let's not be too strait-laced [michael]

the author’s reputation wasn’t based
on taste
25 July 2003, late evening
The Leaky Cauldron

It had been a longer night than Anthony had expected. Last year, after his resounding defeat and then the further loss of the "Worst Luck Award", of which he had been certain he would have won, Anthony had made a sad excuse about feeling poorly and went home.

This year was more entertaining, though, given that the Goldstein draft had actually Done Well This Time. Proudfoot returned his files early in the night, baruch HaShem, and he had only had a mild panic about the amount of confidential information that Proudfoot had probably read in the process of this last-minute hail Mary. In one corner, Leighton (the younger) from the Muggle Liasion Office spent the whole night complaining about his team to Flume. In another, Willbond and Edwards had spent the whole night on an arts-and-crafts project, wherein they made and awarded each other trophies of their own devising, leaving only to slip food into their pockets.

Tony wished that Zacharias could have been there, but Michael insisted on some façade of secrecy. No significant others, no roommates, no childhood best friends currently living on your couch. Never mind that the memos had everyone's name on them - they were still, officially, just the Orthography Club.

(Michael had informed him that orthography meant the study of words. Anthony told him that was pretentious as shit for a fucking underground gambling league. Michael had flipped him the bird.)

Despite himself, Anthony had a good time, not even minding that he ended up staying to the bitter end. There was a shocking amount of clean-up to do (Willbond and Edwards made a phenomenal mess for two supposedly full-grown adult men and the proprietor of the bar was not pleased with them) and it would be such a dick move to leave Michael to find for himself.

They stacked glasses, wiping up glitter from Willbond's disaster. "Pass that here," Tony said, sticking his hand out absently for a new rag. "Good work, Corner," he said after a moment. "No brawl, that's a win, yeah?" He wasn't sure how often this did turn into a brawl - Michael started at the Ministry before him.

@Michael Corner

Michael was feeling pretty good about himself. It seemed like a good time had been had by, if not all, a decent number. There was always an undercurrent of discontent at the end-of-season event, because a little over half of them lost money, but that couldn’t be helped. It was only fun if there were losers as well as winners.

It was wearing off, by now; most everybody had gone home, save Anthony, and Anthony had -- he thought -- only stayed out of guilt. Anthony did a lot of things out of guilt, Michael had noticed that, oh, ten years ago. It made him feel bad -- this was Michael’s thing and therefore Michael’s mess, and Michael thought of himself as a cleaner person than Anthony, who was trying to clean glitter with a rag.

He flicked his wand to send a rag lackadaisically at Tony; it flopped into his friend’s hand, and Michael went back to Vanishing spilled popcorn out of the booth seats.

“Thanks,” he said, and gave a short laugh. “Supposedly there was a brawl in ‘96, so, you never know.” He straightened up to look at Anthony more directly, “Who do you honestly think could hold his own in a fight, anyway?”

Hanging around Cordelia, he’d gotten much more aware of the conversational topics that would sic his mental processes on his war memories, but he wasn’t good at avoiding them when he wasn’t sober. Michael let himself quickly recollect how long he’d lasted in the Battle of Hogwarts (twenty minutes or so) and then added, “Without magic. Fisticuffs, like.”

The Orthography club was an uninspiring mesh of unimpressive men, from those built like outhouses to those built like asparagus. Michael and Anthony, both of whom leaned more toward the asparagus, wouldn’t stand a chance without seriously uncool tactics.

Speaking of uncool tactics; Michael blew out a breath. “So sorry about your case files, man. Not my intention at all.”

Tony ran through the list of members in his head quickly, assessing them for their magical prowess and deliberately excluding himself from the options. "Silverman and Flume. Emma as well," he rattled off, cutting over Michael's qualifiers. Fisticuffs changed little -- "Still Silverman," Tony said, grinning. Perhaps only Silverman, though he couldn't help adding on, "Proudfoot would put in a good effort, he fights dirty."

Neither he nor Michael would survive a physical brawl since they were both built like two reeds of grass. Michael was perhaps a touch stronger, but not as fast given his leg. Tony let himself think about that for exactly one second before returning to scrubbing at the sticky glitter-infused patch of beer.

"Course it wasn't," Anthony said good-naturedly. He did cast a look around for his briefcase, now magically locked in case anyone got a bright idea. "Proudfoot is a right bastard but he did give them back, didn't he?" Tony glanced at his friend, who seemed to be genuinely - if only slightly - distressed by the whole affair. "Wasn't going to court on that one this week, anyhow. Still got a few months to prep, and to redo the enchantments on my desk."

He shrugged, cursing under his breath as a large piece of glitter wedged itself under one fingernail. "And besides, I actually won a few Galleons this time. No harm done, I believe." To him, anyway. Tony looked at Michael again, wondering which of them was going to broach the topic of Goldstein's suspiciously good luck first.

“I’ve promised to kick him out if he goes after you again,” said Michael – sure he was the only member of the club guaranteed to lose money, since his registration fee went straight to toy trophy purchases, but he liked having the final word on things. It was the only thing in the world he had final word on (other than his dignity, or whatever his dad had used to tell him, although his dad had been dead for Michael’s greatest indignities and therefore hadn’t known what he was talking about.)

And, like, the weather on level four.

He hated to muse on the important work he did for the Ministry while Anthony was going on about whatever poor sod’s life he held in that briefcase, so he shrugged and said, “Well, you know, some people take it all very seriously. Think it’s a lot to do with professional or personal dissatisfaction.” He was the poster child, which hopefully Anthony knew he already knew, and wouldn’t get pointed about. Besides – Proudfoot was a dick, but Anthony sort of had to have expected some harassment when he’d gotten good all of a sudden. It was like he’d learned nothing from being a swot at Hogwarts.

Anthony didn’t seem to have taken it as a warning, though; Michael finished with the popcorn and straightened up, returning his friend’s look. “Pretty lucky guesswork,” he said, “What, did you decide to take some of your abundant free time to teach yourself the ins and outs of British Quidditch?” He didn’t think so, and some of Anthony’s little victories this year had been just too good to be sheer coincidence. Maybe one of the lesbians from law school had been giving him tips.

Michael would kick him out. Tony shook his head, smiling ruefully as he continued to attack the patch of glitter. it it made him feel rather fond, that Michael would threaten a senior member of the Ministry on his behalf. Even if the threat was rather small in the grand scheme of things. It reminded him of school, of grassing on Crabbe and Goyle for each other and the other stupid things the three of them had taken up to defend each other. It was always small things, never on the scale of some Gryffindors who talked back to Umbridge in front of the whole class, but it had kept Anthony sane through the first six years. "Thank you," he said, "I'm rather hoping he's learned his lesson, but one never knows."

Anthony let out a soft "tch" under his breath, not commenting on anyone's professional dissatisfaction. Michael didn't seem as depressed about his job these days, but Tony wasn't going to touch that topic with a ten foot pole tonight. Not at the event that Michael was clearly channeling such dissatisfaction directly into. Tony could be willfully obtuse, they both knew, but that didn't mean he was going to always step directly onto a obvious conversational landmine.

He was, apparently, enough of an idiot to dodge into another such trap. Tony's nostrils flared for a moment, sucking in air in an attempt to sober up enough to dodge the question without lying. "Been listening to more matches this year, I believe that's probably helped out." Nevermind that Zach was the one putting on the radio programmes, and famously Knew Things About Quidditch and, well, Michael knew Zach was living on his couch.

Everyone thought that lawyers were good at lying, which Tony knew wasn't necessarily true. Lawyers were good at manipulating the facts in front of an audience that, and this was important, hadn't lived with the counsel for eight years. Tony scrubbed half-heartedly at another sticky spot, which was blessedly coming up. "I reckon I absorbed some of Zach's opinions."

Though Michael thought Anthony had been sorely, viciously tempted to comment – some people take it all very seriously, and Michael most of all – he let it go with just a little cluck of his tongue, which Michael thought had only been ventured to make absolutely sure that Michael knew the thought had been there.

He had been kidding – he and Anthony both knew that Anthony didn’t give a damn about the ins and outs of British Quidditch – and Anthony’s nose did that thing, right on cue. Michael resisted the urge to say something gloating or triumphant, and struggled to keep his own face straight, though his mouth twitched a little. “Right,” he said, “in your aforementioned…” he paused, just in case Anthony was about to start visibly sweating – “abundant free time.”

Though he was pretty sure he and Anthony were both too skilled at giving each other half-truths and lies of omission to say that either of them were experts at fishing each other out of actual untruths, at this point Anthony was better at it than Michael’s own mother. (Anthony’s mother was a different story.) He twitched his eyebrows up, and waited for Anthony to crack.

Anthony cracked. “Huh? Oh,” said Michael; Zach, as in -arias Smith. At some point during Zacharias Smith’s tenure on Anthony’s sofa, Michael had opted to avoid discussing or thinking about it, lest he go mad with wondering. He didn’t like prying – not when he himself was a fairly private person – and he liked the idea of devoting his time to thinking about Zacharias Smith even less. “I thought it was the law school lesbians whose opinions you were absorbing.”

Unfortunately, Michael knew the rules of the game like the back of his hand, and this had never been outlawed specifically, but he said, “Bad form, you know.”