Strange Errand [Roderick]

[Deleted]

@roderick

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broom & bat & bludger ❤ Krystopher Roye pledged long ago, when he was still a student at Hogwarts, that the last place he would ever go was Knockturn Alley. You would never catch him dead in that place. It was full of people no one wanted to associate with, and it was said that things darker than the unforgivable curses lurked in the cobwebby corners. Still, some good wizards and members of the ministry did find themselves there, and on this particular day, Kryss was the one to set foot on the black pavement. He had come to get a potion and return a favor that he owed one of his coworkers. Knockturn was the only place to get that concoction, so Kryss had sucked up his instinctive dislike of the narrow alleyway. Now as he approached a potions shop and pulled open the door, he glanced around the small place and tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness. There were some jars sitting on the counters with ingredients Kryss recognized- Wormwood, Eye of Newt, and Coriander- but many of them he didn't, and they looked scary. Like they could jump out of the jars and kill him. It made him already more uneasy than he was. "Hello?" he called, and wandered up to the front counter. He hoped that the owner wasn't as scary as he was imagining. PYXIS ★

[Deleted]

And life went on as usual for Rod.  Aside from being a Death Eater, tricking people where necessary, practicing his spells, and anticipating his next move in Death Eater action (granted, he actually needed to gain more experience in that field and get more used to destruction), Rod mainly worked in his potions shop.  He like to brew potions--in fact, that was probably the only thing he ever liked to do.  He rarely ever exited the shop, and when he wasn't in his shop, he mainly headed back to the Montfort mansion.  He hated public places and showing his face outside a lot.

The ironic thing about owning a shop for him was that he hated his customers, period.  Unless they were Death Eaters or highborn purebloods, they were beings that he wanted to practice his dark spells on.  He had a shop just to have an excuse for brewing potions from dawn until dusk, and because it was a good cover up for a Death Eater.  The brooding, quiet, calm, and private young man who rarely did anything and was shut from the sun.  Sounded a lot like a typical creepy inhabitant of Knockturn Alley?  Who would've imagined that he would wreak havoc on people like a lunatic?

Of course, though, he wasn't nasty to customers.  He had to contain himself and remain impassive, cold, and controlled.  Rod forced himself to be civil to them, and it wasn't the easiest.  But he still managed; after all, Rod was good at staying casual.  At least he didn't need to be warm.  Some of them were simply okay and never bothered him much just by being ordinary, but others made him want to rip their heads off because of whatever made them uniquely stupid in his eyes.

The creep was sitting on a chair behind the counter, reading a book.  It was then that he heard a customer enter through the door, and he heaved a sigh.  Time to serve more idiots.  One look at the guy and Rod figured he wouldn't like him.  Rod never did well with other males as much as females, especially ones who looked to be around his age and looked good.  He considered them to be rivals, no matter who they were because he was oh, so vain.  In his opinion, the bloke looked dumb.

He got up from his chair to stand in front of the counter.  He did what he could to be nonchalant, but with this man, he couldn't help but let a more hard edge escape in his expression.  What the hell do you want? "Yes?" he asked.  His tone was the same as his expression.  Almost completely stony and devoid of feeling, but still with a (hopefully slight) grumpy edge to it.  He hadn't really meant to let his grouchiness leak out, but his composure just wouldn't comply.  Maybe he ought not to care so much.  After all, he already really disliked this person more than ever just by looking at his face.  Why should he, Roderick Montfort, have to worry about pleasing a lowlife like the person in front of him? It was different with a guy than with females for Roddie.  As weird as some women could be, Rod managed to contain himself, but with guys, the show was over quickly.  Sometimes the same gender got along swimmingly well, but other times...they clashed.              

@bryune

[Deleted]

@roderick

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broom & bat & bludger ❤ Kryss didn't have to wait long before a man stood up to greet and serve him. He had been hiding in a dark corner so when he suddenly rose and spoke up with a single-word greeting Kryss jumped and invariably let slip what his mother would have considered a curse. "Bloody hell- I didn't see you." No point in apologizing. This man seemed like the kind of person that didn't appreciate them. Well, maybe he did, but in these parts it was better to be safe than sorry. Once Krystopher was over his surprise, he took a better look at the owner. Or perhaps he was only an employee. He seemed young enough to be so, younger than Kryss had expected him to be, with short, mousy brown hair and a hard, firm mouth. Skinny as a rail, with large hands, it was no surprise that he made his living in the potions business. If it wasn't for the particular cold gleam in his eyes he might be considered handsome. That look- it made the Ministry man feel uncomfortable, and gave him this nagging feeling that this was going to end badly. VERY badly. Then his glance strayed back towards the corner. Now he saw that there was a chair and a book there. So that's why he hadn't seen the younger man at first. He was still except for the occasional turn of the page. Kryss found himself wondering exactly how many hours a day the other read, how many books he went through in a week, and what they were about. Probably something dastardly- but he was being judgemental now. He shook his head slightly and set his mind on what he needed. "I'd like a Alihotsy drought, please." Kryss hadn't inquired into why exactly it was needed, and really he didn't have a good idea, either. The leaves from the Alihotsy tree were well known for their laugh-inducing scent, but when mixed into a drought, then breathed or drunk, they caused hysteria. Generally it was considered something that you didn't mix yourself; at least, you weren't allowed to make any for personal use in your seven years at Hogwarts. It was one of the dirtiest tricks known to Wizards. Perhaps he shouldn't have been polite. But it couldn't do any harm, he thought. Surely people still said please for things in Knockturn alley. This was becoming more and more like a foreign country every minute now. PYXIS ★

[Deleted]

Seeing that surprised look upon his face, that hilariously pathetic look on his face, Rod couldn't help it.  He let out a short laugh that was not lacking in the contempt he felt, because there wouldn't have been any point in laughing in the first place if it was not filled with scorn.  "What else could you have seen?" he said drolly.  The idiot, showing off his fears so easily, being fidgety at every little movement and noise.  Obviously he was not fit to be even an auror.  Now, perhaps he was lacking in manners, but, at the moment, he wasn't really minding them.  Plus, compared to what other things he was capable of, this was rather nice in his standards, besides the frozen demeanor that he usually sported towards customers on a regular basis.  There was just something about this man that made him irritated enough to divert from that irksome civility.  But what? The fact that he was young, male, and rather good-looking--not to mention, in Rod's view, stupid, too?

But then again, he had dealt with that half-wit woman who had kept on shoving a muggle thing in his face without losing his cool...well, at her.  He did, however, end up destroying the muggle thing out of rage when a muggle talked to him from inside the device or something (it had just been a muggle woman named Annie who seemed to have a husband also named Rod, or "Roddie" as she called him, and he thought it had been some dirty trick being played at him).  But then again, it was probably easier to contain himself when he was talking to someone who viewed kind of like a strange creature.  No point wasting his energies upon someone beyond help.  This oaf, however, he saw as a regular person who he had no liking for, and that was easier to make him feel chagrined.            

He watched with an ever so slight smirk on his face as the man glanced at the corner where Rod had presumably been sitting at earlier, and then turned his cold gaze back on the bloke.  An alihosty drought? That was easy enough.  At least he was actually ordering something for all of his faults.  Rod hated people who just browsed more than anything, but he just let them wander around his shop like usual, as long as they didn't bother them.  He still had a bad taste pertaining to those sort of people because of that strange lady with the muggle artifact that had been bugging him--she, too, had been "just looking", but then again that lady had tried to interact with him.  As much as it annoyed him, he figured he could tolerate people who quietly looked about...and of course, behaved.  For all that he forced himself to deal with people, he had his limits.  He wouldn't be afraid to kick them out if they acted up, and no one should put it past him not to be literal about that.  He supposed that the next person like Willow Huckleberry who came his way would find themselves out on the streets.  He shouldn't have let her waste his time having to worry about that muggle thing, and he wondered why he hadn't done that sooner.  Oh well, lesson learned.  It hadn't happened to him before, but now that he knew people potentially like her might just enter his shop and fool around like that.  Therefore, he knew to be wary of who stepped into the door and didn't have doing business in mind.

"It'll be a moment," he said tersely before turning around and walking to the back of the shop, where the cauldron was.  He was going to go brew that potion and come back when he had completed it.  It wouldn't take long.  At least he got to brew potions in this godforsaken job that required interaction with people, the former which he loved doing more than anything, second or first to taking down muggle-loving good-guy butt depended on his mood sometimes. 

((In your next post you can say he came back.))

[Deleted]

@roderick

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broom & bat & bludger ❤ He should have expected it- at the sight of his scared expression the other man chuckled drolly and said "What else could you have seen?". Kryss's jaw tightened instinctively; that, he considered to be an insult. Though it wasn't wholly unexpected, it still made him angry. And, if he wasn't already wound up from stepping in here in the first place, it wore his short nerves down. He wasn't fully aware of it, but his gaze started to shift to the cold, icy stare he was famous for. "Oh, I can think of a few things." The retort came out a lot harsher than he had intended. Recoiling instantly, he realized too late that the damage had already been done. Roderick was right in one respect- that Krystopher wasn't fit to be an auror. Of course he wasn't fit to be an auror, because he wasn't. Kryss had never intended to go into fighting Dark Lords or evil creatures. All he had wanted to do was play Quidditch. Now he just happened to work for the Ministry, in a very un-aurorlike position. He was paid to schedule Quidditch matches and gobstones tournaments. Sure he could cast a corporeal patronus- a falcon- on will, but only because that had been part of his training. It was useful for sending messages and defending against Dementors. Neither of which he did on a frequent basis. He supposed that he should be less jumpy, though; he was an official part of the Order of the Phoenix now. Ginny Weasley had seen him as a good fit for the secret organization, and Kryss was extremely grateful. Even being allowed to know about the Order was an important thing in itself. The comforting thought drifted into his head that he may seem ordinary, but Krystopher Grant Roye was far from being so. Kryss relaxed as Roderick acknowledged his order and wandered back to start brewing it up. Now he truly got to look around at the jars that lined the walls. More than once a rat ran by his foot, and Kryss did his best to not balk, and control the rapid beating of his heart. He hated rodents- he had been diagnosed with murophobia by a muggle doctor and his boggart had always been a giant mouse. Even anything to do with them he avoided, like how now he avoided the mouse tail jar. Finally he heard the potions master's footsteps approaching, and Kryss went to meet him at the counter. "How much would you like?" At this point Kryss would probably just pay whatever Roderick asked, unless it was crazy high, of course. He was eager to get out of here. PYXIS ★