2 June, 1893 — Greengrass Home, Bartonburg

Mama had Grace and Clementine out tonight at a women's event of some sort; since he hadn't been invited Ford hadn't bothered to listen to many of the details. The season had only just started properly, but it was already a welcome reprieve to have both a night where he didn't have to attend any events and a night where the house was free of the girls. He was taking advantage of the moment to monopolize the dining room table: every invitation they'd received laid out in neat rows by date. He didn't trust the privacy of their home enough to take physical notes, but he was scanning through them and taking mental ones.

"Here," he eventually said, laying his index finger on one of the cards. "This is one of those can't miss it events. Everyone will go," he announced to Noble, who was sitting across the table. The unstated implication: so their houses will be empty. It had taken them a few months to divest themselves of all of the stolen goods from the Mulciber home (and for Ford to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and to discover that he'd actually been caught after all), and then Ford had gotten cold feet about moving forward when the news started covering Hogsmeade crime sprees and eventually the murder of the watchmaker. They weren't related to him at all, obviously, but if law enforcement was already on high alert looking for a burgular on High Street, breaking into a home in Wellingtonshire seemed riskier. Things seemed to have died down now, though... and, what was more, the bills for the girls' new dresses were starting to come in.

---

Noble Greengrass Cassius Lestrange

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble leaned over the table to look at the card Ford indicated. He nodded. Planning out a burglary felt odd, but hopefully planning would prevent them from facing any consequences — and if they were going to get through this season, they'd need it. "I like it," he said, "We'll need you to make appearances at the event, too. But it shouldn't be hard to get you in and out." Once people had some champagne at these things, they weren't paying attention to people like Ford.

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford ran his tongue across his teeth. "I don't know if that's really necessary," he pointed out. With an event as large as he expected this one to be, no one was going to notice whether he was there or not, unless they were looking for him specifically. Who would fall into that category? Probably only Tycho. Ford had a rule against mentioning Tycho in any capacity around Noble, since December, so he didn't bother saying anything — just shrugged. "I guess it couldn't hurt. But we don't know how long it'll take. Probably safer if I have to leave early and not come back, rather than trying to pretend I just ducked off to the retiring room." He chuckled and continued, "I'd say you could light my sleeve on fire, but then we'd be on the hook for a new suit. So I guess we should stick with something more mundane," he joked. "Headache, or something."

When he'd robbed Rufina Mulciber's house he'd watched the windows before he'd flooed in; he'd known exactly when she had left for the night and when the servants had retired for the evening and staged his entrance so as to reach an empty parlor. Going to a party first meant he wouldn't have the same luxury this time. It was riskier. He didn't know that he wanted to tell Noble this, though. He didn't want Noble to try and talk him out of it when they needed this — and he didn't want Noble feeling responsible if it all went wrong.

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

"Just listen to Mama have a conversation with a bachelor," Noble offered, "Then anyone will believe you have a headache." He grinned at his own joke. Their lives would probably be easier if Mama was less Mama, just a little bit, sometimes, but at least he could make jokes.

"I was thinking a street on the outskirts of Wellingtonshire, towards Asphodel, would work well," Noble suggested. Wellingtonshire had better security than Bartonburg, obviously, but the further up in it Ford went the less there was a chance of someone seeing anything, because who walked around when the mansions thinned out?

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford smiled and exhaled an almost-chuckle at Noble's joke about Mama, but shook his head when the conversation turned towards picking a house. "The last one wasn't that far out," he pointed out. The last one had been directly across the street from Tycho's house, but of course that was solidly within the realm of things Ford could never tell his brother. "I think the servants are more important than the area. We want a house where they don't wait up," he surmised. "A family with no children, definitely, but probably no debutantes, too. If they think someone might come home early with a headache, they're no good for us," Ford joked wryly.

He wasn't sure Noble knowing which house he was going to was the best idea, all things considered, but it was a bit late to withhold that sort of information. If he'd wanted to execute it all secretly, he shouldn't have invited Noble to help him plan it at all. Ford plucked another invitation off the table and indicated the host's name — his recommendation for a target. He'd already walked by the house a few times and thought it through, so he was fairly confident in his choice, but for some reason even in the safety of their home he was reluctant to vocalize a name.

"I might go by a few days early and watch from the garden wall and see how things go after everyone leaves for a ball," he suggested. "I think the invisibility cloak will last long enough to make it through both."

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

"No debutantes," Noble agreed. It was too risky — and a house with debutantes in it might have more security than a house without one, like how Noble had wards against apparating on most of their house. He considered the name Ford indicated and nodded. Noble didn't know much about that family, which meant, hopefully, that they weren't that notable — and if they weren't that notable, then they probably didn't have a reason to do anything wild with security in their own homes. Probably.

He considered Ford's next statement. "How long does the invisibility cloak last?" he asked. "We — well, you know this, but we really don't want it running out when you're in there."

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford nodded. He did know, and normally Noble saying something so obvious would have led him to crack a sarcastic joke in response, but he couldn't manage it in this case. The stakes were too high for him to joke about invisibility cloaks going out in the middle of a crime.

"It was advertised to last a whole day of use," Ford said. "And I've only worn it about three hours so far. But I don't really know how long it can last between uses, you know, if that effects anything," he admitted. "And I don't know if the advertisement is accurate. But I don't have any better ideas."

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

Of course, they couldn't afford another invisibility cloak — and even if they could, it wasn't the sort of thing they wanted anyone realizing they kept buying. "We'll be careful about it, then," Noble said, tone conveying a confidence he didn't feel. "It'll be better to scope out the house than not, anyways."

---

  

---

set by Bee

"Yeah," Ford agreed. "And if it's imminently about to fail, I'd much rather it happen on the street than in the parlor." Hopefully failing invisibility cloaks gave some sort of indication. He didn't know what he would be looking for, but Ford imagined they didn't go from flawlessly invisible one second to just a normal cloak the next, so hopefully if it was on the verge of running dry he'd have some warning of it. Of course, if that was the case he didn't know what they'd do next. They probably could have stretched their savings a little farther, but mentally Ford had already committed to this burglary; he had been planning on a windfall for weeks now.

"We'll have to make this one last longer," he pointed out. "Last time we had all those bills to pay down and the new season dresses to buy, but this time we should try and really stretch it out." This was rather needless to say, of course; the two of them had never been the problem when it came to frivolous spending. What they really needed was one of the girls to get married, but between Grace and Clementine, Ford wasn't sure whose chances were worse.

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble was more adept with budget-planning than burglary-planning, and straightened at Ford's statement. "The season's always good for potioneering," he said. People were always buying questionable potions in the summer, the sort he charged more for — abortions, mild love potions (never amortentia,) and things that kept them awake for longer. "So we should be able to avoid dipping into it right away."

He paused and considered. "Mama doesn't have any upcoming big purchases planned, right?"

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford rolled his eyes. "Mama doesn't plan anything." This was one of the central points of tension between the pair of them when it came to finances. The difference in expectation (Mama aspirational, Ford practical) was one thing; in that respect he understood Mama and could empathize with her, at least to some extent. But he didn't like being surprised by expenses, and Mama surprised him more often than she didn't. The numbers she reported back to him were never what they'd agreed on, and seldom matched the bills he later received from the shops she'd visited. If she'd stuck to any sort of plan, even an extravagant one, their finances would have been in a much better state even with the debt he'd inherited from Papa. There was no way to reign her in, though, not without cutting their credit off at every store in Hogsmeade and more or less broadcasting to the world that he didn't trust his mother with a two galleons to rub together.

"What we really need is for someone to start courting Grace," he lamented, but he had so little agency on that particular problem that just thinking about it nearly made him scan the invitations for a second house to target.

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble sighed. "I wish we knew more quiet rich people," he said. Grace really needed a husband who would scarcely speak to her; otherwise, she'd be unable to handle his attention. "Unless you know anyone?" Ford had more rich friends — (and possibly friends in general) — than Noble did. Maybe he had someone in his back pocket that they could get Grace interested in.

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford frowned and shook his head. "All my rich friends are getting married." Not that he had an exceptional number of rich friends — the ones that Noble would probably have recognized as Ford's friends were Cash Lestrange and Valerian Macnair, who were both also a) gay and b) depressed, both of which were at least half as problematic as their being already married.

(Tycho was not depressed and was certainly not getting married, but he also didn't fit Noble's persona of quiet rich people by any stretch of the imagination. Even his clothing was usually loud.)

"I might know some quiet... not-rich-but-not-poor people, though," he offered. He had been more or less scouring the Ministry rosters (and the guest list of every event he'd attended so far this season) for someone he might forcibly shove in Grace's direction, so he had an idea or two. The question was what to actually do with those ideas — he didn't have much experience as a matchmaker.

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

"Middle class is fine," Noble said, "Obviously, I guess." As long as the men had more money than the Greengrasses did, it didn't matter. They just needed someone to marry one of the girls before they found themselves bankrupt. Noble paused and looked away from the table and up at Ford. "Are they nice?"

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford shrugged. With this question the weight of the conversation had suddenly occurred to him — that they were talking about someone Grace might spend her entire life with — and he felt woefully unqualified to shoulder it. But of course that left the question: if not him, then whom? There was no one else to take on these sorts of responsibilities. Noble helped — Noble probably helped too much, honestly — but it was not, when all was said and done, his.

"I guess so," he said with a frown. "But it's hard to tell, you know. If they're nice in the right ways. Like, I can have a conversation with them in the break room and it's fine, or good, or whatever. But would I want to be married to them?" He shrugged again; the point he was trying to get across was that it felt entirely impossible for him to deduce anything about their actual quality as a husband (so, the only thing that really mattered) from the superficial interactions he had with people at work.

---

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble shrugged. "But if they're fun in the break room, we can at least introduce them to the girls," he said. He had never imagined himself saying the phrase 'fun in the break room' before. Noble was suddenly, briefly glad that Ford was the one who worked in the Ministry; he would never want to do so himself, but it paid well.

"And I'll see if any of the healers I know seem like a good fit for Grace," he added, the thought striking him. "Some of them are — quieter, than a lot of the society types." Grace needed someone quiet; she was never going to be the type to throw a party.

---

  

---

set by Bee