ALOHOMORA | CEDRIC DIGGORY

43〝forty-three〞

MOPPING CHOCOLATE FROM HER JUMPER with not much success, Ellis pondered quickly over her options. Should she feign sleep so that he would leave? But she doubted that he would actually leave, and she couldn't possibly just lie there whilst he watched. She fished for her wand, took aim, whispered "Scourgify," returned her uniform to a cocoa-free state, and thought some more...but her mind wouldn't cooperate—it kept skipping back to Ginny Weasley...

Ellis's head was pounding now, and it seemed that every time she attempted to drive the female Gryffindor from her brain, the intensity of the throbbing reached a new pinnacle. She pinched the bridge of her nose, glad to feel it was no longer tender, struggling to obliterate the image of her classmate that only became more prominent with each effort. The next time she failed, she wound up throwing something.

"Woah."

Perfunctorily, Ellis glanced up, then did a double take. At the foot of her bed stood Cedric, smiling not his usual confident grin but a nervous, sheepish one—though charming all the same. What had magnetized her attention in the first place, however, was the wand clutched in his hand—hers. She frowned at the ten-and-a-half-inches stick of pine, unable to recall the sound of it clattering to the floor. Had he...caught it?

Cedric still hadn't advanced, but said, finally, "Did I screw up so royally you had to throw your wand at me?"

He was only half joking.

"I didn't throw it at you," said Ellis honestly, averting her gaze. She didn't quite know the answer to the first part.

"What were you doing with it, then?"

His voice held a tinge of amusement. Ellis felt her cheeks reddening for no reason at all. At least Madam Pomfrey would be pleased.

"I was just...throwing it...in general."

An odd noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, escaped from him. Ellis rolled her eyes at her blanket. "I'm...a wizard" could not be happening to her.

Seated in the visitor's chair at last, Cedric held out her wand to her. Ellis accepted it as she stole a peek at his face. His smile was gone, his overall demeanor was uncomfortable, and she met his eyes—they were plainly worried.

"Does it hurt?" he asked gravely.

"What?" she said, in a way that meant, "Does what hurt?"

"Your nose."

"No," said Ellis at once.

"What about elsewhere?"

Something in his tone suggested he wasn't referring to her head, and that, too, seemed to have stopped aching anyhow.

"No," she lied, looking to her wand and fiddling with it, then said coldly, "If you're here for your handkerchief, it's on the table—rest assured, it's been cleaned."

"Why do you always have to be like that?" he said, not unkindly, but with an air of forbearance.

"Like what?"

Her reply was as though what she always had to be was the most uninteresting thing in the world. Strangely, though, Cedric chuckled.

"Like unapproachable."

"And yet, here you are," Ellis mumbled to herself, for the most part.

"Well—" He paused; curiosity getting the better of her, Ellis cocked her head towards him. Cedric was straightening up, his Adam's apple bobbing a little, then beamed a self-satisfied yet edgy sort of smile. "That's because I like you."

It was as if Ellis didn't already know that, because hearing it aloud, and from him no less, was something else. She didn't realize it would make that much of a difference—after all, the Baron had only said it about a hundred times—but how wrong was she. Him, Cedric, verbalizing it made the fact quite real: something she could no longer deny or pretend—if she wanted or needed to—was merely a figment of her imagination.

Things were not helped by her heart that hammered so vigorously against her rib cage Ellis feared she might break another bone today.

A part of her, the part that had swooned over his handwritten poem and portrayal of Seekers and dragons, that was drawn by his ubiquitous smile and occasional cheekiness (that sometimes was just lameness), that had gradually been unlocked by his tireless encouragement and unwavering generosity, was so excited indeed—how could she not be? Her crush had just confessed!—that it was quite ready to drop everything (Cho Chang's lamentable and plagiarized valentine included) and stroll hand-in-hand with him into the sunset like at the end of a romantic Muggle movie.

But the part that wasn't absolutely over the moon was unnerved.

By and large, things had been going smoothly: the rumors were subsiding now, and Ellis hadn't been burdened with another "vision" for months. In hindsight, though, she should have known it was too good to last. Just when she thought she was in the clear, she had to be hurled back to square one: being haunted by something she didn't fully comprehend.

She could—especially when it wasn't tormenting her—be apathetic towards what it was, when or where or on whom it worked, or even how and why it did; she could shrug off its entire existence. She could not, however, under any circumstance, turn a blind eye to what it foreboded.

The various times she had been gifted with the chance to prevent ill omens from becoming tragic truths and fell short were now being dug up from the very depths in which she had tried to bury and forget about them. The guilt they instilled was catching up with her tenfold, in inescapable torrents as if being rained on by a downpour in an open field. And that part of her, that part surging with shame and self-reproach—that part was reigning.

Cedric was still gazing at her, for what had been Merlin knew how long, and somewhat expectantly; Ellis was still staring at him, horribly aware that she had only been dishing out blinks for a reaction. But try as she might, Ellis could not will her self-condemning side away. On the contrary, quite like the mental picture of a certain redhead, the more she yearned to get rid of it, the more it was determined to put its foot down.

And her mind was suddenly swimming with scenes of Mrs. Norris hanging rigidly from a torch bracket; Colin Creevey glued to his camera, still as the marble steps he laid upon; a supine and statue-like Justin Finch-Fletchley, wide-eyed but unseeing, underneath a black puff of smoldering cloud that was Sir Nicholas; and Ginny Weasley, chalk-white and frazzled, mouthing frenziedly (something inaudible to Ellis) before keeling over onto gloomy stone ground, her vivid mane the most lively feature of her collapsed form—the sights of which disconcerted Ellis so that she winced and flinched and squeezed her eyes shut yet to no such avail that they would disappear.

"What's wrong?" she heard Cedric as though from several metres away, a dizzy sensation overcoming her from shaking her head too much.

The weight of the mattress shifted, and what little logic left in Ellis told her that he had moved himself onto the bed.

"Nothing..."

Ellis turned away and opened her eyes in hopes of seeing something that wasn't Petrified victims or Ginny Weasley apparently dying of exhaustion—or Cedric, for she was on the verge of weeping. She gazed raptly at the tiny rectangle that was a window at the end of the ward, hot tears collecting rapidly in her eyes.

Her breathing was erratic and fast, and became even more so when she suddenly felt something graze her ear. Out of sheer panic Ellis shrunk away (several tears shed themselves), to find that it was only Cedric's hand that had ventured to tuck away a stray lock of her hair. He looked shocked at first, but soon rallied with a smile.

"I don't need to be a Legilimens to know that something's bothering you," said Cedric understandingly. "You know you can tell me anything, so just—"

"IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!"

For the very first time, Cedric looked affronted as Ellis glared at him.

"Of course it's not," he said quietly.