November 18th, 1893 - Three Broomsticks

Reaching out to Theo had been twofold; one they had been friends for a while and Alvin was doing his best to tend to his roots in Hogsmeade lest he get any ideas to take off again. Two, since he and Penny were working together on some new designs together, he thought Theo's connections to the quidditch world would be something Alvin could pick his brain about. He'd been out of touch for too long and despite his father's position as a coach in the league, Alvin didn't like to shoehorn Carson into one loyalty over another. Plus he wasn't entirely sure he wanted his parents to know he was slinking back into broommaking again just yet. Just in case things didn't work out.

The pub wasn't too busy this afternoon, so Alvin grabbed a table near the bar and ordered himself a butterbeer. He hadn't touched true alcohol since his accident and he planned to keep it that way. With a packet of broom designs in hand, he was ready to see if Theo had any ideas about what players were looking for in a broom these days, but also rather thought it would be good of them to simply catch up. Alvin had been in a fog every since his accident and the clouds had only grown darker after Sloane, and then Wally. The need to drag himself up by his bootstraps was so strong that he felt like he was finally starting to make headway. Not to mention he was fairly certain his mother couldn't handle another child who wasn't alright.

Watching the door, he saw Theo make his way in and stood to greet his friend with a handshake and a wild smile. "Been a while," he said mostly by way of apology, smile slipping into a little bit of a grimace. "How've you been?" He motioned for Theo to join him as he took his own seat again. "Team doing alright?" Alvin had always tried to stay somewhat neutral in the quidditch world when he was making brooms, but it was hard between his own family and his friends sometimes.

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Theodore Gallivan

  

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It was rare Theo felt like the more cheerful part of any conversation, but he couldn’t even be too pleased about that today – he felt like the Bixby family might as well be cursed. Any one of their children’s accidents would have been bad enough, but there had been Alvin’s, and then Sloane, and Wallace in the dragons. (The quidditch world was a small one, sometimes.)

And he was glad to see him, but he hadn’t seen Alvin often enough yet to have any grasp on how he was coping right off the bat, so Theo had come in curious and careful and a little wary. But he shrugged off the been a while, because if there was one thing he could do for a friend, it was to prove himself low effort company.

“I’m alright,” Theo said lightly, honestly. “The team’s good, actually.” You’re not keeping up with the league these days, then? He almost asked, but caught himself – what with his siblings and their general closeness to flying, to the sport, it might be a sore spot. He wasn’t sure. “You want a full run-down of our last match,” Theo said instead, making a joke of it, “or are you willing to take my word for it?” He could do it, in full blow-by-blow detail, if Alvin wanted, but he wouldn’t subject him to it unasked.

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"I'll take your word for it," Alvin got enough quidditch talk at home. His father's coaching position demanded some sort of attention to the league itself, but Alvin hadn't exactly had the time nor the inclination. Keeping himself busy was almost a full time job and he needed the distractions to keep him going. "Glad to hear it though." Theo taking over the team at such a young age seemed like every Hogwarts student's dream, but Al knew it had to be a lot of work, especially when Theo had already set his sights on the auror department.

"Been a little out of touch with it, well, as much as one can be when there's a coach in the house," Alvin chuckled, spinning his butterbeer idly on the table. "Hoping to get back into it a little bit, dipping my toes back into designing brooms." He hadn't meant to jump right into the heart of it, but he knew small talk with someone like him was difficult these days. Too much tragedy in his family, too much heartache. Nobody wanted to say the wrong thing or cause any upset, even though Alvin was pretty thick-skinned. He appreciated the forethought anyway.

Flexing the fingers of his band hand under the able, he was still a little lost on missing out on the part of the job he'd loved the most, but even being to design and help with the charmwork was something. It was more than he'd had in well over a year at this point and he desperately needed something to keep him going.

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Theo laughed, understandingly – he had sort of guessed that Alvin wouldn’t have been able to escape, even if he’d wanted to. Meanwhile, Theo did actually like talking about quidditch again these days – it had become comfortable, easy, more painless than most things – but he also did spent a lot of time talking tactics.

But Bixby’s next remark saw his expression brighten, as pleased as he was surprised. How that was quite feasible, after his accident, he didn’t know... but it had been a passion of his even at Hogwarts, so – if it was true, that was good. That was really good for him.

“Oh yeah?” Theo echoed, tilting his head in curiosity. “How’re you getting on?”

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Pleased that Theo appeared to think the idea positive, Alvin shrugged a little "I can still design," he waggled the fingers on his good hand. It was fortunate it was his dominant hand that hadn't been injured. Not having both was the struggle with actually fashioning the brooms themselves, but he could still draw. Alvin couldn't even lift his pint with his bad hand, the grip was far too weak and the glass too heavy, which also attributed to an inability to old onto a broom to carve or sand, or even hold a gauge for that matter.

"Sort of struck up a partnership with Miss Penelope Fawcett." Penny had been the year ahead of him, so two years ahead of Theo, but she was no stranger to the quidditch world either. "She was abroad apprenticing for a while." Just like he had been before he'd accidentally imploded his career. "She's been working with Grimstone too, but we've struck up a sort of agreement. I can do everything but the actual crafting." Which was better than nothing, he'd come to realize after a long bout of self-loathing and hopelessness. "I've been painting to get by financially," which was slightly embarrassing, but anything to have his own income. "But finding I still prefer sketching and now I can do something with it again." Even if crafting and creating had been the part he'd enjoyed the most, having anything to do with the process these days was enough.

Being on the design end wasn't so bad, especially when he had Penny to bounce ideas off of. Not to mention they could piece out the charmwork together. He'd always been pretty good at it, but was finding two heads were better than one.

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Theo listened with increasing interest as Alvin explained. The designing was certainly still something – half the battle at least, he assumed – and he’d heard of Miss Fawcett, too. Grimstone and his father went a ways back, so he was a family friend; and if Miss Fawcett had apprenticed with him then her brooms had to be solid.

He didn’t know what to say about the painting – he didn’t know a thing about art – but he grinned at the broom-designing anyway. “Well, that’s got to be something,” Theo agreed, impressed and relieved for Bixby, that he had found a way for his life not to have been thrown entirely off course. “Have you – has she – managed to finish anything from your designs yet?” Theo was keen to see, if they had – of course he was. The shop was managed quite successfully in its own regard, so he and Veronica didn’t have too much work of it themselves, but he always had an eye open when it came to stock ideas for Quality Quidditch Supplies, all the same.

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Alvin's own enthusiasm picked back up as Theo seemed genuinely interested in the conversation. "Not yet, we're still fine tuning both a broom for travel and one for quidditch." The spruce had a lot of potential. It would be a sturdy, capable travel broom when they finished. "The quidditch broom needs a bit more work, the wood is pretty heavy, so we're trying to balance it out. It's nearly unbreakable though, which is good for the sport." It would travel fine too, he supposed, but he really did have quidditch in mind while designing it.

"Which was part of— though certainly not all, of why I wanted to grab a drink. I wanted to pick your brain about the brooms currently in use." He could have asked his dad, but wasn't so sure that he was ready for the complete, two-hour lecture on brooms in quidditch these days. Alvin rather thought Theo could condense it into something more useful rather than what Carson Bixby could do.

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Small talk might be effort, even with people he knew – but this, this was easy. Whether it was business or a casual conversation, it was a topic he could be objective about. He rested his chin on his hand and considered it; naturally, the quidditch broom had piqued his interest more of the two.

He nodded at unbreakable, although usually sturdy brooms came the cost of speed and agility. “Well, I mean, they’re getting faster and faster,” Theo warned, because broom capabilities were being pushed to new limits with every model, “but anything too flimsy’s not sustainable against bludgers or heavy weather or – anything.” Speaking as a sponsor of a team, they couldn’t afford to be replacing players’ brooms after every collision or mishap: they’d go bust in a day. “How does it steer?”

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Speed was a factor, a major one, in addition to the weight. The heavier then got, the slower, typically and Alvin was still working out a way to get both out of the model. Changing the wood might be their only option, but he wanted to try his best to get the field maple to work. Between himself and Penny they would figure it out. Only once they had exhausted their options, would he consider changing the wood of the handle.

"Steering is good, responsive, still a little clunky though." Alvin had done his best to made sure of that in the charmwork. Their prototypes were promising, flew steadily, just not quickly. "I just need to figure out how to lighten it up. I was afraid the the hardwood would be a problem, but it's so sturdy it's hard to swap it out. Might just be figuring out the right combination of charms." Penny was doing all she could with the physical changes to make it work. He had to have faith they could make it work. Between the two of them and their backgrounds, they would figure it out. If not, they had plenty of contacts in the industry to ask, he supposed.

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“Maybe there’s scope in slimming down the shape, somehow? I dunno,” Theo suggested, more in general sympathy for the creative problem than because he knew much about the practical process of broommaking. He knew more about the finished product, after all – and he had enough experience of quidditch, he thought, to tell a good broom from a bad one.

“Two heads are better than one, I s’pose, so I’m sure you’ll get there,” he put in with a grin. “And if it’s – once it’s – properly flyable, I’d love to try it out.” Probably he should have his players test it, if anyone – but Theo couldn’t help himself. He didn’t fly enough, anymore, and didn’t have many good excuses for fun, either.

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"Yeah, we're working on that part." Alvin knew Penny had done her best to slim down the handle to its limit; any slimmer and it wouldn't be sturdy anymore and that was the whole point of the broom design. He was still open to changing to wood altogether, but Penny seemed determined to get it to work, so he had to support her decision. "Miss Fawcett is very talented, I'm not much use in the creation department anymore," he waved his bad hand as evidence. "But the design aspect is good. Hopefully we can figure it out." It would come eventually; they both needed something positive to come out of this.

Upon hearing Gallivan would be interested in testing a prototype, Alvin sat up a bit straighter. "Yeah? That would be great. I can't test anymore either, so it would be good to get some feedback on somebody who knows what they're talking about." To get some anecdotes from a few people would provide some good insight on anything they needed to fix, of if the design was even worth pursuing into production.

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Oddly, Theo thought he understood Bixby’s frustrations, just a little. He might not have played quidditch since Hogwarts, had never chosen to play professionally, but – coming back to the Cannons as the sponsor, being forced to take a back seat and an overview and rely on other people to take direction and not being able to just – take to the pitch and score a shot himself had taken some getting used to.

“Honestly, you’d be doing me a favour letting me, I don’t get to fly enough these days,” Theo explained with a wry laugh; if he didn’t keep up with these things he really wouldn’t know what he was talking about anymore. But he knew the market, and he was also keen to encourage any new enthusiasms in Bixby’s life, knowing full well how easily a downer could take hold.

But Alvin had drawn attention to his bad hand, and Theo’s face softened into a slight grimace, never quite able to resist directness. “Your hand’s no better, then?” It looked just as bad as he’d ever seen it, but maybe not all the damage had been permanent?

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"I'd really appreciate it." It would be good news for Penny too, if Alvin could get back in touch with some of his quidditch contacts and industry sources. Having some reliable feedback on the prototypes would be crucial to their progress. Alvin felt pretty useless in the grand scheme of things; Penny was doing all of the hard work, which was he was quick to give her as much, if not more credit for any success.

The question about his had didn't surprise him, though many people didn't often ask. It was related, he supposed, and Alvin didn't really bother to cover it up except in extremely polite company. Gloves were uncomfortable on his mangled skin and it wasn't like he was super self-conscious about it. To him, it was what it was and he was trying to make the best of it. "No grip anymore." He demonstrated, holding his hand up, unable to bring his fingers very close together and nothing even close to a fist. "Not my dominant hand, but still nowhere near good enough to hold a broom for much of any reason." Hell he could barely hold a glass in it.

"Can still sketch though," he laughed. Designs and discussion, that's about all he was good for. He was going to have to work on his sales pitches. He wasn't doing too poorly here, he supposed. "I'll have to have you 'round the house to take a look sometime." Gallivan would know what was currently being used around the league, maybe he'd have some good insights to the designs too.

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“Ah. I see.” Maybe it had been rude to ask, and not to avert his gaze at it, but Theo understood Bixby’s problem much better at that demonstration. So yes – flying was probably out for him, unless he got shockingly good at hands-free steering. It’d make handling any tools hard, to be sure – Theo thought it was fortunate that Bixby had lucked out enough to still be able to draw.

“And clearly you’ve got ideas,” Theo added, half to be positive and half because it was true; and because at that point having any kind of purpose to cling onto had to be something. “Yeah, well, you let me know.” These things took time, as far as he knew – he wasn’t going to rush the production process. For him, it amounted to something small to look forward to, which was nice. “I mean that,” he added, in mock-warning; if Alvin wanted help, he had better ask for it.

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"Good, so do I." Alvin had always been somewhat hesitant to use his contacts in the quidditch world; it felt a little like an unreasonable amount of nepotism. Now he wasn't quite so anxious about it; it felt far too good for him to be getting back into the business that he wasn't quite as leery about trying to use his connections. Theo felt like a safer bet anyway, their friendship wasn't as close to home.

Alvin raised his glass in a little silent agreement. "Cheers to that then." This was good. He needed this. Alvin desperately needed something to go right in his life so he was sincerely hoping this was just another step forward into getting his life back together.

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