Fourteen:

Not even Potter's fall was enough to dampen Jona's mood as he bolted towards the Hufflepuff locker rooms. This was Hufflepuff's proudest moment in a long while. Their seeker, Jona's best friend, was the first person to beat Potter to the snitch. Sure, they'd won the Quidditch cup in former years, but everyone knew that they wouldn't have had a chance in Azkaban if Potter hadn't been indisposed during the pivotal games.

And not to mention how excited Cedric had been about playing against Potter, he would surely be proud.

He nearly slipped halfway down the stairs to the stands and ended up jumping over the last few steps in his rush. He ignored the torrential rain pounding over him, his umbrella furled at his side. He could feel the mud caking at the bottom of his trousers, his feet sinking into the swampy ground, but he paid it all no mind. He yanked open the heavy door to the men's locker room with ease, throwing his umbrella to the floor and tracking mud across the pale yellow tile. The team was around the door he'd just entered through, silent and stationary in their dripping robes. Jona frowned at them, but continued further into the room. Cedric was standing at a sink at the far end of the bathroom, dripping hair covering the majority of his face. Jona quickly approached, clapping a hand onto his friend's shoulder.

Cedric didn't move.

Tentatively, Jonathan spoke, realizing something was off. "Ced'?"

With that utterance the taller boy seemed to come to life, lifting his head to reveal dull eyes and a tired countenance. Turning to address his teammates he said, "You all ought to get changed, you'll catch your deaths if you all carry on in those soggy rags."

Jona watched the boy stare at nothing in particular, a distant look in his eye.

"Cedric, are you-"

"Fine." said Cedric curtly, reaching into his pocket to pull out his wand and cast what looked like a half-assed drying charm judging by the still slightly damp shoulder under Jona's hand.

"I've gotta go..." muttered Cedric distractedly, meandering towards the door that led to the path up to the castle.

"Cedric wai-" the door slammed before Jonathan could get his sentence out. He casted a glance at the other team member's ignoring their various states of undress. They stared back at him with

pathetically lost looks on their face. He sighed. Hufflepuffs.

Summoning his umbrella he jogged out the door Cedric had just left through, nearly panting with exertion by the time he'd caught up with his friend, who was power walking towards the castle.

"Where..." a heavy breath. "Where are you going, mate?"

Cedric's grey eyes remained firmly forward, the umbrella clasped in his fist casting a dark shadow over his face. His mouth firmed into a harsh line as he withheld any sort of reply. Jona watched silently, doing his best to match Cedric's rapid pace despite his slightly shorter stature. They were back in the castle in record time and after following his friend down three stairwells, Jona finally put his foot down, grabbing Cedric by the wrist and using all his might to pull the stronger boy to a stop.

"Cedric, what is going on?"

He flinched as the taller boy let out an almost animalistic hiss whirling around, eyes flashing mercury.

"What's going on? Did you not see what just happened? Did you not see Harry nearly fall to his death?"

Jona could only stand there in confusion and slight fear even after Cedric had whirled back around stomping off. He knew that Potter falling was quite a surprise but, he wasn't certain just why Cedric was so torn up about it, it's not like he knew the kid.

He continued, following his friend but with a bit more distance. "Where are you going?" he asked tentatively after a moment's time.

"The kitchens."

He blinked. "The kitchens? Why?"

"Treacle tart."

-0v0-

It was circumstances like these that truly tested your ability as a coach.

Oliver had only just left the Gryffindor locker rooms after a solid forty minutes of attempting to drown himself in the showers. With a sense of guilt he stepped into the Hospital Wing, he should've been at his injured teammate's side instead of wallowing in self pity over something no one had any real control over.

He knew that his other teammates and Potter's two sidekicks had left the hospital wing a few moments ago, having passed by them on his way up, so he was rather surprised to find not one, but two people at they boy's bedside.

Upon realizing who they were (well, one of them anyway, you can't actually expect him to recognize every Hufflepuff, can you?) he had to resist his immediate urge to order them to get as far away from his poor, slumbering Seeker as possible.

"Diggory." he instead politely greeted through gritted teeth while walking over to Harry's bedside, barely wrenching his eyes away from the boy's deathly pale countenance to fully look at the Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain.

"I-" began Diggory shakily.

Oliver took in the younger teen's still damp clothes, messy hair and red-ringed eyes curiously. "You alright, mate?" he couldn't help but ask, despite being livid with the guy.

"I'm fine!" Oliver winced at the way the guy's voice cracked. "I just- I came to- to- to bring th- this."

He looked down to see a generous slice of treacle tart clutched tightly in the Hufflepuff's trembling hands.

He blinked.

"Oh, er... That... Oh yeah! That's Harry's favorite! How'd you know?" His question didn't seem to register in the dull silver eyes that were trained on Harry's prone form. Oliver sent a worried glance in the other, nameless Hufflepuff's direction, but only received a concerned shrug in response.

He heard Diggory mutter something along the lines of, "Gon' leavis here..." and watched him place the plate with an unnecessary amount gentleness onto Harry's bedside table. He flinched when Diggory suddenly turned back around, his previously morose expression completely replaced with an unsettlingly manic sort of excitement.

"A rematch! We could have a rematch! A- and everything will be better and I'll get to play against Harry again!"

Despite the rather psychotic delivery, Oliver was greatly tempted to take Diggory up on his offer, but knew logically that there was simply no way Hooch would go for it, Hufflepuff had... technically won fair-and-square... he... supposed...

"No," he ground out, ignoring the distant screaming coming from somewhere in the back of his mind. "You won f- ...fair and square. Harry himself had said during timeout that he could hardly see with the rain pelting against his glasses. That's why he'd been sticking so close to you during the game. The likeliness of him spotting the snitch in that weather was slim to none."

It was alarming how quickly that crazed smile slid from Diggory's face at his words.

"His... glasses? I had thought he was following me 'cause... I had just thought that he was... I see..."

He stepped forwards when Diggory's shoulders started shaking. Just as he opened his mouth to inquire again if he was alright, Diggory was speaking again.

"I gotta go!" another voice crack. "Wood, I'm sorry about everything. Ca- can you make sure that Harry knows that? That I'm sorry?"

"Uh..., yeah?"

And within seconds both Hufflepuffs were gone, leaving Oliver alone with his still-unconscious Seeker.

-0v0-

"Cedric. Cedric. Cedric!"

"What, Jona?" yelled his best friend, turning around to regard him with unhinged, silver eyes, striking Jona with a strange sense of unease. He wanted to do something, like pull Cedric into a hug and tell him everything was fine, but honestly, he still wasn't exactly sure what the problem was in the first place.

"Where are we going?" he only just noticed he was panting, they'd been running almost nonstop since leaving the Hospital Wing, so he supposed it would make sense considering they were all the way on the other side of the castle.

"I- I don't know!" Cedic breathed out in the most pitiful voice Jona had ever heard from an almost grown man.

"Well, why don't we er..." he glanced around the nearly empty corridor, catching sight of a single door standing across from a ghastly painting of man attempting to teach some trolls ballet. "Why don't we just pop in here until you figure it out then, aye?"

He ushered the taller boy inside, taking in the two cushy armchairs and the crackling fireplace occupying the mostly empty room.

"Never knew a room like this existed..." he commented absently as he manhandled Cedric into the leftmost seat, a task he certainly would not have been able to do if Cedric were present of mind. He sat down across from him, their knees nearly touching as they both stared at the floor for a long, pregnant pause.

Jona contemplated in this heavy silence, how far his friendship with Cedric had come, or perhaps how far it had gone, he wasn't sure. As terrible as it sounded Jonathan had always known his best friend to be a dull, dispassionate, uninspired individual. There was always a unique calm to Cedric that had consistently made Jona feel like even the most unbearable situations were trivial, as if things would go fine, no matter what. But, looking at him now, Jona could find none of that unbreakable calm that had made Cedric who he was.

Cedric sat before him, skin pale and clammy, red-ringed eyes weighed down by dark bags, darting this way and that in a haphazard manner. His broad shoulders shook minutely.

He withheld a sigh at the disconcerting sight. "What happened, Cedric?"

He flinched at the dry sob that followed his question. Cedric rocked forwards, burying his face in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.

Jona continued when he received no reply. "This isn't about the game, right? This has been building for awhile, hasn't it?"

He had an accusation of sorts at the tip of his tongue, but he dreaded the thought of verbalizing it. Instead he watched the teen in front of him rock back and forth curling further and further in on himself as seconds passed.

He gritted his teeth and said it.

"Is this about Potter?"

The head of chestnut colored hair immediately snapped up, revealing eyes that glinted wildly in the fire light, shadows flickering across his face and painting a sinister picture. Cedric lifted a hand to his mouth, gnawing at already bruised and bitten fingertips.

"What am I gonna do, Jona? H- h- how am I gonna fix this? Everything was supposed to lead up to that game- and I-" he broke off, turning to look around the room as if the solution to all of his problems would just appear before his face out of thin air. He stood, pacing in circles in front of the fireplace. Jona remained in his seat, watching with weary eyes as Cedric continued talking.

"All I wanted was for him to- to- to look at me, y'know? It's-" He inhaled a ragged breath, fisting his damp hair. "It's all I've been working towards and I've- I've ruined it! He'll hate me! He'll call me a cheat! Say that I- I left him to die!"

"Potter knows better than that." Jona consoled before he was swiftly interrupted.

"Potter doesn't know I even exist! I'm nobody to someone like him! Dirt under his shoes! A background character! Why can't I just matter, Jona? I just wanna fucking matter!"

"You do!" Jona shouted back, his alarm at the whole situation rising to a crescendo. "Don't ever say otherwise, Ced! You matter to me!" He reached for a shoulder, halting the taller boy in his frantic pacing. "Look, I don't know what... this is, but Potter seems like a nice bloke. I'm sure he'd accept an apology from you, Ced and then you can just move forwards from there."

"He is nice." Cedric agreed, nodding so rapidly it would be comical if it weren't for the current situation. "He's great..." his eyes went distant for a moment, before he suddenly refocused, gaze snapping back to Jona's face. "D'you really think he'll forgive me?"

Jona swallowed back the bile that had steadily been rising up the back of his throat throughout the conversation and forced a shaky smile.

"Honestly? I think he'll agree with me that there's nothing to forgive."

As he watched his best and only friend's face crumple in relief he didn't know if he should more worried about Cedric or Potter.

A/N: It's back.