In this sea of change, understanding is our shore
I disappear with no control
The current is strong, my arms are weak
But you are the branch within my reach
Though I cannot catch my breath

"Currents"
Sleeping At Last

LUCY:

Hermione's birthday in 1992 fell on a Saturday, which meant I tossed and turned the night before, trying to decide if I should wake her up before I left for Quidditch practice to steal a couple quiet moments with her to give her my gift or if I should just wait until after practice and have it be less rushed.

But since I was still awake at midnight, I grabbed the small package out from under my pillow and tucked it into my pajama pants pocket before sliding out of bed.

"Hermione, Hermione, wake up, it's urgent!" I whispered.

Her eyes fluttered open slowly. "Lucy? What's wrong, are you okay?"

"Just follow me," I urged, grabbing her hand and pulling her down to the common room, careful not to wake our roommates up with our commotion. I led her to my favorite window seat and patted the cushion next to me.

She now looked wide awake and worried. "What's the matter? What's going on?"

"It's your birthday!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms around her.

"Oh," she said, giggling and blushing ever so slightly. "I suppose it is, yeah."

"I wasn't sure if you'd rather have me wake you up before I left for Quidditch practice or wait until after I got back to give you your gift, but since I realized it was after midnight and therefore technically your birthday..." I drew the small box from my pocket and handed it to her. "Happy birthday, Hermione."

She tore the paper off and popped the lid open. She smiled. "It's beautiful," she said in a hushed voice, drawing the silver ring from the box and putting it on. She blinked in surprise as it instantly became half-purple and half-green. "What do the colors mean?"

I lifted my hand to show that the ring on my finger was also half-purple and half-green, purple on the left and green on the right. "I heard that Muggles like to wear rings that change color and call them mood rings. I asked Dean Thomas about them, but he laughed and said they change color because of temperature, not mood. But I enchanted these to match our moods, for real. I'm on the left and you're on the right, since I'm left-handed and you're right-handed, and as long as we wear these, we'll always get to see what the other is feeling."

"Whoa," she said, holding her hand up next to mine. "So you're purple? What's purple?"

"Nervous, I think. I haven't figured all the colors out yet," I admitted. "I haven't personally been able to test the extent of the ring yet, because the magic works best when we're both wearing them. But I think purple is nervous, and green is excited. Does that sound right?"

She nodded, and the entire ring glowed yellow. She gasped. "What's that one?"

"Happiness," I said with a smile. "And I think that the stronger the emotion, the more the ring glows."

"This is the best present ever!" she exclaimed, hugging me tightly. "Thank you, Lucy!"

"Of course," I replied. "I'm so glad you like it. We can head back to bed now, if you'd like. I just wanted to take the time to explain the rings to you, rather than trying to leave a note or letting you think I forgot about your birthday."

"I know you wouldn't," she said with a confident smile. "You're my best friend. But you do know that now I need to find out your birthday, right?"

I laughed. "I intend to keep that secret as long as possible."

In the weeks that followed, we figured out more and more about the colors of the rings. Hermione's half turned faintly red whenever she was around Professor Lockhart; I reasoned pretty quickly that red meant love, and she tried and failed to deny it. The ring turned pink when I brought it up, and we realized pink must be embarrassment. She told me that any time I disappeared with the twins, it flickered between green and white. I speculated that one was amusement and one was focus, but I wasn't sure which was which until Fred pranked George during dinner one night and both sides of the ring turned a brilliant green as we howled with laughter.

But for the most part, our rings were yellow. We were happy. Quidditch practices were hard, but I loved my broom, and I loved the camaraderie I could finally begin to build as an official member of the team. I didn't spend as much time studying by myself in the stands. It wasn't worth running through the rain, and I was actually starting to enjoy studying with other people anyway. I didn't like studying in the library very often, either, but I often made myself comfortable in a corner of the common room, surrounded by other second-years that would ask me for help from time to time (since most of them found Hermione intimidating and me significantly less so). I still sat with Fred and George at meals, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione across the table, but on the nights Percy asked Fred and George to sit with Ginny, I found myself in good company with other kids my age.

Of all of our friends, Archie of all people was the first to notice the rings. The two of us were stuck working across the table from Draco Malfoy in Potions, who was droning on and on about how he'd love to drink his strengthening solution and use it to hit a Bludger at me so hard I'd go flying through the goalposts. I was trying to drown him out, but I snapped back into focus when Archie said my name.

"Nice ring, Diggory, where'd you get it?"

I blinked in surprise and glanced down. My half was a dim scarlet, a color I hadn't seen before. Hermione's half was white; the lucky girl was working with Neville at another table, so she was actually able to focus on her potion.

"It was my birthday present for Hermione," I explained. He watched as the scarlet faded to a subtle orange. "Huh, I've never seen that color before. Anyway, Hermione has one, and I have one."

"Why?" Draco asked. "You two getting married or something?"

"I thought you said I was too ugly for that. No, we're not getting married, we're just friends."

"Not that I think you know what those are," Archie added.

"I have friends!" he protested.

Professor Snape swooped by then with a judgmental glare my direction, so I quickly went back to work as if nothing had happened, but the ring glowed pink out of the corner of my eye. Draco huffed and returned to his potion. "I still want to knock you off your broom with a Bludger, Diggory," he mumbled.

"Be my guest." I looked up at him and smirked. "I'd love to see you try."

"Give it a month or so, and you will."

"I can't wait, especially considering you're a Seeker."

Archie snickered and added more salamander blood to his potion. "She got you there, Draco."

Draco scowled, not bothering to reply. His eyes strayed to my ring, which had returned to a subtle shade of orange on both sides. "What does orange mean?"

"I've never seen orange before," I admitted. "The magic knows better than I do."

I waited for a sarcastic comment, but none came. He merely nodded slowly. "How did you do that?"

"A couple different charms," I replied with a shrug. "It was a lot of trial and error, but I'm happy with how it turned out." The orange on my half of the ring glowed brighter.

"Yeah, well," he said as he sprinkled some powdered griffin claw into his potion, "maybe you should just stick to charms. You're better at those than Quidditch anyway. I mean, you covered my whole team with a silencing charm a couple weeks ago."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Was that almost a compliment?"

"Didn't know you knew what those were, either," Archie sassed.

"No, it wasn't almost a compliment," Draco spluttered, stirring his potion faster. "I just think the ring is neat, that's all. And such a big silencing charm would be hard but I could probably do it if I-"

"I get it," I interrupted. "Thanks, Draco. Hermione thinks the ring is neat as well, and the silencing charm was fun. Now you might want to stop stirring so quickly, you'll splash it all over Crabbe, and he doesn't need it. He has to hold up that thick skull somehow, I'm sure he's plenty strong."

Crabbe grinned and cracked his knuckles. "You bet I am."

Draco elbowed him hard in the ribs. "She just insulted you, dimwit."

Crabbe's face fell. "Really?"

"I'm just joking around," I said with an inkling of a smile. "I meant nothing by it. If anything, it was half of a compliment, saying you're strong. Draco was the one who called you a dimwit, which isn't a compliment at all."

Before anyone could respond, Snape swooped by again, and we were silent the rest of the class. But as I left, I noticed Draco looking at me with a new interest. I watched his eyes wander again to my ring, and he stared at it for a moment before turning to someone else. I shivered involuntarily and ducked out of the classroom before he could look further.

A thirteen-year-old girl sat on her bed fighting tears the night of the full moon, nervously twisting a ring around her finger. The right half of the ring was a brilliant shade of purple; the other half was just its natural silver. An identical ring rested in the drawer of the nightstand between her bed and the empty bed of her best friend.

"Everything okay, Hermione?" a curly-haired girl asked as she slid between her sheets.

Hermione stopped twirling the ring and nodded. "Yes, of course. Thanks, though, Lavender."

"Lucy's sick again?" the other girl in the room asked, glancing up from her magazine.

Hermione nodded again. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind you two knowing the truth, if you'd like to know. We've been roommates for a year now, and-"

"Oh, we know," Lavender said. "We figured it out a while ago, didn't we, Parvati?"

Her friend nodded. "We did. It's okay."

"You did?" Hermione asked, her voice a nervous squeak. The ring on her finger nearly burned her with the intensity of the dread flowing through it. She wasn't planning on telling the true truth, that her best friend was a werewolf. She was just going to let them think they knew the truth by feeding them a convincing lie, one she and Lucy had decided upon telling the other girls over summer.

She was still reeling when Parvati nodded. "Disappearing every month? Looking really sick for a week? It's related to her period, isn't it?"

"Oh." Hermione breathed a small sigh of relief. "Yes, it is." She sighed again. "I always just tell the boys she's sick, because it's rather personal that she has to leave every month for that, but I was hoping you two would understand."

"Oh, we understand," the other two girls said quickly.

"What's wrong with her?" Parvati asked after a moment.

"She doesn't like to talk about it," Hermione lied. The lie came easily; she had rehearsed it for many weeks at that point. "But she told me that it's extremely painful for her after the incident in the Forbidden Forest last year, and since she's allergic to dittany, Madam Pomfrey gives her something else that actually helps. She always stays the night, just in case something goes wrong or she needs a higher dosage."

The other girls nodded their solemn understanding, and Hermione's gaze drifted toward the window. The full moon was obscured by clouds, but she knew it was there.

"It'll be okay, Hermione," Parvati said. "Lucy's strong. She'll be okay."

Hermione tore her eyes away from the window and sucked in a deep breath. "I know, she always is. I just worry." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "But I suppose you two have learned that by now."

They smiled and nodded. Hermione smiled as well and laid against her pillow, lacing her fingers behind her head and tangling them in her bushy hair as the room lapsed back into comfortable silence save the flipping of magazine pages.

It was the most she had talked to her roommates other than Lucy in weeks; she found Harry and Ron far more interesting. Hermione knew that Lucy preferred their company to anyone else's, too, but ever since returning to school, she had noticed her friend making new connections everywhere she went.

Lucy was by far the most patient of anyone with the starry-eyed Colin Creevey and the well-intentioned Neville Longbottom. When it came to the Weasleys, she could just as easily talk to Percy about classes as she could laugh with Fred and George about their Zonko's discoveries. And when it came to talking to girls, well, Hermione knew Lucy was better at that than she'd ever be, and that was fine with her. Her lack of connection to the other girls in her dorm only ever bothered her when Lucy was gone, as she was that night.

But for all of her connections new and old, Lucy was alone that night in the Shrieking Shack.

Rain poured down in sheets outside the dilapidated house; unfortunately for the werewolf, the roof was rather leaky and the floor quickly became more wet than dry. The wolf slipped through puddles as it searched the house desperately for something, anything to eat, but when it slid straight into a door frame and got a nasty bruise on its hip, it whimpered and retreated to the bed in the corner, hiding beneath it and waiting impatiently for the dawn.

Sleep did not come easily to Hermione that night, but it did come eventually. And when she dreamed, she dreamed that she was running through the Forbidden Forest with Lucy sprinting in front of her. But no matter how hard Hermione tried to keep up, Lucy ran faster and faster until she disappeared into the darkness. A scream echoed in the distance, and Hermione jolted awake.

She sat up, her hands reaching forward for a friend whose bed was empty. She heaved a dry sob, raising her shaking hands to her face in horror, and took a deep breath to gather herself.

It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

Unable to go back to sleep, Hermione grabbed a set of robes at sunrise and slipped off to the shower, the warm water washing away the uneasiness of the night. She returned to the bedroom silently, and before she descended the stairs to make her way to the Hospital Wing, she reached into the drawer between their beds and grabbed the other half-purple and half-silver ring.

Lucy was soaking wet, shivering, blue in the face, and buried in blankets when Hermione arrived, but she was sitting up in bed, and she smiled when she saw her friend. Hermione sprinted across the room and flung her arms around the swaddled girl as best as she could.

"Good morning." Lucy wrestled her arms free of the blanket mountain to hug her back. "Miss me more than usual?"

Hermione nodded as they pulled away. She reached for Lucy's hand and placed the ring in her palm.

Lucy's blue eyes twinkled when she smiled. "I was hoping you'd bring that. Thank you." Lucy slipped the ring on, and Hermione's purple half was joined by a soft yellow.

Hermione laughed, and it sounded watery and weak to her ears. "How can you possibly be happy right now?"

"You're here," Lucy replied simply. Her brother, looking concerned but trying not to show it, appeared at her bedside and handed her a steaming mug of something golden and shimmering. "And Cedric's here." She took a sip of the potion, and the yellow of the ring glowed brighter. "And this tastes really good, somehow. And I made it through the night. And I know Harry and Ron will be happy to see me later, and I hope to finally beat Ron at wizard's chess this afternoon after I take a nice long nap in my own bed. Why wouldn't I be happy?"

Cedric placed a hand on his sister's forehead and managed a smile. "Possibly because you spent several hours in the freezing rain last night on top of the dozens of hours you already spend outside practicing in the daytime, but just the same, I'm glad you're happy."

Hermione lowered herself onto the foot of Lucy's bed, fiddling with the fringe on the top blanket.

"Did I miss anything exciting?" Lucy asked after Cedric had walked away for a moment.

Hermione shook her head. "I told Parvati and Lavender the story we talked about."

"How did that go?"

"They believed it, easily," she replied. "They already suspected something like that."

"Well, that's good." Lucy took another long sip from the mug. "What's wrong?"

Hermione shrugged. "Nothing."

Lucy held her fist up so the ring was plainly visible, the yellow half still clashing with the blue and purple of Hermione's half. "Your half looks like a bruise. What's wrong?"

"Lucy, it's nothing," she insisted with a half-hearted laugh. "You're the one who's buried in blankets and probably covered in bruises, not me."

"And I almost considered giving you a book for your birthday instead." Lucy rolled her eyes and sipped the potion again. "Hermione, please."

"Fine, fine," she relented. "I had a bad dream last night. But that's all."

Lucy raised her eyebrows in silent prodding.

Hermione sighed. "Alright. The two of us were in the Forbidden Forest, running. You were in front of me, and I tried to keep up, but you were faster. You disappeared, and I woke up when I heard a scream."

Lucy nodded slowly. "I'm sorry you had that dream, that sounds scary."

"It's fine," Hermione said, hoping to convince both herself and her friend with her quick confidence. "It was just a silly dream. You're alright, and that's all that matters."

But Lucy's face remained serious. "I'm still glad you told me." She glanced down at the ring. "And see? Your half looks better. That must have helped."

Hermione looked at her own ring, and surely enough, the blues and purples were less intense. But so was the yellow. "Your side dimmed too, though."

"So?"

"You were happy."

"I still am, Hermione. Friends share each other's burdens."

"Why do I get the feeling you just quoted my own words back at me?" she asked with a slow smile.

Lucy grinned. "Because I probably did." She finished the potion with one last swig and set the mug on the side table. She peeled the outermost blanket off of her mound and held it out to Hermione. "Friends share each other's blankets too. Especially when one friend is beginning to overheat."

Hermione giggled and accepted it. "That sounds like a sign in the Hufflepuff common room. Friends share each other's burdens --- and blankets!"

Cedric's laughter rang out through the empty Hospital Wing. "If it doesn't already exist, I'll make sure it does soon!" he declared.

Oliver's Quidditch practices happened rain or shine --- most often, rain. As a result, the whole team was plagued by a head cold that refused to leave no matter how much Pepperup Potion we drank. Harry and I started sitting together at the back of every class so that the steam rising from our ears nearly 24/7 wouldn't obscure anyone's view.

"Sorry, Harry, you're on your own heading up to the castle today," I said after one such practice as I shouldered my broom. "Think you can handle it?"

He laughed. "I think I can. Where are you going instead?"

"Cedric's birthday is Tuesday," I explained. "I'm meeting up with a group of his friends to make a plan."

"Sounds like fun! As for myself," he said, gesturing toward his muddied robes, "I think I'm going to go change."

It was my turn to laugh. "I wish I could, but I think I'm already late. See ya!"

I placed my broom in my locker and raced up the stairs.

"Sorry I'm late," I panted, ducking under the massive umbrella they crowded under and taking a quick seat next to Archie, careful not to touch anyone with my robes. "Practice went long."

"I can't believe Wood is making you practice in this weather!" Henry exclaimed. "And then making practices extra long!"

"All part of his new strategy," I said with a shrug. "You're lucky it's raining so hard he couldn't see you in the stands. He would have thought you were spying on us." Everyone laughed at that. I grinned. "Glad you all think that's funny. He's a paranoid pain in the arse sometimes, honestly. But anyway, Cedric. Who was assigned to distract him, since Henry's here?"

"His new friend, Cho Chang," Beatrice answered, trying to blow her bangs out of her eyes but growling in frustration when she realized they were so wet they were stuck to her forehead. "Your brother sure has a lot of friends."

I nodded. "Sure does. So what's the plan?"

"Nonexistent," Henry said with a sigh. "We just found out he's not going to Hogsmeade next weekend, and we were all planning on celebrating then."

"That was my plan too," I groaned. "Why isn't he going?"

"He wants to study for our big Transfiguration test the Monday after, but we all know he's the best in our year at that," a boy I recognized as Alex said. "There's got to be another reason, though."

"Whatever the reason may be, Hogsmeade's out of the question," Henry said. "We have to think of something else, something we could do on Tuesday."

A sudden thought occurred to me. "Maybe Hogsmeade isn't out of the question entirely. What were you planning on doing?"

"Uh..." Beatrice counted on her fingers. "Dragging him to the Shrieking Shack on a dare, then making it up to him by going to the Three Broomsticks and pooling our money to get a round of Butterbeer, then taking him to Honeyduke's."

I pursed my lips. "If I told you that I could make Honeyduke's happen still, would you be willing to give me the money?"

Everyone raised their eyebrows.

"How?" Archie asked.

"I have friends," I replied, a smile spreading across my face. "I helped them with someone's birthday over summer. They'd happily help me with this one, especially if it meant breaking some rules in the process. If that's okay with you all, of course, I know how you Hufflepuffs are with rules-"

"Oh please," Beatrice retorted. "Our common room is next to the kitchens. We don't mind breaking rules for food, and we certainly wouldn't mind breaking rules for Cedric. Right?" she added, glancing around the group.

Henry grinned. "Sounds good to me. Alright, Lucy, meet me in the courtyard tomorrow after dinner, and I'll give you what I can gather."

"I'll talk to my friends right now," I said, smiling. "Thanks for helping, everybody. You should probably go back in pairs so he doesn't realize we were all gathered together. Let's make this Cedric's best birthday yet, yeah?"

Everyone nodded their enthusiastic agreement, and we went our separate ways. I trudged up through the common room to my dormitory, where Parvati and Lavender were hunched over the new edition of Witch Weekly.

"Hi, Lucy, how was practice?" Lavender asked. Her eyes widened. "Ew! You have mud everywhere!"

"I know," I said, but with my horribly plugged nose, it came out sounding like "I doh." I grabbed the clean set of robes I had left on my bed that morning and disappeared into the bathroom.

I wrestled the Quidditch robes off and vigorously scrubbed my arms and chest and face and neck in the sink before pulling the clean robes over my head. I paused and studied my reflection in the mirror, something I tried not to do anymore but couldn't resist sometimes.

With my perpetual head cold, my blue eyes were watery and rimmed with red, and my nose was shiny and bright pink. I leaned closer to the mirror.

The scars had faded somewhat over the course of the year, though a couple of new ones had joined the ranks. A couple slashed across my right hand's knuckles from the time I smashed through a wooden plank after jumping too hard. A perpendicular line ran down my collarbone from running into a doorway at high speed. But somehow, my face was largely the same. Thin white lines still marked every centimeter of my skin, and my face was no exception. I tore my eyes away from the mirror and shoved my robes into the sink to deal with later. I needed to talk to the twins.

I threw my wet hair up into a ponytail, so it dripped down my back rather than my front, and headed down to the common room. The twins seemed busy, gathered around a table with a smoldering salamander, so I instead made my way over to Hermione and Ron. Harry appeared to have just arrived as well, which seemed odd considering I had been talking to Cedric's friends for quite a while.

Before I could say anything, Ron asked, "Did you two come up together?"

I shook my head. "I had to talk to someone. Did you just get here, Harry?

He nodded. "I bumped into Nearly Headless Nick, and he invited me to his death day party, which slowed me down a bit. You're all invited," he added. "Nick was hoping you three would come with me."

I sat next to Harry and began flipping my wand in my hand. "Sounds like fun! When's the party?"

"Halloween," he replied, somewhat glumly, "which means we'll miss the feast. You'll be busy with the haunted house anyway, though, I reckon."

I shook my head. "The twins and I have been too busy with, ah, other things. We'll do one next year."

"A death day party?" Hermione asked, looking up from her book for the first time. "I bet there aren't many living people who can say they've been to one of those! It'll be fascinating!"

Ron was less than impressed. "Why would anyone want to celebrate the day they died? Sounds dead depressing to me."

Harry opened his mouth to say something else, but just then, the twins' salamander took flight. He soared across the room in a spectacular series of crackles and pops, showering orange sparks as he whizzed back and forth before landing in the fireplace. I jumped to my feet and pointed my wand at the fire. It was extinguished with a quick "Aguamenti!", and I snatched the salamander from the ashes before igniting the logs again with an "Incendio!"

Percy immediately marched up to the twins. "What were you thinking?" he roared, his face nearly as red as his hair. "Where did you even get that salamander? You could have hurt someone! You could have killed someone! You two are-"

I approached softly and stood on my tiptoes to tap Percy on the shoulder. (The twins were rather tall, but Percy stood a couple inches above them still. They always wondered how his tall, skinny body could support his metaphorically big head.) He spun around, and he looked for a second like he was going to yell at me too for interrupting, but his face softened.

"Yes?" he asked, seemingly trying very hard not to sound impatient with me.

"The salamander's alright," I said, holding him up for emphasis. Still crackling and smoking a bit, the creature scrambled up my arm and curled up in a ball on my shoulder. "See?"

He nodded stiffly. "I do see. But they should have known better than to feed a salamander a firework-"

"Oh, but he's fire-resistant! It doesn't hurt him! I only took him out of the fire so he wouldn't try to spit the firework up and cause an even bigger explosion." I turned to the twins, who were watching the scene with mingled relief and amusement. "I was coming over to ask you two a question anyway. I ran out of Pepperup Potion and I don't want to go to the Hospital Wing alone. Would you mind coming with me?"

"Sure thing, Cub!" Fred exclaimed, bursting forward toward the portrait hole with George on his heels. "Meet you just outside!"

Once they had disappeared, I removed the salamander from my shoulder and handed it to Ginny, who smiled widely.

"Hold still, Ginny!" Colin Creevey exclaimed. "Let me take a picture!"

"You do that," I chuckled, glancing at Percy as I left. He looked as if he'd been stunned, but his gaze was locked on the beaming Ginny and not me.

"Something tells me you need more than company," Fred said when I crawled through the portrait hole.

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh, come off it, Cub," George teased. "We both know you and Harry always stop by the Hospital Wing together before Lockhart's class, you don't need us to walk you."

"Go on then, let it out," Fred coaxed. "Why'd you really bail us out of a well-deserved Percy lecture? Because if you'd ever let us get it, it'd be for endangering a creature."

"Alright, alright," I relented. "You have a point. Well, here's the thing..."

I explained the tentative plan for Cedric's birthday, and, as expected, they jumped at the chance to break rules for a noble reason. They went with me the next day to pick up the money from Henry, too, who didn't look at all surprised to see them.

"I had a feeling these two would be the 'friends' you mentioned, Lucy," he said with a chuckle as he pressed the pouch of coins into my hand. He eyed them with a new interest. "You two really think you can get to Honeyduke's before Tuesday? And get there and back with all the candy without getting caught?"

"Think?" Fred scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Dearest Henry, we know we can."

"Why do you think everyone speaks so highly of the Gryffindor Quidditch parties?" George asked.

Henry smiled and shook his head in disbelief. "Well, good luck regardless, though it certainly sounds like you won't need it."

"We don't," they assured him in unison, "but thanks."

Henry laughed and glanced at me. "Do they do that often?"

I nodded. "All the time. I'll contact you once they've gotten the candy and we can figure out how to give it to Cedric."

"Oh, George and I have figured that the delivery can be our contribution to the celebration," Fred said. "Leave that to us."

Henry and I exchanged a look.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"What's the matter, Cub, don't trust us?" George teased with a good-natured grin.

"I just watched you feed a salamander a firework."

"So you have nothing to worry about!" Fred declared, snatching the pouch from my hand and tossing it to his twin. "Come on, Georgie, we have an errand to run. Wait for us in the common room, yeah, Cub?"

I nodded. "Sure. Good luck, and don't get caught."

George patted his chest; I knew the map lay beneath his hand. "Weasleys' honor," he said with a wink. "See you later."

They spun on their heels and disappeared into the darkness.

"They do know what they're doing, right?" Henry asked after a moment.

"Oh yeah," I agreed immediately. "They definitely do."

"What do you reckon they have in mind for the, er, delivery?"

I laughed. "I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that Tuesday will be a day Cedric remembers for the rest of his life."

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, even though it contained very little content from the book itself! I promise it'll get more exciting very quickly, but I wanted to take the time to build a couple of relationships before Hogwarts gets turned upside down.