10pm

"My grandmother's like, obsessed?" Dido was saying as she re-entered the living area with an armful of make-up palettes and other cosmetics. "She listens to all of them, we've heard The Mousetrap every fucking Christmas."

The Wireless on the mantel was on, set to a muggle frequency. Moody classical music was playing - a prelude to the start of tonight's radio play, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Dido knew the book but she had never listened to it in this format, and was looking forward to all those twee British accents and brooding remarks.

She set down her make-up on the coffee table; a low oakwood affair donated to their little apartment by her mother, who was clearing out the attic rooms in her grandmother's house in Hoxton. Although she sometimes missed the house, Dido liked Dorothea's.

The apartment opened onto a small square living room, with its chintzy loveseat and armchair left behind by previous tenants. A fireplace smouldered away below their Wireless set. She settled on the floor, legs folded, pulling her hair back to look at herself in the cosmetics mirror on the coffee table.

"What do you think? Smokey eye and nude lip?" Dido asked Nemo, looking up. "Something brighter?"

It was Saturday but she wasn't going out tonight, exhausted from a busy week on Level Four. Aftermath of paperwork from a full moon. The make-up was just for fun, something she did to experiment with looks she couldn't wear to work.

Nemo was still wired from an evening busking out in the city. She'd been 'Nattie' for a half-hour, a character inspired by an absurd ruffled bibbed apron left behind in the kitchen by the former tenant. Nattie was a housewife, married to a human man, with two human children, and they had a mailing address and everything. Nemo would affect a terrible Mid-Atlantic accent for the role, and make excuses for her terrible sons as she dusted the mantle with a feather boa.

Nattie had since gone to bed, though Nemo had forgotten to take off the apron.

"Brighter," she said from the couch, where she had a colander of popcorn in her lap. "But in a way that says, I've just come from hell and brought you back something nice."

Nemo still felt like she was in a TV show, having moved into a flat in London with a friend. Very little of the decor was hers, but she'd begun to pick things up here and there for the walls and floor. There was an old playbill from the Starlight in a frame, and at Pandora's Attic she'd found a rug with an elephant motif. She'd had to admit it was fun to have a place and be able to make it her own, rather than living out of luggage. And Dido was loads more fun than anyone Nemo had ever roomed with.

"So, who's in this?" she asked, referring to the cast of the teleplay. It was a muggle production, so it was far more likely Nemo will have heard of the actors. But then, it was also British, so no guarantee at all.

Brighter! Dido sorted through the eye shadow palettes, picking out the one that best accommodated her sudden vision of flaming eyes. With a red hot eyeliner, yesss, and coral lip. She could see it in her head. Girl. On. Fire.

"Umm good question," she frowned a little in thought as she leaned into her reflection and swiped on some eyelid primer. "I think there's like, some oldies, like John Hurt and Gary Oldman? Mark Strong, total hottie. A lot of white guys, which seems shit 'cause it's Wireless right? Blind casting my ass."

The radio play was starting - she giggled a little at the Belgian accent of the voice actor playing Poirot. Dido's mom liked British and European actors, which annoyed her American dad to no end, so she knew a lot of names and faces.

"You ever get voice catfished?" Dido glanced up at Nemo and reached for her concealer pot. "I mean, when you're listening to someone on the Wireless and they have a really sexy voice. But then you see a pic of them in the Prophet or whatever and.... ew."

She gestured abruptly, talking over the supercilious voice of the to-be-murdered Ratchett on the radio. "Okay not ew, I don't wanna be mean, but the voice and face do not match. Muy decepcionada."

Gary Oldman, Nemo had heard of, but not the other two. Perhaps if she saw a picture, the names would ring her a nice bell, but alas, it was the Wireless. Nemo shifted a little on the couch to get more comfortable and to better see what colors Dido was setting up. The array of it all was deliciously covetable.

"Same as it ever was," she said with a concurring 'harumph' at Dido's apt criticism of the pallid casting of the radio show. She reached for her coffee mug of orange juice.

Then Nemo giggled as Dido play-acted the drama of visions unrequited. "Ah ha, you're personally offended!"

She thought for a moment and then offered her own answer. "Florence Welch, kind of. Florence and the Machine. I don't know what I expected, but when I saw her on an album cover I was sure she was going to call the cops. Oh! Kind of the opposite: I thought Billie Holiday was a boy until I was honestly thirteen," she said.

She'd been slain dead by embarrassment at the time, but had since tried to forgive her poor sheltered younger self.

Dido snorted, she could absolutely imagine Florence Welch calling the cops - or the MLE officers, whatever. Girl had killer taste in dresses though so she could overlook that.

            "I thought Billie Holiday was a boy until I was honestly thirteen."

The older witch stopped blending out her eyeshadow to let out a single cackle. "Okay, classic. It's all in the name. I thought Billie Piper was a guy, all those nomaj loving anglophiles at my school were talking about how much they LOVED Billie Piper in Doctor Who. She's hot stuff though."

Nomaj culture was great but Dido hated it when wixes fetishised that bullshit. British muggles weren't any more interesting than American ones, and it definitely didn't make them any better than magic folk in general.

"Oh sshh love this part!" she glanced at the Wireless - the rotten kidnapper millionaire was trying to hire Poirot, and Dido grinned with satisfaction to hear Poirot's refusal.

Way to go, egg shaped detective! "You know he's a Belgian refugee right?" she went back to looking at herself in the mirror, taking out her glittery yellow eyeliner. "Poirot, not the voice actor. It's so random, I love it. I wish we had a cool detective running around London solving all the crimes the Ministry can't."

Dido was too kind about Nemo's naive Billie Holiday mix-up and Nemo was grateful. It was however another opportunity for Dido to drop references that went beyond Nemo's pop culture lexicon. Sometimes she asked after them, sometimes not. London was a culture shock and having more in common culturally with the other American was unexpectedly homey, but Dido's American experience was very dissimilar to Nemo's. It was cosmopolitan, it was exciting. Nemo wouldn't admit it made her self-conscious of her own beige and dusty background.

"I did not," Nemo replied regarding the detective's past. It took her a moment to place exactly what he'd be a refugee from, but guessed a World War.

She mimicked the accent. "It is very simple, mademoiselle. There are no marks on her neck, so the blood must be in the pocket of the vampire, not his es-stomach. This explains the needle that was found in the wine cellar."

"Is that gold eyeliner?" she asked then, over Dido's shoulder.

She snorted at Nemo's play accent, careful not to let the eyeliner brush wobble. European accents were so funny when you imitated them but so sexy when someone actually European was talking - except Poirot wasn't supposed to be sexy of course.

"Kind of, it's yellow glitter?" Dido put it away, angling her head this way and that to make sure she'd gotten the cat-eye straight. "I can do you when I'm done but I don't think I have any foundation in your shade."

Nemo wasn't porcelain white but any of her skin make-up would show up as a bronzer on the younger witch's face. Dido considered herself light-skinned in New York, where at least half of her friends were also black. It was different here. So far, anyway.

The radio play was interrupted by some ads, so she picked up her wand and accio'd the bottle of coke she'd left in her bedroom earlier. "So, like, do you know anything about the clubbing scene here? Léonie only took me to muggle spots." Dido grasped the glass bottle, giving it a tap so that it chilled in an instant.

"I heard there's a queer bar, The Closet, or is that just for guys?" she pulled a face. "Not that I don't like looking at hot wizards, just feeling the sapphic energy lately."

Nemo, who seemed to live a magical life of hopping around wizarding and muggle London, would probably know. Dido's life ricocheted between work and afterwork drinks and helping her mother sort out grandma's house. She needed to get out more in the magic world.

Nemo admired Dido's symmetrical work and nodded approvingly. She didn't however take the offer for a similar look, too married to her sickly semi-goth habit. Never a pale lip, nothing in pinks or tropics. Strictly the palette of red wine and bruises.

"I can't get into the Closet," Nemo said. "You have to be eighteen. Girls can go to gay bars, though. Just, like, don't be awkward."

She said this with authority but she'd rarely ever been successful sneaking into the eighteen- and twenty-one-and-over bars and clubs (even Muggle ones) due to her height and baby face, and she'd never been to a gay bar.

"Spellpunk is pretty good. It's kind of lowest common denominator and there are too many boys trying to hook up, but there's dancing and some of the DJs are actually not bad."

She sipped on her coke, nodding along to Nemo's musings on the local gay bar. Dido kept forgetting that the other witch wasn't yet eighteen - she seemed pretty street smart and knew a lot more people than Dido did.

"Spellpunk, yeah, lotta folk talking about that when I was working Reducto..." she trailed off, looking herself in the mirror as she turned her head this way and that. Then she took out a red eyeliner pen and shook it a little.

The radio ads faded into a beat of silence before Poirot returned - it was evening in the mystery, the time of the murder, when the sleeping detective would be woken by sounds in the corridor outside his room. Dido started drawing a red fiery line over her yellow eyeliner, then adding flicks to give a flame effect.

"You wanna go?" she asked after doing her first eye. "We can get some other girls. Or meet some other girls. Dress up, smoke up, dance?" Dido wiggled her eyebrows at Nemo and then started  on the other eye.

It was hard trying to imagine Nemo in a club but that only made her want to see it more. There was a term for that. Some kind of fancy term, cognitive whatsit. When vibes clashed. "I mean, not tonight, tonight's all about -" she lowered her voice into a disastrous European accent, "- the little Belgian detective, non?"

Nemo felt that wash of affection that used to make her feel awkward, that fluttery feeling if intimacy towards friends that used to feel so threatening in the small intolerant town she'd come from. Platonic closeness was burned at a pyre under accusations of lesbianism. Social ostracization often followed.

But all of that was behind her now, like her name, Nemo had left it behind when she'd come to London, brazen. She was working deliberately to let herself love. It was easy to love Virgil Carstairs, for example, in the way she did. Siblings, almost, though Nemo did not fit in with his family. Abby, too. But something about Dido's attention made her flutter. She'd go anywhere with Dido.

"Oh, my god, totally," she grinned with a furrowed brow. "We can, like, pre-game and wear tops."

Nemo shouldn't mock preppy girls, she knew, for few were as ride-or-die than they were.

The radio play continued, and Nemo was finding her attention divided. She was quiet for a little while to avoid interrupting the dialog. She played with her hair, drawing locks forward and twisting them to inspect the ends.

"Do you ever wonder, like, what your life would be if you had someone like you in it? I always wonder that, what it's like to know me, you know?"

Pre-game and tops! Dido cackled, finishing her second eye with flourish. A night at Spellpunk... that was something to look forward to. Totally different crowd from the Ministry, or a similar crowd with different faces on anyway. At least she would be guaranteed not to run into the likes of Mrs Lanningham & Co.

As the Orient Express wore on, through to the murder being announced, Dido finished her make-up. Bronzer, a delicate tough of golden highlights on all the right parts of her face. She was choosing between two different shades of coral lipstick when Nemo spoke up again.

"Umm," the older girl pursed her lips thoughtfully and put down the lighter shade. "I guess kinda? I always wanted a sister. Someone who knew what it was like being me."

Dido had twin little brothers who she periodically complained about - she loved them to bits but she would have loved a sister. She swiped on the lipstick, a vivid orange red. "Boys got it easy, being mixed. Even my ma doesn't get it."

Her parents were always oh race doesn't matter and you have to look past colour but they didn't have a foot in each world. They weren't torn. Dido sighed, shaking out her curls so that her hair seemed to double in volume.

"What would you and other Nemo have been like?" she looked at her friend curiously.

Nemo didn't get it either, what Dido had said about her brothers and being mixed race, and Dido didn't elaborate. It was one of those things Nemo knew she just didn't know about and that it'd be rude to ask. Dido had interpreted Nemo's ask in terms of being a sister, whereas Nemo had meant it more metaphysical. Nonetheless, it was an insightful response just the same.

"It's hard to know what other people really think of you, right?" Nemo began, shifting around to put her feet over the arm of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling which had cracks and plenty of character. "You can only guess. People say one thing, but keep the whole truth from you. Out of kindness, but still."

She paused, trying to put into words what she'd just had as thoughts before. "I feel like ... another me would take the pressure off. Like, someone else to be the black sheep. Then maybe it wouldn't be so tiring being weird."

Nemo had always felt weird, but all teenagers did.

"I feel like when you're a kid you have best friends, but growing up, not anymore. You need someone who knows you, but I don't think that's real."

Nemo didn't mean it to be melancholy. She had some idea of the role she played in her circles, but it was always just a little guarded. One could not be known and still protected by mystery.

She fussed over her reflection a little more as Nemo spoke - happy to listen to the other girl instead of the radio play. Poirot was interviewing the old royal lady and Dido had never heard a rendition of that character who didn't remind her of her grandma. That glacial, knowing tone.

Her eyes slid over to the sofa; it sounded like Nemo had been sitting on her thoughts for a while, but she didn't really get it. Did it really matter so much what other people thought of her? And Dido's family were so frank, she never really worried about whether they were trying to spare her feelings out of 'kindness' or whatever.

           "Then maybe it wouldn't be so tiring being weird."

A little smile pulled at her mouth. Okay, that was kinda cute.

"It's different when we're kids I guess," she mused, pushing the mirror away and folding her arms on the coffee table to rest her chin on them. "Easier, yeah? To be honest..."

Dido thought of the kids she knew in her apartment building, the ones she played with in the playground and never saw again. She felt a little pang in her chest - funny, to miss something that young and fleeting.

"I think there's like a grown up version of that. Plus, like, this is London right?" she grinned, a little goofy. "Nobody's actually weird here 'cause everyone's weird. Except for Morgenthau, he's a hundred percent from actual weird city."

The head of level nine was elusive at work but Dido had bumped into him in the elevators before, and known his face from newspapers back home.

"Oh my god!"

Nemo couldn't help at exclaiming at the mention of Yavin Morgenthau, Virgil's unsettling mentor, their strange rescuer, his inspecting eyes. Nemo couldn't seem to shake him. Nemo loved London. Her houselessness when she'd first arrived had been a shock to the system, and the isolation, but it hadn't disillusioned her to the city and all it offered. She'd figured it out. Dido was right - she felt more herself here, or more like the self she wanted to be, to be Nemo instead of Natalie.

But Yavin Morgenthau, here in her own home now! His name sliding into their girls' night. She hadn't realized Dido knew him.

"I swear he's like, psychically following me. He keeps coming up."

In truth, it was only Virgil who ever mentioned him and he'd agreed to speak of him less for Nemo's sanity. Nemo got up from the couch, but didn't go far. She stood a few steps away and redid her messy bun, an agitated habit, not yet checking that she'd jumped down Dido's throat.

Her eyebrows went up, momentarily unimpressed by Nemo's disproportionate reaction. Dido thought she was going have to explain about Morgenthau - it only occurred to her a second after mentioning him that the other witch wasn't exactly a fixture at the Ministry of Magic.

From the sounds of it though, Nemo knew all about the Head of Mysteries!

"All the Morgenthau fuckers are like that, name popping up like daisies everywhere," she laughed, taking a swig of her chilled coke. "There's a couple of bigshot ones in MACUSA, rich and old. This one's way weirder though."

New York gossip wasn't totally reliable but she was pretty sure she'd know if any stuffy politicians were constantly sporting stupid sweaters around Magical Congress. Dido narrowed her eyes at Nemo - bringing up Morgenthau was like pricking her with a needle. What was up with that?

"Wait," Dido held up a hand. "How do you know Mister Ugly Sweater?"