(OotP) CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Sweet Sixteen

The further into October it got, the worse things seemed to get—with one small exception: Quidditch was reinstated.

"We've got so much lost time to make up for!" Angelina exclaimed as soon as she'd delivered the news to the Gryffindor team. "I've reserved the pitch for first thing tomorrow morning. The Slytherin game is only a few weeks away, so we need to give it our all!"

"I think she's hitting decibels not previously achieved by mankind," Fred quipped into Ellie's ear.

Ellie wanted to laugh. More than that, she wanted the news of Quidditch being reinstated to be enough for her.

But it wasn't.

Umbridge was everywhere now—spectating on what felt like every single one of Ellie's classes, scribbling notes onto her clipboard and shooting Ellie warning looks every time she opened her mouth. Ellie hadn't earned herself another detention yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time; Umbridge inched closer and closer to Ellie's breaking point with her talk of "lies" and "rumours" with every passing day. Ellie's Occlumency training was going well, both with Snape and with Luna, but that came at a heavy price: her having to relive painful memories over and over again.

And then there was Fred.

He still talked to her. He still joked with her. He still ate meals with her and spent time with her in the common room. But it was all cordial—all on the surface—and it was never just the two of them.

And he didn't invade her thoughts anymore.

She shouldn't miss it, she knew. She had always hated not having any privacy from him, hadn't she?

Now that he was gone, though, there was just… emptiness.

"We need to have another D.A. meeting," Ellie told Hermione one evening after class. It was late October—several weeks after the first. "What are we waiting for?"

"We'll have one as soon as the Slytherin match is over," Ron explained for Hermione. "Angelina made us promise not to hold one sooner—y'know, just in case Umbridge found out and canceled Quidditch again."

"Oh." Ellie nodded, trying to disguise her disappointment. "Makes sense."

"Probably for the best you take breaks in between, anyway," said Harry. "You know, given your affinity for getting yourself hurt in the meetings."

She smiled a plastered-on smile before rising to her feet and leaving.

"This is what I want. I want you to go."

"You want to die?"

"You're going to change the world, Ellie. You, Harry… Him, too, I reckon—by association, if nothing else."

"You are, too! You're a Triwizard champion. You're an all-star student. You're—"

"I think this is how I change the world. What I was mean to do. And I'm okay with that."

"I'm sorry. For everything."

She was dreaming again, but it wasn't Ghost-Cedric this time. It was real Cedric—the one with the kind, blue-grey eyes that had stared at her so many times—filled with a love she had never deserved.

"Do you remember what came next?"

Ellie jumped at the sound of the voice behind her. It had been a long time since Fred had entered her thoughts, but even longer since he had entered her dreams. What was he doing there?

"He said, 'don't be sorry,'" Fred told her as he stepped over to her. "'Just be happy, Ellie."

She had almost forgotten that part.

"I tried writing to her," she told Fred as the image of Cedric faded and they were left in sea of foggy grey. "To my mum. I just… couldn't do it."

He nodded. "I know."

So he had still been listening in. But why had he stopped communicating with her?

"Because I thought it was what you wanted. I don't know how to navigate any of this either, you know. I'm just… I'm really trying, El."

He was really trying? Really trying was writing her off and ignoring her?

His brown eyes clouded with hurt at that. "And what's really trying for you? Insisting that we have sex?"

She looked away from him.

He was right, of course. Her strategies had been no better than his.

"What are you doing here, then?" she asked him. "If you've been trying to stay out of my head."

"Well, it's a special occasion, isn't it?"

She blinked up at him, confused. What special occasion was he referring to? The Slytherin match wasn't for a few more days, and the D.A. meeting wasn't until after that.

"What is this, a reverse Sixteen Candles?" he asked, laughing. "Ease up on the act there, Molly Ringwald."

Ellie's eyes bulged as the realization sunk in. It was her stupid, Halloween birthday. Sweet sixteen, as the Muggles called it.

There didn't seem to be anything sweet about it.

Fred's eyebrows furrowed together as he realized that she hadn't been acting. "You really forgot?"

She didn't see a point in answering that question, so she decided to ask one of her own. She took a tentative step toward him, bringing her closer to him than she'd been in several weeks—even if it was only a dream. "Can I ask for something? For my birthday?"

"Anything," he told her. "Well, anything where we keep our clothes on."

She laughed wryly at that, though her heart wasn't quite in it. She reached up a hand to cup his cheek, and for an instant, it almost felt as good as the real thing.

"Just… pretend with me," she whispered. "For tonight. Pretend we're the only two people in the world, and nothing else matters."

His eyes sparkled with the same longing that tugged at her heart, and he took her face in his hands, too, at that, leaning forward to press a kiss onto her forehead—and then another one on her cheek—and then, finally, one on her lips.

"Okay," he whispered. And he kissed her again.

When she woke up, she was alone.

She had slept in, she realized as she looked around her suite in confusion. It was so rare that she was the last one up, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been the only one there.

When she reached the common room, she was surprised to find that it, too, was mostly empty. Classes hadn't started yet—she hadn't slept in that much—but everyone must already be off to breakfast.

"We must really be throwing everyone off this morning," joked Fred from the far side of the common room as he strode over to meet her. "We're usually the last two asleep and the first two up."

It made sense, she supposed, that he, too, had slept in. Their little escape from reality had been pure bliss, and neither had been ready for it to end when the morning came.

"I did get you a tangible present," he said, reaching into the pocket of his robes and fishing something out. It was a small, glass vial, stoppered and filled with a deep, violet-coloured liquid.

"What is it?" she asked as she accepted it. "Did you make it yourself?"

He nodded. "Made one for myself, too. Took it already, just to be sure it was safe. Doesn't have a real name, or anything, but it's basically… an Occlumency potion."

She blinked, first at the potion and then again at him. "An Occlumency potion? Meaning, I take it, and no one can get in my head?"

"Not exactly." He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, looking away from her. "That was what I tried for, of course, but I couldn't quite manage it, and it seems no one else ever has, either."

"Then… what does it mean?" she asked slowly, though she had a feeling she already knew—and dreaded—the answer.

"Well, I was able to mimic a lot of the things I did to make our communication devices—you know, your locket and my ring—only in reverse. I think that's where it all started, you know? From using them so much. So, when I did that, along with quite a few other things, I managed to create a potion that would keep us out—you know, of each other's heads."

The night Fred had kissed Ellie for the first time on Christmas Eve and then rejected her, he broke her heart. The day she finally decided to let him back in, she told herself that he would never do that again—that she trusted him with every ounce of herself.

Now, for the first time since letting him in, she started to doubt that.

Did he have any idea how much this "gift" hurt her?

Judging from the way he was looking at her, he did know—had heard that very question in her head.

"The one I took," he said, "it only keeps you out of my head. You have to take yours to keep me out of yours."

"But…" She shook her head. She refused to accept this. "This is what you want?"

"I want you to get better, El!" His patience was clearly waning. "I want you be happy again! For months now, hearing my voice in your head has caused you nothing but pain. I've tried to ignore it, but I can't anymore. This is what you need. It doesn't matter how I feel about it."

But it wasn't what she needed. It was the farthest thing from what she needed.

And the fact that he didn't know that was really starting to scare her.

At Fred's insistence, she had taken the vial and stashed it in her trunk upstairs.

But she had no intentions of taking it.

The rest of her birthday wasn't much better than the start of it. She received small gifts and short hugs from the closest of her friends and roommates, all of whom seemed distracted by the O.W.L. workload and the upcoming Quidditch game. She attended the Halloween feast with the rest of the school, staring blankly toward the staff table as Umbridge leered down at her with that fake, plastered-on smile.

And then it was time for bed again, and the nightmares returned, but Fred did not.

"Blimey, Ellie," groaned Parvati early in the morning as she shoved Ellie awake. "Is it just me, or are your nightmares getting even worse than usual?"

"Better not let it affect your playing today, or Ange will lose it on you!" teased Lavender from Ellie's other side.

"Right," Ellie said, laughing shakily. "I'll be fine."

But she wasn't fine.

There was something going on with her shield.

It felt almost like it was stewing inside her, bordering on the cusp of activating at every waking moment—like the pain she had felt the night before, and still felt, was nearly enough to spark the shield without any shroud of actual physical harm being done to her.

Fred, of course, noticed that something was wrong the moment he saw her at breakfast. But, knowing perfectly well how he'd react if he knew it had anything to do with her shield, she focused on the Occlumency Snape and Luna had been teaching her—only instead of protect your memories, she focused on protect your thoughts.

It seemed to do the trick.

"Did you take your potion?" he asked her as they walked to the Quidditch pitch.

"What? No." As if she could ever do that. She still couldn't stomach the fact that he had.

"Something's wrong," he said to her. "And I can't get inside your head to figure out what."

They had reached the field by then. Madam Hooch was already starting the announcements as the Slytherin team lined up in front of them.

"You want to know what's wrong?" she asked Fred, not bothering to lower her voice. She didn't care who heard. "Us, Fred. We're what's wrong."

And with that, the whistle sounded, and she took off into the air.

But she didn't get very far.

She did catch the Quaffle off the bat, of course. But almost the second she did, Graham Montague lunged at her, and the second he did, he was thrown off his broom by her shield.

Ellie froze, Quaffle still in hand, jaw having fallen open, as she watched his body streak down to the ground. Madam Hooch cast a slowing charm in time to break his fall, of course, and he was fine. But then Cassius Warrington zoomed at her, and she even closed her eyes and thought, Don't do it, don't hurt him, it's just a game…

But it did hurt him.

It knocked him off his broom, too.

"Enough!" shouted Madam Hooch from the ground, blowing her whistle furiously as all the players slowly touched back down to the ground. "Eleanor Black—what is the meaning of this?"

Hearing another professor call her by her real name did nothing for her in the intensity of this moment.

She had no control over her shield anymore.

"She obviously can't control it, Professor," said Angelina, reaching out to touch Ellie. "She didn't even have her wand out."

"Be that as it may," said a new voice—a girlish, high-pitched squeak that Ellie didn't have to look to know who it belonged to—"she obviously cannot be allowed to continue playing Quidditch."

Groans and complaints erupted from the rest of her teammates, but for once in her life, Ellie actually agreed with Umbridge. Why should she be allowed to play? It was the most unfair advantage imaginable.

"Furthermore," continued Umbridge, "as penance for the damage you have done against these poor Slytherin Chasers, you will be required to attend one week of detention."

"But it wasn't on purpose, Professor!" shouted Fred. "Surely you can't—"

"Another word," Umbridge interrupted swiftly, "and the entirety of the Gryffindor team's Quidditch privileges will be revoked."

At that, of course, the Gryffindor team went silent—leaving Ellie to pray that her Occlumency lessons had been enough to keep Umbridge out of her head.

Well, it's a good thing she took those lessons, I suppose. But what's going on with her shield, and how much longer must we endure this misery? Surely they can find a way toward happiness, right? Well, as with all things, it'll get worse before it gets better... but stick with it and you will be rewarded, my friends!