A Day in the Life of Jess Potter

Remy’s motorcycle flew down the nearly deserted streets of London, the sun just rising behind her. The bright orb was low in the sky and reflected brightly off of the motorcycle’s mirrors, nearly blinding Remy even with her helmet’s tinted plastic to shield her eyes. She ducked her head lower and pulled her shoulders in against the chill in the morning air and forced the bike faster.

A woman on a motorcycle in the wizarding world is conspicuous no matter how you slice it, but it was less so in more urban areas. There, she could take the back streets and the alleyways if she had to, or disappear into them if someone got too curious. Because it was so early now, though, Remy was able to take the main drag all the way to her appointed destination: Sparks.

After pulling the motorcycle into a dark alley and shaking her long tresses out of the helmet, Remy rounded the corner and slid through the door to Sparks. She had been told at the meeting that Jess Potter frequented this locale, which was why she was here in the first place. She was to collect information about his comings and goings, and anything else that might be useful. Needless to say, this task was just what Remy would have chosen for herself if she had been given the chance.

The place was empty save for a few customers and a sole employee who seemed to be dead on his feet already, so Remy attempted to avoid notice by taking a seat at the table closest to the windows in the far corner of the room. That way, she would be able to see everyone coming and going. She was already acquainted with Jess, so if he arrived first she would likely be forced by social convention to engage him before her accomplices arrived. Truth be told, Remy would rather do this without Marla and Naomi anyway, but she wasn’t going to go parading that around. She needed to at least seem like a team player to the rest of the Death Eaters, although she couldn’t have been further from it.

((Cue Jess, Marla, and Naomi))

(Marla and Naomi are played by the same person. Perfect, right? -_- I apologize, but I will probably be posting as both in one post. Sorry, I'm already going crazy...)

Marla was irritated. She hated kids; she was not a babysitter. And Remy and Marla basically played the same game; neither would want to give up the dominant position. This was going to be great. Marla decided she'd tail him while Remy worked her magic. Jess didn't know Marla and if things went sour, someone needed to be quick to the draw. That was she.

But the girl... she was missing, wanted, be it what it may, Jess would notice Naomi. And if he didn't, someone else definitely would. So after Remy left, Marla grabbed the girl by the upper arm and apparated to Marla's apartment. She lathered SleakEazy's into the girl's curls and took her wand to her. Afterwards, the frizzy blond hair was sleek, straight, and auburn. She then gave her an outfit and a cloak to cover it- don't breakout the girls until necessary- and headed off.

They arrived at Spark's before Remy and Jess. Marla strode over to a room in the back and sat down, pulling her hood down. She looked up; Naomi was wandering idly, gazing around. Marla almost didn't recognize her, she looked so different. She hissed and Naomi looked up before joining her, a hollow look in her dead eyes. Remy entered and Marla looked away, deciding to sit back and watch.

Babysit.

Euh. Another day. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This was the thought that flashed through Jess' head that morning as he hit the snooze button on his alarm, burrowing his face into his pillow to avoid the follow up alarm, knowing it would come soon, and regretting (As he did every morning) that he'd enchanted it to go off until he was awake if he hit snooze once, to prevent him from doing so every morning. Thank god for the more sensible, more afternoon oriented brain he had.

Sure enough, five minutes after the initial encounter with his alarm, it went off again, forcing him to rise from his slumber and begin the day, a quick shower, a shave, get dressed and head down to Sparks for a warm cup of coffee and a piece of french toast.

Yes, just another day, or so he thought. He would get his breakfast, go to work, tend to an errand or two then head home and begin it all again tomorrow. Of course every day was different, and once he was completely and utterly awake he did have a more favourable view of his day, but before 9 he was essentially a shell, just following routine.

So he did just that. A quick shower, a shave, and with a pop he apparated from his home near the Scottish Border, taking in account the distance, and concentrating extra hard to ensure he didn't get splinched. He'd learnt that lesson once before, that apparation before 9, particularly long distance, was not to be trifled with. He'd never done it again.

With another pop he appeared in Diagon alley, just outside of Spark's Cafe, his preferred stop for his breakfast needs. Walking in he didn't notice the three women who were sitting at the font of the cafe, instead walking straight to the front and smiling at the attendant, a pretty girl who was now on first name basis with him, and knew his order off by heart, ah, the privileges of being a regular.

((Just for the record, Marla and Naomi are sitting in a room in the back of the place separate from Remy, who is sitting alone by the windows. Just in case this applies to any future posts…))

Remy sat idly by the windows, impatient as usual. The dark-haired woman hating waiting around and far preferred action, but her lifestyle demanded a certain level of idleness. Powerful people had to be watched carefully in order that Remy might approach them equipped with the necessary information to impress them. It was her personal experience with scouting and the work of a similar nature that she had done for the Death Eaters in the past that prepared her for the task at hand.

The dark-haired temptress hadn’t noticed Marla or Naomi in the room at the back of the store, but for now that didn’t mean anything. Remy preferred to operate alone, and for the time being it seemed that Marla was prepared to allow her to do just that. It was only when Remy saw a tall, dark-haired figure appear out of thin air just outside the windows of Sparks that she perked up, straightening in her chair.

Remy smirked when Jess walked right past her, failing to notice the snake in the room. It was just like Jess, though. From what she knew of him, Jess was the highly distractible type, given to flights of fancy and believing in foolish endeavors. No wonder he was the head of the Order of the Phoenix. From everything Remy knew, that group was even worse off than the Death Eaters had been for the last few months, which is why Remy hadn’t realigned herself when the dark side started to lose its grips. A good thing, too, because if this mission went according to plan, the Death Eaters would be that much closer to regaining the power that would afford Remy the protection she desired.

While Jess smiled gullibly at the pretty young thing behind the counter, Remy stood up from her chair and shook out her long hair. She crossed the room in a few long, casual strides before coming up a stool’s length away from Jess at the counter. She pretended not to notice him, though her senses were acutely tuned onto his every move, and spoke instead to the other attendant, the older gentleman that had been there when she first arrived.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee, black,” Remy said, pulling a coin purse from the inside of her leather jacket, “and a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and berries.”

“Coming right up miss,” the old man said hastily, disappearing into the kitchen behind the counter to begin preparing Remy’s breakfast order. This was the part where Remy would ‘coincidentally’ notice Jess standing beside her.

Examining her fingernails for a minute or so to establish a sense of non-chalance, Remy finally orchestrated the movement of her head which put Jess into her line of sight. Imitating a look of pleasant surprise, Remy plastered a smile on her face and extended a hand to touch Jess lightly on the forearm to draw his attention to her.

“Why if it isn’t Jess Potter?” Remy questioned, her tone a believable one of surprise, though it had been completely fabricated. All of Remy’s emotions were fake, so it was nearly impossible to detect the difference between sincerity and falsehoods.

“How have you been? I haven’t seen you since New Year’s,” she added, wanting to remind Jess of the last time they had seen one another, perhaps managing to conjure the image of what she had looked like that night – deliberately alluring, of course, given all the powerful people that Jess had invited to said party.

(Sorry this is Marla/Naomi on another account. Jess feel free to post before me since they're just watching this all go down)

Jess was quite fond of Sparks. It was conveniently located for him, which was almost always a very big plus in his mind, and it had that warm, welcoming feeling which he always longed for when he was out and about. He missed the attitudes of his home country, the mateship and camaraderie which came with people who were almost complete strangers. England, and more specifically London, had too much of a hustle and bustle feel, no time to stop and smell the roses. Sparks had that feel, and it had a nice smell, also an important factor for Jess.

With that, the smell of Remy alerted him of her presence before he actually saw her, as she usually was when he saw her, she had perfumed herself with a particularly fine smelling fragrance, one that he had come to recognise, usually pausing to look around and see who was wearing it, this time being surprised to see someone he recognised.

For almost a year now he'd been regularly going to Sparks in the mornings, and other than the brief encounter with Khaat or Brian, he'd never seen anyone he knew in the place, he was someone who enjoyed company, as was shown with his friendly demeanour with the waitress, a woman whom he often invited to join him for his breakfast.

Fortunately enough at that moment his order came up and he accepted it greatly, hearing his voice spoken at the same time, he turned and smiled at Remy. "It most certainly would be," he said with a quick smile in her direction before he raised the cup of coffee to his lips. Remy sounded genuine enough, but he was always cautious around those he recognised to be Death Eaters, but with their current state in doubt, he chose to discard the threat she might pose.

"I'm quite well thank you," he said with a quick glance at his coffee, "A lot better now, though I must say," he said with another grin as he raised the mug, "Always makes mornings a little easier," he said with a chuckle.

"Not true," he then added looking over at her, "I saw you out one evening at the Leaky Cauldron, speaking," he said, pausing on that word, adding a slight bit of influence to the word, "with a friend of yours," he told her with a wink and a sly grin, "you two looked like you were very.. close," he added with a chuckle.

"Tell me," he said, returning to his normal tone of voice, "Would you like to join me for breakfast?" He asked politely, pointing at his own piece of French Toast and then gesturing to one of the tables up against one of the walls. "If not no worries, otherwise I'll be over there," he told her, before walking off to his seat and pulling out his copy of the Prophet, folding it over so that he could read without covering the table with paper.

While he had to admit that he'd not been his usual courteous self, mentioning things that weren't his business in the slightest, meeting at a party, and meeting pre-coffee was like meeting two separate people, one was in a buoyant, jovial mood, the other was cynical and quick to annoy. He also had a different mindset when at a party with a Death Eater, where there was almost an unspoken ceasefire between his own party and theirs, and meeting alone on a Tuesday morning on his way to work.

Remy was pleased to see that when Jess turned his attention onto her, it was with a smile. It was always a relief to Remy to know that the image she carefully constructed was still in place, though it was not always possible to tell that just from what people said and did. Most human beings wore their feelings blatantly on their sleeves, and men were even worse at hiding what they were feeling and thinking than their female counterparts. But still, if Remy could fake her way through emotions she was incapable of feeling, surely others could disguise the true emotions they were feeling with other, more advantageous ones.

The dark-haired woman returned Jess’s smile as he responded to her question of how he was doing. Honestly, she couldn’t have cared less how he was doing, but there was a certain social code that had to be adhered to if she was going to get any information out of Jess that would be of use to the Death Eaters. She was tempted to make a sexual comment about other things that can make mornings better, but kept her tongue in her mouth where it belonged. If this had been a bar at closing time, the setting would have been perfect for her witty innuendos, but as it was morning in a café Remy had never been to, she wasn’t exactly in her element. She would need to play by Jess’s rules because she was on his turf, at least until she found an opening that she could exploit to gain the upper hand.

With Jess’s next comment, however, Remy realized that gaining the upper hand was going to be somewhat of a trick. It seemed Remy wasn’t the only one who had been doing some watching without detection, because Jess had a piece of knowledge about Remy that she hadn’t intended him to have. This wasn’t Remy’s ideal situation in the least; she was careful with her information, because she knew how powerful it could be. However, Remy chose not to respond explosively to the knowledge that Jess knew more than he ought to, and instead smiled slyly and dropped her eyes to appear coy and portray that appropriate amount of embarrassment at being caught, though thinking about her meeting with Philipp made her less embarrassed and more hot under the collar.

“Yes well, Philipp and I do have a bit of history,” Remy said coyly, “But we’re really just friends,” with benefits. No reason to be closing off the option of using her sexual draw on Jess on account of Philipp. That is why being with Philipp was so advantageous: great sex and no strings.

Jess seemed to accept this answer, because he didn’t comment on it, and even went so far as to invite her to eat breakfast with him, which was the perfect opportunity for her to get the information she would need to report back. “Yes, I would love to,” Remy replied easily as Jess picked up his breakfast and turned to head to a table, “I will just wait for my meal and meet you over there.”

Shortly thereafter, the man she had ordered from returned with her coffee and oatmeal, and after paying him Remy picked up her food and strode across the room to where Jess was sitting. She did not even spare a thought for the fact that Marla and Naomi hadn’t shown up yet - she was already proving she didn’t need them, and they would just be excess baggage.

“So do you come here often?” Remy asked as she slid into the chair opposite Jess and set down her bowl and mug. She already knew the answer, of course, but she needed a way to get Jess out of his newspaper and interested in talking to her. The more he talked, the better off she would be.

((Writing with you is sooo hard, my gosh you're good at it. Forgive me if I don't quite match your quality ))

Jess' brow was well and truly furrowed by the time Remy reached him, the newspaper was not a happy site this morning, there seemed to be some sort of killing spree going through York right now, muggle doctors knew nothing of its source, other than that the dead were found stock still, some in the midst of showing a look of horror, one particular family had shown that effect perfectly, with the muggle man who sat facing the door showing a look of pure fear, and the muggles around the table showing various signs of recognition, right around to the muggle woman who sat with her back to the door, a teacup handle still in her hand, while the teacup itself lay in the centre of the table, unusually detailed for a newspaper, but then again it had been taken directly from a muggle paper, and the crime itself was a particularly odd one.

Of course magic was involved. Magic was always involved somehow. In this case it was safe to assume that a powerful killing curse had been used in conjunction with a stunner, or some sort of poison. While the sign of the Death Eaters was not apparent, and while it appeared to merely be a rogue series of attacks in the area, it could be the lead to something far more important.

When Remy sat down though it cleared a bit, though a hint of frustratedness remained on his face, as it always did when he read stories like that one. "Good morning again, we really mustn't keep on running into each other like this," he told her with a slight laugh, folding up his paper as he did so and placing it in his bag.

"I do," he replied simply, picking up his toast and taking a bite, smiling at her as he chewed. "Every morning in fact, I like to come here and soak up the atmosphere before experiencing every bit of the stale bureaucracy that was his job, still it could be worse, I might work at a pub, or a bookstore, I can hardly imagine anything mroe dull than an over the counter job," he told her, tilting his head subtly at the waitress at the back of the store. "How about yourself, I'd ask if you were a regular, but I know the answer to that one already," he said, "One of the benefits of being a regular here," he told her with a chuckle, "So what brings you here this fine morning, off to work?" He asked, before frowning slightly, "Now I think of it though, where do you work?" He asked, realising he didn't know the answer.

((Don’t sweat it. I write this way for my own benefit, and for the benefit of anyone who cares to read what I write. You should write however you feel comfortable. I care far more about solid plot and few grammatical errors than I do about length or things like that.))

At her question, Jess folded up his paper and set it aside, which meant that Remy’s intentions still stood a chance of being carried out. The fact that Jess had seen her with Philipp could prove to be a major obstacle, but if she played her cards right she might be able to make it into a minor snafu instead. She tended to try to keep her many prospects separate, both to avoid confusion and to ensure that no one caught on to her games. But it might still be possible to put Jess back at ease if she was careful to steer the conversation in the most advantageous direction.

Jess’s response to her question was ultimately unnecessary as Remy already knew the answer, but it seemed to accomplish the goal of getting him talking and making him believe that she had actually needed the answer. He went on to describe his reasons for coming, and Remy couldn’t help but smirk to herself when he mentioned his distaste for his own job, but that it was significantly better than working in the service industry. Clearly, Jess didn’t know quite as much about Remy as he thought he did, because in expressing his aversion to that type of work, he was inadvertently insulting the only type of job Remy had ever held.

Many people might have been offended by this very obvious – though unintentional – slight, but Remy wasn’t all that touchy about the subject. She didn’t feel her self-worth was defined by the job she held; it was just a job after all, a means to an end. And the official job she held where she got a steady paycheck wasn’t at all where she made most of her total income – most of that was in under the table dealings and late night meetings with men who preferred to keep that part of their business expense discreet. In truth, Remy wasn’t cut out for much more than a service industry job in the wizarding world, what with her lack of magical ability and less than stellar performance at Hogwarts. It was actually rather ironic that the positions in which Remy found herself most often were jobs that required social skills and relatability – bar tending, working in sales, that sort of thing – when in truth, Remy couldn’t relate to anyone at all. She merely mimicked the appropriate responses and constructed situations in such a way that they would be most beneficial to her personally, while simultaneously making everyone else think that she was helping them out.

“I’m actually just getting off of work,” Remy responded when Jess asked her what had brought her here. This was a slight lie, because she hadn’t come from Satan’s just now, but it was a plausible lie; on a night that she had tended at Satan’s this would have been about the time she would have gotten out.

“You see,” Remy replied, her smirk deepening as she took a sip of her coffee, “I work as a bartender at Satan’s.”

Remy let this information sink in for a few seconds, believing that Jess would likely be embarrassed at having to eat his own words so soon after saying them. The realization that he had just insulted Remy’s profession would like make him feel at least some sort of embarrassment, or at least that is what Remy predicted; sometimes she was wrong, never having had those feelings herself.

“But I don’t have nearly the aversion to that type of work as you seem to,” Remy added after giving Jess a few seconds to react to the knowledge of her profession, “And actually find that it suits me well. I am sorry to hear you do not find your own work so appealing; is there anything at the office that is giving you particular trouble?”

Remy asked this question casually, in the same way that she might ask a bar patron about his day at work, but of course in this case she was more invested in the answer. It was still a little early in the conversation for Jess to be feeling comfortable enough to share anything of real value, but he might slip up and give Remy a piece of information she didn’t already know.

((I'll be honest. Last night I did a massive assignment, so pretty much every once of conceptualesness in my is gone. As is my ability to prattle on. I'm going to quickly reply to this, and it will be short, but next time I'll be right to post properly again, just so tired right now, but don't wanna leave this another day))

Jess cocked an eyebrow and felt that familiar chill set over him. Not fear, not regret, but a wrench to the stomach as he realised that he'd screwed up. It was quite within reason to assume that he had insulted Remy greatly, but she appeared to shrug it off, which suited him well, however he let a sheepish look creep onto his face. "It's just not my thing, is all, we're all entitled to our ideas," he told her slowly, knowing he was backtracking a little, but he was simply being honest. "In my defence," he said, "I do speak from experience, I'm not just shunning something because it looks bad, I put a great many hours of work into the Cauldron," he told her, once again knowing it was merely an excuse, but yet again true.

He listened to what she continued to say and shrugged, a thoughtful look hanging on his face for a few moments, before clearing completely. "I don't not like my job," he told her, "I love it, in fact. Well, most of it," he told her, "It's more the background stuff I don't like. See, I used to always want to be a member of the court," he told her with a remiss grin, "Always being right, it's hard not to like it," he added with a little chuckle, "But I don't like who I work with, entirely, and I don't like the way some other people on the court work, even if I like them as people, as a result I've found myself working more and more on telling the court what to do, not the people who sit before it," he told her honestly, realising that this was the first opportunity he'd had to share his work problems with anyone else.

"I miss Mari," he said quietly, but with a hint of shock in his voice, as he forgot that he wasn't alone momentarily. He missed sharing with her, he missed her company, he was lonely, and despite what Remy offered, a night of fun and a good memory, there was never to be any chance of anything long term. It disappointed him really, that 3 months on he wasn't really over her.