Chapter Five: A Watch-Knot

It was during the process of the makeup, I think, that I decided the whole thing was a bad idea. I resolved to call Charlie through the fireplace and, as politely as possible, call it off. I resented being fussed over, I really felt uncomfortable in my clothes, nice though they looked, and I was just too damn nervous to deal with that sort of mess.

I was also too damn cowardly to say this aloud. After all, one of the dangerous females with a brush within eye-poke distance was the sister of aforementioned dishy guy. Besides, I had already endured enough. It would be a shame to go through all they had done to me and then not go through with it. Besides, Hermione and Padma were making a good effort to not let me wind up looking a trollop.

Padma's the shyer twin, and, I suspect dimly, the smarter one. She quietly took charge of the makeup operations, and within a few minutes I looked a lot different, but subtly so. Lavender and Parvati's strategy seems to involve a small trowel for makeup products, if you go by the amount of gunk they slap on each weekend, but Padma favored the Very Small Brush approach. I seem to recall seeing her working on a few watercolors in the Common Room before I graduated. It must have paid off. There was delicate dusting of several very sheer colors above my eyes, which made up for the fact that I tend to squint, an almost imperceptible darkening of my lip (what did she do, think about lipstick?) and a little swipe with a soft brush over each cheekbone stopped me looking quite so much like a cave dweller.

I don't go out in the sun much, as the hours when the sun is out are usually the same hours people are shopping for clocks or the hours I spend designing and making clocks. Sometimes, though, I absolutely have to go out in the sun to work on a project. Natural light is very important for matching colors, or making sure they compliment each other. On those occasions, I go up to the attic and (this will sound strange,) open the window onto the sloping, slate roof. There's a wives' walk just below the window on the south face of the house, which is the architectural term for a little balcony-like thingy with an intricate wrought-iron railing that's like a kind of fence.

The original purpose of the thing was for the wives of sailors and sea captains and such to have a place to pace around and watch the sea for their husbands' ships. A romantic idea and a lovely bit of decoration, but on the roof of a Victorian-era clock shop, it's really more like a wives'-two-steps-in-either-direction. It's also quite narrow, and if I sit down with my legs stretched out in front of me, I can work on my lap-desk while leaning against the railing.

I usually take a pillow for the railing if I expect it's a long project. That railing is wrought iron.

Oh, yes, and a lap-desk is what would happen if you either glued a piece of plywood to a pillow or upholstered one side of a finished walnut panel with elegantly routed edges. You set the pillowy bit on your lap, and it makes a desk. Mine is of the finished-walnut-panel variety, upholstered with Ravenclaw-blue velvet, but it was a pillow-glued-to-a-bit-of-plywood before Fred and George decided to transfigure it nicer. I had just gotten one splinter too many, and since they're the ones who had to watch me coolly pluck a quarter-inch of plywood out of my palm and comment on the size and blood as if it were a new record, I can see their point.

Merciful peace, where was I? Oh, yes. I don't go out in the sun much, unless it's in the evening, so I am somewhat pale.

Wow. I can take a simple lack of a tan to natural light to architecture to inventions to first aid and back. Professor Binns would be so disgusted. If he ever enriched a topic or went on a tangent, he'd die again. But then again, I loved his class. There's an entire line of alarm clocks I designed in there while I was trying to stay awake.

Anyway…

After Padma pronounced me 'done,' we all went downstairs and waited around the shop for a little bit. We ate some Every Flavor Beans, which are no fun to eat alone and dangerous anyway –what if you bite down on a pepper one and choke? I'm certain at least one person's died that way, and also some really delicious Muggle candies. Harry got Ginny hooked on them and she carries loads around in her pockets and purse and even amidst the books in her schoolbag. They're round, come in little paper tubes, which you slowly tear away, and have holes through the middle. Ginny's first thought was that the holes were for whistling through, like Crackpot Whistling Sweets, but they don't make a very good noise. Parvati suggested that perhaps they were like candy-necklace beads, and since they come in many flavors, she seemed pretty well onto something.

I had some Liquorice Bootlaces, which used to be a Muggle thing too, but which, since they're like tape, were very little help. A bit of maneuvering with a paring knife later, we split the Bootlaces into a sort of Liquorice Garrot Wire, three from each Bootlace, nearly six feet long, and made candy necklaces. We may be the pride of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, but we are still girls, after all, and sometimes maturity goes on holiday. The Butter Rum flavor ones looked like amber and the minty ones looked like some kind of shell, so once the Patil girls showed us this sort of braidy-thing to do with the Liquorice Garrot Wire, we made some pretty neat-looking stuff. It looked like leather and beads and was still really tasty. Hermione acted like we were nuts, but then, she's the one who showed us that if you turn off the lights and bite the wintergreen ones really hard with your mouth open, you can see green sparks. Muggles aren't as stupid as some wizards think, you know, making light-up mints. She also gave in and made a bracelet in the end that wasn't too bad…probably intends to wear it in case she needs a snack in the library. Madam Pince is impossibly strict about munchies, and Hermione practically lives in there.

The girls left at seven thirty so they'd be sure to make the eight-o'clock prefect curfew. After all, Hermione was the only one who could legally Apparate, so she either had to take them all in jumps or do up a Portkey, something I've never been good at, or else Floo to the Three Broomsticks. One time I took the Floo from the shop to there and landed head first in the fireplace. I was a little bruised, but Madam Rosmerta gave me a lot of free butterbeer and sent an elf over to get Uncle Gard to come get me. In retrospect, it was likely not a good idea to give a potential concussion victim butterbeer, but then, it was likely not a good idea to let me use Floo powder, so it all evens out. While I was waiting for Charlie, I finished a bit of gold inlaying on a grandfather-clock face, ate some of the white Muggle-candies-with-holes that had broken while we were making the necklaces, did an order of engraving on a pocket watch, and repaired a broken fob chain.

I was just polishing up the fob chain when he arrived.

"Jessie?" he called, stepping inside the door while the bell jingled. I looked up, smiled, set down the watch, and invited him in. He came the rest of the way in, being careful to gently close the door –in case there was something fragile, or in case his brothers were watching, I suppose. For once, I wasn't such a nervous wreck …possibly due to those little candies with the holes in them, or perhaps I had been working on projects I rather liked. Charlie ducked over and into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and selected a medium-sized glass. This he filled with water and brought to my worktable. He then added a double handful of violets. I had been rubbing the engraving oil off my hands and had barely caught that he went into the kitchen, so the entire performance was a bit of a surprise.

"Oh! …Charlie, they're beautiful…"

"They grow in the meadow behind my house, so…"

"Actually, I've always liked violets best…"

"Really?" This seemed to brighten him up quite a bit. "Well, it's a funny thing. Mum had me mowing the lawn again, and I noticed we had violets again, so I got a bunch, and set them in a glass. I got some lemonade and went out to finish the lawn. Well, when I came back, Pig –that's my brother Ron's owl, Pigwidgeon, he'd come with a letter and was drinking the water out of the glass. He'd, like, pulled half the flowers out so he could get a drink."

"Poor little guy," I sympathized. I'd gotten notes from Ginny with Pig before –written back answers on a coffee filter, so as to be lighter on the little bird.

"So, I –er…picked some more. There's a near inexhaustible supply on the meadow there…sometimes we get these great flop-eared rabbits come out to have a snack, and they can't make a dent in 'em. Besides," Charlie seemed to be quoting, "'it is proper and, indeed, advisable to bring a lady flowers when you invite her to go somewhere. Ladies are notable keepers of diaries, and no matter what goes wrong on the outing, if there are flowers in evidence the next morning, she is certain to write a favorable report in said diary, which she will consult when you invite her out again. The presence of flowers has a remarkable effect upon diaries.'"

"Algernon Montcrieff, wasn't that?"

"Precisely. It's a little outdated…I bet you've never kept a diary in your life."

"Not since my fourth year at Hogwarts. I keep a sketchbook –filled with watches and clocks and even a sundial or two."

"I keep a kind of dragon diary…write down what they're up to each day, how's their health, any new developments, all that sort of thing. Oh, and speaking of…" Charlie took a roll of soft, green-black material out of the inner pocket of his vest. "Has my littlest brother told you about Norbert?"

"Yes! He was the Hungarian…no, the Norwegian Ridgeback, right?" Charlie unrolled the stuff -clearly dragon hide. "Oh, no…"

"Oh, it's nothing serious, he just had an appendix out." I must have looked really startled, because he explained: "Dragons have four, you know. Poor Norbert had an abscess from his upper left, so they finally took it out, but there was quite a bit of excess skin from the abscess, so the healers took a little section out."

I was looking at a seven-by-thirty-six inch piece of dragonhide.

"A little section?"

"To Norbert, this was like a quarter of an inch on us. He's really grown since Hagrid looked after him. …I was thinking, you can make leather watchbands, eh?"

"A dragonhide one for Hagrid?"

"Yeah. Could you…?"

"Of course." I laid out the sample across the leather table and flicked on the light. "Actually, this may be easier than leather. With the pattern where his scales were, there's an almost perfect grain…and it's surprisingly soft…"

"Norbert's still quite a young dragon."

"There's enough here for…wow. Something like six watchbands, even in Hagrid's size. One for you?"

"I've got a watch," Charlie reminded, indicating the one I had made. "But for the set…yeah, I think one from Norbert could be cool. I'd also have an excuse to wear two. Set my unmeltable watch to Romanian time and my dragon watch to, er- London time." He glanced down at my wrists. "…Where are all of yours?"

"Oh…I…"I collapsed. I fell off the watch-addict wagon. I'm a creature of habit with no discernable willpower and Ginny would be disgusted. "…I feel naked without them! Give me two minutes." I raced upstairs and got the entire lot, putting them on as I walked, in their proper order and with a nice relieved feeling. Charlie, astonishingly, was smiling without having to stifle laughs. He came over to the foot of the stairs, caught up my tie-on one, and helped me on with it, even as I buckled another. I stopped, turned my arm over, and let him do it.

My heart, it should be remarked, was beating at a rate and level that I'm sure was perfectly audible in his brothers' shop. Charlie, for all the burns, did have agile hands, and yes, he knew a proper watch knot. There are two leather strings that close the wide leather strap, to which the face of the watch is looped, and he knew to tie them separately, then the loops of each bow together, then tuck the low loops in. It's an intricate little practice, which, since living alone, I'd had to do either with my wand or (I blush to admit this,) my other hand and my teeth. Having help with it was…so…

I can't really get into that.

"Well, now, Miss Tickes," Charlie observed in that soft voice I'm certain he could use to calm a whole mess of dragons at once, "shall we be on our way?"

"Yes, Mr. Weasley," I managed not to stammer. "Just let me lock up."