Ford's stomach flipped at the mention of whiskey. On the one hand, it was strangely thrilling that Lestrange had cared enough to remember something about him from their first meeting. On the other hand, it was a bit mortifying that this man might only know five to ten facts about him, and one of them was apparently going to be that he'd never really figured out how to drink whiskey. It wasn't exactly what he lead with when he was introducing himself, particularly not if he wanted the other party to think well of him. And he did want Lestrange to think well of him. He'd given up on the pretense that he was only interested in the potential friendship here because it would ingratiate him to Society Types, or even that it would make passing an occasional evening at Black's more pleasant. About halfway through their first conversation, about the time that he'd stopped pretending to care about cards, he'd realized that he actually enjoyed talking to Lestrange. He wanted the feeling to be mutual.

But he didn't sound like he was poking fun, about the whiskey — with the brightness in his tone it was more like it was some personal joke that the two of them were in on.

"Yeah, let's," he agreed with a nod, weaving his way through tables until he found one that appeared to be unoccupied. "I wonder if they'd sell us a bottle for the road, if we asked," he mused as he sat. He'd never had occasion to ask, but he didn't see why they wouldn't; they had plenty of bottles, and were in the business of exchanging them for money. Not that he wanted to be drunk, tonight, but a bottle of wine between the two of them would hardly be enough to cross that boundary, especially if they were still going to have dinner later.

"Oh — and congratulations," he said, remembering only after he'd slipped his bag off his shoulder and to the floor. "I saw in the paper about your match."