Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Cas)

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

Although she had planned to return to New Orleans after Hogwarts had been destroyed, Emmanuelle Picquery had another opportunity arise when she had least anticipated it. She had taken up Casimir Karkaroff's offer of employment and had been working for him at Borgin and Burkes for some time.

The winter, however, reminded Emmanuelle of why she should have gone back to the Southern United States when she'd had the chance. While she knew that she wouldn't have been totally free from the potential repercussions of her involvement with Elaine Dupree if she were to have gone back home, it would have been the safer option. On top of that, she would have been warmer, at least. She was thin and always had been, so she didn't have much in the way of insulation without layering up various items of clothing.

Casting the occasional Hot Air Charm when she could certainly helped matters for Emmanuelle, though she couldn't cast one continuously while she was at work. Instead, she just had to brace herself for the rush of cold air that would blow in whenever someone opened the door to the shop.

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

5 January 2028

It could all be an enormous mistake, a decision that would come back to haunt him and ruin everything later. That was a possibility, but Cas rather liked the excitement of having found something he didn’t know. Life had lost most of its color after the Order disbanded, after the Purifiers had been defeated and life had gone back to normal. Whatever normal meant. For him, it meant a brief escape abroad to chase after better days, and then settling into a dull routine. Mind the shop, mind the club, mind the gallery. He let Ana take more control when it came to the Poisoned Spindle, because it was good for her, and he let Damian involve himself with the Pensieve Gallery (even if that would almost certainly end in disaster).

And for Borgin and Burke’s…well, he’d hired Emmanuelle Picquery. That was done and couldn’t be undone. His instinct had been correct in that she’d been a stellar employee. There was no denying that she had an eye for antiques, and her curses were still unrivaled in the modern markets. But Cas couldn’t ignore the vague thought in the back of his mind that maybe someday he would regret the decision. They weren’t quite the same, but they weren’t so different. Opposite sides of a coin, maybe. At any rate, it had certainly added some intrigue to his otherwise colorless days. He couldn’t say he minded that.

He was satisfied with the results of his latest trip abroad, and Cas fingered the Aztec gold in his pocket as he silently swept down Knockturn Alley. He found it unbearable to stay trapped in London for too long, so these acquisitions trips offered him the best (only) opportunity to entertain himself in an otherwise dreary British winter. The bell rang sharply as he entered the store, and Cas nodded at Emmanuelle as she lingered behind the counter (looking as appropriately miserable about the cold as a Southerner should be). “My brother didn’t stop by while I was out, did he?” His tone sounded bored but Cas couldn’t help the added note of suspicion either. It would mean nothing good if Damian had. He wordlessly removed the necklace from his pocket (with a gloved hand, of course) and laid it out carefully in front of Emmanuelle for examination while he waited for her answer.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

As with any job, there were perks and drawbacks to working at Borgin and Burkes. That she wasn't solely responsible for finding and importing products for other people to purchase was one of the major perks for Emmanuelle, not to mention that the antiques weren't some random junk nobody had heard of except some decrepit wizard in Bhutan. (Maybe that was an exaggerated view of what the work at the Gaelic Knot had been like, but it wasn't that far from it.) Another plus was that she didn't have to drag herself to Ireland to go to work every day. There wasn't anything wrong with Ireland, but Knockturn Alley was more convenient from her standpoint, even if it meant that she had to watch her back.

The drawbacks were mostly in being publicly associated with a business in Knockturn Alley that had a reputation that was closely tied to the Dark Arts. The Gaelic Knot had some strange inventory on occasion, but there wasn't anything that was cursed or truly dangerous to handle. At Borgin and Burkes, all bets were off, so actually picking something up was reserved for anything that Emmanuelle could ensure wouldn't kill her or send her to St. Mungo's. So far, neither of those outcomes had occurred, though.

Working for Casimir Karkaroff wasn't what Emmanuelle had expected in the beginning, either. He was serious and meant business, and he certainly didn't seem to have lost quite as many marbles as some of the people she'd met while being involved with the Purifiers. Other than the cursed antiques and the occasionally sketchy people who came into the shop, it wasn't too different from working at the Gaelic Knot.

Casimir—or "Cas", as he was frequently called—had been away, traveling outside the country. Given the chance, Emmanuelle thought, she probably would have done the same, but someone had to keep an eye on the antiques. When he entered the shop, he nodded to her, and Emmanuelle nodded back.

"My brother didn't stop by while I was out, did he?"

Emmanuelle then shook her head. She hadn't seen his brother there. "No," she informed Cas, though her focus was primarily on the necklace that he apparently had been carrying with him. "Haven't seen him in. Why?"

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

It wasn’t that Cas was eager to have a conversation about his brother, but he did spend an awful lot of time worrying about the sorts of things Damian considered to be fun. The problem was the potential for scandal. Cas had absolutely no interest in Ana’s personal life because she could be relied on – whatever or whoever she spent her time with wouldn’t have an impact on the Karkaroff name or standing in the pureblood community. Alek didn’t have enough of a backbone to act out, and he’d always done exactly as his older brother told him to. But Damian? He liked to play with fire, and someday that habit would flare out of control.

And, to be honest, Cas didn’t trust Damian around the merchandise. So there was that too. But Emmanuelle replied that she hadn’t spotted the younger Karkaroff, who was rather hard to miss, so Cas dismissed the concerns from his mind. “Idle curiosity,” Cas responded dryly to Emmanuelle’s question. One of the most fundamental principles of purebloods was their loyalty to the family, and in public – well, Cas wouldn’t air all the family’s dirty laundry. When they were in public (and the store certainly counted as that), the Karkaroffs stood together as one. Far be it for Cas to inform his employees that he didn’t trust Damian with shiny things as far as he could be thrown.

Instead he focused on what they both truly cared about, the thing that united them above all else – cursed and powerful artifacts with an interesting story. Cas lay the necklace gently on the counter, the gold catching the dim light of the shop as he handled it carefully with gloved hands. “This necklace has more secrets than I’ve had time to unravel,” he observed. He had a good eye for curses, but there were several tightly woven into the Aztec gold and he hadn’t had time to sit down and untangle them. Besides that, the seller hadn’t had any useful information for Cas besides what the preliminary tests had shown. “Might be a fun project,” he finished. At any rate, it seemed right up Emmanuelle’s alley.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

Cas claimed that it was "idle curiosity" that had prompted him to ask if his brother had stopped by the shop in his absence, though Emmanuelle wasn't sure that that was the full answer there. She didn't push the subject, though her own curiosity was piqued. She didn't really know Cas's siblings, other than knowing who they were, so the possibilities were open-ended.

The necklace that Cas had brought in with him was more interesting to her than whatever he wanted with his brother, and it certainly seemed promising. Cas laid it out where she could get a better look at it, and Emmanuelle was immediately taken by its appearance. Appearances, even for necklaces, could be deceiving, though, so she waited to hear what Cas had to say about it.

"This necklace has more secrets than I've had time to unravel," he admitted, which was a clear signal to her that she shouldn't touch it until she could be sure of what it might do. "Might be a fun project."

It was tempting to take up the necklace as a side project, but Emmanuelle also knew to exercise caution. She knew that she could trust Cas, at least to the extent that he probably wasn't going to do anything to kill her intentionally, so that was better than it could have been. "Well, what do you know so far?" Keeping her hands safely behind her back, she took a closer look at what was visible to the naked eye.

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

There was still a lot Cas didn’t know about Emmanuelle, but something (between pureblood manners and excess caution) stopped him from asking too many questions. There were things he could guess based on the little facts that she couldn’t, or at least didn’t try, to hide from the world – family name, place of origin. And of course, he’d had the chance to observe her enchanting abilities and skill with curses first-hand since she’d started to work with him. But all in all, Cas was fine with the dynamic they’d established since the first time she’d walked into his shop. He trusted her with the merchandise, didn’t openly share much about himself, and avoided asking her too many awkward questions. It seemed to work.

Emmanuelle seemed to have almost the same reaction he’d had when Cas had first spotted the necklace on one of his acquisitions trips. She moved closer to examine the artifact and her eyes stayed locked on it while she studied the inconspicuous jewelry – but her hands stayed out-of-range and she didn’t bend too close to risk activating a latent curse. The epitome of risk-averse expertise, wanting to know more but recognizing the obvious dangers. Cas let her study it while he kept his distance, having already run through all the typical procedures he’d done a million times since his cursebreaking days – taking notes, visiting the Oraculum for background research, casting a series of revealing charms to test its protections.

“I bought it in Mexico City, although it seems to have come from further south. Part of a set, although the rest was gone by the time it made its way to me.” Cas paused for a moment to brood on this sad fact, eyebrows creased together in the mild irritation of a collector with an incomplete set. He continued in a flat voice, draining all the emotion out so he could focus on a more scholarly analysis. “There are at least three distinct curses on the necklace, although they were most certainly done at different times. The oldest was woven into the gold as it was set, and the others…are not Aztec magic.” The Americas wasn’t his realm of expertise – he’d always been assigned to retrieve the ancient artifacts of the Middle East and other parts of Asia – but different groups had different flavors of magic and it hadn’t taken long to notice the differences in this necklace. He let Emmanuelle draw her conclusions on that last fact and waited patiently for her to process the profile he’d painstakingly put together.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

Cas said that he had purchased the new necklace in Mexico City, but he seemed to think that it had come from farther to the south. "Part of a set," he elaborated, "although the rest was gone by the time it made its way to me."

Because she had been educated at home by her grandmother, who had focused most of her studies on voodoo, Emmanuelle's geographic knowledge of Mexico was limited. She knew where Mexico was, obviously, because she hadn't lived that far from from it. Off the top of her head (and without a map or a globe easily accessible to her), though, she couldn't say what was to the south of Mexico City. Presumably, at least based on what Cas had just mentioned, there was more of Mexico to the south of it.

There was also more than just the necklace out there, somewhere, but there was no telling what those pieces were or where they'd ended up. Cas seemed to recognize that, too. "There are at least three distinct curses on the necklace, although they were most certainly done at different times," he informed her. "The oldest was woven into the gold as it was set, and the others… are not Aztec magic."

Emmanuelle nodded her head, but she immediately had a million things running through her mind. Aztec? That was potentially some really old magic, and it was anyone's guess what the curse woven into the gold itself was capable of doing. "So there was alchemy involved, I'm guessing?" she mused, trying to get a better feel for the necklace and its power (or danger). Since she couldn't exactly send an owl to the person who had woven a curse into the gold from which the necklace had been made, she would have to do some digging.

That also meant picking Cas's brain a bit. "Do you know what the other two that aren't Aztec are?" Emmanuelle asked with a hint of hope in her voice. He had emphasized the fact that they weren't Aztec, so maybe he knew more about them. Were they from a century ago? The day before? Any piece of information would help to put her on the right track.

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

Cas had gotten used to working alone. In his cursebreaking days, things had been a little different – missions were always assigned in pairs and you had to learn your partner’s style or face the consequences. Like a cave-in or grave robbers looking to piggy-back off your work. But then the career switch to Borgin and Burke’s had opened a new playing field, one in which he could only really depend on himself to expand his enterprise while keeping his record (mostly) clean with the Ministry. He had assistants, of course, but they handled the menial day-to-day tasks and therefore his instructions to them were precise and narrow. He wasn’t interested in mentoring them, or giving them actual responsibilities. No, they were only there to handle the small and repetitive things that he didn’t have time to deal with.

Emmanuelle was a little different, in that sense. It’d be a waste of her talent to treat her like one of the recent graduates from Hogwarts who minded the front counter and handled inventory. At the same time…she wasn’t one of his trainees from Gringotts who had a vested interest in learning what they could from him to maximize their chances of staying alive on the job. In their last meeting at the Gaelic Knot, Cas had decided that there were advantages to keeping her close, certainly because of her instinct for curses and maybe a little because of the circles he suspected she’d run with in the past. But she wasn’t his student and he hadn’t quite decided what to do with her yet. Where she’d be best placed within the varied services his store was known to offer.

Still, he was open to experimentation and the necklace seemed like a good opportunity to see what she could do. “Most likely,” Cas agreed with her assessment that alchemical processes had been involved, “So it would be near impossible to untangle the original curse from the necklace itself.” That kind of alchemy was rarely done these days, ever since the production process had become more streamlined and there was less of an intimate relationship between creator and object. Cas had reached the conclusion that unlocking the secrets of the necklace meant investigating how it’d been created and the three different methods that had been used to enchant it. That process would be complicated, if only because there were multiple layers that would each require a different research approach. He didn’t immediately answer Emmanuelle’s last question, instead moving behind the counter so he could pull out his trusty dragon-hide gloves and place them beside the necklace. A basic staple in any cursebreaker’s toolkit. “Use my office for your examination. There are protective enchantments there in case the curse tries to spread.”

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

While Cas was in agreement that there had been alchemy involved in the creation of the necklace, as Emmanuelle had suspected, that also ensured that she had her work cut out for her. As Cas mentioned, it would be almost impossible to isolate and remove the original curse that had been, essentially, crafted into the necklace itself. Anyone who wanted that necklace curse-free wasn't going to get it that way, though that wasn't applicable to most of Cas's customers. Anyone who wanted jewelry simply because it looked nice wasn't going shopping for it in Knockturn Alley.

Emmanuelle was sure that Cas had heard her question about what the other two curses on the necklace that weren't Aztec in origin were, but he didn't respond verbally. Instead, he merely pulled out a pair of gloves—clearly made of dragon hide—and set them down beside the necklace. If he knew what the origins of the other two curses were, he obviously wasn't telling.

"Use my office for your examination," Cas instructed her. It still wasn't an answer to her question, but at least he seemed to be feeling generous. "There are protective enchantments there in case the curse tries to spread."

"Alright. Thanks," Emmanuelle replied, nodding. "I'll start working on that, then." Having some degree of protection from being cursed threefold was nice, obviously, and she couldn't pretend that it wasn't.

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

It wasn’t their job to disenchant the necklace or make it safe for use. Really, Cas could’ve just slapped a price tag on it and left it to gather dust in one of the display cases until some collector or enterprising Dark wizard found it. It was easy to make up stories about artifacts that seemed plausible enough, especially since most wizards weren’t discerning enough to know their artifacts or the history behind it. But that just wasn’t how he worked. Cas wasn’t interested in learning about the curses so he could remove them and leave the necklace as it’d originally been created. No, he just wanted to know. To study the secrets of whatever ancient craftsman had poured their time and expertise into this jewelry until he knew exactly what they’d done and how. Once his curiosity was satisfied, then he didn’t care what happened afterward to the necklace.

Anyway, this time there was the added bonus of seeing how Emmanuelle would tackle the problem – even if Cas felt unnervingly similar to the examiners that had come to Durmstrang to silently judge his OWLs and NEWTs. He shook his head slightly to shoo away the thought. He was not a mentor, or a teacher, or anything of the sort…regardless of how many times he’d accidentally fallen into that trap in the past. This time, it’d really just have to be about the galleons. And the priceless knowledge of a collapsed culture’s curse-enchanting techniques. That too, of course.

“Don’t forget to write down your observations,” Cas noted idly as his eyes wandered from the necklace to the dragon-hide gloves, “Sometimes a detail seems unimportant in the moment but gains a new meaning later.” He paused for a moment, mentally catalogued what else he usually did whenever a new object entered the store, and then nodded his head slightly. “And give a price estimate before you start working. It’ll change after your examination, but it’s good to practice visual assessments as well. Sometimes clients won’t allow you to touch or test an object before demanding an offer.” He nodded his head and leaned back slightly on the counter.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery

[emmanuelle antoinette picquery]

January 5, 2028

Although Emmanuelle had never attended an actual school, she couldn't help feeling that Cas's reminder to her not to forget to write down her observations pertaining to the necklace felt a lot like the sort of thing a teacher would tell a student. It also made her want to remind him that she really did know what she was doing. Working backwards on cursed objects to figure out what those curses were wasn't what she normally did, but if the Purifiers had trusted her to deal with cursed objects, then he certainly could. But Emmanuelle knew that talking back to her boss, when he didn't know about her past involvement with Elaine Dupree, was also an invitation for trouble. Even in Knockturn Alley, it was better to shut up sometimes.

At Cas's prompting, Emmanuelle nodded. "Got it." She could get herself a notebook that was guaranteed not to be cursed in Diagon Alley and then pop back over to the shop to continue her work with the necklace.

"And give a price estimate before you start working," Cas instructed her. "It'll change after your examination, but it's good to practice visual assessments as well. Sometimes clients won't allow you to touch or test an object before demanding an offer."

As much as Emmanuelle wanted to mutter a few choice words under her breath at the thought of having to put a price on the necklace in front of her, Cas had a point that time. It was something she needed to learn about buying and selling antiques, particularly if he decided to go off to another country and come back with more cursed items from centuries before.

"I don't know much about valuation," Emmanuelle admitted to Cas then. "Especially not for something like this." That was her way of getting around saying something to the effect of, "How the f**k do you expect me to set a price for some Aztec necklace?" She absolutely thought it, though.

Casimir Elias Karkaroff

[Casimir Elias Karkaroff]

There were a lot of unspoken things in his brief history with Emmanuelle. Even if he suspected that she’d had something to do with the Purifiers, it didn’t matter much to Cas. It was important not to get confused about why he’d joined up with the Order, because he hadn’t done it as a sort of witch-hunt to catch purebloods or wipe out an antiquated line of thinking that mostly circulated around pureblood communities (whether they be British, druid or elsewhere). No, he’d wanted to wipe out old sins and put his family on a better track than the one his father and uncle had led them down. So he didn’t care about Emmanuelle’s history, even if left a lot of things unspoken between them.

But it meant they both had to tiptoe the line about what they were each capable of. Cas didn’t know what kind of training she’d gotten back in the States or in her brief stint here, but she worked for him now – and that gave him some kind of responsibility to pass on the things he’d learned. Besides, she might have her own area of expertise but he’d gotten a wide range of knowledge from his time as a cursebreaker and then as Borgin’s protégé. Emmanuelle didn’t seem opposed to learning – at least, she’d agreed to buy a notebook and write down her observations – but she kept her own comments short. And sometimes, she didn’t say anything even if she clearly had her own thoughts on the subject. Cas wondered what he might be able to do to unlock those silent observations. He didn’t mind being patient, although this sort of unwilling budding mentorship was a little different from his previous trainees. He had to be a lot more careful here.

Cas and Emmanuelle both had blank faces as Cas instructed her to value the necklace while Emmanuelle answered that she didn’t know much about it. But the poker faces didn’t cancel out that they both clearly had thoughts on the subject. “There are a number of things to look for,” Cas said neutrally, deciding to sidestep the fact altogether and leave the thoughts unspoken. “The value of the stones, for one. Type, size, quality. See the lapis lazuli here? Very typical of the region.” He pointed out the stones set into the gold of the necklace as he spoke, although he made sure to keep distance between his hand and the jewelry.

“But the setting also matters. How the creator chose to present the stones says a lot about how this necklace was supposed to be used, and who might’ve owned it. Gold is expensive, and see the elaborate designs? This wouldn’t have been accessible to lower castes, or for everyday use. All of those details brings the price up.” He’d started assessing the necklace all the way back in Mexico City, but time and experience also meant that he could pick out these sorts of details more quickly now. He had a lot of different pieces to compare against (both in his store’s inventory but especially from previous sales) and that made it easy to look at a new piece and understand what he was looking at. Besides that, he liked to read. Common sense stated that if he didn’t know something, someone somewhere had already researched the topic and written on it.

emmanuelle antoinette picquery