A/n: I do not own any Harry Potter copyrights.
Cedric's fire-spitting groupie just wasn't letting him off the field.
The dragon bit, spat and snarled, pushing back the tamers in a show that was nearly more exciting than the task itself. Well . . . nearly. The dragon tamers had enough stunners to fell Hagrid several times over. Slowly but surely, they were making ground.
What was entertaining, and somewhat worrying, about this wasn't actually the behavior of the dragon. No, I had expected her to act this way. It was the nature of the spell.
The fact that the tamers were acting up, and that Cedric had already received more than one bear hug . . . Well that was a bit more alarming.
Because love spell or not, Amortia was not supposed to be that strong.
Not that I had time to ponder that, exactly. The moment the dragon was finally well and fully stunned, Kara turned on me with a look I knew well.
I sighed and resigned myself to my fate. There was no escaping a Kara in 'gossip mode'.
"Alright, out with it. I know you know what Cedric did down there." The look she pinned me with all but screamed: 'Details, details, details!'
"Fine, fine. You want to know? That spell Cedric used is called Amortia, we found it in the library after Harry told him about the dragon. It's the-"
"Harry told Cedric?" Despite being the one who wanted the explanation in the first place, Kara'd still decided to interrupt. "But none of the champions were supposed to know. Who told Harry?"
"It is unsurprising. Victor knoo, I overhear Headmaster tell him."
Mikhail's interception made both of us jump. As he'd been eating his way through a whole pie, I'd assumed he was too preoccupied to eavesdrop. My mistake.
And the assumed fact that Mikhail was the only one listening in?
Also a mistake.
"Somebody told 'im? Well why didn't you say so? Dragons can only mean. . ."
Cue George.
"Hagrid. There's no one who knows those buggers better than Hagrid. Hey George, remember what Charlie told us? About that baby dragon Harry and them smuggled out the Astronomy Tower? What was his name again? Nathan? Or was it Nigel . . ."
Cue Fred.
And while it might have been interesting to listen to the quips of Fred and George . . . we just didn't have the time.
Though I hadn't noticed it with all the talking, now I could see that the judges were whispering frantically in their booth. Since Cedric had also been separated from his hulking mass of mystical lizard bodyguard, it didn't take a genius to see that we were running on a clock.
It wouldn't be long now until his scores were announced.
So rather than let the twins get too far into their reminiscing, I cleared my throat.
"Should I do this later?"
Surprisingly, it wasn't the Twins, Kara, or even Mikhail who decided to speak up.
"No, please continue. I found it interesting."
Summers, the self-proclaimed mute, had a deeper voice than I thought he did.
Admittedly, I was a bit thrown. The boy had never, in the full month since he'd started to shadow Kara, said a word to me. Other than the fact that he'd once grown a beard in an attempt to cross the age line, I didn't really know much about him either.
He'd just been there, like Kara's easy to forget shadow.
Out of sight, out of mind.
"Right . . . as I was saying, then. Amortia is the precursor spell to Amortentia, the love potion. Cedric was going to cast it on the dog he transfigured. It'd have made the dragon too enamored to focus on him stealing her egg. Or at least it would've, hadthe plan worked and he'd actually hit the thing. As you've probably already noticed, the spell rebounded. Instead of having a distracted dragon . . .
"Cedric somehow ended up playing house with it." Kara was no longer the cheerful gossiper, instead she sounded distant. It was a surefire sign that she'd put two and two together. As my friend looked slightly panicked, I'd say she'd picked up on exactly how close a call he'd had.
After all, if the spell had been weaker, or if the dragon had been just a bit less gentle in picking him up . . . Cedric could have easily lost his head in that task.
The mood didn't stay somber for long. Ever the odd ones out, the Weasley Twins found something else in my explanation to focus on.
"So what you're saying is, Diggory fought the dragon . . ."
"With the power of love?"
And then they both burst out laughing.
Well if there was one thing the books got right, it was the maturity of these two.
"Look," Summers spoke up, once again startling us all. "They're showing the scores."
He was right. The judges had stopped whispering. From a tent down below, Cedric was shoved out to see what we were all on the edges of our seats for. It was time for his results.
And though I was excited, I still couldn't help but frown at the sight of him.
Was that the infirmary tent?
Madame Maxime interrupted my thoughts with a raised wand. The giantess shot out a long strand of silver ribbon that spun for a moment before forming a number.
An eight.
"He vas likely marked down for missing spell, but it is still good." Mikhail commented through a mouthful of food. In the span of time since he last spoke, he had finished the pie. Now there was a whole loaf of bread to replace it.
Crouch shot out a seven . . . Dumbledore shot out a ten.
The number sent the crowd –well the Hogwarts' side anyway- into a frenzy. There was another round of nails on chalkboard screeching from behind us. The fangirls had decided to grace us all with their 'cheering'.
"Bloody hell-"George breathed. It was hard to tell what had shocked him more, the score or the screaming. Either way, he looked determined to be unimpressed. "Er . . . Just you watch, Harry'll do better."
"What do ya'know, boys? I guess Dumbledore likes the power of love." With the comments the boys were making earlier, I'd say they deserved how smug I sounded at that moment.
Their replies, both firmly in 'sod off' territory, made me smile.
The two remaining judges shot off their scores.
Bagman's was an eight. Karkaroff's was a . . .
"Six?!" Kara, along with the rest of our house, suddenly yelled in outrage. As she was far from a Quidditch fan, this was something I'd never heard from her before. "Oh, come on! He should've gotten at least a seven!"
I blinked away the shock of Kara getting worked up over anything other than a manicure and leaned over to poke her in the shoulder.
"Uh . . . Kara? It's alright, six isn't that bad. Besides, his total score is . . ." I paused to do the math. "39. Definitely not something to sneeze at."
Or maybe it was. Because, even as Kara let it drop with a frustrated grumble, I found that Cedric's final score didn't sit quite as well with me.
Had Cedric's score been as high in the books? Did helping him out . . . change something?
Unbeknownst to Kara, Mikhail, and practically everyone else, I found myself swallowing nervously at the thought.
Of course it had. I hadn't existed in the books.
I'd been so focused on helping a friend in need that I'd forgotten what I'd drilled into my head for months now. Cedric would never be just a friend. He was a character too.
Oh god, how could I be so stupid?
A second later and there was no longer any time to focus on my worries. Bagman was screaming Fleur into the game.
The rest of the Champions' tasks went exactly as well as I knew they would, something that helped ease my worries slightly. Fleur's skirt catching on fire, Krum managing to destroy his dragon's real eggs, they were both stark reminders of the things I hadn't changed. After my mess up with Cedric, this was very refreshing to see.
Yet, despite the familiarity of the action being reassuring, none of it was anything I really wanted to see.
No, I had other worries, worries that were firmly rooted in the tent I'd seen Cedric emerge from. There was only one reason I didn't run off to the infirmary the moment I had a chance.
The Twins weren't letting me leave.
They'd told me 'we're not going to let you run off', and translated it into 'you can't go anywhere without us'. Until they wanted to go, I wasn't going anywhere. Given what was going on currently, I somehow doubted that'd be anytime soon.
Harry's match, the last match, was still up in the air.
And no matter how horrible of a pun it was . . .
"Oh great Merlin, look at him go!"
Harry was in the air, twisting around molten jets of fire with nothing more than a broomstick. Sure, that broomstick was a Firebolt, but the avid Quidditch lover in me was still out and shouting nonetheless.
This match, more than any of the others, was the one that had me putting my worries on the back burner. As frazzled as I was, loosening up and just shouting like a fan was something I desperately needed.
So while I was still upset, I allowed myself to get as worked up about the action as everybody else.
"That was a Meruvian Barrel Twist!" I cried in near disbelief as Harry did a neat roll around the stream of fire. "Did you guys see that? He- No! Do a feint to the left, the tail is-"
Harry swerved too late to avoid it, the Horntail's spiked tail slashed and hit. His shoulder was bleeding. It wasn't bad but it still could be enough to affect him, to affect his grip.
I bit my lip.
Any player worth his spit knew that grip was everything when it came to Quidditch.
"You know about the Meruvian Barrel Twist?" There was genuine surprise on Fred's face.
Even George looked thrown. "You know about Quidditch?"
"Yeah," I replied casually, more focused on the match than on them. Harry was circling now, keeping far above the dragon's head as he worked out a plan. "I like Quidditch, sometimes I even play."
"Y-you . . . But what position?" Fred stammered. The fact that he was so flabbergasted probably would've bugged me had I not been so focused.
What on Earth is so mind boggling about me being a fan?
"We have to play sometime." There was a certain look to George's eyes.
"Sure, whatever. Now shhhh, Harry's doing something."
And indeed he was. No longer circling, the Gryffindor had now taken to darting in random directions around the dragon's head. He was too far for her to really get at and too high to blast down with fire. It took me awhile, but eventually I began to see what the boy wonder was trying to do.
"He's trying to get her into the air . . ." My eyes went wide. I'd just realized exactly what Harry'd have to do in order for a flying dragon to be a viable strategy.
Out on the field, the dragon decided she'd had enough. She went up and Harry went down, the broom tilting, tilting, until suddenly Harry was plummeting straight into a freefall.
The crowd gasped, some even screamed.
Waiting until his glasses nearly brushed the ground, the youngest champion in history pulled out of his nosedive and straight under the dragon's claws. By the time he was slow enough to see, there was already a shiny egg being held out to the crowd.
That was a . . . Harry just did a . . .
"That's our seeker!" The Twins cried as they leapt straight out of their seats. Everyone of Hogwarts, Gryffindor or not, cheered right along with them. The crowd of screaming teenagers was so massive it was impressive.
"LOOK AT THAT!" Bagman was yelling. "WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT! OUR YOUNGEST CHAMPION TIES AS THE QUICKEST TO GET HIS EGG! WELL, THIS IS GOING TO SHORTEN THE ODDS ON MR. POTTER!"
"What? What's going on? What was that?" Kara demanded, annoyed to be out of the loop. She squinted at Harry like she was trying to figure him out. "Did he do something important? Some sort of crazy Quidditch move?"
"That . . ."I was stunned, too stunned to speak, move, or do anything but stare. The hardest move in Quidditch history had seemed so easy in Harry's hands.
".. . That was a Wronski Feint."
oOoOoOoOo
When I pulled back Cedric's curtain in the infirmary tent, the first thing I did was make a beeline for where he sat on a bed. My worries had come back in full force as soon as the students were released from the stands. Now that I could see him looking decidedly alright, the most I could do was smile out of sheer relief.
I didn't look down as I went to him, of course I didn't. Why would I? It wasn't like there was a reason for him to be in the infirmary in the first place.
My foot caught on something grainy, I slipped . . .
And then a great deal of things happened at once.
Cedric's panicked face became all I could focus on, all I could think about. Everything else, from Madame Pomfrey to the Twins talking to Harry outside . . . Nothing mattered anymore, it was just so faded.
Somewhere beyond me, someone shouted. It was like listening underwater.
Cedric shouted too, a crisp "No!"
His voice was impossibly enchanting.
Had he always sounded so beautiful?
"What? I don't sound . . ." Cedric looked horrified, only he also looked angelic. His face entranced me far more than the fact that I'd just spoken aloud. My own embarrassment seemed so insignificant now.
And though I knew, knew that I shouldn't be like this, that I shouldn't be sliding onto his bed and nuzzling into the crook of his arms . . .
I . . . I just don't care.
Running one hand along the bare skin of Cedric's arm, I tousled the other in his hair. The details of how I'd gotten to this position were fuzzy. A finger was run along the curve of his cheek. I smiled serenely at the rich color I found there.
Had he always been so red?
"Julia! Snap out of it!"
"Snap out of what?" I murmured into the warm skin below his ear, skin that was quickly becoming hotter with each breath I took. "I like where I am just fine."
"Do something!" He shouted, though this time it was not at me. Vaguely, I knew that Cedric was talking to the voices I could barely hear, only once again I couldn't quite bring myself to either care or listen. Any voice that didn't belong to him was unimportant.
There was a pause, and then . . .
"What do you mean you can't step over the line?!"
The voices began shouting again, barely whispering things that I knew I should recognize. Simple phrases, repeated over and over again until my subconscious remembered what they were.
Spells, they were casting spells.
Just like that, I began to hear them again.
"Fin-"
"Wingar-"
"Accio!"
Where the spells before had no effect, this one had my arm jerking out of Cedric's hair violently. As the hairs I pulled out went floating to the ground, suddenly all the voices were shouting the same thing.
"Accio Julia!"
"Accio Julia Whitman!"
"Cynthia!" Cedric supplied randomly, making me blink. He knew my middle name? "Try it! Julia Cynthia Whitman!"
"Accio Julia Cynthia Whitman!"
And then I was flying.
Propelled by sheer spell power, I was ripped from Cedric and sent flying through the air. I screamed, but not for my own safety. I was far too concerned with losing Cedric to care about something like that.
The screaming cut off, the obsessive yearning stopped, and I could hear again. By the time I slammed into a chest of a Weasley Twin, I was reeling with the fact that I was, once again, fully me.
I was also fully horrified.
"Oh Merlin, oh bloody Merlin. What have I done?" All it took was one look at the crowd I stood in, at Fred, George, Madame Pomfrey, and Cedric. Reality set in like the weight of the world.
"It's not your fault dear." Madame Pomfrey said kindly even as her wand waved like a scanner around me. Apparently finding nothing wrong, she let it drop. "Mr. Diggory's spell was stronger than he expected, I think. Had to put a spell line around the poor dear until Professor Snape returns with the cure."
I'd just barely registered the words 'spell line' before my eyes darted to the trail of pale sand surrounding Cedric's bed. There was a scuff where I'd slipped.
That made me seduce Cedric.
"I . . . I think I need to go."
"Julia," Cedric, despite still being redder than a cherry, looked concerned. "Don't be embarrassed, it was an honest mistake. We're not going to-"
"Let her go mate." I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before, but the Twin who had caught me still hadn't let go. His arms wrapped protectively around my middle. "She's been through a lot, just now."
"Right," The other Twin agreed with a cheeky grin. His hand dropped on my shoulder. "Besides, we still have something to show her, don't we George?"
"That we do, Fred."
I blushed, though I don't know why. Whatever the Twins had planned had to be better than . . . well, than this. How in Merlin's name had I been so stupid?! I knew there was something wrong with the spell! I bloody knew it! It was the reason I'd marched into the tent in the first place.
And then I'd made a mistake . . . and then I . . .
Oh bloody merlin, am I crying?
Tears streamed down my cheeks for no other reason but sheer frustration. I fled the tent.
"J-Julia! Wait!"
"Oi! Whitman!"
There was no stopping me once I'd started running. I bolted straight past a startled Harry and Ron –probably finally working out their differences- and straight on to the forest. There was only one reason I didn't continue on past Hogsmeade and beyond. Well, two reasons actually.
Two redheaded reasons that tackled me before I could get that far.
"Whitman! Whit- Ooof!" The twin that I'm pretty sure was George buckled under my punch.
The other one grabbed my shoulders and pinned me to the ground.
"Fred, I'm pretty sure whatever you guys have planned can wait till tomorrow. In case you haven't noticed, I've just experienced the worst 20 seconds of my life. If you really need me, you can just leave a note on the rock I'm about to crawl under."
Fred didn't let me go, he just chuckled. The git probably found my sarcastic side funny.
"Or you can let us show you what we wanted to show you."
"Right," George, though still a little raspy, wasn't wheezing quite as much as before. "We'll give you the special Weasley treatment. Guaranteed to make you forget about nearly snogging Diggory or your money back."
I rolled my eyes but still allowed them to roll me to my feet. Somehow the Twins strange methods were actually working. I felt . . . better.
"Pssh, like I'd pay you."
The Twins shared a grin, correctly reading my quip for what it was. I was giving in.
Why? Because they were right. For someone who'd already replayed the – and what will be forever be dubbed as- 'incident' several times over in the span of our conversation, I needed their distraction.
Badly.
With another grin and a 'well, hurry up then', I let the brothers lead me onto a different path. Still in the forest, but no longer running straight in like I had done. To my immense confusion, we seemed to be trekking the back way around the arena. Or maybe 'sneaking' would be the better word.
The brothers had fallen into what I could only describe as 'stealth mode'. Following them to what I suddenly realized was the Judge's Tent, I had an epiphany.
Am I going to help these two pull a prank?
Breaking through the brush, we were suddenly witness to a very odd scene.
There was Bagman . . .
There was Bubbles . . .
And there was Bagman running screaming past us as my pet bombarded him with dozens of steaming red letters.