31 December, 1891 — Morgan NYE Party, Morgan House, London
The party had finally started in earnest, now that midnight was creeping closer and some of the other competing parties had started to bleed guests into theirs. Morgan had slipped outside for twenty minutes or so, smoking with a few friends and taking a break from drinking. He fully intended to be hungover by tomorrow morning, but it would be a poor show of things to be obviously drunk when there were still people arriving, so he had to time things right. There were fireworks in one corner of the sky that he could see from their back garden. Someone hadn't waited until midnight. He stopped to watch them for a minute, sitting on the edge of the garden wall. By the time they'd finished and he'd hopped down to rejoin the party, he'd smudged his crisp white suit with dirt along the backs of his thighs, which wouldn't do at all. He could have headed straight up to his room and changed, but he liked this suit, and it fit the color scheme so well with its golden accents. He'd only just stained it, so he could probably get it back to white easily enough, with soap, water, and magic at his disposal.
From the garden the closest room was one that had once served as the classroom for their pre-Hogwarts lessons, but had long since been converted into another general purpose sitting room, with a small writing desk in one corner. It wasn't the sort of room anyone ought to be looking for during a party, so he thought it was a safe place to slip in and fix the stain issue. He found a glass and filled it with magically conjured water, then held his wand between his teeth for a moment while he worked his trousers off so that he could properly see the stain he was meant to be removing. And that was exactly where he was — wand in his mouth, pants in his hands, in a dimly lit room — when the door he hadn't bothered to lock opened.
From the garden the closest room was one that had once served as the classroom for their pre-Hogwarts lessons, but had long since been converted into another general purpose sitting room, with a small writing desk in one corner. It wasn't the sort of room anyone ought to be looking for during a party, so he thought it was a safe place to slip in and fix the stain issue. He found a glass and filled it with magically conjured water, then held his wand between his teeth for a moment while he worked his trousers off so that he could properly see the stain he was meant to be removing. And that was exactly where he was — wand in his mouth, pants in his hands, in a dimly lit room — when the door he hadn't bothered to lock opened.
