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Firewhisky

Dan is fast asleep at Hogwarts when he gets a 2am call from a Firewhisky-fueled Phil in the club

Rating: Gen

Words: 1752

Relationship: Dan Howell & Phil Lester; friendship; phan if you squint

Tags: wizard au; Hogwarts au; Youtuber Dan; Youtuber Phil; muggleborn Dan; pureblood Phil; Hufflepuff Dan; Hogwarts grad Phil

Read on ao3

a/n: Written for @phandomficfests​ 2019 Bingo to fill the prompts birthday, drug/alcohol use, and writer’s choice (which I made magic au)

**This oneshot takes place in the Dan and Phil Hogwarts/Modern Day Wizards AU established in my chaptered fic Galaxies and Greenhouses, which should probably be read before reading this fic, but isn't absolutely necessary.

(If you don't want to read the chaptered fic first, main takeaway info needed for this fic: yes, Dan is a Hufflepuff in my au, fight me; also, Phil and PJ worked together to make a wizard smartphone equivalent out of a magic mirror, aka SmartMirror, that bypasses the Hogwarts ban on Muggle tech)

Dan groaned as his eyes slowly blinked open. He breathed sharply through his nose and stretched his long limbs across all four corners of his bed, resulting in a satisfying pop in one of his joints.

As he let his eyes begin to drift shut again, he noticed that he wasn’t hearing his housemates bustling around the room and starting their days while he, as usual, slept the morning away with his bed curtains drawn tight. Curious, he reached over and parted the heavy yellow drapes, only to be met with moonlight streaming into the dormitory and the soft snores of the other seventh year Hufflepuff boys.

Dan let the curtains fall together again and collapsed back against his pillow, wondering what could have possibly woken him up in the middle of the night, when suddenly he received his answer: a faint buzzing was coming from somewhere underneath his duvet.

Fumbling through his bed sheets in the darkness, Dan’s fingers finally closed around his SmartMirror. Bringing it closer to his face, he was nearly blinded by the screen, which displayed the unflattering closeup that Dan had set as Phil’s contact photo, along with the time and date: nearly two in the morning on the 30th of January.

Dan somehow managed to groggily accept the call, bringing the device up to his ear. “‘lo?”

“DAN!”

Dan jerked away from the sudden onslaught of sound, both from Phil’s unexpectedly loud greeting and the cacophony of background noises and music behind him.

“DAN? DAN, ARE YOU STILL THERE?” Wincing, Dan brought the SmartMirror closer again. “Yeah, Phil, I’m here,” he half whispered, “but why the hell are you calling this late?”

“DAN, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! TELL ME HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAN! I THINK IT’S THE LAW!”

Dan rolled his eyes, chuckling fondly. “Yeah, yeah, happy birthday, dork.”

“WHAT?”

“Happy birthday!”

“DAN? ARE YOU THERE?”

“I SAID HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Merlin’s sake!” Dan finally had to almost yell for Phil to hear over the pounding music behind him.

“Oi! Howell!”

Dan’s bed curtains were suddenly ripped open, revealing a bed-headed and irritated housemate.

“Some of us are trying to sleep here, yeah? Slughorn has that nasty N.E.W.T. practice exam for us tomorrow, remember?”

Dan felt the tell-tale rosy patch on his cheek flush red and was thankful for the darkness of the dormitory. “Er, sorry, I’ll just…” He jerked his head towards the door, grabbing his wand and slipping out of bed.

Once he was safely in the quiet of the empty common room, he brought the phone back up to his ear, settling into one of the plush yellow armchairs facing the dwindling fire in the hearth.

“Phil? You still there?”

“Why, hello there, Daniel. Fancy meeting you here at this late hour, eh?”

Dan frowned at the familiar Northern voice, although it wasn’t the one he had been expecting.

“Chris? Where’s Phil?”

“Ah, well, our no-longer young Mr. Philip is currently finishing off what I believe is his third birthday Firewhisky shot of the evening and asked me to hold his phone,” Chris answered with a mischievous laugh. “So… How’s Hogwarts?”

“Three Firewhiskies? Shit, Chris, where the hell are you guys?”

“Lighten up, Daniel! Don’t get your wand in a knot, he’s fine. PJ and I just took him out for his birthday to that new magic club in London, Smoke and Mirrors. Perfect Prefect Lester is actually letting loose for once, it’s kind of wild—”

Chris was suddenly cut off and Dan heard nothing but the thumping bass of the music and the sound of someone fumbling with the SmartMirror, accidentally mashing several buttons.

“DAN! I’M BACK! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

Dan winced at Phil’s unexpectedly loud return, leaning away from his phone slightly. “Trust me, bub, hearing you is not an issue right now.”

“WHAT? DAN, HANG ON A SEC, I’M GOING OUTSIDE SO I CAN HEAR YOU BETTER!” Phil shouted into the receiver. “PJ, I’LL BE RIGHT BACK!”

Dan idly flicked his wand against his knee, shooting out small sparks and reigniting the fire in front of him as he half listened to the sound of Phil making his way through the crowded club, mumbling apologizes to seemingly everyone he passed.

As he heard the door swing shut behind Phil, the music that had been blasting only moments before completely vanished; presumably there was some kind of noise dampening spell around the club to avoid suspicious Muggles.

“Okay, that’s better,” Phil said, finally at a semi normal volume.

“Yeah, much better,” Dan agreed, pulling both of his long legs up into the chair to get more comfortable. “Aren’t you freezing standing outside, though?” Dan glanced out the window where he could see a thin layer of snow blanketing the castle grounds. Phil may have been further south than Dan at the moment, but it was still January, even in London.

“Nah, I’m practically immune to cold, I’m so Northern,” Phil replied, and Dan could hear the smile in his voice. “Besides, I reckon I’ve probably had about half a bottle of Firewhisky tonight, I’m basically a dragon at this point.”

“Phil!”

At Dan’s scandalized exclamation, Phil let out a loud shriek, which came off much more pterodactyl than dragon, before dissolving into giggles on the other end of the line.

“You okay, there, bud?”

“Dan?”

“Yes, Phil?”

“I think I might be a little drunk,” Phil stage whispered into the phone, leaving Dan rolling his eyes fondly.

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” he replied, making Phil snicker in return. “It sounds like you’re having a pretty good birthday, though.”

Phil hummed in response, and Dan could easily imagine the shrug that would have accompanied it. “‘s alright, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“It’d be a lot better if you were here.”

Dan felt himself deflate a bit. He pulled his legs to his chest and hooked his chin over his knee.

“You remember my seventeenth when we snuck up to the Astronomy Tower,” Phil continued, filling Dan’s silence, “and we pretty much ate our weight in Honeydukes?”

“‘course I do,” Dan finally managed to breathe out, “McGonagall was pissed when she caught us out of bed that late.”

Phil snorted. “I think it was worth a couple detentions, though, to get to spend my birthday with my best friend for the first time.”

Dan felt a wetness suddenly pricking at his eyes. “Shit, Phil. I really miss you… Like, I know I just saw you last month during Christmas break, but I mean… Why’d you have to be a whole year older and graduate before me, again?”

“Hey, I offered to flunk my N.E.W.T.s and stay another year.” Phil chuckled, voice cracking a bit.

“Yeah, I’m sure Kath would have just loved that,” Dan said as he rubbed at his eyes. “And speaking of… What’s she gonna say when you stumble home drunk off your tits tonight?”

“I’m, uh… I’m not going home tonight. I’m staying with PJ and Chris in Brighton for a couple days. I kinda got in an argument with my dad and I’m trying to avoid him for a bit.”

“I mean, I can definitely relate.” Dan laughed, a little darker than he intended. “But you and your dad usually get along mostly fine, what happened?”

He heard Phil sigh deeply. “He bought me, like, proper business-person robes for my birthday.”

“What? Why?”

“Dunno, I guess he thinks it’s time for me to ‘be a man’ and ‘get a proper job’ and all that other adulty stuff.”

“Damn,” Dan replied, twirling his wand between his fingers absentmindedly. “And is that what you want?”

“I dunno. Probably not,” Phil admitted quietly. “I don’t really know what I want to do with my life, I just know I really like making videos, especially with you.”

“And I’m guessing your dad doesn’t really get that?”

“Not at all. Try explaining Youtube to a wizard who’s never even touched a computer.”

“Mine doesn’t really get it, either. I think maybe it’s less a wizard versus Muggle thing and more just a dad thing.”

Phil was silent for a long moment, leading Dan to pull the phone away just to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.

“Hey, Dan? Promise me something?”

“Yeah?”

Phil took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Promise me that we’re still gonna move in together next year like we talked about?”

‘“Course we will,” Dan answered with no hesitation. “We’ll probably have a pretty crappy apartment ‘cause it’s all we can afford, but it’s gonna be awesome.”

“And we’ll make videos together?”

“I mean, duh, all the time.” Dan couldn’t wipe the smile from his face if he tried. “Damn, our neighbors are gonna hate us, aren’t they?”

He got a classic Phil laugh in return, and he felt better knowing he put that goofy tongue-biting smile back on the older boy’s face. “That’s fine by me. Dan and Phil versus the world.”

“Always,” Dan answered as he glanced around the empty common room, desperately wishing his best friend wasn’t so far away, and felt tears building up again. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about how being here without you guys this year sucks major ass.”

“How would you know?”

“What?”

Phil snickered. “How would you know that it sucks ass unless you’ve—”

“Damn!” Dan swiftly interrupted before Phil could finish that thought. “Proper pissed Phil is a cheeky little shit, isn’t he?”

“No,” Phil answered around a yawn, “he’s a sleepy little shit. I kinda wanna just lay down right here on the pavement and take a nap...”

“Phil! You’re not sleeping on some random London street at two in the morning, you’ll get picked up by the Muggle police,” Dan laughed, shifting his phone to the other ear. “Go back inside and find Chris and PJ.”

“‘kay.”

“And make sure at least one of you sobers up a little before anyone tries to Apparate home,” Dan instructed. “I doubt you want to spend the rest of your birthday at St. Mungo’s because you splinched yourself and left an arm behind in the club or something.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll be careful,” Phil assured him as he opened the door to the club and the music suddenly blared into the phone again.

“Text me tomorrow whenever your hangover goes away,” Dan called over the noise.

Phil groaned in reply. “Ugh, don’t remind me of the consequences of my actions! It’s my birthday!”

Dan felt himself grinning like an idiot. “Happy birthday, you dork.”

Nicole is being examined by Assistant US Attorney Moira Penza. It was the 19th day of the trial of Keith Alan Raniere in Brooklyn Federal Court. After her conversation with Keith – where he told her he would – even though he did not want to – have to release her collateral [just like Billy Budd had to be hanged] for the sake of DOS, Nicole walked around Clifton Park and started thinking about this. She had three options. 1. To get fully on board with DOS and Raniere. 2 To commit suicide 3 To go into the witness protection program, [disappear.] “Maybe if I disappeared, they wouldn’t have to release my collateral. I could just disappear and maybe they wouldn’t bother me,” she thought. Then came a new assignment from Keith. She was assigned to seduce Robbie. [Robbie, readers may recall, was the man who had an affair with Cami, which drove Keith to fits of insane jealousy – such that he demanded Cami tell him whose semen tasted better to her, his or Robbie’s.] [Robbie is the son of Raniere devotee and high ranking Nxivm leader Esther Carlson.] It was arranged that Nicole would run into Robbie “accidentally” and strike up a conversation. She would use a fake name. She created a fake Facebook page, fake email, and separate phone number for him. Keith said they needed to keep track of Robbie for his and the community’s welfare. Robbie had been ordered to report to Lauren Salzman if he interacted with or was interested in any woman – for his own welfare, Keith had assured him. The Vanguard, Keith Alan Raniere. Keith told Nicole to accidentally run into him at a track where he worked out. Nicole like Robbie and Robbie also must have thought Nicole was nice. They met several times and Nicole started running with him. Nicole was nervous about doing dishonest spying for Keith, but Keith said she was born to do this kind of work. Nicole soon figured out that Robbie was Nxivm leader Esther’s son. And his stepdad was Jim Del Negro. Nicole met his family and liked them, especially Robbie’s sister, Rose. Nicole didn’t want to be lying. Esther Carlson Chiappone, longtime High Rank of Nxivm, is Robbie’s mother. Keith said he understood how Nicole was feeling but the spying was needed, he said. Keith said he could never do what she did because he wasn’t a good liar. It would be so hard for him to lie, he said. Nicole was eventually supposed to sort of “hand-off” Robbie to Sahajo Haertel [another DOS slave – still active in DOS]. But Robbie was getting ready to join the Navy. Allison was really insistent about Nicole getting Robbie handed off to Sahajo [so they could continue to spy on him or maybe set him up somehow and get some blackmail-worthy material on him.] But Robbie, since he was going into the Navy, was uninterested in meeting anybody then. Keith and Allison wrote text messages to Robbie on Nicole’s phone pretending to be Nicole. Allison and Keith began to write text messages using Nicole’s phone, pretending to be Nicole and sending these to Robbie. Allison said it was very important that Nicole didn’t fail in her mission to get Robbie to meet Sahajo. Nicole was at some point ordered to cut off contact with Robbie. Keith told Nicole she should go to him and insult him. *** In time, Nicole realized that India was one of Alison’s slaves. It came as a relief because Nicole wasn’t alone anymore. India and Nicole became close. In fact, India became good at talking Nicole “off the ledge” when she was having difficulties. Nicole explained that there was “collective punishment”. If Nicole did something Allison or Keith didn’t like – both India and Nicole would have to take a cold shower, or their calories would be cut. Allison and Keith realized that Nicole was the kind of person who cared about other people and they could keep her obedient easier with India because Nicole wouldn’t want India to have to reduce her calories because of something wrong she did. As for calories, Allison wanted India to get down to 105 pounds and go on a 500 calories per day diet until she got there. Nicole said it was hard to watch India diet this way. [It was unhealthy]. On 500 calories a day, India would get really tired. Nicole said India was on 500 calories the entire time she knew her. Allison was trying to get down to 103 pounds herself and was on a 500-600 calories a day diet. Nicole was naturally skinny and did not need to lose weight. She met with Keith’s approval as to ideal weight. Eventually, Nicole met more of Allison slaves. In some ways, more slaves was a good thing, because now, she wasn’t so alone. In some ways, it was bad. Readiness drills got more intense because they were responsible for each other – to respond within 60 seconds – or all would be punished. Now that they knew of each other, all of Allison’s slaves would meet once a week on Monday night. They called it ‘church.” The slaves would sit on the floor. Allison would sit on a chair. Allison introduced the concept of the “family photo.” They had to take off all their clothes and look happy while a photo was taken. Nicole found out these photos were sent to Keith. She became upset with that. But Allison explained that it was for scientific purposes – because Keith could tell their state of mind by seeing their faces. This was for their own welfare that he took the time to care about them. [Keith texted back after Allison sent him one of these family photos — “all mine” with a devil emoji.] On the witness stand, Moira Penza asked Nicole “How did this family photo feel?” Nicole said, “I absolutely hated it.” Nicole began crying on the witness stand as she said it made her feel really unsafe that this could happen. She described how such a photo could be required anywhere. Allison could merely order them to do the family photo at any point, anywhere. Nicole continued to cry as she explained, “I couldn’t say no. It was no control. You were just told to take your clothes off and you had to do it.” Nicole would ask, “Why is this family photo part of it? How is it?” She started crying again. Nicole pushed back against Allison, still crying, as she described how she felt. “How is it empowering to make us take off our clothes for a man?” Allison explained, “You don’t have to know the reasons for this.” Nicole said it didn’t matter that she was upset about this. Nicole said she felt furious at the requirement of additional collateral. New collateral was due by the first of the month. She felt more and more stressed, more and more trapped. She’s crying on the witness stand, as she says, “I hated it.” She understood she had to provide additional collateral or her “first collateral” would be released. The collateral went into a Dropbox account. Nicole said she provided new collateral every month except for one month. That was the month Alison presented them with a contract. The contract called for them to sign an agreement that if they ever spoke about DOS, they would lose a million dollars tied to any assets they had. [I doubt this contract could ever be enforced anywhere.] At the time Nicole was thinking “Oh my god, this is really never going to end.” Allison had booked to act in a play around that time and became busy. So the contract never was actually signed. It slipped through the cracks. That was the only month that collateral wasn’t demanded of Nicole. As for collateral, Nicole was trying to keep her family out of it. Nicole and India each gave their credit card authorizations to Allison. Nicole wrote a letter saying that if she broke her word, her grandmother’s prized and beautiful 1938 wedding ring would be forfeited as collateral. Michelle Hatchette, still a DOS slave and trying to recruit slaves for Raniere while he is in prison. She has a “beautiful cunt” Allison Mack said of her. Michelle Hatchette [reportedly still in DOS – so her last name is given to protect innocent potential recruits] was one of Allison’s slaves. Michelle’s family had a house in the Berkshires. They went there for a “bonding” trip. They hiked, made dinner, and had a nice time. After dinner, Allison said it was not just a bonding trip. Nicole thought, “Oh gosh, what’s coming next?” Allison explained she had another assignment, a close-up photo. Allison said she’s going to take “a close up photo of all your pussies.” Nicole pushed back. It was a back and forth with Allison but Nicole lost the argument. They took off all their clothes. Each woman had to sit on the couch and spread her legs. Allison took the picture. Danielle Roberts was first. Nicole was the last. When Michelle’s picture was taken, Allison said with delight, “It is a beautiful cunt.” After pictures were taken, Allison said, “See, that wasn’t so bad.” Allison ordered them to speak about how they felt. Nicole refused, not speaking was the only power she had left. Allison said, “Oh, are you still throwing a fit over there?” The slave pod of Allison Mack’s had nicknames. India was the Princess. Nicole was the Brat. Michelle was the Clown. The “Brat” was not happy about having Allison take a closeup shot of her vagina. But she had no choice. She was a slave of Allison Mack [with plenty of blackmail-worthy collateral on hand to keep her in line] and the grand slave of Keith Alan Raniere, known also as the Vanguard, the smartest and most ethical man – they all said – in the world.