-reliant and proud of it, or at least that was how she saw it. And everyone always talked of how important it was to be independent, Stacey actually lived it. She walked the walk rather than talked the talk.

Hogsmeade was empty today for some reason. Most people liked to shop when the place wasn’t crowded, but Stacey was here on her own, and all the Hogwarts students were in groups. This wouldn’t do at all. A little disappointment crept up on her, but Stacey pushed it away as the seeds of a plan were planted in her head. Just because she was alone didn’t mean she couldn’t entertain herself – or at least it was all right this once because her plan would actually be easier to execute with minimum intervention from anyone who knew her. Scratch that, if anyone who knew her turned up, it could cause a bit of a problem. But she’d take that risk.

A fancy apothecary was just a few blocks from where she stood. Excitement and mischief egged her on as she entered the shop and carefully formed a confused expression on her face. Stacey walked down the aisles of the shop, making little noises as she did this – little noises she’d heard her own mother make before. She sneaked a glance at the man at the front of the shop; he was actually a teenager a few years older than she was, lanky and bespectacled. She felt that luck was on her side and that he’d probably never met many foreigners and could be fooled by her. Her formulated plan was now ready to put into action.

Stacey went up to him and smiled, her eyes wide and bewildered. “Please,” she began. “I not English, but I am speaking it very best. I like to do – what you call it – ah, experiments, make big boom,” she said, making an explosive gesture with her arms. “I is needing some components for my experiments,” she told him. “I is needing – what is the name?” she said, frustration evident on her face. “Ahh, I will tell you. End,” she said happily. Stacey placed her hand on her behind and stuck it out like a tail and started swishing it around and opening and closing her mouth in a fish imitation. “End,” she said again, as if that made it all clear.

She didn’t hear the door shut a little distance away from her. Someone had walked in while Stacey had been putting on her little act.

[Jez Cuthbert]

Jez was sure that Filch had placed spies at the entrances to Zonko's. He just had the feeling, and that was enough to make him convinced. He wasn't about to have his face recorded so that the caretaker felt justified in making him turn out his pockets every time he walked down the corridor; that could be potentially disastrous, since he was usually carrying something illicit around. Today he had a few boiled sweets that could be used to change the colour of one's tongue, an Extendable Ear, and of course the obligatory Dungbomb. Then there were a few less mainstream things - more reprimand-worthy but less likely to be noticed by Filch. Jez wasn't afraid of taking chances, so long as they were favourable ones.

Well, that was the main plan of the day scrapped. But Jez didn't feel like going home just yet. He had a little spot of revenge planned for the end of the trip anyway, and it would be foolish to miss that. If you didn't take the first chance you got, you might never get another one. It looked like he would just have to go and trick some knowledge out of a shopkeeper. Knowledge was a commodity to Jez - if he knew that the means to accomplish whatever goal existed, he could usually manage to secure them to exact retribution in his normal manner. But not everyone was delighted to talk to a 16 year old boy hungry for academic information. So Jez had had to become wily and devious to satisfy his thirst (and his trouble-making needs). Shopkeepers were the only people (other than his father, who intimidated him a little sometimes even though he would never admit it) that were treated to a dose of disarming charm from Jez.

This place looked expensive. The irregular shape and spiky lettering of the swinging wooden sign above the door told him that, as well as the cringe-worthy name that they'd chosen for it. It was all nonsense of course - they still sold the same herbs and slug essences and powdered dragon dung. Just charged more for it. Well, if they could get away with it, so much the better for them. Cuthberts knew that it didn't take a fancy name to make a good supplier - Doxycide just needed some nasty ingredients, and that was sufficient. Still, the shopkeeper might be willing to divulge some knowledge. He was trying to give a sense of class, after all - and class and knowledge went together for sure.

Jez was sorely disappointed when he stepped into the shop and craned his neck round the girl at the counter to take a peek at the attendant there. It had an overwhelming musty smell which could become quite pleasant if you liked that sort of thing, but Jez wasn't looking for smells. He was looking for someone that knew a lot - and there was no way that someone two or three years older than him was going to have any advantage over him in that respect, work as he might in an apothecary. Jez had grown up in a storeroom (well actually, he was far from growing up yet, but that was beside the point), and he knew the smell, the appearance, and sometimes even the feel or taste of most commonplace - and a few less commonplace - ingredients. But he was Jez Cuthbert. Jez Cuthbert did not admit failure, even when it was staring him in the face - because that was the easiest way to guarantee failure. He just kept on trying, confident on eventual success. Finding success here was going to be tricky. But he couldn't just walk out of the door... not now that he'd stepped in through it. That ensnared him into a certain amount of commitment.

Jez had been so busy considering his own predicament that he almost missed his route out. Well, that was the danger of being preoccupied with your own plans. But the man leaning on the counter was busy enough gawping at the girl who couldn't be for real (she just couldn't be; Jez felt he was more likely to meet a centaur venturing out of the forest than someone that young with English that bad in a place important only to desperate students) that Jez hadn't lost his chance to join in. Quickly assigning the teenager a high gullibility rating, he stormed up to the counter himself, coming to a rest beside the girl with a face as glowering as someone like Jez could muster.

"I has told you always, you get it wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong!" he repeated, as though immensely proud of this part of his vocabulary. He appeared completely oblivious to the man standing in front of them, his face livid with indignation as he faced his 'fellow foreigner'. "You make mistake and make me blame for it, because do not speak your language, we only talk Eenglish in same, only not good enough to you. You not like me, well I not like you and you wrong. End," he mocked with a disdaining laugh. "End not make boom, make experiment..." Jez finally acknowledged the other person in the apothecary, turning to him with an expression of puzzlement, as though expecting to find the answer reflected in his glasses. "Make it... I forget word..."

His pleading look turning to impatience, Jez searched around on the counter to see what was in the bottles there. Powdered dragon horn would respond nastily to about anything... ignoring the stammering protests of the man in front of him, he grabbed the bottle, emptied a little into the mortar on the counter, and with the pestle beside it ground some daisy petals into it from a shrivelled daisy chain that had been hanging up above him. A yellow light began to exude from the small stone dish, and Jez looked at it worriedly for a moment before gingerly picking up a snake fang and dropping it in. The light flared orange, then slowly died away with a hiss and a fizzle. Jez grinned widely, knowing that his teeth were satisfyingly yellow from one of those boiled sweets. He also knew that he'd have to pay for those ingredients before he left, because he didn't fancy being hunted down and arrested. That wasn't part of his life plan. "End," he said, giving the girl a triumphant look, "make it do this. You... wrong."

[Anastasia Castlerock R4]

The unfortunate salesman was looking at Stacey with a completely befuddled expression; almost as though he was finding trouble she was real. Stacey was contemplating her next move and how long she could keep up her pretence when an unexpected person arrived at the scene of her little charade. Stacey didn’t know this person was but he certainly didn’t look like a foreigner so when he opened his mouth and joined into her charade she was surprised and a little scared. At least I’m half-Italian, what business does he have thinking he can pull this off? She watched the expression on his face and she actually found herself holding back laughter as Jez plunged into quite a performance. It was bold of him to jump in like that and even start calling her in on her mistakes with whatever potion it was she was supposed to be making. It was like something Rex might do. However, it left her a little uncertain as to how to proceed, but whatever happened it was all in good fun and she was sure no everlasting harm would end up befalling the shop or the salesman.

Stacey looked at Jez with a hurt expression on her face, biting down her lip with her arms crossed across her chest as she did her best to appear offended and as if Jez as was doing her a great wrong. “You always think you know everything - make me feel like I am so so dumb – I will prove to you I right. Sir, I is making the En-gorge-ment Potion.” She stressed on the middle syllable as her mother might do. And then inspiration hit her and Stacey almost gave away herself as she held back a cunning smile. She was going to push Jez and see how far he would go; try and scare him a bit. “I is making the potion right here, and I will swallow it and show you who is right and who is wrong. You will learn not to speak to me like I am talking garbage! You will see that it is you and not I who is doing a grave mistook!” A little more careful there Stacey, that sounded like Gobbledegook. “What is this potion you make eh? It not make something big, what does it do? Drink it, I dare you to in this moment!” she finished on a high note and then looked at Jez defiantly. She actually had no idea what his concoction did. Her story was going to be that she hadn’t really meant for something to explode, but simply to grow very large, for Engorgement Potions were the only ones she knew that required the use of fish tails.