Café Faith

There were three rooms to the apartment: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen/eating area. Grand total, the whole thing had perhaps four hundred square feet; that was a generous estimate. There was no elevator; the apartement was on the fifth floor. There was bad wiring; Gabrielle frequently had to fix the heater when it began to get cold. (And it got very, very cold far too quickly for her taste.) The plumbing sounded like a manticore mating with a banshee, and neither of them having any fun at all.

When Gabrielle had lived in France, as a powerful witch and a beautiful woman, she had lived in, quite literally, a castle. The ethereal beauty of her grandmother's heritage had ensured that as long as the proper Muggle deception spells were in place, she could live there as long as she wished, and she would forever be no more than a shade that magic-less eyes would never perceive. All the richness and splendor of her home was a secret, hidden by the sheer will of Muggles desperate for dull lives.

The contrast was unavoidable, and the comparison blatantly favored France.

There were, however, certain features of this apartement that endeared it, and that the castle in the Midi-Pyrenees would never have. The first was the overwhelming Muggle-ness of it. Squalid, poorly-lit, cold, with noisy plumbing, it was undeniably Muggle. For that alone, Gabrielle would have loved it. But it was also hers; yes, she paid rent, but that was just it: she paid the rent. Not her mother, not her sister, not her current fling; Gabrielle. And that independence was worth more to her than the size of the place.

This apartement was less than ten blocks from Café Faith. When she had started looking for an apartement, she had started in the middle of the city, headed towards the North side, and traveled along the bay weaving back and forth until she hit, on the west, the houses too expensive for her to afford, and on the East near the harbor, the buildings too ramshackle for her to trust.

The main drag of the city ran East-West, and hit the main highway that went North to Providence about ten miles West of the Port City border. Café Faith was on the main drag; Gabrielle's apartement was three blocks south of it, and five blocks East of the Café. Convenient? An understatement; although no one wants to walk eight blocks with feet tired from standing all day, it's better than walking sixteen or twenty, and a car was completely out of the question; even if Gabrielle could have afforded one, she didn't know how to use one.

The layout of the apartement was a bit odd. The whole thing was on the corner of the building, on the top floor, and it was much bigger than one would have thought she could afford. The far corner as one came in the door, the one that was also the corner of the building, was her bedroom. The bathroom was directly in front when one opened the door, which Gabrielle thought might have something to do with why the landlord was so eager to have someone buy it. To the far left, there was the kitchen area.

It was in the kitchen that her real find was. She was wobbling a table, attempting to determine if she would be able to trust her tea-set to it or not, when she noticed a door next to it. She immediately pulled the table away and tried the door.

It was a closet. But not just any closet. It had shelves, of varying heights, spiraling down the sides of it. There was no shelf under anoth and the sun shone full on every one of the them through a skylight.

There were two important things that that skylight meant. The first was that there was a security breach in her apartment, a serious matter given the neighborhood. The second was that Gabrielle had her very own drying rack.

The breach in security was easily remedied by using a few set-spells that her sister had created; they could be activated anytime and any place, with no one the wiser-the only actual magic used was that of the caster. Fleur had given Gabrielle her set of fifteen set-spells every girl should have when moving, a gift Gabrielle had been extremely thankful for. It wasn't as if Gabrielle couldn't stand magic, after all--it was just that she couldn't handle the world that went with it. Gabrielle had a serious problem in that she could not cast any spell without the local Ministry knowing; luckily, extensive testing with her sister told her that they could not detect the use of the veela abilities-or these set spells.

There was still very little chance of her getting away with anything involving a wand, though. She supposed she should have broken it, but she just couldn't stand to... Gaby leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking of what her veela blood had cost her, thinking of the jeers in school, the assumptions, the shame...

Perhaps one day she would be able to come out in the magical world without hiding her blood, but until she could, the wand would stay hidden in her trunk.

******

Gabrielle smirked to herself as she came up the stairs from the manager's rooms below. Although the man had been reluctant, he had eventually confessed that the skylight was the reason for the low price, and had been forced to lower the price of her rooms even further. Gabrielle was allowed to use the drying racks to her heart's delight, which she immediately commenced to do in order to have the ingrediants for the potion to release her magic, Chamomile and Nimue's Embrace, dried by the next week, and she would be allowed to have a pet should she desire one.

Perhaps a kneazle... would she be able to afford one? Perhaps an Auguery... or was that the one that drove you insane? Perhaps it was a Jabberknoll she was thinking of... Gabrielle had never cared enough to work on remembering those two. Well, something that wasn't too plainly a magical creature... she couldn't have people knowing.

******

Roe called at precisely six o'clock the next morning.

"Darlin'," she said, sounding breathless over the hissing and chatter in the background, "I need you."

"Got a new girlfriend, Roe?" someone joked in the background.

"Jealous, Brine-boy?" Roe called back. "Look, Gaby-can I call you that?-we need extra people from seven to nine and eleven to one. I-well, Harry, but he proposed it to me and I think it's a go-said that we should have both you and Josh in at both of those times, and then give both of you a break until five. One of you will come in at five and stay until six, and then be off until five the next morning. The other would come in at eight thirty and stay until one. I realize that's late hours for all involved, but it would really ease the strain on us. Now-I asked Josh, and he really didn't care, so which shift do you want-the two that are five to six, or the one that's eight thirty to one?"

Gabrielle took a moment to translate the mix of fast Irish lilt, background conversations ("Did you want your normal amount of schnapps, Kevin?"), numbers in a foreign language, and brewing coffee. "You want me in at seven," she asked finally, "right? And then a lunch shift, and either a dinner shift and an early morning shift or a late-night shift?"

"Aye.-Oh, stuff it in a sock, Brine-boy, don't think I don't know you're waving it at me!"

Gabrielle laughed softly to herself. "Well, could I decide when I am arrived? It sounds as if you need all your attention on the customers, and I would like to take some time with this."

"Aye, that's fine, Gaby. Just know by then, all right?"

"But of course!"

*******

It didn't take long to figure out. Given the option of getting a good twelve hours in a row to sleep, or two longer breaks with a huge amount of time between, Gaby would take the stretch all together any time. The only thing Gaby was really worried about was whether or not this "Josh" would mind. The way Roe had said it, it had sounded as if "Josh" didn't much mind about anything. While she doubted that was exactly true, Gabrielle suspected that in this particular case, it was. In which case, she would ask for the two five-to-six shifts.

And of course, the easiest way to find out would be to ask Josh himself. In furtherance of this end, she decided to be early.

She entered the store at precisely fifteen minutes of the hour.

*******

It was amazing how quickly one could adjust to a new life. She's never done this before, but still, within two days it was as if she'd been there all her life. In a way, it was depressing-how could she say good-bye to magic so easily? She'd thought it would hurt at least a little, but in the end it was comforting, too. It helped that all the staff of Café Faith seemed to be one big family... Whenever something went wrong for anyone, someone was always there, giving them hugs, kind words, and, invariably, coffee.

She and Harry grew to be especially good friends. Both immigrants, both unwilling to talk about their pasts, but both with mysterious pain lurking behind their eyes, neither felt the need to press the other for details. If one said, "It's a long story," the reply was never "I have time." Instead, it was closer to, "I understand... maybe you can tell me when you want to."

As for the others in the Café... they were a little more complicated.

Roe, for starters, was not the snapdragon she had originally appeared. She was only sarcastic when stressed... she was calmer than one would have thought given the hair... and she was absolutely hilarious. Not that Gabrielle had doubted that for an instant, but it was the sort of hilarious that one wouldn't have thought to see in Roe, given the inevitable first impression. The first impression was of someone serious. Roe was flippant, taking nothing seriously. Nothing was of great consequence to her... so she acted as if everything was a life-or-death matter.

Although when Gabrielle realized that it was all joking she became much more comfortable with it, she was at first very worried. When Roe acted heartbken when Gaby turned her down for a date, Gaby was terrified she would lose her job. It was only when Harry laughed that she realized it wasn't serious.

Bernardo, the second shift manager, was soft spoken and mysterious. He was the child of his mother's second marriage, and although she was Irish, his father was apparently Chinese. He had the dark complexion one would have expected, and dark eyes that never glittered. He was extraordinarily handsome, but in such a strange way that Gabrielle was never quite comfortable around him, although she knew she could count on him. He was never assertive, but he got everything done that needed to be. He tended to come in during Gabrielle's second five-six shift.

Josh was nearly as apathetic as he seemed. He was always willing to be the one to give, and never objected too strenuously when someone took something he had been wanting. As a result, he seemed to almost always get his way. Although the rest of the crew was regularly hassled by customers, Josh had only to look disapprovingly and they backed off. (Although that might have something to do with his extremely large size... the man looked like he juggled hippogryphs for a living.) Fortunately, he seemed to dote on Gabrielle, and, like Harry, made sure no one hassled her too much.

There were also ten regulars. Two were men who worked on the docks, and would stop in every morning before work and every evening after. One was an entertainer who came in every day for the noon crowd. Five were executives who passed the café on the way to work. And two were a pair who came in each morning and played soft music in exchange for whatever they got in their hat and free breakfast.

That was one of the reasons that Gabrielle liked her job at Café Faith so very well. She was, as far as she knew, completeloff the record. She was paid in cash every week, and in tips; she paid her rent the same way. She did her laundry at the Laundromat next to her apartment, and cooked her food in her building. Her lease was contractual, but nobody looking for her would think to look here. She didn't have a bank account, and she didn't own a car or a driver's license. She wasn't even sure which pedal was the gas in a car!

In short, no one was likely to know where she was, and no one was likely to care.

In a way, she was startlingly like Harry. He was off the record, too-when he'd said he knew what it was like, he meant it. He had come from his old country because of the "unfortunate attitudes" of his fellows. "Even the ones I looked up to and respected were thinking like that... it was disturbing. There's no need to hang around that, I said to myself, and I left by the next week. I'm in touch with a few of my close friends, especially the ones I knew would get over my leaving... and the rest of them can deal." The way he said this, Gabrielle thought he was certain he was right, but didn't like being so. He, too, had come to a new culture trying to get away from old prejudices; and he, too, had less than an ideal amount of money when he started. "I was just lucky that Roe needed a job," he said. "I'm not exactly built to juggle pianos like Josh... I'd never have gotten work at the docks."

He wouldn't, either. He was scrawny, in a wiry sort of way. It was clear that he had muscle, and well-trained muscle, but he wasn't built for heavy lifting. If he was been a wizard, he would have been a Seeker for certain, Gaby felt.

Pity he wasn't one. He was English, and she remembered that that team still needed a decent Seeker... Wimbleton was just not good enough. Of course, as Krum had proved in 94 and 98, even the best Seeker couldn't make up for a truly pathetic set of Chasers...

Well, Harry wasn't a wizard, and he never would be, so she might as well stop thinking about that.