Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or the HP universe; I just meddle with them in interesting ways.
Rating: Currently PG for now but, will quickly go up…
A/N: This is my second FanFic, first HP/Cedric&Harry fic. As this is my favorite pairing, whether Slash or Het, and I thought this was a great story to do. I am trying to get out of a writing funk and figured fanfics would be a fun ways of doing that, so bare with me as my updates might be a little irregular. Also, I plan for this fic to be a long story so the plot might take a slow course in some areas, hope ya don't mind…

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Before the beginning of fourth year, Harry had very limited contact with Cedric Diggory. Most of those times had been from a ways away, passing in the halls of Hogwarts or across the Great Hall during meals. He was popular, well liked, quiet, intelligent and kind but, beyond that Harry paid little attention to him.

However, in the summer between his third and fourth year they had met, officially, on their way to the Quidditch World Cup. The quiet Sixteen year old Hufflepuff had seemed nice and after his father had gone on about a lost quidditch match they had played against each other in the previous year, he had blushed in embarrassment at his father's obliviousness. Harry had quietly laughed at the expression on the older teens face as his father talked, he had tried more than once to correct Mr. Diggory on the events of the match but, the elder Diggory was not listening. At that point, an unconscious interest in the Hufflepuff was stirred in Harry.

Of course after that, their paths continued to cross once fourth year began. With the Tri-Wizard Tournament coming to Hogwarts, it seemed as its two champions, they were both competitors and partners. After Hagrid had shown Harry what their first task would be, Harry had felt a strong desire to tell Cedric about the dragons they would face, feeling that the other competitors would have probably already have been told as well. From there, a natural sort of camaraderie settled between them and they helped each other to not only survive each task but to move on to the next.

What happened the night of the final Tri-Wizard Tournament task Harry still couldn't believe? It was all so surreal. Cedric and he had made it to the cup together and after a debate, where neither boy had felt he should win, they had agreed to a tie. With that, they had both reached for the cup simultaneously and suddenly Harry had felt a familiar tug behind his navel, a whirling nausea induced flight and then he fell to the hard ground.

He was surprised to say the least, the thought of the cup being a portkey had not even crossed his mind, but, then again it was an easy way to return the champions back to the arena where the crowd awaited. Slowly regaining his balanced, Harry lifted his head from the damp ground below it and tried to focus his eyes.

The first glimpse he had he knew something was horribly wrong. What should have been a large arena of cheering students, family and friends, was instead a cold, damp, eerily quiet graveyard. The quiet unnerved Harry as he glanced around in confusion. Mist was floating about, surrounding the graveyard as if a supernatural fog, meant to keep those in from going out and vice versa.

"Ughhh…" a voice groaned beside him, followed by "What the bloody hell happened? The cup's a portkey?"

Harry finally glanced to the side and found Cedric sprawled out beside him, touching the back of his head, he withdrew his hand to see it covered in blood. At the sight, Harry finally snapped out of the daze he had been in and stumbled over to Cedric.

Putting an arm around Cedric's shoulders, Harry said "Here lean on me; I can do a healing charm… I am not very good at them but, it will tide you over until Madam Pomfrey can take a look at you."

Cedric nodded, and then groaned from the pain the movement caused, and slightly rested against Harry and turned his head so Harry could get a better view. "Where are we?"

Muttering the healing charm, Harry then looked to make sure the wound was closed. Satisfied, he was about to answer Cedric when he heard a noise from behind him. Turning around he froze in fear as a cloaked figure stepped from the mist. The figure was dressed in dark cloak with the cloak's hood covering the head. The figure continued to walk forward, in its arms was a bundled mass, held carefully as if it were fragile.

It was a death eater.

"Cedric, get up, now!" Harry hissed quietly, not taking his eyes from the person who had finally stopped, just fifth teen feet away. Just as he spoke pain shot through his head, crumpling to the ground, he touched his scar.

"Wha…" Cedric started to ask as he turned his head around and gasped. After the events the past summer at the Quidditch World Cup, Cedric was all too familiar with what a death eater looked like. Jumping to his feet, Cedric gripped his wand tightly, moving closer to the boy writhing in pain beside him.

From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."

Then, as if in slow motion, the hooded figure flicked his wand and yelled "Avada Kedavra!"

A burst of green light shot from the wand, as the spell travelled towards the two boys. Harry felt a hand shove him away and then heard a thud as a body fell to the earth below it. Turning in horror, Harry cried out as he saw Cedric's body spread out to the ground, face in the dirt with his right arm in an awkward angle.

Cedric was dead, his lifeless body lay before Harry and there was nothing Harry could do about it.

From that point on in a shocked state, pain coursing through his head, he was bound in tight cord against a head stone and watched on in fear as Voldemort was resurrected with blood taken from Harry's body. Once he had been given his new body, Voldemort went about his usual long winded speech, high on the effect of his latest achievement in his quest for power and immortality. When he ordered his servant, Wormtail the traitor, to release Harry and give him his wand, Harry knew this would be his only chance to survive. It seemed Voldemort felt the need to reinforce the belief that he was indeed the most powerful being in the wizarding world.

With Voldemort's death eaters watching on, somehow their spells collided with a powerful force and Harry watched on as several figures erupted from Voldemort's wand, his parents among them. His parents shouted for him to hold on, that they would keep Voldemort occupied as he fled and to use the portkey to get back to Hogwarts.

With a yell, Harry jerked his wand away, breaking the bond between the two wands and ran to Cedric's body. With a quick summoning spell, Harry felt the cup fly into his hand as he heard Voldemort scream for his death eaters to stop him and then a tug as the portkey to him away.

o0o0o0oo0o0o0o0o0

As he landed he heard the crowd cheer for the champions return and feet stomping towards him as he pulled Cedric's body tightly against him, tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt a tug and looked up as Dumbledore's face came into view.

"He's back," Harry whispered. "He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?"

The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over Harry; it looked white,appalled.

"My God - Diggory!" it whispered. "Dumbledore - he's dead!"

The words were repeated; the shadowy figures pressing in on them gasped it to those around them . . . and then others shouted it - screeched it - into the night - "He's dead!" "He's dead!" "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"

Harry continued to hold Cedric to him, crying, as those around him told him to let him go and then with a wrench, Dumbledore pulled Harry away from Cedric. The crowd continued to roar as the news of Cedric's death spread like wild fire.

Harry heard Fudge in the background saying he was ill and needed to go to the hospital. The professors argued over where he should go but in the end Professor Moody nearly had to carry him back to the castle as he explained what happened. Once they arrived at the professor's office it seemed Moody was not who he appeared to be, but rather he was a death eater in disguise. He went on to elaborate all he went through to get Harry to the final task in the tournament. How he helped the dark lord to be reborn. Just as the imposter was about to kill Harry, the door to the office blasted open. Dumbledore stormed in with several teachers, to stop him.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It was sometime shortly after Harry left the stadium where the portkey had returned Harry and Cedric's body, that a groan could be heard from the supposed dead Cedric Diggory.

"Diggory's alive!" someone shouted.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

With a groan Harry awoke, pain lancing throughout his body. He slowly opened his eyes and found himself lying in a bed in the hospital wing. Events of the night raced through him mind… the maze, the portkey to the graveyard, Cedric dying, Voldemort's return.

A muffled sob erupted from his chest as he realized another life was gone because of him. All because an evil bent mad man decided Harry's death was the only way he would gain more power.

From a shadowed corner, a bed spring creaked and then footsteps could be heard shuffling towards him.

"Who's there?" Harry yelled out as he scrambled for his glasses on the bedside table. Grabbing his wand as well, he put his glasses on and watched as what had to be a ghost, came to stand beside his bed.

Harry gasped in fear as he scrambled away from the ghost, only to fall over the side of the bed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" he whispered over and over as he curled up into a ball.

The ghost came around the bed, kneeling down bedside him and then said "Harry, it's alright, you're alright."

Cedric's ghost then wrapped his arms around Harry's much smaller body and then lifted him up. Sitting down on the recently vacated bed, he placed Harry across his lap.

Harry lifted his head from under his hands and then looked into Cedric's face. With shock, he realized ghost couldn't touch people; they certainly couldn't lift anything…

"You're alive?" he whispered with wide eyes.

Smiling, Cedric nodded.

Harry quickly turned towards Cedric, inadvertently straddling the lap below him, grinning he wrapped his arms around Cedric's neck, pulling the older student roughly against his chest in a tight hug.

"I thought you were dead, how did you survive, Wormtail cast the killing curse on you?" Harry said in a small voice. "I'm so sorry; I should have reacted quicker and tried to do something."

Wrapping his arms around the small waist of the younger boy, Cedric looked into Harry's sad eyes and said "It's not your fault, you couldn't have done anything. Besides, the curse missed me; I hit my head on the ground or something and knocked myself out. I knocked my head about twice in a few minutes time span, bruised my ego while I was at it."

He laughed and touched the covered wound against his temple.

"You only hit your head because you pushed me out of the way." Harry stated with a smile as he lifted a hand to lightly touch the gauze. "I am glad you're alive. When you fell, I heard your body hit the ground and then you just laid there…"

Cedric sat quietly, just waiting for Harry to continue. The sad faraway look in his eyes made it clear he need to.

"…I was grabbed and dragged over to a headstone, tied up and cut. They use my blood in some ritual to resurrect Voldemort. I just laid there and watched, while he was given a new body… my worst enemy, the twisted monster that took my parents away from me and marked me for death."

Harry looked away after speaking, worrying his bottom lip, trying to keep the keep the tears from falling. The silence around them made the words reverberate across the infirmary, hauntingly echoing the fear and pain laced throughout them.

"Afterwards, he told them to release me, he wanted to duel me, prove that he was more powerful wizard. Even though I am a fourteen year old student and he has probably sixty years experience on me, not to mention we were surrounded by his death eaters." A hallow laugh slipped from Harry's lips. "Then something happened with our wands, our spells collided and the wands were tethered together. The spells fused together and then from out of his wand came all the people he had killed, they were transparent like ghosts. They told me to hold on, that they would help me… my mum and dad were there, they told me it would be alright."

Tears falling from his glistening emerald eyes, Harry whispered "They kept him there, just long enough for me to run to you and accio the cup. The cup flew into my hand and then portkey brought us back to Hogwarts."

Cedric stared at the boy in his lap, shocked that someone so young could do what wizard twice his age could only dream of. He had always ignored the gossip about the famous Harry Potter, he figured that Harry probably didn't want the world to know every little detail of his life, whether it was true or not. When he heard about all the amazing and terrifying things that happened to him, the events of his first year, or his second and the rumors of the Chamber of Secrets… Cedric had taken it all in with a grain of salt. However, now he couldn't believe how much this fourteen year old had been through and still he managed to not only win the tri-wizard tournament(well tie for it), then he faced countless death eaters and the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as well and came out with a just a cut in his arm. Harry was without a doubt truly a powerful wizard.

"I…I can't believe you went through all that and you're sitting here now, unhurt and talking about it… I probably would have been dead a few seconds after I got there, no, I would have if you hadn't been there with me."

"But it was just luck and help from my parents and those that Voldemort has killed. It's always been like that, I am nothing special at all." Harry exclaimed.

Cedric smiled and cupped Harry's cheek "You can say what you want, luck or what have you, but you still have done and seen more than many people. You went up against a truly evil man and lived, more than once. No matter what you believe, you are strong and you are brave, and I am thankful that you were there to bring me back."

They sat like that, in a companionable silence, just looking at each other, comforted in the other's presence.

Then a loud snore, reverberated through the infirmary, and the two students looked at the sleeping Professor Moody several beds away, who had been recovered from his trunk after Barty Crouch Jr. had been captured.

It was then that they realized just exactly how they were sitting there together. Harry sat straddling Cedric's lap, his arms around Cedric's neck with his finger's just a moment ago lightly threading through the hair at the nape of his neck. Cedric had one arm wrapped around Harry's waist, having pulled him against his chest and one hand cupping Harry's cheek.

Just a moment ago, the position had seemed natural and now it seemed awkward. Harry's eyes widened and he wiggled to try and get off of Cedric's lap.

At this point, Cedric's eyes too had widened in alarm, as he quickly picked up Harry and placed him back onto the bed. Backing up a few steps, he blushed and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"Uhh, we should probably, get to bed. Madam Pomfrey would be angry if she found us out of bed while recovering…" He said as he walked back to his bed.

Lying down, Cedric then said "Goodnight, Harry."

"Er… goodnight, Cedric."