A/N So many loose ends, so little time….! SHR You got me into so much trouble – seriously lol! Anybody enjoying this should send you a bottle of wine or flowers or something because Cedders was supposed to pop off just like in GoF, but then Hermione got all lip trembly and Luna was like 'I'm not finished' – now look what you made me do ) I should just go back to giving them chapter numbers tee hee!
Epi 3 or 16 - more of the same anyway
"Cedric calls me Kit," mumbled Hermione and was almost suffocated by the squeeze that followed. Hermione searched Rons face. "Show yourself," she grabbed a fistful of his clothing. "Now!"
"Not here," he shushed her. He was too weak, even if he had wanted to. He had to work out a way of getting hold of his wand. And then a way of telling Molly Weasley her son was dead, because he was stupid. After that he could show Hermione himself, with her help. Right now, just holding her close was enough.
"Cedric?" asked Hermione softly and swallowed a teary hiccup
"Not exactly," said Cedric into her hair. He sighed deeply, breathing her in and trying not to think about how cold he felt around the edges not in direct contact with her. With as much stealth as possible, he drew magic from her and cocooned himself inside Rons body. The nausea dissipated somewhat and his vision cleared. He sucked in a huge breath and tried to think about how to tell a body how to run itself since it seemed to be having a spot of bother with keeping its temperature about right.
"Where's Ron?" asked Hermione, turning on his lap and lifting her teary face so that she could see his eyes.
"It's complicated," he hedged, shifting nervously under her. It didn't help that her slight movement was giving his unbody ideas above its station, or the sight of her obvious distress made him want to chase down every tear with his mouth, because it wasn't his mouth. "There was this potion and ah, listen, can we do this later?" He freed himself gently and chafed his arms to try and warm himself, the sensation creeped him out. "We should go and help Harry."
Amos Diggory had fought his way from the stands to the arena and was hunched over the prone body and sightless eyes of his sons corpse. Cedric felt momentary guilt for his old man and shook them off the minute he remembered being groomed for the Ministry, at least this way he was free of that future. The question was, what did this future look like? Harry stood off to one side looking dumbstruck, Hermione took Harrys arm and led him unresisting out of the arena.
"I'll catch up," said Cedric in Rons voice. He stood a few steps from the corpse and tried to look respectful while he searched in vain for his wand, it wasn't in either of his bodys hands, stupid bugger must have dropped it in the graveyard.
"We can arrange for Cedric to lie in the chapel overnight, Amos," Dumbledore assured his old friend. Professors gathered about the pair and the body levitated a short distance into the air. Cedric stepped back out of the way and watched his former body float past him, flanked by sombre faced teachers. Amos wept unashamedly as Dumbledore rested a comforting arm over his quaking shoulders and the pair followed the procession. "Come up to the school and we'll arrange quarters for the night and an owl to your wife." Cedric was shocked to see the same comforting arm slip down his Fathers back and pat his behind.
0.0
Cedric caught up with Harry and Hermione in the hallway outside the common room, the Fat Lady was wailing horribly. Large blubbery tears had driven most of her eye make-up into Halloween-esque trails down her cheeks and she had smooshed her lipstick sideways with her sodden hankie.
"Oh, the pain," she cried dramatically clutching at her ample bosom, "my poor broken heart." Cedric summoned his best sullen Ron and said nastily, "I bet they'll do a portrait or something, of him flying or looking all prefectorial." The Fat Lady's sobbing choked off abruptly.
"Do you think so? He's a little young for me, but still…" The Fat Lady put a hand to her hair and smoothed it down, tripping over to a crumbling garden wall with a mirror inset and twined about with ivy. She peered at her reflection and shrieked when she caught it, "I have to go!" She waved a hand at the edge of her picture frame, "let yourselves in," and with that, disappeared at speed.
Hermione spun around with her mouth open, then looked really confused. Cedric shrugged uneasily, "What? I was only trying to help." Cedric winced, Rons voice was so whiney, no wonder he wound Hermione up.
Hermione looked between Harry and Cedric and gave a tiny nod, Harry didn't appear to be noticing anything amiss. They trooped into the common room, the noise from the other students dropped off and Cedric felt his skin crawl. "Um, I'll take him up?" Cedric offered, looking at Hermione for agreement.
"There will be questions, but we can hold them off for tonight right?" she included the rest of the room in the question and repeated loudly, "RIGHT?" The rooms general murmuring suggested that the rest of Gryffindor was falling into line. Hermione started issuing more detailed instructions, "Neville, you're our early warning system, stay by the door. Luna, yes all right you can stay with him. No, Ginny let him be, he's better with…Ron, the rest of you get in the way of anyone coming through that door looking for Harry."
Cedric left her ordering the others about as he pushed Harry gently ahead of him up the stairs. "C'mon mate, let's get you sorted out." Harry stumbled upstairs, "he's dead, Ron, he's really dead."
"I know mate, believe me, I know." Cedric said mournfully, Ron could definitely do miserable, Cedric thought, he almost wanted to bawl his eyes out himself at his own disconsolate tone.
Harry turned and grabbed him by both shoulders with surprising strength, "you don't, you don't know. You weren't there," he said vehemently.
Cedric grabbed at Harrys shoulders in turn and shook him viciously, "you're alive. That's what matters here. I, on the other hand-," am very dead he stopped himself, maybe he could own up later, if there was a later. If there wasn't, Harry was going to lose a best friend as well the rest of the torment he was going through. "I think you might need something from Madame Pomfrey to help you sleep."
"I don't want anything, I just want it to stop," Harry whispered, he let his arms drop, turned and dragged his feet up the remaining steps.
"Nothings going to happen tonight, mate, not with Hermione on the case." Cedric followed close behind, Harry was starting to weave and put out a hand to steady himself on the wall.
Cedric tripped and put out his own hand, Rons co-ordination was piss-poor at the best of times, either his feet were too big for him or…Cedric knocked the toe of his shoe into the riser of the step, he felt the vibrations, but not actually in his toes. His forehead tried to break out in a cold sweat, instead he just felt cold and curled himself smaller on the inside.
Harry gave him a weary smile over his shoulder, "I dunno how she's doing it, Cedric was her mentor."
Cedric gave a non-commital grunt and Harry continued, kicking off his shoes and crawling onto his bed. "He was good for her, pushed her you know? She must be gutted, he was one of the best, even if he did piss her off."
"Doesn't take much to piss her off," Cedric said moodily.
Harry curled into a ball and closed his eyes and shrugged, "they had a ding dong after the second task, anyone would have thought that Hermione was expecting Cedric to rescue her. She said it wasn't that, that Cedric had ticked her off for being tricked by an enchanted parchment, even if it was Dumbledores magic. I never heard her swear before." Harrys voice drifted off, "you should hear her say fucking."
Cedrics unbody twitched and made him jump. He waited until he was sure Harry was asleep and dragged the duvet from Rons bed to cover the sleeping boy. He said rather wistfully, "I wish I could help, Harry, I really do."
0.0
Cedric found Hermione dozing on the couch in the common room, she sat up and ran the back of her hand over her bleary eyes.
"Is he asleep?"
Cedric nodded and sat beside her, he offered his hand and she took it without thinking. "Geez, you're cold."
Cedric kept his voice deliberately low, "you do know I'm technically dead?" he said as gently as possible. "And, Ron, he, well, he really is dead."
Hermiones went white, then her face turned mutinous, "it's still you inside though isn't it?"
Cedric sighed and nodded, "the potion was never supposed to last this long though, just a few hours. It doesn't integrate the consciousness with the body, it's more like papier-mache over a balloon – at some point only the shell is going to be left."
Hermione thought frantically, "can you still do magic on your own?"
Cedric shook his head, "haven't tried, it takes too much resource. I don't even dare trying to get back into my own body in case I get stuck inbetween. I might be able to with my own wand-" but Hermione was already shaking her head.
"Unicorn core won't have survived, not completely intact, no way," she said with painful certainty. "How many strands in the core?"
"I don't know…."
"How can you not know?" Hermione turned on him. "It's important," she sounded furious and looked incandescent.
"More than one, less than a hundred," he said in exasperation.
"Fucking hell, Cedric, this is serious. We need to find it."
Cedric flexed his shoulders, it wasn't the sound so much as the sight of her top teeth against her bottom lip on the 'f' sound, and her white teeth on the pink cushion of her lower lip and then helpfully deployed by his brain as a distraction to the crisis, on the deep pink of the head of his tumescent cock. He blew out a breath, shifted in his seat and reminded himself that really, she would be sucking Rons cock from now on if anything like that was going to happen. He threw up a little in his mouth.
"Wait a minute," she said," I can find it. Your wand has a common aura with mine, it should work like a dowsing rod. I have to get to the graveyard."
"You can't go on your own and I can't manage a broomstick," said Cedric immediately, "I don't think I could stay on, I'm just not strong enough." Hermione concentrated on pushing magic through their joined hands, Cedric felt it as a trickle of warmth coating bones he didn't own. He squeezed her hand, "thank you, but it's not enough, you need it to keep yourself safe."
Lunas soft voice piped up, "a thestral could carry you." She rose effortlessly from Nevilles lap, his sleeping form shifted, letting her go and hugging the teddy-bear she conjured to put in her place. "They live in the Forest, I can call them," she said in her curiously earnest, honest way.
Hermione looked in horror at Luna, "did you know?" Her mouth flattened as she accused Cedric, "did you tell her and not me?"
"You just called me Cedric, Kit," he rebuked her.
Hermione stuck her face in her hands, "I can't believe this is even happening." She took a deep breath and turned back to Cedric. "I've never seen one, but I know what they are. You could stay on a thestral if I rode behind you. Luna, please, if you would?"
"Of course," Luna said dreamily and moved to stand in front of the pair on the couch, "we need to be outside, here, Hermione, on the count of three," Luna took Hermiones hand.
Cedric opened his mouth to protest.
"Three." Cedric felt his unbody lurch as soon as Luna gripped his hand and in a second he was falling, crashing against the girls joined hands that stopped him from faceplanting in the grass outside the castle walls. They pushed him upright and Luna turned her back to them. She ran a hand over her wand and said, "tibia morta." Holes appeared evenly spaced down her wand and a bulbous mouthpiece appeared near one end that she raised to her lips.
Hermione watched Lunas shoulders rise and fall with her breaths, but heard nothing, Cedric on the other hand heard music to make a soul dance. He wasn't sure how long it lasted, only that it made him feel more alive than he had since he had seen his own dead body in front of him. The wind whipped, circling around them and tightening on Luna, hoofbeats drummed the ground, softly though, as if a great distance was between them and whatever was coming. Overhead a downdraught signalled the arrival of a great winged horse, landing with pinpoint accuracy in front of the threesome and Luna played on.
The beast was black with luminous white eyes, to Cedric it looked inside out since what flesh there was, was behind the pale grey bones of its skeleton instead of covering them. It lowered its head and set forward one foreleg in an ungainly bow. Luna played on and the beast furled its wings and settled itself close to the grass, curling its great neck around so that its muzzle almost touched its hindquarters, fangs showed, curving down from its top lip, over the sides of the bottom. Lunas music drifted to a close.
"Here," Luna said in her sing-song voice to the two behind her, "it's quite safe." She walked forward and lay a hand on the thestrals scaly muzzle, stroking gently.
"I can't see anything," Hermione hissed.
"I can," replied Cedric grimly and led her forward, he lifted her and settled her on the animals great wide back, wrinkling his nose against the stink of rotting meat.
"They eat carrion," Hermione said conversationally although her voice wavered a bit while she tried to get used to the idea of sitting a metre or more high in the air with apparently nothing holding her up. Cedric scrambled up in front of her, the thestrals back felt as wide as a table. He didn't think the smell was from a recent snack, rather from the beast itself since the flesh behind the bones was, on closer inspection, well on its way to being compost. Hermione shifted forwards, pressing up against his back and reaching around him.
"Does it know where to go?" Cedric asked gingerly.
"It knows the field of bodies," Luna said darkly, "she will wait for you and bring you back." Luna stared at Cedric, "don't belong. Don't be long," she repeated cryptically, it didn't really sound like a correction, and with that she clicked her tongue and the thestral lumbered to its full height. To Hermione she said simply, "hold on," and turned away. The threstral bunched its muscles, took threes strides, stretched out neck and wings and launched into the air.
Luna stared the way of the Forest, the drumming of hoofprints was easy to pick out now, telling her that despite the intensity of the vibrations, it came from an individual and not a herd. She smiled softly to herself, he would be angry for her using the spirit pipe and instruct her to be more careful in his own particular way. She shivered in anticipation, sitting in company might be difficult tomorrow if he was really cross.
0.0
Kazym trotted up to her, he carried a long black stave in one hand and a recurved bow in the other. He brushed past her rudely and rounded on her.
"Do you have any idea who can hear you when the music calls?" He circled her and she turned with him to keep him in front of her and studied the stave.
Lunas eyes lit with excitement. "Where did you find it?"
The centaur clopped to a halt and grudgingly handed her the staff. His face still showed his displeasure with her actions, but was lifted by her reaction to his gift. "In the waters under the ring of trees," he replied.
"The dew pond in the clearing?"
"The same."
Luna took the dark wood stave from Kazyms outstretched hand and ran her hands along the length of the Alder. The last of the dew ponds water steamed off and the wood creaked as the excess moisture departed.
"Alder transcends the natural barriers of the elements, serving all four, air, earth, fire and water," Luna repeated like a catechism, "it's perfect. Stronger in death than in life."
Kazym pulled a small pot of paste from small leather bag dangling from a thong at his shoulder. The base of the pot was bulbous and the lid domed and oversized so that the whole thing together looked like a mushroom.
She twisted a tool into the shaft an inch from the top and withdrew a small plug of timber, inoculated the void with a wad of pale green paste from the jar, using a spatula stuck out from the underside of the lid and replaced the plug. She held her hand hovering over the odd repair and the plug seated itself more snugly, turning a half turn clockwise to re-align the grain.
"Is it working?" Kazym didn't bother to mask his impatience.
"Too soon to tell," Luna didn't take her eyes off the timber.
"Death is an impatient partner. It is written, he will make me immortal before….but he doesn't have much time. She is strong, if it happened later maybe she would manage, but it's too early in her years."
"Hermione…?"
"Is all that is keeping him here"
"We need more time," Luna sighed.
Kazym turned his dark eyes to the heavens. "There is none to be had, but perhaps I can hurry this a little." He took the stave from Lunas hand and folded his horny palm over the plug and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed in concentration. The paste squeezed out from the joint coated his hand and made it itch furiously. He knew the fungal spores would pass through the barrier of his skin, knew too that this was both end and beginning and he deliberately kept that she was the start of his death from her, because he loved her. Magic spiralled along the fungal growth, up his arm as far as his elbow and then down, inching back into the rod.
Luna set her palm against his chest and whispered, "I miss you." Kazym didn't open his eyes, but smiled as if presented with an obvious untruth.
"You have the sleepers gift of walking and a witches eye, we could hunt together in the dreamers fields if you wanted."
Luna smiled at the thought.
"You will have to teach me to shoot the bow."
Kazym smiled wolfishly, "you will have to earn it." The stave hummed and groaned, a sliver of bark a fingerswidth wide peeled off to show the mottled wood beneath.
"The fungus has taken, the alder is spalting, the staff is alive and dead. It's working. He stared at the twinkling starlight. "Death is no longer our enemy, it is time." He turned to her with urgency in his voice, "find the core."
"What is it?" Luna asked, "what does it look like?"
"My herd brothers tail."
0.0
Hermione clutched at Cedric and tried not to look down, he felt so cold it was like hugging a human popsicle. Up her sleeve, her wand stirred restlessly, below her the schools lights disappeared and darkness took hold. Without any landmarks it was impossible to tell where they were until her ears popped seconds before the thestrals hooves connected with the ground with a jolt.
Hermione pulled her wand immediately, "lumos." Her wand dragged her arm right away from her body and down towards the ground, the vine extended itself to its full length, obviously pointing.
The thestral nosed the earth near a gravestone and Hermiones lit wand outlined the daunting shape of a stone grim reaper, complete with skull for a face and a wicked looking scythe. She bit back a cry of surprise. Hermione reached forward, looking her Cedrics hand with her own and grabbing at him tightly when she found it.
"Call your wand," she said sharply, shifting away from him so that he couldn't feel her shaking. "I want to get out of here, now!"
"Accio wand," said Cedric, holding out his other hand. Hermione felt the slight tug of magic, but nothing happened. "It's like it doesn't know it's me," Cedric worry bleeding into Rons voice, he shook his head.
"Stay here," Hermione demanded and slipped off the thestrals back. It was further to the ground than she thought and she landed awkwardly, tripping backwards and landing hard on her arse. She kept a death grip on her wand, but put the other out to save herself and refused to think about what she might have put her hand in that was cold, squishy and damp. Moss, she told herself, it's only moss and refused to light the area in case it was flat toad or irreparably damaged slug instead. She shuddered and concentrated on her wand.
"Where is it?" she hissed at the vine. The wand tugged at her hand and she stumbled across the uneven ground, barking her shins on grave corners and tripping over half buried stones. A little way away from where they had landed, the vine tugged her arm down so hard she almost fell forwards. Crouching, she scrabbled about in the damp tufts of grass and whatever else, muttering to herself about boys losing things and what the equivalent of idiot-mittens for a wand might be. Once a spider skipped over the back of her hand and she shook it like a lunatic to dislodge it before it made a break for her sleeve.
"Hate you, hate you, hate you," she chanted and made a noise like, "bwaaaahhhh nggghh," which seemed to help. Her questing fingers found the ridge of a twig, too smooth and too warm to be here. "You better be worth it," she threatened the inanimate object and bundled the two wands together in one hand so that she had one free in case she tripped on the way back.
She turned around, then around again when she couldn't quite get her bearings in the dark. Something like fear was trying to squeeze her stomach into a small ball and encourage her to curl up and hide, she quashed it firmly. "Fuck it, lumos maxima,"
Light arced from her wand, gravestones and statues threw disturbing shadows, one shaped like a horse with wings and a man on top moved towards her, when it came into the light it looked like Cedric was floating. If she had looked carefully, she would have seen the tip of Cedrics wand glow faintly orange, as it was, she was trying not to dwell on all the muggle horror films that she had accidently seen, since her dad was a zombie fan, that featured scenes with a graveyard backdrop – there were quite a lot, all competing in glorious horrific Technicolor detail for her attention. Out the corner of her eye, something definitely moved.
"Here," Cedric called softly, "we're over here."
Hermione hurried towards him and he reached down a hand to pull her up. If it was possible, he was colder than before, Rons chubby features had taken on a craggy, hollow look about them. She dragged herself up behind Cedric, "bloody hell, you're freezing." The thestral pawed at the ground as Hermione passed Cedric his wand, "here, your wand feels warm to me. If you drop it again, I'll kill you." She rearranged his clothing rather than dwell on the foot-in-mouth syndrome she had acquired.
Cedric clicked his tongue and the thestral turned daintily, looking for a clear runway. Hermione looked over her shoulder to where she thought she saw movement. "Go, go!" she urged kicking the beast on, it grunted and Cedric tipped back as its neck shot up and the fanged muzzle snapped at his legs.
"Shit, Hermione, whatever you just did, don't bloody do it again, it's trying to eat me."
"Don't be stupid," she said tersely. "It only eats dead things…" she held him tighter. "Oh, sorry." She reached behind her to tentatively pat the beasts hindquarters, "err, sorry?"
The thestral lurched forward, collected itself and burst skywards. On the ground a small tabby cat wound itself around the legs of the figure of the grim reaper and purred. It sounded a lot like ner-ne-ner-ne-ner-ner.
A/N The tune I was thinking Luna was playing was "Toss the Feathers by The Corrs, it's a proper foot tapper. Early flutes were made from the shin bone, which is of course the tibia.
Spalting is real and is where fungal or viral growths in wood (alive or dead) causes the timber to become patterned by different colours. Spalted wood is very sought after by carvers and furniture makers. Alder is truely hardened by soaking in water, where other timber would rot.
Idiot mittens are mittens or gloves secured to a coat by elastic that runs down the inside of each sleeve, usually for small children. Pinging said mitten by pulling away from the coat and letting go often with the child in the coat was what we used to do for fun before telly lol.
Thank you PG616 for giving me the gentlest of nudges.x Sherbs.