Chapter 9: The name of the game

I didn't really have much to say during dinner. Annabelle and I talked about our holidays – her fling with a French witch on her family's trip to Paris and my stint at the Quidditch World Cup – but I didn't much feel like talking. I just wanted to go up to my dorm, turn on the radio, and fall asleep, but my mind was too distracted for sleep. Every time I picked my eyes up from my plate, I scanned the Great Hall for Daniel, but I never saw him. I saw Fred and George chatting with their brother Ron and his friends, as well as Cedric, Gethin, and Annamaria, but no sign of Daniel.

Before I could take a bite of blueberry pie (my favorite dessert), I heard a booming voice from the front of the Great Hall.

"Now that we are all fed and watered," said Professor Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster, "I must once more ask for your attention, while I give out a few notices."

He then continued to talk about the four hundred and thirty-seven forbidden objects that were banned from the castle this year (across the room, I could see Fred and George's smiles fading as the list went on), but I sort of zoned out. Where the hell was Daniel? I thought. I don't think we've ever had a fight like that, and if I don't make it right, he'll never speak to me again, much less fight with me.

Suddenly, my ears perked up.

"It is also my painful duty to inform you that the Inter-House Quidditch Cup will not take place this year," said Professor Dumbledore slowly, as if he already anticipated the verbal backlash that followed from the student body. Fred and George were yelling 'that's rubbish!' across the hall, and Harry Potter was shaking his head furiously. I craned my head down the table to see my brother, head in his hands, making his disappointment clear as day.

"Is he joking?" Annabelle whispered to me, shaking my arm.

I shook my head. "Don't think so. Have you heard anything about the special event happening this year?"

Her eyes widened, then shook her head. We both turned back to face Dumbledore.

"This is due to an event that will be starting in October, and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teachers' time and energy — but I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts —"

Suddenly, the doors of the Great Hall flew open with a loud BANG!

A tall, heavyset man in a ragged black cloak and a walking stick came limping into the hall. Suddenly, a flash of lightning filled the ceiling with white light. The sounds of students whispering were drowned out by the loud, awkward clunk! of thestranger's walking stick.

His face was wrinkled and scarred everywhere – his chin was covered in three little scars, but a larger scar stretched from his hairline all the way down to his upper lip, taking up half his face. When he turned his head, I could see his eyes, or rather eye: one eye was dark and small, and the other was bright blue and peering all around the room, rolling all around in his eye socket. When he finally reached Dumbledore, he held out a heavily scarred hand, which the headmaster shook.

"May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" said Dumbledore. "Professor Moody."

I turned to Annabelle. "I know him! My cousin's an Auror, Moody trained her. She says he's scary, but damn good at what he did. She says he filled half the cells in Azkaban back in the day."

Back up front, Moody took a seat next to Professor Snape, who looked less than thrilled to be sitting next to the hulking former Auror. I could see Moody digging into his cloak to pull out what looked like a hip flask and taking a long, drawn-out drink, his eye twitching as he did so.

Dumbledore turned back to us.

"As I was saying, we are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event that has not been held for over a century," he said, pausing for dramatic effect. "It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year."

"You're JOKING!" exclaimed Fred, loud enough for the entire student body to hear.

Suddenly, the Great Hall burst into fits of laughter. I didn't even try to conceal my giggling. Leave it to Fred Weasley to draw attention to himself at a moment like this.

Dumbledore gazed down at Fred through his half-moon glasses, trying to stifle his own laughter.

"The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of magic," he explained. "A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks. The schools took it in turns to host the tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities — until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued."

I gasped, looking for Cedric at the Hufflepuff table. When I caught his eye, I made a face that said, 'I'm entering.' I could see him laugh and roll his eyes from across the room.

Dumbledore then explained how the Ministry of Magic was closely regulating the tournament this year, as to avoid adding to a centuries-long death toll, but I could only think about entering. If I could've stood up and volunteered right then, I would have.

"The heads of Beauxbatons Academy and the Durmstrang Institute will be arriving in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween," Dumbledore continued. "Eager though I know all of you will be to bring the Triwizard Cup to Hogwarts, we have agreed to impose an age restriction on contenders this year. Only students who are of age — that is to say, seventeen years or older — will be allowed to put forward their names for consideration. I will personally be ensuring that no underage student hoodwinks our impartial judge into making them Hogwarts champion."

The only verbal backlash to that rule came from none other than Fred and George.

"The students from the other schools will be here in a few weeks! What d'you think they'll be like?" Annabelle asked me.

"I dunno," I said, my voice far away. "I think I'm going to enter. I'm going to put my name in."

Her eyes widened. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I'm seventeen, and as far as I can tell, that's the only criteria," I replied. "For all you know, you're looking at the next Triwizard Tournament Champion!"

"If you do win, you think you might split the thousand Galleons with your nearest and dearest?" Jermaine Pucey called over to me as we got up from the Slytherin table.

I smirked. "Since when are you my nearest and dearest, Pucey? I know you only want me for my money!"

He laughed. Jermaine was my first boyfriend. We'd dated for about three months in fourth year, before breaking up at Christmas. Since then, we'd actually become rather close friends.

"You'd have to be an idiot to want Cass Malfoy for anything other than her money," I heard Trevor Nott say. I turned and raised an eyebrow.

"And you'd have to be an idiot to want Trevor Nott for…well, for any reason, really," I replied, sticking my tongue out at him. Annabella and Jermaine laughed out loud and followed me, leaving Trevor behind.

As we headed for the dungeons and the Slytherin common rooms, I couldn't help but feeling light and happy. It felt really great to have the two people who knew me the best in all of Slytherin House back at my side again. I was worried that they'd hear the story of what happened with Daniel from someone with the same ugly views as my family and desert me, but I was glad to be wrong.

When we reached the common room door, Jermaine uttered the password.

"Pure-blood!" he said. That password always made me cringe.

The door flew open and we walked in.

I had never been more thrilled to be back in the Slytherin common room. Unlike the other common rooms, ours was underneath the castle, and our windows gave us a front-row seat to what lurked beneath the Black Lake, giving the room its signature green tint. Black couches and chairs with silver buttons sat in front of a roaring fireplace, and the mahogany tables and chairs were covered with wizard's chess boards, water goblets, and other expensive-looking trinkets.

I ran for the largest couch, pushing past Jermaine and Annabelle to throw myself onto it, laughing as I did. They followed suit, dogpiling on top of me as our laughter filled the whole room.

"I'm surprised you've even still got friends, being a lover of Mudbloods and all," I heard a voice say. Bloody hell, really?

Annabelle, Jermaine, and I all turned around. "Considering you feel so emboldened to call people who are different than you by disgusting names with such reckless abandon, it is I who is surprised that you still have friends, little brother," I replied, looking him up and down. His hair was longer and almost white, and his robes looked brand new. My mother probably treated him to all new things over the summer, since she didn't have a daughter to spoil anymore.

Draco smirked, looking to his cronies Crabbe and Goyle for backup. They offered none, of course.

"You did tell them, didn't you? Don't want to keep secrets or tell lies, do we? I've already seen how that's gotten you in trouble," he shot back. I glared at him, my mind racing. I felt suddenly overcome with the need to put him in his place. Annabelle and Jermaine tried to restrain me but failed. I climbed over the back of the couch, lunged at Draco, but instead went for the table. I stood on it, as I'd been wont to do when I was intoxicated.

"Hello, hi, can I have a quick word with everyone?" I called out to the common room. Everyone who was lounging or talking quietly or going to their dormitories had now turned to look at me.

"Isn't it a bit early to do a dance for us, Malfoy?" Trevor called out, a low laughter filling the room.

I stuck my tongue out at him again. "Get lost, Nott. Anyway, now that I've got most everyone's attention, my darling little brother wants me to tell you all something."

I looked down at him. He looked stunned that I'd actually done it.

"At the end of last term, my parents kicked me out of the house," I said. "Can you believe that? They kicked me out because I'm dating – or at least, I was dating, I think we broke up today – a Muggle-born boy. That's right! I'm not a blood purity-obsessed bigot like they are, or like most of you and your families are. That said, if you've got a problem with me because I don't baselessly hate Muggles or Muggle-born wizards and witches, this is your warning to just…stay the hell away from me!"

I looked around. Everyone was staring at me. I'd been known to do outlandish things in this common room, but I was usually drunk out of my mind when I did them.

I smiled. "Good, that's settled. Everyone, back to your knitting!"

I jumped off the table and walked back to the couch, sitting back down between a bewildered Jermaine and Annabelle.

"Now you can't say I'm a liar, Draco," I called, not even looking over my shoulder. "Oh, and I meant what I said: stay the hell away from me."

I woke up the next morning with a knot in my stomach. I needed to find Daniel. Today.

I tumbled out of bed and hunted for a pair of black denim jeans and my dark green jumper, the one I stole from the shop the day I met Tonks. I tucked the jumper into the front of my jeans, tied my shoes (a pair of steel-toe boots from a south London thrift shop), stuck my wand in my pocket, and headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

I wandered down to the Ravenclaw table, where Daniel was sitting with Cho and another student I didn't recognize. I braced myself for whatever was coming my way.

"Hey, Dan," I said, so quietly he didn't even hear me.

Cho noticed I was standing there and smiled, reaching across the table to get Dan's attention. When he looked up and realized it was me standing there, his smiled faded.

"Cass, hi," he muttered. "Is there something you want?"

I blinked. "Yeah, actually. I want to talk. Now, if you can."

He looked back at Cho, who was suddenly very interested in her breakfast plate. He looked back at me and exhaled.

"Yeah, alright," he said evenly. "Where'd you want to go?"

I smiled weakly. "Let's just go for a walk."

He nodded, then followed me out of the Great Hall. As we headed for the courtyard, I saw Fred walking and talking animatedly with Angelina Johnson, a Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He tried to catch my eye, but I couldn't look at him.

"Where are we going?" he asked me, clearly exasperated. I whipped around.

"Where did we always go last year?" I asked flatly. That shut him up.

A few minutes later, we were sitting on the edge of the lake in silence. The waters were deep blue, almost black, and looked rather peaceful. Dan and I would come down here on weekends and watch the sunrise, skip stones, or have picnics in the afternoons. It was here that we wrestled in the lake after he pretended to throw my wand in the water, and where we had our very first kiss.

Daniel broke the silence.

"So…what did you want to talk about?" he asked quietly.

I sighed, my eyes focused on the water.

"I wanted to talk about what I said yesterday."

"Cass, you really don't- "

"Dan, I feel really awful about it," I said. "I didn't intend for it come out the way it did. There was probably a better, more productive way to have that conversation, and I'm so sorry. I wish I could take it back, but- "

"Cass, no you don't."

I turned to face him. He smiled sadly.

"You don't wish you could take it back," he said plainly.

My brow furrowed. "If you're still going to bring up this summer- "

"Cass, why didn't you write?"

Now I was mad. "I already told you! I didn't think it was safe to write when I was living under bridges and stealing from Muggles and – "

"No, Cass," he said, shaking his head. "I mean when you moved into your aunt and uncle's house. Why didn't you write then?"

Silence. I put my head in my hands. I knew the reason why I hadn't written. I'd thought about it the night Tonks and I returned from the Cup, but because it was ugly and uncomfortable, I pushed it away.

"I don't know, Daniel. I really don't have an answer for you."

Again, he smiled that same, sad smile. "I know why you didn't write. I just wish you had the courage to tell me, so I knew for sure."

"Fine," I said, closing my eyes, trying to not lose my cool. "I didn't write because the longer I was away from you…the less I missed you. I didn't miss you the way you said you missed me. I know that doesn't make sense and probably hurts more than it helps. I don't know how it happened or how I failed to realize it…but I just don't think I love you anymore, Dan. At least not the way you want me to."

I opened my eyes to see him staring at me, blinking back tears. Shit.

"I'll always love you, Cass. You know that. And I know I'll get over this, but it still hurts all the same."

"I know it does," I said, reaching for his hand, trying to hold onto whatever tiny part of him I could. "And I'm so sorry – so, so sorry Dan – for being the person who hurt you. But I can't lie to you and string you along and pretend. It's not fair to either of us. You deserve someone who can't bear to be apart from you and wants all the big and little moments with you and that loves you, full stop. I'm sorry that I couldn't be that person. I know you wanted me to be."

He was silent. He squeezed my hand tight, like he was releasing all the pain and bad energy from our relationship into the ether. It felt like a ritual, like a cutting of a cord. A letting go.

"Can I ask you one more question?" he asked quietly. "And then I'll leave you alone."

I nodded.

"Do you think…that we maybe have a chance later on? Like, when we're done with school and we have our lives figured out?"

I wasn't going to lie anymore.

"I don't think so, Dan," I said. "All I really want is for us to be friends someday. I just don't want to lose you completely."

He nodded. "I get that. I think we just need to be apart for a while. Go no contact, give ourselves some time to get through…this. I want to be your friend too, Cassie, but I don't think I can right now."

"Of course," I said. "I wouldn't expect that of you."

He nodded, his lips pressed together in a thin, almost smile. He stood up but squeezed my hand one more time before he let go completely.

"I'll always love you, Cass," he said quietly, before leaning down to kiss the top of my head. I could feel a tear or two hit my scalp, and that made me lose it.

When I was certain that he was gone, I broke down crying next to the lake, the sound of my wailing hanging in the thick, morning air.