What would you do if you could have what you most desired? Come to 354 Emerald Street if you wish to have what you want most.
Yves Conault
The wet streets of Paris glistened from the night lights of the street lamps. The rain had died only an hour ago, but the smell of damp dust entrenched into the nostrils of Jude Mercury, the receiver of the note. Across the street from her was the address left for her, it was large like a museum. She been performing street magic in Rue Claudel, a secret street to Muggles that was a splendour with magic. At the end of her card show performance Jude counted her earnings to find the folded-up note in her hat. The offer of her heart was tempting, but Jude was no fool, what she wanted could not be earned with ease, and it was a thing that could lure Jude to her enemies. To help make up her mind Jude travelled the shops of the street asking if anyone knew a Yves Conault, but nothing came to fruit until she went to the Griffon Buveur, a place far cleaner and sophisticated than the Leaky Cauldron. Yves Conault was, to the word of the bartender, a reclusive academic of noble blood.
She tapped the letter against her hand as she leaned against the streetlamp. Perhaps noble blood, meant political connections, but why offer me help? Jude thought. What could he want from me?
Those questions plagued her swaying in her mind against his offer. Not knowing the situation left the odds at fifty-fifty. From Jude's experience when you had those odds, the decider should always be laid towards desire. Would I live if I was wrong or could I live with never trying at all?
She stepped on to the street towards the massive building as her boots made wet scratches against the ground. Jude looked up and down the road for any signs of a trap, but instead, she couldn't only see cars and people under umbrellas. As she neared the shelter of the building, she pulled out her wand. If this Yves was a bookworm, then he'd not be a quick draw, but he'd know things that Jude had never thought of before. She dried herself with a twitch of her wand and walked up to the front door, a large wooden door polished with varnish with metal notches around the border. She knocked on the door, but after a moment no one answered, she grabbed the knob to see if it was unlocked and felt herself get ripped out of the space into a long narrow hallway. Jude fell face first on to a burgundy rug that spanned from the door to a spiral staircase. The corridor itself was an entry carved from polished white marble that reflected off the burning torches that lined the room. The sight would remind one of the entrances to a tomb or a temple. The door knob slipped from her grasp bouncing with sharp thuds a few feet from her. She looked up seeing it begin to twitch back to the museum door, Jude scrambled to her feet trying to grab it before it left.
"No," Jude yelled before diving towards the knob, but the thing popped away as she landed. The pain of the impact knocked the wind out of Jude, but she jumped to her feet pulling out her wand.
"This is not good," Jude said as she walked back towards the single door, hoping it to be an exit.
Seemed she'd made the wrong bet, the simplicity of it this trap is what got her. She'd been too focused on the complexities to see what was in front of her, by what was behind the door, not the door itself. When she reached the door, Jude looked down to check, but there didn't seem to be any magic to it. She looked up to see an older man with salt and pepper hair with olive skin a few feet in front of her. She jumped against the wall from the shock but point her wand at him, and he stood with his arms resting by his side with a kind smile.
"Pardon Madam for the ... suddenness of your entry. Can't have too many people knowing where I work. Scholars can be more ruthless and unethical than any mad murderer."
The calm, casual demeanour of this Frenchman was disturbing him, but somehow his checkered sweater vest and turtleneck was troubling her even more. "Are you supposed to be Yves?"
"Oui and pardon me for not introducing myself. I'm not accustomed to the gesture."
Jude's eyes twitched around the room and to the supposed Yves, he was too far away from the stairs and too calm to have run. He apparated, but he didn't seem to have a wand in his hand, which meant he was either a very wizard or used apparition all the time. This was a possible option due to his large stomach that almost seemed fake due to the rest of him being quite slim. This man fit the bill of a reclusive scholar, but there were still so many questions unanswered.
"You said you could help me."
"Yes."
"Prove it."
"The only way I can prove it is to make it happened and I cannot do as such till you finish the job."
The furrow in her brow softened, the idea that the offer for her heart's desire was not a trick, but instead the proposal for a job lowered Jude's guard. This was a reasonable exchange but did it have the breath of realism? Jude lowered her wand but stayed where she was.
"How else can I be assured of the offer?"
His eyes fluttered with bewilderment. "You're not going to ask what the job is?"
She gave a short laugh. "My skills don't equate to academia. They can be applied to entertainment or crime, and I don't think you're hiring me for a children's party."
Now it was Yves time to laugh as he scratched his beard in contemplation, he pulled out his wand. "Accio."
A whirling wisp echoed down the stairwell until a beige coloured blur flew into Yves' hand. "Here is part one of your reward — something I can prove," He said before levitating it to Jude. She grabbed it out of the air and opened it. Her smile of disbelief died when she saw a bank transcript for a transfer of 2000 galleons to her account.
"I've already sent it. Consider it a bet on my confidence."
"That you'd convince me?"
"Non, that you'd convince me. But we've not finished the interview yet," Yves explained before holding out his hand. "Nor am I done with gifts. I'll take you to the next stage."
Jude looked down at the door handle, it seemed to her that regardless she was going to get paid and whatever work he was offering could make her life better worse. Another fifty-fifty situation.
"You are, of course, allowed to leave. You can touch that doorknob and end up in the bathroom door of a park in Paris. But Madame you are more than a street performer, and I believe you know that as well."
Jude took her hat and rubbed her head desperate for comfort. Stay safe or take a risk? How much worse could her situation become. "I can leave whenever I want, with the money?"
"Oui."
She walked over to him with her hand outstretched but stopped just before their hands touched. He looked at her confused, but she had a dangerous edge to her eyes. "If you are lying. I will turn you into a teacup and shatter you against the wall," she said before taking his hand. He didn't seem to react to her words other than dropping his smile and the blink of an eye and soft scream of air. They were in a large opiate room made of the same marble as the hallway, but this room was like a half sphere without a single door except one that was in the middle of the ceiling. In the centre of the chamber were seven pillars, with each pillar holding a distinct item.
"This is the second stage. You must pick one of these objects, things I've collected in my studies."
"Why?"
"So, I can get a sense of you and because I must."
"Like that's not ambiguous," Jude said before she walked up to the first pillar on the left.
On it sat a pile of burning coal that soothed and warmed Jude even from this distance, it felt different from the Eternal Flames she had encountered before more authentic, though the authenticity of such things had never entered her mind before. The idea made her shiver and step away and she didn't spot as stepped into the pale blue glow of an ice shard. The piece was long and angular like the tooth of a dragon, she could almost hear it chill the air around it, she felt comfortable in its presence - calm even. She would have stayed there if it wasn't for a faint humming sound, it cut through her zen and she found herself walking towards it, she felt her hands become desperate to touch it.
"Once you touch an object that's it, it is yours."
"Is that a warning?"
"Advice. You haven't checked everything."
Advice my butt didn't say a word about the other two. He doesn't want me to pick it, which his either because it is the thing I should choose or shouldn't pick at all, Jude thought.
She sucked her teeth before walking away from the crown to a basic boring pile of ash. She stared at it waiting for something impressive to happen, like for it to turn into a little twister or maybe a phoenix would pop out. The idea reminded Jude of a major even at Marsay's Traveling Tent, they had the exact type of pile on the ground, it was sold already around the state that a one in a lifetime event would occur. Jude had to trade not only money but her transfiguration trick for changing her cards to get inside. However, little did the guy know was that you had to be able to do wandless magic. The deception was worth it, watching a phoenix become reborn is a spectacularly quick thing, like a shooting star.
Jude waited for something spectacular like that to happen to the ash on the pillar, but nothing did. So, she decided to move on to the next item, a black wand that was smooth and shaped like a stretched-out water droplet. The wood was polished, so Jude couldn't tell what type, wood it was, but regardless she wasn't interested and waited a second before moving on.
"Why so quick?" Yves asked.
Jude touched the wand in her pocket, a Redwood with the feather of a Phoenix. When she first picked it up before going to Hogwarts, she'd turned Mr Ollivander's inkblot into a smooth black as in fedora with the bright blue quill sticking out of the side. She had feared that he'd become upset and take the wand off of her, but instead, he stuck the hat on her head.
"I've seen a lot of things happen when a pair meet, but I've never seen a wand make a gift for their owner before. Be kind to it or else the hat might change back while you're wearing it."
The memory caused her to reach up to the wide flat brim of that very same hat on her head. Jude did have to grow into it, but this hat has always held great importance to her, it was her magic hat.
Jude gave a shrug. "I don't need it."
Next up was a diamond the size of a man's fist, Jude wasn't a diamond girl, but due to its size, it almost seemed to attract the light of the room towards it, with little rays of light cutting through it. She could get a ton of money for it, but that wasn't the job, and she'd learnt the hard way that things weren't always what they seemed. Jude stepped up to the last pillar.
There is no way it is just empty space must be something made invisible with a spell, she thought.
Jude knew she couldn't reach out to check because touching it would be claiming, so she leaned down and blew air. Her logic being if there was something there, she would get blowback, but she got nothing. She blew her lips in disappointment before stepping back to see all of the options.
"Well, obviously not I'm picking that last one."
"Then what do you choose?"
Jude appeared to sway, as her eyes danced between the cold blue ice shard that she could feel from here or the crown, that seemed to hum as if it were a magnet. Jude began to hum with laughter, she was reminded of the draw she'd felt when she'd gambled the feelings overwhelming her logic. She began to shake her head as the humour left her face.
"This is a trick. Tempting me," Jude looked over at the man. "Not going to work, but I'm still not going to go away without something, so I pick the ash."
"Are you sure? Coal is just as bland as ash?"
"Don't go asking me that. Of course, I'm not sure, but when you start playing not to lose, then you lose." She walked up to the plate of ash. "I'm not getting any bad feelings from this," she said before putting her hand on the pile. The room became silent as she waited for something to happen, Jude had thought made the ash would do something if she'd picked it or Yves would tell her that she'd made the wrong choice, but nothing happened from the ash or from Yves. She turned to look at him for some answers, but the squishy cheeked frog was gone. A sudden clap from behind her caused Jude to jerk from surprise and shower the ashes in the air over herself and Yves.
"Merlin's pants, Yves. Can you cut it out with the apparition?" Jude yelled. "Are you too lazy to walk in front of me?"
"Non, Madame Mercury, I find it too boring to walk, accio stone jar," Yves said and a thing shot out from the door on the ceiling right into his hand. He began to whirl his wand in a circle above his head causing the ash to levitate of the ground, Yves and Jude almost becoming a cyclone before sending it all into the jar. Yves pressed the lid on to it with the line being unclear becoming a cylinder. "You've made a marvellous choice Madame Mercury, though I must admit not the one I'd thought you'd make," he said with an amused tone before holding out the cylinder. Jude frowned not liking his smile, it was like a competitor at a casino, smiling when they knew they had an advantage.
She grabbed the cylinder out of his hand. "I aim to be unpredictable, so have I passed your little test."
He snapped his fingers, and a staircase began to pull out of the wall into a spiral that led to the open door of the ceiling.
"Oui, now please go up those stairs to my study where your colleague waits."
"How many people are in on this job?"
"Time will tell, but for now it is just deux."
She looked over at the other items. Guess that means someone else is going to get what I wanted, Jude thought. Got to follow through though. She tucked the cylinder into her bag before going up the stairs, the clicking of her boots echoed through the room. She looked over her shoulder to look at Yves, but he was already gone, no doubt giving the same introduction to the next candidate.
A/N: Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it, be sure to follow, favourite or review.