alexandria was flicking through the pages of an article in witch weekly, looking mostly bored with the mildest hint of disgust, like she wasn’t quite paying full attention to the pages before her — but she was, and anybody close enough and observant enough would have noticed that her eyes were indeed scanning the page. she tapped a finger against the bench thoughtfully. she was looking at a recently published profile of a popular quidditch player from the ballycastle bats, a real potential candidate for the josef wronski award for excellent pitch skills. many people were under the misguided impression that awards were decided on by an authoritative body purely based on merit; in actual fact, it was possible to campaign for an award, and nearly every winner did so. they didn’t tend to explicitly state that they were campaigning for an award — there’s nothing sexy about fighting to get an award, after all. it looks much better to get up on stage and smile graciously, like i never believed i could get this. the world likes humility — it makes famous people likeable, relatable, palatable. alexandria knew all about that. she had worked on political campaigns ( the 1975 one as an intern and recent hogwarts grad to minchum’s opposition, and the 1980 one as executive director, despite her youth — it paid off and her candidate, millicent bagnold, was elected ) but also worked — due to the infrequency of ministerial elections — on campaigns regarding laws, organisations and even during awards.
this young man whose profile she was looking at, erebus manning, was good-looking, charming, from an inoffensive family and adequately talented at seeking usually, but had been having an especially lucky run the last few months. however, he was not her prospective client. her prospective client was from another team, the appleby arrows, and it was her job to not only bolster his popularity, but to assess the threats. alexandria had identified erebus manning as his primary threat ( they were all ranked in terms of relevance ) and was now considering all the ways she could discredit him, or at the very least, prove how much better her client was, even if he wasn’t. that was the job, after all.
with this in mind, she took a sip of her coffee. “ tell me, ” she said abruptly, turning to the person next to her at the bench ( to whom she had paid absolutely no mind until now, focused as she had been on the profile ), “ what are your thoughts on erebus manning? ”
