Foreword: Thanks for reviewing, everybody. I really appreciate that. I'm glad that you guys find my writing above average, and original even. It's one of the best things I could hope for, and it makes me proud to have you all reviewing my modest story. Again, I'd like to note that quite some time has passed since the last update. There was not much to tell in that period.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for about half of the events occurring. Everything else is all JK Rowling's… And she's made a killing off of them. It would be nice if I could do something like that, hahah. Anyway… I'd be more than willing to comply with taking the story down if I was contacted by a bunch of JK Rowling's lawyers and all that craziness… Though I don't know what threat my story poses.

Harry had been here all day. He sad silently, perched on the windowsill, with his head leaning on the window, as he stared through the paned glass. The four champions had been sequestered for an entire day, and weren't allowed to have any human contact, other then amongst themselves. Everyone was on edge, with no exceptions. The room was plain, though it had a few massive windows facing away from the Black Lake. Inside, it was sparsely furnished, with only a few chairs, a couch, and a four poster bed for each of the Champions.

Fleur had taken to napping, while Krum carefully polished and groomed his broom. Cedric, ever the vigilant student, carefully practiced spells in the corner of the room. Harry, however, had simply taken to spacing out, as his emerald green eyes, unfocused, blankly stared out at the blurred landscape outside Hogwarts Castle.

It was hard to deal with Ron absolutely refusing to speak with him once more. And what was worse is that the problems between the two were greatly written about, much to the chagrin and mystification of all parties involved. Rita Skeeter was somehow gathering information without physically being present, and that disturbed him. Harry could keep nothing secret from the woman, unless he cloistered himself all alone. But Harry could not do that… he needed the support of his friends too much.

It had taken a while to figure it out, but Harry and Hermione managed to decode the cryptic clue. Something very important to Harry would be taken into the Black Lake, and guarded by the Merfolk.

He faintly smiled as he remembered when Hermione had figured it out. It had already been a late night, since the both of them had detention in the Library every night for an entire month, after Harry's spasm of accidental magic. They were forced to manually re-shelve each book perfectly, which was, the least to say, quite tedious work, and clean the library, again, manually. It had become habitual for the two to finish detention, and then return to the Common Room, where they'd work on decrypting the clue for the second task until exhaustion forced them to sleep.

On one of those long nights, Harry had turned in before Hermione, only to be woken up about an hour later, her excited face shaking him awake, frantically whispering his name. She had figured out what the clue had meant. It was then that he hopped out of bed and tightly embraced her, to thank her for the help, despite his mainly undressed state.

'How… awkward…' Harry thought with a bashful look on his face. 'I-I can't believe I did something like that… I mean, I was hardly in any state for her to see me.' He frowned though, remembering that the task was to start tomorrow morning. 'Something important is going to be taken? Nothing could be more important than my friends.' Harry clenched his fist and his eyes focused, as he thought of Hermione smiling brightly. 'I won't let this tournament claim my friends.' Harry thought of the gillyweed that was stashed away in a jar, silently thanking Dobby, the ever-faithful house elf.

Harry leaned his head back and allowed it to rest against the windowsill, and he closed his eyes momentarily. 'I've gotta be strong. I can't break down. Hermione… All my friends are counting on me.'

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard Cedric's voice. "Hey, Harry… since we're all cooped up in this room, can we talk? You know… privately?" Cedric was calm, and collected, as he usually was. He coolly walked towards the corner he had been practicing magic in and sat down on the floor, with his back in the crook of the room.

Harry joined him, slumping down to the floor, resting his own back against the wall.

"You nervous?"

"Yeah…"

"Me too." Cedric nodded sadly, and rested his arm across his raised knee. "So how about we just forget this tournament for a while? We never did talk about what really happened at the Yule Ball, did we?"

"I guess not." Harry smiled, remembering the night he had spent, far away from the prying eyes of the rest of the inhabitants of Hogwarts. "I was… you know, nervous. I didn't want to go to the Yule Ball. There were so many people who wanted my attention. So many people I barely knew, and who barely knew me. I mean, I thought very seriously about asking Hermione to the Yule Ball, but I just knew… I knew it was something I didn't want to attend." Harry chuckled a bit, knowing how ridiculous he sounded.

"Don't laugh, mate. That's perfectly reasonable… You shouldn't have to live up to anybody else's expectations." Cedric looked at Harry with honesty glinting in his eyes, and gave an imperceptible nod.

Harry appreciatively grinned, and continued, "Well, after dodging quite a few girls, I slipped out of the Great Hall during dinner, and made it to the Common Room. Turns out, Hermione was there too, and… well, we just got to talking… a-and the Yule Ball came up. She didn't want to go, I didn't want to go, so I just asked if I could stay with her instead. The rest is history."

"But not Rita Skeeter's version," Cedric stated, rather than asked. He knew that Rita Skeeter would twist the facts however she could to get a story, and he simply didn't think that Harry and Hermione would do something that racy.

The sun cast long shadows across both of their faces, as Harry shook his head. "No… I… I fell asleep, and Hermione just… she sat with me."

Cedric's jaw dropped as he gaped at Harry. "I knew Rita Skeeter wrote a bunch of lies, but I didn't know she could twist something like that into what she did! How did she get the whole part about your… you know?"

Harry managed to awkwardly say, through a blush, "Well… she and I were a tad close… My head was kind of… resting on her leg."

"Oh… That's it?" Cedric couldn't contain the incredulity in his voice. He simply couldn't wrap his head around the fact that somebody would twist such a monotonous event into something as vulgar and disgusting as Rita Skeeter had.

"That's the entire story."

A few moments of silence passed between the two. It was a comfortable silence, not like the silences he had been subjected to at the Dursley's house.

"So… what do you think of her?"

"Who? Hermione?" Harry glanced sidelong at the Hufflepuff seeker, and raised an eyebrow. "Uh… w-why?"

"Curiosity, I guess." He shrugged, and shifted against the wall, for a better view of Harry, so he could read the younger boy's facial expressions better. "I want your take on the situation."

"She and I are friends." Harry nodded, doing his best to beat that notion into his own head without a doubt. "There's nothing more between us," he finished with absolute finality. Yet, the shadow of doubt once again crept into his mind. Voice wavering, he, very quietly, amended his statement, "I… I think."

Though it was a question, Cedric somehow made it seem more like a statement. "Having doubts?"

"I don't know… Maybe," Harry said uncertainly. He wasn't sure exactly what was going through him at the moment. He simply wrote it up to stress, and shrugged. "I just can't figure it out… Unfortunately, Ron thinks there's something we haven't been telling him."

"Fred and George's little brother? He's a bit of a hothead." Cedric put a hand to his chin and thought for a moment, then slowly said, "Ever think that he might have something for Hermione?"

"Ron? I don't think so… He's… not quite nice to Hermione that often. In fact, he's flat out mean to her at times." Sadly, the Boy-Who-Lived shook his head. "He's even gone so far as to call her unattractive, and bossy." Harry's voice seemed to linger on the unattractive part, and only tack on the end of the sentence as an after thought, as though he was hung up on the former part.

"What about you? What do you think of her?"

"I… don't know for sure," Harry confessed, as he ran a hand through his dark hair, in a pitiful attempt to smooth it down. "She's always there for me, I know that at least. Hermione's just able to tell, you know? She can just tell when something's on my mind, and somehow manages to pry it out of my thick skull, even when I don't want to talk about it. I… I can come to her with anything, and not worry."

Cedric placed a hand on Harry's shoulder and stood up. "Sounds like you have yourself a real friend there, Harry… You're lucky. Not everybody can say that. I think… you should just listen to yourself, Harry. You say you're not sure about your feelings, but I think you'll sort them out one day." He waved goodbye to Harry, and slipped into one of the four-poster beds in the cloistered room with the Champions in it.

Harry glanced over to Krum, who hadn't noticed anything, as he had been fervently caring for his Quidditch equipment, and was wholly absorbed by the task. Fleur still remained behind the curtained exterior of one of the four beds in the room.

As the sun rested on the horizon, and continued to gently shuffle away, Harry climbed into the bed assigned to him. "I'll need all the rest I can get, especially with tomorrow coming up."

Harry disrobed, and slipped under the covers, pulling the curtains around his bed, for privacy's sake. The black haired boy turned onto his side, and began to curl up, for comfort and warmth. "Somebody… Mum, Dad… Whoever's watching," he prayed, "Please… Help me."

And as he closed his eyes, Harry swore he could almost feel the familiar presence of Hermione wrapping her arms around him, with her soothing voice cooing gently into his ear, "Shh… You're safe here, Harry… You're safe."

Author's Notes: Just a slowed down pace. The task will come next chapter! Again, I really like Cedric's character. I always felt that Harry and he would've interacted more, since they're both Champions, and how distraught Harry was over his death. I always thought that it was a potential friendship that was never quite explored, unfortunately. But alas, at least I get the chance to do it! Cedric seems like the type of person to help talk somebody through their troubles, and that's what Harry needs. Kind of like a surrogate big brother. Please leave me a review, if you have the time! I know I really skipped around with the last two chapters, and I'm sorry. I just don't think I could handle multiple chapters for every single day!