“What will it be, young lady?” he asked.
I thought about it for a minute, about my family, my friends, school. And yet, I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I did what Dumbledore asked me to do and waited for the sickening sensation of Disapparating. In just a few seconds we were gone.

“Are you going to put your name in?” I asked suddenly, surprising even myself. He was amused, though slightly taken aback.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said, playing with a lock of hair that had fallen from my untidy bun. God, his touch. My body felt aflame.

“What should I do?” he asked me.

“How should I know?” I asked right back.

“You’re the one with the insight,” he said grinning.

It’s not like I had expected detention to be nice but, seriously, that had been torture. “Think about it as a complementary Potions lesson” my ass.

“Let me go, Ced,” I told him in a whisper. His expression changed to one of utter confusion and what I hoped was not sadness.

“No,” he whispered. His right arm wrapped still tighter around me defiantly, “I am fucking tired of people telling me what to do.” I lowered my left hand and stopped him from pulling me closer. My eyes closed.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, smiling broadly though slightly worried about what he was planning to do.

“You agreed to ‘treat’,” he said with a charming smile, “didn’t you?”

He whispered an enchantment and I suddenly found the palms of my hands involuntarily attached to the tree trunk.

“Did you just immobilize me?” I asked him surprised.

“I’m not planning on letting you run away this time.”

“Maybe this friendship thing doesn’t really work,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked opening his eyes.

“Friends don’t make out with other friends,” I explained.

“Maybe some friends do,” he said practically begging. It made me feel even worse.

“Maybe some friends shouldn’t,”

I had to admit that Cho Chang looked beautiful. Now she was prancing around the common room causing all the girls to admire her flowered cream coloured dress and the boys to wolf whistle at her from time to time. I, on the other hand, still looked like I had just got up from bed, half sitting and half lying on a couch. While the boys whistled at Cho, they would turn to me and sort of stare, as if they were wondering how in hell could Cedric choose me over the obvious beauty of the goddess-like Cho.

“Well,” he said, “At least your father is not the biggest jerk in all humanity.”

I laughed.

“Your father is not a jerk,” I said, “He just – he doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

“What’s going on?” he asked. I looked up at him and saw a mischievous smile curling his lips.

“I don’t think he fully realizes his son is human,” I said.

Two hours later I woke up panting and sweating. I had seen everything more clearly than I had when I first read the book. I turned to my right and discovered that Cedric was not there. Somehow I knew just where to look. I got up from bed, splashed some water on my face, tied my messy hair into a ponytail, grabbed my wand from Cedric’s nightstand and finally walked out of the Hufflepuff house. My feet guided me to the Great Hall as if they had been programmed to do so.Turned with his back to me was Cedric, sitting atop the Gryffindor table, his head clutched in his hands.

 My legs began moving after I heard the screams. At first I was just walking like a zombie across the grounds; soon enough, with a new wave of screams, my walk broke into a run. Now I was stumbling, crawling practically to get to the clearing. To get to my boyfriend. 

I don’t know who was it that said ‘the mirror doesn’t lie’, but he was right. I am pretty much used to doing this everyday. After dinner I come up here to my room, and stare at the scars. It’s like I’ve been butchered. They run every way. Diagonally, vertically, horizontally, you name it.  And then there’s this one.  It doesn’t look much like it right now, but at the beginning, when it was almost violet, I swear it looked like a kiss.





 

t doesn’t take me quite so long to gather my surroundings this time around. I had only to think ‘Lewisham School’ and I was here. There is a red bus parked in front of the main entrance, with quite a large queue of students waiting to get on. I look around frantically. I need to find her now. Suddenly there is a parting in the crowds and I see her, her hand in her pocket, her gaze lost, a boy talking to her. She was beautiful in the memories, but, to me, right now I hardly think I could put her properly into words.