The dark of late evening had settled upon Diagon Alley gradually, as shops closed and windows shuttered.  Without its customary bustle and hum of commerce and enchantment, the street seemed to slumber, the quiet interrupted only occasionally by someone with business urgent enough to be out this late, the darkness relieved here and there by the cool blue halos of Bluebell Flame street lamps.

Weasley Wizard Wheezes was no exception.  Though the shop had extended hours on Tuesdays - there was apparently high demand for something to break the monotony of mid-week doldrums - it was now closed, though an unwary visitor might not be certain.  For one, the window displays continued their activity all night, albeit with a Quieting Charm applied.  For another, a sign behind the door window boldly stated, "We're Open!", though if a hypothetical late-night shopper touched the door handle, they would find it securely locked, and the sign would quickly change to read, "...tomorrow!  Gotcha!", and in smaller print, "Mention you fell for our Waffling Welcome for a 10% no-hard-feelings discount on a single item of your choice!"

The interior was darkened as well, lit mostly by the latent glow of various items on the shelves.  There was occasional movement as random products with more boisterous enchantments twitched or shifted slightly.  A magenta 3W staff robe had been draped carelessly over a stool, and a small black bag sat upon it.  A careful observer, however, might also have heard quiet muttering and seen periodic flashes of light from behind the curtain to the back areas of the shop.

The witch in one of the back rooms was not very imposing by wizarding standards - her staff robe had been discarded within seconds of locking up the shop, revealing her muggle-style garb, and the distance from the bottom of her short black boots over neon green tights to the top of her unruly mop of (currently) bright pink hair only measured a couple inches over five feet.  But the practised ease with which she wielded her wand suggested it might be unwise to underestimate her.

Cassiopeia Grimlish rubbed a bit more bruise-clearing salve onto her nose, then packed up the last of the Nose-Biting Teacups she'd produced into a pre-labelled box.  Making these was as old hat to her as the Sorting now, but George insisted each item - at least those that weren't single-use - be tested before going on the shelves...there was nothing so disappointing as a prank that turned out to be a dud.  She agreed wholeheartedly, of course, and having her nose bitten a dozen times was not by any stretch of the imagination the worst thing she'd had to regularly inflict upon herself since hiring on at 3W.

Working the Tuesday night shift meant that the shop closed after Gringotts did, so she'd need to use the Untimely Official Deposits drawer to deposit the day's sizeable receipts, which currently rested on the same chair as Cassie's staff robe in a deceptively small bag of black velvet tied with a gold drawstring.  But that also meant there was no particular rush, so she'd decided to shore up some of the shop's stock of more popular items with a little late-night enchanting before she left.  The witch made a check-mark on a list next to 'Nose-Biting Teacups', and wrote '12' next to it, then read the next item.

"Confunding Cubes," she said, smiling.  This was one of hers...she'd based it off of a muggle toy called a 'Roobix' or something similarly nonsensical.  Meant for challenging people who were too smart for their own good, after the small coloured squares on each side were mixed up by twisting the cube in various ways, individual squares would occasionally change colour - but only while covered by a finger or otherwise unobserved - thus making it impossible to solve.  It reportedly drove Ravenclaws completely mental.  But the owner - who'd read the special instructions on the box - could simply rotate the faces of the cube for several seconds, at random and as fast as possible, while biting the right side of their lower lip exactly three times, and once they stopped, each face would end up miraculously the right colours.

Cassie bent down to a low shelf and got out a small muggle shipping box, cutting it open with a quick slide of her wand, and took out a few fresh cubes.  Even with shipping, it had turned out it was much easier and cheaper to order them from China than to get them conjured or transfigured.  She placed one in the centre of the table, then levelled her wand at it.  "Colovaria...Confundo...Colovaria...Confundo..."

It was time to step up her A-game. Though Dotty's game was more like a B-movie with a C-list cast and D-list production and E-list catering, earning a Z-grade on the film critic column.

Life had been relatively cush for her standards in the land of Tea and Crumpets but the last few days had been piling onto heck week. She was edgy all the time, had a teeth-grinding sore throat and red itchy eyes, a headache like the 'oh god! of hangovers' and a general restlessness that left her an insomniac more-so than usual. The skin around her eyes was plum colored.

Simply put, Dotty was in the need of emergency funds to fix a fix. And while 'Sell-a-fixes' was an apothecary that could potentially be a one stop five fingered discounted shopping run for her needs (even if it was only filled with herbal stuff) they were catching onto her ways, which meant money was needed to shop anywhere legit, or rather to impress the non-magical crims with solid gold and silver pieces that could be exchanged for the street value of 'do you use pounds or kilos or stones? Not the pounds of paper pounds, and not stones of the pond skipping variety, what the heck do empiricals have to do with decimals.'

Simplier putted, Dotty had been eyeing which shop on the alleys had just the right blend of steady cash influx that she could probably rob unaided. And that award went to the Wheezes (there was no reward envelope, Dotty had been desperate enough to crisscross papercuts on her tongue be licking the gummy stuff off of every envelope she could find) and their mannequin over the door with a rabbit disappearing hat she had once had an unfortunate encounter with in her flying squirrel form.

A form that, in a withered state matching her recent fatigues (and you bet Dotty had never been in the army), was trying to squeeze through a grate where the more choice architect would place a window to a nonexistent side street where the back of Diagon butted buttresses foundations with the rest of London proper.

With a last rubberband like snap the flying squirrel popped out of the crevice and in the same movement transfigured back into a human, the disheveled Anadotti Squiggs wobbling on her feet and smashing her nose into something in the darkness, stifling a sailor's swear. She was in some kind of storeroom, the last of her Pteromyini night vision fading as her knees found other things to smack into as she patted her pockets. Something that had always plagued Dotty was finding where her stuff had shifted around with all the rest of herself and clothes that disappeared whenever she transformed (when she remembered to bring them along). She'd have sworn again to hearing the clatter of some of her stuff falling but she was trying to keep a silent profile. That meant the use of one thing but she had to find her wand first.

"Lums. Lumas. Lumos!" she whispered, finally bringing some light after mumbling the right word. There was her key as she bent to retrieve. There was the frog. There was--FF--FF-FF-FF-FF!!!

It had taken all of what little self restraint Dotty had multiple times over to not partake of her last bottle of Blue Toad. She'd been saving it for a victory swig, once she had the gold in pocket where such things would be on the way again (as the inevitable lesson of the street was that you couldn't steal everything). But her wandlight told her two things. First, under the grate of her entry there were a bunch of boxes wrapped up together, a cube of many smaller cubes which had things like pirate ships, handsome youths, swooning girls and clouds made out of cotton candy on the myriad little boxes, the greater assembly of that under a shipping label filled out to the effects of 'Destination: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry' but why was Dotty focusing on that when there was a greater horror in front of her eyes??!

Her bottle of Blue Toad had cracked and was leaking all over the dominant-blue packaged boxes! Dotty grabbed the bottle but to no avail, the last of the neon blue liquid lost. Her hand with the bottle swung violently as if she didn't understand the movements to an invisible game of tee-ball until she cooled down. Frockin' A! She was robbing a liquor store after this, even if it wasn't her favorite!!

The loss of the booze steeled her nerves again into the work she had set out to do. She picked up the brass Croak-A-Corder and pointed at it with her wand. "Sorbio. Sorbo. BO. BMO ff-ff-ff! Sorbeo!"

And that was the last sound from the storeroom as the frog opened its mouth, creating a vacuum effect of silence. Which was pretty handy, as in minor victory Dotty had let out some choice words for frustrated expression that shouldn't reach the light of day and had also crashed into another order bound for Hogwarts (Skiving Snackboxes) that tumbled to the floor while she was jumping up and down.

Cassie paused in the middle of her work and looked up.  She was used to ignoring the small sounds of the shop's stock shifting and twitching, but she could've sworn she'd heard a voice that time.  Maybe the Quieting Charm on one of the front window displays had fizzled out?  But now that she was listening deliberately, she couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

She sighed.  She'd have to make sure or there could be trouble - many shopkeepers lived in flats above their stores, and the Weasleys had come to an accommodation with their Diagon Alley neighbours soon after opening.  The young enchanter decided to finish the Cube she was working on first, though, or she'd be bound to lose her place.

"Colovaria...Confundo...Colovaria...Confundo...Specialis Confundo!"  Cassie steadied herself on the table as she caught her breath - she took pride in her work and always put as much effort as possible into the last spell, which would ensure the cube appeared innocent under any magical examination that wasn't cast more strongly than her own casting.

That taken care of, she moved to the curtain and leaned through it, looking and listening for anything out of place.

If Dotty had known her old film comedies, this would have been a simple but effective sight gag. Herself and the unseen shop clerk both poking their heads out of their respective doors just far enough to look but not far enough past the shelf between them to catch sight of the other. But then Dotty would never stand to watch black and white television, even if the Stooges were electrocuting their nuts and jamming syringes into their eyeballs. They'd been doctors and equally the victim of mad scientist malpractice but what was the episodic film where they had a nut roasting cart?

Whatever, Dotty spent more time trying to color the TV with a pair of magnets rather than pay attention to the late night reruns. And for the current moment all Dotty observed was a quiet store as her eyes glanced up the central spiral of stairs, looking for anybody.

It was quiet. Too quiet. Though the cliches was refreshed somewhat because Dotty half forgot why it was so quiet.

Cupping the brass frog in hand, Dotty wound her arm back for a toss and set the frog skipping across the floor towards the barely seen checkout counter, hoping that if the sound sucking implement was close to the middle of the store it would silence most of the shop. Why must her brain continually think in synonyms?

The 'PLINK PLONK PLONK' that would have soundtracking the tossed brass frog were added to the sound cache. Dotty cringed in a two moment prep before she would make with the haste toward the till.