Chapter Three: A Watch
Yes, there have been more humiliating moments in my life than that. There was the picture of me at two years old with my finger glued up my nose. There was the time I locked myself outside the girls' bathroom in nothing but what most Hogwarts students used for hand towels and Luna Lovegood had to rescue me. There was the time I had sneezed and gotten the spring of an especially tiny earring watch under my eyelid and had to have a Healer with magnetic tweezers paw around my left eye for an hour so it didn't start cutting in and hurting worse than it already did. Mainsprings, in case you've never handled one, tend to be razor-sharp at the ends. There was the time I enchanted my quill in detention to keep writing, fell asleep, and woke up with 'I will not adjust the school clocks' written across my arm four times. They were off by forty-one and three-quarter seconds! Damn Umbridge. At least Dumbledore'd let me fix the big one when he came back. But I digress.
At any rate, none of those wretchedly embarrassing memories felt even remotely close to the level of self-loathing horror that I felt in that moment. There was the hottest, most wonderful chunk of what Ginny calls 'dishy manflesh' ever to cross the threshold of my shop, smiling calmly as if it were perfectly normal to discover the proprietress dancing around like a nit to Muggle disco music. I stopped cold in my tracks. If the floor had any consideration whatsoever, it would have called it's buddy the ceiling and had a tile squash me dead.
But it got worse.
"Hey, Jessie," Charlie greeted.
"Erm …uh…hi…"
I was more articulate in the picture at two years old.
"I didn't know you liked Muggle songs!" Charlie was giving me an incredibly cheerful smile. He stepped closer and before I knew what was happening, he had one of my hands in his. I found myself being pulled out of the back and into the main showroom, where there was more floor, and then spun around. And again! I was pulled close and spun out again, and then backward, so that Charlie's chest was close to my back.
In case you aren't familiar with Muggles, they used to have a sport known as disco, played in nightclubs with loud music and floors that lit up with electricity. As far as I can gather, score was kept by how good one managed to look dancing, how ridiculous one's clothes were, and how sweaty one got. I knew a little about it, as my uncle Gard used to play every night in some really hideous flared pants when I was just a baby, and after I learned to walk, he sometimes used to dance with me as an excuse for babysitting. I can't imagine where Charlie learned it, but he was a few years older, so he probably remembered seeing people play it a little better than I did, and I know his father is fascinated by Muggle stuff.
At any rate, we wound up dancing around the shop. Once I got over the shock, I do know a few of the steps, and Charlie showed me a couple more. As the song ended, we were laughing incredibly hard and breathing harder.
"Where …did you…learn to…do that?" I gasped.
"My dad …and mum…dance…all the time," Charlie panted. "You?"
"My uncle." We smiled at each other, breathing really hard, as the record finished and flipped over. As a little ditty called 'Dancing Queen' started, Charlie looked confusedly in the direction of the sound. "Oh! I have one of those Muggle turntables from the early seventies with the arm, so you can put a whole stack of records on and it'll flip them when they're done."
"I thought those turned out to be bad for records. Muggles don't make or use them anymore."
"I've made some subtle improvements…"
"Really? How subtle?" Charlie looked at the spinning record curiously. "Mom hasn't used the old one in years and she won't let Dad improve on it because of the Muggle Artifacts interference laws."
"Well, there are a few loopholes…but I suppose you'd know about them. I actually have a license to inspect, repair, alter, improve and transmogrify Muggle articles."
"A license?"
"Yep." I couldn't resist a smirk, because-
"The Ministry hasn't given licenses to tamper since…" Charlie looked incredulous.
"December seventeenth, 1789," we finished in unison.
"I know. Come 'ere."
My shop –I do think of it as mine- has four rooms on the ground floor. The glass storefront opens into the main showroom, which isn't very big, but there are velvet-lined shelves and glass cases for hundreds of timepieces. There's a doorway with no door that leads into the main workroom. The door on the left in the workroom goes down to the basement. The basement is two rooms; the safe room, which is where all the expensive or dangerous things are kept. I also have my furnace, smelting equipment, a spare work-desk and the demi-forge down there. Behind the main workroom is the downstairs loo and the half-kitchen. I keep the record player on the table by the work-desk in the main workroom, and I keep my Muggle Artifact tampering license in the third hollow-backed cupboard.
All of my cupboards are hollow-backed, a feature James Tickes the second installed during the French Revolution when we bought jewelry from displaced aristocrats. The first currently hides my secret Snitch project, the second is where my most secret watch projects go, the third is where the important documents stay, and the fourth is my candy and Muggle soda stash. They each have a different, complicated catch to open them, and not even my older brother knows the secret.
I opened the third cupboard, took out the false panel full of tools, and popped the back open. The license is in a frame, and I carefully passed it to Charlie. And yes, I did give him a little smirk. The license is somewhat impressive to some people.
"'The Ministery of Magick hereforth confers the Right to Inspecticate, Repairify, Alter, Improve and Transmogrify any Article of Non-Magickal Manufacturity or Design unto James. Worthing Tickes,'" Charlie read. "'Signed this day the six-and-tenth December, Year of Our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty-nine.' The day before they made issuing them illegal. How on earth did your ancestor…?"
"As far as I know, the Minister of Magic owed James the second a favor." I shrugged. I knew a bit further than that, but it's in the line of what you'd call a clan secret.
"But this license says James Worthing Tickes. It only applies to…"
"Look a little more closely at the first name 'James,'" I suggested, offering Charlie a magnifying glass. That was a bit of theatre there, it was plainly visible if you knew what you were looking for.
"There's a period after the name, why?"
"It can be taken two ways. First way, it's a grammatical error. Second way, which is the way James the second's wife took it after her daughter was born, it implies a possible abbreviation." Charlie understood and grinned.
"An abbreviation…so it would apply to someone called, say, Jamesina?"
"Precisely. That's the real reason there's always one in the family –and why I'm named that… my parents weren't just being sadistic."
Charlie got a mischievous little smirk, himself, as I put the license back.
"So…does that mean your middle name is Worthing?"
"Shut up!"
"Oh, I think it's a lovely name …a bit masculine, but…"
"It was the maiden name of the first James Tickes' mother. It's Jamesina Worthing Elaine, if you must know, and it could be rather worse, couldn't it, Charles Reginald?"
"I'm going to murder my brothers."
"Really? Care to borrow a…" I grasped around for a tool. "Leather punch?"
A leather punch, at least the kind I've got, is an intimidating little number that looks like what would happen if a really big office hole-punch mated with a cowboy spur. The first use that comes to mind when you see one, at least for me, involves body piercing of a rather fearsome kind. Charlie flinched appropriately.
"Jeez. Wouldn't want to be the shoplifter breaks in here."
"Actually, I haven't gotten any shoplifters in a while." I set down the punch and headed back into the front of the shop.
"Just lucky?"
"Well, that, or the Sneakoscope your brothers connected to the door may have something to do with it. I mean, it's hard to nick something from behind the glass of the cases, but since they put that in, a person so much as thinks about swiping a watch and the door locks and the alarm goes off."
"Alarm?" I gestured to an ordinary alarm bell, mounted on the wall. He seemed surprised. "What, no dancing penguin?"
"Nope. I figure they figured an ordinary bell from them would be more of a shock than something crazy."
"Jessie…can I ask you a question?"
I looked up from the case I had been tidying.
"Yes?"
"…Exactly why were you dancing in here alone?"
I bit my lip, which I do when I'm nervous.
"I…er…well, I rather like that song, and…" I couldn't lie to him. I can't lie very well anyway, but there was something about Charlie. Not only is he cute, but you wind up liking him too much to lie to him. "I was happy. I got to tell a customer that their old clock was worth money."
"Really?" Would you believe he actually looked interested? "What sort of clock?"
"Early American mantel clock. It was made at Lyon et Fils in Louisiana in about 17- …you don't have the faintest clue what I'm on about."
"So tell me. If it had you dancing…"
"Well…" I thought for a moment on how best to explain. "There's this clock shop in the United States called Lyon et Fils. They're about as old as we are-" I gestured about the shop, "but they used to be a Muggle shop until one of the sons married a witch. She and her children eventually converted the business to serve both magical and Muggle clientele. Kind of ironic how it's still called 'and Sons' when it was the daughter-in-law who made it so important, but…"
"Like here," Charlie observed bluntly. I looked away.
"Not so much. I mean, my great-grandmother did design arguably the best clocks the family ever made, but she did have sons and they helped run the business while she was alive." I drew out the little watch I wear on a chain about my neck and showed Charlie. I've had it since I was a baby, and it's only about the size of a Knut, but it runs and you can see the little second hand racing around. "She made this one."
"It's …it's infinitesimal. How could anyone make anything so small that works?"
"Beyond me," I shrugged. "And she was quite elderly when she made it…eighty-six. Last one she ever made."
"I'd love to be that lively at eighty-six."
"Oh, she was almost frightening, according to Grandfather. With a great-grandchild and a second on the way, she completely redecorated this shop."
"That second grandchild was you?"
"Yeah. She sort of figured I'd be a girl, I guess. I'm named after her and my mother."
Charlie touched my hand.
"I found out today how your mother and great-grandmother died."
"Oh, did you?"
I really don't like talking about that. Yes, it's a terrible thing to have had happen, but I was only a few weeks old at the time. My father spent nine years in deep mourning and still refuses to speak of it. My grandfather and uncle decided to let well enough alone and didn't talk about it with me, which I appreciated. My brother Ian missed our mother terribly, being old enough to miss her, and whenever he spoke of her, I only managed to feel jealous. There were also about six well-meaning old biddies a year who try to get me to discuss 'my feelings' on the matter, when I'd usually rather discuss the vivisection process of decayed cephalopod bodies after eating.
So can you blame me for getting a bit distant, even with Charlie? I think he got the message, because no more was said for a little while.
"Well, er…I stopped by, because I got some materials for the watch set you're doing for my family reunion."
"Really?" I sprang up immediately and raced to the back. "I've already started …your cousin Sedrick's."
As I opened the drawer of my workdesk and drew out the half-finished watch, I could hear Charlie's stifled laughter. He came up to me with the notepad:
'Cousin Sedrick?!'I seized the pen and wrote back:
'You know, the cousin who's really into bats. Imitates them and everything.'
That only made his laughing fit worse.
'That's who I thought you meant.' "Why did you start his first?" Charlie asked aloud.
"I d'know. I just had the idea fixed in my mind. He seems to get along with my grandfather… Okay, look at this, but do not touch." I held out a black-steel watch face on a handkerchief. The numbers were, indeed, tiny green crystals, as Charlie and I had discussed.
"Wow." Charlie looked impressed. "It's almost too good for him."
"Now wait here." I went to the half-kitchen and got a paper towel, which I got wet, scrunched, and unscrunched. I hung it from two clips I had thumb-tacked to the wall, like a sort of moist bull's-eye. "Watch this." I held up the watch, pointed the face at the towel and pressed the tiny second button on the side.
There was a popping noise and a circular pattern of twelve green dots appeared on the paper towel. The dots grew in size for a few seconds and Charlie reached out to touch them. "Don't!" I cried, catching him by the wrist.
"What are they?"
"Crystals, like you suggested for the numbers. Shh." I picked up the pad and wrote:
'Crystals of copper ferrocyanide, that is. Among the more deadly Muggle-style poisons. The watch-glass flips up and the crystals launch if you press the button and hold it for three seconds. It looks like dear Cousin Sedrick is just setting his time, but in fact, the poison is landing on the clothes or skin of Whoever He Needs Gone. In contact with human skin, the crystals take only about an hour, tops, to be Most Effective for the purpose.'
Somewhat smugly, I handed the pad to Charlie. His eyes widened and he wrote back:
'And how does a clocksmith know about the more deadly Muggle-style poisons?'I got a bit brazenly arrogant at that point, writing back:
'Two words, Charlie dear. Hermione Granger. We owled half the night and I was up 'til four making that."
"Only four?" Charlie asked. Anyone listening might've assumed we were chatting about prices. "How precisely did you design something that quickly?"
"It's not entirely my design. The crystal decoration-" a meaningfully raised eyebrow, "was something my great-grandmother did in 1945."
"Ah." He understood. "Well, the classics are the best, I suppose, but it's a very –erm, modern twist." He glanced at the watch I'd made for him and jumped. "Damn. I have to be somewhere in a few minutes. Uh…here's the materials I brought, and I'll …see you for dinner?" He pressed the handles of a leather valise into my hand and smiled hopefully.
"Dinner?" I asked, brightening. "You coming by tonight?"
"Er…no. I was rather hoping you'd come out with me."
Ohh, merciful peace, that smile…
"Out…with…you?" I'm so self-assured. I could feel my cheeks going red and Charlie grinned.
"My brothers can feed themselves for once. See you at …quarter to eight?"
"…Sure."
"Great!" Charlie moved closer, then suddenly shook my hand. "And, er…don't worry 'bout dressing up. I'll …see you then!"
"…See you…then," I managed to mumble as he swept out the door.
I was still standing there with what must have been an utterly goofy smile on my face when the twins arrived.
"Jessie!"
"You'll never guess-"
"Who just bought-"
"Thirty-one fake wands."
"Flitwick must be going to get-"
"A whole bloody classfull…"
"…Jessie?"
Fred and George exchanged looks, just as I woke up and started tucking away the half-done watch for 'Cousin Sedrick.'
"Oh, guys. Sorry, I'm just…"
"Asleep on your feet?"
"You were up 'til all hours…"
"I was n- -how would you know?"
"The lights were on upstairs-"
"In your Fancy Ideas office."
"So, what were you cooking up-"
"Up there,"
"And what's for lunch?"
Bugger! I'd entirely forgotten lunch…
"Oh, dammit. I'm sorry, guys. How about we have lunch down the 'Cauldron …and then I've gotta get some sleep…"
"Why?"
"Got something on for tonight?"
"Or just beat?"
"I…" How to tell them? "I'm going out to dinner with-"
"Oooooh!" Fred and George observed in unison.
"Jessie's got a date…"
"You –guys!" I glared at my 'heretofore undiagnosed triplets.' "Just because a cute guy asks me out to dinner doesn't mean I have a date!"
"Actually, I think that may be the definition of a date," a female voice observed. I looked over the twins' shoulders and saw Ginny and Hermione. "What do you think, Hermione?"
"Definitely a date, especially considering you just described him as a cute guy."
"Awwww…" Fred and George chorused. Before they could start their chanting again, I picked up the leather punch and they scattered.
"So what if it is? I'm allowed to date!"
"Who is he?" Fred asked.
"It isn't Nate Borgin again, is it?"
"Though you could use the winnings."
"No!""Fred, George, why don't you two just duck over to your shop and we'll talk to Jessie," Hermione assuaged.
"I have to ask her a few questions anyway," Ginny agreed, before adding in a malevolent tone: "Girl stuff."
"Eww!"
"Girl stuff as in brassiere watches?"
"Or girl stuff as in…eww…"
"Out!" Ginny barked, and the boys vanished. She gave me a brilliant Weasley smile and calmly walked over to the door. Nimbly she detached the Extendable Ear and snapped her fingers loudly one inch from the auricle. Cries of pain were heard as she opened the door and let the thing snap back to its' owners. "So," she observed. "Now that we're in relative privacy, who's the chunk of dishy manflesh you're seeing tonight?"
I don't believe her sometimes. But still, she and Hermione are the closest thing to female friends I have.
"Ginny, cool it," Hermione looked appraisingly at the green-spotted paper towel. "I take this to mean it works?"
"Very impressively. There's only one problem. The crystal decoration only looks good-" I raised an eyebrow, "for one formal event. Then I have to tune it up. Will that suit the purposes?"
"Perfectly. Have you any spare crystals?"
"A hundred and forty-four." Hermione seemed surprised. "Well, a hundred and forty-four minus twelve…I used a French mold to make them. It used to be for paste diamonds of that size."
"Twelve shots at a shot. Nice, Jessie." Hermione shot Ginny a look that meant 'quiet!' An idea suddenly occurred to me.
"What if I made interchangeable faces? That way your friend could just pop another in when he wanted to –erm, change outfits? He could store them in an empty candy tube."
"It's brilliant!" Hermione seemed a little too pleased –hell, she seemed a little too interested in the Slythy professor's watch. But then, she had given me the solution I needed for an undetectable, Muggle-type poison, so maybe she just had the thrill of the craftsperson. "You didn't have any trouble getting the things to make up the…"
"The er- polish?" I asked. "Nope. I can get chemicals and solvents for metallurgy, etching…all kinds of stuff." It was true. Mixing up the poison was easy for someone who everyone in the Alleys thought of as a mere artisan. "Could you get the…?"
"Right here, Jessie," Ginny sighed. They were in Diagon Alley by the grace of a Hogsmeade weekend, a pass from McGonagall and Hermione's early Apparation license, and since I still don't Apparate well, I had prevailed upon them to courier my monthly fix of Honeydukes' crispy-rice chocolate. The damn owls sometimes try and eat the stuff, it's that good. The redhead pulled the box out of her bag and then held it away from me. "Who's the guy?"
I can win against Gred and Forge, but not against bribery by chocolate.
"Charlie," I mumbled sheepishly, going red.
"What?!""You remember, Ginny, your second-oldest brother," Hermione responded sarcastically.
"No, I mean…oh, wow!"
Okay, the Weasley Spontaneous Hugging Gene had better not be dominant.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know. He said not to worry about dressing up."
"Well, you know guys," Ginny scoffed. "You can't go in that." She said 'that' as if my shirt with the rolled-up sleeves and vest were somehow made from dead flobberworms.
"Why not this?"
"Well, Jessie, it looks good for everyday, and considering your work, but…" Even Hermione did not approve of my work outfits for dates. I knew it must be bad.
"Alright, will you two help me out?"
"I doubt we can have the full Gryffindor Makeover effect," Ginny observed. "You need Lavender and Parvati for the heavy stuff. But just picking an outfit that looks less like what my father wears to work…"
"We can handle that."