le petit prince

jacob nott. 30. purveyor of fine ice creams

[jacobnott]

rosewesle​:

“I think Vi exists solely on spite and the spirit of the country of France alone. For that, and for this part, I admire her.” Rose allowed him a graceful smile before taking a sip of champagne. The complement shocked her so much she felt the need to look away. She was accustomed to the attention, of course, but the rawness of his tone—especially at an event like this—threw her off her game. The usual grace she carried with her was gone, replaced with a flush that had absolutely nothing to do with the champagne, which she downed in a single gulp. “Alfie, would you—“ he nodded and ran off in search of a Scotch, bless him.

The impropriety of the moment was not lost on her, nor was the fact that she had severed ties with Teddy. She knew full well the reasoning behind that decision was standing right in front of her, yet she was hesitant to make the move that she so desperately wanted to. Vi was a ghost between them, but it was more than that, and she felt like they both knew it.

Rose finished off the champagne and replaced the empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter before clearing her throat. “You know the motto of Gryffindor house is ‘Their daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart’ and I have always done the daring part justice. Always gone blindly into the dark, never worried what was on the other side. My father always possessed a bravery my mother never had, and vice versa. My father possess a bravery that relies on selflessness. He is absolutely unafraid to sacrifice himself for those he loves, the innocent, the unjustly accused, you name it. My mother’s bravery is more about speaking up for the voiceless. My mother is brave for those who cannot be brave for themselves.”

She avoided his gaze, unsure if she could face him. “I’ve always been brilliant at facing the unknown. My bravery has always been feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” Her eyes glistened, which she hid with a carefully timed smile at a passerby. “But you, Jacob Nott, scare the devil right out of me. I cannot for the life of me understand why that is. You look at me and I want to run straight for the hills and never look back.”

Rose’s comment about Vi startled a laugh out of him.”You are not, er, entirely wrong.” Jake refrained from pointing out that he saw Vi’s drive and independence reflected in Rose’s life as well; he could tell she wouldn’t take kindly to it. No need to ruin an otherwise pleasant evening with a glass of champagne to the face and going home alone. His pulse quickened at even that brief thought of taking Rose back to his house at the end of the night. For a moment, he was caught up in flashes of imagined scenes—the graceful bend of her neck as he unzipped, the brush of his lips against a freckled shoulder, his fingers twisting into coppery red hair. A brisk movement—Rose finishing off her glass of champagne—brought him out of his reverie.

The entirety of his body felt warm, like there was fire blazing through his veins in place of blood. He struggled to focus on her words, knowing that although he couldn’t quite parse what she was trying to say, it was important. Or would be someday. Perhaps that was the same thing, that the distinction of important now and important later was, well, unimportant. Just as he was trying to put his feelings about his own family into words—about Vi, about the gaping hole in his life where parents should be—she finished her speech on an entirely different note.

He couldn’t help but grin, although it was a crooked, vaguely manic sort of smile. “You think I’m not terrified too?” he asked, voice low so as not to draw attention. “I don’t do intense, it’s never been part of who I am. I’m not Vi, I don’t live in search of a cause. I sell ice cream because I like it and because it makes people happy and that makes the world a little better.” Jake paused, sipping his cocktail and trying to figure out how to say the next bit. “And all of that is because I have spent the last twenty years trying to fit the contradicting pieces of my life together. I’m a Hufflepuff with the legacy of the Dark Mark hanging over me, for Merlin’s sake.” 

He gently turned her face to his, smiling weakly. He was no longer aware of the room around them, although he distantly wondered whether anyone was watching. He just couldn’t quite bring himself to care. “But you, Rose, you are all intensity. So maybe you’re just what I need. And maybe we can be scared together.”

[jacobnott]

rosewesle​:

soft words | jake & rose

Rose doesn’t get nervous, not really. Years of Victory Balls have conditioned her to All Eyes On the Weasley-Potters. The gazes become so clinical and detached that they aren’t even worth being nervous over. And there’s really nothing to be nervous about. She hasn’t done her own hair and makeup for an event since she was fourteen. Even then her mum had mercifully let her stylist ease over the rough bits with a flick of her wand. There wasn’t much to it. Someone tucked her curls up into something resembling elegance, made sure her eyes sparkled under the lights but not enough to distract from the dress, and most importantly Alfie put a cushioning charm on her shoes so that they wouldn’t pinch her feet throughout the night.

Once assembled they had decided that the best way to travel in order to preserve her hairstyle was to Apparate, which would be difficult in heels, she knew, but it couldn’t be helped. Alfie did the hard work of concentrating on the designated checkpoint and they landed in Hogsmeade, where they were immediately directed to a carriage that led them through a glittering pathway. It was all breathtaking, as was to be expected. Vi knew what she was doing. It was rainbow without being garish.

The Great Hall was decorated so as to make sure it did not look like a school. Rose was impressed she was able to pull it off. Something—or rather, someone—caught her eye before she was able to fully appreciate her surroundings. “Your sister did a wonderful job on the decorations,” she nodded to a particularly spectacular iridescent rainbow in front of a spectacular statue of what had to be the Greek goddess Iris. “Has she slept at all lately?”

Jake had been expressly forbidden from speaking to Vi until at least an hour into the ball. He thought back to her speech early that afternoon–“do you really want me to be distracted and not notice that the caterers had left orange out of the fruit pride flag? Or that the photo backdrop is crooked? Don’t come near me until after eight or I’ll never speak to you again, brother,”–with a smile. All of this in a rapid stream of French and English, natch. So, instead of his preferred activity–standing near his sister and making questionable jokes in low, murmuring French–he was aimlessly walking the perimeter of the Great Hall, greeting people he knew and watching Vi put out fires as they arose.

He noticed Rose the moment she entered the room. There was some sort of magnetic force that pulled him in her direction, like a compass aligning with due north. She was clad in twinkling silver, the beading on her dress winking in a way that seemed impossible without a bit of extra magic. He watched her get settled with a glass wine, watched as the crowd seemed to part around her. Jake was unsure whether Rose even noticed the effect she had on those around her, or whether she just took it for granted as an immutable aspect of being Rose Granger-Weasley.

Jake kept his eyes decidedly forward as she sidled up to him, taking a sip of his champagne before responding. “Oh, gods no. I made her nap a bit yesterday, but that’s been it. And that took about twenty minutes of wheedling, bribery, and sheer physical power on my part.” He imagined that it was akin to getting a toddler to nap, if the toddler in question was a sophisticated and cunning woman in her mid-twenties. He turned to face her, raising a single eyebrow. “If I may, you look absolutely stunning this evening. I thought Iris over there would be the only Greek goddess in attendance, but it seems to me like you’re channeling Selene.”

Even as he said it, Jake winced at how absolutely cheesy the words were. Rose’s proximity made him feel loose, unable to maintain his usual level of careful control. He opened his mouth to make a joke, to do something to divert attention from his obscenely sincere complement, but no words came. “Fuck, GW, I-” he said instead, voice low and tight in his throat. He wasn’t even sure where that sentence was headed, but it seemed unnecessary to continue. Rose was a brilliant woman she could figure out what he was trying t say better than he could. He wasn’t equipped for this; the only person he’d ever felt this strongly about was Vi, and–needless to say–his feelings toward Rose were decidedly un-sisterly. He’d had a handful of girlfriends at Hogwarts and beyond, and another handful of flings and one-night stands, but none of them held a candle to the redhead next to him.

[jacobnott]

rosewesle​:

Rose’s lip quirked at Jake’s mention of ice cream. Truth be told, she hadn’t only come for the ice cream anymore. Jake’s company was soothing, like he molded into her roughed up edges and made her soft again. She’d spent her entire life running away from softness, from weakness, from comfort, that it was nice to have a small taste of vulnerability. Much as Vi annoyed her, she knew the Nott children were good people.

And he was an attentive listener. After years of befriending people only to find out they wanted something to do with her family she knew the difference between feigned and genuine interest. She was grateful to be able to talk about her fuck ups to someone outside of her family. Someone who wouldn’t berate her for doing something that would affect all of them.

“Of course you do. Vi thinks that France is the only country that should exist. I can’t believe you don’t spend more time there, to be honest.” Was he offering to come to France with her? Something fluttered in her stomach and she took a large gulp of her drink to flush it out. Scandal and notoriety were two bedfellows she had lain with solo for years. Her mum was the bloody Minister, for Christ’s sake. Running away when it was too much (which was often) was something she had just shouldered alone.

Rose was happy to shift the conversation away from her own shortcomings. She flagged down the bartender and ordered another drink, sucking on a piece of ice thoughtfully before she replied. “I think I know what you mean. Paris has a soul, it’s so powerful that people feel drawn to it from all corners of the world. I’ve always felt most at home in France. A baguette and a cigarette with a side of coffee is actually the perfect breakfast for me.”

The mention of his shop didn’t surprise her. It was so bloody popular that sometimes she had to check the line before going in to make sure that she wasn’t pulling Jake away from his work. “That sounds like a brilliant idea. Do you think you’ll be able to manage both yourself? Will you be taking on more people? It sounds like you could end up wearing yourself thin. Then again, I don’t know a single thing about business. My degree was in classics. Muggle literature.” 

There was something incredibly intense about sustained eye contact with Rose Granger-Weasley. She didn’t hold back from truly looking at him, and didn’t seem to mind when he did the same to her. Maybe when you drew that many eyes the second you walked into any room, you stopped caring. He glanced down at his hands, needing a break from Rose’s fierce gaze. “There are a few other countries she would save from being wiped off the face of the earth, but probably not if it meant France’s destruction,” Jake said with a chuckle. “I personally go for a croissant instead of a baguette, but I could be swayed from that stance. As for why I don’t spend more time there… Well, as much as I feel at home there, it’s still not my home in the same way it is for Vi. I don’t belong there in the same way she does.” 

The chuckle had left his voice, though he had tried to keep his tone light. Envy wasn’t the word for the way he felt towards Vi’s relationship with her grandparents–that implied some level of antagonism. It was closer to grief, a loss he felt deep in his bones. Theodore and Vi were truly his only family left, and the ones that were gone weren’t exactly the kind of legacy to be proud of. 

Rose’s reference to his business pulled him out of his internal monologue, and her praise made him grin. “My manager, Bex, already handles almost all of the day to day of the shop. She could be doing it all, but I’m too selfish to give it all up. I’d probably handle all of the Paris operations for the first bit, then hand it off to whatever staff I thought could handle it. I’d give anyone here the opportunity first, but I’m not opposed to hiring locals.” Jake shrugged. “And a degree in classics is more than I’ve got–the shop fell into my lap. Merlin bless the muggles, though, they publish books about absolutely anything.” He had spent many an afternoon in the Westminster public library reading room back then, poring over books about business (many of which gave extremely questionable advice) and trying to learn as much as he could. 

[jacobnott]

text • Rose • Jun 20

Rose: Well, at least I'll look better than Hitler did.

Rose: I'm wearing Versace.

Jake: Well it IS a bar so low you can step over it...

Jake: Impressed. I'm wearing whatever Vi put in my closet.

[jacobnott]

text • Jake • June 20

Vi: Please make sure this is a success.

Vi: I need you in this. And I love you.

Jake: I'm there for whatever you need, Vi. You know that.

Jake: Je t'aime aussi

[jacobnott]

text • Rose • Jun 20

Rose: Save me the first dance?

Rose: Vi wants me there as much as Hitler wanted Churchill at VE Day, but thanks.

Jake: Of course

Jake: I think that Hitler would have relished any opportunity to take out his strongest opponent, and he definitely would have been more vulnerable on the beaches than he was in London.

Jake: I'm not sure the metaphor holds up.

[jacobnott]

text • Rose • Jun 20

Jake: So I assume I'll be seeing you tonight?

Jake: Vi wouldn't admit it, but she wants you there.

Jake: Okay maybe it's just for the publicity, but still.

[connectivitty-blog]

cell phone headcanons

send me “#” for cell phone headcanons about our muses including:                              - what your muse’s name is in mine’s phone                              - what your muse’s picture is in mine’s phone                              - what your muse’s ringtone is in mine’s phone                              - my muse’s last text to your muse

[jacobnott]

Texts with Teddy

teddy: you don't think girls are attracted to the exhilaration they get hanging off of a motorbike as it weaves in and out of traffic?

teddy: esp considering they have nothing to cling onto BUT you???

teddy: do you know anything about women?

jake: even if I did think that actually worked, wouldn't that require, you know...

jake: a working bike?

[jacobnott]

Texts with Teddy

teddy: it is... entirely possible

teddy: how else am i going to acquire that gorilla grip coochie?

teddy: you know what? I wanted to try that phrase out and I don't think it works for me.

jake: yeah there are so many things wrong with that statement

jake: 1-562 is that it's gross

jake: 563 is that I don't think girls are particularly attracted to malfunctioning glorified bicycles.

[jacobnott]

Texts with Teddy

teddy: unfucking believable

teddy: third fucking time this month that my bike's tire has gone flat.

teddy: wait fuck this is the wrong person

teddy: but i still think you should care.

jake: why do you still use that godforsaken contraption anyway, Lupin?

jake: did you text me instead of James *again?*

[jacobnott]

rosewesle​:

Rose tilted her head to the side, feeling him out before she answered. It had been a long time since she had talked seriously to anyone outside of her own family. The stress of it was too great, in the end it wasn’t worth it. Most of them ran off to the nearest reporter and sold the stories of the Weasley-Potter children for a ridiculous amount of galleons. Vi had been trustworthy, for what it was worth, generally choosing to use secrets as weapons and currency rather than selling them off straightway. 

Plus, the press already knew the nitty gritty details—what would be the harm in telling him? “I fucked the Muggle Prime Minister’s son.” She waggled her eyebrows and turned so she could stick her tongue out at the paps. Rose had managed to tie the cherry stem into a knot, which balanced on the tip precariously. “And he had to have his memory wiped. It wasn’t really my fault, not the whole thing. He caught me unawares when I was trying to fix my hair at a dinner with the queen. What man comes into the women’s loo anyway?”

Still, she had jeopardized her entire future on the encounters they had. Those types of risks were usually not the ones she liked to take. Risks were part of her, an intrinsic desire to fuck up her life, but big ones—they had to be worth it. That one simply hadn’t been. She wondered what her next risk would be and prayed it wouldn’t bring the weight of the press down on her family again. 

“It doesn’t matter, not really. He—the PM’s son—is an idiot. I’ll go stay in France in my flat there until it all cools down. I’ll miss your ice cream, though. You have the best chocolate rum ice cream I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some really good ones. Don’t suppose you ship to Paris, do you?” The logistics of keeping ice cream cold that long were well beyond her. “French ice cream just doesn’t cut it.” 

Jake raised an eyebrow, impressed. It was disaster on a scale far beyond his small London life, with Vi and their house and the shop and events to attend. He loved that quiet life, loved that he spent his days making something that was pure joy for a lot of people. Oh Merlin, he’d really been indoctrinated by all that Hufflepuff shit hadn’t he? Regardless, as much as he loved it, he sometimes felt like he was supposed to want to be more, is to do bigger and better things. But he didn’t want the kind of life that Rose had, where every step she took could bring their world crashing down around their ears.

He listened to her story, letting it spill out of her before he interjected. He has patience baked into his DNA, patience that was born out of a childhood of delayed gratification. Waiting for Vi to grow old enough that they could take care of each other. Waiting for the day he could find his own place. Waiting, again, for Vi to join him. It’s not that he doesn’t have a temper, because he does, but he has patience for the small things. After all, they’ve always come to him eventually.

“Well,” Jake finally said, leaning back in his chair, “That certainly merits the extra pint of Rum Chocolate last week. What a bloody nightmare.” He is far from an expert on successful relationships—his history is a string of dates and one-night stands and girls who he liked but couldn’t deal with Vi and one particularly noteworthy one who had only dated him to try to get with Vi—but he’d never created an inter-world PR fiasco either.

Jake flashed her a grin. “I don’t exactly ship but I’m sure some sort of delivery service can be arranged,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “We have a house there, after all. I end up spending at least a weekend or two a month there, sometimes more. It’s so much more…” he trailed off, trying to find the word. “Paris has a kind of magic that London has lost. Or maybe never had. But even though I was born in Wales and schooled in Scotland and I live in England, there’s a part of me that feels at home there.”

He shook his head almost self-consciously, realizing he’d gone off on quite the tangent. “Which is a very long way of saying that I’ve been thinking about opening a Paris branch of the shop. Pints at least, even if we don’t have cones and a dining area. Even I find apparating back to London a pain in the arse.”

[chewbacca]

By the way, nice spirit fingers! Yeah, well, here’s another.

[rosieweaslies]

jake nott + rose weasley aesthetic

She was not soft. She smelled like cigarettes, leather, and ground black coffee. And when you inhaled, she burned your lungs the way that made you want to do it again. She was danger, and you wanted her.

[jacobnott]

rosewesle​:

Rose’s eyes skimmed over Jake with a perfected look of boredom on her face. For years she had cultivated the image of the perfect bitch. Detached from the world around her. The career woman she had become. The mask was starting to slip but she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be in front of Jake Nott, especially when he could go squealing to Vi about what he saw. The last thing she needed was a perfectly perfumed letter in Vi’s neat font saying ‘I told you so, bitch!’ 

There was something interesting about Jake, much as she wanted to deny it. There was something she recognized—something in herself that was broken and sad. He was much like his sister in many ways—but where Vi was, well, a bitch, there was something soothing about Jake. Something nice to be around. 

“I’d bet you’d like to see my dick.” She took a sip of her old fashioned to hide a small smile. This week had been the worst, truly a week from hell. The Muggle Prime Minister’s son just had his memory modified—removing all traces of Rose herself. While she didn’t care particularly (he was dim witted, truly) it still stung to know that she was completely out a partner and a good-looking plus one at all the Muggle events she was forced to attend. 

And Alfie hadn’t been bad looking either, not all that different from Jake, really. Though he was an Eton lad and an Oxford scholar to boot, he had about as much intelligence as a chocolate éclair. Something told Rose that Nott would make a far better sparring partner. 

She sighed, pinching the cherry stem and popping it into her mouth. “Unfortunately, the gap is for your benefit. There are about fifty paps waiting outside that door for a glance of me. I’m sure you don’t want to get yourself tangled in Rose Granger-Weasley’s latest disappointing scandal.”

Rose’s gaze as she looked him over was almost tangible, but Jake kept his own steadily on her face. He held back a smirk. He knew that look; anyone who spent any time with Vi would. It was a facade, carefully constructed so that it appeared effortless. Rose was almost as good at it as his sister was, but not quite. He wondered idly whether the cracks in her veneer were new.

He raised an eyebrow at her quip. “There’s a time and a place for that, GW, but I’m not sure this establishment is it,” he said, pointedly looking over the menu as he did so. He liked a menu pun as much as, well, someone who came up with them for a living, but Merlin. Some of these were awful. He glanced up, catching the eye of a bartender. “But if you’re offering, I’m sure it can be arranged.”

Half the reason Jake enjoyed running the shop as much as he did was its endless opportunities for people watching. Growing up as isolated as he had, Hogwarts had been his first opportunity to interact with and observe a variety of different people. And in Hufflepuff, they were very different from those he had grown up around. Rose was harder to read than most–he could tell that she wasn’t all that she acted to be, but he couldn’t quite see into the depths beyond that.

The errant bartender arrived and took Jake’s order–a daquiri they had renamed the Dizzy Dame. “I’ve found that my life has been significantly improved by not reading anything the press says about me. Except glowing reviews of the shop. Those I’ll still read,” he said, nodding his head in acknowledgement of this exercise in vanity. “Although I do get quite a bit less than you do. Is there a preexisting scandal I should be concerned about, or is us sitting together sufficient to generate one all by itself?”

[rosewesle]

rose & jake | sweet love

There were very few things Rose detested more than an abundance of free time. Free time led to over thinking, which led to idle criticism, which led to thinking too much about her miserable existence. Dramatic? Quite possibly. But Rose had always been prone to theatrics. 

Diagon Alley isn’t exactly a relaxing place to be. There are so many people who know her, and her hair is a dead fucking giveaway. She has taken to wearing a long cloak with the hood pulled up to disguise herself, but it gets harder and harder to do so, because she’s often dressed in Muggle clothing. The Muggle clothing makes her even more conspicuous. The click of her heels is almost as loud as the clicks of the cameras as they snap photos of Rose Granger-Weasley, Muggle Liaison, daughter of the Minister for Magic Hermione Granger-Weasley—look over here! What’s new, Rosie Posie? Still breaking hearts? It grates on her like nails on a chalkboard but she forces herself to move along. 

Her destination looms in front of her. A wizard bar, new to Diagon Alley. It’s one of those concept-bars like the ones that Muggles have. The paps blessedly leave her alone as she crosses the threshold and pulls her hood down with a huff. 

Alone. At a bar. With NO Muggles and unlimited time on her hands… she sighs and orders an old fashioned, which at this bar is obnoxiously labeled as a Firefucker. It suits her, she thinks, especially in this mood. 

Someone sits down next to her and she swears for a second that she might actually kill them, but she thinks better of it. “Don’t you know to leave a gap?” 

[jacobnott]

Sometimes Jake couldn’t believe that he willingly submitted himself to the amount of paperwork that owning an ice cream shop entailed. He picked up a sheaf of parchment with a sigh (yes, the ministry still used parchment when they all carried magically enhanced computers in their pocket), then set it back down. This could wait until tomorrow, after he’d had at least two stiff drinks and more sleep. He organized his desk so that he’d be able to find everything in the morning, took one look around the room to make sure he wasn’t forgetting something, and then left his office.

The bustling dining room was a shocking contrast after the quiet of the back rooms, but it was a welcome change. After all, he has created this place. The hand-lettered menu loudly proclaiming the specials that week to be Kill ‘Em With Compassionfruit and a salted caramel waffle cone, the sixties pop playlist coming through the jukebox, the low hum of amiable conversation– it was all his. “Have a good day, Bex!” he called to the manager on his way out the door. Rebecca had been one of his first employees back in the early days, and she had taken on more and more responsibilities as he had taken steps back from the day to day. She was probably the closest thing he had to a friend, outside of Vi.

Jake wasn’t sure where he was going to end up as his feet carried him down the Alley; he’d eaten lunch at the Leaky Cauldron that day and he winced at the thought of being drawn into yet another conversation with the recently hired bartender who insisted on chatting with him. Muggle London beyond held a certain anonymous appeal, but he wasn’t dressed for it. Then he was reminded of the new bar three buildings down from the shop that he’d been meaning to investigate. He turned on his heel and headed towards the new establishment.

After his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Jake couldn’t help but notice the fiery redhead at the bar. He imagined that few men wouldn’t notice when Rose Granger-Weasley walked into a room, but he hadn’t considered himself one of them until she started coming into the shop with regularity  a few years back. Most Tuesday nights she came in the hour before they closed, picked up a pint of chocolate rum and a cone of their rotating special, and left after finishing the cone. Sometimes she wouldn’t be alone, sometimes she would chat with Jake, and sometimes she just ate in silence. They weren’t friends exactly, but he’d caught himself watching the door for her on more than one occasion–and was quick to silently mock himself when he did. Nonetheless, he knew he’d never discontinue their chocolate rum flavor as long as she was buying it.

Lost in thought, he found himself sitting down at the barstool next to her without being fully cognizant of his actions. “I think that rule only applies at urinals and public transit. Unless you’re going to whip something out, I’m perfectly within social norms,” Jake said with a smirk.

[holdhard]