The school year had finished at Ilvermorny, and unsurprisingly his ex-wife had insisted on having the kids for the first weeks of vacation. Having barely seen little Ricky aside from a few days at Spring break. the home economics professor felt the familiar dip in his mood, but was determined not to waste this time. So he had decided to take a trip over to Europe, not exactly reliving his youth, but at least giving himself the opportunity to visit Paris and London again, and perhaps even Neroli where he still had a couple of old friends living.
For now though, he was in Diagon Alley, and everything would have been perfect but for the annoying and persistent twitch in his right foot that had started three days earlier. At first he thought it had been an insect bite, but there was no swelling or redness and none of the common remedies he knew had made any difference. Probably it would improve in a couple of days, he had told himself, but positive thinking had only taken him so far and last night it had woken him up several times. The sensible thing would have been to take himself to St Mungo's, but Ricky had seen a nice looking cafe the previous evening he planned to visit for lunch, and besides there were at least three shops he wanted to look in. It wasn't as if he was struggling to walk.
Except he was, sort of. It wasn't painful or anything, but every few steps his foot would twitch and he would find himself pointing in a slightly different direction, so his route down the street was a rather meandering one. That hadn't stopped him buying an ice-cream thugh, which he had been enjoying until his foot gave a particularly strong and unexpected jerk and he found himself depositing the remains of his ice-cream onto the arm of an unsuspecting passer-by.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! May I fix that for you?" he asked, his Californian accent sounding particularly out of place in the London street.
@Ian Moray
