welcome to chimera!

[Victoria Summers]

The summer was not her favorite time of the year, it was never the vacation from work and stress like most of her peers viewed it. She got home with her stiff-lipped parents, with which she shared a room and was immediately expected to work. Her mother would often list a number of suitable boys she'd routed out in the neighborhood. Her mother saw Vicky's marriage as a way to secure their position in England. By marrying an actual, legal, resident, it would cement the family's position, make it much more difficult to deport them where they ever to get discovered. It was the same reason her mother was not as adverse as she should be to Grant's dreams of going off to war.

Of course, Vicky took no more heed to her mother's suggestions than she did to Grant's desperate pleas about being allowed. She felt no real pressure to concede to her mother's will. She did, however, have to help her mother work if she wanted to be fed. It was just easier to be home if she compromised, and so Vicky didn't really mind accompanying her mother to work cleaning houses and doing laundry.

The house they were working in today was large and not usually her mother's terrain. Vicky had gotten her into a cleaning agency in the Wizarding world solely as a substitute maid; she wouldn't have held up anywhere long term. She gave her mother her wand, told her to tuck it behind her ear and that none of the wealthy would actually watch her do the work they were paying for. Vicky's excuse was of course being underage and as long as the house was clean at the end of the day, it didn't make a difference.

It was also easier to do work in separate rooms from her mother. The wealthy might not watch her clean, but her mother certainly did and the constant comments on how she was scrubbing the floor the wrong way was infuriating. So she'd escaped to the third floor and had been working on what seemed to be a boy's bedroom. It was a right mess and despite the sign that had warned her to please not clean, Vicky was having none of it. Her mother would get to it sooner or later and would accuse her of being lazy.

The sign, however, and the notes she'd eventually stacked neatly on the desk had left her feeling a little uneasy. Something about the writing had seemed familiar and judging by some of the stuff the owner of the room would be school-age. There was an awkward chance she was cleaning the room of a schoolmate. This made Vicky gladder than ever that etiquette of the wealthy seemed to dictate pretending the help didn't exist. She was certainly not looking herself; her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, even her fringe held back with bobbypins. Her blouse was starchy and nunnish, buttoned tightly at the wrists and all the way up to her neck. Her skirt went to her ankles, with a very straight cut and a plain grey wool. And she was being quiet, looked serious as she plucked through expensive quills and astronomy paraphernalia and set them all up neatly on a dresser. Definitely not how she usually presented herself.

Once she'd sorted the desk, she collected the pile of wrappers and quill nubs and such to the rubbish bin. She heard someone on the stairs, but didn't panic because she'd been told no one but the father was home and he was to be sequestered in his study and so she figured it was her mother. Not bothering to call out because really she didn't want her mother there any sooner than she had to be, Vicky only kept cleaning, feeling some passing jealousy when she reorganized a very nice chess animated chess set.

[Janus Thickey]

It was strange to realise that once the summer was over, he wouldn't be going back to Hogwarts. Usually, Janus wavered between loathing and loving the summer: on one hand, it was quiet and he could be alone for as long as he wanted until he was called down to dinner, but on the other, his father's library was extremely limited compared to the one at Hogwarts (and he had to sit through the painful long formal dinners with his father at one end of the table and his aunt at the other end while he picked at his food and took notes on napkins. Now he spent most of his time writing to Gringotts about just when they wanted him to start work. Much to his pleasure, he'd been accepted for training as a curse-breaker, but the bank's training program didn't start until November, leaving Janus to cool his heels in London - or the country, which house his father felt like living in at the moment.

They were currently living in London, which at least gave him easy access to Diagon Alley and the book stores there, and Janus hoped they would remain there for the rest of the summer. At least when they were living in London he could easily leave the house and find somewhere else to go in the city; when they were in the country, he was usually stuck in the house unless he felt like paying a social call to the neighbours, and that had never been a particularly favourite pastime of his.

He had been at Diagon Alley for most of the day, shopping idly, his generous weekly allowance burning a hole in his pocket to the point where he'd started buying things that he didn't really need: a new telescope, some books on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a few potions ingredients that his personal cabinet was running low on, ties to replace the Ravenclaw ties now stuffed into the bottom of his sock drawer, a new pocket watch. But this was what he usually did on the days when the cleaning lady came to their home. Janus didn't like being in the way, or sitting around in his room watching someone try to clean around him. Then again, he always left a sign Spellotaped to his door, worded in his typical fashion, Please Do NOT Clean, the word 'not' capitalised and underlined and usually obeyed. Naturally untidy but thoroughly organised, Janus could never stand it when other people touched his things, or moved them around so that he no longer knew where they were. His father and aunt always told him to take the sign down, but he left it up anyway.

Now he was going up the stairs to his room, ready to put his new things into the mess that he lived in, perhaps start reading one of his new books before he even bothered setting his new watch to the correct time, maybe check on the chess game he'd enchanted to play itself, although he had been surprised at how slowly it was progressing. Apparently he'd bewitched it to over-think each move.

Accustomed to the request on his sign being honoured, Janus stopped in front of the door to his room when he noticed it was left open and the sign had been removed and there was a girl who was most definitely not Matilda, the usual cleaning lady, inside. Of course, the way the girl was dressed did her no favours, but that didn't change the fact that she'd completely disregarded his sign and gone in and--

His room was clean. Perhaps his horror was a bit much for something as relatively small as a reorganised room, but all Janus could think was that it would take ages for him to find where everything had been moved to and to move it back to where he knew it ought to be. He didn't drop his purchases or anything overly dramatic like that, but he did clear his throat in hopes that the cleaning girl would stop rearranging his chess set - now it would have to start all over, and Merlin knew how long a rematch would take! - and leave his room, and asked, dryly, "Didn't you see the sign?"

[Victoria Summers]

Vicky didn't really mind cleaning other people's houses, what she despised is when the wealthy condescended to speak to her. It was inevitably with some sort of offensive tone. Either overly-friendly as though she were their dog or that demeaning tone of talking to her like the sole point of her existence was to clean for them. The voice that interrupted her was doubly dreadful for being condescending and all too familiar. So she'd been cleaning Thickey's mess, she should have known. Straightening up and sighing, she quickly undid a button or three of her blouse; not in any bid to entice him, but at least to put a hole in the whole nun get up. Folding her hands demurely in front of her, she turned around. "I saw the sign, Master Thickey. I thought for the well being of the household, however, the smell should not be ignored. Turns out there's nothing you can do about the stench of self-righteous wanker."

It was a little humiliating to be caught in this position and she felt all of the sudden volatile. Despite her rather cool handling of his first abrupt greeting, Vicky felt more vulnerable and exposed than she liked. Only a select few at Hogwarts knew about her considerable poverty and that list had not included Janus Thickey. Her expression seemed deeply unhappy no matter how she struggled to hide it. Besides her poverty, if her mother happened to come talk to them there would be no denying her thick accent. Too many things Vicky kept close to her chest were due to be exposed and that seemed horrendously unfair.

She liked Janus. Had even, although she wouldn't ever admit it, been disappointed he was graduating and wouldn't look back twice. But she hadn't trusted him with the intimate details of her own personal sob story. Since the school year had ended, they still hadn't heard about her father. That was one bit of her private life she hadn't been able to keep from Janus, but she'd hardly kept him updated on the matter. In fact, they hadn't spoken since the school year ended. She had started a few letters to him, majorly starting 'Hey wanker,' or "Thickey, got a job yet?', but had scraped them all and none had come from him.

Vicky, who was not overly sentimental, who was proudly Muggleborn, was ashamed of her poverty and perhaps for the first time in Janus's experience felt beneath him, and she resented that. It was a touchy situation that, since one could probably not count on Thickey's diplomatic skills, would likely not end well.

[Janus Thickey]

Janus did drop the bundles in his arms when the cleaning girl turned around and was Vicky Summers. He didn't even wince, however, at the sound of the lens in the telescope breaking, too stunned to see the Hufflepuff standing there in the middle of his room, hands folded in front of her looking like she was some sort of, well, cleaning lady. Sure, even Janus couldn't avoid being aware of the gap between their social classes, if only because of the differences in the way they dressed and spoke and stood and all those other little things that didn't really matter when a girl was willing to jump out the window of the Astronomy Tower, but he'd never really dwelt on it. At school, after all, everyone was essentially the same.

After a moment of open gawking, he shook his head and blinked and realised that he'd dropped everything in his arms. He bent and picked it up quickly, before Vicky could think to help - not, from what he knew of her, that she would - and straightened again, trying not to feel awkward in his own bedroom. "Er, it's Thickey," he said, unable to think of anything else to say.

He'd meant to write to Vicky after he'd graduated and gone away, at least to tell her that he'd been accepted for curse breaker's training, but he'd kept putting it off and putting it off until he'd completely forgotten about it. Already, only a month and a half into the summer, Hogwarts and the people there, even the few people he'd considered his friends, seemed like distant memories. The memory of Vicky was slightly more vivid than the rest of them, if only because of what they included, but it had still faded just as quickly as the rest of them.

Finally he managed to think of something to say. It wasn't exactly the wittiest or most brilliant of things to say, but it was at least something to break the awkward silence between them. "What are you doing here?" He felt like an explanation of why Vicky was standing in his room arranging his chess set - and was presumably the one responsible for the neatness he saw behind her, the neatness that promised he'd spent hours reorganising his room - was owed, at least. "And why're you dressed like that, Vicky? You look right terrible."

Not the nicest thing to say, but it was certainly true. Then again, he'd never seen her out of her uniform; perhaps it was the surprise seeing her in an unfamiliar location and in strange clothes that threw him this much.

[Victoria Summers]

She watched his surprise passively and a little distantly, trying to swallow anger and did a horrible job as he commented on how she looked. Hands gripping each other more tightly, her eyes narrowed. "Sorry, I don't usually clean houses in my silk gowns."

Not even that deep down Vicky knew he wasn't trying to be a wanker in any kind of direct way, it was just a byproduct of his personality; she was used to it. It was so entirely different in this situation however. She performed perhaps the most passive-aggressive curtsy in the history of man kind. "You probably shouldn't be distracting the help. Mr. Thickey - sorry I got it wrong, it's been a while."

Struggling between which would be best; to excuse herself quickly or make him be the one to bow out, she stayed put but seemed filled with a nervous sort of energy. She didn't want to explain to him any of this. "I'm helping my mother fill in for your usual servant, turns out I'm dirt poor."

It was probably for the best their pseudo-relationship wasn't ongoing, because it had been an easy, mellow sort of affair. Although they'd never tested it, Vicky had been nearly positive it was a fair weather thing. Not exactly built to withstand her temper.

[Janus Thickey]

The curtsy - and, of course, the expression on her face that promised him a slow and painful death, much like the lethifolds Professor Kettleburn had taught them about in Care of Magical Creatures often caused - told him that saying anything, perhaps, had been the wrong idea. Janus, hardly ever stricken speechless, wallowed in awful uncertainty, trying to find something to say or do that wouldn't set off the girl in his bedroom.

This was certainly the most awkward situation he'd ever been in, worse than Aunt Lydia trying to sit him down to explain the facts of life.

"No," he said, "don't do-- no, Merlin, Vicky, that's awful." The curtsy made him supremely uncomfortable; no one ever curtsied to him, much less the cleaning lady. Suddenly realising that he was still standing in the doorway to his own room, as if Vicky was keeping him out, Janus took a few steps forward until he reached his (neatly made) bed. The thought of Vicky tucking in his sheets brought colour to his face and he hurriedly dumped his purchases onto the bed before stepping away quickly, shoving his hands into his pockets before he looked back over at her. "Mr Thickey's my father, and-- Merlin. She's not a servant, she's the cleaning lady."

Yes, because 'cleaning lady' sounded so much better. Frustrated with being unable to say anything that wouldn't escalate the situation - and Vicky's temper - he ran his fingers over the silver case in his pocket that he'd meant to replace after it had gotten so scuffed and dinged over the course of his friendship with her. Somehow he hadn't found the time - probably for the same reasons he'd never written to her.

"Er," he ventured, removing a hand from his pocket - although he left the cigarette case where it was - to tug nervously at his jumper. "You don't have to finish in here." Not, of course, that she'd left that much untouched. "If you don't want to, I mean." Giving up on trying to straighten his jumper, since it was as straight and unwrinkled as it would ever be before he flopped down onto his bed and started reading, Janus settled for instead pulling the case from his pocket and extending it toward Vicky. "You don't want a smoke, do you?"

Really, it was the only thing he could think of to do.

[Victoria Summers]

Snatching the case from his hands, she fumbled out a cigarette, it was lit with a fierce little flame before it reached her mouth and she was only glad it was a small spell and that there were other wizards present in the house hold who were of age. It burned to a crisp before she could inhale and so she took another and lit it a little more carefully. Once she stuck it in her mouth she chucked the case back to him a little violently, but still an under-handed throw and then proceeded to undo the buttons at her wrists. Rolling up her sleeves and pulling her fringe free helped her feel a little more at ease, as ridiculous as it seemed. "Damn straight I want a smoke, you wanker."

She smoked it hurriedly though, conscious that if her mother or another member of Janus's family caught her at it, it would mean more trouble than a nicotine fix was worth. Still, it helped her calm down, soothed her temper just a little as she inhaled deeply. "Oh thanks for your permission,' she very nearly hissed. "But I wouldn't want to leave my work undone. I promise I won't stop working for more than a minute."

Vicky knew she wasn't being entirely fair. None of this was Janus's fault, but she couldn't help herself as much as she wished she were handling the situation more smoothly. Catching his blush when he looked at his bed, she grinned just a little. "Bet this isn't how you pictured me in your bedroom, eh?"

[Janus Thickey]

He caught the case easily, used to the way Vicky threw it back at him and ambled over to the window over his bed, pushing it open casually to let the smoke out of his room. There was no delicate magic in here that the smoke would disturb, but his father and aunt hardly approved of him smoking in the house as it was. If they found his room stinking of it, he'd probably have to suffer through yet another visit from the cleaning lady. But Janus lit a cigarette of his own as the sound of cars occasionally passing and people walking by filtered in from the street below his window.

Vicky looked more like herself as she rolled up her sleeves, and certainly sounded more like herself - for a moment, until she practically hissed at him like a cat whose fur he'd rubbed the wrong way. "Bloody hell," he said casually, "I'm not trying to offend you, Vicky. Take a break, you can tell them I distracted you."

With a shrug, he sat down on his bed, pushing aside the things he'd just bought, noticing for the first time the tinkle of broken glass in the package that held the telescope. Well, it was nothing he couldn't fix; Reparo was a remarkably convenient spell.

Matching her grin, he blew smoke towards the window, watching it float out into the summery London afternoon for a moment before glancing back towards her. "To be honest," he said, leaning towards his nightstand to grope for something they could use as an ash tray and finding an empty water glass, "I don't think I'd ever imagined you in my bedroom." Well, not the one here, certainly - Janus hardly ever thought of it until it became more and more his bedroom than the one he'd left behind at Hogwarts.

[Victoria Summers]

Conversely feeling better when he told her to knock it off, she seemed to shake off her anger with a roll of her shoulders as she leaned against the dresser, not bothering to approach the window to let her smoke out discretely. Petty, perhaps, but she didn't care. She humphed a little when he claimed not to have pictured her in his bedroom, like she didn't quiet believe him. "Right. Well, haven't heard from you in a while, how's adult life?"

She didn't sound particularly offended, it wasn't like she'd made efforts to contact him beyond a few scribbles. "Your parents get you a proper girl yet?" She asked not out of jealousy or curiosity and more because her mother's own urgings where on her mind. It was sort of funny to think of the kinds of fits her mother would get into if she knew Vicky had had an in with someone as wealthy as Janus and hadn't finagled herself into a marriage with him.

The replacement was to last through most of the summer and no matter what it would be awkward. It would be pissy of Janus now to purposefully avoid the days on which she came to clean, but equally bad for him to watch her do it. She couldn't slack off because of her mother's situation. She was almost, mostly glad she only had to know him for the rest of the summer and then could forget he existed and not have to face him when school started again.

[Janus Thickey]

"Boring," was the thoughtless response. Despite the fact that Janus had a job lined up to begin in the autumn, it was nonetheless boring to hang around one house or the other and simply wait for it to start. There was little for him to do beyond go to Diagon Alley and see if any new books had turned up at Flourish & Blott's or Obscurus yet, and if they hadn't, then to stalk off to one or another apothecary and pretend that he was interested in yet more potions ingredients. "Sorry," he added. "I meant to write when I heard from Gringott's."

He tapped the ash from his cigarette into the water glass, wondering exactly how upset his aunt Lydia would be if she caught him not only fraternising with the help - a deadly sin, the way she talked about it - but smoking with her, as well, using a glass as an ash tray. The question about a 'proper girl' was unexpected; Janus and Vicky had never really discussed the future beyond the careers they were both interested in. Certainly the topic of who his father was planning to marry him off to - probably someone filthy rich, knowing Mr Thickey and Aunt Lydia - had never come up, and he'd never really given it much thought, either. Arranged marriages were something for purebloods, after all, and Janus was hardly one of those.

So he took another drag and blew the smoke toward the window, not offering Vicky another cigarette despite how quickly she was smoking the first one. "No," he said at last. "I doubt Father's looking, anyway. But what about you?" He threw the question back towards her, jokingly. "Or do maids have matches like that?" It wasn't meant offensively, but was rather a legitimate question: Janus had never really interacted with anyone outside of Hogwarts who wasn't at least his social equal.

[Victoria Summers]

"Sure you did,' she replied in a dismissive voice that spoke of how lowly she thought of Janus's intentions to keep in touch. She was not particularly bitter about it, though, it didn't matter in the least. It wasn't like they'd keep close now that he wasn't at school anymore. It was more of a tease then any attempt at a guilt-trip and the accompanying grin help made that clearer. "Did you then? Hear from Gringott's I mean?"

That brought about a more genuine expression; she was pleased for him. "Good for you, Thickey." Tapping her own cigarette against the edge of his dresser, she showed no concern for where the ash landed despite the fact that she'd likely have to clean it up after. Vicky tended not to think that far ahead. When he turned her somewhat impertinent question back on her, she shrugged and looked a little uncomfortable.

"Even lowly maids can't escape nosy mothers,' she offered as way of vague answer. How expressive she was being, although hardly dramatic, was still more than was normal and she still felt edgy for all she'd stopped acting offended. She worried her mother would come up and check on her and then things would unravel even more. Rolling her shoulders in an attempt to shake off her nerves, she glanced around the room. "Should of known this was your room, really. It's full of expensive pieces of useless crap."

[Janus Thickey]

"I did," he said, watching her ash the cigarette against his dresser, eyes dropping downwards with the ash as it fell onto the threadbare old Turkish rug covering the wooden boards of his floor. "Thank you. Training starts in November." He didn't mention, however, that training started in November in Egypt; it didn't really seem relevant to the conversation.

He was about to defend his belongings - they weren't useless crap, Merlin - when suddenly footsteps in the hallway outside his bedroom made him sit up straighter and look nervously at the door. Merlin, please let it be his fa--

"Janus, who are you talking to?" Unfortunately, he and Vicky weren't to be so lucky. Materialising in the doorway was Aunt Lydia, tall and thin and severe as always, her hair pulled back from her face and her dress buttoned up to her chin. Not even Vicky in her outrageous cleaning costume could compare. Even as she appeared, he frantically chucked his cigarette out the window, although there was nothing he could do to spare Vicky. Lydia was a formidable woman, and Janus sat up straighter under her glare, although he wasn't about to stand up.

"Just the maid," he said casually, putting the water glass on his night stand behind a pile of books and hoping she wouldn't notice the ash in the bottom. "She was cleaning my room."

Lydia put her hands on her hips and looked at what Janus considered the disaster Vicky had wrought in his room. She, despite his opinion that Vicky had ruined the careful methods of organisation he'd instilled in his room, looked pleased. "And she's done a lovely job, Janus," she said, glancing around the room a third time. "Perhaps this summer won't be as terrible as I had suspected. But," she added, a bit sharply, "it doesn't do to--" here it came "--fraternise with the help, you know. I thought we'd taught you better than that."

"I know," he replied, terribly conscious of the fact that Vicky wasn't really supposed to say anything in this situation and that all she could do was stand there and listen. "It's all right. I'll be downstairs in a moment."

Unable to find anything else to criticise in Vicky's cleaning - besides the fact that she dared to speak with the son of her employer, of course - Lydia nodded sharply, removed her hands from her hips and left the doorway. Once he heard her footsteps going downstairs, Janus let himself heave a sigh of relief.

"Sorry about that," he said, slouching back down on his bed, stretching his legs out and leaning back on his elbows. "She means well and all, but--" He trailed off, digging through his pockets for his cigarette case so he could replace the one he'd thrown out the window. "Want another?"

[Victoria Summers]

Except the encounter with Janus's abrasive mother and his referring to her as 'just the maid' shattered her sense of calm and she'd flicked her still lit cigarette - which she'd managed to hide behind her back in the nick of time - onto his bed before standing up straight. "Good thing your mom doesn't know you've snogged the help as well, huhn? Best head downstairs."

She left his room and headed to the guest bedroom across the hall and began an angry session of dusting. Feeling stupidly humiliated, she really hoped Janus just left her alone. Surely anything he said would only make it worse. In Hogwarts, class discrepancy hadn't been so evident or problematic or even relevant. Out here, it was different.

There was little to do in the room that looked like it barely got used, but she didn't feel like heading out into the hallway immediately until she heard Janus's footsteps heading down the stairs.

[Janus Thickey]

Honestly, he had fully expected Vicky to take another cigarette; he hadn't realised the effect his words had had on her, and he was honestly surprised when she flicked hers towards him. Janus snatched the cigarette up off his bed before it could burn a hole in his favourite quilt and dumped it into the water glass on his night stand with the rest of the ash. He'd toss it out the window when he had time, but by the time he looked up from brushing the bits of ash off his quilt, Vicky had stormed out of the room and into one of the other rooms along the hallway.

Why the Thickeys had so many guest bedrooms, he had no idea, but at least she still had plenty of rooms to clean so that he could apologise properly.

He found in her the guest bedroom directly across the hallway, although he didn't enter, leaving her some space. "She's not my mother," he said from the doorway, watching her dust. He was mildly impressed, really, by the amount of passion she could put into something like dusting. Having never dusted anything in his life beyond running his hand across flat surfaces before setting something down onto it, Janus had never really considered how much energy it was possible to put into an activity that had always seemed so... domestic. "She's my aunt. But it's none of her business who I've snogged, anyway."

[Victoria Summers]

"Just bugger off, Thickey,' she didn't even bother looking up from her enthusiastic dusting, not wanting to. Couldn't he take a hint? He should know by now she was not a girl to do the opposite of what she wanted. She hadn't left his company because she wanted him to chase her down. She had left his company because she wanted to be alone, wanted to pretend nothing had happened and just go on cleaning until the end of the work day.

Of course, life could not be kind and although she'd planned on ignoring Janus's presence, she couldn't ignore the fact that her mother had come up behind him. Vicky's mother was a dark little woman with square shoulders and hips. Her eyes were wide with something approaching horror as she contemplated her daughter. "Victoria! You do not speak to Master Thickey so. I am so sorry, she is rude girl. Apologize!"

Vicky could have died. Wanted to. Right then and there. Not only was her mother's stupidly thick accent painfully audible, but she was making awful demands of her. She maintained stiff silence for a long moment as she felt her mother's eyes bore into her. She knew it would mean a lecture and a slap when they were alone. Vicky didn't really consider it abuse; she never got smacked when she didn't deserve it. Taking a deep breath, she made eye contact with Janus's shoes before muttering an apology and edging past the both of them to fetch clean sheets from the linen cupboard. Mostly, though, to get the hell away from them both.

Having extricated an apology from her quarrelsome daughter she threw her hands up in an extra show of exasperation/apology and trundled off back towards the stairs, Vicky's wand still tucked behind her ear.