“When don’t I?” Theo answered, with a pfft of breath, his brief grin making it look like more of a joke than it possibly was. Not always in public – he had gotten more in the habit, in the last few years, of drinking alone, which was probably bad – but this pub sat conveniently near some of their (muggle) relatives he was just back from visiting, so he’d stopped in anyway.

If it had been a while since he last had, it was because this pub also sat conveniently close to the Ministry, and he’d made a habit of ducking in here from time to time from back then, too. So: Holden Cartwright was no surprise.

And there were plenty of worse people to come across, to be fair – people he hadn’t even bothered to keep in touch with, from the auror department or otherwise – so he took the place at the bar beside him in something like relief. “Take it you do too?” Theo raised an eyebrow in mild curiosity. Cartwright had actually become an auror, which was enough stress for anyone even before the rest of what Cartwright had going on – so that wasn’t much of a surprise either.

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