Juliana was quite religious about checking the post box she kept at the Diagon Alley post office, because she never knew when one of her subjects might have some sort of crisis that required her attention (or, more accurately, she never knew when they might write and request her attention; their crises, due to the nature of their affliction, tended to happen at one fairly predictable time of the month). Between that and the potential for new subjects to write in at any point, since she renewed her advertisement in the classifieds of the Daily Prophet every few months, she made it a point to check the box every day, even on the weekends. Besides, it was nice to have an excuse to get out of the house and go for a walk. It gave some minor structure to what otherwise could easily have become a forty-eight hour period of burying herself in work and forgetting to eat or brush her hair.

Respectably dressed and groomed, then, she'd set off, but the box had been empty today. She was walking the very familiar route back to her parents' house when she noticed something quite unfamiliar on the side of one of the buildings: a large, painted sigil of some kind, which appeared to be glowing.

"That's magical," she observed to herself. It was worth observing because she was currently in the midst of a very Muggle street, though no one seemed to have noticed it just yet — whether because of a typical lack of traffic on Sunday morning or because it had some quality which prevented it from being observed by Muggles, she wasn't sure. "And certainly wasn't there yesterday."

(@"Elsie Beauregard")