“Ed, you didn’t!”

The curly-haired witch let out a guffaw of laughter, practically doubling over at the small, round table that she had her former partner had crammed themselves into.  Hunter was out of town for the week on a Quidditch road trip, and so she’d owled Pratt to see if he wanted to catch up.  Although they both still worked on Level Two, his position as Head Auror and hers with Wizengamot Services kept them busy enough in the office that their paths rarely crossed.

It had been two years since she’d accepted the promotion and left the Auror Corps.  There were things that she still missed about being in crimson robes, but having to ride herd over Edward Pratt and make sure he didn’t permanently scar any trainees wasn’t one of them.

Still laughing, she wiped a tear from her eye.  “Merlin.  The poor girl was probably just trying to enjoy a night out with her beau, and you swooped in and ordered her into the office at 7 AM.  What were you thinking?” she demanded, swatting at his shoulder playfully.  “And what were you doing hanging out at a kid place like Spellpunk anyway, Pratt? I didn’t think they let you in there if you were over thirty-two!”

Edward Pratt was grinning from ear to ear. The entire time he’d been partnered with Frizzy Malone, Ed had taken the piss out of her and moaned about her and just been a general pain in her backside. But she’d never backed down from him and they’d developed a unique sort of friendship where she’d allowed him to stay on her sofa and have women around. She’d even provided him once[1], with a nearly morning alarm of ice cold water to the face and body and soul. She was a good friend and Ed genuinely enjoyed her company.

“I got set up, din’t I?” Pratt replied, twisting his pint glass around on the table. “On a blind date wi’some blonde bird that had all ‘er personality in ‘er tits.” He shook his head, remembering the disaster that had been his date. Ed knew the reality. He was a 35-year-old twice divorced wizard with 4 kids. He may as well give up now on the dating scene and accept a life alone. For now, he had his career to focus upon. One didn’t become a good head auror without a lot of hard work.

“Well, she faked an ‘eadache and buggered off and I spotted the kid.” He shrugged, as if to say what could he really do about it? “Better to learn now that work’s gonna screw her over and destroy her personal life, don’t ye think, Frizz?”

1.	An Icy Wakeup Call

"That is not how you should be talking about your date!" Charlene protested.  She punched his shoulder again, although this blow was hard enough to sting.

In her time as Ed Pratt's partner, she'd come to appreciate the other Auror's eccentric tendencies.  She'd also accepted many of his quirks, such as his atrocious handwriting, his inability to correct file paperwork, and his inexplicable desire to trick new recruits into running his personal errands.  But sometimes the sexism was too much.  She liked Ed, but he couldn't just talk about witches like that.

"How about, 'My date was quiet and we didn't really seem interested in the same things?'" she suggested instead.  "Or, 'I don't know what it was but we didn't really click?'  Her personality isn't in her tits, Ed; just because that's all you've deigned to notice about her shouldn't reflect on her.  How would you feel if I told people that all of your personality was in your you-know-what?"

She shook her head again at Pratt's description of what had happened to the Auror trainee, although she was smiling now.  "Just because it ruined your persona life," she said, laughing.  "You keep butting in on your trainees' dates like that, Pratt, and you're going to end up with a bunch of office gnomes who never smile working under you."

“OW!” The Yorkshireman grunted, rubbing his shoulder. Since when had violence been okay? They were ex-colleagues now, former partners so she couldn’t even use that excuse. RUDE.

She started to yabber on about other possible explanations – all lame. Then she asked the best question she could possibly have asked EVER.

“How would you feel if I told people that all of your personality was in your you-know-what?”

Edward Pratt’s grin may never have been any wider throughout his entire life. He grinned, like a Cheshire cat who’d just caught an entire family of big fat juicy mice. Oh, his grin would definitely be her answer to that question. Clearly Frizzy Malone did not know men. Silly, silly woman.

He barely registered what she said next.
Barely registering meant not listening at all.

“Do ye spend a lot of time thinkin’ about what personality is in my you-know-what, Frizzy? Things not going well with Hunter?”

Ed Pratt's shit-eating grin was one of the things that Charlene decidedly did not miss about Level Two.  She very nearly punched him again, but the Auror had already shrugged off two blows and she didn't want to hit him hard enough to actually injure him.

Men.  Now he wasn't even listening to her.  Ed wished that all the women he knew spent time pondering the state of his 'personality.'  Charlene rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and thought silent words of sympathy at all the women in the Auror Office who had to put up with Pratt's churlish rubbish on a regular basis.

"No, we broke up almost six months ago," she said tartly.  She'd see if that yanked his attention away from his you-know-what.  "And even if I ever wanted to, it would hardly take a lot of time to think about it, Ed.  You aren't a very complex individual in that department."

"No, we broke up almost six months ago,"

The Cheshire cat grin vanished and Ed suddenly looked rather serious. Oops. Drat. That was insensitive, even for Ed. His former partner, however, had her little dig of revenge. But he was more focused on the whole breaking up part. He took a glug of drink and sat back in his seat, folding her arms.

“Shit, Frizzy. How come ye didn’t say owt?” Not that Ed had talked to anyone about marriage failure number 2 either. He’d been embarrassed and had tried to ignore that it had even happened in the first place. He got why Frizzy hadn’t said anything. But he felt bad. They were friends, weren’t they?

“Ye were engaged weren’t ye?” Maybe she didn’t even want to talk about it. “At least we didn’t marry the bloke.” He shrugged, having made the decision months ago that he was never going to get married again.

At least her retort wiped the grin off of his face. Even Ed Pratt couldn't gloat over attention being paid to his unmentionables when he'd just stuck his foot deep into his mouth.

"When was I supposed to say anything, Ed?" she asked, mostly rhetorically.  "You're busy with work, I'm busy, then you got married again..." 

Really, even though they both worked on Level Two, the moments when their paths crossed were now few and far between. Charlene wasn't sorry that she was missing out on Pratt's presumable power trip as Head Auror, but she did sometimes miss her days in the Auror Office.  At least he'd kept things interesting, even when 'interesting' involved a tiny enchanted Quidditch figure charmed to look like her zooming around the office.

She sighed, relenting slightly.  "Yes, we were engaged," she said, finally raising her cocktail to take a sip.  "For two years.  That was part of the problem, really.  I just finally realized that it wasn't going anywhere."

“…then you got married again...” Frizzy pointed out.
“…and divorced again…” Ed added with a shrug. Perhaps one day he’d be willing to date again. Third time lucky, right? He certainly hadn’t had much luck with women. Being a decent and efficient auror didn’t leave much time for building relationships and maintaining them. Ed had always put work over dates and time with his wife. Work was life or death. That would never change.

Engaged for two years. Ouch. That said one thing to Ed. Either Frizzy or her former fiancé clearly weren’t all that committed. Apparently, it was Radley. Pratt could have said he was a tool, years ago.

“Maybe you should just take a leaf outta my book, Frizzy. Skip the dating and engagement and just marry them.” He gave a self-deprecating smile and took a swig of beer. “What could go wrong, eh?” She never would. Charlene Malone had always been a serious auror. Then she’d been a serious auror partnered to Eddie Pratt. Now she was a serious administrative something or other. The theme? Serious. Serious people didn’t marry on a whim. Pratt expected she even planned her wardrobe a month in advance.

Keeping up with Ed Pratt’s romantic life was probably a full-time career.  Charlene had lost track of the number of dates he’d gone on since he’d broken up with his Hogwarts sweetheart a few years prior.  His social life was a mess as he leapt from relationship to relationship, like a Seeker racing from side to side of the Quidditch pitch in hopes of finally catching sight of the Snitch.  He certainly wasn’t the sort of person that she was going to willingly take marriage advice from.

Still, she laughed and flashed him a smile.   If nothing else, at least her old parter could always make her laugh.

“I don’t know, what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you while you were dating?” she retorted, with the hint of a wicked grin.  “There was that Muggle women you brought back to my flat that one time.   I can just imagine having to explain why I’ve gone and unintentionally violated the Statute of Secrecy to someone from the Wizengamot.”

Oh Merlin, she had to mention the one woman she’d caught on the sofa bed in her living room. Now, Ed could smile. That morning, smiling certainly hadn’t been on the cards. The muggle woman hadn’t supposed to have fallen asleep. Ed shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Sure, he could accept that it was perhaps pushing it having brought her to Frizzy’s house. A step over a line, yes. But to douse them with water in a rude awakening? Not friendly.

“You totally overreacted that morning, Frizz.” Ed smirked, sitting back with his drink in hand. “She only had two braincells to rub together,” did this count as inappropriate, again? He wasn’t talking about her chest, at least. “She probably wouldn’t remember even without a touch of obliviation.”

“Right, worst thing…my date’s husband turned up, once?” That had been awkward. Obviously, Ed hadn’t known, but the husband hasn’t cared about that particular reality. “Oh, a chick I met a couple times told me she loved me.” He took a swig of beer to let that sink in. “end of second date and I were dropping her off at home, nice guy that I am. Well, she leans in to me and whispers it in my ear. Proper bunny boiler.”

Charlene arched an extremely sardonic eyebrow at her former partner. Overreacted, indeed.[1]  It had been the first night that Ed Pratt had been staying at her flat after being kicked out of his own home by his estranged wife, and she'd come out into the main room to find him sleeping on the sofa with an unknown woman. Who had just happened to turn out to be a random Muggle.

Pratt went on to recount his most traumatic dating incidents, which included cheating with a married woman and having one of his significant others express her feelings out loud.

"How horrifying," she said without a trace of empathy. 

Shaking her head, she chuckled. Whatever had gone askew with her romantic partner, at least she'd never hold a candle to Edward Pratt.

"Have you been seeing anyone since, ah...?" She paused, trailing off a bit more uncomfortably than she would have liked.  What had been the name of Ed's second wife? She'd met her once or twice, but it had only been at work events.  It felt like she was getting out even less than usual the past few years.

1.	March 15, 2009 - An Icy Wake-Up Call