The Story of Harry and Cedric

by Hermione Granger

a sample

The human heart must be the ultimate mystery. It's the final frontier no person has ever been able to chart. Sometimes it happens that one imagines knowing all the nooks and crannies of one's heart through and through, only to see it change completely different in a single heartbeat. The rule is: you can't rule your heart. It does, what it does of its own free will. It will race, flip, ache, miss the beat and reach out for reasons the mind can't predict nor magic tame. It is as big a mystery and source of wonder to muggles and wizards alike.

Yet even if we can't understand our hearts, it is wise to listen to them. Trying to silence one's heart can be outright dangerous. Once the barriers break, and they will, the results can be formidable. It's like a volcano: the bigger the barrier, the bigger the blast. Harry and Cedric learned this the hard way when the winter was turning to a new spring in Hogwarts.

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THE BOY WHO LOVED

Chapter 7

Mapping Hearts

That night, Harry wrote two letters. The first one went to Sirius, giving a brief update without a word of the matters of his heart. Which, by and large, was bleeding. The sober warnings from Hermione had caught him completely by surprise at the height of his first love. The drop onto the sharp rocks of reality could hardly have been more drastic. When his brain regained its proverbial feet, Harry knew something had to be done. However he was longing for Cedric's embrace, he could not seek it knowing it would, sooner or later, bring about the ultimate threat of Voldemort's vengeance to Cedric. Therefore, he wrote the second letter. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to write. Every word seemed wrong somehow, every sentence either too sappy or casual to the point of heartlessness. After several drafts, all of which he burned, this is what Harry wrote:

"Hello, O Naughty One!

I hope I don't have to tell you this, but I'll tell you anyway: the other night was the best one of my life. Better than Quidditch, no competition.

However, I can't keep seeing you, not that way. We would be found out. There is a magical item on the loose that can reveal us, no matter how well we plan our meetings. I can't be any plainer in the letter, but trust me on this one. And as you must know, I'm not only underaged, unlike you, but too young in the eyes of the law as well. If we are found out, you'll be in trouble. I can't risk that.

Just in case this ends up in wrong hands, I won't sign this. You know who I am. Even someone as hot as you couldn't possibly have two such encounters in the same week. And just in case you are that naughty, I'm the one you gave a lovebite under the left arm.

We can, however, meet in the daytime. That shouldn't be too evident. But it has to be somewhere innocent, where we could meet by accident. Drop me a line, if we don't happen to actually meet by chance. Use a school owl."

Harry knew the letter wasn't enough, but he thought it was a pretty good start in making the whole affair seem like just sex on his part. If Cedric thought this was only a fling, it might be easier to make him forget Harry and move on before it was too late. Harry also knew that he would never forget Cedric, even if it turned out to be just a one night stand among others for him. At least that way Cedric would be safe from the seemingly contagious danger that Harry was spreading to his loved ones. His parents were dead and Sirius was still hiding after spending years in Azkaban. Harry couldn't take it if Cedric would be the next one. He felt sick.

When Harry was coming out of the owlery after sending the letters, he turned away from the door and found himself face to face with Cedric. The other boy seized the opportunity of the deserted place, took Harry in his arms without a word and kissed him like a man dying of thirst. Harry's hard-won resolutions of not letting his feelings ruin the future of the boy he'd fallen in love with shattered like so much of glass filigree. He couldn't help answering to the passion in Cedric's kiss. In fact, his knees went weak. For someone like Harry, who'd had to get used to standing on his own two feet, it was both a wonderful and scary feeling. He suddenly remembered his first time on a broom, flying.

"Oh, Harry," Cedric panted after a sweet minute or two, holding Harry's face between his hands. "I want you so bad. I couldn't wait any longer."

"I can feel that," Harry said with a sly smile. He'd been getting hard, too. He was so intoxicated by Cedric, by his sweet smell and strong hands, that his own fears and Hermione's warnings had lost their edge and almost slipped from his mind. "But we can't possibly do anything about it here."

"I know," Cedric said, between playfully chewing Harry's lower lip. "Let's find a better place, then."

"We could get into trouble."

"Hasn't stopped you before, has it?"

"No, but now it's different," Harry said. "You could get into trouble. I'm too young."

"You weren't last night. You're quite a big boy, Harry, where it counts."

Harry blushed. "I was. Too young, I mean. I just didn't know it. I don't feel too young, but Hermione told me about the Age of Consent," Harry explained. "You could get into serious trouble if we are found out."

"You're just half a year from fifteen. And if we're careful, no one will be the wiser."

"Mad-Eye will be."

"No he won't," Cedric said. "Even his eye can't possibly see everything."

"No, but he now has other means," Harry insisted. "I had to give him a map of the school last night. He saved me from getting caught by Filch and Snape, and he wanted it."

"I see that you had a busy night." Cedric replied, "So what, a map is just a map."

"Not this one, it ain't. You can't really understand if you haven't seen it. It's called Marauder's Map and was made by my father and his friends. It shows every person moving about in Hogwarts. As long as Moody has the map, he can catch us any time he chooses. I was just sending you a letter of warning."

"I'm still not too concerned," Cedric said. "Mad-Eye is a friend of Dumbledore. And he's only after dark wizards. Why should he care even if we made out through every single night?"

"I don't know," admitted Harry. "I just don't want any trouble for you."

"Harry, listen to me. I've been in trouble from the very moment you first looked at me." Now his tone was serious and he looked straight into Harry's eyes. "If you think this is just a bit of sex for me, you're wrong. I'm serious about you. I've fallen for you, Harry, and can't help it no matter how much trouble I get into."

Harry was almost torn apart right then and there. A part of him was glowing with happiness and trying to float at least a foot or two from the ground. The other part turned into a leaden lump of fear, which tried to sink him to the ground below his feet. When he looked into Cedric's intensely silver eyes, the strength of the emotion he saw both attracted and scared him. A beatific smile was spreading on Harry's face, but at the same time tears welled up in his eyes. He took a deep ragged breath and swallowed, twice. Then he saw someone moving in the distance behind Cedric.

"Someone's coming," Harry said, breaking free of Cedric's arms. After a heartbeat of looking at Cedric, he bolted. He didn't have the foggiest inkling of what he might have said, had he stayed. It was easier to run. Cedric didn't follow.

If someone had been able to sneak into his office, a room laden with various strange contraptions such as foeglasses and sneakoscopes, the intruder would have seen professor Alastor Moody staring down at the Marauder's Map, which was laid open on his desk.

Since the meeting with Harry the previous night, Moody had spent all of his free moments studying the myriad names moving on the map. The map was clearly a work of a genius. Mad-Eye found himself wondering idly who had made such a practically intrusive tool. It was spelled so that the more one concentrated on a place on the map, the more details could be seen, even if the names would on a normal piece of parchment be too tiny to read without a strong magnifying glass. One could see all the various floors of the huge building, and at same time read the almost microscopic names moving about in any of the hundreds rooms, staircases, cupboards, shortcuts, corridors and other spaces of Hogwarts. And there was more. After studying the map a while Moody realised he only had to name a group or a person silently in his mind, and they would start flashing on the map. It was child's play to locate anyone.

Mad-Eye concentrated on Harry Potter, and found him from the owlery. Another name was scurrying there through the map.

"How intriguing," Mad-Eye muttered to himself, "Cedric Diggory, again. You were on the move last night also. Didn't have time to get to bed before I got the map, now, did you? So what's cooking between you two?"

Suddenly he jumped out of his chair like a much younger man, opened the fifth lock of his trunk and rummaged trough the corresponding compartment. After tossing other things out of the way, he took out a telescopic spyglass. He rushed to his only window, opened it and reached as far to the left as he could to be able to see the owlery. He lifted the spyglass to his magical eye, and gave a long, surprised whistle.

Harry kept walking around long after he got tired of running. He didn't want to see anybody. Instead he got out his Firebolt and spent a couple of hours just flying. It felt liberating, but only because he flew so dangerously he needed all of his concentration to stay on his broom. After he stopped, he realised it hadn't really helped at all. He still felt shattered, and the pieces of him were at war with each other. At least no one was up and about any more when he finally went through the Gryffindor common room and sneaked into his four-poster bed. Both his heart and his body were exhausted, and he went out like a candle.

And found himself in a dimly lit corridor of an old house. There was a rustling sound, and a huge snake slithered past him. It stopped for a moment, raised its head and looked straight at Harry with its cold, evil eyes. It went into the room at the end of the corridor, creaking the door open a bit. There was some parseltongue, but it was too silent for Harry to make any sense of. He could see a part of an old armchair, and then a hissing voice spoke out.

"Turn my chair, Wormtail, so I can greet our guests."

The door opened and the armchair was turned to face it. The lighting was dim, so Harry couldn't see clearly, but the creature in the chair was small, hairless and hideous. It was holding a wand. There was a suprised breath behind Harry, and for the first time he realised he wasn't alone. He turned his head to see. Next to his side, only half a step behind was Cedric. He took Harry's hand.

"Young lovers, I see," half-formed Lord Voldemort hissed, "How touching. But I only invited you, Harry. I have no use for the other. Although, he is very handsome..."

"Don't –" Cedric started, but was interrupted by a green flame.

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort hissed. He didn't even raise his voice.

Harry screamed. His scar felt like a burning iron. The other boys all woke up, and Ron was next to his bed in an instant.

"What's wrong? You okay? Is it the scar?" he lowered his voice in the end so the others wouldn't hear. He looked worried.

"Hurts," Harry replied through clenched teeth, "I saw Voldemort... And his snake... Just a nightmare." Slowly he started to relax, even if the hurting scar brought tears to his eyes. "I'll be all right."

"You sure?" Ron asked. "Shouldn't we get you to Madame Pomfrey?"

"No, really," Harry resisted. He didn't want to go anywhere. "I'll be fine."

"Okay, mate. Just wake me up, if you need anything, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks, Ron."

After Ron had gone back to sleep and lights were out again, Harry bit his pillow and cried his heart out, as silently as he possibly could. The pain from his burning scar took hours to subside, only letting him sleep at the crack of dawn. And when he woke up again, croggy, disoriented and late from breakfast, the pillow was still wet.

TO BE CONTINUED