Highlander:

The Hogwarts Champion

A fanfiction

by

Nathanielle Sean Crawford

Based on characters and events in:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

Highlander: The Series

And

Highlander: The Raven produced by Davis-Panzer Productions

Disclaimer: Nothing here is my own. Heck, if I had been responsible for the Raven it would have gotten a heck of a lot longer than one season. As for Goblet of Fire, as of writing this chapter I have only read the book and not yet seen the movie.

Chapter One

In the Nights that Followed

June 27, 1995

"Kill the spare."

"Avada Kedavra!"

A flash of green light filled my vision and then there was nothing.

Many people imagine death to be a dark void. Oblivion. But to be more accurate, death is literally nothing. No darkness, just blank nothingness. Awareness of time and space are gone and memories of what you were doing prior to death, vanished.

Darkness did fill my vision. But it wasn't until I took that first breath, finding myself in a box buried several feet below the ground.

A floodgate of memories rushed my mind, sending me into a panic as I pounded on the lid of the coffin.

Harry Potter stood beside me, wand drawn and frightened as we tried to find something to explain why we had been pulled hundreds of miles away from the maze, where we had recently completed the Tri-wizard Tournament. The cup was a port key, this much I knew. But who set it up and why was another matter.

Then, I heard those words and suddenly, it didn't matter why. Winning the tournament and bringing honor and glory to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry meant absolutely nothing. Being the Seeker for House Hufflepuff 's Quidditch team and unwilling to accept an accidental win against Gryffindor meant nothing. My interest in Cho Chang, seeker of the Ravenclaw team meant nothing. Nothing matters to the dead.

Now something mattered. It mattered that I had been killed and it mattered that I was now, suddenly, alive. Alive and trapped in a wooden box, sealed and buried.

I pounded the lid of the coffin, screaming for my mother, my father, anyone. My hands ached and the warmth and stench of blood spread over my robes. Then I suffocated and nothing mattered again.

Again, I came back to life. The pain in my hands was gone and the cuts healed. The smell of dried blood filled the small space.

What's going on? I kept asking myself as I screamed and pounded at the lid.

Each time I died, injured and bloody, I came back healed and with a new supply of energy that burned up as quickly as it came.

Was this some new curse? I wondered. Some awful curse that not even Professor "Mad-Eye" Moody new about?

It would certainly be an effective curse. Causing someone to live and die repeatedly for eons so that all they knew was the tomb in which they were trapped. It made the Killing Curse a silent blessing in comparison.

So it seemed that the son of Amos Diggory, Champion of Hogwarts, Seeker and Wizard, would remain in this coffin, doomed to live and die buried beneath the soil where no one would be the wiser.

For many nights I lay there, taking deep breaths, hoping for a quicker death each time. Death by suffocation is not a pleasant way to spend the final hours. Your head aches, slowly at first. Over the minutes, which seemed like hours, the head ache grows into a pounding, rhythmic throb, like sound of a roaring dragon. The body spasms and shutters and finally there is nothing. And this is the way it went every time I came back to life.

The Killing Curse was a blessing in comparison.

After the first few nights I finally stopped fighting. I was nowhere near as strong as I needed to be to break through this coffin. And even if I could get the lid to budge, there was probably six feet of dirt to dig through.

Most of the richer families in the Wizarding world had above ground mausoleums to bury their dead. But the Diggory family traditionally buried its members at a cemetery in Ottery St. Catchpole, the town where our family has lived for twelve generations. In my more coherent state I realized that this was where I had been buried. Not that this did anything to help my situation.

And I was just about to accept the circumstances, when something happened. It was a feeling, like something pulling at my brain. It felt very much like the feeling of walking through a port key, or the sudden jolt of apparation.

At first I thought it was just another headache coming on, or dizziness from the lack of air. But the feeling came every time I came back to life and it didn't go away.

In my weakening state I could barely hear the sound of metal scraping against the soil above. My heart pounded as I soon heard the voices of whoever was trying to get to me.

"How long has he been down here?" Someone asked. The voice was muffled, but I could recognize the words.

"The tombstone says he was buried two days ago. You should be careful, he's probably freaking out."

"Don't worry so much and help me get him out of there."

"Leave me alone!" I screamed. "Go away! I don't want your help!"

I didn't understand why I was so frightened. After all, these people were trying to free me weren't they? Getting out of here was a good thing. But fear was all I knew and I wanted to remain in this coffin. It was what I knew, it was…a comfort zone.

Metal scraped against the lid. There was a sensation of movement as the coffin was lifted and placed back on solid ground. Then a loud scrape of more metal and someone pried the lid open.

Air rushed into the open space and I screamed. I kicked and flailed about wildly, barely aware of the people who tried to restrain my arms and keep me from harming them.

"I told you he'd be frightened," a man said.

I looked at the taller, brown haired man and the feeling died away. A second person, a woman with hair the color of the moon, grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes.

"Calm down," she said, soothing. "We're not here to hurt you."

"Go to hell!" I screamed. I tried to push her away, but the man held my arms down.

"Amanda, it's no good." The man said. "He's just a kid. This whole thing is screwing with his mind."

"I know what I'm doing Adam. Hold him still."

The woman named Amanda reached for a broad sword, which she had used to pry the lid open.

"What are you going to do?" Adam asked.

"We need to get him somewhere safe."

I tried to kick at her, but she stepped out of my reach and thrust the sword into my stomach. After dying of suffocation so many times, stabbing was an almost welcome change of pace.

When I came back again I was in a bed.

My wrists were held in a metal shackles, connected by a chain that went around one of the posts. I briefly flashed back to a conversation between my father and Arthur Weasley about the devices Muggle law enforcers used. Handcuffs I believe they were called.

The room was empty accept for a table, two chairs, a dresser, a second bed and Muggle devices I had no name for. The curtains were drawn and a lamp on the desk dimly lit the room.

I graciously took a deep breath, filling my lungs with warm, fresh air. When my lungs were satisfied I realized that my stomach was also empty. How long had it been since my last meal anyway?

The feeling came back, along with a sense of nausea and danger. I wanted to run but I could barely sit up. My wand was probably sitting on the mantle of my parent's living room right now, so magic was out of the question.

The door flew open and the man from the cemetery came in, back first, with two white paper bags in one hand, a large plastic bag in his teeth and several beverage cups in some sort of strange holding device. The feeling died away again.

He placed the bags and the cups on the table and took the remaining bag out of his mouth. When he went to close the door he glanced outside.

"Where the hell did she go?" He muttered.

He wore a white sweater beneath an old trench coat. He seemed very thin, with dark wavy hair and a big nose. His accent was hard to place, though he probably traveled long enough to pick up many different tongues.

"Damn it, Amanda, I could have used your help."

"Well someone had to leave his sword in the backseat," Amanda replied. She came in, a misshapen object into his arms, stopping to kiss Adam on the cheek. "Not a good place for it to be if you get challenged."

"Mine's on me as always," Adam said. He placed the item gently on the chair, and I realized it was an old blanket wrapped around a sword. "This is a little something I picked up at a shop in Bristol."

"Well, someone is awake," Amanda said, shrugging off her overcoat and resting it on one of the chairs at the table. She sat on the bed beside me. "My name is Amanda Montrose. This is Adam Pierce."

"Hey," Adam said as he took a set of keys from his pocket. "Listen, I want to let you out of those cuffs. But we can't let you hurt us and you'll can't go running."

I swallowed nervously. Then I smelled the food in the bags and remembered how desperately hungry I was.

"You saved me from the grave," I said, my voice trembling. "I owe you my life."

Adam undid the handcuffs and I stared longingly at the food. Amanda went into one of the bags and pulled out a white container.

"I hope you like burgers and fries. There was a-"

The minute she opened it I grabbed it and started eating. I barely tasted the beef, bread and vegetables as each mouthful spent barely a second in my mouth. The melted cheese was exquisite and the ketchup and onions felt like a massage as they traveled to my stomach.

"Hey, eat it slowly," Adam said, patting my back as I coughed. "Easy there."

Amanda snickered as she took a sip from one of the cups.

"Sorry," I apologized, embarrassed at my behavior. "It's been…"

"Ah, I was like that once," Amanda said. I couldn't tell if she was being serious or not. Her smile was somewhere between warm, friendly, and mischievous and her tone was like that of a nostalgic parent.

Adam sent her a sideways glance as he sat down in the other chair.

"Maybe we should ask him his name first, before we try to bore him to death," he said, taking a burger out of one of the other containers. He waited patiently while I started on the chips.

"Cedric." I said when I was finished. "My name is Cedric Diggory."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Amanda replied, as if there was nothing at all strange about all of this. "How old are you Cedric?"

"Seventeen. I had to be in order to join the Tri-Wizard tournament."

Amanda sent a confused glance in Adam's direction.

"You're not…you don't know about wizards?" I asked, returning the glance.

"What, you mean like, hocus pocus, abra kadabra?" She asked. "Yeah I was a stage magician once in-what's wrong?"

I shuttered. The memory flashed. As Amanda a hand on my shoulder I lowered my head into my hands, suddenly dizzy.

"Kill the spare," a shrill, wicked voice ordered.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"I was killed," I uttered, shaking violently. "He killed me with…with the curse."

"What curse?" Amanda asked.

I explained everything I knew about the Three Unforgivable Curses. I told them about Hogwarts and my family. When I was finished Adam was staring at me thoughtfully. Amanda handed me one of the cups and told me to drink.

"The lack of fluids and oxygen must be affecting you still," she said, patting me on the shoulder. To Adam she said, "We may have to wait until all eight cylinders are functioning again before breaking the news to him."

Adam had been quiet the entire time I spoke. He seemed to be remembering something of his own when Amanda spoke to him.

"Actually…Hogwarts is real."

"What?"

Adam slurped his cola as he tried to explain himself. I was equally as confused as Amanda. He looked from me to her and back and then just shrugged.

"Well, this is as good a time as any. About a thousand years ago I met one of your kind while traveling in Scotland," Adam said, referring to me. "I was traveling by horse through a particularly dangerous area, when several bandits mugged me and left me for dead. Fortunately I was only unconscious, and a kind stranger took me into his home at a castle in Edinburgh.

"I don't think he had ever seen one of our kind before. But when he witnessed the Quickening healing my wounds he was shocked he didn't have me tried as a witch and burned. In fact he managed to surprise me by demonstrating his own kind of magic, with a wand.

"Then he introduced himself as Godric Gryffindor, a wizard."

"I'm surrounded by nut cases," Amanda muttered, rolling her eyes.

Adam ignored her. I was both confused and fascinated by what I was hearing and he held my attention.

"He introduced me to his partners, Helena Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin. They were trying to start a school for their kind. They felt it was best if wizards and witches had a safe place to learn and master their special abilities, and to function in the society that was slowly separating from what you call the Muggles.

"The school had only been up and running for a few years and they were always looking for help. They even offered to pay me a little if I had any talents to offer. Of course all I had at the time was my four thousand years of life and my experiences with a sword. So I joined their staff as one of the first teachers of Muggle Studies and taught swordsmanship on the side."

"Are you…" I tried to find the right words. "What are you?"

"Well, that's where the big part comes." Adam said, leaning forward. "To sum it up Cedric, you're one of us. You are an Immortal."

For some reason it didn't shock me as much as it should have. Two days of suffering in a grave must have shielded me for this. Strange to think that in this world, there were things that even a Wizard would find shocking.