(GoF) CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Hogsmeade Trips and Fireside Chats

Things weren't good. As Fred had predicted, the whole school believing that Ellie was "easy" had resulted in Cedric trying to go further and faster with Ellie than she had ever been before. She refused him, of course—as gently as she could—and he always respectfully accepted her refusals. But she had a feeling it wouldn't be long before that, too, became a point of contention between them.

The gossip turned away from the subject of Ellie and Aleks a few days later with the release of the latest Rita Skeeter article, which, rather than being an in-depth story about the Triwizard Tournament and its four champions, turned out to be a humiliatingly overdramatized puff piece about Harry and Harry alone.

"I swear," muttered Harry at breakfast when he was finished reading the article. "Why did she even bother interviewing me, if she was just going to make up complete rubbish to begin with?"

"Forget her," said Hermione, snatching the paper away from him and crumpling it up. "We've got Hogsmeade today. That'll be fun, right?"

"I guess." Harry glanced at Ellie, frowning. "You coming with us today, or going with the new boyfriend?"

"At what point do we stop referring to him as the new boyfriend?" grumbled Ellie, trying not to notice the way Fred's eyes shot over to them from a few seats away at the mention of Cedric.

"When it's been more than a few weeks?" suggested Ginny helpfully.

Had it really only been a few weeks? It felt like a lifetime.

"I think your answer's walking this way, Harry," said Ron, eyeing the group of good-looking Hufflepuff boys coming over to their table.

"Wotcher, Harry," Cedric said politely to Harry when they reached the table. "Getting nervous about the task yet?"

"No," said Harry shortly, though Ellie knew perfectly well it was a lie. "You?"

"As if Ced has anything to be nervous about," said Ernie Macmillan pompously from Cedric's side. "Y'know—being of age and all."

Ellie rolled her eyes. Ernie had already given Harry enough grief during their second year when he claimed Harry was the Heir of Slytherin; was he really going for another round? "Come on," she said, rising to her feet without finishing her food. She had to get the Hufflepuffs away from the Gryffindor table. "Let's go."

She met Fred's gaze for a few, short seconds as Cedric put an arm around her. He offered her a weak smile in return, but it did nothing to help the aching in her heart.


"It's just such rubbish," said Zacharias Smith, a particularly snooty classmate of Cedric's who Ellie didn't remotely care for, later that day as they sipped on Butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks. "She didn't write one word about Ced, and she barely wrote about the other champions, either."

"I agree it's rubbish," said Ellie as calmly as she could. "That reporter is rubbish. But it's not Harry's fault."

"Ellie believes," said Cedric with an amused grin, "that Harry didn't actually put his name into the Goblet of Fire at all."

"Didn't put his name in?" repeated Susan Bones—one of the few Hufflepuffs that Cedric spent time with who Ellie could stand. "Meaning, what—someone else did?"

"Please," snorted Zacharias. "A likely story."

Ellie glanced pointedly at Cedric as she bit her lip to keep from saying something that would anger his friends. Seeming to follow, he cleared his throat, told them, "Well, I'll catch up with you a bit later," took her hand, and led her outside.

"Thanks," she said as he put his arm around her and led her toward Honeydukes. "It's true, you know. He didn't—"

"I know it's what you believe," he interrupted gently, kissing the top of her head affectionately. "Now, c'mon. I'll buy you something sweet."

She followed him into Honeydukes, which was as crowded as it always was. She spotted Fred and George in the corner and offered them a small smile, which they both returned before turning their attention hastily away from her. Cedric purchased her a Chocolate Frog and some Fizzing Whisbees, which she kept in a bag for later, then guided her outside and into a nearby alleyway.

"It's nice, being here with you," he said in a husky voice as he pressed her gently against a brick wall—reminding her a bit too much of the situation that summer with Aleks. "Like being on a date in the real world."

She smiled as best she could, and kissed him back when he kissed her. But, again, he didn't stop there.

Some of it, she could handle. She didn't mind his hands making their way toward her back pockets, nor even when they snuck their way up her shirt to the bare skin of her stomach. She had done that much with Oliver, after all; it didn't overwhelm her like it had in her earlier years. But when his hands started wandering higher and farther, she pulled away from him—again.

"Cedric," she said softly.

He was doing his best to look patient, she could tell, but he was frustrated. "Come on. I'm not trying to do anything serious. I'm just…"

"I'm not ready," she said firmly. At least, not ready to do this with you. If she and Fred had managed to be together longer than a day and a half, would she have been ready to let him touch her that way? She was pretty sure she'd let him touch her any way he wanted—and enjoy the hell out of it, too.

"But…" His faced was screwed up in concentration not to say the wrong thing. "But if you were ready with… with him…"

She groaned, shoving him off her with just a bit too much force. "I told you, Ced—I hate him. I don't want to talk about him. Ever."

"But you said… you said it was mutual. That you wanted to. So how come you don't want to with me?"

She almost felt bad for him—almost.

But it had only been a few weeks, and nothing gave him the excuse to pressure her—not even the false belief that she'd already gone that far with someone else.

"El?"

Ellie's eyes bulged as she turned away from Cedric to see Fred and George standing at the entrance to the alleyway, watching her and Cedric with highly concerned expressions. They might not have seen her shove Cedric away, but her body language was still pretty rigid and upset.

She glanced heavily back at Cedric, whose blue-grey eyes had gone from frustrated to pleading. Don't go with them, they seemed to say. I'm sorry.

"I'll see you later," she said shortly to Cedric.

And she walked away from him.


"I really wish you'd just tell me what the fight was about."

They were on their way back to Hogwarts. Tonight was the night Sirius had instructed Ellie and Harry to meet him in the common room by the fire, and she didn't want to take any chances missing that, despite the fact that she'd barely seen Harry all day.

"It was nothing," she told Fred shortly. George was there, too, though he'd been mostly silent since she joined them. "We're just… you know. Not exactly a match made in Heaven."

She caught George roll his eyes at that, and she understood why; as far as he knew, she had actually chosen to be with Cedric—voluntarily.

"I don't get why you were in an alleyway like that," Fred pushed. "I mean, Hogsmeade is for eating, drinking, and buying joke products. If he wanted to… canoodle you… couldn't he have waited until you were back at the castle?"

Ellie thought about mentioning that if it was him she was dating, she would have been happy to disappear into an alleyway with him, but decided against it. "Can we just forget about Cedric? Show me what you got at Zonko's."

"It's for research," George explained to her as he pulled out his own bag to show her. Apparently he was done being mad at her for the moment. "We've been working more on our own products—you know, with you being preoccupied with the new boyfriend and all."

Ellie made a face at that, but she was actually relieved to hear that Fred and George had been making productive use of their time apart from her. She hated the thought of Fred letting the misery overtake him—the way she herself was starting to feel quite often.

"I'm going to go upstairs and work on this," said George when they reached the Gryffindor common room. "Catch up with you at breakfast, Ellie?"

She nodded and hugged him goodbye, watching him thoughtfully as he ascended the boys' staircase. Did he and Fred have some sort of secret code for when Fred wanted alone time with her, or was George just that perceptive?

"It's a twin thing," Fred explained, as if reading her mind. "He can tell when we have things we need to talk about."

"A twin thing and a friend thing, then," she corrected.

He nodded, then scanned the common room carefully. They were the first ones back from Hogsmeade, though there were a few first- and second-years scattered about. Fred guided her to the armchairs furthest from the youngsters, where they both sat.

"I was right," he said, watching her carefully. "About the expectations. Wasn't I?"

She sighed. She really wished he wasn't so good at reading things—at reading her. "Yeah—you were right."

He cursed, standing right back up again and starting to pace. The youngsters on the other side of the common room all looked up at them with wide eyes.

"It doesn't matter," she said quickly, rising to her feet and striding over to comfort him. "Just because he expects it doesn't mean he's going to get it. I might be going along with the majority of Aleks' asks, but I do draw the line somewhere."

He gave a weak, half-hearted laugh at that, though he did look at least a little relieved.

"Come on," she said gently, reaching out to take his hand. "We still have a few hours before Sirius comes. Can we just… enjoy it?"

He sighed. "Of course we can, Ellie. I just..."

"I know."

For the briefest instant, she thought she might just succumb to the urge—to kiss him the way she had wanted to ever since she had accepted Cedric as her boyfriend.

But to do so would only make things harder for the both of them, and he seemed to know it, too.

So, instead, they curled up together and held each other in silence.


"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Ellie demanded a few hours later when Harry stumbled through the portrait hole, invisibility cloak half-on, half-off. "You were nearly late for—"

"I'll explain to both of you," Harry promised as he joined her on the sofa by the fire. He glanced pointedly at Fred and corrected, "All three of you."

Ellie hadn't initially planned on Fred joining them to speak with Sirius—mainly because she was worried he'd say something he shouldn't about Aleks—but spending the past few hours with him had felt so good, she wasn't quite ready to stop. It had been easy enough to convince George to protect the boys' side of the dorms from anyone coming down and spotting Sirius.

Sirius's head appeared in the flames at that—a sight that was every bit as bizarre as it sounded. He coughed and sputtered a bit before scanning them carefully, then smiling.

"It's good to see you," he said. "Though a bit of a surprise to see all three of you. Ellie, Fred—you two finally work things out?"

Ellie and Fred exchanged an uncomfortable look, but before either of them could think of what to say, Harry explained for her, "She's got a new boyfriend now."

Sirius' eyes widened in some combination of surprise and fury, but Ellie said hastily, "Now's really not the time. We need to talk about the Tournament, Dad. Harry—"

"—got chosen as a Triwizard Champion," Sirius finished grimly. He didn't sound quite ready to let go of the boyfriend topic, but he nodded grimly. "And never actually put his name in the goblet."

"Please say you believe me," Harry begged. "I didn't—"

"Of course, I believe you," Sirius interrupted shortly. "You might not be a stranger to danger, but you don't go seeking it out, do you? Clearly someone's put your name into the goblet—the question is, who?"

"I have no idea," Harry said, shaking his head. "Someone who wants me dead, I reckon."

Sirius nodded grimly. "No friend to you—that much is certain."

"You said you were heading north to investigate certain… stirrings you'd been hearing about," Ellie told him. "Have you learned anything more?"

"Oh, a good number of things—though I haven't quite worked out how it all pieces together. There's Igor Karkaroff, for one—word has it he's come to Hogwarts as the representative of Durmstrang. That true?"

Harry nodded. "He's their headmaster."

Sirius' grey eyes darkened at that. "He's also a Death Eater—at least, he was. Turned in a whole slew of fellow Death Eaters in exchange for his crimes being pardoned."

Harry, Ellie, and Fred all stiffened at that; Fred was the first to speak. "So that's one Death Eater and one son of a Death Eater under our roof—and that's just the ones we know of?"

"I don't like it, either," said Sirius grimly. "Nor does Albus—which is why he brought Alastor to come teach at Hogwarts this year."

Ellie knew that much was true; Dumbledore had said so himself to Ellie and Harry when she and Fred came to him about Aleks.

"There was, however, an incident at Moody's place of residence the morning he was due to report at Hogwarts," Sirius continued. "I have reason to suspect that someone was trying to stop him from making it to Hogwarts—perhaps the very someone who put Harry's name into the goblet."

Ellie vaguely remembered hearing about Arthur Weasley being sent to assist with the debacle at Moody's the morning they took the train to Hogwarts. She also remembered an article coming out about it, making fun of both Moody and Arthur. But she hadn't connected the dots that it had been someone trying to stop him from coming to Hogwarts.

"And that isn't all," continued Sirius. "Have you all heard of Bertha Jorkins?"

"The missing witch from the Ministry," said Harry, nodding. "Heard about it at the Quidditch World Cup. What about her?"

"The last place she was seen before disappearing was Albania—the last known location of the Dark Lord."

All three of them outright shuddered at that. "B… but…" Harry stammered. "He isn't… I thought he wasn't more than a… a…"

"Than a shell of a man," agreed Sirius. "Still, the coincidence seems… concerning."

"No kidding," said Fred grimly. "Any other good news?"

Sirius allowed him a chuckle at that. "That's all on my end—but I'd love to know what Harry's plan is for the first task. Harry, have you been told anything at all about what you'll be up against?"

Ellie expected Harry to say no—as far as she knew, none of the champions had any idea what the first task would entail—but, to her surprise, he didn't. "Actually, I've just got back from seeing Hagrid. It's dragons—the first task is dragons."

Ellie gaped at him, then turned to Fred as if to determine whether she'd heard him correctly. Fred looked no less shocked than her.

"Dragons," repeated Sirius, frowning. "Well, I'll admit they're not exactly easing you into things, but it won't be so bad. All you need is a simple—"

But he stopped short when he heard the same thing the three of them did: some sort of commotion coming from the top of the boys' staircase. It was George and Ron, from the sound of things—arguing quite loudly.

"I'd better go," said Sirius reluctantly.

"It's fine," said Ellie. "George has it under control. What were you—"

"I'm sorry," Sirius interrupted. "Be safe."

And with that, his face disappeared into the flames.


Well, this chapter was mostly true to the books - but we certainly have some differences coming up! Stay tuned, as the first task is upon us!