Ford wrinkled his nose slightly at Gallivan's move, trying to figure out if this was a strategy he hadn't seen before. Ford was hardly a chess afficionado, but he'd played often enough with his siblings that he recognized many of the standard opening strategies, and this was one was new. Maybe he was outmatched and Gallivan was about to beat him handily (fine — it wasn't as though he were particularly invested in this chess tournament) or maybe Gallivan didn't play often enough that he had opening strategies, and he was just trying to get pieces out on the board and see how things developed and go from there.

"Mm, we're friends," Ford answered succinctly, as he chose a second piece to move. He might have said something about being in the same year as each other at Hogwarts, since that was the readiest explanation for how and why they'd become friends, but they hadn't really been anything more than passing acquaintances back then. Gallivan was close enough to their age — and probably close enough socially to the popular Quidditch types that Cash actually had been friends with in school — that he might have noticed Ford was exaggerating, though. And anyway, it wasn't like he even had to explain it. Mama and his sisters might have needled him for details, but he hardly owed every passing stranger a history of all his friendships.

He chose a second pawn and moved it out, blocking the one Gallivan had just moved out.

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   Cassius Lestrange, Theodore Gallivan