[OOC Note:  This thread may contain foul language.]   

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Dominik Wiedman walked into Daily Prophet Headquarters carrying a single blue flower he had picked from someone's window sill.

Immediately after he entered through the glass doors, looking a bit lost, and progressed through the entry to the main floor, heads started turning.  All the eyes of all the nosy newspaper people seemed to be trained on him.  A few Witches stopped to point and whisper things to each other, and one Wizard snapped a 'Just-in-Case' photo.  Dominik walked onward through the small stir he'd caused, looking up warily every few steps before approaching a random desk, leaning down and saying in a quiet, private voice, "I'm lookin for Niobe Thursby."

"Who?"

"Niobe Thursby."

"Who?"

Dominik stared at her.  "What the fuck?"

The elder Witch looked up at him sternly over her wire-rim reading glasses, then eyed his blue flower.  "I apologize, Mister Wiedman.  You're going to have to SPEAK. UP.  I'm a BIT. DEAF."  It wasn't hard to imagine why.  The monstrous office was more like a fancy warehouse, abuzz with frenetic activity and carrying conversations, flying memos and accioed objects.  But for some reason, he didn't quite believe her.  That wasn't stopping him though. 

"NIOBE?" he pleaded.  A reporter walking by craned her neck as she passed.  The older woman stood up, looking satisfied with herself, and brushed her lap off, smiling.  She then instructed Dominik to follow her in a dubiously sweet voice. 

A man broadcast his voice across the office with wand to throat, issuing a deadline warning for those working on the Evening Prophet, and Dominik had to dodge some other man running straight for him with a stack of files held over his head. 

In the tangle of cubicles it was every Wizard for himself.  It felt like being in the middle of a Quidditch match.  At some point the thin, pruning lady held her hand up for pause and disappeared behind a thick cubicle wall. 

"Thursby," she said, a little loudly.  "Dominik Wiedman is here to see you."

Dominik's lip curled up and he winced, realizing that he was causing a scene.  He'd probably lose his sleeping-over privileges for this.

---

Should I Stay or Should I Go, by The Clash.

Jalla Que from the front spotted Dominik right away, and unlike her colleagues didn't gawk at his celebrity.  She'd heard that the on-again-off-again (or more like, in-and-out-again) relationship between Niobe and the rough-a-tumble Quidditch player was on-again.  So she slunk off around through advertising to warn the dread-headed reporter. 

Niobe, in her cubicle on the sunny side of the floor, was speaking rapidly to her quill as she shuffled around her notes.  She wasn't even sitting, just standing there, and her chair some sort of relic whose use was forgotten in this place.  The back wall of the Daily Prophet floor was topped by big bright yellowish windows in iron frames.  She was senior staff so her cubicle sat in its afternoon light. 

Jalla only had time to breeze by and mumbled in her heavy Barbados accent.  "Don' look now, love.  Yer fella's 'round."

Niobe snapped her head up from her work to see who'd spoken, but Jalla was off and Bethany Tigges-Hallow was mincing her nose at her and looked all too triumphant.  Niobe shot her a dark look and stood up to her full height.

There he was.  Dark-headed. Dark-browed.  Rough-scullionly.  Niobe didn't have to look about to know that people were stealing glances and starting rumors this very second.  Rumors that were absolutely true.

She stared at him over top the cubicle. "What the fuck?"

Quickly trussing her dreads up, she brushed Bethany Tigges-Hallow off and went out into the cubicle-corridor to meet Dom.  She was not at all pleased to see that he had a silly little flower with him.  What the hell did he think he planned on doing?

"You need to go now, Dominik," she said with a low angry voice.  "This has been a very bad idea, and now you're going to leave.  I work here.  You are not my boyfriend, but now everyone thinks you are.  Thank you, now good-bye."

Her glare was hard as stone and uncompromising.  There wasn't even a shred of mirth, or amusement.  No hint that his attractive stray-doggedness might unravel her.  That she'd been lonely and had needed a laugh. 

Look at her; there she was -- dread-headed, lion-like, and with a fire in her eyes.  The look she gave his flower could have made it melt. 

For a very, very brief moment, the whole whirlwind office blinked out of existence for her.  Even the homicidal expression on Niobe's face couldn't stop him from giving a hungry, animalistic gaze in her direction as he drank in every second of her muted fury.  He even managed to smile a little on the tail end of her harsh attempt to drive him off with bold words and daggers for eyes.  It was because she'd said boyfriend.  Even though she was saying it to mean that he wasn't, she was the first to use the word, and a reaction was a reaction was a reaction.  In the end analysis, her assumption had to have been good.

He could've kissed her right there as she scolded him for his bad behavior.  She was so bloody hot when she was peeved.

The sad little flower drooped in his hand, but Dominik took his chances with a dare devil grin and didn't budge.  "I'm sorry love," he said.  "I just had a bit of sensitive information to divulge.  That is your line of business, innit?  Favor for a friend?" 

He chanced a glance upward and to the left and caught a man peek-a-booing over the edge of his cubicle.  With a sudden flash he was gone.  Dominik was all too used to the jedi moves of Wizarding world reporters.  Theirs was a haphazard, perilous and sneaky line of work.  Fitted to make the likes of him, unwilling celebrities that was, rely on polyjuice or else accede to the idea of being caught with their knickers down every couple of weeks.  And Dominik had long ago adjusted to having his knickers down in the public eye.  Just not literally.  Not yet, anyway.

Dom let the flower spin lazily between his fingers.  He lifted his brow, apparently awaiting an invitation into her working space.  Of course he chanced total humiliation with this little stunt of his, his wayward wandering, but when you were as down and out as was Dominik Wiedman, it really didn't hurt to live a little bit on the wild side. 

He did think it might be a challenge for Niobe to push him out after he'd dangled that little baited hook, to pass off his mysterious lead, but he hadn't yet decided which would win out -- her gargantuan pride or her stumbling curiosity.  That was the fun of it, wasn't it.  Either way he'd be on her mind afterward, and that was all he could possibly ask.  Between being thrown out of her apartment on the morning of her birthday and falling out of trees, Dominik was willing to take just about anything he could get. 

As long as it was more than a string of orgasms, as delightful as those were.

Why the hell was he grinning like that? Niobe's angry brows were wrinkled with annoyed confusion.  Insufferable kov! He was loving this, wasn't he?  The thought rankled her and she wrinkled her nose like she smelt something dead.

But he'd said the magic words.  Sensitive information.  She hated him for it, but he actually was in a position to know something good.  His fecking sister was a criminal, he was a professional Quidditch player, and he knew just about anyone who ever had anything interesting happen to them.  He'd tipped her off before and she would gouge out her own eye before she'd chance losing something as good as that.

And she'd gouge his out if he was lying.

"Stop smiling," she said, realizing how stupid it sounded.  She stepped back a half an inch and snapped her head towards her cubicle door.

Once he moved past her, she tried to look pleased with herself for her colleagues' sakes.  But she snapped her wand up in a muffling charm and stepped inside.

"If the next words out your mouth isn't the information you promised me, you'll cut your own lying tongue of your head yourself, I'll make you regret this so much," she threatened.

What was it about Dom and the way those tattoos snaked up his arms that made Niobe so violent? Oh yeah. He was a dimglow thug who refused to do as he was told and keep away.

She flicked her black-plumed Verbatis Quill onto a fresh bit of paper and it snapped at the ready. 

"Well?"

Dominik couldn't stop smiling, so he turned his head toward the floor in sheepish obeisance instead.  Apparently, he'd won himself the golden pass into paradise with those few words -- a glorious victory that spelled success.  So it was with a bit of arrogance that he strolled past her curt domain and into her sacred space, setting the pale blue flower down delicately on her desk before twirling around to plop himself down in a chair lazily, quite nearly marking his territory with the reflexive, cavalier motion. 

He'd grinned up as she entered behind him with magically muffled threats, hoping to detect a wiggle of excitement or perhaps a more dangerous, lusty drive to have him right there.  But all he got was a demand for the goods he'd promised.  Should've figured, but all was well.  Well enough, it seemed.

"Kabana," he said nonchalantly.  The quill jerked with swift motion and he cocked his head in its direction rather apathetically.  "The -- Knockturn Alley Business and Neighborhood Association.  It's been spreading like a wild fire."

Dominik licked his lips and let his gaze linger over every section of Niobe Thursby's body.  He knew the power of his connections enticed her and, thanks to his total lack of discretion, pity, or interest in anything (save, well, Niobe), certainly didn't mind abusing the privilege.  His own kid sister was the one who'd been raving about it, she'd been to the "concerned citizen's" meeting and was ready to kick the revolution up a notch herself.  Dominik preferred not to get involved, and merely shoved her off when she sent five million owls and came pounding on his door to tell him how important it was that he be there. 

But Dominik Wiedman had been in the Ministry's pocket since the end of the war.  Despite appearances it was much harder for him to get away with attending conspiracy meetings than the average petty criminal in the Wizarding World.  Even ten years after the fact, not even knowing that he actually had killed people, the Ministry was still very much In His Business.  Anger management classes, therapy sessions, check-ins and questionnaires... he may as well be host to the lycanthropic disease that was spreading over Great Britain like the bloody plague.  What sort of way was that to treat a veteran?

"There was a meeting at the Black Chimaera 'bout a month ago," he said.  "And I have the inside scoop.  Strictly a confidential informant, just as it always was... are those new leggings?"

When the first word that came out of his mouth was "cabana" and her pen scribbled it out and paused, in that half-second of silence, she was sure she'd been had.  That he was just going to ask her out to some beach get-away and that she'd have to hex his mouth shut. 

But as soon as he explained (explained as he overtly oggled her) she was almost just as peeved - he did have something good.  Damn him, he was delivering.  She had to work hard to keep her expression bored because his information was just...

...lovely.

Her pen wiggled on as he scowled. 

"Yea - Audrey Chanc-" she began to answer automatically.  They were really nice.  Black with a peacock feather design going up the back of her calves.  She snapped her mouth shut and shuffled another notebook to hide her slip.

She sighed.  "This is for real? Is it Tawse.  He doesn't seem the neighborhood watch type.  Who else was there?" she asked, maintaining a dead pan as much as she could.

But the curiosity and thirst for something that smelled so delicious was difficult to hold at bay.  She hated that Dom had something she needed.  He was a manipulative tosser, not daring to come in here on a bluff.  She had already begun calculating how far she'd go to wring the rest of this lead out of him.  Who was using who now?

Audrey Chanc--

-elier.  Yes, the Darks' insane mother with the fashion line.  Interesting.  The way the peacock feathers went up along the back of her calves... well that was interesting, too.  They looked silky.  They looked -- smooth.  Ayeayeaye they looked so damn silky smooth....  Biting the inside of his lip, he forced himself to look away with a commendable amount of self-control.

Dominik's eyes went glassy for a moment as Niobe curtly got back to business -- was it Tawse.  He neither affirmed or denied the implication, choosing to completely ignore the man's mention.  There were some holes you just didn't want to dig yourself into. 

"Ex-Azzies, felons, thugs, hags, your usual Knockturn Alley crowd," he said with a shrug.  Then, putting his hands up defensively, "I do swear to Salazar that this is all on good authority."  He let them fall back easily to his wide-open legs and his eyes wandered over her work space.  "Some bloke in flowing white robes climbed the highest surface like a mountain goat and tried to swoon the crowd," he said lazily.  He cleared his throat, looking to her closely as he tagged on casually, "Nakamura?  Didn't you work your birthday just to get an interview with him?  They didn't buy it though.  They're on some underdog kick.  He was too pretty to get their vote.  Oh and.  Theodora Kingstreet.  She's wanted, yeah?  Big time?  I think she does their paperwork."

This went all kinds of ways against Laney's advice.  It's the story or me, but that had been the spark.  Make her want you.  Dominik had a bit of, um, selective hearing?  His eyes were penetrating a moment as he tried to gauge her reaction, but then he eased off a bit in favor of seeming nonchalant and devil-may-care.  Truly, playing the role of informant and teasing her like this was a very bad idea.  But Dominik failed miserably at seeing the errors of his ways.

"It's anti-Muggle, anti-Ministry," he continued.  "They want to be left alone, right.  Want to go about their ways in peace.  So they're looking for ways to bar off the Alley from outside influence.  What else you wanna know?  I'm glad I got to see ya," he said sappily, not giving her much of a chance to get on with questions.  "I'd say we should get together but uhh, I've got this gig up at the Festival tomorrow.  Work.  Maybe I'll -- see you there?"  Inwardly, he kicked himself.  "Or not.  I'm going to be busy.  Don't want to disappoint the Wizarding public, you know, my um, fans."  He coughed awkwardly.  Dominik didn't give a shit about his fans.  But she wanted him to go to press calls, right?

"You could always... come over to my place after?"

It was funny what people got warm in the knickers for.  For some it was peacock feathers that went up and up and up.  For others it was mention of Theodora Kingstreet in the same breath as Koujirou Nakamura.  The Verbatis quill sped on, and Niobe tried to keep her chest from heaving with the thrill.

Bastard, bastard, bastard! 

She listened with her arms crossed over her chest, and glaring at Dominik should he decide to pause or get off track.  He was acting the fool, speaking about this 'K.A.B.A.N.A.' incidient with the ennui of a summer holiday slideshow.  And she hated to be hanging on his every word.  Every sliver of information he uttered was career-making, it seemed.

Firstly, Theodora Kingstreet was in Knockturn Ally of all places.  And Koujirou Nakamura, the baby of philanthropies and gentlewizard of society was trying to win the favor of the bottom-barrel criminals like Tawse and whoever else.  Niobe had not only worked her birthday (not a rare occasion), but she'd had to throw in all her favors to interview him.  He'd been eloquent, gracious, and a little bit creepy.  But he'd said all the right things and the article had been a hit.  She'd even got him to admit to being one of the largest benefactors of the Remus Lupin Resource Library.  Dom, full of shit or not, had given her a giant lead.


And as quickly as he seemed to give her everything she could ask for, he transitioned into that same tired bollocks about meeting up and seeing each other. And that godsdamned winter festival.  Niobe hated winter, hated snow and hated Christmas even worse.  Everyone always seemed to lose their minds.  Niobe was no more amenable to favors than she was in July.


After he stopped talking, after the giant scoop and the colossally awkward proposal, she raised her eyebrows.

"You taking the piss, eh?"

Her voice was calm, for now.

"Not winding me up with all these sweets," she gestured at the notepad, now chock full of tight cursive. "You at this meeting, were you, Dom? You bringing this to me first hand, or just telling me pies?  You've got no call to sabotage me, you know that right? This is business."

"Taking the...."  Dominik's face contorted, growing strange and more pensive as he thought it out.  His blind puppy enthusiasm drained under the weight of her accusation.  Did she really think he was trying to sabotage her career?  To be truthful he hadn't thought of it -- hadn't thought that far -- of the repercussions should he embellish by being greedy.  There was a real, solid chance that had she bitten his line blind he might've had the nerve to drop another, less substantiated claim.  But the fact that she expected it....

That was sobering.

He looked hurt in that moment's silence.  It was just.  How she think that?  Of course she thought that.  Frustrating.  "I'm not tryin' a...."  Blast it.  This was just all wrong.

"Listen," he said.  He looked up at her earnestly.  "No word of this in the papers or I'll --"  he stopped short.  "Just don't bring her into this.  Okay?"  He crossed his arms begrudgingly.  "It's my little sis, yeah?  She was the one that's told me.  She was there.  And," his tone turned the littlest bit snotty.  "It's business.  Right.  But it's always business, innit.  I don't give a bleedin nogtail's curse what's going wrong down Knockturn, pet.  I care about you and me.  You got it yet?  You want me there?  Cos I'll play double agent if it's on for you.  You say it, love.  I'm on it."

There was a rub, right.  Dribbling after the Willing Slave bit.   

"If you'll see me."

His dark eyes roamed across her sure-footed frame again.  "If it's not good to you that I'm playin the part off the pitch, at least don't make me spend the night alone.  It'd be so much more...."  He took a few breaths' pause, relishing in a thought.  Slowly, he stood up and went over to her, stopping after just a step, lingering just out of reach of her.  Excruciating. 

"I'd be more alive," he said carefully. 

"Dazmond," Niobe said flatly.  She'd met the strange little sprite before. She was wierd and up to her elbows in dirty. Niobe didn't not like her, but then, Niobe preferred to not break the law.  But now elder brother Dom was playing the pouter and looking all hurt.  Niobe didn't soften as Dominik went from offended to protective, from snippy to anything-for-you-my-pet-my-queen.

It was exhausting and confusing and Niobe couldn't keep up and counter his many changing faces.  She knew she must look vulnerable or confused or something as equally undressed.  She glanced again out her little doorway, self conciously, hoping this all looked legit from out there. 

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, if only just to break eye contact momentarily.  "Your sister's safe with me," she assured him bruskly.

"But you're crazier than I thought if you think I could just... just...Dominik, I can't trade me for information.   You could make me famouser than Dennis Creevey and that wouldn't make me - Giving me things isn't going to make me love you."

She was more flustered than she thought.  She felt better thinking that Dominik was stupid, but it wasn't true.  He was either intentionally or naturally manipulative.  She wanted what he offered.  Badly.  But she couldn't make that deal. She couldn't even fake her way through it.  Not because Dominik was repulsive - I mean look at him.  Not because he was boring - that had never been true.

Niobe just wasn't very good at lying.

"Okay," said Dominik in an eerily calm voice.  His eyes softened and lowered slightly, like dim lamps shutting off or bamboo shades being drawn.  He stood there for a moment. 

It was the most natural thing in the world for him of course -- this sort of subtle manipulation that so characterized his actions (or not so subtle as the case may be, perhaps depending on his level of desperation).  He was just too used to things falling on his lap after all, and so drawn to the flame like a little moth, like a little boy who just wanted something.

He just wanted her.

Dominik made a little move like he was going to leave, but then he stopped and paused there again.  He wasn't really looking at her now, but he could still see her in his peripheral vision.

"You don't have to love me," he said.  "But I do you know; and I'll be around if you want me, pet."

And with that and a little pause to follow, he went out, leaving the little blue flower and the pile of notes behind him on her desk.

Gods, he was so frustrating! She couldn't help but watch his every move, the subtle changes in his fascinating face.  That quiet acceptance now, that contrasted so vividly with his fights, passions and rages.  She couldn't help but scowl in pained frustration as he said his final piece and left her there.

She couldn't help that nagging feeling that she'd just let something very exciting, fulfilling and desirable walk out of her cubicle...

... an exclusive pipeline directly into Knockturn's underworld. The resource of a century.

Damn her pride.