Make Me.

Book 4 - Chapter 21

The entirety of the second week of her Fourth-Year, Ellie spent every waking moment trying to block the sounds of other people's thoughts from her head. It got harder as the week went, what with her lack of energy and with Harry walking around with her constantly worrying about Sirius Black and his lack of a return letter, in turn causing her to worry about him. Ellie sucked up his anxieties like a sponge and took them upon herself, getting nervous that something was going to happen to him. She didn't much let him out of her sight - as much as she could manage it.

Daphne and Pansy caught onto her quickly, watching Ellie's glazed over facial expressions as she ate meals with them throughout the week, staying away from Ron and Hermione, again, as much as she could manage. Her attention always seemed to be elsewhere and when they tried to talk to her. Ellie always took a few blinks to get back on track with the conversation all while keeping Harry in her peripheral vision.

Fred too noticed Ellie's distractedness throughout the week, though along with Daphne and Pansy, they were the only people who really knew what was causing it. He put two and two together rather quickly and insisted on Ellie napping on his chest from time to time, only after assuring her that he would wake her up if Harry left the room so that she could go with him. And it seemed Fred was the only person in the castle who could keep the nightmares away from her while she slept. Luckily, Harry seemed distracted enough on his own that he didn't notice Ellie hovering over him any more than she usually did.

As the week went on and tensions "cooled" between Ellie and the Gryffindors she was in feud with (Ron and Hermione), she started to notice a particularly bothersome curiosity haunting her - that she feared was not going to end any time soon.

Ellie was constantly finding Hermione's SPEW badges tacked to her robes.

At the beginning of the week they were highly noticeable, bright reds and blues and yellows, tacked to the front of her shirts and on the pleats of her skirts. Ellie kept taking them off and returning them in piles to Hermione's desk during class times, but as the week went on, Hermione got more clever. She stopped using coloured ones and resorted to using blacks and navy blues and browns, and pinning them in odd places - like the strap of Ellie's school bag, the back of her canvas sneakers, and Ellie even found one in Marshall's pocket on Wednesday night after dinner. How Hermione was doing it, Ellie didn't know, because the pair of girls were in a general agreement of avoiding each other. Even more curiously, Ellie could never quite catch onto Hermione's sly thoughts as she was far too focused on Harry, and Ron was always around too, muttering insults under his breath in Ellie's direction. Ellie had half the mind to assume Hermione and Ron were working together - both of them in search of causing Ellie a mutual suffering.

"How are you doing that?" Ellie hissed just loud enough for Hermione to hear. She had bolted up and out of her Transfiguration seat after finding a SPEW pin attached to the inside of her skirt waistband; it had poked her when she sat down for class.

"Doing what?" Hermione asked innocently.

"You know what."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Hermione, holding her head high in the air and speeding up, leaving Ellie in her dust.

"Oh, you'll know when I shove one of those pins up your -"

"I can hear you!" Hermione called behind herself, interrupting Ellie's under-the-breath muttering.

"Good! That was the point!" Ellie called back.

"No it wasn't," Hermione said over her shoulder. Ellie grumbled loudly at the girl for catching onto her and she was forced to follow her down the corridor. They were going to the same class after all, and Ellie just knew she was going to find another pin tacked in an untoward place on her clothing. She wondered just how far Hermione dared to go.