Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings, or worlds within this work, outside of a few OC's. Any recognizable characters are not mine; I'm just playing with them. Harry Potter and its associated works belongs to J.K. Rowling. X-men and Marvel belongs to... er... Disney, I suppose? I am not making any money off of this fan work, nor do I wish to.

AN: The entirely of this chapter takes place during Harry's second year, starting in early October-ish, so Cedric is currently a fourth-year student. Just wanted to clarify that, since I'm bouncing around in the time-frame a bit during these individual-character-themed chapters. (which we're almost at an end to, by the way; the actual plot of the story will start soon, these chapters are just the initial set-up.)

Chapter 4

Cedric

Cedric turned from his textbook and grabbed a piece of blank parchment to write his essay.

Or at least, that was his intention. Until the parchment scooted away from him. Cedric blinked. He looked up from the worktable he was sitting at and glanced around. There were a few others milling around the Hufflepuff common room, but they all seemed to be intent on their own homework and no-one was paying him any mind.

He turned back to the table and slowly reached out for the parchment, and while it seemed to wiggle a bit as his hand moved towards it, he managed to nab it before it got away from him again.

Weird. It was probably just some first-year prankster seeing if they could pull one over on him or something.

As Charms class let out for lunch, there was a sudden commotion in the corridor. Fourth-years ran screaming as a series of loud *POPS* sounded from the door leading into the corridor, each *pop* preceding bursts of brightly-colored paint onto the students as they passed through. When it was his turn to exit, Cedric had just managed to dodge what he now saw were a series of long strings of Zonko's patented Pretty-Paint Poppers hung over the door and all throughout the hall. He breathed a sigh of relief at his luck in managing to successfully escape becoming a walking work of splatter art, and was making his way down the hallway away from the crazy Weasley prank when suddenly, one of the strings of poppers disconnected itself and landed on top of him, exploding right next to his ears and startling Cedric half out of his wits.

"GAH!" he yelped. He scrabbled at the string, but it stayed wound around him, defying all attempts to untangle it and get it off himself. More of the poppers exploded, until Cedric was completely drenched in a rainbow of colors. Irritation welled up inside of him, and he redoubled his efforts to get the stupid thing off of him. Abruptly, the string squirmed around a bit, and then began to unwrap itself, unhappily falling to the floor in a disgruntled heap moments later. (and how the heck did a piece of string manage to convey such utter disappointment?)

Mad, cackling laughter echoed through the hall, off to his left.

"Looks like somebody-"

"Got a bit-"

"Tied up in a few things."

"Perhaps he should have-"

"Let himself-"

"Get splattered-"

"In the doorway-"

"Like everybody else-"

"Instead!"

Cedric turned to see Fred and George Weasley standing there, grinning at what was surely a crowning achievement in their career as Hogwarts' Resident Jokesters.

Within moments they were running to save themselves from being hexed, as the entirety of the Hufflepuff fourth year class ran after them in a fury, Cedric Diggory leading the charge, so covered in paint he was barely recognizable.

Later on, when they had time to stop and discuss how they felt the prank had gone, and whether they should include it on their personal "Best Pranks of the Year" chart, Fred recalled that they had never actually released the charm that caused the string of paint poppers to attach itself to Diggory's person. Curious, that. He should have remained struggling with the string for much longer...

Ah, well. No matter. It was still a great prank.

The last several weeks had been rather... discomfiting. Cedric was certain someone was messing with him. For a day or two he thought it might be the Weasley twins again, but... it was too subtle, too mild to match their typical modus operandi. Even if they did do a prank like this, it was unusual for such a prank to target one person and one person only, unless something had happened to offend them. So, no. Probably not the Weasleys...

But then who was it? Because this was starting to get really annoying.

His essays kept moving around when he was trying to work on them. He would put his clothes in their proper places, only to turn around and find them scattered across the floor. He had taken a few moments to watch one of the girls working on a knitting project the other day, then noticed that the skein of yarn was floating and beginning to unravel as he stared at it. It was never anything big, nothing that really stood out... but even little things can become a problem if they keep stacking up, and good grief were those small moments stacking up. He was starting to think he could actually feel it when things were moving, a sure sign that the stress of the situation was getting to him.

Cedric sighed. At least during Christmas, whoever was doing this to him would be gone, and he could relax and try to think through all his acquaintances to figure out who might want to set up a prank like this so he could tell them off, because this whole... thing was starting to get old.

He pulled out his Herbology textbook. As he opened it, all his notes scattered over the floor, and they scattered even further when he growled in irritation.

Oh yeah. Getting really old.

Cedric was feeling... contemplative.

He was at home for Christmas break. He was away from school, away from any prankster friends who might have been lightly hexing him... But the incidents were still happening- just the other day, his towel had skittered away from him as he got out of the bath... and then back, and then over to the side, and then the towel suddenly floated up and plastered itself to the wall, finally allowing him to actually grab the thing.

This was... very strange. Even the strongest of hexes and jinxes didn't remain in place for nearly this long, and even if there was a hex that could hold on for two weeks on end, it shouldn't have been behaving this way. The incidents were too varied, the types of objects which reacted to his presence too randomized. The very best of schoolyard hexes still weren't capable of such discrimination between objects. If it had been a hex or a jinx of some sort, then it would have caused everything within a certain size range to shift away from him when he was near. And that just... wasn't the case. His forks and knives remained in place at the dinner table, his quills and textbooks jumped around a bit on occasion but they never actually moved, his wand always remained in its holster, and none of the candles ever reacted to his presence beyond what was normal within a wizarding household.

On one memorable occasion, he had to reorganize all his father's robes after he had accidentally caused an entire laundry load to scatter all over the house. He had woken up to find his school notes floating around above his head so many times that by now he practically expected it. The other day, one of the family portraits had been knocked off the wall, to the extreme displeasure of his great aunt, and had to be put back up and adjusted three times to ensure it was placed to her satisfaction.

If he didn't know better, he'd say he was performing some sort of accidental magic... But that, too, was impossible. Aside from the fact that he was much too old to be having magical accidents, the incidents were too consistent. They happened too often, and usually without any rhyme or reason. Heck, half the time he didn't even realize it was happening until it was too late to stop it. And that wasn't even counting the weird snatches of sensation he kept getting every time it happened, like he was connected to things somehow.

Yes, this was all very strange indeed. He had no idea what was happening. But one thing was certain.

Whatever was going on, it involved Cedric directly.

Was something wrong with him?

He hoped this whole thing would get better when he got back to Hogwarts.

...It didn't get better at Hogwarts.

In fact, it kept getting worse. He had to keep a close eye on his papers every time he pulled them out now, for fear they'd swoosh away. He had taken to using a Sticking Charm on all his clothing to keep them in their proper places. His dorm mates kept complaining that their stuff kept getting switched around. Wrappers, homework assignments, robes, hats, string, necklaces, even a few schoolbags.

Cedric did his best to ignore it all. He just... he couldn't be bothered with whatever was going on with him right now, what with school, and all the people who kept getting frozen, and the exams coming up in Transfiguration, Charms, and Arithmancy next week... It was a bit difficult to care about a problem that had pretty much become routine by now, and he was dealing with it. It was fine. He was fine. He was taking measures to keep up with it, and it was working, and... he was fine.

Really, he was.

Cedric was laying on the floor, alone in his dorm room, feeling absolutely miserable. He hadn't done too well on his Arithmancy test. Potions class was especially full of pungent odors and disgusting ingredients, and the smell had yet to dissipate from his clothes. The Weasley twins had struck again, this time by replacing all the girls' hair ties with Itchy Scritchy Scrunchies, which, when worn in one's hair, gave a person a horrible itch that kept switching places the moment you scratched it, which lasted for the next six hours- whether the person wore it for that long or not. By the time someone realized what was going on, a full two-thirds of the girls had already put them on.

The girls were not having a good day, to say the least. And if the girls were having a terrible day, then the boys were having a terrible day, too.

And then there was the weird restlessness which had been humming through Cedric's body ever since he woke up this morning. Which he was ignoring. Because he had a feeling it was connected to...that.

And he wasn't thinking about that. Even if that was giving him a headache, and making his skin buzz with overloaded senses, and surging up underneath his skin-

Okay, so maybe he actually needs to pay attention to that because this is even worse than usual, and he feels very strange, and he's starting to get worried now because something's feeling not quite right, and the feeling is only getting stronger now, he can feel it pushing from his core, through his entire body, up and out and-

CRASH! SWISH-BANG-WHOOSH-rustle-flutter-

Cedric lurched to his feet and his eyes went wide as he became a witness to the Worst Incident So Far. Parchments, robes, socks, strings, blankets, coats, hats, and even pillows were all swirling violently above his head. Books went flying as the pages inside latched on to whatever-it-was that was making this happen. At the same time, that strange energy seemed to be circulating the whole room- he could feel everything-

Wait...he could feel everything.

He could feel everything?

He could feel exactly what was happening. It was...a surprisingly familiar sensation, a stronger version of something he had been feeling over the last several months, though he was only now taking notice of it. It was like... like an outline, or an afterimage of everything that was in the room, with a focus on the stuff that was floating in the air. It felt like there were dozens of invisible strings creating links between himself and each object...

Cedric brought his focus in on one string that was wrapped around a pair of trousers belonging to the person in the bunk next to his. Concentrating on that string, he severed the connection between him and the trousers, and... they dropped to the floor.

Huh. Great. One down, about five dozen more to go.

Making a conscious effort, he reached out with his mind and managed to sever a large cluster of strings at once. About half of the homework essays that were circling his head swooped downward. He continued on in this way until all the "strings" were cut, leaving him standing in the middle of a room still full of chaos... but at least it wasn't chaos in motion.

He slumped in a combination of exhaustion and relief, only to stiffen in realization as he noticed that the feeling itself hadn't gone away. He was still generating that weird energy. He could feel everything in the room; it was just muted, like someone had placed a cloth over his awareness, but it was there. It would only take a nudge within his mind for him to connect that energy with one of the items in the room and create one of those strings.

Where did that whole explosion of... whatever-that-was... even come from? It sure didn't feel like any type of magic he'd ever heard of.

Ugh. Merlin, this was confusing. At least he seemed to have regained control of this odd power... For now. He decided now would be a good time for a nap. Heaven knows he needed one. He laid down on his bed, and curled up with his coverlet-

The door opened, and one of his dorm mates walked in. His new senses told him of the way they stopped in their tracks at the entrance, most likely gaping at the state of the dorm room.

"What the heck happened in here? Cedric?!"

He was just so done with this day.

Author's Note:

I'm not really sure what prompted me to include Cedric in the lineup of characters, but I had this mutant-power idea, and for whatever reason he was the first one to pop into my head to receive it.

And, well, the idea of one of the mutants getting frustrated because their powers keep accidentally pranking them just sort of stuck with me, and here we are. Cedric's a mutant who keeps accidentally pushing all his papers to the floor. :P

I figured we needed at least one older mutant, anyway. Most mutants' powers aren't even supposed to develop until they're in their mid-teens, and here I've had like three of them so far who've activated the majority of their power before they've even turned 13.

This particular power is a little bit of an out-of-the-way one, so I'll give a basic explanation here:

It's sort of a variation of telekinesis, except the actual "moving stuff" part only works with specific things.
Cedric can sense an outline of pretty much everything that's near him (think kind of like a film of energy projected over the room; it brushes over everything within a specific radius of his body, only touching the surface area, but giving a pretty good mental non-color picture of everything in the immediate vicinity) but the energy field only works in certain ways, and so while he's able to move stuff around, it has to be stuff that light, malleable, and has a very large surface area.

So for instance, he could move a piece of cloth just fine, but he'd have a much more difficult time moving a hollow metal cube that was the same weight, if he was able to lift it at all. Paper and similar materials are his best bet if he wants to use this ability for fighting at all.

Basically, this extremely specific, niche, difficult-to-properly-explain-but-it-makes-perfect-sense-in-my-head ability gives me an excuse for Cedric's eventual main mutant weapon of choice to be paper ninja stars. So sue me. (actually please don't) :P

Cedric's "mutant journey" is... basically going to be a lot of "I am so confused what the heck are my powers and why do they work this way" with a dash of learning how to deal with being different from everyone else when he's always thought of himself as just another guy.

Basically, out of all the characters who're mutants in this story, he's the one who's generally the most emotionally well-adjusted, so it's a bit difficult to really come up with a good personal arc for him... but I'll give it a good effort, anyway! :P Who says everything has to be angst and despair, after all? The mutants in X-men:Evolution certainly aren't angsty and despairing all the time.

Next chapter may be the last "mutant-version-of-a-harry-potter-character" introduction chapter, solely because he's the last one to activate his powers at this point in the story... But really, he's the one who started this story. I was thinking "what would happen if mutants were discovered at Hogwarts... and it wasn't just Harry?" which led me to considering the mutant-awakening/journey-story-potential for this specific character, which led me to considering how exactly one goes about making a wizard mutant whose abilities aren't just a wandless version of what they're already able to do naturally... Which led into writing this!

So, you can all thank Character Number 5 for this story's existence! :)

By the way, I would appreciate it if a few people gave me a review so I can know how people are reacting to this story- whether it's fine as it is, or if it would be better if I changed a few things. Advice on writing certain characters would be welcomed, etc. I'll probably be editing one or two of these chapters a bit at some point, particularly the earliest ones; right now I'm just trying to get the story out.