"It is said that it can grant you eternal life or fortunes beyond your wildest- what now? Oh! I was under the impression you were asking after the same as that Potter boy. A Hellgate you say? Well dear me, why would you ask about something as terrible as that when there's a whole Philosopher's St-wait! Where are you going?"

-Mundungus Fletcher

Chapter 14: What exactly is Obliviate?

Cedric was not proud.

As soon as my last class was up, he dragged me to our usual meeting place.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Several things I think, but I was quickly learning when Cedric wanted a question answered and when he was just talking to hear himself talk. I think he called them rhetorical questions. Not to be confused with trick questions. A trick question is when there is no right answer. A rhetorical question is when there is a right answer, but the person asking it doesn't care what that is. I hadn't even gotten to sit down. He was hovering over me. His brow wrinkled together in anger, making his unibrow look even thicker. "Do you know, how many people I've had to obliviate today?"

Again, I was silent.

"Well! Say something!"

Nope. I knew better now. He didn't mean it.

Cedric sighed and slumped into the dusty teacher desk chair. It looked comfy but like it hadn't been sat in, in years. "This close. You came THIS," he held his fingers up really close together," close to becoming the laughing-stock of the entire school. I had to overhear a group of sixth-year girls in the bathroom with the lights off chanting 'Bloody Mary' over and over again before laughing their arses off."

"What were you doing in the girl's toilet?" I asked, genuinely curious. Cedric didn't strike me as a pervert. He hadn't tried to kiss me once.

He blushed anyway. "Never mind that. Focus." For once, I didn't doubt I was focused on the right thing for a change, but I let it go just the same.

Cedric is my Guide. He knows best. "Yes, Sir."

"And stop calling me 'Sir'. I'm only two years older than you."

"Yes, Mr. Cedric."

"Cedric, Mary. Just Cedric."

"Alright."

"Try it. Say it out loud or you'll forget."

"Cedric. Yes, Cedric."

"Good." I think he was done yelling at me. "You really have to be more careful, Mary. I know-um-having your-that-um- can be difficult-um-at your age." He looked disgusted. "I can't do this. Didn't that woman you lived with ever talk about this with you?"

"Mama doesn't like to talk about that. She says ladies don't talk about those kinds of things. But it's okay Cedric. I didn't have my period."

Her Guide's face seemed to pass through relief to confusion. "Then why does everyone seem to think you have?"

I frowned. My thougts returned to how Cedric found out in the first place. I thought I should help Cedric out too. If he was spying on girls in the toilet, he was going down the wrong path. I think we cannot help being born servants of Satan, but we can resist certain temptations. I am working on my gluttony at meal times. And I think for Cedric being a gross boy, he has to resist watching girls in the toilet. "I was just trying to help a friend. She's not used to being laughed at."

"A friend? You found another advisor. Good for you, Mary!"

I beamed. "Yes! She's really cool. Her name is Daphne Greengrass."

"Greengrass? There's a Greengrass in Ravenclaw?"

"No. She's a Slytherin." Cedric didn't respond at first. "She's another girl in my year and we share a few classes."

"What did I say about a Ravenclaw," he finally growled. "And you chose a Slytherin. A Slytherin?!" He was up out of his chair now and snarling over me again. "The house know for it's incredible disloyalty. Are you an idiot?!"

"All the Ravenclaw were taken! And what's so great about them anyway? I like Daphne! And she likes me now-"

"If she likes you so much, why did she let you take the fall for this period mess? Your new friend was going to sit by while the entire school laughed."

I didn't have anything to say back to that. My feelings were hurt at Cedric calling me dumb, and after I stormed out of the classroom, that was the last time I spoke to Cedric that week.

Which was best because I didn't want to hear an I told you so. Any classes I shared with the Slytherin girls, they constantly went out of their way to pick on me. Milly knocked me over for calling her Milly but never corrected me so now I avoid calling her anything even though she's always hovering around with the rest of Pansy Parkinson's group. And that all started when I sat with Daphne one lunch and she didn't tell me to go away. The next thing I knew, Pansy was following me around asking things like "If I'd ever heard of a comb" or asking me things like "What's it like?" But never explaining wat it is or how I was supposed to know anything about it. And Daphne usually just stood around at the edge of the group, doing nothing about her gang of friends or their odd brand of picking on me.

But I'd still sit next to her at lunch. "Are we friends?" I asked her one day. Draco Malfoy had just purchased a new broom and everyone clamored around him to go look at it. "It's okay if we aren't. I don't think I fit in with the rest of your friends. But I'd like to know."

"Those girls aren't my friends," she said off-handedly, flipping through her monthly copy of Witch Weekly that just came in, via Owl. I hadn't seen my own in a while. Maybe I should check on him. Dean couldn't afford a pet so I let him use my owl to write home to his family since I didn't exactly have anyone to write to. I think he's been taking care of him. I hadn't even named him. I'd just been calling him Owl. "They only hang out with me because my father is a rich pureblood and pretty much owns the entire witch fashion industry." Daphne flipped another page. "Mine and Pansy's mum's are best mates, so they expect us to get on nicely."

"Oh," I squeaked.

"And they're not bullying you. They're just jealous that you got your time of the month before any of them. They were all reckoning Pansy would get it first, and an article in Teen Witch Weekly says that girls that hang around other girls that get their moon cycle first are more likely to start theirs sooner. So, they'll be sticking to you for a while I'm afraid."

"Oh."

There was a long pause and then. "But to answer your question, no. I don't consider us friends. I just met you."

"Oh." Can you say anything else, Mary?!

"But you're not too bad. And you're a McGowen and a Smith. Mum sure will be pleased when I tell her I've made a friend like you. Even if you are a Hufflepuff."

"But I thought you said we weren't friends?"

"We're not."

"But you're going to tell your Mama we are?"

"That's right."

"…Can I tell people we're friends too, even though we're not yet?"

"Yet?"

"Yet."

"Go for it."

I looked over to the Hufflepuff table where Cedric was watching like a hawk and pulled my nostrils up at him. The big goof. He could just go mind a lady's toilet for all I cared what he thought of me and my new almost-friend.

Daphne caught me and looked up just in time to see Cedric look away. "You know Cedric Diggory?"

"Yeah, he's my best friend."

"Your best…I thought I always saw you with that Gryffindor boy."

"You mean Dean?" I asked. Dean was currently serving a detention with Seamus, and Neville. I'm sure it was all Seamus' doing. "Dean is my friend too. I like him better than Cedric really."

"Then why isn't Dean you best friend?"

"Well?" How do I put into words that we are practically married in a secret Hufflepuff club? We aren't supposed to tell. Just the thought of mentioning it sent off alarm bells in my head that made me physically nauseous. "We share a secret," I spoke slowly, as the sick feeling faded away. "A secret that we can't share with anyone else. Not even Dean. Cedric says that makes us better than best friends."

Daphne looked Cedric's way again. He was laughing with another couple 2nd string boys on the Hufflepuff quidditch team. After looking closely, I could see some pink peeking through all the gray of her cheeks. "Well that's sort of like the two of us then. We have a secret too. One that we can't tell anyone else." I shrugged. She had a point. I suppose Daphne's mooning all over a chair in the middle of class was our version of a super-secret Hufflepuff club. "Then let's be better than best-friends, you and I," Daphne offered, extending a hand to me.

I smiled and put down my buttered croissant to shake her hand. "I'd like that. We won't be telling anyone about what happened in that bathroom."

"What?"

"…Isn't that our secret?"

She seemed to blush more at that. "Oh right. Keep that to yourself. Additionally, you won't be gossiping to anyone about my middle name being Hydrangea, either."

"Oh, that? Okay."

"Good. Tomorrow, let's have lunch at your house table with Cedric. It'd be a good thing, for all your better than best-friends to get along, I think," Daphne conspired with a grin, revealing a perfect row of pearly white teeth.

"Sure thing!"