=ENDNOTES TO FINDING HIMSELF=
In print, this novel would be c. 800 pages, just a bit shorter than the one by Rowling on which it's based. It came about in an odd way. It wasn't the first story featuring Cedric that I did, nor even the first Cedric!Lives novel that I conceived of, but it is the one that ran away with my brain . . . more or less literally. This novel was written in 9 months.
Keep in mind that my average turn-around time on a novel (fanfic or profic) is about 18 months . . . so I wrote this one in about half the time I usually do. Why the speed? I'm not sure. I've only ever written one other novel at this rate, and ironically, it was also a fanfic novel and also written early in my 'fascination' with that fandom: Climb the Wind, for X-Men. But that was a lot shorter. (Anything over c. 60,000 words is a novel, but there's not much comparison between 83,000 and 320,000.) For anybody interested, this is my 7th fanfic novel, and hands-down, the longest I've ever written, fanfic or original.
Yeah, I think I've been a little obsessed.
Will there be a sequel?
That seems to be a popular question. Yes, there will, covering what amounts to Books 6 (Half-Blood Prince) and 7 (Deathly Hallows). If Finding Himself was a coming-of-age novel, then the sequel will be a war story. The sequel is already in progress, and is titled Dulce et decorum est. Due to the fact that I'm also involved in continuing the other main Cedric!Lives novel series, Aorist Subjunctive, however, it's taking me a lot longer to write the sequel than it took me to write Finding Himself. (To find these other novels, please see my website, linked from my profile.)
What the bloody hell is "parallel canon" anyway?
I was intrigued by the idea of changing one (fairly major) thing, then seeing how closely I could run a story alongside the events of Book 5. What would Umbridge's reign of terror at Hogwarts look like if Cedric had lived? So the goal of the story was to maintain canon as closely as I could, and adding Cedric only added to, rather than significantly altered events.
This is also why Cedric was wounded. I needed to maintain Harry's emotional dynamics as closely as I could, so Cedric couldn't escape the maze unscathed. Furthermore, his wounding had to have a long-term, and serious, impact.
For those who prefer their AUs to be more wildly divergent, my other foray into Cedric!Lives (mentioned above) is of that type: Aorist Subjunctive. It introduces a major change that consequently throws off everything that follows. So between the novel and novella series, I do believe I've got both ends of the AU spectrum represented.
Harry and Cedric as Foils
In her original work, Rowling created Cedric to have two basic purposes, first as a symbol, and second as a foil to Harry. He's the 'other Champion,' Harry's competition for the affection of Cho Chang, and even as early as Book 3, a fellow Seeker who beat Harry to the Snitch. But he's a thoroughly good bloke in the bargain, hard to dislike, as long as one keeps in mind that he's a 2D symbolic foil, not a 3D complex character. For what Rowling needed, that was sufficient. He not only didn't need to be, but shouldn't be very complex.
When I decided to turn him into my protagonist, things obviously had to change, but I wanted to maintain the basic elements of his character as drawn in the books: he's a moral person, a good student, and a powerful and capable wizard. Yet I wanted to maintain his function as Harry's foil. As a result, I had a couple of problems to address, as well as some thinking to do. The first and most significant problem became the apparent disconnect between the modest young man we see in the books and somebody who'd put his name in the Goblet of Fire, hoping for "eternal glory." Why would Cedric Diggory do that?
Building an answer was a lot of fun, and I'm somewhat indebted to the performance of Robert Pattinson in The Goblet of Fire film for giving me a few clues. He portrayed Cedric as a delightful mix of genuine niceness (which is not a bad word, you know), quiet charisma, and a charmingly unconscious vanity. I found myself very intrigued. Not everyone who's fortunate in the gene-pool lottery is a spoiled brat. So I wanted to take the Hufflepuff golden boy and turn him into a real person . . . without negating his manifold talents and gifts. Yes, he's crippled, but that serves a plot function other than humanizing him, although it may do that as well. That wasn't why I did it. I resisted giving him some hidden flaw or great childhood tragedy. Cedric has parents who love him, had a happy childhood, and never wanted for anything much.
That doesn't mean his feelings and reactions to experiences can't be empathized with, or that he's somehow inhumanly perfect. He has quite refreshingly normal flaws, needs and fears. Behind "that face" and his perfect-prefect image lies a real human being, one he spends most of the novel trying to uncover . . . and maybe can only do so when all his status and reputation have been stripped away.
In maintaining his status as a foil to Harry, I had to go about it in a different way. He's no longer a symbol. Nonetheless both boys find themselves in opposition to Umbridge and the Ministry, and both have their reputations attacked. Both suffer losses as a result of their impetuousness at the novel's close. Yet they choose to fight back in very different ways. Both are leaders, but different sorts of leaders. Harry excels on the battlefield, so to speak. He's gifted in Defense Against the Dark Arts, able to think on his feet, handle a crisis, and stay firm in the face of opposition.
Cedric isn't particularly quick thinking in a crisis situation, nor especially talented at hexes and curses. Instead he's a diplomat, a magnet for others to rally around, a people-manager and an enthusiastic, charismatic speaker. That's a different sort of gift. As a result, when it came to Umbridge and the events of Book 5, throwing Cedric into the mix created a foil between the two boys yet again, as Cedric is far better suited to handle Umbridge than (hot-headed) Harry.
Cedric and Hermione
The pairing of Cedric with Hermione may, unsurprisingly, raise eyebrows. To say it isn't canon is something of an understatement. They never talked in the books (nor film). Hermione does speak of Cedric once, defending him against the twins' derogatory comments, but that's it.
I hope after reading Finding Himself it's clear why I find them to be not only a possible pair, but even a likely one should they ever have had the chance to exchange more than a few words in passing. For those who'd like to know how I came to that conclusion, I addressed the question a while back in a Live Journal entry called "The Lure of Cedric and Hermione."
Wizarding Art
My interest in Wizarding art owes to my niece, who's a professional artist. All we ever really seem to find in the books are portraits, but surely that's not the only kind of magical art out there. I had a lot of fun imagining how paintings other than portraits might work, and some of my ideas never made it into the novel because they didn't really belong there. (Authors often know a good deal more about characters and details than they reveal. It's essential for thorough worldbuilding, but not always essential to the story being told.)
Another reason for making Cedric's mother a (well-known) painter is that I'm interested in the children of famous people -- how that can be a burden to bear even if the parents are good ones. Yet another reason that (my) Cedric put his name in the Goblet of Fire was because his mother is Master Painter Lucretia Diggory. He struggles with a sense of inadequacy, despite his mother's attempts to keep him from feeling so.
The Legend of the Summer King
The Hunter, Cernunnos and the Summer King are Celtic-British figures that overlap and bleed into one another. Much of the legend is already related in the story itself. It's a fertility tale/rite connected to field cultivation and spring renewal that's found in a variety of world cultures. In ancient Babylon the New Year began in the spring with a festival that, among other things, involved the Sacred Marriage Rite reenacted between the king as Dumuzi and the high priestess as Inanna Descended, in a bed atop the great temple of Esagila (the Tower of Babel, yes).
It would be far too White Goddess-ish to suggest this festival is somehow the ancestor of the one employed by the Celts and others. But I do think what we're seeing here is a tendency in human culture to create religious rites to celebrate either natural passages in human life, or cycles of the year. Hence we find -- over and over -- the sex-spring-fertilty-fields/groves parallel. It's not only not much of a leap, but even painfully obvious. So down the centuries, some sort of king-goddess sexual act has been consummated each spring in fields, sacred grottos, or temples.
We know less about the Celtic festivals than we might like, thanks to the Romans, who despite their oddly eclectic civic religion, could persecute quite thoroughly any religion sufficiently different that they regarded it as a superstitio -- a superstition or false religion. That, in ancient times, was "atheism." Few ancient people were religiously tolerant, and intolerance was measured only by how far any given culture was willing to extend the 'sorta like us and so acceptable' noose.
In any case, the basics of the myth are that the Summer (Sun) King, antlered and wreathed with oak, deflowers the Maiden Goddess on Beltane night, impregnating her. At midsummer, he's sacrificed, his blood fertilizing the fields, and the goddess gives birth to him again at midwinter. So we have the ancient cycle of birth, death, and resurrection in the new generation.
--Minisinoo