ALOHOMORA | CEDRIC DIGGORY

15〝fifteen〞

THERE WAS NO WAY SHE was going to finish this Transfiguration essay, Ellis thought.

It was the night after the Dueling Club. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington had been discovered to be victims of a horrific double Petrification that morning; Peeves the Poltergeist had seen to it that everyone in the castle was blest with this information.

Ellis was listening very hard to Professor Binns drone on about self-stirring cauldrons and their creators, in hope to shift her mind from a certain Hufflepuff whose figment came to her more frequently during History of Magic than any other lesson simply due to its dreariness to not much avail when Peeves's screeching shattered the image of Cedric Diggory working his fingers like chopsticks, swiftly nicking a bewitched paper crane mid-flight—she now comprehended how he, tall and muscular and built most unlike a Seeker, could be a Seeker (she had asked Marcus Flint who the other Seekers were for "research purposes"; although, she kind of already had a hunch) after all.

The class, sleepy as it was, stampeded into the hall in a manner befitting of one responding to a fire alarm in the middle of the night: all panicky but without any knowledge of what or where the true danger was. Ellis, however, seemed rooted to her seat. Peeves had given her a rather good idea of what was going on—and she could do with a few more moments before facing it. But "no mortal or ghost is safe"?

A sudden bang issued loudly outside. It sounded much like what Professor Snape had set off the night before in the Great Hall, but it was Professor McGonagall whose shout commanded everyone back into their classrooms.

Professor Binns, whom Ellis didn't even see leave, glided back to the front of the blackboard from the door. She thought he looked even less opaque than normal, and his voice slightly shaky—though, sadly, still as boring—as he plowed on about self-stirring cauldrons without delay, and in spite of nobody paying attention. People were still shuffling back to their seats, whispering darkly. Luna Lovegood floated back into her chair next to Ellis. The Slytherin had only to glance at her to get confirmation.

"It's that boy," said Luna dreamily, "the one the snake wanted. And that nearly headless ghost."

News that Sir Nicholas had been attacked, and his form severely defiled, came as a blow to the entire school, alive and dead. Ellis, for one, could never have deduced that the vague black cloud hovering above the stock-still Justin in her head was anything but a cliched symbol of misfortune, let alone the fate of a Petrified spirit. The Bloody Baron, for another, could not believe such atrocities extended to imprints of departed souls, never mind one whom he found companionable.

His groaning and clanking became more cacophonous than ever. Convinced the Baron wanted his misery to be known and shared by all within the grounds, and able to sympathize with his plight no less, Ellis was piqued all the same. It was as though she, riddled with pangs of guilt (she had not managed to devise any methods of warning Justin when her luxury of time ran out), wasn't already doing a stupendous job at not concentrating on her homework.

"Baron!" called Ellis; nothing happened. "BARON!"

"What?" he snapped, rising through the wooden floorboards directly beneath her.

Seated cross-legged on the highest level of the Astronomy Tower, Ellis shuddered uncontrollably. Her little jar of bluebell flames, while effective against the wintry weather, did nothing to douse the feeling that was like being drenched in a truckload of ice whenever a ghost passed through a living thing.

"Do you mind giving me just a few minutes of quiet?" asked Ellis, hugging the container of fire nevertheless. "I would really like to—"

"I do mind, actually," said the Baron stiffly. "You know I'm grieving."

He cast a mournful, longing look into the night that swirled with what remaining snow the day's blizzard held. Ellis was watching it through his transparent figure when, very abruptly, he swiveled around.

"What are you thinking bringing homework up here anyway? Don't you usually work in the library?"

"Don't remind me," spat Ellis.

"What's wrong?"

Sprawling herself on the deck, Ellis wasn't sure what made her do it but began telling the Baron all about Cedric Diggory.

"Like seriously, what does he want?" said Ellis irritably upon recounting everything from their encounter in the Quidditch locker room to being down in the kitchens.

" 'What does he—' " spluttered the Baron, making a series of noises that sounded like he might have choked. Uncertain whether that was even possible, Ellis propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him, by which time he had rallied. "Great Scott, do you really not see?"

"See what?"

"I daresay," said the Baron, "this boy—this Cedric Diggory—has been taken with you."

"Taken—?" said Ellis incredulously, bolting upright. "He's not taken anything from me!"

The words had tumbled mindlessly from her lips, for her heart was beating so furiously it seemed to have sucked all energy and power from the rest of her body that neither her brain nor voice could function at will.

"Taken with you!" bellowed the Baron, rolling his eyes as if he had been speaking to an imbecile—Ellis was staring at him still, wearing a blank expression that gave the impression she had not understood. "It means he's interested in you," he explained impatiently.

Ellis, who had known perfectly the meaning of the phrase but had refused to believe it at any rate, felt her mouth going very dry. Her thoughts were in disarray; her brain had definitely ceased to operate. It could only have been from the very depths of her subconscious whence her next argument arose.

"Well, of course he's interested in me. Everyone's interested in me. They think I'm knocking people off brooms for fun and targeting Muggle-borns for the greater good. They think I'm Slytherin's heir—well, now they think Harry Potter's also Slytherin's heir. In any case, they still think I have him working for me because he's 'the Boy Who Lived,' but"—Ellis snorted, letting out a terse, shrill laugh in the midst; it was such uncharacteristic behavior that she felt as though she might have been listening to the acts of a stranger—"what do they know? They think I've hexed Lyanna Aldrin when it was really—"

"Foolish girl!" barked the Baron, shooting right up to Ellis. "FOOLISH, FOOLISH GIRL!"

His face was barely an inch from hers so that her cheeks tingled with a biting sensation and her breath misted as she exhaled. The Baron was livid—more livid than Ellis had ever seen—and for the first time since she'd arrived at Hogwarts, she was properly afraid of him.

"YOU KNOW THAT'S NOT HOW HE FEELS—JUST BECAUSE YOU DISMISS IT DOESN'T MAKE IT FALSE! JUST BECAUSE YOU DISREGARD IT DOESN'T MEAN IT FAILS TO EXIST! JUST BECAUSE YOU DESPISE IT DOESN'T MAKE HIS LOVE—"

"I don't despise it—" cried Ellis, wholly scandalized.

But the Baron appeared neither to have heard, nor cared, for that matter.

"—HIS LOVE WAS TRUE: HE LOVED YOU WITH ALL HIS HEART AND ALL HIS SOUL; HE LOVED YOU SO, HE WOULD LIVE AND DIE FOR YOU! BUT DID YOU REQUITE HIS LOVE? OH NO, YOU REJECTED IT; YOU RAN FROM IT—YOU RAN FROM HIM!"

And an overwrought sob escaped the Baron; his hysterics and appetite to yell seemed to have purged with it, for, as he—who, in his madness, had strayed to the further side of the Tower but was now drifting back—gazed down at his skyward palms as if in prayer, he persevered in nothing but a melodramatic undertone:

"Alas, folly would have your blood on his hands... Though he lived up to his word: he died for you—still, you do not forgive him... Oh, but why would you...? Why should you...? Even with these chains... It was folly...all folly..."

As his murmuring endured, and he clutched vainly at the shackles he bore, the gears in Ellis' head were slowly whirring back to life, and she reckoned: he was long past talking about her.

AN: It's my dear OC's birthday today, so happy new chapter 🥰 Happy New Year too, and wishing everyone a lovely 2022