Author's Note: Very loosely inspired by (please don't run away) Partially Kissed Hero, which introduced me to the malaclaw.

One wonders why the poor thing hasn't been hunted to extinction by people seeking to poison their enemies, much as one wonders why every Wizarding aristocrat doesn't keep a fountain of Felix Felicis in their back room for emergencies, but that's not the subject of this ficlet.

Ron Weasley looked around nervously as he was led into the inner sanctum. At last, after all this time - he had achieved his boyhood dream. Chaser for the Chudley Cannons.

Right, it was somewhat less glamorous than he'd imagined. Their base of operations was even smaller on the inside (and not because of the paper-thin and decaying walls). The whole place stank of something noxious and malign, though the others assured him that one got used to it after a while. Moreover, half the building had apparently been set on fire just last week due to an accident with a snapped wand and spilled Firewhiskey.

Still, Ron steeled himself and kept going forward, despite his every instinct urging him to go back. A true Cannons fan would not flee. He had stuck with the team through disaster after disaster, and now that he was an actual member -

"We're here!" Ron turned to stare at Tim, his escort, and was disturbed to see tears brimming in his eyes. The Beater's face was wracked by religious awe, which was thoroughly unnerving when Ron couldn't even see anything in the darkened room.

Then his teammates finally stopped mispronouncing Lumos, and in the wand-light, the greatest secret of the Chudley Cannons was revealed.

"LARRY THE LOBSTER!" went up the scream from six crazed throats, and Ron attempted to back away in horror. Tim grabbed him by the collar and shoved him towards the thing.

It was an enormous, grotesque lobster, at least twelve feet long, with a Dementor-flesh-grey shell dotted in sea-green in a manner horribly reminiscent of splattergroit. Its eyestalks moved about blindly, and it took a great, lumbering step towards him.

That was, it looked like a lobster. One thing had to be said for Hagrid's Magical Creatures class: it made for a paragon of trauma-based learning, and incited even the laziest student to read ahead in both the textbook and supplementary materials, lest Hagrid neglect to mention some interesting property of the newest featured monstrosity and belatedly apologize to a melted puddle that had lately been a student. It had not actually happened that Ron knew of - not in his year, at any rate - but still, the memories of his textbook came roaring back, and he pointed one shaking finger at the great shelled beast.

"That's - that's no lobster! That's a Malaclaw!" He tried to retreat, but the others barred his way. "But they're only supposed to be a foot long!"

"Don't be silly," one emaciated, wild-eyed wizard crooned. Though the poor lighting distorted his features, Ron dimly recognized him as Sammy the Seeker, who had broken his arms five times already this year. "That's Larry the Lobster."

"He's been with us for over a century," said Tim reverently. "A fan gave him to us over a century ago. Though our benefactor was too shy to leave any trace of their identity, the Chudley Cannons all instantly fell in love with him, and he has been the cornerstone of our team ever since."

Fan, his arse! "You - you don't mean in 1892, do you?"

"How did you know?" a gaunt woman, half her body wrapped in bandages, squealed, clapping her hands together and promptly dropping her wand. (Caroline Fawley, Chaser: brained herself on the Quaffle ring and was immediately hit by both Bludgers. Multiple times.) "That's the last time we ever won a Championship! The next year, our Beaters accidentally killed each other in a practice session gone horribly wrong, the Seeker was forever lost in a terrible experimental Portkey accident, the team captain landed in the Sealed Ward for the rest of his life, and the manager resigned in disgrace after being caught in compromising circumstances with a flamingo!"

"You really are our biggest fan!" the Seeker cried.

"Yes," said Caroline, eyes glistening with tears either of emotion or pain - Ron couldn't tell which. "It was very hard for us, the team annals record. But Larry got us through. Isn't that right, Larry?" She attempted to pet the thing, only to be knocked off her feet by a careless wave of one giant claw.

Ron took the brief moment of distraction to attempt to Apparate out. But it was blocked. Of course. Worse yet, the spell was partly faulty, so some of his skin made it out when he didn't.

As he cursed and grabbed at his arm, attempting to get past Tim, the Cannons closed in on him. They pinned him (ineffectively) and hexed him (with half their curses hitting each other), and their sheer numbers overcame him. Ron wondered briefly at their devotion to the thing.

Of course, he realized numbly. Malaclaw venom only lasts a week. The unluckiest thing they can do in that time is start to like getting bitten by it.

"Receive now the sacrament of the Cannons!" an ecstatic voice, one too shrill for him to tell if it was male or female, cried.

"Not too eager, not too eager, Larry!" Tim cautioned as the monster loomed over him, sideways jaws opening wide. "That's how we lost the last one!"

Harry Potter blinked in surprise upon seeing a familiar shock of red hair.

In the years since Ron had signed on as Chaser of the Chudley Cannons, it was the first appointment he had managed to keep.

"Hullo, Harry," Ron slurred as he sat down in his chair - and managed to topple over sideways, only Harry's grip on the table preventing it from going over onto Ron, too.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked in alarm.

"'m fine. 'm fine." With some effort, Ron managed to get onto his chair. "Just been a real hard season."

Yes, especially after that escaped Welsh Green had gotten woozy from dragonpox mid-flight and collapsed onto the field just as the Cannons were beginning their match against the Harpies, incidentally managing to miss every last one of the Harpies. "I've heard, yeah."

Ron sighed. "You've no idea. We just lost our Seeker."

"Really?" Harry frowned. "I thought he had survived that match."

Ron's brow furrowed. "Which one?"

"Er... the Welsh Green?"

"Oh, dragons. Hell, that one wasn't so bad, relatively speaking. There was the time a cockatrice got loose on the practice field... or that time when somebody tried to clean off the equipment with dragon's blood... Have you ever seen a hole burned straight through a Snitch? It isn't pretty... Worse, the Bludgers started going while they were still coated with the stuff... That really wasn't pretty..."

Ron's eyes had defocused, and his face had grown rather slack and pale. Harry tried bringing him back to the present. "So how's your life going?" he asked. "Aside from Quidditch, I mean."

Ron gave a hollow laugh. "What life? I don't talk to people much... things keep getting in the way..."

"Yeah, I know. You've missed every single meeting I've arranged for three years straight." Including the interventions.

"Harry, I swear, I really did get trampled by an escaped nundu on your birthday," Ron insisted. "I was in a Sudanese hospital for two weeks after. And the year before that-"

"Yes, yes, I know, the demiguise rampage," Harry said irritably. "But everyone else's birthday, too? Ron, unless you're the unluckiest man in the world, you should be able to make some time for your old friends and family."

"I bought my father brand-new Muggle tecknologie for his birthday, top of the line - a smellcone or something, lots of fancy buttons and a glowing thing - but then it got blown up by a fire crab on my way to give it to him!" Ron protested. "We weren't even anywhere near Fiji!"

"Yes, Ron," Harry said, attempting to suppress his irritation. These stories had become increasingly common in Ron's scant few letters, and, at some point, began to stretch credulity past the point of snapping.

"I mean, I really don't know what I'd do without Quidditch," Ron said, suddenly growing misty-eyed. Harry held back the urge to suggest he might actually have friends, family, a life, a credit rating... You knew it was bad when the goblins began soliciting friends in some vain hope of seeing debts repaid. "Which is why I'd hoping you'd join me in the Cannons-"

"NOT A BLOODY CHANCE!"

After a moment, Harry's mind caught up to his mouth, and he tried to apologize to his former best friend. "Ron," he said, forcing his voice to stay reasonable. "I haven't played Quidditch since Hogwarts. I'm an Auror now. Remember? I-"

"Oh, you think you're too good for the Cannons?" Ron said, growing red-faced. He looked briefly thoughtful. "Actually, you probably are. You flew better in first year than our last Seeker ever did. Poor Sammy. I don't even know what happened... He must have tripped, and I guess his sounds of distress... Well... you can't blame a creature for its natural instincts..."

Harry did not want to know about the dire end of the prior Seeker at the jaws of a manticore or grindlylow or perhaps even a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. (Luna had generously opined, after Ron had missed the five-year reunion of Dumbledore's Army, that he wasn't to blame because he had been wholly devoured by the Wrackspurts. It was becoming an increasingly plausible diagnosis.) "Did you actually make this meeting just so you could attempt to recruit me for the Cannons?"

"Look, the Cannons need -"

"A head examination, and a vat full of Felix Felicis," Harry said shortly, standing up. "I came here to meet my old friend Ron. If all I'm going to meet is Chaser Weasley, I'm done." As he left, he tossed over his shoulder, "If Ron ever wants to talk to me, he can write me whenever he likes. So long as he doesn't mention Quidditch."

As Harry shut the cafe door behind him, Ron shook his head and looked away - just in time to get an eyeful of Gregory Goyle wandering by in a belly shirt and polka-dotted speedo. He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "At least I still have Larry," Ron muttered, just as a passing waitress stumbled and dumped a tureen of boiling soup over his head.

Author's Note: Come to think of it, isn't there some story that takes out Voldemort by having him get hired by the Chudley Cannons?