All is not fair in love and beer

Holding her blue denim bag across her shoulder and walking down the streets. Renae had finally made it London, England. Living her whole life in Paris, France made her the woman she is today, but she still longed for the adventure in her life. She finally got what she wanted when she graduated from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, and finally got the "ok" from her father to allow her to move out of the house.

Walking down the street with her skin tight jeans and button up shirt, she looked around with a greatful spirit. There were times where she would get lost and ask people for directions. She was greatful that her father taught her English at a young age. And of course, she spoke fluent French. Her constant walking and asking for directions led her to a place called The Leaky Cauldron. She walked in and sat down, "Phew ! Enfin fait lui." (phew! finally made it) she said.
"One pint of whisky please."

Elijah had spent another day where he was staring at the walls of the Apothecary. No one wanted to make potions anymore - either that or they had a new supplier. Eli sighed and pulled on his jacket and dropped his messenger bag onto his shoulder before picking up his sketch book and leaving the shop. He locked up and put the keys in his pocket before heading up to the Leaky Cauldron where he would spend a few hours before Flooing to the Three Broomsticks for another drink before finally heading back to the school.

Elijah tapped the wall and it made an arch big enough for him to pass through and he opened the back door of the Leaky Cauldron. Eli stepped inside and closed it behind him before walking over to his usual table and dumping his stuff down. Eli took his jacket off and hung it on the back of the old worn chair which had probably seen a lot in its time. Eli put his hand in the pocket of his jeans and wandered over to the bar.

He threw a few Galleons down onto the bar and ran a hand through his hair.
"A bottle of Ogden’s, mate." he said, needing something strong.

"That'll be 3 galleons m'lady" the bar tender said. Renae took out the three galleons to hand it to the bar tender as she smiled slightly. The bar tender winking at her response, she straightened up and had the feeling that she had conquered him; just by her mere beauty and flirtatious ways. Taking a sip of her pint of whisky she glanced over at a guy standing at the bar a few feet from her, asking for a bottle of Ogden's. Out the corner of her eye she gazed at him, trying to figure him out.

He was very intriguing, very fascinating. He seemed to have a distant past, yet it was still very close to him, not all of it had left his mind. He also seemed awfully familiar, and that was strange. She lived and Paris all her life, and today was her first day in London. So she couldn't have seen him then, but he was still awfully familiar. Don't think she hadn't noticed he was very easy on the eyes, that was the first thing she noticed. She knew a cute guy when she saw one, and he seeming to be very intresting made it a plus. "caractère intresting" she whispered to herself. She then took another gulp of her pint.

"So what brings you here to The Leaky Cauldron?" she asked.

The Bartender nodded and took the lid off of the bottle and handed it to Eli. He raised it in thanks before putting it to his mouth and taking a lot of liquid from the bottle. It was about the amount that was in the thinner part. He knew it wouldn't last him long at all seeing as he'd had a long day and was bored of drawing potions bottles. The bartender put a piece of paper down on the bar and Eli smiled before taking his pencil out from behind his ear. He took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and put it between his lips before doing a quick sketch of a woman that had come into the shop and promptly walked back out again. She was pretty but not extraordinarily so. Pretty average compared to what he'd seen before.

"There you go mate." he smiled, signing his name at the bottom and sticking his signature on there with it. "Another tattoo?" he asked in interest as the bartender took it away and pinned it to the corkboard behind the bar that was mostly filled with Eli's sketches.
"Nah, the misses don't like it. You have one don't yeh?" he asked.

Eli shrugged and unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt. His snake familiar was laying there curled around his neck with her head on his chest and the bartender nodded with a smile. Nachash had been a bit more reserved for the last few days which was a welcomed change to her comments on the customers in the shop. The awful thing was that some of them were Parselmouths and he found himself getting slapped a lot.

Eli looked over at the woman at the bar who had spoken to him and raised an eyebrow in interest. Her voice was heavily accented with one he'd come in contact with quite a bit. She also looked awfully familiar to him which wasn't the best thing in the world. The French women he usually came in contact with were usually angry with him about something. That was probably why he didn't venture back to France during to the school term - more specifically, Paris.

Now the beautiful women are coming to me. Eli thought with a mixture off glee and apprehension. The only reason the found him again was to either slap him or set their boyfriends on him for being crude and inconsiderate. Fun.

"I usually spend a few hours here after work." Eli said, cocking his head slightly. "I Floo to Hogsmeade and spend the rest of the night there before wandering back up to the castle." he explained with a smile.

Still captivated by the man sitting beside her, Renae took sips of her drink. Every now and then looking out of the corner of her eye. "Dieu qu'il semble familier" ( God he looks familair)
She could not quite get her finger on who he was, but she knew she had seem him before.
She noticed him taking a piece of paper that the bar tender put on the counter. He seemed to be drawing a picture of a lady. Renae tried to ease over to see what he was drawing but didn't want to draw attention to herself.

When she had asked him why he was here, she was glad to see that he had an interest in her. She could tell just by the raising of his eyebrow. She smiled in response. "Where do you work?" she asked. Renae didn't want to be to inquisitive, but she would like to know more about the boy she was speaking with, rather then his looks. Men in Paris were different. All they wanted was to grab pretty French girls and have sex with them. Of Course the men don't get off that easy, us french girls get paid to do the dirty work. But there comes a time when a man thinks women are meant to show off their goods. And when it comes to the bedroom, men have the say on what goes on underneath the sheets. Renae had learned that at a young age. It was then she understood the words...

"Des femmes sont censées pour être vues non entendues."
(Women are meant to be seen not heard.)

As he was speaking to her, she would listen and often look him up and down, over again.
She gazed over at the many pictures that he had drawn on the cupboard behind the bar. They all had the same style, they were all mostly women, and they all had the same signature. The signature is was an eye opener. There was never an adolescent woman in France, who did not come across that signature. It was at that moment she knew who he was.

"You Elijah. L'artiste célèbre" ( the famous artist.)

Elijah couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. How did this woman know who he was? Although judging by the heavy accent he was sure he knew why. He’d been all over France that year but still preferred the comforts of Paris. He’d seen and done a lot of things and drawn many people. An old woman had even tried to coerce him into buying one of her daughters to paint. However, he had enough models waiting for him in Paris. Far more mature ones and it seemed that the woman wasn’t quite aware of how things worked with the models. He couldn’t help but wonder where the head of the house was to shut her up but didn’t voice his opinions, knowing that he would get a slap.

“Oui, c'est moi.” Eli said hesitantly. He was slightly worried. He did stand by his philosophy - any woman that came back to find him was looking to beat him up or inflict bodily harm. He’d come to accept it now but he was a little apprehensive considering it hadn’t happened in a while. Eli drank from his bottle of Fire Whisky again and swallowed hard.

“You’re from France that is obvious.” he said in interest, turning on his stool to look this woman up and down. He could tell the age of most girls brilliantly and could also roughly say where they were born and raised - sometimes even their name. He was also never wrong which was a plus for him because it helped when he forgot names. “You are a Paris girl, 5’6 and your were raised in the nicer part of the capital so I am guessing you’re name is Renae, yes?” he asked in interest.

Eli quickly doodled the front of the Apothecary on a napkin and drew lots of sad faces around it before pushing it along the bar for her to look at. “The Apothecary. Some of the girls that come in there are quite shocking. I did not know my art had come to England as well as the girls. What brings you here, Renae?”


French: "Yes that is me."

The man seemed to be a little worried when he confessed that he was Elijah. She wanted to know why he felt that way. Even though she knew who he was, they never had an actual encounter with each other.
"You seem a little worried. Do you think I'm going to slap you like the others?" she asked straightforwardly. That was when her leglimancy went to work. She could easily go inside his head and read his thoughts. If she really wanted to she could read every thought his mind had came across when he walked in the bar. But she felt that would be cheating.


She smiled brightly as he spoke french, it made her heart thump just a little.
"Pas chacun qui habite à Paris pendant deux ou trois années peut parler français tellement admirablement."
(Not everyone who lives in Paris for a couple of years can speak French so beautifully.)

"You were taught well, I see" Renae wasn't surprised when he basically told her , her physical appearance, and where she lived. "Oui c'est exact.Very impressive Elijah, but do you know what I'm thinking at the moment?" She turned her stool towards him going up and down. She wondered if she had caught him in a corner. There's was nothing stoping her from figuring out was he was thinking. Of course she would always be right.

"Well I wanted to see the world with my own eyes. I was tierd of being in Paris. I know, its sounds horrible to put those words together. As soon as I graduated, I needed to leave. I always knew that I was going to go to all these exotic places, and nothing or no one could stop me. I never thought I was going to meet you on the way. " Renae smiled and drunk some of her whisky. "I'm here because I need to find a place to stay, I was thinking about staying here, but things are so expensive now-a -days. But I just might end up paying for it."

Oui c'est exact:yes that is right.

The familiar feeling of someone poking around in his mind provoked a hostile reaction from Nachash who hissed violently and poked her head out of the space which was created by the two top buttons of his shirt which was undone. She scowled in her usual way and crept out onto his shoulder. Elijah threw his Occlumancy shields up which were, ironically, covered with sketches and graffiti which he seemed quite fond of. Nachash hissed in his ear and she absent mindedly began to flick his neck in a snake-like caress that she’d never even thought of doing before.

He raised a hand to her head and patted her softly, reassuring the snake who was staking her claim on her master. Nachash hissed softly in response and he smiled before putting his thumb over the top of the bottle of Fire Whisky and turning it upside down. He felt the burn of the alcohol on his thumb and turned it back up before putting the bottle back onto the bar. Eli lifted his hand to the mouth of the snake and she began to lick the sharp, burning drink off of his thumb; enjoying the treat she was receiving from her master.

“Possibly.” he responded, throwing up some protective barriers around the shields of his mind. He felt Nachash enter and she wrapped herself around all of his defences, making the defences like a fortress. Nachash hissed softly in his air and he whispered reassuring words to her in Parseltongue. She was probably the only woman that could ever have a hold on him and she planned on keeping it that way. She hated it while he was in France (Paris specifically) and wanted to strangle every woman that ever waltzed up to her master.

Model or not they were all little harlots that just wanted a good time with someone who had a libido like Elijah’s. His was advanced for someone his age and Nachash would scold him because of it but he’d brush her off with a smile and a kiss to her scaly temple. She was the one that drove away the women though. She kept them to one-night stands and purely that. No one would be with him without her approval.

Their relationship was often considered to be a mother-son connection but then some would consider it to be a brother-sister relationship. Both of them proffered the first and considered the latter to be rather insulting. Their relationship was complex and the snake would always contemplate what her life would be like if she were human - a witch specifically. However, she would never voice these things to Elijah as she knew it would scare him. He was nothing but a child with a lot of talent. He didn’t know how to use it as of yet but he was learning. She knew he saw her has nothing more than a companion but one could dream couldn’t they?

The two of them needed each other much more than it was apparent. He was nothing more than the snake’s son but he was also a form of life support for her and vice versa. The bonding spells insured that if the other died when away from each other than the temple or inhabitant would die with them. The literally couldn’t live without each other as he was her life support and she his. He was the only reason, when he was in the depths of depression as a thirteen year old onwards, he stayed in the land of the living or… existing.

The two were like an old married couple and their love for each other changed and morphed as time went on but they were both waiting for the day that the bonds would break when they would find those who were completely perfect and solely for them. Nachash would probably still return to him, her son, but with her family and those she had created with another. Elijah was her whole world and meant everything to the young snake.

You speak French the way you have always done. Nachash said in a bored tone. That same seductive drawl that you’ve spoken in nearly every language. Truly you are insufferable, Krum.

He chuckled and kissed the snake’s temple once more before taking a swig from his bottle of Fire Whisky. Elijah contemplated what to say, there was nothing he could say though. He was either seduced by the French women or their roles were reversed. However, he was not giving in tonight. No way. Just because a semi-attractive Frenchie has walked into his life like so many others had before him didn’t mean he had to indulge the way he always did. For that would come with the cigarettes that were at the bottom of his trunk in the dorms and the alcohol in the racks he’d hidden in the kitchens. Then everything else that came with it. He’d not given up on his art, everything else he had, but the French were… difficult to say the least.

“You come to England because you believe it to be exotic?” Eli all but laughed. He heard Nachash hiss a laugh and he raised an eyebrow at Renae. “If that isn’t the case either then why did you come here? The world here is transparent and fake.”

(Sorry. I sort of got carried away)

Renae quickly came to realize that there was something stopping her as she tried to read his mind. As if someone were threatening her. It was obvious, but to good to be true. It was a rumor in Paris, not to long ago, about a particular artist who carried another soul with them. Although it was never seen or heard from, one particular model had said, when she tried to seduce the artist, she soon begin to feel as if she was threatened by not the artist, but as if someone else was in the room, or something…

”So it’s true… she thought. She couldn’t help but see that they had a deep, true bond. More than a friendship. More than just any regular relationship. It was more than any relationship Renae had anyway. She knew exactly what his companion was doing. Blocking her from reading his mind, testing her, threatening her. She wasn’t scared to say the least. She had come to encounter many jealous females in her day. Thanks to years of slapping, scratching, hair pulling, and biting, ( sometimes) she knew how to handle it. But this situation…was different

Renae was a very inquisitive person. As she thought deeper about the relationship between Elijah and his companion. She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. Her constant hissing, and threatening messages would keep Renae's powers at a halt, but as a woman, she quickly became to understand, that there was more to her then meets the eye. There was a reason on why she is, the way that she is. ”As of any husband and wife, they will live together for all eternity, til death do you part. If one leaves the earth, it is hard to continue your life alone. Knowing that the one you truly love is not beside you is heartbreaking. Enough to make you want to sacrifice yourself. One can’t live without the other. Renae understood what she (nachash) was feeling, she felt her pain. It made her face cringe. Was she the first to understand his companion’s heart? It made her wonder.

“Hmm. Don’t be so quick to judge what you don’t know, Elijah. I may look like some common whore. But I definitely don’t act like one.” she looked in his eyes and spoke sternly.
“Well it’s a lot better then living in Paris, I think out of all people you would know. You did leave. You must’ve had a really good reason, I don’t doubt that. But I bet I have a better one.” The thoughts quickly became to flush in her head as if she were a little girl again, in her room. Closing her eye’s praying that he would stop hurting her so deeply. It wasn’t her father, definitely NO! She knew her father loved her. It was his drunk, revolting, brother that was the problem. She never told a soul, not one. She would take it to her grave. After her uncle died, she felt as if she needed to leave.

She vowed that no man will ever take advantage of her. And that's what is was all about back in Paris.

Feeling the tension in her shoulders, Renae was getting a little irritated. Even though he didn’t say it exactly, she believed he saw her as some French whore who decided to move to England because she was looking for better money, or she was looking for him. That was not case.

Her tension released as another memory came into her mind. It was her father and mother…
“Belle. How could you do this? How could you do this to our family?”
“Listen Nathan, living with you is not enough me. We have no money, we barley have a house, and we barley have enough food to feed our own child.”
“Oh so now you want to think about Renae. After you go out and sleep with all kinds of men.”
“All I know is Nathan, life out there is better for me. I’m tired of living on hopes and dreams. There not doing anything for me. You’re not doing anything for me.”
“I don’t care, if you stop loving me, but I believe you stop loving Renae.”
“Don’t you dare bring her into this! You know I love her! I’m going to try and do everything to be in her life.”
“No. I don’t want her being around a whore.”

It was like as if it was just yesterday when her mother had walked out on them simply because of money, and greed. She would remember the days, as she peeked behind the door of her parent’s room, and while her father was away on business, she would do her business with other men. She remembered watching her putting on her skimpy, cheap clothing. Her tight jeans, short skirts, silk tank tops, and high heal shoes. Stuff that she had all gotten from the money she made off of Paris streets.

It really took a toll on Renae’s life as she grew. Her life at Beauxbatons wasn’t as nice as it seemed. People only looked at you depending on who you lived with, how you were raised, where you came from. People only saw her as the prostitute’s daughter.
“She will grow up to be just like her filthy mother.” Those words would ring in her head.

As she grew older, and her father grew weaker, there was a time where she thought about going out on the streets. Only to keep her father from dying, leaving her alone in the world. She still hadn’t told a soul about Nathan’s brother. She thought that was the only thing that would keep him from dying.

Recently after her father died, her mother went as well. Her father gave her the very little money he had left. To last her for a couple of years of food and shelter. The only thing her mother left her was the clothing she had while she was out on the streets. It was the only thing she could remember her mother by. So why not wear them?

“You don’t know anything about me. You think I’m some girl who just wondered off the streets coming to England because I’m not getting what I want in Paris. I didn’t leave because I wanted to. I left because I had to. I didn’t come here looking for money. I didn’t come here looking for you. I came her because my life at home was nothing but a living hell. And the closes place I was able to have enough money to travel for was here. London, England. So if you want to judge me by the way I look go right ahead. I’ve had it before. I won’t get angry…”