FF: Getting Drunk

[derannimer]

Quick question for, er, anybody who would know. (No personal 
anecdotes, please.)

Say you're in a pub. Say you're drinking some kind of ale-type unit. 
Say you are **really** and profoundly bummed at your life. Say, 
actually, that you are Avery. 

(Note: Fourth Man With Remorse But No Will-Power Whatsoever. Those 
who frequent TBAY will recognize him.)

How many pints do you have to drink before you become drunk? Not so 
drunk that you absolutely cannot function -- I want Avery to retain 
the sense to watch what he says around Snape -- but drunk enough so 
that you're not thinking all that clearly, and. . . 

Oh, bummer, I'm going to have to explain, aren't I?

I'm writing a ficlet set post-GOF; Avery and Snape, having a  
conversation, after a DE raid. Avery has just killed someone. Snape 
is going, at the end of the evening, to be going back to Hogwarts and 
telling Dumbledore that Avery has just killed someone. Dynamics 
between the two are rather tense in that Avery believes Snape still 
to be the fanatical hard-core DE who once pushed Avery into becoming 
a DE, and is hence trying to speak much more enthusiastically about 
the killing than he really feels; and in that Snape -- partly from 
the things that Avery is saying -- believes that Avery has now 
become, thanks largely to himself, pretty much a hardened DE, and has 
hence just crossed him off the "People who might help us out a bit if 
I hint obliquely at them" list, and is hence obviously trying to 
speak as if he was still a fanatical hard-core DE. 

Neither of them are feeling particularly chirpy, but Snape, needless 
to say, is not staring "into the pewter pot/ to see the world as the 
world's not." [1]

Avery, perhaps also needless to say, is. 

But he's got a pretty careful line to walk, conversationally 
speaking, and as I've never myself gotten drunk -- that I know of -- 
I need some input on whether or not he *could* be drinking, and still 
walk that conversational line. I *want* him to be a bit drunk -- I 
want him to be completely emotionally shell-shocked and dazed -- but 
I'm not sure it's *feasible* for him to be drunk. And, as mentioned 
above, I don't know how much he'd have to drink to get to a sort of 
in-between-y state, either. 

So, if no one minds answering, do you think he could be a bit sauced 
and still manage not to give away his real feelings about the 
killing? Bearing in mind that he's used to hiding things, and hence 
might be, even when sauced, unusually cautious. And if he can get 
drunk, how many pints does he need to drink to get just slightly 
drunk? And what sorts of things go in pints, anyway? I don't really 
think that "ale-type unit" is going to cut it. 



Derannimer, beginning to think that this story shouldn't be set in a 
pub