Pen Pals [Cedric Diggory]

chapter ten

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"It's Maeve."

"Maeve? Maeve Hopley?" Anthony again raised his voice a little. "Our Maeve?" He released the tight fist that he was holding since Malcolm spoke up and a broken chalk scattered all over the floor. His eyes first stared at Malcolm in slight disbelief as he said it and then at Cedric who didn't look surprised at all. "Where d'you get that from?"

"Well, we know Maeve, she's been our friend for years. She's kind and funny, everything Dig just described. She also likes Quidditch and has an older brother." Elaborated Malcolm with a slight shrug to his shoulders.

"And she's been at the Quidditch World Cup." Cedric added.

"You've been suspecting it's her?" Anthony looked at Cedric.

"Sort of." Cedric sighed. "I just didn't want to say it out loud. I still can't picture it though. As Malcolm said, we've known her since our first year, I see her as a sister that I never had and suddenly all the signs from the letters pointed at her. After I saw her at the World Cup I could hear her voice in the letters and it was strange."

"Not to mention she has a massive crush on you," said Malcolm.

"But I've known that since last year. It still doesn't change my feelings towards her."

"Could you?" Malcolm raised an eyebrow at Cedric. "Change your feelings? If it really is her."

Cedric didn't want to answer the question. He didn't want to admit how many hours he spent thinking about just that and any worst-case scenario about the end result of Pen. Maybe she won't be attractive, maybe she's faking it in the letters, maybe it really is Maeve.

Maybe, maybe, maybe... He hated this game.

The silence, in which Cedric again stared into the abyss, thoughts in a complete mush, was then broken by Anthony.

"Hold up." He raised one hand as if he tried to stop them from leaving, although no one had moved for the past half hour. "I think we have to look at the bigger picture still."

"Which is?" prompted Malcolm.

"Maeve not being the only option. There are others and maybe we're just looking at it a bit too narrowly. For example, there's Johnson, Bell and Spinnet from Gryffindor. They are all on the Quidditch team, they look pretty fun, it could be any of them."

"But we don't know if any of them have a brother. Or anything really about them." Cedric opposed.

He didn't really like the three Gryffindor Quidditch girls, so the idea of any of them being her was appalling, to say the least. Nothing against them in particular, just that he almost always lost against Gryffindor in Quidditch matches.

"That's exactly what I'm trying to say. You don't know any of these girls. You don't know most of them, we only know Maeve and that's why she would be the obvious target. Maybe we list a few of them that we know of, that could potentially be your mystery girl and then you just have to talk to them, pick out the details and find out. Simple." Anthony crossed his arms over his chest in pride of what just came out of his mouth.

Yet, Cedric did not like his idea. It was still smart, but intentionally walking up to girls and asking them things as if they were being interviewed was not something he ever planned to do. Girls were watching him enough as it is, and he had no doubt they would quickly pick up what he was trying to do by asking them questions. It would be chaos. Like Prince Charming looking for Cinderella who lost her shoe. Only his Cinderella didn't lose anything, but he still tried to find her.