BEAT IT! ━ GEORGE WEASLEY

iii. Grow Up, Weasley

The Marley siblings know all the chants for both football and quidditch, and they yell them with such passion they've never had and will never have for anything else.

Kiera loves talking about either sports to her friends, who really don't understand them (especially the football) but they try and take as much interest in it as possible. Of course, Taylor somewhat understands when Kiera's talking about Quidditch to an extent — she is a Chaser on the Ravenclaw team, so she knows a bit about it. However, she doesn't keep up with the British and Irish League like Kiera does, so that topic of conversation is entirely foreign to her.

Becca doesn't have a clue about either. But it's definitely the football that confuses her the most.

"We played West Ham today, but I'll have to wait until Dad's weekly letter to know the scores. I reckon we would've won, though. Last game was against Southampton, and we ended up on top of the League," Kiera says, her friends nodding as a response because they don't really know what to say.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Kiera stops speaking to applaud a first year boy, walking over to their table with a relieved look on his face.

"Bless him," says Taylor.

Another thing was the fact that, because she's at Hogwarts, Kiera's unable to watch the Premier League with her Dad, which she finds very annoying. She writes to and receives letters from her parents weekly, so Maximilian usually sends the scores to her then. Still, it's not the same as watching the game itself or hearing it on the radio. That's why usually in the summer, the Marley siblings try and get tickets to watch as many games as possible alongside their Dad before term time.

Of course, it's different for Kiera's brothers, now. Travis is away studying Dragons, so for his birthday he was given a Muggle radio to listen to the game live, whenever he couldn't watch it. For a while it was just Kiera and Tate at Hogwarts, receiving the football scores weekly by owl. Kiera spent a lot of time entering the Gryffindor Common Room just to find her brother so they could celebrate Man Utd's wins or sulk over their losses. The best was when Maximilian would add a little note at the bottom, stating 'We're on top of the League!' and the siblings would loudly chant it only for the rest of the common room to give them strange looks — well, minus the Muggleborns, who understood. Sometimes there would be another United supporter around that would join in.

Kiera'll never admit it, but she'll miss having Tate around during the school year, just to chant 'We're on top of the League!' with. She supposes he's only in Hogsmeade — after all, he is the shop assistant in Zonko's. Kiera'll have to visit him a few times.

It'll also be strange for her since she has no reason to visit the Gryffindor Common Room anymore. She knows she's technically not supposed to, as she's Ravenclaw, but people break these rules all the time. Kiera's not sure what the teachers expected — like nobody is just gonna stay friends with or just talk to the people in their own house.

But there had been times where she needed to talk to Tate about something (mainly football or quidditch) and she wasn't just going to wait to find him at meal times — and Talia always wanted to come because she (for some reason) has a fat crush on him — so Kiera and her friends would just find out the password for Gryffindor's Common Room and enter there. Nobody actually cared. Plus, they had some Gryffindor friends, anyway. In fact, the young Marley's not entirely sure if she spent more time in the Gryffindor Common Room last year than her own.

But still, Tate's now gone. So Kiera has no reason to go there anymore. That'll be strange.

Dumbledore begins his speech, as per, and so Kiera sits up a little more straight to try and seem as interested as possible. It lasts for like a minute, though, before she goes back to slouching and resting her chin on her palm which is propped up on the table by her elbow.