Valley of the Shadow, Act II

“But we’re not leaving home,” Evan said reasonably, interrupting himself to wave, “Oh—yes, hullo, Tetchley.  Well, I’d love to, speaking personally, but you’d have to floo the firm; I’m not allowed to make my own appointments anymore—”

Severus rolled his eyes.

“His daughter’s starting at Hogwarts next year,” Evan subvocalized as the man drifted off, without moving his mouth much.  “Some families get sentimental about a kid’s last summer unsorted.”

“…Better than the alternative,” Severus allowed gloomily after a moment’s reflection.

“Quite,” Ev agreed, although he was thinking about Sirius more than Spike.  Or even Regulus.  Spike’s grandfather had been horrible, but Spike hadn’t had to actually live with the man and his opinions.  Reg wouldn’t have looked good in yellow at all, but black was also okay for Hufflepuffs, and the Sprout would have been good for his nerves.  Aunt Walburga wouldn’t have minded it as much as Gryffindor, especially after Sirius had already been a worst-case scenario for her to compare Reg to, and Sirius would have teased Reg but not been mean about it—not the way he and his cronies got about Slytherin—and Bella might just have given up on the poor kid in disgust.  But no, Reg had just had to live up to the Family’s Expectations.  

You’d think the Hat would listen to a kid thinking that and shout ‘Hufflepuff!’ no matter what the kid was asking for.  Then again, Gryffindors didn’t seem to think as hard about the Conflicting Priorities problem as other people did, so Ev supposed one couldn’t expect their hats to, either.  

“As I was saying, we’re not leaving home, we’re—oh merlin halp—why, good morning, Madam Prewett.  Yes, a very ugly morning indeed, such a pity, but I’m sure it’ll clear up.  Oh, I’m so glad you’re satisfied with it—I do think it’s one of my better works, you know, but of course that hat would draw out any artist’s best attentions.  By the bye, have you met my flatmate?  Snape, this is Muriel Prewett.  Madam Prewitt, Severus Snape, of course you’ll have heard old Slughorn go on and on about him—”

“Rosierrrr,” Severus groaned, burying his eyes in the heels of his hands.

“Snape, you remember Madam Prewitt’s niece Maleficent’s husband, Arthur Weasley?  Head Boy our first year, wasn’t he?”

“I think he may have been a Gryffindor prefect,” the terrible woman allowed, as if she did believe it but only because Dumbledore was unbelievable.  Which, fair enough.

“Of course,” Severus agreed, uncurling warily.  “He used to corner me and Evans and ask highly enthusiastic questions about zips and ring binders and why anyone had ever thought carrier pigeons could do the work of owls.”

Evan’s automatic Polite hiccupped at this, and he couldn’t help pausing inquisitively.

“Well, actually, they can’t,” Severus explained, “but rock doves are a bit like salmon in that they have a natural ability, which can be enhanced through selective breeding, to be able to,” he glared at Evan, “return to that one place that we as humans call a home, to wit, the comfort and safety of their own nest where dwelleth that one pair-bonded mate under whose wing they belong.  So they can’t be sent with a message to anyone anywhere, but they can be taken away from home and let loose to fly back with a message for the human handlers whose House hosts that nest.”

“Birdbrain,” Evan said with affable fondness, because the lady was looking at Spike as if he was crazy, and today Spike was wearing a greyish shirt that was more blue than green and a waistcoat that was on the brown side of taupe, so Evan could very easily excuse the fact that he was, in fact, yes, crazy.

“Oh, as if you haven’t spent hours painting pigeon necks,” Spike scoffed irritably.

“Not just pigeon necks, Snape, I paint the whole bird, you know, and, after all, they are awfully shiny—oh, must you be going?  Well, give my best to the family—thank you, thank you, thank you…”

“I’m sure you could get rid of them yourself if you only tried,” Spike noted, amused.

“Yes, but if I try I get scolded,” Evan said cheerfully.  “Your reputation as a surly, untamable reprobate is more precious than gems, Spike, I hope you realize that.”

“Gracious,” Spike replied blandly.  “Such a birdbrain as I could never have comprehended any such thing, I’m sure.  Certainly not by the age of, oh, I don’t know, sixteen at the latest, as I recall.”

Evan laughed, and leaned into him sideways so their shoulders pressed together for a moment.  “Now, listen, Spike, we’re not leaving home, honestly, because—”  

“For pity’s sake,” Severus snarled, loudly enough that poor Mr. Crumbworthy, sizzling in alarm on the other end of his glare, retracted his wave hastily and backed away.  Turning the glare on Evan, he said in exasperation, “Stop saying that, it’s obviously cursed.”

“Well, we’re not,” Evan said mildly.  “I mean to say, we’re both going, aren’t we?”

“…Oh, Ev,” Spike sighed, and leaned tiredly back into him.  “For god’s sake, you’re not taking this personally, are you?  I swear, if you’ve let Lily give you a complex, I will invite her over to tea so as to explain matters to her all afternoon.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Evan reassured him hastily, trying not to make a face.

“Thought not,” Spike smirked.

“I’m not taking it personally,” he reiterated.  “Only, you really worried me, Spike.”  He took advantage of the cover of their summer cloaks to find Spike’s hand next to him and squeeze onto it.  Severus always wore cloaks that looked autumn-appropriate no matter what weather charms were spelled into them.  It was one of those things that got him looked at when he didn’t necessarily want to be, but Evan appreciated it.  In summer Evan’s own outerwear was too short to hide what hands were doing, and in colder weather two pairs of winter-weight cloaks would have been more difficult to navigate around.  Besides, when Spike looked underdressed for the weather, Evan had an excuse to wrap an arm around him, although Spike wasn’t providing this excuse on purpose for the purpose, as far as Ev could tell.

He also clearly hadn’t meant to worry Evan on purpose.  Not that he usually did make people worry about him (as opposed to about what he might do) on purpose, but how very worrying it had been was worrisome all on its own, if he hadn’t meant to at all.  He’d really thought Severus was about to go catatonic again, for a minute there.  Over luggage.

“Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean you have to worry,” Severus muttered.

“I don’t have to, I get to,” Evan told him, injecting just a touch of nearly-sharp annoyance into his voice, Narcissa style, so that Severus would stop sullenly avoiding his eyes and see they were warm.  He could have done without the flinch, but he did get a Spike who was looking at him again. Making sure to warm his face to extra-embarrassing even though they were in public, he squeezed his friend’s hand harder and explained, in the Tone of Using Small Words, “You’re my Spike.”

Severus made an araagh noise.  His expression under his heightened color was, however, slightly pleased as well as deeply embarrassed, so that was all right.  

“But what I don’t understand is,” Evan went on, “since I do, honestly, know not to take it personally… well, why?”

Severus eyebrowed at him.

“Well,” he elaborated, making a mental note to tell Spike later that using that expression on small children who didn’t understand things that he, Severus, considered perfectly obvious had never actually been much help to the kids he’d tutored in the past. It would probably not get him much better results just because he was older now. “Evans said she thought you were upset because you were leaving a place you’d liked living to go back somewhere, er, difficult.  But you know it won’t be like before.  And we can put all our furniture in your rooms, and I thought you were satisfied about the agreement you and Dumbledore came to.  You seemed perfectly happy about it until we actually started packing.”

“The arrangement’s fine,” Severus said irritably.  “I think it’ll be a damned nuisance, as a matter of fact, but it’s better than not seeing each other or advertising to the whole world that putting pressure on one of us would be effective with the other, with things so unstable and precarious as they are. If you see any way out other than through, I don’t.”

“No, and to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not even sure what ‘out’ would look like, Spike,” Ev admitted.

“Nor I,” Severus agreed gloomily.  “We’ve enough languages between us to manage some literal out, but Lord only knows how far certain people’s pique would stretch.”

“Ha,” Evan agreed.  “If even he does, yes.  On which subject, moving to take this job makes you more occupied.  I thought you wanted that.”

“I do!” Severus insisted.  “I just… I don’t think you’d understand.”  

“Nonsense,” Evan scoffed with a cheerful face, squeezing his hand again sympathetically.  “You just think you’re being silly for having feelings you don’t think are rational or useful, so you don’t want me to understand and agree you’re silly.”

Then he let Titus Andrews-Novak say hello to him and even stood up and let himself get drawn into a brief chat about the stranglehold the goblins were trying to get on the French ochre market.  This was of particular concern to Titus, who fanatically maintained that Provence was the only place for pink ochre, in the same way that most British wizards insisted Ollivander’s was the only shop for wands.  Evan personally preferred Neapolitan ochre.  While admittedly it wasn’t as beautiful, as an unaltered pigment, as the hot Roussillon color Titus admired, that color wasn’t found very often in nature or anywhere, and had to be blended more often and more intensely.

Evan also felt it unwise to be hasty about making the Goblins feel overly stifled.  Titus was blind to this concern, because he’d never had Spike reading his History notes out loud to him and therefore had, like most people, barely scraped an A on his OWL and dropped the subject hastily the moment the school would let him.

Even wanting to be cautious about them, though, Evan also strongly felt that if they wanted to participate in business and trade, they should be prepared to get stymied and blocked just like everyone else without taking it personally.  Even if some families could get away with monopolies, they were still resented for it, and anyone trying to develop a new one would find themselves kicked rather thoroughly, as Spike might have put it, in the teeth or lower down.  If the goblins didn’t understand that getting that treatment only meant they were being treated normally… well, someone ought to explain it to them, but sadly they probably wouldn’t be inclined to listen, given the way they felt about wizards.

And if they absolutely had to take it personally, they might want to consider that wizards actually had some right to be nervous, and there were perfectly good reasons for it that had nothing to do with disliking goblins as a race.  When a population who’d been really extraordinarily problematic for wizards in the past when it came to weaponry made out of rocks and metals, who showed that they still really did have a grudge against wizards every time a wizard came into their bank, started to get excited about a type of earth that was really quite common… well, couldn’t it just be good history and good political sense to point out that goblins had made good use of loopholes in treaties before?  Did it have to be racial?  

Maybe it did, when the population in question was a race.  But how could that be avoided, when that race presented a united front and acted politically as a body and wouldn’t let anyone get to know any of its members as individuals, except as employers and just maybe co-workers?   Severus would have made a sour phoenix-or-its-ashes comment about that sort of question, and all right, acknowledging wizards’ part in building the tension would have been a smart move on the Ministry’s part, except that they were so terrified of demands for concessions.  But philosophy about circular causality, well, how useful was it, really, when one was trying to deal with the fallout from the situation practically?

Evan didn’t know, and was desperately glad no one expected him to make policy or liase with hostile businessmen or whatnot.   Titus gave one the impression of thinking he wanted to do that sort of thing, but he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a pub with Reggie. And Reggie was the very definition of harmless, until he was told not to be by someone he felt he ought to listen to (whether or not he thought he should).

He might have introduced Severus to Titus anyway, because Titus was wildly jealous of Evan’s brush cleaner and might have been able to help him convince Severus it was worth taking to the Ludicrous Patent Office   and putting on the market.  The point of talking to him at all was that Severus had clearly needed a minute to compose himself after having it hammered in to him that someone Really Knew Him, though, so it would have to wait.

Waiting was all he’d need, though; Being Seen always upset Severus, but he didn’t mind being seen by Evan once he’d got over being rocked.  Ev wasn’t sure if he’d show as much appreciation as usual later, since Ev had had the questionable discretion to do it to him in public, but as long as Evan didn’t call attention to the matter and gave His Jumpiness time to settle himself, he thought it should be all right, at least.

When enough of Severus’s nose had re-appeared from behind his hair that Ev thought he was probably feeling halfway human again (as opposed to 100% pure raw, unsheathed nerve bundle), Evan decided, with some relief, that he could wrap the conversation up.  Having more or less lost track of what Titus was arguing passionately at him about by then, he allowed that the man could possibly be right, but it wasn’t really a matter that could be decisively decided between two painters, was it?

(He caught a soft snorting noise from under Spike’s hair, and smiled to himself.  If Spike was scoffing at the abuse of the language, he was probably feeling better.)

Titus proved stubborn, though, which ‘forced’ Evan to finally give in and get rude.  “Is it ochre mining that's brought you to the good old Portkey Office today, then?” he asked jovially.  “Planning to get in and do some digging yourself while the coast is clear, eh?”

“The idea!”  Titus shiftily scoffed.  “I am going to France, yes, but it's only to visit my uncle. He's poorly, you know. What nasty minds you Slytherin families have.”

“There's no need either to blame any nasty-mindedness, had there been any, on—”Severus began sharply, his hair sliding back as he raised his head so that his nose looked like a blade sliding out of a black oiled-silk sheath. It was entirely possible, Evan noted fondly, that he'd meant it to.

“I don't believe we've been introduced?”  Titus insinuated haughtily, looking at Spike’s beloved, custom-tailored, extremely eccentric cuffs and the stolen school Quidditch boots he tended to wear when he was feeling rattled.

“No, but I've mentioned my flatmate, Severus Snape,” Evan agreed chattily.

Titus’s face went a funny color. “Snape?”  he repeated faintly.   Titus was older than they were, but Hogwarts alumni comprised a rather small town. Severus might not have been a big fish, but he’d cast a long shadow.

Spike based his crooked teeth in what he would have protested was a polite smile, but in practice made him look like a homicidal horse.  One of the winged, sawtoothed French ones that would not only kick right through its stall to get at your head, but also bribe the rats to paint your bandages with raw sewage.

“Yes, he's the one who makes that brush-cleaner of mine you like so much,” Evan nodded as if happily oblivious. “I did tell you, Snape, that it would be popular if you'd only bother--”

“Had there been any,” Severus pressed on, evidently in one of his bloody-minded moods, “on either Rosier’s family or his House.”

Titus didn't stop looking cheese-colored, but he did pause to be startled. Evan tried not to look annoyed, since Spike didn't need to feel he'd done something wrong on top of everything else that was bothering him. Ev would have preferred, however, to let Titus go on peacefully  assuming that he was another, younger Hufflepuff.

“Or his family's house,” Severus went on as smoothly as if his eyes hadn't cut to Evan's face and momentarily faltered.  “Whatever any of those might be, or what he had for breakfast, or the composition of the Great Wall of China, for that matter.  Firstly, because painting a individual as wholly a product of his background rather than a person in his own right is what has torn our school and our country apart for the last fifty years at the least, and left us instead with a cauldron of warring tribes, half of which are so drowned and drunk with groupthink that they might as well wear their House badges instead of faces. You are Hufflepuff, I take it? Yes, I thought so. And secondly--”

“Oh, dear,” Titus said desperately, all his worst fears about Talking To The Dreaded Snape clearly confirmed.  “I think they might be calling my number, I had better--”

“And secondly,” Spike glinted on with a poisonous snarl, “your avarice was so blindingly obvious that no nasty-mindedness was necessary. You might as well have gone about with ‘I shall get mine before my bankers get theirs, because they're too feeble to notice me doing it and certainly wouldn't think to punish me for it in my interest rate’ stamped on your forehead.”

“He can get a bit cranky in waiting rooms,” Evan didn't-really-apologize, slinging an affable hand around Spike’s bristling shoulders. “I'm sure you'll get on splendidly really. Was that your number, though, Ty?”

Titus agreed that he was sure it had been, and hustled away to the far end of the room, nowhere near the counter—to tell his friends how everything the Gryffindors had ever said about Spike was true, judging from their furtive, wide-eyed looks.

Evan sighed, just a little.

“What happened to ‘more precious than gems’?” Spike asked sardonically.

“Nothing, but if you throw a gem to an augury, it’ll just blunt its beak trying to eat the shiny beetle,” Evan told him.

Spike’s eyes glinted, inappropriately happily, and his quoting voice matched as he recited, “Age before beauty… and pearls before swine.”

Evan blinked.  “What?”

In a grander and more sarcastic quoting voice, Spike replied, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Ev peered at the gaggle of presumably-Hufflepuffs, who were whispering ferociously and still eying Spike.  “Yes, that’s about the size of it,” he agreed resignedly.  “Is that someone clever we should be reading together?”

Spike paused and, to Evan’s fascination, twitched.  Finally, he said, “I’m not taking a crack at that one with a fifty-foot Beater’s bat. Don’t ask Narcissa.   Or Evans.  Really don’t ask Evans.”

“All right,” he temporarily-acceded, puzzled.  “Er… why not?”

“Because she’d know.  And she’d laugh at me.  And she might just think it was so funny she had to tell my parents.  And then me da would remember to care about something he doesn’t actually care about at all, and decide he’s horrified about you, me, and our entire world all over again just because he’d think it’s expected of him.”

“…Right,” Evan folded, but dubiously.  “Well, if you’re not going to explain that…” he trailed off pointedly.  Spike pulled a blank, incurious face on over his little squirm.  “I really think I ought to understand,” he referred back to what would have been an insulting put-off if he’d believed it.  “And I’m sure I will once you’ve explained.”

He kept on looking open-eared and immovable until Spike sighed, and hunched into vulture-shoulders.  Evan put a hand to his wand in its holster (no one ever noticed his wand-sheath was open-bottomed, although he had to agree with Spike’s glum assessment that if he tried to get away with a holster that would let him cast without drawing, everyone would notice instantly) and cast a quick eyes-away.  In the wake of the tingle of the magic, he rubbed the stressed furrow between Spike’s eyes with two gentle fingers, and stroked down the long line of his face.

Severus met his eyes, waded with a gently lost look in something only he could see for a moment, and then glanced away and sighed again.  He muttered, “Ours is the only place no one’s ever attacked me in.”

Evan froze.

Possibly taking it for incomprehension, Severus muttered on, “I mean, it isn’t just bedrooms, actually my actual room at ho—at Spinner’s End was the safest place in the house; it was where I was out of the way.  Out of sight, out of mind, you know.  But for years there wasn’t anyplace there that… I mean, there wasn’t a lock, and absolutely everywhere at Hogwarts, if it wasn’t that lot it was Mulciber and Avery thinking something was funny or I’d annoyed them, and even at St. Mungo’s Potter would keep bothering me, and when I was staying with Lucius that summer I never got to wake up on my own until I learned to sleep very badly; it was always either the elves bouncing in to be alarm clocks or the dueling instructor surprising me awake in oh-so-enjoyable ways to improve my reflexes.”

Evan was so shaken and at a loss that he was probably grinding Severus’s fingers together far too hard and he didn’t manage to stop himself from blankly saying, “Duels are formal.”

Spike shrugged uncomfortably.  “Yes, well.  I told him how things were.  I didn’t say I didn’t want him to do it, it’s just that our flat has really been the only place.”

“Spike,” Evan said helplessly.  He didn’t see how they could call any of it off, not now.  You didn’t break promises you’d made to both the Dark Lord and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.  He could see, behind his eyes, a little fuzzy animal that was his mind, running in circles in a sealed room, looking for an out.  Which was frightfully unhelpful, because while he was looking at it he wasn’t actually thinking.

“Needs must,” Spike said gruffly, with an abrupt shrug.  “It doesn’t take that before there’s no way out.”  He nudged Evan’s foot, the one the Dark Lord had put his Mark on because Evan’s arm had already been inked with the comforting reminder of who he’d become for Severus.  “As soon as one’s been brought to the attention of people like that, it’s ‘are you mine or my enemy.’  Backing out would just invite example-making, even if one could.  Think of that strange cat-god.”

It took Evan a moment to translate this last into ‘Bast Lestrange.’  Still helplessly, he re-offered, “We can put all our furniture in your rooms.”

“Possibly,” Spike theoretically-agreed, in the tone that meant he wasn’t at all sure how he he felt about that idea and the uncertainty was making him uncomfortable with himself.

“I’ll paint the ceiling?”

This got him one of those warmly wry looks, and a threatened, “Yes, you will.”  With another resigned shrug, though, Spike went on, “It still won’t be…”

After a moment, Evan tried, “Untouched?”  But at the same time, Severus finished, “Hallowed.”

Evan looked at their ticket, and then he looked at the counter.  Good.  “Come with me,” he said decisively.

“They said we’d have to take another queue-ticket if we left,” Severus objected.  

“Oh, Spike,” Evan sighed at him affectionately.  “You’re so scrupulous.”

Thirty-seconds’ chat with the bored-stupid Ministry guard at the door and a discreet passing-over of a few sickles saw them leaving the waiting room and its anti-apparition wards.  With their original tickets.

“I think I object to this,” Spike disapproved.

“You don’t very much,” Evan told him.  “It’s the sort of bribe very nearly anyone can afford.”

“…Meaning it’s expected if not actually baked into the system.  Now I know I object to this.    There isn’t a WC in the waiting area.  Or a tea station, although I suppose a tea station would disimprove the bladder situation.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Evan promised, and Spike hummed dubiously.  Smiling, Ev clapped once, and called, “Linkin, take us to my room, please, and then you may go right back to what you were doing.”

“What?” Spike choked, alarmed, as the twiggy little fingers grasped their wrists.

Linkin took Evan at his word, and so when they reappeared and Spike wheeled around, he was already gone.  Evan thanked him anyway: he didn’t need to be there to hear a Rosier calling him even if it was just for a thank-you, once his attention had already been alerted.

Then he lolled onto his old bed, the same one he’d had as a child.  Lucius and Narcissa hadn’t decided yet whether Draco would get a bed that would grow with him.  Luke said having the same bed your whole life was comforting, and made it even more true that Hogwarts was an exciting adventure and home was home,  Narcissa said she expected to want to redecorate her baby’s room a few times as he got older, and had no reason to think the same bed would always suit.

Evan, who personally thought it was asking for trouble to unnecessarily make long-term decisions about a child who was so very likely to be spoiled silly without taking its opinions into account, if anyone had asked him, stretched luxuriously out over the bed on which his opinion had also never been asked.  Confidentially, he said,  “I wasn’t here much once school started, you know—hols were either with Narcissa and Reggie’s families or out wherever Mum and Dad wanted me to bounce about the museums and landscape-worthy scenes on any given summer.  And before that I didn’t think about it, but it’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”

Severus looked around slowly.  Linkin had kept the place pristine, of course; there wasn’t even any dust in the air.  The fine, diaphanous summer curtains and sheets were snow-white, and the fat, roly-poly rosewood of the furniture stood out ruddy and cheerfully dignified against the walls, which were the pale, pure blue of a cold winter morning.  As slowly as he’d turned, Severus said, “It looks like a hotel.”

Evan frowned thoughtfully.  “Well, you know how it is, one can’t ever stand one’s old work, and all my recent things are bought or at the firm, or they’re ours and I’ve packed them.”  

On second thought, he wasn’t sure if that was actually true for Spike.  If a potion worked, it worked.  It wasn’t the sort of thing where one winced over one’s old brushwork and wanted to correct all the composition.  

Then again, Spike had been known to correct published recipes by other people that did work, and to good effect.  Improving his own early efforts wasn’t a stretch at all.

Spike was looking at him funny.  He considered more.  “I think I had a stuffed goat,” he offered, and got up to check in the closet.  “Yes, here it is.”  

“…That could almost be an actual goat,” Severus said.  He was still using that slow voice.

“It’s more cartoonish, a bit,” Evan pointed out, holding out the thing for perusal.  It was life-sized—about as big as a large rabbit or a small badger—but very soft, with eyes a bit too big for its head, and Evan hadn't ever seen one on the grounds whose eyes were blue.

“Quite realistic, though.  You seem to have chewed on it.  Evan?  Why did you have a stuffed goat, when you were young enough to chew on your toys, that wasn’t especially cuddly?”

“Oh,” Evan explained, relieved to have an answer, because that particular slow voice never boded well.  “It was because we always keep a few goats, for dairy and groundskeeping.  They’re charmed not to eat the roses, you know, except for fallen leaves and petals, so it’s quite safe to let them wander where they like.  Grandpère wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be afraid of them.  You’re still looking at me funny, Spike.”

“The question of ‘why did you have the particular soft toy that you had as a baby’ isn’t normally expected to have an answer with actual logic behind it, Ev.”

Evan blinked.

In a perfectly collected voice, Severus said, “I’m going to show each of your parents all of their bones, one by one.”

Dubious in his turn, Evan asked, “Aren’t you the one who said they meant well?”

“That’s not what I said, and irregardless I am not currently interested in the difference between criminal incompetence and criminal negligence.  I am understanding correctly, am I, that this is what your room’s always looked like?  Linkin didn’t empty it out and make it look like a hotel when we moved into the flat together?”

“What I brought you here for,” Evan began firmly.

“There is no possible way you can end that sentence grammatically,” Spike observed, probably going along with his attempt to change the subject.  It was always a mistake to try and lighten a mood while mired in a killing rage, Evan had observed—mostly from watching Spike try it.

“I brought you here to fix it,” Evan bypassed his touchingly lame effort.

“…Interior decorator is not a job in my skill set,” Spike informed him, eyebrows up.

Putting the goat back away and drawing him down into the bed, which was too small for two even if one of the two was as skinny as Spike, Evan informed him back, “O Best Beloved, this is not news.”

After a while, possibly as a result of having his eyes too close to them, Severus pushed out, “Your sheets should be blue.  Darkest.”

“Mmmnavy?” Evan asked his spine, following the question with his teeth.

“No, the other one.”  Perhaps feeling this was too vague, or else because Evan had moved back to kissing and he’d therefore recovered the use of a few neurons, Severus amended, “As in an Everlasting Elixer.”

“…Er… Spike?”

“Before you add the powdered chestnuts,” Spike elaborated crossly.

“That’s teal,” Evan told him, chuckling into his skin.  “It’s practically hunter-green.”

“No, teals’ eyes-feathers are lighter than that.”

“Well, I know what you mean,” Evan laughed, nosing his hip, and tapped the sheets with his wand. What Spike actually meant was a sort of swamp-at-night color, only more pure.  Just for fun, he gave it a bit of a shimmer, and an underlying dark-and-light pattern as if sunlight were straining to get at it through leaves.

Spike hummed approval, and flipped them, his hooded eyes lingering on Evan’s.  Ev tried not to bat them.  “How much time would you say we’ve got?” he asked, drawing back enough to dig the pads of his genius fingers into Evan’s soles.  As always when he did this, Evan had the brief flutter of a queasy thought about how connected that tasteless, boring, black tattoo made him to He Whose Business This Wasn’t, but the warm roll-in to the deep pressure drove it quickly from his mind.   “Before they go past our number?”

“Not so very much,” Evan estimated with unfathomable regret.

Severus made a well, then sort of philosophical noise.  He folded Evan’s hand more tightly around his wand, rumbled, “Paint,” into his ear, and lowered his mouth.

Evan would, under other circumstances, have been extremely dissatisfied with the blotch-and-lines abstract he jerked and flailed into existence under the gloriously unhelpful guidance of his Spike’s ruthless attentions.  On the other hand, this was definitely their bedroom and not his nursery now, which had been the entire point.  And it undebatably did not look like a hotel room.

Ev didn’t know what it looked like, except ‘liable to give Linkin conniptions,’ between his ‘painting’ and the long strips Spike had (rather vengefully) torn out of the curtains, but ‘a hotel room’ was not it.

He had to deal with Spike glowering cheatedly at him when Linkin took them back (in order to avoid elf-fits, they stepped out into the hallway before Ev called him) to find there were still a stupid number of tickets in the queue to be addressed before theirs, but he was far too buzzy and happy to care. He, too, would have liked to spend more time forced skin-tight together in the little bed, Spike’s neck flushed-hot and welcoming-soft against his face as their hearts slowed, but there was a bigger picture.

His old room at Rosier Hall was a new one for Spike, and he’d be a fool to think Spike would unconsciously rely on it for safety as he had their flat.  Not yet.  But there was no reason to think it would ever be a place Spike would get harried and horribly startled in by anything outside his own skin, either.

Dumbledore wasn’t giving Spike a safe place—he couldn’t; Spike would never be able to completely relax in Hogwarts even if none of the kids ever bothered him in his rooms.  But Ev could give him one that he could know right now was theirs-only, and at least know right now it could become safety to him in time.

Of course, Ev’s parents did sometimes come home, and on rare occasions they were even home when it wasn’t a holiday-ish sort of thing.  Which was why he hadn’t taken Spike into the master bedroom.  But really it wasn’t often, and surely not-quite-perfect was better than a bleak and harried future of no respite at all from adolescents?

But brewers were not fundamentally big-picture people.  Spike was better at it than most, but he was as liable as the rest of the birdbrains in his lab to getting hung up on details, when he wasn’t remembering not to.  So Evan got glowered at.  

He hadn’t actually told Spike out loud what he had in mind, anyway; it was entirely possible that Spike (who liked to pretend he never seriously needed anything) thought he’d just been distracted.  Ah, well, nothing to be done.  Actually telling Spike would have been a bad idea; would have gotten his back up on the subject.  Much better to let Severus sink into occupation slowly, as they had with the flat, even if Ev would have preferred him to feel better about everything right now.  It would feel more real to him that way.

The glower intensified when Spike realized that this time they weren’t going to be able to get one of the benches against the wall.  Evan shrugged at him, and steered them towards the back of a dark, neat head of hair that he thought he recognized.  They might as well try to get some use out of the morning.

It was indeed the head of the DMLE, also known to those in the know (although not, one could assert with 99% certainty, to himself) as the father of Bella’s new catspaw.  It also appeared to be his secretary, who drove Evan absolutely up the wall.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the man.  It was that Weatherby had a rather interesting chin and hair that was extremely boring until he went into natural light (seldom) and a downcast-eyed, deferential way of speaking that made Evan sure he knew absolutely all of the things ever (Spike, when he’d complained about this, had gone all quirky-faced and asked if he knew the word ‘projection).  And he’d very humbly shunted away an offer to be painted—or, rather, he’d shunted away an offer to be painted by Evan in favor of being painted by an older but, modesty aside, less inspired and honestly less competent Rose & Yew portraitist.

And Dashiel, who was a third cousin and did know what Father and Grandpère expected of him,  hadn’t even been able to get the man to engage in small talk, let alone to talk about anything interesting.  The wretched wizard had, according to Dashiel, just followed directions with a vaguely distant expression the whole time and, when pressed a little, apologized for being dull by saying he felt it his duty to use his time away from his paperwork to organize his mental file cabinets.

Evan wanted to pry into his head with a crowbar and a nutcracker, never mind his wand.  On the other hand, the feeling cheered him up, because he thought it helped him know, just a little bit, what it felt like to be Spike all the time.

Neither he nor his employer were providing Evan with any crowbars at the moment, although possibly he was getting some nuts to crack.   The two of them were going over a long list of names, but it seemed to be just Crouch telling Weatherby what to write down.  Evan wasn’t getting any context.  It was a list of Ministry workers, he knew that—mostly people from the Department of Accidental Magic and Catastrophes, Muggle Relations, and Auror trainees, but also a few of the lower-level people from the Office of Misinformation.  Weatherby was occasionally suggesting a name, and sometimes Crouch said, “A good thought, but so-and-so won’t wish to spare them” and sometimes, “On balance, I think not,” and sometimes, “Indeed.”

Spike looked utterly bored and impatient with being in the waiting room and was shifting restlessly and had taken out his notebook.  He appeared to be writing out a list of ingredients, in Futhark. Evan noticed, however, after watching him with half an eye for a few moments, that Spike had written down Gamboge, Galengal, Mistletoe, Jasmine, Devil’s Bit, and Nothaphoebe umbelliflora in the same order and at the same time that Crouch had said, “Gammage, Galworthy, Misanthwerpe, Jaspar, Deviner, Nott.”

Unfortunately, tackling him down into the bench and snogging him soundly in public just was not on.  Rats.

Crouch finally wound up his list, and said irritably, “I can’t imagine why the Portkey Office is permitted to behave in this dilatory manner.  We must have been here twenty minutes.”

Evan and Spike rolled their eyes at each other.  By Ev’s estimation, they’d been gone forty-five minutes, and they probably still had another half hour to wait.

“I’m sure we all wish to be certain that everyone’s paperwork is correctly processed, sir,” Weatherby murmured.  “As I recall, you said only last month, after that small difficulty with Minister Bagnold’s entourage—”

“Yes, yes, of course, but this is holding up the business of government,” Crouch said testily.  “They can’t imagine that ministers at my level—”

Severus coughed a cough that sounded remarkably like, “Polyjuice.”

There was a turning-around sound, and Evan could see in the spectacles of the knitting wizard opposite them that Crouch had turned around to face them.  In an affronted voice, Barty’s father demanded, “I beg your pardon, young man, were you addressing me?”

Severus ignored this until Crouch cleared his throat with rising indignation.  Then he turned around with a very cool face and very high eyebrows, and inquired incredulously, “I beg your pardon, Director Crouch, but were you addressing me?”

“Perhaps not,” the older wizard said, narrow-eyed and not precisely mollified.

“Do convey our regards to Bartemius,” Severus said, with a gesture that included Evan.  “Regulus informs us his NEWTs were spectacular and he’s doing very well in his training.”  He nodded civilly and turned away.  As he turned, though, his face twitched as though he were going to sneeze and then he did, indeed, ‘sneeze,’ “Controlling spells!”  Perfectly poker-faced, he sighed, “Rosier, have you a spare handkerchief?”

Rather less than perfectly poker-faced and without looking around,  Evan said, “You don’t deserve one.”

Perhaps Weatherby disagreed, because he wordlessly passed one over. It was dove-grey and very plain, of quite good linen.  Severus looked at it, paid particular attention to one place on the lining that looked like every other place on the lining, and then actually twisted around in his seat to give Weatherby a bright-eyed You Are The Sort Of Person I Can Deal With look.  

Evan should not have been surprised.  Actually, he wasn’t.  The lack of surprise didn’t stop him wanting to bury his face in Spike’s neck and whine.  He hadn’t been able to get Weatherby to give him more than the time of day, and no one had previously had any reason whatever to think the man was amused by rudeness or responded well to over-bluntness.  It wasn’t fair.

Crouch was looking at Spike as though what he was thinking was that crazy and impertinent children should not, in a sensible universe, make good points through sneezing.  He seemed to be about to say something, possibly at least encompassing the ‘crazy and impertinent’ part of that, when a portly little ex-neighbor bustled up to their bench.

“Crouch!  So glad I caught you before you left, your office said you might still be here.”

“I am,” Crouch said icily and rather loudly, “as the Portkey office appears to feel that a top-level Ministerial meeting with the head of the Rigspolitiet Magiske in Denmark to follow up on the Giant situation in the Faroe Islands is of equal urgency with housewitches wishing to take the sea air on holiday!”

There was an awkward pause, as one of those silences that sometimes fall in a crowded room fell.

“Oh, well, you know how it is,” Fudge mumbled into it,  “They wouldn’t work here if they could get a job training security trolls, eh?”  

A nearly tangible wave of frost rolled over them from the counter.  It wasn’t actually tangible, as it would have been if Spike had been the one to be slapped with a pas as faux as that.  Evan could still feel an hour being added to Crouch’s wait time, though, and two hours being added to Fudge’s every time he came in for at least the next year.  Or until he figured out how to apologize really effectively.

In hopes of preventing it from affecting him and Spike, because he knew Fudge was going to cast about for help and notice him in a moment, Evan turned with an expression of really wide-eyed and obvious I Cannot Believe You Just Said That What Is Wrong With You Today—so obvious that it would be visible from the counter, he prayed.  Severus, failing to take Fudge’s invariable habit of never trying to handle anything on his own into account, had done his absolute best to vanish behind his shoulders, hair, and notebook.   You could actually only see an acute triangle of forehead and his horrified fingers clutching the cover of the book.  Evan wanted to snug him and duck under his hair and kiss his poor appalled face, but of course that was right out.

Typically, it was barely half a second before Fudge worked out he’d done something gauche and his eyes darted around.  Blithely (or desperately, it was hard to tell with Hufflepuffs sometimes, not because they were good at covering but because a significant portion of the ones who went into the Ministry had public faces that were always trying too hard) ignoring that Evan didn’t look any more impressed with him than anyone else did at the moment, he jovially called, “Rosier, hullo!  And that’s never Snape under there, is it?”

“NO,” Severus snapped emphatically.

“Hullo, Severus!”

“Auuurgh.”

“Haha, he’ll never change, will he, Evan?”

“Not till the reed blossoms, Neil,” Evan smiled, sighing to himself under the sleepy expression even though Severus, fingers twitching towards his pale and knobbly wand, had rewarded him with a very rare double take. Fudge didn’t look to be in one of his moods where you could subtly remind him he had ‘important’ things to do and he’d bustle right off.  

“Barty, have you met my neighbors?  Ha!  Well, my former neighbors now, I suppose!”

Severus attempted to merge into the pages of his notebook, face-first, while Crouch and Evan resignedly went through the tedious process of explaining through Fudge’s I-says that Evan and Severus had been a year or two ahead of Barty Jr at school, and that Ev’s cousin Regulus Black (Ev could hear Severus roll his eyes at Crouch’s name-dropping from behind the book—which was exactly why, once properly introduced, the same people who were only willing to be introduced to either of them for Narcissa’s sake in the first place were quite often less snippy about Spike’s parents than Lucius’s peacocks) was great friends with said Barty Jr.

Fudge made a noise he probably thought was sage-sounding, and probably only didn’t get his hand bitten off at the wrist when he patted Severus jovially on the shoulder because Severus felt proprietary about the man’s wretched child’s Gobstones skills.   “Well, I won’t keep you lads,” he said, still jovially.

Severus’s eyes slid up from over the pages, although his nose didn’t emerge.  He didn’t actually say ‘This is the Portkey Office, we will be stuck here until Doomsday, especially since the wizard working the counter who visibly took your comment personally has seen you being friendly to us,’ but he also didn’t blink. Weatherby turned away, smoothly but swiftly, and coughed.

Having completely missed this, Fudge was pressing on, “It was Barty here I wanted a word with.”

“Oh,” Crouch replied, flat as Spike’s eyes and twice as gloomy, “you had something of importance to discuss, Fudge?”

“Well, yes!” Fudge blinked.  “Said I was looking for you, didn’t I?”

“Not in those precise words,” Spike answered, but it was so far under his breath Ev didn’t think anyone could hear him: purely knee-jerk pedantry, which Spike might have resisted better if Fudge hadn’t been annoying him.  Ev slid him an indignant look and traced S-T-O-P-P-I-T / I-N / P-U-B-L-I-C on his own leg.   He received first a confused look, and then an amused one and the reply G-L-U-T-T-O-N.  He widened his eyes, gave the tiniest, most emphatic nod he could, and got to see all the stress around Spike’s eyes warm away.

"It's about this new department you want to steal all my lads for, " Fudge went on indignantly.

"I hardly think that a fair description, Mr. Fudge," Crouch replied-testily. Evan was starting to think it was his default tone.

"Well, however you care to describe it, I should like to know what you mean by it!"

Crouch looked like an elephant with a small toothless crup latched onto its tail. “I mean, Fudge, that, you must have noticed the recent rise in petty, muggle-related crimes."

Evan's brain took a possibly irrelevant microsecond to notice that now he sounded exactly like Spike would have, if Spike had badly wanted to say ‘even you’ and was absurdly proud of how terribly diplomatic he was only just managing to be.

Then his brain took a brief pause—from the much more pleasant occupation of wallowing in considerations of the least suave Slytherin since Merlin thought swanning off to wherever on earth the ‘Forest Sauvage’ really was with the firstborn Crown Prince of really a not terribly pleasant or temperate High King was a bright idea[1]—to realize what the unpleasant and overly-groomed man had actually said.  He glanced over at Severus, silently asking whether he was the only one who didn't know what this was about.

Severus’s expression suggested that Evan was not, exactly, but that Severus might have heard something that hadn't seemed important at the time and was making more striking sense now. The slight wince under this expression, which otherwise was one of slow consideration, suggested he'd heard it from Lucy Wilkes.  (It was a very distinctive pained wince.  He had a completely different one that usually meant Lockhart, too.  Actually, a lot of people shared that one.  This would have been funnier if Lockhart had been oblivious to it. Although since he thought it wasn’t so much a wince as a jolt of being overcome by his stunning good looks yet again despite years of exposure, Ev still felt it was it pretty funny.)

Ev had wondered if they were still on speaking terms after Spike had told her in no uncertain terms that he had a right to dictate something about the way she was handling her boyfriend/assignment, despite not even knowing who said boyfriend was.    He hadn't asked Lucy because when he tried to talk about Spike with her, she went over all sparkly and asked about things Spike did not want her to know and talked about things Spike did not want her to look at, or, indeed, think about. And he hadn't asked Spike because thinking about her tended to make Spike look headachy.

He asked now, just with an eyebrow.  Spike sighed, silently, and replied, M-U-L-C-I-B-E-R.

Evan sat back in disgust.  He didn’t doubt it for a second.  Playing silly, little nasty jokes that upset the muggleborns had been Mulciber’s favorite thing to do at school—and, therefore, sort-of-Avery’s too, by default, although Avery really had simpler tastes and wouldn’t have thought it was much fun on on his own.  Of course Mulciber had graduated to nastier tricks against muddier blood.  And, knowing him, he’d probably found himself more friends to help.  

Reptilian ladder snakes weren’t especially social, but most real snakes weren’t, whereas most Slytherins learned to be even if it wasn’t their natural inclination (coffSpike). Mulciber was one of the ones who liked to surround himself with frie—well, a gang of friends, at least.  That probably wasn’t always different from being really friends, but Evan had only had the Gryffie trolls and Mulciber-and-Avery to watch, when it came to gangs of friends, and it looked to him as though the power games involved would be too exhausting to let real friendship as he understood it survive.

But Ev probably wasn’t qualified to define ‘real friendship.’  He was friendly with almost everyone he knew, but Spike and Lucius were the only people he would have called friends that he wasn’t actually related to.  Even in their cases, he only called Lucius his friend to please Narcissa, and he only called Spike his friend because anything else would have embarrassed the poor thing until he turned quite deep colors and possibly popped and then definitely started howling about decorum and discretion and what if someone decided to hurt Evan just because Ev didn’t look dangerous and Spike had somehow narked them off.  

Either way, Ev had been quite pleased to stop being Mulciber’s roommate when they’d graduated, and he knew that having to play the part of the man’s friend had made Spike quite uncomfortable even before having Evans convinced of that friendship had rather ruined his life for a while.  Ev had to give Evans credit for being right about Mulciber, at least: he was not a nice person, as pleasant as he could be when he respected you, and anyone who still really genuinely liked him after spending time with him directing the activities was also de facto not a nice person.  She’d only been wrong about how the world worked.

“How distressing,” he murmured.

Apparently not sure whether he was serious or not (he was: quite serious. Primarily about Evans being right about anything, but also about Mulciber making things difficult for everyone, especially people who hadn’t the least idea how to expect the kinds of things he’d thought were funny even in first year, let alone defend against them), Crouch said sharply, “Indeed it is, Mr. Rosier.”

“Master Rosier,” Severus and Weatherby muttered at the same time, Weatherby in a rather less irritated and more helpful tone.  Severus perked up, and Evan tried not to fond at him too obviously in public.  It was rather like watching a kid who’d been playing with pastels stumble across a really good sidewalk artist.  Not that Evan had ever been that kid, of course...

“Very distressing,” Crouch went on, turning back to Fudge with only a flicker of acknowledging eyes in Weatherby’s direction that, to Evan, said yes, mum/dear, got it, I shall remember the next time.    “And as neither your department nor the Auror Office has curtailed the problem—”

“Well, you said yourself it was petty crime, Barty!” Fudge protested, puffing himself out a bit, like a pidgeon.  

Severus, looking sardonic, had sagged disinterestedly back into his notebook again and started scribbling too small, too busy, hardly important, obliviators on top of things. Ev initially thought Spike might be either showing off for him or just grouching on paper, but then he realized Spike was writing in English. He was showing off for Weatherby. Ev didn’t know whether to laugh or be jealous or tackle him to the bench and snog him proudly in front of everybody for finally, finally learning to network.

Or, maybe, it occurred to Evan with a touch of something squirmy that felt almost like guilt, for finally finding someone he had a common para-language with that would let him network in a way he really couldn’t with the people Narcissa kept wanting him to. And what that squirmy feeling was about was his instinctive no! against the idea that his Spike was happier and felt more at home passing notes with secretaries and house elves than passing social code with the Somebodies Evan wanted to show him off to.

It wasn’t as if Evan even liked most of those Somebodies, particularly. He had a great deal more fun chatting and giving out quick sketches to other shoppers in Diagon than in appointments with witches and wizards who could pay Rose & Yew.

Severus had sent him a poem once, read it to him by music-ball during their last summer apart. Evan had remembered the bits that went, ‘I am not Prince Something, nor was meant to be, am an attendant lord, one that will do, something something to advise the prince, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, something something, cautious and meticulous… do I dare to eat a peach?”

It had made him angry.

Well, it had overwhelmed him with missing Spike, along with all the other poems in the music ball, since it was the first time he’d heard Spike’s voice in something like a month, and letters really hadn’t been the same.

But that bit. It had been a very long poem, that one, and really strange, and Evan hadn’t understood most of it, but Spike’s voice had gone all fervent on that bit, and Evan had gotten really angry. He hadn’t been stupid enough to show it, fortunately.

But he’d been hard put to it not to shove a ruddy peach down Spike’s throat first thing the next time they got to see each other. Or smack him over the head with the deed to some orchard, which would have been more to the point, except that Spike would have forgiven him for being choked with a peach a lot sooner.

 “I’m sure the Auror Office has more important things on their minds, what with all the disappearances, you know!” Fudge was blustering on. “We have ourselves, for that matter!  Quite a lot of them are from muggle families, or half-bloods—”

Spike flinched.  Ev wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it.  He pressed his knee against Spike’s.  Even if they’d been in private, there was nothing to say: Spike wasn’t scared, and he already knew there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t be worlds more stupid than useful.

“—Which is why one might have thought Muggle Relations might take an interest,” Crouch observed cuttingly.

“Well, yes, Barty, we do, dash it, that’s just the thing!  I know you can speak Mermish and Gluglug and whatnot—”¨

“Kglügvnyōk,” Crouch snapped.  

Evan had to admit he was impressed.  He’d never heard of anyone who’d spoken with a Veela and kept their brain from dribbling out their, er, ears long enough to make even a creditable attempt at their language.  Of course, not all Veela were pureblooded, but most of the ones who were at least a quarter wizard were better at human accents than the kind you really needed a beak to get right.

“—But have you ever spoken with a real, live muggle? They can get a bit excitable, you know! Every time we get one of these complaints, we’ve got to go calm down everyone in the family who had anything to do with it, find out what they know and whether they need to be obliviated, and then get them to sit ruddy still long enough to let the obliviators at them, and that is just the family, don’t forget!  We’ve also got to deal with the shops, and that’s far more complicated sometimes!  And to be perfectly frank, Barty, your Aurors only make things worse, as a rule, as far as keeping things contained goes.  Oh, you’ve got a few who know not to dress in women’s clothing and wave wands about and shout about billiwig stings, but some of them, well.”

“And I’m sure Mr. Crouch is very pleased to finally be able to make things easier for your department,” Weatherby said soothingly.

Severus and Evan looked at each other and tried not to grin.  Severus was better at it, but worse at pretending he didn’t avidly want to know what Crouch was up to.  Ev didn’t blame him, especially as the odds were that funds from Spike’s own project would find their way into Crouch’s new one.

“What’s that?” Fudge blinked, a bit suspicious but game enough.

“If you’d only—” Crouch began irritably, and then jerked slightly.  He scowled at Weatherby, and then shot him a different, Fine, you explain scowl.

Severus, however, either couldn’t resist, was trying to impress Weatherby, or had noticed that Weatherby actually preferred not to draw attention to himself when he didn’t have to.  He said, impatiently, but not with Crouch’s contempt, “He’s saying that the removal of personnel from your department is expressly to address the difficulties that have been bogging you down and stopping you from doing all your everyday work, Neil.”

Fudge brightened up, although still bit suspiciously, and shot I am tempted to be admiring but can’t really trust you so-clever-you-’ll-cut-yourself boys at both Spike and Crouch.  “Really?”

Ev was amused to see that Crouch wasn’t impressed with Spike, although he wasn’t Not Impressed, either.  Barty, now, had compared his marks to all his classmates and come to the correct conclusion that, at least on measurable measures, he was unusually intelligent (which the Hat and his mum had probably both told him anyway), and should accept people who seemed slow to him as normal.  It seemed that Barty’s father, however, like Spike, thought himself some variation on just-about-smart-enough-for-Ministry work (literally, in Crouch’s case), and therefore it was to be expected that not everything would come easily, and therefore if a problem was frustratingly challenging a fellow just had to work harder.  As dedicated a craftsman as that self-assessment made Spike, it meant that when other people didn’t seem to be as clever or quick as he was, this did not mean that he was exceptional. It only meant that the people who couldn’t follow him were both exceptionally dumb (since he himself couldn’t possibly be anything special) and not putting in the appropriate effort to keep up with life.  

Ev doubted that Weatherby ever called Crouch DF or the equivalent, even to save other people who were certainly about to get pecked.

To make Fudge feel better about it all, Ev stretched and said lazily, “Probably about time, too, Neil.  Shouldn’t wonder if the Muggle PM hasn’t been on the DMLE’s case about it.”  He pinched warningly at his indignant Spike’s sleeve to stop him hissing Double negative!!!  “You’ve only got so many people, after all.  Can’t be everywhere, even with apparition.  Not what with the paperwork, and having to be careful about one shows up in a Muggle area, am I right?”

“Well, that’s certainly true,” Fudge complained, “but we have got only so many people, and he wants to take some of them!”

“They’ll still be doing just what they have been doing, won’t they, if Snape’s right?” Ev reasoned.  “Is that right, Director Crouch?  You’re compartmentalizing the bit that’s been taking over Neil’s office and the Aurors’, so they can get back to their normal work?”

“Precisely,” Crouch agreed with relief, his sharp, narrow shoulders dropping a notch.  “We are forming a committee for the exclusive purpose of explaining strange happenings to muggles.”  Irritable again, he added, “It is to fall under your oversight in any case, Fudge.”

“Well, then I do think you might have told me about it without all the cloak and dagger stuff,” Fudge grumbled more cheerfully.  “Quite a good idea, really!  I’d have backed you if you’d only let me know, Barty.”

“I’m sure Director Fudge just didn’t want to get your hopes up until he knew it’d pass through the Bursary,” Evan said soothingly, hooking his ankle commiseratingly around Spike’s foot even before he saw Spike’s lips go tight at the mention of the Ministry’s budget.

“Quite right,” Weatherby lied, really quite convincingly.  They exchanged a quick, long-sufferingly amused you’d think some career Ministry drones with loose lips would have learned before the age of forty that walls have ears look.  Evan broke it off largely because Spike had made a stifled noise like a cat with the start of a hairball.  His expression said it was more due to the likelihood of Crouch thinking about other people’s feelings than because Fudge didn’t understand discretion.

Of course, Spike had given up on the idea of Fudge understanding discretion the second time he’d come up to bang indignantly on their door when Evan had forgotten to make sure of the privacy charms.

“What I want to know,” Crouch said, lips drawing tight, “is why you are accosting me today, Fudge.  The memo would have come around your office once the plans were fully drawn up, but we had intended to get one or two minor matters settled before alerting the department heads.”

Even Spike winced at this relatively bald announcement that only Fudge’s compliance would have been expected, and his input not desired, but apparently Weatherby was used to Crouch’s authoritarian style.

And apparently Fudge didn’t notice at all. Then again, a certain deafness to nuance wasn’t always a bad thing, in politics.  It could substitute for a thick skin.

“Oh, young Malfoy was worried about your shakeups pulling too much money from day to day business.  Said St. Mungo’s was already suffering a budget pinch—”

Spike made a very quiet noise, somewhere between a snarl and a ha!

“Yes, I was sorry to hear about that, old man,” Fudge patted his shoulder commiseratingly, “but I hear you’ve landed on your feet, haven’t you?”

“I,” said Severus icily, “am not the issue.”

“Malfoy’s a friend of yours, though, isn’t he?  Likely lad, I thought,” Fudge turned to Crouch.  Crouch hummed the skeptical hum of a man who knew nothing against Lucius personally but spoke fluent French.   “Poor chap’s having to take over more and more for his father.  Seems the Old Man’s been coming down with every damn thing lately.”

“Yes, my father’s been rather worried about him,” Evan agreed.  It might have been the only thing he’d ever seen his father really shaken about.  Once they’d been sure that Abraxas Malfoy’s faltering immune system really had started failing because he’d exposed himself to the curse the two of them had been developing, Dad had sauntered into Spike’s lab and inspected every single piece of equipment and very casually read Spike a two-hour lecture about safety procedures until Spike had ceased to be able to care who was insulting at him and started shouting off the Laboratory and Alchemical Safety Guide, word for word, off the top of his head and at the top of his lungs.

He’d admitted later that it had probably been nice of Ev’s dad to try, in a weird Rosierish way, to show concern for his well-being, but that hadn’t stopped him.

Come to that, the curse’s effect on Abraxas Malfoy hadn’t stopped the two of them slapping it on muggles wherever they went.  Or, rather, enchanting water-taps with it wherever they went on business trips.  The curse only lasted a few days in the metal, although it was (as Malfoy’s experience proved) quite stubborn once it got into even wizarding flesh, but according to Dad, that didn’t matter.  Not when Ev’s father was putting it on water fountains in museums and Lucius’s was putting it in the WC taps in nightclubs and places like that.

Dad had, fortunately, misunderstood the revulsion Evan hadn’t quite been able to tuck away, and reassured him that they’d woven in a side-spell that made the cursed objects look too poorly-maintained and suspiciously unwashed to be used, to anyone with magical blood.  This hadn’t made Evan feel better in the least, but he hadn’t been able to figure out anything to do about it, short of calling the Aurors down on his father and Malfoy, or killing them.

He wasn’t going to do either of those things, even if he sometimes wondered if Spike would have, in his situation.  He thought this was probably the sort of thing Spike had been fretting about, back in May, when he’d talked about being worried all their friends were turning into monsters.  Ev was a bit embarrassed about being glad that Dad hadn’t told him about all this until he’d already taken the Mark, by which time the two of them had already been doing it for years.  It made it easier for him to tell himself that destroying his family would be of limited use, on any grand scale.

The thing was, as much as most of him knew exactly how Spike would react and knew perfectly well he’d be right, there was another part of Ev that had grown up spending most of his holidays in a house with elf heads on the wall, being encouraged to play conkers with bronzed and gilded squib bits, and talking to portraits who had spent their lives trying to legalize various forms of muggle-baiting up to and including full-blown Wild Hunts, with extremely varying levels of failure.  And then there were his own cousins, who were not waiting for the Ministry’s permission when they had their Lord’s, and, while they were exercising reasonable caution, did not actually appear to be terribly worried about what might happen if they should ever get caught doing what, after all, only amounted to deprecable levels of muggle-baiting.

Granted, so much as giving a muggle a boil had been known to earn wizards a spell in Azkaban, but only if the wizard had had the colossal arrogance to draw his wand and deliver that boil through an obvious performance of magic in muggle-public, thereby producing an equally colossal stink that the Ministry had had to show a good-faith effort towards clearing up.  

After all, the Ministry of Magic had originally only been one of many offices under the Prime Minister, and its job had been to streamline the segregation of magical and mundane life and regulate magical goods, not enforce the law in any broad way.  It was trying, now that the Statute of Secrecy had become so completely successful that muggle law enforcement was completely outside wizarding life, but it just hadn’t been built for it.  The branches it had sprouted for the purpose were a rather tangled patchwork of zeal at cross-purposes.

So—he knew it was both a rationalization and a sad truth—there was actually absolutely no guarantee that, even if he did send information about the wretched health-sapping curse to either the Aurors or even the papers, anything of use would get done.  The Ministry barely cared about werewolves, for pity’s sake, and even one angry werewolf was a clear threat.  Look at the damage Greyback had done, back when Evan was a kid.  Dozens of quite prominent families had moved out of the country or had one of their children put down after he’d decided they were one of his problems.  

The Dark Lord clearly thought his followers just felt the pack-leader was unpleasantly subhuman and were being tedious about working with someone he told them to work with.  Ev wasn’t going to be the one to correct him, but he did wonder where the man had been, that he hadn’t even heard about the Year of the Blood Moon.

And even after that, regulations had only gotten harsher, not more conciliatory.  And werewolves literally had teeth and claws, and the Ministry and public both understood that they had them.  But had one were-hunter ever been prosecuted for what was, technically and legally, murder?  Not since ‘65, that was for sure.  And plenty of quite ordinary witches and wizards were scared stiff of muggles—en masse, at least.  It wasn’t just families like the Blacks with their blood-purity hangups.  Even wizards with muggle relatives knew about the burnings, and knew that the stories first years learned were stories told to children, and remembered family members struggling with the reality of magic they could never share, whether love had won in the end or not.

No, there was no guarantee that shining a light on the curse would do any good whatsoever.  Evan didn’t even think the chances were very good, although it niggled at him occasionally that he might have been fooling himself. And even putting a stop to them wouldn’t have put a stop to the spread, according to Ev’s father.

And Spike really, really didn’t want Ev to ever have even hurt anybody, he knew, let alone killed his own family.  Severus needed him to be a safe person, a warm hearth, not an inferno.

And, frankly, he didn’t want to, even in the moments when he most thought it might be the best solution.  Spike got violence out of his system by giving it vivid voice, but whenever Evan thought maybe he should at least try to think about it as a problem, he flinched away.  His dad was a perfectly good person, by the standards of pureblood supremacists who thought muggles were dangerous vermin.  Like he’d been raised to be.  It might be both legal and just to hold him to Severus’s standards, but it wasn’t fair.

Sometimes he did think killing Lucius’s father would be the most merciful thing all ‘round, though.  Being sick nine weeks out of ten couldn’t be fun, and Abraxas Malfoy wasn’t letting that stop him from spreading the curse either in the original way or more personally, from what Ev had gathered.  

He didn’t think Lucius knew; he thought Lucius would probably have either bragged about the curse or killed his father himself for befouling the family with the, er, more personal spreading of it.  On the other hand, it couldn’t be any surprise to Lucius that his father was more interested in variety than standards, could it?

Maybe it could.  Lucius wasn’t like Severus, who Refused To Let Himself Know certain things on purpose and quite consciously.  In which case, it was entirely possible that at some point he would find out how dissolute his father had become since Abraxas's mother's death, and an insecure strutter like Malfoy would definitely decide that his father’s unfelt shame was his own and his House’s.  And Lucius’s wife was a Black, not a soft-bellied squish of a mother hen who, being constitutionally incapable of dealing out either fatal or maiming damage (except to egos) when he wasn’t in a blind, uncontrolled panic, had only survived Slytherin and the enmity of Gryffindor by dint of sheer deranged creativity.

Evan sighed.

“I’m sure we all wish Mr. Malfoy the best of health,” Crouch said in an agreeing but rather perfunctory tone.  Oh, right—Ev had said Dad was worried about him.  His eyes flicked to Spike, who was, silently and with a quite straight face, laughing at him.  Trust his hedgehog to know when he’d really gone off in his thoughts, and wasn’t just looking dreamy and absent for company.  Evan grinned back at him, just with his eyes.

“However,” Crouch went on, a trifle primly, “you may assure young Mr. Malfoy that all due consideration for the budget is being taken.  Naturally, if he is concerned with any particular office’s welfare, his family is welcome to make a contribution to its upkeep.”

“I don’t think he needs telling, there,” Spike muttered sardonically into his notebook.

“He said you’d certainly have his support if it wouldn’t turn out everyone else’s pockets, though,” Fudge said brightly.  “Said to tell you to let him know if he could be helpful.  Says his wife knows everyone he don’t.”

Severus sighed, and vultured himself even further into his notebook, if that were possible.

Shooting him a reproachful look for this desertion, Evan said cheerfully (well, more dutifully, in truth, although really he didn’t know what Lucius was thinking, or, more properly, plotting), “Well, that’s certainly true.  I think Narcissa’s even had Sue over for tea a few times, hasn’t she, Neil?”

“Oh, has she?” Fudge asked vaguely.  “Shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t be surprised.  Can’t see that having tea’s helpful, though.”

Spike started softly banging the notebook against his forehead.  Equally softly, Evan kicked his ankle.   He got an evil glare in return, but Spike only banged one more time, most likely to prove he didn’t have to stop just because people who weren’t even wearing Cissa’s pointy shoes felt like kicking him.

“Everything all right there, Severus?” Fudge asked in mild alarm.  He wasn’t concerned about Spike’s cranial health.  Rather, he’d seen Spike go from zero to tantrum in under ten seconds before.  It was only mild alarm, though, Evan speculated, because no failure of privacy charms were involved this time.

Clearly through clenched teeth as well as the pages of the notebook, Severus gritted,, “Knowing people might be considered useful, when one is trying to form a new department without utterly gutting all the old ones.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, he did have a few suggestions!” Fudge very nearly clapped his hands.

Severus and Evan exchanged a look that said ah, which on Severus’s side looked quite weary.  When they emerged from it, Ev noted that that Weatherby was regarding them with interest.  Evan smiled and shrugged, resignedly, and Severus gave Weatherby an extraordinarily long-suffering Lucius is ridiculous eye-roll.  Ev could see that he was also trying to get across and likes to feel involved, but however bright he suspected Weatherby of being, Severan was a dialect whose finer nuances it took time and dedication to learn.

Fudge reeled off a few names, two of which had already made it onto Weatherby’s list.  Crouch rejected two others out of hand, and gave a third a grudging consideration face before saying he’d consider it.  Rather impatiently, he asked if there were any more, and Fudge said, “Two more—Peter Pettigrew, from the Improper Use of Magic Office, and Mnemone Radford, from Obliviator Headquarters.”

At the same time, Crouch, purse-lipped and skeptical, started to point out that Mnemone Radford had died in 1649, and Severus flung his notebook into his lap and snarled, “Pettigrew?!”

Eying Severus nervously, Fudge said, “Our Miss Radford is named for the first one, Barty.  A descendent, I believe.  All right there, Severus?”

“Lucius,” enunciated Severus, ice and murder dripping from every syllable, “recommended Pettigrew.  For a promotion.”

“Well, it might just be a transfer, Severus,” Evan said reasonably.  “And he might be setting him up to fail, you know.  IUMO’s safe as Houses, even if they do have a pipeline to Eternal Records Hell.”

The non-Slytherins, Evan noticed, were all giving him funny looks.  He sighed inwardly, and explained, “Man was in our year at school.  Far as we could make out, his only talent was for wriggling his way out of trouble, and he didn’t much care how he did it.”

“How did he do it?” Crouch asked keenly, interest, against all reason, piqued.

Severus gave him a gloomy-vulture stare.  A haunted-vulture stare, even.  “What,” he asked flatly, “is the nature of the work, precisely.”

“Public-relations and Statute of Secrecy first aid, as it were,” Crouch said.  Evan would have expected that he’d have gone all sniffy about Spike wanting to do the evaluating himself and answer Crouch’s real question rather than the one he’d asked, but apparently the man could be equitable enough as long he felt the proper attention was being paid to his problem.  “For the more minor matters only, of course; in the case of major upsets, established enforcement offices with established relationships and lines of resource will continue to do their duty.  But there’s no need to call the Aurors out in a panic for every teashop that finds a nose-biting teacup has been hidden amongst its ordinary stock, and, I assure you, young man,” he looked at Severus severely, “I have no intention of spreading my department so thin.”

Severus gave him an annoyed wait for a person to argue with you before scolding them look, and said, “And, no doubt, the Obliviator Headquarters has raised similar concerns.  I should think they would, since the delicacy of memory charms means both that their number is necessarily limited to those both talented and practiced and that over-use of obliviation, particularly on the same individual over time or if an error is made, can lead to a noticeable cognitive decline, in some cases quite abrupt, which could lead the muggles to investigate what they would see as a quite concerning spike, particularly if localized, in varying forms of amnesia and premature dementia.”

Crouch blinked at him, and said, “Quite,” in a satisfied tone, with a rather scathing look at Fudge which Evan didn’t think poor old Cornelius quite deserved.  It wasn’t fair to expect everyone to be Spike.  “Therefore, we’ll be dedicating a squad to these petty incidents.  It will have Obliviators on it, but also wizards,” he gestured at Fudge, presumably to indicate Muggle Relations, “familiar with muggle culture.  The tactic of first resort will be to convince the muggles that nothing inexplicable has occurred, and only if that fails will they resort to more extreme methods such as would be used in dramatic enough violations of the Statute that my Aurors ought to be involved.  The working title for this office is, at present, the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee.”

Severus slumped even further, the haunted vulture turning hollow-eyed, and then anger flashed across his face.  “Right,” he snapped.  “Yes.  Lucius is absolutely right.  Give Pettigrew the job.  The manipulative little weasel will be perfect for it.”

Crouch eyed him, not sure how to take that.

“No, he means it,” Evan told Crouch and Weatherby, slinging a sympathetic arm around Severus’s taut back.  “He just doesn’t want to.”

Severus snarled something garbled that sounded a bit like bloody right I don’t and probably was, and then convulsively thrust his notebook into his robes and shot to his feet.  He strode over to the counter and started menacing the clerk.  Actually, to Evan’s eyes, he was trying to be reasonable and civil and measured, but he was in such a foul mood that he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself looming and dripping intimidation anyway.

To the clerk’s credit, he wasn’t interested in being intimidated, but he’d chosen to stand up for himself to the wrong wizard in the wrong mood over the wrong cause.  Ev saw Spike thrust out a bony finger in Fudge’s direction and not-quite-thump the counter with the heel of his hand as he leaned forward again, his shoulders almost audibly cracking back and down in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with relaxation and everything to do with arching and lengthening his neck and increasing the impression he might actually bite his irritant’s face right off.

The clerk, rather to Evan’s astonishment, was still arguing with him when the air was split by a drumroll crackcrackcrack of several apparitions at once, and only cut off when the screaming started.

[1] What mostly impressed Slytherins about their most prominent alumnus was that he’d somehow managed to get everyone to revere his name despite, as far as anyone could tell, being such a completely archetypal sidewinder that he’d only gotten everything right by stumbling into it over the hem of his robes and then flinging up his staff and shouting portentously, “I MEANT TO DO THAT BECAUSE IT WAS BOTH NEEDED AND FATED!”

Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, of course, loved him for his loyal support of one of their own favorite heroes.  

Ravenclaws, on the other hand, while it was hard to say they exactly approved of him, did seem to feel he was owed prominence and gratitude for, whether or not he had actually invented time-turners (opinions differed: he’d never actually written anything to support one stance or the other, and there was no possible way to know, now), making sure everyone knew about them and they could be properly researched and supported by ethical litigation while in the process of (as did appear to be so typical for him) utterly turning his life upside down and shaking it vigorously.

Even modern muggles knew he’d done it. He’d come right out and said he’d ‘lived backwards.’ Fortunately for everyone, the only muggle who’d ever really been able to make the ideas of Camelot and time travel fit into his head was Samuel Clemens, and by the time the Veil of Secrecy was under serious threat, the only reason anyone was paying serious attention to Clemens was over the matter of whether dehumanizing language should prevent children being taught how to recognize and dislike dehumanization when they saw it.

If the Department of Mysteries knew how to replicate whatever Merlin had used to throw himself back hundreds of years, they certainly weren’t telling anyone else, thank goodness.  Even the best modern time-turners could only buy their users a day or so, and anyone who got their hands on one also got repeatedly hit on the head with how many problems using them to capacity could create.

Evan mostly found it amusing that, as long as he only did it once in a blue moon, sternly telling Spike that if a fumbler like Ambrosius Merlin could distinguish himself in a High King’s court, Severus could certainly behave at one of Narcissa’s dinner parties usually worked.