Harry Potter : the next generation

chapter 9

Dinner, too, was wonderful; Al felt a thrill just sitting down at the Gryffindor table, surrounded by his fellow first-years. He was beginning to be able to distinguish his fellow Gryffindors from one another: a group of three or four girls was already chattering excitedly to one another across the table from him, and Al thought he could name them all: Amy Adams, the chubby girl with a tangle of thick, messy hair that reminded him rather of his cousin Rose's, only Amy's was brown instead of Weasley red; Leila Ghoul, an Arabic girl with a high laugh; and Maddie Harman, a green-eyed girl with a pointed nose. Farther down the table, Nick Shea was talking to a group of second-years, boasting about something; some of them even looked impressed. Al caught James looking over at him, that same sharp, unpleasant look coming over his face.

            Al scooted down the bench so he could hear what was going on.

            "My family's more Gryffindor than anyone," Nick was boasting to the other boys. "Every last family member I've had for more than three hundred years has been a Gryffindor; we've only ever married other Gryffindors or Muggles, and we're known more than anyone for being bold and willing to—"

            "More Gryffindor than my family? How many Sheas do you see in Gryffindor right now?" James finally spoke up; Al thought he'd been in a foul mood ever since Rose had been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and Nick's boasting certainly wasn't helping anything.

            "Yeah," Fabian piped up; Fabian, Gideon, and Rommy Lupin seemed to magically appear behind James, popping up where Al hadn't seen them.

            "One out of ten Gryffindors is a Lupin, Potter, or Weasley. Last year, before Teddy graduated, there was Teddy, Missy, John, me, James, Fabian, Gideon, and Victoire," Rommy piped up, "and in another two years, we'll have lost Missy and Victoire, but we'll have Trina and Thecla, Lily, and Hugo." 

            "Lupins aren't related to Potters and Weasleys."

            "We will be once my brother Teddy marries Victoire there," Rommy said, jabbing his finger at Victoire Weasley, who heard her name, briefly looked up, and rolled her eyes in such a haughty way that her mother would have been proud. "I bet they're just waiting until she gets out of school."

            "Yeah," James said, though he sounded much more on the disgusted end of the emotional spectrum than Rommy, who was downright enthusiastic about the idea. "Then we'll all be related. Besides, we have Lupins over for dinner so often that they might as well be family."

            "And we go there often enough," Gideon agreed. 12 Grimmauld Place was generally as crowded as the Burrow, and much more exciting: the Lupins had left a number of the more harmless magical heirlooms and artifacts in place, although Al knew that Rommy had been disappointed to learn that, once upon a time, house-elf heads had decorated the stairway. Those had been repatriated to Kreacher, the last descendant of said house-elves, long before Rommy's birth. "We're all like family anyway."

            "Well, how many generations of Potters have been in Gryffindor?"

            "All the Potters I know about," James retorted. The Potters, at one point in time, had been an old pure-blood family; Rose had once showed Al a copy of their genealogy in a copy of Nature's Nobility they'd found in the Black family library. "And all the Weasleys, too." 

            Nick wasn't ready to concede, even confronted by four angry second-years.

Gryffindors have to be courageous, Al thought. There was nothing that ever said they couldn't be stupidly brave. Nick seemed to fit that profile admirably.

            "Not all," Nick said. He jerked a thumb at the Ravenclaw table. "Your cousin there must be one fine example of a Weasley coward. And don't even get me started on your family—" he sneered at Rommy Lupin.