"I am seeing somebody I really shouldn't be and we're using Polyjuice to manage my father."

"Okay."

"What did you notice, do you think other people are likely to -"

"Minor said he'd been over a lot but didn't elaborate, when I ran into him I asked what for, he said he'd only been over once. I suppose Minor's probably writing Karen too, I don't know if your other brothers send chatty letters."

"I can ask them not to but -"

"They might wonder why."

"Yes. 'nefarious plot' only gets you so far."

"It's sort of out of character as a nefarious plot."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize to me, you aren't using my form to evade whoever thinks you shouldn't be seeing whoever."

"I shouldn't guess I should go do something distracting thank you for explaining." She gets up. "- why didn't your father like Smith though, she's perfectly respectable -"

" - oh, I asked him for a way out because I realized I shouldn't get married - he wouldn't even care if I wanted a Muggle, he's not like that -"

She still shouldn't guess but she stops leaving for a moment.

Feverfew crawls into Timothy's lap.

"...so, yes, it's worse than that." Sigh. "I'm not hurting anyone."

"You'll probably trust me eventually," she sighs, and she goes back downstairs.

He arranges for Fredrick to change faces. He cuddles him and frets."There's too much at stake -"

"For you to be blackmailably fucking around with love potions, yeah. This is less of a risk, easier to deny..."

"I could just be alone forever."

He pats his head, a little condescendingly.

"I told Miranda I wasn't doing anything illegal. That's not totally true anymore - Muggles forbid this -"

"They probably also forbid witchcraft. I doubt she took you to mean you were abiding by local Muggle ordinance."

"I'm betraying the people who trust me."

"If they were trusting you to be an infallible personal-needs-free automata dancing its way to ultimate power with no concessions to human frailty along the way, sure."

"You say that like it's a joke but that is what I trusted myself to be."