It hadn't been a particularly productive day at first, and Ben had finally caught up with why after an hour of quietly trailing it through through the crowd.

Them, rather than it, technically. The young man and his friend couldn't be older than 16, and they were clearly new to this delicate and swift art. They followed a classic routine; the girl would head to a crowded corner and loudly whine she'd been pickpocketed. As the crowd assured themselves they hadn't been robbed, the boy would quickly go to work.

Ben had been finding them quite handy, as it turned out. He'd been shadowing them and following the girl's lead. The young boy needed practice, though. He took too long, and wasn't paying attention to his surroundings. Ben had already managed to relieve the boy of half the wallets and three watches without much effort.

Oh, he'd put the empty wallets back, of course, along with the credit cards. Ben was after cash and things to pawn. He only swiped cards from the posher looking ladies and gents, and usually didn't try to cash them. The Government watched the ATMs, the bastards. It wasn't like it was illegal to get money from an ATM. Was it his fault the money wasn't his? He'd stolen the bloody card. A bit of cash was his by right, in his mind. But prison was such a bother.

The boy was getting clumsy as the day wore on. Ben was hanging back, sitting on a street corner, when the boy finally got caught. Ben lit up as the chaos unfolded, apparently too out of it to care. This was an easy mood for him to imitate, as it was all too often the case.

Ben might have had a mind like a scrambled egg, but when it came to petty crime, he had a mind like a razorblade.

He meandered away as the teenagers were removed from the area, taking the time to work the crowd. Cash, watches and expensive reading glasses vanished. He even got a few necklaces, his light touch all but perfected after nearly 5 decades of this.

His large, offensively yellow and dirty jacket full of the day's earnings, he'd then turned for home. However, habits died hard; when a young woman appeared from the Magic pub, he automatically tailed her, her distracted espression and movements making her an easy target.

Of course, she was probably a Wizard. His screws might be all but missing, but Ben knew Wizards were real. Exactly how he knew, he wasn't sure on that; but that was one rare universal constant that remained true regardless of how high he was, or how sober, or however much his therapist told him they weren't. He even worked for the sneaky rats, not that they payed him much.

Her wallet was easy enough to swipe as she stopped by one of the fanciest cars he'd seen in some time, and he settled against the wall not far off to inspect the contents. Much to his annoyance, she didn't have much of interest. He did take the golden and silver coins, though; those he knew were valuable.

It was the Ministry of Magic card he glared at suspiciously. Putting her wallet back together, he wandered back over to her, his cigarette's smoke trailing in the evening light.

"Wizards don't got'a Ministry," he said, with his thick cockney tone. He shifted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth, holding her wallet out to her. "If  f'ey did, I'd git payed more of'en."

With the end of her shift, Jacoba's workweek came to a close.  One of her magically capable coworkers had been breaking for lunch and the two had made their way down Diagon to the brick wall that separated the wizarding alley from the Leaky Cauldron and Muggle London beyond that.  Once through the brick archway, her coworker made his way over to the bar and Jacoba slipped out into Muggle London. 

Once far enough away from the Leaky to be clear of the mobile dead zone, Jacoba checked her messages and was, indeed, lulled into a bit of a false sense of security as she made her way home.  She had just reached the car when a voice drew her attention to the fellow behind her. 

She snatched the offered wallet out of the fellow's hand and scowled as she glanced around, anxiously.  the last thing she needed was the Ministry accusing her of violating the secrecy code just because someone else was talking about magic in her presence.  But, there were no conspicuously dressed people in the vicinity so either they were wizards who knew a thing or two about dressing like a muggle or they were safe from magical eavesdroppers. 

She turned back to the fellow and opened her mouth but stopped just short of saying something. 

Maybe this was a test?  This could very well be someone from the Ministry who was testing her ... whatever.  Not wanting to give the Ministry any more reason to chuck her out, she decided it was better to be safe than sorry. 

"Not sure what you're talking about," she offered, vaguely, glancing once more down at her wallet as she became aware its weight was just a few galleons and sickles-worth short.  Would the Ministry really stoop to pick-pocketing to test her?  If so, it was a cruel test.  Since, she couldn't ask for her money back without exposing the wizarding world. 

"Maybe whoever this Ministry of Magic group is might pay you more frequently if you didn't help yourself.  Must say, I've never thought much of those who steal from the poor." 

Ben's glaze slide silently to the car she'd been unlocking and then back to her, his eyebrows remaining solidly in place. He said nothing; his silent disbelieving expression did it for him. He moved his cigarette again, pulling it from his mouth and breathing a smoke ring before he finally replied.

"Don't 'elp meself to the ones I work for," he said, and was only partially lying. "There's bravery n' suicide, an' they're in the latter category." Brain like a damp firework aside, Ben had some basic survival skills left - and one of his most basic skills was detecting who was safe to rob and who wasn't, and Jacoba had gotten herself firmly in the first category.

He looked her up and down, curious assessment in every inch of  his gaze. "You don't look like a wizard," he said, skeptically. "They normally dress all arse about face. Galoshes fer hats n' all that." He inclined his head in the direction of the Leaky Caldron.

Jacoba followed the man's gaze as it shifted from her to her mother's convertible and sighed before chewing her lip awkwardly.  "Yeah.  Well."  She nodded her head.  It was still a bit foreign to think that anyone might look at her and think 'rich.'  She was well aware of how frustrating and potentially fruitless this situation was.  She couldn't exactly raise a stink and demand her money back; was she supposed to tell whoever might stop and help her that the man had stolen her ... golden and silver ... doubloons? 

Well, if she factored in the car, maybe someone might buy that claim.  Shame she didn't have one of her mother's dresses to finish out the ruse. 

"Look.  Despite ... appearances, I actually really need what you took.  And, if you can't exchange it, it's not going to do you a whole lot of good.  I'm just borrowing it."  The car, that was.  If she was in the man's shoes, she wouldn't have bought the story, either. 

Maybe she should just see this as a right of passage.  Having wizarding money stolen from her by another muggle.  As she was starting to assume this fellow was.  Most of the folks at the Ministry - especially who dealt with meddling muggles like herself - weren't this good at playing the part. 

"I'm not.  I'm just -" she glanced around.  "You're not supposed to be talking about this in public.  Look - give me my money back and ... I'll buy you a drink."  It even sounded foolish in her own head but she'd been in the man's shoes enough to know sometimes it really was just business.

Ben extracted one of the galleons from his pockets, turning the golden coin around in the light. With his gaze still on her, he bit the edge of the coin; it bent.

"They hock for more n' the exchange rate, I'd wager," he said, but she seemed to have gotten through; he flipped the slightly bent coin back to her, and then with surprising speed the rest of her coins were in his hand, having been extracted from the labyrinthine depths of his coat.

"Yer not a wizard - you just work there, right?" He smiled oddly; half mocking and half understanding. He tilted his head towards the distance Leaky Cauldron to indicate his meaning.

He didn't hand the coins over yet, though. "Food would be better, missus. I got plenty of beer back 'ome." That was easy to buy, at least; his reedy and gaunt appearance gave away the fact he didn't eat much.

Great.  Just great.  The last thing Jacoba needed was for one of her galleons to wind up in a thrift store.  She doubted it could be traced back to her but that wasn't really something she really wanted to test.  She caught the coin, mid-air, and glanced down at it before looking back up at the sound of more coins jingling. 

Jacoba glared at the fellow, quickly weighing her options.  If he thought she was going to beg for her money back coin by coin he was going to be disappointed.  It wasn't going to happen. 

"I'm sure they've thought of that," Jacoba pointed out, nodding to the coins in his hand.  "They're paranoid about the rest of their stuff, I'm sure they've figured out some way to make them impossible to hock.  If one of them blows up in your hand or makes your junk fall off, it'll be no one's fault but your own."  The more outlandish the notion, the more it seemed a likely possibility in that world. 

"Yeah," she confirmed, reluctantly.  If this were some Ministry test, she was about to flunk it.  "Not in the pub.  Back in the alley.  I just work there." 

She snorted sarcastically.  He was hoping she'd buy him food?  Really?  "Well, either you're buying," she said, gesturing to the money he still held.  "Or you need to give me that back so I can exchange it.  Because, as you well know, I'm currently pretty much broke." 

Ben grunted. "They can just wave their wands'n everyfin' they don't like goes away. Why would they bovver?" That was certainly something he remembered. He grinned horribly, though.

"Missy, I been takin' all sorts crazy of'fings since I was old enough ta walk. If my junk hasn't fallen off'from all that it ain't gonna."

He handed her the coins back wordlessly, though, honestly expecting her to just hop in the car and leave. He looked at said car critically. It'd fetch a good price. He wasn't sure exactly how one went about having friends who could afford that sort of car while being poor. If you had friends like that, the trick was to mooch them for all they were worth. Or just steal their wallets.

And if she was borrowing it in Ben's sense of the word, she should just hock it.

"What, they kick out normals?" He asked, a soft strain of sarcasm in his tone.

Jacoba's eyebrows lifted, slightly, not sure if the fellow didn't get it or if he actually was taking the piss out of her.  Why would they bother with anything beyond making the gold disappear?  When did the people they were referring to ever take the subtle and mundane route? 

"You clearly haven't seen much of what they can do," she said both dismissively and with a touch of lofty knowing.  Those folks could make heads shrink and people change appearance and, well, species sometimes.  She had no doubts they could find a way to do such a thing.  "But, it's not my junk you're risking, so what do I care?" 

To her surprise, though, the rest of her coins were dropped into her hand.  She closed her fingers around them, rolling them in her hand, trying to gauge how much was there by the volume.  She wouldn't count them in front of the man; what was she going to do if it wasn't all there, anyway?  Beg for it back coin by coin?  She already said she wouldn't.

"Normals?"  Jacoba stared at the man in confusion, her gaze traveling up and down that man's figure.  In what world were either of them considered normals?  Oh, yeah.  The world where most people had magic sticks and talked to storefront mannequins.  "You know, we aren't supposed to be talking about it in the open." 

Hopping in the car and making a quick getaway (which, anyone who'd argue that she didn't have the vehicle for such a cinematic and exquisite exit was just an idiot) would have been the wise move.  But, it would have also proved her a liar.  "So, I guess I owe you food.  If I was being really tacky, I'd just take you to McDonald's and send you on your way with a hamburger."  Tempting, yes.  Petty, definitely.  "If you have a preference, better speak up now." 

Ben shrugged. He'd seen plenty, he thought, but like most things the line between real and one of his bizarre disjointed dreams was so blurred he just assumed everything regarding wizards was true, and left it at that. Trying to sort out the truth from his jumbled memories was an impossible task.

Still, he smirked, and the loud roar of a passing car drowned out a snigger. The girl had a proper sense of humor, then. None of that pussy-footing around.

His cigarette burned steadily as he considered his options. He didn't really go out to eat much. He ordered in, sometimes. Most of the time he just swiped something if he wanted a snack, and every now and then he actually went grocery shopping. Food, all in all, was not the number one item on his list of absolute necessities.

Finally, he shrugged. There was a  soft clinking of coins as his large, multi-layer jacket and ensemble shifted.

"S' a nice little cafe up the street," he said finally. "They do a nice sandwich."

Jacoba watched as the man seemed to give the question a healthy dose of consideration.  What were the chances the fellow was going to suggest the Leaky Cauldron?  Obviously, that location would have been out of the question.  She could just imagine the theatrics her having the audacity to bring another of 'her kind' into that place. 

"Excellent,"  Jacoba confirmed, relieved his choice was unquestioningly muggle.  "They've got good kebabs." 

Jacoba double checked the car door before turning and starting down the street, pausing only briefly to check the contents of her other pocket.  "It seems pretty indicative of the stage of my life right now that I don't even know how much normal money I have."   But, it sure was nice to actually refer to pounds as 'normal.' 

Another few steps and Jacoba glanced at the fellow.  "Johanna," she offered in greeting, opting for her legal name just in case somehow word of this got back to the Ministry.  It certainly wouldn't cloak her completely ... there probably weren't many Johannas in the wizarding world.  Chances were slim, though, there were any other Jacobas.  "And, you're ... you know ... muggle right?" she asked, whispering the crucial word.  "You aren't some Ministry bloke in disguise?"

Ben adjusted his jacket casually. The change inside clicked again. He might have been sending a subtle hint that he could pay for anything she couldn't afford, or he could have been redoing the zipper. It was hard to tell.

"Ben," he said. "Mos' people who know me call me Fingers, or Topsy, or yew bastard." He said this all matter-of-factly - clearly unbothered by the last one.

Her question, though, clearly confused him; he paused and looked thoughtful, his lips pressed together. He even took the cigarette out of his mouth and appeared to concentrate deeply, dark red brows knitted under his mop of messy hair.

"If I am, I don't know," he said, and it might have sounded like he was yanking her chain. He wasn't. "Can't say I remember anythin' about that. Ne'er worked fer the Ministry of anythin." Most of what he remembered about wizards had had, even to his muggle mind, the smack of illegality about them.

Jacoba's gaze flickered briefly down to the man's hands and back up, trying to quickly gauge whether the source of the first nickname had more to do with some physical attributes of his phalanges or his deftness with thievery. 

"You bastard?"  Jacoba grinned slightly but wrinkled her nose in mock disapproval.  "I'm afraid I reserve that name for my father.  Don't think you want to be compared to him.  I'll stick with Ben." 

From her other pocket, Jacoba withdrew a small hand purse and took a quick survey of her muggle currency.  To avoid accidentally dropping a few stray knuts or sickles on the counter of the corner coffee shop, she'd taken to keeping the various coins segregated from each other.  By quick estimate, she had enough for a couple sandwiches. 

"You're not," Jacoba said with a certain degree of surety.  The Ministry had a hard enough time imitating normal muggles; imitating a muggle like this bloke this effectively was probably beyond their abilities.  "You'd know if you were.  And it's-" she hesitated.  So the man was a muggle who recognized galleons but hadn't heard of the Ministry of Magic.  "So - how is it you know about them?" 

Ben shrugged again, taking her word for it. Given the area and life he'd grown up in and still resided in, parental dislike wasn't exactly far from the norm. He'd disliked his own father plenty. It was just life.

However, her assurance that he'd know if he was wasn't, strictly, true. He frowned slightly, out of her line of sight. But he was still pretty sure he wasn't, as no one was sending him proper paychecks and no one came round to complain he wasn't showing up for work, so the likelihood of him being involved in that was pretty low.

"'bout wizards?" That was a better question than she realized, and part of him - the cynical, ticking core of him - told him he should tack on alien abduction to any explanation he gave, because it made as much sense as anything else.

"I know some," he said, which was good an explanation as any. "Used to know more. They got weird habits. Wear galoshes in the summer, powdered wigs and bellbottom jeans." His eyes narrowed. "All at once. An' they keep talkin' mutant snakes."

Perhaps the explanation seemed like a good one to Ben but it wasn't the most helpful to Jacoba.  Given what she'd observed so far of the wizarding world, Jacoba theorized that at least 75% of muggles probably knew at least one witch or wizard.  She actually had no hard data to back up that number it had been pulled out of nowhere.  But, it sounded nice and about right from her entirely uneducated point of view. 

Regardless, she was pretty certain at this point that far more people knew a few witches and wizards than actually knew about them.  So, for Jacoba, that explanation raised more questions than it actually answered. 

"That they do," Jacoba agreed with a slight snort of a chuckle.  Wizards did do weird things.  She was still nervous; still somewhat worried about this whole violation of the statute of secrecy.  But, at this point, was it really her violation?  She hadn't actually revealed to him anything he didn't already know and it was quite nice to be talking with another muggle about wizards, for once.  To be talking to someone who understood the constant confusion and peculiarities. 

"And, talk to inanimate objects and keep the strangest pets.  You never can tell when they're being serious and when they're making something up.  It's annoying."  It was like constantly being in the same room as a large group of people, knowing well aware there was some inside joke being shared amongst everyone else that you just got little snippets of.  But, being in that room was infinitely better than being stuck out on the curb.

At first, Jacoba just nodded to the comment about mutant snakes.  After a few steps, her mind caught up with what he'd said.  She stopped, reaching out to take a hold of Ben's arm to turn him towards her.  "Mutant snakes?  You mean, runespoors?"  There'd been plenty of talk of the creatures in the Daily Prophet - of escaped serpents, smuggle busts and various criminal activity.  Who would he have been around that would have muttered on about the things? 

And, how awesome would it be for her to get some inside information that she could pass on to Adon.  Or, even Zora! 

"You know they're like really dangerous, right?  More than mambas and cobras and such."

Ben, who talked in inanimate objects all the time (and half the time decided they were taking back) just smiled slightly. "They're crazy, yeah," he agreed, and his next comment was cut off as she grabbed him and turned him towards her. It wasn't difficult; under his massive layers of clothing Ben was reedy and thin.

"Runespoors? Yeah," he said, confused. They had 3 heads and talked, and their venom was very deadly. These had become simple facts to him. He knew they were dangerous; he'd had to bail out the window of his flat more than once until the snake calmed down, and had gotten in trouble for severely injuring one by beating it with his guitar. His argument it had kept talking to itself hadn't helped his case much. That had taught him not to cross wizards; he hadn't really known until that point that their little sticks could cause excruciating pain.

"They don't really get out much, of their boxes," he clarified. "They're magical or sommat. You look at 'em and think they're for oranges and when ye open 'em there's a bloody huge snake inside." Ben usually opened them anyway, usually when he got the munchies and decided they really did have oranges in them. He cocked his head.

"What, they illegal?" he asked, though he knew they were; still, her reaction wasn't really like most would expect if it was just some outlawed exotic pet. "Wizards get real serious about their pet laws?"