a-punk [grace]

"Jesus Christ, Rob—" Frank marveled at the exterior of Honeydukes. The windows were filled with an impossible variety of candies and chocolates, casting a warm glow on the cobblestoned path outside. "It's something alright," He cast a hesitant glance back to his friend who was awaiting his reaction excitedly. Honeydukes. Robin had only been talking about the place all afternoon. He touted that it would have even him converted.

Frank was skeptical, as he was about most things, but he would give it a shot.

A sickeningly sweet smell confronted him the moment they stepped inside. It looked like every nightmare-inducing dream he'd ever had about Santa's Workshop when he was a kid. Robin went in search of his friend who ran the operation— Honey. "Fake name..." Frank repeated his statement from earlier, that there was no way that was her real name, though Rob was already gone and definitely hadn't caught it.

Cautiously, the tall wizard wandered through the shop, reading the labels on the boxes as he went, touching the plastic cellophane wrapping. Clever naming, he would give it that. He was so distracted that he wound up sidestepping right into a kid, who in turn looked up at him with a chocolate-covered grin.

"Shit," Frank jumped. "Sorry, crap," He corrected himself, visibly uncomfortable under this kid's unwavering gaze, taking a deliberate step back. The boy took another closer and dug his sweaty hand into a box of chocolate to share. "Uhh," He made a face. "Nope," Brown eyes frantically scanned the room for whomever the goblin belonged to. "Kid over here," Thankfully his height made it easy to see over the shelves and he caught the eye of a curly-haired witch who he prayed was the mother, pointing to the child.

Milling lazily about the shop, Grace examined the collection of sweets that Honey had arranged near the front door: ‘new recipe!’ the sign on the table announced. The confectioner herself was in the back, pulling supplies to replenish her displays of the most popular sweets before the students descended on the place. Fortunately there was at least one more Hogsmeade weekend left in the term, so it shouldn’t be a complete madhouse… but you never knew. Hogwarts had always been full of surprises. She – along with a team of other Curse Breakers – were actively investigating one of them now, as it was: disappearing ghosts.

The auburn-haired witch didn’t even look up at the gentle tinkling of the bell; one could usually hear the students approaching long before the bell announced their arrival, so there was no need to send a preparatory warning to Honey. What did catch her attention a few minutes later was a note of concern followed by: “Kid over here.”

Mildly curious (and sincerely hoping said kid wasn’t having an anaphylactic episode or something that would morally mandate her intervention), Grace glanced in the direction of the voice – and was sufficiently puzzled to find the speaker in the adjacent aisle, staring at her. Her gaze shifted to a grinning chocolate-smeared child a few feet away, and back again to the tall dark-haired man. His look was expectant, almost; as though he expected her to do something. About what? The kid standing beside him? Hilarious. Had this guy never set foot in a candy shop before? There were kids everywhere…

Grace raised her eyebrows.
“Aye, there is. What of it?” she replied dryly. “It is a Hogsmeade weekend.” She realized, belatedly, that this child looked younger than thirteen… but all the same, wasn’t there a popular saying about ‘a kid in a candy shop’?

Well, this woman wasn't going to be any help.

At least, if her confusion was an indication.

Frank frowned. He thought that he had found the gremlin's mother because of their likeness, the same damn curls, but apparently that wasn't the case. It was 'Hogsmeade weekend' she said, like that meant anything to him. It was Hogsmeade, and it was a weekend— how that was a suitable response to his very clear and present danger just didn't add up, and his furrowed brow said as much.

"He didn't even buy that, I bet," Frank said loudly, shuffling past the grubby redhead, careful to avoid his wet-with-chocolate-limbs. Why they were wet, he really didn't want to know. Without thought, he made his way toward the witch who seemed to know her way around the place. Perhaps she worked there and could go find Robin before Frank had an allergic reaction to all the children that he suddenly noticed were milling about (now that it had been pointed out).

As if the place couldn't get any worse.

"Hogsmeade weekend?" He leaned down considerably to study a package of something called Acid Pops. That probably had a different meaning in America...

“He didn't even buy that, I bet.”

Grace smirked.
“If he didn’t, he won’t get far. Honey’s a clever one.”
In all honesty, she actually wasn’t sure what sort of security measures the Flumes had in place… but she was willing to bet that anyone who stole from Honey would swiftly regret their poor judgment.

“Hogsmeade weekend?”
She was about to raise her eyebrows again but, belatedly, she identified that his accent was not English, Irish, or Scottish – and so she had mercy on him.

“One Saturday a month, the Hogwarts students” – she tilted her head in the direction of the castle, even though it was not visible from their position within the shop – “that are Third Year and older are allowed to come down to the village for the day.”
She regarded him curiously. He was significantly taller than average, dark-haired… definitely had distinctive facial features, though overall attractive. And had no clue what a Hogsmeade weekend was. How did he end up here?
“Did they not have something like it where you went to school?”

"Honey," Frank repeated with subtle (he thought) air quotes, unable to control himself. "Can't be a real name, said that to Rob, too..." He shook his head, speaking to himself before casting his dark brown eyes to the back where his friend had disappeared to. Still in disbelief, he touched the plastic, annoyingly cheerful wrapping of the sweets on the shelf without thought.

No wonder this place made a killing with kids on a day away from school—Hogwarts— this was their fucking crack.

And left unattended, no real supervision? Jesus, Mary, and Merlin, it was his nightmare.

Francis jumped out of the way of a little girl with curls of auburn hair that pushed at his legs impatiently, seemingly to get a better look at something on the shelf. "Shit, calm down, Shirley Temple," He could no longer censor himself. He needed to get out of here, and fast.

"Well, it's a terrible idea, Hogsmeade weekend," He decided, looking to the woman, then speaking more pointedly to the little girl in some attempt to scare her aware. Where the fuck was Rob? "Nothing like this this—" Frank responded. Ilvermorny had something similar but couldn't bring himself to imagine himself so young, so obnoxious. "I'm actually here with Robin," He wondered if Grace knew him, given she seemed to know this Honey person so well.

"We're supposed to be getting drinks—" He remembered his friends sober status just as he said it. "— well, just, hang out," He corrected, almost knocking a chocolate something from the shelf. He wondered if she would be joining.

Folding her arms neatly across her chest, she had to hand it to this guy – her forehead hadn’t got this thorough of a workout in ages, thanks to all the eyebrow-raising that anything he managed to say seemed to elicit in her. She caught her friend’s name repeated back, but ignored the grumble that succeeded it.

“Shit, calm down, Shirley Temple.”

“There are children present,” she commented mildly, but without any real rebuke. He seemed utterly bewildered by the concept of a Hogsmeade weekend. What was with this guy? He must have gone to school somewhere really lame if it had been “nothing like this”…

Now it was her turn to repeat something back blankly, though her ears pricked at the mention of getting drinks.
“Robin?”
A ludicrous image popped into her mind’s eye, then, of a bird perched on the rim of this tall dark-haired guy’s pint. Before she could capitalize on a pun, though, he nearly knocked over part of a display; with honed and practiced reflexes she moved quickly to steady it.

But as she turned to fix him with a ‘you’re-lucky-it’s-not-wrecked’ look, something clicked belatedly in her mind: he’d referenced Shirley Temple, and very few magically-raised wizards knew about her.
“You Muggleborn?” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Frank pulled a face but miraculously fought the kneejerk reaction to point out that no shit there were children present. Hadn't they just been talking about that? Then it dawned on him that maybe she was fucking with him. The sense of humor that he had picked up on thus far during his time in Britain, dry and cutting, indicated that maybe she was (he hoped), and he half-smiled in return. "Yeah, can you, do something about that?" He gestured around them jokingly, as if she might just kick all the little monsters out.

In a perfect world, he thought...

With the exception of his nieces and nephews, kids were the worst.

"Just a fan," Frank shrugged, nodding appreciatively as she saved him the embarrassment of knocking the whole place down. Maybe it was all of the kids crowding him, but it seemed like Honeydukes was made for people half his size. Muggleborn. He learned the term years ago in New York, but it was still strange to hear it spoken out loud in the place of no-maj. Another subtle reminder that he was on the other side of the world. "You are...?" He wondered, already more curious.

“Aye, sure, I can… but that would be bad for business.” She grinned wolfishly, folding her arms casually across her chest.

“Just a fan.”
Grace tilted her head slightly, sizing him up. In this day and age, Shirley Temple was still a little more on the ‘obscure’ side of pop culture; she’d hit peak popularity something like seventy years ago, after all, a good forty years before either of them had been born (this bloke looked to be of-age with her, at least).

“I am,” she confirmed, unfolding her arms for a moment to more closely inspect a brightly-wrapped candy that she wasn’t sure she’d seen before. Was this one of the new sweets Honey had told her about? She made a mental note to ask – and offer to taste-test it, of course.

“You’re not from around here, hm?” It was framed as more of a statement than a question, as she’d heard him speak enough by now to rule-out any of the British or Irish accents; plus there’d been his earlier bewilderment at the term ‘Hogsmeade weekend’. Grace was feeling unusually non-antisocial today, so she continued: “Whereabouts, then?”

The woman was smiling but it didn't quite meet Frank's mouth in return. In the grand scheme of business versus the annoyance of prepubescents, he knew what he would have preferred. Then again, The Deli was filled with dishwashers whom he detested based on their age alone and somehow he was managing.

"Nope," Frank studied where she had just been studying a painfully bright candy in all of its shiny plastic-wrapped fucking glory. What the appeal was, he would never know. Either way, he reached a large hand out to touch it, for whatever reason. "Pittsburgh," He confirmed, then remembered that it might not be the most well known of cities of origin to a foreign witch. Muggleborn or not. "Close to New York," He added. It wasn't, really, but it had been the identifier he used anytime someone had asked him where he was from leading up to that point.

"So you work here?" He hated small talk but it was certifiably better than falling prey to the kid with the wet chocolate hands and uninterrupted eye contact again. With any luck, Robin would be out soon and they could be on their way and he could forget the ordeal had even happened.