The Boy In My Dreams -HEDRIC (1)

8.(C) ethics of loyalty

CEDRIC

XV

The brief moment in which he thought he wasn't the only one having strange dreams came as unexpected as the illusion that surged within him. Deep down he believed that, after all, there might be some explanation for those eyes haunting him, but what Harry had heard on the Quidditch field was nothing like it.

A memory, he said it was. Of his mother.

One far worse than simply being watched. Cedric shuddered with the impulse to hug him, because Harry seemed so devastated that he couldn't look back at him. Cedric remembered every time that fragments of his mother appeared to him at night and the immense sadness he would wake up to, and he knew there was no comparison. He thought about how much he would have liked to have someone there for him and be able to share it, as Harry had done with him.

That trust was priceless.

So pure that Cedric was about to tell him about his dreams.

He couldn't do it. «Harry, I must tell you, I've been dreaming of your eyes since before we met» sounded weird on so many levels that he couldn't quite place them all. If he couldn't shake the feeling that there must be a reason, he couldn't help but think that there must also be one for his dreams returning to normal as the days went by.

It didn't make sense that they had stopped.

Or that they had happened in the first place. Cedric wondered if he had been enchanted, but who could have done something like that? When and why? And especially how? Because he didn't know of any spell capable of provoking that sort of dream as an effect, and he had researched in the library. While his friends were studying for the real exams, he would search for books on the subject. And even when he was reading for class, his mind wandered.

"What does it mean if you dream of someone?" Cedric asked once, sitting in one of the armchairs in the common room with two of his best friends.

Malcolm, who was also one of his roommates, could always be counted on to engage in any (really any) topic of conversation. So it was only natural that he would be the first to look up from his textbook on the art of divination.

An unexpected goofy smile on his lips -as if he thought it was funny.

"It means that you fancy that certain someone," he replied, putting the book aside, interested. "Who is the lucky one?"

Highly interested in the topic in the wrong way .

Cedric expected his friend to take it more seriously, since he was fond of the occult. Maybe he would have something to say that he hadn't already read. And although he certainly hadn't read about it, he didn't know what to answer.

That couldn't be the case. There had to be other options.

Luckily for him, Tam came to his rescue.

"It depends on what you dream of," she murmured, interrupting the trace of her quill.

"Let's just say... Their eyes."

This time Tam glanced at him.

With a smile.

Just as silly as Malcolm's seconds ago.

"Oh, you have fallen so hard."

Cedric shook his head and refocused on his next week's homework.

XVI

"IS IT A NIGHTMARE?"

Malcolm kept trying to get information out of him about the person he dreamed of. Cedric didn't know how much to answer him. Anything could be used against him. He told him that it wasn't exactly a nightmare, but it wasn't ROMANTIC either (as he implied). Malcolm insisted on asking him what he felt in his dreams, if he had had any others and, of course, who it was about. Cedric was almost sure that it was just one of his strategies to make him answer without realising it.