February 25th, 1891 - Londonderry, Ireland

The muggles were sort of funny, in the way that muggles were. They talked them through the whole sorry history of the house during most of the dinner, and the son had been eaten by wolves, rather than the nurse - the nurse had 'simply vanished, and her skeleton was discovered in the attic,' which was as ominous as it was probably untrue. Cash was having great fun so far, really, and had been very careful about schooling his expression into 'polite interest,' glancing over at Greengrass every few moments to see if he thought the same bits of the story were funny.

Except now they were at a pause in the story - Cash had no doubt they were building to a horrifying climax - and the muggles were still around, and Cash was realizing that he didn't know how to have a conversation around muggles. He couldn't talk about any of the usual things he liked to talk about, and he had to be very careful about his wand in the pocket of his trousers.

"So I think it's a little rude that I don't know this," Cash said, having almost immediately run out of ways to say 'oh yes how scary' in a way that would hopefully please their muggle hosts. "But what's your work in, again?"

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The tour of the house was everything that Ford had been expecting, and the Muggles were going so over the top with this story that he couldn't help but smile every once in a while. Lestrange was doing a better job of keeping a neutral expression, but if the side glances the pair occasionally shared were any indication, he seemed to think this was as amusing as Ford did, so things were going swimmingly. And Ford hadn't done anything too obvious yet, and outed them as skeptics (or as wizards, for that matter). He was doing a fairly good job of looking sombre when the Muggles were paying attention, and the occasional comments he made were nothing if not appropriate to the setting.

Then Lestrange had to go and ask him about work, which was not something Ford could talk about while maintaining the cover that he was a Muggle who believed in the story of this particular haunted house. It was so ridiculous that at first he thought Lestrange must have done it on purpose, as a joke, but he couldn't recall if they'd ever talked about it before, so maybe it was a genuine question. If it was, though, how was he supposed to answer it around a bunch of Muggles?

"Oh, uhm," he said, buying himself a minute to think. "Not rude at all. I guess it never came up, did it? I work — in government," he said vaguely. The word Ministry was probably safe but he honestly didn't know enough about Muggle politics to say for sure, so best to avoid it just in case. "With... some of the..." Ghosts. Spirits. Banshees. Ghouls.

"Older residents of the county?" he concluded, wondering if Lestrange was following.

  

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He should have asked something innocuous about the weather, Cash was realizing swiftly, but it was too late now to find a way out. Excellent. Government, that was obviously the Ministry, but Greengrass lost him with the quip about older residents. "Oh," Cash said, "Like, the -" Wizengamot, shit "- courts?" The Wizengamot was mostly populated by the elderly, Cash knew well, but he felt like he wasn't on the right track. He frowned.

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"Mer— goodness, no," Ford said, catching himself halfway through the word Merlin, which might have raised eyebrows. "I mean, not usually. I've had things go to — uh, court — a few times, and I'm rubbish at that. Too much pressure," he explained, with a smile.

But how to explain it? Lestrange didn't seem to have understood at all, so he needed to try a different tack. His next thought was to make a reference to one of the more well-known ghosts, like the ones at Hogwarts, but he wasn't sure how to go about that, either. He couldn't just throw out a name like Nearly Headless Nick and expect the Muggles to take it in stride. Maybe he could have name-dropped the Fat Friar, but pretended it was a pub, or something?

"It's more... Hmm," he said, musing over how to express this. It was not a difficulty he'd ever had before; usually when people asked what he did he could just say spirit division and their interest ended immediately. "Well, I mainly work with— people, but some of the other people in my department deal with... animals," he concluded, his tone turning up slightly at the end of his sentence as though it were a question.

  

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"Oh!" Cash said; Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, sure, he got it. It was the people part that had him thrown off; maybe Greengrass worked with the veela, or the vampire? He couldn't imagine Greengrass handling a vampire, but they were old. "And do the people you work with prefer to - spend their time at night?" Cash asked tentatively; he was pretty sure that the muggles thought he was talking about prostitutes, but that was still more subtle than asking about pointy teeth.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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"Oh, no," Ford reassured him. It took him only a second to guess what Lestrange meant, and he personally thought vampires were a little terrifying. Technically they were a part of his department, but he was very pleased that no part of his job involved dealing with them on a day-to-day basis. He didn't really understand how anyone could have a civil conversation with someone who wanted to eat you, even if they were being very polite and civilized about it.

"No, they're, uhm," he hmmed again, trying to come up with something more definitive to say. "Sort of hard to pin down, sometimes, though." Was that too obscure? Most of the other things he could think to say about ghosts were even more obscure, and involved a handful of other magical beasts, beings, and spirits to compare them to.

"Oh, actually," he said brightly, as a thought occurred to him. "You probably know some of my... uhm, clients," he said, unable to resist smiling at this — it was such a ridiculous way to talk about it. "Like Herbert Fudge?" Fudge was sort of famous, as far as ghosts went — not on par with the Bloody Baron, or anything, but most people who had been to the Sanditon knew his name, and he was recently and publicly deceased. He also had a name that sounded fairly innocuous, compared to the Bloody Baron, which made him more Muggle-friendly.

  

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Hard to pin down didn't help; maybe Greengrass did work with Veela? Cash was trying to come up with a way to ask about them as subtly as possible when Greengrass mentioned Herbert Fudge. Oh. He brightened. Suddenly it made sense; all of the cagey explanations as well as Greengrass' wealth of knowledge on ghosts, and maybe even his fascination with haunted houses. Cash felt like he'd clicked a puzzle piece into place.

"I feel like that's sort of perfect for you," he said, grinning, "Must be an interesting office, too." Maybe they could actually talk about it later - they were sort of in for a long night together.

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Ford grinned widely, both because Lestrange had finally understood him and because he had described the spirit division as interesting. Most people forgot it existed at all, until they had a ghost they were angry with. When he told people where he worked, typically the response was, oh, that sounds nice, or, from the less charitable types, what do you even do there?

"It's fun, yeah," he agreed with a nod. "Lots of really interesting stories from people. When they're not too angry to tell them, anyway," he added. Most of the ghosts that he worked with on a daily basis were angry, because the pleasant ones just went off and existed and didn't make anyone write the Ministry about them, but he did occasionally get to talk to a friendly, interesting ghost.

"Should I ask you questions about your work?" he teased. He knew what Lestrange did, obviously, but after having gone through such an ordeal to tell him about Ford's work it seemed only fair that he would have to talk about something magical in front of the Muggles, too. "Or maybe about your favorite classes from school?"

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   Cassius Lestrange

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Cash raised his eyebrows in slight alarm at Greengrass' question. "Oh, I'm not sure we need to do that," he said lightly, "Sounds a little boring to talk about -" fuck, what was an equivalent to Quidditch? Was Rugby a sport people played, in the muggle world? "- sport and coursework, over dinner." Cash was realizing in this that he really didn't know much about muggles; this was the sort of thing Angie would have laughed at him for, as she could pass between worlds relatively easily, and the sort of thing his family would have encouraged.

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"Oh, I wouldn't think it was boring at all," Ford insisted, a little mischievously. This wouldn't have been a serious topic of conversation anywhere else, particularly since they'd been in the same year at school — if he tried hard enough, he could probably have come up with at least a rough list of what classes Lestrange had taken at NEWT level, so it wasn't going to be much of a surprise — but he wanted to force him to play the game, just for a minute.

"You could probably guess my favorite subjects," he said with a shrug and a smile. Ghoul Studies, Muggle Studies, History — he could probably talk about at least two of those in Muggle terms if he needed to. "But what were yours?"

  

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Cash was smiling mischievously, but he was a little alarmed - couldn't think of a way to describe Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts without raising any suspicions. "I had an interest in... the sciences," he said vaguely. Potions, sure, Potions was like a science, at least in theory. "And - " was there any way to talk about Defense without making it weird? Muggles did not really have the Dark Arts; Cash glanced at them, sure that they were thinking him odd or perhaps just stupid. "You know, those courses that go with the sciences."

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The sciences? Ford wasn't exactly sure what Lestrange meant by that, but didn't find his ignorance discouraging. This was part of the fun, wasn't it? Having to be more specific than you initially thought, and having to figure out what to say.

"I didn't take you for a scientist," Ford teased lightly. "But I suppose that's my bias against... professional athletes," he said with a shrug. "What kind of science? Astronomy?" That was the only science- adjacent class Ford could think of.

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"Not Astronomy," Cash admitted, "But -" he was visibly trying to think of a good answer, and hesitated "- the class with a... laboratory?" And if the muggles thought he was very tentative in sounding out the word, that was fine, because he did not actually care if some Londonderry muggles thought he was stupid.

He really hoped laboratory was an actual muggle word, otherwise he might just sound crazy.

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"Oh!" he said brightly; he understood now. Potions. He wouldn't have made the jump from potions to sciences, if he were trying to describe it himself, but the laboratory couldn't really have been anything else, he didn't think. Unless Lestrange was talking about alchemy — that might have had more of a laboratory-feeling, but was also just Fancy Potions, as far as Ford was concerned, so either way he thought he got the gist.

"Are you planning to make a career out of laboratory work when you stop... uh, what you're doing now?" he asked; at the last minute he'd forgotten what euphemism they had previously used for Quidditch, and didn't want to try to make up a new one in case he accidentally confused Lestrange. The Muggles would also probably think this was a crazy conversation if he kept jumping around so much, but — well, they probably thought that anyway, with his being so vague about his career.

  

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Cash shrugged. "I hadn't decided," he said, which was code for Lucius hasn't decided, but Cash didn't go around telling people that unless he knew them particularly well. "Something in government, though, I think, either with - laboratories or the law." He'd like the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, he thought - certainly better than other departments, he didn't have the constitution for the Spirit Division and most of the Ministry of Magic sounded very boring.

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Ford couldn't picture Lestrange as a lawyer and more than he could as a scientist (though maybe a potioneer, he supposed). There were other things in the Law Enforcement department, but he thought people who wanted to be aurors or investigators typically went into it right after school, didn't they? Maybe it was possible to get into it later, but he got the impression that aurors typically had the same retirement age as Quidditch players, more or less. It wouldn't be a very illustrious career to go through the training program for five years or so as an auror before switching to full time paperwork.

But then, maybe Lestrange didn't really need an illustrious career, coming from the family he did. Maybe whenever he finished Quidditch, he could just sit back and do nothing, if he wanted. That had never been an option for Ford, even before being saddled with his father's debts and the responsibility for the girls, but there was a world of difference between the Greengrasses and the Lestranges. Then again — he had an older brother, so maybe he wasn't planning to inherit much.

"Well, whenever you get there, I'll help you settle in," he offered with an easy smile. "Since you offered to help me get back into things at the club, it's the least I can do. But I imagine that'll be at least half a dozen years away, won't it? Captain," he teased (hopefully this was not too bizarre a thing to say in front of Muggles — their sports had captains too, didn't they?)

  

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