Chapter 10: Normal
When I found the compartment Colin and Ginny had chosen, to my relief Luna was already there, along a small boy sitting next to Colin I didn't know.
"Chelsea! This is Dennis! You got my letter of course about how he got a letter too this summer and is starting!" I briefly remembered opening a rather heavy letter then throwing it to the side when it wasn't the right handwriting.
"Of course Colin. You won't be seeing much of your brother this year I'm afraid. He's going to be a Ravenclaw." I smiled lightly at the small boy who was grinning as wide as his brother.
"Don't get excited Dennis, you're not going to Ravenclaw. You're going to be a Gryffindor like me!" Colin grabbed his camera case from the rack and before I could even sit down, the flash went off.
"You're just jealous that your little brother is going to be smarter then you." I smirked at Colin before sticking out my hand to the little boy. "Chelsea. Chelsea Snape."
The boy shook my hand once, as his eyes grew wide. "Can you help me with potions?" I couldn't help but laugh and nod in agreement. It appeared that Christmas had come early for the boy.
"What took you so long anyways, Chel? Luna beat you here and said she hadn't seen you yet." I turned towards Ginny, placing the most innocent smile I could muster on my face.
"Looking for Luna." I then turned to the blond girl staring into space. "Sorry Luna, I guess I just missed you." Luna shrugged and turned her gaze out the window.
"Bet you were just flirting with someone. Could it have been the handsome Hufflepuff you are so enamored with?" Ginny's words caught me by surprise. She was not supposed to know about that, no one was.
I wanted to tell her, gossip away about him late at night like she does about Potter but it was a secret need to be kept quiet. People would start to ask questions about the age difference, especially my father. It wouldn't just be the age difference. It would be the fact that I was spending time with a boy, in his eyes Colin was very much a girl, at all.
"What Hufflepuff?" I tried to stay calm, make my voice sound casual.
"Why, only Thomas Brody of course!" Before I could respond Ginny was on the floor bursting with laughter and I soon joined her. As she was only thinking of our fellow third year, I was comparing him to Cedric.
Where Cedric was handsome and cute, Brody was fat and pimpled. When Cedric was smart, Brody was as dumb as a toad. Most of all, where Cedric was kind and loving, Brody was quite simply rude.
Yet mostly, I laughed at my panic. Ginny hadn't known at all, she was only playing with me and I was calmed by that certain fact. I smiled as Colin joined in with our laughter, even Luna. It was simply the four of us once again, with a first year looking completely confused.
We were still laughing when I heard the slight knock on the compartment door. I looked to find a small boy standing behind the glass, one I assumed to be a first year. I waved him to open the door as I gathered myself once more.
"I'm looking for a Chelsea Snape." The boy's eyes circled around the compartment once before I put out my hand.
"That's me. And you are?"
"Nigel. Nigel Wespurt. I'm looking for you because your dad said you could help me out with a few things…" Nigel Wespurt, my ticket to secrecy, looked positively confused as he watched my friends.
"No problem. Let's go." I turned back to Ginny, with a small smile. "Save me a seat in the carriages alright? I just have some things to do." I didn't bother to wait for her to nod in response as I followed Nigel from the compartment.
"Mr. Diggory is waiting for you in a compartment he showed me. He told me to bring you there." I laughed as Nigel continued to walk forward without looking back. Only Cedric would plan everything so perfectly for us, for the time we could spend together.
The boy was small, dirty blond hair with a freckled face. He walked briskly, flipping through pages in a thin black notebook. With a quick glance over his shoulder I noticed the pages had three columns: employer, job, payment.
"I see it's not only Cedric who has bribed you to do things. The older students will just take advantage of you if you continue to let them do this." Nigel stopped walking suddenly at my teasing voice. He clamped the book shut, turning to face me.
"These are not bribes, they are investments. Wouldn't you like to be getting autographs of famous people, a few coins, assignment help for only a small job because someone else is too lazy to do it?"
I sighed in defeat. The boy's logic was sound.
We continued to walk in silence, for so long I was convinced we had accidently turned around and at any moment I would see the compartment with Ginny and the others.
"Here Ms. Snape." Nigel nodded his head towards a compartment I had walked past without glancing into. Cedric was leaning against the window, standing, with eyes closed. Softly, Nigel opened the door.
"If the train were to suddenly stop, you would topple over standing like that Cedric." His eyes opened quickly at my smirking tone and in two wide steps he wrapped me in his arms.
"Only been apart for no even half an hour and you two are like this." Nigel Wespurt laughed as Cedric and I turned to look at him. "Good luck keeping this a secret. Mr. Diggory, my payment for delivering your Juliet…."
"Her name is not Juliet, it's Chelsea." Cedric's voiced was laced with confusion and we both looked at the boy curiously.
"Romeo and Juliet? The famous play? You wizards are so weird sometimes." I had no idea what the boy was talking about; it simply sounded muggle to me. "Alright, just give me our deal."
Cedric reached into a bag sitting on the bench, extracting two boxes of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and a chocolate frog. The boy took it anxiously, while opening his black book to check off the row with Cedric's name.
"You say a word and I'll take double points from you every time I see you doing something wrong until you graduate." Nigel Wespurt nodded once and left the train compartment.
"Look at how well this worked out. The Prefects meeting was move until after dinner, so we get the whole train ride to ourselves." Cedric turned me to face him, pulling me closer. His fingers ran softly through my hair as I rested my head on his chest.
"I missed you so much this summer. Your letters only made me miss you more." I closed my eyes as his hands ran down my back and his breathing became deeper.
"Explain that to me?" His voice was light and calming.
"We never really talked much my first year, or most of second. It wasn't until you offered the four of us help in the library that day for exams that I ever really had a conversation with you. Then we kept finding each other to study. For the first few weeks I hadn't realized how use I was to being around you until I received your first letter Ced. Then you became all I could think about."
He was silent for a few minutes, the two of us just standing there happily in the middle of the compartment. Then he laughed. "I never should have written you then. You would have forgotten all about me and our dating lives could have gone on normally."
I jerked my head up from his chest, crossing my hands over my chest, as I looked him straight in the eyes. "Don't you dare say the Cedric Diggory! This can be normal! People hide stuff all the time! Remember last year when those seventh years got engaged on the last night, the ones in Gryffindor? No one even knew they liked each other!"
"Relax Chelsea, I didn't mean it like that. Whoever said normal was fun anyways?" One look at his eyes twinkling in the light coming in from the window let me forget everything he said, the same way his eyes twinkled each time in the library. "Don't you remember that I've told you that before?"
"Chel? Can you explain this chapter to me?" Ginny looked up hopefully from her textbook, shoving it towards me. It was open to the same page as mine. The same page I was hopelessly lost on.
"Sorry Ginny, I'm stuck too." I continued to flip through pages eagerly searching for a clue at decoding the textbook pages to no avail.
"If Chelsea can't figure it out we are all screwed!" Colin threw aside his book in exasperation and the rest of us closed ours as well.
For the first time I noticed the older student skimming through the books on the shelf behind me, the potions books. As Ginny let out another loud sigh he turned around. It was Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff fifth year and seeker for their team.
"Can I help you four with anything? I'm not very good at potions but if it's charms I could definitely help there."
A smile spread across Ginny's face as she handed him the textbook. "Yeah, its charms. I'm Ginny Weasley. That's Colin Creevy, Luna Lovegood and Chelsea Snape."
"If it isn't the teacher that hates me the most's daughter? You wouldn't mind putting in a good word for me, would you?" He smiled lightly as he pulled out the chair beside me to sit down.
"If only I had a knut for every time someone asked me that. Considering what you said earlier I assume he hates you because you can't brew a potion for your life." I managed a small smile as I continued to flip through the charms book.
"Alright, you explain this potion to me and I'll help you four with your charms work. Every time I make it, it turns forest green instead of navy." Diggory opened up the potions book in his hand and pointed to a potion I instantly recognized from helping my father the previous summer.
"You are most likely using minced asphswood instead of sliced. The regular spelling refers to minced asphswood but if you look closely you can see the two small dots above the second o. That means you need sliced." Diggory smiled before jotting down a note in the book's margins.
"Alright, let's see what I can do about this charms chapter. I do think I may need to use you as a resource in the future though."
"It's not very normal for a third year to be helping a fifth year study for exams." I laughed lightly as I saw a small twinkle in his eyes.
"Whoever said normal was fun?"
"How could I forget?" As I spoke, his cool lips brushed lightly against my cheek.
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