Magical Hogwarts

SATURDAY, 19 MARCH 2005

Sam was pretty certain that Juin Proulx of the Gravesend Griffins was absolutely, one-hundred-percent flirting with him. Hitting on him. Making a move. At least that was the sense he’d gotten off her when he’d met her at Kenmare-Portree. Since that night he’d gone and looked her up, to confirm for himself that she had been brought to British and Irish League Quidditch by Quinn Regan’s own expert meddling hand, which made her absolutely, one-hundred-percent off-limits.

Maybe it didn’t. This would have been much easier if he and Quinn had fallen apart in a more spectacularly terrible way, so she would qualify as a crazy ex and he would be within his rights to ignore her feelings for the rest of time. As it stood, with him and Quinn on amiable terms, he was walking a tightrope. Obviously there had been no clause in their breakup to stipulate that he live an ascetic monklike life, mourning what he’d had, and frankly eighteen months was long enough that he knew he was implicitly allowed to move on.

He’d think it was a dick move if, like, Charlie started dating Quinn, though; this was probably the same thing. Right? Right.

It wasn’t just Quinn’s feelings he had to maneouvre around, anyway, but Juin Proulx’s as well, whom he – for some reason, implicitly, probably because she was French and Frenchwomen had some way about them – wanted to please and impress and so on, so he had decided not to jilt her at her Quidditch match.

Besides, she’d sent him two tickets, which was practically asking to be third-wheeled. He had initially wanted to take his brother, Ryan, who would make a splendid cockblocker and whom Sam could be actually honest with, but Ryan had been like, ‘But we went to a game last month’ and ‘Do you think I don’t see enough Quidditch games, or something? I’m a commentator’ and ‘My daughter is sick’ and other unhelpful things, so he had gone – instead – to Quinn, whom he thought could be trusted to act on her own unreasonable behalf even without his telling her to.

Or, he was allowing himself to hope, she would be cool about him and Juin and somehow signal to him that he could totally make a move on her friend. That was also plausible. Right? Right.

It occurred to him about ten minutes through the game that there was a third option here, which was that Gravesend lost the match and both witches were too dismal about it to allow for any romance. Thus far, the Griffins were keeping pace with Wigtown (go Wanderers!) but as a team they were lacking in cohesion, which made some sense to Sam. “Mid-season trades,” he said sagaciously. “They’re still not used to each other. And the other Beater is like half his size.” He didn’t dislike Harlan Bellamy but he still felt a keen wariness around him, and had ever since he’d dated Harlan’s sister. He stretched one arm out along the backs of the seats beside him (in the opposite direction of Quinn) and took a long sip of his second beer. “Where’d you find this broad, anyway? She wasn’t playing for Spain, was she?”

@Quinn Regan @Juin Proulx

Quinn pursed her lips, trying to retrain her gaze to stay fixed on the quaffle instead of looking for the snitch (because habits die hard) and uncharacteristically hoping that someone else (not herself) would do well in a quidditch match, but she would make more money if the Griffins made the playoffs. And she had enjoyed–in a carefree, teasing yet loving sort of way–Wigtown losing since she had started dating Sam, and that hadn’t just gone away because they had stopped.

She sat back in her seat–she had been perched on the edge of it because watching from the sidelines was far more stressful than captaining her own team–when Sam spoke up, both because it would be easier to have a conversation that way and because she needed to relax. That was half the reason she had gone with Sam, anyway; she had (better) tickets already but she handed those off to two of her younger sisters, who happened to think the Gravesend captain was dreamy. The other half of the reason was because his tickets had been from Juin Proulx, and Quinn would be having none of that.

The Griffins weren’t used to each other yet–Quinn nodded, because that was obvious–and there was a huge discrepancy in the size of the beaters– Quinn huffed a laugh. “He’s like, mostly vanity muscle,” she reasoned in a roundabout way of saying she thought the little beater could pull her weight; her cousin Keela had thought so, anyway, having her on as her co-captain when she was captain for Gryffindor. And never mind that Quinn had made Keela a beater for the Falcons, and it wasn’t like she was a beefy lad either. She was surprised she had more opinions on it than she had previously thought.

But Sam was right, either way. Quinn set her cider down by her feet and sat back the rest of the way, crossing her arms across her chest. “They could use her more,” she said with a sulkier huff, talking about a different mid-season trade: Juin. It had only been two months and she wasn’t the newest player on the team anymore (and Quinn was also trying not to take it personally that a Falcons chaser had joined the Griffins, but she was having a hard time of it).

Quinn waved her hand vaguely, unable to remember where she had first met Juin. Was it when she was playing for Braga, before the international matches, or was it at one of the international ones? She wasn’t prepared to admit that she might not remember things from a decade ago crystal clearly. But she knew for sure that Juin didn’t play for Spain, and she figured Sam knew that, too. “She plays for France.” She waited a beat before adding: “Juin Proulx,” in her best (over exaggerated) imitation of the French way to say it, as if her name should have been indication enough where she played.

“She didn’t think I could get her an offer off Quiberon,” she said with a smug smile, glancing at Sam quickly before putting eyes back on the match. And it had been killing her, not asking–she thought it would have been easier to ignore if she didn’t know–but since they were already on the subject: “Where did you find her?”

"Well, it's all still muscle," Sam remarked idly, though -- at Quinn's prodding -- he had to allow that the petite one was keeping pace fine enough. His spirits had lifted substantially, though, at what he took as an implicit (very possibly nonexistent) compliment toward *his* muscle, which -- while he was a little vain about it -- was less obviously photogenic. He glanced sidelong at his arm (sadly, he was wearing robes slightly too loose to admire the muscle there) and then back at the game. He propped his foot against the seat in front of him and rapped his knuckles rhythmically against the seat back adjacent to his (fortunately it was unoccupied; as it was he suspected this would eventually annoy the neighbouring spectators.) "They don't use her enough? How much is average?"

He felt automatically inclined to pronounce Quinn's French -- "Juin Proulx," -- though his own wasn't much better. Then, he felt automatically like this might have been a mistake, like it might have implied that he was more familiar with Juin than he was letting on. He considered bringing up his French ex-girlfriend, as though this situation could be fixed by adding another woman to the mix, and decided quickly against it.

"Oh, you sure showed her," he said, finding Juin on the pitch and raising his eyebrows. (He had worn his glasses today, in a possibly misguided effort to project ineligibility; otherwise it might have taken him much longer to pick Juin out, just one among many red robes flapping in the wind. "She was at Portree v. Kenmare, I went with my brothers and Fergie Flume --" (Quinn had met his brothers at some point, he was sure) "-- but they went running back to their wives and kids and left me at the party with Brody and Shannon. Reckon she thought I was a player at first. Sort of flattering. 'Course --" he hastened to add, "not my type." (This was just a lie.)