WHO: Ignatius Travers and Bellatrix Lestrange WHAT: A shopping spree! WHEN: This afternoon WHERE: Knockturn, probably WARNINGS: Sharp objects
The air seemed to go still when they entered the shop, but Bellatrix was used to having eyes on her. It came with the territory, and she couldn’t say she didn’t enjoy the way her reputation allowed her to draw attention to herself. It meant she usually got exactly what she wanted.
“Oh look,” she said, approaching a display of hats and throwing a smirk over her shoulder at Ignatius. “It’s not too late to find yourself a bonnet.”
Ignatius tilted his head to the side, considering the hats for a moment. He supposed he shouldn't light them all on fire to prove a point — people would be so upset. “I’m considering your suggestion and then promptly discarding it. Though perhaps the golem can have a hat.”
“It needs an exploding one, after all,” she said with a mirthless laugh. But they weren’t here for hats, cursed or otherwise, and she passed the display to walk deeper into the store, where there were far more promising items for sale.
“Should I ask one of the shop clerks where they keep the knives?” Ignatius asked as he followed. “What do you think their expression will be: complete terror or slow burning anger?”
“Complete terror, of course,” Bellatrix answered before scanning the shop for one of them. She inclined her head in the direction of one that was hiding behind a shelf full of well-worn books whose ages were likely older than the two Death Eaters’ combined. She grinned at Ignatius. “We’ve earned this.”
Ignatius grinned in return, slow and catlike as he approached the clerk who looked decidedly put out that her hiding place wasn’t going to save her. “Excuse me,” he said pleasantly. “Might you be able to tell us where you keep your knives?”
The sound the woman made was something resembling a squeak, and Ignatius wasn’t convinced there were actually intelligible words coming out of her mouth. But she pointed towards a display in the back, and Ignatius thanked her graciously. (“We have some very important business requiring knives, you see.”)
“I love it when they’re terrified,” he said to Bellatrix.
“Just wait ‘til they find out what we’re about to do with them,” Bellatrix said on the trail of a laugh as she reached for one of the knives. She rested the blade flat against her hand and fell silent as she considered the weight of it.
After a long moment, she glanced at her friend again. “Did Theodora mention I sent her a knife from my personal collection?”
“I think she did,” Ignatius replied, not actually entirely sure if she had or not. Not because he wouldn’t have been interested, but just because there so many things he was trying to keep track of and remember about his daughter. There were too many years of things to learn. “It was nice of you. She should be trained in how to properly use it.”
“I thought so,” Bellatrix said, replacing the knife in her hands to pick up another. “I suspect she could use some training in plenty of other things as well.” She watched him from the corner of her eye. “Have you discussed it with her yet?”
“Not explicitly,” Ignatius replied, taking a knife and considering it. “But she did seem to show some interest recently. I’ve thought I might bring up the idea.”
“I think you should,” Bellatrix said decisively. “The Dark Lord would be pleased to have her. And lucky, if she’s capable of anything near what you are.”
“Of course she is. She’s my daughter,” Ignatius said, as if that was something he was sure of despite his many years away. Certainly, what he’d seen had only reinforced the idea. Perhaps bringing her into the fold would help ease the rift left by his many years in Azkaban.
He picked up a particularly large knife. “This might make a good appendage.”
“Have we decided to make our golem male?” Bellatrix asked with a tight smirk before she shifted her knife to one hand and picked up another.
“One more thing with which to cut down our enemies doesn’t seem like the worst idea. Think of what a machete there could do.” His own smirk was more jovial as he put down the large knife and picked up a machete in its place, waving it around as if to prove his point.
“Just like a man,” Bellatrix said with a laugh as she replaced both the blades in her hands. “Swinging his sword around wherever he pleases.”
“That’s why I’d be happy to help —” She picked up a smaller knife by its hilt and twirled it between her fingers. “If you find you need a woman’s touch with Theodora.”
Ignatius looked at the knives, but really he was considering Bellatrix’s words. While a part of him certainly liked the idea of Theodora joining as a father/daughter bonding activity, he knew that she might appreciate having another perspective. He couldn’t think of one better than Bellatrix. “I think she might like that.”
“I think so too,” she said, closing her fist around the knife’s handle. “Almost as much as she’ll like getting to know her father.”
There was a smile, as genuine a smile as Ignatius’s tended to be these days. “We’ll have to broach the topic. But first, we have to finish the task at hand.” The knife selection was better than he’d anticipated.
The smile drew one from Bellatrix as she shifted her grip to the knife’s blade. In a swift motion, she turned and sent it flying through the air. The clerk let out another squeak and ducked behind her counter as the knife lodged itself in the wall just inches from where her head had been.