Chapter Text
The airy drafts of a cold January drifted through the high towers of Hogwarts castle, the most brisk of whom flitted around the tall Ravenclaw tower. In the private library, the magically created fire of sapphire blue flame quelled the cold–for now. The small, circular room was intended for sixth years, and the tall shelves were accompanied by dark blue armchairs, desks of deep brown, and bronze accenting, all the design of the house’s founder. Ancient books of riddles, spells, and potions gracefully flitted in the high rafters of the library as several students worked below.
As the hours grew late and the candles fought against the darkness of the night, a lone sixth-year remained, hunched over a small desk with several rolls of parchment. The floor by his desk was stacked with books for his paper. Many spent ink quills littered the surface, and ink dripped from the overflowing wells, all necessary for the studious house. This boy was named Liam Carroll, who was tall and straight, with wavy light fair and hopelessly pale skin (many in the house swore his skin turned blue in the winter). Liam did not usually miss sleep to work on an assignment, but this one eluded his concentration.
“How difficult must McGonagall make these? We’re not even N.E.W.T. level students yet?” he spoke aloud to himself as he pressed his face into the wood. Liam squinted hard at the title of his essay: “A Transfigurer’s Blunder: The Practical Impracticalities of Moralicci’s Principle”, trying to think of more things to say, but the piling rolls of parchment seemed to fill his brain with paper shreds, rather than calculations for Transfiguration.
Liam looked upon the ornate glass clock that was mounted on the wall of the sixth-year library, which already showed it to be forty-five minutes past midnight. He had lost hope of completing it tonight, and instead decided to work on it over breakfast (although not an uncommon sight at the Ravenclaw table).
He clicked off the lamp at his desk and walked out of the room, the candles extinguishing behind him. The boy tried his best to be silent, and the carpeted floors of the tower generally kept sound down, as he walked to the foyer on the left of the library and carefully opened the door to the sixth-year boy’s dormitory.
Liam quietly tip-toed across the hardwood floors of the dorm, careful not to wake any of the other boys. Luckily, most of them were deep sleepers. He carefully changed into pajamas and climbed into his bed. The midnight blue curtain closed, and Liam pulled the comforter patterned with constellations toward his head. The cool air of the room circulated around his face, reddening it, but he pulled a blanket over it, warming himself up.
The boy lay awake in bed for several minutes, convincing himself it was from Luke McDonough’s soft snoring. When that clearing wasn’t the reason for his lack of sleep, he instead focused on the essay that he just couldn’t seem to figure out. Why was the principle, which he had earlier been confident he could disprove, suddenly making too much sense? He went over it constantly in his head:
Moralicci’s Principle: A Transfiguration spell becomes gradually more ineffective the greater the gap in awareness between the two objects transfigured.
It simply made no sense to him. How could it be that the effectiveness of a spell would be thrown off just because something didn’t know it was being transfigured? His essay continued to keep him awake for several minutes more, every minute detail, each transition word, each calculation, every single data entry. It just seemed to perplex him in ways that he wasn’t comfortable as a Ravenclaw.
Liam eventually dawned upon the unfortunate truth. That there was something much more unfortunate preening at his heavy mind. Something subconscious…love, if he could even call it that. Love for someone who most certainly did not love him back. Love for someone so much more accomplished, more popular, undeniably more beautiful. Although they were both good students, prefects for their house, all of the things that Hogwarts emphasized for successful passage through the school, and yet Liam couldn’t help but feel pathetic in comparison to him.
He wanted to think something, too afraid to say it out loud, unwilling to speak it into existence, for fear that his whispers might travel on the brisk winter winds into the ears of everyone in the castle.
“Fuck it,” he thought to himself. “I’ll say it in my head. Then maybe I’ll finally go to sleep”.
“Goddamn it, I’m in love with Cedric Diggory”.
…
That same cold January night, not in the windswept peaks of the highest towers of the school, but in the warm upper basement, heated by roaring fires and the shared fellowship of students that lived there.
Cedric Diggory sat in the Hufflepuff Common Room, a cozy nook that felt much like a greenhouse, but with the uncomfortable humidity spelled away. The furniture looked like it had simply grown out of the ground and been blessed with comfortable pillows and blankets. He was sitting out, doing his duty as the prefect, making sure that nothing suspicious was going on in the common room (as uncommon as that was in Hufflepuff house). The only events of note were some accidental spell diversions that caused some slight cuts to a couple second-year students, but they were easily mended and sent on their way.
As the younger students went off to bed, Cedric moved more towards talking with friends in his year. The few that had stayed up a little later chose to congregate at a round oaken table near the center of the room, so that Cedric could still claim to be keeping an eye on the room. The conversations mostly revolved around the newest events going on in the castle. One of his closest friends, Matilda Farrell, was a muggle-born witch with a clear talent for figuring out gossip. Her bright demeanor tended to absorb a lot of time in discussions, but no one seemed to mind, as no one in the group had as much to say as she did. Her best friend, Gracie Cheltenwalter, was a quieter girl, but she and Matilda seemed to go together perfectly. The final person at the table, Felix Foxbourne, was Cedric’s best friend and easy to find in crowds, what with his fiery red hair and incredibly tall stature. The two sat close and listened to Matilda’s latest findings.
“I simply cannot believe that some of the professors have been trying to institute harsher punishments for our year. It’s simply not fair, what with everyone knowing that all the trouble that ‘we’ seem to cause is clearly not our fault,” tittered Matilda, smoothing her blonde hair as she went on.
“I know, Mattie. Like us and the Ravenclaws don’t start shit. It’s the damn Gryffindors picking fights and Slytherins starting rumors, and then we all get caught up in the mess of it,” followed Gracie. “I mean, I’m pretty sure everyone knows that it’s not us, and then Dumbledore just lets the Gryffindors get away with it while we suffer the consequences”.
“Well everyone knows that, Gracie. But it’s not like we can go around telling people that the Headmaster’s biased, now can we?” said Felix. “What say you, Mr. Perfect Prefect Diggory?”. He looked at Cedric, who tended to avoid conversations about inter-house drama.
Cedric made an annoyed face for a second, which made Matilda laugh, and Felix roll his eyes. “It’s not just the House Heads, some of the student leadership is making it worse. Miriam’s trying her best, but Leo just encourages the fighting”.
“Some Head Boy,” Matilda scoffed.
“Honestly, can they not let Miriam do it all herself? She probably could,” replied Felix.
“Well that would require some mental exercises from half the students to grasp the fact that she’s smarter than them,” laughed Gracie.
Cedric laughed as he thought of Miriam Cottrie, Head Girl from Ravenclaw. A muggle-born and genius, there were stories of muggle schools making discreet dealings with Hogwarts to recruit her to them after she graduated. He shook his head as he imagined Miriam as being in charge of the school, which wasn’t a far stretch considering she was already pretty close.
The group continued on in their conversations and Cedric mostly zoned out, mentally resting before his prefect patrol. The only thing he acutely heard was Felix saying, “Oh, Cedric would tell us anything”. He tried to figure out what the context was, but their words dissipated into an ocean of useless phrases.
Cedric was close with his friends, and did tell them everything. Well, almost everything.
As they cleared out and headed back to their dormitories, Cedric pulled out the enchanted parchment that Miriam had given all the prefects, with a strict instruction (threat) not to lose them. He checked the parchment:
Boyle (G): Library Annex & Greenhouses
Carroll (R): OFF
Diggory (H): Grand Staircase & Clock Tower
Hadroggs (G): Dungeons
Not the worst assignment, he thought to himself as he checked to make sure the common room was empty. He walked out the barrel leading to Hufflepuff house and up several staircases to the Grand Staircase near the Great Hall. Many of the portraits seemed to be asleep. He walked through his patrol, making sure that no students were out and about. The teachers had given very strict instructions to keep students in the common room, especially with the increased security risk posed by Sirius Black. The thought of an escaped prisoner made him shudder, but he continued on, certain in the castle’s protection from him.
About an hour into his patrol, he stopped at a window that led over one of the cliffs that Hogwarts sat on, admiring the moon that cut through the towers and gave him a bit of natural light. In his daze, he saw the Ravenclaw Tower, tall in the snowy winds outside. Normally, he avoided that tower because he thought it was cold and he always felt ten times more stupid every time he walked past one studying, but recently he had been avoiding the area for an entirely different reason.
Cedric had never understood the term “lovesick” prior to a couple of months ago, but now he wholeheartedly endorsed that definition. And it was all over a nice Ravenclaw boy. Cedric felt like he was going to expand then compress every time he thought of him, and every mention of his name was even worse. It was truly terrible when they were in prefect meetings, because his presence made Cedric sick to his stomach, not out of disgust, but because he was so beautiful and kind that Cedric never could think anything bad.
Gazing out the window towards the tower, Cedric dared to speak it out loud, confident that no one around could hear him.
“Liam Carroll, I know you’re nowhere near here, but you should know I’m in love with you”.
Cedric already felt embarrassed for putting those words into the universe and hurriedly walked past the windows, down the grand staircase, and through the complex corridors in Hufflepuff house. When he got to his dorm, he shucked his clothes off and climbed into bed, exhausted from both the monotony of prefect patrol and his spoken, yet constantly unspoken declaration of love.