Since going blind at 6 years old, Fiona Diggory has lived in the shadow of her twin brother, Cedric.
Now entering her 6th year at Hogwarts Fiona finds herself thrown into a new friendship with Fred and George Weasley while trying to determine the m...
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The first week back dragged on, but they had made it through a full week, and their weekend had dwindled down to hours. The excitement of the holiday and the Yule ball had been successfully extinguished among the student body after only a few days of class. The next task would not be until the end of February, and it seemed, for the time being, the castle had settled into the monotonous regularities of school.
Fiona let her fingers follow the braille in her textbook, her skin moving lightly over the bumps. As she read, the ticking clock became a metronome of the library chatter. Her mind began drifting from the words in her transfiguration textbook, and instead focused solely on the ticking clock.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick
Fiona's steady concentration on the ticking of time was interrupted by a lazy howling yawn coming from Malcolm. Seconds later she heard his book thud closed. He rubbed his tired eyes with the insides of his palms, his eyes were dry from staring at the textbook for hours.
"C'mon, let's head to bed," he moaned in a drowsy tone. "Pince is going to shut the Library down in an hour anyway."
"I can't!" Fiona wailed as she threw her face down into the weathered pages of her transfiguration textbook. "I'm going to fail!" She slumped lower into the wooden chair, head still buried in the pages. Hopelessly praying that the knowledge would somehow transfer through physical contact.
Fiona was close to tears. She had spent the whole weekend pouring over her textbook, deciding on the pursuit of knowledge over any form of life sustaining substance, such as food, or sleep. Still, she hadn't the foggiest idea how to conjure a frog. A Bloody Frog!
"You're exhausted, you won't learn anything at this point anyway," Malcolm sympathetically cooed to her.
Malcolm wasn't wrong. Fiona was bordering on insanity due to lack of sleep. Although, it wasn't as if she could help it. Nearly every night she allowed sleep to take over she was startled awake by the horrifying images her mind created. Night after night she dreamt of Cedrics demise; and though she always knew it was coming, she was helpless in preventing the inevitable.
"Just go! you weren't any help anyway!" She venomously hissed through clenched teeth.
"You're welcome," Malcolm uttered stoically before departing without another word.
Fiona regretted her outburst the second he had left, but, she determined, that would have to be a fire to put out after she got past this exam.
