(GoF) CHAPTER TWENTY: Buck Teeth and Summer Flings
"Good morning, beautiful."
Ellie smiled politely back at the handsome face of her new boyfriend as it leaned in close for a kiss. It had been a week since she gave him her answer on that stage, and faking her relationship with him hadn't gotten any easier.
It could be worse, though, she mused grimly as he pulled away from her lips only to pepper her cheeks and hair with kisses, too. He did seem to really care about her.
"Good morning," she said back as he took her hand and guided her toward the moving staircases that would lead them to the Great Hall for breakfast. "Get much sleep?"
"More than my insomniac girlfriend, I'm sure."
She let herself laugh at that, but her laugh faded when she saw three of his Hufflepuff friends approaching—all of whom were wearing Potter Stinks badges.
Cedric picked up on it immediately—he was good at that, too. "Guys," he said. "I've told you before. Take those off."
"Oh—sorry, Ced," said one of them—a gangly, giggly female. "Thought your girlfriend wouldn't mind, though. It's our way of saying we're Team Cellie and not Team Hellie, y'know?"
Ellie resisted the urge to vomit at that. Even the merging of Ellie and Fred's names—Frellie—worked better than with anyone else. As if she'd needed another reason to believe she was meant to be with him.
"She minds," said Cedric with a bit of curtness in his tone. "So take them off."
They obediently did as he said, then, upon further glare from him, scuttled off.
"Thanks," she said quietly to Cedric.
"No need to thank me. Those buttons are stupid. Look, Ellie…" He came to a stop, leaning against the handrail and using the hand that was holding hers to tug her closer to him. He looked a bit nervous. "Is everything okay? You seem a bit… off."
It wasn't the first time he'd asked her this since they started dating, and it wasn't bound to be the last, either. Aleks had left her alone so far, so she must be a decent actress, but Cedric didn't always seem convinced. "Sorry," she said, biting her lip. "I just feel… bad. You know… for Harry."
"Right." He looked annoyed. "Because you don't think he put his name in the Goblet."
"I know he didn't." They'd had this conversation before, too. "Ced, he's not like you. He's not seeking eternal glory. He just wants to get through his fourth year without Voldemort attacking him again."
Her use of the Dark Lord's name made Cedric cringe, but he didn't speak of it. "I know you believe that, Ellie, but you don't understand how guys work. Glory is important to us. Imagining holding that Triwizard Cup…" He grinned slyly at her. "Imagining the way your girl might look at you when you win…"
She laughed, allowing him to snake a hand around her lower back and pull her even closer to him. "But Harry doesn't have a girl. He doesn't even—"
"Hey, Ellie?" he interrupted, still smiling, as his other hand found its way to her hair and tucked a strand behind her cheek. It felt… nice. Not as nice as it would have if Fred had done it, but nice.
"Yeah?" she whispered back, trying to calm her pounding heart.
"Can we get to the kissing part now?"
She actually was starting to prefer the kissing part, she mused as she leaned in.
At least it didn't involve quite as much lying.
"You and Cedric seemed awfully chummy today," said Dean with a wrinkled nose on their way to Potions a few days later. "Isn't that sort of like fraternizing with the enemy?"
"Harry doesn't care that I'm dating Cedric," Ellie said dismissively, glancing around for any sign of Harry to confirm her claims. She spotted him just ahead of them, getting into what could only be a future argument with Draco over the Potter Stinks badges that all the Slytherins were wearing.
"Very funny," Hermione was saying sarcastically from next to Harry. "Really witty."
Ellie glanced at Ron, who was being notably silent. She really couldn't believe how immature he was acting when Harry needed them most.
"Want one, Granger?" sneered Draco. "Take one, please—I've got loads. But don't touch my hand—I've just washed it. Don't want a Mudblood sliming it up."
Ellie groaned inwardly, but Harry didn't have such a quiet reaction; to her surprise, he reached instead for his wand, causing everyone else around them to back up.
"Harry," Hermione warned.
"Go on then, Potter," said Draco, drawing out his own wand. "Moody isn't around to protect you now, is he?"
Ellie held her breath, praying that neither of them would be stupid enough to perform spells against each other with Snape so close by.
Unfortunately, she was wrong.
The two performed their spells against each other exactly the same time, causing jets of light to stream out of their wands, strike each other in midair, and ricochet off to the nearest individuals: Goyle and Hermione. Great, ugly boils instantly sprouted from Goyle's face, but Hermione's reaction was worse still; her front teeth were suddenly growing at an alarming rate, all the way down toward her chin.
Snape entered the room at that, demanding an explanation from Draco, who, of course, tried to pin it all on Harry. Despite there being plenty of witnesses to the fact that it was a mutual bout of rule breaking, Snape, being Snape, sent Goyle to the hospital wing, snapped a snarky remark about Hermione looking the same as she always did (to which Hermione burst into tears and tore off to the hospital wing, anyway), took fifty points from Gryffindor, and gave Harry and Ron detention.
Ellie could hardly believe it. He wasn't even trying to play fair. How could a teacher act so… so… so biased?
She wanted to confront him about it, but he was snapping at the class to get inside the room before she had the chance.
She popped open her locket as she made her way to her seat, sending a message to Fred, as she always did when she couldn't express herself properly with anyone else: I will never forgive myself for being related to him.
Fred didn't reply for a long time. It was a rare thing; he almost always replied immediately. By the time he did, a bright-eyed, young Colin Creevey had knocked on the door and interrupted the class to inform Snape that he was supposed to take Harry upstairs for the Weighing of the Wands.
Not exactly something you can help.
She didn't like how short his message was, but she understood. He was trying to respect the boundaries that they both had to accept—the fact that, fake or not, she was currently in a relationship with someone else.
She tried to think of something—anything—that she could say back to remind him how much she cared about him without outright betraying Cedric. But she couldn't.
So, reluctantly, she closed her locket and turned her attention back toward Potions.
"It was brilliant," Cedric told her a few hours later when they left the Great Hall with plates of food to dine together in the courtyard. It had become something of a ritual for them, since neither was quite comfortable sitting at the other's House table. "They had a reporter there from the Daily Prophet and everything."
"Hang on," Ellie said, frowning. "Rita Skeeter?"
Cedric nodded. "You know her stuff?"
Ellie grimaced. "Mainly just the one she wrote about me."
"Oh—right. That." He looked unsure of what to say. "I'm… sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay." She forced a smile, though it wasn't easy. "I'm glad the Weighing of the Wands went well."
He smiled back at her, but it didn't look much less forced than her own felt. "You can talk to me about that stuff, you know. Your dad… all that."
The thought of talking to Cedric about Sirius was both terrifying and preposterous, but, of course, that wasn't fair to him. "I know. There's just… not much to say. I don't know where he is." That part, at least, was true.
"But you did spend the summer with him, right? I mean—before the Tournament and all?"
She understood why he was asking. As her boyfriend, he had a right to know something, didn't he?
Only… what if they broke up? What if she somehow found a way to shove it to Aleks, break up and Cedric, and finally be with Fred? Would Cedric do something with the information she had given him as some sort of vengeance? She doubted he was capable—he seemed like a good enough guy—but did she know him well enough to risk it?
"I… don't think I'm ready to talk about it just yet," she said carefully. "Is that okay?"
"Yeah," he said, but those blue-grey eyes of him were heavy and disappointed. "Yeah—of course."
They spent the rest of the meal in silence.
Aleks caught up with her a few days later on an actively moving staircase. "Tell me, pretty girl—why does everyone in school think you and sweet Cedric aren't going to last out the month?"
Given that November was already halfway over, Ellie wasn't entirely sure that was a fair assessment. "I don't know. Because he's bored with me?"
"Then be more interesting, would you? Do I really need to remind you that our deal is off if you two break up?"
She groaned. "Aleks, I can't help if the guy doesn't like me."
Aleks snorted. "It doesn't take much to keep the interest of a guy like that. A hot body, a pretty face, and…" He seemed to consider something for a moment, then said, "I've got it."
"What?" she asked, though she was fairly certain she didn't want to know.
"You and I dated over the summer—while you were staying with your dad. No, not dated, exactly… had a summer fling."
She rolled her eyes. "Please. That's only going to serve to disgust him."
"A mysterious affair with a handsome, foreign boy? Nothing disgusting about that. It'll make him jealous—which is just the spark we need to keep the relationship going."
"That's insane. You don't know that it'll work. And even if—"
"It's brilliant. It'll help my street cred, as well. Word on the street is, dating Ellie Black is like a rite of passage around here."
She really thought she might be sick.
"Go along with it," he said cheerfully as the staircase finished moving he grabbed her arm a little too roughly to lead her to the nearest static platform, "and Daddy's secrets stay secret. Don't, and—"
"Yeah—I get it."
"As for the Tournament. Any word from either of our sweet contestants as to what their plans are?"
"How could they have plans? They don't know what the first task is."
"Right—right." He smirked at her. "Won't stay that way for long. As soon as either of them finds out what it is, report back. Clear?"
This was the part she really hated—even more than the part where she had to fake-date Cedric. If she reported something like that back to him and it got one of them hurt or killed, could she ever forgive herself?
It would have to be tomorrow's problem, she mused grimly. For now, she had to keep Sirius safe.
"Clear," she said.
And she darted away from him before he could think up any more ridiculous requests for her.
That Aleks goes from bad to worse with each chapter, doesn't he? Only... how much worse can it get? Stay tuned to find out, and don't forget to comment and follow!
