A/N: J K Rowling introduced duelling, I just made it real. Don't try this at home. It will hurt. Seriously.
Cedric escorted Cho as far as the stairwell with his hand on the small of her back and a small smile playing on his lips. It wasn't her fault that she was no longer flavour of the month and from a guys perspective, there was no such thing as a bad blowjob. Although, she had been a little more rough with him than usual, he put that down to her impatience in his delay acceding to her request to partner her to the Gala. They were just in time to see Hermione introduce the Bulgarian Seeker to Harry and Ron and learn that the victors were celebrating at Hogsmeade.
A gaggle of girls in Gryffindor colours cat-called to Cho when she delivered an apologetic smile to Cedric. She gave a side nod in Cedrics direction and joined in the laughter when she theatrically fanned herself with her hand in a parody of the dance from the game.
Hermione turned at the noise and rolled her eyes at the girls, noting the usual suspects and more importantly, the subject of the mirth lingering on the stairs with an easy smile. Cedric watched Hermiones gaze bounce between him and Cho and let the smile slip from his face. Mentally he offered the Clinton defence. He watched the two groups walk away from him comparing one back, ramrod straight and the other with a nonchalant sway. His teeth clenched briefly when Hermione slapped Rons hand away from her arse and her voice rang out.
"Stop it Ron. Honestly you are such a child!"
The statement was so obviously flawed, her friend towered over her now. Cedric could easily fit two of her narrow frame mentally across the width of Rons shoulders. His left hand closed over his right and the sound of his knuckles popping cracked the silence one by one.
Cedric made his way to the common room via the study carrels, considering how quickly his mood had soured and ruminating on how Viktor and Hermione might have run into each other. Hufflepuffs were going to Hogsmeade too to commiserate on their performance in the quidditch game, but Cedric had already bowed out. He had to get his head in the new game. The one in the Forest tonight.
He allowed himself a grim smile and hoped Hermione had completed her homework before going out to play. He was both pleased and a little annoyed to see the weird construction that constituted her timetable and a roll of parchment littered with his handwriting and now a series of neat tick marks suggesting that she had also completed the recommended reading that he had left her with. Scrawls in the margin indicated that she had taken it upon herself to swot up further in key areas and included at least two tomes that he himself had not perused.
He tossed her timetable idly from one hand to the other, trying without success to pry each subject from its puzzle place so that he could see the keystone, but it remained irritatingly obscure, since each subject seemed to link almost organically with it and each other. He tried to guess what her keystone would say, wondering if it was at all congruent with his own ambition of 'eternal glory.' The pieces in his construct came apart easily and snapped back in place with a pleasing 'zsup' sound that had taken him hours to perfect. As it stood however, the two timetables could not be merged, which had been his original intent.
Sighing, he stuffed Hermiones version into an inside pocket and exposed the heavy contents of another pocket to the light. He extracted the orb discovered in the room of requirement and studied it, but it gave no further clues as to the mysteries of Hermiones desires. He had intended to give it back to her after dance practice, but changed his mind when he saw the visitors from the other schools arriving. He thumbed an indent on the otherwise perfect curve, setting it to spinning on his thumb like a basketball. The flurry of snowflakes within stirred and spread in a perfectly miniature tornado. Ruefully he remembered the accident that had caused him to erase a fascinating insight into the mind of the girl he had previously discarded in previous years as bookish and uninteresting.
The orb had been perched on his nightstand, serving as the best material for his self indulgence whilst he sought her sleeping mind the previous night. His cock stirred just in the remembering of it. Contentedly he had drifted off to sleep, only to be jerked awake by the sensation of lips closing over teeth, closing over him and the heady new taste sensation of something that desperately needed to be added to his yearbook collection. His flailing arm had hit the nightstand, knocking the orb just enough for him to be worried for its safety, and in his somnolent state he had caught it with his bare hand. A weird feeling of deja-vu gripped had him when the snowflakes had settled, just as they were doing now as he stopped it from spinning. He blinked at it owlishly in the artificial light and shook it one more time to dispel the idea that he might have seen, for just an instant, the outline of a hare couched almost flat against the inside edge of the glass. It hadn't stopped him coming like a train.
He placed the orb carefully in one of her pigeon holes and stood back. Impulsively he retrieved it and allowed himself a grin of childish delight as he dropped it into the toe of a small, white sock and placed it a second time, front and centre.
0.0
It was a short distance to the Hufflepuff common room, down a narrowing passageway that got progressively darker and more claustrophobic as he neared the door. There was no password for this door, Cedric thrust a hand into the centre of a painting of a woodland scene, into the darkness that suggested at a badgers sett underneath the roots of a spreading oak and waited for the feeling of a cold nose and the brush of stiff muzzle bristles to accept him as genuine. His house would never be troubled by imposters aided by polyjuice potion. A badgers sight may be poor for colour, but its sense of smell and powers of detection for the faintest tremor were unsurpassed. The painting swung open and he stepped into a cosy space punctuated by lumps of dark furniture.
Not everyone was at Hogsmeade it seemed, somewhat to his dismay, since he would prefer the quiet of his own company to disassemble Hermione's concoction. He slumped into the corner of a sofa and tipped his head back, but was immediately joined by a girl with long blonde hair who sat forward expectantly, as Tomas dropped a package in his lap paying scant regard to his family assets.
"It's chocolate," said the girl, "I can smell it a mile off."
Cedric dispensed a smile under a cocky eyebrow. She smirked in return, offering a pearly reply and twirled the painfully high ponytail that she had scraped her hair into. She was a destination already visited, he nodded to himself, one well worth refreshing the memory of, once he got rid of the Finchbury facelift. After all, he thought, what's the point of all that beautiful, blonde window dressing, if you can't wrap it around something. He adjusted the parcel in his lap.
She stuffed her stockinged feet under his thigh and he masked the downturn in his lips when he thought of feet in white socks instead. Maybe she had some. His stomach turned. He flipped the package over, annoyed with himself and inspected the return address, recognising his Mothers handwriting. A fond smile made the girl fidget and he raised both eyebrows to tease her.
"And if I give it to you?" he asked, pulling at the string that criss-crossed the brown paper wrapping.
She gave him a look through her lashes that suggested she would give him something right back that might make him miss the Forest in terms of timing if not actuality. He regretfully shook his head.
"You never eat chocolate," she whined, "and it's the good stuff, I can tell."
He picked open the folds at one end and unsheathed the box The box was indeed chocolates, high-end merchandise destined for the tourists that helped keep the reputation of his home village as the place to visit for unusual antique pieces. The box lid portrayed distinctive image of the river that bisected the village triple arched bridge in local stone, that crossed it. Cedric allowed his lips and ironic twist at the proximity of the pub, 'The Travellers Holt' and the quaint church, whose twisty spire leaned like the vicar at the bar ten minutes after the sermon ended. Chunky white letters over a blue sky announced Greetings from Ottery-St-Catchpole. The sentiment made him briefly homesick, not for his own home, but for the feeling that home gave him, most recently experienced in the Weasleys kitchen.
Cedric flipped open the box lid and the girl inhaled appreciatively. He picked out one of the morsels and held it up to his eyes with his palm flat, before tossing the open box on her knees. She wasted no time in sampling the windfall and moaned in appreciation.
On his hand a chocolate otter rose on its haunches, using its tail for balance and looked around. Cedric studied its form, thinking back to the patronnii in the corridor and winkling out a memory of the different types that there were – not the different animal forms, but the nomenclature of how an animal form arose for an individual. He stretched his neck and swallowed slowly at the potential his memories offered. When he lifted his thumb, the little creature bounded up on to it.
A low laugh was all the warning he got before Tomas snatched the little beast away and bit its head off. Cedric half rose in anger.
"You look like you don' know if you want to pet it or eat it," goaded Tomas. He chewed thoughtfully, adding, "nice beaver."
Cedric grinned in spite of himself, "yeah, I bet," then side eyed his colleague.
Tomas had stopped chewing. Cedric mentally kicked himself when he said, "delicia?"
"What about it?"
"You know who she is."
Cedric shrugged noncommittally
"An' you no' have any yet," finished Tomas, sure of himself. He swept the girls legs out of the way and planted himself between them. "Who is she?" he insisted.
"Who is who?" asked the girl.
Tomas fed her another chocolate otter, brushing dark crumbs from her lower lip. "No-one for you, my cherry." He turned back to Cedric licking his lips, "interested parties need to know…"
Cedric pushed himself off the couch hard enough for it to scoot back an inch. The incumbents corrected the positioning without pause. They all navigated the room in complete darkness enough to know that exact placement was vital.
Tomas stared up at him, starting a slow smile. "She is going tonight, no?" Considering changing his plans if it meant getting sight of whoever it was, holding the great cocksman at arms length.
"Who?" interrupted the girl. Tomas patted her thigh and reached for another otter, forced to look at what he was doing as the little buggers were escaping.
Cedric leaned down and deliberately tugged the box out of the girls grasp and strode off to the dorm. Tomas replied, more to himself than anyone else. "No, not going" he rubbed the girls thigh in what he hoped was an enticing manner, "jus' like me." He placed a wriggling chocolate creature between his lips and offered himself as a sacrificial anode.
0.0
In the Gryffindor common room, two ginger heads of hair, almost exactly alike, bent over a scrap of parchment extracted from an exhausted pygmy owl, fresh from the foul air of the Capital.
"What are we going to do?"
"We can't stop now, we'd lose everything."
"Could it be a faulty batch?"
"Yes that's it, faulty batch. We'll send down a fresh supply. Get someone else to say the spell."
"But Fred," said George, "it's the third dead one this week. The casino will be full of them by the end of the month at this rate.
"We can to alter the disclaimer saying that they can have their bodies back. We only needed it in there to start with so that we could use them to make the place look full. You know, enhance the ambience…."
George looked at his twin dubiously. Fred threw the fragment into the embers of the fireplace and poked at it with the fire iron until it was entirely consumed. "Never mind that now, there's this foreign lot that's got to be good for a few galleons and the thing in the Forest tonight."
0.0
In the back workroom of a shop in Diagon Alley, a grey haired man busily tidied away the days work and set a pot of tea on a low stove. Front of house, a fat bodied, long legged spider let itself in through the letterbox.
Olivander didn't see the spider until it was already upon him and he upset the pot in his haste to sweep it from his body. Undeterred, the thing launched itself on a silver thread and climbed onto the skin of his bare hand with indecent haste. Before he had a moment to squash it flat, it bit him and finding a match to the hair in potion it had ingested, sought the first available flat surface.
Olivander clutched his wound and watched the insect draw two words and an impression of a cloven hoof before it scuttled off. 'Expect me.'
He stared for at the message for a moment, trying to consider what it might mean. Snape had found what he was looking for perhaps? The 'E' started to smoke and he drew back just as the letter exploded, going off like a firecracker. Letter after letter popped and fizzled out of sight until the entire message had been obliterated. He reached for a quill and parchment, what with everything coming at once, there was so little time. An owl would have to do.
Professor, I shall arrive in good time for the wand weighing ceremony.
0.0
Cedric tossed the box of chocolates on to his bed and it fell awkwardly, the tray dislodging from the base of the box, exposing a small pink post-it note. In his Mothers handwriting, a message informed him that Hogwarts had been chosen for the re-inauguration of the Triwizard Tournament. Winning would be quite a prize and entirely consistent with the raison d'etre on his keystone.
From his trunk, he extracted a polishing cloth and a small bottle of linseed oil and set to polishing his wand. The soothing motion helped to clear his mind and relaxed his shoulders. When he moved to replace the cloth and oil, he was perfectly calm. His hand brushed the corner of his yearbook and he debated sneaking just one look at the ladies page. It couldn't hurt.
The pictures on the page had stopped swapping places at least. Hermiones plain frame was in the centre, with the other girls images primping prettily in a circle around her. In the rectangle of Hermiones picture, a dark archway was now steady. What the archway led to was obscured by a continuous fall of snowflakes. A chocolate otter scrambled on top of the page and stood on its hind legs outlined by the rain of white. Angrily it chittered at him and he laughed out loud at how it berated him, reminding him of Hermione and the fierce way she dealt with everything. Truly the epitome of attack is the best form of defence.
He scrubbed his hands through his hair. She was definitely getting under his skin and the patronus thing wasn't helping. There were three ways she could share a patronus form with him, hereditary, geography and the other one. The one that meant they were both deeper in than either realised. He stuck out his lower lip and pulled at it. No time for that now. He dropped the otter back in the box and secured the lid, tucking it under the yearbook in his trunk.
0.0
Cedric slipped slipped away shortly after the introductions and announcements at dinner. Thanks to his Mother, the stuff about the T.T. was already old hat. It wasn't that he had been watching the Gryffindor table exactly, but he couldn't help chuckling at Hermione nailing Rons sweater sleeve to the table with her fork while he drooled over the Beauxbatons flipping their skirts. Tomas had looked over, vainly trying to pinpoint what had caught his humour and Cedric left before he gave anything away. He swiftly changed into stretch pants and a hoodie before replacing his top robes.
0.0
Cedric passed from the fringes of the forest, deeper into its dark embrace. What little moonlight there was did little to illuminate his path, but his footsteps never wavered. His tread was measured and a thoughtful frown graced his brow. What opponents would stand against him this night? A frisson of excitement tightened his muscles and he forced himself to relax into the anticipation..and the fear.
By the third oak, a dun coloured centaur waited silently with a towel and hip flask. They were never the same and whilst it might have been polite to enquire after its name, the pronunciation would probably be beyond him due to the nickers and huffs that punctuated them. Cedric declined the flask and fell in behind the gigantic beast, using the sound of the heavy hooves to guide him further, rather than sight. Cedric counted his steps as a distraction from the unending tactics that his mind paraded in front of him. 423, 424, 425 same as always, 425 steps into the deepest part of the forest and they entered a clearing lit with cool blue light that emanated from the branches overhead. The collected occupants offered the bated air a universal sigh when they caught sight of him raising his hood and turning his back. His opponents would be similarly hidden and each ones arrival was masked from those before and after by both route and placement.
In the centre of the clearing, demarcated by a twisting ribbon of grey-blue smoke was a rectangular ring. Cedric stuffed his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie to keep them warm and waited for the draw.
The centaur lowered its bearded mien and growled commentary on the first tier games already past. Cedric listened with half an ear, adding the results to his personal rating table and adjusting his sleeves.
"Put a galleon on me, for me," he murmured
"Win or place?"
"Win." His rating placed him as the top seed in the second of a three tier game, not because he had lost a match although he had drawn a few, but because he had only recently taken to duelling – last year being his first in the arena. Some sporting individuals tried their hand as soon as they arrived at Hogwarts.
Not a word was spoken, but an expectant susurration warned him that the draw was being prepared. The centaur retreated to the judges table and was met by a further eleven of his kind, the blue light patchworking their varied coats in shades of grey and black. Six pairs of straws were drawn and chalked on a board, twelve numbers. After the final bout, names would be given, it added to the suspense and allowed for no planning, even in the moments before the bout, if those selected were first up. In the pyramid contests, names were only released as the vanquished were eliminated from the competition, such that a loser in the early stages, to the ultimate winner, might not know their name until the very end. "Third," his minder informed him.
Cedric let out a calming breath, readying himself for the entertainment, third was a good placement, enough to get a feel for the crowd, steady his nerves and spec out the skills of four other players before having to face his own nemesis. He shucked the hoodie and fastened the robes back on loosely. It would be unusual to have a blackout match in the middle of a pyramid contest, but it was a twist he was expecting sooner or later and his performance would allow his, or anothers ascension to the third tier if the outcome was favourable.
Two cowled figures entered the ring through a gap in the smoke ribbon that closed behind them and moved to opposite ends. Wands were hidden, hands hidden in the opposite arms sleeve and the opponents turned to face each other, both executing a stiff bow. A third cowled figure wearing a white sash apparated directly into the centre of the ring, the referee. The smoke thinned and drifted hazily upwards so that the rectangle was enclosed to a height of around eight feet and was as transparent as a wine glass passed one too many times through dishwasher salt. He knew from previous experience that if a blackout match came about, this same screen would act as an infra-red filter, allowing the audience to see what the participants could not. A sharp peep from the whistle around the referees neck and both opponents struck the obligatory duelling posture, leading leg forward, trailing arm raised, offering the smallest profile to be struck by magic.
There was a tense silence, then the ring exploded into noise and light. Hex met hex, curse ricocheted off counter curse, all supposedly non-lethal, but serious impediments to casting the following spell, thus, in theory, allowing an unequivocal coup de grace. Cedric watched carefully for any patterns in the magical fluxes, linking them to past bouts to identify the combatants. He would lay odds on the one nearest him being Fred Weasley and where there was one Weasley twin, there was always the other. A full body bind curse was partially deflected and the recipient wobbled, stance compromised but managing to launch a duck-foot hex that got through.
The referee moved back a step to keep both contestants in their field of view, whistle in mouth, ready to stop the duel at the next clear shot. A pause in the fight, while both caught their breath and Cedric studied Weasleys opponent. Barty Crispin he thought shrewdly, taking his finals this summer and an artist at Summoning, the wand matched too, oak heartwood. Weasleys robe flapped in a breeze that disturbed nothing else and his hood fell over his face, he launched a last minute 'stupefy' with a curved trajectory that found its mark and Crispin went down like a nine-pin.
The referees whistle sounded shrilly and he visited the fallen first, reversing the winning spell and any other lingering magical maladies before affording the same service to the victor, then apparating briefly to the judges table before out of sight altogether. Cedric watched for the two faces to appear in the crowd during the second match to confirm his suspicions. The new opponents were less evenly matched and it was over just after he spotted Fred shouldering his way towards a bay centaur and presumably his charge. The bay and his dun centaur were the only two activated by the end of the second duel. He leafed through the mental page he kept for the Twins, certain that he would soon face George in ring.
His centaur parted the crowd and Cedric entered the ring, hands in his sleeves and keeping his head down, he moved to one end. He murmured an entreaty to the beast in the moon to keep him safe and smiled to himself at his own foolishness. Mantras help those who help themselves. The crowd fell silent and he bowed automatically. Even before he had even raised himself, the lights went out. No light penetrated this far into the forest, there was nothing darker than the black that surrounded him now.
"Shit!" Cedric heard clearly whispered from the other end of the ring. Definitely George he thought to himself, definitely going down. Cedric dropped to a crouch and stayed low, slipping the robes from his shoulders to use his upper body for its extra senses.
He knew the walls of the ring would deform outside of its given parameters, because for this match, the normal rules no longer applied so not even the space they fought in was certain. He wasn't completely sure that there was even a referee until he caught a glimmer of the sash that was visible, in a vague attempt to keep them from being hit accidentally. He waited and waited and there, a shifting in the air prickled his consciousness. Scraping a handful of dirt, he moved silently to his feet and stealthily angled away, keeping the referee between himself and where he thought George was approaching. Nothing wrong with a little dirt in a fight. He wondered if the hive mind extended to the point that it could pass the games barrier meaning that potentially George could see through Freds eyes perfectly clearly.
Apparently not. The next exchange happened so fast. A silhouette flashed in front of the referees sash. Cedric threw the dirt ahead of him and his opponent struck out at the sound where it landed, leaving the origin of the magic arcing in the air visible for an instant. Cedric attacked with 'rictusempra' racing to put himself beside George as he fell. Cedric knelt swiftly so that George caught Cedrics knee hard in the small of his back on his way down, helped by Cedrics palm slapping viciously against his breastbone and a sucker punch to the kidney. Cedric pushed the groaning body off his raised knee and stepped away panting, kicking Georges inert hand to make him release his wand. The lights came on blinding him, even before the referee had blown to stop the match.
Cedric smiled grimly and watched the referee tending his victim. Eventually, George struggled to his feet, his face a rictus of pain. Cedric departed from the strict rules of the game, since he was already unmasked by his own actions and strolled over, offering his hand. George took it slowly and they shook once, before George bent uncomfortably to retrieve his wand.
The referee spoke dryly, "you are both excluded from further bouts. Mr Weasley on the grounds of health and Mr Diggory on the basis that you are too dangerous to be part of the second tier." Cedric looked over sharply. This was normally a judges decision, he would have withdrawn anyway, but being booted out still stung, even if he had secured his place in the top level. He fixated on the few strands of lank black hair poked out the bottom of the referees cowl and nodded briskly. He was down a galleon, but hopefully up several notches on everyones radar, except perhaps the one that mattered. He bowed briefly, retrieved his robes and left the ring.
The centaur proffered the hip flask again and this time he emptied it, gulping greedily at the mead like taste, part choking on the centaur spirits. He struggled back into his clothing whilst his minder waited patiently. The rumble of a laugh caught Cedrics attention and he followed the centaurs line of sight to another centaur. It had an inflatable doll strapped to its back like a rider and was corralled by its fellows, one of whom seemed to be trying to pierce his ear whilst another unsuccessfully attempted to mount him.
"What's going on?" asked Cedric.
"Initiation," replied his minder.
"They are not having a lot of luck," commented Cedric as the centaur at the rear fell off sideways, exposing a large, but flaccid cock.
"The geldings, they make their own luck," his minder replied gruffly. Cedric winced at the word.
"And they volunteer?" asked Cedric.
"Kazym was an accident, he met a Witch…"
Cedric squinted, then frowned, amazed that the story had not got out. "Which Witch?"
0.0
The moon was at its zenith and Cedrics shoulders carried its silvery weight on the trail back to the school. His wand hummed in his hand and he moved his fingers up and down its length like a fiddler practising for the bow. Behind him a pale glow briefly illuminated a doorway cut into the side of the hill and two figures leaving it.
A/N: There will be more tomorrow/Monday. I have to split it otherwise BBR can't read it in her lunch-hour and that makes her a sad panda.
The Clinton defence went something along the lines of a blowjob (with someone other you're your usual partner) cannot be classified as infidelity.
The Finchbury facelift is known in Muggle terms as the 'Croydon' facelift, NED if you are Scottish, Millie for the Irish and I have no idea what the American equivalent is. Perhaps you could enlighten me?
In England pubs are always within spitting distance of a church. It's all very chicken vs egg.
A sacrificial anode is a material that is deliberately consumed as a by-product of forging (or protecting) something more valuable.
