𝗽𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗲 𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁, teddy lupin

˗ˋ 12

CHAPTER TWELVE
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-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH THEY MEET

. . .

"Good morning, my darling Celeste." Teddy Lupin's voice just had to be the first one that the Weasley girl was greeted with as soon as she entered the Great Hall for the first morning of term. "Good sleep, I presume?"

"Absolutely wonderful, Ted." Celeste replied, taking her time without a following of girls surrounding her for granted, a smile on her face that they would see as a weakness.

"Amazing. Now, down to business." Teddy glanced around before tugging the eldest Wealsey girl down onto the nearest table - which happened to be for neither of their houses, the Ravenclaw table. Not that either of them necessarily minded, if anyone saw them conversing they would know it to be quite the usual event.

"Business?" Celeste repeated, blinking sleep out of her eyes and unable to rub it out of fear of ruining her carefully applied mask of makeup. "Teddy, what business can you be possibly talking about at.. almost half past eight in the morning?"

"Quidditch." Teddy said simply, and the single word seemed to waken the girl across from him up, although her best friend still had to take a croissant and a cup of fruit and place it on her plate, picking up a strawberry and prompting her to eat.

"I see-" Celeste managed through a mouth full of the berry, her fingers brushing against Teddy's polish-stained fingertips as she took the stalk from him. She took another bite, discarded the pale top of the strawberry onto her plate. "So Quidditch. Let's talk Quidditch."

Her jaw had mechanically moved to chew on the strawberry at first, but it seemed to have woken her up and she pulled apart the flaky pastry of the croissant. The mention of Quidditch had certainly awoken the girl, a certain excited light appearing in her eyes at the mention of the sport.

"Quidditch." Teddy nodded, stealing a piece of of croissant that she had ripped off. "I was thinking we could-" He cut himself off, gaze focused just over Celeste's shoulder. "They're watching, you know. From the Slytherin table?"

"Oh thank Merlin my back is to them." The Weasley girl didn't seem too surprised by this, rather nonchalantly continuing to pull apart and eat the croissant. "It's normal today, don't worry. Half of them are utterly desperate to hear about my decision, I suppose."

"About which girls get into your little clique?" Teddy asked, the ginger teen deciding not to correct his usage of 'clique' - she rather it wasn't referred to as that, but with everything stipped aside, it essentially was. The metamorphmagus waited for her nod to continue talking to her. "Back to what I was saying. We need to decide on Quidditch training days."

"Are you sure we should do it here? And not call the other captains to a meeting so we can organise which days we're training on?" Celeste asked, leaning forward on her elbows and balancing her chin on her palm.

"Well, I'm fairly certain that we all know you would be able to run that meeting anywhere so.." Teddy paused, looking around. "Duncan! Eric!" He called, and Celeste's eyes widened as both the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw captain sat down at the table.

"Morning gentlemen." Duncan announced, Scottish accent just like his father's as he sat beside Teddy. "And of course, the lady." He winked, and Celeste merely smirked at him.

"Weasley, Lupin." Eric nodded, head tipping to each best friend in turn. "Tell your uncle and godfather my mother sends her love."

"Let's skip the pleasantries." Celeste sat up, croissant and fruit long discarded on the plate pushed towards the centre of the table. Celeste was the youngest there, the only female and the only fifth year in the group of four - but just as Teddy had predicted, was taking charge wonderfully.

She clicked her fingers and rather suddenly a quill and pad began to float by her head. "We have precisely half an hour before school starts and I am completely willing to miss first lesson in order to get this done. As this is a meeting between four opposing sides, I can only begin this meeting by suggesting we keep a permanent record of what is said. My quill will note down the minutes and everything that we say to each other. And I shall also assume that meetings like this will occur in the future, and they must also be managed. It is not a question of whether you agree to it or not, it is simply going to happen, capiche?"

"Capiche." The three boys chorused, a glint in Teddy's eyes that could only signify his knowing that this would have happened.

"Alright. So, there's four of us, five days in a week. A week between now and tryouts, so really it is the perfect time to sort this out." Celeste crossed her arms, glancing around. "Any suggestions? I will go to Madam Hooch with the transcript after this, so anything we decide now will be final."

"Actually I was thinking-" Eric began, before Celeste clicked her fingers.

"It was a rhetorical question. I've got an idea." She had decided to play into the insufferable Slytherin stereotype, and Eric sighed, looking towards her, imploring her to continue. "There's four of us. You know what else has four things? A month. There are four weeks in a month."

"Thank you for pointing out the obvious, Cel." Duncan joked, only to get an elbow in his side. "Cel-este." He finished, frowning at Teddy's actions.

"Thank you for thinking that I would be so dimwitted to point out something so glaringly obvious. This can be scratched off the record." She didn't even look up as her finger pointed to the quill, drawing an 'x' in the air. "It is a result of a rambling idiot."

"Anyways." The girl ignored Duncan's glare. "My idea. I suggest that we assign a day of the week to each of us and the final day is divided up. One of us takes it the first week, another the second and so on. Weekends can be assigned by appointments with Madam Hooch."

"Well I say that it is a wonderful idea." Teddy sat up banging his fist on the table. "Ten points to Slytherin, we go with Celeste's idea."

"It is rather a good idea I suppose..." Eric turned to Duncan who nodded as well.

"Perfect. Well considering that Monday's are utterly awful, Tuesday's are still sleepy and Wednesday is only just about woken up - I shall take Thursdays." Celeste said, eyes lighting up as she watched the other three fight over the days.

And as breakfast came to a close, as did their meeting, all recorded on the pad floating by Celeste's head, depicting their decisions. Slytherin had Thursdays, Gryffindor took Mondays, Ravenclaws had Tuesdays and Hufflepuff took Fridays, Wednesday becoming the day that they switched between.

It was a plan, a solid plan. And Celeste had come up with it. And she was going to use it to her advantage.

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