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Atropa Belladonna  ✷ "Eat Your Heart Out!"
"Pretty boy Diggory? More like Lovesick Diggory!"

        Cedric Diggory has been sick for quite some time.

         Or at least that's what he says. His friends, however, will tell otherwise. So, when Cedric lets himself sigh for the thousandth time, coughs excessively in a manner far too close to their plates, it's nothing but pained silence and tired glances. But he just wants his mates to look at the facts: excessive sweating, abnormal heart rate, and flushed skin. Even if Madam Pomfrey sends him on his way every time he goes to visit her with nothing more than cough drop and a pat on the back, scientifically, all signs point to illness.

        It's exhausting. Playing games with a disease that does not want to be named. It's the gum under his shoe. Ironically, it's the last cough he just can't get out. It's also a real head-scratcher. Cedric never was a sickly kid. He couldn't even remember the last time he had the flu or the cold or any injury that wasn't inflicted by Quidditch. Even then, a painkiller and some bedrest, and he's right back on his feet within the next day. Can't be helped if his immune system was forged from steel. No matter how exasperated his friends may be, what this whole ordeal was was alarming. What it was was unlike him. He's really starting to fear the worst even if his friends won't give him the time of day.

        "Don't be dramatic, Ced. You can't still be sick after all this time!" One of his friends, Bellamy Walker, chided, one morning at the sound of a slight sniffle. Cedric didn't even get the chance to say anything else before the bloke swatted his hand away from his red nose, and the entire group rustled with groans and sighs.

        "I can," Cedric replies as always, "I am."

        Yasmin Gallagher, always the peacemaker, perhaps pitied him enough to play along, "Well, when did it begin, Ced?"

        Bellamy wouldn't have any of it, swiping the back of the girl's head as he shook his head absolutely, "Don't reward bad behavior. It only encourages him!"

       Yasmin hissed, rubbing the back of her head before turning to the perpetrator with a hearty glare. "Oi! You get one dog and think you know how to handle everyone!"

        The expected argument dissolves into obscurity for Cedric as the grim realization dawns on him: he would have no clue how to respond to Yasmin's question even before they got interrupted by Bellamy's high talking. 

        It's odd. This sickness, if you could even call it that, was of a supernatural beginning. Quite fitting, Cedric realized, as he watched a giant platter of sweets float past him. Yet, not in the fantastical sense that left him reeling from the sugar ache in the back of his teeth. He meant supernatural as if not quite right, almost fittingly gothic like the chill on the back of his neck. This sickness, if that was even close to accurate, was never truly a physical ailment, and it could only have sprung from one night in particular. Exactly. If he had to put his finger on the one moment, one single event, Cedric would say he's been sick since the moment when he kissed Belladonna Lupin in a dark, cramped closet in the secret Hufflepuff dorm party held not even two months ago.

        The night is hazy and clogged from the body heat of awkward, rowdy teenagers doing what they're not meant to and the stench of cheap alcohol that just keeps on coming. Even then, it is not the lasting effects of a buzz that have taken Cedric's memory away from him. He isn't as much of a lightweight as the rumor mill suggests.

        The only party of the night that seems to clear up just a bit begins when Belladonna takes his hand and lures him behind the closet door.

        If you could look back through the lenses of Cedric's memory, you would see that the kiss lasted maybe a minute. They were in there for more, but that was only because Cedric couldn't find the right words, or, really, any words at the sight of Belladonna looking up at him expectantly. He was still reeling from the fact that after their friends pushed them into this cramp closet, he thought to shake her hand and introduce himself as if they hadn't gone to school together and been in almost every class since they were children.

          She laughed. "I know who you are Cedric."

        "Oh, right-- Um. Sorry."

        It's probably the trauma response somewhere buried deep within him to keep the night blurry. It's even more cruel to give bits and pieces of clarity and leave the rest up to his imagination. Cedric is left to his own devices. The sharp burning of his reddened cheeks, and the feeling that never vanishes: embarrassment. He kisses her, or more so she kisses him. And if you ask Belladonna, she will say she initiated it. His hands were far too shaky; his palms much too sweaty. He couldn't even look her in the eye nor could he string along a coherent enough sentence though she seemed to follow along perfectly well, nodding with a teasing smile before clamping both hands over his cheeks and luring him closer to her.

        The next morning, despite the fact Cedric swears up and down he didn't so much as take a second sip out of his cup, the boy wakes up with the most head-beating hangover. So intense, it ventures into the realm of fever, and from then on, well, that is how the long-held illness accusations began. As his friends leave him in bed, forcing him to miss class, and the girl in question, Cedric lays with a damp rag over his forehead, slowly drifting between the planes of consciousness. His lips buzz with the memory of Belladonna's cool-toned shade of cherry lipgloss. The way it coated her lips, and how she smacked it once, twice, and each time he followed the motion. He remembers the way it made her eyes pop. He remembers how it followed him after their kiss, leaving his lips a little purple too.

        Cedric sleeps that day until he can't anymore. He doesn't stop dreaming of her even when he wakes up. 

        From then on, it all suddenly falls into place.

        Every symptom that arises whenever she happens to be near. It was all very speculative until now. Cedric's heartbeat never did survive the sight of her nor has his nose forgotten the scent of her perfume, and just how far it is destined to linger even after she passes him in the hallway. He can't help must insert himself in any conversation where her name is thrown around, either, even if it is just with an alert ear. (Although, that one isn't so much of a symptom, just more of a nosy reaction he cannot control.)

        Oh, maybe Cedric isn't sick.

        It's not like swapping spit, even if an invitation for the trading of cesspools of bacteria,  couldn't cause that. But this, this, goes right back to those supernatural forces only found in between the tiny font of each page of a Charlotte or Emily Brontë book. The wistful kind that makes you scoff and put the book down with such disbelief that you have to pick it up and read it once more to make sure your eyes have not deceived you. 

         Cedric may not be sick. But that doesn't mean something doesn't plague him.

         It's not implausible. It may just be even more plausible for this simple reason:

        Belladonna is the type of girl to have poison on her lips. That's another rumor.

        When Cedric kisses her in that dark closest, he tastes it.

Belladonna Lupin       ✷        Park Sora
Poisonous Girl:           Deadly Nightshade

[...]

Ursa Black    ✷    As Described
                                  Fallen Star

Cedric Diggory    ✷     Robert Pattinson
                                         Lovesick Diggory!

&&&.

Valentina Lupin (Née Ambrose)    As Described
Remus Lupin        Max Irons
Sirius Black       Y! Hiroyuki Sanada
Verona Black (Née Ambrose)     Lee Sung-Kyung
Hermione Granger           Whitney Peak
Fred Weasley    Harris Dickinson
George Weasley     Harris Dickinson
Lee Jordan      Kedar Williams-Stirling
Angelina Johnson       As Described
Oliver Wood                  Mike Faist
Amie Wood                Natalie Dormer
Levi Fang            Havanna Rose Liu
Fleur Delacour           Léa Seydoux
Viktor Krum        Josh O'Conner
Bellamy Walker         Harry Collett
Yasmin Gallagher     Medalion Rahimi

More to be added.

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        ✷         All the graphics are made by me with resources I've found in various places (Pinterest, Tumblr, Google, etc). I do not any of the resources I use. The PSDs used are 'Lucky' by 'neighbourhood', 'red lipstick' by' youthxxc', 'PSD 111' by 'julella' and 'PSD 102' by 'sttoneds' all on Deviantart. Please do not take credit for, steal, claim these graphics in any way. If you take major inspiration from any of these graphics please PM for permission.

        ✷          Belladonna Atropa contains many difficult topics that may be difficult for readers. Watch out for blood & gore, vivid descriptions of death and violence, mental illness, PTSD, abandonment issues, neglect, and terrible family dynamics. If there is anything else that may be triggering that I did not add, please don't hesitate to tell me.

        ✷           I do not own Harry Potter. This includes the books or live-action movies or anything affiliated. I also DO NOT support or agree with any of J.K. Rowling's views or actions. I do however own Belladonna, and other added characters, and everything added by me into this book that was not previously included.

        ✷         This is the third book in the 'Gilded Hearts' Saga, a collection of books that follow multiple characters and span throughout the different generations of the Harry Potter story. The full list of story includes:

                I. Grindewald's Era

        Untitled / Newt Scamander & Theseus Scamander

                II. Marauders Era

        Fair Verona / Sirius Black
        Violent Delights /Remus Lupin
        Makeout Creek / James Potter
        Untitled / Regulus Black

                III. Golden Trio Era

        Belladonna Atropa / Cedric Diggory
        Ursa Major / George Weasley
        Untitled / Harry Potter
        Learning Curve / Oliver Wood & Viktor Krum

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