Spark - A Fred Weasley Fanfiction

Chapter one

Lola Diggory doesn't know how much longer she can go on without her twin brother. It's been seventy days exactly since her brother was murdered during the Triwizard Tournament. Every single day is more painful than the last. The silence in the family home, only ever broken by the occasional sharing of pleasantries between her and their parents or her parents wailing over the loss of him, serves as a constant reminder of his absence.

Lola has always been the quiet one. A shy little Ravenclaw girl who has no real friends, but could always rely on spending time with her brother. Now, she has nobody. Her parents are either always crying or emotionally unavailable, and she never made any real friends because she always had Cedric and his friends. Now, Cedric is gone, and her brother's friends haven't even bothered to reach out to her, so she is well and truly alone. Trapped in the empty house. Trapped in her despair.

Not even the return to Hogwarts is welcome. Her parents aren't proud to see her and her brother off like they have been every year without fail for the past six years. Now, they both hug Lola quickly on the platform, crying as she reluctantly steps onto the Hogwarts Express. Alone. She doesn't want to go back. Why would she ever want to step foot in a school which let her brother die? But she doesn't have a choice. She has to finish her education. It's what Cedric would have wanted for her. He always cared about her studies more than his own. He was more focused on Quidditch, although he always managed to score perfect grades. Lola isn't that fussed about her grades. She tries to get good scores, and she's actually very intelligent. She just finds exams boring and pointless. She wants to apply her skills, not write about them.

Lola sits with Cedric and his friends every year on the Hogwarts Express, but when she walks past their usual compartment, his friends all turn away from her and stare out the window. She sighs, fighting back tears as she walks along and finds an empty compartment. She uses her wand to levitate her trunk up onto the luggage hold, and she sits by the window and stares back at it. She tries her best to ignore the emptiness of the compartment. Cedric would be in the prefect's compartment right now anyway, he was in the running for Head Boy this year, but the knowledge that he won't visit her compartment or come and sit with her once their meeting is over weighs down on her.

The compartment door slides open, and Lola looks up expectantly for a moment, hoping that by some miracle, her brother would be standing there with a grin on his face and a Head Boy badge pinned to his robes. It's not him, and Lola does her best to try not to look disappointed by the appearance of Luna Lovegood. She's a fourth-year Ravenclaw with long blonde hair that reaches her waist, paper white skin and pale blue eyes that stare at Lola curiously.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" She asks in a dreamy voice. Lola nods, and Luna gracefully puts her trunk onto the rack before sitting down opposite her. "You're Lola Diggory."

"Yeah, I am," Lola nods, speaking quietly. "You're Luna?"

"That's right," she nods. "I'm sorry about your brother."

"It's fine," Lola sighs, looking down at her feet.

"My father and I believe that it was You-Know-Who," Luna tells her in a hushed voice. "We don't listen to the Ministry."

Lola's chest ties into knots. She hasn't kept up with the news much. She hasn't really done anything all summer. She just rotted away in her bedroom, occasionally popping into the living room or kitchen for food when her mother forced her or making her way into Cedric's room and just sitting on his bed for hours at a time. But, she has seen the occasional headline from her father's copy of the Daily Prophet. The Ministry denies Harry Potter and Dumbledore's claims that Cedric was murdered and that the dark lord has returned. They've painted Harry out to be an unstable liar, and Lola heard from her dad that he was almost expelled from Hogwarts after being attacked by Dementors.