Disclaimer: It makes me sad every time I have to say it, guys. Please don't make me do it again…

I wrote this chapter as an afterthought. I realized that the last chapter seemed abrupt and rushed which partially might have had to do with the fact that I was writing at five in the morning, so I did a few things. Firstly, I took out the last two mini-paragraphs because I decided that they were the main reason it didn't seem to flow in a good way. Secondly, I opted to add this as an explanation chapter. I decided to include it to give you guys more insight into what's happening on Cedric's side of things, plus I tie up a few loose ends that otherwise would have been left alone.

Prepare yourselves for some trippy stuff.

Enjoy! :)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cedric had been in pain before. When he was eight, he was soaring around his yard on the new broomstick that he'd gotten from his dad for his birthday. The wind had picked up and made the ride rougher than usual, but he continued on at a tremendous speed while laughing profusely.

Suddenly, a particularly strong gust hit his broomstick in just the right way that it bucked him off, pitching him helplessly into the air and turning his peals of joy into screams of panic. He threw his arms out to brace himself for the impact of the hard ground as he picked up speed in his descent, screwing his eyes tightly shut in fear.

His right arm made contact before the rest of his body did and he let out a shriek of pain as it twisted and bent in an awkward way before his entire body followed it, bouncing once with a resounding thud before settling in the grass. He lay in the soft grass, tears streaking down his face as he cradled his arm and his parents ran over to him anxiously.

His mother was a healer, thus able to immediately diagnose him as having broken his arm. The enchantments she had to perform to refuse the bone together were possibly even more painful than actually breaking it had been, but he got through that.

But this—this was agony. He couldn't even focus on what was happening to him anymore, his eyes clouded over by the intense suffering he was undergoing, the relentless torture of the large snake's lunges toward his defenseless body.

There was no hope for him, no savior to bring him back from the depths of Hell this torture was putting him through as his body shuddered involuntarily at the impact of another attack by the venomous snake. He could feel the blood gushing out of him with each pumping heartbeat.

This was dying in the most excruciating sense of the word, the most horrific way to draw out the syllables.

His veins were coursing with blistering fire, charring his arteries as the venom made its steady journey throughout his body. The pain was beyond even the point of being unbearable as the seconds dragged on and he writhed and twitched uncontrollably in the slick mud where his blood had mingled with the dust.

His mind was a frenzy of thought, everything blending together as he prayed ceaselessly for it to end one way or another.

He kept experiencing flashes of things he couldn't understand—Weasley's face, his cobalt eyes searching his own, feeling the phantom of hot tears that weren't his own streaming down his face. He knew it wasn't his tears or his face, that Ron wasn't there, but nothing made sense because with each millisecond that passed, he was dying, dying, dying and he didn't want to die, not yet, not like this, not when he had just gotten back, not before he could avenge Cho.

Each ragged breath was more painful than the last and he could barely breathe between cries of pain he could no longer hear himself shouting hoarsely, and then the razor-sharp fangs were hooking into his skin and tearing into him again, ripping him apart piece by piece.

He was alone, but he thought Scott and Aiden had been right there the whole time and he couldn't understand what happened to them and why they weren't helping him. He wanted it to end but he didn't want to die. He wasn't ready but the blood kept pouring out, his head beginning to feel fuzzy from the blood loss and he couldn't focus, his wand was too far away for him to even try to reach it and he was struggling to gasp for air.

Blood roared in his ears as he saw the snake poised for its final attack and he could feel fear that he somehow knew didn't belong solely to him mingling with his own in the strangest way, his senses heightened and dulled at the same time as he lay alive but near death, his vision failing him.

Blood—his blood—was dripping from the viper's muzzle, its mouth opened to reveal the long, bloodied fangs that drove him to the violent grave he was laying in. It lunged just as his eyes began rolling back in his head, a flash of green light blinding him before he became engulfed in darkness.

Hermione…

His head lolled limply backward, his eyelids occasionally fluttering open infinitesimally before abruptly shuttering closed again. He could feel a stranger carrying him, their arms crushing him to their warm body in an attempt to keep from jostling him as their feet pounded on the ground below them. He felt the stranger's heartbeat pounding through their shirt, their labored breaths indicating the struggle they were fighting through to keep a hold on him.

"I need a Healer now! He's going quickly!"

Cedric knew that voice, but he couldn't quite figure out who it belonged to. His whole body was numb as he was abruptly handed off to someone else, the hasty movement jerking his head and causing his eyes to flash open for the briefest moment.

The last thing he saw before it went black again was a tall, achingly familiar teenage boy covered in dust and blood with light brown hair and anxious, tear-filled brown eyes saying something to him that he couldn't understand, his trembling lips moving hurriedly to form words Cedric couldn't hear over the radio silence that filled his mind.

Cedric felt a familiar tug at his navel that indicated he was Apparating and found himself falling a short distance onto his back. He couldn't move and his eyes were wide open, staring into a dim, foggy sky. The milky glow of the moon was muted by the gloomy grey clouds that loomed in front of it, casting the landscape in eerie shadow. He could feel the frosty grass brushing against his cold skin, but his whole body was numb as he blankly stared ahead.

A strange sound filled his eardrums, softly repeating as if on a loop.

Tick, tick, tick.

He heard a startled gasp beside him as soon as his body made contact with the ground before a face that was obscured by the shadows entered his vision, looming over his own pale face.

It was a girl—that much he could tell—but he couldn't make out her facial features very well in the dim lighting. She had a mass of curls standing out from her head that surrounded her slim face and he couldn't help but curiously wonder why she was wearing a tank top when it felt so chilly outside.

He wanted to say something to her, wanted to move, but he was frozen in place, his traitorous eyes immobile and unblinking. He wasn't even sure that he was breathing.

The mystery girl's mouth opened as a horrified expression contorted her shocked features, and he could see tears beginning to pool in her eyes as panic settled into her demeanor but she was as motionless as he was. Her eyes began blinking furiously as tears began spilling onto her cheeks, the moonlight that reflected in the moisture causing them to appear like pure silver before they dripped off of her quivering chin.

Just as his curiosity was piqued, she disappeared into a cloud of smoke and he was swallowed up by the thickening fog.

Tick, tick, tick.

He wasn't sure how much time passed between that instant and the next, but eventually he could finally move his limbs freely. He sat up as the fog began to clear, surprised when he found himself inside the Room of Requirement. It was decorated almost the same way it always was whenever he found refuge there during the Triwizard Tournament days, the twin sofas placed before a merrily crackling fire, but there was a wooden desk in the corner.

He didn't know why, but he was inexplicably drawn to it. His eyes didn't waver from the single black quill sitting on a stack of fresh, blank parchment. Inquisitively, he reached out for the quill, startled when his hand went straight through the old, polished desktop and everything else sitting on top of it, his arm disappearing up to his elbow where the quill was sitting.

He retracted his arm and stared at it for a moment before it sprang to life on its own.

Dear Hermione, it wrote, and he stared in awe as the quill magically dragged across the page in his own tidy, slanted handwriting without an inkwell in sight.

Cedric's brows knitted together as he watched the parchment shuffle around, the quill poised motionlessly in the air as a fresh piece laid itself out on the desk. Slowly, the quill lowered itself to the parchment and began tirelessly writing again in his distinct script.

Three letters were written before his astonished eyes, each oddly signed off by his best mate, Scott Logan. As he watched the quill move across each piece of parchment, he saw the letters at the beginning of each sentence glow.

One by one, as they folded and tucked themselves away into envelopes that magically sealed on their own, each of the glowing letters lifted off the page and floated before him. It was a jumble of letters he couldn't understand at first, but when the last envelope was sealed and settled itself down on the desk on top of the others, the quill going back to lie in its rightful place beside them, they began to shift around.

A message began to form in the very air before him that looked as though he'd written it himself as the letters arranged themselves. His eyes scanned over them interestedly as the last few fell into place.

I need your help, Hermione. Meet me soon. I can't wait to see you.

-Cedric Diggory

Before he could fully register what that even meant, however, he felt the same tug once again before involuntarily Disapparating.

For the second time, he felt his body drop to the ground and immobility fixed him in place once more as the frost-covered grass welcomed his limp body. His eyes were transfixed on the glowing area of the sky where the moon begged to shine through the clouds, fog consuming the edges of his unblinking vision.

Tick, tick, tick.

His thoughts were like a record that had been played far too many times, skipping and replaying but still too choppy to be fully comprehensible.

Where am I and why can't I move or speak and why does nothing make sense to me, why is everything blurring together and why does time seem so irrelevant?

The sound underwent a crescendo before decrescendoing back into the background once more—tick, tick, tick.

He heard the same gasp as before and the girl's face appeared before his again. Her hands were shaking as she dug the heels of her palms into her eyes to hastily wipe away the tears glistening in them.

He wanted to comfort her, ask her why she kept crying whenever he saw her, but mostly, he wanted to know who she was. The shadows that hid her identity from him were frustrating, but he had no way to express any of these thoughts because his disloyal body refused to move. He stared expressionlessly up at the sky, up at her sorrowful face that was now mostly blocked by her delicate hands. He saw her bite her trembling lip and a wave of compassion coursed through him that only added to his growing irritation.

After a few long moments, she lowered her hands and shifted slightly in her sitting position just enough that the faint, pale light finally graced her fair skin. Had he been in control of his own body, his jaw would have dropped in shock as the murky moonlight lighting up her tearstained face made it faintly shine like porcelain, her identity no longer shadowed in mystery.

Hermione Granger's brown eyes were looking upon him through a glossy sheen of tears, the poignant grief in her expression shaking Cedric to the core. He couldn't understand why she was so sad, her stricken gaze transfixed on his face.

She lifted a dainty, quivering hand and hesitantly reached toward him, a gesture he watched in innocent fascination through his peripheral vision. Why was she doing this?

Her smooth fingertips briefly brushed against his numb cheek, an action that sent electrical sparks jolting through his body with a surprising mix of astonishment and pleasure, before she immediately retracted it as if he'd burned her.

He saw her chest heaving erratically, her eyes shining with alarm as she looked at him and he felt suddenly very vulnerable and bewildered by her enigmatic behavior.

Had he done something wrong?

He tried fighting the invisible barriers that held him frozen in place in an attempt to get to her, but he could only watch her through his glassy, fixed eyes as a storm of muddled, disorderly thoughts raged inside of him.

Throughout it all, the sound was constant, never-ending; infinitely echoing in his mind and reverberating in his eardrums.

Tick, tick, tick.

He watched as she stared at her hand, the anxiety building inside of her causing her to shiver, taking in the guarded look she sent him before she took a deep breath and reached toward him again. There was a part of Cedric that was drawn to her touch for some inexplicable reason, so when her fingers grazed his face for the second time, he couldn't help the surge of comfort and relief that coursed through him.

He watched as she battled with the fear inside of herself while her hand lightly skimmed over cheeks, forehead, and chin before moving to gently stroke his hair.

A warm buzz settled deep inside of his soul as she pulled her hand back with a look of contentment shining in her soft eyes, the smallest pleased smile gracing her lips for a moment.

Thankfulness was surging through every fiber of his being for the contact she had just made with him despite the fact that they were virtually strangers, the unease he felt with his surroundings diminished completely by her act of kindness.

Just as her hand was reaching out to him again, he felt his thoughts surround them, encompassing them with the two words that were echoing in his mind over and over again: "Thank you."

Everything was consumed by a rush of fog again, and Cedric found himself watching her in the library. She looked exhausted as she slouched over a thick book, a few others scattered around the table she was seated at. He walked over to her and saw the notes she had sitting next to her, reading the rushed scrawl she had written.

There were bits and pieces of sentences, some of it written out in bullet point note format and some scribbled across random corners or open areas of blank parchment, all of which had something to do with ghosts and death. One section was written out as a laundry list—life, death, ghost, resurrection, life.

There was a furious series of squiggles where it appeared that she blotted something out in the middle of that, and he followed the loopy arrow she had drawn between "resurrection" and "life" that led to a question mark she aggravatedly circled a number of times.

He stood beside her for quite some time, glancing at other random bits of parchment that surrounded her with similar writings and scribbles etched onto them, before realizing that she couldn't see him. It was actually a bit of a relief because it allowed him the chance to observe Hermione without her knowledge of it.

There it was again, the sound emerging from the dull hum it had become in his mind.

Tick, tick, tick.

He watched her blow a stubborn ringlet out of her face and huff in frustration as it fell back where it was before slamming the book she was reading shut. She tucked the lock of hair behind her ear and sighed to herself as she glanced at the stacks of books around her, expelling her anger in that one breath. He saw the tiredness creeping into her expression as she slumped forward and put her head in her hands.

"What am I going to do?" She whispered to herself, desperation evident in her voice as she peered up from her palms to the countless tomes set out on the table.

He looked again at her notes, peering intently between the question mark enclosed by about five dark circles and the laundry list.

life, death, ghost, resurrection, life

That meant something to him. It stirred a feeling of knowledge inside of him, as though he had a sense of familiarity when those words were all involved.

life, death, ghost, resurrection, life

He glanced at the question mark again, the way she had frustratedly scratched it onto the paper before circling it so forcefully that she nearly punctured the parchment.

And then, as though he had found the missing piece after so long, everything clicked together like a jigsaw puzzle right when he was forcibly Apparated away again.

Tick, tick, tick.

He was on his feet this time, the freedom he felt at still being able to move unfathomable as he stood immersed in the dense fog. He could make out wooden beams nailed together around him, forming what he belatedly realized was some sort of spectator stands. He looked around the benches and spotted several signs and banners hung around them.

He knelt down when he saw one laying dejectedly at his feet and flipped it over so he could read the front. It was a black sign with bright yellow lettering across it that formed the words, "Diggory for the Victory!"

He raised his eyebrows and read a few other signs before coming to the ultimate conclusion that he was standing in the deserted Triwizard Tournament stands. He glanced down at his clothes and realized for the first time that he was even dressed in his yellow and black Champion attire.

He put the sign on a bench nearest to him and made his way over to the Hogwarts side of the stands, sitting in the section and allowing the memories to come back to him. He remembered watching his fellow students cheer and whoop as he and Harry competed to the best of their abilities against the other two Champions, the memory still so crisp that he could almost hear their frenzied shouts filling the crisp night air.

The fog dissipated enough that he could begin making out a strange, dark shape in the distance. His heart began pounding with fear as he squinted just enough to realize it was the maze.

He had died in that maze.

Cedric.

He heard the faintest whisper of surprise and turned to see Hermione sitting in the grass quite a ways from himself, her eyes transfixed on him. He realized that he wasn't hearing her speak, but rather listening to her thoughts, when he heard her question about why he was there.

He remembered what had occurred to him in the library before he was whisked away from her, that thought alone driving him to speak. "I thought it would be easy enough to guess."

He watched intently as Hermione jumped in surprise, the incredulity she felt flooding her thoughts. Could he—

Cedric quirked a humored eyebrow. "Hear your thoughts?" He supplied for her. He smiled slightly when she nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide. "Yeah."

She kept staring at him as if he had grown two heads, her disbelief evident even from the distance Cedric was sitting at. That's impossible.

She was entertaining him far more than he was willing to admit as he raised his brows in amusement. "Nothing is impossible, Hermione," he told her as he stood up, slowly descending the stairs and stopping at the bottom row.

He walked out to the railing and leaned lightly on it, wondering briefly if he would ever forget how comical she looked as she watched his every move with her wide, captivated eyes after he had told her he could read her mind.

After a few minutes, he relented and decided to go on with what he needed to tell her. "You can talk now, you know," he said quietly.

She let out a deep breath, and he saw her relax upon processing the revelation. "You still didn't answer my question," she said softly. Her eyes were staring curiously at him as she asked, "Why are you here?"

He honestly wasn't sure about that himself, but before he could say anything, he heard a thud close to her.

He squinted into the dimness and finally understood why he wasn't able to move before—he had been the dead body that just landed beside her. He heard her gasp like the other times and couldn't bear to see her break down again.

"Don't," he warned her as she began to turn around.

She turned to look at him questioningly over her shoulder. "What?"

He was bewildered by the strange way she was acting. "You know what," he said, his lips pulling into a frown and brows knitting together in confusion. "You know what's happening."

Her eyes shone with sincerity as she murmured, "I don't know what you're talking about." She seemed to hesitate for a moment before ultimately turning around against his word of caution.

He was not prepared for what happened next: Hermione Granger officially lost all her marbles.

"CEDRIC!" She screamed, her high-pitched wail piercing the air as she scrambled over to frantically shake his body.

Cedric watched her, stunned by her reaction to seeing his body lying there on the ground. He heard her gasping, struggling to breathe through the sobs that threatened to overtake her small frame.

"Stop this right now," he heard her hiss before taking his lifeless face between her hands and shaking it. The whole experience was too bizarre to put into words—watching her slip past the point of logical thought processing as she continued trying to rouse his dead body, Cedric himself still reeling at the out of body experience he was having as he stood a distance from his own lifeless corpse—but ultimately, it was her evident anguish over his death that struck a chord within him. "Cedric," she growled, the demanding undertone wavering in her voice amidst the evident distress, "quit joking around and sit up!"

He could see her getting more and more worked up as she continued but he couldn't understand why. He remembered that she was working toward finding a cure for him alone, but that still didn't justify why she was reacting this way. He felt an insatiable urge to rush out to her and calm her down, collect her in his arms and pull her close to remind her that he was right there with her.

He wanted to comfort her the same way she had comforted him. He owed it to her.

"You can't be dead, Cedric!" She whispered brokenly, the sound of her plea nearly splitting his heart in two. He stepped out of the stands and strode toward her to lessen the distance between them before standing in front of her.

"I'm not," he interjected hurriedly to put an end to her grieving, his heart thudding as he saw the way she was cradling his body to herself.

She jumped, the panic dancing in her teary eyes as she jerked her head toward him. "What do you mean?"

Tick, tick, tick.

He thought about the way his body was beginning to fade before answering, "There's still time, Hermione."

She could still save him, but she couldn't do it alone. He saw the way she was suffering in the library and couldn't bear to have her continue doing that on his behalf. He had asked for a favor too large for her to carry on her shoulders alone and this was the only way he could fix it.

"How much?" She pressed.

He ignored her question because, truthfully, he didn't know. Time was ticking, although he wasn't sure how synced up he was with the concept of time anymore. It was all running together to him. "You're close, but you need help," he told her, thinking about Scott. Cedric looked around suddenly when a thought occurred to him.

The fading process was only going to progress more and more quickly, something that it had already proven.

"You need to hurry," he said quickly, looking at her with fear shining in his eyes. He wasn't ready to disappear. He didn't want to die. "Your time is almost out."

And that's when he understood the soft ticking sound that had been playing in the back of his mind ever since his first strange encounter here with Hermione.

Tick, tick, tick.

The clock was always ticking, ticking, ticking.

He could hear her speaking to him, demanding to know information that he didn't have, but he was consumed by the terror that had begun to take hold of him.

Tick, tick, tick.

"Hurry," he whispered before the world swirled into darkness.

And, like the beat of an incessant drum, the sound of the clock continued to chip away at him.

Tick, tick, tick.

When he opened his eyes again, he was stretched out in a dappled patch of golden sunlight on the ground. He sat up, looking around at the trees that surrounded him and trying to piece together where he was.

What had happened before he got here?

He couldn't remember. Something about a snake and a green light kept coming to mind but he couldn't understand how those two were related so he ignored that thought.

He heard muffled sounds of laughter and stood up, shifting so that he stood behind a tree and cautiously looked around it to see where the source was coming from.

He was staring into a sunshine-filled clearing and could clearly spot Naomi, Andrew, and Cho. There was a fourth person with them, another girl, but her back was to him so all he could make out was a waterfall of curls cascading past her shoulder blades.

"Naomi found me," Cho said in a teasing voice while pointing at Naomi, who responded with a shrug.

"What can I say?" She joked. "I have a gift."

As Cedric stood there watching them smiling and laughing, he couldn't help but feel as though something wasn't quite right. He kept his eyes on the fourth person, something nagging him inside that she was out of place.

That's when it happened—everything came crashing down on him.

Naomi and Andrew lifelessly sprawled in the corridor.

Cho's mangled body.

The snake attack.

Blood, so much blood…

"Let's go again!"

Cedric shuddered, unable to breathe properly when he recognized exactly who that excited feminine voice belonged to.

No, no, no.

She didn't belong here. She was supposed to be with Weasley and Potter right about now, cradled in their arms while they comforted her over the losses they had to face after the battle was over.

"I'll be it this time," she offered gleefully, turning toward him and heading straight toward the very tree he was hiding behind.

The smile on her face made him feel sick, the dread inside of him intensifying as she began counting as part of their game, hiding her happy face behind her hands while the others scattered. Everything about this picture was wrong.

"Hermione," he whispered, startling her out of her counting.

His heart was pounding as she looked up and narrowed her eyes to peek through the trees to find the source of his voice. He saw the curiosity on her expression as she said in a soft voice, "Hello?"

He reached out and grabbed one of her soft, pliable ones. He couldn't help but remember the way it felt when she trailed it along the planes of his face that night in the dark, the immense solace he found simply by feeling her touch him.

Memories bubbled deep within his mind, beckoning to him like sunlight glinting off of the ocean's waves, but he couldn't reach them. He saw flashes of Hermione in them—her smile, her laugh, the way she looked curled around a book when she slept, her determined face, how her curls looked when the firelight danced across them, her freckles—but couldn't pause one long enough to get a good glimpse at it before seeing the next.

She wasn't meant to be here like he was, like the others were. Hermione was full of love and light. She was supposed to be living, spending time recuperating with her family and friends before taking on the world in the way only she could.

Death wasn't supposed to take Hermione Granger so soon.

"You shouldn't be here," he murmured, his brows drawing together as he looked into her inquisitive eyes.

He blinked and he was in a sterilized hospital room when his eyes opened again. He knew better than anyone where exactly he was because of all the times he'd come up with his mother throughout his childhood: St. Mungo's.

As he shifted his weight to his arms to push himself up on the bed, he felt soreness emanating from his chest. He looked down when he felt a strange cottony fabric rubbing against his skin and saw that his torso was wrapped in gauze. He had a dull headache throbbing in his temples as he moved to a sitting position, feeling extremely disoriented.

His mind was clouded with muddied, unclear thoughts. He didn't know how long he had been unconscious, but he still felt the pull of strong medicinal drugs lulling him gently back to sleep. He fought it off, trying to remember what he had just dreamt about.

Nothing was making sense to him as images of trees, foggy skies, and Hermione Granger kept playing in his head.

Most days would pass in Cedric's monochromatic hospital wing without much excitement.

He wasn't allowed to have very many visitors because of the critical condition he had been brought to the hospital in, so he only saw his parents, Scott, and Aiden at least once a day.

Healers changed his bed sheets and bandages every day, the latter at least four times. He had been informed that the venom had almost reached his heart by the time Scott rushed him into the hands of frantic Healers and that, combined with the excessive amount of blood he had lost, it was a miracle that he was still alive.

He had also been told by Scott that he was in a comatose state for two weeks. "I thought I'd lost you again, mate," Scott confessed to him, his voice cracking with emotion.

It had been a week since he had regained consciousness and, although his brain was still a mess of tumbling, disjointed, mismatched thoughts and memories spliced together, he kept seeing one face dominating over all of it.

Hermione Granger.

Cedric pulled on a loose fiber sticking out of his sanitized dressings as he said, "I understand it now."

He saw Scott lift his lowered head in confusion. "What?"

Cedric turned to him and smiled despite everything that had happened to him. "Why you kept bugging me about my dreams," he replied softly. "I remembered," he added after seeing Scott's expression shift to one of shock.

A few seconds ticked by before he asked, "About Hermione?"

Cedric nodded, leaning back and closing his eyes. He could picture her perfectly behind his shuttered eyelids, his emotions as mixed up as his mind was. Why did he feel something so strongly towards her, something magnetic and unfathomable that drew him inevitably to her?

The memories that came back to him from his dreams and in that moment that Nagini was about to strike were connected in some way but he couldn't fill in the gaping holes between them to understand how they resulted in his heart pounding the way it did at the mere utterance of her name.

He could see her brown eyes sparkling with inquisitiveness as she looked at him, her pink lips pulling into an amused smile. She was sitting there in his memories, waiting for him to find the key that would unlock all the secrets she guarded.

Cedric turned to Scott imploringly, his eyebrows pulling together. "Why does everything I do seem to point back at her?"

He saw her sitting in the Great Hall with her friends, the hurt in her eyes as he sat with Cho after being resurrected. He saw the stolen glances she aimed toward him, the deep look of longing in her face that softened her eyes. He saw the distraught look on her face when they locked eyes after he bumped into her in the corridor before she quickly covered it up, the way she ran from him in such haste that she barely uttered a handful of words to him.

His fascination with her, his yearning to understand how he seemed so achingly familiar with all of her quirks, only served to confuse him more.

A knowing look dawned on Scott's face, as if he had been aware of something far longer than Cedric could comprehend. His lips quirked into the smallest but most significant smile as he said, "Because it does."

The day had finally come that Cedric could leave the hospital. Scott, of course, arrived to help him pack up the rest of his things. "She's still not responsive," his friend murmured as they folded the extra clothing Cedric's parents had brought throughout the week.

Cedric flourished his wand and muttered a spell to downsize them so he could shove them in his pocket for safekeeping. Worry weighed him down upon processing the news. Scott had kept him up to date on Hermione and told him that despite his attempts to provide the same service to her in regards to Cedric's wellbeing, she seemed too wrapped up in herself to even notice he was there at all. Scott told him that all she did was lay wordlessly in bed staring blankly into space.

"Have Potter and Weasley gone to see her?" Cedric asked.

She had been discharged a few days before he was roused from his coma and had been unresponsive ever since. Two weeks had already gone by that way.

Scott nodded, letting out a sigh as he handed Cedric the last folded article of clothing. "Yeah, but nothing's helping. We're all at a bit of a loss here because we don't know why she's acting like this."

Cedric downsized the shirt and tucked it into his pocket, mulling over his brooding thoughts. Was there any way that he could help her? He couldn't bear to picture her wasting away like that but he didn't know the first thing he could do about it.

He was about to make his way toward the door when Scott tapped his shoulder. "Hey, Ced," he said. Cedric turned and looked at him, surprised when he pulled a book out of some deep pocket in his robes. Cedric recognized the book somehow, his eyes tracing over the crumbling burgundy cover as Scott proffered it toward him. "This will answer your questions."

Cedric wanted to ask what he meant, but opted to wordlessly take the book instead. "Thanks, mate," he told him with a courteous smile before stepping outside the room to Apparate home.

The book had been sitting on his bedside table for two weeks when Cedric finally decided to sit down and pore over it. He skimmed his fingers lightly over the old cover, unsure of what answers he would find inside.

Where was he supposed to look, anyway?

His fingertips drifted to the edge of the cover before gingerly flipping it open. His eyebrows raised in surprise when he saw a scrap of parchment tucked neatly between the front cover and the first page, something written across it in Scott's untidy scrawl.

He picked it up and skimmed over the words, a smile slowly lighting up his face as he did so.

Ced—

You wanted to know why Hermione seems so important to you. I bookmarked the page about the Resurrection Spell for you and I recommend you read it. You might be surprised by what you discover.

-Scott

Cedric set the note aside and allowed his probing fingers to feel the edges of the pages for the single dog-eared one. He sucked in a breath and hooked his index finger between two pages once he found it and stared at the ancient yellowed paper.

He squinted at the faded writing, barely able to make out the words: Resurrectionem Alica.

Beneath the title was an inscription that summarized the use for the Resurrection Spell.

Only the purest of heart, with true intentions, can retrieve a soul from the afterlife with mutual consent. It involves powerful earth magic that, if done even slightly incorrectly, will kill the caster. Every move must be exact.

His heart thudded as he remembered the surge of desperation that coursed through him when he argued with Hermione about going through with it the night of his resurrection. She was resolute in her decision to bring him back regardless of the consequences, a choice that made him shake his head incredulously as a chuckle escaped his lips.

His brave little lioness.

Without pausing to consider the fact that he had just taken ownership of her, he continued reading.

At exactly midnight on the night when the sky is dark and moonless, a circle of seven candles must be lit around a cauldron filled with the Elixir of Life, from which the soul shall arise, replanted into its mortal shell. Each candle represents a characteristic of life: joy, sorrow, anger, forgiveness, courage, strength of will, and love.

Below that was the formula for concocting the potion, called "The Elixir of Life."

His eyes drifted lower, reading over the incantation itself.

Surge, cor de mei cor.

Expergiscere, oculos de mei oculos.

HALO, os de mei os.

Surge, amica mea.

He recognized the language as Latin but was a bit rusty as far as his own translation went, so he pulled out his wand to reveal what the words meant.

His eyes widened as they faded into perfect English.

Rise, heart of my heart.

Open, eyes of my eyes.

Speak, mouth of my mouth.

Rise, my love.

Had Hermione known the intimacy behind the powerful words she had spoken? His heart was pounding, picking up speed as a million questions began cropping up in his mind.

There was one last paragraph.

Resurrectionem Alica is a means to an end. If the love shared between the caster and the departed soul is pure on behalf of both individuals, success and happiness are sure to follow. Sacrifices must be made in order to maintain the balance because love is more powerful than any other form of magic.

And that's when everything suddenly became crystal clear.

His enthrallment with her, his strange feelings for her and his craving for her touch.

He was in love with her.

Another set of memories crossed his mind—the distinct picture of the anguish and horror in her face when he asked for Cho in the Hospital Wing after waking up, her furtive glances, the blush that settled into her cheeks when they bumped into each other and her slightly labored breaths when they made eye contact.

He knew just as well as he knew his own name.

He was in love with her and she was just as irreversibly in love with him, a thought that made him draw his wand and Apparate to the only place where things made sense to him: the Room of Requirement.

Author's Note: After writing it all out, I might actually leave the story this way. I feel like adding an epilogue takes away from the journey that these two are about to embark on their own.

Hopefully this made things a lot clearer. It's supposed to be a little confusing and disorienting because of a few reasons.

One, Cedric still doesn't have all of his memories back. Actually, based on the direction I went with it, the memories that he's retained at this point are about the only ones he will ever regain.

The second is because all of those flashbacks took place while he was in a coma. In case it was hard to see, this chapter was meant to bring everything full circle. Whenever Hermione or Cedric go to this place I thought of while they're in a coma, time is infinite and limitless. In other words, there are no bounds of reality that keep them from going to different periods of time that, if they were conscious, would be in the past or future. He was in her dreams from the beginning because of their magical connection.

Speaking of which, in case it was unclear a few chapters ago, basically everyone's magic comes from stars. Usually it's one person's magical ability per star, but the one that gave Hermione and Cedric their power broke into two pieces that went to each of them. That's why they have such an intricately entwined magical signature—because their magic is from the same source.

One last question I decided to answer in case anyone was wondering was why they couldn't remember their "dreams" after waking up. It's supposed to be like that feeling when you wake up and you know deep inside that you had an awesome dream, but you can't really remember what happened in it so you let it go.

Okay, I love you guys dearly but I honestly think this is the end. It seems like the right way to end it and I hope you liked it as much as I do.

This has been an unforgettable ride and I feel blessed to have been able to share it with all of you. Thank you for all of your kind words, criticisms, and friendships. You're all wonderful, fantastic people.

-Caitlyn