rat race [roderick]

It had felt like an impossibility when he started, but having a real job had finally become Henry’s routine. He and his dad flooed out from home at the same time every weekday. He drafted correspondence and sorted memos. He ate lunch: sometimes with a friend or coworker in the cafeteria, often at his desk, and when he was in the mood to treat himself, at a restaurant. (Even popping out to buy his own sit-down meal in the middle of the day was becoming less exciting the more often he did it.)

Today he’d finished his Deli soup with some time left over and thought he’d look in the shop down the street before Apparating back. Upon walking outside, however, a pair of passersby gave him a judgmental stare. Henry mumbled an oath and looked self-consciously down at his work robes. Most often he got lunch in Diagon Alley; he’d forgotten this place was on a non-magical street.

A cook was smoking outside the kitchen door when Henry turned down the backstreet to Apparate. On first smell it certainly wasn’t tobacco, and on second look Henry recognized him: Roderick Macnair leaning against the brick with a mismatched coat open over a work apron.

“Are you supposed to be doing that?” asked Henry, and the moment Macnair turned his gaze on him he wished he hadn’t. Clearly he hadn’t been the Ministry’s smallest fish long enough for the Head Boy instincts to get rubbed out. At least, not where Roderick Macnair was concerned. Henry thought he was reasonably allowed a small grudge—but he’d hoped to leave the moralistic quibbling at Hogwarts.

To be honest his coworkers probably preferred Macnair come in high. Seemed like it might make him more agreeable.

“Archie wrote me,” said Henry. Maybe it would be less annoying if he had something else to say. “He said you got him a good wand. Nice of you.” Their mutual Hufflepuff friend had written him about other things as well since school had started, social struggles and twelve-year-old tribulations—Henry didn’t dare bring any of that up. He suspected Archie might have considered his interpersonal advice more useful than his brother’s. (Frankly Henry hoped he’d someday find someone more knowledgeable than both of them.)

Well, now Henry knew how Macnair had paid for a new wand. Archie hadn’t been specific with regard to his employment and Henry had sort of worried. Diner cooking wasn’t Healing school, of course. Henry remembered specifically that Macnair had mentioned that because of how surprised he’d been. But it was, at least, legal. And tasty.

He pushed up his sleeves, even though it was wintry out, just for something to do. Henry felt like kind of a tool standing here in his Ministry robes. That was just him, though. He imagined Macnair would look down on his desk job more than see it as showing off.

@Roderick Macnair

Roderick hadn’t been a smoker for long.

It would be two months in a week or so. He had managed to avoid the habit for six months working at the Deli. Six months of watching all the other cooks and busboys get extra breaks because of their addiction, gritting his teeth, and moving on. Six months of surprise ambushes at work from his classmates, coming to gawk at Macnair’s plight. He didn’t understand what was so exciting about this, to them — it wasn’t like the Macnairs being poor was news.

He had avoided the vice long as he could -- nicotine was expensive, and Roderick was saving for Healing school, and Dad was likely to nick any spare coins he could find in Rod's room to keep up his own habits. There was no room in Roderick's plan -- to go to school, to move out, to get Archie and Kelsey out of that flat for summers -- for wasted coin on blasted cigarettes. But. But.

Ben's visit had been the last straw -- Roderick had been antsy, needing something to fiddle with in his hands, needed something to take the stupid edge of that whole pity parade out of him. After he had bolted straight to the alley, bummed a smoke off of Colin and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. Colin had watched him cough like an idiot for five minutes, told him to join him on his next smoke break.

Colin had shown him how to roll a joint, two days later. Grass is less addictive he had said, his voice gravelly from years of smoking. More 'spensive up front, but if you want to be able to quit later. Roderick did want to be able to quit later, when he didn't need to use smoke breaks as an escape. Like he needed one now, when he had seen some busybody send back her soup three Mordred-foresaken times. Normally a joint could last him a couple shifts, but Roderick was blasting through this one, trying to get mellow as fast as fucking possible.

Are you supposed to be doing that? came a familiar voice. The Cheshire accent and the timid threat of grassing were unmistakable. Roderick turned his head, slow and measured, eyes narrowed and lips pulled tight as he surveyed the busybody. See, it was this kind of nonsense what made him turn to smoking in the first place. He lowered the joint from his lips, letting out a cloud of smoke in Henry’s direction. All this work to cultivate enough of an addiction for a smoke break, and even that wasn't enough to stop the barrage of Hogwarts students and graduates from bothering him.

Murphy obviously wasn’t going to offer any sort of normal greeting. “Afternoon t’you too, Murphy,” Roderick said, sighing through the sentence as he turned his face back to the opposite alley wall. Merlin’s balls. This was annoying. Bastard was still in his fancy Ministry robes and all, even. "How was lunch?"

Archie wrote me, Murphy said. Roderick didn’t even blink. Did Murphy think that was supposed to be a gotcha? Roderick had instructed his brother to write the former Head Boy in a letter months ago. Roderick's lips began to curl into a defensive scowl. But Murphy followed it up with -- something that wasn’t quite a compliment but was certainly not antagonistic. That got a ginger eyebrow to twitch up. Was their lakeside truce still on, then? Roderick couldn’t imagine that it was, but Murphy seemed to be going for friendly. Friendly and not overly paternalistic, like Ben Danvers had been.

“Ach, he needed it,” Roderick finally replied, still not turning his head but allowing his eyes to slide right to Murphy. “That one was already causing him enough trouble. It’s a right bastard piece of wood.”  He wondered if Henry had noticed -- he couldn't remember if the family wand had come up in their one decent conversation.

Still, if the two of them were in regular correspondence, Rod had a more important question to ask. “Did you give ‘im the prefect bathroom password?"

Macnair replied casually, in that chillingly conversational voice he used when he was being annoyed. Henry scuffed his shoes together uncomfortably. “Good, I guess,” he said. He wanted to ask then if Macnair had done anything to it, but even more than that Henry didn’t want the look of judgment Macnair would give him if he hadn’t.

Talking about Archie had been the right move, though. If only Macnair never had to do anything else, Henry thought people might get along with him. “Shame people keep making their kids use old wands,” he said, which he’d never have dared say to any other pure-blood’s face. “I s’pose that’s something nice about being Muggle-born, isn’t it? Nothing to live up to.” This part was a bit less well-considered in the present company but he'd been thinking about it since the outreach to new Muggle-born Hogwarts students last summer. So many of Henry’s peers had grown up steeped in history. His own family had been as clear as they could be that he was loved any way he was, but he had felt a pressure regardless. If he’d been born to a family that took their lineage more seriously he wasn’t sure he would have survived.

With what sounded like amusement, Macnair asked him about the prefect’s bathroom password then. Henry snorted. “I should've known that came from you." Had they been communicating through Archie this whole time? Merlin—he ought to have put more thought into what he wrote in those letters. Hopefully Archie hadn’t passed along anything too dorky. “I said he can become a prefect if he wants that,” Henry said. “Besides, they change it every year.”

He shrugged. “I think he could if he tries, ‘least now he’s got a wand that’ll work for him,” he went on. “Depends how many teachers’ pets there are in Hufflepuff his year.” He spread out his hands in a stupid little ironic gesture. “I was lucky, obviously.”

In his own amusement it struck him, too late, that he and Macnair were having a real conversation. Henry opened his mouth before he’d formed the words to apologize. (Apologize? He’d been told before to stop doing it so often, but not until now had he appreciated how stupid the habit got.)

Good, I guess. Roderick nodded, noting and then ignoring the hesitancy in Murphy's voice. He hadn't noticed Murphy come in, and unless he was in fact the bitch with the soup, Roderick had no idea what he may have had.

"Nothing wrong with an old wand, in theory," Roderick said, tone shockingly light. "Saves an extra tree from being felled before its time, or a dragon pup from being culled." He had done some reading on wandwoods after Archie had gone back to school, found himself interested despite himself. If he flunked out of Healing school, perhaps he could apprentice with Ollivander. "But it's the fit of it, isn't it? There's no one size fits all wand, and the family one just weren't right for him." Nor was it for Roderick, nor was it for anyone since Great-great-granddad, but Roderick didn't feel like mentioning that.

Murphy, muggle-lover that he was, had to bring it back those wretches. Nothing to live up to. "Suppose so," Roderick said grudgingly. It seemed unfair to him, that muggleborns got fresh wands by dint of being born in the wrong community. But he didn't think Murphy would see it that way, and he wasn't keen to start an argument just now. It would defeat the point of his joint if he got agitated now. This was perhaps the most words Roderick had ever shared with Henry Murphy in one go, now that he thought about it. The ginger held his blunt out in front of him for a moment, trying to calculate how much he had smoked already. He must be a little stoned already, to say all that.

They changed the password every year? "That's rubbish," Roderick said. "There are all of sixteen ex-prefects at any time, might as well let them have the password." Not that Roderick had ever made Prefect and therefore would know, but the point stood, he thought.

But Murphy thought Archie could do it, and a little part of his chest twinged with pride. "Not as many as Ravenclaw, one hopes." Murphy spread his hands out in some sort of self-deprecating gesture, and Roderick snorted. "Obviously," he repeated. Roderick was sure Henry Murphy would have made Prefect even if he hadn't been coming up under two of the worst Prefects the lions had ever had, but that would sound like a compliment and therefore he could not possibly say it.

The fact he considered it was either a testament to the power of time to heal wounds or, more likely, the power of marijuana to mellow him out. Roderick took another hit, leaning his head up against the brick as he lazily blew the smoke out. He rolled his head toward the former Gryffindor, eyes a touch distant. A heavy moment passed, than Roderick stretched out his arm, joint pinched between index finger and thumb. "D'you want a toke?"

"Come off it, they don’t kill baby dragons,” said Henry, who had no idea whether they did or didn’t but certainly wanted to believe the latter. All that time spent around the apothecary as a kid and it had never occurred to him to ask how they got the barrels of bat spleens and eel eyes. Someone like Gene might have said he had too much faith in the Wizarding world. Considering all the cracks that had broken open recently, why would he trust their society to operate with ethics or kindness? Henry had a feeling Macnair would think similarly, and be far ruder about it.

Well, if Macnair wanted to school him, Henry could ask for it instead of just looking ignorant. “…Do they really?”

A breeze shuddered toward him through the alley, and Henry put up his wand to blow Macnair’s smoke away from his face. Even when he smoked himself he tried to get the stuff as far away from him as possible. He stopped himself from getting into that though: better he come off as prudish than just as a wuss.

Rubbish, sure. Henry shrugged. The Prefect’s Bathroom was nicer and larger than any flat he could get on his own, so if he still had the password he might have just broken into Hogwarts and lived there. Where on earth was Macnair living, he wondered? Hopefully not with his parents still. Henry might have been feeling a touch smothered as an adult in his family home, but at least they weren’t dicks.

Maybe he was sharing a place with those shithead friends of his, still being a shithead despite gainful employment and civility with former Head Boys. Maybe Henry was being as naïve and foolish about this as he was about wandmaking supply chains. He ought to just go back to work. And—Macnair was holding his joint out to him, offering.

“Er—” Henry looked at it, and then up at Macnair’s heavy-lidded eyes. The temptation was inexplicable. Some pride, maybe, at having gotten to the point of an olive branch? Some pathetic desperation to look cool in front of a terrible person? “S’pose so.”

Any criticisms about his excess of faith felt entirely warranted. 

Come off it, they don't kill baby dragons, Henry scoffed. Roderick waited, eyebrow rising up by just a hair. There was a pause, as Murphy worked through the concept slowly. Do they really? Roderick let himself smile a little bit, the curl of his lips shaping the smoke as he blew out, slow. "S'lot easier than getting heartstring from an adult dragon, isn't it?" Roderick didn't mention that such magical butchery was functionally the family business. It wasn't any of Henry's business. And besides, it was more fun to let Herny wonder how Roderick could know that.

Henry waved off the smoke, and Roderick almost stopped himself from offering the joint. Prude. Probably hadn't had a drink until he was of age, and then in only measured and responsible sips. Probably never had pot before (not that Roderick could judge -- this he had only started because of Ben Fucking Danvers, all of a month ago). Probably beg off with a 'no, thanks,' in his Head Boy voice.

S'pose so.

Roderick's eyelids flickered up, open wide with surprise for half of a second. You sure, mate? he almost asked, but stopped himself before he coudl call Henry Murphy his mate. He shrugged instead, the joint dangling from his fingers. "Go on, then," Roderick said, waiting for Henry to take the little paper roll. Did Murphy know how to light? The end was no longer hot. "D'ye need a light?" With his other hand, Roderick slipped his own wand out, conjuring a small flame at the end of it.

“Of course,” said Henry, who didn’t want to think about bringing down any dragon. Fighting creatures was still a nervous, tender spot in his memory. “But they sell the skin too, and the blood, and the meat, and there’d be way less of that, so why bother?” It felt like even the heartstrings ought to be worth far less before a dragon had spent years living with them. Henry knew though, that sometimes he had fanciful expectations of magic. All those stories about the influence of emotions and heart and meaning on its properties…but magic was often more bland and biological a force than he’d liked to imagine.

Surely the…harvesting was done by others, and hopefully after the dragon’s natural death, but upon further consideration the thought of old Mr. Ollivander going out to fight a fully grown dragon was sort of funny. Henry flattened his lips against a suppressed snicker.

Macnair lit his wand after Henry had already taken the joint and stuck it in his mouth. To lean over into the flame? The intimacy of that particular gesture had always made Henry’s idiot stomach flutter. But he’d resolved, even long before their personal duel, that the only thoughts allowed about Macnair’s handsomeness were about how unfair it was that such a horrid person was so handsome. And the wand had been burning now for several unnecessary seconds and Macnair probably thought he was a nutter, so he took the joint out of his mouth to relight it.

He inhaled, and exhaled, and thought on it for a minute.“This was stupid,” mumbled Henry. “I’m back at work in twenty minutes.” He fiddled with the joint in his hand and took another hit before handing it back. “Whatever,” he said. “Not like I’m doing anything useful yet anyway.”