The business day was quickly drawing to a close and the shop had fallen into that last quiet half an hour before Reducto officially closed.  Jacoba's two coworkers (the two employees she supervised!) were scattered amongst the record bins checking that everything was properly stocked for the next business day.  Jacoba sat on a stool behind the counter, hunched over a stack of invoices, tallying the invoices from May on the massive, old fashioned cash register.  The record player behind the counter whirred reliably along, filling the shop with Joan Osborne's deep, rich rendition of Bob Dylan's Man in the Long Black Coat.

With Erwin's urging, Jacoba had opted to take a week off of work following her moving out of Adon's flat.  Given the argument and the reasons for the breakup, he insisted she needed to step back from both work and home to be able to fully analyze where she needed to go and what she needed to do.  Erwin had never been to the United Kingdom so they'd done the proper touristy things to occupy their time and to help Jacoba keep distracted.  By the following Monday - the twenty-fifth - Jacoba had returned to Reducto and formally accepted the promotion. 

There were some who might say that moving into Reducto was a foolish move - a move that was the exact opposite of what Adon had been encouraging her to do.  But, it was a move that made the most sense to Jacoba.  She was now, largely, on her own in the wizarding world.  She'd always felt most vulnerable waiting at that wall behind the Leaky Cauldron for someone to let her in or out.  Reducto had fortifications.  There were protective wards in place and monitoring systems.  People were watching her back.  Especially at Reducto, she was surrounded by magically-capable people who were willing to keep an eye out for her.  Once she left Diagon Alley and stepped back into the muggle world, she was now entirely on her own.  When she'd lived with Adon, it had been different.  His home had been secure and he'd been there.  Now, out in the muggle world on her own, she'd have practically no defenses if a witch or wizard decided to hurt her.  If someone decided to follow her home to some muggle flat, not a soul would know and there'd be nothing she could do about it. 

This would be the first time Jacoba spent the entire night in Diagon Alley.  The first night she'd really figure out how to negotiate living in the wizarding world without magic - when she'd really be putting all the little tips she'd picked up from Tilly over the months to work.  How to light a space without electric lights or magic.  How to boil water.  How to take a shower.  Luckily, Jacoba still had very little to her name which made moving into Reducto quite easy.  All her worldly goods still fit in the confines of her backpack.  Her backpack was still where she'd left it this morning: propped in the corner behind the counter.  She'd head upstairs and unpack once her shift was finished and Reducto was closed, locked up and sealed for the night. 

The shop door clanked open and Jacoba looked up to greet the customer as he came up to the counter.  "Good afternoon," Jacoba offered, her accent accentuating the 'd.'  "How can I help you?"

Sissel was whistling to himself. A riff from ]Hip To Be Square'[1] a favorite of his because it was so ironic, given how active he was with his work and whatnot. Sissel cooling down? That would be a laugh. During his downtime he had been learning the guitar part from repeated listenings. He would be playing it now if it wasn't for the sad fact that his guitar was broken.

Sissel skipped the last few steps down Diagon until he made it to Reducto Records, red Gibson[2] on his back, hooked by the strap. Even though Sissel was a music lover he'd never been to Reducto much and hadn't been in the shop in a while. A bell tinkled somewhere as he entered. The tune in his head clashed with something over the speakers, a dark moody piece. So "I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around/But I couldn't take the punishment, and had to settle down" segued into "Somebody seem him hangin' around/At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town". Odd.

The woman behind the counter greeted him in a germanic sounding accent. "Good afternoon, how can I help you?"

"Hey howdy," Sissel replied, pulling off his mirrored sunglasses. "I heard you guys do instrument repair. Though I wonder if you can handle electric. I would have taken this to a regular repair shop but my axe was damaged by magic anyways, so I thought I'd better play it safe." He flipped the guitar off his back, unclipping the strap, to lay it out on the counter. A panel was unscrewed to show the inner workings. "It's a Gibson ES-345. And you don't usually find purple mushrooms growing in them. Also think a few wires have been cut and the solderings been messed up. Hoping something can be done about that."

Sissel's eyes lingered over a nearby rack of records. Ooo, how tempting: a rarely found 7'' original release of 'Take Me Home Tonight' which offered rather speculative suggestions based on how the conversation went. "I forget, do you carry cassettes here?"

1.	music
2.	guitar

Jacoba gave the customer her typical, danger-assessing once over before coming quickly to the conclusion he wasn't likely here to bomb the muggle-loving establishment.  Even if the man's general demeanor wasn't a complete give away, the blatantly muggle axe slung over the man's back was. 

The 'howdy' also helped ease any suspicions that might have persisted past the demeanor and the gibson. 

Jacoba grinned good-naturedly at the fellow before turning her attention to the request.  Fixing a magically-damaged electric guitar.  Even if they couldn't manage, there was some sort of fantastic symbolic modern art hidden in here somewhere.  "No.  I usually hope not to find purple mushrooms growing anywhere," Jacoba offered good humoredly.  Jacoba actually had no idea what purple mushrooms were and whether they held more relation to edible mushrooms, 'fun' mushrooms or those horrible strains of fungi that killed people in sci fi movies.  Either way, she was pretty confident they had no place in guitars.

"But, have no fear.  Reducto can handle electric.  We thought about putting that on the sign outside but decided it wasn't the wisest move."  She pulled a double layered tag from a drawer behind the counter and handed it to the fellow.  "Just fill out your information and our builders will take a look at it and get back to you with a time and cost estimate.  At some point, we usually have to send the electric instruments out for the testing, tuning stuff since the whole ..."  She waggled her fingers in the air, the pantomimed representation of the magic of Diagon Alley making testing non-wizard-adapted electric instruments fruitless.

"Cassettes?"  Jacoba shook her head.  "Naw - they require electrical amplification.  And, it's almost impossible to find people who are putting muggle music on cassettes anymore.  LPs, at least, have their following.  Putting out new vinyl is like the hip thing now.  And, I don't think they'd put wizarding music on anything but records.  I think everyone's just happy to see cassettes go."

"Good to hear," Sissel said, taking the claim ticket for the order and filling out the details and damage. He whistled during his jottings.

"No cassettes? Shame, guess my old Walkman can go back to the corner of the closet where I found it." The one thing wizards didn't have going for them was portable music players. Music boxes and wireless were 2o years behind at lest in design. Nothing made just by wizards. If you wanted anything smaller that meant adapting muggle tech to magic which was always tricky.

"Man, haven't been here in ages," Sissel said, taking in the view of the record shop. He'd be sure to linger around over the summer to keep tabs on his axe. "Been remodeling? The windows look new and you've got the shelves categorized differently."

"You might be the only one that'll miss them."  The man with the gibson was a walkman fan?  Those big, bulky things that required flipping every thirty minutes?  Jaocba was fairly certain this was the first time she'd come across someone who lamented the inability to take their walkman out of retirement.  "I think we've all kind of moved on from them.  In the muggle world, discman have even come and gone since the last time I saw a walkman.  It's all about mp3 players, now.  A hundred albums in the space of a postage stamp.  Though - I suppose those are harder to adapt for this world."  The more purely digital media got, the harder it probably would be to make them functional in the wizarding world. 

Jacoba's gaze trailed around the room, following the man's verbal tour of the shop's changes.  "I've only been here since October," she admitted as explanation in case there were changes she wasn't aware of.  "We've been expanding and a few features have been added.  But, the window was replaced out of necessity.  Some of our neighbors aren't pleased with us and they thought they'd make a point by sending a rock through it.  And, we've been expanding the muggle music section." 

And, adding a humbly furnished flat in the attic.  It was a dinky space - or cozy.  But, it was hers.  In exchange for twenty-five galleons taken from the pay submitted to her vault in Gringott's, this was now home.  But - that wasn't really news Jacoba was quick to share with customers that came to the shop.  "Glad to hear you're a longtime customer, though.  To be honest, as much as the purists loathe the idea, Creevey and the shop manager having a kid has made this Diagon's hip place."

Sissel nodded in the right places. "I used to flip cassettes between my walkman and my tap recorder all the time during summers outside of school." You could strap it to your arm, wear the headphones around your head. The lack of headphone equivalents in the magical world always bothered him and Quick Notes Quills didn't have the same charm of your voice memos played back with lots of high screeched rewinding. Bliss.

As Sissel tried to recall the last time he was in this store, several key phrases from the clerk's words stirred something in his memory. Nothing he had witnessed but a significant news article or inter ministry notice or something. Finally he snapped his fingers.

"Didn't Reducto have that anti-muggle attack a while back? Vandalism and threats over an employee?" In fact, given her extensive knowledge of muggle music and technology, "That wasn't you, was it?" Sissel cocked an eyebrow.