Ford had survived dinner with Lestrange — and, despite all of their combined best efforts to make the dinner table spontaneously combust, all of his siblings had, too. That could be conservatively counted as a win, but he wasn't exactly convinced that his friend had come away with the most charitable impression of them all. It was a good thing that Lestrange was an actual friend, not someone Ford was trying to befriend in order to present them as a potential suitor for his sisters (Verity's comments about magical royalty aside). They could treat last night as a very rough trial run for any future dinner parties, and hopefully do a little better next time. In the meantime, he was eager to talk to Lestrange again — if nothing else, then just to let him know that no, his siblings weren't always like that.

The club was really the only place he could have looked. He didn't know what Lestrange did in his free time, except for the one excursion to Londonderry. He wasn't surprised when he didn't see him there, though, because Lestrange had mentioned before that he went to the club only sporadically, and their paths hadn't crossed there since January. Having arrived at the club and made the rounds, though, he couldn't just leave again without looking rude, so he supposed now he was stuck here for at least the next hour.

He ordered a drink — red wine, having learned his lesson from the first time he'd been here — and gravitated without really knowing why to the same set of armchairs he'd previously occupied for his card game with Lestrange. One of them was occupied already by an older fellow that Ford thought looked familiar, in the sort of way people looked familiar when Verity would have been highly offended that he hadn't already recognized them.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked, indicating the empty chair.

Valerian Macnair Holly Scrimgeour