"she was the type of person who'd explain how she was going to stab you in the front before she actually shoved the knife in... and you'd let her.
she'd probably even pass the knife to you so you can shove it in your own chest...and you would."
tom...
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t h e r e w a s no time between their arrival at King's Cross Station and their hike to Diagon Alley in which Tom had fully registered the logistics of finding a place to stay. Evelyn, to his relief, had always been ten steps ahead. She had owled the Leaky Cauldron before graduation and had requested two rooms for them for the time it took for them to move into a flat. He was only silently disappointed that they would not be staying together. Tom missed sleeping in the same bed as her, but he did not ever want Evelyn to know that.
He wished there had been more said between them before they had checked in and parted their separate ways, but there had been almost nothing exchanged. Even for the days that followed, Evelyn had become restrained. Her severity had lessened significantly. Tom wanted her to fill the silence during meals or before she left for bed in the evenings, but she hadn't. He wondered briefly if she feared being in the open and away from Hogwarts. If she feared for both their safety enough to become so subdued.
She had brushed all of his inquiries away. Evelyn had already crafted some kind of cloaking spell for the two of them, so that they would be completely hidden from anyone who came looking for them. When he had asked why she was acting so closed off, she had simply stated she was just tired of pretending. Tom hadn't fully understood what that had meant when she had first spoken the words, but he was slowly realizing that Evelyn had become less refined. Less perfect in a way.
When they looked for houses together, touring only one per day, she would automatically correct herself into the charming Evelyn he knew so well. Smiling and wooing the witches and wizards who showed them the available places.
Securing a house in the wizarding world seemed to be easier than one in the Muggle one. Although Tom was an orphan, so had not learned much about acquiring property. All he knew was that it seemed to be a constant struggle to even find one place available in the bustling streets of London, most of the time causing people to move into undesirable parts of the city to find anything affordable at all. That was probably why Evelyn had no problem finding multiple available options. She had the expansive Maeve vault aiding in their search, and no one turns down someone who tells them that money would not be a problem.
The one hiccup in the search was merely that there were not a lot of residential offerings in Diagon Alley itself, due to the fact that most of the shopkeepers lived in whatever available space that was offered. Both Evelyn and Tom had been adamant about finding a place within the magical haven; they did not want to risk living in the Bloomsbury area outside because of its popularity among recently graduated Hogwarts students. He did not want anyone asking too many questions about why the pair were living together. In a way, he understood Evelyn. Tired of pretending for so many people.
It wasn't until a month into living at the Leaky Cauldron that they came upon a bit of luck. There was a pair of eccentric-looking, old witches who had come to the inn solely because they had heard the two of them were looking for a place and hadn't found one yet. They owned the little teashop, Rosa Lee Teabag, and had been waiting for the right people to rent out the top apartment of the building.
