Cheeky

II

We Play and We Fight

"Merry Christmas!" Ginny stepped out of the fireplace in Charlie's quaint home. He had moved to a small wizarding community with his wife, Lavinia, several years ago. Ginny turned back to the fireplace after yelling through the empty living room. She was waiting for Liam to pop out.

He did so and tripped, and she went down to catch him. He just shook his mother off.

"Mum, I'm eight, not four," he grunted, standing himself up.

Next, Harry stepped out perfectly--much unlike the first time he ever traveled via the Floo Network.

"Hello?" Ginny repeated.

Suddenly a wave of people entered the living room. First to greet them were Lavinia and Fleur.

"Merry Christmas!"

"Ah! 'Ow are you? So nice to see you..."

"Oh, Liam, you're so big now!"

Then came Ron. "Harry! Ginny! So glad you could make it. Hi, Liam! All your cousins are upstairs."

At that, the sound of dozens of pairs of feet could be heard stampeding down the stairs.

"Liam!" Ben was first, throwing his arms very masculinely around his cousin.

Then all hell broke loose. There were far too many people in the room to count, especially after Charlie, Bill, Fred, Angelina, George, Sadie, and Mr and Mrs Weasley all found their way in. Liam bushwhacked through the tangle of legs and followed his cousins back upstairs. They all--as they did anytime anyone went to Charlie and Lavinia's house--had congregated in the attic, which had long ago been converted into a vast and highly entertaining playroom.

First, there was a loud thump. "Ow!"

Then, the usual amount of loud, scratchy whispering that commenced with the start of Murder in the Dark erupted.

"It's so dark in here..."

"Aaaah! What is that?"

"Don't worry, Victoria. It's just your cousins up here."

"Who's touching me?"

"Ha, ha..."

"Stop it, Ben."

"What? That wasn't me!" came from the other side of the room.

"Sssh!"

"Wait, was that a tap? Did you kill me?"

"Sacrebleu!"

"Sssshh!!!"

"How am I supposed to die if I don't even know whether or not I just got killed?"

"Be quiet! Alright, no more talking."

"Hey, kids. Hello?"

"What?" Charlotte, Charlie's youngest daughter, turned the light back on.

Her father's head poked up at the top of the stairs. "How about if Ewan and Alexandra and Victoria all came downstairs and helped their parents with the cooking?"

"No!" the three youngest in the room all moaned, sounding horribly upset.

"Yes, I think that would be very helpful. And you can play with Pippa and Angus and Petey."

Alexandra, Fred's youngest, folded her arms and shook her head adamantly, Victoria looked a little nervous, and Ewan scowled the deepest scowl any of them had ever seen.

"Dad, this really isn't necessary," Charlotte said, approaching her father, determined to deal with this peacefully.

"It just gets a little too chaotic with all of you up here," Charlie explained.

"Dad, come on, they're going to all start crying and that's going to make things even more hectic."

But Charlie ignored his daughter and summoned the three downstairs. They all stomped their way incredibly loudly to the stairs and once they reached the bottom, every cousin who was left upstairs could hear the howling and wailing start up.

Dominica, Charlie's older daughter, appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Dominica! Did you get Dad to bring them downstairs?" Charlotte asked, offended.

Dominica shrugged. "Admit it, Charlotte. We don't have any fun when they're up here."

"What fun are we going to have, Dominica? You're not hanging out with a group of kids that are all your age. You're hanging out with your cousins."

Dominica just shrugged once again and plastered an eerily Malfoy-like smirk across her pale face. But of course no one in the room knew just how Malfoy-like Dominica's smirk was because none of them had attended school with a Malfoy. Yet.

"Mum, I'm going to Samantha's house!" Iris shouted through the house as she hopped downstairs.

"Okay," she heard her mother reply from somewhere in the distance.

She put her hand on the doorknob. "I'll be back after dinner."

"Alright."

Iris, who was now eleven, left her house and started down the block. It was midday in late July and the sun was shining brightly, high in the sky. She and her mother and father lived on the outskirts of a quaint, charming wizarding community. She had been best friends with Samantha Pucey--daughter of Daphne Greengrass and Adrian--since the Malfoys moved to said community when Iris was seven. Samantha was one of the few people that Pansy let Iris play with anyway, and it was only because she was the daughter of Pansy's friend from Hogwarts and another Slytherin alumn. Daphne and Adrian, however, were substantially less paranoid than Pansy.

Iris skipped up the steps to the Pucey household and knocked on the big brass knocker that adorned the front door, which swung open just a moment later.

"Hi!" Samantha greeted happily, letting her friend enter the house.

"Hi."

Samantha stepped aside, allowing her white-blonde haired friend to enter her house. "Want to go outside?"

Iris nodded.

"It's so hot in here." Samantha lead the way to her modest backyard and the two sprawled out on chairs on Samantha's back porch. They could hear the noises of the neighbors playing in their yard. Suddenly something landed in the middle of the crisp, green grass of the Pucey's backyard. "Oh, bugger."

The talking on the other side of the fence became clearer and less jumbled.

"Did it go over?"

"Nice work, Atticus."

"That wasn't me!"

"What are you talking about? I just saw you with it in your hand."

"Yeah, then I passed it to Lucas and he threw it over."

"Don't try and blame your lack of depth perception on me."

"Whatever, we're going to have to go over and get it, anyway."

Samantha had, by now, put a finger over her lips to indicate that Iris wasn't to speak. They heard the boys--three voices had been speaking--make their way to the front of their house. Samantha giggled quietly and scampered to where the object--a Fanged Frisbee--had fallen. She picked it up, despite its snarling protests.

"What are you doing with it?" Iris whispered, just as the sounds of knocking could be heard coming from the front door.

Samantha grinned evilly and chucked the frisbee back over the fence. The girls laughed before traveling back through the house and opening the door for the boys. There were, indeed, three of them, and the one who looked the oldest stood in front of the other two, smiling charismatically at the young girls. Iris stole a sidelong glance at Samantha, who wore an expression on her face that suggested she had just been confronted by a god. This boy was conventionally attractive--nicely tousled blonde hair and deep, glistening blue eyes--but Iris didn't feel that he was anything worth collapsing over.

"Hi, girls," the boy started, speaking almost condescendingly. "We're cousins of the Weasley family, who live next door, and we accidentally tossed a frisbee to your side of the fence. We were wondering if you could perhaps just toss it back over to us?"

"We already did." The words seemed to burst out of Samantha's mouth. She laughed in a horribly unseductive way and Iris rolled her eyes dramatically.

The two boys standing behind the blonde one looked horribly angry. The blonde, however, kept his cool. "Alright, then. Thank you." With a swift turn he was down the steps and heading over to his cousins' house. The last two quickly followed.

Samantha shut the front door. "That boy was gorgeous."

"He was okay."

"Okay? Only okay?" Samantha stood with her mouth agape. She regained her composure. "You're just saying that because your mum doesn't want you having anything to do with the Weasleys."

Iris frowned. "It has nothing to do with my mum's stupid rules. I just am clearly much, much better at keeping my composure around boys than you are."

Samantha gasped. "You are not." She paused. "Wait, so you do think he's cute?"

Iris laughed.

"Oh! I have an idea!" Samantha darted up the staircase to the second floor of her house. Iris followed her. "There's a perfect view from the study to the Weasleys' house." Iris grinned, a devilish glint in her eye. Iris shook her head but followed her friend into the study nonetheless. The two crouched next to a window in the back left side of the house. They could see straight into the Weasley's backyard, where the three boys were tossing around the Fanged Frisbee.

"Oh, my God, look at him," Samantha sighed. "You know, I think I've probably seen him before. There are always hundreds of cousins over at that house. I just usually can't tell them apart because there are so many."

"I wonder why they're all always over here. Do they live nearby?"

"I don't think so. They must all go to Hogwarts. My mum says that my letter should be coming soon. Oh, this just makes me want to go even more badly."

A few more kids entered the yard. One of them started kicking around a strange, checkered ball.

"What's that kid doing?" Iris wondered aloud.

"Huh? Who?" Samantha didn't want to tear her gaze from the blonde boy.

"That kid. With the ball." Iris pointed at where she could see him through the glass.

"He's just kicking around a ball. He looks funny."

He was kicking it around and sort of jogging behind it. Then he'd stop periodically and bounce it up and down on his foot.

"I think that might be some Muggle sport, or something..." Samantha guessed, her attention now slowly being drawn back to the blonde boy.

"What a strange past time." Iris needed to find something else to look at.

Pansy was startled to see Draco step out of the fireplace that evening. "You're home early," she said.

"I know," Draco replied, brushing himself off. "The Ministry was feeling generous today."

Pansy held up a sealed envelope. "This came in the mail today for Iris."

"Is it her Hogwarts letter?" Draco took it from his wife, recognising Professor McGonagall's neat script. "That's fantastic. Where is she?" Draco thought his daughter should open it.

"She's at Samantha's."

"Well, let's bring her home, then." Draco noticed his wife's sour expression. "What's wrong?" He took a seat on the couch.

"I don't know if I want her going to Hogwarts."

Draco looked confused. "Why wouldn't she go to Hogwarts?"

"It's not safe for people like us."

"People like us? What do you mean 'people like us'?"

Pansy narrowed her eyes. "You know pefectly well what I mean."

Draco looked at her blankly. He wanted her to say it, if she was so confident in her conviction.

"People with families like ours."

He waited for her to continue but she didn't. "Ex-Death Eaters, you mean? Pansy, the world is a very different place now--"

"Yes, and it's much less safer for Purebloods than it may have been when we were in high school. Everyone at Hogwarts is probably a dirty, half-blood, Mudblooded excuse for a wizard. Do we really want our daughter to be tainted like that?"

"Tainted--what?" Draco spluttered. He was baffled by Pansy's remark. "I don't know what you think is going to happen to her, but she'll get the best education at Hogwarts. Where else would we send her?"

Pansy ignored Draco's statement. "What happened to the Draco I knew at Hogwarts that bragged about how his father wanted him at Durmstrang and how much he hated Hogwarts?"

"I stopped being that person a very long time ago, and you know that."

Pansy's hateful expression stayed painted across her face.

"My father being sent to Azkaban was a big wake-up call for me. Involving myself with the Dark Lord as I did was a big wake-up call for me." Draco shook his head, trying to clear his mind of any more theatrical speeches. "I don't understand why this is all coming up now. After we've been married for nine years."

"Maybe it's taken me this long to realise all the mistakes I've made." Pansy stood dramatically and stalked out of the room.

Draco stayed on the couch and waited for his daughter to return home. He didn't feel like dealing with Pansy after she'd had another over-the-top outburst; something which she was incredibly prone to. There wasn't much that she could say to really hurt him anymore. He had taken it all for so long that he was basically immune.