Cho Chang knew better than to wake me before the last possible second, so when she ripped the pillow from under my head that grey morning in late September and hit my face with it, I hoped for her sake that it was for something important.
"Wa'up. Roga wahsa prakiss."
"Whassat?"
"Roga…" she stopped to yawn and decided our incoherent conversation would be easier for her to participate in if she sat on my bed. "pra…ahhhh, practice."
"No," I muttered, taking my pillow back. I rolled over, buried my face in it, and closed my eyes again. Judging by the pinkish grey sky outside, I had an easy two hours of sleep left before my daily routine of rolling out of bed, throwing on the first uniform I touched, patting my hair into place, thanking the universe for giving me curly hair so I didn't have to brush it every morning, running out of my room to get to the Great Hall and shovel some kind of food in my face in record time, and rushing off to class.
"Yes," Cho insisted, grabbing my arm and shaking me weakly. "Roger says."
"Roger can eat my socks."
"You're disgusting. Come on." She tugged on my arm, so I tugged back until it was free.
"We 'av practice toniiiiiiight," I moaned into my pillow."
"If you really want to lay around all day, I'll just tell the team to hold practice here."
"That won't work. No boys allowed."
"You think I don't know how to outsmart that?"
Disgusting thoughts of Cho and Cedric immediately flew into my head, and I sat bolt upright in bed. "CHO! That's disgusting!" To further show my disapproval, I grabbed my pillow and hit her with it.
"Oh, good! You're awake! Let's go!"
Merlin, how I hated her sometimes.
"Oy, Davies, do you know what time it is?" I bleated as Cho and I slumped onto a bench.
"I know perfectly well. It's time to practice."
"Wrong," I shook my head. "It's time for me to kill you for getting my arse out of bed, and if that is a drawing board, I will make your death a slow one."
"Rogerrrrrrr," Cho whined. "You didn't wake us up to talk about strategieeeeees, did you?"
"Both of you, quiet," he ordered, pointing between us with his wand. "And no whispering amongst yourselves and getting all giggly." He knew us too well, although I thought we snickered rather than giggled. "As you all know, our first match is going to be, erm, challenging."
"Challenging?" Rufus Bradley snorted. "We're playing Hufflepuff!"
"We can't possibly win," Patrick Chambers agreed. Davies glared at his fellow chasers, but that didn't stop them. One thing we had learned over the years as teammates was that once Bradley and/or Chambers started, they could not be stopped.
"If we lose, we've lost the only match we stand a reasonable chance at and are totally thrown out of the cup. If we win, we've just beaten a reeling Hufflepuff team that the entire school wants to see do well because of the turmoil they're going through." Bradley shook his head.
"We lose just by walking on the field. And how are we even supposed to play them? Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs have to stick together. It's all about the Gryffindors and Slytherins now; if we don't help each other, no one else will even remember us," Chambers added.
I tried to make it a point to start all my mornings with such pleasant thoughts.
"That's enough out of you," Roger warned. "All of you. It's pointless to say this season is no different than all the others, because we all know it is different. But we are Ravenclaws, and Ravenclaws do not give up. Hufflepuff doesn't want to win because we took pity on them. They'll be playing at the top of their game. It might not feel like it to us, but they'll be doing everything they can, and they deserve to play a team that won't play down to them. That's how we support them. We play them with respect. Fair?"
Cho was crying. I shared wary looks with Chambers, Bradley, Jules Huffington, and Lowell Parker. Jules, who sat closest to Roger with her beater's bat between her legs so she could rest her chin on it as she tried desperately to stay awake, spoke for us.
"Fair."
Roger nodded at her. "Alright, then. Cho, could you please calm down?"
"I-I-I'm f-fine," Cho blubbered. Lowell rolled his eyes and mouthed something to Jules, who nodded. Lowell and Jules were never particularly fond of Cho. Well, that wasn't fair. They loved Cho when we hung out as a team. We all loved each other when it was just our team, but some of our "outside" friends really irritated our other teammates. Bradley and Chambers were the typical perfect students of Ravenclaw that were driven insane by the lack of organization that my Weasley twins brought to homework. Jules's boyfriend was a Slytherin who was actually rather nice, but he did have quite a disdain for muggle-born students, which meant that Lowell, former reserve player and currently a starting beater, stayed the hell away from the couple even though Jules was easily his best friend on the team. And Jules and Lowell absolutely hated Cho's giggly band of friends. I never was a big fan of them, either, but I was much more tolerant of Cho's gaggle than they were. Now that most of them seemed to have abandoned her, though, instead of helping her deal with Cedric's death, they were noticeably kinder to her in the presence of others.
"If you say so," Roger shrugged. We simply did not have time to wait for Cho to calm down. Well, we did, but Roger didn't. No, he had to spend the next hour regaling us with all the new strategies he had cooked up over the summer. Not that many of us stayed awake to listen to them. This was the kind of thing I imagined Angelina going through under Oliver Wood's reign, but Roger had always been a reasonable captain. Evening and weekend practices. Never mornings. Obviously, the match at the end of the following month was getting to him more than he let on.
"Alright, then," Roger announced. "Let's go try some of these."
"Woah, wait," Lowell held his hands up. "Right now?"
"Well, of course, right now," Roger waved dismissively. "When else would we do them?"
"Wait," Jules held her hand up. "Not that I don't love breaking a sweat before breakfast, but, Cho would you shut up for a bloody second," this only succeeded in making Cho sob louder (I patted her gently on the back), "but we're barely awake. Why not wait until this evening so nobody gets killed?"
Roger rolled his eyes. "Because, the sooner we start learning them, the sooner we'll have them down for the Hufflepuff match."
"Er, that's a lovely plan," Lowell frowned. "But…doesn't that seem a bit extreme? This isn't exactly the match that will decide the cup, is it? We can afford to wait until this evening to run them."
"Yeah," I nodded, "at least for safety's sake, Roger."
Roger rolled his eyes. "We will be safe. We need all the edge we can get, and you're all excellent out there. You wouldn't be on the team otherwise."
"Well, there's a vote of confidence," Lowell wrinkled his nose. "Look, I'm not running your patterns right now just so we can even more thoroughly embarrass a team in total ruins."
"Could be worse," Jules grumbled. "He could have dragged you out of bed to bestow this honor upon you. OH WAIT!"
"Oy," Bradley intervened, "c'mon, do you want to win or not? It's still a match, Hufflepuff or otherwise."
Chambers shook his head. "It's the principal, mate. They're not going to play their best, and it's not fair to beat a team that isn't at the top of their game. Not to mention that Hufflepuff is being led by bloody Zacharias Smith, who couldn't lead a bunch of monkeys if he had a barrel of bananas."
"That boy is such a twat," Lowell muttered.
"He's not a twat!" Jules shook her head. "You just don't know him." It was the first real opinion she had voiced. I assumed that, like me, she saw the points of both sides of the playing Hufflepuff argument. Or maybe, also like me, she just wanted to go back to bed and didn't have the energy to shout like the rest of them.
"Don't defend him," Lowell snorted, and Chamber shook his head at Jules in disgust. "Just because he's nicer than the Slytherins you spend your time with doesn't mean he's a living saint."
"We can't play down to them!" Bradley insisted before Jules could give Lowell an earful (wisely). "The last thing they want is to be mollycoddled. Think if it had been Roger, yeah? I'd hate it if everyone walked on eggshells around us."
Lowell shook his head, "Yeah, I want to play them fair, and yeah, I want to win, but that doesn't mean I think we should fly brand new patterns as the bloody sun is coming up."
"That's not what I'm suggesting!" Roger protested.
"Yeah, actually, it kind of is," I pointed out. Jules nodded as she pulled her strawberry blonde hair back into a loose ponytail.
"Look," she yawned, "The strategies are great. But if we fly this morning, someone's absolutely going to get killed, seeing as we all seem to hate each other anyway," she shot a glare at Lowell. "Let's call it quits for this morning, spend today calming down so we don't lose our heads, and have our practice tonight, eh? Without the bickering."
Roger studied the dissent in the room solemnly. Cho was still sniffling beside me. Lowell and Chambers couldn't have been more obviously fuming unless actual steam was rising from them. Bradley had slid away from Chambers and crossed his arms, disagreeing with the "principals" his best friend defended. Jules muttered to herself as she packed her things, intent to leave with or without Roger's permission.
"Yeah," he muttered finally. "It's nearly breakfast anyway. I'll see you all before dinner."
FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGF
"There they are!" Fred beamed as I peeled away from Roger and Cho to drop into a seat at the Gryffindor table. "How was practice?"
"I got hit in the face with twelve, count them," I slammed a pile of orangey-red leaves on the table, "twelve leaves. In an hour. I hate quidditch."
"You love quidditch," George muttered as he counted the leaves. "There are only nine here."
"I brushed one off, ripped one to shreds and danced on its remains, and shoved the third down Roger's pants."
"Wwwwwhy?" Angie asked me slowly.
"For making me practice on a beautiful day. I had every intention of doing homework by the lake this evening, but instead I had to battle leaf demons."
"Doing homework?" Fred made a face. "Why would you do that? It's Friday."
"If I do my homework now, I can finish it through the end of term and not have to worry about it later!" I explained. Fred and George exchanged smirks.
"You are such a Ravenclaw," Lee Jordan shook his head. "Oy, what's wrong with Cho?"
I spun around to look at the Ravenclaw table where Cho Chang sat alone, sniffling into her pumpkin juice. "Nothing," I answered. "Probably just thinking about Cedric. Everyone pretty much clears out when she gets that way. Gotten fed up with her crying all the time."
"I've noticed that," Katie nodded. "Burst into tears in divination the other day because Trelawney told her she had suffered a great loss. Like she needs the Sight to know that! It's not even in the future! Iknow she's suffered a great loss. All of bloomin' England knows she's suffered a great loss."
"Listen," I pointed at Katie with my bread roll, "Sybil Trelawney doesn't deserve half the ridicule you people give her. The Sight doesn't just work on command, you know."
Lee snorted. "Every year, she tells a new student that they'll meet some horrible, grisly fate. Or do you forget how she screamed in terror when she looked at your tea leaves our first class?" Yes, Lee, I remembered that quite well. Apparently, you did not, or you would recall my reaction to it.
"Alright," I rolled my eyes. "So, she likes dramatics. Sometimes, she can be a crock of shit, yeah, but she's not the biggest crock of shit to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts."
"Umbridge," George grunted as he stabbed a slice of ham.
"Oh, crock of shit doesn't even begin to cover it with her. She's a…"
Angie threw her hand over my mouth as Umbridge herself walked by, because, of course, George hadn't been finishing my thought; he'd been warning me that she was about to walk by. I glared at Umbridge's robes as she scanned the Great Hall with her nauseating smile. I still felt sick to my stomach when I thought about the scars on my best friends' hands. The pure terror on the young faces of the first year students as they studied their hands by the dying firelight of the Ravenclaw common room made me shake with anger every time I saw it just like I had in her first class. I hated that woman. I hated her as we read about defensive spells we weren't allowed to use. I hated her bright pink robes. I hated the kittens that meowed incessantly as she made me sit in her office just to "discuss my emotional state" in which I said nothing more than yes and no as she spewed overly elaborate phrases that made no sense. I hated her fake smiles and her "hem-hem"s and her bulging eyes and her toady face. I had never truly hated anyone before, but I hated her right to her very core. Which, by the way, was purely evil. Just for clarification.
When she was firmly seated at the professor's table, Fred and George turned to us and leaned forward conspiratorially. "Did you hear what Harry's planning?" George asked. Angie, Katie, Alicia, and I all shook our heads. Lee shoved food in his mouth and probably didn't hear.
"Some kind of defense club," Fred picked up. "Ron told us about it. Since that old bag isn't teaching us a bloody thing…"
"…and Harry's actually had to use real spells in real situations…"
"…they want to take the learning underground, so to say. Ron says there's going to be a meeting in Hogsmeade next weekend."
"The first trip?" Katie made a face. "But I had…"
"Cancel your date with Zacharias Smith," Angie rolled her eyes. "He's a twat."
"He's not a twat!" Katie defended. "He's sweet."
"No," I shook my head. "He's a twat. Everyone thinks he's a twat. You know, he's captain of the Hufflepuff quidditch team this year, and even they all think he's a twat. You'll never find a quidditch player that will openly ridicule a fellow teammate, but if you talk to them long enough, you get the basic idea. Which is that he is a twat, if you were wondering."
"Hey, Mel," Fred grinned, "do you think he's a twat?" I cracked a smile.
"Did he even ask you out?" Alicia questioned. "Or is this a date you've dreamed up? Because I don't remember you mentioning this before."
"Oh," Katie turned a shade of red I had never seen anyone turn before, which surprised me considering how many gingers I willingly spent time with, "be quite, Alicia. I was just…we talk so much in the library about transfiguration….and…"
"Maybe he'll be at the meeting, too," Angie smiled sympathetically. "You never know."
"What do you think? D'you want to go?" George asked. It sounded as if the question was aimed to the whole group, and everyone else nodded and murmured their confirmation, but I knew by his eyes that he was specifically asking me. Going rogue was absolutely my style. I was all about dancing on the line between what was allowed and what wasn't, and this technically fell on the safe side of that line. But if Miss High Inquisitor caught us, there would be a hell to pay unlike any other. Her special quill would hardly compare. She'd probably throw ust up in front of the whole Wizengamot just because she could, maybe even make us spend time in Azkaban. If she didn't just kill us, which I hardly put past her, though I would never tell that to anyone else. They would probably just laugh at my dramatics.
A good boy, pure of heart, well-loved by his peers, skilled at magic, and a true representative of the qualities we look for in a young wizard lost his life long before his time.
My jaw clenched as her words replayed in my head. She didn't know a damn thing about Cedric. Ceddy was loyal and good and true. He treated Cho like a queen. He helped me with my herbology papers when George wasn't around. He directed first year students that got lost and always had time to pick up the books of someone who had just been tripped. He would laugh at the worst of jokes just so the teller didn't feel like a failure. When Harry fell off his broom because of the dementors the year that Sirius Black escaped, Cedric wanted to replay the game because he knew it wasn't fair to catch the snitch when the other seeker had fainted. He asked everyone to stop wearing those Potter Stinks badges during the triwizard (mine was carefully tucked away somewhere safe). He was a good man. Umbridge didn't deserve to even think about him.
…in these times, you must ask yourself this: Is this what my dear friend would want?
Shows how much that bint knew about Cedric Diggory.
"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds absolutely brilliant," I nodded, and George beamed at me before attacking the roast beef.
This was exactly what Cedric Diggory would want.
Thanks you guys so much for reading and reviewing. It really means a lot that you're sticking with my story! Next chapter: Meeting in the Hogshead