Harry tossed the snitch up in the air, caught it, and tried not to look as bored as he felt. Hogwarts might as well have been a thousand years ago. Now, life was going to work at the Ministry, coming home, eating cheap food, sleeping, and doing it all again. For some unfathomable reason, he'd thought being an Auror would be fun.

It was not fun.

He was behind all the other recruits because of the time he'd spent touring the world on Malfoy's knut, and he didn't care about catching Dark wizards or policing Muggle artifacts. They were all so stupid about it he was sometimes surprised he didn't discover wizards on their knees in Muggle houses sticking knives into electrical outlets asking, "What does this do?"

Not that he'd stop them if he did.

"Good day at work?" Tom asked, tossing a bag of fish and chips down on the table.

Harry eyed him. Tom's smile glittered, and his skin had that gleam it got when he was excited about a new toy, and he wasn't commenting about the knickers yesterday's witch had left on the counter. "You kill someone today?" he asked sourly.

"Noooo," Tom drew the word out.

"Find a new trinket?"

"Maybe?"

Harry tossed the snitch up one more time, caught it, then shoved it down into a pocket. "Don't suppose I can use it to kill my boss?"

"Probably not," Tom said with what sounded like genuine sympathy. "Why don't you quit?"

"I've found the need for money and food to be compelling arguments against unemployment."

Tom snorted. "Confound a few Muggles, steal their money, it'll be fine."

The concept of consequences never entered Tom's mind. It was one of the refreshing things about him. Most people fretted over things. It was wrong, or they would get caught. They wrung their hands and dillied this way and dallied that way and opportunity passed them by. Harry could only manage to muster Tom's level of indifference to the outcome when it came to girls, but he had to admit it worked. It worked every time. "Maybe, you're right," he said.

"I always am." Tom pulled plates out of the cupboard and began pouring tonight's takeaway onto them. "Want to make a delivery with me later?"

"Bad enough I have to do my job. Why would I want to do yours?"

"Because your brother is asking you to?"

Harry rolled his eyes and accioed a fork from the drawer, but they both knew he'd go. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do, and Tom's plans had to be more interesting than the day's lecture on charming Muggle objects and why you shouldn't do it, complete with a quiz planned for tomorrow on being able to cite Ministry code and take charms off things Aurors working in the field had confiscated. Harry had taken a peek in the box before leaving. A watch tried to bite him for his trouble.

They'd only gotten three steps inside the door of Hepzibah Smith's cluttered house for Harry to realize he'd made a mistake. The elf eyed him with the scowl and muttered words under its breath they all pretended not to hear. Harry guessed the creature had slipped into old age and suffered from whatever the elf version of dementia was. He hoped it didn't decide to kill him what with the way the lady of the house seemed a bit surprised he was there. An addlepated elf was dangerous.

"Get some cocoa, Hokey," Madam Smith said, averting that particular disaster and sending the elf off to the kitchen mumbling, "cocoa" over and over again under its breath as if it were afraid it would forget.

Tom slid a necklace box her way and whispered, "new trainee," under his breath, and she brightened up a bit. Harry trailed the pair of them as she led Tom through a veritable rat's nest of magical flotsam. Her shelves had junk. Her tables had junk. Harry wasn't sure what it was about wizards and witches that made them such hoarders, but for a people who could create almost anything they needed out of rocks, they seemed awfully obsessed with keeping every last trinket that came their way.

And talking about them.

Madam Smith had a story for every artifact, and by the second pile, Harry began to be afraid she really did mean to share them all. By the third, he was convinced of it. By the fourth, he hoped Tom's plans for the evening included killing her.

The necklace Tom had brought went into a drawer with, as far as Harry could see, a dozen other necklaces. "What's that one?" Tom asked as nonchalantly as possible, reaching his hand down to touch one of the boxes.

"Oh, you do have an eye," Madam Smith said. "This is the one I was telling you about, and right to it you go, like a niffler in heat."

Well, that was a disgusting image, but Harry kept his face blank as Madam Smith lifted out a dull green locket. It didn't look like anything special. Too much time spent in Slytherin where girls talked about jewellery – and compared it - in specific detail had left Harry with enough unwanted knowledge he could tell at a glance it was nothing but glass. Tom let out a slight hiss at the sight.

Mine.

Harry's brows went up, and he flicked a glance at Madam Smith but, like most people, all she heard was an exhale. She probably assumed it was in appreciation, and while she wasn't exactly wrong, Harry wouldn't want to be the owner of anything Tom had decided was really his.

"You got this at Borgin's?" he asked a little too carefully as Madam Smith handed it over.

"I did." Madam Smith must be an idiot because she sounded smug. "Some girl had come in with it. Didn't know the value, silly thing. Sold it for a song."

"Desperate, probably," Harry said.

Madam Smith didn't care for the way he interrupted her story. She sniffed. "Probably, but that's what happens when you get pregnant and haven't a pot to piss in."

"I do think the man involved might have had something to do with it," Harry said. Tom's shoulders had become noticeably tighter, and he wanted to ward off any immediate violence. "I understand it takes two to make a baby."

Madam Smith tittered. "It's true," she said. "Not that men ever have to really pay. They can walk away and leave their mistakes selling heirlooms to buy dinner."

"And this is an heirloom?" Tom asked.

"Slytherin's locket?" Madam Smith asked. "I should say so."

She eyed them both, waiting for their response. Harry smiled politely, his attention fixed on Tom. If he killed the old biddy right now, they'd have the elf to deal with. "Impressive," Tom said. "That poor woman," and he handed the locket back. "I'm sure whatever man left her in such dire straits as to sell this ended up regretting it."

Harry managed not to snort.

"If you're impressed by that, I have something else to show you," Madam Smith said. "A real treasure."

Harry avoided making any kind of eye contact with Tom as the elderly woman led them to yet another cabinet. "It was my grandmother's," she said with a flavor of the same smug pride Harry was used to in Tom. He leaned forward, interested now, and his eyes widened when she pulled out a small cup, the sort of fancy goblet people used in old paintings, and held it toward them. The thing was gold, and a badger danced along one side, and Harry could hear Tom suck in his breath.

"Is that?" he asked, and for once the awe in his voice was real.

"Helga Hufflepuff's cup," Madam Smith confirmed.

Christ. Harry rubbed one hand over his face. This was going to end so badly. Not for him. After this find, he'd have no trouble talking Tom into stopping for a pint on the way home. But poor Madam Smith. She might have lived through the theft of Slytherin's locket, but objects from two Hogwarts founders? That would be harder to steal on the sly, especially given the way she was holding that cup. She probably had a dozen anti-theft charms on the cabinet it was in, and those would take time to unravel, and it would be tricky to get that done with her standing over them.

People were so fussy about not letting you have their things. Whether they were old hedge witches with what turned out to be useless old spoons or this woman with her golden cup, Tom always ended up having to kill them.

Madam Smith put the cup back away. Harry counted at least three charms that clicked into place, and there were probably more. Ugh. He was going to want two pints after helping to unravel all of that.

"I think the cocoa is probably ready," she said.

The cocoa was ready. So was Tom. He poured extra milk for the old lady with every gracious line that time spent around the Notts and the Malfoys had trained into him. He was elegant and deferential and, as Harry watched, he emptied out a tiny packet of some powder or other into her cup, then stirred both it and the milk in. The silver spoon clinked against the porcelain, and he handed her the cup with the hint of a bow.

She giggled through her nose.

Harry declined his own cup.

Tom sat and prepared his as Madam Smith took a sip, then another, then began to choke.

"What did you put in it?" Harry asked as her skin began to turn blue and she clawed at her throat in evident agony.

"Something I filched from Slughorn back in the day," Tom said. "Pretty common poison really. Nothing special. Pity no one has a bezoar around, but what can you do?"

Madam Smith began to point frantically at a drawer, her flailing hand becoming more and more desperate before it sagged against her, her head lolled to one side, and a line of spittle began tracing its way down her chin.

Her chest didn't rise.

Tom stepped over her outstretched legs to open the drawer she'd been pointing to. "Look," he said, false surprise in his voice. "There was a bezoar after all."

He tossed it to Harry, who rolled his eyes but tucked the useful little item down into his pocket. You never could tell when you'd need one. "What do you plan to do about the elf?" he asked.

"Don't suppose you can make it forget we were here?" Tom said. "I've got to go unravel those wards."

"We're taking the cup too, then," Harry said. It wasn't really a question because of course they were. "Be fast about it, would you?" He plucked a biscuit off the tray and popped it into his mouth, then grimaced. Stale. He should have guessed. This whole house was stale and closed and fading into the past.

He glanced at Madam Smith. Well, she was really all the way faded.

He'd never tried to obliviate an elf. He wasn't sure it could be done. And maybe it couldn't. Hokey was so old, though, and so forgetful, that when he walked in on her in the kitchen her mind went blank, and it was easy to stun her. From there, he poked at her mind, erasing himself and Tom from her memories, replacing them with confusion and an endless loop of wiping off the same kitchen counters.

Of course, that left the extra dishes. Harry threw a dirty look back toward Tom, who was still undoing all the protections guarding Helga Hufflepuff's cup, and started to wash up the evidence there'd been three people drinking cocoa, not one.

"The things I do for you," he muttered.

Tom popped his head around the door. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Why are you doing dishes by hand?"

"Removing the evidence we were here," Harry said. Honestly, sometimes Tom missed the really obvious things. This woman was rich enough the Ministry would at least send over some token Aurors, and if there were traces of magic smeared all over the place they might even think to ask questions. Probably not, but when you were stealing priceless historical artifacts and blaming a creature, you should bloody well be careful. "Did you get what you want?"

"And a few other things to boot," Tom said. He tossed Harry a necklace with a complicated gadget at the bottom.

"What's this?"

"Some kind of fancy time turner," Tom said. "Want to travel back in time and find out who your parents were?"

Harry threw the device back as hard as he could, and Tom laughed as it slammed into an open cabinet and broke a fussy, pink teacup. He didn't share Tom's fascination with parentage. His mother was nobody and his father nothing. It wasn't as if he was going to go back and find out his father was a pureblood or his mother a heroine. His mouth tightened at the thought of how different things would have been if he'd not been an orphan. Not been beneath everyone. Then, he forced his muscles to relax. He'd never make himself acceptable to the wizarding world, and he didn't plan to bother trying. He was nothing to them, which meant they were nothing to him.

"Accio time turner," Tom said, and the chain unwound itself from the broken cup and sailed through the air to his hand.

"You too good for wands now?" Harry asked.

"You would be too, if you just practiced," Tom said. He pocketed the time turner. "Who knows when this will come in handy."

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you to anditjustmadeherkind and for beta reading!