PRANKSTER [1] ↝ C. DIGGORY

twenty-eight

Dear Bill,

I hope this letter finds you well and that you've made it back to Egypt safely. So glad you and Charlie were able to make the trip out for the World Cup, if only the evening had gone better. The school year is off to an interesting start, to say the least.

This year, they've decided to host the Triwizard Tournament for the first time in hundreds of years, with Hogwarts as the host school. We'll be joined in a couple months by students from both the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the Durmstrang Institute (though of course that means no Quidditch this year, which is a bummer). You have to be over seventeen to enter, with the prizes being both one thousand Galleons and "Eternal Glory," whatever that means. Fred and George aren't particularly happy about the age limit, but at least this will (somewhat) keep them out of trouble.

Hope things are going well with you. Keep on breaking those curses.

Love always, Clary 

Clary folded up the letter for her eldest brother as the clock hanging above the fireplace in the Hogwarts Library struck six o'clock, sealing the piece of parchment shut and shoving it into her messenger bag, vowing to remind herself to ask Ron if she could borrow his owl the next day to deliver the message. She stood up from the table she'd been occupying, returning the books she'd borrowed for her Herbology homework to their original shelves before quietly tip-toeing her way out into the hallway to meet Vasantha and her brothers for dinner. 

Clary hurried through the empty corridors so as to not be late for dinner when she suddenly froze in place as two familiar voices reached her earshot, coming from just around the corner near the stairwell. Taking a deep breath, Clary rounded the corner while Cho's laugh echoed through the hall as Cedric reached the punchline of his joke, the Ravenclaw girl watching the Hufflepuff boy with an admiring gaze as Clary's eyes darted back and forth between the two.

"Oh, Clary, hi!" Cho greeted with a friendly smile as the couple passed the young Weasley girl, and Clary painfully returned the grin, her eyes daring to break away from Cho's to try and find Cedric's, though, despite the three being the only ones in the deserted corridor, the Diggory boy continued to look down the hall, as if he didn't see her, hand gripped tightly in Cho's.

"Hi," Clary muttered, quickening her pace toward the stairwell and down the steps, wanting to get as far from Cedric and Cho as humanly possible.

By the time Clary reached the hustle and bustle of the Great Hall, it was nearly six-fifteen, and George was already on his second helping of mashed potatoes. Clary sat down in the empty space next to Vasantha, across from the two boys, cheeks flushed bright pink as she attempted to catch her breath, both from her previous encounter and from the effort of running down the many flights of stairs.

"There you are," Vas said as Clary sat down. "We were beginning to worry. Everything okay?"

"Huh?" Clary asked, looking over at Vas before nodding a second too late. "Oh, yeah, sorry. Everything's great. Just got a little bit hung up at the library."

"Wasn't McLaggen bothering you, was it?" Vas smirked, shaking her head. "Slimy little thing, he is, always wanting to 'study.'" she said, holding up air quotes as she spoke. "Whatever that means."

"Sure was," Clary lied through her teeth, piling roast chicken and asparagus onto her plate. "You know him. Insufferable, that one."

"Well, let's add him to our list." Fred suggested, nudging George, who had the group's prank list laid out on a small piece of parchment before him. "Nobody messes with our sister and gets away with it."

"Except for us, of course." George replied as he hastily scrawled the boy's name on the list, causing Clary to roll her eyes in exasperation, tucking behind her ear a strand of hair that had somehow managed to fall loose from her braid.