did i see you in a limousine

[amourpropre]

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and Severus Snape
What: Chance non-meetings in common places.
Where: An apothecary
When: Shundi afternoon, in the case of one.

It reminds him something of home.

Not a novel concept. Baedal has its similarities, every now and then reminding of Lucius the place he vanished from some several weeks ago, recent enough for it to dog his thoughts between more immediate concerns. Sort of like homesickness, except with dignity and careful indifference. But this place could well transport Lucius back to Knockturn Alley, hand touching light the door once he's scanned the building front of the apothecary, and pushing it open.

There is some-- awful-- social happening for the Other Malfoys, that Lucius had heard in the edges of conversation between avoiding everyone, and decided it best to take leave of the townhouse early, and dare suggest that his younger analogue would be grateful for it. It's driven him past the borders of Sobek Croix, walking down streets he had sort of known before his encounter with Narcissa, and are familiar to him now in abstraction and fragmented memory.

There had been a store down here, hadn't there? One that had sold the necessary ingredients for potion making.

Hard to say if it will have what he requires, or if he requires anything except a place to go to kill a little time. Regardless, Lucius enters, the click of his cane heralding his presence if the sound of the door swinging open does not. His shape is cut in expensive coat, grey-blonde hair left to tendril somewhat ragged past his shoulders, and grey gaze ever flat and indifferent as it takes in his surroundings.

Comments

[inkdamage]

It's just an apothecary.

There's an edge to the neighborhood it's in, true, and its stores and prescriptions tend to run the gamut towards the magically inclined lifestyle, but nothing remarkable; it's not even a city landmark. It opened a generation ago, not two or three, too young to be established but too old to be new and interesting. The clerk is bored out of his mind, and only offers a nod of his head to acknowledge the arrival of this customer.

The basement tells a different tale.

The day he knew he'd be spending any tiny amount of time at the store and its on-site laboratory, Severus installed wards - subtle, strange ones of his own design, nothing that could be found in any text book or classroom or forbidden tome. All day people come and go, and he acknowledges it, and does nothing, but now, there's a certain pull, like a shadow over the back of his mind, as something familiar slithers its way into his territory.

He's silent as he takes the stairs.

[amourpropre]

The clerk is acknowledged and little more than that -- some sort of passing once over as if Lucius could determine on side the make of his wizarding caste, if there is any such thing to see. And even if he did recognise it, there is no singular person that Lucius has met that has reassured him his month could get any better. The familiarity of a store such as this will suit him fine, as if he were helping Draco obtain the essentials required for a new school year, or browsing for himself and any inclination he might have to revisit his own talents as a potioneer, hobbyist as they may be.

His own reflection, gone ghostly, lately, drifts over various glass bottles and jars and reflective ceramic. Things separated by species, by moon harvest, by purpose and by state -- it's impressive, a kind of pedanticness that Lucius might not have bothered with, himself.

He had wondered, even, if potions work the same way here as they do back home. It does some to assuage his doubts.

[inkdamage]

If he were another man, Severus might have sworn. But he's not; instead he's quiet, gravelike, skeletal hand clutching the frame of the door to the back room and watching through the crack, unseen. How mangled time is in this wretched place. He knew of Narcissa and her husband, as he remembers them, the girl, Rodolphus - he felt Bellatrix - even that poor girl's broken father. How had this one managed to slip by him? Lucius isn't that subtle.

Dully, the clerk inquires as to if the pale-haired visitor might like help locating anything. Severus stays where he is, watchful, and doesn't bother to shut the door. Even if Lucius looks his way, he'll remain perfectly hidden. His spell is good enough to walk by Dumbledore and go unnoticed, that much he's made absolutely certain of. What are you doing here, Lucius?

[amourpropre]

If Lucius senses eyes on him, or the presence of a concealment charm, it doesn't show. It is pretty probable that he is aware of nothing at all, as susceptible to the next wizard to the charms and hexes of others, and he never made a very good Legilimens on the rare occasion he'd attempted that particular breed of wandless magic. He instead takes a jar off the shelf-- heavy with pickling fluid, snake skin within, and labelled boomslang-- and inspects it, turning it over for the price.

He can't really afford any kind of stockpile, not yet, and not without asking his alternates for the help. They probably would. But as the saying goes: over his dead body.

He glances back at the clerk, as if irritated at being interrupted. Like maybe this isn't a store at all, but his own personal space, as entitled to everything as the stray cat let in from the rain. Still, he chooses to be polite -- he may need to do some bargaining, if something catches his interest. "Not at the moment. You've an eye for organisation." His back turns once more, setting back the heavy item.

Susceptible or not, something nags at him. It isn't necessarily magical.

[inkdamage]

There's an awkwardly long pause after that remark, so obviously a prompt for conversation. Just on the edge of where awkwardness might morph into rudely ignoring the man, the clerk offers: "I have to do something to look busy when my boss is actually here."

The shrug in his voice is apparent, hanging between the routine politeness of a wage slave and the compelling disinterest of everyone who's ever worked retail. He doesn't really care what Lucius might be looking for, because he doesn't care what anyone is looking for. This job sucks, the pay is only barely worth it, but no one else is hiring second generation residents who only barely graduated.

Behind him, cloaked in an enchantment that keeps him utterly obscured from any and all persons from his world or one like it, Severus wordlessly clutches his wand, pointed at the center of the clerk's back. He's going to be sick when Severus releases him from the Imperius Curse, but it's a sacrifice that Severus is graciously willing to make. To slip out of the back room, put the door back where it was, get to the register, and cast the spell - in seconds, silently - was not simple, and though he is and always will be a very powerful wizard, at twenty-five he sometimes still wields his power like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel.

[amourpropre]

The clerk's worth dwindles fast when he announces the obvious, that he is merely employed, and the apathetic disinterest in his voice tells Lucius that not only does he care not for Lucius' presence-- there was a time and place when these people would be honoured to have the Malfoy patriarch in their stupid little back alley store-- but he probably isn't the mind behind this place at all. These shelves and their contents were chosen by someone who cares, and knows.

"Indeed. And who is that?"

This question is tossed out almost in offer of severing conversation entirely -- a simple, primly delivered query with only a short answer needed. His attention even remains on the shelves as he picks out a few ingredients with his eyes only, like a mathematical puzzle. Boomslang, leeches, fluxwood by light of half-moon, no moon, fullmoon...

[inkdamage]

It's nerve-wracking. Is this a coincidence, or did Luicus come looking for something familiar? Could he have heard there's an alchemist here that specializes in potions that work the way he's used to? Severus has been careful, mixing things he knows with things he's invented, melding tradition with theory and bits and baubles of knowledge stolen from other worlds. (It's an intellectual's fantasy, this place.)

"Ramil Oleander," the clerk says, and for how casual it comes out there's not even a breath of a hint that it's against his way. (He's struggling a little, inside, but Severus has him in a vice grip. Futile.) "He's got, er..." a tapping noise, and the clerk scoots a little plastic container of business cards across the surface of the counter.

He can see the picture starting to sketch together in Malfoy's mind even from here. He wonders how old he is, what he's lived through, what track of existence he hails from - the epicenter, that dismal tale, or something different? He looks like he's been vacationing in Hades, to Severus's eye. It hardly matters either way; he's putting together the familiarity of the setting and the familiarity of the utterly manic perfectionist order of godsdamned potion ingredients and there's not a thing Severus can do about it but sit there, ten paces away, and watch.

[amourpropre]

The name is meaningless. The name isn't important. Lucius is still and unresponsive for a few moments, before there's the whisper sound of wood sliding against wood succeeding the click of metal detaching. His wand is taken from walking stick piece, and in the same movement, waved in an arc not so far from his own nose. Whatever incantation that goes with it isn't spoken, merely thought.

Nothing happens.

Nothing apparent or even not apparent, dissatisfaction having Lucius' mouth curl, and by the time he is turning back to the clerk, the length of mahogany-- it isn't the wand that he went to school with, refitted into silver snake head handle after the war had ended and he was able to get another one-- is slid back into its sheath. He moves towards the counter-- nine, six, four paces-- and takes one of the cards for himself.

He turns it over, unimpressed. "Thank you," he says, anyway, tone dry. "I had it in my mind to negotiate for ingredients with promise of return in the form of working concoctions, but I assume your employer would have no need."

[inkdamage]

The revealing charm floats past Severus, nearly gentle. He's almost disappointed - not that he wants to get caught, but he always likes to expect a bit more of housemates. (This is the man who gives failing marks for one incorrect comma, mind.) Obviously it turns up nothing, Severus wouldn't be Severus if it did, but that's not what bothers him - what bothers him is that Lucius tried anything at all, which means the idea of it is implanted in his head. Damnit.

"Uh.. huh." The clerk watches that little display, his incredulity expertly timed, for some people can mimic social norms far easier than they can express them genuinely, and here Severus plays with a human as if he were a puppet with more grace and timing than he cares to show on his own. "You could ring him, I guess, there's a couple guys that do work. I wouldn't know."

[amourpropre]

Unfortunately for Severus, that Severus wouldn't be Severus if it did indeed is exactly why the idea hasn't wriggled its way out as seamlessly as it got in.

"Ring," Lucius repeats, flatly. While perhaps not a completely alien term to him-- some of this Muggle lexicon slips past his defenses, for all that he's no where near Arthur bloody Weasley's level of obsession-- it is an alien term if applied to him. He hasn't seen one owlery since he's ventured out of Sobek Croix, either. Irritating. It would be wise to conform to Baedal's methods, but Lucius would prefer things conform to his own.

The card is set back down, turned over, and, spying the pencil lying near the till, Lucius picks this up and scribbles, simply, Malfoy on the back of it, his print as elegant as the silver rings on his fingers that he should probably man up and sell, soon. Usually what happens next, beneath the name, is a cellphone number or something, but owls don't need digits, being smarter than simple digital devices. Also he misplaced his somewhere.

And Lucius isn't convinced he'll see return for this at all, but that's hardly the point. "Give this to him," he says-- or rather, orders. "You needn't do more."

[inkdamage]

The Muggle angle is clearly the nerve to hit, here, and the clerk plays his part beautifully by giving Lucius a faintly unimpressed look at the notion of yes, Virginia, you call people here. People have phones and fancy little CiD devices and they don't lurk around all the time in shops that rely on Muggle technology that surely, surely a Death Eater would not work at, even a deeply anti-social one.

Surely.

"Sure thing, man." The clerk accepts the card, enthusiasm the very opposite of genuine - amusement, perhaps, at the ridiculousness of it all, but that's the extent - and his face stretches into a brief smile that is meant to humor Lucius.

[amourpropre]

Lucius really hates these people.

He is not Bellatrix, or any number of Death Eaters who were froth-mouthed in disgust over the non-magical -- but they really are irritating, pathetic beings that could spend more time kneeling in subservience and less time being ignorantly arrogant. That old sentiment stirs up like muck from a still lack, but doesn't have Lucius hexing him out of malice or anything -- just imagining it. The clerk has a task to perform, and Lucius would like him to do it.

Customary sneer cuts the equivalent of a smile at his mouth, the pencil set down delicate enough before he doesn't, you know, offer formal goodbye or thank you. A last look around the place with pale-eyed suspicion is all that follows, before he's moving for the door.

[inkdamage]

The clerk offers no comment as Lucius leaves, merely waives one hand lazily. He sets the card aside, and then goes back to reading through his CiD. Minutes tick by with no customers inside, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. No one appears from thin air, the clerk does not run off to deliver any messages. Things merely carry on, as if it was just one more oddball customer in a city where odd is the standard.

It's a long time before Severus releases the spell and hauls his co-worker's head back, hand gripped in his hair, tip of his wand pointed directly between his eyes. There's a soft noise like a whimper and the clerk goes quiet again, punctuated by the sound of the store locks sealing of their own accord. In this he is a surgeon, and all parties are grateful - no one ever died from a memory charm, not even a complex one, but Severus knows full well what a man can live through.

When he's done, he takes Malfoy's card, and leaves.