Chapter Text
Harry had always tried to be a good person, but Capitalism was a bitch and he needed money more than he’d liked to admit. That was the simple reason why he’d agreed to help commit art forgery, well, that and because Tom was the one to ask him to do it.
In all the time they’d known each other, Tom had never explained how he came to be at the centre of an art forgery ring, and frankly, Harry had avoided asking. He wanted plausible deniability that way, if he ended up in a windowless cell at the local nick with officers in starched uniforms, he wouldn’t have anything to share and he could claim all the legitimacy of an innocent man. Sure, it could backfire. Sure, as soon as things got rough, he could be dropped in it. Sure, that could happen, but he trusted Tom to make sure it didn’t.
The unknown quantity was, of course, the other five people caught up in this lurid melodrama. He’d known about them since the beginning, but Tom had been fervently resisting introducing them, at least, he had until this morning. Instead of meeting him like he usually did, Tom had just left him one of his little notes that directed him to a fashionable address in Hampstead. The kind of place where the white picket fence dream had been replaced by wrought iron in the Westminster style, and windows so large you could bathe in the light. Harry was not looking forward to it.
As soon as he had stepped out of the taxi, the stench of wealth rolled over him; it leached from the brickwork and pristine hedgerows that favoured clean-cut lines to biodiversity. The whole place felt heavy with a sick abundance that infected the very air these people breathed, and despite the stickiness of the afternoon, Harry kept his hands deep in his pockets.
Against his better judgement, he’d already met some of Tom’s friends; they were wealthy and obnoxious—real old money with horses and houses and immaculate tennis lawns, people who were so accustomed to prosperity that a nauseating entitlement slithered out of every word and every gesture. They were the type for whom money had become meaningless, the real test was in lineage, education and blood—you could be old money without any money at all, in fact, as far as Harry could gather, there was something quite romantic about it.
Harry was hoping—desperately hoping—that these friends would be more palatable, or at the very least, less greasy on the tongue. The type of people that he didn’t like per se but could be civil with for the sake of the money, his sanity and Tom.
The neighbourhood itself was large and wide and white, and Harry felt cheap walking around it—visible to the rich and the afraid peeking out from behind pressed curtains and cool shutters. By the time he found the address, sweat was prickling at the back of his neck and a throbbing in his left eye socket.
The building it was in was partitioned into several apartments, all of which were bigger than any house he'd ever been in, and thankfully doorman was polite enough to point him up the right staircase. Unfortunately, the inside was as uncomfortably warm as the outside, the sort of hazy wet heat that clung to the skin like a film, and Harry was sweaty just from the stairs. The heat oozed down the walls in a heavy sludge that stagnated along the skirting and up in the corners—not that Harry’s room in the dorms had been much better.
The student dorms had a reputation, but not for being a place of coolness and clarity, especially not when the May exams were hovering, unspoken but monstrous, around every corner. These days the rooms consisted of a stale mixture of cheap caffeine, complex existential crises, and an influx of sweat-stained sheets that the laundry room couldn’t possibly cope with. It gave the place a sweet, stifling sense that no number of open windows or burnt sage could cleanse.
Even the library had been unpleasant. Just crowds of students crammed over textbooks, slurping lukewarm water from Styrofoam cups, leaving behind blurred and inky fingerprints like a crime scene. The place had stunk with first-year fears and final-year failures, and it hadn’t been the same sitting in his little nook without Tom; he’d been checking his watch every few minutes, watching the hands sluggishly slide around to the hour.
But he’d made it here, in good time too, and once more he checked the number against the manicured notecard that Tom had left for him again—the paper painfully thick and so creamy he could taste it, Harry knocked twice.
From within there came the sound of feet padding over the floor and several voices lilting off one another like the dawn chorus. Harry glanced one more time at the stairs, a desperate nagging in his chest to make a run for it; to hide from Tom’s friends because meeting them made it official, and there wasn’t really anything to make official. Then, before he’d got his act together to make a getaway, a young woman opened the door.
The first thing that Harry noted was her height, she was easily as tall as he was, perhaps even a couple of vital inches taller, and her silhouette was long and lean, carved out from the bright rectangle. Harry had to blink a couple of times, winking out the grains of light from his vision until he could see her properly. She had pale hair—a Hollywood blonde that most women could only ever get from a bottle—that grazed her shoulders like wet silk, and if Harry glanced down, he could see that she’d answered the door in nothing but her slip.
He darted his eyes back to hers, as if he hadn’t been staring at the glossy fabric that was soft and pink, and shone, almost iridescent, as it spilled over her shoulder and down to her knee. She wasn’t wearing shoes. Behind her was the slow swell of a record player, turned down to a lethargic volume, that leached through the air, curling around the doorframe like smoke before it sagged in the heat.
“So, you must be Potter,” she said, her voice soft and low as she leant against the doorframe to watch him; her nails were painted a delicate shade of pink, the same colour that was on her lips and her slip—a sophisticated nonchalance that was only accessible to the wealthiest. For wealth wasn’t about what you wore—not really—it was who you were. Wealth was having the right connections, the right friends, the right manners, the right upbringing, and this woman oozed old money wealth, real old money.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, shifting himself, wanting something to do with his hands, “Uh, Tom gave me this address—is he here?”
The woman smiled at him with a row of perfect white teeth, her eyes drifting down to his jeans. They were far too hot for the weather, but he liked the way Tom looked at him in them. She just raised her brow like she knew he was trying to impress.
“Oh, he’s late—as usual,” she said. “You must come in, though,” she continued, still not taking her eyes off him, “you are, after all, the mystery man of the hour.”
“I’m the, what?”
“The man of mystery, of course,” she said, as she stepped back, flat against the door and her arm outstretched, inviting him in; beside her, the light flowed through and Harry to shade his eyes. “You’re the one that Riddle’s been hoarding all to himself for far too long. You know, ever since I found out about this new… thing of his, I’ve been insisting that we should be introduced, and it’s still taken him a good month to do it. I was about to issue an ultimatum.”
Harry was still shading his eyes when he stepped forward, over the threshold and into the great, gold glow, and he was faintly aware that he was nodding—confirming that he was part of the thing they’d all been hearing about, just so he could pretend for a moment that he actually was part of it. That he and Tom had a connection that went beyond the tenderness of friendship, one that dipped towards an affection that overzealous governments deemed unsightly.
The room he found himself in was large and bright with a high ceiling and a large, sloped window stretching across the centre. The afternoon sun was gold and heavy, and it dripped through the panes like candlewax, coating the entire room in a thick buttery glow. Harry looked about, taking in the chairs in the middle of the room, gathered in a circle around a low wooden table that was covered in a pack of cards, set out for solitaire, and far too many books and magazines. On the far side of the room was a door, and on this nearside were a couple of desks, piled high with books and other tools of the trade, behind them were more doors.
The most noticeable thing though was the heat. It smoothed over his skin and worked down into his blood vessels, slowing him from the inside. He could almost hear the steady ache of his pulse thudding in his throat. A couple of the lower windows had been opened, but the stifling stillness kept the hot air chugging around the room; the only relief came from a couple of fans directed at the central chairs, both of them humming something terrible, the papers and books that were spread about caught in the gusts and fluttered. There was no other movement and the place felt thick and lazy like the edge of sleep.
“Uh, shoes off, sweetheart—if you wouldn’t mind.” His host glided past him, her hand flowing across his shoulder as smooth as the drift of a languid stream, first to the record player to tame its whinging and then to drape herself over the arm of the wicker sofa in the centre of the room, her arm resting along the back and her slip streaming across her legs. She looked like one of those dream creatures that famous poets spoke of or a muse for a precocious mind.
Harry turned to undo his shoes before he looked for too long and she got the wrong impression. He was glad to get the tight leather off his feet though, and he left them at the end of a little line that had formed by the door: men’s monk straps, men’s loafers, women’s saddle shoes, and now his ratty old pair.
When he looked up again, she was still resting on the arm, watching him with those Bambi eyes. “First, the preliminaries,” she said, “I’m Rosier, and this is my property, whatever the rest of the scroungers might make out. And, more importantly, I don’t answer to Riddle, so if you don’t want to be kicked out, I’m the one you’ve got to impress, not him.”
“Good to know,” he said, standing there and feeling exposed with his bare feet in an unfamiliar room, being watched by a woman whose eyes were soft and round, but whose smile was razor sharp. She looked like the cunning type of woman, whose husband thought she spent her days flipping through magazines, sipping champagne, and looking pretty, when really, she was busy moulding herself into something fantastic and horrid.
He swallowed; despite the heavy hum of the fans and the slow sounds of the street outside, all dampened by the heat, he could hear his heart thudding, hot and steady in his chest. Again, he wanted something to do with his hands but had to settle with pressing them into his pockets, which only made him more self-conscious.
“So… uh, what do you do here?” he said, just to alleviate the quiet that was pressing hard between them. “I mean, I know what you do, but what do you do?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said with a light laugh that was born more from overly educated manners than humour, “I allow, graciously might I add, my dear late grandmother’s apartment to be used for criminal activity—quite the burden, you understand—even if it’s what she would have wanted, which, of course, it was.”
“Of course,” he murmured back.
Rosier must have decided that his face was blank because she smiled, softer but no less slippery. “My family knows art—Rubens are my parents specialty, though I, myself, am more partial to an Anna Bilińska piece—and, as I'm sure you know, art carries a certain reputation, so, my endorsement is quite a precious thing,” she said with a little wave of her hand. “You must know how jumpy first-time collectors get around strangers, even strangers like Riddle. I put them at ease.”
Harry could imagine it; she had a sleek style that complemented Tom, a breezy charm to his much murkier charisma. He could see the two of them out to dinner with a potential client, perhaps a couple, the type of stuffy old money who couldn’t do anything of value for themselves. They would lean forward over expensive wine and expensive food, with an awful pensive expression and say, ‘we’ve never done anything like this before,’ like a pair of inexperienced swingers. Rosier would probably touch her hand to theirs and smile and say that she was nervous the first time too, but they’re professionals and you can trust a professional.
As he was imagining the scene, Rosier stood up and came to stand beside him. She touched lightly at his shoulder, her fingers sliding along his shirt like it was a rusty frame she was thinking of replacing. “Anyway,” she continued, “one of us needs to provide the respectability and let’s be honest, it’s none of this lot.” She swept her hand over his shoulder and across the apartment, including even the furniture in her assessment of respectability.
Harry was going to turn around and try and see the rest of them—a big game hunter surveying the Serengeti, but someone interrupted.
“Like you’re respectable, Rosier,” a man said from across the room; his voice was a rough, calloused thing, thick in all the right places, the sort of voice that sounded like good sex, and Harry looked towards it. The sun was still leaking through the window, but Harry could just make out the man’s shadow on the other side of the gully. He was whipcord lean, though that was balanced out by the way he held himself, his limbs moving slow and careful, as if through water; it was a practised sort of carelessness.
He stepped forward, a little more into the light, and smiled at Harry. Between paint-stained fingers was a cigarette and Harry watched, with the juvenile awe that always accompanied seeing someone do adult things, as he exhaled. “Take a bit of advice, Potter,” he said, still in that voice, “if Rosier says it is respectable, that means it isn’t.”
Rosier let go of his shoulder and went back to leaning against the sofa, still facing him with her hair swishing over her shoulder and her fingernails tapping the wicker—she was everything and nothing, so superficial in her performance as hostess that she’d eradicated any genuine act. “Can’t a woman reinvent herself as she sees fit?” she said.
“Sure,” the man said, taking another drag, “if she’ll admit it’s just another pretty way of lying.” He exhaled, his tongue curling around a mouthful of cigarette smoke that drifted lazily out the window. He smiled at them, and Harry’s stomach squeezed from just the sight of the guy’s teeth, not to mention the rest of him. He was dressed for the weather in one of those crisp linen shirts, the sleeve cutting off on his forearm, and the buttons were undone right to the arc of his ribcage, the first was a given, the second, a fashion choice, a really good one.
“Meet Dolohov,” Rosier said, her voice heavy with faux sugar sweetness, “he's the artist.” She leaned forward and lowered her tone to a theatrical whisper, complete with exaggerated hand motions, “that means we’re stuck with him.”
“You know love me, baby,” he said like he wanted to devour her.
“Sure, I do, darling,” she replied like she wanted him to try.
Dolohov grinned to himself; he had a sharp vitality about him that gave the impression of a tight coil of energy inside like a gun loaded and cocked, ready to fire. It was the same hazy verve of all young men who’d been old enough to pick up a gun and sacrifice their youth for their country—an age that both he and Tom had missed by a single year, and which seemed to place an immeasurable distance between them and their fellow countrymen. He stepped fully into the ruddy light that showed off every sharp angle of his face and with a painter’s eye, looked Harry up and down.
"So, you're the one that's got him so fucking whipped,” he said, before turning his head ever so slightly towards Rosier. “Didn’t I always say Riddle had good taste?"
"Uh, thanks?" Harry said with one of those like me smiles that were the staple of shopworkers up and down the country. Dolohov smiled back at him, and Harry couldn’t help the way his pulse wobbled; Tom had not cared to mention that his friends were the kind of people that could make anyone swoon like a teenager.
Dolohov took another step forward, this time to put out his cigarette in the ashtray and the last of the smoke got caught in the crossfire of the fans and was swept into a flurry. Harry swallowed. There was no denying that these people were very different to Tom’s other friends; where the others were stiff and uptight—the next generation of oily politicians—these ones were all loose-limbed and languorous, the kind of people you’d meet down dark alleyways for nefarious purposes.
“Sweetheart,” Rosier said, snapping her fingers at him, “it’s rather unbecoming to leave your mouth hanging open like that, especially when it’s a man you can’t take your eyes off.”
He snapped his mouth shut, his teeth biting together and his whole face just burning. He’d imagined this afternoon would be filled with tensely smiling at rich tossers and Tory-party prats, not standing there, mortified, with his mouth open because Tom’s friends made him all too aware of his inclinations.
“That’s better,” Rosier said, “we wouldn’t want anyone thinking there was impropriety afoot, now, would we?” Though her smile like a little serrated picnic knife suggested she was quite familiar and rather fond of being improper.
Behind them, a door creaked, and Rosier pushed herself off the chair and came to stand at Harry’s shoulder again, as fleeting and indecisive as a bird and close enough that he could taste the sweet stickiness of her perfume. “Ah, Prewett, there you are,” she said, “meet Potter—he’s the thing Riddle’s been keeping oh so hush-hush.”
Harry turned to see a man standing behind the desk, half-hidden between the shadows and the stacks of books. He was broad and heavy with wide shoulders and thick arms, though he grasped a pen with a surprising delicacy, the scholarly impression was perpetuated by thick spectacles balanced on the end of his nose. Carefully, leant across the desk, weaving his arm between the papers, and offered his hand. Harry took it with a polite smile. Prewett’s grip was firm and moist, he accompanied it with one of those easy smiles that were just nice, the sort belonging to sweetshop owners and kind old matrons.
“Afternoon,” Prewett said, pulling his hand back and clasping it, despite the heat, he was wearing a waistcoat over his shirt and a green tie—his collar was damp. An awkwardness clung to him; he looked like the sort of man to clap strangers on the back and call them chaps in a poor attempt to ingratiate himself. That twee sort of personality to whom friends did not come naturally but who was the darling of academia—surviving on endless cups of green tea and the goodwill of those who invited him to dinner.
“Yeah, uh, afternoon,” Harry said, still looking at Prewett. He didn’t have the same conventionally attractive features as Rosier or the firecracker charm of Dolohov, but there was a sturdy dependability about him—he seemed like the kind of guy you could rely on to feed your cat. “I guess,” he looked at the books and papers that to Prewett were a natural habitat, “I guess you do this kind of… stuff, huh?”
What kind of stuff he exactly meant, even Harry wasn’t sure, but Prewett was just as anxious to fill the silence. “If you’re interested,” he began, “I perfect the technique—for authenticity, you know? The colours, the brushstrokes, the brushes themselves.” Prewett spoke in short sharp phases as if there was only room for so many letters in his mouth. “And I do what I can for the, the provenance—correct documentation, dealership history, et cetera.”
Prewett took a moment to run a pale handkerchief over his forehead. “Right now, it’s the handwriting of this seventeenth-century dealer, and his ink—we can’t just use any ink.”
“Oh, please save us all; this isn’t supposed to be a lecture,” Rosier said. "How you ever cope at those soirées, I’ll never understand."
“He copes because he’s got me,” said a woman appearing through the same door as Prewett. She looked suitably artistic in a loose pair of trousers stretched over her wide hips and a blouse that opened almost as low as Dolohov’s. Her hair was a flurry of dark brown about her head as if the artist had been rushing to finish her, and in the process smudged their work. She too had thick glasses, though hers were folded up and hooked into the bow of her blouse; they were heavy enough to drag it down an inch.
“So, uh, this is he?” she said to Rosier, who nodded as she smoothed her hair back, still close enough to Harry that he could feel the warmth steaming off her skin.
“Indeed. This is Potter.”
“Black,” she said reaching towards him, and Harry noted the shimmery engagement on her finger—big enough to make her friends coo, small enough to still be modest. She touched his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. “Lucretia, that is, in case you are… well, you might be familiar with my family.”
Harry wasn’t familiar with them and frankly, the assumption that he had nothing better to do with his life than be aware of rich people rubbed him the wrong way. But he smiled all the same, perhaps a little tighter than before and watched how she looped her arm in Prewett’s and momentarily and conservatively rested her head on his upper arm.
“For the sake of completion,” she said, “so that we’re all on the same, uh, page. I ensure all paperwork and artwork is… well, as it should be,” she said in one of those posh accents that were cultivated in private schools and at the races, and couldn’t be hidden, no matter how hard someone tried, and Black was doing her best.
“Anyway, it’s—I must say, it’s good to finally get round to meeting you,” she said with the same inherent attempt to be as likeable as afflicted all young people when they met their future parents-in-law. “Riddle can be—well, he’s known to be a little, uh…”
“Selfish?” Dolohov said from across the room.
“Obstructive?” offered Rosier.
“If I may finish?” Black said indignantly, her arms crossed as she waited for silence like a nun at Sunday service. “Thank you. He’s just a little secretive, that’s all. So he must… well, he must think you’re uh—pretty special,” she said, “to bring you here, I mean.”
Harry felt hot and it wasn’t from the sun. It was a heat that started in his stomach and in his chest and wormed its way through his body, spreading wide his blood vessels and filling him—bathing him—in a pleasure so heady it made his knees weak. He bowed his head towards the floor before realising just how obvious that made his affections, and however much he might have tried to deny it, they were affections. Instead, he darted his eyes towards the window, searching for imaginary birds to fill his gaze.
A little praise shouldn’t make a man weak; it shouldn’t make him fold into himself in perverse delight, and yet, here he was with his stomach churning and his palms sweaty and the sound of praise still writhing through his brain. With no small amount of awkwardness, he patted at his thighs like he was looking for his keys and waited for someone to fill the silence before he died of embarrassment.
Rosier saved him from his own mortifying self. “Well, that’s it, sweetheart,” she said, coming in so close that she could rest her hand on his shoulder, “that’s almost everyone—don’t be intimidated, most of them aren’t nearly as interesting as they think they are.” She gave Dolohov a particularly pointed look.
“Speak for yourself,” he replied, though it was low, and Harry would have thought that Rosier hadn’t heard, was it not for the way she looked at him.
“I must correct myself, then,” she said sternly, looking at Dolohov even as she lay a steady hand on Harry’s shoulder and half-guided and half-pushed him towards the circle of wicker settees, “Dolohov is the only one with such illusions of grandeur.”
“You haven’t kicked me out yet,” he replied, “so I must be doing something right.”
They were on the threshold of the chairs now, each one drifting in the pool of sunlight and probably worth more to some people than Harry’s life. Rosier was still looking at Dolohov when she leaned in close to his ear so that when she spoke, her lips tickled his skin. “I would be quite the fiend to kick out such a pretty face, wouldn’t I, sweetheart?”
Harry swallowed and raised his head to the shadows where Dolohov was still lurking. “You could always get yourself another one,” he heard himself say, the words leaving his mouth before he had a chance to feel their character against his tongue. And as soon as it was out there, it sounded scandalous.
“I could, couldn’t I?” she said, “but, then again, it would be a shame to have to break a new one in—men like him are hard to find.”
“Better keep him, then,” he replied, the bravado starting to run a little thin. Anyone would when it was becoming obvious that they were being used for some end that they would be the last to know about. He would have been happy to watch them, to hear their witticisms curl around their tongues and to see the practised steps of their toying, but it was cruel to make him participate in a game that he neither knew the rules or parameters of—even if it did make the back of his neck prickle with some misplaced interest. That was what the wealthy did though, they saw you, liked you, used you and finally, they discarded you because your life was their little side-project and they tired of philanthropy easily.
“I suppose you’re right,” Rosier said with a sigh, releasing his shoulder and gesturing to the collection of chairs spread before them. “Guest gets first pick.”
Harry took the one with its back to the sun. Like the others, it was large enough to fit two, perhaps even three when the heat wasn’t so stifling and you could sit close to someone without your skin gumming to theirs, and was padded with thick cushions. Even this close, the rickety fans didn’t provide much relief—only managing to shove the hot air right into his face and buzz like they were proud of themselves for it.
Without turning his head, he knew the others were still watching him, their gaze wasn’t particularly sharp, but was suitably persistent, always watching for the moment that he gave it all away. It must have been what it was like to be a circus animal brought into the ring for the first time.
“So, how about a drink?” Rosier said, still standing at the edge of the threshold, though without him there, her hands had to rest on the arm of the chair to his left, “you do drink, don’t you?”
“Uh—sure,” he said, “whatever you’ve got.”
“The rest of you?”
Several responses overlapped, but Rosier, in her impeccable host fashion, just nodded and tallied up the numbers of her fingers. Then, with a flick of her hair, she weaved her way through the furniture and towards the door to the right wall. Dolohov was standing beside that door and Harry watched as Rosier paused beside him, her fingers skimming down his shirt and her thumb hooking on the first button he’d bothered doing up. She must have said something because Dolohov smiled at her and glanced at him. Harry looked away, biting the inside of his cheek, and trying his best not to feel like a naughty schoolboy called to the headmaster’s office.
Dolohov was the first to join him. He’d stubbed out his cigarette and had roughly smoothed his hair back behind his ear, it could only have been done with his fingers, but it made him rather debonair in a way that Harry was not prepared to contend with. He sat opposite Harry, facing the sun, and there was something decadent, perhaps even hedonistic as he sat with one foot up on the seat, the crook of his elbow slung over his bent knee, and his other hand spread across his thigh like he belonged there. It was clear that whilst Rosier might hold the legal claim to the house, Dolohov was mounting a claim for its political ownership.
Harry returned his gaze, and tried to relax, loosening his shoulders against the wicker, easing himself into the sun’s caresses, and trying to concentrate on Dolohov’s face. It wasn’t easy, not when he was aware—so painfully aware—of the spread of his legs to accommodate his foot up on the cushion, just wide enough for that Harry noticed, that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The guys he hung around with during lectures and in the library didn’t sit like that—they kept their legs closed, pulled stiff pretending they were respectable and suitable and above all decent. Even his friends for all their radical politics and loose morals maintained some small vestige of decency. Nothing about Dolohov was decent from the way he sat, to the way he smiled under the flare of the sun, and Harry had to wonder how Tom had met a man like that.
Dolohov just continued to watch with his head tilted back—the very picture of superiority. “How did you get into art, then?” he said, taking his time to linger on every word. "You don't look the type."
Harry wasn’t the type, that was the truth of it. Despite Tom’s best efforts, sitting pressed up against him in the nooks of the library, he still knew next to nothing about art; that didn’t mean he didn’t respect it though. Art was pleasant and necessary, and surprisingly lucrative, but he didn’t get it.
“So?” Dolohov prompted.
“I met Tom, I guess.”
“Riddle, huh?” Dolohov said, his smile widened as he leant forward, his hand slipping deeper into his thigh—Harry tried not to look. “He’s quite something, isn’t he?”
Harry shifted, his weight rolling from one hip to the other and back again. “You could say that.”
“Oh, I am saying it,” he said, “a man like that could make a fucking reverend have second thoughts.”
“Hey, now, leave the poor chap alone,” Prewett said as he and Black came to sit down with them, "you’ve barely met him and you’re already—already tormenting him." They shared the small wicker seat to Harry’s right, Prewett with his legs crossed neatly—his large body occupying as little space as possible—and Black with her feet tucked up and her head resting on his shoulder was the opposite, taking up as much space as her small body could manage.
Dolohov didn’t take his eyes off him. "I'm being polite," he said, “doing my best to make conversation—”
"Well now, being polite is asking after his thesis,” Black said, “it's not uh—interrogating him about our mutual friend—I mean, really, who raised you?"
This time, Dolohov rolled his head over to her and grinned lazily, Black just folded her arms and gave him such a stern look that Harry almost expected him to shrivel. Prewett placed a hand on her arm, his fingers slow and soothing as he murmured something to her, and Black unfolded her arms but kept the expression.
Prewett leant forward to get a better view of him, his spare hand resting heavily on his thigh; he looked faintly awkward amongst such lavishness like a muddy and wild creature brought in as a pet. “It is a good thing though—you’re a good thing,” he said, “Riddle needs a friend.”
Black swatted his arm—a housewife good-humouredly chastising her husband’s poor etiquette in front of the children. “Uh, in case you forgot, we’re his friends,” she said protectively.
“He needs more than a friend, if you ask me,” Dolohov said, his gaze darting to Harry as he grinned.
“No one did ask you,” Black snapped, not even looking at Dolohov. “And what he needs is… uh an—an intellectual sparring partner. I mean, do we look like we know the ins and outs of the law, let alone—what was it he was on about?—oh yes, the uh, fraudulent psychics act, or whatever.”
“Fraudulent mediums,” Prewett corrected quietly.
“Exactly,” Black said, “I mean, I don’t talk about art.”
“If you had to listen, you’d realise you do,” Dolohov said with a wave of his hand, “you didn’t shut up about that fucking Matisse for a week.”
“Because it was a masterpiece,” she said mournfully, “law just isn’t the same.”
Harry just nodded. He understood the feeling, everyone he’d ever met could only stand the law in small spoonfuls. They preferred to leave it alone and hope that it would continue to chunter along in their favour forever with no input from themselves, even as they filled its dispassionate words with every hope and emotion imaginable.
The conversation had hit a lull and that desperate-to-be-liked part of him needed to fill the gaping quiet. Harry couldn’t help the nice part of himself however much Tom teased him about it. Every smile he handed out was genuine, and every conversation he had was laboriously earnest as if this was all a competition and if he could get enough people to like him—really like him—every day, then he’d win a mushy carnival prize.
“So… what about all of you?” he said awkwardly, “how did you get into art? Into this?”
“Oh well, that would be—it’s because of Rosier, isn’t it?” Black said, nudging at Prewett and waiting for his agreement before continuing. “She uh, she obviously adores art, and she asked us to… help out, I guess.” To solidify their connection, Black added, “of course, she is to be married—well, engaged to be engaged—to my second cousin, so, uh, we’ve always been close.” Apparently, nepotism was alive and kicking even in the shadowed world of art forgery.
“We are qualified, though,” Prewett said, as if Harry was even remotely experienced enough to scrutinise their credentials, “My thesis is in art history and she,” he gently squeezed again at Black’s arm, “she’s doing conservation and curation.”
It struck Harry then, quite out of the blue, that he was the only one who wasn’t really helping the scheme. He didn’t forge the art, falsify the paperwork, or getting involved in the selling; he was the legal person when a third party was needed—a job that any of them could surely do. He was only there because Tom wanted him to be. It was a heady thing to realise.
Even so, he tried to swallow it down—hide it behind another one of those naive smiles—because the last thing he wanted was for this lot to realise just how bad he had it for their friend. He forced his gaze back towards Dolohov and maintained the smile, hoping he wouldn’t see how it pulled at the corners. “What about you?” he said.
“Am I qualified?” Dolohov said, “that’s not a question you’re capable of asking.”
“Uh, no—I meant how did you get into this?”
Dolohov smiled at him with an easiness that only a wholehearted self-confidence could support. “A lifelong passion; I’ve been doing forgeries since before you were a teenager.”
“Family business?”
“By-product of a first-class education,” Dolohov said, “and natural talent, of course.”
Harry nodded and looked over Dolohov again; he didn’t look like the others with their immense estates and gold-filigree lives, but wealth was deceptive and patrician bloodlines, even more so. He was too loose-limbed, too comfortable with himself to have the suspicions of money breathing down his neck, so he was probably one of those old-money types who cruised through life on his name alone.
“Hate to interrupt, but are you going to stare the whole time?” Dolohov said, “not that I’m complaining—you’re pretty easy on the eye.”
“That’s… unnecessary,” Prewett said, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “and inappropriate.”
Dolohov leant forward, both feet now on the floor and his hands clasped between them. “Come on, now, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Prewett, just because you’ve hitched your wagon to a church wedding, doesn’t mean we all fucking have.”
“We know you haven’t, and you’ll be lucky—well, you’ll be lucky if mummy will even let you in the building,” Black said. She turned to him, “you best, uh, ignore him, Potter.”
He forced himself to look away and instead focus on how Black was tucked into the chair, her bare feet curled under her and glasses pulling down the shirt almost indecently—she didn’t appear to notice, or she didn’t care. It must have been nice to be wealthy enough that contraventions of norms became curious personality traits instead of vulgar attributes to be surgically removed by the need to conform.
She must have seen him looking because she shifted a little and smiled at him, all bright and beaming like a debutante. “We, uh, we met him at school,” she said, “if you’re interested.”
“Oh, he’s interested,” said Dolohov backing down when Black gave him that look again.
“We went to university together too,” Black continued, “though—well, we weren’t as close. Art and law don’t mix well, you understand?”
“He was popular,” Prewett said as if it was an explanation. “Lots of attention.”
“Of course,” Black continued, “we never… we never really lost touch—he was just busy. He’s always busy—”
They were interrupted by a loud knock at the door, and Rosier popped her head around the kitchen door, her nails soft against the wood and her hair snaking around her neck. “Someone see to that,” she said, “though, Black, if it’s your brother, he’s not coming in.”
No one moved, all of them glancing at one another, willing someone else to leave the coolish filter of the fans and move their liquid limbs. The knocking continued, each rap sharp and irritable on the wood, and Rosier appeared at the door again.
“Must I ask you again?”
It was another few seconds before Prewett caved. He pressed his hands against his thighs and levered himself up and waded through the hot sludge that made up the air, all the way to the door. He paused there, his shadow heavy against the wood, before finally gathering the effort to pull it open.
“About bloody time,” a low and faintly husky voice said from the corridor, “it’s as hot as the devil’s sauna out here.” The person stepped into the room, already shrugging off her jacket and kicking her heels into the corner; she was thin and pointed, wearing a brown dress that was neat but not fashionable. She was also wearing a wide-brimmed hat that covered her face in thick shadow and lent her the look of a lost-lost relative returning for a nouveau riche funeral.
“Must you talk like that?” Prewett said.
“Yes, I bloody must,” she said, taking off her hat and wincing as the sun struck her face; her thin hair was pinned back for practicality rather than style and she was worryingly pale about her face and hands. She looked at each of them with a severe expression usually reserved for school mistresses looking at their students, she fixed her gaze on him, her brow raising just enough to be insulting.
“Potter, I take it?”
He was going to reply, hopefully with something delightfully witty that would immediately warm her to him, but Rosier emerged from the kitchen with a precarious collection of drinks on a tray.
“Darling, what time do you call this?” she said, sweeping away some magazines from the table with one hand and placing the tray with the other.
“Better than Riddle.”
“Hardly an achievement,” Rosier said, now divvying up the identical glasses between the six of them. Each glass was tall and slim and whatever was inside was a lurid yellow—mustard gas yellow—with a lemon slice wedged into the rim, and rough ice mushed in with the pulp. Harry took the one that was offered but didn’t sip it, he didn’t dare when Prince was still examining him like a medical student looking at their first cadaver.
“Anyway, now that you’re here, this is Potter, and Potter, this is Prince,” Rosier said, “she’s quite the accountant and dab hand at bridge—any cards, really.”
“For the sake of your wallet, don’t take a punt against her,” mumbled Dolohov as he sat back, arms folded; Harry could imagine him going through the five stages of grief after every single loss before trying to win again, always to the same result.
Prince stalked over to stand in front of him and stuck out her hand. “It’s about time we met,” she said. Despite its small size, her hand was firm and confident, her small fingers using a solid grip where they could, to make up for where they couldn’t, and when she dropped his hand, she held his gaze with her chin raised in defiance of an objection he hadn’t made.
She didn’t move more than a step back and continued to look down at him with a hard stare that could have made an angel sweat.
“I guess so,” Harry said, shifting in his chair and glancing over at the others for support. Prince still didn’t move. “Uh, did you want something?”
“You aren’t his usual type,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“Riddle’s usual type,” she repeated, crossing her bony arms, “you’re not it.”
The words sat heavily in the air and Harry could feel the familiar heat of humiliation crawling up the back of his neck. As far as he knew, Tom didn’t have a type, then again, he’d never actually known Tom to be genuinely interested in anyone—usually, he was just trying to get something he wanted. He gripped his glass a bit tighter and fixed his gaze on Prince’s, trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered. “What’s his type, then?”
“Rich.”
“Do try and be civil,” Prewett said, patting Black on the back until she got up to beckon Prince towards her and greet her with a kiss on both cheeks. Prince repeated the motions with polite formality and little enthusiasm before picking up her drink from the table and placing herself beside Dolohov.
“I am being civil,” she said, “I’m merely pointing out reality.”
Black glared at her. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”
“That’s the problem with you young folks,” Rosier said from where she had artistically positioned herself on her settee, a drink in one hand and her legs splayed out in front of her like a siren. “You meet someone at eighteen and without even trying, you still think you know them by the time they’re twenty-four.”
“Are you saying I’m wrong?”
“No need to be so defensive, darling,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. “I just think you should be more polite to our guest.”
Prince didn’t reply. She just crossed one leg over the other and sat back in the chair, her sour disposition curdling the sunlight and making it shrivel around her. Harry didn’t blame her; he’d be suspicious of anyone who disturbed the equilibrium he’d been working on for six years. He offered a smile and, even if it wasn’t accepted, Prince didn’t reject it either, she just gazed past him and sipped at her drink.
He turned towards Rosier. “You didn’t meet Tom at uni, then?”
“Of course not, sweetheart,” Rosier said with another one of her heirloom laughs, “it was through these two.” She raised her glass in the direction of Prewett and Black. “I believe we were introduced at Cyg’s eighteenth—remember that ghastly garden party? Riddle was your plus one, wasn’t he?”
“And you went and thieved him off us,” Black said with a pout, “I don’t think… You didn’t give him back, well… for the whole gosh darn week.”
“Can you blame me? He was an absolute dream, and a woman deserves to have a little fun every now and again.” She raised her glass as if to toast herself and her good fortune and flashed a smile in Harry’s direction—nothing taunting, nothing cruel, not even smug, just pleased that she’d got to touch someone special. The tips of her fingers had been gilded and she wanted to show it off like a girl with a fat engagement ring.
“What about you?” Harry said to Dolohov, all the time forcing himself to focus on the pattern that the shadow of the windowpane made on the wallpaper and not on the way Dolohov was sitting like he was the movie star that all the girls wanted to meet.
Dolohov leant forward again, intimate and easy. “I met him in Paris, back in…,” he paused, his hands working together as he pretended to pinpoint the year as if he didn’t have the date burned into the back of his eyes, as if his entire life wasn’t marked out in the time before Tom and after him. “Forty-nine,” he said eventually, “his French was bad; his Romanian was fucking barbaric, but lucky for him, we weren’t doing much talking.”
Black threw a magazine at Dolohov, and it slapped him on the shoulder. “I’d rather—in fact, I think I speak for everyone when I say we’d rather not hear it,” she said, “it’s bad enough… well, it’s bad enough just thinking about it, I mean, urgh.” She gave a full-body shiver. “There are some things that friends shouldn’t, uh, know about each other.”
“She’s right,” Prince said, the sunniness of her drink beginning to mellow her. “It’s good to keep your mouth shut, not that you’d know.”
Whether the insult was actually meant for Rosier or Dolohov didn’t matter for they both took offence to it and raised their drinks in protest. So did Black and another magazine was tossed. He wondered if Dolohov and Prince were always seated together simply to concentrate all the aerial missiles in the same direction.
Harry was grateful for the distraction though, for something to keep them occupied while he processed. He and Tom had never talked about who they were before they’d met each other, and Harry had, naively, assumed that nothing of note had happened. It was odd learning about another version of the man he knew, a younger version of Tom, still gangly and ruffled with youth, someone who hadn’t yet mastered the ease of conversation and always looked a little awkward; someone who got their tongue twisted around languages and let people have a little fun with him. That was someone he hadn’t met, a version of Tom that had been honed away, the sharper edges smoothed and glossed into a façade that could get him anything he wanted.
Rosier was the one to interrupt his thoughts. “And yourself?” she said, “we’re all anxiously awaiting an account of your meet cute.”
“Uh, it’s not… I just met him around, you know?” Harry said, trying to grin his way out of the awkwardness. He took the drink Rosier had offered him, sipped, and almost choked on it. The thing was sharp with alcohol, tangy with the lemon, and so rough in his mouth that the first swallow scuffed his throat.
“Oh, don’t you like it?” Rosier said, oh so casually before pressing her lips against the rim of the glass and swallowing without flinching.
“No,” he said quickly, “it’s just uh… kinda not what I was expecting.” Was anything around here?
As if to prove it, Harry took another, tentative, sip. It wasn’t nearly as bad when you were prepared for the nick to your tongue and there was a pleasant coolness to it that got him tipping the glass up again sooner than he should. Day drinking was not a habit that he was well acquainted with—a good Friday pint at the pub was practically a necessity, but cocktails in the afternoon sun were for the rich and idle and decadent. Though, he couldn’t deny that he felt gorgeously expensive sipping at something that probably cost more than he’d typically spend in a month, expensive and interesting and frankly outrageous.
If the more radical members of his friend group saw him now, they’d be disgusted with the money and thoughtless privilege of these kinds of people, but everyone deserved a little bit of luxury in their lives every once in a while. His luxury just happened to be a sweet and spicy bourbon lemonade accompanied by anecdotes about a mutual friend who was fast becoming the centre of his world.
“So, just around, huh?” Rosier said, her brow seeking a scandal that didn’t exist; she smiled that insouciant smile of hers and leant onto the arm of her chair, the wicker pressing into her pale arms. She was daringly close to him, and her gaze fluttered between his mouth and his eyes—it wouldn’t have been noticeable to most people, but Harry had spent the best part of six months doing the same thing to someone else.
“Mmm,” he hummed back, looking down at his glass and rattling the ice around as if it would make it melt faster. They’d met in class and over the next two hours, Tom had systematically deconstructed his argument for public ownership of property, and he had slammed Tom’s suggestion that property law was not a product of its capitalist environment. Afterwards, Tom had bought him a coffee and invited him up to the third floor of the law wing, where it was deliciously quiet, to keep talking, and, to be honest, Harry had been a little bit in love with him ever since.
“And the small issue of the crime?” she said, watching him intently, even as she smiled showing off the points of her teeth, “was that something you found ‘just around’ too?”
“What of it?”
“Well, I know how persuasive Riddle can be, sweetheart,” she said, “I, for one, was a good woman until I met him, now I aid and abet. I would hate to think that he’d seduced you into a life of crime.”
“Give us a break, Rosier, you’ve never been a good woman,” Prince said, shifting herself, plucking at the collar of her dress before rolling the cool glass over the back of her neck. “I’d say, you were one of the worst.”
Rosier raised a hand dramatically to her chest, her baby pink nails shining in the sun and blurring with the colour of her slip. “I’ll have you know my record was unblemished before this whole lurid affair began.” She turned back towards him. “Can you say the same about yours, Potter?”
He couldn’t. His record was rather blemished, though the acts they’d caught him for were dwarfed by the number that he’d committed—most of them merely contraventions of unjust laws. But he had, perhaps, been seduced into this particular plot. After all, fraud wasn’t usually his style—it was too slippery—he preferred crimes that were tangible and undeniable; acts of arson and vandalism and criminal damage, but this time, he’d been lured by the promise of satisfaction, of money, of Tom’s attention.
And, frankly, he’d rather keep it to himself. It was his secret how Tom had lured him out of dorms with a conspiratorial smile and the promise to pay for a round. So too was it his secret that Tom’s hand had rested congenially on his shoulder, and he’d been so close that Harry’s heart had been fizzing as he told him, in those hushed, furtive whispers about a little conspiracy he was part of, a conspiracy he’d like Harry to join.
He'd ridden the high of being wanted for a least a week after, enough that his friends had started asking who the lucky woman was. It would have been easier if it was a woman, instead, it was Tom with his careful expressions talking him into an art fraud scheme that did no real harm because no one would ever know, and even if they found out, it was only the soft moneyed hands of high society that would get burned—no one who mattered. He couldn’t admit to Rosier—to any of them—that Tom made a fragile, desperate thing unfurl in his chest, wet and delicate as only a lovesick thing could be. He just couldn’t.
“If you don’t answer, we’ll just make assumptions,” said Prince, “and no one likes assumptions.”
Harry swallowed and tried to relax back into the chair as if he belonged there. “I’ve always been inclined,” he said like he was one of those Hollywood rebels that made agitation look trendy.
“Why does a chap like you do it, though?” Prewett asked, adjusting his glasses and unpeeling Black’s hand from his shirt. “You seem like a good sort.”
The obvious answer was Tom—he did it because Tom wanted him to—but that wasn’t the sort of answer he could give.
“Nice things,” he said aloud, “I like nice things.” Nice things like rent and food and savings, and if he was really splashing out, overly ostentatious things he didn’t need but he wanted because deep down everyone wanted things. In capitalism, things meant you’d made it. Things meant you were happy.
“Good choice,” Dolohov said, “Riddle’s definitely nice, real nice, I’d say.”
Harry smiled at him and tried to meet his provocative tone. “I know.”
“Oh, you’re such a delightful tease, Potter,” Rosier said.
“The best people are, right?”
Rosier certainly thought so. She turned her head towards Dolohov, her expression bright and brilliant, as if to say, ‘I like this one,’ or perhaps like a little girl with big eyes, twirling her hair and asking, ‘can we keep him?’ Dolohov grinned back at her, showing just enough teeth to be conspiratorial. The other three remained a little more detached and just smiled politely at him like sceptical parents meeting their future son-in-law for the first time.
Black peeled herself off Prewett’s arm; she stretched and reached for her glass, still on the small table that sat between them. “Your thesis is, uh, in law, right?” she said, sipping daintily at her drink, the ice knocking against her teeth. “How do you… well, how does that square with…?”
“Committing crimes?”
“Yes, committing crime—how do you do it?”
It wasn’t exactly hard. The only effect that understanding the law ever had, was to persuade him of the necessity of breaking it. The law wasn’t made by people like him, nor was it meant to be for people like him, so he had no obligation to follow it, and almost no choice but to break it. And they had broken it. However these people may have weighed their crimes, they couldn’t deny they’d committed them, just as Harry couldn’t, technically, deny that he’d given willing and informed assistance. He knew it was willing and informed because Tom had sat with him in his small dorm room, the two of them cramped together, shoulder to shoulder on the bed because there wasn’t anywhere else to sit and had taken his time to outline the implications.
For instance, the five-year stint in Wandsworth he would be facing if they got caught, not that he could bring himself to care. All because this criminal enterprise got Tom crashing out on his bed when it was too late for him to go home; it got him a decent income, and it let him swindle rich people out of their money and their dignity. Frankly, it was the best job he’d ever had.
“It’s easy,” he said, “I don’t think about it.”
“But, uh—how do you… enjoy the thrill? It does give you a thrill, doesn’t it?” Black said, her fingers curling tightly around Prewett’s arm until he peeled her off in much the same way that a kitten has to be removed from someone’s leg. Harry could imagine her standing in front of her obnoxiously expensive bathroom mirror and repeating to herself in that delightful voice: ‘you are a criminal’ like it was a badge of honour, like she was some famous Western outlaw. Perhaps that was all crime was to them, some romantic outlet that blurred the lines of nobility they were born into and the underclass they fetishized.
“Speak for yourself,” Dolohov said, “you’re not the one who has to paint the fucking things.”
“Now, that’s odd,” came a nice voice from across the room, accompanied by the slight creak of the door, “I seem to remember you saying that you would paint the world for me, all I had to do was ask.”
All five of them looked over to see Tom standing in the doorway. The sun had begun to dip, basting the room in a hazy gold, and the shadows were starting to stretch lazily across the floor, reaching for the far wall. It was a creamy light, fat and warm, and it caressed Tom’s face, softening the harsher angles in a way that only the afternoon sun could. And as cliché, as it was, Harry’s heart swelled just as it did every time he saw Tom and he realised he was in love all over again.