| Demiguise
Join Date: May 2008 Location: Hobbiton
Posts: 24,239
Hogwarts RPG Name:
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Ravenclaw
Hogwarts RPG Name:
Ronnie Thurkell
Gryffindor Seventh Year
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|  8 lives in a hobbit hole || Ern and Touz's Nuzzle || roflysst || looking at a seed packet
 Made by Ama
January 15th 2070
Wonky desks: 1
Meetings with boss-type people: 1
Article due: Quality Quidditch Supplies: Flying high and Flying Free
Jane Holland a little worse for wear after last night. The Stub is a bar where reporter types hide out. It stocks Self’s favourite triple F drink. Anyone who has to ask Self what triple F drink is, does not deserve to know or experience wonder of said beverage. If one is in need of entertainment however, one might find Jane Holland after consumption of said elixir to be an interesting and alarming diversion. Or maybe just find Self a little sad. Self unsure if new friends consider Jane Holland to be these things or something else entirely.
For first time in months, Jane Holland has friends who are not geriatric.
It was true that Jane was settling into her new life now, and equally true that she avoided satin almost completely, the only exception being her sheets since a girl totally needed a little luxury every now and then. What a girl did not need was waking up sweaty, hot and completely frazzled.
Not late for work thank goodness, her internal clock was nice and reliable, despite a night out with her co-workers, including boss-type people.
If only she could just show up to work with her sheet wrapped around her like a toga, maybe an ivy wreath in her frizzy curls just as a gesture to accessorizing. bare foot of course. She just wasn’t entirely sure it would go down particularly well and if she was ever going to do that, it was possibly best to wait until she’d had some of her favourite flirty, fruity and fun pink drinks.
Jane managed to find her way across the floor of her rented room to the shower, picking between the clothes strewn all over the floor where she threw them the night before. Jane jumped under the water with her sheet still wrapped around her before she had even realized it. It was going to be that kind of day, apparently.
She was dressed and ready to go moments later and decided she might as well get a coffee and a pastry downstairs. Tomorrow would be her last day staying at the Leaky; her article was done and she really couldn’t afford it anymore. One more night there and she would have to head back to her own run down but cozy flat.
Jane arrived on time and cheerful, despite the start she had. It was typical enough not to be alarming after all. She smiled to herself and took a seat at her desk. Of course, she had ended up in the leftover one; all the others were taken by the time Jane had finally gotten around to unpacking her things and settling in. This of course involved a few embellishments, things to make her feel more at home.
Like a pet rock for instance.
And her favourite little plant which resembled a Venus fly trap and had a fondness for pencil shavings among other things.
Her desk was wonky and she had been using a few old books to prop it up since she started working. She made a mental note to pop out and see if she could find something a little more permanent on her lunch break.
Jane unbundled herself, taking her coat off, as well as her scarf, and gloves, draping the coat over the back of her chair and tucking the other bits in her desk drawer. STUCK desk drawer. She looked around and then gave it a thump when it popped open, letting out a triumphant ‘HA!’ Oh thats right trick drawer, you are no match for Jane Holland, journalist extraordinaire!
Jane settled into her chair, smoothing her dress, against her legs as she got cozy comfy. She crossed her feet at the ankle and somehow found herself gnawing on the end of a pencil as she read her notes, losing herself in them completely. That was until a coffee cup, large and brimming with a dark and soupy substance, along with a svelte and bright-eyed co-worker decided to perch on her desk.
"Bet you need that. So... are you aware your desk is somehow even more disreputable than mine?"
Startled out of her reverie, Jane flung her pencil clear across the room and let her eyes trail after it sheepishly.
Meant to do that.
Totally.
She flicked her eyes back to her desk, the coffee on it and the Hunter on it and looked up at the other woman.
"Oh, I know. I got the short straw I guess. It was kind of the only desk left by the time I..." Changed her sweaty shirt and got rid of the toilet paper armpit flags? "...Settled in."
Hunter slid right off the corner of the desk in question. Apparently unbothered by this, she righted herself with a grin and hopped back onto the corner of a neighboring desk.
“Cheers.” She raised her mug at Jane and gestured for Jane to take the other. Jane picked it up and immediately took a long sip.
"Cheers." Jane agreed, smilingover the rim of her mug as Hunter moved to sit on a slightly safer desk. "Mmmm. Thanks. Looks like murder liquid which is awesome because I am pretty sure I still have a few brain cells functioning after last night and I feel like I need to be a little more impaired to function around here, you know?" Jane held the mug with both hands, letting the warmth seep into her fingertips.
"Know I do," Hunter agreed, sipping her own coffee. She was grinning just a bit and occasionally smacked her lips as if she were trying to gauge just how bad the coffee was. "No clue who brewed it, but it’s just as bad as you'd expect this place to have. If it was better, we might get all caught up in fancy coffee and stop being able to string words together."
Jane nodded and sipped the murder liquid happily. See it wasn't that she was technically a coffee fan, she'd still chose hot chocolate over coffee any day, it was just that Jane was pretty sure, a coffee addiction went right along with being a journalist and so from the first moment she'd arrived in England to pursue her career, she'd cultivated a serious one.
"I was ridiculous wasn't I?" Jane asked a bit glumly. Really, going out to the pub was one thing, but bouncing around in front of your new colleagues was a very different kettle of fish.
"I think you were genius. Charming and witty and fun," Hunter toasted Jane once again, her expression flickering a bit as she apparently thought about the night before.
"You are just too nice to me Hunter." Jane answered, sipping at her coffee and offering a warm glow of a smile. It had really been a good thing that she hadn't had all that far to stumble last night and she was very grateful that the beds at the Leaky Cauldron were precisely as comfortable as advertised. She hadn't even undressed before practically passing out on top of the comforter. It wasn’t until during the night that she’d lost all her clothes and ended up in a satin toga. She summoned her tossed pencil and placed it on her desk absently.
"I think I'm going to go find a brick later." Jane commented, shaking her head slightly so that her curls bounced. She gestured at her desk as her pencil decided to roll across it. Jane caught the pencil at the bottom edge of the slope and put it point first in her pencil jar.
Hunter kicked Jane's desk gently. "You can have my desk, if you want. The layout department had some sort of mass aneurysm and set me up with them. But all four legs meet the floor."
Jane cringed as her desk wobbled precariously under the light kick that Hunter gave it.
"But I wouldn't want to put you out." Jane shook her head, blond curls bouncing in complete disorder. She sipped the coffee and her eyes went PING. Murder liquid indeed. "A brick will do, I have no idea if those books are important..." Jane trailed off and pointed at the heavy tomes that were propping her desk up. "I figured I can just... prise a cobblestone free from the street."
"But we make so much more money than before, Janey," Hunter grinned at the idea of Jane tearing up the street. "Surely we can afford fancy things to prop up your desk. Antique tea sets. Persian rugs. Things."
"I happen to think cobblestones are perfectly serviceable desk-propping devices." Jane answered archly, though she added a little smile for Hunter, kidding along with her.
"Planning to deface public property now, Lo--Jane?" Ian’s voice cut through their conversation, Jane couldn’t quite figure out what he’d be doing hanging around the journalists desks, or where he’d appeared from. Had he been there long? They hadn’t talked about him had they? She blushed a little. Probably he was looking for Hunter.
"Are you going to make Hunter your accomplice? I'm not sure that's the kind of image we want to convey here." Ian added, his tone so very… Ian.
"Maybe I just like to live dangerously!” Jane answered, putting on a bright face and a brave one too. He was somewhat intimidating, did he know? Hunter didn’t seem particular intimidated though. She almost looked resigned to his sudden appearance.
“Besides it isn't like I'd be sent to Azkaban for taking a bit of old brick." Jane held up one finger and waggled it at him. "And, we are the press, so even if we get caught we can totally give it some awesome spin and everything will just be fine and dandy."
Hunter glowered at Ian. "No one wants to hear from you, Hoshino. Move along to your pretty pictures."
Jane sipped her coffee again and nodded in innocent agreement to Hunter's comment. Pretty pictures indeed.
"Oh speaking of pretty pictures I was hoping you'd come along with me for my next Diagon Alley feature, take a few nice pictures?"
Ian raised one finely shaped brow.
"I quite value your opinion too, Hunter Bones," responded Ian sarcastically and glanced over at Jane. He shifted from foot to foot, apparently contemplating this request. Jane’s lip caught between her teeth as she waited for him to answer.
"Sure," Ian mumbled at last.
Wasn't it awesome that they were all getting along?
"You don't even know where the next feature is going to be!" Jane laughed, "How do you know it won't be somewhere that you want to spend a little extra time at?"
Ian pinched the bridge of his nose and added, "As long as we don't have to stay there for very long."
What was wrong with his nose? Jane tipped her head to one side and examined it before realizing she was staring. So of course, she blushed and attempted to hide it behind the coffee mug, which was actually empty now so she was sipping at nothing.
"I don't do well in unfamiliar places," informed Ian, raising one eyebrow and lowering his hand from his nose, presumably because of Jane’s stares.
"I'll let you two talk shop." Hunter, who had gone suddenly quiet, slid off the edge of the desk and shuffled toward her own, her expression completely unreadable to Jane who watched after Hunter in consternation, her coffee mug listing to one side and making it obvious that there was nothing in it.Nobody would notice this. Whether it was simply because they’d all resigned themselves to Jane’s particulars or not wasn’t quite certain.
"Did I...?" Do something wrong? Jane was clearly crushed. So she had to go requisition a cobblestone on her own? But things had been going so swimmingly!
"Its... its your shop too, Hunter." Jane called after the other woman.
Artfully, Hoshino shrugged one shoulder. "Oh, don't mind Hunter, Jane," he drawled, making his way to her desk. "I think the one who's in the wrong is me. I might have intruded on something."
"Don't play noble, Hoshieeeeee," Hunter drawled with a simpering smile. "You don't have to pretend with us." But she sighed and reseated herself on a nearby desk at Jane’s looks "Sit, Hoshino. We'll all be friends and plan our Diagon Alley takeover."
Again, a single brow rose and Ian Hoshino stared at Hunter for several moments, finally glancing over his shoulder as if he were hoping someone would appear and make things make sense in Ian world.
"Explain to me, please," he began leaning on a corner of Jane's desk. "Why would we be bothering to take over Diagon Alley?" He eyed Jane's coffee cup.
Watching that exchange expectantly, clearly expecting someone to explain what exactly she'd just missed, Jane smiled and relaxed when whatever it was, sorted itself out.
"I was thinking something a little more covert." Jane giggled, imagining the three of them ninja-ing into the street and prizing up a cobblestone (or two or three or four), then disappearing again. Her little imaginings were reminiscent of the games she played during childhood, when she thought she was soooo sneaky and her parents had noooo idea that she was sneaking in and out of the room. Except, they kind of had and simply hadn't cared.
Jane put her empty coffee cup down on the desk and smiled sweetly at Ian. "Anyway, you aren't interrupting anything. Hunter was just being nice enough to bring me coffee."
Which meant they were friends now. It was easy to bond over a developing caffeine addiction and possibly a shared hangover.
Or possibly not. Jane wasn't sure if anyone else had quite kept up with her own personal intake.
"Someone has to be in charge of Diagon Alley.” Hunter relaxed a little, a bit more of her chipper self reappearing, “It's just being completely mismanaged. None of the shop signs are hanging in complimentary colors with the others. They're completely ignoring Feng Shui and bringing much bad fortune to..." Hunter snorted and nearly overbalanced. In response to the looks she was earning herself from Ian and Jane, one set with eyebrows invading a hairline and the other far more reminiscent of a bush baby, Hunter continued, "Fine. No taking over anything. I bet the Ministry would frown on the Prophet's annexation of Diagon Alley anyway," Hunter summoned a mug from the coffee station for Ian. It almost hit him in the head before settling on the desk next to him. This was quickly followed by the brimming coffee pot. "I'm quite good at getting coffee, you know? I should get paid extra for it."
Taking the hovering coffee pot carefully into his hands, Ian tilted his head. "Lo and behold," he began in a voice tinged with boredom and grandeur. "The power of Bone's summoning prowess. I commend you. I'll give you a tip for the coffee if that's what you really want."
"Well lets hope a few missing cobblestones won't mess with the Feng Shui and cause some financial cataclysm in the Alley." Jane so knew what Feng Shui was. Stuff had to face ways and stuff.
"You're so skilled, you can banish the pot back to the coffee station," Hunter made a face at Ian. It was something Jane had noticed Hunter tended to do a lot. Make faces.
At Ian.
He filled Jane's cup and then his own, apparently ignoring Hunter’s comments and faces. "In any case, I'll go with you, Jane. If just to make sure you don't get carried off to Mungo's"
"Aw you're sweet, Ian." Jane commented when he filled her coffee cup, her eyes twinkling a bit at his next comment. He told good jokes that Ian. "If I did get carried away to St. Mungos I'd make the most of it and go undercover as a patient. I hear there is a healer there who is a complete terror; she might be a hag you know, probably eats children."
She noticed a little envelope on her desk and eyed it curiously. When had that got there? Had it been there all along? Jane took a sip of her second coffee and pulled the envelope closer.
"I'll go rescue the stones too. Can I come?"
"Sure thing." Jane answered, pleased that Hunter actually wanted to come hang out with her. Her, right? Not Ian? Jane still had her suspicions after that night at The Stub.
She opened the envelope and her eyes went wide.
"I have to... go to Ms. Knoll's office. She wishes to speak with me." Why did Jane feel like a naughty student called in to speak with the headmaster? Or, in this case, the deputy? Had anyone ever wondered why the Sheriff had got it but the Deputy hadn't? Those Deputies were made of stern stuff. Tricksy folk, managing to stick around despite all odds.
Jane hurriedly downed her coffee and stood up.
"I think I'll be right back. I hope? Ummm and then we will go out and run our errands." She smiled between Hunter and Ian and then hurried off to see the Managing Editor.
Even her title was scary.
Thanks to Cassirin and Ama, because I steal your charries. All dialogue from Ian and Hunter are THEIRS not mine. *grins*
__________________
love is like a letter wrote :: and life is like an envelope
be careful who you give it to :: they might not give it back to you |