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Cedric jumped slightly when Lori hopped up onto his back as he headed down to breakfast with Ellie and Danny. He laughed, hitching her up as she wrapped her legs around his waist, her head resting on top of his.
The Weasleys, Harry and Hermione were the only students who knew they were in the Order and Dumbledore himself had told the couple to act normal, so as not to raise any suspicion.
So Cedric walked to breakfast with Lori hanging onto him like a koala, his girlfriend unlatching herself as they got to the last staircase.
"You guys are so cute." Ellie mused.
Lori smiled, Cedric's arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her into a kiss before they separated and head off to their house tables. She slipped into a chair between Katie and Ginny, diving into a bowl of cornflakes.
"Is there a world rationing on cereal or something?" Katie laughed.
Lori looked at her, "Need to get my energy up for Umbridge's class today, gotta make a good first impression."
"Yeah, but not by being sick on her!" Ginny chuckled.
Katie, Leanne, Cho and Lori had taken two adjacent benches at the front of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom about ten minutes later, the rest of the class filing in behind them.
"Good morning, children." Umbridgd greeted, descending the stairs from her quarters, chalk writing on the board, "Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test, more commonly known as N.E.W.Ts, study hard and you will be rewarded. Fail to do so and the consequences may be severe."
With a flick of her wand, books floated from her desk, automatically dumping themselves in front of each student, "Your previous instruction in this subject has been disturbingly uneven, but you'll be pleased to know, from now on you will be following a carefully structured, Ministry approved course of defensive magic."
Lori and Katie shot each other a look when Umbridge turned around, "The highlighter can't be serious?"
"It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about."
Normally, Lori would have challenged not practicing spells, but was trying to keep a low profile, so held her tongue. She somehow waded through an entire hour and a half of purely theoretical defensive spell work, before the class bell rang and every student darted out of the door.
*
"The highlighter ruined my favourite subject." Lori groaned, falling into a seat between Hermione and Neville at dinner, "I hate her."
Hermione looked at her sadly, "Not as much as Harry. She just gave him a detention."
Lori glanced at her incredulously, "But it's the first day. What can he have possibly done that was so bad he got detention this early in the term?"
"He said that Voldemort was back."
"That was it? I suppose it makes sense seeing as she's wrapped around Fudge's fat little finger."
Harry dropped into the seat next to Ron, not saying a word as he started eating, Hermione turning to him, "What's wrong with your hand?"
"Nothing." he said, showing her the back of his right palm, pinky flesh staring back at them.
"The other hand," The skin was rubbed raw, blackened in some places as if it had been carved out or burned, "you've got to tell Dumbledore."
"No, Dumbledore's got enough on his mind right now, and anyway, I don't want to give Umbridge the satisfaction."
"Bloody hell, Harry," Ron chimed in, "the woman's torturing you. If the parents knew about this-"
"Yeah, well I haven't got any of those, have I, Ron?"
"No, it's not. Hermione, whatever this is, it's not simple. You don't understand."
Harry got up from the table, Hermione pulling him back, "Then help us to." Harry walked off, Hermione looking sadly at her food in defeat.
*
Cedric was sat in the library at lunch three weeks later, already drawing up plans for their first match against Ravenclaw at the end of November, when Lori found him and slid into the empty chair opposite him.
He smiled at her, laying down his quill and kissing her across the table, one of his hands on her cheek, the other rested on her knee below the table.
"You're devising strategy already?" Lori laughed when they pulled away, eyeing the parchment with various scribbles and notes on.
Cedric didn't even try to conceal his plays, mainly because of the fact that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw played entirely differently, "Well, after last year's landslide butt kicking we got from everyone, the sooner I get them on the pitch, the better."
"Yeah, you were, what," she paused to think, "over two hundred points below everyone else?"
He chuckled, "Maybe it's because I wasn't playing?"
"Hate to break it to you, babe, but you would have gotten flattened either way." Lori's cheeks flushed red when she realised what she had said.
"Babe, huh?" Cedric smirked, "I like the sound of that."
He took her cheek again, pulling himself forward to kiss her, when a student dropping into the last empty chair beside them made them pull apart.
Roger was smirking at them, before he shook his head and realised why he had run all the way from the Great Hall, "It's Umbridge."
Cedric and Lori looked at each other in confusion, before Lori turned to Roger, "What about Umbridge?"
