As much as Avalon loved her parents, if she had to meet another one of their friends from Hogwarts and have another person say 'oh my god, I haven't seen you since you were a baby!' she would snap and murder someone.
But she knew she couldn't do that without winding up in Azkaban, so she simply smiled and hit them with the 'it's so nice to see you again!' and suffered on the inside.
Teddy grinned and gave her a wink from across the room, where he made polite conversation with her mother's friends.
She hated that he could so easily brighten her horrid mood, but she ran with the sudden boost of happiness and began to put a bit more sincerity into her chat with Angelina Johnson.
Luckily for her, Oliver came up to steal her away. "D'you mind if I borrow my sister for a moment?"
When Angelina shook her head cordially, Oliver grabbed Avalon by the elbow and steered her in the opposite direction.
"Let go of my arm, you big oaf." Avalon hissed, swatting at her brother's hand.
He glared at her. "I need your help. I need you to do me a favor—the guy is about to get here and I need to find a way to prep Mum and Dad before they meet him."
"So... where do I come into all of this?" She asked.
"I need you to entertain him 'til I have a chance to get them aside."
Avalon swatted at him again. "I am not entertaining your boyfriend! I should be entertaining my boyfriend." She grumbled.
"Please. I'll owe you one!"
It was incredibly rare for Oliver Percy Weasley to beg anyone, especially his annoying little sister, for anything. But here he was, begging her to do him a favor, even though she already owed him a dozen in return. She couldn't help but smile wickedly.
"Oh, alright. I'll watch the door and wait for him to get here."
—
Lawrence Devoux was, it turned out, way out of her brother's league. She recognized him from school—he was the year above her, and a Beater for the Slytherin team. She almost wanted to ask if he was the Beater that knocked her off her broom in the match against his house, but she didn't feel like getting chewed out by Oliver.
"So, you must be Avalon." Her brother's not-boyfriend said the moment she intercepted him at the front door.
She smiled, doing a little curtsy. "My reputation precedes me, huh?"
Lawrence nodded. "Unfortunately, yes." He laughed when her face fell in disappointment. "Oh, Ollie has lots of good things to say about you, trust me! Well, maybe not lots, but he isn't always complaining about you."
Avalon thought in that moment that Lawrence might be the most polite Slytherin she'd ever met in her life. Then again, the only Slytherins she'd had any sort of contact with were her sister, who had a thick, thick layer of teenage angst with a tiny core of sweetness on the inside; and Cordelia Rosier, with whom she hadn't encountered enough to have an opinion on.
Of course, Reese Lennon was another Slytherin she knew and vastly loved, but they had also had almost seventeen years worth of getting to know each other to get over the hurdle of initial unpleasantness.
Either way, Avalon wasn't a hundred percent sure how she felt about Lawrence just yet. Sure, he seemed nice enough, and she couldn't figure out what about Oliver was so interesting in order to attract someone as objectively beautiful as Lawrence, but she decided to withhold all judgements on the tall, brown-skinned boy until she saw how he treated her brother.
"Hi there." Teddy's voice came from directly next to her, and she jumped, startled.
Avalon smiled sweetly up at her boyfriend. "Teddy, this is Lawrence—Oliver's...friend?" She looked at Lawrence as she said the word friend, checking to see how he reacted or if he would correct her.
Lawrence stiffened at the f word, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he just smiled at Teddy.
"Lawrence Devoux. I hear you're Teddy Lupin, yeah? Ollie's best friend?" He said pleasantly.
Teddy nodded and gave him a smile in return. "And Avalon's boyfriend, but she doesn't like to be seen with me, so I doubt she's mentioned it." He joked, tickling Avalon near her waist.
She rolled her eyes. "He likes to be annoying and act like I'm not the lucky one in this relationship."
The three of them chatted for a while longer before Oliver, face as red as his hair, came up to them and harshly grabbed Avalon by the arm once more.
"Listen, you git, if you don't get your hand off me right now—"
The siblings' respective boy-toys laughed at their antics but made no effort to stop their bickering.
"Shut up for once. Mum is looking for Lawrence so she can introduce herself, and if I don't introduce them before she finds us, she might actually kill me." Oliver said hurriedly; if Avalon hadn't lived with him for her entire life, she would have thought that he was speaking far too fast for her to understand.
Avalon glanced over at Lawrence and gave him a sorry smile. "Looks like you get to meet the parents."
As they walked to the kitchen, where Oliver had seen their mother last, she heard Lawrence lean over and whisper to Teddy.
"Are they scary?"
Wow, Avalon thought. What a very not-Slytherin thing to say.
She heard Teddy's laugh, the sound musical to her ears. Godric, she loved his laugh.
"No, not at all. Unless you find war heroes scary. Or are you more scared of five-foot-three blonde women who can bake you the best cake you've ever had in your life?"
It was funny how he phrased it—like Amelia Weasley was the one to be scared of out of both of her parents.
To be fair, though, her mother was the scariest one in the family, with the slightest exception for Isabel. Sure, Amelia Weasley, née Bishop, was sweet as sugar, and the funniest, most loving person anyone had ever met. But that woman was terrifying when she was angry, and she was so protective of her family that she'd even used the killing curse to save her then-boyfriend, now-husband. Of course, that had been during the second Wizarding War, when all Unforgivable Curses were pardoned during the Battle of Hogwarts.
So Avalon laughed, both sides of her mother fresh in her head; the mother that baked her cookies when she was sad and helped her bathe herself when she'd taken a tumble down the stairs and broken her arm, and the war veteran that could kill someone with ease if she really wanted to.
They entered the kitchen and found Amelia leaning against the sink, a glass of wine in hand and her high heels kicked off somewhere under the kitchen table.
Another thing about her mother that she'd learned over the years was that Amelia hated parties in which she was meant to be the center of attention—she'd gotten her fair share of attention after the war, doing interviews with both the newly-reconstructed Ministry of Magic and various magazines. She had even considered using a pen-name when writing her books, just to stay out of the spotlight even more.
"Oh, hello, darlings." Amelia said with a smile when she saw her children hovering in the doorway. "Did you need something, or—"
She cut herself off upon seeing Lawrence standing awkwardly behind Oliver.
"Is this..." Her eyes sparkled with a familiar blend of kindness and mischief.
Oliver nodded, grabbing Lawrence's hand and bringing him forward. "Mum, this is Lawrence Devoux. Lawrence, this is my mother, Amelia Weasley."
"Oh, call me Meely." She said in her best I want to be liked voice. "Everyone does."
She shook Lawrence's hand, raising her eyebrows at his firm grip.
"It's lovely to meet you, Mrs. Weasley. Thank you for having me tonight."
It seemed like even Oliver was surprised by Lawrence's politeness; maybe he was always this cordial and pleasant, but judging by the look on Oliver's face, it seemed like this was new to him.
Avalon sighed, reaching for Teddy's hand. "Let's go find Beth, yeah? Save her from Arthur—godric knows he's probably boring her half to death."
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