A/n: I do not own any Harry Potter copyrights.

The day after Halloween was . . . bad, to put it lightly.

No, 'bad' didn't quite cut it. 'Bad' was what you used to describe a failed date or a hard test. The day after Halloween wasn't on that level. How could it be? That day was the worst day of either of my lives.

And when you'd had two . . . well, that was saying something.

It started at Cedric's 'honor party' yesterday. The fangirls had become bolder the moment the Hufflepuff champion had stepped into the Common Room. They'd hung off him like the Yellow Badger Banner that someone had stolen from the Great Hall, fetching him drinks and laughing at jokes that even Cedric didn't find all that funny. It was disgusting, maybe even more so considering how much of a step up it was from how they'd acted before.

What happened to giggling insistently in the background? To staying just out of hearing as they worked up the guts to approach him?

That behavior had been something I could ignore, pity even. 'Fangirling' was a very demeaning thing to me, up until now I'd never really seen a reason to fault them for it.

Maybe that was the attitude that let me brave them every time they spawned for Breakfast, Lunch, and every between class break. I just had to put on a smile and remind myself that, whatever they were like now, they were most likely completely sane in Cedric's absence.

Sure, the smiles did grow a little thinner as the day grew on and sure, eventually I snapped. My pride lays mostly in the fact that I held out as long as I did.

"Excuse me, what?"

Which of course brings us to me, practically spitting in anger and staring down one of Cedric's groupies. The boy himself wasn't too far away, though it was obvious he hadn't heard what she'd said. He'd be just as mad as me otherwise.

The girl rolled her eyes and flipped her hair, both actions that became infuriating when paired with how condescending she was currently acting. "Honestly, don't you have ears? It's a wonder Cedric keeps you around at all." She ignored my gritting teeth in favor of pinning a badge onto her robes. It flashed 'Potter Stinks' out at me, I glared back.

"I said that you're not worth his time. Cedric's, I mean. Any proper friend of his would want to show some support. And yet . . ." She gestured to the badge like it made a point.

"Oh right, and showing up the moment he becomes famous makes you a 'proper friend'."

At the sarcastic tone and bitter glare, the girl across from me bristled like a cat dropped in water.

"Why you little harpy . . ." She raised her hand, took a step forward, and looked ready to whip out her wand. At a full head taller than me, she even managed to be a tad menacing.

Or she would've been if Cedric wasn't suddenly there, standing between our raised wands with an alarmed look on his face.

"Julia," My friend turned to me, the picture of hurt confusion. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," The word was forced and almost as painful as stashing my wand back into my robes. "It's my free lesson. I'm going for a walk."

Spinning on my heel, I did just that.

Cedric didn't stop me, though he did step away from the girl when she tried to go back to him. When she stomped away as well, I considered it a bit of a win.

Taking my own advice, I tried to walk out the bitterness by prowling the dungeon corridors. I kinda wanted to sulk, or maybe brood, and I didn't want to do it in the sun filled hallways of the rest of the school. These hallways were darker and all around better for dark moods.

Eventually, when the anger had faded and I no longer wanted to try out my nastiest hexes, I slowed to a stop and leaned against the cold stone of a wall. I knew I should go back. My stomach was growling enough for it to be close to dinner and I couldn't avoid the Great Hall because of one girl.

That and I should probably go apologize to Moody. I'd been lying when I'd said I had a free lesson.

Turning back to the stairwell that would lead me back into the light, I paused again when a sound echoed towards me form further down the hall.

Was that footsteps and . . . crying?

Frowning, I turned again and headed off in the direction of the sound. The footsteps had stopped but the crying was still there, now fully evolved into sobs. Stopping at the door to a Girl's Bathroom, I allowed myself a moment to ponder when I'd become such a martyr before pushing my way inside.

A girl sat in the middle of the floor, tears streaming down her face as she desperately tried to lift her head. Her two front teeth were nearly touching the floor.

"Merlin's ass!" I swore rather creatively as I rushed over to the girl's side, wand already out and at the ready. "Who in the world did this to you? Wait, what am I saying? Talking'll just make it worse!" I took a deep breath, if only to control my panic long enough to get the spell right. "Finite."

The teeth shot up a few feet, though not nearly enough to be normal. The girl, now fully able to lift her head, smiled tentatively. Smiling back, I offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet.

"Sorry, that's the best I can do. We'll have to go to the Nurse for the rest. Are you alright?"

The younger girl looked strangely familiar now that I could see more of her face. With a good two feet of mammoth teeth still in place though, I just couldn't place where I'd seen her.

She nodded, still unable to talk, and allowed me to take the lead. With her permission, I steered us both out of the bathroom and towards the infirmary. It took us a while to get there, especially because the girl kept having to stop. I didn't rush her, she had a lot of weight on her face.

Eventually I managed to push her into Madame Pomfrey's waiting clutches and take a seat near her bed. The matron buzzed around the poor girl like a bee, fussing and shrinking teeth almost in sync. When the girl could talk enough to tell her that her teeth were normal again, the nurse ordered her to rest and fluttered into the next room.

"Thank you for helping me. With all the fuss, I'm afraid I never asked for your name."

Looking up from the Quibbler that someone had left on the bedside table, I spared the girl a chuckle. "Well it's not like I'd have understood if you'd signed it to me. I'm Julia Whitman, a Hufflepuff."

The girl smiled and I was again struck with a strong sense of Deja vu. Where had I seen her before?

"Oh I'm a Gryffindor. Hermione Granger, it's a pleasure."

And just like that my blood ran cold.

Did she just say . . . Oh nononononono. What was up with this year?! I'd met what, four characters now? Did Karma just decide to throw my plans into the fire or something?!

Blinking out of my wide eyed stupor, I took the hand that Hermione had offered well over a minute ago and smiled shakily. She looked concerned for my mental health.

"Are you alright? You look a bit pale."

"Do I?" I dodged effortlessly, putting my worries aside for a more believable smile. "I guess it's not every day I get to see if I really deserve my Charms score. What happened anyway?"

Hermione's face fell so quickly that I immediately felt bad for bringing it up.

"If you don't want to talk about it . . ."

"No, it's alright. I don't mind. My friends . . ." She stopped to shoot me a considering glance. "They're fighting."

"Ah," I said even as I began to get a grasp of what she was talking about. Hadn't Harry and Ron fought because Ron was mad Harry didn't put his name into the Goblet as well? "You're stuck in the middle, aren't you?"

She nodded and looked all around miserable.

Apparently I wasn't the only one having a bad day.

"And would these 'friends' of yours be Harry Potter and that Weasley boy?" At her surprised look and not to subtle glance at my tie, I let out a snort. "Oh I see now, you thought I'd go the way of the rest of my house and hate the kid for stealing Cedric's glory. Don't worry," I gestured to the absence of a badge on my chest, "I don't hate the innocent."

She blinked. "You don't . . . You think Harry is innocent?"

"Isn't he? He didn't look like a smug rule breaker when Dumbledore called him up front yesterday. If anything, he looked just as confused as the rest of us."

Nodding, Hermione looked unsure briefly before evidently deciding to give in on whatever she was unsure about. "He is, that's . . . Well, that's what Harry and Ron are arguing about. Ron thinks Harry should have put his name in as well and Harry's mad that Ron doesn't believe him." She huffed. "And of course they don't plan to talk it out. That would be too mature of them."

"That frustrating, huh?" I fought back a giggle. Somehow I had never imagined Hermione to be so . . . sarcastic.

"Of course it is!" Hermione was sitting up now and, by the way she was talking, I got the feeling she was going to rant. "It doesn't help that Ron's got it into his head that Harry gets more attention than he does. I mean, honestly. It's not like Harry can help it."

"A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it." I quoted, thinking of a book I vaguely remembered from another life. What had it been about again? Something about drums?

The girl in front of me seemed to consider that for a moment. "But that's the problem, isn't it? Ron wants to be noticed and he's friends with Harry. I'm afraid he sees it as standing in Harry's shadow."

"But does he want all the attention?" I asked seriously. "Think about it, the publicity Harry gets is both good and bad. From what I saw yesterday, it doesn't look like Harry particularly wants it either."

Hermione nodded again but was spared from actually saying anything by the rather loud growl coming from my stomach.

"Oh right," I ran an embarrassed hand through my hair. "I guess it's time for Dinner already. I could bring you back some food if you want."

"No it's alright. And Julia?"

I paused halfway out the door and turned to look at the girl in the bed. "What is it?"

"Thank you. For helping me and for what you said. Maybe it will help."

I smiled and made an overly exaggerated mock bow. "It was my pleasure. Get better, alright?"

oOoOoOoOo

On the Saturday before the first event, Kara and I finally managed to tear Cedric away from his fangirls in order to have a Hogsmeade day with us. It was to be a strictly 'friend's' day, free of both Summers and Mikhail, two people that had somehow wormed their ways into our lives.

It was very refreshing to have the old group back, to be honest. Even if I didn't mind a few of the new additions, there definitely was something to be said about the three of us just laughing and hanging out.

Well, hanging out outside of the grueling strategy sessions anyway. There had been far too much of my time dedicated to figuring out how to keep Cedric alive through the first event.

"I'm tired." Kara whined from where she appeared on my right. Like a child, she gave the edge of my robe a pitiful tug. "Juuuuliiia. I'm tiiiiired."

"And what do you expect me to do about it? I'm not about to conjure you up a bed."

Cedric chuckled. "How about a drink then? I bet a butter beer will get you on your feet again."

"Or off it. Kara's a light weight." I supplied even as I knew that the Hogsmeade drink of choice was strongly not alcoholic. Well not to any species besides House Elves.

Ushered through the bar door by a chivalrous Cedric, the three of us took a somewhat awkward moment to take in just how crowded the place was. No table was empty and only one had less than four people on it. The sudden onset of noise was so overwhelming that it took a few well-placed shouts before we could continue the conversation again.

"STILL THINK IT"S WORTH IT?" I hollered over the chaos as Kara tried to get Rosmerta to come our way. After a moment of frantic waving, she gave up and headed to the bar herself.

"IT'S NOT TOO BAD!" Cedric called back, actually cupping his hands around his mouth so that he could be louder. "LOOK! THAT TABLE HAS ROOM!"

I looked and quite literally had to stand on my tiptoes before I could see what Cedric was talking about. Then I did see it and suddenly felt the urge to smack my head into a table. Cedric was right after all, that table only had one person and a box of shiny metal badges seated at it.

And of course it was just my luck that it was Hermione Granger, the girl I'd saved from her own teeth almost a month ago.

"Let's go ask if we can join her!" Cedric had grown close enough that we didn't need to shout, unfortunately he only did this to grab my arm. Soon, I was all but being towed in the direction of the fourth year.

"Cedric stop! I know her!"

"You do? Well that'll just make it easi-" Right in front of Hermione's table, Cedric ground to a halt. Apparently he hadn't quite realized that we were charging straight towards a friend of Harry Potter. Someone who, in Cedric's mind at least, might not exactly be a fan of his.

"Can I help you?" Hermione asked politely before shooting a subtle glance at the empty seat beside her. Standing behind Cedric as I was, it didn't look like she'd noticed me yet.

"Well we . . . uh . . ." Cedric trailed off and I, with a long suffering groan, stepped out of his shadow.

"Hey there Hermione, it's been a while. Do you mind if we join you? None of the other tables have room."

"Julia!" The girl's face lit up in recognition but before she could truly smile, another glance at the chair had her frowning again. "Er . . . maybe now's not the best time."

Was she waiting for someone?

Kara was making her way back to us with a badly balanced tray of butterbeer, almost spilling it on the Weasley Twins and Lee Jordan as she navigated the crowd. One look and I could tell she hadn't found a table either.

Unless we wanted to drink in the streets, Hermione was our best bet.

"Please?!" I said with my best rendition of puppy eyes. "We really wouldn't be asking if we had any other option."

Hermione bit her lip and, while I'm sure she tried to stay strong, finally faltered with another guilty look at the chair. "Well . . . alright, but just for a little while."

"Thanks," Sliding in next to the seat that Hermione was saving, I pulled Cedric down across from the badge box. Kara, having finally braved the crowd, slid us our drinks and plopped down on his other side. "Oh and before I forget, this is Cedric Diggory and Kara Jafton. You've met Cedric before, right?"

Though the fourth year really didn't look comfortable in Cedric's presence, she nodded. "We took the same Port Key to the World Cup."

The table drifted into the sort of silence that only comes when no one had anything to say. Kara, being the avid gossiper that she was, decided to break it.

"Oooh," Kara had plucked a badge off the table and was now studying it intently. "What are these? S.P.E.W? What does that stand for?"

And . . . the awkwardness was gone. The small little half frowns had now been wholeheartedly replaced by a beaming smile as Hermione sat a little straighter. From the empty seat to my right, I could've sworn I heard someone groan.

"It stands for 'Society for the Promotion of Elven Welfare'," Hermione explained eagerly, looking for all the world like Christmas came early. "We work to bring freedom, wages and benefits to the House Elf community."

"You do? But they don't want any of that stuff." Cedric sounded a bit confused. He'd probably never met Dobby, the only House Elf to actually want freedom, wages and benefits.

"How do you know?" The bushy-haired Fourth Year replied hotly. "The wizarding community has all but brainwashed them into being content with their lot in life. For all we know, they could be perfectly capable of forming their own running society. Like the Goblins do."

There was another mystery sound from the chair and I turned my head to shoot it a suspicious look. Chairs don't snort.

"That sounds absolutely horrible." Kara had always had a soft spot for animals, or anything particularly smaller than her actually. She had picked up a lot of strays when we were kids. "I've never met an elf. I had no idea they had it so bad."

"Do you want to join us? We have plenty of badges and it only costs 2 sickles to join."

If I didn't know that Hermione had perfectly had perfectly honest intentions, I would've sworn I was watching Kara get conned.

"Really?! I would've thought it'd be much more!" Digging in her pocket, Kara exchanged two silver coins for a badge and eagerly pinned it on her chest. It looked almost eerily like the 'Potter Stinks' badges of everyone else in the building, only this one had S.P.E.W. scrawled onto it.

Hermione, writing Kara's name down on her membership list, looked like she was liable to break the quill out of sheer excitement.

"You know, I've been to the Kitch- ow!" Mid-way through my sentence, a shoe had kicked my shin. A shoe that had come from the empty chair. Shooting it a glare, I turned back to find Cedric looking at me worriedly.

"Julia? Are you alright?"

"No, I think there's-"

"Oh she's probably fine!" Hermione cut me off in the sort of way that just screamed that she knew something. "This place is really crowded. Someone probably bumped her chair."

Yeah that made sense . . . if you could 'bump' my chair from under the table.

"Right . . ." I shot the chair another glare before turning back to Hermione. "You know, with all this excitement I'd forgotten to ask. How are you holding up?"

Caught off guard by the sudden change of topics, Hermione blinked. "Holding up with what?"

"With that bloody news article." If I had been angry with Cedric's fangirl, it was nothing compared to what I'd felt when that article had come out. I had known it was bad before, sure, but what I was expecting was nothing like how it was. "I heard that people have been hounding you about it."

"Oh right, the article. I'm doing alright, I guess. Though to be perfectly honest, Harry got it much worse than I did. I can just ignore them."

"And Harry can't?" I looked straight at the empty chair this time, already forming theories about who might be sitting in it.

"Skeeter did a lot of embellishing on what Harry actually said, she made up and brought up some sensitive topics. If I were Harry, I wouldn't be alright with it either. Having every student in the school remind him of them doesn't make things better."

"I can imagine." I said because I really could. As someone who had spent their whole life trying not to be noticed, I could definitely understand how Harry felt in this situation. "I think I'd go crazy if it were me."

"That's what makes Harry unique, doesn't it." Surprisingly it was Cedric, not Hermione, who said this. "I mean he found the Philosopher's Stone in first year, didn't he? I wouldn't have been able to do that."

"Yeah, I think it's horrible about how everyone's being mean to him." Like I said, Kara would eternally pick up strays. If she knew what I knew, Harry probably would have been glomped by now. "I could tell right away that he didn't know his name was in the Goblet."

"You guys . . ." Hermione was smiling, not at us, but at the empty chair. Any doubts I had had about who was sitting with us were now long gone. "I'll tell him you said all that, I promise."

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a certain boy disappear out the door with three red-headed brothers. Suddenly remembering something, I stood up almost at once.

"Julia?" Cedric stood up too, though it was more out of a response to me than anything else. "Do you want to leave?"

Kara, just as dutiful as Cedric, slid a tip on the table and got to her feet.

"No, well yes but not because of you Hermione." At her name, I shot the younger girl a smile. She didn't look offended, just a bit confused. "I just remembered I need to do something."

"Do what?"

"Well . . ." I bit my lip. "Do you remember that bet I made?"

Cedric frowned briefly before seeming to come to a realization. "Oh! You mean with Lee Jordan? On if I would win-" Suddenly his eyes went wide.

"My bet on if you would become the champion." I clarified smugly, ignoring how both Hermione and Kara seemed to disapprove of me betting at all. "Now that you're here, fully champion-ified . . ."

"That means we can cash in on the bet."

I smirked, leaned forward, and grabbed a handful of Cedric's shirt sleeve. "So what are we waiting for, then? I have a feeling we're not going to get that money unless we can catch him ourselves."

After a wave back in Hermione's direction and a quick returning of our mugs, Kara, Cedric and I made our way back through the crowd and out through the door. Once we were outside however, Kara hesitated.

"If you guys want to find Lee Jordan, go ahead. I'm going to find Jason."

I shrugged, knowing full well that Kara wouldn't exactly be approving of this sort of thing. "Go ahead, I'm not going to stop you. Do you want to meet back up for Dinner?"

Looking a bit surprised that we let her go so easily, Kara nodded, slowly at first but then more eagerly after it finally clicked on what she was about to do. Then, with a million thanks thrown our way, Kara dashed down the street like a dog in heat.

"I'd give it a month before they're snogging in the broom closet."

Cedric grinned, though the mention of 'snogging' and 'broom closet' together did seem to make his cheeks turn an interesting shade of pink. "Really? Summers has been talking about that girl in every practice since I introduced them."

Picking a random direction and going with it, I led us off in our search for Lee Jordan. Halfway into the first five minutes, I raised an eyebrow at my friend.

"And how does that lessen the chances of snogging?"

Cedric chuckled and I spotted the telltale heads of the Weasley Twins and pulled us off in that direction. At the sight of Jordan ducking into Zonkos, I quickened our pace.

"It doesn't." Cedric was practically jogging to keep up with me now. "I'd just put the odds at two weeks. Definitely not a month."

Stopping momentarily at the store entrance, I shot Cedric a challenging smirk. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

"Wanna bet?"

If anything, Cedric's grin just grew wider. "One Galleon?"

"Nah, that's boring. If I win you have to hold hands with Mikhail for a day."

Cedric's eyes widened so fast that it was hilarious. "You wouldn't . . ."

Still smiling, I made sure to give him the cheekiest wink possible. "I won't if you win."

"Fine, but if I win you have to . . ."

There was a long moment of suspense as Cedric racked his brain for something suitable. Finally he shot me a grin that was way more wicked than mine had been.

"You'll have to owe me a favor."