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I wrinkled my nose in distaste.
“No?” Oz sounded surprised.
“Daddy isn’t going to work for me.” I didn’t care what kind of nicknames other people tossed around, but that one didn’t float my boat or tickle my pickle.
Oz shrugged. “What do you prefer? I’ve never cared for Sir as a general idea.”
Possibly for similar reasons. “I already call you Oz.” And while it wasn’t a nickname I’d given him, I was about the only person who used it.
“You’re a wizard?” Graham asked in disbelief.
Oz wiggled his hand. “I’ve got magic fingers.”
Yeah, he did.
“And a magic wand, I assume?” Graham might be skeptical, but the antagonism that had been in his voice earlier was gone. His tone was sliding closer to the teasing he and I shared. “Because Oz wasn’t that kind of wizard. Lupin, on the other hand…”
Oz raised an eyebrow. “Werewolf. Buffy. Fucking an adorable redheaded genius. I get it.” He connected the barely-related dots in a way most people would puzzle at.
Graham looked as pleased as I was. Did Oz just slide into our all things fictional are related game without hesitation?
There was one problem with this whole line of conversation, though. “Lupin doesn’t really roll off the tongue in the heat of the moment.”
“I didn’t roll off your tongue last night either,” Oz said. “It was more of a lodged in your throat—”
“Seriously?” Graham’s amusement faded.
“Definitely not.” Oz studied him. “Especially not for you.”
Graham furrowed his brow. “What?”
The play on words, on names, was a reach, but not a long one given we’d already edged into Harry Potter territory. I knew where Oz was going with the statement. “Sirius Black was a noble protector. I could see that in Graham.”
“And he sacrificed himself.” Graham was caught up.
Oz rolled his eyes again. “And he spent a lot of his life before that having fun and playing pranks. Graham doesn’t strike me as a prank kind of guy. Besides, you’re more of a Ravenclaw.”
Graham scoffed. “I’m a Gryffindor if I’m anything.”
I wasn’t. Not even close. Like my not-quite-namesake, “You don’t want to hang out with me in Ravenclaw?” I extended my lower lip in an exaggerated pout.
“You’re not a Gryffindor. You picked knowledge over good,” Oz said.
“I picked Luna.”
Heated flooded me at Graham’s simple statement. “You’re implying that back then, when I came to you with the project, you would’ve said yes, even if I’d been asking for help debugging a basic Python routine?”
Graham searched my face. “The question is irrelevant. If you’d been asking for help with anything less than what you came to me with, you wouldn’t be the you I’d pick.”
And now I must be bright red.
Graham turned his attention to Oz. “I notice you didn’t sort yourself. Are you going to claim you’re a Hufflepuff?”
“Never got my Hogwarts letter.” Oz made the answer sound obvious. “I was forced to become a hedge witch and whore myself out to grow my magic.”
“Crossover alert.” In the best possible way. I’d enjoyed this with Graham, but with Oz added to the mix, it was a whole new flavor of delightful.
“But a logical one.” Graham was already weaving the two worlds in his head. I could practically see those sexy brain gears whirring. “In the UK, they find these magicians young and train them. But after the issues with Grindelwald in the US, revealing magic to so many people at once, the American Ministry locked down. They were more careful about how they approached wizards and witches.”
