18th September, 1889 — Florence’s Bartonburg House

A little bit of tampering with the Floo Network, and Jay had clambered out of the fireplace at Florence’s new residence. (Not hers, really, he considered, thinking uncomfortably of all the men who fell sway to her charms, who apparently would do almost anything to possess her.)

“Florence?” He murmured, picking off a speck of ash that had settled on him. She wasn’t expecting him, necessarily, though Simeon had sent him to check up on her - discreetly, of course. It wouldn’t do to go waltzing in the front door. Nor arrive when someone else was here.

But it was mid-morning, a while after his shift had ended at the shop; and even if she had been entertaining last night, hopefully she would be alone now. Not that it hurt to be quiet, just in case.

Jay looked around the room. It was his first time here, so there was plenty to look at. The furniture, the wallpapers, the view from the window onto Bartonburg, which was quainter than anywhere he’d known in London. Her things, and all the things that had been bought for her. (That had bought her.)

The front room was deserted, and most of the downstairs. Listening intently, Jay began - cautiously - to climb the stairs.

---

Jay started slightly at the war-cry that came, and the abrupt appearance of the poker, being brandished by Florence herself. He had taken half a step backwards (and fortunately not fallen halfway down the stairs) before she lowered the weapon and started lecturing.

“Sorry,” Jay said mildly, too glad to see her to have much room for the shock of nearly getting his eye poked out or his head bashed in, and hardly able to hold back even the smallest smile. “I thought I’d better not ring the doorbell.” He scratched briefly at the side of his neck, not wanting to draw undue attention to the other visitors Florence must get here, or draw people back too obviously to Fox & Son, and their larger business at hand.

“Sorry I didn’t warn you,” he added in apology, looking around the upstairs landing as he let her catch her breath. “You’re not busy, are you?” Not too busy to wield a poker, at least.

---

Reading a novel, hm? This new position in Hogsmeade had really given her plenty of leisure time.

Not that he would even pretend to be jealous. What she did was something... not at all in his wheelhouse.

“Not really,” Jay admitted, glancing at her book and supposing he had heard of Poe, though he had lost most of his taste for fiction since his Hogwarts days when he’d picked up an adventure book or two between the textbooks. “The only books I see are Fox & Son’s accounts,” he said with a suppressed snort. (Though, what with the things he quietly wrote his parents in letters, he could almost say he’d forged a career in writing fiction himself.)

“But it's not making you jumpy at all, is it, this novel?” Jay said wryly, in his own kind of brotherly joke, not quite over the near-attack of the poker.

---

Jay smiled quietly at her hushing him, and only gave her a slight nudge at her shoulder in response. As for her question - “I could be,” he said with a half-grin, following her gracelessly down the stairs. It was close to his ‘dinnertime’, if not everyone’s breakfast or lunch, but nevermind that. He was a man, and could always be hungry, had been that way since boyhood - but he, and he suspected most of Fox’s brood of adopted children, had also experienced what it really was to be hungry, that constant ache inside like one’s body had started gnawing at itself in place of having anything else to consume... so he had never dealt with the idea of hunger quite as lightly since.

Mostly he was interested to see the rest of her new Bartonburg place, but following her downstairs again was the right direction for that too, and some food on the side certainly wouldn’t hurt.

---

Someone - the cook, he supposed - had gotten together a grand old pantry here, Jay mused, poking about unabashedly in the cupboards and nooks and crannies while Florence plated up a meal. (He’d have rearranged some of the cook’s storage-work - but then, Jay liked order. And had grown up in a greengrocer’s.)

“Oh, much the same,” Jay said, in between mouthfuls, as he shovelled food in and swallowed quickly so as to speak again. “Hestia brought in a couple of good things the other day, and she’s seen Imogen in Hogsmeade, though we don’t hear so much down there -” Useful information came filtered down the grapevine, but of course Hestia had the Hog’s Head as an excuse to be in Hogsmeade, and as a maid Imogen didn’t get quite the time to go derelicting her duties. “Eli’s been busy too,” he said with a soft grin. “But how’s Hogsmeade? You’ve been busy too?” Florence knew precisely what all the Foxes would be up to, after all, and it was what she was up to - whose acquaintance she was making, which parties she was attending - that was the more interesting question to him.

---

“Can’t I?” Jay entreated, and indeed he wouldn’t truly touch or mess about with anything without her say-so, but he did shoot another longing glance at the kitchen cupboard.

He nodded approvingly at that news. “And how are the parties?” He and Florence had grown up together, pretty much - or at least, Florence had grown up in the same environment he had - but their paths had diverged quite drastically under Mr. Fox’s hands of guidance. It was part of her role (and a clever scheme, as evidenced by all that she was gaining for them) but Florence now lived quite conspicuously.

It was almost Jay’s idea of a certain hell.

But he hoped, at least, that she didn’t feel the same way.

---

“Excellent,” Jay murmured, beaming outright at her permission to interfere - intervene, to put it more generously! - and as soon as he had swallowed his mouthful of food, left his plate to go and meddle in the cupboards, pulling out jars with a kind of meditative happiness. It might be a shock to the cook when next she came, but even the thought of that gave Jay an uncharacteristic flicker of amusement.

He believed her when she said she met some interesting people, but to be perfectly honest, Jay couldn’t quite fathom the sorts of people who did go to parties. He could read about worlds he didn’t know, of course, and sometimes he met with Mr. Fox’s clients who seemed like they came from wealth - but more often he only met with their associates. And it was not like people in ballgowns much strolled by Knockturn Alley, even though Jay spent most nights awake, so he certainly couldn’t say he’d ever seen them for himself. And, quite unsurprisingly, he knew nothing about any Mr. Pettigrews. “You know, I’ve never worked out what people actually do at parties,” he reflected quizzically. It was not the sort of thing he would ever ask a stranger - but she was family, and could make fun of him if she liked. And more than anyone else in the family, she was fairly placed to possibly enlighten him.

---

---

By the amount of balls it sounded like those sorts of people went to, he was amazed if they still found things to talk about with the same people over and over again, and a little impressed. He did snort at the flaunting wealth part of it: ah. So that was what they talked about, their assets. (Well, they needn’t stop: that was all the better for Florence’s job. They must be making it easy.)

He shot a deadpan look at her over his shoulder at her next suggestion, vaguely traumatised from the merest thought of it. Dusting off some flour from his fingers that had been loose in the cupboard, he replied, now with a lopsided grin: “That’s cruel of you, after I’ve cleaned up your cupboards.” Now if he were invisible, it might be worth going, just to see a different world.

“Do they stare at you all the time?” He asked instead, concerned for her and how impervious she must be to all judgement. She didn’t seem traumatised, herself - she seemed to enjoy that - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t worry about her, all the same. “And -” he inclined his head at the rest of the house, to mean her current paramour, “he’s good to you, too?” She was a means to an end, but some things just weren’t worth her getting hurt in the process.

---

Florence couldn't help a bit of a witchy cackle at the look he gave her at her suggestion. "I do apologize," she said, not sounding sincere at all. She had always seen Jay as a brother and unfortunately for him, that meant some amount of teasing and picking on. Which she also welcomed from him even if she didn't always show it.

"Not all the time. Most of the time, the less uptight men delight in my company. It's usually the prudes that present an issue with my presence." Sometimes she did manage to charm the women as well which worked out for them. "Yes, he is a puppy, really." Florence did not tend to love people but she was very fond of her current pet.

---