— THE NEXT SUNDAY MORNING, NICOLE DIDN'T WANT TO GET UP. It took Hermoine, Lavander, and Pavarti to all bond and physically pull her out of her bed to stand up. Nicole was surprised to see that her dormmates didn't hate her; but she was still pissed cause Ron didn't believe her.
Eventually, they managed to pull her out of bed. Hermoine tried to make her dress into something more presentable, but she just stayed in her pajamas as she made her way down to the common room.
Expecting for her Gryffindor mates to get mad at her, they were treating her like a hero. They started pestering her questions about how she put herself in— and no matter how much she tried to tell them she didn't, they kept ignoring her.
Then Harry came down, all alone. Hermoine looked over to Nicole, and the girl immediately understood what that look meant. Giving her a nod of encouragement, Nicole let Hermoine talk to Harry while she made herself down the great hall all alone.
The Gryffindor table was welcoming; the other tables? Not that much. The Ravenclaws were glaring her down while the Hufflepuffs, whom she was normally friends with, were also glaring her down. The Slytherins stares were so intense that she wanted to disappear and let the ground eat her whole.
"Nic?"
"I DIDN'T FUCKING PUT MY NAME IN—"
The girl turned around in expiration, expecting for whoever who turned up to ask her the same question. Her eyes went as wide as a plate when she spotted Ellis.
"Hello." he said, holding up a stack of toast, which she was carrying in a napkin. "I brought you this. Want to go for a walk?"
They were soon striding across the lawn toward the lake, where the Durmstrang ship was moored, reflected blackly in the water. It was a chilly morning, and they kept moving, munching their toast, as Nicole told Ellis exactly what had happened.
"You believe me, right?" Nicole asked, looking at him in concern. To her immense relief, Ellis accepted her story without question.
"Of course I do." he whispered softly. "You must be crazy if you really did put your name in. And you're a fourth year— no offense, but that type of magic is out of your capabilities."
"Exactly!" Nicole exclaimed, taking another bite out of her toast. She started to eat out of rage.
"I tried to explain to my schoolmates." Ellis mumbled, briefly remembering how they told him to stop hanging out with her, because apparently she was a cheat. "They don't really understand..."
"Nic!"
It was another voice. A much familiar voice. Aurora came running down towards the pair— catching her breath on the process. Ellis bid Nicole goodbye and then walked off to their carriage, getting the idea that she needed to talk to her sister.
"I didn't put my n—"
"I know." Aurora cut her off, still tired from running from the castle to the black lake. "I know you're stupid, but you won't do something like that. Cedric believes you guys too."
This was supposed to make her feel better— at least there were a few people who believed her. But the fact that she knew that Ron still wasn't buying it made her stressed out.
"How bad is it with the Slytherins?"
"Very bad—" Aurora started, but shook her head as she remembered what she was really here for. "Look. I don't know why but someone wants you dead. People die—"
"— in this competition! I know! I've kind of had that figured out!"
"We need to tell mom and dad. Maybe they can help you out with this— what did they say, by the way? About your name getting reaped?"
Nicole didn't reply. She hasn't told her parents yet.
"YOU HAVEN'T TOLD THEM YET?"
"I was stressed out, okay! Mom would probably think I did it on purpose and Dad is busy with the whole Si—" Nicole had suddenly remembered about Aurora not knowing that Sirus was innocent. "They've been busy."
"You still need to tell them, dumbass!" Aurora exclaimed back. "They need to know this. If you don't tell them then I will."
"Alright— alright." Nicole raised both of her hands in defeat. "I'll tell them."
—
"I don't think they're that mad at you, Nicole." Ellis tried to cheer her up.
Nicole found him in the halls having a conversation with Mad-Eye Moody, and as weird at it seemed, she just ignored it and dragged him over to the Gryffindor common room— the only place where she was safe. The Gryffindors were still treating her like she was some kind of hero just like in the morning.
"I Hufflepuff called me a freak, Ellis." Nicole sighed. "A Hufflepuff."
"Huffa who?"
Ellis noted that this cheered Nicole up a little bit because she set the quill down and gave him a soft smile.
"Anyways," Nicole changed the subject, carefully writing her name on the paper. "Mcgonagowl, give this to mom and dad."
The owl hooted, took the letter, and rushed out the window.
"Are you sure I'm allowed to be here?" Ellis asked, looking around to see some of the Gryffindors eyeing him suspiciously. One of them was Colin Creevey and his brother, while Fred and George Weasley were shooting looks between Ellis and Nicole, grinning at times.
"Ignore them." Nicole told him, hoping that Hermoine, who she presumed was still taking to Harry, would come back. The girl stared at the fire for a few minutes, until Fred Weasley came walking towards the pair and started to pester them.
—
The next days were way worse for Nicole and Harry.
The Hufflepuffs, who were usually on excellent terms with the Gryffindors, had turned remarkably cold toward the whole lot of them. One Herbology lesson was enough to demonstrate this. It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry and Nicole had stolen their champion's glory; a feeling exacerbated, perhaps, by the fact that Hufflepuff House very rarely got any glory, and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any, having beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch.
The Slytherins tormented them to no end, and even Aurora couldn't stop them. To make matters worse, her parents wrote back to her a day after she sent the owl.
Both of them were pissed off and they had every right to do so. Atlas said that he would try to speak to Dumbledore about this and her mother, surprisingly told her to owl her if she needed and help if she was really forced to compete. Nicole expected for them to say more, but the letter wasn't that long.
"Ah, there they are! Champion number four and five ! In you come, you two, in you come . . . nothing to worry about, it's just the wand weighing ceremony, the rest of the judges will be here in a moment—"
"Wand weighing?" Harry repeated nervously.
"We have to check that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your most important tools in the tasks ahead," said Bagman. "The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore. And then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter," he added, gesturing toward the witch in magenta robes. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet."
Nicole knew her. Her father wasn't really fond of her, as she had wrote an article about how he apparently cheated with her mom, which he had never done before. It was a good thing her mother understood how much of a scum Rita was and didn't believe in anything she wrote.
Then, Ollivander checked their wands one by one. Nicole's suspicions that Fleur was a veela was confirmed, since she told Ollivander that her wand was made out of her grandmother's hair.
When it was Nicole's turn, she felt a little embarrassed at how long her wand was compared to the others. "Ah, now, this is one of mine, isn't it?" said Mr. Ollivander, with much more enthusiasm, as Nicole handed over her wand.
"Yes . . . red oak and pheonix core?" he shot at Nicole, who nodded. "Thirteen inches.... flexible..."
Mr. Ollivander spent much longer examining Nicole's wand than anyone else's. Eventually, however, he made a fountain of wine shoot out of it, and handed it back to her, announcing that it was still in perfect condition.
Then, Dumbledore announced that it was time for the photos and interviews. The photographer seemed keenest to get Fleur at the front, but Rita Skeeter kept hurrying forward and dragging Harry and Nicole into greater prominence.
"What a charismatic quartet." Rita smiled once the camera went off. Although she was already introduced earlier, the woman seemed to be keen on introducing herself to the students once again.
"Hello." she smiled, walking over to them and shaking their hands one by one. "I'm Rita Skeeter. I write for the Daily Prophet. But of course you know that, don't you?" she giggled, standing over to the last person, Nicole. She wasn't getting the reaction she expected since the girl only glared at her hand.
The woman quickly withdrew it. "It's you we don't know. You're the juicy news."
"What quirks lurk beneath those rosy cheeks?" she started moving around them in a circle, which made Nicole quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, she seemed to have skipped over her and Harry.
"Me, Myself & l" want to know. Not to mention my rabid readers." she explained. An uncomfortable silence made it's way around the group, and Nicole let out a soft laugh of amusement when she spotted Cedric Diggory roll his eyes from the other corner.
"So who's feeling up to sharing?" Rita pressed once again. When she noticed that no one would utter a single word, she faced Nicole with a giant smile that seemed too forced for her liking. "Let's start with the youngest girl, shall we?"
Before she could refuse, Rita grabbed Nicole's hand and dragged her into a broom cupboard. The girl started to squirm uncomfortably in her place— she wasn't used to small spaces and this made her a bit panicky.
"Don't mind if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill, do you?" Rita questioned.
"I mind, actually."
Rita pretended not to hear her, and sat down on the seat infront of Nicole. The younger girl sighed as she slumped down on her seat, while the quill started to write into a notepad when Nicole hasn't said anything yet.
"Is that supposed to—"
"Nicole Hwang." Rita smiled sneakily. "Daughter of Atlas and Noelle Hwang. So tell me, Nicole. Here you sit at the mere age of 12—"
"I'm 14."
"About to compete against three students who are not only vastly more emotionally mature than yourself but who have mastered spells that you wouldn't attempt in your dizziest daydreams."
Nicole's mouth gaped. The realization hadn't struck her until now, but she needed to put up a strong front against Rita.
"I'm amazing in charms, actually." Nicole boasted. "Professor Flitwick told me that I mastered spells that sixth years—"
Rita ignored her. "Did you think that it's the wat that you want to prove yourself as something more that 'Atlas' and 'Noelle's kid' that made you so keen to enter such a dangerous tournament?"
"If I wanted to prove myself against that, there would be a lot more ways that entering my name in a competition that would kill me." Nicole deadpanned. "I didn't put my name in."
"Come now, Nicole, there's no need to be scared of getting into trouble. We all know you shouldn't really have entered at all. But don't worry about that. Our readers love a rebel."
Nicole ignored her, her eyes now darting over to the quill that was writing itself. Her eyes widened as she read the sentence it had just formed.
Tears start to fill those startling brown eyes as our conversation shifts over to her parents who she says make her feel like a weaker person.
"I have NOT got tears in my eyes!" said Nicole loudly.