"I can't believe we're doing this!" Fauna whispered as she stalled in front of The Inkwell with Brett, glancing in the windows to try and see if the shop was more Diagon Alley style or run-down Knockturn style. The parlour stood on the very edge of Knockturn, and even with the warm summer air, goosebumps crept up Fauna's arms.

She was slightly tipsy. Just slightly, Fauna claimed. After a girl's night out flitting from pub to pub, she and Brett had made the brilliant decision that they needed to get tattoos! They wouldn't be proper Hogwarts graduates if they didn't celebrate by doing something daring and unusual. It was almost July, and they'd be receiving NEWT results soon and starting Auror training (Fauna hoped). They'd had about a week to settle into their new house with the Fayettes and Grace, so tonight was the perfect time to act.

A nervous grin on her face, Fauna hooked Brett's arm with her own, opened the door, and stepped into the shop, pausing in the entryway. She'd expected dozens of illustrations lining the walls, sharp, pointy tools on shelves, and tattoo-covered patrons and employees crowding the space. Instead, the place was fairly empty, dust and clutter coated every surface, and the woman who smiled brightly at them behind the desk looked like she'd be more at home in Madam Puttifoot's. 

Fauna glanced at Brett in confusion and hoped she hadn't misread the sign outside the shop entrance.

"Um, hi," she said, stepping up to the desk. "This is The Inkwell? We don't have an appointment or anything," she admitted, noticing the open appointment book in her hands.

An odd, stringent fragrance flooded the Olive Room this evening. What was it?Lavender or bergamot? Dietrich passed through the threshold with a scowl under his beard and walked past the chair towards the other end of the studio, where the sink was. He twisted the cold end of the tap and let it run for a moment while he looked down at his hands-- indigo. It had to be indigo dye. After a second of waiting, he placed his hands under the water and watched most of the dye wash down the drain in a swirl of purple hues.

Dietrich turned off the tap and grabbed a hand towel off one of the shelves, wiping himself dry. If Marlene had broken bottles of hair dye stored at the back of the shop, she probably had something to help get the tint off. He left the studio, heading straight for the stairwell and still trying to mop the colour from his hands. The upstairs of the parlour was still dusty as hell and he stifled the urge to sneeze.

Nobody ever bothered sweeping up there, it was only important that they kept the underground clean. "Lana," he called out in a gruff tone and climbed onto the landing with loud, heavy footsteps. The wizard put aside what he was going to say as soon as he saw the two girls standing at the entrance, looking a little bewildered. Students. Customers.

Lana was behind her desk, appointment ledger open to an empty page and a bemused look on her face-- her gaze fell onto his hands but he ignored the expression and glanced back to the girls: "G'vening. You two looking to be inked tonight, then? We do walk-ins on Saturdays, so I can probably take one of you now." Dietrich gestured towards the stairwell with a purple hand and then looked at the two in a genial way: "Is this a first for either of you ladies?"

His gaze shifted between the two. He always came straight to the point when people strolled in on the weekends but tenderfoots were tricky. They chickened out as soon as they got into the chair or once the needles have been prepped. Dietrich was accustomed to that but he liked it better when they were serious about being marked...

Warning- mature joke ahead.

Hogwarts was over. She was done. NEWTs would be arriving soon, she and her new housemates would be joining auror training- Brett's life was going just as she had planned. And tonight had been a great girl's night for herself and Fauna, a quick pub crawl and more than a few shots of Firewhiskey had made Brett and Fauna decide that tattoos were a brilliant idea.

The tattoo parlour was right on the corner of Diagon and Knockturn. She and Fauna were both slightly wary- future aurors shouldn't be lurking around Knockturn, but it seemed to be an up and up establishment, and Brett had never heard anything bad about the place. They walked in, and a few moments later one of the tattooists entered the room. Brett nudged Fauna with an elbow, grinning. (What could she say, she had a thing for blondes.)

She couldn't help the wild giggle when the incredibly good looking tattoo artist said he could take one of them now and asked if it was their first time. Brett smiled sweetly at him. "We're both tattoo virgins," she informed him before leaning to whisper quietly into Fauna's ear. "And he can pop my tattoo cherry any day."

Brett had no idea what she wanted. Well- she knew of a tattoo that she wanted, but didn't want to get it now, it might take a while. She wanted something cute and simple. And for her first tattoo she wanted something less complicated- so that she could figure out if she could handle it or not. "Have you got any pages to look at?" Brett asked. "For inspiration?"

A few seconds after they'd approached the receptionist, a very tall, burly mountain man figure appeared at the top of the stairs and offered to start tattooing one of them. Judging by the dye staining his hands, Fauna assumed he was one of the shop owners. At Brett's elbow nudge she smiled. Yeah, definitely Brett's type. They'd come to the right place!

Her eyes widened and she burst into giggles when Brett whispered in her ear, her laughter helped along with the firewhiskey they'd imbibed earlier and the newness of the situation. That, and she still thought sex jokes were hilarious. Fauna put a hand over her mouth, then cleared her throat and offered the man an apologetic look.

She nodded, wanting to see illustrations as well. That would give her time to get used to the idea that they were actually doing this.

"Any recommendations for beginners?" Fauna asked without thinking, then glanced at Brett with a funny, close-to-laughter look on her face, hoping she wouldn't make her crack up again.

Dietrich kept a straight face as the two customers made their replies, interspersed by giggles and whispers that he could not catch (though he suspected that was probably for the best). They were inebriated, which meant he'd have to make them sign a waiver after the inking. The one with the short hair seemed particularly tipsy, the artist thought. He threw Lana a look and she ducked under the desk, reappearing with two large leather-bound photo albums-- dusty as well, even though any of the artists could have sworn to having just used 'em earlier in the day.

"Well then, we have some conventional recommendations..." Dietrich took the albums from the witch and carried them under his arm. He glanced back to the girls, eyes dropping from their faces to their shoes and then back up again: appraising. Nothing profound, he supposed, but a frivolous motif wouldn't do.Nothing but regret down that road. "House or family crests. Names. Had me a set of boys coming in for quidditch team mascots, yesterday. Gimme a second, I'll clear a table for y'girls."

Almost every desk at the back was full of odd bits and ends. "You have names, I'm guessing?" He asked them conversationally while walking over towards the back of the reception. Not everyone who passed through the parlour gave a bona fide name. Monikers were aplenty. Dietrich waved an arm towards the closest table, plastered with flimsy sheets of pencilled sketches, and they went flying into the air like capricious birds before settling onto the floor in a neat stack. The books were set down with a heavy thud and he turned around to gesture the witches over: "I'll point out some regulars and then I'll leave to let you make your minds up. 's that okay?"

Brett followed the tattoo artist across the room- she definitely couldn't complain about the view, and kept grinning wildly at Fauna- especially when his eyes went head to toe and back again, and Brett decided to interpret it as an appraisal of the good kind. He started making simple suggestions, and a moment later was offering to clear off a table. She followed again, covering her mouth at a quiet hiccup.

"Names?" Brett asked. "I'd heard a name was one of the worst tattoos you could get. That and stuff that's in another language." She thought for a moment about the stories she'd heard of people getting tattoos in Chinese or Japanese- and how often they didn't translate properly. Her brothers had told her a story about one of their muggle friends who'd accidentally gotten some pretty awful stuff tattooed since he didn't know the language.

"My name is Brett," she told him with another fetching smile (at least she hoped that's how it looked, at any rate). "Just graduated Hogwarts, and we thought we should do something to commemorate our freedom, right?" she said, looking to Fauna for confirmation of their brilliant ideas. She looked at papers that were fluttering to the ground, and then opened one of the books he had dropped on the table. "What about you, gorgeous, you got a name?" she asked, looking up at him.

Fauna wasn't sure what to make of the shop owner's assessing look, but preferred to think it was a professional sizing up thing (and was sure Brett preferred the opposite). He didn't seem fazed in the slightest by their giggly, tipsy behavior, though in comparison to Knockturnites, Fauna assumed their attempts at maturity came across as laughable.

They followed him to one of the dusty tables and she sat down.

"Fauna," she answered him more shyly. "That's the plan," she smiled at Brett's explanation, then nodded when he told them he'd point out the more common tattoos that people got.

When Brett called him 'gorgeous', Fauna gave her a wide-eyed look, then stared at the open book in front of them, pretending to be fascinated by the random page of Quidditch team tattoos that she couldn't care less about. Stifling another giggle, she felt her ears burning and reached up to brush her hair to the side. She wished she had Brett's guts sometimes, but just considering a tattoo had used up all her reserves of courage!

Brett and Fauna. Dietrich let the giggles go with all the practiced flair of a wizard who had heard much worse things come from the lips of intoxicated women. Better a jolly drunk than a dismal one. He let them open the books and then, giving a nod in the direction of the bolder girl, offered "Dietrich. Dirk, if it's any easier." His accent fell into its German thickness for a second but recovered quickly into the generic American slant. He didn't sit but stood behind the girls, reaching over their shoulders to flip the pages as he referred to some of the sketches.

There was a variety. Each one had been drawn and inked by himself, though the softer designs were clearly the handiwork of a less severe artist. Olive slipped her own illustrations into the albums if they were popular enough the her clientele. "There are separate sections for different marks. Flowers and greenery here..." Dietrich turned a few more heavy pages with his indigo fingers: "... nature motifs, insects... the more macabre marks are at the end. Skulls or whathaveyou." The wizard withdrew his hand and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, gazing down at the final section with a frown. He doubted they cared much for that. Neither looked like Slytherin kin. Not even Knockturn kids.

He looked away from the albums to glance at Fauna and then Brett, "It usually means something t'you. A memory or a goal." Dietrich said it with a light manner but his eyes were sombre in expression. It didn't matter how much liquor the girls had in them; come morning, the Firewhiskey would be gone but their marks would not.

Brett watched the pages as Dirk (she giggled at his name too) was flipping them. She pointed to one of the small doodles on the page- a very simple lightning bolt, and looked to Fauna. "A lightning bolt!" she exclaimed. "Like the one Harry Potter has on his head. I should get that. Cause he's a great auror and all, and defeated You-Know-Who twice. That's the kind of auror I want to be- the kind that leaves a great legacy like that. It symbolizes everything I want to be!"

Because naturally Brett wanted to be Harry Potter, who wouldn't want to be Harry Potter? She knew that meeting him at the ministry was going to be exciting and she would have to reign herself in from asking a million inappropriate questions. (And she would probably reign herself in rather poorly.)

"What do you think, Fauna?" she asked. "I could get it somewhere easy to cover up with the aurors robes. I like the tattoos girls get down here," Brett pressed her fingers to Fauna's lower back. "It's just so brilliant!" And to Brett's somewhat inebriated brain, it was a brilliant idea. The chances of her showing off her lower back at work were slim, she thought, considering they would probably be wearing those scarlet robes most of the time- the whole ministry uniform and all.

Fauna glanced at the pages Dietrich flipped through, listening to him describe the sections. She doubted she'd go for the macabre section in the back, but she didn't want to pick a random flower either. As he told them that whatever tattoo they picked should probably mean something to them, Fauna took that to heart. She expected to spend the next ten or so minutes flipping through the illustrations. She nodded, expression thoughtful.

Brett seemed to know what she wanted right away! Fauna smiled, humoring her as she pointed out the lightening bolt, certain it was just a passing fancy and she'd pick something else. But then Brett kept talking, and a little worry line formed between Fauna's brows.

"Ah... er..." Fauna stammered as Brett exclaimed over Harry Potter's legacy, and then patted her lower back to indicate where she wanted to get the lightening bolt.

"Are you sure?" She blurted, glancing at Dietrich as if he'd help convince Brett otherwise.

"I mean, it is brilliant! He's a great Auror, and it would definitely be symbolic," Fauna tried to sound supportive. "It's just... don't a lot of people get a lightening bolt? Do you want it to be more... unique?"

Not that Dietrich's designs weren't unique! Oh shite. Fauna wasn't even going to comment on the lower back location. She knew she'd sound like an arse.

Dietrich looked between the two girls as they exchanged ideas, raising his bushy eyebrows marginally at every comment. Aurors. No... little Aurors, with big dreams and loud ideas. He hoped they would be sober enough afterwards not to leave the alley with that kind of talk. The name Potter still treaded painfully on the nerves of some.

"Do you want it to be more... unique?" Fauna looked mortified by her own words, though she looked like there was a little less of the whiskey in her than in the other one. Dietrich wasn't sure if unique was necessarily a deciding factor when people came into the parlour in this condition; they just went for whatever resonated best with their base desires. Lightning bolts, roses, skulls and hearts.

He understood the concern however: "They're not stickers, don't worry 'bout that. I can make 'em unique if that's what you want," he glanced at Brett and nodded his head towards the album image: "Make it flashier, maybe. Whatever suits you." The kid wanted an Arschgeweih, which was a popular place to mark-- and a quick one for Dietrich. He moved away from the table, slightly, to take a better look at her proportions... good torso. Yeah, not a problem. She'd have to keep a cover on it for a day or two if he gave the mark any fluid effect.

Somewhere behind them at the parlour desk, he could hear Lana giggling over something. Women. If she had it her way, there'd be potpourri on the tables and a copy of the latest Witch's Weekly in the studio. Dietrich resisted the urge to look over his shoulder and instead regarded the trainee Aurors: "Does that sound good?"

Unique? Brett hadn't really considered that- but that small concern was quickly swept under the rug as Mr. Gorgeous told her that he could make it unique when he inked it, and she beamed at Fauna. "See! He knows what he's doing, can make it special just for me... And I don't know if a lot of people get a lightning bolt, I don't know many people who've got tattoos."

"Sounds brilliant!" Brett said to Dietrich. "You are the artist, so I'll leave it up to you! I just think it would be cute and fits what I want."

"So I guess that means I'll be going first?" she said, elbowing Fauna with a grin. "Don't think so hard! Loosen up a little! We're finally free! Time to go wild and have a little fun before we have to be adults for the rest of our lives. You only live once, Fauna!"

Brett smiled at the tattoo artist again, her grin a bit more mischievous this time. "So where does the magic happen?" she asked.

Fauna glanced over at the woman at the reception desk, who had her hand over her mouth as she tried to contain her giggles. She smiled slightly, a resigned look on her face as Dietrich answered questions and Brett got more and more excited about her lightening bolt idea. It was kind of funny. Fauna just hoped Brett wouldn't wake up in the morning and be pissed off at her for letting her get it!

Nahhh, Brett was more likely to be 'mad' if Fauna skipped out on a tattoo herself.

"Ok!" Fauna put her hands up in a gesture of peace, shaking her head and chuckling. "I will!" Her eyes widened. "If you go first, it'll give me some time to really look it over."

She hauled the large albums in her arms and followed them downstairs to the Olive room, the stairs creaking with each step.

"You could make the lightening bolt sort of... flash every so often? Um, like a lightening bolt?" Fauna offered the idea, her face flushing. "Or do different colors, or maybe have a phrase flash inside the bolt? Constant vigilance," she grinned, half-joking.

Dietrich led the two girls down the stairwell, leaving his girlfriend upstairs to laugh out loud over whatever the hell she found so amusing. Fauna shot suggestions as they descended and they were all good ones, he supposed. "Flashing, yeah, that's probably a good one." Not very often that he found a pair of future law-keepers in his parlour and even when he did, they weren't always so damn fond of Harry Potter.

The Olive room still had that stringent scent in the air. He decided now that it was rosemary because lavender didn't really scream Olive Cherryschue. Dietrich nodded his head towards the tattoo chair, which was already in its upright position: "Just sit yourself there, Brett. Face the back and lift up your shirt a little," he told her before grabbing two low stools from the corner. One was placed by the chair for himself and the other a little ways back, near a low table-- for Fauna to wait. "Lana will bring down some drinks soon." Hopefully it'd be nothing more than water... probably better if the girls were sober enough to sign the waiver form after their marks.

Then, with an air of competency, Dietrich rolled up his sleeves and dropped down onto his stool to face Brett's back: "So we're giving you a lightning bolt," he said as one hand reached out to the table to where the tattoo needles were neatly lined up and ready to be attached to the ink apparatus. Instead of picking any of those up, he selected an extremely fine-point marker: "I'll draw it on first and you can tell me if it's any good before I ink it." The wizard uncapped the pen and drew a thin line on his arm first to ensure it was alright. Then, not really listening to either of his customers-- because this was the point at which he really needed to concentrate -- Dietrich began drawing the outline of the lightning bolt onto Brett's lower back. One hand was busy sketching and the other steadily holding her waist. There was always the worry, when the client was tipsy, of him or her falling over. Usually when the needle came but the kid had been pretty giggly when she came in and he wasn't taking chances.

Brett shook her head. "I don't know if I want it flashing," she said. "A phrase would be cool though! I like that idea. Or it could just be static. I don't need all the bells and whistles!" Besides, Brett wasn't sure if the bells and whistles would make it more painful or time consuming. Mostly she was worried about whether or not she could deal with the pain of the needle, but being tipsy made her less worried- and hopefully a little numb to the experience!

She took the seat she was directed toward, grinning as she lifted up her short- more than was probably necessary, jumping a little when his hand steadied her and the other began tracing the lightning bolt onto her lower back. Brett waggled her eyebrows at Fauna and giggled again.

"Find anything interesting yet?" she asked. "You should get something having to do with SAWS! It's what you're known for you know. And it means a lot. Or you could get something about the aurors, too," Brett suggested. She was beginning to get nervous now that she was actually sitting in the chair, and talking helped her push the nerves out. "We could get matching lightning bolts! I can't wait to show Dax and Dion what we did!" Brett grinned a little. "Dax will be so proud!"