Three Hallows, Two Weasleys and One Broken Girl

Chapter 15: Saddled with Guilt

You know who else can see the future in HP? Who would adopt a fellow seer?
Also a warm welcome please for the honourable but ill-fated Cedric Diggory!

Hope all of you are as close to safe, sated and happy as possible this Christmas/Yuletide.

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Delphi did not want to be here, to be put in this position.
It had only been days after her escape from the twins, and she couldn't find peace anywhere, not even outside the arithmancy classroom it seemed.

"Please...consider it?"
Diggory eyed her in that awkward hopeful way, ruffing his mop of brown hair and observing her nervously with his gentle hazel eyes. "We get along don't we? I mean...it can be just as friends... I just want to have a fun night without so many expectations weighing on me...you're the one girl I know who...you know doesn't seem to want... that."

Delphi glanced down the corridor but it was vacant, leaving them in perfect privacy. If...if she said no, his next ask would be Cho, and like the gentleman he is Diggory would date her and love her, and like the loving soul she is, his death would crush her. Her visions of the two of them had been brief, she only ever got detailed visions around deaths and keystone events...but if she said yes and became his friend, she could spare the other girl a fair bit of her pain.
But she'd be taking on that pain.
For five whole years she'd managed to avoid Diggory as much as she could. Not that it was difficult exactly, but she'd been actively minimising their interactions so she could spare herself a little.
And she was going to throw it all away.

"Okay." She said, meeting his eyes confidently.
"Really?" He sounded surprised, so was she to be honest and already regretting it.
She did her best to smile anyway, "we'll go as friends and have a laugh. It'll get most of the girls off your back, and give me some peace too. It makes sense and I bet you're a decent dancer."
He chuckled, looking so relieved she almost didn't regret saying yes. "I'm okay! Dad made me take lessons in the summer. This is great! Thank you Delphi!"
He pulled her into a hug just as some fifth year Hufflepuff girls came around the corner, and resigning herself to the fact the gossip would be overflowing anyway, Delphi relaxed and returned it.

He bounced away from her like an excited puppy, eyes lit and joyous in a way that made her want to cry. She knew she'd miss History of Magic but she didn't care, skipping past the stunned Hufflepuffs with a wink and darting into the nearest bathrooms to silently cry her eyes out as the mental image of his death played over again and again. So much promise lost in an instant. And she couldn't stop it...but she could make his last months better. She could do that.

She left the bathroom an hour later, after casting a useful pick me up spell she'd learned in her first year to reduce skin irritation and thus erase evidence of crying.
She jumped when not two minutes into her trip toward the hall there was a twin either side of her. Normally she'd have seen them coming but she wasn't exactly on top form.
"Fred, George."
"You're going with Diggory to the Ball?" Asked George.
Fred was eyeing her in faint disappointment, and for some reason hurt, "thought you weren't into pretty boys Lovegood."
They sounded disgusted, on a better day she'd have laughed, but she just looked between them deadpanning, "he was the first person to ask."
It wasn't the answer they were expecting which made her smug.
Fred peered down at her. "You were planning to accept whoever asked first."
She nodded, "who asked politely. And he did. You two got dates?"

That riddle of who would win the competition between a seer and marauders...she knew the answer. Her strength of will was steadily breaking down, and they made her infuriatingly happy. They were going to be friends of hers, and there was nothing she could do to escape it, even as the only person whose future she couldn't see, she knew the duo's track record and had to accept going against the current was not an option. Especially when her heart wasn't into resisting.