"Yeah, of course," Cash said, he strode across the room to stand in front of the dresser, hands on the top just in case it started to move. If he'd been charmed by the prank, he was bemused by Greengrass crawling under the dresser - it was like the other man had an endless well of curiosity to pull from, lending him this sudden infusion of bright springiness.

"Anything?" Cash asked, leaning slightly against the top of the dresser.

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"Yeah. I think so, anyway," Ford answered. He could see something, sort of, but in just the moonlight it was barely more than a glint at the part of the dresser that dipped too low for him to really see. This was probably intentional on their part, the poor lighting — most Muggle seances and hauntings and things had that element in common, because it was easier to get away with things when people had to squint to see them happen. Ford scooted back out from under the dresser and reached his arm in, swiping at the space he'd seen the little glint until his fingers brushed the wire.

"Ah! Here," he said, tugging it out until it would be visible to Lestrange. "They've got it run through the floorboards. Probably rigged through some pulleys to the outside — or maybe a shed or something," he speculated. They had quite the set up, here, with a lot of different elements that would need to be facilitated — the weather tonight wasn't too bad, but if he was planning this out he would have wanted a roof over the control area in case of inclement weather. If it had been sleeting or even just raining tonight, he imagined whoever had to stay up and tug levers and play phonographs would have been rather miserable.

"This is pretty elaborate, this place," he pointed out. "You picked a good one to start with. I'm a little worried you'll be disappointed next time, though, if they don't have wires running through the floors and phonographs in the walls."

They had not really discussed there being a next time, but this was fun. Ford thought Lestrange was having fun, too, weirdness from earlier aside — so they were friends now, weren't they, and they might do things like this all the time, whenever they liked. (Probably not on work nights, in the future, though; he was going to regret this sudden burst of energy when work started at eight tomorrow morning).

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Cash kept one hand on the dresser, but crouched next to Greengrass, and grinned at the sight of the wire. "This is so neat," he said, enthusiasm about the inventiveness of the haunted house keeping him from pretending to be cool and unaffected by it. He hadn't realized muggles could be this creative; they really could be more clever with things than he'd thought, even if they were all wrong about it.

And the prospect of a next time was exciting too, because if they were talking about next time they were friends, and that meant that Greengrass had forgotten Cash's whole weird thing earlier, too. He tapped his fingers against the top of the dresser, grinning.

"Well, I'm sure we'll come up with some way to be entertained," he said brightly, "Even if the muggles aren't as inventive as they are here."

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Ford smiled over at Lestrange. He very nearly said I'm sure you could find plenty of ways to entertain me, as a tease, but at the last minute decided against it and bit the side of his tongue. The remark had popped into his head without much consideration on his part, and he honestly wasn't sure what he would have meant by it, but he thought it might have implied a certain type of entertainment. Lestrange might have known what he meant by it, or might have assumed. This was the Quidditch conversation at the Sonata all over again, and that was a road he didn't want to go down. Despite his boost of confidence from a moment ago and his vague thought that perhaps he might become the instigator of such conversations instead of the recipient, that wasn't really who he was.

Besides that, things had gotten... weird with Dorian Fisk. They hadn't exactly been friends before the Sonata, but they were at least friendly acquaintances, and they might have had the potential to be friends since Dorian's younger brother had been Ford's roommate all through Hogwarts. Afterwards, they'd had that encounter at the post office that had left his head reeling, and now when he thought of Fisk he felt guilty and embarrassed and conflicted. He couldn't have articulated why, but needless to say he doubted very much that the two of them were going to become friends.

The last thing he wanted to do was to set off all that with Lestrange, even if they were currently alone in the Irish countryside, and even if Lestrange was sort of leaning over him now that he'd crouched down like that, and even if when the other man looked at him with that sparkle of curiosity in his eyes it made Ford feel clever and interesting in a way that was softly exhilarating.

Ford had maybe been staring at him and smiling and biting his tongue for half a beat too long when something crashed, loudly, in the hallway. It made him jump slightly, and Ford dropped the wire as he moved to sit up.

"Your turn," he suggested, with a nod to the hallway. "Go figure it out. I'll help if you can't find it."

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Cash could be bad at tracking the passage of time in conversations; he didn't notice the extra beat, too interested in the wire and the haunted house and the prospect of having a friend who (mostly, at least) did not know he was a little broken. He jolted at the sound of the crash in the hallway. "All right," Cash said brightly, getting up and finally taking his hand off the top of the dresser. He stepped into the hallway and squinted to try to figure out what had moved - a hutch was slightly off-kilter, and was, additionally, one of the few largeish pieces of furniture in the hallway that could have made that substantial of a noise.

He stepped closer to it, mimicked Greengrass - slid his hand over the top and sides of the hutch to try to find the wire. No such luck; Cash laid on the ground and scooted closer to the hutch. It was too narrow underneath for him to fully slide under it, so he reached underneath, fingers grasping for a wire; the risk of the hutch moving again did not really occur to him as a problematic possibility.

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Ford followed a few steps behind Lestrange, watching with amusement as he started investigating. Despite having never done this before, he seemed to know what he was doing. He must have been paying attention, and that thought gave Ford a small internal rush (even though he'd had no reason to think he hadn't been previously). It was nice to think that someone was genuinely interested in him, as a person, when so much of the conversations he had since Hogwarts were so stiff and structured and only involved feigned curiosity. On the other hand, there were only two of them out here — it wasn't like Ford had much competition for Lestrange's attention.

The other man got down on the floor, and no sooner had his arm disappeared below the hutch than it started to wobble uncertainly. "Watch out, it's —" he started, thinking perhaps Lestrange was making it wobble by moving his arm too actively, but before he could finish it gave another lurch. Someone must have pulled the wire — which they should have been expecting, really, because the dresser had at least two good moves in it before they retired it. Maybe three, if it had moved while Ford was still trying to get back upstairs too.

There were plenty of jobs in the magical world that relied on quick reflexes; Ford's was not one of them. He did his best to get in the way of the hutch before it fell on top of Lestrange, and succeeded in blocking the top with his shoulder. Doing this required him to sort of step over Lestrange, though, where he was on the ground, and it was only sort of successful: a book end that had been placed atop the hutch as a decoration slid off and toppled towards Lestrange's head.

Ford winced. "Sorry," he said. At least most of Lestrange was unscathed?

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Cash felt the wire, and felt it twinge out of reach, a moment before he was aware of the hutch moving. He stilled under the hutch, as if moving would make things worse - he couldn't see the way the hutch was going to fall from down here, and was worried of accidentally putting himself in a more vulnerable position. Cash's breath hissed out as the bookend hit his head; he reached up with his free hand to rub at his hair, but it had been a bookend and not the hutch itself, so - wasn't that bad.

"Nah, I should've seen that coming," Cash said; he was still flat on the ground on his stomach and couldn't see, but he was fairly certain that Greengrass was standing over him now. He reached up with his fingers again to catch the wire. "I think I've got the wire," he added.

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He'd just taken a bookend to the back of his head, and Lestrange was still focused on getting hold of the wire. Ford shook his head, but he couldn't help but chuckle, too. "Great," he said, still leaning on the hutch just in case, although it seemed to have settled for the moment. "Now let go of it and get up before something worse happens to you, hm?"

Not that there was much that might happen, now — Ford wasn't planning on letting the hutch topple over on him, and he was already standing here so it wasn't as though it was going to surprise him and fall before he could get to it. And the bookend was already gone, so there wasn't anything else left to slide off the surface of it.

"Are you going to have a big lump on your head, do you think?" he asked, lightly teasing. "I'll bet there's ice in the kitchen." Presumably there would have to be, if they kept any food in there at all, and with the help of magic they wouldn't have any trouble breaking off a bit to help with Lestrange's head. Of course, if they were going to be using magic there were probably better things to do for a lump on the back of the head than just ice, but Ford hadn't learned anything beyond the most basic healing magic, so he wasn't exactly confident in his ability to administer anything. And if Lestrange actually had a head injury, it probably wasn't a great idea for him to try it on himself.

  

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Cash let go of the wire and backed out from under the hutch, carefully; he brushed against Greengrass' trouser leg on his way and sat back on his heels once he'd cleared his arm from out from under the hutch. He grinned up at Greengrass and got to his feet before actually responding, and reached up again to feel for the pain spot on his head, and the small soft spot where a bruise was forming.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I'll live," Cash said, a little playful, "But we could get that tea, if they're done smashing things around."

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Ford frowned briefly at Lestrange shrugging it off so soon. It had looked heavy, but who was he to argue with the person who'd actually gotten hit with it? Hopefully he actually thought he was fine, and wasn't just trying to downplay it for some reason. It wasn't as though Ford was going to judge him for getting an injury — particularly not when it had been his own failure to catch the thing that had resulted in it in the first place. But Lestrange hadn't been looking, so maybe he hadn't seen how much Ford had tried and failed to prevent anything from falling on him.

"Alright, if you say so," he relented, moving away from the hutch now that Lestrange was back on his feet. "But if you end up with some lasting head trauma and you get dizzy during a Quidditch match and you fall off your broom and die, you can't blame me, alright? No vengeful hauntings," he teased, turning his back to the other man so that he could start towards the stairs. "And watch out," he cautioned. "They might not be done yet. You never know."

  

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Cash laughed. "No vengeful hauntings, then," he said, "But am I allowed to haunt you in an annoying way? Rearranging your desk, and the like." He followed Greengrass towards the stairs. Some of the portraits were moving on their magnets, again, or still - Cash wasn't entirely sure.

"I promise not to stick my head under any more suspicious furniture, too," he added, almost as an afterthought.

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"Probably for the best," Ford agreed with a laugh, as he rounded the corner on the stairs and headed down. He glanced back at Lestrange briefly before continuing, "If you insist on haunting me, I only want... things that would spook other people, but that we think are funny," he decided. Like this haunted house; it was designed to frighten, and for a certain audience he was sure it would have that effect. The two of them had been having a grand time exploring it, though.

He felt like Lestrange could manage it, even though they hadn't known each other that long. Ford didn't tell people about his thing about haunted houses very often, because it wasn't the sort of thing he thought anyone else could appreciate or even understand. He didn't even tell his siblings about this, really, but Lestrange seemed to get it, for whatever reason.

"Like..." he started, fishing for a good example. "Mm. Something really morbid, but kind of cute. Like drawing on the bathroom mirror with blood, except instead of murder it just says good morning," he said, with a smile. Real ghosts couldn't do that, of course, but it was the sort of thing that showed up in Muggle ghost stories with some regularity — and this was all hypothetical anyway, and they were in a Muggle haunted house, so why not?

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For whatever reason, Cash was really genuinely amused at the thing about the mirror - he laughed again. "That is kind of cute," he agreed - it was also exactly the sort of thing that Greengrass would find funny and charming that almost no one else would. They didn't know each other very well, but it was just seemed to be so very him- because Ford Greengrass was a person who went to haunted houses and seances for fun, who talked to ghosts all the time and seemed to enjoy it.

"And I'll whisper through the walls, but it won't be anything creepy - just some song that'll get stuck in your head," Cash said, "All of your bookends will be in random places all the time, too, with little notes on them."

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Ford laughed, at the bit about the bookends. That was something no one else would have understood, surely, because if Lestrange did die in this hypothetical scenario his cause of death would doubtless have been listed as something far less obscure than that. They could claim he'd gotten knocked off his broom by the wind, which happened to Quidditch players all the time and wasn't as weird and anticlimactic as being killed on delay by a bookend that had only fallen three feet. The bookend could be their secret.

"Rearrange all my books to spell secret messages with the first words of the titles," he suggested, taking the last four steps two at a time for no reason at all except that he was having fun. "Show up behind me when I see my reflection in water or a glass, but just make silly faces."

  

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"Leave some footprints, but just to spell out things like hello and bring an umbrella," Cash suggested, grinning as Greengrass hopped down the last two steps. He followed him down, not mimicking but still taking the steps a little faster, like the silliness was contagious. He turned down the hallway towards the kitchen. It was almost like it wasn't so late, anymore - although Cash had not felt the late hour yet at all - just because they were sort of poking fun, joking around.

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"Right, a benevolent ghost," Ford said with a grin. "Warn me about the weather and tell me to wear thicker gloves next time I visit Ireland in February." His hands were fine now, of course, but he'd been quite ready to come inside earlier when they'd finished their exploration of the grounds. That, and being inside felt a little safer — both of the occasions where Lestrange had started acting weird and sad and possibly unhinged had happened outside, in the strong wind and under the large white moon. Inside, on the other hand, Lestrange was being fun and curious and enthusiastic, and didn't mind jokes about dying and coming back to haunt people with little morbid pranks for the rest of time. Maybe it had to do with the setting — maybe it was just too big, outside, and too exposed.

That had been an unexpected train of thought, and Ford momentarily felt a little awkward about it. He didn't want Lestrange to know he was still thinking about the moment in the woods, because if it was the sort of thing Lestrange wanted to talk about he'd had ample opportunity to bring it up before. It didn't feel like a thing he had chosen to share; more that Ford had just been in the right (wrong?) place to witness it, so thinking about it now made him feel mildly guilty. Like he was eavesdropping on a conversation he wasn't really supposed to be a part of, or reading a letter that had fallen at his feet but was addressed to someone else.

"You get a kettle on, and I'll look for the tea?" he asked. They'd reached the kitchen, which was good — it meant they had a ready distraction and Ford didn't need to decide whether to say anything about what was on his mind.

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