Title: Mirrored Hopes (PG)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Cedric / Hermione

Notes: This is an alternate scene to the Hermione and Dumbledore library scene in my speculative Cedric/Hermione fic The Boy Who Died. This story should really be read after you've read The Boy Who Died for it really to make sense. Again, set during the events of Goblet of Fire - a non-canon pairing but constrained by canon events.

Important note: To read The Boy Who Died - please click on my USER NAME, this will take you to a link to my livejournal where you can read the complete story. A lot of people have not realised that the fragment on fanfiction is just a fragment - the complete story is at my livejournal - at 22,000 words, the The Boy Who Died was just too long for me to upload here and edit with ease.

Hermione found herself walking automatically to the only place she knew could bring her comfort.

The corridor was pitch back. "Lumus," she whispered into the blackness.

"You are such a stupid git sometimes," Hermione said furiously to Cedric who looked outraged.

"I'm the git? You're the stupid one. How could you possibly believe that I was dead?" he demanded.

"I saw your body!" she hissed, her face contorted with grief. "How do you expect me to deny the evidence of my own eyes?" Hermione countered.

Cedric looked down at her face and flinched at the pain in her face. "Hermione ..." his voice was a whisper. She stared up at him.

"No ... call me Granger," she told him, dropping to the ground as if her legs were too weak to support her. "All I want is to hear you call me, Granger".

He sank to the ground beside her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her. "Don't cry over me ..." he told her. "Do you know how much it hurts me to see you crying over me?"

"I thought you were dead. Of course I cried!" she told him, her face staring up into his, drinking in the sight of his beloved face.

"Think the most powerful evil wizard in the world could kill me that easily, Granger?" he asked her with a crooked smile in a failed effort to joke and then stared at her as she caught his hand in hers and held it against her damp cheek.

A sob caught in her throat. "Say my name again ..."

"Hermione Jane Granger," he said, kissing her wet eyelids one after another. "Granger most of the time, Hermione when I'm feeling tender and Hermione Jane Granger when I'm feeling most tender," he told her and she slid her arms around his neck and they kissed, long and lingeringly.

"Are you really here?" she asked him.

"I'm really here ..."

"But your body ..."

"Not really mine ..."

"Really?"

"Truly".

The days flew. They did the things that Cedric had spoken of before ... before he had entered the maze. Their days were sunny, filled with laughter and tenderness as they explored the world together. They even danced together as they had not danced together the night of the Yule Ball - neither were particularly good at it but that didn't detract from their enjoyment in the slightest.

The passage of time was vague and indistinct, all she knew was that she was with him again and that nothing else mattered.

One day as they crossed a field, Cedric's fingers were linked with Hermione's and he gazed down at the ground. His face became very still as he stared at Hermione's shadow.

There was no shadow for him.

Cedric's face twisted suddenly and he looked up, stiffening as if suddenly realising something. Suddenly he turned very pale.

"What is it?" Hermione asked urgently, clutching his sleeve.

"I'm the git not you," he told her, his eyes dark with grief.

"What?" she demanded in confusion.

"Promise me you'll never come back," he told her unexpectedly.

"No ... you can't make me promise that ..."

"It won't be real ...," he told her. "I am dead," he told her.

She shrank back in disbelief, shaking her head. "No, no ... you said ..."

His face twisted sharply. "That much was real... I didn't know myself but now I know. I want you to live, Granger ... You have to go on with your life. I'm not saying forget about me but you have to move on. If you come here again - you'll just be playing with shadows ... eventually you might lose yourself... I won't come back ... for your sake. I won't come back here," he told her fiercely.

"But this is real ... this is real isn't it?" she asked him and he nodded, smiling sweetly.

"I don't know how or why ... it's not supposed to be real," he told her but there were tears in his eyes as he smiled. "It's not supposed to be possible but somehow it is - but never again. Your heart's desire ..."

"... was to hear you call me Granger again," she whispered. "I felt that nothing could ever be quite so bad again ... I just wanted to hear you say it ..."

"Granger ..." he told her, smiling at her but his smile was so bittersweet and sorrowful. "I'm so sorry to have left you ... can you ever forgive me?"

"It's not your fault," she said fiercely. "Will I never see you again?" she asked piteously.

He wiped the tears from her cheek. "Don't cry Granger ..."

"Answer me," she demanded fiercely.

He shook his head. "We won't meet again in this life, Granger ... you know that." He held her close as she sobbed against his chest. "That's all right," he whispered stroking her hair. "You can cry here ... there's no one to see except me."

"It didn't hurt?" she asked him and Cedric's face twisted that even at this moment she didn't express a thought for herself, all she cared about was him, asking if the moment that life left his body was a painful one.

"It didn't hurt, Granger," he whispered. "But it hurts me to know that I'm leaving you forever," he told her. He touched the S.P.E.W. badge on her chest. "I still have mine."

"I know," she whispered.

"You have to go on. Harry needs you - it's not his fault, you have to be there for him. Don't let him blame himself".

Hermione nodded and he wiped her tears away with his fingers. It was a useless gesture so he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. "It's not snotty," he assured her and she laughed chokingly and pulled him down to her again, kissing him, not wanting to let him go.

"You have to let go, Hermione. And you have to promise me you'll never come back here."

"Cedric".

"Promise me Granger," he told her, his voice was fierce and almost harsh.

"Promise," she whispered. She felt him push her away from himself and the world turned black.

Dumbledore looked down into the pale, still face of the unconscious Hermione. She had been sitting cross-legged and staring blankly when they had entered the room but then had made a sound and slumped bonelessly to the ground, her hair tumbled in a tangled mess around her pale face.

Her face was streaked with tears, there were very dark shadows were around her eyes and her breathing was sharp and ragged, slightly laboured from endless crying. He wondered how much longer she would have clung onto life if they hadn't found her.

"How did she find the room, Professor?" Professor McGonagall asked anxiously.

"The Room of Requirement is a magical room that can only be discovered by someone who is in need ..." Professor Dumbledore told her. "One of the House Elves said that they saw her walk past the section of blank wall three times, concentrating hard ... she's been here before Minerva, she knew the way ..."

"But why would it help her to harm herself?"

"The Room does not distinguish between right and wrong, Minerva, ought and ought not..." Dumbledore said heavily. "It sensed she was in need so it appeared to her."

"I've always said we should destroy that thing," she said in distaste and the two of them turned and stared at the magnificent mirror, as high as a classroom ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet.

The inscription carved around the top read "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi," - "I show not your face but your heart's desire" written backwards.

"What do you suppose she sought?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"That is for her alone to know. You may leave me with her, she will be quite all right. You are needed elsewhere in this troubled time, Minerva. Go to the others" Dumbledore said sadly and Professor McGonagall left, leaving Dumbledore sitting on the ground beside the unconscious young girl.

Hermione's eyes fluttered open and she stared up into Dumbledore's worried face.

"Professor Dumbledore," she said with a smile which was brilliant notwithstanding her pale, drawn features.

"Hermione, you know you were very wrong to come here," he told her in a low voice. "What you seek cannot be found in the Mirror of Erised. Yes you saw the deepest, most desperate desire of your heart but you already know - the mirror has trapped people who cannot bear to stop staring into it, unsure if what they see is going to actually happen."

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore - I know. Harry told me what you told him," Hermione smiled again, colour slowly returning to her bluish lips. That strange, unsettling smile. "The mirror shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. This mirror gives us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

"Then why do you smile, Hermione?" Dumbledore asked her, looking perplexed.

"I saw him again, Professor Dumbledore. He smiled at me, he called me Granger ... and this time I got a chance to say goodbye to him before he pushed me away and told me to leave".

Professor Dumbledore frowned. "Cedric pushed you away?" Hermione didn't even think to question how it was that Professor Dumbledore knew about her and Cedric. No one else knew ... but somehow - he knew.

"Yes, he said the mirror was dangerous, that I was never to look into it again and that he would never return - I would never see him again in it should I look. He said he was doing that for me ..." her face twisted slightly in remembrance.

Professor Dumbledore shook his head head. "That's not possible, Hermione. The mirror would not do that, the mirror is shadows and deception, the images within would not seek to protect you from yourself".

"But it did," she said. Her face crumpled slightly. "He said he would never come back - that I was never to return ... but I was able to say goodbye to him," she told him. "He knows that Harry needs me - Harry is completely ripped up over this. I can't even let the others know that Cedric and I were friends, it's ... complicated. I have to be ... as if Cedric was just like any other student ... I just needed something, sir... something to hold onto ... to let me be what Harry needs me to be until I can get home ..."

Dumbledore sighed and shook his head. "Hermione, everything you need to be a good friend to Harry is right there in your heart. There is no magic on earth that can match your own love and loyalty".

"Professor, you once told Harry that to the well-organised mind, death was but the next great adventure ... but sir ... Nicolas Flamel and his wife Perenelle were 665 and 658 when they died ... You said it was like going to bed after a very, very long day for them ... but ..."

"I know Hermione. At the age of 18, Cedric still had the world ahead of him ..." Dumbledore's face was filled with sorrow. "Hermione - you know that you can do this. You have always been equal to every single challenge life has thrown at you".

"Thank you, sir," Hermione whispered.

"You won't come back here?" Professor Dumbledore asked her seriously.

Hermione nodded. "I promised Cedric I wouldn't, I won't come back here," she told the Professor who helped her to her feet and stared in perplexed confusion at the mirror. Old and wise as he was, there were some things that he would never understand.

To his shock, a shadowy figure appeared in the mirror and smiled at him, waving him away. His eyes widened and he took the young girl around the shoulders and led her out of the room. The door closed and disappeared behind them.

Cedric stared out after them and he glanced back into the infinity of the universe before him.

"Thank you for letting me see her again," he whispered and then he set off on his long, solitary journey into his next adventure.

The Boy Who Died then continues as is after the library scene. As mentioned, to read that story please click on my user name.