Evan crit-fails at animal-handling, Severus does not go shopping, and the fate of Lily's job is decided by people who have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Warnings: 1980s people being confused by things they'd be expected to be better at today. I think that's about it. A trauma-free chapter for Severus's birthday, amazing!
Temporary Notes: On the off-chance that whoever's been posting news-and-politics blurbs as reviews is actually reading this, please stop wasting your time and mine. Nobody's going to see them. I'll delete them whether I agree with you or not. This story is not a bulletin board or social media platform.
If you were trying to multitask by boosting my numbers while publicising your messages, thanks, but I've accepted that anything posted on ffnet flies away into the void (nearly) unremarked, and I'd really prefer that any reviews I do get be story-related.
September 7: Transit
When Evan got back from the market proper to the shady corner by the gate, he was lighter by five-hundred-odd enamel pins [1] and Spike was still laughing at him. Only now a gaggle of small-to-midsized children was laughing with him, uproariously, while their mothers stared unabashedly at Evan with mirthful eyes full of so, so much judgment.
Evan drooped pathetically. He didn't have to look around to know that behind him, the overburdened Dobby's bulging eyes were bulging even more on the premise that his Beloved And Considerate And Extremely Cranky Master was now at odds with his Master-Consort Who Is Capable Of Using Small Words And Giving Clear Instructions and that therefore Dobby's life was now about to become unbearable again.
He no longer felt guilt over using the elf's original name. Dobby was going to be Dobby, as Evan had told an eye-rolling Spike in no uncertain terms, until the elf grew a spine and fit a more dignified name. As long as he acted like a Dobby, Evan was simply not going to remember to call him anything else. Until then, he had said very firmly, it was good that Spike was showing faith that Dobby could become more, but if he wanted that recognition from Evan he'd have to do the becoming first.
And besides, he'd added mutinously, if the elf's mind hooked the name together with how he behaved with Lucius, using it would make it easier for him to act like Lucius's elf in the future when Spike needed him to.
Spike had given Ev his gleeful look that meant he was both laughing and gloating on the inside because reinventing the wheel is, while a waste of time, just as impressive as inventing it for the first time if the reinventor has never seen a circle before. He then explained at length about some Russian's dogs and also about a comedy routine he'd called Good Cop Bad Cop.
Ev, who would listen with both interest and physical pleasure to Spike explaining at length about the art and science of pickle brine, didn't bother pointing out that he'd already been Spike's Good Auror for a good two years even before Slughorn had stuck a badge in his and Narcissa's prefectly lapels. Besides, what Spike actually meant was that he liked it that Ev had never shown any interest in switching their roles until they were handfasted.
He didn't think Spike realized that he meant that (and he was sure that he shouldn't seriously try to get Spike to admit that their handfasting had made them both more confident about their partnership for at least a couple of years, which should be enough time to come up with a way to celebrate without traumatizing Spike) something but it wasn't Evan's fault that Spike had dumped Divination. (Not that he'd taken it either. He'd just helped Narcissa with her homework a lot [3] while Spike was busy being a Potions overachiever, and when they were sitting with him in the Infirmary.)
Of course, Dobby had it completely up his jumper. Evan would happily scream and run away from at least half a dozen giant, slobbery, shaggy, cloak-eating monsters if it would make Spike laugh like that.
As long as it was one at a time. If they mobbed him, he'd expect Spike to stop laughing and help.
The children all turned to look at him as Spike's attention shifted, and one of them shouted something that Ev's limited Bulgarian understood as 'Make the face.'
"They want to see the face a silly Englisher makes when a friendly goat half his size politely says hello," Severus 'interpreted helpfully.'
"'Half his size' my eye," Evan retorted, drawing himself up snootily, like Narcissa when someone she didn't like had turned down a gracious party invitation. "That hairy monster outweighed me by at least thirty pounds, and it certainly did not say hello before taking an enormous chomp out of my cape and starting in on my boots!" He chomped the air in aggrieved demonstration to shrieks of laughter from the children.
This was a clear enough indication that he wasn't upset that he could hear Dobby sag in relief behind him. Which itself was a relief; he'd been rather afraid they were going to have to spend half an hour persuading the elf they weren't at odds, which would have put a serious strain on Spike's temper.
"I told you boots that folded over at the top were a mistake," Severus commented. "Even putting aside that they make you look like a sixteenth-century French dandy."
The boots had not been a mistake, no matter how much contempt Spike could inveigle into the word 'French' without noticeably giving it emphasis or changing his tone. [4] Apart from their being handsome in a slightly over-decorated way, admiring and purchasing those boots had bought Evan an introduction into a circle of local crafters. Word would get back if he wasn't seen wearing them (and there was no hiding whether he was wearing them or not), and he would be thought dishonest.
Since people he hadn't met until this trip already thought he was an idiot because last time he hadn't realized smile frequency was cultural, that was right out. 'Stupid' he could work with. 'Stupid and insincere' was not a reputation he wanted.
"They were not a mistake," he insisted, lifting his chin. "If I hadn't had 'em on, the brute would have had a piece out of my shin."
Once this was translated, the children jeered at him for being afraid of a little goat, and Spike sighed, "Ev, goats are herbivores."
"Then why did it eat my boot?!"
"It nibbled it," Spike said long-sufferingly, his mouth only doing a slightly better job than his eyes at hiding his warm smile. "Probably because of the glue. Or the beads."
"In fairness to me," Evan said with as much dignity as a man could show while wearing flappy red boots bestrewn with a bright rainbow of wooden beads (he did love them, but he'd love them more on a display pedestal and far away from this waistcoat), "you should tell them that their goats are gargantuan and normal ones are much, much smaller. "
"And that sad delusion," Spike told his audience, in Bulgarian, "is why he tried to feed Madam Karkarovna's prized milk doe a grasshopper engorged to the size of her head. Which is why her dairy shed now has large horn holes in it and why we must flee the country tonight."
Evan flung up his hands. "My goats do eat grasshoppers! Which are the size of their heads!"
Actually, his exasperation was because Spike was speaking smoothly after a lifetime total of nine days in the country, but the kids didn't have to know that. Anyway, it wasn't Evan's fault that Mrs. Snape had been owled a Latin For Spellcasting primer the day after Spike's first accidental magic incident (according to Spike, the nearest owl post had been so far away that the book had already been at their house when she got back from sending the news) and started him learning languages young enough to get good at it.
Besides, while Spike's English was, in Evan's opinion, glorious, he was at the same time secretly inclined to agree with Narcissa that it was hopelessly muddled and not the same language that any other British person spoke. At all. He found this thought cheering, as it meant Spike was always going to need him around if for no other reason than to translate. But possibly it also meant Spike had made an advantage out of finding his native tongue no less alien than any other.
"Your goats are the size of very small rabbits and have been magically altered to serve as pest control!" Severus shot back, still in Bulgarian.
Evan considered that Spike could have just asked him to transfigure all the children stuffed hand-sized goats with big eyes so he could give them Goodbye And Thank You For Providing Me With An Activity And Positive Attention While My Spouse Was Shopping presents. But he didn't mind really.
Not just because several of the mothers approached him about importing some real Rosier goats while the children were choosing their toys, either. This was going to create some paperwork, but Grandpère was going to be very pleased with him for opening up an intercontinental trade opportunity. It would open an opportunity to go to Weatherby for advice, too. And open up excuses for conversation with Avery's dad, which could be useful.
But mostly because watching Spike try to practice rudimentary networking skills after spending a solid week fighting with Slughorn about how to properly be a Slytherin was a cascade of sunlit bubbles foaming up from Evan's core. Give him the rest of the year, and Spike might be up to trying it with elderly biscuit-baking witches who were already inclined to think he was cute, although probably still not with busy, working adults or, Merlin forbid, teenagers.
Besides, being angled into it was more fun.
"Time to head back, I suppose." Severus's new knee didn't seem to be giving him any trouble as he rose from his cross-legged position, and Evan was watching.
He did hope the Pomfrey would like the sueded-sheepskin slippers he was bringing her by way of thanks for taking care of Severus at all hours. The embroidery was a bit more in Dumbledore's style than hers, but the rich golden thread on the night-sky blue of the suede flattered her House without being too obviously partisan, and Evan had been assured the charms to keep the wool warm and prevent it from getting crushed, dirty, smelly, or matted would both last for years.
While revealing his unmagical childhood by trying to brush dirt and grass off trousers that he'd have had to sit in a mud puddle for a week to dirty and coincidentally proving Ev with a lovely view, Spike unenthusiastically proposed, "Shall we apparate back to the Portkey Office?"
"Let's walk a while," Evan proposed instead, checking the sun for the approximate time. "I'm not in a hurry."
Something of an understatement; he had to give Runcorn at least another hour. But Spike didn't know that.
Turning to Dobby, Severus said, "You can meet us there, Dobbs. And you might shrink that… good grief, Ev, did you buy the entire marketplace?"
"I don't want to be bothered about holiday shopping later," Evan explained, "and I have some decorating to do."
Spike made a sceptical noise. Sadly for him, since his real issue was that he had an allergy to spending money and was still trying to pretend Evan's gold wasn't his business, it would have made his brain fizz to try and convince himself that he had a right to say anything.
Ev was probably taking advantage of that a bit, but he wasn't dissembling about his reasons even a little. There were too many people on his list that were going to expect expensive Scion Of A Noble House Values You gifts that he couldn't just make something useful and personal for. Bringing something in from abroad was ok if it was quality, which was a huge relief. The prospect of shopping for tasteful British-made holiday presents, at the same shops Narcissa frequented, without duplicating her purchases, again, gave him a headache.
Besides, he hadn't made a secret of this trip, so people would expect him to bring back souvenirs. Rakia and rose oil would satisfy them, and then he could surprise them with more interesting gifts at the solstice.
Once Dobby had poofed out with Evan's haul and they were through the marketplace gates and far enough away from people that Spike felt less exposed, he slid his fingers around Evan's wrist and down his palm until their hands were laced together. Ev pulled free to wrap his arm around Spike's back, instead, and tugged him close enough that they had to synch their walking rhythms. The experiment with kissing while strolling was quite successful until they were out of the field and Evan walked right into a mailbox.
"Work on situational awareness without vision," Spike suggested, dragging his eyes open to observe the mailbox with mild disfavour, heavy lashes throwing long shadows down the Dover-cliffs of his cheeks in the strong sunlight of the teatime they weren't having.
"Mm-hmm," Evan agreed vaguely, and pulled him back behind a low stone gate that he could see now that he was looking at things.
The afternoon dissolved into an unhurried haze of buttons and sighs, the home-spice of heathery, oaky juniper against live grass and wildflowers, sunned linen and strong bones under his lips, long fingers tracing undirected patterns over his back.
It was so lazily, luxuriously lovely that Evan assumed they must have been there for hours and was starting to wonder why it wasn't getting darker when Spike made a comfortable noise, pressed their temples together, and got into one of those brain-places where all he wanted to do was sit together and breathe Evan's skin.
Normally Evan would have taken this as his cue to have a delicious catnap on his Spike, which would probably turn into his dozing body being used as a bookstand after about two minutes. Since they weren't at home he supposed it currently meant they'd be fixing their shirts and getting up soon. Probably just as well; there were two more important items on the agenda, you never knew when border Aurors would choose to be tedious, and sunset was in only a few hours.
"What are you going to tell whozisface?" he asked sleepily.
He felt Spike's mouth twitch grumpily against his cheek. "About what?"
"About the pins."
"I'm not going to tell him anything. I'm just going to show him one, say they were Grindeldwald's idea, and give him an admiring well-done-you-amazing-supporter-getter look."
Evan considered the pins. He'd seen paintings of muggles sporting wearable political statements. They mostly seemed to be brightly and ungracefully coloured, about the size of an eyeball, and to have either blocky words or someone's face on them.
They also seemed to be encoded, as was only sensible. He couldn't bring himself to believe that 'Ike,' pronounced as one syllable, was a real name. Not even in America.
These were about the size of a modest cufflink. To Voldemort, hopefully, they would look like a green enamel snake emerging from a pearl-inlaid skull to climb the golden Deathly Hallows and take over.
Grindelwald's followers, the man himself had assured them (he'd seemed very confident, but Dumbledore had warned Evan that he always did), would look at the same picture and see the Deathly Hallows with the wand overgrown enough to spear the skull, with a snake climbing over Death's cloak because it couldn't get inside in its attempt to bite the Elder Wand—which was going to be a completely useless attempt because snake poison does not kill wood, and also counterproductive because if you bite the top of a wand you're going to get your snakey head blown off. [5]
Ev was about as on board with calling Grindelwald by a familial name as he was with calling Dobby Dobbs. Having been given the invitation, he had little in the way of an intelligent choice while they were in Europe, but he didn't have to do it inside his head.
"You don't want to give him a 'look how well we've done' look?" he asked.
Spike shook his head, without removing his face from Evan's. Ev sighed a little at how good it felt to have Spike pressing thoughts into his skin while they were out in the sunlight, and tucked his nose in by way of encouragement. Spike smiled a little against him and explained, "If it's presented to him as our achievement he can use it to punish us for arrogance and presumption."
"He can still do that for acting like something was his idea when it wasn't, especially if he doesn't like it," Ev pointed out.
"Yes, but it'd be less natural, objecting when he's being praised," Spike said, unfolding to his feet and helping Evan up. "And it wouldn't look good."
It certainly wouldn't. If the tactics that worked with Slughorn and with Hufflepuffs didn't work with Voldemort, no one under seventy would be pleased. Probably no one at all. That was the world that Slytherin had been living in for a long time: those were the manners—the rules—that they'd learned to expect and learned how to work with. If flattery and favours didn't protect them, people would get scared fast.
"Anyway, allying with Grindelwald was his idea."
"Then you'll have to be very clear about what you're admiring him for when you present it," Evan said.
They worked on that for a while as they ambled between pale buildings of stone and faded brick and unnaturally smooth materials, all topped with red cobbles, walking on that rough-smooth Muggle stone that was the colour of sand here. Some of the stone and brick buildings had interesting details, and the larger smooth ones had unusual window arrangements and sticky-out bits (balconies, Evan supposed), but he wouldn't have wanted to live in any of them. Brutally blocky seemed to be the rule, and he found the average height of the trees unnervingly short. They wouldn't have done Robin Hood any good at all.
"We've probably left your elf waiting long enough," Evan said once they'd settled on what Spike should say.
"The trees are boring you," Spike guessed, a corner of his mouth tugging up.
"They were better near Ustra," he said pathetically. "And not all the buildings in Sofia are square ."
Severus put up an amused eyebrow and said in his I Have No Idea Whether You Know This Or Not So We'll Pretend I Think I'm Funny voice, "It's called a suburb."
"It's awful. They should put the pazar someplace better. Who wants to do their shopping in the middle of a maze of cinderblocks? I'm surprised the elves can even breathe in there, the town's so muggle! There are flowers all over but they put it—"
"Somewhere central and convenient," Spike finished, not laughing at him any less.
Evan made a disgusted noise. "I'll apparate us. I had to be side-alonged far too many times on Friday for a project of Grandpère's, and if it happens again this fortnight I shall be ill." Again.
Appearing near the great castle still left him with an upset stomach, though not as bad as anything that had happened yesterday. "Why am I nauseous when you're not when I'm the one who took us?" he demanded of Spike, who looked fresh as…
Well, fresh as wet lichen in that outfit, honestly. Evan had to get him to stop wearing greenish neutrals. They didn't suit him at all. It would have to be a very gentle, very slow campaign, though, since they made him so comfortable. Evan would have to find him a shade that worked just as well for that. Spike reacted to even the darkest burgundy like he'd been asked to go about naked and painted scarlet with whiskers and a tail, but a nearly-black aubergine would bring his skin to life just as well...
Spike shrugged, passing him a vial of ginger juice from Merlin knew which pocket. "It's a rougher ride when I take myself."
Evan grumbled about unfairness, but then they had to be quiet because they were passing a pair of Muggle tourists. Anxiety gripped Spike's shoulders for a moment, but the tourists were too busy taking pictures and cooing over the 'ruins' to have been surprised by their clothes even if the nothing-to-see-here charms had worn off.
Getting out of the country took a little longer this time because of all Evan's purchases, but he still considered they were comfortably on schedule when the brain-scrambling international portkey let them go and they landed in the Customs room where Moody was waiting.
Spike blinked at him and demanded, "Hullo. Why?"
"Just making sure our witness made it back safe and sound," Moody said sweetly, which worked on him even less well than innocent did on Spike.
Severus regarded him for a long moment, shrugged, and said in a talking-to-overenthusiastic-fourth-years tone, "You can't pull off winsome at all and shouldn't try." He gave Moody a civil but dismissive nod, and then strategically forgot the Auror was there.
"Thanks for your concern," Evan called politely to the man's unimpressed but calculating eyebrows as Spike physically hauled him out, Dobby trotting along anxiously at Spike's heels and Evan's toes. Ev would have to ask one of the other elves to work with him on being unobtrusive. Maybe Kreacher; he probably despised Mistress Cissy's unworthy husband [6] enough to keep a secret about Luke's old elf, as long as nobody actually asked him.
They only had to stop and say hello to four people on their way out of the Ministry because the fifth was Ranjit Patil with a stack of large St. Mungo's envelopes. He trotted over in their direction, observed Spike's ticcing Too Many People eyebrow, smiled knowingly, and strode the rest of the way towards them in a very businesslike manner while greeting Evan, sweeping them up in his wake. He marched them to the exit, showing Evan pictures of his new twins as they walked and not addressing Spike at all.
"Bless you, Patil," Spike unwired his jaw long enough to say, fervently, at the door.
"I know when you can't talk to one more person without shouting," Patil smiled, patting his arm. "Come around to the lab when your skull isn't about to explode and I'll tell you where the potion's at." Spike brightened. Patil smiled back, waved, and left without acknowledging that verbal goodbyes sometimes happened.
Severus regarded his back in a nostalgic Where Have The Competent People In My Life gone sort of way. Evan also patted his arm in a comradely manner. He limited himself to that because they were now not only in public but back in England, and he expected Spike to appreciate how good he was being. "I'll put him on the Samhain list," he said comfortingly.
"What Samhain list," Severus demanded, instantly suspicious.
"Narcissa's."
"Oh, god, why would you do that to a perfectly sound Ravenclaw with young children to think about."
Evan laughed at him.
Spike sighed. "Back to the Hall?"
"No, actually, I've got a project I want you to look at."
Spike blinked. "The…?" He waved his hand vaguely around his face, suggesting Voldemort's creepy masks.
"Nope. That project of Grandpère's I mentioned. Well, it was my idea, but it's for the firm. Mostly. I think you'll like it." He held his arm out, and Spike warily took it.
When they reappeared in the solid world, Spike barely had a chance to blink again and ask, "What the hell are we doing here," before seven extremely beery people in sweaty, dusty, head to foot green had mobbed them and were aggressively trying to pull Spike into the pub near the apparition spot and buy him a drink.
Taken aback, especially because Spike was reacting tolerantly and hadn't whipped his wand out on them more than a little bit despite getting hit with a cloud of beer-breath, Evan tried to make out what they were on about. He picked out words like 'varnish' and 'two inches from the hoop' and 'two-ninety to one-forty.' "That must have been quite a game!" he cheered.
Four of the (presumably) Merrymen assured him enthusiastically that it had been, it had been, lasted three days, teach those Arrows to muck about with archers, he should have seen the catch! One of the others tried with gusto to join in despite a broken nose that made her speech far too snuffly to be understood, but a sixth said to Spike, "Here, now, who's this Johnnie, then, our Very?"
"My captain and my friend," Spike said, and there was something about his tone that made Evan notice it. That was Spike's quoting voice, only softer. Without pause but more briskly, he added, "Seeker."
"Any good?" asked one of the enthusiastic ones, leering. Ev hadn't known you could do that without it being either a come-on or a threat. He wanted to sketch it.
"Distractible," he apologized humbly.
"Good eye, though," Spike snapped, glaring at him, which made him grin. "Have we time to stand the team a round?"
"Not today, but have one on me and I'll see about dragging this one to your next game," Evan promised, pulling a galleon from his mokeskin and flipping it to the one who hadn't spoken. She was the smallest, and her eyes were still sharp even though her nose had gone bright red. Her snatch was lightning-fast with perfect hand-form. He nodded to her, not surprised but impressed. "I just bet it was a good game."
"That's my team," Spike said as smugly as if he didn't know perfectly well Evan had worked that out a good three minutes ago, adding disapprovingly, "Or at least they are when they aren't pissed as—"
He was cut off by friendly jeering and it was Evan's turn to shake his head in amusement and pull Spike away.
"Oi," Spike yelled, and tossed a vial at the probably-a-Chaser with the broken nose.
"Jeers!" she snuffled back, waving.
"Ugh, " Evan said, feelingly.
"She can't help having her nose broken," Spike said mildly. "Well, she can now. But presumably she couldn't have helped it at the time without missing her shot."
"That is not acceptable behaviour in a Chaser," Evan scowled.
"Said no Quidditch captain apart from you ever."
"Well, I am saying it, so you're still not to get ideas. I know it's not her fault, I just can't stand it when people sound like Avery."
"Which is why you never mentioned 'acceptable Chaser behaviour' to Avery, I suppose."
Evan looked innocent. He did it much, much better than Moody. "Well, you know, if normal people's voices sound like his when they get a broken nose, then maybe if he got one…"
They wandered through the cobbled streets and tall leafy trees between stores that had clearly been built by architects whose rock-solid understanding of arithmancy had, clearly, only the wobbliest grounding in geometry, and Evan felt something in his soul slowly unclench. He reached out with his unnamed senses to the autumn-tinged greenery around him as Spike kept the argument going mostly by himself, and could have sworn he felt their colours brightening under his insubstantial touch.
It smelled so good here, after the dusty trek through the Bulgarian 'suburb' with its flat, false-stone roads, the damp-stone smell in Nurmengard that never really leaves castles and against which the lemon grove hadn't had a chance, the chemical smells of Liverpool. Not heady with flowers like the many green places in Bulgaria or tantalizing with spices and perfumes like the marketplace; just right. The food smells were just stew and fried stuff and unimaginative curries Spike would sneer at, with a glorious, homey curl of mulled cider floating through, and the very different living dampness of mossy wood and rich loam for an unobtrusive, implacable, old-growth foundation.
Evan understood why his parents liked to travel. Even though his own feet didn't get itchy like Spike's, he could not for the life of him fathom why they spent so much time away.
And people kept waving at Spike. A lot of them were clearly also coming from the game, some in dispirited Appleby red. They waved at him and mostly didn't try to talk to him, and the ones who did try to talk to him just congratulated him briefly on how a broom with his varnish had stopped their crazy Seeker from smashing into a large metal pole at a hundred miles an hour or asked if he was taking potion commissions at the moment. Spike wasn't tensing up at all and Evan had never been so sure in his life that he'd done something right since he blew up James Potter's wand.
"How upset would you get if I dragged you behind a tree right now?" he asked, in a just-out-of-interest voice.
"You would find we were suddenly in your gazebo, and also, I assume, given your remarks earlier, that you were unexpectedly nauseated."
Evan ignored the predictable correction to his grammar [7] and sighed tragically.
"What brought this on?" Spike asked, eyeing him with one of his mellower suspicious expressions.
"Everybody seems less bustly and starched and monocle-eyebrows here than in Diagon."
This netted him a How does other people being more relaxed translate into you snogging me look that failed to understand that by 'everybody' Evan meant 'you.'
Also a shrug. "The shopping crush is over now that school's started, and there aren't so many self-important Ministry types living here who think they need to bustle about in formalwear all the time. The forest is still a draw in Autumn and there'll be another crowd for the Goose Fair, but that's not till October."
Spike was still explaining what a carousel was and had not remotely begun to explain why cheese came into it (though he had explained about the geese) when Evan pulled up in front of a shop that looked rather like a wireless, complete with two round windows where the dials would be and a huge arched one on the top floor with a fancy grate. Indistinct voices came from inside, too, just as if it really were a wireless. One that needed to be adjusted for clarity, and was probably set to a children's programme.
"I think this is it," Evan said dubiously. It was the right building—there was no mistaking it—but he hadn't expected anyone to be in. Had Runcorn failed him?
"It says it's open," Spike said, even more dubiously, and went in.
Or started to: before he'd passed the lintel his jaw had dropped. "Selwyn?"
"Naj," Selwyn nodded at him. "Is that Lance lurking back there?"
"I didn't think you'd have started!" Evan exclaimed, steering Spike in and looking about.
"We haven't really, but it didn't seem like the sort of operation that needs to be polished before it gets going," Selwyn explained. "I asked Becca for advice, and she says neighbourhoods welcome a business more if they get to poke about and be welcoming before the grand opening."
Spike opened his mouth.
Not defensively—she didn't do defensive—but very firmly, Selwyn said, "I was vague, Lance didn't say it was a secret, and anyway she's across the pond."
This, of course, didn't exactly stop Spike asking penetrating questions, as Evan supposed she'd intended, and he still gave her a look that very clearly was meant to remind her that Becca had a brother. In Britain. Of whom she was fond. Who had his own friends. And who was most likely getting so little sleep, due to the combination of Unexpected Infant and Overdeveloped Sense of Responsibility, that nobody sensible would count on his discretion. Even if he had been trained up Slytherin. Which Ben had not.
He let it rest there, though, shifting to looking about in some bewilderment and settling for, "What 'sort of operation' is it?"
Everything in the large room was very bare (of course it was; most of Evan's new purchases would be on the walls by the end of the week), and the previous owner had liked paint in a shade of sickly beige that Evan was not going to tolerate. A few chairs and tables were scattered about, though, probably temporary transfigurations and all of them full of kids scribbling with crayons or painting random objects. An extremely elderly wizard [8] who looked as if a puff of wind might blow his (?) bones apart looked very comfortable in the armchair in the corner, knitting a scarf apparently by feel while he (?) watched the children. He (?) nodded complacently at Severus, who lifted a hand in casual reply.
"It's going to be a new branch," Evan explained. "I'll be the only professional working here, but the ground floor will be open to any witches and wizards who want to come and do art. And chat."
"Ah," uttered the Naj, seeing the point at once. He shot Evan the faux-angry eyes that meant Ev had been intelligent in public where Spike could not kiss him for it, how dare he.
He bobbed his eyebrows cheekily in response, then looked around again and told Selwyn, "We're going to need a lot more shelving."
"Ah," she declared, deadpan. "How exciting. My second memo." However, she did in fact take out a little notebook and write something down, so Evan wasn't worried.
"This is very interesting," Spike said slowly, in his I Don't Trust You An Inch voice.
"What's the first memo?" Ev asked, interested.
"It's four memos but I put them on the same page."
This heavy, unrushable punctiliousness, Evan reminded himself, was why she was a good choice and also why she and Spike got on when they weren't treading on each others' toes.
"The pottery wheel will be here tomorrow and Gowan can get us a wood-turner by Wednesday, but we can't get the kiln until sometime next week because the charmwork and wards will take several days after it's made."
"What, no glass-blowing oven?" Spike drawled.
" No ," Evan said, blanching at the thought of what half of his cousins would have done with one of those ten years ago. Or, actually, now. Now would be worse. "No glass-blowing. No metal-etching. Having a kiln in the back that only Selwyn and I will light is one thing; we won't have anything that'd be hot while the kids were working with it. If they want to do metal-etching or leatherwork they can draw the pattern on and have somebody use a wand. What about my abax?" he asked her.
She gave him a look at least as sardonic as Spike's, and with her solid features it was almost as intimidating. Evan gave her very good marks for it in his head. "Everyone I talked to, and I mean everyone, said 'oh, now he's just making up words because he's seen Snape get away with it.'"
"I don't make up words!"
Evan and Selwyn looked at him.
"Spells don't count."
They continued to look.
"My mundanely communicative expressions are, if infrequently sesquipedalian, eminently and corroborably legitimate. If an apprehension of their own paucity of erudition has spurred them to rancour, it does not signify one iota that their calumnies are justified."
Evan grinned while Selwyn sighed in disgust. From the corner, the probably-a-wizard noted, click-clacking away, "Corroborably."
Wheeling on probably-him, Spike sputtered, "That's just transformational grammar, Alan! [9] It's not making things up!"
But life couldn't be all fun. Turning back to Selwyn, Evan explained, "An abax is just a table with raised sides." He was frankly confused as to why this was complicated. Spike had a point: Ev might have been inconsiderate in using the proper name for a specialized item, but dictionaries did exist. "I want a big round one."
"...Why?"
"For sand. There's no need for you both to look at me as if I've lost it; it's going to be brilliant for arrays and I would have loved one when I was a kid."
"You would have loved a yo-yo as a kid," Spike muttered under his breath. To Evan, it was clear that he had resumed plotting murder against Mum and Dad for the usual reasons, but Selwyn looked like she was restrained only by twelve generations of hoity-toity ancestors from saying that Evan not only had loved a yo-yo but manifestly still did.
"I suppose a yo-yo would be a good exercise in symmetry-in-perspective," he replied blithely before Selwyn's ambivalent self-restraint could fail her. "Come see my studios, Spike!"
Repeating, "Studios? Plural?" Spike allowed himself to be dragged through the side door and up the stairs. "Two extremely bare rooms," he said dryly. "Most impressive. I'll grant you the windows are good, although I think that grating will interfere with your light."
"Oh, that's not going to be visible from inside," Evan said. "Madam Sprout has a spell she uses in Greenhouse Four to stop the Carnivorous Columbines climbing up the bars. I stopped by when I went to talk to Dumbledore about his commission and she said she doesn't mind sharing. I'd like to bring her some mead as a thank you along with her souvenir, if you have any bottles lying about."
"I've been too busy with Felix and trying to keep the lab open these past few months to make any," Severus said, bemused. He'd looked bemused every time Ev had said the word 'souvenir,' but Evan wasn't quite sure whether he thought giving them was a silly waste of time and money or didn't actually know what they were. Most likely the former (surely people did that in books), but Ev had sort-of-lost two years to assuming Spike knew things just because he was brilliant and everyone else knew them. "But I sold Dickon a few cases from the last batch; we can stop by Heartwood and see if he has any left. Why do you need two studios?"
"I'll take sitters here; the light's a bit better. It'll need a mirror, a changing screen, a bare wall for backdrops, storage for props, gramophone and oil-burners for mood-setting, that sort of thing."
"And the other?"
Suddenly feeling a bit shy (ridiculous: this was Spike! No, not ridiculous: Spike was usually biased in Evan's favour but he was also extremely critical and what if he didn't like Evan's work?), Evan pulled his sketchbook out of his pocket, flipped it open at random, and enlarged it.
Spike looked for a long time. He paged through, taking his time. "I remember that," he said eventually. "Fourth year, wasn't it? But I seem to remember the mers eating the hippocampus after they caught it, not inviting it to join their council because it was so strong and wily. They were rather upset about the property damage, as I recall. I'm quite sure there weren't any tea parties. I'm not sure how tea would even work underwater."
"Like oil burning or incense does in the air, maybe?" Evan shrugged. "Reggie was awfully traumatized, so I didn't think the real ending would make a very good kids' book. I don't think he could look out the common room window without flinching for a month or two after that."
"Why?" Spike asked, looking up from the book to spear Evan with an expression that was indecipherable even to Ev. He was not asking about Reggie's trauma.
Evan shrugged uncomfortably. "Thought it might be fun. And Dad says I'll never get assigned really high-profile clients unless I come up with something new, and I have a few thoughts about that… and since everybody will understand that it's my private studio where I work on things I'm not ready to show anybody yet, no one will expect to be allowed in, so I can work on things like the masks when I have to. And if this sort of thing," he waggled the sketchpad, "is what comes out of the room from the start, I don't think anyone will be particularly interested in what's in here, what?"
"What?" Spike asked, raising both eyebrows.
"What what?" Evan asked, on edge. "I mean, what are you whatting about?"
"You said no one will be interested in what's in here, wot," Spike told him, and the sides of his eyes melted into incredulous bemusement. "You wotted me. You wotted me. Evan, are you nervous about showing me your stillroom?"
"What? No!" Evan laughed uncomfortably. It was his studio, he could do what he liked with it. He'd hardly be the first Rosier to do something a little less weighty with his brushes. No one would mind as long as he used a pen name so people would know the firm hadn't started branching out just because he had. And while what he had in mind for developing a new technique was clearly not what Dad had had in mind, even Grandpère would have to admit, if he could pull it off, that it'd be interesting… and it would definitely be magical so it wouldn't matter too much that he'd gotten the idea from muggle art… probably...
Arms were around him and he was being very possessively kissed. "My beautiful," Spike murmured into the very middle of his forehead, almost inaudibly, running fingers from Evan's temple and down the back of his neck, following the line between his lobes and down the brainstem. Kissing his eyes in turn, Spike added, no louder, "My brilliant."
Feeling himself flush, Evan pressed a fierce hand over Spike's heart and argued, "My gorgeous," bit at Spike's fingers and insisted, "My genius."
"Polymath at best," Spike reminded him cheerfully without letting go, "and I never thought anyone could be worse at taking a compliment than I am."
"He said, instantly proving himself wrong," Evan pointed out, grinning.
"I wasn't exaggerating."
Ev narrowed his eyes combatively.
Spike gave him a lofty look, pressed a kiss just to the side of his nose (which was an odd place for it in Evan's opinion, but Spike liked to make a point of kissing whatever bit of him was most convenient, as if to prove he had no favourites), and archly inquired, "What's the sand table for?"
"Colored sand art. You can do some great peace spells with mandalas, you know, and I expect we can find a way to do coloring-book style for the younger kids. And it'll be great for plotting out arrays-er-and-possibly-battlefield-terrain-and-whatnot," he finished very quickly.
Spike touched Evan with a fingertip between his eyes, where Patil's wife wore a garnet, and didn't say anything. Evan flushed again and rubbed his cheek into Spike's hand, which cupped him. Tenderly, Spike asked, "What's in the cellar, slyboots?"
Ev was sure if he searched Spike's midnight eyes long enough he'd find the next galaxy to theirs eventually, but it seemed he was being spoken to. "Cellar?"
"When we came up. My eyes slid off the other end of the hall, just where there'd be a staircase going down. So what's in the cellar?"
"I thought you could ward it to an extent that all paranoid people would think was overkill and then if we ever needed a spare safe place we'd have one," Ev explained. And, because they were completely alone, Severus smiled with his actual mouth.
"I'll probably want your help coming up with plots," Evan said as they re-emerged from the stairs into the open studio. "Er, and possibly the dialogue. You could pick a pen name, too, and get author credit!"
"You and Lily," Severus did not refuse, rolling his eyes. "I should start charging a consultant's fee."
"You absolutely should," Evan agreed, scowling at him, while Selwyn groaned, "Oh, no, not Evans again."
Severus looked panicked for a second, apparently remembering that he'd been worried about people knowing he and Lily were speaking again. Then he remembered things had changed since then (or possibly just decided to brazen it out) and waved an exasperated hand. "Apparently since I'm working at the school Dumbledore must truuuuust me," he singsonged in some disgust. It was so well done that Ev, astonished, realized even he would have believed what Spike was selling if he hadn't known better. "It just warms me to the cockles of my soul that I'm all right to know again, I can't even tell you."
Selwyn snorted, and Evan said calmly, "You really ought to let me at least get her fired. And you know Lucius wouldn't even think we owed him a favour if all Potter's investments suddenly went south. He'd just think you'd come to your senses. Come to think of it, Reggie might want the practice. You know he blames Potter for Siri leaving. He could use a little confidence-boosting mission, don't you think?"
"Don't you dare give that four-eyed jackass something legitimate to blame me for—for once—when I've just found a way to keep an eye on him," Severus warned, looking very Najaish. If there hadn't been kids around, Evan would have darted in to bite his mouth.
"Fired from what?" Selwyn asked, with a distinct hint that she would be delighted to do a bad turn for the main reason Slytherin had been a target for years.
"Oh, she's writing this column for the Prophet—"
"Which is completely beyond her capacities," Evan interjected sourly. His ribs were blessed by a brief encounter with a bony elbow.
"I think I may have seen that," Selwyn noted. "Assuming 'asphodel' is extremely obvious code for 'Lily.' You're right, Lance. Completely beyond her."
"Well, she's been owling me for alternate opinions."
"And then, evidently, not using them." Ev accepted a second elbow-jab with a graceful lack of acknowledgement.
"Stupid cow," Selwyn opined and, she and Evan joined in with Spike's sharp, "Don't," in perfect time. "Well, she is," Selwyn insisted while Spike was still glaring. "Her column is boring and it's mental to ask you for advice and then not use it. Even if she's just doing it to be friends again, it's an insult."
"I gather there's some editorial interference," Spike said delicately, and Selwyn snorted. "Well, I haven't exactly been writing careful and diplomatic prose under the delusion that it was actually going to be published," Spike defended his insistence on believing he wasn't being treated like dirt.
"Her column," Selwyn repeated, laying down every word like a two-ton brick, "is boring."
Spike had his I Think So Too But If You Criticize Lily Again I Will Bite You face on. It looked exactly like Sirius's had at parties when they were kids and anyone hinted that Reggie was a timid little drip. "The Prophet wants their articles anodyne, when not poisonous," he said neutrally.
"They want them safe, not dull," Selwyn insisted. "Space is gold. Dull doesn't sell papers; people won't keep reading. Look at Binns."
"Spike got an O on his history NEWT," Evan told her, by way of explaining that she was rattling at the wrong beehive.
Selwyn shrugged. "Not through paying attention in class, though, I'd bet my best hound."
Spike's irritated silence admitted very clearly that this was the case. Evan, speaking personally, couldn't imagine how Spike could be annoyed about anything when remembering the way they'd studied history together, [10] but Spike was focused like that.
So was Selwyn."She's going about it all wrong."
"Let me think about it," Evan said to Spike before he could go on embarrassing himself by lying badly out of deeply misplaced loyalty. That one moment had been brilliant, but as soon as Spike had stopped misusing the truth and started saying things he knew perfectly well were nonsense his discomfort had turned as tangible as over-warm jelly. "Did you have a closing time planned, Selwyn?"
She shrugged, willing enough to stop talking about Evans as long as nobody was arguing with her. "I'm meant to pick Millie up from Mum's at five."
Evan nodded. "You've already checked all the locks and sunset wards?" Selwyn gave him a thumbs-up and he nodded again. "We'll leave you to it, then. Come on, Spike, I want a walk in the woods before it gets dark."
"You're not painting me," Severus said at once, apparently by reflex, but left with him willingly enough.
Evan teased Severus lightly about since he was a teacher now, hadn't he wanted to poke about in the kids' art projects and make friends?
The resulting rant left the Hallow Way community exceedingly well informed about how Severus was at the school not because he wished to be exposed to children but because he needed the library for his thesis, dammit, and therefore had to put up with many inconveniences including noisy ankle-biting twirps who had apparently learnt to spell by drawing letters at random out of a hat.
If Evan was any judge of children (and he would be the first to admit that he was not), this was well-calculated to have the local kids gravitating to him like cats to a dog-person with white silk robes and an allergy. At the very least, it served as an unofficial announcement of Evan's little studio-initiative and would probably have people poking their heads in out of curiosity. Job well done, he hoped.
Also, because Spike was fully capable of complaining about a beautiful sunset on a lovely day for a solid half-hour when he was Not Interested In What Avery Had To Say About The Hufflepuff Girls (it had involved several strange noises Spike claimed were words, like 'smaug' and 'oh zone'), the rant lasted until they could no longer hear the bustle of the high street behind them.
Severus ended his slightly high-pitched tirade (by this point he was in a state of high dudgeon about Slughorn) in the middle of a sentence and said in his normal voice, "This should be far enough for a reasonable expectation of privacy, but we'd still better check."
Evan, who had more or less stopped listening once Spike started word-for-word repeating the goat-related rant he'd used to chase off the bug-eating Karkaroff, started a bit and dragged his mind away from calculating the widths between the dark streaks in birch bark.
Once Severus was satisfied, Evan said, "All right. Why did Rodolphus corner you on Friday?"
1. It could have been two thousand—there were certainly enough people wandering around wearing Deathly Hallows jewelry to offer them to [2] and whichever artisan Grindelwald had written to had been efficient—but the key to creating demand is controlling the supply.
Historically, in the case of Evan's firm, by burying competitors in the yew grove, but that's what you get when your government was created to solve a single specific problem and never bothered to outlaw monopolies. Or duelling.
2. An average of twenty per recipient. As Evan had learned because Lucius liked to complain about the sloppiness of the young Hufflepuffs who occasionally braved the peacocks to insult Narcissa by trying to sell her cosmetics she wouldn't have touched with a repulso even if she'd been willing to admit to using any at all ever, the key to distribution is pyramids.
3. This had largely involved helping her decide what she should say she'd seen/dreamed about to properly manipulate the rest of the class and start the right rumours. However, he'd realized, far too late to join the class, that what the images meant in the more popular systems would be useful for arranging meaningful backdrops. That was okay. All he needed for that was a few books for reference. What Divi pretended to be, he felt, wasn't the kind of creative he was.
4. A lot, for someone who could trace his ancestry back to William the Conqueror and was talking to a Rosier. Also a lot for someone who'd asked a Parisienne to do his handfasting.
Spike did have these fits of caring that he was English. Evan hadn't quite figured out whether this was partly coming from the same kind of halfhearted, lineage-related sense of duty that had Mum celebrating quarter-days with ritual but no rites or if he was doing it entirely to make Evan laugh.
5. Grindelwald had probably not used those exact words. Ev was going to have to brush up on his German and Bulgarian, both of which were strictly tourist-level. Spike's real-time translations were reliable fundamentally, but the Department of International Magical Cooperation would never have hired him even if he spoke as many languages fluently as Barty Crouch; the situation had to be extremely formal before Spike could be depended on not to liberally add sarcasm.
Since Ev had heard Grindelwald speak English fluently, he suspected this had been information the man had been fishing for, and that the more relaxed atmosphere of their second meeting had been specifically intended to get them both to reveal themselves like that. He was sure Spike had also figured that out but less sure whether he'd been playing along or belligerently refusing to play.
Evan strongly doubted that anyone was going to overthink a little pin that much. However, the people getting one would accept and want to believe whatever Grindelwald told them. So the fact that 'cousin Gellert' was a grandiose nutcase was not, in this instance, going to matter.
6. This wasn't a comment on Lucius. Or, at least, it wasn't personal. Nobody would have been good enough for any of Walburga Black's nieces, as far as Kreacher was concerned. He couldn't find anything specific to criticise about Rodolphus, apart from muddy boots and a tendency to quaff when everyone around him was sipping, but it didn't matter.
In fairness to Kreacher, Evan had to admit that he didn't think any of their husbands were good enough for them, either—although he certainly could find something to criticise about Rodolphus and thought it had been irresponsible of Aunt Dru to let Bella go live with someone who would only encourage her.
Ev actually couldn't think of anyone who would have been good enough for Narcissa, since Spike wasn't an option for many, many reasons, and he was just glad that Reggie hadn't been serious about any of his dates so far. Especially the ones with Gildylocks. He didn't think Siri and the very tall doormat were going to last, either—although this wasn't a question of 'good enough,' since Siri had not yet given any indication of regretting his Potter-related decision to be a horrible person.
Fortunately, Evan did not have to admit to agreeing with Kreacher's draconic and persnickety partiality, as no one had asked his opinion.
7. Which was unusually subtle for Spike. He hadn't even made a face at the time, just cut his eyes at Evan sharply. Evan was so proud.
8. At least, there was a moustache and some hair on the chin. But it was a very sparse moustache, and at that age it was hard to tell the difference between a wizard with thinned facial hair and a witch who didn't give a toss what anyone else thought about her face. The robes weren't helping Evan, either; they were comfortable-looking and plain and didn't have the sort of buttons where which side they were on was a statement. The philtrum-to-chin-height ratio made Evan think the knitter was probably a wizard, but, well, he'd met Spike's mum.
9. Or it could, Evan noted sadly, giving himself a Social Observation mark of Dreadful, have been 'Ellen.' At least Narcissa was unlikely to find out about this.
Severus could have told him, if asked, that it was Ölynn. It is perhaps fortunate that Evan was too embarrassed about his failure of perception to ask, because this information would have been deemed Not Helpful.
10. After their OWLs it hadn't involved spending any time in Binns' classroom at all. Ev wasn't entirely sure there'd been a history NEWT class, per se, although he distinctly remembered Spike staring at him in implacable expectation until he signed up for one.
Next: Variably-fun crafts projects to do with friends.
