A/n: I'm back! YAY! For anyone who doesn't know, I started college at the end of August, and the projects are many and huge, and thus why my stories are taking eons to be updated. So major apologies for that, guys and gals. But here I am with a new chapter! So, I hope it's to your liking. :D

Chapter 21

Hermione let Theodore race up to reach the Quaffle first as they'd practiced. He luckily beat Ravenclaw's forward Chaser, Zacharias Smith, to the ball, though it was a very close shave. Theodore was able to snatch it out of the air and throw it straight down to Millicent who was waiting very near the ground for the pass. She caught it deftly and raced forward, skimming the grass of the pitch with her feet. As two of the Ravenclaw Chasers swiftly took after Millicent, she leaned forward on her broom and accelerated across the pitch.

Hermione concentrated on her part in this play and raced towards Ravenclaw's goal hoops. She was a little behind and far above Millicent. Theodore was on her left, pushing hard for the goalposts, with the third Ravenclaw hot on their heels.

Then, all at once, Theodore was less than ten feet from the far right goal and began waving his arms madly at Millicent. The Ravenclaw flew over to "cover" Theodore. Hermione was roughly fifteen feet or so from the middle goal and was watching Millicent intently.

Abruptly, Millicent leaned straight back on her broom so she was practically in a lying down position – one which she'd gathered a score of bruises mastering during practice sessions – effectively bringing her to an almost immediate stop without lurching off her seat. The two Ravenclaw players who'd been chasing after Millicent shot past her, not expecting her to brake so suddenly.

Before the other players could recover, and as the Ravenclaw Keeper was anticipating Millicent's next move, Millicent sat up instantly and threw the Quaffle hard up to Hermione. Without thinking, but letting her muscles remember the moves she'd painstakingly done over and over again until she'd gotten them right, Hermione caught the ball. In one quick motion that took up the same amount of time as two blinks of an eye, she swung her arm around in a throw reminiscent of an Ancient Greek discus athlete, and sent the Quaffle hurtling through the far right hoop.

Though the Ravenclaw Keeper very valiantly dove for the ball, he'd anticipated Millicent's move quite wrong, thinking she was going to throw to Theodore as he was much closer to a goal. The Keeper completely missed and was unable to stop the Quaffle from flying right through the unguarded hoop.

The Gryffindors, and those rooting for them, let loose a tumultuous cheer, while the Ravenclaws and their supporters groaned and booed.

Hermione shouted and whooped happily that their play had worked as Millicent and Theodore flew over to pat her and each other on the back.

"I did it!" she said, grinning from ear to ear. "Did you see that? It worked! We did it!"

Theodore laughed. "Of course it worked. Graham's a master at Quidditch plays. But that's only one goal, Hermione. We have a whole game to go yet."

Hermione nodded and glanced over at her other team mates to see how they were doing. Instead of spotting Draco, however, she saw Cedric. He was gazing moodily around the pitch, his jaw clenched tight. She looked away and forced her mind back into the game unfolding before her.

After that, the pace picked up a bit, but still went fairly well. Hermione found this strange, wonderful sense of focus, energy and clam while she played. It was a totally different feeling than the one she got during practice, and this one blocked out everything except the other players. Though she lost track of time and score often because she wasn't playing close attention to the commentary (which was being done by Lisa Turpin, Millicent informed Hermione) she was still having an amazing time. She'd never felt so included and free and yet somehow not in control… it was perfectly glorious in an unexplainable way that she could never, ever have learned from a book. She finally understood why Harry and Ron would rather breathe Quidditch than air. For her however, as much as she was fast falling in love with Quidditch, nothing could ever replace a good book.

Both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw played smart and full of strength and energy, getting a handful of goals in each. There were two time outs called during the game – one by either Captain – in which Graham encouraged his team ferociously in an Oliver Wood-esque way, and reviewed which plays he wanted them to use in the next part of the game.

Finally, about two and a half hours after the match began, and Gryffindor was only twenty points ahead, the Seekers spotted the Snitch. They blasted off simultaneously to pursue and catch it.

"Malfoy! SNITCH!" Graham yelled unnecessarily.

Hermione held her breath and tried desperately not to watch the Seekers. She was currently following Theodore, who had the Quaffle under his arm, and she was also trying to keep a very annoyingly persistent Zacharias Smith from getting past her to take down Theodore.

The tension and noise level of the crowd escalated and Hermione guessed that one or both of the Seekers must be very close. When the noise level climaxed suddenly, nearly deafening Hermione, she could no longer focus on her task and whipped around to see who had caught the Snitch. The instant she laid eyes on the winner was the same instant that his name was blasted into the microphone by an ecstatic Lisa Turpin.

"He's done it! Diggory has caught the Snitch! Right there, just barely before Malfoy, right in front of him!" she was fairly squealing. "Well done! Final score stands one-hundred and ninety to sixty, Ravenclaw. Great game, everybody. Perfectly top drawer!"

The players came in for a landing on the patchy green and brown ground. The Ravenclaws rushed over to thank and congratulate their Seeker, while the Gryffindor made their way to theirs to console and reassure him.

Hermione stared at her feet and walked quickly straight to the locker room, fighting back tears. It wasn't that it hurt this bad to lose, though it of course did sting. It was more the way Cedric was currently holding the Snitch high for the world to see, bouncing and laughing among his team members. She didn't know what she had been expecting to happen, but this wasn't it. She'd somehow imagined that if Cedric won, he'd rush over and take her in his arms to apologize. And she would forgive him and everything would just be like it was before she'd told him the truth…

She had managed not to imagine him standing tall in the ring of admiring teammates, still waving the Snitch triumphantly and grinning a little too smugly. For some reason, she had never, not once, thought that Cedric would ever look at her so arrogantly then when she'd met his eye as she'd walked past Draco. The message in his eyes so clearly seemed to read, "You lost. So there."

Maybe she should have guessed or imagined that these things had a possibility of occurring. But she hadn't, and it hurt that much more.

Cedric was sitting on the bench in the Ravenclaw locker room as the last of his team cleaned up and changed. It had been nearly an hour since the end of the match and now Cedric was the only one still in his sweaty Quidditch robes.

"Why so glum, chum?" Jenny Cadwallander, one of Ravenclaw's Chasers, came out of the girl's showers and bathrooms in fresh, clean clothes, towel drying her hair. "We won, you know.

Cedric didn't respond or acknowledge her.

"I said, 'we won, you know'."

When Cedric still didn't reply, Jenny eyed him with concern.

"Is everything alright, Ced?" she asked.

"Fine." He finally spoke, though very quietly.

"Did you… want to talk about it?" Jenny offered kindly and then paused. "Because they say talking is good."

"I said I was fine." He said more loudly and firmly.

"Okay then." Jenny gathered her things uncomfortably. "I was only trying to help." She exited the locker room a few moments later.

Cedric sighed and felt a stab of guilt. He shouldn't have been short with Jenny. She was only being a friend.

He slowly buried his head in his hands. Over the past week or two, a small pressure had been growing steadily on his mind. He knew exactly what it was, but he'd doggedly ignored it. Though during the game he'd managed to forget about it, afterwards, he could ignore it no longer.

It was guilt. Lots of it.

He'd only had this same feeling one other time in his life. He'd been seven years old and had managed to break his mother's favorite glass lamp in the living room. It had been an accident, but it'd also been one that should have been avoided. Cedric was strictly told not play floor hockey in the house, least of all the living room. But his parents had been out and he'd been so tempted to just try it once. The result of a badly aimed puck was the broken lamp. Cedric had worriedly hid all evidence of his forbidden Muggle hockey escapade, and waited for his parents to come home. He explained calmly but in a very upset manner that it'd been his magic, that he hadn't been able to control it, and he was very sorry. His parents had readily believed him, as such things had happened before.

Then this terrible pressure grew in Cedric's mind every day after that, until it became literally unbearable. One day while his mother was making supper, Cedric burst in, clamped onto her leg and spilled out the true story between his tears. He'd been so guilty and ashamed that his parents didn't have much heart to punish him as harshly as he probably deserved, especially considering Cedric himself locked his hockey things in the garage for outside and garage use only, and had made it a point to be as honest as possible from there on.

Even so, he'd had bouts of guilt or shame, or times of lying, though in much smaller measures. That guilt and shame was eating at him again, a massive shadow and weight in his mind, though this time not for lying about a broken lamp.

This one was because he was finally realizing he was wrong. And though he'd always tried hard to stand for truth, he'd recently condemned someone for being brave enough to tell it to him.

The images of her and the internal pain, just behind her eyes, and her hollow smiles, were burned in his mind. On top of that, his and her words seemed to echo loudly all around him whenever that guilt and shame abruptly pushed to the surface.

You see, the thing is, in my world, the one I belong to, you're… you're gone. You don't exist. I can't fall in l- I c-can't be close to you, only to go back to where I can never be with you.

He had been convinced she was trying to harshly blow him off. Humiliate him, even. The Hermione he had known months before had not been above using elaborate excuses to get out of things – dates and guys being her specialty, it seemed.

Then she had turned up one day, a hundred and eight degrees different, looking frightened and grief-stricken. He'd always had a small crush on Hermione, though he knew nothing would ever, ever come of it. But suddenly she was so changed! His crush had intensified tenfold and quickly turned into something much more. She was so wonderful…

And then she abruptly started avoiding him. He had hoped she would give him a valid excuse, though his cynical side whispered often enough to nearly convince him that she hadn't changed after all. It was just another complex act.

She'd told him that outrageous story about the alternate universe and the wishing coin not too long after, and his hope that she was different had vaporized faster than steam. He had never felt angrier than he did at that moment.

You didn't need to spend so much time coming up with this bloody elaborate story to get me to leave you alone!

He brooded for days, berating himself for not seeing it sooner. He ran their fight through his mind endlessly. Ewan kept trying to cheer him up in any way possible, but it always came back to the fight.

So I 'don't exist'? What is that supposed to mean? Does it mean I –

It means you're dead! You were murdered. So when I go back, all you'll be is a tombstone and a coffin.

Yet doubt lingered. And it had finally grown and merged with his guilt, which was now crashing down all together on him at once, forcing him to look the truth straight in the face.

Had Hermione not had her odd moments? Had he not heard others talking about the radical change in her? Bits of things he overheard Ally offhandedly say to Ewan?

One day in passing, Cedric had caught Cho Chang telling one of her friends that Hermione Granger had forgotten what the D.A. was. Cedric had been confused by that comment, but brushed it off and forgot about it.

He, among other students, had noticed just how sad and strangely disoriented Hermione had seemed during the first week of school or so. In his anger, Cedric had dismissed that as being very good acting. But what if it hadn't been, and she really was disoriented and sad because she'd left an entire world behind by accident?

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more things he could come up with to support Hermione's fantastic tale rather than contradict it. He could suddenly think of many examples:

Their first Hogsmeade weekend together…

After we came back, I got to go to the Weasley's for a weekend or two. It was really fun.

Sorry, did you just say you went to the Weasley's for a weekend?

Uh, no. I said – uh – Minstrel's. Ally's.

The one and only study session they'd ever manage to schedule, and how strange that had been…

Remember, when I was in second year, how the Chamber of Secrets was opened? That was scary times... I was petrified by the Basillisk. I'd just figured out that seeing its reflection petrifies you - because we knew looking directly at it killed you –

What? Chamber of Secrets? A Basillisk in the school? Never! What –

Yes, I remember it was Mrs. Norris first, then Colin Creevey - annoying little first year, he was - and Nearly Headless Nick –

Nearly - what? Who!

- and then Justin Flinch-Fletchley. Of course everyone thought poor Harry did it because he was a Parseltongue. And after that awful business with Ginny and Riddle in the Chamber - well, Ron and Harry told me all about it after of course -

What - are - you - talking - about?

…I-I... someday. Someday I'll tell you.

Then that one day he'd been nearby as Ewan and Ally talked…

That's a bit far out there, wouldn't you say? Ewan had said skeptically.

I agree, it is. Ally replied. But you should have seen her! Ewan, honestly, no one, can fake the way she was. I mean, she was best friends with Potter, and huge enemies with Draco, and she's had to completely reverse her thinking!

Still though… a coin that grants a wish by accident? I just don't –

I've seen it, Ewan.

You… have?

Then they'd both broken off and hurriedly changed the subject when they noticed Cedric was within earshot.

Excellent! Well! I'll be going now! Thanks for the, er…

No problem Ally! See you, er, later!

His words to her the day after their study session, as he prodded her to explain what she'd been talking about with Near-headed Nick (or whatever it was), stuck out particularly painfully.

You wouldn't believe me, Cedric. You really wouldn't.

Sure I will! How crazy can it be? …Please tell me. I want to know. I will believe you.

Someday.

That 'someday' had been their next Hogsmeade weekend together, and he had thrown her words right back at her.

You want to know what I was doing all this week while I was coming off cold? I spent the whole week trying to gather the courage to tell you the ruddy truth, and here you are, flipping out, exactly like I knew you would.

What do you mean, you 'knew I would'?

I had really hoped you wouldn't be angry –

With a sodding tall tale like that? How could I not be?

It's the truth!

Yes, I'm sure.

It hit him now, though, like a sledge hammer to the gut, as all the evidence and memories cascaded down on top of him. He thought he was being stupid about her before, but she'd just been telling the truth.

The truth.

I liked you enough to tell you the truth! Doesn't that count for something?

His heart sped up and he wasn't sure why. He sat very still, his breath quiet and slow, not blinking, his emotions and thoughts dashing and bouncing chaotically around his mind like laser beams.

Doesn't it count for something?

Finally Cedric blinked and his mind stopped racing. He was going to fix this. And as much as it was going to kill him to wait, he knew when the right moment would be to do so.

…count for something?

"Yes, Hermione, it does."

A/n: Hope you liked it, and I'm dying to hear from you. Leaveth me-eth a review-eth. :D You know I adore them. Oh, and in case I haven't updated before then: HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (I'm dressing up as a Pirate :D!)