October 6th, 1892 - outside the (Lucius) Lestrange household

Cash was chain smoking. He'd stopped chain smoking over a year ago, but lately there hadn't been any good reasons not to smoke, and cigarettes calmed his nerves. He usually didn't chain smoke outside the walkway for his own house, but he didn't smoke in the Cannons stadium anymore, and this was the least exhausting space he could think of.

He'd been aware for several minutes that an individual on the sidewalk was watching him. Cash finally blew a smoke ring at them and said, "If you want to look like a muggle, you shouldn't watch me like that."

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ideally open to someone trying to investigate belphoebe for the SWP!

  

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MJ made this!

If he was trying to put the Sight to some real use and concentrate on narrowing down the murderer, rather than the wild goose chase of warning any potential next victims of innumerable possible causes of death, then it made sense to be methodical about it. After all, glimpses of any concrete details would only be valuable in so far as he recognised them from reality.

So he had started in scouting out the suspects’ houses in his spare time, just in case any of them sparked a feeling of déjà vu. A street in London first, and he had gotten out his pocketbook and a pencil and was lingering there, eyeing the building and the man outside it, trying to decide if he was one of the Lestranges when –

Ah. He blinked as the smoke filtered towards him, and attempted to school his expression into something that read politely embarrassed. “Sorry,” Savino said, but since he hadn’t stopped regarding him yet, he wasn’t sure if it sounded sincere or just impertinent. Then, in curiosity (or maybe still impertinence): “Are you invisible to muggles out here?” Maybe the whole house was?

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Cash shook his head. "Not — invisible," he said. "They don't look for long, though." To muggles, the Lestrange property and the people in it were always the least interesting thing happening on the street — and why would they stare at the least interesting thing? They could be easy to confuse, that way, or so Cash understood it.

"Do you want something?"

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MJ made this!

“I, ah – won’t say no to a cigarette, if you’re offering,” Savino said cheerfully enough, although he suspected the stranger had not at all been offering. Nevertheless, he couldn’t exactly explain what he was doing here – well, he could, but he doubted it would go down very well. I’m just trying to decide whether your relative is a mass murderer. Oh, and also what the building looks like from the back.

“You live here, then?” Savino added casually, because – in case the request for a cigarette (and an extra excuse to linger here) didn’t work out – he may as well push his luck a little.

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Cash hadn't been offering, but found himself striding over the sidewalk to hand a cigarette to the stranger nonetheless. "I don't have matches," he said. This was true, but he also wanted to see how the stranger would react to having to do magic in public. "And I do live in there."

For now.

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MJ made this!

One step forwards, and one step back. Savino took the cigarette into his hand, well aware that he wasn’t carrying matches either. He held the cigarette contemplatively for a moment, twirling it between his fingers, a little at a loss – glanced down at his jacket pocket where his wand was and then along the pavement, just to see if he could get away with it. He might have risked it – it was a small law to break, and would hardly matter if he didn’t get caught – but with someone (a Lestrange, for that matter) watching him so inscrutably, it felt a little like walking into a trap.

Savino glanced over the man’s shoulder, and ambled a pace nearer to the house’s walkway. He nodded his head in that direction, deciding that if brazenness hadn’t let him down yet, he may as well carry on with it. “Do you mind if I – step in for a moment, then?” Just onto the property, maybe, if it was hazy to muggles; or maybe there was a way around the side of the house, a garden at the back or something. That would be... convenient for more reasons than one.

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Cash didn't really care if this man wandered in, but someone probably would. "You can come in if you tell me your name," he offered, after a beat, "And if I can walk with you." Was he lonely, or just bored? Maybe it was both, and maybe it was also the security that the Lestrange home offered — Cash was strong enough in defensive spells that even if this spindly man had ill intentions, nothing bad could happen to him in the shadow of his father's house.

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MJ made this!

Parting with his name also felt like a trap – for all he knew, this Lestrange would report him straight to law enforcement. For intruding or snooping or, well, something.

(Or this fellow had guessed what he was actually interested in, the murders, and had nonchalantly decided to lead him right to Belphoebe Lestrange like a fly sent to the spider’s web.)

Oh well. He wasn’t afraid of being murdered today, even if she was the culprit – and he didn’t have anything to lose by getting himself arrested, either. So, casting off any sensible hesitation he should have had, he offered, carefree: “Savino Zabini.” He strode over onto the property before Lestrange could change his mind, glancing upwards as if admiring the architecture. “It’s a nice house,” he remarked, slowing to let his impromptu host lead the way. “Do you live with your family?” (Merlin. If this wasn’t Mrs. Lestrange’s house, he would really be barking up the wrong tree.)

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So he was a Zabini, but not one of the ones Cash remembered overlapping with in school — he didn't know enough about this one to have any opinions. He probably wasn't a halfblood, which meant if anyone else stumbled across them, Cash wouldn't be in trouble.

Was he too old to worry about that sort of trouble?

He sighed and followed Zabini, pausing where the man did before he decided that he would lead them into the small side-garden. (Why not?) "Thanks," Cash said, accepting the compliment for the house he hadn't bought, didn't own, and only reluctantly lived in. "A good portion of us live here," he offered, "It's my father's house. Lucius."

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MJ made this!

“...ah, Lestrange,” Savino said, with enough of the lilt of a question to signify he wasn’t sure, or had only realised it now. Hopefully he had feigned it well enough: that their family was interesting but also incidental, that Lucius’s wife had nothing to do with why he was here.

Because he was in the right place then, if Belphoebe Lestrange lived here. Once they were in the garden, Savino’s mind was more on this than anything else as he drew out his wand to light the cigarette, and his eyes already straining furtively through the nearest window, trying to match the glimpse of wallpaper to something he had Seen.

Whether it was the cause of this distractedness, or the trying too hard to seem careless, or just one of his waves of faintness that came on suddenly now and then – he accidentally dropped his pocketbook from open onto the grass. The pocketbook, where he scribbled all his notes (on the murders, and everything else) and, more particularly, had been sketching the front façade of the Lestrange house just before he’d been caught out there. Hands full, Savino was still fumbling with the cigarette and his wand, or he would have snatched it up at once.

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