WHO: Andy Smudgley and Byron Kettleburn WHAT: Watching Dame Judi Dench fawn over trees and discussing their journalistic endeavors WHEN: Backdated to Christmas day WHERE: Byron's flat in Nottingham WARNINGS: Swearing, drinking
For a brief moment, Andy struggled to reach the advent calendar he had placed by the sparsely decorated tree. The calendar had been finished a while ago, but he had used it to carry the beer and spirits to Byron's flat. Finally, he stood, walked the few feet, and carried the calendar back to place between them. There was a slight pause before he pulled out another beer to hand to Byron, and he grabbed one for himself.
"I should've paid for meat," Andy commented as he used his fork to slice into the Tofurky roast.
“Was the butcher’s closed, or…” Byron let the question trail off as he watched the slice of roast tip away from the rest, revealing what he assumed to be the ‘furky’ inside. “Are you sure that’s even edible?”
Sure, Andy was sure. He gave Byron a withering look and scooped up a mouthful. As he chewed, he grimaced, and then lifted his plate to his mouth to spit it back out. "Would've needed a meat thermometer," he replied after a swig of beer.
After watching Andy spit his out, Byron poked at the bit on his own plate. Slanting a glance at his friend, he grinned. “Or did you secretly want me to order takeaway all along? Thai or Chinese?”
"This is supposed to be good," Andy protested. He dumped a good portion of the gravy on a small portion of his roast. After another bite, he placed his fork on his plate and said, "Thai," before drinking more. "Would it be sacrilegious to eat bamboo during My Passion for Trees?"
“Can’t be more sacreligious than what you tried to feed me. On Christmas, no less.” After giving the roast a pointed look, Byron took a swig off his own drink. When he set it back down on the table, he squirmed in his seat to extract his phone from his pocket. “At least neither one will hurt the Dame’s feelings.”
Andy nodded heavily. He started listing off some satays, and requests for extra salad and peanut sauce, as he pulled more beer from the calendar with his free hand. Then, "Hey, By, make sure the shrimp is sustainable before you order it."
Byron made no attempt to conceal an exaggerated roll of his eyes as he held the phone to his ear. “If you’re worried about the shrimp, why don’t you go fetch it from the ocean yourself?” But someone had picked up mid-sentence and a confused voice sounded from the other end of the line.
“Sorry, no, I didn’t mean you,” he explained before rattling off their order. He shot Andy a look across the table when, at the end of the conversation, he asked, “Out of curiosity, is the shrimp sustainable?” A beat. “No, I didn’t think so. That’ll be all, cheers.”
“Sorry, mate,” he said when he hung up. He gestured to the tofurkey. “They’ll still taste better than your monstrosity there.”
"That's always how it is, innit?" Andy began in an exaggeratedly philosophical tone. Realising he wasn't sure where this was going at all, he let it hang awkwardly and gulped down his beer instead. "Let's just start the doc."
Byron snorted before he rose from his seat to fetch the remote for his tv. He waved Andy over, abandoning their attempt at a Christmas dinner on the table and sinking into a spot on his sofa. “Maybe this is just what we need to inspire us to journalistic greatness.”
"Seems easier to leave the Profit and start a restaurant." Bringing his calendar and beer, Andy followed Byron and sank heavily onto the other end the sofa. The calendar landed between them.
"I'm Judi Dench, and I've been an actor for sixty years. But I have another passion..."
“It’s shagging, isn’t it?” Byron quipped at the screen despite knowing better. “She loves her some of that hardwood.”
"Mate, that's our fake granny you're talking about. Behave yourself." Andy took a swig of beer.
“The key word here is fake,” Byron said over the sounds of the intro. “Maybe she’s only pretending to care about the trees.”
Andy tilted his head as Judi Dench pawed at the tree trunk. "I don't know… I don't even care this much about the Profit. Ever."
“What’s left to care about?” The bitterness in Byron’s voice was obvious, even as he stared at the endearingly enamored woman on the screen. “We’re just spitting out Death Eater propaganda at this point.”
Andy remained silent as she narrated and gasped on the screen. After downing the rest of his beer, he offered, "A lot of people don't believe us. And it pays the bills."
“And in the meantime, our kids—” Byron’s kid. “They’re being tortured at school for refusing to perform dark magic."
That finally got Andy to look away from the screen, but it was only to shoot Byron a weird look. "Have you talked to him?" A beat. "For what you're writing."
“Not yet,” Byron mumbled, sinking into his seat and fixing his eyes on the screen. “I’m going to talk to Gwen’s sister. Guess I should add him to the list.”
This time, Andy stared at Byron longer, with his eyebrows raised. He spoke to Narcissa Malfoy's son first?! But instead of voicing it, Andy went back to watching the documentary. "What're you going to do with it after you write it up?"
“I don’t know,” Byron said over Judi Dench’s glee over another new fact about trees being revealed to her. He glanced at Andy. “There aren’t many places left mad enough to publish anything like that. Maybe the Quibbler. But no one takes them seriously.”
Andy's tone was carefully neutral and his eyes remained on the trees. "It'd help if they didn't print their shit upside down and sideways." Then, "People are taking them more seriously than they're taking us."
“You think so?” Byron slanted another glance at his friend. “People are reading the Quibbler? People besides me? Half the people at the Prophet didn’t even know about the kids at school.”
"Are you really using the Prophet as a barometer?" In his earlier days working at the paper, Andy had gained some respect for it that he lacked in his youth. But in the past few years, it had begun fraying, and it wasn't something he kept hidden from Byron. "We can't even put out something like this." He used his fresh beer bottle to gesture at Judi Dench waxing on about her trees.
“To be fair,” Byron said, raising his eyebrows and inclining his head toward the telly. “This doesn’t feel all that important compared to things like their letting dementors, hags and werewolves use muggleborns as their own personal buffets. Or professors torturing children. Or the Death Eaters blackmailing the Wizengamot. And I could go on...”
Andy had nodded along, making slight faces and shrugs as Byron spoke. "Guess that's why our being shit bothers me now. I mean, the Profit was never that great." Using a second unopened bottle, Andy popped off the cap of the one he was holding.
“Well, no,” Byron conceded, barely paying attention to the trees anymore. “But it wasn’t terrible. At least not until Fudge.”
"Yeah, going after a twelve-year-old… or however old Potter was…" Andy turned to Byron. "You reckon he'll save us?"
Byron let out a short laugh. “No, I don’t think a seventeen-year-old boy is going to save us,” he said, barely able to contain another snort as he said it out loud. “I think we’re more or less on our own here. Unless the Order of the Phoenix manages some sort of comeback.”
Andy remained silent for a long moment, sipping his beer. "I was gonna spin a shit headline, but—" He shrugged and checked his watch.
“It’s not looking good,” Byron said, slumping back into the sofa cushions. It wasn’t the first time they’d had a conversation that followed this vein. He was sure it wouldn’t be the last — at least not as long as they both continued to write trash for an increasingly trashy newspaper.
“You know,” he said, letting his head loll to the side so he could look at Andy. “I’ve been talking to these kids, right? And there’s no doubt about them using dark magic at school. And Malfoy aside, they’re all scared shitless. People should know, but getting it out there's not going to be easy.”
He sighed. “I don’t think the Quibbler’s long for this world if you’re right about them being cooler than us now.”
Instead of making eye contact, Andy opted to down his beer instead. "Probably." He fished another out of his calendar. "It's shit because you can't report specifics without them realising who the source is, but it makes it more credible. Even if you started your own website like the Intercept, one—" he used the beer bottle to count off his fingers "—our credibility is shot, and two, how're you gonna get your kid to Russia?"
“People seem more open to anonymous sources these days,” Byron pointed out, dropping his eyes to the rim of his own drink as he considered the options. “None of those kids’ names are going to make it to print. I’m not looking to get anyone killed — or send anyone to Russia.” He shifted his gaze back to Andy. “His mum would kill me before the Death Eaters ever had a chance to track me down.”
Andy was still watching the trees or the contents of his bottle. "It isn't particularly anonymous if a certain incident only happened to one person."
“I’d have to avoid anything like that,” Byron said, wiping a hand down his face. “I know it’s risky, but it's not about to get better.”
"You should do it," Andy declared, though all his s sounds had begun to have soft shhs that accompanied them.
Byron sat up a bit straighter and smirked at his friend. “Is that you or the advent calendar talking?”
Andy shook his head and shrugged at the same time. After another gulp, he gestured at the television. "That's what your grandmother would say. I dunno, mate. Even if you're just going along or if you know it's bollocks or if everyone else knows it's bollocks or if everyone knows you know it's bollocks or you're just trying to get through school in peace or whatever the fuck, you're gonna have regrets if you keep going like thish."
“If I keep going like fish?” Byron couldn’t resist taking the piss. “If you keep drinking like a fish? What bollocks are you on about now?”
"Quit being an arse. You're ruining the moment and the documentary."
“Right,” Byron said, nodding. “The moment you tell me I should risk my life and career to do the right thing, and then we go back to watching a documentary about a woman who loves trees. Because of course this is how we’re spending Christmas.”
"People are getting abducted and tortured, possibly every single fucking day." Judi Dench gasped as she listened to her tree on headphones. "You know about it. If you put in half the work it takes to write to Narcissa Malfoy's son and remain civil, fuck, Byron, you can uncover so much more shit that's going on. You're employed by what's supposed to be the paper of record. How the fuck can you just wring your hands for two wars?" The Dame beamed and looked so proud of her tree doing all that work.
“There it is,” Byron said before tipping and draining the remainder of his drink. He put the bottle down on his coffee table with a loud, hollow thud that sounded out of place in the happy chatter pouring out of his speakers. “You know I’m not trying to sit here wringing my hands while they put my name to a bunch of lies. You know I care about getting the truth out there. You know that’s what I want. It's the entire point.”
"All right, New Year's resolution: Byron prints the truth." Andy lifted his now-empty beer bottle.
“Also known as Byron tempts death.” Byron lifted his own empty bottle, tapping it against Andy’s. “What’s Andy doing while I’m out there on my crusade?”
Andy tried to take a sip and frowned when he realised it was empty. He cracked open two more and shot Byron a look.
With a slow nod, Byron reached out to take one. “This’ll probably help overthrow the Death Eaters too,” he said before taking a long swig.
"If there are two of us, maybe we can get him to change the font," Andy mused. The buzzer sounded, and he started looking for the remote to pause the documentary.
Byron got to his feet to get the door, but he stopped halfway across the room and turned to look at Andy. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Even with the Comic Sans? And all the mental bits about heffalacks and crackspurts and that?”
"Don't forget 'werewolf abducts schoolboy', but upside down. Get the food, you git."
Byron shook his head and made for the door again, musing out loud. “We really are going to have to get him to change that. Can’t be reporting kidnappings in joke fonts.”
"I will give you my whisky collection if you can make that happen." Andy's collection consisted of empty bottles. He shifted in his seat as he dug around for his wallet.
“Keep the rubbish.” He pointed at Andy’s wallet. “That too.” The buzzer sounded again and Byron picked up the pace, calling over his shoulder as he flew out the door. “Times New Roman will be enough reward!”