❛ hartford, i'm pretty sure you're allergic to responsibility. ❜
❛ just because i'm not a narc like you doesn't mean i can't be responsible. ❜
in which 𝗿𝗼...
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CHAPTER TWO,prefects are supposed to be responsible, hartford!
━━━ CEDRIC
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧
AFTER THE EVENTS ON the train, Cedric Diggory was shaken, sure. He and his best friend Oliver had tried to ignore what they had felt, but neither could seem to get it out of their heads. What Cedric couldn't seem to forget was the whispering while he looked out into the corridor of the train, seeing that... thing—a dementor, they learned later. It wasn't a whisper, per say, like a person speaking to him, but more like words in his head that weren't there one moment but were there the next:
You will lose her and feel empty. You will never reach happiness.
Cedric wasn't entirely sure what that could have meant, but he didn't want to lose anyone in his life. Everyone liked to think that Cedric was made to be in Gryffindor, with his popularity and his need to stand up for others, but most people didn't know the half of it. The truth was, when Cedric loved, he loved hard. Once he cared about someone, it was hard to stop; even if they'd done something horrible to him, he still would care about what happened to them.
Oliver liked to joke that Cedric's obsessive loyalty had to be his "fatal flaw" and would cause his downfall, but it's something that he could see as a possibility. That was why the words had frightened him so much; Cedric didn't want to lose his best friend, who loved Cedric for who he was, not his status or his popularity. He couldn't lose his parents, who, even though they used every other breath to fight with one another, had been there for him through thick and thin, and had supported his ambitions from the day he was born. Cedric couldn't even lose Rory; their daily bickering and rivalry had become a routine of sorts, with how often it happened. Arguing with Rory was a habit in the same way that brushing his teeth in the morning was.
Rory often occupied Cedric's thoughts, but not in the way one would think a teenage boy would think about a girl his age. But it wasn't exactly his fault, seeing how much time he spent with her (unfortunately). In fact, the amount of time they spent together was pure coincidence, as the Hogwarts scheduling team had decided that Gryffindor and Hufflepuff must have over half of their core classes together for the past four years. For the cherry on top, Rory and Cedric were paired together for a project or partnership in at least one class every month, and they had been potions partners two years in a row. Talk about a conspiracy. With all of their forced time together, it was like the Hogwarts' staff wanted the two of them to hate each other. The only upside to this arrangement was that Cedric and Rory now had lots of ammunition to use in their bickering, because they each knew way too much about the other.
Rory was the thorn buried in his side—the pain in his arse that simply refused to quit. She was irrevocably stubborn, unmovable even when she was clearly wrong. Well, only when Cedric told her she was wrong. What a grudge! It's not like Cedric was some annoying know-it-all or something. Though Rory was an affliction that couldn't seem to stop tormenting him, it was entertaining to give her some of her own medicine. Their rivalry had blossomed over the years into a hateful poison ivy plant that actively stung everyone that walked past. Cedric loved to leave her speechless—considering how much she talked—then he would know that he had won.
