1 March 1890 — Fort Lestrange

Tiberius had just come off of a nearly forty-hour workday in the Department of Mysteries, and was at least twice as irritable as he normally was due to an unexpected lack of sleep. Time magic wasn't his thing, as it was some of the other Unspeakables, so he wasn't even particularly engaged with the work they were doing. He understood the importance of monitoring the time disturbances in the country and making sure nothing blew up, but that didn't mean he was particularly enthused to be doing it. He sort of wished he'd been one of the ones dispatched to recoup all of the rented time turners — which had been removed back to the Ministry to prevent anyone from accidentally breaking time just that much more. At least then the task would have had a finite end in sight. Monitoring time, on the other hand, was a tedious chore, because you never knew when it was going to be done. It could be minutes or hours or days — literally.

After the Friday without end, he should have just gone home and slept off the magical stimulants he'd been using to keep his mind sharp at work, but there were other things on his mind. He, personally, had bigger problems than some idiot in Florida who had gone messing around with time turners, and he wasn't going to let this development derail his weekend plans entirely.

He set himself up in the dining room Sunday morning and waited for Cassius to make an appearance. When he finally did, Tiberius launched straight into what he'd come to say, without paying any attention to whether they might be overheard by someone else in the household in such a public room. "I noticed you've not so much as made a move towards courting someone," he said, tone both sharp and dry at once. "Do you need me to intervene to help you move the process along?"

Cassius Lestrange

  

He had not necessarily been avoiding Tiberius, although he also had not sought him out - neither of which were shocking pieces of information. Cash was about to do his usual weekend escape routine - after getting something to eat and some coffee - and had not expected to see his cousin. That wasn't shocking, either. People tended to drift in and out, here, and Cash was difficult to surprise.

He was pouring his own coffee when Tib spoke. Cash stopped pouring, set the kettle down, waited a moment before replying.

"I want this to be easy," he said, "It - has not been."

He did not know how to flirt with women. Hell, he barely knew how to interact with anyone, lately - and exhausting with women was exhausting. He did not like flirting with them, did not like parties, did not know how to make this happen. And frankly, although his interest in freedom as a concept remained high - but getting there was more difficult.

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MJ made this!

"What's difficult about it?" he snapped. He had little patience for such sympathies in general, but even less so when he was operating on such a short supply of sleep. The only requirements he had was that this girl was pureblood and had a functional womb. What was Cassius looking for? An amiable companion, wit and elegance? It wasn't as though his mother had possessed any of those qualities, so he'd be setting his sights a bit unreasonably high, Tiberius thought, if that was the case. As long as the woman was capable of remembering to breathe on her own, she was probably on par with Cassius' mother — the woman who had impaled herself on a fire poker accidentally.

"There's a whole finishing school full of girls in the right age range," he pointed out. "Which your cousin owns — just go stroll down to Irvingly and take your pick." Cassius was not exactly what one would consider a catch, for certain girls — being both a second son and Cassius — but between Tiberius' machinations and Lucius' influence he was certain that just about anything could be arranged. At this point, Tiberius was more than willing to take on the burden of actually arranging things, if that meant there would be some sort of movement in the right direction.

Once he had the plan in place and working smoothly — once he had a route to an heir secured — Antigone would stop this madness.

  

"I'm a second son with something a little off, Tiberius," Cash said. It was easy to snap at his cousin; they had never much liked one another.

"Even if I was entirely -" he could not say there. Cash gestured with his left hand, as if to conjure something in Tib's head. Sane, present, not-depressed, straight. Any of them worked. "- well. Even then there would be some slow-downs, here."

What he needed was someone at least a little desperate; ideally someone who would not torment him too much, someone who was not likely to notice her husband's inclinations, nor who was bedding her. He did not know where to start with this. And, of course, it didn't help that engaging with anything was hard - despite the freedom that Tiberius' offer promised, motivation was hard.

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MJ made this!

"You're a Lestrange," Tiberius said, a cold rebuttal. Honestly, that should have been enough. Their family name commanded respect. They had a history, a reputation — and even if they did not have those things to fall back on, they had connections. Lucius was the head of the Wizengamot, and had been a well respected figure in society and in the Ministry for long before that. Plenty of men would willingly sacrifice their pureblood daughters just to have a solid connection to him, let alone the rest of their quite influential family tree. If Cassius was even trying, there was no way he — flawed though he certainly was — could fail to make this work.

"Just find someone, and I'll handle the rest," he offered, tone harsh. He could arrange something, the same way that he had done prior to his marriage to Antigone — or, if the family in question wasn't particularly interested in that, he could find another way. If he had to make Antigone forge love letters and sign Cassius' name at the bottom in order to get this accomplished, he would. He was done wasting time.

  

Cash sat down across from his cousin. He took a sip of his coffee. He didn't know what he wanted in a wife - or, rather, he didn't know what he wanted in this wife. Her personality could not be abysmal, but she also - there had to be something wrong with her. He had to be doing her a favor in some capacity, or he would never be able to forgive himself for subjecting her to this life.

She would be a Lestrange. She would be sleeping with Tiberius. They were going to lose a child. And - well, there was Cash, with his occasional chain-smoking and his sexual preferences and his desire to be off of this planet. There had to be a component of it that was a favor. And perhaps that was where the problems arose.

"And you're confident," Cash said, "That - once I have someone, you can execute your part of the deal."

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MJ made this!

What did he mean with a question like that? Was Cassius, of all people, questioning Tiberius' virility? That was quite obviously not a concern, but it wasn't as though Tiberius could just throw the evidence of that in his cousin's face. He was still hoping Antigone got rid of her current pregnancy, so he wasn't going to bring it up to anyone. A part of him wanted to snap out two of your sister's children are mine, you little twit, but that, he recognized, was the lack of sleep talking and not an impulse he should act on.

"Quite confident," he said in a clipped tone. "Not that it should make much difference to you." Honestly, children were only useful for carrying on a family name and a legacy, and Cassius, as a second son, didn't really need that. And if he was willing to take bastards instead of legitimate children, as the terms of their agreement stated, he probably didn't want them for any sentimental reasons. It wasn't as though he was particularly close to Tiberius' other children — honestly, Tiberius wasn't even sure if Cassius had met the twins (and, if he had, whether it was before or after one had 'died').

  

Oh. Cash's eyes widened for a second. Wrong implication, clearly.

"I meant the logistics, not -" Cash waved his hand in a gesture that was meant to encompass all talk of Tiberius' penis. Antigone had certainly been pregnant often enough before whatever that there was no doubt in that department. Besides, if Cash, who was not at all interested, had managed to have sex with a woman more than once - well. He had no doubt in Tiberius, was the point.

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   Pandora Falk, Tiberius Lestrange

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MJ made this!

"You're imagining difficulties where there aren't any," he snapped, even more irritable now than when he'd arrived. "A quiet, short engagement, a small wedding that her family plans — you literally just have to show up and say the right words. And then I'll do the rest." Cassius was, of course, the Lestrange in the world most likely to fuck things up, but there was nothing to fuck up here — or, at least, there wouldn't be. Tiberius would take all of that out of his hands, to make sure things ran smoothly. Getting married wasn't hard. Tiberius had done it at twenty-three, which was nearly as young as Cassius, and he'd coordinated everything himself.

"And if there's difficulty in getting the arrangements made, we can always leverage something," he continued. Money, if that was what it took — or some bit of blackmail, if money wouldn't suffice. Tiberius was a legilimens and was not afraid to go prying around in people's secrets for some sort of ammunition to use in this situation. If nothing else, there was always extortion. There were ways, in short — but he couldn't do anything until Cassius had a god damned girl.

  

Everything sounded sorted, like it should be easy, but Cash still wasn't entirely convinced. But - maybe Tiberius was right. And maybe on some level Cash just wanted this to be difficult, because everything else always was.

Eli would not like this. But there were a lot of things Cash was doing that Eli would not like; the chain-smoking, the fraying relationships with his friends and teammates, the drinking in muggle dive bars and the listless way he was approaching everything. The thing was - Cash didn't know how to do any of this without Eli. He had tried for years and still had not figure it out.

"Fine," he said. His leg tapped up and down under the breakfast table. "I'll find a girl. And you can do whatever with me if I don't have it figured out by - when do you want me to figure this out by?"

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MJ made this!

"Last year," Tiberius replied, all sarcasm. Obviously Cassius wasn't in possession of a time turner, or enough wits to use one effectively if he was, so that wasn't feasible. Honestly, though, once Tiberius had decided he wanted to find a wife it had taken him maybe a month to locate a suitable girl and set up the arrangement. He'd talked to Cassius about this for the first time in December of 1888. The only way he could possibly not have been finished with it yet, from Tiberius' perspective, was if he'd been intentionally malingering and putting it off, which was plausible. It was ultimately Tiberius' fault, then, for not making the threat of Lucius offing him seem real and pressing enough.

Then again, the threat hinged on the idea that the new infant would prove that it was less useless than Cassius and therefore make him irrelevant. While Tiberius did expect that it was only a matter of time before that happened, assuming that it took place before the baby could walk was, perhaps, a bit extreme.

"Can you do it in a month?" he asked. "Then you could spend the season engaged and marry this fall. If that's not realistic, at least by the end of the season — then the wedding could be planned for Christmas." Could he convince Antigone to get rid of her pregnancy if he didn't have something lined up until Christmas? He'd probably have to. This was not exactly the time to start putting a large amount of faith and trust in Cassius' social skills.

  

Summer engaged, married in the fall. Cash tilted his head back and forth, as if he was stretching it out before Quidditch practice, instead of just thinking. This meant that he could, probably, play in the Quidditch cup - and that he had a few months to endear real goodwill in his future bride. A few months to accustom himself to the idea of doing this to someone.

"I think I can do that," Cash said. He stopped moving around, finally looked Tiberius in the eye. "I can do that."

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   Tiberius Lestrange

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MJ made this!

"Good," Tiberius said briskly, rising from his chair. "Then we've nothing more to discuss. Write if you come across any unexpected obstacles," he directed. He wasn't keen on getting a letter from Cassius with a laundry list of problems for him to solve, but it was much preferable to having their next interaction be one like this — Tiberius forcing his presence on his cousin after months of silence. Hopefully Cassius would actually do something this time around.