Gellert is face down on Tom's bed with Credence giving him a bad back massage because Credence understands the concept of human having muscles but can't quite put it into practice. It's the thought that counts anyway.
Tom is sitting beside them cross-legged, picking over his own letters with a frown now that he realises how it's going to play out.
"Can I borrow your knife next time?" Gellert mutters into the pillow. "It would only be a little stabbing."
"We need a new plan," Tom sighs, ignoring Gellert although yes, he does still carry around a dagger much to Harry's consternation. "I am not dealing with that, we need to shut this down now."
The boys pare down their lists to only the people they need to make connections with, cutting out the ones they were curious about because there's no need to make it any harder when they'll have plenty of time in the future.
When the guests come, they bring others. They walk around and touch things, make snide comments about the work, blatantly ask questions about the creation and coo at the boys for being so cute when they butt up against Tom's stony silence and Gellert's airy, dismissive laughter.
The guests will try and separate them from their work and Gellert's base plate was beginning to chip away by the time he got back, so when Tom is demonstrating Gellert will come and they'll both field questions or will herd guests away from the major focal points.
Tom is unafraid to pull out nice little packages of blackmail when a woman gets too insulting with Gellert and oh my, how is your Squib son, I heard he won a nice muggle award for running around a little stadium quite fast? Amazing, what Squibs can do.
The guests ask after the Unspeakable and Albus and inquire as to Harry.
They bring Credence, who sits obediently somewhere nearby, kicking his little legs until someone tries to touch something and then he's hovering over their shoulder, eyes too wide, skin too tight, ash flaking off him and tells them politely to please stand away from the project, thank you very much.
The Unspeakable is absolutely unsympathetic because he warned them to not go to the party Priya invited them to.
Britain is small though and many of the people they're meeting with are international, so in fact it's quite easy to rip away any leftover power these people have in the country and shut them out of commercial deals.
It's so much more work and the boys are already drowning in it, but it's so satisfying and also lends to extending their feelers – a bit earlier than intended but they have learned their lesson from last time they got overworked and overstressed, so delegate more of that work to Tom's minions.
"This is not worth it," Tom states, sitting in a low armchair in the Room of Requirement that night as he idly plays with the heavy Slytherin ring on his necklace, deceptively relaxed after a solid month of spending every free moment not in Hogwarts dealing with people.
Not the usual kind of people either, easy to run rings around, only need to be put in their place once and they're falling over themselves to please - oh no, these are actually intelligent adults, and Tom misses when they were in short supply.
"Life is allowed to be difficult," Gellert says peacefully where he sits cross-legged on an ottoman with too many tassels, having started up the mantra after someone casually brought up the fact that Gellert's 'real' family missed him.
(Credence is still reeling from the fact that Tom and Gellert have actual parents and they weren't made like he was. He knows they're human but…sometimes he gets suspicious.)
Credence looks back down at the mirror in his hands as he waits for Harry to answer. Credence is rolled up in the invisibility cloak, sprawled on a plush rug along with a tiny snoozing Mooney and three snakes even though Tom was only allowed to have one.
When Harry does answer, Credence rolls over so all three of them can see the mirror, the way Harry's blazing green eyes are alight with inner power, his windblown instead of just normally messy hair, and the way he's trying to calm down his heavy breathing.
"Hey!" Harry cheers, his background some kind of sunlit brick wall outside, no other sound getting through so he must have thrown up a muffling ward.
"Why did you take three minutes to answer?" Tom demands, tucking the ring back into his shirt and leaning forward.
"I-I was…busy," Harry tries, eyes darting around. "Doing. Things."
"Where are you right now, Harry?" Gellert muses, smile too wide.
"Just talking," Harry explains. "With – Albus."
"Why is it daytime over there?" Tom snaps.
"Oh, well, Scotland is pretty far away, you know how the…sun is, with the – Earth's rotation," Harry attempts and then just smiles through it. Something too fast to track cracks the brickwork next to Harry's head and he ducks away with a nervous laugh. "Oh, Albus, don't mess with the oven, the pie will be ready in a minute! Sorry, boys, I'll be right back."
The mirror shuts off and the boys waits in silence until Harry comes back on three minutes later, now clearly at home on their couch.
Harry adjusts his glasses, still a bit out of breath. "Alright, so how was your day? Did you do another demonstration?"
"We need to have a talk," Gellert begins.
"I don't think we do," Harry insists.
"Harry, there is blood on your collar," Tom hisses.
"No there isn't, don't try and trick me," Harry scoffs because he's fallen for that before. He reaches up to pull his collar away and check but gets startled at the dried blood smeared over some of his fingers. "Oh, I did get a papercut when I was going through the files. It wasn't even bleeding before though – ugh."
Harry flops the mirror down so the view is now the ceiling and fusses around a bit.
"My shirt!" Harry complains in shock a moment later. "What the – when did that even happen? Oh! Okay, okay, it was from my finger. Mystery solved!"
Tom rolls his eyes as Harry picks up the mirror again.
"Don't worry, all the blood is mine," Harry reassures them, now cleaned up. "Also I would like to take this moment to reiterate killing is bad and you know – okay, technically I'm the aggressor here, so the whole 'being chased' situation was well deserved. But notably! No dead people. Zero torturing either, which is also a point I'd like to make."
"We haven't thrown a single spell at a person since school started back up," Gellert complains, which is a lie. "The lack of trust is atrocious."
"I just like to be thorough," Harry protests. "I didn't say you did anything; I was just setting an example."
"You'd finish a lot faster if you did kill people," Tom points out.
"Good thing we'll never find out if that's true," Harry shoots back.
"Are these documents encrypted too?" Credence asks politely, always willing to hear about Harry's day. "Did you want to send them to us again?"
"No, no, you three are doing so much already, I'll probably just look up some decoding spells," Harry dismisses. "So how have you boys been? Is that Mooney over there in the background? Give him a pet for me."