The Most Precious Snitch

Chapter 4

The news of Harry and Cedric traveled fast. By Sunday, practically everybody knows about their little 'make-out' session. The relationship was welcomed by most students from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The Slytherins however, had a whole different opinion about the two. They would pass unpleasant remarks to Harry every time they saw him. They didn't dare do the same thing to Cedric though, as he was a prefect and he has a whole crew surrounding him wherever he goes.

Fortunately, Harry was used to being verbally assaulted by the Slytherins. Any remarks simply bounced off of him. Besides, nothing could bring down his happiness at the moment. After what happened the other day before at the lake, he had proclaimed himself the happiest man on earth.

Sunday came and goes with Harry and Cedric spending a lot of 'alone' time with each other. They talked about Quidditch, their studies, their hate for Snape, Cedric's parents, Harry's divination class –particularly about the time Professor Trelawney insisted he was going to die- and Harry's first and second year adventure. In between their conversation, Cedric would steal a brief kiss or two from Harry which eventually transform to passionate kisses.

During lunch, Harry sat at the Hufflepuff table along with Cedric's crew, Hermione and Ron (who was there to make sure Cedric didn't try anything 'funny' with Harry). Harry meant to seat beside Cedric, but he was pulled onto Cedric's lap before he could protest, not that he would. This, apparently, earned Cedric a death glare from Ron.

In short, Sunday passed way too fast for Harry's liking. Before he knew it, Monday had come, bringing the dreaded double potions with Snape and the Slytherins.

Monday started as rottenly as it could. Harry woke up with quite a start. Hermione had previously charmed Harry's and Ron's beds to shake itself when it was time for them to wake up, an attempt to get rid of their oversleeping problem. Harry usually wakes up during the first few seconds his bed started shaking.

Unfortunately, as he was having an extremely pleasant dream involving Cedric and an empty classroom, he missed that first few seconds of gentle rocking the bed was making. The next thing he knew, he was shaking really hard –well, the bed was anyway- and before he could register what was happening, his bed rudely threw him off and he landed painfully on the floor.

Harry gingerly stood up, rubbing his back. He noticed Ron was on the floor too; except he was actually STILL sleeping. Harry laughed and Neville, Dean and Seamus, who were slowly waking, stared at him through half-lidded eyes.

"Ron fell of the bed sleeping," Harry laughed.

The other three exchanged a look before Dean flatly replied, "It happens every morning Harry."

Waking Ron up took longer than the four dorm mates had expected. As it turns out, Hermione had charmed Ron's bed to wake him up 30 minutes before the others. After being continuously on-time for the past few weeks, Hermione had decided that Ron earned that 30 minutes extra sleeping time; so she set the bed to wake Ron up at the same time as Harry. Clearly, it wasn't a very good decision.

The five were beyond late. They couldn't make it for breakfast. It would be a miracle to even make it to Snape's class on time actually. Unfortunately, miracles don't happen everyday; they were 10 minutes late.

"10 points from Gryffindor for being late…"Snape started.

The five sighed in relief; that wasn't too bad.

"From EACH of you…" the professor finishes.

The five growled and discretely cursed Snape. Harry sat with Ron behind Hermione, who later scolded them for being late, muttering something about making the charm stronger. Snape scribbled something on the board and sharply turned back to face the students.

"I will be pairing all of you personally. Unfortunately there are some of you in this class," Snape turned his glare to Harry and Ron, "Who just can't seem to grasp the concept of FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS. Fortunately there are some of you who are EXCEPTIONALLY GIFTED at it." he concluded, staring fondly at his Slytherins, Draco Malfoy in particular. After which, he begrudgingly was forced to give Hermione a look of approval as Hermione was one of the best student in his class.

Snape began pairing everyone; true to his word, he paired those who are poor in Potions with those who are excellent in it. This means, most Gryffindors were paired up with Slytherins. Ron was paired up with Crabbe and he complained saying Crabbe can't be any better than himself. Hermione was paired up with Neville as Snape couldn't bear to see any of his Slytherins near the boy; he thinks Neville's 'stupidity' is infectious.

And surprise, surprise. Harry Potter was paired up with Draco Malfoy.

Draco looked extremely scandalized at first. He shot a dirty look at Snape who shrugged and squeezed Draco's shoulder. Later when Harry moved to seat with Draco, the blond boy was beyond scandalized. However, as they started working on the potion, it was Harry's turn to be scandalized.

'No Potter, that's not a dragon scale, THIS is a dragon scale,' 'No! You could've blown us up Potter, use THIS,' 'Stir it CLOCKWISE not the other way round,' 'It's 5 times! FIVE BLOODY TIMES Potter! Do you know how to count! Here, let me teach you, one, two, three, four, five!' And so goes on. It appears that every single movement Harry did was wrong. He was criticized for not knowing the difference between a strand of Unicorn tail and hair, he was scolded when stirring the cauldron, he was even screamed at when chopping the ingredients.

Through out the verbal abuse, Harry kept his mouth tightly shut, afraid that if he opens it, even a little, he might bite Draco's head off. He was doing such a good job of it too, until one particular snide remark.

"Diggory must be blind. What could he POSSIBLY see in you Potter, you can't even clean the bloody scales," Draco snapped, snatching the scales out of Harry's hand.

That, was when Harry snapped. He would allow the nasty little git to insult his stirring techniques, he would allow him to criticize his chopping techniques, he would even allow him to provoke him about his appearance, but he would never, ever, allow MALFOY to even TALK about Cedric and him. EVER.

"Well you do it then since, well, you ARE good," Harry replied, suspiciously polite.

"Fine, I will! You should probably watch and learn anyway. I'll do EVERYTHING myself!" Draco snapped somewhat rather smugly.

Harry got up to the front and told Snape, Draco didn't want him there. Snape snorted, took away 20 points from Gryffindor, told Harry he would give him a 'zero' for the assignment and instructed him to go back to his seat to watch a 'professional' at work.

Harry smiled tightly and nodded. He walked back to his seat, pocketing an ingredient that wasn't supposed to be in the potion. He sat back down and leisurely watched Draco work. Draco, working alone, was extremely busy, chopping this and adding that. While he was distracted chopping a green scale, Harry swiftly drop the extra ingredient in.

There was no reaction. But Harry knew, he didn't know how, but he just knew that it would explode sooner or later. After all, it happens to every potion Harry tried to brew.

Sure enough, when Draco dropped the scales, the mixture turned alarmingly gooey and exploded. A slime-covered Draco started screaming in outrage and accused Harry of 'doing something weird' to his potion. Harry just stared at Draco and innocently stated to Snape that he didn't do anything; after all, Draco DID say he'll do EVERYTHING himself.

Snape pursed his lips when he couldn't find prove Harry was the culprit. Strike one for Harry.

By lunch time, the incident with Draco was known to every one in the castle. The members from the other houses were teasing Draco everywhere he went. Harry almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Lunch time was almost over by the time Harry came down. He saw Oliver and the twins; no Cedric in sight. As he and Ron approach the three, Fred and George burst into cheers and claps.

"Congrats Harry! We've heard! We just know you have it in you!" cheered Fred.

"Yea, sure it took some time, but now, you've officially become A PRANKSTER!" chirped George.

"I got to admit, it was pretty good Harry. Thanks to you, the Slytherins can't have a proper practice now with their Seeker out," Oliver chimed in.

"Yeah, those are one nasty goo. Madam Pomfrey couldn't get them out at all. She said Malfoy will just have to wait 'till the effect wears off by itself," finished Fred.

Harry blushed discretely at the attention. He slipped in into the seat with Ron seating opposite of him. Fred and George didn't stop there though; they placed an arm around his shoulder and started singing a made-up song. They were swaying Harry with the rhythm of their song and although Harry didn't really like it, he felt it was too rude to make them stop. Apparently though, their singing was infectious to the other students, who soon joined the singing-swaying motion.

In his attempt to eat his lunch while being swayed by the twins, Harry's wand fell out of his robe and rolled under the table.

He saw this as an opportunity to get away.

"Oops," Harry whispered as he slid down and crouch under the table while the twins and Oliver continued to lead the other student singing and swaying.

He felt around for his wand which was starting to bother him; he was sure it rolled under the table. He tugged at Ron's robe, who, after 'discretely' dropped his fork, slide down too.

"What is it?" Ron whispered.

"I can't find my wand! And oh, can you make them stop?" Harry whispered back.

Ron nodded and started feeling around for Harry's wand too. He felt something and immediately brought it to his face, "I found your wand, Harry!"

But as he took a better look at the object in his hand, he added, the previous excitement absent from his whispered voice, "Oh, never mind. It's my fork. No winder it's so thin and cold…"

"Oh no! Where is it?" Harry whispered a little louder, panic reaching his voice.

Ron looked around a little while more before shrugging, "you keep searching, I'll go out and get them to stop singing."

As Ron slide out, Harry saw a little wooden stick under the neighboring table. Unconsciously, he crawled out of the table, into another. Not many people seemed to notice though, as majority of the students were too busy singing along with Fred and George. Apparently, Ron hasn't been too successful.

As he crawled along under the table, his hand accidentally landed on someone's foot. He heard the owner gave a little hiss of pain. Harry didn't care though; he was nearing his beloved wand. He would just apologize to whoever it was later.

As he reached out his hands to grab his wand, he heard a murmured 'Accio Harry's wand' and the wand slide out of his grasp.

Harry didn't have time to react when he heard a familiar voice, "Harry, what are you doing?"

Harry, in his hurry to turn to the source of voice, tried to stand up from his position. Only to find pain as his head hit the table none too graciously. He winced in pain for a while, rubbing his offended head, before sliding out to meet the owner of the voice.

He blushed as he saw Cedric, half-seated, half standing, from his chair, holding his wand in one hand and Harry's in the other. Cedric's expression revealed that he was amused. One of his eyebrows was raised and a half-hearted mocking smile was placed on his lips.

Harry blushed even more furiously, "I, I dropped my wand…"

"You could've summoned it to you," came the still-amused reply.

"Well, I'm not very confident with wand-less magic…" Harry defended himself, determined not to look ignorant in front of his boyf-… In front of Cedric.

"You could've gotten Fred or George to do it for you, he's supposedly good with wand-less magic, word-less magic, all the jazz," Cedric countered.

"Well, they were busy, I didn't want to disturb them," Harry replied, a bit shakily this time.

"You could've asked Ron to summon it for you. If I'm not mistaken, HE didn't drop his wand did he? What was it he dropped? Oh yes, a fork."

"Well… He… Oops…" Harry blushed, not believing he didn't think of it sooner and not believing Cedric had seen the whole affair.

Cedric chuckled at his blushing boyfriend –yes, BOYFRIEND- and pulled the younger boy towards himself.

"I think, you and your little Gryffindor paws squashed my foot," Cedric continued, pulling him even closer, aware of the attention he was getting from the other students and not caring about it.

Harry, who had yet realized they were being stared at, bit his lower lip, "That was you? Oh, Merlin! I'm so so so sorry, Cedric. Let me look at it."

As Harry tried to squat in order to see Cedric's injured foot, Cedric grabbed his arms to stop him. He pulled Harry even closer and stole a kiss. It was a brief kiss that leaves promises for more.

"No worries, my foot will be fine. I'll take THAT as the apology… I'll wait for you in the library tonight, as promised. See you and DON'T be late for class, okay?" Cedric chuckled at the blush making its way up Harry face once again and walked off along with Percy who was waiting for him at the entrance.

Harry felt giddy thinking about that night's arrangement. Suddenly, his back felt cold and he realized he was in the Great Hall. 'Oh no' was all he could think about before a cluster of students swirled Harry up.

It was only after fifteen minutes of non-stop questionings and 'congrats', a pair of Weasley twins, a Ron and a fuming Professor McGonagall later that Harry managed to make it to Divination.

TBC

Yaviel's Notes: Ooh, public display. Cedric is SO bad. Half of this chapter doesn't have anything much to do with the couple but I think it was necessary all the same. I wanted to draw out the fact that Harry acts so differently around other people and when he's with Cedric. He could be shrewd and mean to Malfoy and yet he's so sweet and shy when he's with Cedric. Plus, he got really mad at Malfoy when he mentioned Cedric's preference. Isn't Harry cute? Review please!

Thank you so much for your reviews by the way! They strangely empower me to write more… Lol… Oh, and Atilla-the-Honey, how did you do that? You absolutely read my mind! O.O I planned on something like that once Harry has been declared Cedric's property (like what had happened) … I won't give out too much though… We'll have to wait and see what happens! The other guy would be a mystery though! Guesses anyone?