Now that she was staring at him at this angle, Charley felt a spark of recognition. Something she really wouldn't rather have thought of, but it might have been only a week ago that the uncouth man had shed all but his most immodest of clothes to wade into the lake beside Hogsmeade. It would have earned a snigger from the urchin, until he decided to dress her down with words alone. "Yeah, an' what's yers called, 'Swill Chic'? En't be-argered 'nuff meself to go out wearin' summat like that."

She backed up when he stood, crossing arms over her chest. Had she thought better of it, the urchin might have pulled out her wand to defend herself. Surely she had her wand along, right? In this dusty retreat, it was clear that she didn't have any herself. "What's it yer business what I'm doing in London? Not like ya got a clue 'bout where my Ma an' Pa'd be."

There, she said it. He was bound to be satisfied now, enough to back off. If the man wasn't about to help her, Charley was about to have a long journey ahead. Patting the long pocket slipped between her skirts, she found her wand at last. By now, the spells she knew might be enough to get by, until she found another working floo anyway.

"Crawlin' through fireplaces has to be the daftest thing a wizard's ever came up with," Charley grumbled to herself, pining after circumstances she might have known better about. For all the mishaps that followed the search for her parents, she might have guessed someone had put a curse on them. Or her. That would explain the floo going bad, after all. "'Course it'd be a wizard, too, wouldna catch a lady thinking o' getting clever with a sooty flue."

If only she knew how to make a portkey, that would get her right to the city without going through a chimney first. Awful things.

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