The Girl who Survived (Fred Weasley)

CH. 36 Visions or Dreams

~Elodie's POV~

"Alright you lot! Raise your glasses for the first-place champion," Fred said.

"The best looking of the lot," George continued.

"With only one more round to go," Fred said.

"Cedric Diggory!" They both shouted as an eruption of cheers broke out.

They were right. There was no situation that a night of drinking couldn't fix. It was still weird at first, but after the first three shots that I happily poured over and over it seemed to work. We had taken over the room of requirements, neutral ground for all houses to join in the festivities. Even a few people from the visiting schools.

"You should slow down, you're going to have a wicked headache tomorrow," George told me as I began filling our group's cups for another round. Lee and Katie were off somewhere snogging. Alicia was twirling her hair to one of the guys from Durmstrang. And Angelina was making nice with a few of Cedric's friends, her and Maggie had really hit it off. Meanwhile that left me with the boys as they tried to keep up with me, and I tried to drown the memories of the lake.

"She's fine! A pretty lady always knows what she wants!" Cedric said before Fred put a drink in his hand.

"You should tell tweedle jokester and tweedle champion to slow down," I said in a sour tone gesturing to Fred and Cedric in front of us who kept chugging down drink after drink in some weird kind of pissing contest. I threw my shot back not waiting for anyone else, and then quickly proceeded to fill it again.

"Okay, easy tiger. What's going on?" George asked me as he took the glass from in front of me. I must have looked terrible, like I'd just spent the last fifteen hours at the bottom of the black lake. Yeah, that summed it up. But it was more than that. I didn't want them to see it, but the way George was looking at me, I knew that my face was a book with the cover turned over. Allowing everyone to read me.

"Why does something always have to be going on? What about you? What's going on? Why can't I ever just be?" I said and grabbed the bottle to take a swig from it directly. "See that's the tricky part Isn't it? I want to be alone, but I hate feeling lonely. So, I guess that's what's going on," I said and left with the bottle.

Looking back, I realized that what I had said was really bitchy, but in my defense, I hadn't had an easy 24 hours. I left out one of the doors and slowly began making my way through the corridor back to the common room with no care in the world as to if I got caught or not. Hell, I wished I would, then they could take me to McGonagall. I walked by an open archway and was hit by a wave of cool air. I still felt like I was freezing from the water. But the breeze reminded me of the floating feeling before the nightmare started. It felt like the world was moving fast, and my mind was moving slow. But then again, Fire whisky was rude and tended to have that effect.

I leaned on the opening and slid down until my bum found the ground. I took another drink from my bottle to bring the familiar warmth to my chest. That was the drink that did it. It. It made me hyperaware. I thought about every mistake that had gotten me to this point, every misstep. I wanted nothing more than to find the nearest fireplace and floo as far away from here as possible. To go find a flat in the city, somewhere loud, to drown out all the noise. I wished it were snowing right now, I'd give anything to feel the burn from the ice on my skin. I'd never thought I'd be the type to contemplate running away, it seemed like such a cowardly thing to do. Leave everyone behind to deal with the wake of whatever mess I had left.

"You shouldn't be out here on your own," George said as he took a seat across from me. "Especially with that," He said, gesturing to the bottle.