(PoA) CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Shiny, New Toy
By New Years, Ellie and Oliver were the It Couple at Hogwarts. Everywhere they went, people stared. Students Ellie had never spoken to before were coming up and chatting with her as if they were old friends. Despite having claimed that the "Lavender look" was a one-time thing, Ellie kept it up. She told herself that she liked the way people looked at her when she dressed that way, but she knew that wasn't really it. She wanted to torture Fred.
It didn't work, of course. He didn't notice it; he didn't notice her. She barely even saw him, and when she did, he changed immediately into a red blur, taking off in the opposite direction.
What right did he have to be mad at her, anyway? What had she done wrong, besides tell him that she was in love with him and quite nearly beg him to be with her? Why was that such a crime?
It made her even angrier at him than she already was.
Ellie and Oliver spent most of the remaining holiday with Oliver's friends, but he never minded dining or chatting with her suitemates. As he had warned, George rarely spoke to her, which she understood; he was nearly always with Fred, who was avoiding her every bit as much as she was avoiding him.
To her surprise, a few days before the start of spring term, Harry approached her in the common room.
"Wotcher, Ellie?" he asked her with a guarded smile. "Got a minute?"
She glanced at Oliver, who didn't look particularly concerned about her going off with Harry. Despite projecting themselves to the outside world as a couple, they hadn't exactly gone into the details yet themselves. He stole kisses from her from time to time, but never took it too far; he seemed to sense that she still hadn't quite recovered from Fred.
"Sure," she said to Harry, rising from the couch and following him into a secluded corner of the room. "Everything okay?"
"I s'pose I could ask you the same question," he said with a hint of edge to his voice. "Oliver Wood, really?"
"You don't get to be jealous," she grumbled. "You dumped me."
"I didn't say jealous—just surprised. I was sure you'd be with Fred by Christmas."
Ouch. She tried not to grimace too obviously at that. "Well, I'm not. Anything else you'd like to give me a hard time about?"
He sighed. "I'm sorry. That's not why I wanted to talk, anyway. I wanted to know if you'd heard anything from… well… you know."
She hadn't. It had been well over a month now—so long that she was starting to worry about her owl on top of worrying about her father. She didn't like thinking about any of it.
He seemed to sense the answer without her having to say it. "Why don't I send Hedwig? Maybe Woodstock got lost."
She doubted it, but it wasn't a bad idea to send Hedwig, too. "Okay. That would be nice. I'll write something up today."
He nodded, but he didn't look quite finished. "Have you tried looking for him at all? For… Scabbers?"
She didn't much care for that question. The truth was, she hadn't—not because Sirius had told her not to, but because she'd been preoccupied with her own heartbreak and misery.
Which made her feel like a pretty terrible person.
"No," she admitted glumly. "Have you?"
"A little. Not exactly easy to find a tiny rat in a giant castle. I did have one thought, though. Did Si—I mean, your dad—did he ever mention using Crookshanks' help?"
She blinked, surprised by the question. Sirius had never mentioned using the cat's help, but Crookshanks had leapt out of the pit that one day, and chased after Scabbers countless other times. Was it possible that Harry had a point? "No," she said slowly, "but… that doesn't mean he didn't."
"Have you ever tried communicating with other animals as an Animagus? I mean… is it even possible?"
She suddenly felt very foolish for not having thought about this sooner. "I don't know. I mean… I've never tried. But if I could…"
"Then you could ask him for help."
It was a great idea. There was only one thing that was still nagging at her. "Harry… why are you helping me? Helping him?"
He looked surprised by that question. "I told you I believed you, didn't I? That he's innocent?"
"Well… yeah. But don't you hate me—and hate him by association?"
He actually laughed at that. "I could never hate you, Ellie."
She hadn't felt so much relief in quite some time. "Even after that song?"
"Right—the song." His smile lingered. "It wasn't exactly pleasant having my ex sing a song called Liar, Liar to the whole school. But you said it yourself—it was about both of us. We hurt each other. And I'm sorry for my part in that, Ellie. Really."
Before she knew what was happening, she had grabbed him in a bone-crushingly tight hug. He had no idea how much his words meant to her. "I'm sorry, too," she whispered into his ear. "For everything."
When she pulled away from him, she thought she caught a glimpse of a certain redhead watching them from the lounge chairs.
But maybe it was only George.
Communicating with Crookshanks proved difficult for a number of reasons. For one, her roommates were bound to ask questions if they saw a giant, black dog wandering around their suite—especially Hermione, who knew that it was Ellie's Animagus. And for another…
Well, she didn't speak cat.
It was late January by the time she finally managed to get some alone time with him. She was in her room, doing her best to smile and nod as Lavender and Parvati went on and on about how great they thought it was that she was with Oliver now, when Crookshanks emerged from beneath Hermione's bed and darted out of the room.
"Be right back!" she shouted abruptly to the girls, leaping from her bed to follow him. She scooped him up on the staircase, snuck her way quietly out the portrait hole and into the nearest courtyard, and placed him back on the ground. Only then did she change.
The cat blinked up at her in confusion, which made sense. He was used to Sirius looking that way, but he knew she wasn't Sirius.
So how did she tell him who she was, and that she was on his side?
She couldn't speak out loud, of course; she had tried that during her first year when attempting to communicate for the first time. But could she speak… animal?
Scabbers, she thought. Is he alive?
The cat blinked at her again.
Scabbers, she thought again. Scabbers. Is he alive?
Slowly, something in her shifted. She couldn't put her finger on what it was, exactly. It was as if, over the course of a minute or two, she was learning an innate, new ability—a language without words. A way to shift and move her body and her eyes to communicate the things she couldn't otherwise say.
And a way to understand when they did the same to her.
He's alive, Crookshanks told her. And he's still somewhere on the grounds. But I haven't been able to catch him.
Is there anything I can do to help? Go hunting with you, or—
No. I promised I would keep you out of this. He needs you to stay safe.
And with that, Crookshanks ran away from her.
"Well, I can't say I'm shocked to hear it," Harry said later that day when she handed him the newest letter to deliver to Sirius. It wasn't much unlike the last one—just a little more desperate. "Bummer, though."
She started to say more, but stopped when Oliver approached them, looking handsome as ever. "Glad to see you two working things out again," he said cheerfully as he put an arm around Ellie. "And just in time for Quidditch practice to start up again."
Ellie tried not to groan too audibly at that. She was as excited for Quidditch as she ever was, of course, but not for the part where she'd have to play on the same team as the guy who had stomped her heart into a million pieces.
"Speaking of which," said Harry, frowning. "My Nimbus 2000 was brought back to me in pieces after my fall during the last game. Ellie, any chance you kept yours?"
Ellie had upgraded to the Nimbus 2001 the year before, determined not to let the Slytherins out-speed her. Only… "Actually, I gave it to…"
Fred. She had given it to Fred.
"Forget Fred," said Oliver sharply—so sharply that several people around them glanced up. "I'll get it back from him. Harry needs it more than he does."
Ellie didn't relish the thought of Oliver demanding anything from Fred, but the only thing she liked less was thinking about him at all. So she nodded and left it at that.
It hadn't been the hardest thing in the world, avoiding Fred in the common room and the Great Hall. There were always other students—other bodies—to hide behind. Besides, he didn't seem want to be around her any more than she wanted to be around him.
But Quidditch practice was different.
There were only seven of them. There were no bodies to hide behind. There were times where she had no choice but to look directly toward him—especially if there was a Quaffle flying in his direction.
And looking at him was really, really hard.
She missed him. She missed talking to him. She missed laughing with him. She missed sharing the things with him that she couldn't—or wouldn't—share with anyone else.
"Focus, Ellie," Angelina said as she zoomed by. There was a sensitivity to her tone—a gentleness that wouldn't normally have been there—that suggested to Ellie that she knew exactly how much she was hurting.
Ellie wondered who else knew.
She did her best to push back all of those thoughts and focus on the practice, catching a Quaffle from Katie and trying to get it past Oliver. She failed, of course. Her head wasn't in the game, no matter how hard she tried.
By the time practice was over, Oliver had visibly deflated. He gathered them up, looking miserable.
"Hufflepuff was the easy team," he reminded them. "Now, each one of you did a fantastic job in the last game—except you, Harry—and I know that if you play like you did then, Ravenclaw won't stand a chance. But we can only do that if we work together."
"We are working together," said Katie, sounding confused. Whatever Angelina had deduced, she apparently hadn't. "Ellie's just off her game, is all." She grinned at Ellie and added, "Or maybe she's just distracted by her shiny, new toy."
Half the team laughed at that, and the other half… well… didn't.
For a split second, Ellie let herself spare a single glance at Fred.
He was pissed; there was no denying it. Pissed at Oliver—pissed at her—even pissed at Katie for making a joke about it.
What gave him the right to be pissed?
"Come off it, Katie," Harry said quietly. "Ellie's got a lot on her plate right now."
"I'm fine," Ellie said firmly. "I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. Promise."
She was just going to have to kick the distractions up a notch.
Things are going to get worse before they get better, friends - at least, if you look at "good" and "bad" the same way I do in this story. But I promise you that when they get good again, they'll be REALLY good. So stay tuned - and don't forget to review!
