Evan exercises his genius for efficiency, his lawyer regrets charging only time-and-a-half, and Walburga's umbrella stand was probably already cursed so no harm done, really.
Warnings: Parenting by sheltered Gryffindor who has not practiced making split-second decisions in hectic circumstances.
Happy birthday, Severus!
Not only is this on time this year, it's a chapter in which I am not torturing you! Yes, thanks to my generosity you may dread your next bout of being afflicted by stupid people for another few weeks and instead live in the more immediate fear of what I'm about to do to Evan, who is keeping secrets from you which will directly affect you and matter to you very much! Don't bother thanking me, bubbeleh, I understand your feelings perfectly. ^,^-3
Retching miserably into the horrible troll-leg umbrella stand of nightmares, Evan had just enough attention to spare for Reggie's Horrified But Still Trying To Be Polite voice saying, with an additional note of flattering indignation, "Er. Your client appears to be ill."
"Apparating twelve times in one afternoon was entirely the gentleman's own choice, Mr. Regulus," replied the solicitor, unruffled.
"I'll have," Reggie started, paused while he obviously remembered Kreacher was supposed to be dead, and gulped in grief that might have been a little too overdone for a servant. [1] The almost-smoothness of his recovery was much better, though, when he finished, "—Some mint and ginger in a minute, Evan, hang on."
"Tea, if you don't mind," Ev managed before he had to pause for another heave. "I can't eat ginger straight, it burns." He left just enough space for Reggie to, presumably, nod anxiously, and begged, "And a toothflossing stringmint if you have one, please."
"Oh, sorry," Reg said, with a voice that sounded quite wide-eyed. "We keep them in the umbrella stand."
Ev turned just enough to grin at him and get a pleased-with-his-own-cheekiness grin back before Evan had to turn back to the receptacle. Which, in his opinion, hadn't been notably disimproved by his additions to it. He could have dumped the flowers out of the vase (Aunt Walburga's curse against careless, filthy boy-hands probably didn't apply to him anymore and besides, it wasn't a permanent transformation), but he would have felt badly about putting something nasty in such a beautifully enamelled volute krater and Circe really didn't deserve to be disrespected like that. [2]
Spike would have argued that Evan was being extremely shallow and the troll's leg didn't deserve it either. At least the second half of that was probably true, but since it was a present from Rodolphus, who had killed it himself and who Aunt Walburga rather liked, the only way Evan's aunt and uncle were going to get rid of the wretched thing was if it was, quite innocently, made unusable. Vomit probably wasn't going to be enough, but maybe if it was the target of enough outrages over time?
He was feeling better by the time Reggie hustled back with the small paper box and large mug. 'Good' would have been an exaggeration—his stomach felt punched and his balance was off, with the sort of suggestion-of-nausea that comes with stuffed-up sinuses. But he was better enough that it didn't seem pointless to do some intense cleaning spells on the umbrella stand. He was almost sure he'd made them powerful enough to take off at least a layer of skin, although one of Spike's upholstery-bleaching scouring spells would have been stronger.
"I could get rid of this," he told Reg thoughtfully, hoping for an ally though not for actual agreement, "and tell your mum it evaporated under the evanesco."
Runcorn shot him a speaking look. What it spoke was: Please do not plot out loud in front of your solicitor who has to see That Woman at holiday parties.
"Evvie, it's made of troll," Reggie said patiently, holding out the little paper box of mints.
Evan stuffed a string into his mouth and waited for it to wriggle clingingly through his teeth, relax into a tingly, scrubby foam, and dissipate without fuss. He was in complete sympathy with Spike's violent hatred of the mints and preference for the controllable muggle tedium of toothbrushes, but he personally thought they were fun. Bracing in the morning and quite cheering after one had been sick, or when a client was droning on self-importantly at such length that one was legitimately afraid of falling asleep over one's canvas, and far less likely to provoke a gag reflex. "Yes," he agreed finally, when his mouth was clean and felt sparkly, "but she already thinks I'm crazy."
"I wouldn't go that far," his cousin temporized, walking them to the parlour and putting the tray down. "Why did you bring your solicitor?"
"I need to be very efficient," Evan said mournfully as they sat, and sipped his tea. It was a bit weak, but he was used to Spike's hell-brews, he supposed [3], and probably Reggie had wanted to get it to him as soon as possible. "It's horrible."
"Oh, sorry, does it need sugar? Or—"
"The tea's fine, Reg."
"...Oh. Er, good. Oh!" Reg remembered his manners. "Would you like some tea?"
"Thank you, Mr. Regulus." Runcorn inclined his head civilly. "I took a potion in anticipation before we left—"
"So did I!" Ev objected. It wasn't his fault if he was used to Spike's, which actually worked. He'd had to pick up a commercial one, because Spike would have Noticed and Asked Worried Questions if the level in their bottle had gone down. He wasn't used to apparating this many times in one day at all, and for most of them he'd been riding along with the estate agent. Side-along was always worse, and since the commercial potion was only helping with the nausea rather than eliminating it as Spike's would have, it had gone cumulative on him.
Several times.
"Indeed, Master Rosier," Runcorn probably-agreed, and looked back at Reggie. "I don't require any ginger tea, but the ordinary sort would be welcome."
Reggie hesitated, then summoned the necessaries from the kitchen. Evan could faintly hear the 'dead' Kreacher being insulted and indignant from down there, and devoutly hoped he was just imagining it.
In case he wasn't, he started talking, as Spike would have said, complete drivel. "I know you don't feel right about replacing your elf straightaway as such, Reg, but couldn't Aunt Wally at least borrow one from Granddad? I bet he's got one or two that could use some polish on their training before they're placed, and this place has to be hard to keep up without one, what with all the…" he looked around at all the vicious decorations that would gleefully and sometimes lethally bite anything with human blood, "whatnots."
Reg made a politely noncommittal noise that Spike would have pronounced as 'sod off,' so Evan shrugged peaceably. "I thought you weren't coming to start on my portrait till Monday," Reg said, his face pointedly and silently adding and you still haven't come close to explaining the solicitor.
"Actually, I came to tell you I have to delay it," Evan apologized. "And it's even ruder than that, because I might not be able to start for a week or two, and I can't say exactly when."
"Is he okay?" Reggie immediately asked (discreetly if not subtly), eyes widening in worry.
Evan looked at him fondly, smile tugging wider. He turned to the solicitor, said, "Excuse us a moment, if you don't mind," and cast Spike's sound-muffling charm. Back to Reggie, he said, "He's not hurt or anything, but he doesn't have a place of his own and it's become very clear to me over the course of the week that he absolutely cannot stay at that school all weekend and my parents' house will not do. I need my own place, I need it fast, I need it right, and—"
"There is no way on earth you can get a new house and have it ready for Spike by tomorrow," Reggie interrupted, looking at him as if he were crazy. "There is no combination of magic and gold that will make that happen."
"That's what he said," Evan grouchily agreed, tilting his chin vaguely in Runcorn's direction. "And Narcissa."
"Because there is no way on earth," Reggie repeated, looking as if he were trying to be patient but was slightly worried because someone as crazy as Evan might do something dangerous.
"Right, well, I'm suddenly busy this weekend anyway. I think I can get it done by next weekend," Evan sighed, "but I'm busy because I have a new paying commission [4] that Grandpère wants me to clear immediately, so I'll be out of the country again for the next couple of days. Sorry, Reg, I do expect to be back in England by Monday, but I'm really going to have to put the whole of next week towards this house thing. It's rotten of me to do that and ask you to help me with part of it, but I've got to make Spike somewhere safe and quiet to escape to before his head explodes and he kicks somebody out the window again and gets sacked. I promise you'll be top of my schedule as soon as it's settled."
"What do you mean, ask me to help you with part of it," Reg demanded warily, and Evan beamed proudly at him for not letting the hook be buried. "I'm not helping you pick out furniture, Evvie. And I'm definitely not helping you paint, no matter how simple you say it is. Anyway, if it were that simple you'd let Linkin do it—"
"Look, you know how Spike is about doing things ourselves—"
"And nobody but you and Narcissa can tell the difference between misty-agate green and smoked-gunpowder-matcha tea or whatever you said, and the way you get about 'even coverage' and the tiniest drips—"
Evan laughed, and let the privacy spell fade. "No fear, Reggie, Narcissa would kill me if I asked anyone else for help decorating. No, the thing is, as long as I'm getting a place, Grandpère thinks—and he's quite right, of course—that I might as well take the opportunity to expand the business a bit. So I'll need a receptionist—someone who's absolutely reliable and not gossipy at all."
"I maintain," Runcorn said long-sufferingly, "that my firm is not a hiring service."
"But you do help out with our hiring contracts," Evan pointed out reasonably.
"Certainly, Master Rosier, but not with your hiring selections, as a matter of course."
"True," he agreed, "but I value the character assessment of anyone who survived Slytherin while Lucius Malfoy and my cousin Bella were butting heads, and since I needed you along to find problems in the estate contracts anyway…"
"Also something of an expansion on our usual services," Runcorn murmured, now not so much long-suffering as appreciate-my-goodness. He only meant that it was unusual for his firm's solicitors to actually come along on a client's house-hunt; for Evan to have made his own decision and then sent the contract along for him to facilitate would have been perfectly normal.
Sadly for him, his dress sense was much like Spike's except more conventional and with fewer pockets, and the skin around his eyes was expressive even when the rest of his face was a perfect deadpan. Evan had every expectation that between his own understanding of Spike's preferences and Runcorn's natural taste, he wouldn't have to wonder whether Spike would think a house was too silly to be borne.
Sadly for Evan, the estate agent hadn't shown them anything remotely silly yet, but Evan considered dragging Runcorn all over England would be worth it even if she never got less boring. The solicitor didn't seem to agree, but then he valued thoroughness over efficiency.
Ev slid Runcorn an amiable And I'm Paying You Commensurately smile, and explained to Reggie, "My difficulty is that Narcissa and I tend to gravitate towards the gossipy types, [5] and we can't have anyone spreading company business talking about our clients out of turn. It'll have to be someone who can say no to people more rampaging erumpent-ish than you can imagine and make it stick, and do the books very competently and keep track of everything, and be willing to accept a silence geas without taking it personally and getting insulted. I thought you or Lucius might know someone, and frankly, I'm not sure Lucius would suggest anyone I can tolerate for more than five minutes put together."
"Selwyn," Reggie said at once.
Evan blinked.
"She can say no to Bast," Reg added, both fervent and a bit defensive. "And she's been helping Bulstrode out at the trainery, with the books as well as the crups, so she's had a bit of accounting experience. She wouldn't make a very smiling receptionist, but she's never been gossipy and I always thought you got on all right…?"
"Reggie, you're a genius," declared Evan, smiling at him. "Do you think she'd want to?"
"I don't know," he admitted, his I'm-being-useful! glow faltering. "Would you need her full-time? She's been talking about wanting to give up the security-troll training since the baby came or I wouldn't have mentioned her, but I think she still likes helping Bulstrode with the crups and thestrals. She wouldn't want to stop helping with the books, either, unless you'll be paying her enough that Bulstrode can hire some other help with it. And there is Millicent to consider."
"Well, I'll see if we can work it out," Ev decided. "Let me know if you think of anyone else, will you, in case she won't?"
"Sure, Evvie. Tell Spike hullo from me, will you? And I'm sorry his job's being so…" Reg waved an aimless hand.
"He just needs to get used to it, I think," Evan lied. What Spike needed was to be able to relax and feel safe every single evening. He was about to start losing his appetite, if Evan was any judge of his stress levels. But settling in would certainly help. And a weekend away from the school might, too, even if it was a busman's holiday.
Runcorn put his teacup back on the silver tray and stood up. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Regulus. Are you ready to resume the hunt, Master Rosier?"
"I don't think so," Evan decided. "Folley gets cranky when her tea's interrupted, and she looked like she really needed it."
"Quite," Runcorn agreed, with eyes that silently accused Evan of being unreasonable and a terrible client for wanting to see every house that fit his specifications in the space of one afternoon, as if he wasn't paying them both their full time-and-a-half for several hours at short notice.
"Anyway," Evan ignored this reproach, "it looks as if I need to find out whether I'll need the waiting area to have room for a crib and a playmat and possibly a dog bed."
Runcorn let his eyes close, expressively. "Babies require a great deal of attention and must be changed and bathed."
Evan considered that giving Dobby more work than he currently had could only be a good thing, but just said firmly, "Well, I'll discuss it with Selwyn."
"They occasionally become quite loud, and, indeed, odiferous," Runcorn pressed on in a despairing if a prominent client crashes and burns it will damage my reputation voice, "neither of which is a trait commonly considered an ornament to a place of business."
"Quite, quite. Thanks for the tip, Reggie!" Evan said loudly. "I'll let you know when we can reschedule as soon as I know."
"D'you want to come over for supper sometime this week?" Reggie asked.
He was clearly hoping for a reprieve from his own parents, but Evan thought it would probably be a solid month before Spike had calmed down about Hogwarts enough that he could be either left alone of an evening or subjected to family-formal meals. Anyway, Aunt Walburga was conflicted about Spike, and he reminded Uncle Orion of Sirius being disreputable and a disgrace, and then there was gloominess and extra drinking. Taken altogether it made things strained.
So Evan said, "I don't think I can commit to any particular day just at the moment with all this to get done, but I'll tell you what—I'll have you over as soon as the new place is fit for company. And then you can explain some of this heir-apparent nonsense Grandpère suddenly wants me to pay attention to and tell me all about why you've been haunting the tea-shop so often the Prophet's calling you its patron," he added on his way out the door, shooting his sunniest grin over his shoulder and watching Reggie turn all pink and white and completely fail to refuse to help him figure out how to do the books.
Even though Ev had specifically gone to see Selwyn while he was already paying for Runcorn's time, he was disappointed in his wild hope of getting this step taken care of at once. While cautiously in favour of the idea once promised that at the very least she wouldn't be taking a pay reduction if she worked anything resembling normal business hours and Ev wouldn't mind if she did her wife's books at his desk, she naturally wanted to talk it over with Bulstrode and have a think about how much time she wanted to keep free.
She wasn't keen on Evan's idea of taking the baby to work to give the place a friendly, casual, mum-friendly air, either. Ev rather thought she was trying to make him feel like a monster for even suggesting it, possibly in aid of salary inflation.
This did not work for her at all. He'd thought it would be convenient for her with a possible business side-benefit, but it wasn't as if he particularly wanted to have an infant around all the time. He wasn't even terribly fond of Narcissa's, although he had to admit that Millicent was, based on the two or three times he'd visited when she was awake, less fussy and fretful than Draco by far.
When Selwyn suggested, all on her own, that she might occasionally bring one of the crups in instead if he thought having something big-eyed about would be such a bloody draw, he felt quite pleased with himself. Everyone liked dogs, and though he personally preferred larger ones, crups were cute and unintimidating, as long as Selwyn could train hers to be polite to Nottingham muggles. That would be a bit of a challenge, considering how offended crups tended to be by the smell of humans who lacked magic, but Selwyn and Bulstrode both secretly enjoyed challenges. They claimed not to, but Evan had known Spike and Narcissa for a long time and he could tell when someone was only pretending to be grumpy or annoyed so as not to be taken advantage of.
So even if he didn't have a signed contract in hand by the time they were ready to leave and Runcorn was making agitated little wasting-my-literally-valuable-time faces, Evan felt considerable progress had been made.
And it hadn't been a waste of Runcorn's time, in Evan's opinion. This sort of thing was exactly why he'd asked him to come, along with thinking to raise issues like:
* Do remind me which concern would be used to transport the building, because the one I surely-incorrectly recall you mentioning is currently under investigation for fraud.
* If my client is to consider purchasing this house, it will be after the carnivorous ivy and doxy colonies have both been removed, along with the curse on the oven, which, as I'm sure you'll recognize, is a fire hazard.
* What do you mean the wards are incompatible with the spells to expand rooms?
* Will your client refuse sales if mine wishes to completely replace all the bathroom fixtures that her grandfather lovingly installed, taking into consideration that they appear to have been built for extremely short people of no evident taste? [6]
* Er, is it actually possible that the cottage will irretrievably fall apart stone from stone if removed from its native ley lines, or could it be, and I do hesitate to suggest it, that your client is simply loath to sell the building without also selling the associated land which happens to be blighted by proximity to a nogtail colony?
Et cetera. Ev wouldn't have thought of most of the little details Runcorn apparently had on a pre-written checklist, and he didn't think even Spike would have thought of all of them.
He certainly hadn't known what salaries Rose & Yew typically paid anybody, [7] and he'd completely tuned out for a good five minutes while Runcorn and Selwyn talked about how early in the morning an office should open even if the artist it was serving wasn't awake yet and why the confidentiality geas was standard and what it actually involved.
It had given him time to start thinking about what different backgrounds he wanted to put in into the Grindelwald portrait, since he and Dumbledore had agreed the fellow ought to be confined to a single frame. The lemon grove was obvious, even if Dumbledore hadn't hinted he'd like it, and Ev would have to do the cell since he couldn't take the man out of it to pose. Probably Grindelwald would like a library, even if he'd have to let Dumbledore choose all his books. Other than that, the only thing Ev knew for sure was that he was not going to flit all over Europe to paint war ruins.
He was going to treat this more or less like a normal portrait, not a Provocative Work of Great Historical Meaning. This commission wasn't being painted for strangers to gawk at and learn from—if one of those was to be done, Grandpère could do it. This was helping an old man unburn a bridge with someone very important to him. This was that old man making sure that his important person didn't entirely disappear from the world, and would be comfortable in his anchor and not feel it a prison or a penance. If there were politics behind it, that might be Evan's concern as Severus's partner, but it wasn't his business as an illuminator.
He was, as an illuminator, deeply curious about how soon Dumbledore would break and ask for a second locked portrait with them both in it, but probably even studying Divination with Narcissa wouldn't have helped him with that one.
"—Or two more, if we go now," Runcorn was saying pointedly. "I daresay she'll be expecting us by this point."
"Jolly good," Evan said vaguely, deciding against putting in any of the places he'd shared with Spike during their Bulgaria visit, no matter how gorgeous and how much fun they'd be to paint. Those were theirs. [8]
Selwyn sighed heavily, came over, levered him out of his chair by the arm, and shoved him out the door. She wasn't rough about it, so he just waved absently to her as Runcorn took a grip on his arm.
Before Runcorn could take that one magical step, Evan said, "Just one more thing."
Runcorn let him go and, if Evan was any judge, cathartically considered three or four methods of untraceable homicide. Evan, interpreting this as the melodramatic internal sobbing of someone who liked schedules more than as any real threat, smiled placidly and drew him over to a nice piece of field a little distance Selwyn and Bulstrode's house, on the other side of a little copse with enough battered tree-branches to show they used it for flying practice. [9]
"While I have you," he said, as though it were something he'd only just thought of as they left, "why don't we discuss the Prince matter."
"So you did get my letter," Runcorn said in what Evan considered to be an unnecessarily accusatory tone.
"Why did you think I made sure I'd have a large window of time with you where so much of it could be accounted for that any moments in between would disappear?" Evan blinked. "Only this one won't if we don't use it well, so let's be quick. You said you'd made progress?"
Runcorn looked as if he would have liked to have an emotional reaction to an outrageous remark but a) was too professional and b) acknowledged that Evan had a point about using the time well. He said, "I hesitate to take credit for it, but nevertheless progress has been made. Which is to say that on Monday I received an owl with a missive addressed to the solicitor overseeing your affairs, which it took me until Wednesday to authenticate. At which point," he underlined pointedly, "I owled you."
"And I arranged to meet with you as soon as possible, so there's no need to feel ignored. Was it, by any chance, from one Mrs. Augusta Longbottom?" Evan asked.
"It was," Runcorn admitted, surprised. Evan smiled. That letter Spike had mocked had looked to Evan like a clear declaration of her willingness to act as an intermediary, and he was, reservedly, glad to have pegged her right. "I didn't anticipate discussing this matter today, considering how much other business—"
"I'm lazy," Evan said placidly, hurrying him along with an encouraging gesture.
Runcorn eyed him, but allowed himself to be hurried. "So I didn't bring the documents, but I take it you'd like a summary?"
"Please."
"There were two, and the first was what you asked me to acquire."
"Julilla Abbot's marriage contract," he breathed. He'd thought it would take months. "Wait, don't tell me-not Severus Prince's contract, his wife's father's." He didn't say I'm an idiot out loud, but he thought it. Of course something Mrs. Longbottom could lay claim to, as a descendant, would be easier to get than anything Mr. Prince didn't want to let go of.
"A copy of it," Runcorn corrected, "which is why it took me two days to authenticate: the magic which would have made the matter instantly clear is all attached to the originals, of course. But I believe it to be a genuine copy."
"And it's as binding as was represented to us?" he asked, trying not to sound too much as though it mattered.
"Oh yes," Runcorn said with a dry little legal smile. "You may view the document at your leisure, of course, but in brief, Mr. Prince is bound to support his wife's safety, and to deny her no comfort within his means (some codicils there, I might add) and support her advancement in such endeavours which a gentlewitch may undertake without embarrassing her family."
"...Which means?" Evan asked warily.
"I gather that Mr. Prince is permitted to block Mrs. Prince from supporting businesses and charities he would prefer his money not aid, taking public office while promoting positions he opposes, and from engaging in work which would either be physically dangerous to her or which he finds, and here I quote, 'morally reprehensible.'"
"Considering all indications are that the man's a tyrannical twit," Evan said drolly, "that sounds promising."
"I could not possibly comment," Runcorn said solemnly.
Even though they were on a bit of a schedule, Ev couldn't resist asking, "Why? He's not one of your firm's clients; I checked before putting this job on your desk."
"He isn't," Runcorn agreed, the twinkle in his eye suggesting strongly that he had his own opinions about who else was either a tyrant or a twit. Evan looked sad at him. "But I must say that all the clauses of the contract are quite standard for that period—one might even say bog-standard. Including the provision for mutual bodily fidelity, and the binding on her to obey his decisions in regards to heirship and other inheritances, disinheritances and other forms of social, er, severance, adoptions, and the general finances of their House, once he declares such decisions final and providing they don't violate clauses which are in her favour."
"So he can't oppose her in picking out the furniture to suit her comfort over his," Evan summarized, "but he, in fact, can make it impossible for her to speak to her daughter or send any money and there actually is nothing she can do about it."
"Just so."
"Well, that is a charming and equitable balance of power," Evan said, distracted from how glad he was for Spike by the thought of how Spike would have reacted if Mum and Dad had tried to make him sign anything that, if Dad had his way, probably would have been quite similar to that.
He really was glad, though. Not just that he didn't have to think Julie Prince was the complicit monster Spike had braced against, but that Severus Prince was apparently an idiot. He must have said never to contact Mrs. Snape, but only said not to write Spike or seek him out. There were ways around that, although in Evan's opinion Mrs. Prince hadn't looked hard enough.
Runcorn shrugged philosophically. "The Abbotts may be a more significant House than the Princes, in Britain, but the Princes have a strong Continental presence, which was even stronger before their losses in Grindelwald's war. And, of course, Mr. Prince was at the time the heir to the British branch of his House, as he is now its head, while Mrs. Prince is from a significant branch of her own birth-family but not high on its line of succession."
Evan said, "Well, I wouldn't sign it in either role, that's all I can say. What was the second?"
Runcorn explained.
Evan said, "Huh," and crossed his arms to give it due consideration. Now that he was reminded, Mrs. Prince (he was going to have to find a less cold way to think about her, if she was actually family) had mentioned something along those lines at the handfasting. At the time, he'd thought it was, if not a false promise, something between wishful thinking and wild brainstorming.
Apparently she'd been serious. Worth bringing to Spike's attention, even if it didn't ultimately turn out to be practicable for them.
Uncrossing his arms, he smiled. "Okay. I'll take a closer look at it later. Let's go give Folley her chance to bite my head off."
He was absolutely never apparating this many times in one day ever again, but his stomach had had enough time to recover since showing up at Selwyn's door that he didn't decorate the teashop. He did, however, get queasy enough that Folley only looked exasperated and informed him he was paying for her tea as punishment for being late instead of scolding him at length.
She was annoyed enough to get sharp with him, at least, four more houses in. This was less than an hour later; Evan had turned away from all of them on sight. Hanging on to professionalism by her teeth (he did feel sorry for her really) in front of what he had to admit objectively was a very handsome Tudor building, she suggested, "Why don't we go over your requirements again, Master Rosier? Maybe there's something in them I didn't understand."
"Not a bad idea," he agreed, using a tone that suggested an apology for being difficult without actually making any. "We may as well go in and see if the owner's left any furniture to sit on."
The owner had, so they settled in the sitting room. Folley appeared to hope that the very nice appointments inside would sway Evan. They did not, and he let it show. With a sigh, she pulled out her scroll and started reading off it. "Master and guest bedroom. Room large enough for a combined office-library."
"One with two desks and at least six shelves," he reminded her. "Or expandable to that size."
She made a note and nodded. "Sunny studio area with ceiling capable of taking a sky charm. Personal sitting room with a fireplace mandatory, with a secondary parlour if possible. Room or outbuilding outfitted or suitable for potioneering, with good ventilation, either fortified or fortifiable against internal accidents."
"It has to be able to take additional fortifications regardless," Evan corrected, because Spike was going to want to add on no matter what was already in place. "It's good if there's a foundation to build on, though."
"No locked wards, all right." Pulling out her scroll with the addresses, she made a couple of strikethroughs a few inches past everything Evan had already rejected, and then four more at the bottom. "And you wanted a cloakroom near the work areas in addition to the master bathroom, and a guest bathroom."
"Well," Evan temporized. "There don't have to be two bathrooms and a cloakroom, really, do there? As long as there is a second bath, and some sort of toilet and sink near the work areas. Which I suppose we can add, but a place to put them, at any rate."
She gave him a look that suggested she might have been able to add another address or two if she'd known that earlier, but didn't comment. "You also wanted a kitchen and pantry operable by elves and wizards, a size-malleable dining area, an elf lair, a dedicated room for storage and 'lots of closets'. That's all I have for interior requirements."
"That sounds right," he agreed, after scanning the list she handed him and closing his eyes to see if he'd forgotten anything.
"Have you realized anything as we've been looking at places today?" she asked. "Ceiling height requirements? You want everything on one floor, or you definitely want two floors or three? You don't like certain architectural styles?"
"I… hmm." He considered this. "Actually, yes—well, and obviously the ceilings should be tall enough for me, but I don't need anything, er…"
"Malfoyesque?" Runcorn suggested under his breath, speaking (Evan assumed) as someone who'd shared a school dorm with Lucius rather than as Evan's solicitor.
"Grand," he substituted diplomatically as Folley coughed into her hand in an I'm Not Laughing sort of way. "I want the master bed and bath, the study, and the personal sitting room on the top floor, and the guest and working rooms below. Or a three-story place with the study and dining area as a buffer."
"Ah." She made several more strikeouts. "No sprawling single-story layouts. And have you liked the looks of anything I've shown you, whether it fit your other requirements or not?"
"No," he burst out plaintively. "They've all been indefensible and soulless! And stuffy!"
"Some of them have had lots of windows," Folley pointed out, looking confused.
"But they're all so… boxy," Evan tried to explain, frustrated. "And… and sterile, and show-offy for strollers down the high street."
Runcorn made his I Shall Not Display My Opinion That My Client Is A Lunatic face, but couldn't resist saying, "Surely you would wish a new home to be sterile before moving into it?"
"Only in terms of actual cleanliness," he said plaintively. "A home shouldn't look that way."
He hadn't thought about it before Spike had reacted with that quiet fury to his childhood bedroom. It had never bothered Evan before, and their own place hadn't exactly been cluttered. But when Spike had, he'd felt as though something in him that he hadn't known was broken started cautiously thinking about knitting together. Clearly, even if Spike was overreacting, there was something to it—something more than Evan being bored by boring architecture, which was also a (less important) consideration.
"Homeowners generally want their houses to have curb value," Folley said mildly. "To be attractive to onlookers, and in case of future re-sales."
"Yes, but it's not going to be on a curb," he said. "There shouldn't be onlookers. I don't know, they could be teashops, Folley. Muggles could live there. They're so… so fashionable."
She looked at his clothes.
"Yes, but when I get dressed it's to be in public," he pointed out. Actually, he considered his comfortable at-home clothes to also be as fashionable as such things ever got, but that wasn't really the issue at all. "A house with an elf should be… I don't know, I suppose a house can't really be natural, but it should be able to become part of its land. These have all been parts of their cities. It's not the same thing at all."
He half expected her to snap at him that what did he expect? Houses were houses; they were made in a certain way because it worked.
Instead she hummed contemplatively. "How much do you actually care about having guests over?" she asked.
"Well, I don't want any," he admitted. "One or two friends over for dinner occasionally, but I suppose one might as well use the family house for any big dos. That's probably better anyway, really. Still one ought to be prepared."
"So you wouldn't mind if a house had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but no size-malleable dining area?" she checked.
"Well, I suppose not."
She rolled up her scroll. "So I understand properly: what you really want is a cosy little fortress with some character. Possibly even one that's a bit… old-fashioned, shall we say."
He felt his shoulders go down in relief. "Yes. Yes, exactly. I mean, if it's the right sort of character. I don't want any ghosts tagging along, or fireplaces that were used for dark rituals or whatnot."
"Cosy," she repeated comfortingly, and stood up. "I'll just use the floo-one or two places come to mind, I'll have to check to see if we can visit today. You probably won't like them, but you can tell me if I have the right idea, and then I can see what else I can find."
Having gotten the go-ahead from her office, she handed Evan yet another ginger chew and side-alonged them to yet another secluded area in yet another bustling probably-a-city. This one smelled, not as pleasantly as it might have, of seawater.
"It's quite close," she said, gesturing to the street. Runcorn made the exact sour face he'd made everywhere that wasn't either Diagon Alley or a nice spread of secluded countryside, but he didn't say anything. He had the first time, in Mayfair, but once Evan had reminded him that he already had the paperwork started on the land they'd be moving the house to, he'd contented himself with pressing his mouth flat and breathing in long-sufferingly through a pinched-looking nose.
Happily, the Mayfair exchange had alerted Folley to Evan's complete lack of use for any townhouse his cousin was not currently living in, which had probably saved them all a lot of time.
As they got closer to the intersection, Evan started to hear the crowds, and as far as he was concerned they were not speaking English. "Where are we?"
"We're coming onto James Street in Liverpool," she said, and they turned a corner. "Here we are."
She gestured up at a building that looked rather like a red stripy jumper over white trousers, or, alternately, a castle on top of a warehouse. Evan started to laugh. "What is that?"
"That's Albion House," she said, smiling. "It's a hotel."
"You weren't going to sell me a hotel!"
"No, no," she assured him, still smiling. "I'm just trying to work out what your limits on acceptable character are, and how much of a fortress you want."
"Defensible," he laughed. "Not an actual castle!"
"What do you think about the looks of it?"
"It's very stripy," he said, trying for a grave tone. Only it was very stripy.
"There's another building I couldn't sell you five minutes' walk from here," she suggested. "It'd give your stomach time to settle before the next jump, anyway."
Evan checked the time, pleased he'd remembered to wear a pocket-watch so he wouldn't have to cast the tempus spell in the middle of Muggle Liverpool. Addressing Runcorn, he said, "I don't mind a walk if you don't."
"A moment first," Runcorn said, and took them back into the alley before casting a nihilmalio on them all. "I believe the ones from this morning were starting to wear off," he explained. "I'm sure I saw a muggle woman looking surprised at your outfit, Master Rosier."
"She probably just thought he was a model," Folley said dismissively, making Evan go a bit blank as he tried to discreetly check he was wearing more clothes than you saw during life-drawing practice, "but an extra dose of nothing's-off-here can't hurt."
In Evan's opinion, being in this place at all was hurting his soul a bit. Some of the architecture was interesting, but it was all so greyish. The buildings stretched from one end of the block to the next, without a leaf of any sort in sight, and once it stopped smelling like a dirty beach it was full of horrible mugglish smells.
He felt badly about being so put off by them, he really did—but they were honestly horrible. They were strong and not-alive and he couldn't even work out what a lot of them were, though some of them got worse when a car passed through.
Objectively speaking, he would probably have had to acknowledge that the pit of polluted despair Spike had fought his way out of smelled worse, but at least that reek made sense. The river was dirty and the streets smelled like old alcohol and older urine and garbage and the people smelled like sweat and harsh soap and giving up.
It wasn't nice, but you knew what you were smelling and you'd gone in expecting it. People here looked as if they were not just going about their day but actually living their lives, and finding that people could walk around happily with their shopping in the middle of this tarry and synthetic stench… Evan was having a hard time fitting that into his head.
Even muggle perfumes smelled unnatural, and when one woman with aggressively curled hair passed by, he had a moment's shaking flashback to being on the Devon moor with blood on his hands and Rabastan humming placidly off to one side and Spike trying with a white face to fashion a finger-bone out of a rock.
He was just reminding himself that he was not a Gryffindor and there was no shame in exiting an upsetting situation that promised minimal benefits when two things happened.
First, he spotted a flash of cool green and white that, when he looked at it, resolved into a statue-sprinkled gazebo in a stone resting area, across from some trees. They were lonely and didn't look especially healthy, but at least they were something growing. He felt better at once. Not a lot better, but less like running away.
Which was just as well, because as soon as he'd noticed the trees, his peripheral vision started shrieking alarms at him, and other alarms started blaring, too. He shoved Folley and Runcorn up a short stone stairway into a somewhat-sheltered doorway, ignored her reflexive shove back with the ease of someone who'd been on a sports team and grown up with Narcissa's shin-assaults, and peered out.
The cars, though large and worryingly solid, had previously to this been proceeding in an orderly fashion, stopping politely at the intersections and going in sets. They were no longer doing this, and Evan thought it might have something to do with the way the three lights on the boxes on the stout poles on the corners were going mad.
That was just a muggle problem, though. As Evan saw it, the real issue was that the statues on the gazebo were hopping down from it.
"I realize this isn't your area of law," Evan said to Runcorn conversationally, "but how much trouble would I get into for doing magic in this situation?"
"We'd best call the Ministry first," Runcorn said, looking pale as he fumbled with a cloak-pin that, as a family solicitor, he'd probably never thought would have to serve as more than a mark of his profession. "But I should say the Statute is not currently a factor." [10]
"Call them now, then," Evan said in his That's Enough, Avery voice, starting down the stairs. Of course Runcorn was already trying, but it was important to make good intentions crystal clear at times like this. "And tag as many muggles for the obliviators as you can."
"I'll set up an expanding zone to tag us all," Folley agreed, sitting down to spread one of her scrolls out on the top step to start the array. "A square quarter-mile should catch everyone who can't apparate, with the traffic going mad." Which did sound more effective than trying to zap the muggles they could see, though they'd probably already lost some of the faster runners. It seemed a bit fishy to him that an estate agent would have that sort of spell at her fingertips, but he didn't have time to wonder about it.
His protego charm got a serious workout before he even made it to the square, especially when two of the cars tried to smash into each other trying to avoid the statue swinging its scales like nunchucks.
(As opposed to the ones lobbing royal orbs and drop spindles and gyroscopes at people, or bashing at them with shepherd's staffs and crutches and books and whatnot.)
Evan couldn't drop his protego when the car that hit it flipped up into the air: the car he'd been shielding was careening into a group of fleeing, screaming Muggles. That was why he was so surprised when it stopped in midair, spun gently wheels-side-down, and was settled carefully in a temporarily-empty spot.
Wheeling around, he was prepared to shout at Runcorn and Folley (though he wasn't quite sure what for; he could certainly use all the help he could get even if his initial impulse had been a Spikelike one to get people whose Defense skills he was unsure of out of the way), but instead he was confronted with auburn hair, flashing green eyes, and a wand pointed at his face.
"What," Lily Evans (er, Potter) hissed, "are you doing here?"
"House-hunting," he said, too astonished to consider whether it was wise. "What are you doing here?"
"My parents live here," she said, lowering her arm a little but still looking suspicious. "We were taking the baby for a walk."
"There's a baby here?" he demanded, appalled. "Where is it?"
"HE is safe in a cafe with my parents," she snapped, "and how do I know—"
"What exactly do you think is safe with them chucking their bits and bobs about?" he demanded, gesturing wildly at the target-practicing statues. Cafes had windows, after all.
...He was turning into Severus.
No, Severus would have spontaneously figured out how to make a copy of himself so he could both shoot shields at people here and run after the baby. Still, Evan felt quite proud.
"It's safer," she snapped, white around the eyes in a way that told him she'd already thought of that and was trying not to. "I charmed the glass. And what am I supposed to do, let these people—"
"Never mind, just stop that car so I can put the shield down, will you?"
Still looking unfairly truculent, in Evan's opinion, she somehow froze the careening automobile before it hit anything else. Evan thought he saw someone's forehead hit the big window up front, but he didn't have time to worry about that because an old man was about to lose his kneecaps (and quite possibly the rest of his legs as well) to what looked like an enormous bronze toy boat.
Her voice still sounded a bit as if she were extending him the benefit of the doubt as a deliberate choice somewhat against her better judgment when she asked, "Are you better at protego or finite?"
"Don't use finite!" he said, alarmed. "Are you mad? They'll stick in place."
"We don't have time to worry about some dead Victorian's artistic integrity, Rosier!"
"Maybe not, but we don't have a choice. We'd never get them back quite right. All the old pictures will be wrong and it'll be a permanent crack in the Statute."
"Well, what do you suggest?" she snapped, throwing the statue with a shepherd's crook away from the middle-aged woman it had been pounding towards and through another car's window. The woman was probably only about Folley's age—maybe even younger, since muggles seemed to age faster—but her aggressively blond hair made her look older to Evan. He wasn't sure if it was the wrong shade for her or just made her look as if she were trying a bit hard.
Not that he was really thinking about it, but a corner of his mind he wasn't currently paying attention to was deciding whether to emphasize the faint lines in her face when he painted her.
Not that he'd decided to paint this disaster, per se. It was just unthinkable that he wouldn't.
"Petrificus. Or—Arresto momentum!" he stopped talking to demonstrate, since the angel was swooping down on a man with a briefcase who looked unnervingly like Madam Marchbank's boggart-vampire. It fell to earth—well, paving-stone—with not only an almighty crash but also a crater. Evan breathed, and checked on the man. He was in one piece, although he was starting to look a bit damp around the trousery regions and Evan couldn't tell whether he was having a heart attack or clutching at one of those cross necklaces that went in and out of muggle-mandatory fashion through the centuries.
Then it started climbing out.
"Nope, definitely Petrificus totalus," he concluded with regret, waving his wand sharply at another impending disaster. He was aware that he decidedly had not been in the top ten of their year as far as spellcasting force and endurance were concerned, while she both had and was better at charms generally than he was. Still, no use risking that the difference would only buy them a few extra seconds. An arresto didn't last long enough that you had to worry about dehydration even on mice, but Evan had never seen a petrificus wear off on its own.
"Right," she said, sounding as if she'd set her jaw resolutely, and dashed off for the square.
Evan rather wanted to sigh, Gryffindors. Since he was being at least as bad ('at least' since he didn't have the excuse of actually being one), he just set off after her in protego-peppered silence.
After only a few meters (and about six swift shields) he stopped, cursed himself for an idiot, and shouted, "Linkin! Dobby! To me!"
1: Overdone, at least, in front of someone who didn't know about Reggie and Kreacher. Evan made a note to talk to him about that, though it was probably okay if Reggie was doing it on purpose for consistency.
2: Sixteen years later, the feud between Molly and Sirius did not actually start over disagreements about how much to include Harry, but because Sirius didn't remember that the vase Molly was about to put some flowers in likes to turn people into pigs.
3: Not that Severus's tea wasn't delicious. He managed to avoid whatever mere non-potioneering mortals might do to make it bitter or sour, every time. It was invariably, however, freakishly strong. If there was a hint of flavour or a molecule of caffeine left in the leaves by the time the cup made it to one's lips, that cup had not been brewed by Spike.
4: Not that any Rose & Yew commission were pro bono, of course, even deathbed rush-jobs by junior painters that might end up as a very modest line-item in the funeral expenses. But coin aside, some of them paid off more than others.
5: By which he meant 'shamelessly encourage them into talking three times as much as they ordinarily would and leave feeling they'd been quite discreet.'
6: Runcorn hadn't put it exactly like that. But that was what Evan had been thinking and, furthermore, what had been all over his face.
7: His own income came from his share of the family interest and his commissions, and the rent for a fashionably-located flat in Diagon hadn't taken as much of a bite out of it as Spike seemed to think. They were really going to have to talk about that at some point. Even if Spike never wanted to use any of the money that was now his-too, it was a fact and he was going to have to face up to it, poor thing.
8: Or, well, obviously not. Not remotely, in fact; Evan would never have heard about them if they hadn't been famous national attractions. No one over there had liked him enough to let him know about the places only the locals knew about. But he wasn't painting them for anyone else.
9: Although there were few wizard-only communities, this wasn't because there were a lot of mixed ones. For wizards, the threat presented by neighbours had been far greater than those of living far from markets and hospitals since King James. After all, as long as you weren't too sorry a wizard to apparate and too paranoid to be on the Floo network, commuting wasn't a problem even if you worked in the city, and it wasn't as if there were any wizarding supermarkets. Every Hogwarts graduate had enough Herbology to support a kitchen garden. In theory. In practice, there were weekly market days near any town with even a minor-league Quidditch team to its name, and if a muggle looked up at night to see a broom against the moon it was most likely to be some dairy farmer's idiot nephew forgetting the invisibility charm on their milk delivery route.
10: In this Evan was mistaken. As a solicitor to families like the Rosiers, Runcorn had thought himself fully prepared to have to take what his firm called Preventative Measures. He just hadn't quite expected giant bronze queens vaulting off their pedestals to bounce their orbs off people.
Next:Severus Snape and the Bureaucracy of Dumb
AKA: If Severus doesn't kill Albus two decades too early by the end of this chapter, fandom surely will.
Notes: I literally found out this monument even existed by using street view on Google Maps to trace the walking route between Albion House and the town hall. The muggle-attack originally planned was going to be a lot less of an obvious assault on the Statute of Secrecy, but then the Victoria Monument was right there.
Both my perspicacious betas noticed a discrepancy against chapter 12, and if you noticed it too then
a) the character in question would like to know why anyone thinks this detail is anyone's business and hopes everyone will understand that this was a rhetorical question meant to serve as a warning against continuing the discussion and thereby inviting a punch in the face by someone who trains security trolls for a living
b) while I, by contrast, am impressed!