"Hello, Harry."

"Oh, god. You – you –" Harry stuttered, staring wide-eyed.

"Yes, Harry, it really is me."

"But you – you're dead."

"Yes, I am that, too," Cedric answered stoically.

"And you… you really stink." Okay, that probably wasn't a smart move. Insult the zombie. Harry grimaced. This was completely unreal. Cedric was dead. He had been for four years. It really showed, too. Cedric's skin – what was left of it – was hanging in bits and appeared to be a dull green. Harry swallowed thickly. Cedric was missing an eye and his skin hung off his bones. The skin around his missing eye was eaten away and Harry could see his skull.

But he could still tell it was Cedric.

"I've been dead for a while. I'm rotting. Of course I smell," Cedric said, his voice low, barely above a whisper. The forest was deadly silent and this didn't help anything. Harry shivered. This was very creepy. And very disgusting, he decided.

"So… are you an Inferi?" Harry asked, stepping cautiously away.

"Of course not. Inferi can't talk, now can they?" Cedric smiled, revealing blackened teeth and rotting gums. A piece of his lip was missing. Harry had a hard time not vomiting.

"What are you doing here? How are you here?" Harry asked suspiciously. Maybe he was going mad. Maybe he'd stopped along the way and eaten some weird fruit he couldn't remember and now he was having one of those weird hallucinogenic trips. Or maybe he'd fallen and hit his head. Maybe he was dead. He hoped this wasn't what the other side looked like. He didn't care for Inferi or zombies.

"I'm here to torment you, why else would I be here?" Cedric said blandly, folding his decayed arms over his chest, his dress robes hanging in dirty strips. "I'm here because you killed me, Harry, and everyone has to pay a price eventually. Yours just took a while."

"I didn't kill you. Voldemort killed you."

"Actually, Wormtail killed me, but we're not being technical."

"This whole tormenting thing doesn't really work when you say things like that," Harry said, strangely becoming rather comfortable in the presence of a rotting corpse. It was nice to see someone he knew – besides Draco – even if that someone happened to be dead and probably was a figment of his imagination. Right. Draco. "Have you seen Draco anywhere? He disappeared a little while ago and he's had a bit of trouble around here and I'm afraid he's probably gotten himself killed like you. Oh – sorry."

"It's alright, I'm quite used to being dead," Cedric said pleasantly, scratching his head and bites of stringy hair fell off. Harry cringed. "And Draco Malfoy? I haven't seen him. It's probably a good thing, too. I never liked him."

"I didn't, either," Harry said quietly, furrowing his brows together as he thought. Why exactly was he worried about Draco anyway? Even if they got back to Scotland, Harry and Draco would simply be pitted against each other and Harry wondered if Draco would even hesitate to kill him like he had with Dumbledore.

"You shouldn't trust him, you know, Harry. Didn't your mother ever teach you not to trust Death Eaters?" Cedric said, suddenly becoming strangely sardonic. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. It's probably the bugs eating away at my brain, you know."

"How am I supposed to trust you? You're a corpse. And probably a hallucination or something this island conjured up," Harry said, folding his arms over his chest. He wondered if Cedric would notice if he cast an anti-smelling charm on himself. Cedric really did smell awful.

"Well, yes, I suppose that's true. But I'm the corpse of a Head Boy. Malfoy's a Death Eater. A Death Eater killed me, remember? He'll probably kill you."

"Maybe. I don't think he's capable right now, though. He kind of has a problem with both of his arms. He wouldn't even be able to fight back against a flobber-" Harry halted. "I need to find him. I really, really need to find him. He could die."

"I can't let you do that, Harry."

"Why? Because you're here to torment me?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're doing a very poor job of being creepy and tormenty. In fact, you don't even sound like Cedric at all."

"Oh, poo," sighed Cedric. "And I thought I was doing a really good job. I even memorized your memories, too. Funny sentence that – memorized your memories."

"Who are you?" Harry asked, suddenly becoming angry. Whoever this was had looked into his mind and made Cedric a corpse. That just wasn't on. "Because I swear I'm this close to beating you within an inch of your undead life."

"You're too passive for that," the Cedric-wannabe said. Suddenly the illusion melted away and in Cedric's place stood a tall man dressed in black robes and a black cape. He was very thin and had a long beard, not nearly as long as Dumbledore's once was, but it was fairly long. "And I am Doctor Montague Kane."

Harry wasn't surprised. He felt he should have been, but what with dragon half-breeds, cannibals, Devil's Snare and rotting, walking, talking zombies, he seemed to have lost all ability to be surprised.

"Why did you do that?" Harry asked, slipped his hand up his sleeve and gripping his wand just in case. He didn't know whether this Doctor was friend or foe, and he certainly seemed to be leading toward the latter what with the Cedric impersonation.

"I was testing a theory. It's ongoing, and I don't have many people around here to test it on. I thought it would be easy to divide you and that Draco boy up, since you very clearly don't like each other, or at least, he doesn't like you. Physically, it was simple, but mentally, it seems you are no match for my astounding mental abilities."

"You're very crazy, aren't you?" Harry asked, staring.

"I'm told so," the Doctor sighed, before waving his hand as though he were brushing it off. "Anyway, you should come to my home with me. This forest is enchanted, you know. Makes you see things that aren't real. I mean, I do that, too, but this forest can make you see some very strange things. Usually your worst fears. Sort of like a boggart, and I don't care to run into my worst fear here."

"How am I supposed to trust you?" Harry had a very hard time believing a man who had tried to dupe him and failed. Not to mention, he lived in on this island and that didn't bode well. Harry couldn't imagine living in this horrible place.

"Ah, I suppose you can't. It's your choice to follow; I can't make you do anything. My failed experiment proved that, now didn't it?" the Doctor chuckled and began to walk onto a path that suddenly appeared out of seemingly nowhere. The tree's even seemed to bend away from the Doctor. "But if anything, I can get you out of this forest quick as a flash."

"It's tempting, but I still don't know where Draco is, and I really have to find him."

"Oh, silly boy, this forest can't hurt anybody. Well, I suppose if you were terribly clumsy and tripped over a log, it could, but it only shows you you're fears. And no one in all of history has ever been scared to death. He'll be fine," the Doctor said, smiling warmly and Harry had a strange feeling about this man. It wasn't anything suspicious – in fact, Harry felt that he could, indeed, trust him. The man's eyes twinkled and he was reminded of Dumbledore and he felt very compelled to follow him.

"I'm still going to look for him," Harry said, moving away from path. He hadn't a clue where he was going, and the Doctor seemed to, of course, know this.

"Not that way, m'boy, that way!" he pointed in an entirely different direction than Harry was going and a path appeared. "After you find him, feel free to stop in at my home. It's the large manor at the top of the hill just as you exist the forest on the west side. Just use your wand and you'll find your way, I'll make sure of it," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Cheerio!"

After that, the Doctor began to walk down his separate path, whistling to himself. The tree's seemed to close up behind him and soon Harry couldn't see him at all, and might have though the entire thing was just his imagination run wild, except that the man's whistles echoed throughout the forest, and even as Harry trudged down the path the Doctor had created for him, he could still hear them as loudly as though they were right beside him.