After Amelia had given her small wave to Arthur, she had not been able to see his reaction, because even as tall as he was, he soon disappeared behind the crowds of other students, graduates, professors, and general public that had been invited to the event. Everyone had come out to see the finery, to stand among ‘the future of the magical world’, and to inspect the champions about whom much was being written in the papers and tabloid magazines.
At least not entering the tournament saved me that trouble… Amelia thought to herself as her eyes began to wander again, settling on nothing in particular. Although the time of the choosing of the champions had long since passed, Amelia could still feel a knot in her stomach each time she thought of the goblet that she had passed so many days in a row and never put her name in, all because of her parents. She would have wanted to enter – did want to enter, as she had last year – but the pressure she felt from her parents’ expectations was too much for her even to step over the age line and place a tiny slip of paper into a glorified drinking glass.
And then there was Raoul. Amelia had never lied to him before, but when he had asked her about the tournament, she had told him she had entered, even though she had never worked up the courage. It was a cowardly lie, one told to protect herself from Raoul’s disappointment, which affected her almost as much as her parents’ did. He had wanted her to enter the tournament, even knowing how it had turned out last year, and although she wanted to, she hadn’t. She had, as she always did, put her own wants and desires aside to be the daughter her parents had always wanted, the one who did as she was told and was never a source of embarrassment. But she couldn’t tell Raoul that. The last time she had told him about her folding under pressure from her mother, he had stopped writing her for nearly six months. Amelia couldn’t handle the thought of being cut off from him again; it was bad enough that she hadn’t seen him in two years. Some days, her letters were all that kept her going. After all, Raoul was the closest thing she had to a friend, and although he was partially responsible for the way she was – cold, distant, unwilling to connect – she couldn’t let him go.
Shaking these thoughts from her mind, Amelia turned her attention back to the dance floor where the champions had finally started dancing. The Beauxbatons champion was dancing with Simon, another Ravenclaw she recognized, though most of what she knew about him came from her mother constantly prattling on about how good a suitor he would make for Amelia. In truth, Antoinette likely preferred Simon because of his father’s accomplishments and not because she had ever met the boy herself. Well off, of high social standing, and a high potential for something to brag about to her socialite friends. Check, check, check.
Now that the champions were dancing, a few other couples were moving to the dance floor, dissipating Amelia’s claustrophobia that had been growing ever since the crowd around her had been thickening. As the pairs around her began to move to the floor, those that remained on the outskirts of the hall came into sight, and completely by accident, Amelia’s eyes found themselves resting on a dark-haired Slytherin boy leaning forward to kiss a redhead in a white dress with green accents that almost hid the bump on her stomach that Amelia knew to be there.
Not tonight… Amelia told herself sternly, pointedly looking away from the Hollywood-esque exchange between the happy couple. She was putting Elijah behind her. She had put Elijah behind her, or at least that is what she told herself. But no matter how many locks and spellotape she put around the mental box she had hidden Elijah in, or how far to the back of her closet she buried the necklace he had given her, there were some things Elijah had done that she couldn’t hide or will away. He had put her back three years in her ability to trust, her willingness to believe in the good in people. And no amount of anger or reminiscing or self-pity was going to change that.