MAUGRIM (maugrim) wrote in raveled, @ 2017-01-12 13:56:00 |
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"What's this?" Rodolphus gestured loosely at a thick envelope set aside from the rest of their usual mail. Bellatrix was frowning deeply at a letter—he groped absently at his memory for the sender but came up empty—and not listening. They did this often. She would hear him in a moment. Unbothered, Dolph helped himself to more marmalade and butter, heaped neatly on two triangles of toast. Breakfast with the Lestranges could paint an incredibly languid picture of the couple if one allowed it. And though this cross-section of their lives was no more a lie than the renderings hanging in the Gallery, it was misleading… "Hm?" Bellatrix finally set the the letter aside, lifting up her teacup so the floating silver teapot could replenish it. "Uncle Alphard thinks he might stay in the Seychelles for another month..." She paused to give Jack his obligatory good morning rub on the head before he padded towards the other side of the table to beg for bacon. "Oh, I didn't even see that one." Bella flipped over the letter Rodolphus had indicated, sniffing once she caught a quick glance at the seal. "Gringotts. Yours." Without a second glance, she handed it to him and picked up the carefully folded gossip columns, yawning. He turned it over, brow creasing as a wet nose and wiry muzzle followed, complicating his examination. "You old beggar," he muttered fondly, leaning back in his chair. The hound bumped his ribs, snuffling at the napkin tucked unceremoniously into morning clothes. In the atrium, even Lestranges deigned to be rumpled and half-dressed. But Dolph realized as he leaned to set some bacon on the floor that his socks did not quite match this morning. Maybe it was the light, filtering unevenly through conservatory windows. He let it be this. Another mouthful of tea, a brush of crumbs, and he cracked the envelope open with a vicious looking letter opener. Nine inches. Razor sharp. It opened Gringotts' buttery parchment as easy as it did a throat. "Ah, our annual options." With a wave of his fingers, Dolph summoned back his discarded reading glasses. "Overdraft protection." A huff. "Credit line increase…" he glanced at Bella. "No." At that, mirthful eyes raised to meet his, blithely ignoring the pile of unopened parcels the elf had left in the corner. "Killjoy." He turned back to the sheaf of parchment and Bella began picking over the platter of fruit, one scarlet nail hovering over the line in the paper where she had left off ("Recently spotted dining at Trois Sorcières…"). There was a little choke of laughter once she got to Narcissa's name on the list and then the whole society section was tossed unceremoniously to the bright oriental carpet, only to be snatched away by an elf doing its best to seem invisible. "I still think..." Bella slouched in her chair, voice raised slightly to be heard over the contented growl of a wolfhound eating his third breakfast "...it's so funny that we let our money be handled by rude little animals who try to kill us every couple centuries." Rodolphus frowned at her over the top of his glasses. He hadn't scratched this particular itch in a while. But it didn't matter how many times they agreed that serving was serving—even if the servants weren't especially servile—it still annoyed him. More importantly: he lifted the parchment in his hand. "Those funny animals are finally offering fraud protection on certain vaults." "Fraud protection?" Mere words didn't seem to be enough to contain Bella's disgust at the goblin cartel's latest method of extortion; her teacup vehemently met its saucer with a noise that would have horrified Lestrange ancestors. Fortunately, magical china was hardy. "For Salazar's sake, we're already paying for a DRAGON!" "Did you know," Rodolphus said, seemingly unperturbed by her outburst. He read from a list, which began at the top with—"one in five wizards are victims of identity theft?"—and increased in font size with the severity of each additional bullet point. "I don't know how to break this to you," she interrupted. "We're not easy to impersonate." He placed his finger over the next bullet point (DID YOU KNOW: Wizard credit can be ruined in as little as 72 hours?). "They're goblins, Bella. We all look the same to them." "They have identity checks in place already," Bella said stubbornly, crossing her arms. "And you do acknowledge that there's a living dragon as deterrent." "I don't deny there's a dragon." He adjusted his glasses, a silent acknowledgement that there was no real counterpoint in the shadow of a guard-dragon. "But they did send this. To us. Personally." He continued reading through the list. His eye lingered on tax deductibles. "I don't care that they were able to dredge up a goblin literate enough to spell our names, Dolph!" Bellatrix stabbed a piece of pineapple with unnecessary force. Beside their feet, Jack suddenly looked up at his humans, a mournful whine escaping him from the absence of bacon. She ignored it. "Look, it just comes down to this: no one is going to steal our identities and we don't need fraud protection because we aren't going to be robbed!" |