Magic Box, Thursday, 7/26

[world_enchanted]

Every time Tara came into the shop, she expected the worst. It operated in a grey zone -- as long as almost nothing was on display except worthless plastic amulets and smelly incense, most of the time Umbridge and her goons let it be.

But that was only most of the time. There'd been a couple bad days over the last few years

Comments

[nokitestringnow]

Kennedy made a semi-regular habit of wandering in, as it happened. She was hardly an expert on how to detect magic, but she knew enough to recognize some of the basic necessities. Anyway, sometimes you just had to remind people that they weren't flying under the radar.

She pushed the door open and sauntered in like she belonged there (which was just true of wherever she chose to be at the moment, naturally). "Knock knock," she singsonged.

[world_enchanted]

Tara hadn't even been doing anything vaguely questionable -- yet -- but she still froze in place. "Hi," she said softly. "Are you ... how do you feel?"

She kept asking, even though she could almost tell by looking that the imperio curse still held.

[nokitestringnow]

"I'm fine, duh." The somewhat flat tone of voice in which Kennedy replied was also a pretty good indicator that she was still under the curse, as was the moment just before she answered, where she looked like she wanted to say something else and decided against it.

Moment over, though. She made a show of scanning the contents of the shelves for anything untoward, then moved over to lean against some shelves. "How are things?" she asked. "Pretty quiet and boring so far, I hope." The words were casually conversational. The undercurrent was not.

[world_enchanted]

"Totally quiet and boring," Tara nodded vigorously, though she couldn't hide the concern and disappointment in her eyes. "The only new stock we got today is these Chinese zodiac calendars. I -- always wish I was something cuter than a rooster, you know?"

[regretiz4u]

Kenzi wandered in. Grinning. The kind of grin that anyone who had encountered her before might fear.

"Tara! How is your day going how is business can we talk ordering things maybe?"

[world_enchanted]

"Hi!" Tara looked appropriately wary. "It's fine. And -- I guess? What kind of totally legal and not actually magical at all things did you have in mind?"

[regretiz4u]

"Which I'm sure are only for use in ambiance and in case of power outages," Kenzi agreed, then slid a piece of paper with a drawing and a word across the counter to Tara: Koushang. "I do not want this for reason of, um. Anything that might neutralize anyone. Nope."

[world_enchanted]

Tara raised her eyebrows as she looked it over. The sketch wasn't ringing any bells. "Uh-huh," she said. "And, um, just for the record -- who in particular would it ... totally not have any effect on?"