"Eh?"
She blinked several times, as if trying to figure out why there was a smaller, almost identical version of her best friend standing with the two.
She then turned to Daphne.
"What's with the brat?" she asked, hooking a thumb at Astoria.
"B-Brat!?" Astoria sputtered indignantly as she took a menacing step forward. Well, it was supposed to be menacing, but because she was so short and cute it was about as menacing as a small puppy. "I turn ten in a few days, you idiot! I'm not a brat!"
"Idiot!?" Tracey's head snapped towards Astoria, a glare present on her face. "Listen here, you little turd! It's not polite to go around calling people idiots! Especially when it's not true!"
"Just like it's not polite to call someone a brat when it's not true, idiot!"
"Oh boy," Lisa said as she and the others walked up to Harry and Daphne, who were both staring at the arguing Astoria and Tracey. It was like watching a train wreck. You wanted to look away, but for some reason you just couldn't. "It looks like we finally found someone who's got just as much... spunk as Tracey."
"You call it spunk," Blaise muttered as he watched his friend argue with someone nearly a head shorter than her with a dismayed expression. "I call it stupidity."
Hermione gave a long suffering sigh as she walked up to Tracey and quickly grabbed the girl by the ear.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Not the ear! Gah! Let go, Hermione!"
"Only if you stop arguing with that girl," Hermione told her friend firmly. "Honestly, Tracey, arguing with someone two years younger than you? You should learn to set an example for your juniors."
"Oh I'll set an example for her!" Tracey growled. "After I smack her around like a ― Yeowch!"
While Harry and Daphne managed to keep the surprise off their face due to their training in Occlumency, Susan and Hannah were watching the pair with dropped jaws.
"Do you ever feel like you're missing something whenever you leave for a long time then come back?" Hannah asked no one in particular. "Maybe it's just because this is the first time we've all met up together, but I can't help but feel like I missed out on something big."
"You're not," Lisa told the pair. Out of the entire group, she looked like she was the most used to seeing what was going on between Tracey and Hermione. "Not really, anyways. Tracey, Hermione and I have been spending a bit more time together since none of us went on vacation. At least, not for very long. Harry, Neville and Terry joined us too sometimes, but they also tended to do their own thing when we met up at Diagon Alley."
"We didn't want to go into the new perfume shop that opened up," Neville said to the looks they were getting from Hannah and Susan. Terry nodded his head in agreement.
"And only Harry and Hermione wanted to go into Flourish and Blotts before we got our book list," Terry added.
"Now there's something I never expected to hear a Ravenclaw say," Blaise muttered, earning an eye roll and slight glare from Terry.
"Besides, you guys were here for one of the times this happened," Lisa informed the two.
"We were?" Hannah sounded very surprised to hear this. Lisa nodded her head.
"Well, you might have just missed it when it happened. Remember when Hermione's mum took us to that muggle pool?"
"I remember that!" Susan blurted out, surprising everyone enough that even Tracey and Hermione stopped struggling and looked at the girl in shock. Seeing all the stares directed at her caused the young girl to flush as red as her hair. "Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?" The question came from both Astoria and Tracey, who, upon hearing the other speak the exact same words, looked at each other for a moment, then looked away with a huff. While Hermione and Lisa shook their heads in amused exasperation, Blaise rubbed the palm of his left hand against his face.
"I feel like I don't even know her anymore."
"What's that supposed to mean, Blaise?" asked Tracey, looking very suspicious by his choice of words.
"Nothing, nothing," Blaise waved a hand in front of his face, as if warding off some kind of bug. Tracey frowned at her friend, but was soon pulled into a different direction as Daphne finally decided to greet the girl properly.
"So how was your summer in Italy?" Harry asked curiously. He had not heard as much from his friend, who had spent two months in Italy. And the descriptions he had received in the letters had been rather lackluster in their depiction of the dark skinned boy's time there.
"Oh, you know, nothing to special," Blaise said with a dismissive shrug. "Just a family gathering."
"Your attention to detail never ceases to astound me," Harry's tone was very dry. "That's about the same thing you said in your letters."
"What can I say?" asked Blaise, chuckling a bit as he scraped a hand over his head. "I tend to be a very detail oriented individual."
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