Loser

Best Mates

III

“The thing with the Falcons,” Harlan said, “Is that they’ve got a great chaser but the beater couldn’t hit the broad side of a bludgeor three inches from his face, with his wand drawn.”

Ginny snorted, “They certainly manage to hit the other players well enough.”

“A chaser makes a bludgeor not,” Harlan said with a grin.

Ginny and Harlan were flipping through the magazine Ron had been forced to wait on back at Snape’s grotty old house. It was a rare edition of Quidditch Quarterly that had a large pictorial set and interviews with all the teams in Great Britain.

Ron sat by a rickety wooden table in the Burrow and lazily circled wanted ads in the Prophet. Every few minutes, he’d crane his neck in hoped of getting a glimpse of the Canon’s set. He’d heard there was a very in depth article entitled; How Losing Has Changed My Life by their team captain. It would certainly be a pick me up, Ron knew he wasn’t ambitious enough to really get a job in Diagon Alley but there was a tiny hope that maybe he’d work something out and Hermione would come back to him. They’d dated a year and danced about each other for nearly four, the miserable end of their relationship was an epic disappointment.

They’d gotten into another big row, maybe the seventh in a month. Hermione found him by the lake in the evening with a bunch of his mates. Perhaps he’d had one fire whiskey too many and was a bit off to begin with. It had been the end of the year and as far as he was concerned, a bloke was entitled to a raging drunk every now and again, particularly when they had done a bang up job buggering their grades.

Hermione had been in full blown lecture mode the minute she saw him lounging on the grass.

“What is wrong with you, Ron Weasley!” She had shouted at him, “You practically failed your OWLs and you’re on your way to failing your NEWTs!”

Ron had wanted to say something like, ‘You don’t have to live with five brothers who are all better and smarter and just more capable in every way then you. No matter what I do, it just won’t be enough!’ but instead with the fire whiskey burning on his tongue, he choked out something like ‘So?’

Which was really, the worst thing he could have said; hands down.

He could tell by the look on her face that resembled a tea pot gone off, that he was either going to get hexed within an inch of his life or they would break up.

It was the latter happening that had bothered him more.

So now he was scribbling a little head on his Prophet paper that was full of bushy hair and smiling. But he crossed it out before his eyes could tear up or he’d turn red from sheer, frustrated anger. She hadn’t answered any of his letters and thereby, he wasn’t sure half the time whether to be pissed or miserably depressed.

“I’m hoping for the Wigtown Wanderers to get in this year,” Harlan said, admiring the magazine spread.

Ron coughed and interjected, “I thought you were a fan of the Ballycastle Bats?”

Harlan flushed a rather unusual shade of crimson and mumbled, “Not anymore.”

Ginny gave Ron an absolutely murderous look.

“What?” Ron said, totally perplexed.

“Nothing, Ron!” Ginny said through clenched teeth, “Let’s go have a game, Harry.”

Harlan seemed cheered by this, “Sure. Do you have a quaffle?”

“Yeah, it’s in the shed,” Ginny said, scrambling from her place on the floor.

She helped Harlan up who brushed the dirt off of her pants and grinned.

Ron managed to keep his urge to make a disgusted sound. Harry. Really! It was a completely stupid nickname. Harland was already inches from a boy’s name anyway, she didn’t need a nickname to confuse half the bloody student body as to what sex she was.

Not that Ron would have shagged Harlan if someone had paid him a hundred galleons to do it. Girls were supposed to have big chests and soft arses and long, pretty hair. Harlan was scrawny and almost gangly, too tall and had a short crop that made her messy black waves stand on end. The best part about her was her green eyes but even those were masked by a pair of awkward, round glasses. She wasn’t ugly Ron supposed, since she had a pretty fit figure and a nice looking arse even if it was bony but he still couldn’t reconcile with a girl who wore no makeup and called herself Harry, in his universal concept of shaggable females.

Not to mention, she was a Slytherin. And Severus Snape’s adopted daughter. If anything was reminiscent to a blow to the manly bits, thinking about those particular details were.

“Want to play?” Harlan said, Ginny stood beside her looking at Ron curiously.

Ron snorted, as if this were the most ridiculous question in the world, “No.”

Ginny shook her head, “Come on Harry, we’ve got a good four hours before the sun sets.”

Harlan glared at Ron and then turned to Ginny, “What crawled in his floo and died?”

“Long and stupid story,” Ginny snarled.

Ron drew some more angry swirls on his Prophet and then snapped it across the room, huffing and crossing his arms. Perhaps he’d go up to his room and pull a Percy, writing surly letters to Hermione all summer.

It was all his mood was really good for, at the moment.