Disclaimer: I still don't own anything. I'm so lonely…

The Beater's Bible

'… So I made sure to take the one who was coughing!' said Razvan and shouted with laughter, leaning over the counter.

Amelia laughed as well, but mostly because of Razvan, who wasn't someone you'd expect to laugh that much at his own, very tasteless jokes he insisted on telling his niece. She was sitting on the wooden floor with a heavy book in her lap and a cracked cup of tea on a pile of books next to her. Most of the books had been Razvan's or her mother's, and there was hardly a clean page in them. Her mother's was mostly filled with notes from friends about how boring Professor Binns was (though he had been alive when her mother had had him) or about the cute bloke in front of them. Razvan's, on the other hand, were scribbled with notes on how to manage this or that spell better, or how to get this and that potion to set better.

'Don't you have any notebooks from your school time?' she asked suddenly and slammed the book shut.

'Huh?' asked Razvan, who apparently had still been laughing.

'Parchment, you know, notes and stuff,' said Amelia and crawled up from the floor, brushing dust from her skirt.

'I don't know. Look in the back,' he said and scratched the back of his greying head. 'Did I tell you the one about the goblin and the Durmstrang tart?'

'Just three times…' muttered Amelia, though she couldn't deny that she loved being around her uncle.

She had also met her cat, who lived at Razvan's during the summer, who she had very tastefully named Gatsby. So he was at the moment sitting on the counter, next to Razvan, watching everything that moved in the shop, which, if you looked closely, was a lot of things.

'Shame about Snape, really,' said Razvan suddenly and Amelia looked out from the back room.

'What?' she asked.

'Good wizard that kid,' started Razvan and Amelia had a feeling that this was going to be a long story.

'Then what's a shame?'

'He's half-blood, you know.'

Amelia dropped the pack of old parchments she was holding and they fell down on the ground.

'What?' she snapped and ran out from the small den.

'Didn't you know?' asked Razvan with his usual face; content over having given Amelia some new information most people didn't have.

'He's not, is he?' she asked and looked round-eyed at Razvan.

'Yes, he is. Shame, isn't it?'

'Yes it is…' said Amelia and moved back to the den to gather the parchment she'd dropped.

'Mother was a witch and a damn fine one as well,' he started to explain. 'A few year above me, but still. I really respected her, but then she goes of marrying some muggle… I thought she'd know better. Eileen her name was… Eileen Prince. Good blood, that family… But she was the only child… Shame… Real shame…'

The bell over the door rattled, and she backed a step to get in an angle so she could see who it was through the perfectly placed mirrors she had helped Razvan to set up two years earlier. She saw light-brown hair, a perfect smile and charming grey eyes, and had to think for a minute before she remembered who it was.

'Amos!' she said happily and ran out in the shop, forgetting all about Snape's blood-line.

Amos Diggory played Beater in the Ravenclaw team, and was in the seventh year. He was one of the most popular boys in school, and there was a reason for it. He was very talented and very, very handsome. Perhaps not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but actually quite smart when he set his mind to something. One of the most promising talents in the school.

'It's been a while!' said Amos when he saw Amelia come rushing out.

She threw an eye towards Razvan, who looked more than mildly disturbed by the handsome young man. Razvan, though an attractive in another way than, well, most others, did not hold much for people who did look good. And Amos was for him the epitome of what was bad about the world. Amelia herself didn't like people like Amos either, but she liked Amos, because, well… it was Amos Diggory!

'I'll be in the back…' muttered Razvan very disgruntled.

'How did you find me here? You don't seem like someone who'd go down in Knockturn Alley

all by yourself,' asked Amelia and looked around for somewhere to offer him to sit down.

'Really good. I've been training a lot,' he said calmly and leaned against a chest of drawers, which rattled and sent Amos flying to the other side of the room.

'I wouldn't recommend leaning against anything here…' said Amelia and finally found a low stool. She seated herself on the floor; she thought she was already dusty enough.

'As I said… I've been training a lot, you know. Dad bought me a whole Quidditch set for my birthday. How's it going for you?'

Amelia had dreaded the question. 'I haven't been on a broom for the whole summer. I spent it with me dad, and well, I came here yesterday, so I haven't had all that much opportunity.'

'You know, if you don't practice, there's a risk you'll be kicked off the team,' he said in a warning voice.

'Yeah, but you're the captain, right?' asked Amelia and blushed a little.

'Yes, I am, but you are the one who'll be cut if there's anyone better.'

Though Quidditch was very far from her top priority, she did like it. She played Beater together with Amos, a position she'd gotten because she was, in Potter's words, 'a sadistic cow with high threshold of pain, but no flying-abilities whatsoever'. The only reason she had tried out in the first place was because she wanted a chance to cause Potter some serious pain without ending up in detention. Her try-out had been far from smooth. There weren't all that many Ravenclaw students who were up for playing Beater, they were often not too much for the whole violence thing, but as Amelia was (for the whole violence thing) she had tried out. She knew how to fly, there was no question about it, but she was not among the best in the team. Far from it, actually. What had settled it was when she took a Bludger in the back and one in the head without a word. From that day in her third year, she had caused Potter three fractures, a concussion and two black eyes all together.

'I know…' said Amelia and ran her hands through her hair. 'I'll really try to improve, but I've got a lot of other things as well.'

'No, you don't. I've got to worry about my NEWTs, and two of the Chasers have to worry about their OWLs. You don't have anything this year. But I want to keep you on the team, you know, with half the team left last year and all that.'

'They did?' asked Amelia.

'You're not exactly Miss Current Affairs, are you?' asked Amos with a laugh. She hated his laughs, because whenever he laughed that way, it was because he'd successfully made fun of someone, and it was mostly on Amelia's account. But whenever he laughed that laugh, you got it almost rubbed in your face exactly why he was the most popular boy in Ravenclaw. 'David Hoskins left last year, so we need a new Keeper, Eddie O'Neil, that Irish son-of-a-bitch, decided that he wouldn't come back to school this year, so we have only two Chasers, and, to top it off, Barty Crouch's dad actually wrote me and said that Barty would play Seeker anymore. Well, that's not definite, is it? Let's face it; his father's been trying to get him OFF the team since he was brought ON!'

'So you are saying you've done nothing than to worry about Quidditch all summer?'

'Pretty much,' answered Amos with a very proud voice.

'How did you find me here, anyways?' asked Amelia, who honestly felt a little insulted by this. He had come all the way to Knockturn Alley, a place he rarely was in, only to inform her that she's bad at Quidditch? She knew that herself, thank you very much.

'I went to the second hand shop first, and your mother told me you were here,' he said, but didn't look the least uncomfortable. But, then again, someone like Amos Diggory very rarely managed to look uncomfortable, they were just there to look pretty and make others feel bad about themselves. Nonetheless, he was very charming and just hard not to like, in spite of all his classic pretty-boy characteristics.

'Well…' started Amelia, really not knowing what to say.

'Yeah, I'd better get going… I have to talk to Charles Branwhite about his broom, and I heard he's staying in the Cauldron.'

'I'll see you in school, won't I? said Amelia and followed Amos to the door. He looked around the shop before smiling a little at Amelia and then he was off again, probably to bug poor Branwhite about buying a better broom. Apparently the old one was too out of shape compared to the other Chasers'.

Razvan came out from the back the moment she had closed the door.

'That pretty boy?' he asked and locked Amelia with his eyes.

'What?' asked Amelia, trying hard to ignore the fact that she knew exactly what her uncle was talking about.

'You could get much better boys that that, you know. He's not worthy you.'

'What are you talking about?' asked Amelia and could even feel how she blushed a little.

'You look at him the same way you look at Lucius, and that's saying something.'

Amelia was now positively purple in her face, and her lips were throbbing madly, as always when she was caught doing something or was nervous.

'What?' she asked in some very badly played innocence.

'Do you think I'm stupid?' he asked and laughed a little. 'It wasn't all that long ago I was your age, and I know exactly what it was like. You should know that you look like you've over-dosed Amortentia whenever he is in the room.'

Amelia was paralysed. She didn't know what to say, or what to do, when it turned out that Razvan had noticed her interest in Malfoy.

She started to stutter very incomprehensibly before she got one word out, 'How?'

'I know I'm old, but I'm not stupid, or blind. I've seen how you look at him, and you look the same way at Diggory. Why?'

'What do you mean "why"?'

'Why do you like Diggory?'

'How can you not like him?' was all Amelia and looked stunned at Razvan.

'Well, I just -'

'I'm not going to discuss this with you!' yelled Amelia, and could hardly keep from laughing at the unbelievable situation.

She stormed out and threw the door shut behind her, running blindly out in the alley.

BANG.

She had run into something, and felt the cobbles in her back, telling her that she'd fallen.

'Look out…' she muttered and sat up with a hand on her forehead to keep her head from spinning. After a moment she realised that she was the one who had been careless, but didn't bother to apologise.

After giving it a minute or two to recuperate, she knew exactly who she had bumped into. She didn't even have to open her eyes, the smell of a thousand different potions was enough to tell her that the boy she had run into was none less than Severus Snape.

He didn't say anything, he just scrambled up from the ground, and Amelia could see that he was wearing the school robes. Not even she was wearing the school robes during summer!

'Watch where you're going…' he muttered and, much to Amelia's surprise, reached out a hand to help her get back to her feet.

As it was a human reflex to grab whatever is handed to you, she took his hand, only to notice that he probably had the most uncomfortable hands ever. Cold and clammy, and very skinny, it felt like holding a scrawny, dead fish. Her first instinct was to let go, but then she'd fall backwards, so she let hi help her up, then she let go of his hand as quickly as possible.

'I didn't see you,' she said quickly, trying to wipe her hand on the back of her skirt without Snape noticing.

'No, of course you didn't,' he said with a gloomy voice and took a deep breath. However, it sounded like there was something in the way, so it sounded more like he was trying to inhale through his nose with a very bad cold at the same time.

It was very hard to notice Snape, and when you finally did, it was very hard not to notice him. Unfortunately, ever since her first year, Razvan had been obsessed with trying to make Amelia and Snape friends, something she wasn't very keen on. Snape might be nice, she had no idea, she didn't know him very well, but there was even a bigger chance of him being a very, very nasty person, which was her first impression of him.

'Going to Razvan's?' asked Amelia and tried to make small-talk, something she soon understood was hopeless. Another question that kept gnawing on her mind was whether or not he had washed his hair at all during the summer, but she decided against it, it wasn't like he didn't get enough of comments about it.

'Yes,' he said in a voice of someone who just explained they were going to be executed.