Rose Knightley
Axe pulled disgustedly at the
collar strangling him.
Black-tie formal. Did they conveniently forget the hosting team had gallivanted across Germany to such a troublesome degree that the UK tabloids had picked up the story published in the local papers? Or the rampant misbehavior of the team for the rest of the season?
No, he knew, they remembered
exactly what the Kenmare Kestrels had done in the past season, and their manager was trying desperately to rehabilitate their image. He scoffed, yanking the bothersome collar of his dressrobes further away from his Adam's apple as he waited for the doors of the lift to open, to take him to the fourth floor where the event was.
And
that was another thing! Who wanted some stuffy celebration of the end of the playing season? They hurled out words like
ballroom, and
string ensemble, and other things that made him want to throttle someone. Was it perhaps the slightest bit cool how the Wizarding world parties often popped up in the most surprising of places, provided full-scale amusement and entertainment, then disbanded with a snap, not leaving a trace behind? Well, maybe a little, but—not this time!
It probably wouldn't have been so bad if their manager and the coordinating witch Q.U.A.B.B.L.E. had sent over hadn't tried to include Axe in every small detail. Attire? (Casual! Very Casual—no)
Black-tie, of course. An open bar? There had better be. How many reporters were they giving passes to for the event?
None, but Axe was vetoed as if they hadn't even heard him. The inaneness went on and on, and to save himself from being driven absolutely mad, Axe remembered actually plunging his hand into his pocket for his wand. He didn't know what he was going to do, but it was going to be
satisfying, and he wouldn't have to be party to this—this
party-planning, and—no, he may actually have been going mad, if he was thinking of doing this.
Instead he stroked his wand lovingly and told himself he'd been ousted from the UK for three years for maiming another highly skilled player for
life—was he really so willing to subject himself to the same sentence because he lost his patience with an overly enthusiastic party-planner?
So he Apparated out of the office after perhaps one rude hand gesture.
Now, he was
late, and the blasted doors were taking forever to open. Snarling by the time the lift finally arrived, he waltzed inside and was confronted with a panel with buttons on it.
A lot of buttons.
He hated these things. As if the ones in the Ministry weren't bad enough, now he had to ride some decrepit and run down one that he could not make heads nor tails on how to navigate. Axe took a wild guess and pushed, a chime echoing after he presumably selected his floor. Slumping against the wall, he waited impatiently for the thing to move.
"Wait!" he heard from vaguely outside the lift. "Hold the lift!"
The 'lift' brought him to attention. He was not sharing this suffocating box with anyone else. Those doors had to slide close immediately.
But which
button? He stabbed futilely.
