ziggy played guitar [charlie]

 Sam dropped ‘Do You Have What It Takes To Train Security Trolls?’ back on the table with a disgusted sigh – “God,” he scoffed, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. He’d spent a long, long morning so far reading all about the dullest jobs invented (forty-five minutes, at least) and was starting to lose it. He opened his eyes again, staring bleakly through his fingers across the table at Charlie, who looked like he was having about as much luck as Sam was. Possibly less – poor Charlie wasn’t so great with a wand.

“What’ve you got?” he said, gesturing with one hand at the brochure Charlie was holding. “Trade you for –” he glanced at the nearest discarded pamphlet to his right hand – “Broom Safety Inspector.” Charlie didn’t like brooms much, either, but Sam chucked it across the table anyway, on the off chance his friend happened to care about air traffic safety.

There just weren’t any good jobs he was qualified for, and even if he did have what it took to train security trolls, he didn’t fancy the smell. Surely no security troll trainer in the history of training trolls had ever gotten laid.

“This is a waste of time,” said Sam. “Maybe my dad will get me a job selling nuts at Quidditch games. You can come too, it’ll be a laugh.” At least they wouldn’t need to be magically talented (or even very hard-working) to peddle peanuts. It would be a serious test of John Lynch’s questionable charitable sense to ask him to find a job for his eldest son, anyway, much less for his eldest son’s random friend. Sam was starting to wish he’d listened the first five or six hundred times his parents had gotten on his case about applying himself.

He flipped through the latest pamphlet and tossed it back down on the table. “Please tell me you don’t have any clue what you’re doing, either.”

@Charlie Baker

 Charlie had stopped actively reading the pamphlet in his hand, instead staring at it with an intensity only a teenage boy realising he had no future could possess. What the fuck was he going to do? It didn’t help, really, that he didn’t know (or hadn’t cared to learn) much about the careers a wizard might work towards outside of those he’d had to interact with (shop worker, professor). He’d been too busy wrapping his head around magic being real in his first couple of years (and still now, if he was being honest with himself), and then wrapping his head around his complete lack of competence with a wand—had there been some sort of mistake?—and then pretty much given up on achieving academically.

The other boy flicked a brochure at him. Broom Safety Inspector. Charlie hadn’t been on a broom since his first year (for good reason). He glanced at it anyway, curious, then at the one he’d been glazing over at—Dragon Feeder—and blinked, unsure why on earth he’d picked that up (desperation for choice, or something), before sliding it across the table to Sam.

Charlie laughed dryly at Sam’s backup plan – at least he had the look of someone who belonged Quidditch-adjacent, Charlie not so much. “Yeah, Mum’ll be well impressed.” God, his mum was going to be so disappointed. All the lying and for what? Him to sign on the dole? He supposed it could be worse, he could end up tiling kitchens and bathrooms with his Uncle. But he’d been good in muggle school, hadn’t he? Maybe he could go back and do GCSEs at a college or something, not that he knew what he’d want to do in the muggle world either.

Some small relief that Sam seemed to be in the same predicament, at least. “Er, no.” He was too depressed to lie about it. The outlook was bleak. “I’m fucked,” he said as he slouched in his seat, running a hand through his hair. “Anything decent needs a good result in Charms,” which, it went without saying, he was barely scraping an Acceptable in.


 

 Where Sam’s discouragement was making him talkative, Charlie’s was doing rather the opposite; Charlie didn’t respond at all to Sam’s first prod, just kept up his respectably broody silence and slid his pamphlet across the table. Though (Sam glanced over the list of pros and cons) imagining oneself as a dragon feeder probably just did that to a person. Another job to eliminate on olfactory grounds.

Even Charlie’s laugh was rather glum, but it gave Sam a better sense of what he was so glum about. Sam had been too concerned about how well he would like his future job to devote any thought to his parents’ opinions, but Charlie’s parents were both teachers – surely they’d given him all kinds of complexes about his success as an adult. Probably Charlie had grown up intending to attend university and get a job for educated people – Sam had a sense that Charlie hadn’t struggled in school until he’d come to Hogwarts, poor bastard.

Sam leaned forward, scrambling the pamphlets on the table with one hand like he was trying inefficiently to shuffle them, and picked another out of the loop, hoping it was something funny enough to pull Charlie out of this funk; nothing cheered Charlie up like badmouthing the magical economy. Naturally it was, Do you have what it takes to be a Morbiwizard? and Sam knew already that neither of them did.

The issue was that Charlie was shite at Charms, and even the employers at the bottom of the barrel seemed to want a N.E.W.T. in Charms, which was bloody ungrateful of them. Sam wasn’t brilliant at Charms, but he was good enough that anything he could say in sympathy would make him sound like a massive prick, so he said, “These jobs all look like shite anyway. Like I want to do any of this for the rest of my life – fuck having a career.” He said the word distastefully; just his school career was boring the shit out of him, and he was only five years in.

He’d probably just get a new career every few years if he fancied it, anyway, so what was the point in deciding now? Obviously ‘I dunno, whatever I can get’ wasn’t as good a career as any, but it was a better career than none. Sam flipped through the Morbiwizard pamphlet – he hadn’t set it down yet – and said, “Are Muggle jobs this boring?”
 

 

Charlie lifted his head as Sam shuffled the brochures like a card game and watched as his friend plucked one at random. He didn’t read it aloud, but from the grotesque illustrations on the back Charlie could pick that it looked off-brand for them, at best.

Sam surmised what Charlie was also thinking – these jobs all looked terrible. He wondered then if there were any good jobs – and he didn’t mean just in the magical world, though he suspected he could get along a bit better with something in muggle society. Sam sneered at the prospect of a career and Charlie grinned lopsidedly, grateful that they were on the same page.

Charlie sat up a little and pushed his bottom lip out. “Well, I wouldn’t say feeding dragons is a boring job,” he countered, thinking about what an accountant might do if faced with a living, (fire)breathing mythical beast. “But yeah, pretty much. I don’t know anybody that loves their job—”  He stopped suddenly and pulled a face. “‘cept for my Mum and Dad.” He got the distinct feeling that to be a teacher (or professor, as they were referred to in the wizarding world) you had to have a few screws loose. “They’re not normal though,” he added, unnecessarily.

“Best jobs are the ones where you do fuck all for a shitload of money. Problem is finding one.”

 “Would be after a few months,” said Sam, folding his pamphlet back up and dropping it back on the table. Charlie was kind of smiling now, still with more irony than cheer. “You just think so ‘cause you’ve never seen a dragon.” Sam had only seen one in his life, and from a great distance – his dad had pointed out a wild Welsh Green to him and his siblings once while they were on holiday in Snowdonia – but it had impressed upon him that dragons, like most supposedly awesome animals, spent most of their time not doing anything interesting.

Sam’s family seemed to have a good deal more job satisfaction in general than Charlie’s – except for Charlie’s parents. They’re not normal though, Charlie added. “I don’t fancy being a professor anyway,” yawned Sam, tilting his chair onto its back legs. “Imagine having to put up with little shits like us all day, I’d go insane.”

Now that they were back on the topic of fulfilling jobs, though, Sam was back to thinking about his own family again. He did want to make a shitload of money, if only to prove that he could. He got a sense lately that his parents had started putting their eggs in his siblings’ baskets. “Yeah,” he said – the problem was finding one. His parents couldn’t get mad at him if he pursued an idiotic career when they’d done the exact same thing when they were his age, but Sam didn’t have extraordinary Quidditch talent – at least not enough of it to outperform Charlie Weasley’s freaky brothers with their weird twin thing at the tryouts.

“If the Falcons signed Colm they’ll sign anybody,” he said – Sam, and indeed most of his family, never missed an opportunity to snipe at Colm – but, “I don’t much fancy that, either, that’s practically a real job, you have to go to practises and get drug tests and everything. All those teams are in the Ministry’s pocket. You wanna be your own boss, you know?”
 

 

Sam countered him and Charlie tilted his head in defeat. “Fair enough,” he agreed, he expected even zookeepers got bored of feeding lions and crocodiles after a while. “I imagine it’s more riveting than feeding a flobberworm, though,” he smirked. “They progressed you to dung beetles yet?” he teased. Charlie hadn’t had any intention of working with animals let alone magical creatures, which tended to be less cuddly and/or more dangerous, or just absolutely fucking useless, like the flobberworms Sam had been looking after this past spring, and so he hadn’t taken it as one of his electives. He had taken Divination, however, and had been tempted to drop the crystal ball on his hand just for an excuse to leave and go to the hospital wing.

“Neither,” Charlie agreed (again), as if he’d had any hope of teaching magic when he could hardly perform it. He could probably have done potions, but he wasn’t sure if Snape bumped up his marks (marginally) purely on the basis of being a Slytherin – and being Potions Master would require Snape to die or retire, of which neither seemed likely (more’s the pity). Charlie glanced under the table at Sam’s chair legs, if only to see if he could reach with his foot to tap it out (not quite).

He was about to ask why Sam didn’t do that then—quidditch—but he quickly laid out his reasons why. Charlie exhaled in a deep sigh. “Yeah,” he agreed, as if he knew anything about the league being in with the Ministry of Magic (of which he knew even less). Sounded like too much work either way, though for comparatively more pay, he was sure. “Wanted to play footy when I was little,” Charlie said distractedly, now on the tangent of unrealistic career aspirations. “Could’ve helped Wednesday win the Cup,” he continued melodramatically, more disappointed that he hadn’t been able to watch Sheffield beat Manchester United the previous month – he’d have to settle for the recording his dad was keeping for when he got home in the summer.

Charlie folded his hands behind his head, then snorted at the next improbable job that popped into his head: “If it weren’t football it were rockstar,” he grinned lopsidedly. “Wembley one way or another.”

 “Feeding a flobberworm with Rachel Hewlett,” said Sam, as if he’d had any luck chatting up Rachel Hewlett in Care of Magical Creatures. She was definitely taking that class out of genuine love for animals and not for an easy O.

Charlie said he’d wanted to play footy when he was little. Sam sat forward, grinning, letting the chair clunk back onto the floor. “No kidding?” He didn’t know what about the idea was so funny to him – perhaps the mental image of skinny, scrubby Charlie in one of those ridiculous Muggle costumes, perhaps the idea of Charlie having athletic aspirations at all, perhaps the idea of Charlie succeeding at it. “Sure you could,” he said anyway, with too much humour. “S’pose I thought I was gonna play Quidditch, too, until lately.” He left unsaid that this was the only reason he didn’t make more fun of Charlie for that admission.

For a moment they were both silent, probably pondering their dumb little childhood dreams, before Charlie spoke again. “Who the fuck’s Wembley?” said Sam, but not really caring about the answer, he went on without waiting for Charlie to explain, slouching back in his chair again. “That’s better than Quidditch, though, innit? Nobody’s gonna tell a rockstar what to do or how to do it.”
 

 

“How romantic.” Fair play to Sam though, Charlie thought even he might put up with feeding flobberworms for Rachel Hewlett – as if either of them had a chance (and of either of them, it was probably Sam). “She good at handling worms, then? That’s lucky for you,” Charlie smirked, which stretched into a grin, into a tired sort of laugh – the lack of a future had clearly gotten to him.

“Mm,” he replied to Sam’s (presumably) rhetorical question. “Everyone wants to do a sport at some point, don’t they?” He didn’t specify football this time out of consideration for Sam, for whom it was obviously quidditch rather than the (superior) muggle sport – point was, most people grew out of such unrealistic aspirations.

Who the fuck’s Wembley? Charlie looked at Sam like he’d grown a second head, then remembered Sam would have no reason to know what Wembley was, any more than Charlie had known that Ilkley Moor had a secret quidditch stadium  – and he was from Yorkshire.

Sam had carried on but it would be remiss of Charlie not to educate his friend; “Wembley Stadium,” he said, too dumbfounded (even with countless prior muggle-magic exchanges akin to this one) that someone could not know about Wembley. “It’s like, the best football stadium in the world.” This didn’t do it justice, so he continued after a pause: “Imagine the Sistine Chapel of quidditch, that’s Wembley. But like, they have concerts and that as well, Live Aid—” Sam wouldn’t know what Live Aid was, “Queen, Bowie, Genesis…”

Sam had had a point, though – nobody would, or could, tell a rockstar what to do. Mötley Crüe weren’t his choice of listening material but you’d have to live under a rock (or at a remote Scottish castle) not to know they were the perfect example of rockstar immunity to instruction, and while he had no desire to throw a bed out of a hotel window, the idea of earning a lot of money from playing to sold out crowds—crowds of girls, obviously—was very attractive. He looked Sam over before shaking his head. “Be nice, wouldn’t it?” An understatement.

“Bet you’d pull Rachel Hewlett if you were in a band,” he grinned.

No Quidditch pitches had catchy enough names to be any kind of Sistine Chapel of Quidditch, but Sam was too impressed at Charlie’s analogy to raise the point, and also too intrigued by the idea of concerts held in stadiums. Quidditch pitches were, on the whole, too big and windswept to be acoustically sound, but he’d seen the Irish National Team mascots enough times to imagine the potential spectacle. And he recognised all the artist names Charlie had listed save for Live Aid (which was a horrible name for a band anyway.) “Wicked,” he said.

They sat for a moment, staring right through each other, probably both thinking about rockstars getting away with shit. For sure rockstars didn’t have to get drug tests or intensive training. The only concert Sam’s parents had ever taken him and his siblings to, the entire band had been absolutely clobbered and Sam’s mum had made them leave early after the lead singer took her shirt off. Sam had complained, which had worked until his dad had realised he was just stalling. “Yeah,” he said absently, “Nice.”

Charlie was clearly taking the mickey, but Sam was anxious to get a shot back in after the worm comment earlier: “Hell, you’d pull Rachel Hewlett if you were in a band,” he said, laughing. “I could pull anybody I wanted. They always go for drummers.” After a moment: “I told you I played the drums, right?” He vaguely remembered it coming up when he’d first met the Bakers – the mister was a music teacher or something.

“Yeah.” It was wicked, and what Charlie wouldn’t give now to have been able to see Queen at Wembley – alas, he had been ten and hadn’t yet grown to fully appreciate them outside of his mum playing their Greatest Hits album in the car on trips.

“Fuck off,” Charlie grinned. Again, Sam was talking a lot of sense despite the delusion of it all – Charlie probably could pull (someone like) Rachel Hewlett if he was in a band. Multiple Rachel Hewletts, even. He looked at Sam and blinked, having zoned out for a moment, then blinked again when he recognised what Sam was saying. “Yeah,” he nodded. He was curious now, where this line of thinking was going. “Like, properly or just for a bit?”

“I can play guitar,” Charlie continued, careful to make it sound like a throwaway comment just in case this was simply a tangent of their conversation, rather than identifying prerequisites to actually starting a band (how did one even do that, anyway? Asking seemed so wanky and pretentious, surely it should just happen – organically).

“Can play piano too but only ‘cause they forced me.” God forbid he admit to learning the instrument under anything but duress (which was sort of true).

“Dunno about properly,” said Sam. “I’m shite at the notation, obviously, but I can usually figure it out if I listen to it.” He could figure out how to play just about anything once he’d heard it a few times, but he wasn’t much for reading it off a page. Just didn’t seem right, did it? Drummers shouldn’t have to play music off of levitating scrolls like jazz musicians or string quartets; they were cooler than that. That was the whole reason Sam had wanted to play the drums in the first place, instead of piano like his dad had suggested first.

Speak of the devil; Charlie could play piano. “Me dad suggested that first,” said Sam, tilting his chair back again. “Honestly, I think my parents just wanted an excuse to lock me in a room on my own once in a while, just to stop me beating on Ryan, but I was like, Dad, playing the piano is for losers.” Sam’s dad was a pain in the arse lately, but Sam would always be grateful that his dad had been so invested in making sure Sam would be cool once he got to Hogwarts.

Frankly, “You don’t want a pianist in a band, anyway, you don’t see the Weird Sisters toting a grand piano around on tour. A guitar is a pussy magnet. You could even bring it to school and show off.” In his mind’s eye, Sam tried to imagine hanging around Charlie, his guitar, and his hypothetical crowd of admiring girls. It sounded insufferable; he changed tactic quickly. “Man, we should start a band.”

Charlie nodded. Notation wasn’t his forte but he could read it well enough, better towards the end of the summer after spending time with his dad, less so at the beginning of the break when he’d been in a remote Scottish castle for the best part of a year.

Sam’s dad had suggested piano first, too, but clearly Sam had done a better job of converting his parents to a different instrument. Charlie leaned a few inches sideways in his chair (with all four legs still on the ground) to peer at Sam’s, ready to nudge it with his foot should the opportunity arise. He glanced back at the Gryffindor and grinned lopsidedly. “Cheers,” he said, referencing his loser status. “At least one of our dad’s wanted us to be cool,” he lamented; though, really, Charlie did think his father was cooler than most – largely attributed to his passive parenting. His mother, on the other hand, seemed hellbent on embarrassing her son at any given opportunity.

“No, ‘course not,” Charlie agreed, then grinned wider at Sam’s review of the guitar. “I could,” he conceded, already pondering the logistics of bringing one. Were there any rules on how much luggage you could bring as long as you could carry it yourself? He knew as a first year it had been ‘one standard trunk’ but then you could also bring a caged animal, so he figured he could argue a guitar was less cumbersome to transport than a living thing – and he’d happily take it on the train himself, make the most of having it in the compartment, pussy magnet and all that.

He looked at Sam, blinking once as he thought over the suggestion – it didn’t sound like a joke, but even if it did, being in a jokey band was surely preferable to fading into anonymity in their later years at school. “Yeah, we should,” Charlie affirmed. “Just need to find someone else to play summat. You know anyone?”