Prompt: We're in a museum together and trying to come up with the craziest back story for the artifacts that we're looking at (N 41)

This drabble takes place after the war where Harry and Ginny visit a museum and come up with backstories to some stolen paintings.

Note: this prompt is on my bingo card.

"What about this one?"

Harry stared at the empty gilded frame that hung on the elaborately decorated wall where the Rembrandt painting, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, once hung for a minute, thinking of what to say.

"I think the thieves wanted it because one of them had a girl they were trying to impress that came from a family of fishermen and thought a big painting of a ship on the choppy seas might work to whoo her into going out with him."

Ginny laughed from beside him. "It would be pretty hard to display that in their home if they ended up married if his elaborate stunt paid off and she did end up going out with him. Any guests they had over would surely raise their eyebrows over how it ended up in their small, cozy house in the countryside."

"Would be quite the conversation starter though, wouldn't it?" Harry cleared his throat before saying in a higher pitch, "'Oh, that painting? Well, you see Daniel here wanted me to go out with him, but I kept telling him no. And then one day he just shows up out of the blue with this amazing painting, and I thought, well how can I say no to a date with him now?! I mean, a guy gives you a giant painting of Jesus on a ship at sea, you go out with him! And so, yeah, that's how we ended up together for ten years now.'."

Ginny's loud laughter at Harry's impersonation drew frigid looks from the couple next to them, but they paid the two no mind.

They moved on to the next empty gilded frame in the Dutch Room where another Rembrandt, A Lady and Gentleman in Black, once hung.

"What about this one?" Harry asked this time. He watched as Ginny pondered the painting as she thought of her story, her face cutely scrunched up in concentration.

"Hmm, I think the thieves wanted this painting because the person who was going to buy this painting off of them had a kink for women wearing very large, fluffy round collars. He was into BDSM but hated the leather chokers and collars he would make submissives wear. He liked his submissives to wear this outrageously large, puffy round collar because it would further humiliate them, and the stiff linen of the collar would tantalizingly rub against his skin when they performed sexual acts."

"This art buyer sounds like a real sexual deviant."

"Oh, he was. Started when he was a kid and his mum was a Renaissance performer who was forced to take him with her because she couldn't find a sitter. She'd leave him with the costumer all day. He loved the feel of all the costumes that he'd try on, especially all the ridiculous collars. So, since the thieves knew this, they figured they could get a lot of money out of this guy for this painting. And if they didn't get what they wanted, they were going to expose his strange BDSM lifestyle to his strait-laced elite friends and his wife if she didn't already know."

"I could see someone willing to pay a lot of money to keep that hush-hush. Sirius told me a story once where one of his female ancestors blackmailed a member of the Yaxley family into marrying her by threatening to expose his father's dirty secret of having several young male lovers that he kidnapped and kept drugged in the old Yaxley family manor's basement. She got the marriage contract she wanted, but she ended up dying a year into the marriage after giving birth to her first and only son. Sirius speculated the Yaxleys killed her once she gave birth to an heir they desperately needed."

They left the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum a few hours later after coming up with other silly and outlandish reasons as to why the thieves stole the other eleven pieces of art in 1990 and exploring the gardens of the museum.

"You know, I thought Hermione was crazy for suggesting we go here while we were on vacation here in Boston, but that was fun." Ginny admitted as she and Harry walked down the street to the Museum of Fine Art T stop to head to the North End for dinner where Harry had made reservations at a small Italian restaurant for the two of them.

"It was fun, although I'm amazed that after all this time, they still don't have a clue as to where all that stolen art ended up."

"Maybe the thieves were wizards and just left all those muggle tools around to throw off the muggle authorities? It would explain how they would have gotten the paintings out of the frames, a cutting charm would slice though the canvas easily enough." Ginny hypothesized.

Harry wrapped his arm tightly around his wife's waist and pulled her close to him, dropping a kiss on top of her head. "It's definitely a possibility, but after all this time and even with a multi-million dollar reward, I have a feeling the world is just going to never know who really was behind this art heist and what really went on that night."