Jinx Not-So-Malfoy and the Triwizard Tournament

Chapter 21

So Jinx and Fred are officially together. :D

I've been waiting to write that for a while.

Now I have to figure out how to write romance...

Sheep.

Thanks to everyone who commented on Chapter 20! The comments were so sweet! You guys ship Frinx like a bunch of sailors! 

That's extremely cheesy, but I don't care.

Everybody got up late on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been lately, many yawns punctuating the lazy conversations. Hermione's hair was bushy again.

Ron and Hermione seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. They were being quite friendly to each other, though oddly formal. Ron and Harry wasted no time in telling Hermione and I about the conversation they had overheard between Madame Maxime and Hagrid, but Hermione didn't seem to find the news that Hagrid was a half-giant nearly as shocking as Ron did. 

"Well, I thought he must be," she said, shrugging. "I knew he couldn't be pure giant because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can't all be horrible.... It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves.... It's just bigotry, isn't it?" 

Ron looked as though he would have liked to reply scathingly, but perhaps he didn't want another row, because he contented himself with shaking his head disbelievingly while Hermione wasn't looking. Fred wandered over to where we were sitting and kissed me gently. 

"Morning love," he said. 

"Morning," I replied. "How did you sleep?"

"Good, you?"

"Fairly well." He smiled and I smiled back. I noticed Ron looking between us with a shocked expression on his face. Harry just looked constipated. Hermione was grinning like mad. 

"You two are...?" Ron said, dumbfounded.

"Yup," I said. Ron frowned and turned to Fred. 

"You didn't even ask me!" he said hotly. 

"Ask you?" Fred repeated. "Why would I ask you?"

"She's my best friend!" Ron protested. 

"Ron, shut up," I said. "He didn't need to ask you, and we'll both date whoever we please."

Ron shut up, but still looked pissed.

It was time now to think of the homework we had neglected during the first week of the holidays. Everybody seemed to be feeling rather flat now that Christmas was over - everybody except Harry, that is, who was starting to feel slightly nervous. 

And so the first day of the new term arrived, and we set off to lessons, weighed down with books, parchment, and quills as usual, but I felt happier than I did before Christmas. Fred was the best person to ever spend time with. 

Snow was still thick upon the grounds, and the greenhouse windows were covered in condensation so thick that we couldn't see out of them in Herbology. Nobody was looking forward to Care of Magical Creatures much in this weather, though as Ron said, the skrewts would probably warm us up nicely, either by chasing them, or blasting off so forcefully that Hagrid's cabin would catch fire. 

When we arrived at Hagrid 's cabin, however, we found an elderly witch with closely cropped gray hair and a very prominent chin standing before his front door.