everything familiar [anthony]

lambeth || august, 2003

Gene really didn’t have anything in common with Simon Cresswell; he’d gotten on all right with Aldous, who was quieter and had better taste in literature, but Simon Cresswell was snippy, easily bored, and liked Narnia. It was like he was from a different planet. Two months ago, he’d washed his hands of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; today he washed his hands of Simon Cresswell’s bar mitzvah. This was what adulthood was all about, he thought.

(Not that Simon’s bar mitzvah had really been in his hands anyway -- while he’d at least had something to talk about with Aldous, when they were slacking off, he and Simon had mostly sat in silence until one or the other made an excuse to ditch.)

He would have taken an excuse to ditch right now, if he could. He knew most of these people too well to ignore and not well enough to talk to, a neat and stifling balance, and those he didn’t know were all twelve.

With a (wholly inappropriately) melancholy air Gene got a finger sandwich and a glass of brandy. His dad had said he wouldn’t like brandy (Gene had gotten his dad’s opinions on a whole list of liquors when he’d turned seventeen) but Gene was holding out hope that his dad would be wrong about at least one of them.

Brandy was disgusting; Gene braved the group of parents to give his glass to his mum, then (to avoid conversation with her, since she seemed to be weepily remembering what he’d been like at thirteen) had a seat at one of the tables, where @Anthony Goldstein was sitting. At Gene’s own bar mitzvah (not that Gene was also comparing the two, but he definitely was and he couldn’t help it) Anthony had gotten him a shot of whiskey in secret; whiskey was pretty disgusting, too, but it had gone down faster.

He cleared his throat; “So how’s it, being a real solicitor?”

The secret wizard's community inside the West London Egalitarian Synagogue felt like a good one to one analogue to Anthony's entire existence. Something about living a secret life inside of another quasi-secret life. Something about layers of difference. Something about kosher egg rolls. Maybe that one was a reach.

Simon Cresswell's bar mitzvah, like his brother before him, was a big affair for the wizards and confusing for the muggles. Sure, it was sad Dirk Cresswell died so young, but it was just a tragic accident to them. The wizarding Jews at West London Egalitarian, however, rallied around Aldous and Simon to celebrate.

Mum was hovering near the food - of course, she wasn't technically working, all the food was self-heating for Shabbos, but Mrs. Goldstein was nothing if not an anxious perfectionist. It ran in the family. She was readjusting the finger sandwiches - cucumber, lox and cream cheese, whitefish (whitefish! whitefish finger sandwiches!) - to make them look less picked-over. Tony gave her a quick side hug as he went by, grabbing another piece of rugelach and popping it into his mouth. It was just a diversion on the way to the drinks spread - he poured himself two fingers of scotch into a proper glass, and then significantly less into a plastic juice cup.

Tony took the long way back to his seat, making sure to pass the birthday boy's table with the gaggle of twelve-year-olds. They all looked so small. "Mazel tov, kid," Tony said, placing the cup in front of Simon's plate and giving him a friendly wink. Simon was probably going to be the last wizarding kid to get the secret booze from him, Tony was getting a little old for that to not be weird, but the Cresswell kids deserved to have a little special treatment.

His table was cleared out - all the other young men had taken their nice Jewish Girlfriends to the dance floor or to gossip with parents or what have you. Tony didn't mind - he was the only wizard in that group, after all, and the only gay man as far as he knew. Anthony was used to being on the outside of that group. He watched them, the curly-haired boys in their ill-fitting suits trying to dance, sipping from his glass of scotch.

After a bit, there was movement beside him. Tony turned his head to see Eugene Horowitz settling down next to him. Merlin, the kid had grown - Tony did some quick math when he spotted the glass in the kid's hand a realized with a jolt that Gene was definitely of age by now. Hadn't Tony passed him a whiskey at his own bar mitzvah just yesterday? Anthony was beginning to feel old.

He raised his glass to Gene as a greeting, then shrugged. "It's not as glamourous as they make it sound," Tony said after a moment, trying to figure out how to say I am drowning in case files and grief without sounding like a whinger. "Far fewer absolutely crooks in the system than there were a few years back, which is just my luck."

For a moment Gene just followed Anthony’s gaze to the dance floor -- he glanced back at the other wizard but couldn’t read his expression. Instead they just sat, Gene slouching a bit in his seat. They made a weird and mildly pathetic picture, here together (only slightly more pathetic than Davey two yards away doing some sad excuse for a shimmy) and not even talking.

As far as Gene knew -- which was, admittedly, more like a hundred-metre sprint than a marathon -- he and Anthony had a lot in common, most of which they were probably going to ignore for the rest of their lives because five years comprised a totally insurmountable barrier these days. Homosexuality was just the top of the list (and Gene knew better than to ask, even though he was sure Anthony must know that he knew (it was something he’d heard via the network of magical mums; possibly the vastest network in the world. Horace Slughorn had nothing on Elizabeth Horowitz.)

He felt like it’d been the lamest possible way to start a conversation (as soon as he’d said it, he’d kicked himself for not starting with a more conventional “hello") but Anthony seemed not to mind. Another similarity he supposed they had, if it came up -- Gene had been thinking about being a lawyer, at least until May. Delusions of grandeur. A public defender had advocated a murderer and Death Eater -- that’d cured him of that ambition, sort of. He grinned anyway -- just my luck -- and said, “There’ll be more crooks if you wait long enough.”

That didn’t seem like enough of a reply to go on, and he was a little desperate to have a conversation with Anthony Goldstein, so he added, “I thought about going to Tinker. You liked it, right?”

“There’ll be more crooks if you wait long enough.”

Tony lifted his glass again, just a smidge, one pinkie out like a posh asshole. "From your lips to God's ears," he said, allowing a twinge of a smile to curl around the corners of his own lips. It would feel good to actually take someone down, the way he had watched after his seventh year. Someone who was a real stain, not just someone who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time or broken some esoteric wizarding law.

The pinkie curled back in after a moment - he had spotted his own Hebrew School classmates and slapped the offending digit back into place. It wasn't like it was a secret, but Tony still felt a need to butch it up at shul. Stupid, that was. Mum was trying to set him up with nice Jewish boys anyway, everyone must know - and yet. He wondered what Gene thought. He wondered what everyone thought.

At Gene's question, Tony set the glass down on the white table cloth. "Sure, I liked it. Not that I have much comparative experience there - the American school is good but useless unless you want to practice there, and I never went to the ones on the Continent." A beat passed - Tony pulled his focus from the dance floor (was that a wedding ring on Jacob Rosenthal's finger? Jacob "barfed at Shoshana Kohen's bat mitzvah" Rosenthal was married?) to the young wizard in front of him. He resisted the urge to steeple his hands, instead just leaning up with one elbow onto the table. "Depends on what you want to do, really. Are you still thinking about Tinker?" The past tense wasn't lost on Tony. "Or have you gone straight to Ministry already?"

Anthony was a touch more eager than Gene thought he would be at the prospect of catching crooks -- Gene wondered whether it was worth saying he had sort of wanted to go into public defending. He didn’t anymore, so it probably wasn’t. But he had even less interest in private practise. He grinned anyway -- Tony had made a face over his glass -- and thought better of saying, careful what you wish for. Maybe sometime soon they’d catch another Death Eater; they couldn’t stay in hiding forever, could they?

They sat in quiet for a moment -- Gene tried surreptitiously to follow Tony’s gaze but could only see the other partygoers dancing. Again he fixated on Davey’s dancing (or on Davey’s arse) before he dragged his gaze back up. I liked it wasn’t the most ringing endorsement, but it seemed good enough -- Gene nodded. He had zero interest in the American school -- nay, he had negative interest in the American school -- and he doubted he would ever leave England anyway.

“Not sure,” he said, “I don’t want to do private practise -- I was sort of interested in public defending but then that kind of… hasn’t appealed anymore.” He didn’t particularly want to elaborate here or now, so he rushed on, “I don’t want to be a prosecutor either, though, so I’m just -- straight to Ministry until I work myself out.”

He wanted desperately to tell Anthony that he was working for Hermione Granger, without gloating, which was probably impossible: as casually as he could, he said, “I’m interning in MLE in the meantime -- pay’s shite.”

So, no to private practice, no to public defending? Anthony raised an eyebrow (subconsciously this time, he was just naturally judgemental) slightly, then higher as Gene eliminated prosecution as well. "Right," Tony said. That was basically all of the options, as far as Tony knew, with regard to the law in the wizarding world. "That's pretty much all the options, there, then," Tony said. He pursed his lips -- "unless you want to do paperwork." Which was really just private practice but worse - being a retainer for a business got old really fast, Tony was told.

So, ministry until he worked himself out. That was common enough - but a small part of Anthony was disappointed. It would have been nice to give advice. Not that anything was stopping Tony from offering all his opinions right now. It was just nicer to be asked about them.

MLE? Tony's other eyebrow went up, giving him a generally bemused look. He took a sip of his drink before asking, "Where in?" It couldn't be the Wizengamot Offices, Tony spent most of his waking hours in those rooms. He would have spotted Gene by now, if he had started right after Hogwarts with the other new hires. "MLEP? Auror Office? One of the IUMs?" Then, added to make it less like an interrogation - "Intern pay is always shite. Doesn't matter what department, or whether you're in Ministry or not."

“Yeah,” said Gene glumly, to Anthony’s quirked eyebrow -- he’d worked that out himself too, that he was really not giving himself much choice. Or any choice, at all. “Honestly, least of three evils, I would think public defending, it just -- you know, you get public defenders sticking up for people who did really nothing wrong, but you also get them keeping the lowest scum out of prison.” He glanced back over at Anthony -- he was taller than Anthony Goldstein, he realised giddily (not that it generally surprised him anymore that he’d shot up in height above really a lot of the people he’d ever looked up to.)

“Same for you, I reckon?” he said -- if Anthony was the exact opposite of a public defender, he had the same problem in reverse. “Sort of makes me think lawyering’s a scam and we need to rewrite the laws first, but I don’t think I could go Wizengamot if I didn’t have a background in it.” But that was way too far in the future to think about yet.

Anthony raised his other eyebrow, and Gene half-grinned, half-grimaced. He hadn’t been working long enough to understand the acronyms everybody rattled off all the time. He was still mixing up the Magical Trading Office and the Office for Mermish Relations. “No, I think technically Administration Services, but I’ve just been told to tail Hermione Granger and do whatever she tells me so far, so I don’t honestly think I’ve done anything that’s in my actual job description. Well -- paperwork.”

Intern pay is always shite -- “Yeah,” said Gene again, “Dunno how some of my friends’re moving out of their families’ houses -- I’m going to freeload for as long as I bloody can.”

Public defending as the least of three evils. Tony grudgingly had to give him that -- despite being a prosecutor himself, there were times he found himself wishing he was arguing the other side of the case in front of him. "Mmm, you'd reckon right," Anthony said, raising his drink to his lips and taking a small sip. "Prosecution has a harsher reputation, but it's just the other side of the coin. Some people do need to be punished, do need to be removed from society for some time. And some," he took a larger sip, not looking right at Gene, "it's wrong place, wrong time, and you still have to do the work."

Lawyering's a scam. Tony cracked a half-smile at that. "Some reform is certainly needed." It didn't seem appropriate to mention that, too, was Anthony's ultimate goal -- to reach the top and to rebuild the justice system with a firm hand. "Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof," he said, looking over his glass at Gene again. Justice, justice, you shall pursue -- A portion of Deuteronomy he knew was part of the synagogue's Hebrew School curriculum. He had it written in flowing block script in Hebrew on the bag that held his tefillin, on the inside of his wig for court. It was rare he wrapped tefillin, these days, so he saw it more often when he was dressing for court. Always an important reminder, he thought.

Tail Hermione Granger. Both eyebrows went up -- Tony was impressed by a number of things, there, not the least of which was the ease Gene had managed to drop the name of 'the brightest witch of their age' without coming off like a pompous git. He nodded, lips pressed together. "Impressive," he said, his tone slightly but genuinely awed. "Don't let her work you too hard. She has always worked herself to death, doesn't mean you have to, as well." That was the pot calling on the kettle, like Tony was anything less than a workaholic himself -- but of the two of them, who had the Timeturner in third year to take every elective? Certainly not Anthony.

"Sound choice, long as your folks don't try with curfews or anything." Tony glanced back at the dance floor, back at Gene. He wondered, vaguely, if Gene would have problems with that. Tony couldn't imagine coming home from a night out to his parents, covered in glitter and sweat.

“Uh huh,” said Gene, though the way Anthony had chosen to put it was kind of a little bit maybe fucked up. Like – this was probably why prosecution had a harsher reputation. Although he couldn’t say he disagreed with the sentiment, just the strength with which it’d been expressed.

He shuddered a little bit – this was the sort of opinion that got him into real arguments (not stupid ones) and this was neither the time nor place to start something. On some level he knew a lot of it was that he was just impossible to please, that there was no real perfect compromise between mercy and justice, which he hated. His dad said he’d outgrow it, but he wasn’t so sure.

Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof. Gene gave Tony a less uncomfortable smile at that – he’d given his brandy to his mother, so he had no way to drink to it, so he borrowed somebody’s glass of water off the table and lifted it silently to his companion, and barely remembered at the last second not to actually drink it. He set it down again, lapsed into not-quite-moody silence.

He’d tucked his eyebrows down a little bit, as though he had to think hard about where in, but he peeked up at Anthony and was sort of gratified that the older wizard looked duly impressed. (Right, he remembered – Tony was five years ahead of him in school, so Tony was her age.) “Noted,” he said, though he felt privately as though he would probably just do whatever she asked him to, working to death or not, and not particularly mind. For now even the boring work was a lot more exciting than it was boring.

(His dad said he’d outgrow that too.)

“Don’t think they will,” said Gene, “but I haven’t really tested it.” He hadn’t really tested his parents’ limits on anything yet – he was pretty sure he’d still never had an unsupervised drink. He furrowed his brow again. “Should I?” What did Anthony Goldstein know? He’d always come across pretty straight-laced.

Gene looked as though someone had walked across his grave. Tony managed to keep himself from frowning. If he didn’t like to hear that, the kid certainly wouldn’t survive Tinker. He lifted his own drink up when Gene did, actually drank his instead of awkwardly setting it down. He should get the kid a drink — properly, not hidden in a plastic cup. The kid was of age, after all.

He wondered idly if Hermione had picked him, or if Gene had simply happened across the assignment. Tony couldn’t work out how to phrase it without making it sound like he was still competing with Granger. Which, of course he wasn’t, he hadn’t been competing with her since spring of 1997. But, nu, it hadn’t escaped his notice how fast Hermione was rising in the Ministry ranks. Not that their careers were comparable, not that anyone had ever compared Tony to Hermione except himself.

Instead of saying any of that, he said: “She asked me about a meeting at a wedding reception.” It was unnecessary, given Gene had already noted it, but Anthony felt it was still worth mentioning. “You’ll learn loads from her — just don’t learn that habit.”

“Should you test it?” Tony set his glass down, giving Gene an appraising look. “Well, I don’t know your parents as well as you do, certainly.” He glanced back to the dance floor,  where Jacob Rosenthal was attempting to do some sort of dance he was almost certainly too white to do. Looked over again, where his mum and Mrs. Horowitz were schmoozing with a number of other mothers. Well, certainly Gene must know, and he might as well give a swing at the subject. “I do regret not discussing that with my parents beforehand, before I moved out. Mum stayed up until four in the morning once waiting up for me.” The face his mother had made was burned into his memory. “Not the best circumstances to find oneself coming out to your mother, when you’re exhausted, sloshed, and wearing someone else’s coat.” And in platform heels, he managed to keep himself from adding.

His left hand, the traitorous appendage, was hanging limp from the wrist. Tony crossed his arms over his chest, watching Gene’s face for a reaction.

“That sounds like her,” said Gene, as though he were anybody at all to say what was or wasn’t like Hermione Granger. He saw her every day and still wasn’t entirely sure he could comprehend the depth of the things she did – sometimes she made choices that were either completely illogical, or five hundred layers of ingenious too high for him, and – given the lack of experience and understanding in his own job that had persisted through three months working there – it was probably the latter.

Besides – it felt rather presumptuous to think that anything sounded like Hermione Granger. He was still having a hard time conceptualizing her as a person that was his boss and not as a mythic figure.

“Don’t worry,” he promised anyway, “I’m not overworking myself or anything. I don’t think anybody trusts me to write anything more advanced than memos, at least.” It’d always seemed like writing things was the most time-consuming task anybody had at the Ministry, which irritated Gene only because he’d spent his entire Hogwarts career thinking that his ability to spin an essay out of nonsense and fluff was going to die in ignominy the same way his understanding of geometry had. (He was still riding the high from that time three years ago that knowing the volume of a sphere had come in handy.)

“Huh,” said Gene – he felt this might not be an invitation to start psychoanalysing his relationship with his parents, although now he wanted to. Following Anthony’s gaze over to the mums, he tilted his head slightly and snorted (four in the morning? when had he slept?) “Oy,” he said. Anthony went on (Gene could respect his pathological need to talk, since he had one too) and Gene’s eyes widened so quickly he thought they might never shut again. “At four in the morning?” He hadn’t broached the topic of his own homosexuality with his parents yet, but he was hoping they’d all be, like, awake for it.

And Anthony hadn’t broached the topic of either of their homosexuality with him – did Anthony know anyway that Gene was gay? because if not, Gene was probably coming off like a homophobe right now – so this felt momentous. He fumbled for some way to say I swear I’m making this face at the time of night without sounding like a tool, but it was taking too long, so he blurted, “Well, I’m gay too.” That felt stupid. He added, “Got any, like, tips?” and felt immediately stupider.