It was a strange situation, to go from living together to lives slowly growing apart. Even though Dirk and Barty still worked in the same building they barely ever saw each other at the Ministry and now it was very much a case of having to make an effort to see each other but one of their main bonding points at school had been an affinity for languages and having someone to practise with made it a lot easier to learn. “Anything you’ve been looking at in particular recently?” he asked as he sorted a few dictionaries and grammar books out on the table. “I think I need a new human language to focus on before I let the goblins persuade me to learn their Catalonian dialect,” he added, slipping into French with relative ease. “Interesting as that might be. Also, can I just make a rule here and now that we don’t talk about work or Buchanan or any of that.”
It was clearly weighing on him, as he chewed on his lip, stress in his eyes. While keeping his blood status a secret meant that some people would treat him without discrimination it also meant that people didn’t try to cushion bad news. There was no care to avoid casual gossip about muggleborns and muggles being targeted and it was exhausting to hear it day in, day out and there was something about Aila being involved that made things feel like they were creeping closer to home. And sometimes hiding was exhausting, too. “I, um--” He sighed and then slid into Thai, perhaps just because of who was on his mind but also partly because the less Western the language the less the chance of being overheard. “Bertram found out. And it was good to talk about it, but— I mean, I’m still better off people not knowing, aren’t I?” He knew he was. The war was worse than ever. It was just that hiding was so exhausting.
