I Know And I Don't Care (Cedric Diggory x Reader)

Chapter 33

It had felt like a dream. One second I was wasting the hours away in class and the next I was leaving the hall without a best friend anymore. It was too surreal to be true.

But the way my whole body tensed when my dorm mates quizzed me on my early dismissal from class, I knew it hadn't been a dream. Such a strong feeling of hurt had never been obtained like this. Not even in fortunes of what I knew was worse destruction.

While this had happened before, me pushing him away that is, it had never felt like this. The other times it had felt more concrete. I was able to push the emotions down when needed. Now, I felt like jelly. Completely and utterly intangible and unreachable. Maybe that was true agony, the ability to not really feel anything.

I did feel guilt, though, just one day before the task. Hermione had come bursting into our room to tell me that Harry had figured out the egg and that they were all going to the library to figure out a way to not have him killed in the cruelest competition.

Happiness flooded me for a moment, at hearing Harry had a stable foot on the ground. When I asked how he figured it out, Hermione's mouth was left hanging open, unsure if I wanted to hear.

Again, I didn't tell her what happened. But I was pretty sure she had figured out the gist of it. For all she knew, it had been a Yule Ball debacle that had stretched till February, rather than the unspoken for the situation she had with Victor. Either way, Hermione knew I didn't want to think of him. She had just forgotten as the excitement of Harry getting his foot in the door in regards to this task.

"Makes sense." I nodded, playing with my book page. "Harry did help him out with the first one. Only fair."

My friend studied me for a moment. She lost her piqued interest when I looked up to her, instead, she went to grab her sweater. She seemed to find intrigue again right before she was about to leave.

"Why can't it be fair for you?"

"I'm sorry?"

Hermione turned to face me, playing with the jacket in her hands. "Why can't it be fair for you to be friends with him?"

I didn't know what to say. Hermione had never gotten involved in anything that was happening with Cedric. I associated the two friendships pretty differently and quite distanced if I was being honest. Hermione: best school friend. Cedric: childhood best friend.

Former childhood best friend.

Before I could mull over if the childhood part had to be taken from his title, Hermione continued. "You seem to keep falling out with him this year. What? Because of the Tournament?"

"It's more-"

"It's not more than anything." Hermione came to stand by my bed. "Need I remind you my best friend is also in this competition. He's also about to face the mermaids tomorrow."

I raised an eyebrow. The task was mermaids? That hardly seemed like much a fight compared to dragons. Hermione didn't give me much of a chance to ponder the fact.

"And while my best friend also has a very high chance of getting severely injured in whatever cruel game this is,-"

"He's going to be fine." I interjected, setting a hand over hers.

"-I'm going to help him." She finished strongly. "You should help him, too."

I knew we were no longer talking about the same Hogwarts champion. While Hermione's words struck a chord in me (one that made me want to bring up my breakfast from earlier), I had to remind myself they were words I couldn't take as my own. Not with my 'gift' as Cedric called it.