(PoA) CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: The Cave
As soon as nightfall hit, Harry and Ellie snuck out of the Gryffindor Tower to follow Woodstock to Sirius' hideout.
She was excited to see Sirius, but undeniably sad about going to see him without Fred. She thought of how many times he'd gone with her earlier that year, and of how worried he'd been the few times she hadn't brought him. It had confused her—made her question her relationship with Harry—made her long for him in a way she never should have. But even now, she knew that his feelings had still been genuine. That fear and panic in his eyes whenever he thought she might be in trouble—he couldn't have faked it. He might not have been in love with her—or if he was, he might not have allowed himself to be with "someone like her" due to his apparently judgmental personal values—but he still had cared.
So what had changed? How could he have stopped so suddenly? How could he just… walk away from her entirely?
"You've written him out of your life, too," Harry pointed out to her as they walked.
She blinked, surprised by that. She hadn't voiced any of her feelings out loud, and usually Fred was the only one who could read her thoughts that well. "What?"
"Fred. You're clearly devastated that he isn't speaking to you these days. But you aren't speaking to him, either, are you?"
She scowled at that. Harry didn't know the first thing about what had gone down between her and Fred; why was he pretending to? "I'm not speaking to him because he was horrible to me. I don't know why he isn't speaking to me."
"Look, Ellie—I don't know exactly what went down between you two, but it's obvious that it was incredibly impactful—and incredibly painful—for both of you. All I'm saying is that if you're feeling hurt by him shutting you out, remember that you're doing the same thing to him—not to mention, you know, the Oliver of it all."
But it wasn't the same thing. Not even close.
Right?
Sirius wasn't in the same pit hideout as before, which made sense. Woodstock led them to a new spot that was deeper in the Forbidden Forest, in a small, concealed cave nestled at the foot of a hill.
"Dad!" Ellie exclaimed with the first genuine happiness she'd felt in weeks. She dived into the cave, which was decorated quite similarly to its predecessor, and into her father's arms.
Sirius held her tightly for several seconds before saying, "This must be Harry."
She pulled away from Sirius, remembering that they hadn't met yet. "Sorry. Yeah—he saw you at the game today. Wanted to come along."
Sirius took a step toward Harry as if wanting to hug him, too, then seemed to remember that he might still terrify the boy. Instead, he said in a tone filled with sweet sadness, "You look so very much like your father, Harry. Only you have—"
"—my mother's eyes," Harry finished for him. But he was smiling, and those green eyes he'd gotten from Lily were twinkling with happiness.
"Well," said Sirius, clearing his throat as if fighting to push back the nostalgia of seeing his daughter and his best friend's son in the same room. "What have I missed?"
Ellie and Harry exchanged a look at that. Finally, Ellie said, "Well, Crookshanks says Peter's still here somewhere. But he won't let us help him—"
"Good," Sirius interrupted shortly. "Stay out of it. That isn't what I meant, anyhow. I seem to recall seeing my fourteen-year-old daughter kissing a new boy today on the Quidditch field. Not exactly something I was prepared for."
"Nor were the rest of us," joked Harry with a bit of a grin.
Ellie rolled her eyes. "His name's Oliver Wood. He's the Quidditch captain. He's…. nice."
"He's a seventh year," Harry added.
Ellie shoved Harry at that. It was strange, the dynamic they were developing around Sirius—like siblings tattling on each other and vying for their parents' attention. She thought of the way she and Fred had acted around Sirius—just the opposite—and tried not to sulk.
"A seventh year?" Sirius was demanding. "He's of age?"
"He's been after her for years." Harry again. "'Nice' isn't the first word I'd use to describe him, but he is a good guy—you know, deep, deep… deep down."
Ellie groaned.
"Harry," said Sirius. He didn't sound angry, exactly, but he didn't sound ready to accept this information, either. "Would you be willing to wait outside for just a few minutes? I'd very much like to speak with you, but I'd like a moment along with my daughter first."
"Of course," said Harry, pulling back out the invisibility cloak he'd worn to the cave while Ellie had followed Woodstock as a dog. "Take as much time as you need."
Harry departed the cave at that, leaving Ellie with a very concerned-looking father.
"He's just joking around, you know," Ellie told Sirius. "He and Oliver are friends."
He didn't say anything for a moment. He scanned her appearance as if trying to figure out what had changed. She'd done her best to "dress down" for the occasion, not wanting him to see her in the "party" clothes she tended to wear those days, but she still had put more effort into her appearance than she ever had during Sirius' previous stay at Hogwarts.
"I don't understand, Ellie," he finally said. "You seem different—look different—even talk different. It's only been a few months."
She tried not to stiffen at that. Why were all the men in her life so… perceptive?
"I figured you and Harry would have ended things," he continued. "Not just because of me, but because of Fred, too. So what's this about a different boy?"
Were they really going to go there? "Dad, I'd really rather not talk about this."
"Did something happen with Fred?" Sirius' grey eyes darkened, and he asked in a darker tone, "Did he hurt you?"
She sighed, taking a seat on a small, wooden stool Sirius appeared to have Transfigured from a fallen tree. "Yeah—he hurt me. So that's all there is to say about that, right? And we can move on?"
It wasn't, though. Sirius wasn't letting this one go. "What did he do to you?"
It was strange, but even after all Fred had done to her, Ellie still felt guilty for turning Sirius on him. Sirius had liked Fred, she knew—had encouraged her to be with him, if it was what made her happy.
"You were wrong," she said quietly. "About him. About us. About all of it."
"All of it," he repeated, watching her intently. "Meaning—"
"Meaning, he isn't a gentleman; he's a jerk. Meaning, if he has all those many feelings for me in his little finger that you described, then it must not be connected to his brain—or is heart. Because he wants nothing to do with me."
His eyes clouded over with sadness at that. "Ellie," he said softly. "Surely—"
"You were right about one thing, though—I did have feelings for him. But all that did was get my heart broken."
After she was done filling in Sirius on the painful saga of her heartbreak, he asked to see Harry alone. She could tell he wanted her to wait for him outside, the same way Harry had, but telling him about Fred had made her feel quite miserable and rather in need of a drink, so she gave him a final hug and said her goodbyes to him, leaving Woodstock behind to report back to her if there was any trouble.
There was a party going on, of course. Oliver and the rest of their "group" pretty much seized any opportunity to party those days, and Gryffindor winning their second game was certainly a reason.
The party went about the same as they all did. Ellie was getting closer with Oliver's friends now, which, of course, meant she was getting less close with the students her own age. She still brought Lavender and Parvati along, but Angelina and Katie had largely stopped attending, and Ginny and Neville hadn't been to a single party since the first.
Cedric Diggory showed up to this one, which was somewhat rare. He and Oliver weren't exactly friends, but sometimes ran in the same circles, both being popular, handsome Quidditch superstars. Cedric came right up to Ellie, eagerly asking her about The Weasleys—the band, not the people—and when they might play again. He'd met her at their first concert ever, and hadn't missed a show since.
She tried to smile and laugh in all the right places. She tried to let herself swoon the way any other girl might when talking to Cedric Diggory. She tried to squeeze Oliver's hand to let him know there was no need to be jealous.
But all she could think about was Fred.
Why had Fred name-dropped Cedric when he rejected her? Was it possible that he thought she was… working her way up to someone like him, somehow? That, if there was someone like Cedric in her future, there couldn't possibly be someone like Fred in her present?
The thought made her sad for the sake of her ex-best friend, but angry, too. He'd had no right to make those kinds of assumptions. If he'd only listened to her, he would've known that he was wrong.
"Ollie," she said once Cedric left to chat with Cho and Marietta. "I need another drink."
February rolled into March, and Ellie didn't go back to see Sirius.
She should never have told him about Fred. He should never have asked about Fred. She knew he had meant well—that he had just been worried about her—but it wasn't fair. She had been doing a proper job of blocking out thoughts of Fred until then.
Harry tried to approach her several times over those few weeks. "He's worried about you," he would say; "he misses you. Can't you just drop by and say hello?"
But she couldn't. It was about more than just Fred at this point. Ellie had fully embraced this new life of hers; she dressed the part; she acted the part. But she didn't want Sirius seeing it.
And she couldn't pretend to be the old version of herself around him, either.
So she stayed away.
It was the second week of March that it happened. She was walking from the common room to dinner with Oliver and his friends, discussing plans for the next wild night, when Peeves floated by, cackling about how they'd finally found Sirius Black's hideout.
She stopped dead in her tracks, much to the surprise of the seventh years around her.
"Peeves." Her voice was cold and sharp, and seemed to capture the poltergeist's attention immediately. "Where did you hear that?"
"Talk of the town, it is," said Peeves happily. "All the teachers won't shut up about it—won't be long before the rest of the school does, too."
"His hideout." It wasn't Ellie who said this; it was a voice she'd heard very little of since Christmas Eve. A voice that still made her heart ache with longing and pain. "Did they say where it was?"
Where had Fred come from? She hadn't seen him when they left the common room.
Why did he care about Sirius? He certainly didn't care about her.
"Edge of the forest, on the eastern side, they say," said Peeves. "Clever little pit he dug—covered with a grassy trapdoor that blends right into the ground."
Ellie tried not to exhale too obviously with relief. They hadn't found Sirius' current hideout; they'd found his old one.
But it could only be a matter of time before they found the cave.
What was she doing? Why had she wasted the past three weeks worrying about parties and boys and people she wouldn't even be going to school with next year? Why had she written off her own father?
Because of him, she thought with a pang of vulnerability as she let her gaze travel to the boy she was, for better or worse, still very much in love with. Because he had to ask me about him.
For a split second, Fred met her gaze. In his eyes was everything there ever had been—the same care; the same concern; the same love.
But then he looked away from her—walked away from her—and again, the love was gone.
Oh, the feels! Will this near-miss with Sirius be the wake-up call Ellie needs to snap out of it? You'll find out in the next chapter - possibly with another Ellie Black original song! Stay tuned and don't forget to follow and review. Thanks for reading!
