Only thought through strikes for losing — well, that was fair enough. Who could have anticipated that they'd be here? Even his advocates had never seemed to think it very likely. Maybe Minister Ross had suspected things would end like this, when he gave his recommendation, but Oz had never really believed it. Clearly his family hadn't, either; the prevailing attitude in the house the day before had been well thank goodness this is almost over, not anticipation on the edge of a brand new state of things. (Though to be fair, none of their lives were going to be as dramatically impacted by this as either his of Thomasina's).

"Well, if the alternative is staying in a house with just you for company, I'm sure I'll manage it," he teased. Maybe there was a slight silver lining in having to move... it would be a hassle to find a house and purchase it, and to set up a whole new set of staff, and to move their things — it would be a hassle to have to host people and not have the excuse of eccentric siblings and parents to keep them away — it would be odd to not see his siblings so often any more. But if they had the house entirely to themselves (which in Oz's consideration they would; he did not rate servants as actual people for the sake of tallying who was in the house) then they'd have a larger assortment of places in which they could have spontaneous sex.

In all seriousness, though, how did people even get places early in the morning? The Ministry work day started before Oz typically woke up. He'd never had to force himself to wake up earlier than he wanted to since graduating Hogwarts, and at Hogwarts there had been a whole dormitory full of roommates who would take the opportunity to throw things at oversleeping peers before they missed the start of class. Did other people have servants come in and prod them awake? Dear god. How dreary.

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