Rejecting Graham Montague's offer was more difficult than expected. His smile fell like a stone in the river, his eyes wide and woeful as he implored me for a reason.

     I told him the truth, as gently and politely as I could, that Cedric Diggory had asked me, and that he was my best friend so I had to go with him. He couldn't very well argue with that, and had no choice but to accept it, crestfallen and dejected.

     In the following days, Cedric had come to me often wanting to talk about the Tournament. Arduously, I forced myself to shut up and listen for once. He had come up with all these fantastical ideas of what the challenges would be, and how he would go about beating them.

     Most of his solutions involved obscure, unfamiliar spells I didn't think he'd known of, or clever tricks he couldn't characteristically have devised on his own. But he was so hopeful, so eager, that I could not find it in me to question them, even for the sake of playing the devil's advocate. So I shackled the little argumentative monster within me and plastered on a silent, encouraging smile.

     And maybe some part of me did believe he would win. I had to. The entire school was rooting for him, most even preferring him over Harry, so that had to mean Cedric was indeed capable, and it wasn't just his own delusions of grandeur, right?

     It was just harmless games, I reminded myself over and over. The professors were there watching. Dumbledore had safety protocols in place. I was obsessing over nothing. So I smiled.

     I smiled even when the dragon nearly fried him to a crisp and I sat all night by his bed in the hospital wing, repeating the words he'd often said to me in times of distress. "I'm here. It'll be alright. You're doing good."

     I smiled when, on the day of the Yule Ball — after spending two hours making sure my dress looked right and my makeup teetered the perfect line between natural and done-up — I saw him standing at the foyer with his arms around Cho Chang's waist.

     I smiled when he saw me and his expression was one of shock, as if he'd just remembered we were supposed to go together. As if I had not been on his mind when Cho approached him three days before saying she'd decided to go with him after all.

     "Sorry, I forgot to tell you," he said, scratching his head sheepishly. "You could still go with Montague, right? I don't think he's found anyone yet. Or you could... you could come with Cho and I. Couldn't she, Cho?"

     "Of course," agreed Cho, but there was a repressed reluctance in the curl of her smile only another girl could pick out. So, like a good, supportive, and unproblematic friend, I smiled and said, "It's alright. I'll be fine on my own."

     Ernie found me in the darkness of the courtyard when he came out to sneak a smoke. "That's rough," he said unsympathetically when I explained why I was alone. "I say you go back in and show them you're having a good time."

     "But I'm not."

     "You will," he said. "'Cause you're going with me now."

     He escorted me back in, his jacketed arm looped tightly around mine. Montague and several other Slytherin boys were huddled at the snack table by the doors and spotted us when we entered.

     "Spreading yourself a bit thin, don't you think, Ainsley?" Urquhart called after me gleefully, earning from Montague a rough jab in the ribs and a hissed "Shut the fuck up!" 

     Ernie flipped them off and dragged me onward. "Ignore them. Montague probably had to tell them you turned him down, so they think they're looking out for their mate. Funny, since they all haven't got dates themselves."

     "Ernie," I whispered once we were out of earshot. "Tell me honestly. Am I slut?" 

     "What?"

     "Am I a slut, Ernie?"

     "Why on earth would you think that?"

     "I was supposed to go with Montague, then Cedric, and now I'm going with you. Do you think I'm... spreading myself thin?"

     "Fuck, Ains, I literally just told you not to listen to them. And you're not a slut just because many boys like you and you like many boys."

     "But I don't like many boys!"

     "I know, I'm just saying. Come, let's dance."

     We wandered onto the dance floor where we found Hannah and Susan with their dates and, at their urging, soon lost ourselves to the music. After an hour of spinning and twirling and giggling, I decided I needed a breather and broke away to get a drink for myself and Ernie. As I approached the punch bowl, so did someone else from the left.

     His suit were rumpled, hair tousled and ever-so-slightly damp with sweat. I took a half-step back and gestured for him to help himself first. "Amazing, huh?" said Cedric as he picked up the ladle. "Looks like you're having a ball of a time. Ha-ha, ball. Get it?"

     "Yeah," I forced a tight laugh, suddenly reminded that I was supposed to be dancing with him and not Ernie.

     "Hey, thank you by the way," he said, leaning in conspiratorially. "I think Cho really really likes me. She invited me back to the Ravenclaw common room tonight. Couldn't have done it without you."

     The words ripped through my heart like ice-cold water. I grinned at him. "What can I say? I'm a pro wing-woman even without meaning to. Although I think I should start charging a fee."

     He laughed and bumped me so that I lost my footing and stumbled a little. "Ah, what would I do without you, Ains."

     His face was a portrait of jubilation. Happiness; unbridled and radiant. Its rays poured from every orifice: his eyes, his teeth; gleaming in his hair and dripping off his nose. 

     I thought: he would live the rest of his days never knowing I loved him, that I wanted to be the one he chose. He would meet Death in blissful ignorance of the fact that every minute of my misery paid for every second of his happiness.

     I felt a warming at the back of my eyes and my nose was beginning to tingle. I forgot about getting Ernie's drink, told Cedric my friends were looking for me, and excused myself from his presence, rubbing my nose so hard I walked right into Draco Malfoy.

     He recoiled immediately away as if he'd accidentally touched animal faeces. "What the fuck—" I heard him mutter under his breath as I dashed away, too consumed by my heartbreak.

     But if I thought Cedric being with someone else was the end of the world, it was because I never conceived the possibility that there could ever be anything worse.

༻❁༺

     I wasn't sad when Cedric died.

     Yes, I had caused quite a commotion at the Tournament. My scream had shocked everyone — or so my friends had told me a few months later, when the funeral was long over and they presumed it was alright to speak about it more openly.

      But if anything, my scream had been more from shock than sadness. Sharp and shrill instead of a long, drawn-out cry of anguish — again, so my friends had told me.

     They had to tell me because I don't remember much of what I saw that fateful day, or the days following. I only remember what I felt. And what I felt was something so blunt and formless, wedging itself so deep within me, that I barely even realised it was even there. I was dimly aware that somewhere in my body, something hurt. But it was slow and soft, almost gentle; biding its time.

     The funeral came and went. The burial, the wake, the sombre lunch during which the only audible sounds were the clinking of crockery and silverware, before finally, the collective silence that blew through the castle, like an autumn wind slicing through a wheat field.

     Only a few people had dared to approach me to ask me how I was. I could count them all on one hand. Well, one hand and two fingers. 

     There had been Hannah and Susan, who were rightfully frightened out of their wits for me. Then Ernie, who dumbly — in attempt to cheer me up — kept offering me his precious hand-rolled blunts, which I never accepted. And Neville, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who cast worrying glances in my direction whenever I passed, observing me from the sides of their eyes as if I were a walking time bomb.

     They lowered their voices purposefully, turned up their eyebrows when they leaned in, touched my shoulder, and asked if I was alright. Yes, I think so, is what I always replied. Because saying 'I don't know' would've sounded strange.

     I was supposed to be devastated. Heartbroken. Unable to function. I was supposed to lie in my bed sobbing and refusing to get up and wash. It was supposed to be all "Do you need a glass of water?" "Yes, please." "Do you want to talk about it?" "No, thank you." 

     But none of that happened. Not for another two months, at least.

     Instead, I went about with a smile on my face and a spring in my step (when it was socially appropriate to be happy again, of course). I hummed in the shower and attended classes, paid attention, and took extra care to loop my 'o's and 'g's in my usual, precisely pretty manner.

     And so people thought I was alright. After all, I had only been Cedric's friend, not his girlfriend. Things were much different for the latter.

     They fawned over Cho; trailed her as she walked to and from classes, fussing and flustering and fumbling. Do you need anything? How are you feeling today? You must miss him terribly. He was a good boy. We'll always remember him fondly. 

     She would smile, her expression a careful blend of bashfulness and sadness, shake her head politely, and say "I'm fine, really" in her dainty voice, which made people want to fuss even more.

     Sometimes, I wondered if she actually felt sad at all.

     She had barely known Cedric for a few months. She had barely known Cedric, period. 

     She didn't know that his favourite colour was aubergine purple, or that his favourite jelly bean flavour was mashed potatoes, or that no matter how hard he tried he could never remember all the magical properties of the number 7.

     She knew him only as Hogwarts' Champion. The Golden Boy. Hufflepuff's Seeker. And, more distastefully, Voldemort's First Victim After His Return. She probably thought that that was all there is to him, or that nothing else was worth knowing.

     And maybe in some ways, I was slightly envious of her. Because I wish I hadn't known Cedric, either.

     I wish I hadn't known that he liked strawberry flavour but not the actual fruit, or that he always peeled the skin off his roast chicken even though he knows it's the best bit. I wish I didn't know he had different laughs for every mood, even changing it depending on who he was speaking to.

     I wish I hadn't known that he had a scar just in the small of his back, where he'd once accidentally backed into a sharp, stone statue of Cupid when he was ten years old; or that there was a speck of green in his left iris, nestled snugly amongst the stormy starburst just a millimetre North-West of his pupil.

     Maybe then it wouldn't have hurt so much.

     Because when it did finally hit me, two months later, when everyone had already moved on and Harry had started Dumbledore's Army and the Wizarding World was in tumultuous political upheaval, it bloody fucking hurt.

     I had been standing in front of the floor-length mirror in our dorm, braiding my hair. I looked at my reflection and thought: wow, my hair has finally grown long enough to touch my ribcage, when it exploded within me: a sudden hurt so deep and incredibly excruciating that all conscious thought left my mind. 

     I forgot where I was, what day, month, year it was. I forgot my name and my age, and the fact that I was standing in front of the mirror in the midst of braiding my hair before the bell rang. There was only Cedric's face, floating behind my eyes like a big laughing moon in the sky.

     And Cedric was gone.

     Susan found me in tears on the floor, wailing my lungs out. Apparently I was sobbing so loudly and so violently they thought I would give myself a heart attack.

     Anaïs Smith, a Fifth Year whose friend group had a penchant for abusing calming potions and other herbs, had come rushing in with a bottle of strongly-brewed Draught of Peace, which Susan tipped into my snotty, sticky mouth with steady fingers.

     It was like that for the next year. I woke up crying and went to sleep crying. I cried during lessons and during meals. And during the holidays when everyone had gone home for Christmas, I would sit on the bench at which Cedric and I used to have our lunch and cry so much it felt like my body would shrivel up like a raisin.

     It was one blustery December afternoon, when I had been doing exactly this, that Hagrid found me on his daily patrol and bade me to follow him back to his hut. He told me to sit, not on the couch but on the floor by the fire, putting the kettle on as Fang parked himself next to me.

     Hagrid didn't say anything. Despite his roughness, the half-giant knew when words could do all but comfort. But even so, with his hot cocoa between my palms and Fang's loafy warmth pressed firmly against my thigh, the tears eventually eased.

     I began to come back every two days or so during the length of the holidays. It was the same routine: I would knock on the door some time around four in the afternoon, just when it was getting dark and Hagrid had finished his chores. He would let me in and I would slump on the shaggy carpet by the fire. Kettle on, kettle off, mug in my hands, dog by my side.

     He asked about me, what my favourite subjects were and what I wanted to do when I graduated. I told him, and also about my parents and friends. We avoided talking about Cedric, and I somewhat relieved. For a moment I could pretend he never existed, that the stabbing, scraping, tugging pain inside me wasn't real.

     Nightfall, I would return to the castle, where I was once again left to face the darkness myself.

     You never really notice how quiet a place can get until it has been completely and utterly emptied of people. Without its hundreds of living souls in black robes and angry, scolding professors, the castle was a hollow chamber in which the only sounds were the crackling torches and the echoey thud of my own footsteps.

     Sometimes the Fat Friar, the ghost of Hufflepuff House, would accompany me on my walks back to the dorms. Or it would be Peeves, leaping along the walls and putting out the fires in their sconces as we raced through the empty hallways to the kitchens.

     But then I would reach the dorms and I would be alone once more — truly alone —, for the ghosts could only go so far. There, the silence inflated the place, stretched it to its seams, pounding in my eardrums.

     I would drag myself to the bathroom to wash, drag myself back to my bed, curl up under the sheets, and cry myself to sleep wishing that I was anyone but Gabriella Rose Ainsley.

     Because Gabriella Rose Ainsley smiled.

     She stamped down her anger and hurt because she wanted everyone to be happy. She never cried, never complained, and took things as they came with undaunted positivity.

     Gabriella Rose Ainsley was pretty, with long healthy hair and lively eyes. She was what they called 'Everybody's Girl'. She had many friends, but people only liked her when she was passionate and bubbly and sarcastic, always armed with a witty remark. 

     She was the type of person who was willing do anything she could for someone she barely even knew — what more for the people she loved?

     And so everyone clamoured for her attention. They were curious to see what she would do for them, challenge the extents she would go to prove her sincerity and friendship. They wanted to get close to her, to know what it would feel like to have another person devoted to you the way Gabriella Rose Ainsley devoted herself to Cedric Diggory and her closest friends.

     And she obliged, because she was always game to meet incredible demands. She saw friendships as a test of moral strength, a metre against which she could measure her goodness. 

     So she spread herself thin; gave everyone her all. Gave and gave until she was emptied inside out. And then she gave some more, even when she received nothing in return.

     Because Gabriella Rose Ainsley was Everybody's Girl and Nobody's Girl at the same time.

     And the line between the two is the loneliest place to be.