5th May, 1890 — Museum of Magical Miscellany

The sun would be setting soon anyway, but Ishmael tilted his hat lower on his face to shade himself from the light. It had been cloudy all day, but of course the moment he’d dared to come out the sky had cleared, a spanner in the works. Having fed fairly recently, he could pass well enough through the London crowds, his skin looking less pale than it often could... but that did not make sunlight any less uncomfortable.

So much for coming out early; Ishmael supposed he ought to put his plans aside for awhile until dusk fell. The steps he stalked up were not ones he had often traversed, his days not usually put to visiting museums. But once in a while something from the past might weigh on him, might float up to the surface... and besides, at this time and in the unexpected flash of good weather, it would probably be near-deserted.

So he had meandered through alone like any other discreet visitor, venturing through the magical exhibits until he stumbled across a room that featured some American history. Skimming past the Salem witch trials, Ishmael passed a few display cases of letters and some wizards’ accounts of the revolutionary wars when  -

There, in the display of old artifacts, decorated by a littering of objects of the more everyday kind, like someone’s old wand and a wood carving or two - a folding knife with a hawkbill blade and a handle he swore he recognised. Labelled 1770s, and all. He leaned closer. There, a small slanted Z still etched into the side of the handle. 

“Hey!” Ishmael exclaimed, almost nose to the glass and speaking out loud entirely in spite of himself. “But that’s mine!”

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   Ophelia Devine

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Owain had found himself with a pocket of free time and had taken it upon himself to go exploring the museum. He didn't often have time for such things lately so he was enjoying his time. He had briefly spoken with Ignatius Quirrell and been left to his own devices as the other young man went back to work.

He was observing one of the displays when someone spoke next to him. He was startled, especially when the man said that something in the case was 'his'. Had something of this accidentally been mistaken as an artifact? Was the man... older than he looked? A vampire? Delusional? Owain couldn't tell but humored him anyway. "What is? The knife?"

  

“Yes,” Ishmael intoned, too shocked by his old knife’s appearance in the museum case to stop and think about pronouncing this too loudly, and still in public too.

He granted his company little more than a cursory look - long enough to decide he didn’t look like much of a threat, and a little pretty - before he resumed peering hard at the knife, gesturing at it for his new companion’s sake. “You see that Z on it too, don’t you?” Ishmael had to be certain he wasn’t hallucinating. Eyes wide at the sheer coincidence of it, he creased over in disbelieving laughter. “I dropped it in the street and - now here it is!” If that was the knife... it had slipped out of his grasp in a New York street, and here it was, back after more than a century, stirring up all the silt in his memory.

That knife had been lost precisely as long as he had been a vampire.

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It was a beautiful knife but definitely old. Which made him slightly wary of the other man. Not that he had anything against vampires - he wasn't completely sure yet that he was one - but he rather did enjoy his blood staying in his veins if he could help it. Though he had considered selling his blood once or twice when things were tough financially.

"Yes, I do," he said when he was asked if he saw a Z. "How long ago did you drop it in the street?" He wondered if the man would answer his question or backpedal.

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“Oh, a year or two after it was made,” Ishmael said easily, with only the merest touch of evasion. Any fool could work it out by looking at the label that that was an unnaturally long time ago. He suspected this boy wasn’t that much of a fool. But Ishmael liked to see the cogs turning in people’s brains. It gave him the time to gauge how that might go.

“And I rather think I’d like it back.” But in case this encounter went down badly in this boy’s mind and he thought he’d try something in this deserted museum gallery... Ishmael made sure, as his gaze roamed over the youth a second time, for longer and with more intent, that he grinned with his peculiarly sharpened canines clear as moonlight.

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"Ah," was all he could really think to say as his mind turned over this new information. The man was definitely a vampire or else just looked really good for his age which Owain doubted was the case. He didn't seem to mean anyone any harm and Owain did try to be an open-minded person so he didn't go running for the hills like his initial instinct told him to do.

Besides, they were in a museum and that gave him a sense of security. He was slightly disconcerted with the way the vampires gaze roamed over him though he smiled awkwardly back with a mild blush as the vampire grinned, showing off his fangs. Owain resisted the urge to stare and looked back into the case. "How will you do that? I somehow doubt the museum honors original ownership even for one such as yourself." This was the closest he had ever been to a vampire and he definitely had never spoken to one before.

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Either the youth was very practised at keeping a vacant expression or he was just one of those rare souls not inclined to flinch at the unknown (or worse, the inhuman), a live and let live type. Ishmael was too attuned to the smell of blood to miss the colour rising to his cheeks, but his smile seemed more bashful than anything else. Hm.

“Good question,” Ishmael admitted, still smiling in spite of being slightly stumped. He could take it by force and make a scene and risk arrest. He could get Monty or one of the others to pull off a little museum heist, but the knife was hardly worth as much as their usual hauls, and ‘sentiment’ had been a priority to the gang precisely never. He could try and make a case for original ownership as the young man said, but he wasn’t sure it would go down well. “I don’t know. I’m not sure they and I will agree on at what point graverobbing becomes a historical pursuit,” Ishmael said lightly, thoughtfully. He broadened his smile again, only half-joking. “You don’t think it’ll work if I just ask nicely?”

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The older man seemed to have zero idea about what to do to get his knife back. Owain also had no ideas to offer the other man given his morals against thievery. That was one of the only actual options that seemed plausible though. "I very much doubt it," he chuckled. Especially since most wizards were repulsed by vampires as this man obviously was. "I think one of the only ways you could get it back is to sneakily snag it," he suggested reluctantly.

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He was glad if the young man was amused, but it was a pity. Ishmael had had no particular need of the knife in the century or so since he’d lost it, and yet, now that it was so close but just out of reach the temptation to take it was almost unbearable.

Like this sort of human who just wandered into his path and did not seem remotely disconcerted by him being a vampire. The sort of person possibly worth keeping around, if Ishmael could find some use for him.

Ishmael feigned shock at the suggestion - well, hardly a suggestion, he didn’t sound much like he condoned it - that came from the boy next. His gasp was a touch exaggerated in his amusement, but still he pretended to harbour that same sort of reluctance, raising an eyebrow. “And would you think worse of me if I did?” It didn’t really matter what a passing stranger thought, but Ishmael was rather intrigued to know.

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"I don't know you well enough think one way or another. And it belongs to you," he said, morality a bit divided. It was wrong to steal... but it was also the mans own possession. "It's wrong to steal but is it stealing if it was your own in the first place?" It was quite the conundrum for Owain to ponder through and probably not the time or place.

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Ishmael’s mouth spread into a wicked grin. “Another good question. Hm.” (He said, as if he had the slightest moral qualm about stealing anything.)

Still, he enjoyed a debate as much as anyone. “Quite the young philosopher, aren’t you?” he teased, folding his arms in part-impressed, part-amused thoughtfulness, and added, offhand: “Who are you, anyway?”

They had done plenty of talking about Ishmael already. And for all his moral conundrums, this kid was still rather relaxed about a little interview with a vampire, which was nice.

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Like any wizard, Owain felt a mild unease at how the other mans fangs flashed in the light when he grinned. Out of a deep need to be polite, he tried not to let that show on his face.

"Oh? I don't think so. I tend to be told that I think too much," Owain said simply. He flushed when he was asked who he was. "Owain Edwards. I play second string for the Kenmere Kestrals."

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That explanation of his profession was a fair amount of nonsense to Ishmael, who had not known enough about the magical world to have any quidditch knowledge in the mid-1700s, never mind keep up with it in the years since. He fancied Kenmare was somewhere in Ireland, and it sank in that it was quidditch eventually, but for a moment there Ishmael’s mind was gloriously blank.

“Oh, so you must be famous,” Ishmael intoned, not unkindly; second-string meant nothing to him, and nor had the name Owain Edwards, so if anything he ought to be apologetic for not recognising the boy. (It did strike him as slightly funny that he had been asking moral questions of a sportsman - but then, the questions were being asked by a career criminal, so stones, glass houses, et cetera.) “Forgive me. I can be a little... behind the times. What position do you play?” He asked now, using this more as another opportunity to eye him again than to satisfy any actual curiosity.

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Owains skin flushed when the man said he must be famous. "Well, not yet. I don't get to play often but soon enough I will be a starting player!" He had paid his dues without complaint and soon he would reap the rewards of being able to be promoted. "I'm a beater. I get the feeling you don't quite follow Quidditch though."

  

He did not miss the blood rushing to the boy’s cheeks, and cared only because recognising it stirred the usual thirst - of course it did. However, empty as this museum was, it was not the place for snacking, so Ishmael pursed his lips against the idea of it, begrudging as always of his own self-control.

“I know you’re the one with the heavy bat,” Ishmael said with a knowing grin, as if that was information only an expert possessed. Tall and lanky, young Edwards must be stronger than he looked. “I haven’t had occasion to follow it too closely,” he said, with an easy shrug, though ‘not having occasion’ in more than a century was not the best of excuses. Moreso was that the seasons changed so fast, and that he had so rarely had occasion to linger in one place long enough to get invested.

That said, he had been lurking between Hogsmeade and London for nigh on a normal life, so perhaps he should start. Monty had a quidditch friend or two, and Ishmael had just met a soon-to-be starting player now, hadn’t he? “Do they pay you well, at least?”

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"Aha, yes," Owain said with a chuckle. He'd had trained up through his years of playing at Hogwarts to master handling the beaters bat. It was not a role he had original imagined himself in but he had ended up there after he had tried out for the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team.

"Decently enough. More than enough to have a warm meal every night, at any rate." Couldn't be said for some of his neighbors.

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