WHO: Robin Burke & Angelina Johnson WHAT: Shopping! WHEN: April 21, evening WHERE: Borgin & Burkes
With too much free time and too much to think about, Angelina had hexted Robin to see if he could meet her at his family’s store and then, with several winking emojis, asked him not to murder her. She knew the business with his Death Eater cousin was kind of a big deal, if not extremely awkward, but she didn’t really think Robin would murder her. He was a Hufflepuff. And she’d like to see him try anyway.
Mostly she was giving him the same benefit of the doubt she’d started to give Sinistra. Not that she would fess up to either lapse in stubbornness.
Especially not the Sinistra one.
Slytherins, after all.
Hidden behind extremely large sunglasses and a turban that rivalled Quirrell’s, Angelina breezed into Borgin and Burke’s and right up to Robin at the counter. “I’ll have one of everything.”
It was not exactly uncommon for people to come into B&B incognito. Despite the shops reputation for (mostly) being discreet, sometimes people didn’t want to be seen buying things from them. Robin had long ago decided that it wasn’t something that he cared about that much, as long as people paid and paid well. Usually, however, they were not quite as creative in their disguises.
He lifted his head briefly from his notes and said, “I don’t think you can afford that. How about one of something?”
“You can’t just let me have this this once, Roberto?” Angelina slid her giant sunglasses down her nose and peered at Robin over the top of them.
“How much silver are you gonna cross my palm with?” Robin asked, looking at the newcomer properly as she lowered her sunglasses. Recognition followed quickly and he nodded at her. “Ms Johnny, I like your turban.”
“Cheers,” she said brightly, pushing her sunglasses back up with one hand and touching her turban with her other. “I think this is my new signature look, honestly. I’m calling it Trelawney chic.” The talk of silver made her feel like she needed to stall. She had some silver, but now that she was there it didn’t feel like she’d allotted enough.
Robin’s nose scrunched up and he tilted his head to one side, frowning. “Do you think Trelawney was chic? I think she always looked like a lost, confused owl. She probably hooted her way down the corridors.”
Angelina propped her elbow on the edge of the counter and leaned over so she could prop her chin on her hand, considering. “Maybe she was a babe back in the day. I need her to have been to be honest. It’s too sad otherwise. Or.” She gestured at Robin. “She’s an owl who, like Pinocchio, became a real girl.”
“There’s probably a spell you could do to test that,” Robin said, with a grin spreading slowly across his face. “That, or just offer her different bits of owl treats and she’d just —” He broke off to do his best impression of an owl, widening his eyes as much as he could. Trelawney had to have extremely wide, round eyes.
“Actually, it’s probably good I’m no longer there or I’d try and do that now.”
With a too loud laugh that made her turban wobble, Angelina stood up straight again. “Really, though,” she said, grinning. “Because I’d be daring you to and you can’t say no to a dare. It’s against the rules.” She gave Robin a matter-of-fact shrug.
Robin wrinkled his nose at her and shook his head. “I say no to a lot of things,” he said, airily, “especially if there’s rules involved. Dares aren’t catnip to me like Gryffindors.” It wasn’t quite true — there was still a bit of him that was very competitive — but he didn’t need to say that. It was his own kind of secret. “What do you need, so I can say yes or no to that?”
“Oh! Right, so,” Angelina said, casually, like she wasn’t about to suggest doing bodily harm to someone. “I need to get back at someone. Because he’s been running around bothering the people I like unchecked and I think he needs to be checked. I thought maybe you could help.”
A smile sparked at the corners of Robin’s mouth and he leaned on his forearms across the counter. “We have many things that could, if the user wants, hurt someone. What kind of thing are you looking for?” He turned his head and scanned the shopfloor, despite knowing that no one was in at the moment. “I’m gonna guess it’s for one of our hooded friends so — is it for directly fighting them? Like a knife?”
“Montague,” Angelina said, as though she were a Capulet herself. But then her expression cleared and she looked at Robin, studying him over the rim of her sunglasses. “Not a knife, I don’t think. Yet anyway. I want to make him squirm from afar for now.”
Robin nodded, slowly. Graham had been a sore spot for a number of people, particularly Angelina and her friends. Graham was also a Death Eater. They should expect it.
“Okay,” he said, cheerfully, before rounding the counter. “Now, not to brag, but I can definitely find something that could make him squirm. There’s some really funny envelopes you can send anything in that are going to make his skin feel like it’s on fire for, oh, a long time. He’d be dancing in his seat.” It was fairly tame, as far as B&B went, but Robin bypassed a couple of items and sections immediately. He had a feeling they weren’t at all what Angelina (the Order?) wanted.
“If it’s from afar, we’ve got a good selection of things you can send through the post that look fairly innocuous.” Robin banged on a cupboard in a rhythm that caused it to spring open. There were shelves inside, stacked high with items. “You could send him a lovers gift, even — some lovely heart shaped ones but,” he trailed off for a second, then shrugged, “it gives them phantom pains in the chest. Nothing physical. It’s all in the head.”
Angelina studied the hearts. She didn’t want to send Graham something that he might pass along to Sinistra. “He doesn’t seem secure enough in his masculinity for something like that,” was what she said instead. “I like that, though. He tried to blow me up so.” She twisted her mouth at the memory, like she was thinking and not trying not to think.
“What about something he’d use?” she asked. “Like a mug or a quill?”
“I have a quill that’s a little bit poisoned,” Robin started, in a heady rush, and then he said, “Or some that are only a little bit cursed. This one would make his skin scaley, it’s hard to remove. One of the mugs there — that gold one — would make skin rot away of its original recipient. I don’t think it’s been used since, though.”
The mug was tempting. But it looked like it might be real gold and was probably more than Angelina could spend. And if no one had used it since that first time… “Do you have any quills that are a little more cursed? I like the idea of the scaley skin one, but I kind of want him to suffer.”
“Of course.” Robin made a considering noise as he gently moved some of the mugs, taking care not to directly touch a number of them. He had more sense and most things in the shop needed to be handled with a certain finesse. “This one will cause skin to flake and peel, like some kind of highly accelerated skin condition. These couple are rashes of varying severity. There’s some here to burst blood vessels, too.”
Angelina’s eyes followed along as Robin spoke. “The skin condition, I think,” she said with a nod at the quill in question. “Will it make him flake and peel everywhere?”
Robin nodded after a moment. “He’d probably need to be in contact with it for a couple minutes in order for it to work properly, but I’d say so. It’s a strong enough curse.”
After a beat of consideration, Angelina asked, “Do you think he’d use it?”
“It depends how suspicious he is, or how you send it,” Robin said. “I mean, you could just sign anyone’s name on it and he’s liable to use it. People don’t really check these things — as long as it’s believable.” He gnawed on his lip for a moment, taking a step back and folding his arms. “Honestly, I don’t know enough about Graham’s parents to know if they’d be sending him something, but one of his friends or something would probably do.”
“Maybe I could sign it from his new boss,” Angelina said, her mouth starting to twist again. But she took a deep breath and gave Robin a thumbs up. “A ‘great job being a terrible hitwizard!’ present or something.”
A more than a little cursed quill kind of didn’t feel like enough after everything Graham had done — after everything the Death Eaters as a whole had done, even. Everything she’d done felt paltry in comparison. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she glanced at the quills again.
“Actually.” She shoved her hand into her pocket, clasping her collection of coins for a few seconds before hauling it out and showing Robin what was inside. She whipped the sunglasses off and looked at him now, her expression much more earnest than any she liked to use around most people. “I want to do something worse. What can I get for this?”
It wasn’t an insignificant amount. Robin looked at the coins and then back up at Angelina. He’d rarely seen her look quite like that and he couldn’t stop thinking about conversations he’d had over the past couple of weeks, months. He bit his lip and looked around the shop again before back at her.
“Tell you what,” he said, “you give me what you were planning on spending anyway and let me worry about the rest. I’m — well, you know.” For a moment, the sentence struggled its way through his throat: he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say before he continued, “I’m sorry about what’s been happening. Let’s not talk about it. Have you seen this beautiful scarf that would choke him?”
Angelina looked down at Robin’s apology, swallowing hard against the sudden lump in her throat. She was never really sure what to say to someone when they were sorry. But as he breezed past it and onto the scarf she looked back up at him, the corners of her mouth tilting up just a little bit. “No, but I think that sounds brilliant.” She paused, jabbing the toe of her shoe at the floor. “Thanks for your help, Roberto.”
“It's nothing, really,” Robin said, a grin ghosting over his face. He shrugged slightly at her, as if there was nothing else he could do about it. “I'm here to help, aren't I? And,” he reached forward, lifting the scarf lightly to present it to her, “most of these are really beautiful.”
Her eyes flicked between Robin’s face and the scarf, but Angelina didn’t reach out to touch the scarf. She nodded, though. “I’ll take that one, then,” she said. Some of the humor seemed to finally return to her features and she grinned at him now, tossing her turban in lieu of her hair, pressing a hand to the side of it to right it as she added, “Plus now you can say you knew me before I was a scarf-wielding murderess.”
“I’ll get it wrapped for you,” Robin said, voice dipping towards seriousness as he leaned in a little closer and added, “But only if I get such a famous murderess’ autograph first.”
Angelina laughed and leaned in a little closer herself. “I’ll autograph whatever you like.”
“Well!” Robin declared, raising an eyebrow. “That means it’s time to get my tits out.”