August, 1895 — Knockturn Alley

It was easy to hate London in August, with the heat trapped close to the city streets, but at least he seldom needed to do anything during the middle of the day when it was at its worst. The heat was still oppressive in the afternoon when he walked in towards work, but it would die off throughout the night and he'd be awake late enough to get something like fresh air on the walk home. What passed for fresh air in downtown London in August, anyway.

He had been working here long enough that he was sometimes asked to open the pub; this was not to suggest that the manager trusted him, but rather that he had determined he would rather have another hour to sleep off last night's hangover than drag himself in to open doors and count tills. The key to the front door was left on the upper edge of a windowsill that looked into the alley, and whose shutters were therefore perpetually closed. Dil wasn't even sure they were capable of opening any more. He had to half climb onto the sill to reach the key, then circled back to the front of the building.

Someone was sitting on the stoop. They didn't look like they belonged here. Diligent gave them a shrewd look and then stepped over them on his way to the door. "Bar's not open yet," he told them. "And you ought to clear out before it is. If you're sat here when the manager comes in he'll chase you off with a broom."

If he had to guess, they were probably lost. Hopefully they were lost, and not looking for lodging... the Jackrabbit had rooms, but didn't rent them at a decent rate and therefore hardly let them out at all. The current manager seemed to view the rooms and lodgers therein as a personal inconvenience, since it meant he might be obliged to do something for them sooner than noon.

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Sam was glad Knockturn Alley was so far Hogsmeade. It was not a place he wanted to visit often. He figured his father had gotten there by floo - though Merlin knows where he got the powder, they didn't have any at home - but he hadn't asked.

Sam had walked there. Not all the way of course - there'd been a print delivery to be made to the Ministry, which conveniently connected to Diagon Alley but otherwise he'd walked. That did unfortunately mean he was there in his work clothes, looking a bit too clean-pressed for the stoop he found himself on, but Sam was used to feeling at least a little out of place.

He'd been scribbling in a little notebook while he waited when he felt someone step over and past him. He might have scolded himself for not being more vigilant, given where he was, if he had anything on him worth stealing. He stood, tucking away the notebook and pencil stub into a pocket, and brushed off the seat of his trousers.

"I'm here to see about a tab that needs paying." He said to the back of the man's head as he unlocked the door. Depending on the size of the tab, the manager might be very glad to see him.

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Dil made a face at that, though since he was facing the door and the gentleman was standing beside him it likely went undetected. To say that having someone show up at opening to pick up a dropped tab was unusual would have been an understatement. To have someone come by early enough to be waiting when he arrived to open was preposterous. Probably he didn't know when the bar opened, Diligent presumed, because it couldn't have been his tab. Relatively clean-cut kid like this likely wouldn't have been drinking here in the first place, and if he had Dil would have remembered him.

"Can't do that 'til we open," he said over his shoulder. He wasn't in any special hurry to get the tab settled, since it wasn't his money. The Jackrabbit had tabs left unpaid two or three times a week, and that was no skin off his back. Technically they could have turned anyone over to the constabulary for failure to pay, but for some smaller sums it wasn't worth the trouble of calling them in. The reputation they had as the sort of place where one would not encounter law enforcement was worth more than one man could drink in a night, and Diligent would cut them off any future nights until they'd squared the bill away. Generally they were more motivated to do that at the beginning of the night when they were in need of a drink than at the end of it when they were six sheets to the wind. For the really large bills the manager sometimes sent them to collections, but again that was none of Diligent's business.

The out-of-placeness of the younger man struck him again as he looked back over his shoulder, and he hesitated before pushing the door open. "Whose tab?"

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There was something uniquely unpleasant about trying to give money to someone who didn't seem to want it all that bad. Money that Sam didn't necessarily have a ton of. He craned his neck, checking for a sign to confirm he had the right place. It still fit the category of 'rabbit-something' so he pushed on.

"Wrecker?" he said after a quick calculation. If that didn't work he'd try his surname next. "Talks about quidditch a lot - mitght've left a broken pocket watch as surety?" Said pocket watch might not have been worth much but it would have been handy to know exactly what time it was - if it worked. But knowing the time wouldn't help much when he also didn't know what the bar's open hours were. He was starting to think they were a ways off.

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   Diligent Grimshawe

Dil frowned at him. He knew the man he was talking about, because he was the sort who got louder as the night went on and his inhibitions thinned out. Was he one of the ones that had been thrown out before? Maybe, maybe not. He was in that sort of category in Diligent's brain, in any case — the kind of men who might be trouble, if given enough drink and the right set of conditions to spark them off. The Jackrabbit didn't cut people off unless there was some evidence that they'd run out of money to keep paying, so with cases like that Dil's only recourse was to try and massage the crowd enough to prevent the right set of conditions from cropping up. Strategically inviting people over to tables or introducing them to people to steer them away from the places they were likely to find arguments.

"And who're you?" he asked. "Just someone lookin' for a pocket watch?"

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"His son." he said with what was supposed to be an internalized sigh. He almost resented having to convince someone to take his money but he had to remember he was the strange one here. The bar keeps at his father's more regular haunts were used to this song and dance.

"Look, if you could just hold off on the curse I can come back and pay it at a better time." The pocket watch would be nice but he'd stopped hanging hopes on that years ago.

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What a sorry sod this supposed Quidditch great had turned out to be, sending his son out to settle his tabs. Maybe he was still suffering too much under last night's hangover to brave the sunlight, even though it was nowhere near early. Maybe he was already drinking. A little hair of the dog that rolled right into another night at another pub. Diligent had vices aplenty but he'd never been that kind of drinker. Working at a bar, though, he met his fair share of them.

And what a sorry sod this kid was, waiting on a stoop and trying to explain himself on behalf of an old drunk. What did he do it for? What kind of gratitude did he get for it? Dil couldn't imagine himself in that position... but then, he had left home and not looked back until the whole thing disappeared with his family in it, so maybe he was the odd one out there.

"You can come in," he decided. Now that he could recognize what a mortifying ordeal this probably was for the younger man, he wasn't feeling cruel enough to make him needlessly repeat it. Diligent pushed the door open and stepped inside, making space for the other man to do the same. "But you'll have to wait for me to get the till set up if you brought cash."

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   Sam Leakey

Sam stepped in but there was less relief to be found inside the bar than there was in finally making progress on his errand. The bar might offer protection from what sun there was outside but it had the dim and stuffy closeness of a room that had been firmly shut for hours.

He nodded a silent 'of course' about the till but found his voice to say, "I brought some..." Of course he knew better than admit to what he had on him but the real issue is he'd only been able to guess at how much he'd need.

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Diligent moved briskly into the room, not pausing to offer the younger man any direction on what to do with himself in the meantime. Working half his life in service as he did, Dil generally relished any opportunity to leave someone feeling uncomfortable. He didn't have anything against this kid, but he did seem like the sort who would stand awkwardly in the middle of the room for twenty minutes rather than sit where he hadn't been invited. Diligent could hardly let that go to waste.

He set up several things on the bar, working quickly through years of practice but by no means hurrying. Then he disappeared into the back room and came back with a sack that clinked as he walked, heavy with small change. He set it down by the till and opened it to begin counting out the various denominations, then glanced at the piece of parchment beside it to find the amount on the tab.

He rattled off the sum to the younger man and then ducked his head under the bar briefly. "...And a pocket watch," he announced, on coming up with it. He looked at it appraisingly for a moment and turned it over in his hands, then set it down next to the bag of change he needed to count. "I don't think it's broken," he mused. "Just gummed up. Looks like it's been at the bottom of a pint or two." And had the sticky texture to match. Dil grabbed a rag and wiped his hands off before he turned his attention to the coin.

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   Sam Leakey