Okay, we're back in it! I typically update Fridays, but I just finished this one, so I'm going to go ahead and update a few hours early. I also think that FF fixed my email issue, so let's pray it remains that way. It drives me bonkers.

Enjoy!

Gi-L-Ha: Thank you! We've got more going on in this one, and we're back in the groove, so hopefully no more long waits!

Chapter Eighteen

It should have come as no surprise to Nessa when the school turned against her and her brother. Again.

It was such a common occurrence at this point — anything that went wrong that could be attributed to her brother, could be attributed to her. Her loyalty to him was just a simple fact of life for the other students in the school — she was overprotective of him, breathing down his neck, aware of his every move. She would know if he'd entered the tournament. She would know how it had happened. She could have had the twins and Tori help her brother enter to keep Harry within the spotlight.

It was ignorant.

Not only because she wasn't aware of Harry's every move — as had been proven to her on several occasions when he'd risked his life without her help — but also because she had never had any desire to be in the spotlight. The former may not have been overtly obvious to anyone outside her and Harry's inner circle, but the latter certainly should have been; she kept her circle small and she didn't leave room for questions about her or her brother. Her overprotectiveness of her brother had also been well-known, and she had no idea how the school could overlook this under this circumstance. Especially because her defense of him to the teachers and other headmasters had become public knowledge by the end of Monday morning.

Gossips, the whole lot of them.

No matter the sheer stupidity of turning against her, the school did it anyway. Without question. And not just her and Harry, but against all of the Gryffindors.

It was clear that the rest of the school, just like the Gryffindors, thought that Harry had entered himself for the tournament. Nessa didn't entirely blame them — they didn't know him well enough to be privy to the fact that he hadn't, and she wouldn't have believed him herself if she didn't know him so well. Unlike the Gryffindors, however, they did not seem at all impressed that he'd managed the feat.

The Hufflepuffs, who were usually on excellent terms with the Gryffindors, had turned remarkably cold toward the whole lot of them. Nessa didn't need to have Herbology with them in order for this to be demonstrated to her. A pair of Hufflepuffs that she typically got on well with had laughed rather unpleasantly when her bag had split down the middle on her way to Transfiguration. It was plain that Hufflepuff believed that Harry had stolen their champion's glory; a feeling exacerbated, perhaps, by the fact that Hufflepuff House very rarely got any glory, and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any, having beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch, no matter how unfairly.

She could understand their irritation though, even if she didn't like it; they had their own champion to support. The Slytherins were always looking for any opportunity to hate Gryffindor, particularly if Harry was involved — he was highly unpopular there and always had been, because he had helped Gryffindor beat them so often, both at Quidditch and in the Inter-House Championship. But the Ravenclaws, who were usually fond of both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, had taken a similar stance against the Gryffindors. Nessa had hoped that they would find it within themselves to support both Cedric and Harry — they had nothing to lose in the tournament themselves, and they tended to be quite rational — but most of them seemed to think that Harry had been desperate to earn himself a bit more fame by tricking the goblet into accepting his name.

Then there was the fact that Cedric looked the part of a champion so much better than Harry did. He was exceptionally handsome, very outgoing and friendly, and much larger than Harry was at his age. It was hard to say who was receiving more admiration these days. Cedric or Viktor Krum. Nessa had actually seen a group of sixth-year girls begging Cedric to sign their school bags one lunchtime.

Nessa had yet to speak with Cedric, as she'd spent the entirety of Sunday in a sea of self-pity and had not left Gryffindor tower once. Given the reaction of his peers, she wasn't entirely looking forward to it either. She knew that she needed to speak with him at some point — her brother hadn't done anything wrong, and he was her friend — but he was always with Devin and she'd learned the hard way that Devin was a moron when it came to this sort of thing. It was going to be hard enough trying to explain to Cedric what was going on without his idiotic friend's added commentary.

Speaking with him was much harder as well when the twins and Tori seemed reluctant to leave her alone. She didn't necessarily blame them either — she'd been on edge and emotional for the majority of the week and she only seemed to relax when the three of them were distracting her from the immensity of what was to come.

By the time Friday had rolled around, she wasn't feeling much better about the entire thing. They still had no idea what the first task would be, and, therefore, no idea how to help her brother prepare, the school was turning into a madhouse, and she still hadn't spoken with Cedric which only added to her anxiety.

She had very little doubt that her week could get much worse than this, but she should have known that she was sorely mistaken. She and Tori had only just spotted the twins in the courtyard when Adelaide Murton stepped into their path with a smug smirk and a dangerous glint in her eye.

"Potter, Hastings," she said by way of a greeting, her friends flanking her sides as a group of Slytherin sixth-years watched from the bench nearest them. "How is ickle Harry doing? Off stealing someone else's glory?"

"Get stuffed, Murton," Tori snapped, grabbing Nessa's arm and making to pull her around the group of vindictive girls in front of them.

Adelaide stepped into their way again, nearly causing Tori to run into her so that they were now nose to nose.

"From what I understand, Hastings, you're fairly adept at being stuffed," Murton said, raising an eyebrow.

A group of Hufflepuff boys nearest them started snickering, but stopped abruptly when Tori shot them a withering look.

"You'd be better at it if you weren't such a frigid bitch, Murton," she snapped back, her eyes sliding slowly from the group of boys she'd been eyeing dangerously. "Move out of our way."

"Such vicious guard dogs you have, Potter," Murton sneered, as Fred and George made their way over to stand behind her and Tori. The Slytherin boys that had been idly watching before stepped behind Murton and her friends to prevent them from being outnumbered. "Of course, I suspect you keep Weasley on a leash. He'd get bored with you otherwise."

"What do you want, Adelaide?"

There was a long moment of surprised silence at her lack of vehemence. She mostly sounded bored, although not because she was bored, but because she was so incredibly tired of the way her life was looking at the moment. It was getting worse and worse by the second, and any fight she had left in her was slowly ebbing out of her.

Adelaide recovered quickly, however, grabbing a large badge from her pocket and pinning it to the front of her robes. Each of the Slytherins behind her did the same, grinning at her viciously. It took her a long moment to understand what she was looking at. For a wild moment, she thought they were S.P.E.W. badges, but then she noticed the color was a luminous red that burned her eyes to look at. They all had the same message:

Support CEDRIC DIGGORY — the REAL Hogwarts Champion!

"Do you like them?" Murton said. "Malfoy made them — and this isn't all they do, look!"

As one, the group of them pressed the badge on their chests and the message upon it vanished, to be replaced by another one, which glowed green:

POTTER STINKS!

The Slytherins howled with laughter, as the message shined brightly all around her. She felt a spark of anger then, but before she had the time to say anything, Tori was lunging. It was quite lucky that Fred responded fast enough to catch her before she could get her hands around Murton's neck.

"Always such a hothead, Hastings," Murton tutted condescendingly as Tori struggled against Fred's hold, her eyes sparking. "I wonder if you get that from your dear old dad," Nessa tried to maintain a nonchalant expression, to keep the shock off of her face or give anything away, even as the twins and Tori both froze up completely around her. They almost looked like they had stopped breathing entirely. Murton's smirk widened, nearly becoming a full on grin at the response she'd garnered. "Oh, yes, Hastings. I know all about your father…I wonder how comfortable the rest of the school would feel to know that you're the daughter of Sirius Black."

Tori paled as the muttering started — the whole school would know by the end of the day, and there was no telling what this information would do. Fred swore under his breath, glaring at a particular group of third-years that had taken hasty steps away from her, as if she'd sprouted another head.

"You don't know a single thing about her, Murton," he snapped viciously, squeezing Tori's sides in an attempt to get her to respond in a way that didn't give her true parentage away. Especially because no one knew of her father's innocence other than them.

Murton turned her gaze to Fred and Nessa tensed, recognizing the cruel sparkle in her eye as she eyed him up and down.

"Always so quick to defend her, Weasley," she purred dangerously. "Have you told her how —"

"Shut your mouth, Murton," Nessa growled, very aware of what she would say next. Tori's true parentage was enough drama for one day without adding Fred's feelings into the mix. Especially because he still hadn't confessed anything to George as far as she was aware. "You wanted to hurt me, so get on with it."

"How can you stand to look at her, Potter?" Murton said viciously, her gaze still locked on a frozen Tori. "Knowing that her father is the reason your parents are dead and buried."

The words seemed to shock Tori out of her shocked horror, and she growled low in her throat.

"You don't know a single goddamn thing about my father —"

"I know plenty," Murton snapped back. "I had nothing better to be doing last year, other than asking my father questions about the two of you. He works at the Ministry, see. An Auror. He knows quite well who you are and what happened to the Potters. Imagine how happy I was to know that I had some ammunition against the two of you —"

"Nessa's the only reason you still go to this school, Murton," George spat from behind her. "You should be kissing the ground she walks on."

"Like you do, Weasley?" she sneered back. "Truthfully, I don't know what she sees in you. Not when she has Diggory sniffing around for a chance."George tensed behind her, but Nessa didn't particularly have the time to look at him because Murton was raising her fingers and counting off Cedric's "assets" one by one. "Handsome, brave, able to buy her whatever her heart desires, no need for hand-me-downs —"

"Hogwarts champion," a Hufflepuff sneered from the sidelines, eyeing the four of them as if they were dirt on the bottom of his shoe.

"The true Hogwarts champion, he means," Murton said as if his meaning hadn't been entirely plain to them. "Perhaps you're just a charity case, Weasley."

Nessa glared at her, and opened her mouth to retort with something vicious herself, but they'd attracted quite the crowd and it had attracted several more — the last two in the world that she needed to be seeing at the moment.

"What's going on here?" Cedric said, clearly within prefect mode and pushing his way through the crowd with a group of his friends, Devin among them.

It was not lost on Nessa that each of his friend's was wearing a large badge pinned to their chest. At the sight of her, they grinned maliciously and pressed on them, so that the message 'POTTER STINKS' glowed at her from their end as well. Cedric didn't seem to notice, as he was too busy staring between Nessa and Murton shrewdly.

"What's the problem here, Murton?" he snapped, glaring at her.

"Just a friendly chat, Diggory," Murton said casually, smiling at him beautifully. Nessa scoffed.

"Cut the crap, Adelaide," she said in irritation. "He isn't fooled just because you give him a pretty smile."

"If that were true, I don't think he'd be hanging around you."

Devin snorted, clearly in agreement, and Cedric gave him a warning look.

"Back to class, all of you," he said seriously. "Nessa, can I talk to you?"

There was another round of muttering, and several of the girls within the large gathering glared at her harshly. She hesitated, even as the group surrounding them began to dissipate, but she sighed heavily and nodded anyway. She couldn't avoid the conversation forever, even though Murton's confrontation had left her feeling morose and frustrated.

She hadn't even really said anything to her either, too caught up in her own issues to defend herself or her friends, although she supposed she should be grateful that she'd had the presence of mind to keep Murton from blurting out that Fred was in love with Tori. All in all, it could have gone worse.

"I'll be right back," she said tiredly, handing George her bag and waving the three of them away. George didn't look altogether too happy about the development, but kissed her on the cheek and followed after Fred and Tori anyway.

She followed Cedric away from his friends by several feet and took a seat on one of the benches, hiding her face in her hands and trying to convince herself not to rip out her hair. This week had simply gone from bad to worse to dreadful, and that was without having to talk to Cedric about the entire thing.

She didn't move at all when he sat next to her, and pulled her hands away from her face.

"Hey," he said gently, keeping her wrists in his hold and leaning down enough to get her gaze to lift to his face. She did not need to look over at her friends to know that George was likely shooting daggers at him. If Cedric noticed, he didn't bother saying anything to her. "Whatever Murton said isn't worth it. She antagonizes you because she knows she can get a reaction out of you."

Nessa laughed humorlessly and pulled her hands from his grasp, folding her arms across her chest.

"I didn't react at all actually," she said derisively. "She pretty much did all of the damage on her own. I should have let her get expelled last year."

Cedric eyed her for a long moment, and raised an eyebrow.

"She tried to kill you," he said plainly. "She deserved far worse than expulsion."

"Yes, well, she looked guilty," she defended. "And I sort of hoped that she'd learn from her mistakes if she had some time away from the school to think about it." Cedric snorted, and she huffed. "People can change!"

"Murton isn't one of them," Cedric said firmly. "I could have told you that from a mile off."

"Did you just bring me over here to tell me off? Because I've got enough to worry about without —"

"I didn't," he said, raising his hands in placation. "I just wanted to check on you, is all. You haven't been in the library and you said you'd talk to me Sunday…"

"I know, I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "I meant to, but everything is — well, it's just a mess at the moment. And that was before the badges."

The last was muttered quietly to herself, but he seemed to hear her anyway and frowned at her apologetically.

"I've asked them not to wear them —"

"Don't worry about it," she said, waving his apology away. "It isn't your fault. And it's not as if I don't understand why everyone is so upset."

Cedric eyed her for a long moment before leaning back against the wall next to her, looking out at the courtyard in front of them. There was no way he didn't see George glaring at him at this point, but he still said nothing. Nor did he move away from her either, despite there being quite a large amount of space on his other side and they were sitting so close at this point that his knee brushed hers with every inhale.

She'd just begun to debate if she should ask him to scoot over or make some joke about him hogging the seat to make it less awkward, despite the fact that she typically tried to avoid pointing these things out to him as a whole in case it became awkward, but he finally spoke again before she could decide one way or the other.

"Did he tell you how he did it yet?"

Nessa startled from her thoughts at this question, and looked at him in surprise.

"He didn't," she said automatically. "He was telling the truth on Saturday. He didn't enter himself for the tournament."

Cedric gave her a look that was full of doubt, and she straightened angrily even before he spoke again.

"Do you really believe that?"

"Yes!" she said vehemently. "He said he didn't do it, so he didn't do it!"

"You can understand why that's hard to believe, can't you?" Cedric said, clearly trying to sound calm despite the fact that it was starting to sound more like condescension to her. "Who else could have done it?"

Nessa wanted to be angry with him — and a part of her was — but she'd expected this, really. She expected that she'd have to explain the whole ugly thing to him in order to make him understand. She'd replayed it so many times in her head, wondering exactly how to say it that wouldn't make her sound like a lunatic or accidentally give something away about Sirius and his role in the entire thing.

It was such a complicated thing to explain, honestly. Professor Trelwaney was a crackpot and everyone knew it. There were no real, obvious signs that Voldemort was gaining power again. No real, obvious signs that he wasn't dead entirely other than her and her brother's word, which was close to useless in this school, especially in the current climate.

Not to mention, there was a small, niggling part of her that didn't want to tell him everything. She had no idea how he'd react — he might laugh in her face, he might look at her like she was mad, he might believe her and come to the realization that being friends with her was more dangerous than it was worth.

And although their relationship was a bit…complicated, considering his feelings for her, she did care for him. She did enjoy being his friend. He'd always been nice to her, honest, fair. He'd always had a tendency of being overwhelmed by her anxiety and her anger, but he'd never let it color his opinion of her too much.

But she'd always kept the darker aspects of her life to herself. She couldn't save the twins and Tori from the insanity at this point, but she could save him from it.

Before she could work herself up into explaining everything, he spoke again, "Nessa, it's really okay. It's not your fault — you can't keep an eye on him every second of every day —"

Her anger flared again; she'd gotten too used to George allowing her to think through every angle before she spoke. Even Fred and Tori had become more likely to let her think everything through before they interrupted her thought processes to force her to speak. The fact that Cedric wasn't allowing her that now irritated her on a level she didn't truly understand. And that was without him making comments about her lying on behalf of her brother just to save face with him.

"You were there, Cedric," she said angrily, throwing her hands in the air. "How can you actually believe he did it?"

"You really believe that someone is trying to kill him then?" he said skeptically. "Who would want to do that?"

"Who wouldn't?" she said pointedly. "It's not as if this would be the first time someone has tried to hurt him."

"You said yourself that Moody is too paranoid to be entirely trustworthy —"

"It has nothing to do with Moody!" she said angrily. "Harry said he didn't do it. He didn't ask anyone to do it —"

"Not even Fred and George?"

She paused for a second and narrowed her eyes at him.

"What exactly are you suggesting right now?"

"Look, I'm not trying to come between you and George —"

"Could have fooled me."

"I'm just saying that they like trouble. And they're friends, aren't they? It stands to reason —"

"It stands to reason nothing," she snapped, standing up angrily. "If I was upset about the two of them trying to enter underage, it's nothing compared to how I'd have felt if they'd helped Harry do it. They wouldn't do that to me, no matter what you believe of them. And why would they have helped him and not gotten themselves in instead?"

"Alright, so not them," he conceded, grabbing onto her wrist and pulling her back down to sit next to him. His concession only eased some of her anger because he still seemed hellbent on convincing her that Harry had done something wrong. "And I know it wasn't you —"

"Well, of course it wasn't!" she scoffed.

"I know it wasn't — you knew how excited I was about this. Hastings wouldn't have done it. Ron Weasley seems too pissed off at Harry for it to have been him —"

"It was no one," she said in frustration. "He didn't enter himself. He didn't ask for help. This is all just some sick joke. I already told you that."

"He could have lied to you —"

"Harry doesn't lie to me," she said angrily.

Kept secrets from her, maybe. Tried to avoid worrying her, definitely. But he never lied to her. Of that, she was always certain.

"Look, it's really no big deal if he did, Nessa," Cedric said, unswayed by her insistence. "I just don't see what he has to lie about —"

This was exactly why she hadn't told him anything about her life. He was…rational. Too rational, too afraid to think outside the box. George had always been better at calming her anxiety because he was able to remain calm and objective. He accepted that there were things in her life that he just wouldn't truly understand. He knew her well enough to know that she was not blindly loyal, and he'd taken the time to understand her relationship with her brother.

At no point, in their entire friendship, had George Weasley ever looked at her the way Cedric Diggory was looking at her now. With the sort of condescending pity that she just didn't understand the way the world worked.

And she knew very well that she could open her mouth right now and explain the entire, horrible ordeal to Cedric; about Trelawney's prediction, about Sirius' innocence, about Harry's dream, and Moody's odd behavior. She could tell him everything, unpack all of her childhood trauma and fears right now in this very moment. But she wasn't entirely sure it would do her any good at this point.

Cedric was clean, shiny, unmarred by childhood trauma or suffering. His father doted on his every move, his mother adored him, he'd always had the privilege of knowing he could have anything and everything he wanted.

And that wasn't to say that she thought him anything arrogant or unwilling to work for what he wanted. His parents had raised him well — there was no doubt about that. He was nothing like Draco Malfoy in any regard; he was kind and patient, hard-working and genuine. She knew that. But he was boxed into this idea of the world and of himself that didn't mesh well with the chaos of her life. His life had so few complications, it came so easily to him that he didn't and couldn't truly understand her in the way she needed.

So, no, she didn't want to tell him about the entire, ugly thing. He wouldn't have believed her anyway. Not without something to back up the words. He knew her well enough to get along with her — for them to be considered close — but not enough that he'd ever take her word for something as massive as this. Anything that rattled that box of his would be difficult for him to come to terms with. And she couldn't stand another person looking at her like she was some lunatic making up stories for attention.

And anyone who believed her brother would pull anything as stupid and reckless as this — and refused to take her word that he hadn't — would not believe her about Voldemort or anything else. Anyone who would try to convince her that they knew her brother better than she knew him would not take her word for it that he was telling the truth about the most evil wizard in the world.

So, instead of bothering with the wasted breath and explanations, she scoffed, shaking her head in disappointment, and stood angrily again, brushing her uniform skirt down with her hands.

"Believe what you want, Cedric," she snapped. "He didn't enter himself, and if his word — and mine — isn't enough for you then that's no one's business but yours. You can come find me when you've decided to stop pretending you know my brother better than I do."

"Nessa —"

"Er, Cedric?"

It was Colin Creevey; he was clearly a little nervous, but was beaming brightly at him.

"Creevey, can you give us a second —"

"Don't bother, Colin," Nessa interrupted. "I was just leaving."

And before either one of them could stop her, she had stomped off toward the castle, not even bothering to grab her bag from George.

Her life was, quite literally, a mess.

There was simply no other way around it anymore. Murton was a bitch, Cedric had pissed her off, her anxiety was through the roof, Harry was probably going to die. The school was now whispering about Tori just as much as they were about her brother, which didn't particularly help anyone's mood. The twins tried to keep things as light as possible, but it was hard to ignore the whispers and pointing. Or the fact that they had to sit together as a group at the very end of the Gryffindor table. Both to avoid questions about Tori's parentage and the congratulations of the Gryffindors that Harry was a champion.

"This is probably the worst I've ever felt," Harry admitted, pushing his peas around his plate morosely.

Fred and George had long since given up on trying to brighten their moods, and were instead looking between the three of them as if trying to decide which of them was going to off themselves first.

Tori snorted.

"If this is what the two of you feel like all of the time, I'm sorry to say that I thought you were just being dramatic before," she admitted, glaring at a Ravenclaw first-year, who was staring at her with a frightened expression. "This is not the sort of attention I like."

"Remind me, again, how everyone found out about Sirius?" Harry said.

"Adelaide Murton is a self-righteous bitch, that's how," Nessa snapped, stabbing viciously at her green beans. Harry watched her in alarm for several seconds before placing a hand over hers to prevent her from cracking the plate entirely.

"You should have let her get expelled," he said conversationally.

This only reminded her of what Cedric had said, and thinking about Cedric made her want to start stabbing things again.

"Well, I didn't, alright?" she snapped. "I made a miserable, stupid mistake trying to be nice to someone. God forbid. Can we please talk about anything else?"

There was an awkward silence as the five of them went back to eating their dinners, clearly out of conversational topics.

"I met Rita Skeeter today," Harry said eventually when the silence had become too painful.

"What? When?"

"Weighing of the Wands," he said, relaxing a little at having something to discuss that wouldn't cause his sister to fly completely off the handle. Noticing her confused expression, he said, "They have to make sure our wands are functional before the first task. She's doing a small article on the champions in the Prophet."

"Oh, good, just what you need. More publicity," Nessa griped.

Harry snorted.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I told Colin. She pulled me into a broom cupboard for an interview —"

"Always a great way to get in good with reporters, Harry," Fred remarked with a grin.

George snorted into his mash when Nessa chucked a roll at his twin. Harry rolled his eyes at him, but continued as if he hadn't spoken at all.

"Dumbledore saved me just as she was writing some nonsense about having tears in my eyes when she asked about our parents," he said with a snort.

"She called Dumbledore an obsolete dingbat in her last article about him," George said. "I hope your irresistible charm won her over, Harry, or that could be you next week."

Harry glared at him.

"Yeah, well, I'm just glad that Olivander didn't mention that the phoenix feather in my wand also gave a phoenix feather to Voldemort's —"

"I'm sorry?" Tori said at the same time that both twins said, "Excuse me?"

Harry waved away their baffled questions.

"Skeeter would have loved to have put that in the papers, I'm sure," Harry huffed when Tori and the twins continued to stare at him. "Would you quit looking at me like that? They have the same core, big deal. My wand can't help that it's related to his — you know, like the two of you with Ron."

Tori snorted as Harry waved a fork at the twins absentmindedly, glaring down at his best friend, who was sitting with Seamus and Dean. Hermione was nowhere to be found.

"Still not talking to you then?" Nessa queried.

"No," Harry snorted. "Still too jealous to hear how thick he sounds. Don't know what he's got to be jealous of — if he wants my life so badly, he can have it. It's never done me much good."

"Don't say that," Nessa said firmly. "The two of you will make up eventually. He doesn't handle this sort of thing well, does he?"

"No, but I don't see what the big deal is. It's not as if he can't see how much I hate the attention. And it's not as if I asked for our parents to die so we could end up rich. I didn't ask for any of this."

Nessa sighed forlornly. Truthfully, she'd always found Ron a bit materialistic and sometimes shallow in the grand scheme of things.

His whole family was poor, but he was always the one who behaved as if this were the end of the world. She and her brother may have been rich after coming to Hogwarts, but they certainly hadn't been before. She'd worn hand-me-downs of Dudley's and Harry's, despite being a girl. She'd been bullied for it too. She'd had to use torn and ripped books in primary school because the Dursleys refused to buy her anything so that all their money could go toward poor Dudders. She'd lived the majority of her life, and her summers, wondering if she'd get food the next day or not.

The Dursleys had never been poor, but they'd certainly treated her as if they had been. She wasn't unaware of how awful those things felt or the judgment that other people placed on families that couldn't afford their lot in life. But Ron Weasley's life was nowhere near as miserable as hers had been. Or Harry's.

"Perspective, Harry," she said softly, despite her own mixed emotions about his best friend's behavior. "He didn't ask to be poor any more than you asked to be rich and famous. You know exactly what it feels like to be bullied for wearing hand-me-down clothes or to be overlooked in your own home. He doesn't have that perspective into your life at all. To him, you just have everything he's ever wanted, but can't have."

Harry deflated a little, shoving his plate away from himself, just as Ron got up to make his way back to the common room. He ignored them as he passed by and Nessa rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose," Harry conceded. "But I'd never abandon him if he needed me."

Nessa smiled at him and bumped her shoulder against his.

"You'd never abandon anyone, Harry," she said fondly. "That's what I love about you."

"He's always been a right git, Harry," George said seriously. "If you want, Fred and I can put itching powder in his robes. We haven't exactly perfected it yet, but could be fun."

Harry laughed for the first time that evening and Nessa smiled gratefully at him. He winked at her when Harry wasn't looking.

"Where's Hermione anyway?"

"Probably in the library, reading up on the Triwizard Tournament," Fred snorted.

Surprisingly, Harry glared across the room at Draco Malfoy.

"She's in the Hospital Wing, actually," he said. "Malfoy hit her with a curse that made her teeth start growing before Potions this evening. Ron and I got detention for trying to tell Snape that she hadn't done anything wrong."

"Well, this day has just gone straight to shite, hasn't it?" Tori said in annoyance.

They finished eating their dinner, mostly silent outside of a few attempts by the twins to lighten the mood a little. They were among the first to leave the table after dinner and make their way back up to the Gryffindor common room. As it was, the room was entirely empty and their usual spots around the fire were vacant.

Nessa sank onto the couch immediately, as Harry muttered that he'd be back after he dropped off his things. George sank into the cushion beside her and pulled her into his side.

"So, what happened with Diggory earlier?"

She sighed heavily, allowing herself to sink into him and closing her eyes against the feelings of anger and betrayal bubbling up in her gut again.

"Just what you'd expect," she said quietly. "I don't know why I thought he'd believe me when I told him that Harry didn't enter."

George sighed, running a hand over her hair in comfort. She hummed pleasantly and brought her legs up to curl into his side.

"I suppose it could be considered a bit…far-fetched from the outside looking in."

She'd have found the fact that he was attempting to defend Cedric irritating if she hadn't known that he was doing so entirely for her benefit. For one thing, the words sounded as though they'd been ripped from the depths of him, despite his trying to hold them down. For another, his dislike for Cedric Diggory had never been a secret. She'd have expected him to rip off his toenails before he defended him in any manner.

She knew he was right too. It wasn't as if she didn't realize how insane the entire thing sounded in her head — all the more if she had to vocalize it to someone else. She knew that it was asinine. She was also aware that Cedric had been wanting this for the entire year, had worked himself up for it, had prepared to be champion and win glory for Hufflepuff House. It wasn't likely very easy for him to manage the disappointment he must be feeling that he wasn't.

She felt for him in that respect because Harry was not the only one of them to have lost something in his name being entered, but it didn't excuse anything for her.

"You believed me," she said.

Without even an odd look or one hundred questions. Certainly without trying to convince her that Harry was lying to her. He'd believed her — they'd all believed her — without even a moment's doubt.

And maybe it was unfair of her to be comparing him and Cedric's responses — they had entirely different relationships with her. George had known her longer, although only by a year. George also knew her brother more personally than Cedric did, as his family was the closest thing to family she and Harry had ever had.

They were also entirely different people with personalities on opposite ends of the spectrum — Cedric was friendly, casual, outgoing, sure, but his beliefs about the world tended to be a bit more rigid, a bit less flexible. He thrived under a certain amount of control and leadership, he had a very specific idea of what his life should look like with so little wiggle room. Fred and George were also friendly and outgoing, but they'd always been more willing to accept the absurd. They thrived best under chaos, they lived their lives to the fullest with little thought about what might happen in a week or a month or even the next day. They had goals and ambitions, but they were flexible, imaginative, always willing to adapt to a situation without a look back.

Of the two of them, it made so much more sense that George would believe her than Cedric. But somehow she'd thought that Cedric's knowledge of her would trump that rigidity. He wasn't unkind or entirely inflexible. He just needed a harder push than her other friends.

But he hadn't. And whether that was because he was harboring some resentment that he wasn't the only champion or because it was too asinine to believe or because he didn't trust her enough to deduce these things for herself, she didn't know. Perhaps it was a mix of all three.

And she didn't want to take the time to make excuses for him or anyone else, particularly when it came to her brother. She had neither the time, patience, or use for it.

George was silent for a long moment, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger and eyeing her with a soft expression. He sighed, releasing the strand so that it fell back over her cheek and tilted her head up to give her a quick kiss.

"I'll always believe you," he said honestly. "There's never a question about that."

It was the way that he so casually made these statements, with such sincerity, that always ignited the butterflies in her stomach. It was in such contrast to the way he talked to everyone else — not just in the gentleness of the words themselves but in the softness he used in his tone. She'd expected the butterflies he ignited to go away after a while — they were together so often these days, and he was very physically affectionate; she shouldn't still get butterflies every time his hand brushed hers or he kissed her on the cheek or laced his fingers with hers.

It made her chest feel close to bursting when he talked to her so sweetly.

"I just wish the rest of the school would believe it," she said quietly, playing with the fingers on one of his hands idly. "I sort of thought that my word would just be enough for him. Maybe that's naive."

"Diggory will come around once he deflates his head."

She snorted and hit him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand.

"Be nice, George," she said, although there was no heat — or seriousness — in the words. "He has good reason to be disappointed."

"Only because it won't be as impressive that he's a champion when Harry wins the tournament," he said dryly. "Being beat by someone who's three years younger than you is a bit embarrassing."

She paused in her distracted toying with his hand to look at him curiously. She didn't need to look at him to know that he hadn't been joking, and the surety of the statement was oddly comforting.

"You really think Harry could win, don't you?"

"Of course," he said, shrugging. "I don't know why that's so surprising — he's done crazier things in his life than this."

"He's just…he's so young, George," she said brokenly.

It was so stupid, really. The fact that he was growing up and she could still see him as her baby brother. The stupid, annoying little brat that had shaved a line down her head when she'd been sleeping or chased her around the yard with a spider. The one that had run into every wall in the house before they'd finally figured out he needed glasses. The one she'd cared for when he'd been sick or sang to sleep after a nightmare.

He wasn't that little boy anymore, and logically speaking she knew that. He was fourteen, certainly on the cusp of becoming a man, and he could handle more than she probably gave him credit for. He had handled more than anyone his age should have had to. But letting go of that view of him was particularly difficult for her when she wasn't entirely sure what came next for either one of them.

"He can handle this, Vanessa," George said confidently. "He might not want to, but he can. And I've known you for a very long time, love; you won't let anything happen to him. He'll win because he has you, and Diggory knows it too."

He melted her insides, and cooled her anxieties all at once. He'd told her at the World Cup that he'd be strong enough for the both of them, but she'd somehow doubted that it would ease her worries, but he had such an uncanny ability to say exactly what she needed to hear exactly when she needed to hear it, and with such surety and honesty that it was hard for her to think too much about the alternative.

The words she needed to express this were too much, however, so she didn't bother attempting to say them or try to come up with a way to thank him for the confidence he had in her and her brother. Instead, she merely leaned more firmly into him and placed a tentative, lingering kiss on his lips. She pulled away before he could distract her too much because she was entirely sure that the rest of their classmates would be back soon, and Fred and Tori, while very adept at ignoring them in favor of being in their own world, were still entirely too present.

He kept his hold on the side of her neck so that she couldn't pull away more than an inch, and he looked at her for a long moment before pulling her in for another kiss.

"Exactly how difficult would it be for me to convince you to go somewhere more private?" he said quietly, brushing his nose against hers.

"Not very," she admitted, her voice coming out far more breathy than she'd really intended.

He grinned at her, and pulled her in for another kiss, but before he could stand, there was a loud clattering on the boys' staircase and a muffled, "NESSA!" She laughed at George's groan of disappointment, despite a disappointment of her own, as her brother came careening back into the common room with a piece of parchment in his hands.

"Rain check," she said, kissing him chastely one last time before she was forced to turn away from him to look at her brother.

Harry was giving the two of them a half-disgusted, half-exasperated look and turned to look at Fred and Tori instead. Tori was working on a Muggle Studies essay on the floor in front of the coffee table, her back to the fireplace, and Fred was going over some piece of parchment with a quill. He was being so diligent that she assumed it was something related to the shop, although she couldn't be sure from her position.

"How do the two of you even stand to be around them when they're so…this?" Harry said to the two of them, waving at Nessa and George vaguely with one of his hands.

Tori snorted.

"You get used to it," she said, not looking up from her essay. "Besides, I have plenty of other things to worry about without drowning myself in sap."

"And it's not like it was much better before," Fred said, setting down his quill and grinning at Harry. "Both of them mooning at each other, crying about how they fancied each other, whining about Alicia. I'd sooner run into oncoming traffic than go through that again."

Harry rolled his eyes and gave George a dirty look that only elicited a laugh from him. Nessa elbowed him lightly in the stomach before he could say something cheeky.

"What did you want, Harry?"

Harry eyed George a moment longer before huffing and waving the parchment at her.

"I got a letter," he said succinctly. "From Sirius" — Tori's head finally shot up from her essay and she eyed the parchment in Harry's hand with worried interest — "listen to this."

Harry —

I can't say everything I would like to in a letter, it's too risky in case the owl is intercepted — we need to talk face-to-face. Can you ensure that you are alone by the fire in Gryffindor Tower at one o'clock in the morning on the 22nd of November?

I know better than anyone that you can look after yourself, and while you're around Dumbledore and Moody — and Nessa, who I've heard from Remus is a bit over-cautious — I don't think anyone will be able to hurt you. However, someone seems to be having a good try. Entering you in that tournament would have been very risky, especially right under Dumbledore's nose.

Be on the watch, Harry. I still want to hear about anything unusual. Let me know about the 22nd of November as quickly as you can.

Sirius

"Over-cautious?" Nessa said indignantly. "What is that supposed to mean, over-cautious?"

Fred gave her a pointed look.

"I don't think that was the point of the letter, Nessa," he said. "He isn't going to sneak back into the castle is he?"

"I don't think so," Harry said when Tori made an alarmed noise. "Otherwise I don't see why he'd want to meet here. It'd be easier to meet outside wouldn't it? He knows I have the cloak."

"It has to be Floo powder then," George said, grabbing the parchment from Harry and reading it over. "'By the fire,' he said."

"It's very risky," Tori said worriedly, biting her lip. Fred held out his arm without looking at her, and she went over to him after only a moment's hesitation, and settled in the armchair next to him.

"It must be something important then," Harry said, his gaze meeting his sister's. "The common room is usually clear by then, isn't it?"

She was the only one of them that was typically up that late in the evenings, stressing herself out over some essay she was working on for classes until all hours of the morning.

"It is," she said hesitantly. "I'm not sure that it's a good idea anyway. There's no telling who could walk in and we have no explanation for his head being in the middle of the fireplace, do we?"

"We'll manage," Fred said, tightening his hold on Tori when she started chewing on her cuticles. "Push comes to shove, we can set off a few Dungbombs to drive everyone away for a while."

She didn't like it. Not one bit.

But what she liked even less was wondering what Sirius could possibly need to tell them so badly that he would risk his freedom to do so, and she was entirely certain that she didn't want to know.