March 6th, 1890— The Hog's Head

Jimmy was late. While it wasn't unusual for the boys to be occasionally tardy with pieces of information (people they were casing could have a sudden change of plants, routes could change etc), he was hours late. Hestia knew the boys could take care of themselves; she'd taught them well, made sure they could handle themselves (hell she'd practiced self-defense with them herself and had the scars to prove it). Still, that didn't stop her from worrying about them when they were late.

The night stretched on like molasses and it didn't help that the patrons of the bar were being extra insufferable tonight. She'd had to resist snapping at a few of them when they got extra fresh with her, as her impatience had been expounded by the absence of her charge.

At this point, she'd resorted to obsessively cleaning the bar. She'd run out of things to do and apparently her only solace was ridding the sink of the grime that had built up over the past week. She knew enough house cleaning spells to get it done in a snap, but until her shift was over and she could go out searching for Jimmy, she had to occupy her hands somehow and apparently this was it.

Then - thank Merlin - in the middle of scrubbing a particularly stubborn spot, the witch heard the teensiest of creeks behind her. Immediately, she knew it was Jimmy sneaking into the storage room. Her sign to make herself scarce. As soon as she heard the door close, Hestia whirled around and flung the door open, her expression promising violence if he did not immediately explain what delayed him so.

As soon as she laid eyes on Jimmy, however, the storm calmed to make way for a dead stillness as she took him in: hair in disarray, dirt smudged on his face, clothes disheveled and - most importantly - blood from a gash across his forehead. Her coal eyes blazed. "What happened?" she said, closing the door and summoning a clean rag before bending down to get a closer look.

– Elias Grimstone / James Fletcher –

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.

The thought that Hestia would be mad about his late arrival was not nearly enough to stop Jimmy. (Hestia might be a cool grown-up, but even she could get annoyingly grown-up-ish about things from time to time.)

So he snuck into the storeroom, barely aware of what time it was, anyway. When Hestia found him he was grinning ear from ear, dirt and dishevelment notwithstanding. She did look a little mad. “You won’t BELIEVE IT, Hestia -” James began, bouncing on his heels and then remembering to take it down a notch, so the whole vicinity of the Hog’s Head wouldn’t hear.

“You won’t believe it,” he repeated, in a dramatic whisper, hoping she would be intrigued and impressed and in awe, and not prepared for her fussing to take away from that. “I definitely beat him, see,” he explained (sort of), using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth and cheek where he could feel mud - or blood - smeared on it, “you wish you’d seen what I did back there!”

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The fact that he was smiling from ear to ear didn't stop her heart from pounding a mile a minute. Frankly, Hestia didn't know whether to be impressed, annoyed or proud as she looked him up and down once more, skirting his person for any sign of serious injury. Her pride for him gave over to the mild anger she held as she realized this must mean that Jimmy had – as usual – gone charging directly into the line of fire like she so explicitly told them not to do time and time again.

So she settled for keeping her words to herself in regards to this and let out a noise that sounded somewhere between a grunt of annoyance and whine of exasperation. "Jimmy," she started evenly, yes, knowing full well how much of a mother hen she sounded like. "What took you so long, you were supposed to be back an hour and a half ago?"

True to his nature, Jimmy didn't look seriously hurt but she knew with the example she set when downplaying her own injuries that he might have picked up a few bad habits here and there from her. She reached for his face, taking it in her palm and turning it right and left, examining his cuts. "Did you at least leave the poor guy with enough stamina to run away?" she indulged grimly, taking the cloth and wiping the blood off from the corner of his mouth. The rag came away a dark brick red with little clumps of dirt in it; a sign she took to mean he'd been scrapping around in the dirt with someone. Hestia barely glanced at it before chuckling slightly, though against her own will, since the last thing she wanted to do was encourage the kid to go out and do this again.

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.

Jimmy watched for her reaction with eyes as wide and angelic as he could make ‘em, and pouted petulantly at her whiny-grunt noise. Why was she worried? About one of the other boys, sure, but Jimmy? Didn’t she know he’d get whatever she asked of him done and dusted with no trouble?

“I’ll tell you if you gerroff me,” he said grumpily now, because she had taken his face in her hands and was wiping at it. He thought the forehead gash was probably the worst of it, because that was where the fellow had drawn a knife on him.

But first things first. (Even if she didn’t stop wiping his face like he was a mutt who couldn’t wash himself, he was too excited not to recount his tale.) “Well, see, I was casing that place in Wellingtonshire like I was s’posed to,” he began, using his ‘magician’s’ voice like the one he’d learned from his mother’s Italian bastard man years ago, making every action seem inexplicably marvellous. “And for ages it was real boring, yeah, no one coming nor going, but then - guess what I see but some odd bloke climbing out through a window!?!” Here Jimmy inserted a gasp, in case Hestia wasn’t suitably shocked. “And I dunno who he is but he’s clearly robbed ‘em, and that’s what’s so funny. So I decided I could either stay put or I could -” he used his hand to make a pouncing movement, by which he meant he’d leapt out of the bushes and tackled a man, “- and he might’ve had a knife,” he said, all in a rush, “but we were tusslin' for a bit and then the butler of the place came out and saw the whole thing and helped me pin the bloke down, and then he thought I was just some nice kid who’d saved the house’s stuff - and his bacon, I bet - so he was all “thaaaank you” and he gave me some sickles and a snack for my troubles. So I had to stay and chat.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting for her look of awe, and then raised a serious finger, meaning halt, wait, there’s more. With one grubby hand, he rummaged in his pocket and produced a set of keys, dangling them before her. “And he didn’t even notice I nabbed his set of master keys. How’s that, Hestia?”

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Hestia let out another grunt of frustration as he batted her hands away. Regardless, she pressed the cloth to the gash on his forehead while he regailed his story to her, the look on her face neutral.

Jimmy always had a knack for theatrics, so she removed the rag from his forehead and sat back to listen further. He was a fast talker, and not only because he was enthusiastic about the mission. At first, it had been hard to keep up with the stories of his scouting missions, however, she had learned to just let him talk as she pieced the story together for herself.

Hestia had to admit – as reckless as Jimmy could be, he'd made a good decision. Had he stayed, let the other guy go and tried to rob the family then, he could have been caught for both his thriving and the previous man's. But in deciding to stop the thief, he'd gained the trust of the right person. Anyone who knew the structure of a household knew that the butler and head housekeeper were the ones who ran the show. The upstairs gentry may hold the power to remove staff but the butler and housekeeper knew the ins and outs better than anyone.

While she never sought to discredit Jimmy's tales, he did have the tendency to embellish stories, which was something she didn't want to dampen, but always took with a small grain of salt. It seemed in this case, he wasn't exaggerating. Her coal eyes zeroed in on the set of keys he now dangled in front of her like a piece of bait.

The neutral expression that rested upon her face as he told his tale split to reveal a wide grin. "Oh, well done, Jimmy." she exclaimed triumphantly, curling her fingers around the metal keys in front of her. The cogs in her mind started whirring, knowing there was only a matter of time until the butler knew his keys were missing if he didn't already know.

With her attention temporarily diverted from the scraped up boy to the keys, she finally sat down on the floor and took out her wand. "Right then, how long ago was this that you left?" she said, tapping her wand and creating a duplicate of the keys.

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.

He waited with wide-eyed expectation, suddenly almost nervous, for Hestia’s reaction. Her face was impossible to read, and ultimately, whatever trouble he got into (or made), his primary objective was to do her proud.

He mimicked her grin unconsciously, a wave of relief coming over him as she took the keys. He’d done good, then! (And distracted her from cleaning him up, which was also a bonus.) Jimmy watched in barely-disguised awe as she duplicated the keys without a struggle (ughhhh when was he going to get a wand and learn these things?! Couldn’t Hestia start teaching him these tricks in advance of Hogwarts?) and then straightened up at her question. “Not long,” Jimmy said, puffing out his chest. “Came straight here, see. And you know I’m the fastest kid in the village.” And smart, too. “What d’we do now?”

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Hestia couldn't help but laugh as the boy preened at her praise. He'd done well today, so she'd let it slide, but she knew Jimmy could get more than cocky and was not quick to pick up on it. They were alone, so she let him do his mental victory lap.

He also wasn't wrong – Jimmy was incredibly fast, and his size only proved to be more useful because of it. "We make sure you stay in the butler's good graces. You have to go back to the butler." Hestia said definitively, pocketing the set of keys and giving the original set back to Jimmy. She surveyed the boy, immediately regretting having attempted to clean him up. "Damn," She muttered, snatching up a dirty cloth, plopping it unceremoniously on his head and ruffling his hair vigorously. "You need to have more dirt on you." She said talking more to herself than him as she moved the cloth to his face, which seemed to help.

Hestia paused in her fussing and raised an eyebrow as she looked down at him. "Do you know why you might need to go back to the butler?" She inquired, reaching out a finger and tapping the keys by way of a clue.

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.

Well wasn’t this a fun twist of fate, Jimmy thought to himself as she started making him dirty again, giggling a little at the ticklish cloth on his cheeks.

He felt the plan and the purposefulness in Hestia’s dark eyes, and was still a bit in awe of her when she raised her eyebrow at him, expectantly. “I gotta put these back where I found ‘em,” Jimmy said, his hands folding around the keys more securely, hoping he’d answered right. It made sense - her secret set were only gonna be useful if no one knew she had ‘em, and the butler hadn’t thought he’d lost ‘em - but Jimmy, in all honesty, hadn’t thought this far ahead until now. He scratched the back of his neck, thinking hard for his story about returning to the Wellingtonshire house. “What should I say if someone sees me?” He could slip the keys discreetly back in the butler’s pocket if he spoke to him, or maybe even drop them on the ground by the door to make the man think he’d lost them, or even into the hallway to hang them back up - but what if someone saw him nosing about the same place again?

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"Almost," She said encouragingly, crossing her arms and letting the shelf beside her take her weight. Hestia grinned again, the wheels in her mind turning quickly. If James had seen the butler use the keys after they'd talked, this wouldn't work... "The most ideal situation is for him to have not used his keys when you were with him, and for you to go back to him directly and say that you ran into the guy again and realized he was the one who stole the keys." She tapped her nose with a smirk down at the boy, knowing he'd cotton on the rest.

"Make sense?" Hestia asked, before not giving him a chance to answer verbally before continuing on. "Now, if he did use the keys when you were with him, that's when you have to sneak back quietly and put the keys back where he wouldn't be suspicious of where he left them."

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.

To his credit, he listened closely, because he could do that when things were important. And if he did this wrong, he’d be in for a beating from the butler, and he’d already got in one scuffle too many today. (For Hestia’s sanity. Jimmy would launch himself into five a day if he got the chance.)

“I got it,” Jimmy said assuredly, tossing the keys from one hand to another like he was juggling just to prove how easy it would be to do what she’d asked. (Speaking of, he bet Hestia would know how to juggle. She should teach him that next.)

“I’ll go now, and I’ll be right back this time, you can time me if you like,” Jimmy said in a gleeful rush, making a move to leave the room and then backtracking, just to bat his eyelashes at her in what he figured would be some angelically alluring way. “Ya know, when I get back, I might be quite hungry though,” Jimmy dropped in, as innocent a suggestion as he could make it, and his stomach even backed him up by rumbling. Hestia was smart. She wouldn’t need more of a hint than that.

Besides, if she liked mothering him and the other boys so much, a snack was the least she could do.

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Though his confidence was through the roof, Hestia still worried about him; something she never saw herself doing when she first joined The Fox in his dealings. She sighed, though his offer to time him allowed Hestia to give him room to be confident but then go searching for him if he wasn't back by a certain time....

She bit. "Fine," She said, rolling her eyes, half exasperated, half amused. "If you're not back by half four, I'm sending out the search dogs." And by search dogs, of course, she meant herself. She raised her eyebrows again at the mild gall of his suggestion but ultimately gave in and ruffled his hair affectionately. "The nerve of you, James, really." Hestia said, though sure enough when he was to return he'd find a large portion of snacks for him to feast on.

  

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Welcome to The Iron Fang Inn.