"Gin! Try one!" Astoria handed a fresh cauldron cake to Ginny. She reached for it, but was distracted by a loud pop! a few metres away. Marcus arrived, and with him an entourage of former Slytherin men. A few of them were wrestling kegs into an upright position—apparently sidealong apparition with a keg was not as smooth as they were expecting. Ginny noticed that they unconsciously split into two groups. One clustered around Draco Malfoy; they were all in his year. The other group she didn't recognize at all.
"Those are all Marcus' friends. Adrien Pucey and Terence Higgs are the ones with the boxes of bottled firewhiskey." Astoria noticed Ginny's expression and tried to explain quietly why there were all these strange men arriving to the Holyhead Harpies party. "Miles Bletchley and Graham Montague have the other keg." Astoria looked at Ginny, worry filling her brown eyes. "You said it was okay, right? Like, you don't think Miss Gwenog will be upset?"
"Oh, no, Tori, the more the merrier. You said earlier that you were trying to avoid people playing match-maker today, right?" Ginny watched the guys laughing with each other. Graham had nudged Marcus, sharing an inside joke.
"Yeah, when mum gets here, she's going to drag every single one of them over to try to talk to me." Astoria began pouring ingredients into her cauldron for another batch of cakes.
Ginny grinned mischievously at Astoria. "Good. Tori, you need to think of this as a game of Quidditch."
"Hand me the ground cacao beans, Gin, would you?" Astoria was carefully measuring ingredients, brow furrowed in concentration.
"You aren't listening. Look, you obviously don't want to play offense and find a guy to get your mum off your back, I get that. But you definitely need to improve your defense strategy. And I got you covered on that, Tori." Ginny handed her friend the mortar and pestle full of powered cacao beans.
"Defense strategy with boys." Astoria looked at Ginny, completely dumbfounded.
"Yeah. Just like on the pitch. What's Gwenie always shouting?"
"The alphabet." Astoria rolled her eyes and began reciting, "Avoid, Block, Confound, Deflect, Evade—"
"—Yeah, yeah" Ginny interrupted, impatiently. "So the same thing. You see your mum or sister or whoever bringing a guy up, what do you do? Avoid! Like now, you're busy with your cakes, that's excellent."
Astoria started laughing. "Are you seriously applying Quidditch strategy to my love life?"
"Yes. Hush and listen. Next is block. Okay, I've enlisted help with that one. My brothers are on the lookout."
"You did that for me?" Astoria looked at Ginny in astonishment. Before Ginny could reply, Marcus had walked up to them and wrapped his arms around his sister-in-law.
"Hey, Astoria! Thanks for letting me bring the guys." Astoria gently patted Marcus' chest and moved awkwardly out of the hug.
"Thanks…I think. What did you tell them?" Astoria peered around Marcus at the growing crowd.
"Nothing." Marcus motioned for his friends to join them. "Just that they should talk to you."
Astoria blushed bright red and her wide eyes flickered to Ginny. "Oh Merlin." She whispered, panicked, "Gin, you gotta help me!"
"The Alphabet, Astoria." Ginny grinned, and watched Astoria process what Ginny was saying before Marcus interrupted.
Suddenly inspired, Astoria declared, "Oh, it's okay, Marcus, thanks. I've still got to wrap these up—I'll join you in a bit." Astoria ducked behind the cauldron like a shield.
Ginny, winked at Astoria and grabbed Marcus' elbow. "I'd like a butterbeer, come with me." Ginny ordered, then added, "I don't know them, they were ahead of me in school. They're your friends, right?" She looked over her shoulder at Astoria and mouthed silently, "See? Intercept!"
Astoria rolled her eyes and busied herself with her recipe.
"Uh. Yeah?" Marcus sounded confused. "All right. Don't be shy, Astoria." He smiled warmly at the now-pale Astoria, and headed off with Ginny.
"Guys! Hey, this is the Harpies' seeker!" Marcus, ever cheerful and oblivious, reached for a beer, which he cracked open and handed to Ginny.
"Ah, the Weaslette." Blaise drawled, surprised that Marcus walked over arm-in-arm with Ginny.
Ginny thrust her hand out to Blaise in greeting. "We were a few years apart, and different houses, and never really got to get to know each other."
Surprised, Blaise took her hand and gave it a cautious shake. Ginny carefully noted the rest of the gang's reactions—most wore looks of surprise. Theodore Nott's expression could best be described as wary.
"I don't think you know most of these guys. Miles Bletchley, Adrien Pucey, Graham Montague, and Terence Higgs. They're my mates. I think you know the rest of them from your years."
"Yeah, sorry to crash your party. We came because Marcus said there'd be free food and beer. And we're not really Harpies fans, either." The man who Marcus had introduced as Graham Montague spoke in a tone that said he wasn't really very sorry for crashing the party at all. He crossed his hairy arms, defiantly.
"Oh, no, we don't have many fans who aren't teenage girls or lecherous old men." Ginny grinned, nonplussed by Graham's aggressive body language.
Sensing conflict, Marcus tried to change the subject. "Terence was Slytherin's seeker before you arrived at Hogwarts, I think. Draco replaced him, though." Draco Malfoy, busy with the bottles of beer, gave Ginny a nod of recognition and returned to casting cooling charms on the bottles.
"Oh, another seeker?" Ginny smiled warmly at Terence. "I'd love talk strategy."
"I can't say I've watched many Harpies' games." Terence spoke softly.
"Ah, a Puddlemere United fan?" Ginny smiled genially.
"No, actually, Chudley Cannons."
"Oh, Merlin. You and my brother. You even have that same expression right there, the one that says 'I know you're about to make fun of my team and I'm prepared to fight you over it!'" Ginny laughed.
"We shall conquer!" Terence's voice held a tone of defiance and pride, as he recited the Cannon's motto.
Laughing, Draco chimed in, "Naw, man, your new motto is 'Let's just all keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.'"
"You know what, fuck you and your Falcons!" Terence glared at Draco, and angrily grabbed a beer bottle. He cracked it open murderously.
Ginny glanced back at Astoria. Mrs. Greengrass and Daphne had arrived and crowded around Astoria. Mrs. Greengrass had somehow pulled her daughter away from the cauldron and was heading determinedly toward the group. Astoria trailed behind her mother, meekly. "Oh, shit." Ginny muttered to herself.
Before she could do anything, though, George swooped in and deflected Astoria away from Mrs. Greengrass. He flung his arm around her shoulder, "Hey, Astoria! I've been looking for you all morning! I wanted to ask you…" George's voice grew faint as he spun Astoria around and headed in the polar opposite direction of Ginny. Mrs. Greengrass turned around, flabbergasted, and not at all sure what had just happened. She saw though, that her daughter was talking with a man and decided to leave well enough alone—until she could figure out the identity of that wizard, anyway.
"Weaslette." Ginny rolled her eyes internally at the nickname, but attempted to smile at Draco nonetheless.
"Yes, Malfoy?"
"I thought your brother was with the Johnson girl." Ginny was surprised at the look of intensity that Draco was leveling at George.
"Yeah, he is. They're engaged." Ginny took a sip of her beer, curious as to what was bothering Draco.
"So, that Greengrass girl, she's like, what, a friend of the Weasley family?" Draco looked at Ginny, his slate gray eyes serious.
"No, she's never met my family before today. She's my friend, though." Ginny felt a flicker of surprise when she realized how quickly she had termed Astoria her friend. Immediately on the heels of that thought was another, 'but it's true, she IS my friend."
"So, is she single?" Draco asked as nonchalantly as possible.
Ginny felt her jaw drop in shock. Recovering, she replied carefully, "She's not available."
"What, she belong to you?" Draco sneered. "Won't Potter love that!"
"Ooooh, questioning my sexuality! That's mature. No, she doesn't belong to me. She's just out of your league." Ginny felt she had endured enough insults from the Slytherin guests and Draco's insinuation was the final straw. She felt her temper fray. She was about to say some highly insulting things regarding Draco's parentage and Death Eater Scum associations, but the expression on Draco's face gave her pause. He looked-hurt? Embarrassed? She wasn't sure, and the expression had only flickered across his face for a second. Draco turned away from Ginny, and tried to discreetly rub his inner left forearm. He silently started helping Theodore with the rest of the butterbeer.
Puzzled at the lack of snarky retort from Draco, Ginny patted Marcus on the back. "Thank you for introducing me to your friends. I'm going to see if my mum needs help with the rest of the food." She smiled amiably at the young men, trying to be as diplomatic as possible to not ruin the day for Astoria. She headed toward her mother and the ever-growing table of food, mulling over Draco's interest in Astoria. It certainly explained his behavior in Diagon Alley the other day.
Author's Note: Hello, my lovely readers, my favorite people in the world! I hope the weather is nicer wherever you are, because it crappy here. I know I promised some Drastoria, and I am working up to it, I promise! I'm trying to bring out Ginny and Astoria's friendship, along with developing their characters. I'm not sure if I'm pulling it off exactly how I want... I mean, at this point, Ginny is pretty independent but alone and having to forge new friendships, and we know virtually nothing about Astoria. How would it end up that she'd be sociable with a bunch of Slytherins? Does house rivalry continue in such extremes post Hogwarts? I would think not, at least, not if one were to continue to be a functioning member of wizarding society...The animosity can't be that great once they've graduated. Also...I still haven't figured out what Draco has been up to since he "graduated" Hogwarts. Did he even go back for that 7th Year? JKR is surprisingly mute on the subject of the Malfoy clan...*sigh*...these are the thoughts that keep me up late at night! haha! Anyway. Thank you for reading.
