Author's note: So I picked up this story after a long hiatus, and realized that I made the plotline go from Thanksgiving to Halloween…..so we're assuming Thanksgiving happened last year (but they're both in the same years – confusing, I know!). :P sorry about that!
Ginny Weasley, Cedric thought, had a nice face. It was naturally guileless, and even hollowed out and tired-looking, she was still pleasing to look at. He sighed sat down at the Hufflepuff table, across from Emily, wishing there was some way to abridge the distance to the Gryffindor table.
The Great Hall was decorated for the occasion (Halloween), complete with Hagrid's enormous, enchanted pumpkins (that spat a seed out when you weren't looking and added a pleasant little bucolic touch), torches that cast long silhouettes that played across the ground. There was a little pile of hay that looked a bit misplaced, but no one really paid attention to it.
Cedric shot a glance at the Gryffindor table.
"Looking for Ginny?" Emily asked dryly, a bit facetiously. Always so succinct.
Cedric winced. "Maybe," he said, and picked at his food tepidly. "I was trying to be…" - he deliberated, and settled on the right word – "unobtrusive." Parker snatched the fork out of his hand.
"Are you still not over her? It's almost been a year, man. What happened to Lillian?"
Cedric winced again, and tried to think of a retort that was even remotely scintillating. Veracity had never been one of his strong suits, but then again, wit hadn't been either.
"No, I'm over her," he said weakly, in a voice that did not quite belie the truth. Parker glared at him, and he sighed.
"She was so…" he started, and cut off.
"Obsequious?" Cho supplied.
"Sycophantic?" Emily added.
"Dogmatic ("do you even know what that means?")," Parker suggested, "about sex."
"Psycho," Cedric said decidedly.
Instinctively, all four of them turned to look at Lillian Beacon, who was sitting on her latest boyfriend in a rather unseemly manner a few seats down at the Ravenclaw table, jauntily spoon feeding him a large forkful of yams as his hands roamed up the back of her shirt in an equally unseemly manner. Every inch of Lillian Beacon screamed gregarious, especially in between her legs. Cedric cringed.
"How that girl is a Ravenclaw…" Cho mused.
"Life is full of mysteries," Parker said, and they continued eating, Ginny forgotten in every mind but one.
It was, all in all, a lovely evening (punctured by Filch screaming "Renegade, renegade!" and being goaded by Dumbledore into eating half a pumpkin pie (a pumpkin spit a seed at him on his way out)), and by 9 pm, Cedric could barely keep his head upright.
His thoughts were barely lucid, and he sat slumped over the table, massaging his stomach. At 9:30 pm, the roaring clatter of thunder shocked him out of his food coma.
"I'm going upstairs," he managed, with every intention of going upstairs to sleep. Parker was asleep.
"Boys," said Emily, and Cho rolled her eyes.
