I don't own Harry Potter / some content will be odd because I'm uploading it from my tumblr and I've been running it as a multi media story. Don't knock it till you try it ! :)

Tom grumbled as he paced around Borgin and Burke's, placing dusty items on dustier shelves and in clouded cases. They were useless trinkets that the manager would have him hawk at three times the price. Junk. Almost everything in the place was, and the few items that were really, truly magic (nasty pieces of work at that) weren't to be sold. They were kept around to keep the place credible. Occasionally they would be swapped out with something or other equally cursed from a donor, left anonymous.

"Where does he even find this nonsense?"

A gold pendent minted with a sun dial swung from a deteriorating leather thong. Cheap.

"I bet it's not even gold," he held it closer for inspection, huffed some warm air on it with the intend of rubbing it on his coat to see if he could get a shine out of its scuffed surface. When he grabbed it, unexpectedly he felt as if he were no longer alone and his eyes immediately shot to the door. The bell hadn't rang. No one was there. Odd.

Turning around with the intent of hanging it on a display, Tom nearly bowled over a small witch standing behind him. He let out a very undignified yelp that he would deny if it ever got out. Lords were not scared by women.

Her head jerked up, and the confusion was obvious. He was sure he heard her whisper a very unladylike phrase, before she set on a brilliant smile with teeth slightly too large. They gave her face character; though, he wasn't sure he could call her handsome.

"Can I help you miss?"

"Undoubtably," her voice was not as high as he would have thought for someone of her stature, it was womanly. "I've been in here a few times before, you must be new, and I was hoping you could help me with something." She was lying, he had been here for two years and he remembered every idiot that walked through that creaking jingling shop door. She had not been one of them.

"I can try."

"Well I came across this necklace, and I was wondering if you would give me a price for it. Seems rather old, probably cursed, and I might need a place to deposit it in the future, you know how things are." Plenty of people came in for the reason she was suggesting, it was a likely enough reason, there was just one small issue. Everything coming out of the woman's mouth was a lie.

"Let's see it then."

"Oh of course," she fumbled through a beaded hand bag that ate her arm up to the elbow, neat trick. Must come in handy. "Of course, i didn't put it back." she pulled her arm out and instead reached into a coat pocket. Tom now noticed that her clothes were odd, odder than what a witch or wizard normally wore. Nothing she wore was in any style he had ever seen.

"Here it is," she dangled a small gold pendent hanging from delicate gold chain, but it was unmistakably the twin to the one he still had gripped in his hand. He could have laughed, the ridiculousness that the woman would think it were worth anything! That he had one like it in his possession at that very moment and that there were probably a million like it. "One of a kind. It took me forever to get my hands on this little bugger. It was on a nasty old leather thong when I acquired it, but that just wouldn't do for this beauty."

Something on the wall behind him caught her attention, oh the wall clock. She must have seen how late it was getting and needed to hurry on back to her husband soon. He was grateful that she pocketed that junk neckless and made an a mumbled excuse about leaving. He wouldn't have to be the one to tell her that she had been cheated and lied to. He said goodbye as she left through the front door, thinking that she looked rather washed out but thought no more of her.