Chapter Text
1
It would only make me late
He saw Cedric again after fifteen years. No – eighteen. On the day he quit his job as an Auror.
He was old enough now to feel the strange elasticity of time. How the years stretched until the past blurred and strained at the edges. The moments at the graveyard were broken, painful, too heavy to linger on for long without shattering whoever remembered them. The first real death he had faced. The cold body he had wrapped his arms around and brought home only to hear Amos Diggory’s broken scream.
Harry almost dropped his cup and let it crash to the floor, if not for his Auror reflexes honed by years of experience and survival. His heart froze; his body rooted to the spot.
It wasn’t Cedric’s transparent, pale-blue, ghostly form that stunned him, but his eyes. That same panic in them, a sharp pang that cut through the years and stole Harry’s breath.
The young man’s eyes were lost and unfocused. He looked distant. Until, like a radio tuning to the right frequency, the gray eyes seemed to lock onto him. Cedric’s body flickered, fragments and glitches resolving into something more solid.
Then what Harry heard next wrenched him out of his flat and plunged him into the coldest, deepest ice water imaginable. A shiver ran down his spine, numbing every nerve.
“Harry! Those people – we need to get back to school. I can Apparate—”
Cedric’s tone was desperate and urgent. The words he might have said that night, if Wormtail hadn’t killed him moments later like a spare.
Harry swayed, dizzy. He gripped his cup and set it carefully on the table. Through his blurred vision, he could see his own fingers trembling.
“Cedric?” uttered he faintly.
The ghost turned toward him, eyes wide. He looked exactly the same – the same torn, dirt-stained Hogwarts uniform of the yellow and black champion. His brown hair, floppy and ruffled. Faint bruises and small bleeding cuts on his face. Just as he had looked the last time Harry saw him. He had never seen Cedric’s body again after that night, not even at the funeral.
Cedric’s frown deepened. He looked lost. Harry didn’t remember him ever sounding so uncertain before. And he looked so young. Died young.
“Harry? No… wait, you—you’re not Harry.”
Poor thing. Harry took a deep breath, counting to three before slowly stepping closer.
“I’m Harry,” he said tightly.
The expression on Cedric’s face stayed the same. The disbelief mingled with confusion and hurt.
“What happened? I thought… I was at the graveyard. There were people in black cloaks. They chanted…” His body flickered again, glitching with the weight of his emotions: small ripples of grief and shock.
Harry didn’t need to say anything when Cedric suddenly looked down at himself.
A broken whimper escaped him, then a cry of horror.
You might want to sit down for this, Harry wanted to say. But ghosts didn’t sit, did they? He could have offered a cup of tea if Cedric were alive, but that would’ve felt like a cruel joke.
Oh, Merlin. Talking to the ghost of Cedric Diggory. The seventeen-year-old golden boy who had died too young, who had left a permanent scar on Harry’s life. The first boy Harry had ever crushed on. The first crush for all boys and girls.
And now, those feelings felt so distant.
Harry said softly, “I’m sorry. Cedric, I truly am.”
He saw tears run down Cedric’s cheeks. He hadn’t known a ghost could cry. Myrtle could, but he’d never actually seen her not do it.
“I—” Cedric’s voice echoed hoarsely. “What happened?” he asked again, his voice brittle. He looked so small.
There was no way to avoid that heavy question, but answering it meant walking straight back into the old corridors of pain and loss. Too many to count. Harry needed something stronger than the tea he could pour from the kettle.
But he had no choice. Cedric deserved the truth. Maybe this was what had held him back all this time – the not knowing. His soul still lingering in the living world because he didn’t realise he was dead.
Harry sighed and sat down. They were at the kitchen table now, a space barely used thanks to his long hours as Head Auror, which was plain, almost empty. With a small wave of his wand, a cup of tea appeared in his hand. Cedric, sensing the weight in Harry’s manner, looked up through his tears. He walked over and sat down opposite him, still polite as ever.
He began to tell Cedric. Starting from that night in the graveyard, what had happened after Peter Pettigrew killed him in an instant. How Harry had brought his body back to Hogwarts, running from Voldemort’s newly resurrected form, clutching the cup and Cedric’s lifeless body. He left out the part about Amos Diggory’s desperate scream and the sound that still haunted him to this day.
It felt like opening a coffin and looking at the decayed body inside, but Harry pushed on. Cedric’s expression as he listened, flitting from pure horror and disbelief, tightened something in Harry’s chest. When he told him how the whole tournament, and Harry’s entry into it, had been orchestrated by Barty Crouch Jr, the ghost’s brow furrowed deeply. If ghosts could be angry, Cedric was very close. His glassy eyes darkened; his fists clenched on his knees.
“Tell me more, please,” he said faintly when Harry paused.
“You might want to take some time to process it,” Harry warned.
Cedric shook his head, tears spilling again. “No, I need to know. Please.”
With that quiet insistence, Harry went on. He told him about Umbridge’s reign of terror, the Ministry’s denial of Voldemort’s return, the long year when everyone had called Harry a liar for defending Cedric’s death as proof that Voldemort was back. Cedric listened intently, face etched with disbelief and grief.
Then Harry’s words started to lose order. They were jumping between memories, years, and wars. He told him, roughly, about Tom Riddle. The Horcruxes. The Deathly Hallows. The only way to truly kill Voldemort. About Snape’s secret work as a double agent, and Dumbledore’s plan to let himself die so Voldemort wouldn’t realise Snape could become master of the Elder Wand.
“That’s a stupid plan. Throwing his life away like that!” Cedric blurted out.
Harry sighed. “Dumbledore was already dying from the curse on that ring. He didn’t have much time left… maybe a few years.”
But the young man’s anger didn’t fade. “A few years still matter! He could’ve told you about the Deathly Hallows from the start instead of letting you believe Snape was a Death Eater. I can’t believe he kept that from you. He had a whole year to tell you how to destroy the Horcruxes, or at least to research it! He should’ve mentioned the sword.”
Harry smiled tightly. “Hermione thought the same.”
Cedric’s eyebrows lifted. “How is she? And your friends and everyone else?”
That was the hardest part, Harry thought.
“We’ll get back to that,” was all he managed to say.
He carefully wove the memories into words. He had never done it before, not even after the Battle of Hogwarts. It was always Hermione who told those stories to the public. Her words were far more articulate and composed while Harry stood behind her or avoided the public gaze peering curiously at him. So when it came to telling it himself, he found it difficult. It was hard to digest, hard to form the words, even after more than a decade.
But he managed. Somehow, he did. He told Cedric about the hunt for the Horcruxes – each piece, every narrow escape, what had happened in Malfoy Manor, and finally, the last day: the Battle of Hogwarts, when everything came to an end and he realised that he himself was the final Horcrux.
If ghosts could turn pale, Cedric certainly did. His eyes were fixed on Harry, unblinking, as Harry described walking into the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Cedric murmured.
“I had no choice,” Harry said with a small shrug. “Besides, I survived.”
While you didn’t. That was such a wrong thing to say. No.
Maybe because Cedric was a ghost, his presence felt different, detached, as if Harry were talking to something beyond being human. He didn’t feel like he needed to hold back from the dead. So he told Cedric everything. Even about the flash of green light that had sent him to what could only be described as the afterlife. The phantom of King’s Cross 9 3⁄4 where he had spoken to Dumbledore, saw the last fragment of Voldemort’s soul, small and bloodied, dying beneath a bench, before coming back to life.
Something in that memory caught him. “Did you… remember encountering something like that?” Harry asked quietly.
“Like what?” Cedric blinked, as though waking from the spell of the story.
“The… uh, afterlife place. Somewhere to go forward, or come back from?”
Cedric hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. It feels like I just came back from what I last saw… the graveyard, and those cloaked people.”
That’s bad.
Harry had assumed, from his own near-death experience, that everyone who died must see that place, where they could move on. He knew now that the door with the dark velvet curtain in the Department of Mysteries led to the same realm. The afterlife that carried people beyond, without choice. No return. No ghosts. Just the end of life.
He shuddered, but Cedric didn’t seem to notice. “Can you tell me more? What happened after you came back?”
So Harry found himself describing the duel on the Hogwarts grounds, the final moment when Voldemort fell. Cedric let out a deep breath, leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped in his lap.
Then came the worst part. Harry stopped, took a sip of tea, and glanced at the young man before him. He began to recount what victory had cost and the death toll. Cedric let out a soft whimper when he heard the names of his classmates, and of the younger students like Colin and Dennis Creevey, Lavender Brown, and Remus Lupin.
Harry couldn’t go on anymore. A lump rose in his throat, and suddenly he felt exhausted. Outside, the sky had turned a deep violet, and the room around them had grown darker without lights. He—they—had been sitting there for perhaps two hours now.
He waited for Cedric to coax him to continue, to ask another question, but the other didn’t. Instead, Cedric rubbed his face, mirroring Harry’s bone-deep weariness.
“You’re amazing,” Cedric said quietly. “What you did.”
“I had loads of help.”
“You had help because people believed in you,” Cedric whispered. A soft smile curved his lips. “I’ve always known you were destined for greatness, Harry. I knew you were more than just the Boy Who Lived. Since the second task, I’ve seen it. When you helped Ron and that girl.”
It might have been a recent memory for the young man, but that incident had already faded in Harry’s mind. The sudden rush of it almost gave him a dizziness, so he didn’t respond right away. Instead, he stared into the cup in his hand, though he could still feel Cedric’s gaze on him, tinged with something like awe and admiration.
He could have gotten used to those looks by now. But not now. Not when they came from someone he had failed.
There was no need to tell Cedric what happened after. How Harry had carried on with the weight of the world on his shoulders, trying to set things right. How he’d fixed what he could, and lived with what he couldn’t. How, sometimes, it all still felt in vain.
He cleared his throat. “I think you should try checking on your parents. Maybe that’s the key to all this.” He gestured vaguely. “The whole thing. You might need to find some closure… to pass on.”
Cedric’s eyes lingered on him as he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Merlin, this has been overwhelming. I’ve just—” He stopped, shaking his head as though the words had slipped away, and let out a sigh of resignation.
A pang of guilt pierced Harry’s chest as he realised what an awful thing it was. He was pushing the lost and confused ghost to go somewhere else. Worse still, to their next life.
He turned toward Cedric. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured quickly.
But Cedric straightened in his seat. “No—no, you’re right. I’ve overstayed here, and I was asking too much of you. Forcing you to relive such painful memories after all you’ve been through.”
Then he did something unexpectedly endearing – intimate, even. Cedric’s translucent hand reached out to touch Harry’s. The cool, tingling sensation rested lightly against the back of his hand, just like the faint chill Harry always felt when passing a ghost. It was cold, yes, but also gentle. A small gesture that shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did.
“Thank you,” Cedric said softly. “For telling me what happened. For comforting me through… this.”
I didn’t, Harry wanted to argue, but his thoughts scattered, and his voice caught in his throat.
The ghost of Cedric Diggory stood up, his hand falling away, leaving behind only the faint echo of coolness.
“I’d better go now. Thank you again. And it’s nice seeing you again.” Cedric smiled, then chuckled quietly to himself. “Can’t imagine seeing you all grown up. You look so different… better.”
His tone held a light, almost playful warmth. And bloody hell, they hadn’t even been friends at school. Yet now they spoke like two people who had known each other deeply, simply because Harry had happened to see him again.
He couldn’t let that flicker of warmth take root in his heart, not when he wasn’t ready to welcome it. So he stood and looked at Cedric.
“It’s nothing. I’m glad I got to see you again,” Harry smiled.
The younger man nodded once, then closed his eyes as though focusing on something unseen. “I’m going to see my parents. For the last time.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” he reassured him. “I know you can do it.”
A ghost’s imitation of a slow breath escaped Cedric. “Thank you, Harry.”
Then his form began to fade. Harry watched until the last trace of him vanished, leaving him alone in his flat with his quickened breath and heavy heart.
It was the first night Harry tried to sleep without worrying about what came tomorrow. No need to set an alarm. No need to cast a quick spell to tidy up his now-rumpled maroon uniform. No need to stand in queues, to face all those stares. Those admiration, fear, and that unnecessary sympathy.
He should’ve felt free like never before, but he didn’t. His body was restless. The look on Cedric’s face – torn between shock, sadness, and that flicker of admiration kept replaying behind his eyes every time he shut them.
By the time sleep finally began to pull him under, it was nearly three in the morning. Just as the first dream, something shapeless and calm, began to take form, a loud clatter outside the bedroom jolted him awake and dragged him back into the waking world.
His hand went instinctively to his wand. He rose at once, eyes sharp. Call it an Auror’s reflex. He’d warded the place himself, but years of service had taught him that there were kinds of dark magic that could slip through anything.
He bolted out of his room, barefoot and in pajamas, but already in a fighting stance ready to fire the first curse if needed. And then he saw it. The ghost Cedric stood among fallen kitchen appliances, looking utterly mortified.
Harry’s heart sank, and yet, beneath that hollow, primal alarm of something’s wrong, there came an odd relief. As wrong as it was, seeing Cedric again meant… he hadn’t yet gone.
“My parents can’t see me,” Cedric said, voice strained. He looked exhausted. “I’m sorry I woke you. I didn’t mean to cause such a mess. I didn’t know I could do that. I swear I didn’t touch anything!”
Harry lowered his wand and approached him quietly. “It’s okay,” he said. “Ghosts can do that sometimes. When their emotions go haywire.”
It was too late now. He’d said the g--word, and Cedric’s face was stricken with sharp pain. Great, Harry cursed himself. You couldn’t help but be an idiot for one second, could you?
The other slumped back into the seat, eyes distant. “I don’t know why they can’t. I tried. But it’s not like talking to you now.”
“We can figure this out tomorrow,” Harry said quickly. “Maybe we can go to the Spirit Division, ask them about the cause of this. How to fix it.”
But Cedric didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes stayed hazy. Slowly, he began to speak.
“You know that my parents… they have another child now. A girl. Her name’s Cecily. They call her Cee.”
Oh. Harry wanted to knock his head against the wall. He’d forgotten. So much had happened, and everything had changed. Even though he still worked at the Ministry, he was always on the move, and he hadn’t spoken to Amos Diggory or most of the old Order members in years. They’d all lost touch after the war.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Cedric. I should’ve told you.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not like seeing my… sister—” he stumbled over the word “—it’s not like it makes any difference. I’m glad they’ve moved on, that they have someone new to love. She’s about to start her first year at Hogwarts, you know?” He smiled faintly. “She looks so sweet. Her hair’s brown like mine, but she’s got pale blue eyes and dimples…”
“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured again. He felt like a helpless dimwit.
The ghost of the young man shook his head grimly. “It should be me saying sorry. I can’t seem to go. And I don’t know where I’m supposed to go now. So I’ll come back to you. I don’t know what else to do.”
“We’ll figure this out tomorrow,” Harry said gently. He wanted to reach out, to touch Cedric’s arm, but he couldn’t bear that cold, dead feeling again. With a flick of his wand, the scattered kitchen tools lifted themselves and floated lazily back to their hooks and shelves.
Cedric must have noticed the dark circles under Harry’s eyes, because he winced. “You should rest. I’ll— I’ll try to see other people. My friends. Maybe some of them can see me too.”
“Okay.”
He couldn’t say you should get some sleep to a ghost who couldn’t. The moment already felt too fragile. Too awkward.
Despite being unable to feel asleep, Cedric’s voice sounded tired.
“Sleep well, Harry.”
Then he disappeared, and Harry caught a glimmer of tears in his eyes before he faded.
He was already there when Harry woke up groggily and stumbled into the kitchen for a quick breakfast.
Harry didn’t jump this time, nor did he feel that flash of shock anymore at seeing Cedric’s ghost.
“It didn’t work?” he asked, setting the pan on the stove for pancakes and eggs. It was nearly eleven now, but that hardly mattered to someone who no longer had a job to rush to.
“No,” Cedric said. “I came back just a few hours ago. Thought you might still be asleep.”
There was a lighter tone in his voice, so Harry decided to keep things casual and lighthearted.
“I thought ghosts could phase through anywhere,” he remarked while cracking some eggs.
Cedric shot him a look of mock offense. “Yeah, but that’d be so rude. What, you think I’d just barge into your room like that?”
Harry snorted. “You don’t have to keep your manners, you know.”
The ghost frowned, and then, true to his seventeen-year-old self, huffed annoyedly.
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I have to be like Moaning Myrtle or Peeves.”
Harry’s grin faltered. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“No, it’s—” Cedric’s expression turned sheepish. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’m just… upset. About being dead.”
Harry couldn’t help it. He let out a laugh. Cedric blinked at him, then laughed too, as if only just realising how absurd that sounded.
When Harry finished fixing breakfast, he sat at the table. It would’ve felt terribly awkward to eat while someone was watching, so he pulled out his wand and summoned a few books from the shelves. Most were old case reports along with a few stray notes from work.
“You can read these,” he said, gesturing helplessly. “Nothing interesting. Just a few files from cases I worked on. Might give you an idea of how things are now.”
How things were when you were buried cold. He didn’t say that.
Cedric seemed to understand. He floated closer, eyes scanning the pages, and with some effort he managed to flip through a few. His expression turned intent, absorbed, while Harry ate his nearly burned eggs and pancakes.
After a while Cedric looked up. “You were an incredible Auror. These cases… some of them seem so complicated. But you solved them.”
Harry shrugged. “There was a lot to do after the war. I had plenty of time to hunt down Death Eaters and their followers.”
“You say it like it’s nothing. But ‘Head of the Auror Office at twenty-seven’—that’s incredible.”
The plates scrubbed themselves. Halfway through stacking his dishes in the sink, Harry glanced over and Cedric was still watching him with an expression so open, so full of genuine admiration. It burned to look at, so Harry quickly turned away.
“I bet you could’ve done more,” he said before he could stop himself, and immediately regretted it.
But Cedric didn’t seem offended. Instead, he tilted his head. “You don’t go to work anymore.”
“I just quit,” Harry said. “Yesterday, actually.”
“What? Why?” Cedric’s voice rose in disbelief. “You could’ve done so much more for the wizarding world and helped more people! And you’re still so young—”
Harry chuckled. “I’m thirty-one.”
“That’s not the age to quit your job!”
“Who told you that?” Harry shot back, half-hearted.
“My dad,” Cedric said immediately. “He always wanted me to work at the Ministry to do something worthwhile. Something that contributes to society.”
The words sounded memorised, almost recited, and that was when Harry realised he was talking to a seventeen-year-old boy.
“Well, good for you,” he quipped, not so smoothly changing the subject. “Look, I’m going to grab some things from my room, then we’ll head to the Ministry together. To talk about your—uh—conditions.”
Cedric looked like he had more to say. His mouth opened, then closed again, his brows knitting together in visible disapproval.
It was a new expression for him. Harry couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped; he’d never seen the golden boy of Hufflepuff look petulant before.
Before Cedric could retort, Harry slipped away into his room. Now he knew it was the only place the ghost wouldn’t follow, and closed the door behind him, trying to stifle the grin still tugging at his lips.
The Spirit Division turned out to be utterly useless.
The head of the division, Burtram Claxton, took nearly an hour to cast all the spells meant to reveal the presence of Cedric Diggory’s ghost, who, ironically, had been sitting right beside Harry the entire time. Claxton’s appearance might have earned him some credit as an old wizard who knew his craft, but by the end, his voice had gone hoarse and dry with nothing fruitful. He took a long gulp of tea, lowered his wand, and sighed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, but I don’t think the lad wants to be seen.”
Harry wanted to laugh. “He doesn’t want to be seen? We asked you for help. He needs help to move on — that’s the opposite of refusing to be seen.”
Claxton flopped into his chair in the dinky office, which had more cobwebs than the corner of a cupboard. He snapped his bony fingers, and a stack of yellowed, dusty papers appeared on the desk with a thud. Harry coughed, scrunching his nose as a cloud of dust filled the air.
“We have clear regulations about this,” Claxton began, flipping through the parchment. “In section P.O. 3), it states that if a spirit doesn’t wish to be seen, the spells may have no effect—”
“I told you he wants to be seen!” Harry cut in.
“We can’t do anything if we can’t communicate with him,” Claxton countered weakly, adjusting his square-rimmed glasses.
“I can be the interpreter. Cedric can tell me what he wants, or you can ask him questions — he’s right here, and he can hear you.” Harry turned toward Cedric, who gave him an encouraging nod.
But Claxton looked uneasy. “It doesn’t work that way, Mr. Potter. First, you’re not a certified spirit whisperer or mediator. You need a proper license for that. And second, as a spirit officer, I can’t verify whether what you say is true. In that situation, the dead could easily be exploited by false representatives.”
Harry’s temper flared. “Are you accusing me of defamation?”
“No, no, of course not! But according to protocol, I can’t officially confirm your claims without proof that you’re truly communicating with Mr. — ah — the late Cedric Diggory.”
Harry leaned forward. “Then use Veritaserum on me. I don’t mind.”
But Claxton only looked more troubled. “I’m sorry, sir, but that wouldn’t help. You might tell the truth because you believe you see him.”
He didn’t elaborate, but Harry caught the implication in the old wizard’s anxious tone and it made his stomach twist. The memory of that awful year when no one had believed him came rushing back. Now this old bureaucrat was all but calling him delusional.
He was about to snap back when he felt a cool touch on his shoulder — Cedric’s hand.
“That’s alright,” Cedric murmured. “He has a point.”
“He doesn’t,” Harry shot back, loud enough to make Claxton flinch. The old man glanced between Harry and the apparently empty chair beside him, looking both skeptical and uneasy.
“We might have to find someone else who can see me, or have the Ministry assign a proper mediator,” said Cedric calmly.
They eventually settled on contacting a mediator, though Harry’s annoyance didn’t fade easily. Since cases like this were extremely rare, the Ministry didn’t have an in-house specialist; they had to reach out to an external contact. The mediator Claxton mentioned was a seventy-year-old woman who traveled the world handling spirit cases, which meant it could take days, possibly a week, for her to arrive. Claxton looked slightly, only slightly, guilty as he explained that she was the only available contact he could reach.
“Does the ghost of Mr. Diggory trouble you, Mr. Potter?” the old man asked at last, his voice as dry as parchment.
Harry frowned and glanced briefly at Cedric. “No, of course not.”
“Then I suggest you simply leave him be. Ghosts normally exist in their own realm. In time, he’ll learn to coexist with humans and magical folk. Perhaps one day, people will be able to see him.”
“He doesn’t just want to be seen,” Harry snapped. “He wants to pass!”
But it was like talking to a wall. Claxton insisted that Harry’s words carried no official weight, and that they had to wait for a certified mediator to contact Cedric.
“It’s ridiculous!” Harry burst out the moment he Apparated back into his apartment, tearing off his coat and yanking his tie loose by hand. The small act of destruction helped calm the heat still burning in his chest.
Sitting calmly on the sofa, Cedric looked far more composed than Harry. “He’s just following procedure—”
“What procedure? That stupid bureaucracy,” Harry shot back.
Cedric startled. “I didn’t mean—”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Harry cut him off, pulling his watch from his wrist and unbuttoning his shirt with sharp, impatient movements. “It’s the same bloody nonsense every time. The Ministry runs on pure idiocy half the time! Did you see that man rifling through those dusty piles of parchment? It’s always about the rules! Nothing ever changes, not in centuries. There are so many problems, and only a handful of people ever bother to fix them.”
Cedric’s tone softened. “Is that why you left the Auror Department? Because you hate the office work?”
“Part of it,” Harry muttered. “But you don’t get it.”
The younger man exhaled quietly. “You’re right. I don’t. I’ll never get it.”
Looking at him now, crouched on the sofa, his faint blue outline glowing in the lamplight, Harry felt like an arse. He’d lashed out again, this time at someone who didn’t deserve it. Worse still, at the first victim of the Second Wizarding War, as every report and history book since had called Cedric Diggory the first victim.
The word hit like a gut punch.
That victim was now in the room with him, staring at him with resolute, earnest eyes. Even after all this time, Cedric still cared about the rules, the laws, the rightness of things. He looked like a relic from the past Harry had tried to bury, only for it to resurface in front of him again.
He should apologize, but he was too tired. He’d already said too many hurtful things to the young man who had barely reached seventeen, and now every apology felt stale and meaningless.
So he said nothing.
Cedric unfolded his legs and stood. “I’m going to look for the mediator myself. Maybe other people too. Random strangers on the street, perhaps, or other ghosts. I’m sure there must be someone else who can see me.”
He turned to Harry, still wearing that same waned smile tinged with sadness.
“Wish me luck, yeah?”
Harry watched him close his eyes, the way he always did before disappearing. His brows furrowed in concentration, and then his translucent form flickered, wavered, and finally dissolved into the air.
Cedric had been gone for five days, and Harry was starting to believe he’d gone for good.
Maybe he’d found someone else who could see him, maybe even the mediator who could finally help him cross over.
Harry tried not to dwell on it. He went out for walks. He visited the Burrow, stopped by Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, checked in on Kreacher, Tonks’s family, and a few colleagues who still came to him for advice on their cases. He didn’t mind helping, but he didn’t encourage them either. They needed to find their own footing, and eventually, they would have to stop relying on him.
Most of the time, though, he drifted through the days like a ghost himself, unsure about what he wanted anymore.
He thought about why he’d left the Auror Office. The decision hadn’t come suddenly; it had been building for the last few years, gripping tighter and tighter until he couldn’t ignore it. He remembered the exhaustion of endless trials, the sly, unrepentant looks of the accused, their fumbling, unapologetic excuses, and the hollow devastation of the victims listening to the verdicts in dim, echoing rooms of the Wizengarmot.
All investigations and arrests had begun to feel meaningless. He’d quoted the same wizarding laws over and over to imprison Dark wizards, knowing full well that many would walk free again one day to do the same harm. The Dementors couldn’t be controlled anymore. Some had gone rogue, abandoning Azkaban and preying on anyone they found whether they were Muggles and wizards alike, and feeding on fear and screams.
Harry pushed himself out of the water, letting it pour off his body without bothering to cast a drying charm. His hair clung heavy to his face, and a burst of lake water escaped his mouth in a gasp. The cold numbed him, and momentarily dulled the restless storm inside.
When he was underwater, everything went quiet. The lake swallowed sound, swallowed thought. Down there, he could almost pretend he belonged to it. A piece of stillness, rather than a man haunted by things he couldn’t change.
He swam another lap. Then another. Until his muscles ached, and his calves and arms began to go numb and heavy.
“Quite an exercise you had.”
The voice startled him. And there he was. The pale blue translucent figure was sitting on the ground, hands tucked in his knees. Cedric looked almost shy, like he had been caught watching something he shouldn’t. Well, technically he wasn’t supposed to watch Harry wearing only a boxer swim in the lake alone in the very early morning.
Harry cast the quick dry spell and felt the warmth spread over his body. Cedric’s eyes were still on him.
“I like cold swimming. Clear my head.”
Cedric hummed, still sitting crossed legs, hands on his lap, looking up at Harry with something hard to read. It was a lot harder to read the ghost’s expression with their transparent skin.
“Not a successful plan?”
“No,” the other’s face fell. “I can’t find the mediator. Turns out I can’t just think about her and her name to look for her. All the people that I can go visit are only people I’ve seen and talked to. I went to Hogwarts, you know. The place’s changed. A lot more students now, that’s one thing.”
He didn’t say whether he liked it or not, seeing the place where he felt most attached to. The second home. And Harry didn’t ask. He put on his sweater and sat down beside Cedric.
“What about other ghosts?”
Again, Cedric shook his head. “No one can see me. I’ve been there the whole day, seeking for all other ghosts to appear but none can see me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’ve done nothing but helped me a lot lately. I should’ve been the one who said sorry to you.” The other man kept smiling. “Maybe you should tell Mr. Claxton that I’m bothering you. He might have found some ways to send me off. It’s quicker that way.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “Why should I say that?”
Again, the unreadable expression.
“You want to get rid of me, don’t you?”
“I’ve never said that.”
“But it’s true,” Cedric said. “You keep saying I need help to pass, but I never said I wanted that.”
This was getting out of hand. Harry ruffled his hair, inside his chest frustration bubbling up. “Don’t you want to not be stuck here forever? A ghost roaming around with no one who can see or hear you but me?”
“No! But I— I don’t know…” Cedric’s voice cracked. “I just… I needed time to understand this. Maybe to figure out why I’m here in the first place. That matters to me too, you know.”
A single tear slid down his translucent cheek, shimmering faintly before it vanished. “And I want more time to see this world again.”
He looked torn, uncertain as if he didn’t fully understand what he was saying himself. But his words hit Harry hard all the same.
“I know that I’m just a reminder of the past for you,” Cedric murmured. “I don’t have a future. And I’m sorry that me showing up… caused all this.”
It was the truth. Plain and simple. Looking at him now, fragile and human despite his ghostly form, Harry felt a hollow ache in his chest. Cedric was still wearing the same torn and bloodstained Hogwarts uniform he’d died in. The champion’s shirt, strained at the seams. And Harry wished, more than anything, that he could undo it all. Bring him back. Heal him. Make him less sad. He didn’t deserve sadness after death.
“I’m going to help you,” Harry said quietly. He reached out toward Cedric’s face, knowing he couldn’t touch him, and tried anyway, his fingers brushing through air. “We’ll see this through. Find out what this means.”
“Just like one of your Auror cases?” Cedric asked, a faint, apprehensive note under the sorrow.
“No,” Harry said. His voice softened. “Like helping a friend.”
That earned him a small, trembling smile from the ghost.