Can't you move any quicker.

Otillia scolded her feet. Her legs were gravitating to the ground, pulling her downwards with intangible energy. The air she was moving through felt heavy, her aura a heavy-weight wrestler she could barely bear to carry. Although there was no (alive) soul to be found in the Castle's corridors at this time in the evening, she kept peering over her shoulder, feeling hunted by the thought of being hunted.

The prefect rounds Otillia had been walking for over a year now had given her the capacity of finding her way through the Castle effortlessly. This was quite useful since her brain was spinning out of her skull, completely incapable of making any well thought-through decisions. Flashes of red hair and pink lips kept shooting by on her retina. Blinking her eyes, sealing the eye from the light necessary to shape such vivid imageries, was to no avail. The visions seemed plastered.

Darting to the Ravenclaw Common Room, Otillia consistently skipped one flight of stairs while ascending the steps of the Ravenclaw Tower in a rapid pace. Having surely lost all her wits and the logical framework that held fast her mental capacities, she finally arrived at the majestic entrance of the Common Room.

"I am not alive, but I grow; I don't have lungs, but I need air; I don't have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?"

I don't care just what you are, you insipid birdbrained parrot.

She stamped her foot out of frustration. The Eagle was indubitably one of the greater inventions by Rowena Ravenclaw, but its riddles were extremely hard to crack when one was igneous of raging inner confusion. At the verge of strangling the bird's neck with her fingers, the riddle suddenly made sense.

"Fire! You are fire!"

The giant gate opened and Otillia hurried inside. Her heartbeat started to slow the second the gate closed behind her, when she found herself encircled by the majestic ultramarine colors of the Common Room. She deeply desired to withdraw quietly and unseen into the girls' dormitory, but her late arrival was noticed by many of her peers.

"Otillia!"

Sigh.

Duncan's everlasting smile welcomed Otillia warmly. Waving, he insisted her to join the conversation he was having with Roger, who was seated on the armrest of the love chair the pair was settled in. Otillia made her way over, hoping her shock was concealed well enough.

"Catch any bandits?" Roger chuckled.

"Fought off any poltergeists?" Duncan injected.

The truth was burning on Otillia's tongue, trying to escape as flames that suddenly increased with added oxygen.

Bandits, poltergeists, redheaded demons that tear your skin open, rip your wit out, and crush it with their teeth? Check.

"No, nothing like that. The evening was truly uneventful, though I did have a pleasant conversation with Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Popington." She provided the latter information purely so that it felt less as if she was lying in her teammates' faces.

"Who's that?" Duncan asked.

"She means Nearly Headless," Roger clarified to his friend.

"You must have had a bore of an evening then," Duncan laughed while Otillia took a seat in the azure bench opposite to the pair.

"No swamps this time?" Roger asked, his teeth revealing as he smiled at her. Otillia found herself scrutinizing the contours of his lips closely, counting the small folds of skin. Her attraction to her Quidditch captain came to her naturally, but it felt different this time. Almost comparative, or competitive even. She frowned at the realization of this sudden change but shook off the odd new feeling.

"Nothing of the sort. It was quite refreshing to encounter the floors in their proper, physical state."

"We went by the fifth floor by the way," Duncan said, eyes twinkling from cheekiness.

"And…?" Otillia asked disinterestedly, knowing where this was going.

"We saw the patch Flitwick saved. Can't believe the entire fifth floor was filled with that mess. Can't believe I missed it either."

"Umbridge was searching for the Weasleys," Roger informed Otillia.

"Oh was she?" Otillia replied, trying to hide her curiosity.

"Couldn't find them anywhere. Not that she has any proof it was them. But she seemed quite desperate at putting the blame on those Weasleys."

"Smiling the entire time though – she seriously freaks me out," Duncan finished for his friend, grimacing.

"Speaking of freaking out," Duncan's tone suddenly changed, volume lowering to a whisper. "Cho–"

Roger kicked Duncan with his feet to keep him from spilling. With raised eyebrows, Otillia looked from Duncan, to Roger, to Duncan again.

"Cho? What's up with her?" Otillia looked around the Common Room properly for the first time, unable to spot the girl. "Where is she?"

"In the dorms," Roger said quietly.

"What happened? What are you not telling me?" Otillia pressed.

"Honestly, we we're just talking Quidditch. I didn't mean to hurt her," Duncan uttered conflicted, his gaze lowered to the floor, reminiscing his previous talk with Cho.

Otillia pleaded Roger with her eyes to fill her in on what happened.

"We were discussing this year's prospects of the team," Roger started, looking Otillia somewhat troubled in the eye. "When we got to our chances against Hufflepuff…"

Roger's gaze trailed off to some spot behind Otillia, eyes saddened by some distant realization.

"I mentioned Diggory." Duncan pulled his hair with both hands for a moment, before letting them slide. "I should have realized, I know, but it had left my mouth before I could even–"

Duncan closed his lips forcefully, disappointed with himself again for running his mouth off.

"Duncan, you nitwit," Otillia spoke under her breath.

"For a second, I just thought that everything…" he halted afraid to finish his sentence, thoughts visibly racing through his mind.

"Was normal," Otillia susurrated.

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen," Duncan assured his friends, torment loud and clear in his tone.

"I'm also sure Cho doesn't blame you for any of it. But right now, the reality of it all, it just… hurts her tremendously. She's vulnerable, scared, and probably a trillion other things we'll never get to find out about. And hell, she's not the only one," Otillia said softly in support of the boy's good intentions.

Duncan nodded. Both boys stayed silent, looking silently at Otillia as if anticipating a solution from her side. Her possessing an insurmountable intellect and punctual personality had, naturally, allocated a protective, motherly role to Otillia over the years. Whenever anyone of her friends was in distress or in need of aid, it was her they would turn to.

"I'll go and check on her," she said, hoisting herself from her warm seat.

"Please tell her that I didn't mean to cause her any pain," Duncan pressed.

"I will, I will. Don't worry."

Otillia smiled reassuringly at the boys before retreating to the girl dormitories.

Diggory's untimely death had taken a toll on a lot of students, but it was, with good reason, gnawing at Cho especially. Although Cho tried to obscure her heartfelt trauma from her friends, it was painfully obvious that instead of a smile, a gaping, glaring wound now cracked her face, resisting any amount or form of stiches. Greatly weakened since the tragedy, Otillia feared for Cho. The girl's state of mourning was increasingly overruling her normally unbeatable pugnacity. If only Otillia could take over a small part of her friend's burden, the size of a pink or the weight of a tear. But all she could do was to stay strong in the face of the inconceivably unbearable misery her friend was fostering; in the face of the darkness promised by the harbinger of hatred.

Closing the door of the girls' dormitory behind her silently, Otillia found her friend enclosed by the sealed curtains framing her bed. A metaphor, Otillia thought, of the closed off space of Cho's skull, inhibiting the expression of her tormented inner thoughts.

"Cho?"

Due to the absence of even a breathing sound, Otillia realized Cho had put up a Silencing Spell. This, however, did not mean her friend was unable to hear her.

Otillia sat down on the ground against Cho's bedframe. All light seemed to have been sucked out of the dorm's atmosphere. Everything looked so still, it could have forecasted the unliveliness of a coming death. She pulled her legs up, shivering at the thought, folding her arms around them, and rested her chin on her right knee, uncertain what to say to her dear friend, realizing full well that words are insufficiently encapsulating, yet far-reaching like light. And even if no description can fully capture the meaning behind it, their bodies were in definite need of abridgement.

"I know you can hear me. I want you know that I'm here. And I will not leave your side, even if touching your bed is the closest I can get."

Screaming silence.

"I won't pretend to understand what you're going through, but I won't let you go through it alone either."

Attempting to draw nearer to Cho, Otillia turned her body 90 degrees, shoulder resting against the frame. The space in her ribcage compressed, a suffocating helplessness tearing her bones.

"Please, Cho. Please," Otillia stroked the soft material of the indigo curtain. "Please."

The quiet dispersal of cataclysmic disorder after Diggory's death and Voldemort's resurrection had left but distance between bodies. Distrust, a gaze constantly controlling the range of touch. Hope, a vacant space, unoccupied by the verdure of a dream and the sedulity of a dare. And love, that which is capable of completely breaking you down and lifting you up in all your brokenness.

Love, it was out of love and because of love that the indigo façade moved, slowly, afraid to expose too instantaneously the outside environment to the epidemic of hurt closely maintained so securely inside. She found Cho dissociating from her environment, incarcerated by crossed-legs and crossed-arms, tears gliding over her cheeks, eyes unblinking.

Theatre often ends the ordinary with the opening of its drapery, but when Cho's curtains opened, Otillia knew that this was still life, bare and exposed, terror-struck life.

Standing up, Otillia wanted to embrace her dear friend, but she loomed hesitantly at her bedside, afraid to stir her brittle porcelain posture.

"Cho…" Otillia whispered. When trying to swallow her sadness, it got stuck in her throat cavity, pressing against its muscles, squeezing its volume to a constant hurt.

She sat down on the bed sidewards, facing Cho, putting her hand on Cho's underarm.

Cho didn't retreat. Staring at some remote place, secluded from her present existence, she tried suppressing all the sensations that anchored her in her current corporeity. Tears, still, trailing her face.

"Cho…" Otillia whispered again, venturing towards her friend. Knee deep in her matrass and in lashings of sorrow, she closed Cho in her embrace, who returned to her body through Otillia's touch. Immediately, she started shaking, her tears accompanied by shrill squeaks. Incomprehensible syllables full of suffering left Cho's mouth while she tried to express to Otillia what she had been holding in. It sounded like someone had cut her vocal cord but was coercing her to utter a series of nonsensical phrases. Which she did, tragically painfully, detested by her own incapacity to function normally.

"S– s– s– sorry," was the first word Otillia could make up out of the stream of sound.

"I–" Cho put her hands to her mouth, motorically holding back the expression of a too painful thought.

"Shhht," Otillia tried to ease her friend. "You have nothing to be sorry about. It's alright, it's alright."

Cho's sorrow subsided somewhat. Her hands relieved her mouth and her face shot towards Otillia, a mix of anger and desperation swallowing her eyes.

"Nothing is alright!" she exclaimed. Startled by her outburst, she recollected herself, pursuing in a softer tone.

"Sometimes I just miss Cedric… so much. Sometimes … I am afraid someone else I love might get killed." She looked intensely at Otillia, looking through her as if envisioning some dreadful destiny. "Sometimes, sometimes I hate myself for forgetting, moving towards moving on. And sometimes, I hate myself for hating myself." Her fist smashed into the mattress when finishing speaking.

Otillia felt stunned by the witch's words. Dismissing all possible responses to Cho's confession as utterly unqualified – for, what answer does one give to such traumatized grief? – she stared piercingly at her friend. Cho seemed to notice Otillia's reticence, swallowed, wiped her tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, and gave her a weak, apologetic, and unconvincing smile.

"Sorry," she whispered again, lowering her eyes to avoid Otillia's piercing gaze.

"Don't." Otillia grabbed one of Cho's hands and held it in her own. "Don't be sorry and please do not hate yourself. Don't blame any of this on yourself. You are one of the most talented and persevering people I know, Cho. But at this moment, you are in an impossible position that does not have an instruction laying out for you how to handle this. There is really not a 'right' or 'wrong' here."

Cho's eyes suddenly regained a speck of their sparkle.

"I mean it," Otillia insisted, causing a sincere smile to play on Cho's lips. "I'm happy to see you smiling again."

"I'm sorry for–"

"Shut. Up." Otillia ordered kindly.

Cho pressed her lips together in reply amusedly, indicating her enforced silence. Otillia lifted herself from the bed and sat down again beside Cho, upper arms against each other.

"Thank you, Otillia," Cho broke her muteness.

Otillia rested her head against Cho's shoulder. "I won't leave you alone."

"Oh, but I must have ruined your evening," Cho's mood swung upon this sudden realization.

Otillia snickered.

"Honestly, being here with you, for you, is the highlight of my day."

"Have you had such a bad day?" Cho laughed for the first time.

This question returned promptly the previous episode with Fred Weasley in the secretly hidden classroom to her mind. Otillia pondered for a moment if she should confide Cho with this information. Knowing Cho would absolutely relish hearing this, she decided to tell her. If anything, it would lighten up her clouded existence.

"Horrendous really," Otillia replied, lifting her head from Cho's shoulder, putting a hand to her forehead out of theatrical misery.

"My entire day revolved around that witless Weasel."

"Oh? Fred?"

Otillia nodded in reply.

"First, there were the swamps. Then, I tried seizing the twins, unsuccessfully," she grunted the latter adjective. "This bugged me so much that I volunteered to walk Padma's curfew rounds."

"Of course you did."

Otillia went on in all seriousness, ignoring Cho's intervention.

"I actually found out how they got away," she said proudly.

"Hm?"

"I found a secret passage in the dead-end corridor of the fifth floor."

"How did you manage that?" Cho asked in disbelief.

"To give credit where credit is due, I might have gotten some help… from a ghost; Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Popington, to be precise."

"How kind of him," Cho mused.

"Incredibly so," Otillia replied somewhat sarcastically before going on.

"Anyways, so I found this secret classroom, hidden away behind a magical wall. And there he was again. The redheaded ferret." Otillia halted her narration unsure how to shape its progression. Her face reddened when she recollected the boy's powerful posture, raven hair tightly in his hand, eyes infiltrating her spatial sanctuary.
"And? What happened next? I admit my curiosity!"

"He– I–" No word or syntax seemed to be able to catch the position Otillia had been in.

"Angelina, he was there with Angelina Johnson."

"Doing… what?" Cho asked keen, her sly smile betraying that she had some idea of where this was going.

"Intimate stuff." Otillia almost spat the words out.
Cho giggled. "Can't imagine they were happy to see you."

"Actually, they didn't notice." She was certainly not telling Cho that one of them did notice her. And a bit too well at that.
"Honestly, I was so taken aback by that gruesome scene that I only observed the fact and made sure I got away as quickly as I could. The images still burn on my retina though, it's nauseating."

"I hadn't taken you for a voyeur," Cho chuckled.

"I am not a voyeur," Otillia explicated sternly.

"You tell Fred Weasley that."

Flaming Nimue, Weasley will tell everyone!