Badger and Lion

Author: Dusk Magnum

Created: July 8, 2004

Date Written: July 9, 2004

Rating: R

Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER! I'd sure like to, because Harry needs a significant other (which is where our humble Hufflepuff comes into play), but seeing as I don't, I'd rather like to make this clear. Jo owns the story and all the characters, not me, darn it, so leave me alone already!

Notes: I will be changing a few things around in the timeline of Goblet of Fire; things will be slightly different, and I may even input a few spells that Harry uses in Order of the Phoenix that we've never seen him learn in class. So if you can't remember some of the spells and work that Harry's doing, a lot of it was probably never in the original Goblet of Fire.

Part 2: The Hufflepuff Seeker

The day after Harry and Cedric's conversation in the prefects' bathroom dawned cold and gray, the sun weakly shining through the clouds before becoming completely enshrouded in the silvery mass of clouds. Harry was feeling distinctly confident, an obvious side-effect of knowing what he was to face in the second task, and it was all through the efforts of the seventh-year Hufflepuff, to whom he practically owed his life. Of course, he would've found out the secret of the egg eventually… wouldn't he? A nagging voice in the back of his head told him that Cedric was the only reason he was forewarned about the deadly trials that would take place on February the twenty-fourth, but Harry wasn't exactly dumb; he could've figured it out, especially with the help of Ron and Hermione. Harry told Ron and Hermione themselves the next morning about what he'd learned, editing the parts about meeting Cedric, though he didn't really know why. He supposed it was because he wanted them to think he'd figured it out all by himself—which hadn't happened yet in the Triwizard tournament—but for some reason the voice in the back of his head, which assumed the exact tone and inflection of Professor McGonagall, told him that it was for other reasons. He ignored it and told them in detail about the mersong in which he had bore witness to underwater. When he finished his story, Hermione looked both apprehensive and reproachful.

"You said you'd figured out the egg ages ago!" she said stonily. Harry smartly chose to ignore her.

"How am I going to survive under the water anyway?" he asked the two of them, as if Hermione had never spoken. "Cedric says—" But he stopped himself. Ron, rapt with attention, stared at him with his eyebrow raised, and Hermione sat huffily eating her bacon, apparently not noticing that Harry had said something he didn't want to.

"Diggory?" Ron said. "What about him?"

"Nothing," Harry said, scouring his brain for an excuse, "it's just that he said something to me about the egg's clue and I didn't really get it until now but—"

"Why didn't you tell us?" Hermione said. "It probably would've given you more time to figure out how to breathe underwater. What did he say, anyway?"

"Nothing," Harry repeated nervously, as the voice of Professor McGonagall hissed sentiments and possible alibis in his ear. "Well, I can't really remember now. But—" he snatched upon the chance to reveal the scrap of information Cedric had given him, "—he DID say something about one of the teachers mentioning it. Like Flitwick or Moody or someone." Harry and Ron both looked at Hermione, who was staring at her eggs, apparently thinking hard. When she noticed their intent gazes, she looked up and said, "What?"

"Well, you've memorized everything your teachers have ever said," Ron said casually. "So tell us, Hermione. Who's mentioned underwater breathing?"

"I don't know!" Hermione said, looking affronted. "Honestly, I can't remember everything, you're so—wait…" She stopped in mid-insult, looking disappointed. "Cedric Diggory is in seventh year, isn't he?" she said. "Flitwick and McGonagall and Moody and all of the teachers that might have a way to help Harry out teach more advanced magic to the seventh years." She stopped, surveying her two friends with sad eyes. "Which means that not only have they probably not mentioned it in class, Harry won't be able to perform such a powerful spell."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Harry said glumly, mirroring his words from the night before with a different tone of voice.

"Oh, don't listen to her," Ron assured, giving Harry a pat on the back; Hermione looked at him coolly. "She's just jealous because she hasn't learned seventh year magic yet. You'll figure it and out, and we'll help you."

Hermione seemed like she wanted to say something to Ron but didn't. "Yes, of course we'll help," she said. Harry didn't feel much better, but smiled approvingly and buried himself in a plate of pancakes, the knot in his stomach tightening with every swallow as he thought not only about the second task, which drew nearer as the minutes ticked away, but the conversation he'd had with Cedric the night before. It was so different from the usual atmosphere that surrounded the two when they made contact; it was more relaxed, and less competitive, or at least that's the impression he'd gotten. What did happen last night anyway?

After breakfast, Ron, Hermione, and Harry went straight to Transfiguration, where they less-than-effectively learned to Transfigure a lamp into a bird; then off to Charms, where they practiced learning how to repair exceedingly larger objects. Hermione was eyeing a wonderfully accurate diagram of repairing a broken window and said distractedly, "I wonder if Professor Flitwick would let us do that." Harry, too, was looking at a diagram, this time reflecting the proper enunciation of the spell and the swishing movement of the wand used to effectively perform the Mending Spell. Ron was jabbing his wand at a broken clay vase and saying, "Reparo! Reparo! Come on, you idiot, Reparo!" The vase lay still in five pieces, but one of them flew upward and zoomed into Hermione's Charms book just as she shut it. Ron groaned.

"Hermione! Flitwick takes off points if we damage the broken materials any further!" he groaned, eyeing Hermione's impressive array of repaired objects that sat lined up at the end of her desk in a proprietary fashion. She frowned at him, opened up her book, and pointed her wand at the many minute fragments of crunched vase, waving her wand in a complicated manner and whispering, "Reparo." Instantly, the pieces of vase flew back together, and she hand the large chunk to Ron, who sat looking wistfully at both the remaining unmended pieces of his vase and Hermione's pleased face.

"There you go, Ron," she muttered as she buried herself back in the book she held in her hands, where she turned the page and studied a diagram that showed mending thousands of shredded fragments of a piece of parchment.

Harry was waving his wand over his apple, which was split into at least twenty minute pieces, and saying half-heartedly, "Repraro—er, I mean, Reprimoro—oh, damn—" For half of his pieces of apple had gone flying at the window at such speed that it made holes. They disappeared through the air, and Hermione turned to Harry and grinned.

"Spectacular!" she said excitedly, leaping from her chair, pointing her wand at the holes in the glass, and saying, "Reparo!" Instantly, all the fragments of glass flew back together to make one solid, undented pane. Flitwick turned to Hermione after helping Seamus repair his shattered goblet and clapped his hands together, surveying his student with wide eyes.

"Excellent!" he said. "I haven't even taught you lot that sort of thing yet—ten points to Gryffindor, yes!"

Hermione sat down, apparently trying not to look smug, and looked at Ron. "Shut up," he said, breaking his vase pieces even further as he smacked them with his wand. Harry was quite unaware of anything that was happening; he continued waving his wand above the few pieces of apple he had left and muttering the incantation. His mind was on the conversation he'd shared with Cedric the night before, and the vision of merpeople swimming around him, dangling a picture of his parents and laughing madly at him as he struggled to paddle towards them. He wondered what exactly Cedric would miss most and saw, as clear as if it was right before his eyes, Cho dangling over a mermaid's shoulder while Cedric sword-fought it. Maybe Cho was the thing he missed most…. But that couldn't be, he hardly knew her, thought it was not for lack of trying. Cedric had merely got there first. He knew the thought should've brought him bitter emotions, but it didn't.

"Reparo—oh, look, I did it!" Ron cried happily as his vase flew back together. Hermione looked at him approvingly and then turned to Harry.

"Need some help?" she asked. Harry, unaware of what he was agreeing to, nodded his head. She started to show him the correct wand movement required for the Mending Spell when the bell rang, and she hurriedly gathered up her bags and said, "Oh, good, lunch," and dashed out of the door. Ron followed when Harry had pocketed his wand and walked out of the door behind her.

After lunch, Divination, and Care of Magical Creatures, in which Dean Thomas received a severe bite from a Blast-Ended Skrewt and had to have his skin relayered by a deprecating Madam Pomfrey, Harry returned to the common room alone (Ron and Hermione had retreated to the library to look up a report on Transfiguring lamps written by a nineteenth-century warlock). His mind was buzzing about the events of the night before, and he wondered when he could talk to Cedric again, mainly to see if he'd remembered the magic that could help the both of them in the second task, but also to see how he was doing. He felt inexplicably fond of the seventh-year Hufflepuff, who had always been a very nice person but the object of recent envy and rancor as of late. After all, the majority of people supported Cedric Diggory for the Triwizard Tournament… he was fantastic at Quidditch… he had the affection of Cho…. He should've hated him, and he felt he might have before conversing with him in the prefects' bathroom last night, but now he didn't. Who knew—maybe Cedric and Harry could be friends after all.

After throwing a scrap of parchment into the fire, on which he'd been doodling a skrewt tied up by a fireproof net, Harry put his school bag up in the fourth-year dormitory and exited the common room, which was already starting to fill up with Gryffindors happily chatting to one another about their day. He thought maybe he'd use the rest of the day to find Cedric and make arrangements for a time to talk—perhaps in the library, or somewhere without a lot of noise—and ended up running into Fred and George Weasley, who tailed him, asking where Ron was.

"Er—I don't know, the library, I think—" he said, wishing he would've checked the Marauder's Map for Cedric's current location. Apparently, the Weasley twins were eager to find Ron and determine whether their new-and-improved Canary Creams actually worked on humans. Harry, eager not only to find Cedric but to escape being asked to be a test subject himself, doubled back Gryffindor Tower insisting that he'd forgotten a book. Truthfully, he did return, but didn't acquire a book; he checked the Marauder's Map, which showed Cedric Diggory sitting by the lake, alone. His heart pounding unexplainably, he rushed out of the common room, down the marble steps to the entrance hall, out of the oak doors and to Hogwarts' sprawling grounds.

He found him just where the Marauder's Map had said he was. Harry casually ambled toward the Hufflepuff Seeker and sat down, alerting Cedric to his presence. "Hey," he said, and Cedric smiled.

"Hi, Harry," he replied. "I've been meaning to talk to you about last night."

"Me, too," Harry said. His heart beat faster.

"I was thinking maybe, you know, if you want to, we could meet again there. To talk." He paused. "You know, about anything. We're friends now, right? We should get to know each other."

Harry nodded in agreement, thinking of his Invisibility Cloak, which was currently tucked under his clothes in the trunk at the end of his bed. He made a mental note to place it under his pillow right before he went to bed; he wouldn't want to wake everyone up getting it from his trunk, whose hinges squealed in protest every time he opened it. "Sure, that'd be great!" he agreed.

They sat in silence for a few seconds before Cedric mentioned Quidditch. They got into a conversation about the World Cup the previous summer, which they'd both attended (and even shared the same Portkey), and reminisced happily about the fluid movements of the Irish Chasers and both the flying ability of Viktor Krum and his surprising presence at Hogwarts this year. Harry was happy to see that it was very easy to talk to Cedric, who seemed to know and love Quidditch just as much as he did, and found that they had other things in common, too; they both, for starters, were very popular and didn't want to be. Cedric confided in Harry about all of the things that people expected from him, and Harry quite agreed; everyone expected the same from him, as he had managed to vanquish Lord Voldemort before he was old enough to walk. The truth was, he wasn't any better at magic than Neville Longbottom (well, perhaps that was a bit of an underestimation), and he found that the only thing he was really exceptional at was the position of Seeker at Quidditch. Nothing more, really.

They talked all afternoon under the shade of a large, lofty willow tree, and Harry had quite forgotten about dinner until his stomach rumbled uncomfortably at sunset. Cedric, noticing this, grinned and said, "I'm hungry, too," and got to his feet. Harry mimicked this and they talked happily all the way back to the castle, where they separated in the Great Hall to go to different tables. Ron and Hermione had evidently seen Harry come in with Cedric, talking; Ron looked suspicious, and Hermione looked approving. After all, she did say that the tournament was all for the promotion of cooperation among wizards…

"What's with that, mate?" Ron demanded as Harry set down and pulled every bit of food within a two feet radius to him. "Talking with Diggory?"

"It was only for a second, we met in the halls on the way to dinner and we were talking about the second task," Harry said, the last part truthful; they had been discussing the difficulty of the event which was to take place in February as they walked back up to the castle. They hadn't, however, merely met in the halls. Harry still didn't want to tell them about meeting him in the prefects' bathroom the night before, although he didn't know why.

"So then where were you after Hagrid's?" Ron said, bouncing back immediately. "Me and Hermione were only in the library for about thirty minutes, and we couldn't find you after that—"

To Harry's astonishment, before he was able to scramble to think of an excuse to pacify Ron, Hermione cut in. "Didn't you hear?" she said, determinedly not looking at them and studying a platter of salmon interestedly. "Harry said he was going to Hagrid's for the afternoon to help with Friday's lesson, in Care of Magical Creatures this afternoon. Weren't you listening?"

Ron gaped at her, as if this was a very stupid question. "Of course I wasn't listening—the skrewt me and Dean were sharing nearly killed me, it only just missed me and got him instead—I didn't have time to listen to anyone!" He didn't pursue the subject, obviously revisiting the abominable lesson several hours prior to dinner, and Harry looked at Hermione appraisingly.

"Thanks," he mouthed, and she looked at him as if she knew exactly what was going on—which was not unusual, for Hermione possessed not only book-smarts but the uncanny ability to consciously know what was going on around her, even if it wasn't said. Ron grumpily munched on roast beef and seemed to be looking in the general direction of a candle floating in mid-air above them, which it seemed Draco Malfoy was bewitching to tip over and spill its melted wax onto Neville's plate of pork chops.

Later that night, as they all trumped up to the Gryffindor common room and sat in a corner studying Mending Spells, Ron made to pick up the subject of Cedric Diggory again. Harry groaned, but for the second time Hermione put her foot down and this time distracted Ron in a less conspicuous way; she told him about her rather boring Arithmancy lesson that afternoon, which she always claimed was better than Divination. Ron apparently forgot Cedric in favor of Hermione's plight, which he proceeded to poke fun at, and Harry's mind wandered back to his conversation with the seventh-year earlier in the day, which had lasted hours until the sun began to set, signaling dinner. He found it was very easy to talk to Cedric, which was a relief; he thought every time he saw Cho his tongue became quickly incapable of use, which was no help on his part. His stomach was still feeling pleasantly expanded when he said goodnight to Hermione and ascended the spiral staircase to the boys' dormitory with Ron at his heels, expressing his opinion that Mending Spells were almost not worth it.

At one o'clock that night he crept out of bed again, just like the previous night, and made his way to the prefects' bathroom, where Cedric was waiting. This time, Cedric sat fully-clothed and dry as Harry experienced the wonder of the prefects' bath, experimenting with the taps and happily talking about anything that came to mind.

When he went to bed that night, Harry had a dream involving buying Cedric Chocolate Frogs, but when he woke up the next morning, the only thing he recalled was walking into Honeydukes with Cedric, which he decided not to mention to Ron or Hermione.

TBC

DM, Signing Off:

Ah, second chapter. Things are, obviously, beginning to heat up; this is however only just the beginning (!!) and there's gotta be more sexual tension that you can cut with a knife, otherwise this just wouldn't be a proper story. Reviews are much appreciated, as well as links to anyone else on this earth that is on board the Harry/Cedric ship and writes; I already know 'bout Aspen, who writes stories such as Bittersweet and Close Kept, because those are favorites of mine. Anyway.... Signing off now. Chapter three very soon!

And on we go to part three! Dusk Magnum