Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess.

It was saving grace to have Hogsmeade but the shops there were a means to an end for students during the school year and couldn’t support much more than titbits. You couldn’t do a full pre-September shop there and no matter how hard Grace tried, she just couldn’t get what she wanted. She needed to go to Diagon Alley.

The earliest train into King’s Cross saw hardly anyone waiting at the station and the chilly morning meant that the young Hufflepuff was bundled up in clothing that would later become unnecessary and cumbersome to hike around. On the windy station that morning, they were invaluable and for the first time perhaps ever, Grace found herself wondering how useful it would have been to retain some of the auburn hair that she wore all over during the Full Moon.

Needless to say, she soon expunged her mind of those thoughts when she caught on.

The train ride was uneventful and Grace reluctantly even parted with a few Sickles for a pumpkin pasty still hot from being cooked. That was her breakfast, washed down with a mouthful of water from the decanter she’d bought second hand - already engraved with someone’s personal particulars - from one of the dingier shops in Hogsmeade. Still, it did the job and for twelve Knuts she certainly wasn’t going to moan.

King’s Cross was abuzz with activity at eleven o’clock that morning and it was a fight and a half to get out of there with all of her limbs and her belongings with her. From there, though, it wasn’t that far to go until she arrived at the Leaky Cauldron.

Having tapped the bricks, Grace was away and plodded through the shopping district, picking up all of the things she felt she’d need for the school year ahead. She was even a little bit self-indulgent and bought herself some music books. The songs inside would hopefully be practised during the small hours when all of the customers at the Three Broomsticks had gone home and she had a bit of quiet in which to play.

Eventually, lunch time invoked rumbles in her stomach and she made her way back to the Leaky Cauldron with an easy, lopsided smile on her lips.

Grace took a seat inside the pub at the long table that stretched the length of the bar. She pulled towards her a cup that sat surrounding a teapot and made herself up some tea, not forgetting to sweeten it just the way she liked it. After that, she ordered herself a bowl of soup and a hard-boiled egg with some bread and while that was being cooked she dragged one of the newspapers towards her.

The Daily Prophet was a rag, no longer a respectable newspaper, but nevertheless, Grace poured through it reading select articles before reaching the back and the Quidditch articles.

From there, she was absorbed, no longer interested in anything going on around her.

Outfit!

Zooming around the countryside on his broomstick, trying to catch butterflies and teach his younger brother and sister how to play quidditch was how Romeo enjoyed his school holidays - that and bumping into attractive girls to play. Although the latter was more of a Hogwarts hobby. A castle full of teenage girls and having dashing good looks only made sense for him to do that.

However whilst when he came to polish his nimbus 2025 it turned out that he had used up his wood polish in his broom service kit, plus the clippers to trim stray twigs were starting to show scratches on the silver teeth. 

Romeo was quiet an independent wizard. He liked to operate in his own way, go about things his own way an genuinely thought his way was right, even if others disagreed. As a result using the floo network to venture to Diagon Alley by himself wasn't exactly worrisome. His family were used to him disappearing whenever he liked too, just as long as he came home safe and in one piece - which is something they never had to worry about. Romeo stayed clear of physical conformation. He couldn't risk damaging his devilishly handsome face now could he? 

After arriving in the leaky cauldron, heading to Quality Quidditch Supplies and purchasing a new broom servicing-kit and a practice snitch he headed back to the Leaky Cauldron to head home, that was until he saw a fairly attractive girl sat on the long table that ran the length of the bar. 

Plan A was to make a swift shop and rapid return to the Zabini Household but he couldn't pass up on the opportunity. She could give him a good time, either that or she may come in useful. Granted she wasn't the most good looking girl he had spent his time with but oh well. Not everybody is perfect - apart from himself in the eyes of his own.

'Could I have a chicken, cheese and cucumber sandwich?' Romeo asked, not saying please, at the bar before taking it to a seat opposite the girl, who was bound to be a Hogwarts student even if he hadn't seen her around the castle much. Just as long as she didnt turn out to be a muggle born he wasn't too fussed. 

'Hi.' He greeted her as he took a bite out of his sandwich and a sip of the pumpkin juice that came free as part of the meal deal. 'I'm Romeo.' He added displaying his well rehearsed pearly White smile. It could be possible that she was aware of him already: he played for the Slytherin house team, was common talk amongst the ladies and was hard to miss among the spotty, hormonal teenagers of Hogwarts castle. 

The Tornadoes were in good form, having won against a Swedish side that didn’t really know the Quaffle from the Bludger but played with enviable heart. The Catapults had won a match in Bulgaria after a good two-day fight in which the commentators seemed sure that someone had caught the Snitch without letting anyone know - or, even more possibly, the Snitch had just flown away all together. It had been happening a lot as of late and some senior officials had begun to suspect foul play - Grace couldn’t comment herself, she didn’t go to the games nearly enough but always read and watched them when they were transmitted.

Just as the Hufflepuff began to move onto the international friendlies, her meal arrived and she smiled gratefully at the frazzled looking waitress before murmuring her thanks. The woman nodded, managing to raise a smile to her lips before scuttling away.

It was the Werewolf in her that gave her the appetite but that didn’t stop Grace from being rail thin. At the thought of it, she brought her hand up to rub at her angular collar bones that jutted out painfully as though trying to break free from within her, hindered in their path by the roping of her taught, pale, freckled skin overtop.

Bringing the soup towards her, Grace reached for a piece of brown bread and broke a slither off before dunking it into the soup. It was divine - a rich flavour that was made up of a myriad of vegetables that she couldn’t quite ascertain from one another. Nevertheless, it was incredibly tasty and Grace wasn’t going to forfeit eating it for long - she just needed to finish her article.

However, before she could return to the newspaper, she noted the appearance of someone across from her. Grace peeked up through her long eyelashes and balked inwardly at the sight of a boy sitting across from her. Her stomach immediately turned and while she did not feel nauseous, worry did begin to wrack at her insides. She found herself wondering what Charlie would do as she began to panic but after a moment assured herself that he hadn’t spoken to her - she could easily eat, finish up reading and head home without so much as a syllable being uttered to her.

But of course, he said hello.

Needless to say, all panic systems were on and fight or flight kicked in immediately.

“Hello!” Grace squeaked, surprising herself with the pitch of it. She winced a little and rubbed her fingers through her hair, willing herself to calm down, before blinking at him, her mind registering his name and then spurring her forward to offer her own.

“I’m Grace.” She mumbled, dropping her gaze down to the Prophet splayed out in front of her. She reached for her tea, desperate to grab hold of something and busy her hands - no solace could be found in it, though.

She didn’t talk to boys - as if it wasn’t frighteningly obvious. Charlie did. Charlie talked to boys. She liked boys. Not that Grace didn’t but Charlie was calmer. Why couldn’t she be like her roommate? The confident Werewolf - the one proud of her blood and her disease and her - oh, sorry, not disease: strength, power, talent; whatever favourable synonyms you can think of. Why couldn’t she be like her?

Because she couldn’t. That’s why. She was shy Werewolf - stupid Werewolf.

And she knew him - of course. Slytherin Quidditch players were much admired in the Hufflepuff basement. Another roommate of Grace’s captured them accurately by stating they were ‘arseholes - but, problematically, they are sexy ones.’

Grace looked at Romeo. Yes, he qualified as sexy, sort of. No, definitely. Definitely sexy. Was there a scale? He’d be pretty high up on it, right? Right? Sexy! The sexy scale.

In the back of her head somewhere, her shoulder-devil groaned, despairing at her awkwardness and reminding her briefly of the fact that she was staring.

Grace averted her eyes.

“W-would you like p-part of the newspaper?” She asked, her tongue wading through the words as though she was attempting them for the first time. Her fingers gestured weakly to the portion she was done with before she lowered her gaze, moving her fingers to fiddle with the handle of her teacup.

Smooth, Gracie, real smooth.

It was rather cute, seeing the girl, who appeared to be called Grace, embarrassed by his greeting. Not that this was uncommon. Romeo often found that girls he talked too went weak at the knees, felt the butterflies flutter in their stomach and out in stutters through their mouth. In fact, Romeo found it complimentary. 

He smiled endearingly at her, tilting his head forward ever so slightly. Admittedly when he first started using the head tilt Romeo felt odd, weird, almost strange - yet it proved effective. The Slytherin had read an article in his Mother's witch weekly that tilting your head makes your more  attractive to the opposite sex, subconsciously of course. The source of this knowledge or piece of research Romeo didn't know, nor was he too bothered. He'd tried it. It'd worked. Simple as that.

'Grace?' He raised an eyebrown. 'What a graceful name.' He continue smoothly. Wow. If anybody else had said that they'd have sounded cheesy, in fact it was cheesy but somehow Romeo had eliminated most of the cheese through his complimentary, genuine yet dark and mysterious tone. 

He began to study her more closely from the freckles round her eyes to the article that she was reading. Quidditch. So she was into Quidditch, hopefully that meant she was more fun living. Even if she wasn't, it just made the chase that much harder - or it may end up an unfortunate result after all the hard work but the chase could be worth it. One thing Romeo enjoyed about girls was predicting how they'd respond, discover how to manipulate them best. It was... Exhilarating. 

Ignoring her stutter, not wanting to bring the nervousness to light and deter her. 'Yes sure. I'm interested on the catapults recent game if it's in there?' He asked her, knowing full well the chances are she had read something about the catapults - they were usually in there. Plus it got her talking. Brought her out of her comfort zone. Broke the ice...

Spoiler:

If you manage to pull this off, I’ll buy you a cookie

What do you mean? You don’t have any money!

Oh, yeah... you’re right. Well, Gracie, I’ll let you break your diet and you can have a cookie.

Grace pursed her lips a little and wiped at her shoulder, pushing off the devilish and angelic versions of herself that she was sure were mere figments of her imagination and she was just going insane. Wolfsbane was said to make the user mad if there was an extensive use. That was all hearsay by pro-Werewolf groups. Mad or not, Grace would certainly rather suppress her animalistic side than let it roam free riding on the hope that in the absence of Wolfsbane she’d retrain her sanity.

Picking up her bread, Grace brought her bowl of soup to her and dunked a slither in, repeating her previous actions. While bent over the soup, Romeo took his turn to speak and Grace inwardly smacked herself for thinking with her stomach and for putting herself into a rather ridiculous position to receive what she was sure was a compliment but a rather queer one if it was one indeed.

She swallowed her mouthful and put the bread down, bringing her hand up to wipe her mouth as she did so. She certainly wasn’t ladylike but without a napkin to hand, Grace didn’t really have much choice - it was that or the cuff of her cardigan and she was sure that wouldn’t go down particularly well either.

She averted her eyes after a moment, feeling her cheeks squeeze tighter as blood rushed up to the surface. She winced a little as she felt the head sweep down her neck and over her chest. Shaking her head, Grace picked up her spoon and tapped it against the top of the boiled egg, not entirely sure if her stomach was up to anything in the way of food while butterflies frolicked about in it amongst the bread and soup.

The girl felt flutters of confidence in amongst the butterflies when Romeo mentioned Quidditch, however, and she looked up with a hopeful smile on her face.

“You like the Catapults?” She asked before her mind could think to censor her errant tongue. “They’re my favourite team!”

Her grin was impish and comfortable on her lips as she ferreted about amongst the sheets of paper, siphoning out the Catapults article for him. She handed it over and picked up her spoon again, finishing taking off the top of her egg with a lithe flourish of the fingers.

“They did well.” She told him. Quidditch was easy to talk about. Quidditch was her domain. She needed to remember that.

“Andrews was on fire. Sent Bludgers left, right and centre.... wiped out the Bulgarian Chasers.”

She looked at Romeo thoughtfully for a moment as she spooned some egg into her mouth, her mind churning and finally catching up a little bit. The Catapults were a Welsh side. Grace was Welsh, that made sense. But Romeo was ... well, she wasn’t sure. Maybe it ran in the family.

“It’s a Welsh side... why don’t you support the Tornadoes or United?” She asked curiously before she could help herself.

Romeo took a bite out of his sandwich, the cucumber crunching beneath his teeth as he swallowed the chicken and cheese, all the time not taking his eyes from her. He watched as she attended to her boiled egg, giving it a light tap.

However before he could get a word in edge ways Grace had entered a semi-verbal frenzy and thought it best to let her finish. Well, he'd brought her from her comfort zone quicker than expected. Perhaps his technique was improving, after all it was rather smart using the article that she had in front of her. 

Taking the article Romeo raised the goblet to his lips and whilst sipping the refreshing juice pretended to read the article. He had already read it before, not that Grace needed to know, it was perfect how she was informing him of the game. She was getting more and more comfortable when... 

Crap. She had asked why he supported the welsh team. He wasn't a supporter of them, nor did he have any huge real interest in how well they did in their games. It was the Tornado's he supported, she had predicted right. 

 'I support Tornados.' He replied honestly, however a slight smile remained on his face. 'But they are set to play the Catapults in a few weeks and it was an insight into how they'd been playing lately.' Phew. That was believable and a quick recovery, hopefully she wouldn't even notice.

It wasn't that Romeo only cared about getting Grace under his thumb he really did like Quidditch, but he didn't care much for the Catapults. Tornado's were Favourites to win so he wasn't bothered about how the other teams played. He has faith the Tornados would fly through the upcoming league. 

'Do you go to the games?' Romeo targeted another question at Grace. That was his plan. Land question after question on the girl, get her talking, make herself more comfortable around him - Although he simply didn't quiz her alone, it was vital he bounced off what they answered otherwise they would feel as though they were getting to know him. 

There was something about pub food that was comforting; though it might have had something to do with the fact that Grace’s mother’s pitiful excuse for cooking was, at best, inedible and, at worst, charred beyond recognition. Certainly, when she was out with her own money in hand and a mind to fill her stomach, the best food that could be found would be in a pub - and she certainly wasn’t disappointed, either.

As Grace ate, her eyes drifting back to the article she’d been reading earlier on, her mind churned and tried to accommodate the situation with her thoughts and what she remembered of Romeo. He played Quidditch. He was a Slytherin. He was high up on the sexy scale. All of this she knew. Only, she couldn’t really remember where she’d seen him before - certainly not in class. No he had to be older than her - or younger, either one.

Silence elapsed for a while and Grace was grateful for it, giving herself time to recuperate and regain some semblance of equilibrium.

She’d caught him out though and part of her rejoiced for it and she resumed a little bit of self-control; or control over the situation - something like that.

A breezy smile appeared on Grace’s face and she lowered her spoon down, revelling in the fact that she’d guessed right. He didn’t look like a United supporter. Glory hunting Tornadoes-supporter was about right, though. Perhaps she was being judgemental, who knows?

“They’re going to give the Tornadoes a run for their money, I promise you that,” Grace told him passionately. “You’d better watch out.”

She laughed a little despite herself and swallowed it away with a mouthful of tea before looking up at him, bitterly aware of the reality of the question.

“Not anymore. I used to go a lot with my dad but he ... can’t anymore.” Grace brushed away the stab of loss in her gut before smiling a little. “Do you go often? I’d really like to have a game-fund ... like a cookie jar full of odds and todds so that by the time I want to go I’ll have enough... that’d be nice.”

Finishing the remains of his sandwich Romeo dusted his fingers and dabbed his mouth with a napkin that had been resting besides the plate an pumpkin juice. Usually he would have ordered a side salad, eating healthy was important to him - Romeo tried to be nutritious to keep his skin in good condition - although every now and then he passed upon the boring lettuce and peppers. 

'Oh really?' He responded, raising his eyes and smiling whilst the brown eyes carved into his dark eyelids filled with warmth. The Slytherin used to practice this in the mirror in his dormitory until he could create the glow on command. Now, it came natural. 

Raising the goblet of pumpkin juice to his lips he listened as Grace informed him that she would love to one day go the match. Already he knew where he could take this, that was until she announced her lack of wealth. Well Romeo wouldn't be interested in anything long term with her. Not that he ever did see a relationship, he was far too picky and preferred to mess around and manipulate the girls to do anything he wanted them too - something that was getting easier with age, especially at how mature he was starting to look.

'We could go together if you like? My treat.' He suggested, removing the goblet from his mouth and returning it to the it's damp ring on the wooden table. Romeo was a pure blood, and a wealthy one at that, which meant that he was rolling in the money - or at least his parents were in any case and his Father would be more than willing to provide him with the galleons and sickles for tickets. Maybe he could persuade his Dad into buying tickets for the top box? 

Quidditch was the communication of Gods and Men - it breached the classes, the blood and the species; it was neutral ground. As Grace poured over her lunch, part of her wondered where the sudden change had come from and where the discomfort she’d settled herself in had abated itself to. Granted, it lingered but it was a mere flutter in her gut and largely something she could bury and hide. Her tongue had loosened, though. Her smile came easier and her heart had begun to slow down to a calmer chug and not the full throttle of an out-of-control freight train.

She finished her egg much too quickly for her tastes but moved onto what was left of her soup, sating the last of her stomach’s rumbles as she finished for good, bread and all.

Quidditch gave her confidence, she decided, confidence enough to retort to him as though he was anyone at all - Charlie, even - not a Slytherin Quidditch player who was undeniably attractive. She couldn’t be entirely sure on the latter front, however. She’d have to check with her roommate; just to be sure she wasn’t insane. Let’s face it though, the act itself would tell her she was.

“You bet,” Grace inclined her head stubbornly with a small smile playing at her lips. She dipped her fingers into her tea, dismayed to find that it had gone cold, and pushed it way from her before leaning forward. “The Tornadoes aren’t so hot at the moment. The Catapults are on fire. We’ll win, for sure.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing Grace would bet on but for bravado’s sake - granted, at first she hadn’t known she had any of it - she maintained the arrogance.

No, they’d probably lose in a dreadfully dramatic fashion.

For a moment, silence reigned and for a while after Romeo spoke, it continued its brief rule.

Grace lifted her head, her eyes widening to the size of the porcelain saucers upon which the Leaky Cauldron’s crockery sat. Her lips formed a small ‘o’ as she took in the gravity of his words and once her mind finally reconciled them, she leaned forward, her hands smacking down on the table. She ducked a little bit, looking up at him from under her lashes, determined, suddenly, to ascertain his seriousness.

Of course, such confidence broke as soon as it began and she retreated back to her side of the table, mentally admonishing herself for being so abrupt, candid and downright strange.

“You mean that?” She asked hesitantly. “Like, really-really?”

Grace looked at Romeo, her eyes furrowing.

Then of course, the ever childlike question arrived, slipping past her lips before she had time to even think.

“Why?”

Whilst awaiting for the response that Grace would give Romeo watched her move the cold tea away. He would never waste his money on something he wouldn't drink, especially tea - it stained the teeth and Romeo being Romeo wouldn't want that. Not that he hadn't wasted money of his own on skin care products, quidditch magazines, male magazines and dates. Yet to Romeo they weren't a waste of money, there was a reason for them: pleasure.

The word 'Perfect' crossed his mind upon Grace's reaction that was concoction of shock and exceitment. It was highly obvious she wanted to go and, it appeared to Romeo, she would love to go with him.

'Of course I'm sure.' Romeo replied before pulling off a very convincing giggle that gave the impression that the idea he would have been joking is completely ludacris. Not that it was but he liked to laugh. Not to show his white teeth, although that was part of it, but to make them feel even more relaxed and comfortable. A relaxed girl means a happy girls, which ultimately results in a very pleased Romeo Zabini.

'Why?' She'd asked him.

'Because it'd be fun.' Romeo replied, quickly thinking on his feet. It wasn't the best answer that he could give and had Romeo had more time to think he was certain that a better response could have been used. Despite that he felt it was a good enough reason to take her to a Quidditch game, even if she was a rather tricky girl to play.

'Unless you don't want to?' He added, raising a hand above the table in a fake-concerned way to make it seem she was in control.