Ch. 13 – Water on the Fire

Armed with my new knowledge of Ashlee's where shouts, I could ignore everybody's bullying without a problem. I could just walk past people making faces at me without a problem. Knowing that Ashlee was alive and safe and doing what she always wanted to do made me above pretty insults and things like that. If I learned anything about anything from Ashlee, it was how to be strong and rise above. So that's what I did. Smile and hold my chin up.

Eventually people began to let up. They knew it wasn't getting to me, so they just stopped! Well, everybody except for Hermione. She kept nagging me about the end-of-term exams that were coming up soon. I only studied a little bit each night with Harry and Ron because I knew most everything.

But still, I was neglected by Cedric. Mikel tried to talk to him for me, but he just ignored her. I couldn't figure out why… I thought he loved me. Shouldn't he keep on loving me? I mean, love doesn't just die because something bad happened. As I thought about it after dinner, I decided it would be best just to go to the source. Seeing a student I knew to be in Hufflepuff, I decided I would ask her.

"Hey!" I shouted at her. "Where is the Hufflepuff common room? I need to talk to somebody."

"It's in the Loyalty Tower," she answered kindly. "You want me to show you?"

"No," I said. "I know where that is. Thanks so much!"

I rushed to the common room fire and grabbed a handful of Floo Powder. I stuck my head in the flames, threw the powder, and yelled, "LOYALTY TOWER!"

I had the strangest segregation, then. My head was spinning around just like it does when I'm super-confused! As I spun, I could catch glimpses of Hogwarts corridors and hallways as my head raced to Loyalty Tower. As it slowed down, I saw the inside of the Hufflepuff common room! It was very similar to ours, except the students and the decorum. I saw lots of students inside. One Huffle Puff female caught notice of me.

"Umm… hello?" she asked, unsure if I was actually there or not.

"Hi!" I responded. "Is Cedric Diggory there?"

"Yeah… I'll go get him. Just a second…" She drifted out of view as I assumed she was going to get Cedric. I heard muffled voices in the background, but I could not understand them. I waited patiently as the seconds ticked by. I saw a pair of familiar feet strolling my way, and I was excited.

"Cedric!" I cried, happy we could finally talk face-to-face.

Once he saw who it was, he frowned. He was so beautiful when he frowned. I missed him so much!

"Cedric, it's me. Bella." He said nothing.

"Get out," he said dryly.

"Cedric, I—"

"Out. You don't belong here. Just leave."

"But Ashlee is okay! I talked to her! She said you should no longer be mad at me! She's okay!"

Cedric shook his head and took his wand out of his pocket. Before I could say anything else, he pointed it at the fire and said, "Aquafina."

My head began spinning again as it left the Huffle room and on to my common room. Spinning the same way as before, except a little different. It slowed down until it reconnected with my body and I found myself in the fire once more. Stepping back, I realized I was stopping wet.

"Bella, what the heck? You go into the fire and come out wet. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever," Hermione said in a matter-of-fact way.

"Never mind," I said grumpily, heading towards the bedroom. I'm just going to go to bed."

Lying there in the darkness, I felt sadder than I had in a very long time.

—

I woke up with Hermione's face in my face. Scared at this rude awakening, I was too scared to say anything cohesive.

"Bella! Wake up!" she said excitedly. "It's time for breakfast! You don't want to miss your exams, do you? This is what we've been waiting for all year long!"

"Hermione, get off me!" I counted, slightly annoyed. "A regular wakeup call would have serviced." Getting up and rubbing my eyes, I took into consideration that exams were today. I wasn't nervous or excited or anything, just anticipating. I was in a pretty bad mood because of Cedric, but I couldn't let that ruin my day. I just wished he would tell me why he was upset!

Changing and going downstairs to breakfast, I met up with Mikel to eat breakfast. I told her what happened with Cedric.

"Wow, that wasn't very nice. I apologize for him," she remarked after I finished. "I don't know why he would do that. I know he's stubborn, but not rude like that. Maybe something weird is happening to him."

I was confused. "Huh? What kind of something weird?"

"Well, our natural diet is made up of people, right?" I shuddered. "Maybe since we've been depriving ourselves of it, he's starting to act differently!"

I stopped to consider that. It did make sense. But what could we do about it? We couldn't just feed him a person to see if he gets better… that would be too risky.

I thought about it for the rest of breakfast and on the way to the Great Hall for exams. There, instead of having the four house tables, they had little desks for each separate person! I had never seen anything like it outside of grade school. Taking my seat at one of these desks, more students began to file in. Tests were passed out, and I began to prepare myself.

I read the first question and smiled. How to identify a vampire…