Ford scrunched his lips to one side as he considered this. If he was using Lestrange as his new archetype for Quidditch players — since he was the only real Quidditch player Ford actually knew with any degree of familiarity — he wasn't sure he would agree with this man's assessment, either of professional athletes being too narrowly focused in their skill set or of them being generally happy. Not that Lestrange was radiating misery, or anything, but — well, there was that thing he'd said outside the manor, that Ford had let go without a comment and which they hadn't returned to. Maybe it's lucky that the dead don't stick around to blame us for things, which was not really the sort of thing a generally happy person said. It was the sort of thing that might find its way into an Edgar Allen Poe poem, actually — but that was not to say that all of his poems were quite so morbid. Annabel Lee had a rather peaceful ending, with the bit about hoping to see her again in the afterlife, after all.

"I don't know that Poe would agree with you. The happiest day — the happiest hour my sear'd and blighted heart hath known," he quoted, but realized as he spoke that phrasing it in the past tense did sort of imply Poe hadn't been particularly happy when he wrote the poem. Still — "I think it takes more than just being unhappy to write good poetry," he argued. "Poe's work wouldn't be half so good if it wasn't so bittersweet. Layering in the good things with the bad."