Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a handsome man looking at him oddly in the coffee shop.

Harry doesn’t notice at first, glancing away quickly when their eyes first make contact. But when he steals another look several moments later, he sees that the man is still looking at him.

There’s a stunned look on his face. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

Harry lowers his head again, training his eyes back on the textbook he’s reading. His ears burn a little in embarrassment, but he’s not sure why. He’s never seen the man before; for all he knows, the man might not have been looking at him at all, might have been looking at someone behind him, might have mistaken him for someone else. He fishes around in his pencil case and highlights something to make it look like he’s working and not completely flustered by the man who's looking in his direction.

There’s the sound of footsteps approaching him. Someone gives a soft clear of his throat.

“Erm, excuse me?”

Harry looks up. It’s the man from before. Though he’s offering him a polite smile, there’s a look of faint alarm by him.

“Can I help you?” Harry asks when he’s able to find his voice. The man really is unfairly good-looking, with gentle grey eyes and curls of golden brown, and he’s looking at Harry so intently, so earnestly, that Harry’s starting to feel embarrassed again.

The man looks like he’s trying hard to think of the right thing to say. He settles on just one word, and it takes Harry by surprise.

“Harry?”

How do you know my name? Harry thinks. He has a little more tact than that, though, so instead he says, “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

The man looks hurt by his words. He hisses in a sharp breath. “You don’t remember me?”

Harry looks blankly back. He thinks he'd remember meeting the ridiculously handsome man in front of him if he had seen him before. As he tries to think of a situation where the two could’ve possibly met -- class? At the coffee shop? That conference on crisis journalism he attended a month ago? -- it suddenly becomes so apparent how the other man must know him.

“Oh,” Harry says, and a long-forgotten sense of hope starts to rise, like a balloon expanding in his chest. “You know me from before.”

The man doesn’t look like he understands.

“Before?” he asks.

“I lost my memory in an accident several years ago,” Harry explains. “I don’t remember anything from before I was seventeen.”

His companion looks floored by this statement. “Oh no...” he says, and he looks very concerned indeed. Then he seems to remember his manners. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Harry clears his textbook from the table in front of him. “Take a seat,” he offers. “I spent ages trying to find anybody from my past, but I gave up so long ago. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I can hardly believe it myself,” says the man. He sits down obligingly. “Cedric Diggory,” he sticks out his hand for Harry to shake.

“Harry Potter,” says Harry. “According to the government records, at least.”

“Yes, I know,” says Cedric, a faint smile dancing at the corner of his mouth. Harry tries not to stare.

“So, er, how did we know each other?”

“We went to school together. A boarding school called Hogwarts. I was a couple years ahead of you.”

“Hogwarts is a weird name for a boarding school,” says Harry. He mulls over this information. Somehow it had never occurred to him that he would’ve gone to boarding school. He wonders if his family’s rich. He knows from the records the government was able to pull up that he’s an orphan, and his school records went up to year six. Suddenly he’s hungry to learn as much as he can from Cedric. “You said you were a couple years above me? Were we friends?”

“Ahh,” Cedric rubs the back of his neck good-naturedly. “I guess you could say we were friends, yes. Not at school, though. We went through a lot of... well... life challenges together.”

Something about the way Cedric is speaking gives Harry the bizarre idea that maybe the two of them had dated. But Cedric is looking at him with none of the awkwardness of an ex-lover, so he quickly scraps this idea.

“What do you mean by ‘life challenges’?”

Cedric winces. “That’s a delicate question to answer.” He looks uncomfortably around them, a hand placed protectively at the top of his boot for some reason, then leans in and lowers his voice. “Do you really remember nothing, Harry?”

Harry shakes his head. Cedric’s sudden cautious demeanour unsettles him. His own hand reaches instinctively for his pocket for some reason, and Cedric’s gaze tracks his movement.

Something flickers in his eyes. When he makes eye contact with Harry again, there’s a minute shift in his expression that Harry can’t pinpoint.

“Do you want to go somewhere quieter so we can actually talk? I can fill you in on your past.”

“Sure,” says Harry, even though he doesn’t see why they can’t talk in the coffee shop. He does suppose it would be nice if the other patrons don’t overhear his life history, though, so he packs up his books and pens and follows Cedric out of the shop.

They make it less than a block down the street before Cedric pulls him sharply into an alleyway and pushes him against a wall.

Harry would yell in alarm if the wind hadn’t been swiftly knocked out of him.

“Finite incantatem,” Cedric points a stick in his face.

Nothing happens. 

“Revelio.”

“What is wrong with you?” Harry asks angrily.

Cedric ignores him, continuing to speak a string of gibberish. Nothing happens whatsoever, but Cedric continues to hold onto Harry firmly.

“If you don’t let me go, I’m yelling for help,” Harry warns.

Cedric doesn’t let him go. But he does say, for some reason, “stupefy”.

Harry passes out cold.

When he comes to, he sits up and finds himself on a park bench. For a brief, bewildering moment, Harry tries to remember why he’s in the middle of an empty park, but comes up with no answer.

He does remember an odd conversation in a coffee shop, and being attacked in an alley by a man named Cedric.

Cedric, who’s sitting a little ways down the bench from him. When he sees that Harry’s awake, he checks his watch.

“Not polyjuice either.” He shakes his head incredulously. “You really are Harry.”

“And you’re batshit,” says Harry. “How did you knock me out? Did you drug me?”

“I’m sorry,” Cedric apologizes, and good god he looks like he means it. “It was just too strange, having you show up all of a sudden after so many years. I had to make sure it was you.”

“By pointing a stick at me? I have a student card on me, I could’ve shown it to you.”

“I could’ve been gentler, I’m sorry.”

Harry thinks back to the weird words that Cedric had chanted in the alley. “When you said we went through ‘life challenges’ together, you didn't mean we joined a cult or anything, did we?"

Cedric blinks in confusion. “A what?”

“A cult, you know, ‘cause you were saying those strange words.” Though he’d meant it as a joke, Harry has a cartoonish image of people wearing long robes, dancing around a cauldron, waving sticks and chanting.

People wearing long robes, chanting.

Robes, hoods, masks made of bone.

A pale man with a snake face, a milk-white arm extending from his robes and reaching for Harry’s scar.

Harry doesn’t realise he’s screaming until Cedric is kneeling in front of him, shouting, hands hovering like he doesn’t know whether touching Harry is a good idea or not.

“Harry? Harry!”

The pain that threatened to split open his scar is gone as suddenly as it had come.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

Harry is breathing heavily. He lowers his arm, which was digging the heel of his palm into his forehead. Cedric’s concerned face swims into view.

“Was it your scar?”

“We’re - we’re not part of a cult, are we?” His voice sounds shaky to his own ears.

“I - we’re - no? I don’t think so? What’s a cult?”

“I had a really weird...” A weird what? “... vision, just now.”

Cedric’s body tenses. “A vision about what?” he asks.

“A man with red eyes and a snake-like face.”

Cedric pales. “Did he say anything? Is he coming here?”

“No, he was...” Harry’s too confused to pick up on how much Cedric is not making sense. “He was pointing a finger at me, trying to touch my scar. I think he... we were both... in a graveyard...”

Cedric’s brow is furrowed. He looks very concerned, but the urgency that had been taut in his body relaxes somewhat. “That was a memory.”

“A memory ?” What the fuck kind of life had teenage Harry been living? He wracks his brain for any context to the memory. His head twinges dangerously and a sharp throb of pain prods at his brain again. “Ahh,” he winces.

“You used to get visions like that,” Cedric tells him, watching him carefully. “You might be remembering an old vision.”

The idea that Harry had made up the vision of the man with the snake face made some sense, and Harry accepts the explanation readily. Perhaps he was a child with a hyperactive imagination.

“So now that you verified my identity and I don’t think we’re a part of a cult, are you going to tell me more about me now?”

“Oh, yes,” Cedric stands on his feet and takes a seat on the bench next to Harry. “What do you want to know?”

Harry has many questions for Cedric. He spent the past five years of his life desperately seeking answers to who he was, and he has no idea what he wants to know first.

“Do you know anything about my family?” he settles on. “I know I’m an orphan, but I was told that my aunt and uncle used to have legal guardianship over me. Nobody knows where they are, though, so I haven’t been able to find them.”

“From what I know, you grew up with your aunt and uncle before you came to Hogwarts. I was told that for the most part, you stayed at Hogwarts for holidays, but you went back to stay with your relatives over the summer.”

“You don’t happen to know where I can find them, do you?” Harry asks, already knowing the answer.

Cedric shakes his head and looks genuinely sad. “I’m sorry, Harry.”

Harry searches for other things he wants to ask Cedric. “What about friends? Did I have any friends at Hogwarts?”

Cedric looks, if possible, even more sad at this question. “Yes, you had lots of friends. Your two best friends are named Ron and Hermione. The three of you were very close.”

“Ron,” Harry repeats, the name familiar on his tongue. There’s a warm feeling in his chest, comforting, familial. “Hermione.” He feels warm tears prickling his eyes, which is a little mortifying. “Did they look for me?”

“They did. They looked for you for a very long time.”

“Do you know how I can contact them?”

Cedric looks like he’s thinking about the best way to break bad news to him. Harry’s heart drops.

“Did - Did something happen to them?”

“They’re alive,” Cedric tells him quickly. It’s not comforting at all that the most reassuring thing he can tell Harry is that they’re not dead. “They’re just...” He grimaces. “They’re... activists. They got on the wrong side of a corrupt government and they’re a little bit... arrested... right now.”

The more Harry learns about his past life, the less he feels like he wants to know about it. 

“Is this all a little much for you right now?” asks Cedric.

“A little,” Harry admits. There’s a pulsing pain in his head again, warning him that he’s taking in too much at once. 

“We can stop for today,” says Cedric. “I can always tell you more another day, when you have time to process everything.” He gives Harry a reassuring smile.

Cedric is, Harry decides, a very nice person. Even though he had shoved him into a wall and knocked him out earlier.

“Yes please. Here, I’ll write down my phone number.” Harry reaches into his bag for a pen and his notebook, but Cedric interrupts him.

“I don’t have a telephone, but is there someplace or time you can meet?”

“Er, yeah,” Harry thinks about his schedule for the upcoming week. “I finish all my classes for Thursday by the afternoon, if you want to meet after? There’s this cafe by campus.” He scribbles down the name and address of the cafe on a sheet and rips it out.

Cedric takes the ripped-out page from Harry’s notebook with a smile. “Thursday, two o’clock then?”

“Sounds great,” Harry makes his way to his feet. “I should probably head back to study. Which way are you going?”

“Oh, you go on ahead,” says Cedric.

They bid each other goodbye, and Harry heads for the library on campus. As he walks, he realises he left his notebook on the park bench.

It’s only been several seconds since they parted ways, but when Harry turns back around for his notebook, he’s a little startled to see that Cedric is already nowhere to be seen.

~oOo~

Harry and Cedric meet quite regularly after that. They always meet at the same cafe, at least once every handful of days. Cedric is careful with inundating Harry with too much information, but in any case, he doesn’t seem like he knows too much personal information about Harry anyway.  Still, he tells Harry about the school they had gone to together and the teachers they shared, about Ron’s family, whom Harry was apparently quite close with, and little tidbits here and there that he’d heard about Harry through word of mouth.

Harry enjoys these conversations, not only for finally being able to learn things about his past, but also for Cedric’s easy company. Cedric tells stories with a playful glint in his eyes, but he’s never unkind, even when he recounts the most ridiculous events - or people. He orders his coffee with the confidence of someone who’s always been welcome wherever he goes, but he never notices when the baristas melt at his warm smile. He lets Harry ask all his questions and is always apologetic if he doesn’t know the answer.

Soon, coffees with Cedric become the thing Harry looks forward to most in his week.

Yet Harry has a feeling that Cedric is hiding something from him. He gets this from the way Cedric often seems to be choosing his words carefully, or the way he sometimes cuts himself off from speaking.

He doesn’t know what to make of this fact.

One day, Cedric tells him that he’s going away for a while. When Harry asks him how long he’s going away for, Cedric replies, “I can’t be sure yet, but I promise I’ll be in touch when I get back.” He doesn’t tell him what he’s going away for.

Life briefly returns to normal after Cedric leaves. Harry takes the opportunity to catch up on schoolwork that he’s been woefully neglecting. One of the only people in his cohort he would consider a friend, Miranda, shares her notes from the past weeks with him, bless her.

At night, though, Harry would replay the conversations he had with Cedric, trying to see if the stories sparked any recognition in his mind.  He pictures Mrs. Weasley in his mind, the way Cedric described her, and can only conjure up a blurry outline with red hair. But he is struck with a feeling of fondness, of good food, and for some reason, of the sensation of an itchy sweater.

He doesn’t get much from his pondering other than vague feelings such as these. Although, one night when he’s lying in bed awake, his mind is brought back to that first day in the park and the odd vision that he had.

A name pops into his head.

He doesn’t know what this name means. He supposes he’ll just have to wait until Cedric gets back.

Two weeks pass. One morning, Harry’s walking with Miranda through the courtyard after class when Miranda beats him furiously on the arm.

“Ohhhhh my god,” she gushes. “Do you see that guy over there? He’s sooooo cute.”

Harry follows her gaze and nearly trips over his feet. 

Cedric is leaning against the brick wall, one leg crossed over the other. His dark coat makes him look even taller than usual and billows softly in the mid-autumn wind. He has his face turned away from them, watching some freshmen kick a football around the courtyard.

“Where are you going?” Miranda asks when Harry changes course towards Cedric.

“Cedric!” Harry calls.

At the sound of his name, Cedric turns around. When he spots Harry and Miranda walking over, he pushes himself off the wall.

“Harry, hi!” He turns his attention politely toward Miranda. “Hello...?”

“This is Miranda,” Harry introduces. Miranda gives an awkward laugh that comes out very shrill.

“Hi,” she says. She looks between Harry and Cedric. “You know each other?”

“We’re old friends,” Cedric tells her. Then, he gets a look of chagrin on his face. “Did you have plans together? I didn’t tell Harry I was coming to speak with him today.”

“Oh, no, no, no, we were just - we were just heading class. Heading back from class!” Miranda giggles nervously again. “You two talk, I’ll see Harry later.”

“Bye, Miranda,” Harry calls after her, watching amusedly as she runs away. Cedric also has an amused look on his face, but he doesn't comment.

“Finished whatever it is you had to go do, then?” Harry asks.

Cedric smiles a smile that has meaning behind it. “It’s an ongoing project.” He turns to face Harry fully. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine,” says Harry. His voice falters. Now that he’s looking carefully at Cedric, he notices that the other man looks worn. There’s a tired look in his eyes. His cheek is bruised, his lip is split, and there’s a worrying gash along the base of his jaw. “How have you been?”

At Harry’s furrowed brows, Cedric reaches up to rub self-consciously at the gash on his jaw. “It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” he says honestly. He tilts his head towards the open courtyard. “Come take a walk with me?”

An irrational burst of irritation flares up inside Harry. “Cedric, you’re honestly not going to tell me why you look like shit?”

Cedric has an apologetic look on his face. “I know it must be frustrating not knowing everything, Harry, and I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything. It’s just difficult. It’s probably best to ease you into it.”

The genuine look of remorse on Cedric’s face makes Harry feel guilty. And yet, the hot flame of irritation persists, though Harry doesn’t know why. Something tells him this comes from that long-dormant side of his old personality, one where he doesn’t like to be kept secrets from.

“I don’t want to hear any other stories from you if you’re just going to hide things from me,” Harry says harshly.

Cedric doesn't look happy, but he nods in understanding. “It's fair for you to feel that way.” He worries at his lip. “How about this, then, why don’t you tell me about what you’ve been up to these past years?”

Harry considers this. “That sounds OK,” he says.

“Care to go on that walk, then?” 

They walk along the path taking them through the courtyard, hands tucked in their coat pockets to hide from the chilly air.

“You said you were in an accident,” Cedric prompts him.

“I was camping with some friends,” says Harry. “At least, I assume that’s probably why they found me in the woods. Some campers found me passed out in the snow by a lake. They took me to the hospital and tried to find my friends, but there was no campsite near the lake for miles. I woke up with absolutely no memory and I had no ID on me. Eventually, I was able to speak to some people at a government service office and pulled up some files about myself and figure out my name, at least, and some approximate family relations, even though I never ended up finding my family.”

“That sounds frightening.”

“It was a little overwhelming at first. Fortunately, the family that found me was very kind and encouraged me to study for uni. I had to retake three years of school because I apparently also forgot how to do maths and sciences and stuff.”

They walked through the archway at the end of the courtyard and into a patch of field that lead to one of the res buildings.

“Mind, I'm still pretty bad at maths and sciences, so I decided to go into investigative journalism. I figured, with all the investigating I was already doing trying to find out about my past, it made sense.”

“It suits you,” says Cedric. “I don’t know about the journalism part, but the investigative part, at least.”

Harry shrugs. “Well, it’s something to do. If I wasn’t able to remember my past, I could work on building my future.”

Cedric smiles encouragingly at him, but he has that sad look in his eyes again. Then he shakes his head and the look is gone. “Is this your res?” he asks, changing the subject.

“Yeah.” Harry briefly entertains inviting Cedric up to see, but the thought of him and Cedric in his tiny one-person dorm makes his face go hot. He jerks away from the building and continues down the path towards a set of wrought-iron gates that open up to the main road.

“It’s a nice campus,” says Cedric.

“How is it compared to Hogwarts?” Harry asks.

Cedric scoffs uncharacteristically. “No contest. The grounds at Hogwarts are much larger than the space they can carve out for a school in the middle of the city. There’s the Forbidden Forest that lines the grounds and a huge glistening lake at the foot of the hills.”

“Not to mention the Quidditch pitch,” Harry adds.

Cedric freezes.

“Wait.” Harry frowns. “Quidditch. What is that? Did you mention it to me?”

“I never mentioned anything about Quidditch,” says Cedric. He looks stunned, and a hopeful smile creeps onto his face. “Harry, you remembered that on your own.”

“I remember some things,” Harry tells him. “Nothing important though, just feelings and things. Oh,” he remembers. “There was a name I remembered  that I wanted to ask you about.”

“What is it?”

“Who’s Lord Voldemort?”

Cedric’s eyes go wide.

Several strange, sudden, terrifying things happen at once.

Half a dozen hooded figures appear around them, pop-ing out from thin air.

Unintelligible words are yelled. The field is lit up by streams of light.

Cedric throws himself at Harry, grabbing Harry’s arm and shielding the rest of his body with his own.

Harry has the nauseating feeling of being squeezed into a bottle. 

The world around them disappears in a confusing whirl of haze.

His feet slam onto a carpeted floor. He has a quick moment to register that he’s standing in a hallway. 

Cedric is beside him, still holding his arm. He points a stick -- the same stick that he had pointed in Harry’s face weeks ago -- at the doorknob. There’s a clicking noise.

“Quick, in here,” Cedric pulls him inside. As soon as they enter, Cedric waves the stick around the hallway, muttering a string of words. He closes the door and mutters some more words, trailing the stick along the inside of the flat.

At long last, handiwork complete, he tucks the stick into his pocket. He turns his attention to Harry, and the expression on his face suggests that he knows exactly how much trouble he’s about to be in.

Harry, still reeling from the absurdity and sheer confusion of the past minute, is breathing really fast. He has no idea whether he should be scared or angry.

He settles for confrontational.

“What the fuck was that?”

Chapter Text

“What do you want to know?” Cedric asks. His hands are raised non-threateningly, and he eyes Harry cautiously, as if wary of sudden movements. As if Harry had been the one acting suspiciously all the time they knew each other.

Harry, for his part, is too bewildered to worry about defending himself. “I want you to tell me everything. For real this time, none of that fluffy schoolboy stuff you’ve been distracting me with for the past month. I want to know who you are, who I am, who were those people with hoods back there, how did they appear out of nowhere, holy shit, where even are we - ?” He has the vague notion that he’s becoming a little hysterical. He points at the stick that Cedric’s still holding. “What is that? Who are you ? Why do I have weird visions of people in hoods? Who’s Lord Vol - ”

“Don’t say his name!” Cedric interrupts so suddenly and urgently that Harry jumps. At the startled, lost look on Harry’s face, Cedric expression softens apologetically again. “Alright. I’ll answer all your questions, I promise. Just... I need to clarify two things first.” He pauses, waiting for Harry’s permission to continue.

Harry nods his assent.

“First, please don’t say that name again,” says Cedric. “You’ll understand in a little bit.”

That’s a reasonable, if not odd request. “Okay,” Harry agrees. “What’s the second thing?”

“I’m... I’m a friend. I’m on your side. You can trust me, even though it doesn’t feel like it with all the things I’ve hidden from you so far.”

Harry studies Cedric carefully. He has a certain openness to his expression, a certain earnestness, and there’s the same faint glow of righteousness about him that had been present since the first time Harry met him in the coffee shop. Then again, there are too many things between them that Harry doesn’t know yet. As much as Harry wants to trust Cedric - and he does, he really does, it’s so exhausting being on his own all the time - he feels his own expression close off grimly.

“We’ll see about that second thing,” he replies. 

Cedric nods, as if that was what he was expecting. He gestures at the couch in the living space behind Harry.

“You’re welcome to take a seat.”

Against his own better judgement, Harry sits down on the couch, though he makes a mental note of the quickest way out the door if things come to that point.

“Would you like some tea?” Cedric asks.

Harry raises a skeptical eyebrow. “The police use that as an interrogation tactic. Giving the suspect something warm to hold so they lower their guard.”

“I’m not interrogating you, Harry, you’re interrogating me,” Cedric attempts as a joke. When Harry continues looking unimpressedly back at him, he says again more honestly, “you look like you’re going through a lot right now. I just thought you might want some tea.”

“...some tea would be nice,” Harry grudgingly concedes.

He waits on the couch as Cedric bustles in the kitchen. Harry takes the time to work out an interrogation strategy, or at least organise the questions he wants to ask. When Cedric pushes the warm mug into his hands, these plans evaporate from his mind like steam from the Earl Grey.

“So,” says Cedric, sitting across from Harry. “What do you want to know?”

Harry tries to pull up the first question from his plan earlier.

“Who are you really?” he asks.

“Everything I’ve told you so far is true. My name is Cedric Diggory, I know you from school, we were friends before you disappeared five years ago.”

“Everything you told me so far is true?” Harry repeats.

“Yes.”

“I know you’ve been hiding something from me since we first met,” Harry counters. “What is it?”

Cedric only hesitates for a second. “I’m a wizard.”

Whatever Harry had expected Cedric to say, it wasn’t that. The statement is so out of the blue that Harry actually laughs at the absurdity.

“You’re a what? A wizard ?”

“Yes,” Cedric replies. He looks dead serious.

Harry, still partially convinced that Cedric had cracked a joke in order to lighten the mood, waits for the other man to drop the façade. When Cedric continues to look just as serious, Harry feels his own mirth fade.

“What do you mean you’re a wizard?”

“I can do magic,” Cedric tells him. “I can show you, if you’d like.” He reaches for the stick that he had put down on the coffee table.

A magic wand , Harry’s mind offers. Another swell of laughter bubbles inside him, this time more hysterical than out of humour.

“What, are you going to draw a rabbit out of a hat?"

Cedric has a perplexed look on his face, like he can't possibly imagine why he would do such a thing. “I can transfigure a hat into a rabbit?” he offers instead. He waves the stick (the wand, Harry’s mind corrects him) in Harry’s general direction. Harry swivels around just in time to see a baseball cap whizzing out of the closet in the front hall and into Cedric’s hands. 

Then, with another wave of Cedric’s wand, the hat is gone. In its place is a living, breathing, fluffy white rabbit.

If Harry’s face looks anything like the way he’s feeling, he imagines he would look quite dumbfounded.

Cedric clears his throat gently. “There’s, ah, also the fact that I just Apparated you from your campus to this apartment. If, you know, you needed more proof.” The rabbit hops from his arms onto the coffee table.

“No, no, I...” says Harry, not bothering to finish his sentence. He’s sure Cedric gets the general idea.

“You’re also a wizard,” Cedric supplies.

“Oh,” says Harry, speaking, but not really aware of what he’s saying. “I don’t know any magic spells.”

Cedric shifts in his seat. “Do you... need some time to process?”

Harry doesn’t answer immediately. He reaches out his hand for the rabbit to sniff at his fingers before stroking it gently. The rabbit's soft fur and its warm, thrumming heartbeat help ground him. He pets it for a while before he finally replies to Cedric.

“No,” he answers slowly. “I think I’m okay. I... I think this makes sense to me, weirdly. Like I know deep down that what you’re saying is right.”

Cedric watches him quietly. After giving the rabbit a last stroke behind the head, Harry pulls back to sit upright on the couch.

“Okay, so we’re both wizards." What a bizarre thing to be saying completely sincerely. "What does that have to do with that weird vision I had and the people in the park and the name I’m not allowed to say?”

The question looks like it pains Cedric. He picks up his own mug from the coffee table and wraps his hands around its warmth. For the first time since Harry has known him, some of the bravado drops from his frame, and he looks like he's curling slightly inward on himself.

“The wizarding world is at war with itself,” he says softly.

Harry listens as Cedric tells him everything. How a powerful, evil wizard had risen to power and all but taken over the British wizarding world, including the ministry and school (“Hogwarts,” Cedric says the name fondly, if not a little sadly). He tells Harry about the resistance movement that was still going strong, even if it was running underground. Finally, he tells Harry about how he, too, is part of the resistance, and that he’s on a mission to find a way to defeat the evil wizard.

“So those people back there with hoods, those were the... the ‘Death Eaters’? They worked for You-Know-Who?” Harry asks once Cedric finishes his explanation.

“That’s right,” Cedric replies. “The name that you remembered in your memories was a name only those in the resistance dared to use, so You-Know-Who put a trace on the name. That’s how the Death Eaters were able to find us.”

Harry takes this all in, making a mental note not to bring up the name again. He thinks back to the things Cedric had told him before, back to those innocent coffee chats, and tries to square that with everything he heard over the past hour.

“You said that my friends were put in prison for being activists,” he says.

Cedric grimaces. “Yes. The Death Eaters got a hold of them and put them into Azkaban. It used to hold criminals, but now it’s where they put people from the resistance if they’re not deemed to be too much of a threat. Luckily we have a man on the inside who was able to convince You-Know-Who that our friends are more valuable alive than they are dead.”

Harry feels a pang of concern. Even though he has no idea who Ron and Hermione are, he remembers the warm feeling he had felt in his chest when he first heard their names. And now they’re in prison. They’re so young. They’re his age.

“...was I part of the resistance?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Cedric. “You were also a key member of the resistance.”

“At seventeen?” Harry asks skeptically.

There’s an odd look on Cedric’s face, like he’s having an inside joke with himself. “You started very young.” His face takes on a more serious expression. “You were on an important mission when you suddenly went missing, a mission given to you by our headmaster.”

“Dumbledore,” says Harry, recalling what Cedric had told him from before.

“Ron and Hermione took over the mission from you after you disappeared. Then when they got captured, I took over the mission from them.”

Harry blanches. “Wait. So this mission’s been ongoing for five years?”

“Well, we didn’t have a lot to go on,” Cedric explains. “Dumbledore was probably the one who knew the most, and he passed along a lot of information to you, but not all of it. Ron and Hermione probably know everything that you did, but they only told me enough to pick up the mantel in case they got caught. I’ve been spending the past several months just trying to piece things together.”

“What was this mission?” Harry asks.

And that’s how he finds out about the horrifying existence of horcruxes.

At some point in their conversation, Cedric waves his wand to turn on the lights, and Harry realises how late it’s gotten. He also realises, belatedly, that he missed his sociology lecture for the afternoon and that Miranda is probably wondering where he went.

“I should get back to my dorm.”

Cedric stands up with Harry.

“Harry... I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to school,” he says gently.

“What do you mean?” Harry frowns. “It’s not like the Death Eaters will come after me. They think I’m dead.”

“But now they know members of the Order are here. They’ll be patrolling, and if they see you, they’ll easily take you down and bring you to You-Know-Who.”

“I’m not dropping out of school,” Harry argues back. “I worked too hard to get here.”

“I know, Harry, I know, and I’m sorry this is happening,” Cedric tells him. “But Death Eaters are dangerous. Wizards, very powerful wizards, have died at their hands, and you don’t remember how to do magic. If they find you, they will kill you. Please, Harry, I need you to understand how much danger you’re in.”

“Christ,” Harry rubs a hand over his face and sinks back into the couch. “OK, then, what do you think I should do?”

Cedric bites his lip.

“I can take you to the Weasleys’. It’s heavily warded, you’ll be safe there. They’ll be delighted to hear you’re still alive. They might even help you get your memory back.”

“And if I don’t get my memory back?” Harry presses. “I’ll just stay locked up in a house, hidden from the rest of the world as everyone around me fights in a war?”

Cedric has nothing to say in response.

Harry makes a decision at that moment.

“I want to come with you on your mission.”

“Harry, no .”

“It was my mission to start with,” he insists stubbornly. “I know that I probably don’t have much to offer for the time being, I don’t know how to do magic, I don’t have any memories,” he’s aware that he’s not really selling his case, “but maybe... maybe there are things I’ll remember subconsciously as we go along that’ll come in handy. Or I can help you figure things out, I’m doing an entire degree on this kind of stuff.”

“It’s dangerous - ”

“I know. But that didn’t stop me before, did it?” Harry raises his chin. “It sounds like this war was important to me. I want to help. I’m not scared.”

Cedric is staring at Harry with a look that can only be described as deep respect. With a helpless smile, he gives a small shake of his head, his hair falling into his eyes. 

“Always a hero, Potter,” he says softly.

“So?” Harry asks. 

“OK,” Cedric agrees. “Alright. Let’s do this together.”

~oOo~

Cedric apparates them right outside Harry’s dorm so that he can collect his things. Harry leads Cedric upstairs, stopping when they reach outside his room. One of the first years on his floor passes by them through the hall and wiggles his eyebrows at Harry. Cheeks flaring hot again, Harry’s supremely thankful that Cedric is too busy looking around on high alert for Death Eaters.

“Erm, my room is a little small,” he says, turning purposefully to face Cedric before he opens the door.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cedric assures him in earnest. “I won’t mind.”

“Right. Well, what I mean is - oh, never mind.” Harry pushes the door open and enters the room, Cedric on his heels.

“This isn’t bad, Potter,” Cedric says as he looks around, sounding like an impressed upperclassman. Harry wonders how teenage Harry had managed without developing a massive crush on him, before deciding the answer must have been that he hadn’t.

“Thanks. Erm, you can take a seat while I pack.”

Cedric sits obligingly at Harry’s desk. He flips curiously through a textbook Harry was reading, and Harry tries not to think about how attractive it is that Cedric seems genuinely interested in what’s in the textbook.

“So how big of a bag am I allowed to pack?” he asks, reaching into his closet. “A suitcase? A knapsack?”

“Oh, give me your book bag,” says Cedric.

“I don’t think that’s going to fit much,” Harry tells him, though he hands the bag over anyway.

Cedric taps the bag with his wand and says some magic words. “Now it’s a bottomless bag,” he says. 

Harry peers into the book bag. It looks and weighs the same as it normally does. He looks around his room for the largest thing he could put in the bag, just to try it out, and settles on the lamp in the corner of the room. To his astonishment, not only does the base of the lamp fit into the mouth of the book bag, but as he pulls the book bag higher and higher, the rest of the lamp sinks deeper into the bag until the very top of the lampshade disappears. When he picks up the bag again, it weighs the same as it did when it had been empty.

“I don’t think it would be useful to pack your lamp,” Cedric says with amusement.

“Of course,” Harry, still astonished by the storing capability of his deceptively small book bag, wrestles the lamp back out. “Woah. That’s amazing.”

After the bit of fun with the bottomless bag, he makes quick work packing his things. Clothes and hygiene products go into the bag, and after a moment’s consideration, so does bedding. When all that’s left to pack are his school things, though, he hesitates.

“It’s not like I’ll need these things when we go on the run, right?” Harry picks up his news writing and reporting textbook.

“You could bring them if you’d like,” Cedric watches Harry gives the book a long, lingering look before placing it back on his desk. “It’s not like they’ll take up much room.

Harry tells himself that it would probably be quite annoying for whoever would come and clean out his room at the end of the school year to have to deal with his school things. It’s for this reason that he puts his textbooks, notebooks, and pencil case in his bag. It’s definitely not because of the uncomfortable feeling that his life is once again being unanchored.

At long last, when all his things are packed into his tiny book bag, Harry turns to face Cedric.

“Ready?” Cedric asks.

“I’m ready.”

Cedric takes Harry by the arm, and they’re once again pulled into the vacuum of space.

~oOo~

What Harry hadn’t considered, when he offered to go with Cedric on his horcrux-hunting mission, was that beyond working together for a higher cause, this also meant that he and Cedric were now effectively living together. 

This comes to a head almost instantly when Harry starts to unpack and puts his bedding on the couch, and Cedric immediately insists that Harry take his room.

“I’m not taking over your room,” Harry protests.

To which Cedric responds with an equally affronted tone, “I can’t let a guest sleep on the couch.”

To which Harry replies, “I’m not a guest, I’m helping you take down a mass murderer.”

And this exchange goes on for a short while before Harry realizes that Cedric’s first flaw is extreme stubbornness and finally agrees to take the bedroom.

Then comes the time to make dinner. Having not eaten since breakfast that morning, Harry is utterly famished. But making dinner in itself is an ordeal, as it seems none of the appliances in the kitchen work on their own and are all run by magic. This, as Harry learns from Cedric, is because magic and electricity don’t mix well together.

After some initially confused fumbling from Harry with a stove that refused to turn on without the tap of a wand, the two of them manage to scrape together a fine carbonara. As they eat, they discuss the topic of their plan going forward.

“We know definitely that there are at least four horcruxes,” Cedric explains to Harry. “Two of them have been destroyed already, and we know the locations of the other two. One is in the bank vault of You-Know-Who’s most trusted Death Eater. That was the one Ron and Hermione were trying to retrieve a couple months ago when they were captured. Our spy tells us the horcrux hasn’t been moved, since You-Know-Who believes that the failed attempt to infiltrate the vault is evidence of how secure the horcrux is.”

Harry nods, digesting the information. “Where’s the other horcrux, then?”

Cedric reaches into his sweater and pulls out a locket.

“It’s right here.”

Harry, who had thought that nothing else would surprise him anymore, feels his jaw drop open.

“You’ve been wearing a piece of somebody’s soul around your neck this entire time?”

Cedric grimaces. “I try not to think about it, but it’s the best way to keep it safe.”

Harry works to rearrange his face into a neutral expression, but he’s aware that he’s still sporting a look of lingering disgust. “Why haven’t you gotten rid of it?”

“Well, that’s the second issue,” Cedric explains. “It’s really hard to destroy a horcrux. It can heal itself. You can’t just break its shell or something, you have to irreparably damage it.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know.” Cedric looks unhappy with his answer. “Hermione gave me all her books on horcruxes the last time we met, which is how I know all of this, but like I said, your friends didn’t tell me much beyond the fact that horcruxes exist and where they know the horcruxes to be.”

“Do you know how the other two horcruxes were destroyed?”

Cedric shakes his head. “I was just told they were destroyed. My best guess is that Dumbledore was the one who destroyed them, he was the only one You-Know-Who ever feared, but I have no idea how he would’ve done so.”

Harry twirls his spaghetti around his fork, contemplating. “Do you think I would have known?” he asks. “You said Dumbledore was the one who gave me this mission. Do you think he would’ve told me how to destroy the horcruxes?”

“It’s possible,” says Cedric, politely, though he looks no more excited at the prospect. “You don’t have your memory, though.”

“Right.”

There’s another bout of silence as they mull over their position. 

“So our mission is to retrieve the horcrux from a vault and figure out how to destroy the horcruxes once we get it?” Harry clarifies. “That doesn’t sound too difficult.”

Cedric smiles an uncharacteristically wry smile. “That’s actually the easy part. Remember, Harry, I said we know that there are at least four horcruxes.”

Harry’s brain short circuits. “Wait,” he says, shaking his head incredulously. “You mean he could have made hundreds of those things?”

“Well, maybe not hundreds ,” Cedric backtracks. “Souls are vulnerable. Just splitting it in two is already unspeakable for most people. It’s physically impossible to split it into further pieces.”

“How many pieces are we talking about, then?”

Harry knows the answer even before Cedric shakes his head. I don’t know. 

“Okay, yeah, that... that sucks.”

Despite their situation, Cedric laughs at Harry’s eloquence, or lack thereof. “Yeah. It does suck, doesn’t it?”

They eat the rest of their dinner without making any more headway. When they finish, Cedric waves his wand again, sending the dishes into the sink. Harry watches in amazement as they wash themselves.

By unspoken agreement, they decide to table their discussion on what to do until tomorrow. They’re both exhausted from the developments of the day, eager to turn their minds off for the rest of the night. Harry pulls out one of his textbooks and reads on the couch, while Cedric writes - with a quill and ink pot! - the day’s events in a notebook.

But while Harry does his best to train his attention on his book, his mind keeps wandering to their conversation over dinner. As his mind tries, unbiddingly, to piece together the threads of information they discussed earlier, it suddenly becomes strikingly clear what must be done.

“Cedric,” he says, waiting for the other man to look up from his journaling. “I think we need to get my memory back.”

Cedric’s answering look of grimness suggests that he had come to the same conclusion. “That would be best. But it’s difficult, though.”

“I don’t suppose there’s some, what, magic potion or spell that can revive somebody’s memory?”

“You can’t return someone’s memory once it’s been wiped,” Cedric explains. “If it’s erased from the mind, it’s gone, there’s nothing there for magic to restore.”

“But my memory hasn’t been wiped,” Harry counters. “I remember things. Those people with hoods - You-Know-Who’s name --”

“Quidditch?” Cedric supplies with a smile.

“Exactly. What if my memory is still there, it’s just... hard to access? Not all memory loss is permanent, isn’t it?”

“You’re right,” Cedric leans back in thought. “How would we get your memory back, then? We can’t just walk into St. Mungo’s, word will get back to You-Know-Who for sure that you’re alive.”

“And you don’t happen to know any spells off the top of your head, do you?” Harry asks, not really expecting an answer.

Cedric is silent.

Harry frowns at him suspiciously. “Wait... do you?”

Cedric rubs a hand over his face. “I know a spell, it’s just... probably not meant to be used for this purpose.”

“What is it?”

“We can’t use it.”

“Tell me about it, at least.”

Cedric looks unhappy with this, but he tells Harry anyway, “It’s a mind-reading spell. Legilimens. A skilled legilimens can dig around your head for the information they want. It wasn’t meant to be a cure for memory loss.”

“Well, we’re not trying to fix my memory, are we?” Harry pushes back. “We’re trying to get pieces of information from my memory, which is exactly what this spell does.”

“I’m not using that spell on you,” Cedric says firmly.

“Where’s the harm?”

“For one, I’m not a skilled legilimens. I’ve never used the legilimency spell in my life, I have no idea what I’m doing. And even if I were a skilled legilimens, we don’t know what memories we’re looking for. They might not exist. They may be buried deep beneath layers and layers of your mind. The spell effectively requires me to rummage through your brain like a rubbish bin, and I could ruin your mind .”

Harry leans forcefully back against the couch, frustrated. “That’s it then? We’ve hit another dead end?” He stands up suddenly. “No. Listen. For all we know, there may be a dozen out there scattered around the world. You guys have been trying to find these horcruxes for five years and you’ve only found two. At this rate, we’ll never defeat You-Know-Who. If I potentially have information that could help us with the hunt, I say we risk it.”

Cedric stands up too. “Not at this cost!”

“People are dying! How many people have already died in the war? How many more people are going to die if we drag this out?” Harry runs a hand through his hair. “I’m just one person!”

Cedric storms across the living room until he’s standing right in front of Harry. There’s a flame in his eyes and Harry wonders, for an intimidating moment, if Cedric is about to fight him.

But Cedric stops just short of a foot away. He stares Harry right in the eye.

“That’s not how lives work,” he says softly. “We can’t trade lives for lives.”

Harry looks away, breaking their eye contact.

“I’ve seen what messing around with someone’s head can look like,” Cedric continues. “There’s a ward in St. Mungo’s - the hospital in the wizarding world - with wizards who’ve had their minds messed with by magic. It’s... horrible. I don’t want that to happen to you. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I were the one who did that to you.”

They stand close to each other, neither daring to look at the other. There’s a moment’s pause. It’s quiet enough that Harry can hear his own heartbeat.

“You asked me to trust you, earlier today,” he says, still not looking at Cedric. “I do trust you. I know you won’t hurt me.”

Cedric lets out a frustrated breath. He runs a hand through his own hair. “This is a bad idea.”

“Maybe,” Harry agrees. “What other choice do we have?” He steps back so that he can stand to look at Cedric.

There’s a defeated droop to Cedric’s shoulders. His head hangs as he studies the floor. “Alright,” he concedes, still looking down. “We’ll try tomorrow. You should probably get some rest in that case.”

He turns away without looking at Harry.

They start early the following morning. Harry is seated on the couch, Cedric sitting across from them, just like the previous day.

“We’re just going to start slow,” Cedric says for the upteenth time that day. “We’ll just get a feel for the spell. I’m not going to try to look for anything yet.”

“Okay.”

“It might help to relax your mind,” he continues, looking far more stressed than Harry himself and gripping his wand tightly. 

“I’m an open book.”

“Hmm,” Cedric smiles without much humour. “Okay, ready?”

“Ready.”

“Legilimens.”

~oOo~

There’s a load of white fog as the spell searches for a memory to latch on to. Then the memories come flowing like a river.

~

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off --"

Someone stumbles from a room -- a door bursts open -- there’s a cackle of high-pitched laughter --

~

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now...."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead --"

A woman. There’s a woman, screaming, obscuring his view of someone standing by the door.

"Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy....

A shrill voice, laughing, and the woman is screaming --

~

He’s in a small, dark space. A closet. A cupboard?

He’s hungry. He wonders if Aunt Petunia is still angry, and whether she would come bring him food tonight.

He’s just about to fall asleep, sharp, heavy pangs in his stomach, when there’s rapping on the door as food is finally delivered.

~

“Better save your own life and join me … or you’ll meet the same end as your parents … They died begging me for mercy …”

A man stands across from him. Behind the man is a mirror, and in the mirror there’s a reflection of a boy, about ten or eleven, who’s glaring defiantly at the man.

“LIAR!”

~

A man with long dark hair, smiling. But the smile is etched unnaturally onto his face, and he’s falling, falling backward.

A woman with wild curls of dark hair, weaving through the tombstones.

“I killed Sirius Black, I killed Sirius Black -- !”

Anger, grief, so many emotions at once. He’s going to kill her -- no, he wants to do more than kill her, he wants her to suffer --

“I KILLED SIRIUS BLACK!”

~

An old man with flowing white hair and beard, protesting, weeping. “Please, no more, please...”

He’s forcing something into the old man’s mouth. “You have to keep drinking, Professor --” He wants to throw up. He thinks he’s crying.

~

There’s a flash of green light and the old man is dead.

~

He’s sitting in a living room and there’s tears on his face. He’s crying. He wipes quickly at the tears but they keep streaming. He tries futilely to stop the heaving, uneven sobs.

There’s a warm touch on his shoulder.

“It’s OK, Harry, it’s OK.”

He leans into the warmth on his shoulder. The hand stays there until, at long last, his sobs subside.

“Are you alright, Harry?”

Harry looks up. Cedric’s looking at him with concern. He looks like he might have been crying at some point too.

“I’m okay,” Harry says quickly. Now that he’s in a better state of mind, he’s mortified that he’d been crying like a child.

“It’s okay,” Cedric assures him. “That was a lot.”

“What happened?” Harry asks.

“I’m guessing that since I didn’t specify what I was looking for, the spell latched onto your strongest memories. The most traumatic ones,” Cedric clarifies unnecessarily. “I’m so sorry, Harry. I had no idea there was...”

I had no idea there was so much pain in your past, Harry knows is what Cedric wants to say. 

“It’s OK, I don’t remember half of it. Or, I guess I do now.” He rubs his head, trying to recall what he remembered. 

“I tried so pull away earlier, but it was overwhelming.” Cedric kindly gives him some time to process his memories before continuing to speak. “I’m not sure I want to do that again.”

Harry is ashamed to admit that he secretly agrees. He thinks he gets why Cedric was so adamantly against using legilimency. It was jarring, having his darkest, most traumatic memories dredged to the surface of his mind. His breathing is still a little ragged.

“Are you OK?” Cedric asks again. “Some of those memories were...” He doesn’t need to continue. They both saw what the memories were like.

Because Harry can’t stand the sympathetic look in Cedric’s eyes, he abruptly changes the subject.

“There wasn’t anything useful that you got from that, was there?”

Cedric looks like he still wants to discuss what was very likely traumatic childhood for Harry, but he accepts the change in subject with grace. 

“I don’t think so. I mean, that last bit with Dumbledore might have been relevant, but...” he trails off uncomfortably, and Harry can understand why. By the way Cedric described Dumbledore to him, the old wizard commanded a powerful, respectable aura. Yet the Dumbledore in Harry’s memory was a frail old man. It’s disturbing, to say the least. Harry can’t shake off the phantom feeling in his hands of forcing potion into the man’s mouth. Judging by the faint tremors in Cedric’s hands (which Harry notices with an uncomfortable flip of his stomach), the memory has rattled them both.

“Are there any wizards who specialise in memory restoration?” Harry tries again to divert their attention.

“None that we can trust with the sensitive information in your head.”

“Then there’s got to be books written on this stuff."

“There must be, but You-Know-Who has all the major libraries in England under his control.”

“Of course he does,” says Harry. Then the implications of that statement sink into him. “Hang on. What about the libraries outside of England?”

“ Outside of England?” Cedric frowns pensively. A look of inspiration dawns on his face. “That might work! We can ask Fleur if there are any libraries in France we can visit... or maybe Krum...”

Though he has no idea who Fleur and Krum are, the fact that Cedric finds his suggestion promising is enough to excite Harry. At last they have a lead.

“Of course, finding our way out of England will be a bit difficult,” Cedric says to himself, deep in thought. “I can’t apparate, and the floo channels are being watched. I suppose we can always try to fly...”

“Why don’t we just take the train?” Harry asks.

Cedric looks like he’s never considered this before. “You mean the muggle train?”

“No, the Eurorail.”

“No, that’s not what I -- never mind. Do you think that could work?”

“Yeah, for sure. It won’t take more than a couple hours.”

“Then it looks like we have a plan.” Cedric’s face is alight with newfound determination. “I’ll send Fleur a patronus.” 

Harry’s just about to ask what a patronus is when Cedric waves his wand. Wisps of silver shoot from its end, forming into the shape of a stallion. It paws at the ground - or rather, air - with its hoof as Cedric gives it a message to take to Fleur. When Cedric finishes, the stallion takes off, circling Harry briefly before galloping through the living room and disappearing into the air.

“That’s wicked,” Harry watches as the last wisps of silver dissipate around them.

“You taught me that charm,” says Cedric, a soft fondness about his expression. 

“I did?” Harry asks incredulously.

Cedric tucks his wand back into his pocket. “A story for another day.”

“Maybe while we’re on the train to France.”

Cedric grins at him. There's a lightness to him that suggests to Harry that he, like Harry, is simply too relieved that they finally have a direction to this seemingly impossible task.

Fleur’s answer couldn’t come quicker.

Chapter Text

When Fleur’s reply comes, it comes with a thorough list of all the magical libraries in France. Their best chance, she suggests, is the Central Library in Paris, which covers the most breadth. But, as she also tells them, the Central Library is also the branch that guards their books most jealously.

“You’ll need someone to vouch for you in order to get access to the most coveted books,” the hare patronus explains in an airy tone. “Fleur will try to contact Madame Maxime for you.” It vanishes when it finishes its message.

“She seems nice.” Though he doesn’t know why exactly, something about the patronus’s voice puts a  smile on Harry’s face.

“That was Luna,” Cedric tells him. “She stays with the Weasleys. She usually sends patronuses on Fleur’s behalf because Fleur’s still working on her corporeal patronus.”

“Is it a hard spell, then?” Harry asks. Cedric smiles.

“It is. All the more impressive that you were able to master it in your third year at Hogwarts. Then you taught all of us.”

“I taught Luna too?”

“You were a pretty good teacher,” Cedric says with a grin, like he’s calling on fond memories.

After a couple more back-and-forths with Luna, and a quick round of packing, they find themselves at St. Pancras station to head to Paris. The man who checks their tickets has a bored look on his face.

“Passports?” he asks.

Harry fishes his passport out from his book bag, but Cedric looks distinctly like someone who’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Hurriedly, to distract the ticket inspector from Cedric’s awful poker face, Harry hands forward his own passport. The man flips through it.

“Right,” he says, handing it back to Harry. Then he gets an odd, unfocused look in his eyes, lasting only for a moment. “You two can move along now. Next!”

“Don’t you need to -- ” Harry asks, perhaps a little stupidly, but Cedric’s already pulling him through.

“You did something to that man,” says Harry, when they settle into their seats. “The one who checked our tickets.”

“I didn’t like doing it,” Cedric says darkly.. “It’s immoral, using magic on muggles without their consent...”

“...but sometimes there’s no choice,” Harry finished for him. 

“I realise that’s not an excuse.” There’s suddenly a viciously bitter look on Cedric’s face. “Only the worst of wizards abuse their magic on muggles like that. It’s supposed to be illegal. I would be punished for that, if the Ministry hadn’t become revoltingly corrupted.”

“Hey, Cedric,” Harry leans forward, putting a hand on Cedric’s knee. “Don’t beat yourself up too bad. You know there was no other way.”

“I don’t like utilitarian arguments,” Cedric says in response.

Not long after, their train pulls out of the station, and Cedric’s bad move quickly evaporates as they watch London flit past their window. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a train,” he says.

“When was your last time?”

“On the Hogwarts Express, in my seventh year.” Cedric has that nostalgic, faraway look in his eyes again, the same look he always wears whenever he talks about their school days. “There’s a lot of things to love about Hogwarts, but weirdly, taking the train to and from school was one of my favourites.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well the scenery’s fantastic, first of all. Once you get out of London, you see the rolling countrysides and the Scottish hills. Sunsets were the most beautiful -- the leaves would catch the glow of the fading sunlight and glitter gold. It was just very nice, getting to spend the day with your friends on the train, a whole compartment to yourselves, talking, eating sweets from the trolley, not having to worry about things like schoolwork, or exams.” Here, Cedric’s eyes reveal a deep, cutting sense of longing. “And the most beautiful part was that, no matter if it was on the way towards Hogwarts or London, you knew that at the end of the journey, you had a home waiting for you.”

Harry listens to Cedric speak with a longing in his own heart. He pictures himself, sitting in a compartment with Ron and Hermione -- however they looked like -- as the hills rolled by, sharing sweets, laughing, painted in the warm golden glow of dusk. He imagines feeling love, being loved. Belonging. He wishes so badly he could remember experiencing the beautiful moments that Cedric described.

Suddenly he’s so angry at the lost of his memories that he can’t breathe. These thoughts are nothing but fantasies. They’re not even memories.

“Harry?” Cedric asks.

Harry realises that he’s been staring out the window for the past while, and that his eyes are drilling holes through the glass pane. He rearranges his expression. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“Penny for your thoughts?”

He doesn’t reply immediately. Not because he doesn’t want to share, but because he doesn’t quite know how to put his thoughts into words. Finally, he says, “It’s just so frustrating, not knowing anything about myself or my past. And to hear all these wonderful stories from you, but not being able to remember anything at all.”

There’s a sympathetic look on Cedric’s face. “We’ll get you your memories back. It’s the reason why we’re going to Paris.”

“Yeah. Hopefully.”

“I mean, it wasn’t all great,” Cedric tries another tactic instead. There’s a teasing tone to his voice, which immediately puts Harry on guard. “There was one year where a great big basilisk was on the rampage and attacked a bunch of students. I’ll bet that’s a nice memory to forget.”

“A great big what?”

“A basilisk,” repeats Cedric, his grin growing wider. “This huge, fifty-foot-long snake with poison fangs and can kill you just by looking you in the eyes. Of course, you would know better than me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, there was a rumour going around that you killed it.”

“ What? ”

“I know,” Cedric looks far too amused at Harry’s incredulity. “You were, what, twelve at the time?”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Oh, I wish I was -- ” (and here, Harry flushes, but Cedric doesn’t look like he picked up on the inadvertent double entendre), “ -- but you seemed to have a knack for getting yourself into trouble. The stories that were told about you ever since your first year! Though I could never be true which ones were real and which ones were just rumours.”

“What stories?” Harry asks, interest piqued.

“Well, in your first year, you apparently fought Professor Quirrell and stopped him from getting something that could bring back You-Know-Who. I guess after seeing some of your memories, that story was true.”

Harry recalls the image of the little boy in the mirror, staring defiantly back at a purple-robed man.

“Then there was the basilisk in your second year.”

This time he recalls, for some reason, a red-haired girl with a pale face, lying on the wet floor of a stone dungeon.

“Third year... well, actually, your third year was pretty tame. There was just the whole issue with the dementors looking for Sirius Black.”

I killed Sirius Black!

“Oh, and of course, in your fourth year there was the -- ”

“Who’s Sirius Black?” Harry interrupts.

Cedric’s expression changes. There’s a sudden reluctance about him, like he wishes he could backtrack on his previous words, and Harry gets the feeling that this might be a delicate topic.

“I’ve heard that name before,” he says. “When I first tried to find out about my past, I didn’t manage to find much. “Besides the names of my aunt and uncle and some old school records, the only other thing I found was a bank account my parents left me. What’s strange,” he presses on, “is that somebody named Sirius Black also transferred a considerable amount of money into that account, about seven years ago. His name was the only one besides my relatives’ that I knew from my past. I tried looking for him. And now I have that memory of the woman in the graveyard, saying his name. Who was he to me?”

Sometimes, when Harry asks Cedric about certain things in his past, Cedric would get a look in his eyes that was partly sad, partly resigned. It’s a look that says, this is something you shouldn’t have had to forget. I’m sorry that you’re hearing it from me. It’s a look that Cedric is wearing right now.

“He was your godfather.”

Harry tries hard to ignore Cedric’s look. He focuses instead on this new piece of information. He has -- had -- a godfather.

“What happened to him?”

Cedric sighs deeply, like he hadn’t planned for the conversation to take this turn. “It happened in your fifth year. You-Know-Who lured you into a graveyard far from the school because he needed your blood for a ritual. Sirius was one of the people the Order sent to retrieve you, and that’s when he died.”

“Oh,” says Harry, hollowly. 

It feels strange, being told about the death of someone who was probably really close to him, yet whom he can’t remember at all. He remembers the rage and despair that he’d felt in the memory. He’d wanted Sirius’s killer to burn.  

But now... now Sirius is just a name to him. A person who supposedly occupied a role in his life: godfather. Someone who had cared about him, and someone he had cared about.

He feels the frustration simmering inside him again. 

He can’t even mourn properly without his memories.

Harry leans back against the headrest and closes his eyes. He’s so tired all of a sudden.

“Get some rest, Harry,” Cedric assures him. “I’ll wake you up when we get to Paris.”

It feels like no time at all before Cedric is gently shaking his shoulder.

“We’re here,” he says when Harry blinks his eyes open groggily.

When they exit the train station, Harry is hit by the overwhelming sense that he is not in England anymore. Though he’s been in Paris for all of ten seconds, he can decisively say that this is a completely different feeling than London. The city feels... old, in a way that London doesn’t, even just looking at Gare du Nord’s stone face and arched windows.

Cedric, however, looks a little less awed.

“I came here before with my mother,” he says after catching Harry’s eye, answering his unasked question. “Now, how do we get to Champs-Elysées?”

After some fumbling around with the map and several wrong turns, at long last they stand in front of the Arc de Triomphe, looking down the most famous street in Paris. Cedric looks around at the crowd of tourists.

“You can really give it up to the French wizards to be flashy.”

“Is there something we’re supposed to be doing here?”

“I need to tap these three cobblestones with my wand,” Cedric gestures with his foot, “but I can’t do it with all the tourists around. At least Diagon Alley has the good sense to be hidden away. How are we supposed to get in without people noticing?”

“Pardon, monsieur,” a woman says, holding a child by the hand.

“Oh, sorry,” Cedric steps back to let them pass, but the woman stops right in front of him. She kneels down in front of the cobblestones that Cedric had tapped with his foot. A second later she stands up again, pulling her child along. In the next instant, they vanish into the crowd.

Cedric looks stunned at how brazenly the woman had acted. 

Harry says, with just a hint of cheek in his tone, “I think the thing about tourists is that they don’t tend to pay much attention to what other people are doing around them.”

“Right,” Cedric responds dryly. Casting one last cautious look around them, Cedric kneels down too to tap the cobblestones. “Come on.”

Harry follows Cedric through the Arc de Triomphe. He gasps when they exit through the other side. Where a moment ago the street was bustling with cars and people, it now feels like they’ve traveled back in time. The concrete paving has been replaced with a wide, dirt road, and the branded storefronts now have signs advertising spellbooks and tailor services. There are still some cars driving by, hooded and old-fashioned.

“Staring isn’t polite, Harry,” Cedric admonishes teasingly, and Harry tears his eyes away from a group of wizards wearing long, colourful robes.

They walk down the street, Harry peering into each storefront in amazement. A block down, they pass two witches arguing heatedly in French over a crate of steely talons.

“Potions ingredients or food?” Harry asks.

Cedric wrinkles his nose at the thought. “Potions ingredients.”

They reach almost the end of the street when Harry says, “I haven’t seen the post office yet.”

“Hang on,” says Cedric. “I wanted to make a stop first. Ahh, here it is.”

They turn into a shop that’s very much not a post office. The walls are lined with long, thin boxes stacked on wooden shelves.

They’re in a wand shop.

Harry’s heart skips a beat. For some reason, even though he knows he’s a wizard, it never occurred to him that he should have a wand of his own, that he should be able to do magic. There had been too much to worry about, like learning about his past, and figuring out how to defeat Voldemort.

“I thought you’d need a wand,” Cedric turns to him, waiting for Harry’s reaction.

“Yeah, that -- that would be great,” Harry says, not quite knowing how to put his excitement into words.

They make their way to the front counter. A witch is sitting on a stool reading a magazine. At the sound of new customers approaching, she looks up. 

“Un moment, s’il-vous-plaît.” She turns back to her magazine, finishing the rest of her page. Harry and Cedric share a look of amusement. After a long moment, she finally rests her magazine on the counter and sidles toward them. “Vous voulez acheter une baguette?”

“Er, we’re looking to buy a wand?” says Harry, wondering if they’d completely misread the store and are actually standing in a bakery.

The witch rolls her eyes. “Oui, une baguette. A wand. Hé!” She suddenly shouts, making Harry jump. She snaps her fingers at a roll of measuring tape. “Au travaille! ”

The measuring tape levitates lazily off the counter, unrolling itself like a cat stretching after a long nap. It floats over to Harry and starts to measure different parts of his body.

“OK, try this.” The shopkeeper pushes a wand into Harry’s hand. Harry stands in place, holding the wand up, feeling very foolish.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks.

“Bah, it doesn’t work,” says the shopkeeper, snatching the wand from his hands. She pulls another wand from the shelves and hands it to him.

Harry takes the wand again, giving it a little wave. Nothing happens. The witch replaces the wand with another one.

“Here, try this one.”

The third wand doesn’t work either. Harry goes through what feels like half the wands in the shop. The shopkeeper looks increasingly puzzled.

“Ahh, mais c’est un client difficile, non?” She plants her hands on her hips. “Your old wand, it still works for you? You lose it?”

Harry doesn’t know how to tell her that he has no idea what happened to his old wand when Cedric interjects.

“It snapped in half.”

This only makes the shopkeeper look more confused. “Then it should not be so complicated.” She heads back through the shelves at the back of the store. “What was the core in the old wand?”

“I -- I don’t -- ” Harry looks at Cedric again for help.

“Phoenix tail feather, I think?” says Cedric.

The shopkeeper comes back into view, holding several boxes in her arms. “Your friend knows more about your wand than you do,” she says, laying the boxes on the counter.

Cedric blushes.

“Mrs. Weasley still keeps some of your stuff,” he explains to Harry hastily. “Ron and Hermione brought it back with them. I caught a glimpse of your old wand.”

“It’s okay,” Harry assures him, not knowing why Cedric is acting so defensively. It’s certainly helpful that Cedric knows these things about him when he himself has no clue.

He tries all the wands the shopkeeper brought out, but to no avail. The shopkeeper looks thoroughly stumped.

“Those are all the wands I have,” she says. She looks slightly, just slightly, apologetic.

“Do you know if there are any other wand shops around here we can try?” Cedric asks.

The shopkeeper shakes her head. “Not in Paris. But perhaps, in the smaller villages, you can find some wandmakers. Aguillard, she is very good but retired. I hear she is in Colmar now-days.”

“Aguillard in Colmar?” Cedric repeats.

“Yes, she was the best. I take over this shop from her.”

Cedric nods at her and gives her a smile. “I see. Thank you.”

They leave the store in slightly worse spirits than when they entered.

“Don’t be too discouraged, this kind of thing happens.”

“Does it?”

“Well...”

Harry cocks a brow and Cedric sighs.

“Okay, so it’s not often that someone goes through an entire store without finding themselves a wand. But matching a wizard to a wand is supposed to be a delicate thing. Ollivander always said it’s the wand who chooses the wizard.”

“So I must be exceedingly mediocre for none of those wands to choose me.”

“Or you’re very powerful,” Cedric pushes back, “and none of the wands back there wanted to take on a power they’re unable to contain.”

“Hmm.” Harry lets the subject drop, even though he’s not entirely convinced.

A couple of stores down from the wand shop, they finally come across the post office. When they enter, the store is full of -- and truly, Harry cannot possibly imagine why a post office would be full of these, among all things -- owls.

“Mail for Cedric Diggory?” Cedric says to the man at the front desk.

The man points at a round disk sitting on the counter. “Tap wand here.”

Cedric does so, and the disk lights up in silver. “It’s confirming my magical signature,” Cedric explains to a fascinated Harry.

The man heads toward the stack of parcels and letters behind the counter.

“For Cedric Diggory,” he says, handing Cedric a thick envelope.

“Merci, monsieur,” Cedric takes the envelope and pays the man postage.

As they walk back up the street to the Arc de Triomphe, Cedric opens the envelope. There are two pieces of parchment in it: a letter to Cedric, and another letter vouching for their access to the library. Cedric reads the first letter out loud.

“Dear M. Diggory, 

“Hope you are still keeping well. I have heard from Fleur you need access to the Bibliothèque Centrale. Enclosed is a letter from myself vouching for you. Please note I am helping as a favour to one of my best students, and out of consideration for my friendship with your Professor Dumbledore. 

“Mme. Maxime. ”

“I’m guessing taking down a dark wizard wasn’t itself reason enough for her to help,” Harry remarks.

“We can’t be too harsh on her,” says Cedric good-naturedly. “I’m sure she would help us regardless. This is just how she is.”

They walk back through the archway and their ears are once again assaulted by the noise of honking cars and the excited chittering of tourists.

“Where to now?” Harry asks.

Cedric tucks the envelope into his coat. “Lunch first, then we head to the library.”

There’s a quaint little cafe several blocks down from where they are. As they eat, there’s a lightness to Cedric’s shoulders that hadn’t been there back in London.

“It’s nice being somewhere free, for once.” Cedric watches the passersby in the bustling street. “Not having to be in hiding, constantly checking if there are Death Eaters around.”

“You-Know-Who hasn’t managed to expand beyond Britain, then?”

Cedric shakes his head. “He may have a few wayward followers here and there, but his forces aren’t strong enough yet to pick a fight on foreign territory. Not that it seems like he has much interest in taking over anywhere outside Britain.”

After they finish lunch, they take the underground to the Central Library. As they resurface and Harry gets a proper look at the outer façade, he can’t help but laugh.

“You’re joking. The Louvre?”

“We’re much more discrete in wizarding Britain,” Cedric grumbles. “Honestly, where’s the sense in putting all your wizarding books in the biggest muggle tourist attraction in the entire country?”

They walk into the square, weaving through the large crowds. Harry studies their surroundings carefully, occasionally peering curiously down one of the glass pyramids. 

“There’s our statue.” He points at one of the towering stone figures lining the square. It’s a likeness of a man in layered robes, both hands gripping the base of his wand, the way one would be holding a sword. To an onlooking muggle, he would easily blend in with the other statues of garbed noblemen. To anyone who knew what they were looking for, though, there was no mistaking that this was a wizard. They walk over.

Cedric stands directly below the statue, looking up into the wizard’s face. “Scientiam tuam quaerimus,” he recites.

The wizard moves. He steps off his podium, which elongates into a staircase. Harry looks quickly around, but it seems like nobody but he and Cedric noticed the disturbance. He follows Cedric up the staircase, which leads all the way up to one of the balconies on an upper floor.

Cedric unlatches the door once they stand on the balcony. Below, the staircase retracts and the statue takes his place back on the podium.

Harry doesn’t know what he was expecting a magical library to look like, but as they enter, it looks just like any other ordinary library. It even reminds him of the one he used to study in back at uni. They approach the librarian’s desk near the entrance.

“Hello,” says Cedric pleasantly, pulling out Madame Maxime’s letter. “We’d like to access some books.”

The librarian takes the letter, reading it over suspiciously. “English wizards with a letter from the Headmistress at Beauxbatons?”

“You can authenticate it,” Cedric offers.

The librarian pulls out her wand, prodding the letter here and there, occasionally muttering certain words. After a rather longer while than Harry thought was deserved, she sits back grumpily, apparently satisfied with its authenticity. “The English section is on the second level.”

“We can go inside, then?”

“You can look. If you take any books with you, you need to check out. Otherwise, the wards over the building will do nasty things.”

“Delightful,” Cedric mutters to Harry, who smothers a snort as they enter the library.

There’s an eerie quietness to the library, not unsettling, but not comfortable either. A handful of patrons are scattered around, some perusing the shelves, others scribbling over desks. One girl is flipping intently through her book, completely oblivious that the quill she’s using to trace circles over her knee is tracking ink onto her robes.

“Here,” Cedric whispers, gesturing at a section of shelves to their right. “Oh, here we are, books on magic dealing with the mind.”

They split the shelves between them, Cedric starting from the left and Harry on the right. They spend a long while flipping through the books. Occasionally either of them would find something interesting, and Cedric would tap the page with this wand, lifting the words and placing them onto a sheet of parchment. Harry supposes it’s more efficient than using a scanner.

“I’m going to see if I can find any books on horcruxes,” he tells Cedric some time into their research. Cedric nods, still reading from a particularly thick book.

Harry wades further into the library and down a flight of spiral stairs. There are no patrons down here. The silence unsettles him even more, especially without Cedric’s steadying presence by his side. He walks quickly towards one of the shelves, hoping that research will distract him from the unnerving feeling in his stomach.

Eventually he stumbles on his first book mentioning the word “horcrux”, but only as a passing example of kinds of dark magic that could rob a person of their humanity. The footnote refers him to another book, which he finds in a section containing books exclusively on dark magic.

He flips the book open. He might be imagining it, but he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Pushing down the disquieted feeling, he scans quickly through the table of contents and decides with grim satisfaction that this is exactly the book they need on their quest.

As Harry’s about to look up from the book, he suddenly pinpoints the reason he’s feeling so perturbed. It’s not due to any preternatural powers from the book.

It’s because he’s being watched.

He’s quite sure of this, because he hears the sound of repressed movement across the shelf from him, but there’s no sound of shuffling books, or rustling papers, or any indication that the person beyond the shelf is doing any research himself.

Harry can’t think of a single non-sinister reason why someone would be watching him. The plus side, however, is that this person only seems to be observing him, and had not made any move to attack.

There are slow, muffled footsteps on the other side. His observer is coming around the shelf.

Keeping his head ducked and pretending like he’s still engrossed in the book, Harry weaves through the shelves towards the spiral staircase. As soon as he rounds the bend, he sprints back upstairs toward Cedric. 

“Find anything interesting?” Cedric asks. He registers Harry’s expression and takes on a look of alarm. “What is it?”

“There was someone watching me downstairs,” Harry tells him quickly. “They were hiding in the shelves, I didn’t see them, but they were definitely watching me.”

Cedric rubs his face. “You-Know-Who must have eyes here.”

“I thought you said he only controlled the libraries in Britain?”

“He’s not powerful enough to infiltrate the wizarding communities outside Britain yet, but he’s smart enough to have spies watching the major libraries in the continent. He knows we’re after the horcruxes, he probably planted spies to watch over all the books on that subject. He has enough followers outside Britain to do so. I’ll wager whoever was watching you isn’t actually a Death Eater, otherwise they’d have attacked you directly. We need to get out of here before they call for reinforcements.”

They pack up their rolls of parchment and hurry across the common area. Cedric checks behind them.

“That librarian is following us. He just came up from the floor below.”

They hurry toward the exit.

“Wait, we need to check out this book!”

Cedric follows Harry over to the front desk.

“How can I check this out?” Harry asks the librarian at the counter.

“Madame Maxime didn’t say she vouched for you to check out books,” the witch says scornfully.

“Please, this is important,” Harry says urgently. “We really need this book and we... we...”

“We’re going to miss our portkey,” Cedric finishes for him. “We really have to get going but the book is important for our research. Look, Madame Maxime trusts us, that’s why she vouched for us.”

The librarian looks at their desperate faces with little expression. She appears to be thinking it over, completely unhurriedly.

Harry picks worriedly at his sleeves.

“Ahh, fine, you can take the book,” the librarian says. “But you must return in three weeks. And if we don’t get the book back, Madame Maxime will personally be responsible.”

“Thank you,” they tell her, sounding a little too relieved. As they head toward the balcony, their way is blocked by rapidly coalescing clouds of black smoke.

“Fuck,” Cedric swears, and if the sight of Death Eaters doesn’t scare Harry, the sound of Cedric swearing sure does. Cedric pulls Harry closer to him.

“What are you doing?” Harry asks as he taps his wand on Harry’s forehead. There’s a sudden, peculiar sensation, like a raw egg was cracked over his head, trickling coldly down his body.

“Get out of here. Wait for me at the fountain outside the Louvre.”

Three hooded Death Eaters appear in the middle of the library.

“Go! ”

Cedric pushes him away, just in time to swivel around and block a spell sent toward them.

“Qu’est-ce qui s’passe? ” the witch at the front desk exclaims.

“Stupefy !” Cedric yells, sending a stream of red light toward one of the assailants, who falls to the floor.

Another assailant volleys back with a jet of fire. Cedric summons one of the busts from the lobby to shield himself.

Harry stands rooted to the spot as Cedric exchanges curses with the Death Eaters, two against one. Though he fights quite adeptly, it’s clear that he’s being outnumbered. Harry wishes he could be even slightly useful instead of hiding.

“Cedric, watch out!” 

One of the attackers has circled around behind Cedric and sends a curse that sends him flying backward, right in the direction of his colleague.

The other Death Eater points his wand at Cedric.

“Crucio .”

Cedric screams. It’s so devastating that Harry feels his heart stop.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” he roars. A wave of furious energy rolls off of him, slamming the Death Eater into the wall and knocking them unconscious. Harry rushes over to Cedric’s side. “Cedric?” He shakes his shoulder.

Cedric’s panting heavily. “I’m okay,” he says, face twisted in pain.

“We need to get out of here.” Harry helps him to his feet. Another spell wizzes past Harry’s ear, narrowly missing. 

Cedric throws up a shield, grabs Harry around the shoulders, and disapparates.

~oOo~

They reappear in a familiar train station. Gare du Nord. The din of the station is disorienting.

“Come on,” Harry pulls Cedric towards the ticket booth. “Where’s the next train going?” he asks the young man at the front desk.

“Colmar in ten minutes,” the man replies.

“That’s where the wandmaker lives,” Cedric reminds Harry.

“Great, yes, two tickets to Colmar, then.”

Harry waits impatiently for the man to give him their tickets, casting fervent looks around to make sure no Death Eaters would come popping up. When he’s finally handed the tickets, he all but tears them from the man’s hands. “Thank you!”

He drags Cedric over to their platform. They hop onto the train -- or stumble, in Cedric’s case -- minutes before it pulls out of the station. Harry takes one last look out the window, but it doesn’t seem like the Death Eaters have followed them to the station.

When they find their seats, Cedric practically collapses. Harry wonders what spell the Death Eaters could have possibly cast on him when Cedric pulls up his shirt.

There’s a deep, bloody gash in his side.

Harry remembers the forcefulness with which he pulled Cedric through the station and winces.

“God, Cedric, I’m so sorry,” he says.

“Harry, you saved me,” Cedric reassures him. “That was some really impressive wandless magic.” He grits his teeth again when another bout of pain stabs at him. “Can you find a vial of green potion in my bag?”

Harry picks up Cedric’s duffle bag and rummages through it for the potion. It’s considerably more difficult due to the bag’s bottomless capabilities. At long last, he pulls out a small glass vial with a swirling, pale green liquid. He uncorks it and passes it to Cedric.

Cedric drips some of the liquid onto his wound. As the potion makes contact with his skin, it emits a puff of green smoke. When the smoke dissipates, the skin in Cedric’s side has stitched together, looking good as new save for a considerable amount of blood around the now-disappeared wound.

Harry digs through his own bag for a hand towel. “Let me go wet this,” he tells Cedric, who gives him a grateful smile.

When he comes back with the wet towel, Cedric has his head tilted back, his eyes closed.

“Asleep?” Harry asks quietly. Cedric blinks his eyes open, pulling himself up straight. 

“Mm, thank you,” he says as Harry hands him the towel. Harry watches him wipe the blood from his side.

“Here, I’ll rinse it for you,” Harry says once Cedric has wiped the wound clean.

After rinsing the blood from the cloth, Harry takes a detour by the catering bar to pick up some sandwiches and pastries. He figures that Cedric would appreciate something to eat. However, when he makes his way back to their seat, he sees that Cedric is fast asleep.

Harry sighs. He takes his seat across from Cedric and puts the food in his book bag for later. After a long moment, he reaches forward and adjusts Cedric’s posture so that he’s sitting more comfortably. Then, delicately, and cautious not to touch him, he brushes a stray hair out of Cedric’s eyes and tucks it behind Cedric’s ears.

Sitting back in his seat, Harry turns his head toward the window and watches as the Parisian buildings give way to untamed greenery.

Across from him, Cedric sleeps.

They hurtle towards Colmar.

Chapter Text

Cedric stirs just as their train begins to slow. Harry looks up from staring intently at the water bottle balanced on the palm of his hand in time to see Cedric blink bleary eyes awake. He watches as the other man frowns, the day’s events catching up to him. Suddenly, Cedric shoots up in alarm.

“Harry, did that librarian see your face?”

Taken slightly aback by his sudden energy, Harry takes a moment to process what Cedric is asking. “The librarian that was following me? No, I don’t think so. We had the bookcase between us, and I had my head down the entire time.”

The alarm leaves Cedric’s face as quickly as it had come.

“Oh, good.”

“Why is it important that he didn’t see my face?” Harry asks.

“Let’s just say it’s better that the Death Eaters think you’re dead. You-Know-Who was kind of obsessed with killing you.

“Don’t you think he’s still going to try to kill me now that he knows there’s two wizards somewhere in France trying to find out about horcruxes?”

Cedric’s lips quirk mysteriously. “Trust me, Harry, it’s not the same. You-Know-Who really has it out for you.”

Harry has a feeling that Cedric still hasn’t told him everything, and is just about to call him out on it when Cedric winces in pain.

“I thought your potion healed your wound,” Harry glances worriedly at the dried blood on Cedric’s shirt.

“It’s not that.” Cedric pulls himself up straighter. “It was the Cruciatus curse. Sometimes it leaves a phantom pain.”

Harry remembers the agonising way Cedric had screamed back in the library. His heart gives an unpleasant squeeze. “What was that spell?”

“The Cruciatus? It’s a curse used for torture. One of the three Unforgivables that are banned from being used.”

Though he’d gleaned as much from the way Cedric had reacted to the spell, actually hearing the word ‘torture’ being used shakes Harry. His hand reaches out, unbidden, to offer Cedric some comfort. When he realises what he’s doing, he quickly curls his arm back and reaches up to ruffle his own hair.

“I brought you some food,” he changes the subject quickly, and a little too loudly. 

Fortunately for him, Cedric only looks grateful at the prospect of food. In any case, he doesn’t seem to realise that Harry had been two seconds away from holding onto his hand.

~oOo~

The sky is dark and the air is chilly by the time they step out of the train station. After several wrong turns down the streets and some impressively decent French from Cedric to passersby, they find an inn to rest for the night.

The innkeeper at the front desk says something in French to Cedric that makes him blush.

Clearing his throat and ducking his head shyly, Cedric replies, “ deux, s’il-vous-plaît .”*

Harry has no idea what the innkeeper could have said to make Cedric react like that, especially since she didn’t sound like she was being flirtatious at all.

He doesn’t sleep well that night. After the day’s events, it’s starting to sink into him exactly what he’s gotten himself into (or rather, back into). His mind takes him back, always, to the sound of Cedric’s screaming. But the way Cedric talked about it, like he was accustomed to it, the way he stood back up and apparated them away after being literally tortured ...

Was this something pre-memory loss Harry had experienced as well? Had Harry himself ever been tortured before? If Voldemort had been dead-set on killing him, it wasn’t a stretch to think that he could have been.

Yet, oddly, he finds that he’s not scared. Maybe because his subconsciousness remembers that he’s been through worse, somehow. Or may because it’s much easier to be brave when he’s with somebody who’s just as brave, who’s committed to fighting the good fight even when the odds are stacked against them.

Across the room from him, there’s a noticeable absence of slow, measured breathing, suggesting that Cedric is as wide awake as Harry.

The next morning, with the sun beating relentlessly through the blinds and into his eyes, Harry gets up bright and early. After a quick change of clothes and morning hygiene, he takes his breakfast out on the patio behind the inn overlooking the canal. As he sips his coffee, he flips open the book they borrowed on horcruxes.

The book is morbidly fascinating. It’s comprehensive in its knowledge. Harry speeds through the history of horcruxes, then into some of the practical cautions of horcrux-making. The writer of the book, it seems, has no moral aversion to the making of horcruxes, though he does take care to warn against the improvident making of horcruxes.

He becomes so engrossed in the book that he jumps when a hand touches his shoulder. He looks up to see Cedric smiling at him, moving to take the opposite seat.

“Anything useful yet?” the man nods at the book in Harry’s hands.

“So far the book’s just told me a list of things that would not make for good horcruxes.” Harry lists them off with his fingers. “Objects that you can’t keep track of, objects that are too conspicuous, living things...”

“What about how to destroy them?”

“That’s not until chapter nine.”

“Oh, of course. My mistake.” Cedric’s eyes sparkle with mirth.

Harry lowers his book. “...What’s so funny?”

Cedric shakes his head. “Nothing.” He still looks like he’s suppressing a grin. “You just never struck me as someone who liked to read.”

“I like to read when I’m interested in what I’m learning. I mean, I just found out magic exists a week ago. This is interesting stuff.”

Cedric continues to watch him with a soft smile on his face. Harry hurriedly lowers his gaze back down. As he flips through the pages, he notices Cedric pull out the notes he’d copied from the library, and thank goodness too. It's hard to concentrate with the weight of Cedric's gaze on him.

They read for a while, the morning sun climbing incrementally higher into the sky, the water from the canals lapping soothingly below them. Occasionally a boatful of tourists would pass by, giving them cheerful waves.

About two coffees later, Harry puts down his book and rubs tiredly at his eyes. Cedric is still studying his notes attentively. Sitting back in his seat, Harry fixes his attention on the coffee cup in front of him. His brows knit together in concentration.

When Cedric puts his notes down a while later, Harry quickly looks away and smoothes out his expression, but Cedric is too quick for him.

“What were you doing?” 

“Just zoning out,” Harry’s tone is a little too unaffected.

Cedric raises an eyebrow. “I saw you with that focused look last night on the train, too. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing’s bothering me, honestly.”

“Then what’s on your mind?” Cedric isn’t willing to let the subject drop.

Harry mutters something incoherently.

“Come again?”

“Iwastryingtogetthecuptolevitate,” he says with a flush of embarrassment, feeling very foolish.

Cedric, however, doesn’t look like he wants to make fun of Harry at all. In fact, he’s looking at him quite earnestly. “You were trying to do wandless magic?”

Harry shrugs. “Yeah, well, I’m a wizard, right? I figured, if I was able to fling a Death Eater into the air without a wand, I might be able to do some other things as well.”

“Of course,” Cedric shakes his head. “You haven't been able to do any magic at all. That must be awful, for a wizard. How could I be so thoughtless?

Cedric looks so troubled that Harry’s beginning to feel bad for even bringing it up. “Hey,” he says, kicking Cedric gently under the table. “Maybe if we manage to find Aguillard, she can make a wand for me. And you can teach me some spells.”

“Maybe,” Cedric agrees, still looking thoughtful.

Later during the afternoon, they wander around for a change of scenery. Colmar is a charming town to explore. They bring their book bags with them, picking up some sweets from the quaint stores they pass along their way. Weaving through the narrow, cobbled walkways, they gasp in astonishment when the canals and alleyways suddenly open up and give way to a small, secluded clearing.

“Oh, this is perfect.” Cedric leads the way through the grass and towards a pond that’s shaded by trees like a makeshift alcove. They lay their blanket in a spot underneath the sunlight. "It's beautiful here."

“Yeah, it’s... erm... really beautiful,” Harry agrees lamely, trying to distract from the fact that his mind is unhelpfully suggesting that he tell Cedric that he's beautiful too.

Once they're seated, Cedric looks around, checking for onlookers. Then he leans in. 

For a short, absolutely absurd moment, Harry thinks he’s going to kiss him. He hardly dares to move, or even breathe.

But Cedric pulls out his wand instead and places it in Harry’s hands.

Harry blinks down at the wand uncomprehendingly, brain still recovering its function after Cedric’s proximity.

“I’m going to teach you a spell,” Cedric explains simply.

“I thought I needed my own wand.” Harry turns Cedric’s wand around in his hand, marveling at the feeling.

“Magic is most effective when you have your own wand, but it’s not necessary,” Cedric explains patiently. “It’s still possible to do simple spells with another’s wand, and a powerful witch or wizard can do some great things even with a wand that’s not their own.”

“So it’s possible for me to do magic now?” 

“Why don’t we try it out?” Cedric’s eyes twinkle at the excitement in Harry’s expression. He extends his hand for his wand back. “We can start with a simple levitation charm. Here, you swish and flick your wand, like this,” he flicks his wand toward a fallen leaf in front of them, “and say wingardium leviosa .”

The leaf floats gracefully upwards.

“ Wingardium leviosa ,” Harry repeats, and an odd image flashes in his mind. His hand moves reflexively up to his temple.

“What is it?” Cedric asks, concerned.

“Nothing, just another memory. I think there was a -- a troll?”

Cedric frowns as he no doubt tries to recall when Harry would have ever had contact with a troll. “Would you be thinking of that time a troll was let loose on Hallowe’en?” he asks bemusedly. “My third year, so your first year?”

Harry shrugs. “Could be. I only remember someone casting a levitation charm on the troll’s club and it knocking him out.”

Cedric stares. “You’re kidding me. You took out that troll too? You would've only had two months of schooling in you.”

“I’m pretty sure there were other people with me.”

“Ron and Hermione?"

“Must be.” Harry closes his eyes, trying to retain more of the memory. All he remembers is a shock of red hair. “Yeah, I think so.” He tries to conjure up more of Ron’s image, but the memory is hazy.

He feels a gentle hand on his arm.

“Try the spell, Harry,” Cedric coaxes.

Harry takes the wand. He focuses on another leaf in front of them. “ Wingardium leviosa ,” he recites, swishing and flicking toward the leaf.

The leaf trembles, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from the wind or from magic.

“That’s alright,” Cedric reassures him. “It always takes the first years several classes to master, and you’ve done this before, so it must take you even less time.”

Harry nods, trying not to be too disheartened. “Can I keep practising with this?” he raises Cedric’s wand in a question.

“By all means,” Cedric splays his hands. He turns towards his book bag. “I’ll keep doing some reading.”

“I don’t know if you strike me as someone who likes to read,” Harry volleys back Cedric’s words from earlier that morning.

“I mean, it’s not my favourite thing in the world,” Cedric replies playfully. “But I liked school well enough.”

“Were you one of those people who had effortlessly good grades without trying that hard?”

The blush on Cedric’s cheeks indicates that Harry must be correct.

“Go focus on your charms, Potter,” Cedric pointedly turns his attention to his notes, though he sports a wide grin nonetheless.

Harry, also grinning, focuses on the leaf ahead of him.

After several unsuccessful attempts, he at long last gets the leaf to lift shakily off the ground. He tries to force it up just a little higher when a breeze comes by and whisks the leaf away. It’s another long while before he’s finally able to control the leaf just the way he wants it to.

Turning his endeavours towards a more ambitious goal, he next tries to levitate a fallen tree branch just several feet ahead of them.

An hour into his attempts, however, he’s still unable to get the branch to even so much as shift in place.

“How’s the practising going?” Cedric asks when Harry slumps backward onto the blanket.

Groaning in reply, Harry flips around so that he can look at Cedric. “How’s the reading going?” he asks instead.

At the less-than-enthusiastic expression on Cedric’s face, Harry can already guess the answer.

“It seems like there is a potion that can restore lost memories, but you’d need an advanced potions master to be able to brew it. There are some other methods in here too, but they all take much longer.”

“What do you think’s our best option?”

Cedric flips through the sheets of parchment. “I can try to brew this potion here. It’s supposed to be kind of like a sedative to make you more cooperative with mind spells. Then I can try to use legilimency on you again, hopefully with more control.”

Though Harry isn’t eager to have his mind flipped through again, not after that last time, he nods at Cedric’s words.

“Sure, let’s do it.”

“The only problem is that we need potion ingredients and a cauldron. We’d need to find a wizarding settlement.”

“You think there might be a settlement around here? If Aguillard lives here?”

Cedric perks up. “There might be. Hang on. Let me send a message to Fleur -- she’d know if there’s a settlement around here.”

Harry passes Cedric’s wand to him, watching as the wisps of silver gather into a stallion, galloping off to carry Cedric’s question to its recipient. After the patronus runs off, Cedric  hands his wand back to Harry. “Here, you can keep practising.”

They stay out for a little while more. As the afternoon dips into early evening, the golden glow from the sunlight gives way to a rich amber, dusting itself over their silhouettes. More than once, Harry takes quick, secretive glances over at Cedric, who’s engrossed in his notes. He has his collar upturned against wind, and Harry is surprisingly endeared at the way he flattens his notes impatiently against the blanket when the wind rustles the sheets of parchment.

Fleur’s response finally comes to them later that night in their room in the form of Luna’s airy voice. As luck would have it, there is in fact a wizarding settlement not far from Colmar, about a day’s hike away. And, as luck would also have it, Fleur knows of Aguillard, having had her wand custom-made by the wandmaker.

The next morning, they set off according to Fleur’s instructions. It takes them a while to escape the winding alleys of the city, cobblestones eventually giving way to dirt paths among grassy fields. Soon, even the dirt paths are taken over by wild, unkempt undergrowth.

“We are going the right way, yeah?” Harry asks several hours later. It’s thankfully a cloudy day, shielding them from the scorching heat of the sun that’s already climbed to its highest peak in the sky.

Cedric lays his wand flat on his hand. “Point me.” The wand swivels until it points to the right. “We’re going the right way.”

They take their lunch sitting on some large boulders, overlooking the valley that they left behind. 

“So wizards can’t fly or anything?” Harry’s question is only half-joking.

“Some wizards can, if they’re very powerful,” Cedric answers. “Most wizards need something to help them fly, though, like a broomstick.”

Harry’s memory flashes with the image of a large stadium and players weaving through fifty-foot tall hoops on either side. “Broomsticks, like in Quidditch.”

Cedric smiles in response.

After the much-needed break, they resume their hike with newfound rigour. Not long later, they finally make it to the top of the mountain. It’s at this time that the sun decides to break through the clouds, showering its rays on them. Cedric tilts his head back with his eyes closed, the crown of his head encircled like a halo. His brown hair glows almost blonde in the light. Harry allows himself one long look before he turns away.

“Come on, Cedric, we have the other half of the mountain to hike down.”

It’s late in the afternoon by the time they finally see the magical town of Gildoré in the distance, sitting near the base of the next mountain. Too exhausted to do anything more than exchange excited glances, the two of them trudge forward toward their destination.

They make it to Gildoré before the sun sets.

The first sign of the town’s magical nature is the owls that seem to be fluttering over every single house. The next sign is the massive literal sign of a half-griffin, half-horse hanging in front of an inn. They check themselves into the inn and trudge up to their room, dumping their coats and bags onto the armchair in the corner.

Harry flops backward onto his bed, already dangerously sinking halfway into sleep.

“We need to get dinner.” Cedric taps the side of his arm.

Harry groans and smothers his face into the pillow. “What if I just went to bed? How important is dinner, anyway?”

“Very important, considering how much we walked today. Come on, Harry,” Cedric says teasingly. “Be a good boy now.”

Harry flushes. He sits up immediately to prevent Cedric from continuing to talk. He pretends not to see Cedric's offered arm when he pushes himself up.

They have dinner in the adjoining bar downstairs. It’s a silent affair, both too hungry and tired to speak. As he eats, Harry gazes out the window, watching the twilight sky turn from a fiery pink to a deep, inky purple. When he turns his attention back inside, he catches Cedric looking at him. He half expects Cedric to look away, but the other man only continues looking at him, expression unchanged. 

Perhaps he’s feeling tired, Harry thinks.

When they get back to their room, Harry curls up on an empty armchair while he waits his turn for the shower. He tries to read some more on horcruxes, but his eyes run across the same line over and over again without registering a single word. Eyelids drooping, he doesn’t even realise he’d fallen asleep until someone’s shaking him gently awake

“Let’s get you to bed now,” Cedric murmurs, tugging at his arm.

“Hmm?” Harry hums sleepily. He feels a book being taken from his hands and hears it being put on the table beside him. Then, he’s being helped to his feet and walked toward the bed. His glasses are slid carefully off his face.

Harry lies back down, wrapping himself in the warm covers. He hears an endeared chuckle.

“Goodnight, Harry.”

Someone presses a hand against his hair, and then sleep overtakes him.

~oOo~

For the next several days, they make Gildoré their home base. They pick up some potion ingredients and a cauldron at a nearby shop, and Harry is no less intrigued by the range of items around the store, whether sitting in glass jars on the shelves or hanging from strings draped across the store.

“Can I help with anything?” Harry asks as Cedric sets up the cauldron in their room.

“It’s best if you don’t touch anything.” Cedric weighs some goopy substance on a set of scales, double-checking his notes before pouring it into the cauldron. “Potion-making is a precise art, we don’t want you to --”

“Mess anything up?” Harry offers before Cedric can finish his sentence.

Cedric looks up. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“No, don’t worry about it, you’re right,” Harry says quickly, though he can’t keep an irrational sense of hurt from his voice.

Cedric presses his lips together, dismayed. “I really didn’t mean it that way. It’s just... I’m not the best at potion-making either. I may have passed my potions NEWT, but we didn’t exactly have the most inspiring potions professor.”

The uncertainty in Cedric’s voice makes Harry immediately feel guilty. “Hey,” he says, offering an encouraging smile. “I believe in you.”

“Thanks, Harry,” Cedric returns his smile. “Those are far kinder words than I’ve ever gotten from Professor Snape.”

Something in Harry’s mind twinges at the name.

“Snape?” he asks.

A shadow flits across Cedric’s expression. “He was our old potions professor. A truly talented potions master, but not a good person.”

Which is how Harry finds out from Cedric that Snape had been the one to kill Professor Dumbledore. “None of us could believe it,” Cedric shakes his head regretfully. “Dumbledore had put all his trust in Snape, but it turned out he was really working for You-Know-Who the entire time. Not that it ended well for him -- he was killed by You-Know-Who a couple years ago.”

While Cedric spends the next several days working on the potion, Harry alternates between reading the book on horcruxes and practising his magic. He’s managed to master wingardium leviosa quite wonderfully and has now graduated to the more difficult summoning charm. He’s also gotten quite good at lumos , causing Cedric to throw a pillow at him one night when he repeatedly turned the lights on and off in their room.

They also make attempts to find the mysterious wandmaker, Aguillard, whose cottage according to Fleur’s directions is situated not very far from Gildoré. It’s about half an hour’s walk, through a stretch of green field, past a shimmering pond, and over a small hill helpfully paved with stone steps. On the other side of the hill, just enough to be hidden from view, is a cozy stone cottage nestled in a garden of colourful flowers.

Nobody ever comes to the door when Harry and Cedric make their visits.

Still, they don’t feel too discouraged. In fact, after only a short time at Gildoré, they feel like they’ve gotten to know this little town quite well and have settled into a nice rhythm.

One night, they’re sitting at the bar in their inn. It’s a weekend night, and the bar is much busier than usual. They’re several drinks in and Cedric is sharing a story from their Hogwarts days when, for the first time since they’ve started their journey together, a man approaches them.

“Pardon me,” he says, coming up to stand between Harry and Cedric, “I can’t help noticing you are both English, yes?”

“Can we help you with anything?” Cedric asks, polite as always, though a hint of cautiousness seeps into his tone.

“You are new here,” the man continues, turning to Cedric.

“We’re not locals,” Cedric replies neutrally. Harry sees his hand shift incrementally toward the wand in his back pocket.

“Ahh, I know.” The man’s voice takes on a lower register. “I would know if I have seen someone as beautiful as you around here before.”

Oh, God.

This man isn't a Death Eater. He's hitting on Cedric.

From the way his hand relaxes, Cedric also seems to realise the situation. There's a vaguely amused expression on his face.

“What's your story?” the man continues.

Harry suppresses a snort. Perhaps he would feel jealous if it isn't for the fact that Cedric clearly looks uninterested. Their eyes connect over the man’s shoulder. Harry takes a drink from his glass, eyebrow raised.

“Thank you, but my friend and I are just looking to get a drink together,” Cedric says.

“Let me buy you a drink, then.” The man reaches forward to put an arm around Cedric’s shoulders. 

Instantly, Harry feels his amusement vanish. Cedric, too, looks increasingly annoyed as he brushes the man’s arm off cooly.

“I’m really not interested. Your company might be desired elsewhere, but it certainly isn’t here.”

Their interloper takes several steps back. He looks from Cedric to Harry to Cedric again. Then, with a scoff, he retreats to another area of the bar.

Harry watches as Cedric rubs at his shoulder. “Sorry about that.”

Cedric shrugs. “Nah, it happens. I get that a lot.”

An ugly surge of jealousy pools in Harry's stomach. Of course people flirt with Cedric. Who wouldn’t? He’s handsome, charming, and kind, too. And who’s Harry to even feel jealous? Even though the two of them are traveling together, it’s not like he has any... "claim" to Cedric. If anything, it’s sweet of Cedric to let Harry travel with him, even though Harry’s probably slowing him down.

He takes another drink.

He realises Cedric is staring at him.

“What is it?” he asks.

“You’re not slowing me down,” says Cedric.

Fuck . “How much of that did I say out loud?” Harry asks in horror. He must be much drunker than he originally thought.

“You just said that it’s nice of me to let you travel with me when you’re probably slowing me down,” Cedric relays, and Harry thanks his lucky stars. But Cedric is frowning, and he’s eyes are trained on Harry intently. “That’s not true, you know.”

Harry laughs. It comes out more bitter than he expected. “I mean, if we’re being real, I have no memories, no information that can help us, and I can’t do magic. I am a little useless.”

Cedric is looking at Harry like he can’t believe what he’s saying. “Harry, I always thought you were the bravest, most brilliant person I’ve ever met. You’ve saved the world more times than I can count. You saved my life more than once.”

“But that was before,” Harry stresses. “What am I now? I don’t even know who I am. I need you to tell me things about myself, and you’re telling me these incredible stories about me fighting evil wizards, battling monsters, teaching people spells that apparently grown wizards find hard to master. But that doesn’t feel like me. I don’t know anything about this world where we come from, I can’t -- I can’t do anything ...”

“Are you kidding me?” Cedric looks absolutely incredulous. “Harry, you lost your memory . You rebuilt yourself from scratch, all on your own, and then you willingly gave that all up to help me save a world you don’t even remember. You’re every bit as brave and selfless as you ever were. And sure, it might take some time to catch you up to speed again, but that’s because, again, you lost your memory . Look, I can’t imagine what it would be like if I lost either my memory or my magic. I think I’d be terrified. I don’t know how I’d be handling it, but it sure wouldn’t be as well as you are right now.”

Harry looks down. “You don’t have to say that,” he mutters, even as Cedric’s words lift a long-standing weight off his chest.

Cedric searches Harry’s face. “Has this been bothering you this entire time?”

“It’s fine,” Harry says. “Sorry, I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. We have more important things to worry about.”

“Your feelings are important,” Cedric tells him firmly. “And you are valuable. I like having you by my side. Besides, I would’ve been dead in the library if it weren’t for you --”

“Please don’t say that,” Harry interrupts. The image of Cedric lying on the floor of the library is seared into his brain.

Cedric swallows back his words. “Alright. But please understand how important you are, Harry. And talk to me when something’s bothering you.”

There’s so much sincerity in Cedric’s eyes that in that moment, Harry realises with a sickening, bottomless feeling in his stomach, that this innocent crush of his might no longer be a crush anymore.

Oh no.

Now is the absolute worst time to be falling in love.

Harry’s pounding headache wakes him up the next morning. He has no idea how much he drank, but it’s certainly enough to make him vow to never touch alcohol ever again.

He also remembers having a terrifying revelation the night before, but he’s not going to think about that just yet.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he slaps at his nightstand for his glasses. His hand lands on a piece of parchment. Sitting up and squinting at the note, he just about makes out the words:

Meet me by the pond. -C

Harry stumbles out of bed, getting dressed quickly and scarfing down the breakfast he picks up from the bakery next door. Soon, he’s taking the familiar path down to the pond.

A figure is waiting for him below. Cedric gives a cheery wave when he sees Harry approaching.

“Good morning,” he greets when Harry arrives.

“‘Morning,” Harry replies. “What’s this about then?”

Cedric rubs the back of his head. “I thought you might be interested in, well... see for yourself.” He steps aside, revealing two broomsticks laying on the ground behind him.

Harry’s jaw drops open. “Flying?”

“I passed by this rental place a couple of days ago,” Cedric explains, obviously pleased by Harry’s reaction. “Kept thinking we should go flying sometime, and now’s as good a time as any.”

“Wow, yeah,” Harry walks over to the broomsticks. When he bends down to pick one up, however, Cedric puts a hand out in front of him.

“Ah ah, that’s not how you pick up a broomstick.” He extends an arm out over the broom and says in a commanding voice, “ Up. ”

The broomstick hops straight up into Cedric’s open hand.

“Now you try.”

Harry extends his arm over the other broom. “Up.” The words barely leave his mouth before the broom jumps into his hand. “If only I could do all the other spells that easily,” he says ruefully. “Okay, now what?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure the rest out,” Cedric says casually. And with that, he kicks off from the ground, leaving Harry behind.

“What -- Cedric!”

But Cedric only turns around to give him a jolly wave. He waits expectantly in the air.

Sighing, Harry swings his leg over the broomstick and finds, with faint surprise, that the grip comes naturally to him. He kicks off the way he saw Cedric do it, and suddenly the wind is rushing past his face.

He’s flying.

“I’m doing it,” he says, stunned, pulling himself level with Cedric.

“Looks like you’re a natural-born flyer,” Cedric says with a grin. He circles Harry. “Want to see how fast these brooms can go?”

They shoot off, leaving the town behind them, brushing across the meadows, weaving around patches of trees. When they circle back, Harry, feeling particularly bold, dives toward the pond. He lets his fingertips scrape the icy water, then pulls back up.

He takes another sweeping lap, watching the grassy fields skim by below him. As he tilts his head back and lets the wind tussle his hair, he knows it, deep in his bones, that he’s done this before. That he’s meant to fly. Here, coursing through the air with windburn on his cheeks, it feels like he’s saying hello to an old friend he hasn’t seen in a long time.

He closes his eyes at the deep sense of rawness in his chest. 

“Alright, Harry?” Cedric calls.

Harry blinks back the tears in his eyes before turning to Cedric.

“Never better,” he grins.

Cedric swoops in closer. “Hey, want to play a game?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve enchanted this rock so that it’ll try to fly away from us.” Cedric holds up a walnut-sized pebble. “Let’s see who can catch it first.” He tosses the pebble up into the air, and it zips away into the distance.

They chase after it, hovering around the general direction the pebble flew. Harry pulls his broomstick up to get a better view of their surroundings, where he sees the pebble revolving around the top of a tree. Tilting his broom in a nose-dive, he pummels towards it. From the corner of his eye, he sees Cedric closing in on the pebble as well. However, his broom pulls up inches ahead, and his hand closes around the pebble. He pulls out of the dive triumphantly.

“I should’ve known,” Cedric shakes his head. “There’s a good reason you were the youngest Seeker in a century.”

“Seeker? Is that a Quidditch position?”

Cedric nods if affirmation. “You were the Seeker for Gryffindor. You were really good.”

No wonder he feels so at ease in the air.

“Were you also a Quidditch player?” Harry asks. He can’t help but notice the graceful way that Cedric commands his broom.

“Yup, Seeker and Team Captain for Hufflepuff.”

“Did we ever play against each other?”

“We did,” Cedric says. “It wasn’t a fair game though, unfortunately. You kind of fell off your broom.”

Harry winces. “That’s embarrassing.”

“It wasn’t your fault. There were dementors on the field -- dark creatures that suck the happiness out of everything,” Cedric explains at Harry’s puzzled look. “You react particularly poorly to them. They weren’t supposed to be at the game, and you were attacked by them. I still feel bad that they didn’t let us play a rematch.”

“I don’t think I would’ve felt too bad about losing to you,” says Harry. Cedric snorts.

“Oh, trust me, the Gryffindor team was none too happy with me. The Weasley twins wouldn't talk to me for a month. You’re sweet, Harry, but Quidditch can get intense.”

“Let’s go for another round then,” Harry challenges, “First person to catch the pebble five times. I’ll consider that the rematch.”

Cedric grins at him. “You’re on!”

Harry uncurls his fingers from the pebble, letting it fly away again. They take off after it, and it’s not long before Harry catches it again.

But Cedric is quick to catch up, seizing the pebble in the next round, and the round after that.

Pretty soon, the two of them are neck and neck, and the person who catches the pebble next is set to win.

Harry trains low laps around the field, gazingly intently around for any signs of the pebble. He spots it loitering around the top of the hill opposite him. At that exact moment, Cedric launches in the direction of the pebble. Urging his broomstick forward, Harry shoots across the pond. He extends his arm, fingers only just curling around the pebble when he smacks directly into Cedric, knocking them both cleanly off their brooms.

They tumble down the hill, their momentum carrying them until they’re halfway downhill. When they finally come to a stop, Harry finds himself lying on top of Cedric. He quickly pushes himself up.

As he’s about to roll himself off of Cedric, he makes the grave mistake of looking at him. Cedric is looking up at Harry with stunned grey eyes, a little breathless, hair tussled from the fall. All coherent thought leaves Harry’s mind. His heart beats fervently in his chest.

Cedric’s eyes are wide. “Are you alright?” he breathes.

“I -- yeah -- I’m... are you?”

“I’m alright,” says Cedric. His gaze falls to the pebble in Harry’s fist. “I guess you win.”

“I guess I do,” Harry agrees, letting the rock fall from his hand. A piece of Cedric’s hair, ruffled by the wind, falls into Cedric’s eyes. Harry reaches forward and tucks it to the side.

Cedric shivers.

“Are you cold?” Harry asks.

“No -- I mean, yeah, it’s getting chilly out here.”

“We should -- erm... maybe head back...”

“Yeah...”

Neither of them moves.

Slowly, Cedric reaches an arm up. Harry tilts his head down to lean into Cedric’s touch --

“ Hé! Vous deux! ”

The two of them spring apart. They look up the hill in the direction of the voice. 

An older woman makes her way toward them. Her greying blonde curls bounce with her walk, and she’s wrapped snugly in layers of scarves.

“Hello?” Cedric calls back.

The woman looks down at the hill from the top of the hill. “You have come visiting me several times already, no?”

“Are you Aguillard? Harry asks.

It’s hard to see the woman’s expression with her face shadowed by the sun coming from behind her. However, Harry takes the downward dip of her head as a nod of ascension. She beckons them with a hand before turning back towards her cottage.

“Come with me.”

Chapter Text

They sit stiffly on Aguillard’s couch as the old woman bustles around in the kitchen. Harry takes the opportunity to take in their surroundings. The cottage cozy, the walls donned in crocheted tapestry and the sofas piled high with cushions. A kitten snoozes in a pile of blankets just to his left.

He catches Cedric’s eye and looks away quickly, blood rushing to his cheeks. His fingertips still tingle with the warmth of Cedric’s body under him, and the softness of his hair.

He’s saved from his thoughts wandering into a dangerous direction when Aguillard re-enters the living room, laying out three mugs of tea on the coffee table. She sinks into the sofa across from them with a grunt. The cat that had been dozing beside Harry leaps from its nook and hops up onto Aguillard’s lap, where it curls itself back into a sleepy ball.

“So,” Aguillard blows in her mug. “What I can do for you?”

Cedric shifts, sitting up straight. “We heard you’re a wandmaker. We were hoping you could make a wand for my friend here.”

Aguillard takes a long, unhurried gulp of her tea. “Was. I was a wandmaker, heh? I am retired now.”

Cedric nods. “We understand - ”

“You do? So you know I am retired and you still ask me to do work for you?”

“We don’t mean to cause offense - ”

“You think you are the first people to come when I am retired, demanding me to make a wand for them? Demanding a wand from the esteemed Aguillard?”

“Madame,” says Cedric, a bit forcefully in order to insert himself into what was no doubt the start of a monologue. “My friend here has lost his wand. He’s in dire need of a replacement. We tried every wand in the wand shop in Paris, but none of them have worked. The store clerk there recommended we come to you. We wouldn’t be disturbing your retirement if we had any other choice, but I’m sure as a wandmaker you can appreciate How unusual it is that my friend has tried over a hundred wands without success.” He looks at Aguillard imploringly. “We have been told you are an excellent wandmaker, so we were hoping you could help us. Of course, if you would rather be left in peace, we will not push you.”

Aguillard still has a stern look on her face. Her lips are pinched. When Cedric finished his speech, she harrumphs through her nose. “Flattery.” She fixes Cedric with a stare. “Flattery, from a handsome young man. Handsome young men are used to getting what they want, yes? That is why you make a brave request.”

Though he doesn’t quite blush, Cedric’s cheeks tinge a pale pink.

Settling back in her seat, Aguillard pets the kitten on her lap. “Every wand in the wand shop, you say?” she asks, directing her question to Harry, who startles.

“Er, yes.”

There’s some more silence as Aguillard pets her cat. Her head is tilted back, her gaze fixed on some point on the ceiling above. “Do you know what is more persuasive than flattery from a handsome young man?”

Cedric coughs. 

Suddenly, Aguillard breaks into a grin. “A puzzle.” She nudges her kitten gently. Obediently, it hops from her lap. Aguillard pushes herself up onto her feet. “Come! We go to the garden.”

Exchanging quizzical looks, Harry and Cedric follow their host toward the back of the cottage.

Aguillard leads them past the vegetables and the flowers until they’re in a wide clearing.

“Can I ask what we’re doing here - oof!”

For Aguillard had just tossed a small boulder at Harry, who caught it as it barrelled into his stomach.

The wandmaker makes a tut. “No, no, try again to catch with your hands.” She summons the boulder back and launches it at Harry again. This time, Harry catches it in his palms. 

“With only one hand.”

Harry doesn’t know why Aguillard sounds so impatient when she was the one who told him to catch the boulder with his hands, plural. However, he wisely chooses to stay silent when Aguillard again summons the boulder back. This time, when the rock is launched at him, he catches it with his right hand.

“Finalement, we have figured out your wand hand.”

“I mean, I am right-handed.” I could have told you that, goes unsaid.

Aguillard turns away as if Harry hadn’t spoken. She marches back toward the garden and picks up a garden rake. Then, from inside a large cage sitting on the ground, she picks up a large, fluffy rabbit.

“You hold this,” she says when she returns, tossing the rake to Harry. A few paces away, she sets the rabbit down. She makes a gesture at Cedric to move back until the two of them are at an observable distance away - or, one would say, a safe distance away. 

A feeling of apprehension settles in Harry’s gut. He’s barely able to register the feeling before Aguillard is waving her wand again, this time at a mass of boulders by the garden. One of the boulders transfigures into a large German Shephard. It looks around, confused at the sudden bestowing of life.

There’s a sharp whistle. “Ici, ma belle!”

The dog’s attention turns toward the source of the noise, first toward Aguillard, then at the direction she’s pointing. Its attention lands on the bunny. With a low snarl, it snaps its jaws, giving excited barks as it tears in Harry’s direction.

Harry looks down at the rake in his hands, then back up at the dog, which is flying towards him at breakneck pace. Is he… is he meant to fend the dog off with the rake?

He can’t hit an innocent animal.

Tossing the rake aside, Harry makes a snap judgment and swipes the bunny into his arms a second before the dog closes its teeth around it. The dog looks up. Seeing the rabbit tucked safely in Harry’s arms, it pounces forwards, resting its paws on Harry’s chest.

“Woah, woah!” Harry ducks away, turning in place to shield the rabbit from the hound. “Calm down girl.”

Then, in an instant, the weight of the dog’s paws have disappeared from his shoulders. There’s a ringing in Harry’s ears as the dog’s snarls are replaced with pitch silence. He turns around and sees that the dog has been transfigured back into a boulder.

Harry looks across the field at where Aguillard and Cedric are standing. Cedric has his wand out. His eyes are wide. “What was that about?” he asks Aguillard angrily.

“Bah, your friend would not have been hurt,” she says dismissively. “You ended the test early, but it is no matter. I already have the information I need.”

“What test?” Cedric is still indignant. “He could have been mauled!”

Aguillard folds her arms in front of her. “Listen, handsome boy, you come for a wand from Aguillard, you listen to my methods. You trust me, okay? I know what I am doing. If you don’t trust me, you go back to England and get your Mr. Ollivander or whoever to make wands, okay?”

Harry, who has rejoined the group by now, puts a reassuring hand on Cedric’s arm. “Cedric, it’s fine.”

Cedric’s jaw is still tense. At the way Harry squeezes his arm, however, some of the tension leaves his body. “You promise no harm will come to him?”

“Yes, yes, I promise.” Aguillard takes the rabbit from Harry’s hold. “I wanted to see if your friend was a protector or attacker. As I say, you ended the test early, but I think I can assume that you would not have attacked the dog, would you?”

“I might have, if she tried to attack me,” answers Harry. “But she didn’t want to hurt me. She just wanted the rabbit.”

Aguillard studies him. “Hmmph. Okay, enough tests today. I am tired because I am old. We do more tests tomorrow. Come back inside, we take some measurements before you leave.” She turns back towards the cottage. “And put the rake back, heh?”

The walk back from Aguillard’s cottage is silent. The wind has picked up, and the sun has passed its peak in the sky. They cross reach the hills where they had played their Quidditch game. Harry’s eyes fall on the patch of grass where he and Cedric had tumbled into each other. The coolness of the wind reminds him again of how warm Cedric’s body had been under his own. He shivers.

“Cold?” Cedric asks. Harry starts, unaware that he was being watched.

“Er, yeah. A bit.”

Cedric walks closer beside him. Their arms touch, and Cedric’s body heat seeps through his sleeve.

“Want to race back to town?” Harry asks. Cedric’s grin is answer enough, and they mount their brooms snd kick off together.

Along with Aguillard’s agreement to make Harry a wand, soon another happy development occurs. The potion is ready.

It’s evening when Cedric scoops the completed potion into a cup with a ladle. Harry takes the cup and looks at its swirling contents. The completed potion is a dark grey, almost black, with a shimmering purple sheen to it. 

“Bottoms up, then?” he jokes. 

 Cedric doesn’t return his smirk. His eyes are anxious as he watches Harry drink the thick liquid.

“Woah.”

“Harry!” Cedric catches him by the elbow as Harry sways on his feet. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Just a bit lightheaded. But it’s supposed to feel like that, isn’t it?”

Cedric helps him over to the sofa seat in the corner of their room. “Yes. Let me know if you feel any nausea or pain, because that’s not supposed to happen.” He puts a cushion under Harry’s head. Harry watches him with half-lidded eyes as he takes a seat across from him on the corner of Harry’s bed.

“Alright. Are you ready?”

Harry nods. He lets his eyes slip closed.

“Legilimens.”

There’s a dense, thick fog which forms and reforms around him. Snippets of voices float by.

I killed Sirius Black!

LIAR!

Please, no more — 

Stand aside, stand aside, silly girl —

Harry.

The last voice is stronger than the rest, closer by.

Ignore those memories, Harry. Focus. We’re looking for your memories with Dumbledore.

Yes, that was right. 

The fog coalesces around him in a rush, solidifying itself until it’s no longer fog. He’s standing in an ornate office. His attention is first drawn to the tall man with flowing white hair and beard. Dumbledore. This Dumbledore appears much different from the frail old man in Harry’s last memory. This Dumbledore is sturdy, an imposing aura radiating off of him. His eyes are sad, however. 

Standing across from his is a teenager. Harry. The Harry of the present studies his younger self curiously. Teenage Harry is trembling. His fists shake in fury at his side.

“I don’t want to talk about how I feel, alright?”

“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human — ”

“THEN - I - DON’T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!”

Present Harry startles at Teenage Harry’s outburst. He watches, bewildered, as his younger self seizes a delicate silver instrument and throws it across the room, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

Cedric, what on Earth?

Teenage Harry throws another instrument, this time into the fireplace. “I DON’T CARE! I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE - ”

Oh, Harry, Cedric’s voice appears by his ear. He doesn’t sound shocked, or judgmental. Instead, he sounds sad. I think this may be the night Sirius died.

They continue to watch as Teenage Harry rages and yells, dismantling pieces of Dumbledore’s office and throwing them indiscriminately around the room.

I don’t think we’re going to get anything helpful from this, Harry thinks to Cedric.

Probably not, Cedric agrees. I’ll try to take us to another memory. Can you try guiding us to Dumbledore again?

Harry shuts his eyes, trying to tune out the sounds of his younger self falling apart at the seams. There’s the rushing of fog around him, swallowing up more of Teenage Harry’s screams. When he opens his eyes again, the scene has shifted. They are still in Dumbledore’s office, but this time, the room is quiet. 

Two figures are sitting by the chairs in front of a fireplace - the same fireplace that Harry had shattered an instrument only moments ago. Now, it’s roaring ablaze. Harry, much younger than the Harry in the previous memory, looks like he’s struggling with his words. Beside him in the other chair, Dumbledore watches him patiently, his eyes twinkling through his half-moon spectacles.

Child Harry speaks. “Professor, the Sorting Hat told me I’d - I’d have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought I was Slytherin’s heir for a while … because I can speak Parseltongue …”

“You can speak Parseltongue, Harry, because Lord Voldemort - who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin - can speak Parseltongue. Unless I’m much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I’m sure … ”

“Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?”

Harry feels the bottom of his stomach drop out.

“It certainly seems so.”

His younger self continues the conversation with Dumbledore, but Harry’s ears are filled with static. A horrifying thought has occurred to him, and he needs to be pulled back to reality right now. 

Cedric, Harry thinks. He tries to keep the panic contained. Cedric, can you pull me out, please?

Yes, one moment.

The fog rushes by him as if it were being sucked in a vacuum. Harry opens his eyes and he’s back in their hotel room. He shakes his head, like he’s decluttering the cobwebs. 

When his thoughts finally settle down again a long moment later, he sees that Cedric is no longer sitting across from him. In fact, Cedric is not in their room at all. 

Terror, bone-deep, irrational, sinks into him. 

A second later, however, Cedric is pushing the door to their room open. There’s something in his hands. When he sits back down, he’s pushing a bowl of hot soup into Harry’s palm.

“Drink this,” he says. “It’ll help you get your strength back.”

Harry takes a sip of the broth. It sends warmth down his throat and into his heart. He takes several more gulps.

“Is everything okay? Why did you need to be pulled out?”

Harry pauses, the rim of the bowl sitting on his lips. Had Cedric not detected it, then?

He lowers the bowl. “Cedric,” he says slowly. “Dumbledore said You-Know-Who put a part of himself into me. Do you think… do you think it’s possible that I’m… a horcrux?”

There’s a quick inhalation of air from the man across from him. Harry looks up and sees that Cedric has gone very still.

A moment later, however, Cedric shakes his head. “No,” he says. He sounds confident. “That makes no sense. He’s been dead-set on killing you since you were a child. Why would he do that if you were a horcrux?”

“Dumbledore said it may have been inadvertent.”

Cedric is frowning, engrossed in thought. “No,” he says again. “No, Harry. I feel what it’s like to wear this thing around,” he pulls the locket out from inside his sweater. “It sucks the happiness from you. Makes you irritable. Angry. You wouldn’t be the way you are now if you have a piece of You-Know-Who’s soul inside you.”

“But I was irritable and angry,” says Harry. “You saw how I was in that first memory. I barely recognised myself.”

“Harry, you were grieving. You had just lost a father figure. Of course you would be upset.” Cedric leans forward, staring earnestly into Harry’s eyes. “Look, Harry, the fact that you have endured so much trauma and have remained unflinchingly good, kind…” He swallows. “You’re not a horcrux, Harry. You’re not.”

The warmth in Cedric’s gaze is enough to abate the cold fear that had seized Harry’s chest. His worries calm, and he’s able to give Cedric a small smile. But though Cedric is able to convince him enough that he pushes his concerns to the back of his mind, a small part of him still wonders at the possibility.

The next several days pass in a blur. During the daytime, Harry and Cedric are at Aguillard’s cottage, running through various tests that range from understandable to absurd. In the evenings, Harry takes the potion that Cedric had prepared and lets Cedric rummage through his memories.

The memory sessions are, unfortunately, slow. For a headmaster and student, Harry and Dumbledore had had an awful many number of meetings. It didn’t help that these memories frequently came out of order, and thus they had a great deal of work piecing together each of the memories.

What they’re able to gather after several days is that apparently during Harry’s sixth year when Dumbledore had been removed as headmaster, the two of them continued to have frequent meetings in the headmaster’s office. (“It would have been Professor Snape’s office,” Cedric says. “I suppose he was still pretending to be somebody Dumbledore could trust.”) During these meetings, they had explored Voldemort’s past, from childhood to young adulthood.

Why this was important, neither Harry nor Cedric are able to surmise.

On a more positive note, the wandmaking sessions with Aguillard seem to be going well — or, about as well as they could go, with the oddly hostile relationship between Aguillard and Cedric.

When Harry brings this up, Cedric is uncharacteristically grumpy. “She keeps calling me handsome boy.”

“You are handsome,” Harry says before his mind is able to catch up. Then, when his mind does catch up, he quickly adds, “and a boy.”

“She means it as an insult.”

“I think she had a lover,” says Harry. “Apparently they still keep in touch. She took great joy in telling me that he’s no longer handsome.”

Cedric cocks an eyebrow. “I had no idea your relationship was that good that she would tell you about her love life.”

Strange though it was, Harry did seem to have developed a good relationship with Aguillard. Having grown accustomed to the old wandmakers eccentric ways, he’s beginning to appreciate her craft, which in turn seemed to soften the wandmaker to him.

“Do you make all your customers go through these tests?” Harry asks her one day.

Aguillard is busy laying out odd knick-knacks on a long table: wisps of hair, feathers of all sorts, scales, talons, something stringy that Harry couldn’t begin to guess.

“Depends on the customer,” Aguillard replies. “Don’t touch,” she swats at Harry’s hand when he reaches out to poke at the stringy substance.

“I’m curious why none of the wands in the shop wanted me.”

Aguillard doesn’t look up from where she’s busying at her task. “Could be many reason. Everybody knows the wand chooses the wizard, but nobody knows how. Why when you defeat another wizard, his wand becomes yours? The wand would not have chosen you in a shop, but it chooses you when you defeat the wizard it did choose? Why? Who knows? I do not.”

“Then how do you know that the wand you make for a customer is going to choose the customer?”

“That’s why we do so many tests, no? I need to know what kind of wizard you are to build a wand that will like you. A wand good for offensive duelling will not choose a pacifist. A weak wand will not choose a strong wizard, and a strong wand will not choose a weak wizard. A fickle wand will not choose a wizard who demands loyalty. If I know what kind of wizard you are, I can build a wand who matches you.”

Harry nods, digesting the information.

Aguillard lays the last item on the table before stepping back. “Okay. You put your hand out now. Slowly, over each item.”

Harry hovers his hand over the first item on the table. At Aguillard’s nod, he slowly passes his hand over each item on the table. To his disappointment, nothing happens.

The wandmaker, however, appears to be in high spirits. “Yes, this is good information,” she says, scribbling something into her notepad. “Okay!” Aguillard seems pleased. “Good. That was the last test. You do not need to come tomorrow. You return in three days and I will have your wand ready.”

“We’re running low on the potion,” says Cedric, scraping the bottom of the cauldron with a ladle. “We only have enough for one last session.”

The two of them share worried looks. They must be thinking the same thing. After all the trouble brewing the potion and diving through Harry’s memories each day, they were no closer to finding any clues than they had previously.

Regardless of their increasingly despondent situation, they both recognise that they need to trudge on. Harry throws back the potion in a swift, familiar movement. The sense of vertigo is a welcome friend by now. He lowers himself onto the couch and closes his eyes.

They flit through this memories. The fog around him forms and unforms. Him and Dumbledore, in the hospital wing. Dumbledore pops a candy in his mouth. The hospital wing again, this time at night, Harry pretending to sleep while he listens to Dumbledore speak quietly with the other professors. Harry and Dumbledore, emerging from a pensieve, discussing the most recent memory they had witnessed. Harry and Dumbledore, sneaking out of Hogwarts in the dead of night and appearing in a muggle town — 

Wait, says Cedric. This is new. This looks important.

They follow Teenage Harry and Dumbledore down the street of the muggle town. Their path is illuminated by the streetlights. Teenage Harry looks about as lost as Present Harry and Cedric feel, but Dumbledore walks with purpose. 

They stop in front of a house. The lights are on through the windows. Upstairs, there’s the sound of laughter, and the glowing of a television set. 

Dumbledore takes a long breath through his nose. “Alas. Another step behind.”

“Who are we looking for, Professor?”

Harry’s breath hitches. He cranes his attention, careful not to miss the name.

The memory dissipates in a cloud of smoke. He’s pulled violently into another memory. 

It’s dark, cold. The floor is covered in leaves. They’re in a forest. Dense trees stretch up into the sky. Two children stand in a clearing — one with a shock of jet black hair, another whose hair is flaming red. They’re surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of massive spiders.

“Goodbye, friends of Hagrid,” says the spider at the centre of the lot. He’s by far the largest.

Harry’s yanked out of the memory and back into his seat in the hotel room.

“Damn it,” Cedric runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “The potion ran out. We were so close!”

Harry fixes his stare forwards, contemplative.

“We can try without the potion,” he says.

Cedric looks up. “Harry, you know what happens when I use that spell on you without a sedative. I don’t want to make you go through that again.”

“You know what you’re looking for this time,” Harry counters. When Cedric opens his mouth to argue, Harry presses, “Cedric. This is the first lead we’ve had in weeks. We need to follow it through.”

Cedric’s mouth is set in a grim line. He scrunches and unscrunches the covers beside him, clearly torn between the cost and benefit of continuing their session. “Alright,” he says at last, though he sounds none too pleased about it. “But you tell me if it gets overwhelming.”

Harry nods. “I trust you.”

Cedric lets out a shaky breath. “I’ll try to be gentle.” He points his wand a Harry. 

“Legilimens.”

It feels like having a wall slam into him, the way his memories resurface. It’s nothing like the controlled formation of memories when he was under the influence of the potion. 

There’s a mounting pressure that’s building behind his eyes.

Snippets of his darkest memories come and go — Cedric has gotten better at navigating his memories and quickly discards the memories that are not useful.

His head feels like it’s going to split open.

Finally, the memory they’ve been looking for. Him and Dumbledore, standing in front of a muggle house, chatter and light coming from the upstairs window.

He can’t take it anymore.

He has to. They’re so close. 

“Who are we looking for, Professor?” His younger self asks the Headmaster.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkle. 

“Horace Slughorn.”

The pressure leave his head at once. He tips forward, falling into Cedric’s steady arms.

“We should keep going,” Harry slurs, hardly aware of his own words. “We have a name, you can search for the name in my memories — ”

“You’re bleeding,” Cedric says in a hard voice.

There’s warmth trickling down Harry’s nose. He touches it gingerly and finds a substance that’s sticky to the touch. When he pulls his hand back, he sees that his finger is stained crimson.

Cedric waves his wand and summons a tissue. “Apply pressure on the bridge of your nose,” he commands. Though his voice is cold, his hands are gentle as he wipes at the quickly drying blood streaming from Harry’s nose.

“You’re upset,” says Harry. He doesn’t quite think he’s in his right mind yet.

Cedric is silent for a while. A moment later, he gives a sigh. The tenseness in his jaw eases, but the stitch in his brow remains. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be upset with you. You’re putting yourself through this to help. I just wish you’d care more for your own wellbeing.”

Harry takes the wad of tissues that Cedric offers him and holds it up to his nose. 

“Fortunately, though, we don’t need to search through your memories to find out more about Horace Slughorn.” Cedric leans back against the bed. “I know two people who know him quite well, and who would be happy to give us more information about him.”

“Oh?” Harry asks. “Who?”

Cedric smiles. It’s not an altogether happy smile.

“My parents,” he answers simply.

Chapter Text

When they arrive at Aguillard’s cottage, the old wandmaker waves them in quickly. She’s more excited than they’ve ever seen her. 

“Come, come, take a seat, take a seat!”

Harry and Cedric plop onto the couch as Aguillard hurries toward her crafting room. Moments later she comes back out holding in her hands a long, slim box.

“I will describe the wand to you first,” she says, holding onto the box when Harry reaches out reflexively for it. “Holly, like your old wand. 12 inches - you are powerful wizard. Slightly bendy because you command loyalty, but you are not unforgiving. And the core of the wand made from the claw of a Thunderbird talon.”

At this last part, Cedric looks up. “Blimey,” he says. He sounds impressed, so Harry gathers that Thunderbird talons must be hard to come by. He then adds, with a tilt of his head, “I thought Ollivander said that phoenix tail feather, dragon heartstring, and unicorn hair were the most effective cores?”

“Most effective?” Aguillard turns up her nose. “Hah, you mean most easy. Ask your Monsieur Ollivander how many Thunderbirds he is able to find.” She turns dismissively away from Cedric, though her good mood does not seem to have been tempered. At last, she offers the box to Harry.

Harry takes the box. He removes the lid, conscious of the way both Cedric and Aguillard are watching him with anticipation. Then, cautiously, his heartbeat quickening in excitement, he picks up the carefully polished wand from its bed.

Nothing happens.

Aguillard’s eager expression dims. “You feel something?” She prompts him.

Harry looks down at the wand, which feels like nothing more than a stick in his hand. “No.” Then, at the disappointed look on Aguillard’s face, he adds, “sorry.”

Aguillard has drawn back. Her hands are on her hips. She looks puzzled. “But why it did not work?”

Dropping his gaze to the wand, Harry says as unaffectedly as he can, “maybe it’s not the wand’s problem. Maybe I’m just an inadequate wizard.”

There’s a moment of silence as Harry’s words echo in the quiet room. Harry pretends to be fixated on the wand as he twirls it in his fingers. Then, Aguillard strides over and wraps her knuckles against his forehead.

“Ouch!”

“What stupid thought is this? Inadequate wizard? You are either wizard or you are not. If you are wizard, you can do magic. If you are muggle, you cannot. He is not muggle, is he?” Aguillard suddenly asks Cedric, as if the thought has suddenly occurred to her.

“No,” says Cedric. “He’s a very competent wizard. Mastered the patronus charm when he was thirteen.”

“Ha, you see? I can tell during our tests that you are very powerful, and your boyfriend thinks so too.”

Harry goes hot in mortification. “Oh - n-no, w-we’re not - ”

“But why then no wand is choosing you?” Aguillard continues, ignoring the way Harry’s face has gone red as a tomato. “Your old wand is lost or broken?”

“Broken,” says Cedric. His cheeks are pink. “Snapped in half.”

Aguillard strokes her chin in thought. “Sometimes wands are reluctant to choose a wizard when the wizard is already bonded with another wand. But that is not the case here. And I make this wand very powerful, so it should not be afraid to bond with you, even if you have another wand.” 

They watch her ruminate.

After a long while, Cedric finally breaks the silence. “Well, Madame Aguillard, thank you for your assistance anyway,” He reaches for their coin bag.

“No, no, no,” Aguillard waves her hand. “The wand doesn’t work. I don’t charge you for it. But you can keep the wand if you want.”

“We can’t let you do all this work for nothing,” says Harry. “You’ve spent so much effort.”

However, Aguillard pushes away the coin bag insistently. “I tell you before, I am retired. I did not do this for work.” She gives them a rare, genuine smile. “I did it for the puzzle.”

“She’s right,” says Cedric as they trudge through the field back to town. “You either can do magic or you can’t, and I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”

“Maybe whatever made me lose my memories made me lose my magic.”

“That’s impossible.”

Harry shrugs. “Whatever. I don’t need to do magic right now anyway. Besides, it’s the least of our priorities.”

When they return to Gildoré, Cedric bumps Harry in the elbow. “Do you want to go flying again? Hey, yeah, you can use a broomstick! That proves you still have your magic!”

The thought does bring some assurance. “I suppose,” says Harry. He does his best to give Cedric a wide smile. “Maybe tomorrow? I want to get through the last few pages of that book on Horcruxes.”

“Oh,” says Cedric. “Yeah, of course.” His concern has clearly not been dispelled by Harry’s attempt at a grin. “Are you... are you alright, then?”

“I’m fine,” Harry replies. “Seriously, Cedric, it’s just a wand. I’m not bothered.” He speeds up his footsteps before Cedric can say anything else.

Harry spends the remainder of the afternoon reading on their balcony. His eyes glaze over the text, and his mind chews the words vigorously in order to digest any information. After about two pages, he shakes his head to clear the cobwebs before turning back to the book with renewed focus.

He may not be much help with anything else, but he’ll make himself as helpful as possible where he’s able.

By evening, the sky has darkened, just in time for Harry to finish reading the last page of the book. At this moment, the door to the balcony creaks open.

“Dinnertime, Harry,” Cedric tells him.

They eat in the restaurant downstairs. Though their surroundings are full of chatter, their table is quiet. Cedric’s eyes keep flicking up, trying to catch Harry’s gaze. Harry, however, keeps his eyes resolutely down at the table - not intentionally to avoid Cedric, but because of the sudden bone-deep exhaustion that has washed over him.

Despite how tired he feels, though, sleep does not come easily to him that night. He lies awake staring at the ceiling, uneasy thoughts chasing themselves in his head.

There’s a creaking from the bed next to his.

“Harry?” Cedric’s voice breaks the silence.

“Hmm?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he lies.

There’s a pause.

“Are you still worried about using your magic?” Cedric asks. “I’ve been thinking about it. You were able to fling a bunch of Death Eaters back without a wand. That means your magic is still there.”

“I told you, I’m not bothered by it.” He can’t help the flare of irritation that colours his tone. 

“But there is something bothering you,” Cedric presses, undeterred by Harry’s annoyance.

For a few moments, Harry considers his answer, blinking up at the ceiling in lieu of answering. “I mean, bummer that I can’t do magic,” he says finally. “But it’s nothing different than how things have always been for me,” he continues. He turns on his side so that he’s facing Cedric. “I just… where do we go from here? We came here for answers, but we found nothing.”

Without his glasses, Cedric is just a fuzzy outline in the dark, but Harry can faintly make out that Cedric is facing him as well. The moonlight spills over him, shining like frost in his hair.

“We found one clue,” Cedric replies. His tone is sure, unhurried. “Clearly you and Dumbledore were intent on finding this Horace Slughorn. Whoever he is, he must know something important. We’ll follow wherever this clue takes us.”

Though Harry finds this answer unsatisfying, he knows it’s the best they have. “How are you so confident?”

This time, there’s a long pause before Cedric replies. “I’m not. But what use is there to get frustrated? I’d rather put my energy into doing the best I can.”

Neither of them speaks more after that, though neither of them makes to turn away either. Harry wishes he has his glasses on so he can study the way the moonlight frames Cedric’s face. He’s unable to sleep for a long time after that. Is Cedric looking at him as well? Or has he fallen asleep already?

Their beds are close enough that Harry could touch him if he reaches out. He lies there, curling his itching fingers around his blanket.

At long last, his eyelids grow heavy, and he sinks into the soft clutches of sleep.

Over the next few days, they gather their thoughts and work together to set down a new direction for their investigation. Perhaps they take more time than they need, reluctant to leave the little home base they’ve created for themselves. It’s easy to forget about the war back in Britain, here in this quiet, idyllic town.

One afternoon, Harry and Cedric are out flying in the fields when an owl almost collides mid-air with Harry, who swerves sharply out of the way. 

Once Harry hops off his broomstick, the owl comes to a fluttering rest on his shoulder, sticking out her talon for him to retrieve the letter. As Harry untangles the twine, Cedric flies in toward them.

“We didn’t bring any treats out with us,” he tells the owl, who’s looking at him expectantly. “We’ll bring you some back at the post office.”

The owl hoots reproachfully, digging her talons into Harry’s shoulder with rather more force than necessary as she takes off again. 

“It must be from your mum.” Harry offers the letter to Cedric.

They had sent a letter out about a week ago to Cedric’s parents, asking for a floo call. They had not mentioned anything about Slughorn, or anything about their journey so far. Had anyone intercepted their letter, all they would have read was normal letter from a son who was away from home and missed his parents. 

They take a seat at the top of the hill as Cedric rips open the envelope and unfolds the response from his mother. He scans it quickly.

“She’s agreed to speak with us,” he says. “Seems like she was able to decipher the floo address we encoded in our letter. We’re to speak with her on the night of the eleventh.”

“That’s today,” says Harry.

Cedric looks up at the skies, where their owl has already disappeared. “What good timing.”

As they trudge back toward town, Harry notices Cedric taking the letter back out several times, reading and re-reading his mother’s message to him.

“Do you… miss her?” Harry asks delicately. Cedric had never spoken about his parents before, hadn’t really mentioned his family at all. Nor had Harry ever seen him write home before, though he’s not sure if that’s due to the pragmatism of keeping his family safe or something else entirely. Now that he’s observing Cedric, though, there’s a certain softness in his expression as he rereads his mother’s letter.

Cedric folds the letter up and places it in his pocket. “Yes,” he responds. 

“You don’t talk about your family much,” Harry prods, when Cedric fails to elaborate.

“There’s nothing much to say,” says Cedric, shrugging. 

They continue walking in silence. Though Harry would dearly like to find out more about Cedric’s family, Cedric’s reluctance to say more holds him back from asking further questions. Since revealing to him the existence of magic, Cedric had always been open with Harry - his knowledge, his thoughts, his emotions… It’s curious indeed why the topic of his parents would cause Cedric to be less than forthcoming.

They stop by the post office to buy some treats for their owl. Though Cedric feeds her with a soft smile, there’s a heaviness in his eyes that suggests of untold troubles.

Cedric’s melancholic mood lasts until dinnertime. He’s good at masking it, smiling at the hotel staff when they head back up to their rooms and making lighthearted conversation with Harry throughout the day. But Harry can see in the occasional faraway look in his eyes, or the way he pauses mid-step while he’s walking, that something is on his mind.

It’s over dinner that evening that Cedric finally shares his thoughts.

“I was always very close to my parents,” he says suddenly, during a lull in their conversation. “I’m an only child, so outside of my school days, I only had them. They’ve always been very proud of me.”

Harry doesn’t remember having a family, or indeed anyone that he loved like a family member. He doesn’t know what it’s like to miss someone, but he tries his best to be sympathetic. “It must be difficult being away from them.”

There’s a downward twist to Cedric’s lips. “Well, they weren’t exactly supportive of me joining the Order. My dad was most upset, and vocal about it. My mum was less vocal, but I knew she didn’t like the idea either.”

Though Cedric sounds aggrieved, Harry finds that Mr. and Mrs. Diggory’s reactions are understandable. “They’re worried about you,” he says. “You’re putting yourself in danger, fighting in a war.”

“Aren’t we all in danger?” Cedric retorts. “They act like the war has nothing to do with them. They think our bloodline goes back far enough that we’re not targets. Just keep our heads down, and everything will be fine. My dad’s been trying to get me to work for the Ministry, as if it hasn’t become a puppet agency for You-Know-Who.”

Harry doesn’t know how to respond. He’s never seen Cedric so upset before. His expression is cloudy, his jaw set, and there’s a righteous blaze in his eyes as he looks off to the side.

They sit in the common area of their hotel after dinner, playing a game of wizards chess as they wait for the designated time for the meeting with Cedric’s mother. As the evening turns into night, and night crawls past midnight, the common area around them thins out. When it seems like only Harry and Cedric are left, Cedric checks the doorways and casts a Muffliato around the room.

As they continue to wait on the couch across from the fireplace, Cedric watches the flames dancing in front of them.

“I should mention, it’s probably a good idea for you to keep out of sight when my mum appears,” he says.

Harry tilts his head curiously. “Why so?”

“I… haven’t told her that you’re alive.”

“Oh.” Though it takes him by surprise, Harry supposes it makes sense. They have been careful about keeping Harry’s existence hidden from the Death Eaters, and it would be risky to share this fact with anybody outside the resistance. “Should I move, then?”

Cedric checks his watch. “That’s a good idea. She’s going to appear in about ten minutes. Would you mind sitting in that chair over there?”

“Yeah, of course.” Harry makes his way to one of the chairs by the window. He plays with the drawn curtains as they wait for Cedric’s mother.

At long last, there’s a hissing and spitting from the fireplace. Shortly after, a pop! sounds. Harry sees Cedric straighten forward.

“Hey, mum,” he says.

“Cedric,” Mrs. Diggory’s voice is warm, affectionate. “I’ve missed you. How are you?”

“I’m doing well, mum.” Cedric’s voice is thick with emotion. “You and dad doing OK?”

“Yes, your dad and I have been well. He’s standing next to me, but he won’t come say hello. You know how he is.”

“Say hi to him for me.”

“I will.” There’s a long pause. Harry can’t see what’s going on. Perhaps Mrs. Diggory is taking a long look at her son. “Is everything alright, Cedric? It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from you. We’ve been so worried.”

“You know it’s not safe for me to be sending you letters all the time, it’s suspicious. They’ll think I’m passing along information about the resistance to you.”

“Yes, well, if you want to fight in a war, you need to find some way to tell us you’re still alive,” says Mrs. Diggory. Though her voice is heavy with disapproval, she chokes up when she says, “I need to know my son isn’t dead in a forest somewhere.”

“Mum…”

“I don’t want to get into a fight about this again, but your father has been promoted again in the Ministry. If you want to come back, you just need to make a show of swearing off the resistance, he can land you a job somewhere. You can come back home — ”

“Mum,” Cedric says again, this time considerably more impatient. “You’re right. I don’t want to get into a fight about this again.”

Mrs. Diggory sniffs. “Fine. I don’t want what little time we have together to be spent arguing. You clearly didn’t reach out to us because you remembered you have parents, but because you need something. What is it?”

Harry sees Cedric run a frustrated hand through his hair. “I care about you both a lot, and I will write home more, if you’re not too scared to be receiving letters from someone who can tank dad’s chances at another promotion.”

“Cedric Jonah Diggory, what is that supposed to mean?”

There’s another long pause as mother and son stare off at each other. Cedric takes a long breath through his nose.

“I do need help from you,” he admits after a long while. “I need to know everything you know about Horace Slughorn.”

“…Our old potions professor?” Mrs. Diggory asks. She sounds so surprised that she forgets to be upset. “Why do you need to know about him?”

“It’s best you don’t know too much for now.”

“Hmm,” she responds, discontentment seeping back into her voice. “Okay... well… he was the head of Slytherin House, but you know that. He had this little ‘Slug Club’ that he’d invite his favourite students to join.”

“Yeah, I remember dad’s many gripes about that,” says Cedric. He speaks with a faint trace of fondness.

“Hang on, your father is probably better to talk to about this than me. Give me a moment, dear.” There’s the sound of more hissing in the fireplace, then another pop!

“Hullo, Cedric,” a man’s voice comes through from the fireplace.

“Dad,” Cedric replies.

“Why did your mother drag me into this conversation? It’s the middle of the night, I was about to go to sleep.”

“Oh, come off it, Amos,” says Mrs. Diggory. At her son, she says, “your father’s been pacing along the living room beside me this entire conversation.”

“To help me get to sleep! I ate too much during dinner. Anyway,” Mr. Diggory coughs. “What did you want to ask about?”

“What do you know about Horace Slughorn?”

“Horace Slughorn!” the sudden spike of excitement in Mr. Diggory’s voice is startling. “An arrogant, conceited man. Showed blatant favouritism for certain students, completely unbecoming of a professor. And he didn’t even have a good eye! Couldn’t recognise true talent if it hit him in the face.”

“Yes, yes,” says Cedric, with the air of a dutiful son who has heard the same rant many times before. “Is there anything else you can tell us about him? Was he close to Dumbledore, for example?”

“Close?” Mr. Diggory sounds contemplative. “No, I wouldn’t say they were close. They must have known each other well, though. They taught at Hogwarts together for many years — far longer than since your mother and I started.”

A thought occurs to Harry. He fidgets in his seat, trying to think of a way to communicate to Cedric without bringing attention to himself from Mr. and Mrs. Diggory. He looks around for something to toss at the other man, but the only thing around is a filled ash tray. He entertains the thought for only half a second before dismissing it, choosing to clear his throat quietly instead.

Unfortunately, Cedric remains oblivious to Harry’s attempts at communication.

“What about You-Know-Who, then? Did Slughorn know anything about him?”

“Galloping gargoyles, son, you can’t just bring You-Know-Who into a conversation like this, the floo might be monitored!”

“Mum and I were literally just talking about my involvement in the resistance.”

“Oho, the resistance! Don’t get me started.”

“Let’s not get started then.”

“Look, you don’t need to be a hero,” Mr. Diggory implores. “You can live a normal life! I ran into your pretty Korean girlfriend at work the other day, she was asking about you, maybe you can write to her.”

“First of all, Cho is Chinese,” says Cedric exasperatedly. “And secondly, we broke up years ago, as you know very well.”

“She’s still very taken with you,” Mrs. Diggory interjects. She speaks soothingly, no doubt to curb the tension that’s building between her husband and her son. “Maybe if you come back and have lunch with her or something, you might change your mind.”

“What?” asks Cedric, sounding genuinely perplexed. “Why are we talking about Cho now?”

“If not Cho, then maybe some other nice girl,” Mrs. Diggory compromises. 

“It’s time you start focusing on normal things in life,” says Mr. Diggory. “A career, a girlfriend. Not blind notions of heroism. Look at you, you haven’t spoken to your own parents in months, and the first time you call on us is to ask us questions about some old man? Oh, ha, how’s this for a fact — he had a girlfriend too, a French lady. Apparently she ‘knew her way around a wand’, if you know what I mean.”

“Amos!” Ms. Diggory scolds, at the same time her son says, 

“Huh. Interesting.”

“Cedric!”

“No, that’s not what I — it doesn’t matter, I’m not interested in that kind of stuff right now.”

There’s another moment of silence.

“Son,” says Mr. Diggory. His voice has gone quiet. “Forget the girl, then, that’s none of our business. Did your mother tell you I was promoted?”

Cedric ducks his head. “Yeah. Congratulations.”

“I have some sway in the Ministry now. It’s not too difficult for me to find you a position — ” 

“Dad,” Cedric interrupts. “Please, can we stop doing this? I’m never going to join the Ministry as long as it’s still being run by You-Know-Who’s pawns. I’ll keep fighting this war until we take him down.”

“Do you hear yourself, boy?” Mr. Diggory exclaims, voice rising again. “Do you think you’re important? Do you think you alone are going to make a difference? For Merlin’s sake, even Harry Potter is dead! What do you think you’re going to do when the Boy Who Lived didn’t even stand a chance?”

“Maybe I won’t make a difference,” Cedric responds hotly. “Maybe I am expendable. But I’d rather die for a good cause than capitulate to evil.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing, then?” Mr. Diggory asks.

“Don’t make me answer that question,” Cedric replies.

Pop!

Though he can't see, Harry guesses that Mr. Diggory probably pulled out of the fireplace. In the ensuing silence, he can make out Cedric’s heavy breathing. Harry anxiously keeps his own breathing quiet.

“That was not a kind thing to say to your father,” Mrs. Diggory says after a while.

“He started it,” says Cedric petulantly. He adds in a begrudging tone, “can you say sorry to him for me?”

“Of course, dear. You know he didn’t mean what he said, though, don’t you? He’s always been so proud of you.”

“Mm,” says Cedric.

“Anyway, at least give our words some thought. I hope we were able to provide you some helpful information, at least.”

“You were. Thanks, mum.”

“Can I expect to hear back from you more often, then?” asks Mrs. Diggory. “Maybe you can even come home for a visit.”

“I’ll try. Sorry I haven’t been in touch much. And sorry about what happened with dad.”

“Oh, I’m glad we got to talk anyways.” Harry can imagine the soft smile on Mrs. Diggory’s face when she says, “I love you, Cedric.”

“Love you too, mum.”

With another pop, Mrs. Diggory disappears from the fireplace. Cedric doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling down. 

Harry approaches cautiously. “…Cedric?”

“Sorry you had to hear that,” says Cedric. He doesn’t turn to look at Harry. “You can see why I haven’t talked about my parents much.”

“It’s alright.” Harry shuffles on his feet. “Do you, er, want to talk?”

Cedric doesn’t respond immediately. A moment later, he pushes himself up to his feet. “Let’s head back upstairs. It’s late.”

As they leave the common room, Cedric waves his wand and mutters a “finite”. 

“So,” says Harry as they walk up the stairs. “Jonah?”

“Hmm?” Cedric asks. “Oh,” he huffs when he realises what Harry is talking about. Unfortunately, Harry’s attempt at lifting the mood does not seem very successful, as Cedric does not say anything more.

When they reach the top of the stairs, Cedric suddenly reaches out, curling a hand around Harry's sweater.

"Are you OK?" Harry asks, turning to Cedric.

Cedric steps forward. He touches his forehead to Harry's shoulder. His entire body is trembling.

"I miss them so much," he whispers. "But they just don't get it."

"It's alright, Cedric," says Harry. He doesn't know what else to say. Nor does he know what to do with his hands. All he can do is hold on to the other man until his shaking finally subsides.

The next morning, Harry wakes up to Cedric pacing at the feet of their bed. He pats around on the nightstand for his glasses.

“You’re awake early,” he says, blinking against the pale dawn sunlight streaming in through the window. 

“I’m just thinking about what my parents said,” says Cedric, coming to a stop before Harry’s bed.

Harry frowns. “About reaching out to your girlfriend?”

“What?” Cedric looks up sharply. “No. She’s not my girlfriend. Anymore, at least. I was talking about their comments about Slughorn.”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry sits up fully. “I was trying to get your attention about that. If Slughorn was the head of Slytherin House and has been for many years, do you think he could have taught You-Know-Who? Maybe they were close. Your parents mentioned he played favourites.”

Cedric nods. “Yes, it could be. Maybe You-Know-Who told him something about the horcruxes.”

Harry wracks his brain for any memory of the old man, but comes up with a blank. “Do you think Dumbledore and I would have been successful in finding him?”

“I don’t know,” says Cedric. “That’s what I’ve pacing thinking about. I think… I think we might be able to find him.”

Harry cocks his head questioningly.

“Don’t you remember? My dad said Slughorn had a French girlfriend who 'knew her way around a wand'.”

Harry grimaces. “Okay?”

At the disgusted look on Harry’s face, Cedric breaks into laughter. “No, Harry, I mean, what if that’s not a euphemism?”

It takes a moment for Harry to register what Cedric is implying. “You can’t mean… not Aguillard?”

“Didn’t you say she has a boyfriend?”

Harry continues to gape. It would be such an unfathomable coincidence if they had just happened to run into the person who knew where to find the person they were looking for. 

“There’s only one way to find out,” says Harry, tossing off the covers.

Aguillard is surprisingly happy to see them when they knock on her cottage door.

“I thought you have left Gildoré by now. Come in, come in.” She leads them inside, gesturing for them to take a seat while she heads toward the kitchen to put on a kettle. As they sit down on Aguillard’s familiar living room sofa, her cat jumps onto Harry’s lap and swishes its tail against his chest.

When Aguillard returns, she sets their mugs down on the tea table. “So,” she says, easing herself into a seat across from them. “What you are here for? To try again with a wand?"

“Actually, we’re here to ask you about a person,” says Harry. “Do you happen to know a Horace Slughorn?”

Aguillard’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Horace? Bien sûr, we were good… ahh… friends.”

From the look that Harry exchanges with Cedric, it’s clear that both of them are shocked by their good fortune for once. It’s also clear that neither of them are keen on exploring what “good… ahh… friends” means. 

“Do you still keep in touch with him?” Harry presses on.

“Yes, we write letters to each other often,” says Aguillard. “You are looking to speak to him?”

“Would you be able to put us in touch with him?”

Aguillard shakes her head before Harry is even finished his sentence. “No, I am afraid not. He has become very paranoid, Horace. For good reason, because of everything that is happening in England. He seems to think the bad man is after him. You know, the man with the funny name? But apparently I cannot say the name out loud.”

“We call him You-Know-Who,” Cedric supplies. “We’re not with him. In fact, we’re trying to take him down, which is why we need to speak to Mr. Slughorn.”

“Then he is even less likely to speak with you. He does not even come to meet me when I ask in my letters, because he is afraid that I am secretly captured and luring him out.”

Harry considers this. “Then do you have any idea where we can find him?”

Aguillard shrugs. “He travels many places. Too scared to stay in one place for a long time. Last time I speak with him, he said he was next going to Portugal. It was probably one month ago now. He did not give me an address.”

Harry and Cedric share a grim look. Another lead that’s hit a dead end.

Seeing their look of despondence, Aguillard heaves a great sigh. “I am sorry to not be of great help. With the wand, and with this.” She pauses for a moment. “However, if you ask me, I would guess he is somewhere in the Algarves.”

“Why would you say that?” Harry asks.

Aguillard scoffs. “He is English. Of course he is in the Algarves. And if I have to guess even more,” Aguillard strokes her chin, “He likes to be near the comfort of a big city. But not too big, because he wants to hide from attention. So I think… perhaps Faro? Well, it’s just a guess.”

They spend the rest of their visit probing Aguillard with more questions about Slughorn, but it seems their mysterious target was very tight-lipped about his personal affairs to the wandmaker. After they finish their tea, they bid Aguillard a final farewell.

“You know, I will miss having you here,” she says as she sees them off. “Even you, handsome boy,” she says to Cedric, who smiles back at her.

“So, what do you think?” Harry asks on their way back to town.

Cedric is quiet. Suddenly, he snorts.

“What?” asks Harry.

“It really is a funny name,” says Cedric. “Flight from death. I hadn’t even realised, and I speak French.”

“…What?” Harry repeats.

Cedric shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He frowns in thought. “I don’t know. Do we really want to travel all the way to Portugal to track down this man? We don’t even know where he is. Maybe he’s in Faro. Maybe we’ll have to search the entire Algarve.”

“He might even be somewhere else in Portugal,” says Harry.

Cedric fixes him with a stare. “He’s English, Harry. Of course he’s in the Algarve.”

Harry tilts his head up in thought. The sky is overcast today, and thunder rumbles in the distance. “What other leads do we have?”

The answer doesn’t need to be said. They have no other options.

“I guess we’re going to Portugal, then,” says Cedric.