Mary Smith and The Three-Headed Dog

12. I Still Won't Be Kissing Cedric Diggory

"Only a powerful Seer like myself can handle the burden of the eye. Seeing past the veil would drive any ordinary witch to an early grave. But when you are like me, your third eye is wide open, your chakra is strong, and the link to the paranormal necessary already exists. For a creature too weak to bear it, having their third eye pried open, well, it would drive them mad. Don't go tempting fate dear. You're either born with it, or you aren't."

--Sybill Trelawney

Chapter 12: I Still Won't Be Kissing Cedric Diggory

In our small study room, Professor Sprout, the first years, and the third years met to exchange our vows. We first years were given special Hufflepuff ceremony robes and Badger masks for the occasion. We were really doing a lot just to make a magic promise to always be best friends. I was made to hold hands with Cedric, his large ones almost swallowing my own, and speak some words I had to memorize just a few moments before. They stressed it was very important I get it right the first time. Anyway, blah blah I said some things, Cedric said some things, and Professor waved her wand over our joined hands. Is this what it felt like to have a magical best friend? The pulse in my wrist seemed to match Cedric's. It felt...nice. Like we were...really close.

Closer than me and Dean.

Everyone had to do it, this unbreakable vow. The older kids seemed really serious about it but the rest of us, well, we just did it. I didn't think any of us thought we had a choice about it. Hannah Abbott almost seemed to be having a panic attack. She stuttered through her vow.

This all seemed really like a wedding so I could understand her being nervous. In America, child brides are illegal I think. Maybe not in England? Didn't matter.

I still wasn't kissing Cedric. Not even if they said I had too.

That's when things began to change.

"Ernie," I whispered. The boy in question peered up at me through his fringe. "Which one of these," I asked holding up two similar looking leaves, "is a Pipli leaf?"

We were in our regular evening-super-secret-not-sure-why-lesson. Ernie looked for a moment like he was going to answer, but then there was a cough and a nasty glare from his Guide, Sarah. She sat beside him filing her magenta claws, turning those ferocious cat eyes on me. Ernie gave me a small shrug before going back to his leaf diagram.

When my eyes met Hannah's, she promptly ducked behind the book she had set up on the table in what I think was an attempt to stop anyone from seeing her paper. I wasn't just being paranoid.

They were purposely avoiding me.

I mean I know when I'm being avoided. After the incident when I was five, everyone in my kindergarten class pretended like I didn't exist. The ones that did pay me any mind, threw sharpened pencils at me.

"This one," Cedric plucked the leaf from my right hand. "They look almost identical to each other but remember, the Pipli leaf is always perfectly symmetrical." Cedric loomed over me, preferring not to sit. He leaned over my head, gangly arms on either side of me, to show me as he folded the leaf in half vertically. All the lines and dents met in perfect symmetry down to the little scratches.

"That's so cool!" I held the leaf up to Leanne. She seemed to like me well enough. "Look! Weren't you having trouble too?"

"I wouldn't say that," She blurted out immediately before mumbling "...out loud." But she still smiled at me and folded her leaf in half too, awing at how every detail seemed to match up perfectly.