"You understand," Johann explained, looking back over his shoulder as he yanked, "when I mean I'm awful at darts, I mean I'm awful at darts." He stooped to pull the third dart out of the wall beneath the board before retreating to beside Omari again. The chalk had scrawled 17 as a score on the board half-heartedly, as if chalk could actually be disgusted at someone's attempts to throw darts with precision into a board.

They'd drunk one or two while watching some other wizards play a game, making it seem effortless. The darts were anti-cheat, no nice levitation or homing charms would work. For once, wizards were on the same level playing field as Muggles by their own decision. The magical variations of darts were another story altogether, what with moving boards, changing grids and extreme distances for really demanding precision, they weren't quite so easy to attempt as a beginner.
"You had to see it to believe it, hmm?" He asked squeezing round his friend in the space so he could take a turn at throwing. The Leaky Cauldron was always busy on a Saturday night, but it was a good place to start drinking and pick up a few friends. Rover's Fancy was all well and good, but you tended to get comfy and stay there all night.

Johann reached for his drink, watching Omari's turn passively as he drank a mouthful of beer. All of a sudden he sank down against the backs of the group of people sat nearby, trying to blend in.
"Hell, there's Higgins from Transport." He protested to Omari, crouched in his shadow, clutching his beer still. "I don't mean to be rude, but the bloke won't leave me alone. I don't really care about what he cleared from the floo network this week. Trust me, neither do you, but if he sees me, we'll find out." He peered round Omari's legs to see if Higgins was retreating, but the ginger, bespectacled floo maintenance wizard was surveying the scene for victims to bore.
"No, don't look at him, that's how he finds his prey!" Johann hissed from below.

Omari had been looking forward to this Saturday. After working monday through friday, with some extra paperwork to fill in earlier this morning, it had come as a relief when Johann had asked him out for a pint. It would be a nice way to relax and get some of the stiffness of deskwork out of him. He hated paperwork, and always put it off to the point where he had to cram it in on his days off work. No, sometimes he wish he’d have a secretary to fill out all those bloody incident reports. Though that seemed like something out of a fairytale.

The Leaky Cauldron was quite packed as Omari was drinking his pint, watching his friend throw darts with close to no precision. He chuckled at Johann’s remark about being awful at it, feeling the warmth of the beer run through him. He patted Johann on the shoulder as he accepted the darts and took a step forward. He knew that when it came to spellcasting his precision was infallible, but when it came to darts he wasn’t as sure. Squinting, he aimed and threw.

“YES!”

Just as Johann hid behind his leg, and pointed out Higgins, the dart hit the outer bull which made Omari cheer with joy, stop midway through the cheer and swing around to watch the Floo maintanence wizard. It wasn’t until then that Omari heard Johann’s second statement, and he awkwardly kept spinning, so not to linger at the man and catch his eye. He knew about Higgins, but just from hearsay. Hearsay wasn’t good though.

“Sorry,” Omari said, barely keeping a straight face. “But did yer see that?”

He gestured towards the dartboard, allowing himself a glance over his shoulder. Higgins had turned to the bar. Disaster avoided. For now.

Despite Omari spinning on the spot in haste, they appeared to remain out of the attention of the ginger irritation by the bar. Omari wasn't at all phased by being pounced upon by a bore from transport, and was rather more pleased by almost hitting the middle of the board.
"See what, oh, right, yeah, nice." Johann glanced up to the board in a hasty manner, preoccupied with transport-spotting. Then as if realising how he sounded, he took a genuine look up at the board and shot Omari a grin from below. "Sorry, I mean, fantastic - you've thrown 25 with one dart, already more than my three combined." He patted his friend's leg to encourage him. "Try hitting treble twenty though, you don't want to look as crap as I am in public now."

Higgins was making his way around from the bar and Johann cursed to himself, shuffling round to crouch before Omari, which wasn't the best of ideas when his auror mate was throwing darts right above his dark curls, and the surprise of his shift might even make him drop one of them.
"It's like the bloke has some sort of tracking spell on me!" He protested and promptly fell over his own feet, sprawling sideways on the stone floor looking like an idiot. Nearby drinkers turned to stare at him, but he continued to stare across the room.

As he scrambled to his feet, rubbing his elbow, he saw to his relief that Higgins had taken a seat at a table with his back to them both. He was, in the short term, safe. Higgins appeared to be relaying what had been recovered by floo that day to his equally bespectacled colleagues.
"Sorry, didn't put you off there, did I?" Johann asked, from close by, turning round to examine the state of the board and the score the chalk was writing up.

Omari was already aiming his second dart, the grin now clearly visible on his face, when Johann shuffled around his feet. The movement made Omari shift, throwing him slightly off balance, and the dart flew from his hands in a direction he had not intended. Omari held in a curse as he watched the dart fly, as if in slow motion, and hit its target. The target so happened to be the shoulder of an elderly warlock by a table to the right.

The warlock howled, and Omari put a hand on Johann’s shoulder and hunched, a flow of curses now escaping from his lips freely. It didn’t really do much though. With that height, it would take a lot to make Omari disappear when he was in such a straight line of sight. The warlock turned, and locked eyes with Omari. If looks could kill Omari would already be buried.

“Merlin’s manky underpants,” Omari exclaimed, straightened up and peered down at Johann. “I’ll be right back”

As the warlock charged forward, Omari stepped around Johann and began apologising loudly, holding up his hands. The warlock was furious, bellowing on top of his lungs and waving a glass of auburn liquid furiously, making it spill on everyone who happened to be close by. Almost every witch and wizard in the pub was following the fight. It took a couple of minutes, a lot of groveling and the promise to pay the warlocks tab before Omari was finally allowed to perform a small healing spell and be let go.

He turned back to Johann, his eyes wide and with that the same look on his face that had usually followed after a professor yelled at one of the students back in school. The look of someone who terrified but still trying to suppress a laughter.

“Ye might’ve thrown me off a little,” he answered his friend with half a smile.

Their attempts to keep out of sight of Higgins hadn't really gone to plan when Omari landed the dart in the shoulder of the warlock nearby.
"Just a little." Johann replied, the two of them back on their feet. He extended his hand for the darts and gave a boyish grin.
"Is there a knack to this?" He asked Omari as he looked for the mark on the pub floor for where to throw from. "Is it all meant to line up?" He squinted his blue eyes over the top of the dart gripped in the end of his long fingers. Over the top, and out of focus until he looked up was the dart board. As he looked up, he was definitely just above centre. This had to be right?

Johann threw his first dart. It nosedived and landed just outside of the target area beneath the 2. Still, at least it hadn't landed in a warlock's shoulder. The old fart was still blustering about it nearby. Johann wrinkled his nose in disgust at the result and eyed up his second dart in his hand. It shot too high, over compensating and fell to the floor with a clatter as it hit the wall. A portrait just above where it had struck yelped and swore at them.
"Mind my bloody canvas!" Johann pretended to aim right up at it in retaliation, the portrait unleashed a hurl of further abuse.

"Is your hair curling yet?" Johann asked Omari over his shoulder, gesturing up at the portrait. Without too much considering, Johann hurled his final dart at the board.
"Three!" He exclaimed in minor triumph. "I think you're in trouble here Omari, I'm most definitely a natural." He strode over, fishing the second dart up from the floor and pulling the other two from the board while the chalk marked up his score.

"So come on then, show me how you get a double warlock." He asked Omari, winking as he extended the darts in one hand to his good friend.

Come to think of it, why would the Leaky Cauldron place a dart board in the middle of their busy pub? Didn’t that just scream accident? If Omari had been in uniform (and a bit more sober) he might’ve asked the barman to change its location. As of now, he was content on drinking his pint, watching his friend do a bad display of how to throw darts.

“Three,” Omari cheered alongside Johann, and winked. “Not too bad! Just five points behind, aye?”

He was enjoying this. It was a great end to a mediocre week. The filled pub, with the chattering and clinking of glasses all around, made him feel at ease. Without the uniform on, and with a close friend by his side, he could relax in a way he hadn’t really done since before Auror training. He took a mouthful of his pint, just as Johann arrived back with the darts.

"So come on then, show me how you get a double warlock."

Omari snorted with laughter. Mistake. The beer made him choke, making him cough and spit, still roaring with laughter. It took more than a minute for him to regain his composure, and tears of laughter had streamed down his face. He looked up at his friends and accepted his darts.

“Oh, I’ll show ye,” he said, still battling a few coughs, and aimed at the board. This time he had it.

“Warrington! Storm!”

The dart flew - once again in a direction Omari had not intended. This time though, he shut his eyes and quickly turned around, not wanting to know where it ended up. Unfortunately, turning around made him catch eye contact with the person that had called his and Johann’s name.

Higgins was making his way over to them.

Johann hadn't anticipated his comment would make Omari choke, so his eyebrows shot up as it did and he looked concerned for half a second before Warrington's booming laughter became infectious. Ah he was glorious when he laughed, Johann was guilty of almost trying too hard to crack them just to see the grin.

He stood aside to let Omari take his shots and raised his own pint to his mouth, watching his mate's technique until they were interrupted and Johann almost dropped his pint in alarm.

Omari's dart smacked straight into the frame of the protesting portrait which let loose a blasphemous stream of drivel. The two players below were ignoring it, rather more preoccupied with a ginger haired bloke from Transport.

"Crap." Johann remarked, his knees automatically considering ducking again, but it was too late. "Where's an invisibility cloak when you need one?" He whined quietly just before they came into earshot of their impending doom.

"Higgins..." Johann greeted with all the welcoming feeling of a limp fish.

"Playing a bit of darts?" Their colleague asked, making a show of looking round them to the board. "Came across a set of lovely darts in the floo just the other day, might have them," He dropped his gaze to pat his jacket pockets - it looked like he was wearing a magically enlarged fisherman's waistcoat full of things. He was a walking lost property office. 

Johann exchanged a sidelong look with Omari and began to drink his pint in earnest. If George was going to stick about, the least he could do would be to buy the next round. Higgins began to speak again, much to his dismay. Johann wiped the foam from his mouth as he stopped drinking his pint, deciding that this might be a longer conversation unless he took drastic action.

"Dangerous things darts, there, no - silly me - those are my tools for the ornate fireplaces. Those people don't want any risk of me scratching their wallpaper when we're fixing their floo." Higgins pulled out what looked like a set of allen keys, and Johann thought for one horrible moment they were going to get a demonstration.

"Ooh, they're funny darts," Johann remarked, knowing full well that they weren't, but he never usually listened to Higgins drone on, so it was a likely mistake. He reached forward suddenly and seized them, pulling one from the packet and turning on the spot to aim it at the board, ignoring the bloke's protests at him manhandling and potentially flinging his rather delicate tools at the board.
"Which end's the pointy one?" Johann asked, showing it to Omari with a glint of mischief in his eye.

As soon as Higgins made his way over to them, Omari knew that their night would not go in the way that he had expected. Omari was known to be polite, and to not ever be rude. This had always been the case, from his school years, and throughout his adulthood, which had made him to be well-liked wherever he had gone. He was caring and considerate. But with Higgins he felt that this might be harder than usual.

Omari followed Johann’s example, gulping down on his pint as Higgins went on about darts, fireplaces and what-not. Omari wasn’t a technical man, and he knew that if the floo maintenance wizard went into the inner works of the floo system he would drone out. Which was rude.

“Ooh, they’re funny darts.”

Johanns comment almost made Omari protest, but catching the glint in his eyes Omari stopped the protest escaping his lips. After all, Higgins did enough protesting for them both.

“I think yer have to throw them like knives.”

Omari grabbed one of the keys from Johanns hand and demonstrated the throwing movement.

“Tried it once in a pub in Oregon. This Native American wizard showed me. Was quite good at it!” He winked to Johann.

Higgins ever-growing protests made Omari wonder if this was borderline bullying. Was this wrong? Oh, sod it. The pints he had consumed made the thoughts vanish. This was all just fun and games.

“I think yer have to throw them like knives.” Omari explained, grabbing one of them from his hand.
"Oooh!" Johann exclaimed, he hadn't thought of that twist on this.
“Tried it once in a pub in Oregon. This Native American wizard showed me. Was quite good at it!” He winked to Johann who grinned so broadly his cheeks couldn't  stretch any further.

"Chaps, chaps, they're not-."
"Go on, show us how to throw them…" Johann tempted, Omari, not realising his colleague was having a mild moral conscience, he reached for his pint and finished the end of it.
"These are awesome, Higgins, you should have mentioned."
"They're not - look, Warrington, Storm, they're not-."
"Ours, yes, we know, but you're such a kind bloke for letting us try." Johann reached out and clapped Higgins hard between the shoulder blades, so that he stumbled forward between them, dropping his empty pint glass into George's hand.

“They’re not - look, Warrington, Storm, they’re not-”

“Ours, yes, we know, but you’re such a kind bloke for letting us try.”

Omari’s conscience finally got the better of him, and with a sigh and a smile he took the empty glass from Higgins’ hands and dropped the allen keys back. He wasn’t drunk enough to play along with this, even if Johann enjoyed it. Higgins was visibly uncomfortable with the little mockery, and Omari was too nice to let it keep happening.

“We’re just havering,” he said and shot Johann a meaning look. “Keep up, lad”

He downed the last of his pint.

“I’ll get the next round,” he said and gave a wave over the crowd of the pub. It would be hard not to notice him, and a moment later a stout woman with jet black hair in the shape of a birdsnest walked over to them and took their orders. As she left Omari turned his focus back at Higgins.

“Look, lad,” he said and put on an apologetic smile. “Wer got some… eih… sensitive work to discuss.”

“Oh, I could help. Sometimes talking through with a third party will help.”

Higgins did not catch the hint, and looked from Omari to Johann with an anticipating smile. Omari turned to Johann, and with a look pleaded for him to take over.

Omari was always the more moral of the two, and in a way, Johann liked him more for it. Had it been just Johann and Higgins, he'd have not been able to stop his quick mind taking stabs at the floo engineer. Unlike Hamilton who went all out to antagonise Johann, Higgins was oblivious to the fact he was a moron.

Johann pretended to be particularly interested in goings on around them, rather than risk the possibility of Higgins striking up direct conversation while their auror colleague used his height to catch the eye of Phema behind the bar to order another round.

When Omari's attempt to rid them of the ginger haired colleague backfired, Johann fixed a blue-eyed stare on Higgins.
"Not really your thing Higgins." He told the wizard, "I know you love to find weird and wonderful things in the floo," he gestured to the waistcoat with all the pockets, "but when an auror says it's sensitive, he means sensitive."

He reached both arms out to Higgins, resting his long hands on the younger man's shoulders.
"It's the difference between finding a lost cat and a severed arm blocking your fireplace connection my fellow."
"You found a what in the fl-?"
"It was an example, Higgins!" Johann rushed to interrupt, giving a short impatient sigh, and glancing away to Omari before catching George's attention.
"If any of the three of us was going to find missing limbs in the floo, it's going to be you." He dropped his grasp and took a step back, glancing up an down at Higgins with trepidation, "… Just do us a favour and give it to Level 2 rather than keeping such a thing for your collection."

Omari watched as Johann took over. He felt almost bad for lying to Higgins, since the man meant no harm. Omari was sure Higgins was a nice man once you got to know him. It was just… The getting-to-know-him-part wasn’t such an easy task, since all he would ever talk about was that goddamn floo network. To Omari’s defence (he thought, grasping for anything to make their lying okay), anyone who would believe sensitive Auror business was going to be discussed over pints at the Leaky Cauldron a busy Saturday night was probably not the brightest.

And, alas, he saw how the knut finally dropped for Higgins.

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” Higgins said, nodding vigorously as he was backing away. “I get it boys. Sensitive stuff.”

With one last wink and smile towards Omari, Higgins turned around and disappeared in the crowd. Omari turned back to Johann with a deep sigh, holding his pint up to a cheer, before taking a big gulp. It was, after all, Saturday night and he wanted to spend it with his friend. No-one else.

“So,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Where were we?”

Higgins departed and Johann signed with relief.

"So, where were we?" A few pints down, Johann had far too many cheeky things he could say in return to his close friend - mostly tinted with the fact he found Omari attractive.

"About here," He said, turning to face Omari, but far too close, despite how friendly they were. "I mean - here," he pointed to the dart board and stepped back, creating space, before seeking out the darts with his eyes from where Omari had last thrown them.

One was sticking out of the frame of the portrait hanging above the board, and the occupant was bristling still, though at least had stopped the blasphemous drivel it had begun at the time. Higgins had distracted them from that at least.

"Despite the interruption, and the lost dart, you've scored treble twenty, and a single. How the…?" The chalk had marked up 80 for Omari, counting down from 501[1].

"Nobody's going to ask us to join the Leaky Cauldron third team yet, anyhow." Johann remarked at their scores, stealing a low stool from a table where someone had left for a moment to reach the dart in the portrait frame, hopping up on one foot, arm stretching up. The portrait hailed abuse at him but the dart came free. Johann hadn't thought to use his wand, and replaced the stool at the table without thanks, eyes back on Omari and a grin on his face.

"By the way," he asked, squaring up at the oche again, "What was going on the other day? Heard Dribbleby[2] ended up splinched on pursuit and you brought back his arm and the prisoner from Newcastle to be reunited?"

1.	J 17, 3 (481) O 25, 80 (396)
2.	Also the hitwizard Mira and Omari are commanding in September in the courtroom

Johann’s closeness and comment made Omari chuckle, and he softly bumped his forehead against Johann’s before he turned away. He could feel the beer now, and he felt happy. This liquid gold always made him feel happy, and all of his cares usually disappeared. It was an amazing feeling. An amazing feeling that he might feel a bit too often.

Johann, after balancing, what Omari thought, quite dangerously on a stool, returned with the darts with a grin on his face. Omari was just about to ask something when the question of Dribbleby came up.

“That...,” Omari said, and took another gulp of beer and pointed at Johann. “...was a bloody mess!”

He took a deep sigh and watched Johann getting ready to throw. He quickly ran through the events in his head, but it was a bit hard to figure out where to start.

“So, I get sent off to some village in Northumberland,” he began. “Apparently Dribbleby has found that Irish warlock who sold cursed protection charms bein’ up ter no good.”

The story went on, including forest chases, an unlucky muggle couple on a romantic picnic and a hexed trashcan. Omari, taking swig after swig of his bottle (and mysteriously having a new one in his hand when the first one emptied), might not have told the same story sober. Yes, most of it was really true, but some of the details might not have been as extravagant as he told them at the moment.

“...and I ended up having to drag not one, but two, unconscious bloody wizards back to St. Mungo’s,” he said and let out a tired laugh. “Pratt’s not jumpin’ up and down with joy.”

Johann threw the three darts and Omari launched into an explanation about Dribbeby's unfortunate afternoon.

Johann threw double 19, 1 and 12 while Omari painted a vivid picture of the chase, turning back from retrieving the darts to pay attention properly, entertained by the auror's gestures while the chalk marked up his less than impressive score.[1]

Omari was one that could easily drink Johann under the table. He'd learned his lesson not to try a while back. The auror was well built and incredibly fit, and Johann was a wiry weed, the biology was against him. He drank in Omari's appearance and the story instead, it was a most entertaining yarn even if it ended up with two bloody wizards and a splinching.

"Pratt's not jumpin' up and down with joy." Omari concluded. Johann shook his head,
"Does he ever? What with taking up Raynor's old role." He extended the three darts to Omari to throw. "I bet he's become a right grouch with all the extra pressure. Would you ever do it?"

He squeezed past Omari and out of the way, the space becoming tight, and well, neither of them too bothered about brushing past the other. He hoped Omari didn't notice his blush after though as he composed his face again and drank a healthy gulp of beer.

"Did you fancy sticking around here, or are we going to head down the Alley tonight?" He asked Omari, checking the time.

1.	J 17, 3, 51 (430) O 25, 80 (396)