Lemon Grass and Sleep

THE FIRST TASK

The air was beginning to get a bit chilly as the hard months of winter approached. Students were wrapped up in their robes with scarves tossed around their necks loosely, and it just so happened that we all bunched up in little groups.

"That's a pretty big arena," Halla pointed out, letting out a yawn.

"I'd say, what's supposed to be in there?"

"Who knows, maybe it's a magical obstacle course," Jeremy joked.

"What courage that would take," I mumbled, scanning the rocky enclosure suspiciously.

"Students," Dumbledore held his wand to his throat as he addressed the crowd. "We will now commence the first task of the TriWizard Tournament. Let in the first dragon."

"Dragon?" I repeated quietly.

My mind decided to take me back to yesterday morning, when Fred and George had brought up something particularly odd.

"Our brother's here, which is a bit odd, I'd say," George said randomly as he ate a biscuit.

"Yeah, it's Charlie, and he's a dragonologist. Can't imagine what he'd be doing here, though."

My eyes widened as a large dragon was lead into the ring by a lanky redhead--who I would guess was Charlie--and Hagrid. A swedish short-snout, right here on castle grounds.

"What the hell?" John whispered from beside me as the thing stormed around the arena angrily, letting us know with several roars that it was not happy at all.

"Enter Hogwarts' first champion, Cedric Diggory."

As if on instinct the entire Hufflepuff section of the audience erupted into cheers that were swallowed up by the wind to be taken over to Cedric as he walked into the arena. Even from afar I could tell he was nervous, his wand stance looked tense and his fingers looked like they were tightly wound around his wand.

Cedric danced around the dragon, using spells to distract it as he stealthily approached the golden egg in the middle that Dumbledore had declared was the goal. It took a little while, but Cedric managed to make it out of the first task unscathed, and Hufflepuff was absolutely uncontrollable with our boisterous happiness for our friend.

"Did we expect anything less from our Cedric?" I heard someone ask giddily from behind me, and we all hooped and hollered in response.

The next two candidates were Viktor and Fleur, who both had similar strategies to Cedric. Though, I will say Viktor was (unsurprisingly) much more aggressive with his movement. At one point he narrowly dodged a bit of fire from his Chinese Fireball to grab his egg. Fleur seemed much more concerned with being spotted as little as possible, and kept to the outsides of the arena before darting to the middle to snatch up her egg.

Then came Harry.

Obviously we were all expecting a similar play, using spells defensively until the goal could be reached. You could imagine the shock we all felt as he summoned a broom!

"Merlin's beard," I breathed out as he whizzed by the stands on a firebolt.

The Hungarian Horntail he'd been placed against also seemed to be extremely confused, albeit angry. It took virtually no time at all for Harry to dodge a few blazing projectiles before swooping down and picking up his egg in record time. I looked over to the Gryffindors quickly, seeing if I could spot Fred or George's hair in the sea of red. It was too difficult, unfortunately, and I would have to talk to them afterwards.

"Test of courage my ass," Jeremy'd complained as we walked back to the castle. "A dragon?"

"Yeah, I wonder who approved that dumb idea," Halla sighed. "At least Cedric did well."

"It definitely could have been worse," I agreed.

"Potter's broom trick was pretty impressive," John continued, "I wonder how long it took him to learn how to do that."

"Have you guys heard about some meeting about the ball?" A seventh year popped behind us to ask.

That jump started an entirely new conversation about the Yule Ball and who was going with who, especially who was going with Cedric.

"Of course he'll have a date, the champions have to, I think."

"What an odd rule to have for people who just survived dragons," I mumbled.

"Yeah, I think Sprout mentioned that they open the ball or something with a dance."

"Oh, that's nice," Halla commented.

"Have any of you thought of who to ask?" John continued.

"Mm, Halla, would you go with me?" Jeremy asked like he had never had social anxiety in his life.

"I suppose I will," she replied, like they were talking about the weather.

"I'll take that as a no, not until now," John sourly answered his own question.

I let out a quiet little chuckle, leave it to Jeremy and Halla to treat something like the Yule Ball as boring.

"Don't you be over there snickering at me, who are you taking, Soot?"

"Oh," I suddenly remembered that 'any of you' also applied to me, "I'll be going with...with Fred Weasley."

"Fred Weasley?" Jeremy repeated.

"But he's a guy," Halla observed.

"I have noticed that, thank you," I responded.

"Oh, wait, you two hang out all the time," I could tell the three of them were slowly putting the pieces together.

"Are you going out with Weasley?" Halla asked boldly.

"Yes."

"Huh."

And that was the end of that. Instead, we all were filled with excitement as we approached the common area alongside other Hufflepuffs from the event. Surely Cedric would have a story to tell, with behind the scenes information. We quickly tidied up the common area and Halla decided to stop by the kitchens to ask if they had any extra sweets on hand to throw a little celebration for Cedric getting through the first task.

"Are you alright, Thomas?" Halla asked me, I hadn't realized I had zoned out before she talked to me.

"Oh, yes, sorry." I hadn't gotten to talk to Fred all day, which had obviously happened before, but for some reason I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about the ball.

What if someone had asked him the same questions, would he admit that we were dating? Some girl might ask him to go to the ball, what if he felt guilty and agreed to go with her? Like that girl he and George seemed to hang around a lot, what if she expected him to go with her?

"Well," Halla continued, "Here, perhaps a cookie will help you feel better."

She placed a warm macadamia nut cookie in my hand, patting the underside of my hand afterward and stepping away to move some of the furniture around. I watched them bicker about which way they should move the couch, and smiled as I took a small bite from the cookie. Sure, I missed my friends from outside of Hufflepuff, but I was lucky to have such a good group inside my house as well.

"Guys," I interjected, sliding off the table I had been sat on, "It should obviously go over here."

With the center floor cleared well enough for a lot of people to gather around as Cedric retold his great feat of surviving a dragon, we all collapsed onto the chairs and sofas to wait patiently for our house champion.