Tilly untwined her scarf and pulled a mane of light brown from its light draping, letting the hair fall freely down her back as she swished into the shop with the autumn breeze. Brilliant leaves had swept in with her, and she bent down to pick up an red one, which looked more like crisp heart than a leaf. She smiled to herself, pinching it gently between her fingers and thumb, before letting to float back to the floor for someone else to find; for Tilly, such things weren’t a nuisance. They didn’t soil the indoor atmosphere, but added character.

Not that Honeydukes didn’t have plenty of character.

The young woman floated into an aisle brimming with chocolate everything-- truffles, buttons, bonbons, strawberries, candy canes, and even those vaguely-unappealing roaches reserved chocolate exhibitionists and adorable five-year-old boys. She picked one up, studied it for a moment, and set it down again.

Moving on, she paused in front of an impressive display of chocolate liquors. Flashes of recent events took hold of her mind, and she didn’t know whether to smile or blush; she was rarely embarrassed by anything she’d done, but the awkwardness that had existed between Dennis and herself since the night news of Lukas’ death broke... well, it was almost unbearable at times. She had never so expertly avoided discussing something, and she was sure it was rather awkward for the young man as well.

Grabbing a box of liquors with delicate dark chocolate shells shaped like pumpkins, ghosts, and bats, she decided she that trick-or-treating children weren’t the only ones who needed sweets on Halloween. Or a month before Halloween. Perhaps a bit of sugar was what they both needed before they could break the ice... luckily, the alcohol had been (mostly) cooked out.

Jim had been working for the past few weeks as a shop keep of sorts. Cleaning and maintaining the calm and collection of a man needing to keep his sanity. Students, Children, and People jonesing for a sugar fix were regulars. There were a couple blokes he saw a little too often for his liking, he wondered if they were eating the candy or giving it out to children...

For Jim he held a wand that he didn't know. It was money he borrowed from the man who saved his life, he went to Ollivander's to replace the one he knew he had at one point. Now in his possession there was a eleven and a quarter supple Adler wood wand with a Pheonix feather core, it's shaft was unfamiliar with a bend at the center. It was not what he had expected but the wand called to him, thanking both Ringo for the money and the shop keep for helping him find a new wand Jim found himself in debt further.

Ringo had done so much for him in the last few weeks, that Jim felt the need to repay him. Taking up ownership of maintaining cleanliness and order in the shop he did odd jobs as a means to repay his kindness. It was a little at first, but as his leg healed properly he became more and more useful doing repairs and finding ways to help and stay out of the way.

At least he thought he was staying out of the way.. until he slammed into a patron. "Sorry about that miss," Jim said with a small nod not really taking in the face of the subject he rammed into. Sweeping under tables he was concentrating on the dust which accumulated with each passing customer. It took more than magic to clean the shop.

Had Tilly known the man with the broom was the man who had died, the man she’d loved like a brother, the man who had spent his life with another sort of broom and, more recently, had shown a renewed passion for quidditch, she would have fainted right there. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder with a smile, shaking her head softly. “No, don’t worry. Chocolate tastes better when you have to crawl through the trenches for it,” she joked.

Honeydukes was pleasantly stuffed, but not exactly small, and usually fairly crowded with partrons. And with good reason: they made the best sweets in Britain.

But something terrible and wonderful seemed to flash before her eyes when she looked back at the boxes of edible, liquor-filled confectionaries. She wasn’t staring at chocolates, but at headlines and long letters and pianos and Jasper’s face. At Edward, Dennis, and...

“Lukas!”

The box in Tilly’s hands fell from her grasp, as surely as if they were sheet music.

She turned, her curls swimming animatedly around her cheeks and now-tense shoulders. She gasped, like someone who had been stuck under water for too long. Her lungs felt sharp and painful. Her hand shot to her mouth. “Lukas!” She repeated, slowly lowering hand. The other one reached out, as if to touch his cheek, but froze inches from him. It wasn’t possible. She wasn’t seeing him. Spirited, open to exploring the unknown, always there to lend an ear to curious if unfounded theories, Tilly could not bring herself to believe that she was staring at the reincarnation of her dead cousin.

Which meant...

“You’re alive!”

Finally, her hands shot to his shoulders, and she shook him, almost violently. “What are you doing?! Why...! What is this?” She demanded, her face becoming pained. It was insane. Or was she insane?

For the most part the patrons were a friendly lot. A lot of sweet tooth's seemed to be plaguing the rich and poor alike. When they came in it was almost as if they wanted things put in a paper bag to conceal what they were coming in for every evening. Not that he minded it, Jim found the whole situation rather hilarious. To think hiding a chocolate or sweets addiction from the outside world. Jim could think of plenty of things that one might want to hide more than some need for sugar.

The children that ran through the shop were heart warming. A feeling of unknowing guilt would pang within his chest whenever he saw the kids goofing about near the lollys teasing one another or clamoring for their father's attention. Jim couldn't quite place why it bothered him so, though he could tell there was a relationship there that puzzled and tormented him. This not knowing was far worse than any cut or bruise he might have established during whatever had happened to him.

Jim was now in the presence once more of what he figured was a crazy patron. She was looking at him as if she saw a ghost. Looking around him when she called him Lukas, he saw no one around but himself. The box of chocolates now on the floor he tried to calculate how many of them were busted and no longer proper quality for selling.

"Woah!" Jim was caught off guard when she started to shake him in a violent fashion. The broom he had been holding fell from his hand onto the ground with a loud crack. "What? What are you talking about lady? My name is Jim," he stated firmly trying to pull away from her grasp. Shaking his head, "Maybe you should lay off the sweets..." there still hidden in the scalp of his now grown out hair a visible scar from the smack on the head. It told the story not much else could do.

Jim?

Jim?!

Tilly shook her head, her mouth agape. She had no words.

But she had say something. Her eyes roamed his face. He was joking? Was it one, giant sick joke? But his eyes were sincere, and... the scar. She frowned suddenly, noticing the scar on his head. It had an eerily calming effect on the young woman. With one hand still latched firmly on his arm, she reached up with the other, grazing her fingers over the healing wound.

There were many explanations for a new identity in the wizarding world. Not being a witch, Tilly could only guess a good number of them. He didn’t have that subtly glazed stare of someone being Imperiused, and Lukas was undoubtedly a very powerful wizard, one who could probably resist such a curse if anyone could. But had he been force fed a potion, had his memory erased, become the victim of a very inexperienced Polyjuice user, or was there simply a Lukas doppelganger in the world?

The scar...

“Did someone hurt you?” She asked, more gently, less frantically. It was hard to stay calm, however. Tilly was talking to a ghost in a candy shop. Only he wasn’t a ghost. He was the living, breathing Lukas Quinn. She had to keep him where he was, even if it meant bending the truth for once. “How did you get that cut, Luk-- Jim?”

Jim had been trapped in a dream like state for what felt like forever now. He couldn't claw his way to the surface from within the fog he was drowning in. A steady and all consuming flame licked at his heels as he hoped to make it to the day light of his former memories. There was little that brought back thoughts of his personal life, he knew facts if they didn't pertain to him though he couldn't tell you why he knew it.

This strange woman demanded so much from his clouded brain. If she could look into his head he would let her and she could see that an echo was all that he had going for him in there.

If he was this Lukas she seemed convinced originally that he was, wouldn't he had recognized his name? Figuring that was not the case, Jim was going to go about his daily chore list. Instead however she seemed curious about his current state. Other than her desire to touch him, Jim didn't find her terribly harmful.

In fact if he didn't know any better, there had to be a calming force about her. She seemed peaceful and serene opposed to the things troubling him.

She asked if someone hurt him, Jim shrugged his rather large shoulders. "Miss I couldn't tell you if someone did this to me or not. Though I have to say, that I would assume I didn't do this to myself. At least that's my hope," he rubbed the back of his neck as she questioned further on the matter. "Haven't the foggiest clue to where it came from. The bloke who took me in said he found me knocked out in an alley way before taking me to rest at him home. Hoping to know some day," he paused wondering why he was telling this all to a complete stranger, "It just doesn't seem to want to be remembered. Well that and a number of other semi-critical things." Jim bent down to pick up the dropped chocolates and placed them on a near by counter.

His answer was what Tilly needed to hear. She was sure now, that someone had done something to hurt him, that his memory had been modified... erased... or simply hiding. Perhaps he’d hit his head. And hard, from the look of it. The young woman simply nodded in understanding, listening with as much composure as she could manage while he explained what had happened-- or, rather, that he didn’t know what had happened.

“Lukas-- Jim-- I think we need to owl your... my friend, Jasper, and... E-- A few others. The Ministry, too, I suppose...” Tilly tried not to frown. She hadn’t thought much of them lately. But they were all they had at the moment. And, of course, there was Dennis... but she was sure it wasn’t fair to involve him. At least not in this scene. Perhaps they’d talk later. (Not that that was always the wisest decision). “I think you might have amnesia,” she said at last, recalling the classic muggle condition to which wizards were also susceptible. It was a human condition. Perhaps secondary school biology hadn’t been a complete waste on her.

“You haven’t been to hospital yet?” She asked carefully, appraising him again. Maybe they could go to the school. “I know the nurse up at the school. It’s a short walk.” She nodded in the general direction of Hogwarts. “She’s very nice... you might have bumped into her in another life.” Tilly smiled, despite the seriousness of the situation.

Jim looked at her with unknowing eyes once more. Why was it about a lost soul that caused people to reach deep down within themselves in order to help them find the truth?  A stranger, a man who didn't know Jim from a hole in the soil, had taken him in and gave him food and clothing. When he looks into his life for the past few weeks, Jim could only count himself lucky to have made a friend like that in his corner.

Jim was going to wave off her worry until she said the name Jasper. "Jas...per..." he repeated something stirring in the fevered mind of the lost man. Jim brought his hands up to his temples and started to rub in a circular pattern, why was that name so familiar. A jolt hit his heart as he looked at the woman a foggy recognition coming to him like a man trapped but clawing to the surface from a deep pit.

"Tilly..." he said quietly, there was a reason she had a look that was known to him. Jim, no Lukas could not quite figure out how he knew it but he did. "Lukas... I am Lukas...Quinn.." the feeling of overwhelming relief and shock washed over him. Backing up a little he almost toppled over a chair before taking a seat just staring stunned at the woman, no his cousin. "What is happening to me," it was like a heart attack all of this realization coming at him at once. Lukas couldn't comprehend it all.