LONDON CALLING

Jessie folowed Michael to a shop thet sold quidditch gear he was going to say something but he then saw the climbing gear at the back. Walking up he found several nylon ropes , some Carabiners in a color he liked he also saw a single Edelrid harness in black and leather. A long the way he found a desender with and anti panic function he knew would come in handy. Then came his boots, sturdy hiking boots with a thick soul.

Hearing Michael talking about fudge he looked confused " um..I've had normal fudge before but not chocolate." he said then chuckled " sounds a tasty trip." Jessie said taking what he'd found to the counter. " did I forget anything?" he asked Michael " since Im assuming no aperating but actual climbing, old school stlye."

"Gloves. Good gloves." He picked up a pair of the better gloves and handed them to him. "Chalk bag, gear bag. I think that will do it. I think you're set." He helped him get everything assembled and paid for.

"As for us, let's go invade the best candy shop in the wizarding world, in my opinion. Scotland, here we come. The fudge awaits."

They landed in Hogsmeade, and Michael saw Hogwarts students running amuck in every direction. It looked like herding cats.

"Oh, lord, they've let them out this weekend," Michael said. "And they're a day early. They usually invade on Saturday. Someone let them go on Friday for some oddball reason. Oh, well, no matter. The easier to obtain the fudge. I have this game I play with them. I liberate whatever I want from the store, and then, eventually, I send them the payment for it. Is it stealing? No, not really, not when I pay for it. And, actually, the students aren't after the fudge. They want the wizard candy--the candy that does something besides taste good. I just want my fudge to lie still, not sing or whistle or twitter, and taste completely lovely. The kids can have all the gimmicks." He pointed down the block to Honeydukes.

"That's where we're going," Michael said. "I've made Robert promise that if I ever end up in the nick, he'll make sure I have a never ending supply of fudge. Should have specified what flavor though. He's liable to send something revolting like dill pickle or trout. Those things shouldn't be in the same sentence with fudge, but he'd do it just to annoy the snot out of me. We have this competition going since we were boys about who could out prank the other. At this point, I still have one on him because I gave him this enchanted tea kettle that has quite a foul temper, shrieks loud enough to burst windows, and bites. He's got the thing in his office at work, and he's determined he will break her in and make her behave. I think he has his work cut out for him.

Jess gathered the things Michael had said he'd forgot and then let the woman behind the counter bag everything up. He listened to Michael and chuckled as they aperated to Hogsmead " not been here in a long time" he said softly as he moved out the way of several students as they rushed passed them both.

Listening to Michael continue to talk he chuckled " I'd say it was more a teperory borrowing" he said he nodded when Micahel said the kids could keep the gimmiks " agreed." he said as Michael pointed to the shop in question. Jessie pulled aface at dill pickle " blech both sound revolting." Jessie said and walked with him towards the shop. Jessie held open the door for michael but several children walked in as if he was their door man.  Jessie rolled his eyes having made an outh to himself for the moment not to have kids.

"well shall we prevail of the fudge?" He said giving a small unoticed bow to Michael. " becuse I can't wait to try it, if its a delisious as you say." Jessie had , had vanilla fudge and loved it but chocolate fudge, nope hadn't tried it.

"Well, exactly. It is more like borrowing. It used to frustrate them when their books didn't add up, and then they'd get a large check periodically and, voila, it put the books to rights. I do suspect that perhaps the chap that owns it now suspects something. He's a sharp minded fellow, but he hasn't said anything. It isn't like I'm trying to hide it either. I enjoy the fudge and the game. Let's go get stocked up."

He led the way into the store and over to the fudge counter where they had fudge of every imaginable flavor. He was about to 'liberate' some when a handful of first years toppled over a display of blood pops, causing a huge crash followed by a royal mess. All the clerks dashed out to try to resolve it, and that gave Michael the opportunity to pilfer away.

He swiped three or four big thick slices of each of the kinds of fudge that he wanted. the dark chocolate fudge, the milk chocolate fudge, the chocolate amaretto fudge, the chocolate fudge with toffee pieces, and the triple chocolate. And then, for good measure, he swiped the clotted cream fudge.

"Now, what else should we taste test?" he asked Jessie quietly. He was open to swiping truffles, chocolate bark, or anything that appealed to Jessie.

Jessie's eyes opened wide at seeing all the goodies inside. " wow" was all he could think to say but the smell of it all made his nose twitch. " I don't know where to start" he admitted but followed Michael to the fudge counter. When the diplay with over he maganged to get some of the clotted cream, milk chocolate and amaretto fudge knowing those flavors were smooth and not too sharp.

"I have to admit im not keen on chocolate frogs and the like myself." He said " I think what I have will be enough." He could feel two good sized amounts in bags in his pockets as he moved to stand beside Michael.He chuckled as he watched the clearks try and catch a frog that had got out of its box and was hoping around.

Now he glanced at his watch making a note of the time so to be ready for his next dose. Hed tallied it that he could take it in Michaels home and out of prying eyes.

"Follow me, then," Michael said, slipping much too easily behind the counter, through the back of the store and out the back door. The chaos made it not problem at all for him. He walked across the street to the cobblestone cottage that he called home. He really still liked, after all these years, the English country style Khaat had infused into the place when she and Rob had lived here. When he opened the door, Snidely snatched Michael's fedora off his head and hung it up neatly on the hat tree's hooks.

"Jessie, meet Snidely," he gestured to the hat tree. "Snidely, this is a new friend, this is Jessie. He's welcome." At that moment, two footstools dashed into the room, barking and wagging their tassels.
"Ah, and here are the dogs. The plaid boy here is Otto, and the floral chintz is Faline. They had pups last week. We'll get to them in due time." He looked towards the kitchen. "Hey, you lot, look sharp, and put the kettle on, would you? Two proper mugs of tea, please." He glanced back at Jessie. "We'll have tea ready in a moment. Make yourself at home. If you need a chaser for your potion, the kitchen is through there. There is some cans of American iced sweet tea in the fridge, and some cola. Help yourself to whatever you like."

Jessie followed Michael behind the counter, out into the street and up to a cobblestone cottage "Quaint" he said but as the door opened and a hatstand of all things snatched Michaels hat Jessie could not help yell in fright then dance around as two foot stools appeared dashing around and betwen his legs " these all yours?" he asked dodging a foot stool and looked from one to the other.

"I would say get them fixed but how do you fix a foot stool." he said kneeling down beside Otto. " its okay buddy" he said softly. Looking up at Michael he nodded. " almost forgot im due." he said heading into the kitchen but didn't quite make it as a glass of apple and elderflower juice floated towards him. " um..thanks?" he said and moved to sit down in the living room. Taking a drink he then took out his potion flask and took a dose.

"Robert thought my old flask might be nutralizing some of the ingridiants so Jack lent me this one, seems to have some affect." Jessie said showing him the stainless steel and glass flask he held before taking another drink of the juice in the glass.

"This place used to be Khaat's when she finally moved out from Robert and Kate's. Then, she married Abbey's dad, and they lived here together for awhile--until he abandoned her when Khaat was in St. Mungo's having Abbey. Brian was helping out at St. Mungo's because they were shorthanded that night, and when Brian saw how badly Khaat's husband treated her, Brian stepped in, and, well, he's never left her. I don't think either of them ever expected that, after all the years they had been childhood friends, they would end up together as a couple, but by everything I can see, they've got a really solid thing going on. Anyway, he took her and Abbey to his place when she was discharged from St. Mungo's, and she's been there since. So this place was empty, and I needed a place. So, here I am.

"As for my odd roommates, that happened when one of Khaat's spells went wonky, and she got attached to everything. When I moved it, she was crystal clear that I was not to undo the spell. And so now, bloody everything in my house seems to have a mind of its own. I've actually gotten to like having the dogs, except they're a little expensive. They only eat black socks, with the occasional argyle as a treat. Snidely is a good card player, but he cheats. Still, it's a good life, I suppose.

he listened to jessie talk about his flask. "I think you're wise to try a different flask. Makes perfect sense that the pewter doesn't work well. Hopefully it does the trick for you," he said as the kettle whistled and then a moment later whistled again. "Ah--tea's ready. I'll get it." He went to the kitchen and brought back two mugs of fresh tea. "Help yourself to any of the fudge. It isn't like I can't get more whenever I want," he grinned.

Jessie listened to Michael talk about the house and its ocupants along with how Brian and Khaat got together. " hum..he sstill around , coz I'd like to get my hands on him" he said feeling angry some one could hurt Khaat so bad. " Im glad they found each other, my mom and dad met at a marine open day, she came with her sister who was dating a marine, then they had me , my twin brothers and my sis.been together it seems forever"

He chuckled at Michaels words about being able to get more Fudge as he brought in the tea/ " yeah its parctaculy on your doorstep, so you were going to tell me about what else goes on uther than looking after Khaat, Abby Brian and the others?" he quizzed as he took a cup of tea and sat back making sure not to have his feet too close to the foot stools as so not to hurt them.

"I don't know if you read my file but..my.. affliction came about threw bad blood in a transphushion, they thought it was PTSD to start but I guess they quickly realised there mistake when I trashed my room at the VA hospital" he told him " not good."

"Well, you can't very well blame muggles for labeling you inaccurately when they've come to believe that werewolves don't exist, especially when the wizarding community finds it safer to continue to do whatever they can to mislead them and perpetuate the lies that magic and anything like it simply only exists in humanity's imagination," Michael said. "I'm not saying what you went through wasn't painful. I'm sure it was. I'm just saying they would have never believed you were a werewolf. As it is, I'm sure that everything that happened to you has been completely erased from the records."

He took a sip of some tea and broke off a bite sized piece of fudge from one of the slices and ate it. "Yes, well, Robert would have gotten around to telling you this sooner or later, but it probably wouldn't have been this soon. I'm sure he wasn't counting on yesterday's drama to happen on your first day, so you might as well know.

"There's a history to this. Robert and I were mates in Hogwarts. Hell, there was a great lot of us. Robert's brother Remus, Kate, James and Lily, Sirius, we all were in Gryffindor house, and we grew rather close just because of it. As we grew close to graduation, we became more aware that some of the children of wizarding families were coming up missing, and it concerned us greatly. The disappearances were only being seen as unrelated, singular events, but we did some digging. And we didn't like what we saw. They all had a number of things in common, and we were starting to see a strong connection to some oddball things happening in Paris.

"So, long story short, we went to Paris and eventually found that the children were being taken by the same bunch of despicable people. The children were all witches and wizards, and we started to see a money trail attached to it. What we found was that Gelding's family, his father at that time, was the one that was responsible. Robert and Remus were particularly incensed about it, and with some additional digging we found that the children were being placed, for a 'fee', into the homes of the most elite muggles. What we couldn't figure out at first was why.

"So, following the money, we began to see that when a child was placed, eventually that muggle family's income and power would mysteriously begin to soar. And then we figured it out. These children were being enchanted to only be able to do certain kinds of magic--whatever would make the muggles powerful and wealthy. And, at the same time, Gelding's father was raking in the money like he had printed it himself.

"Over the years, we've established operations there. We have a safehouse where our operatives can work out of. We continue to keep an eye on Gelding and look for a way to shut him down. And, we're actually getting pretty good at getting children away from Gelding. The safehouse is set up and constantly manned so that we're ready to bring in a child at any time of the day or night. We clothe them, feed them, tend their medical needs, work to unwind their trauma, and try to undo the enchantments that blocked them, and provide them with an education. We do some deep digging into their family to make sure they weren't financially 'compensated' for their child's disappearance. Robert refuses to send a child home only to find out that their parents might turn them over to Gelding again just to get paid again. He'd rather place them with a different family or let them stay at the safehouse than to put them in harms way again.

"Over the years, with the deaths of so many of the friends that founded the organization with us, Robert and Kate own the place now, and Brian is largely in charge of the operations. We all have our skills. Brian is good at getting boots on the ground and at the actual missions themselves. Robert is a good fighter himself, but we've really tried to discourage him from going on the missions. He's more valuable to us as a strategist, planning the missions, finding all the intelligence we need to stay ahead of Gelding. As for me, well, I have two specializations. I'm the extractions guy--the guy that gets called when one of our operatives gets into something and then can't get back out. Its my job to extract them safely and get them home. My other specialization is 'liberating' things that other people shouldn't have. Plainly put, I'm a catburglar. Now, are you completely overwhelmed?"