Archive of Our Own

Cedric read the letter in his hand for a second time and shook his head. Why would Harry Potter be contacting him now, after eight years? They'd had a sort of friendship, during and after the tournament, and he knew he'd done good work during the war, his own stubborn Hufflepuff approach to the research Hermione Granger had been doing somehow working in counterpoint with her Gryffindor brand of bull-headedness to get them the answers they'd needed when they sat down and collaborated. He remembered that time fondly. But none of that explained the sudden letter now.

After the flurry of celebrations and ceremonies, Cedric had spent nearly two years working in an apprenticeship in specialized charm theory with Gudrun Schiller in Grindelwald, then returned to Hogwarts to teach when Filius Flitwick had finally concluded his battle damage wasn't going to get better, and retired. He hadn't seen Potter in person since, or communicated directly, and local newspaper coverage of his affairs had ended abruptly when he'd told off the Ministry and headed to Europe for a moment's peace, some time just before the millennium. That was too bad; he'd liked all of Harry's friends, and Harry himself, and just now, it occurred to him perhaps he'd left it too long and he ought to be getting back in touch anyway.

However, this letter was decidedly strange, not least because it had come by way of owl to his window, and not in the mail drop; usually only one's own owl did that, at Hogwarts. It wasn't about reconnection; it was something else.

Dear Cedric,

I hope you're well. Once upon a time, we worked rather closely on some things, and I've recently been experiencing some rather strange… I hesitate to call them dreams, or visions, but I don't know what else they would be. They're not psychological problems, as far as I can tell (though I've naturally had to be a bit cautious in my investigations; you remember how that is and that's all true, even here), and they're disrupting my life. While I hope you're having no similarly disruptive episodes, these experiences quite directly involve you, and I'd like, if possible, to meet and tell you about them.

Hedwig will wait for your answer. Meeting place and time up to you, though my Wednesdays are typically not good for getting away.

Sincerely
Harry Potter

The letter had arrived heavily charmed to only open for him, and regardless of the strange tone and content, it required a response. He didn't think the Harry he had known would have bothered writing, or writing something that seemed so carefully worded, if he didn't think it was important, and probably that hadn't changed. Cedric thought about it for a few minutes, then pulled out a quill and a fresh sheet of parchment.

Hello, Harry,

It's good to hear from you. I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with whatever these visions are, and of course would be willing to meet an old friend for a pint. If you'd like to avoid the likely media circus if anyone sees you in these parts, maybe I could come to you. Sunday afternoon is good for me? You are still where you went, when you left?

Cedric

He tied the letter to Hedwig's leg and sent her off.

The next morning, she was waiting for him, asleep on the rail outside his window.

Cedric,

Brilliant. Yes, I am, and thanks for not mentioning where that is. If you can get to town here, around three, perhaps? There's a war memorial in the park. Seems appropriate.

Harry

Cedric set the letter aside and went to breakfast. Fridays were his most heavily-scheduled day, and despite the puzzle of what on earth Harry could be finding so disruptive in his dreams, he really did have to eat or he'd be too distracted for the N.E.W.T. class at eleven.

The war memorial was discreet and off the main path, so Cedric was glad he'd planned to be ten minutes early; as it was, he arrived right on time.

"Sorry," said the man beside him. Cedric turned to ask what for, then did a double-take at a very different-looking Harry Potter. His scalp was shorn nearly bald under a backward cap with some sort of logo stitched into it, and the spectacles were gone, replaced by… Cedric looked closely. Colored versions of the things he'd heard Muggles used, that adhered to the eye itself. His scar had a partner, now, one Cedric hadn't seen after the war.

He grinned. "New look?"

Harry shrugged. "Can't fix the scar, though the second one, which, yes, I did put there on purpose, tends to make people not think it's that one. Hair catches fire, and glasses fall off. And murky darkish eyes don't draw comment, so there it is." He nodded toward the path out of the park. "Come on, then?"

Cedric walked next to him, slowing his longer stride to match Harry's shorter stature. "Thought you couldn't keep your hair short."

"Your idea, actually. First of all, as a kid, I never could because it made my aunt so upset that she was accidentally, you know, reinforcing me. But, once I knew I didn't have to grow it back overnight, I tried to just get it cut and not do it--but it was too old a pattern. Then one night in frustration I tried using that charm you came up with for the thing in Aberdeen? Worked like, well, a charm."

Cedric laughed. "That was for slowing down the regrowth of the heads of a Hydra, Harry. What if it'd taken off your head?"

"I think you have to intend suicide to off yourself with a charm," Harry said. "Or, at least, since I think so, I don't think I could do it by accident."

"But--"

"No, I mean, a charm I cast on myself. Of course I could send a hex up at a chunk of brick and it'd still fall on me and squash me into a puddle. Anyway, it works; it takes a good three or four weeks to get out of hand now, which is all to the good."

"Ah. Right." Cedric thought about that for a minute, then stopped walking and pulled a little scroll and Muggle fountain pen out of his pocket and made a note. "Sorry. That's interesting enough I wanted to write it down."

Harry grinned. "Come on. Pub's up this way."

They settled into chairs at a corner table and Harry ordered in Romanian, some local brew which, it turned out, was thick and heavy and oddly satisfying despite being not Cedric's usual taste. "So," he finally said. "Much as I want to comment that you look good--relaxed and whatnot, if still under some strain, I suppose we ought to get down to it. What, exactly, did you want to talk about?"

Harry took another sip of his drink and reached down for his wand, to cast a minor charm to redirect people's attention. "I usually feel good, and I like it here. And I could say the same about you; teaching must suit. But yes, we ought. Probably I should start at the beginning," he said.

"Often a good place," Cedric agreed.

"Right. Well. Here it is. You know we agreed to take the cup together, and then something--something you don't know--held you back at the last second. Confounded you."

"Yes, I do know, and I'm bloody thankful. Not that I wish that shit on you, but honestly, I'm just as glad not to have gone graveyard-hopping. But what's that to do with now?"

"Just hear me out. I've been having what I guess I think are memories, only they're memories of things that never happened."

"But in your dreams?"

"Almost. I'm not really asleep, exactly. Not quite. I'm in that place between, you know? Only I stay there long enough for the whole sequence to play, and if anything it's growing more detailed. And it's the memory of you going with me. Graveyard-hopping."

"Well, since that never happened--"

"Right, but the thing is, I kind of think it did. Just. Let me tell you about it, right?"

Cedric was beginning to wonder if Harry's haircut had, in fact, had some sort of unexplained effect on his brain, but he made a "go ahead" gesture and waited.

"So, it's like this. I wake up, and it's the same nightmare I've had for years, in a lot of ways. The first time, I couldn’t quite place it. I mean, I knew it was something to do Voldemort building himself a new body in a graveyard in Little Hangleton--and I've had loads of dreams over the years where he does it somewhere else, where he hurts people I'm close to, I mean, not casual friend like you, but people I really love, you know?"

"But this wasn't like that?"

"No. This time it was exactly the way it happened, down to the whole self-important posturing allowing me to escape. Death Eaters. Priori Incantatum. The cauldron and grave and everything. The whole thing."

"So, that's just a memory, then."

"Yes, except you were there. Usually when I dream it, well, like I say, details are there, but they're basically unchanged, and when I wake I remember exactly. This wasn't like this. This was fuzzy and weird and the more I tried to look at it directly, the less it looked like the. The film, you know? Like a Muggle film. That's how it usually feels. This was more like an occluded memory."

"Occluded?"

"You remember how Slughorn tried to alter his memories of Tom Riddle?"

"I remember you telling me."

"Like that. Anyway, so I was lying there, wide awake, and I tried to think about happy Quidditch matches in the sun, or warm hot chocolate on a cold night, or watching the birth of a new dragon, you know? To calm down my heartbeat, relax, get back to sleep? And that was something else new. That usually does the job, and it totally didn't. At all."

"That still doesn't really prove much," Cedric pointed out, wondering at what point he was going to get any sense of this being anything other than an especially freaky dream.

"I know. Anyway, I counted sheep for a while, and finally I gave up, got up, went to make some cocoa, and got out my Pensieve."

"Your highly illegal Pensieve, you mean," Cedric said. Rufus Scrimgeour, in a fatuous and somewhat nauseating speech, had explicitly forbidden Harry to possess or use a Pensieve some time in his second year in office, on the theory that memories were dangerous and subject to interpretation, and no one but Harry ought to be subjected to the horrors of his mind.

A number of people, Cedric included, had been involved in the effort to obtain and conceal a Pensieve for Harry, after that, because everyone knew the value of the kind of observation they allowed, even if Scrimgeour had his head up his arse, and if anyone was going to have a head far too full of horrors at eighteen, it was Harry.

"Yes, my highly illegal Pensieve. Anyway, put on my fuzzy slippers and my favorite warm robe, and started the milk heating first, and then I started pulling threads. Pulled everything I remembered on waking, and everything from the dream, and dropped the whole mess in."

"You jump right in?"

Harry shook his head. "Please. I'm familiar with how this works. Single strands certainly show important things alone, but I know related ones do better, show a more complete picture, if they're allowed to tangle and merge in the dish to …marinate, is how I like to think about it. So now, I dropped them in, then let the whole mess congeal a bit before I dropped in with them."

"So here's where it got weird. I tried to jump into my own memory--the one you know about. And it started all fine, dark, overgrown, and old with weird sharp smells and creepy fog, but then you were there. You said, Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?"

"I said no, and then we didn't have but a few seconds before we realized someone was coming. That part was the same, and by this point I pulled up out of the memory and took a couple of deep breaths and tried again, but I kept getting the same result. It was all familiar and all strange, if that makes any sense. Anyway, as ever, a man with a bundle that might be a baby or… or laundry, approached, and then, and believe me, I've looked at Voldemort-related memories a hundred times and this has never happened. The Pensieve threw me out with the pain in my scar."

"Okay, I've never heard of that happening. Did you check the charms on the bowl? Maybe there's something wrong with it."

"Yeah, at this point I wasn't thinking very clearly, but I did check it over a bit--and also, I brought it here with me, so you can, just in case. You're a lot better than me at diagnosing shit, last time I checked."

"Can I see?"

"Yeah, in a minute. I want to tell you the rest of it. So I jumped back in, scar be damned, and we were there, staring at each other and trying to think of what to do--well, I figure you were thinking that, too--and then a horrible high-pitched voice, nothing like the one that Voldemort had, once he reformed, said Kill the spare! And Pettigrew did. It was green and bright and never there before, and I couldn’t do a fucking thing but watch you die. Avada Kedavra works fast."

Cedric blinked. "I died?"

"Yeah. And then there was the duel, the whole thing, only you were one of the …spirits, I suppose, talking to me, and you asked me to bring your body back to your parents, so I did."

"Uh. Okay, but still, none of that makes it not a dream."

"I know, but it keeps happening, and once I got past the shock of it, okay, I put the dream strands back in my head, and tried to watch the memory in my own head rather than in the Pensieve, and it looked like the tampered memories, from when Slughorn tried to pretend. Not exactly like--but the same sense."

Cedric didn't know what to make of any of this. He'd seen Harry angry, frightened, outraged, frustrated, and upset, and he'd also seen him at play; no fifteen-year-old was deadly serious all the time. He'd seen him lead people, in his army in school and after he'd gone. And he'd seen him crazed with grief, when Dumbledore fell and again when Sirius Black did. He'd never seen him like this: serious, sane, and speaking nonsense. "So.. what'd you do?" he asked, stalling for time.

Harry shrugged. "I finished my chocolate, washed the cup, and went back to bed to try to sleep. Didn't work; I wound up tossing about for the rest of the night. See, I'd hoped the Pensieve would bring clarity. Instead, I was so busy having this physical and psychological reaction to this remembered dream that was almost true, that it had only confused me worse. I don't think I fell asleep until sunrise."

"Ugh."

"Yeah."

"So, yeah, I was on feeding duty the next morning, so I tried a bottle of Pepper-up, which from the taste of it wasn't terribly far from going bad, and headed out into the colony. It only took about forty minutes--and three minor burns and a fit of coughing brought on by smoke inhalation--before Charlie sent me back to bed, and let me tell you, he was pissed right off. And ever since, nearly every time I sleep I wake up hearing it: Kill the spare, over and over. I can't sleep normally without it happening. It won't stop. I'm taking more alertness potions and Dreamless Sleep than can possibly be healthy."

Cedric opened his mouth to ask if he could see it, then stopped. "It's punching into your dreams despite Dreamless Sleep?"

"Yeah."

"Wow."

"Yeah, see? It's not a dream."

"Right. So, what have you done? I mean, where have you asked?"

"Well, we do have a healer on-staff, and he sent me to a woman over in Prague. She had no bleeding idea what was wrong, but said something about my balances being out of alignment with my spirit-something. No idea what she means, but she did something with some beads and then she told me she needed to flail me with a willow switch, which I thought I'd prefer she not, but she did anyway--hurt like a motherfucker until I could get her stopped without drawing undue attention--and then I came back here. And then I went to a place down in Italy, but they really weren't any help either, and it keeps on happening. It's been over three weeks. I finally resorted to literally having someone knock me unconscious at night, which sort of works, and between that and a lot of Pepper-Up, I'm functional and feel all right, but that can't go on forever, either." He shrugged. "Anyway. I can't explain why, but it feels to me as though you need to see it." He put up a more comprehensive Attend-to-me-not charm and glanced at Cedric. "You think that'll do?"

Cedric shook his head. "You're not exactly a slouch at this, Harry. You never have been. It'll do."

"Good." Harry pulled the Pensieve out of the bag he'd carried in and set it on the table.

Cedric leaned forward. "It's all in there?"

"Yes."

Cedric nodded. "You coming with?"

"If you like. Or not, if you'd rather see it alone."

Cedric thought a minute. "Alone, then."

Harry leaned back and made a gesture indicating Cedric should go ahead, and Cedric let himself be drawn forward into the silvery strands.

The cemetery was as Harry had always described it: dark, overgrown, and old, and Cedric watched younger Harry--hair intact--and his younger self tumble to the ground. They stood and brushed themselves off, and Cedric felt a chill as he saw himself do things he'd never done.

And then young Cedric spoke. "Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?"

Young Harry shook his head and looked around, and then both of them pulled their wands and waited.

Present Cedric waited, too, shuddering slightly in the eerie chilly silent night.

"Someone's coming." Young Harry was pointing, and young Cedric squinted with him, trying to see who, from where…

Young Harry gasped and clapped his hand to his forehead, staggering back, and young Cedric turned to help him, his gaze flipping back and forth between the man advancing, toward them and away from Cedric, ragged and balding and carrying a bundle before him, and Harry, who clearly in pain and incapacitated.

And then came the strange voice, just as Harry--present Harry--had described. "Kill the spare."

Cedric heard the words that had never belonged to this night before, and watched in slow distracted horror as "Avada Kedavra!" rang out and burst forth, and with the burst of green young Cedric fell.

Dead.

Present Cedric jerked, his whole body spasming, and tried to leave the Pensieve, but he couldn't pull himself free and he couldn't breathe and this had never happened to him in a Pensieve before. Just as he started to see stars around the edges of his vision, a hand was on his wrist and he was flying up and out, and then they were back at the pub, Harry across from him, strange blue eyes wide. "All right, there?"

"I. Yeah. That was weird."

"See, that's no dream. That's. It's something. It was holding you into it, wasn’t it? Holding you and trying to make you--"

"Experience the same fate, felt like." Cedric blew out a long breath. "Shit. There's really something to that." He shook his head. "But I still don't know what you think needs to happen."

Harry's face went very still. "I think… I think that's what was supposed to happen, that night, and something stopped it. I think we need to know what's bringing it up, and I think… I think we need to know whether the fact it didn't happen is causing some sort of impossible weird time anomaly--I mean, if it is, and it's what's causing the confusion, then we also need to figure out how to stop it."

Cedric nodded again. "Maybe I should take it to Mungo's. Not that your lady in Prague wasn't interesting and all, but maybe someone there has a better idea?"

"Not Mungo's." Harry said. "Department of Mysteries."

"How the hell do I get in there?"

Harry grinned. "Easy. Dial your way in at the 'phone, and say you're on a rescue mission. Which you are, rescuing me from my bleeding nightmares."

Cedric raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment on the likelihood of that plan working. "Maybe you should take it there."

Harry shrugged. "I might, but since it directly concerned you, I thought I should talk to you first. Though I'm more likely to take it to somewhere a bit more local. Language barrier's a bitch, but again, a whole lot less of the dealing with idiocy."

Cedric nodded. "Yeah. Tell you what. Let me poke at it and ask around and get back to you. Maybe I can find out more about dreams and Pensieves or …something. Surely there's research."

"Somehow I thought 'research' might be somewhere in your response."

Cedric smiled ruefully. "Some things never change, you know?" He took the Pensieve, carefully sealing in the contents. "You're all right without this for a while?"

Harry nodded.

"Right. Well. Uh, so besides debilitating real nightmares, how've you been?"

"Not bad. Colony's hard work, but dragons are unlikely to assault me and make thoroughly unseemly efforts to cause me to father their children, so that's enough of a plus right there."

"You had a bad time with that, didn't you?"

"Quite. Given that I'm generally disinclined to engage in any baby-fathering activity, it was wearing."

Cedric could see how that would be a pain, and said so, then leaned back and took down Harry's charms to call for two more pints. "Let me tell you about life at the school, then," he said.

Harry relaxed visibly, and took a sip from his fresh drink. "I'd like that."

Cedric got back to Hogwarts shortly before supper and spent a few minutes evaluating the charm-work on the Pensieve before he set it in the locked closet in his office with a sigh. Everything seemed right, so apparently it wasn't going to be so simple as a rogue Pensieve.

He was going to want to look at the dream or memory or whatever the hell it was again soon enough, but for one thing, he didn't think he ought to do it alone, given his initial response (though, perhaps that was first-time shock or some such, and wouldn't recur), and for another, he wanted to get more information first, about what the differences were, in a Pensieve, between dream, memory, and altered recollection.

He thought about that as he went down to the Great Hall. Any wizard knew the basics of the Pensieve, of course; they were, while not necessarily standard fare, common enough. He thought of three men who would be likely to know the sorts of details he was after, and realized, as he sliced into his roast beef, that he had access to two of them here, though he didn't very badly want to talk to either of them.

Still, attempting to reach Gudrun's friend Walther was likely to be frustrating; Walther was a bit of an odd duck, and claimed to hibernate through the spring months, despite it being first, not the sort of thing humans (or wizards) did, and second, not the time of year every other hibernating animal in existence did its sleeping. And, it was true that both years, Cedric hadn't seen the man at all from mid-March until June. So, that left the two locals.

He sighed. Either was likely to be manipulative and withhold information, but after a moment's consideration, he decided to first see what Snape knew. At least he was honestly manipulative. Dumbledore's code regarding what was to be offered or held back was befuddling and unclear, and Cedric didn't like being unable to ascertain people's motives.

He thought probably Harry would be something like horrified that he was going to ask Snape for help, but then, that was probably another good reason to do it: Harry wouldn’t. Despite the exoneration and final sacrifice, Harry had never made any sort of peace with Snape in life, and dealing with his sneering portrait would never be his choice.

He considered the question closed and finished his supper, chatting genially with Pomona about maintenance work on the sprinkling charms in the greenhouses, then stood to leave as soon as pudding was served.

First, he was going to have to find Snape. The portrait officially hung in the trophy room, in fairly misplaced--in Cedric's opinion--honor of the posthumous Order of Merlin award, but Snape was virtually never in that frame, instead skulking about various dungeon locations.

Fortunately, Cedric had been a Hufflepuff, and he knew the dungeons well. He headed down into the shadows of the south stairwell and turned left toward the picture of Diagon Alley, 1752. Snape wasn't there, but a vendor said, on questioning, that a man matching his description had stormed through some two hours past, so that was a very good start, indeed. Cedric started along the corridor, deeper into the section of the dungeons that divided the Slytherin and Hufflepuff houses, asking after Snape. Finally, and luckily, he found him in the crowd in a painting of what appeared to be a public hanging.

"Good entertainment, eh, Snape?"

Portrait Snape pretended not to hear him.

"Oh, please. Come on. I need your expertise."

Snape edged forward closer to the frame. "I suppose you're looking to find out about sneaking, or spying, or some bloody thing and you want to torture the spy to find out--"

"Not exactly. Nearly, though."

Snape sniffed. "Well, at least you're up front about it."

"I was thinking perhaps a slightly less crowded venue?" Cedric nodded at the rest of the portrait crowd, who had stopped attending to the man with the noose around his neck, and were listening in.

"Indeed." He scowled. "Perhaps the fireplace in the Hufflepuff Common Room?"

Cedric shrugged. "Sure. I'll see you there."

Snape lifted his chin. "First, I intend to finish what I'm doing."

"To get in the mood?"

"Something like that."

"Tonight, then. Say, around eleven." Cedric turned to go, looking back over his shoulder at the roar of the painted crowd when the trap door opened.

He took his time finding his way to the Hufflepuff entryway, then uttered the staff password which would have got him into any of the dormitories, not that he'd ever used it for any but this one because he wasn't a Head and hadn't had an emergency. This one, he'd visited half a dozen times during various holiday periods.

He ran his hand along the mantel and grinned at the photographs of past Prefects and Head Boys and Girls in the alcove as he waited for Snape, glad that there were only four of the oldest students up and working here, and none of those were especially interested, once they'd looked up and seen it was him.

"Diggory."

"Ah, Snape." Severus was sitting in the chair in the portrait that nominally was of Aethelbert the Third, who was, at any given moment, almost certainly wooing one of the maids in any of the various pastoral paintings throughout the castle; Cedric only recalled actually seeing Aethelbert here twice in seven years: once when the castle was on alert related to the escape of Sirius Black, and once when the castle was in mourning over the death of Dumbledore. He wasn't surprised he wasn't here now.

"So. What was it you wanted, then?"

"I need to know what you know about Pensieves."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Honestly. Perhaps you've heard of the library? As I recall, you were a reasonably competent student--"

"Yeah, that won't get what I need, though. What I need to know is, if a memory is tampered with, or if it's a memory of a dream, how, exactly, does one tell, and also, what does it mean if one has a physical reaction to a memory of oneself that one doesn't actually have."

"What sort of reaction?"

"If, for instance, one saw oneself die, and then felt one's actual body choking and seizing up."

Snape's image glared at him. "Mister Diggory. Surely this is a hypothetical question, and I've no idea why you should bother me with it. Perhaps you're endeavoring for a new career as a fiction author?" He stood from Aethelbert's chair.

"No! Snape, seriously. It's. Shit. It's." He looked around at the studying students, then strode right up to the paint, nose to nose with Snape. "It's Harry's Pensieve, and he's remembering a past that never happened. He's convinced it's a real past, and I don't know how to tell… anything."

Snape blinked. "Potter's remembering…"

"A past in which I died in the graveyard on the night Voldemort returned."

Snape paled, which given he was comprised of shades of eggshell already, was astonishing indeed. "There was always…"

"Always what?"

"Potter didn't master Legilimency as quickly as I--and Albus--could have hoped, and sometimes it seemed as though he had a barrier formed of something that couldn't belong in his head."

"Really?"

"No, I've just made that up. Of course really."

"Wow. And you think that's related?"

"It remained a puzzle all the way through, and recall--though you may not have been aware--that despite Potter's formal lessons not beginning until late 1995, I'd been in his head a time or two before, of necessity. It was new, when he was fifteen."

"I expect Harry would be entirely thrilled to learn it."

"I believe I shall disagree. In any case, it would explain a great deal. Unless a different explanation was uncovered once I had died."

"Who would know?"

"We shall come back to that, perhaps. First, describe for me the scene."

"It seemed just like Harry's always said: the graveyard, the tomb, the cauldron…"

"Did you observe any tinge of unexpected color?"

"Unexpected?"

"Such as flesh the wrong color, pink graves, that sort of thing."

"No."

"Fog?"

“A bit, off to the …west, I reckon. It seemed like actual fog, though, coming off a body of water."

Snape nodded. "At any point, did you observe a disruption of the match between the visual and auditory experiences?"

Cedric frowned. "I don't understand what that means."

"For instance, a speaker's lips might move, and the sound arrive inexplicably later."

"Oh. No, nothing like that."

"And you died."

"The, I guess it was Voldemort, before his return? Said to kill the spare, and Pettigrew did."

"To kill the spare?"

"Yes."

Snape looked at him closely for a very long minute, then nodded. "I cannot tell without seeing the Pensieve, and clearly that isn't possible. I cannot believe I am about to suggest this, but I believe you need to go see the most accomplished researcher in the field of memory. As I recall, you know her; it's Miss Granger."

"Hermione?"

"Yes, that would be the one. She might also know whether any other explanation for Potter's hard-headedness had ever been found."

Cedric shrugged. "Do you know where I can find her?"

Snape smiled, a startling expression, and opened his hands wide before him. "In the Department of Mysteries, of course. What else would memory research be?"

"Good point. Also, that's good. I wanted to take the whole thing to St. Mungo's but Harry said Department of Mysteries--but that he didn't want it going anywhere near official Ministry anything."

Snape nodded again. "I believe they are out of touch. She hasn't heard from him in some time—actually, have you seen her since the end of the war?"

“No.”

“Not many have. She’s something of a recluse.”

"You know this …how?"

"Where do you think my other official portrait is?"

"I… have no idea."

"It's in the front office, such as it is, of that department, warded so that I can't hear any but the most banal of conversations."

"…Why?" Cedric felt as though he was somehow out of phase with this conversation, constantly two or three steps behind the thrust of it.

"My educated guess is that it is a ploy to drive my portrait insane."

"I suppose they reckon once a spy, always a spy."

"That is the stated rationale."

"Weird. Can you tell her to expect me, then?"

"I believe I can."

Cedric considered his schedule. "A Thursday afternoon, if she can swing it?"

Snape lifted a brow. "I am not a secretary."

"Sorry. But, if it's convenient, since me getting in there without being expected is going to be a pain in the arse."

Snape pursed his lips. "I shall see what I can do."

Cedric hadn’t really expected the response to be so quick; at lunchtime on Monday he found himself with a letter in hand.

Dear Mr. Diggory.

Professor Snape informs me you’ve an urgent need to use the resources of the Department of Mysteries, and, for reasons he apparently didn’t think were his to disclose (or that he couldn’t), that it should be I with whom you work. He states that you are available only on Thursday afternoon, but that an evening meeting could be arranged; I would prefer that to a Saturday, if possible. Please notify me by return owl whether you intend to arrive Thursday, and if not, which evening is best, and I shall attempt to accommodate.

Hermione J. Granger

Cedric thought about it for a few minutes, then went to his office to compose a reply.

Dear Hermione,

As I recall, we did know each other well enough to use given names, and once you even didn't hex me when I shortened your name--although, as you were mostly asleep at the time, perhaps that wasn't a sign of approval. Anyway. This Thursday afternoon is fine, if you can clear the time. It is somewhat urgent, and involves a mutual friend. If you can’t manage Thursday on such short notice, then Saturday would work, after two.

Thank you for your help, and if you see Snape (since I had a hell of a time finding him here), tell him thanks, as well.

Cedric

He posted the letter, then wondered whether someone like Pomona or Poppy might be able to help him stay with his own body if he watched the memory again. He decided it wasn’t worth the risk, if he could see it with Hermione on Thursday, and resolved to avoid thinking about it until then. He went briskly off to teach the third-year Slytherins and Ravenclaws about the basic linguistic underpinnings of and variations on lifting charms, and refrained from considering his death that had never been.

It was the quietest part of the night when Cedric awoke, gasping for air and certain his body was turning blue. He sat straight up and was out of bed before he thought, then in his bathroom, casting Lumos and staring at his shrinking pupils in the mirror as the light increased.

He wasn't blue; he was flushed and sweaty, his hair so mussed that the overall impression was more along the lines of "freshly fucked" than "choking to death." He deliberately controlled his breathing and waited for his pulse to stop racing, then drank a glass of water and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. What the hell had happened? Before he'd awakened he'd been choking, wheezing, dying, and all at once he realized he'd dreamed the scene in Harry's Pensieve, and that this time… he shook his head. The dream was slipping away, but he had the very clear impression it had gone further than what Harry had showed him. He remembered what Harry had said, about him asking to be brought back, and… and what had awakened him was, in fact, the thud of hitting the ground outside the maze, brought back by the Portkey and deposited there by a sobbing Harry, his parents running toward them, Dumbledore leaning over. He blinked and realized his pulse had gone through the roof again thinking of it, and that was unusual, too. He usually went back over nightmares to work out what they might have been about, and hadn't ever been especially bothered by them, once he was awake, even when they involved monsters and gargoyles and falling out of tall trees, so there was no reason this one should have sent him nearly back into hyperventilation.

He filed this away in his head under "further evidence these are not just dreams" and went back to bed.

When he finally gave upon sleep and got up, it wasn't quite six and the castle was still very quiet, though a few students were starting to make their way to the library for early study, or to the Great Hall for breakfast. He asked the elves for very strong coffee in his quarters and took a long hot shower before trying to begin his day, though he was nearly certain there wasn't going to be much salvaging of it, if he was starting out like this.

By noon, he was desperately grateful for the block of free time between twelve and three, and lay down on his stomach on his bed without even bothering to take off his shoes, falling asleep instantly. He woke, an hour later, choking and flushed, and didn't bother trying to think about it. Instead, he went to Poppy before his next class and asked for some Dreamless Sleep potion, telling her he'd been hit with a nightmare hex. He didn't think she believed him, but enough for one night didn't give her enough pause to force him to submit to an examination, and perhaps it would let him sleep enough. He finished his slate of classes for the day, went to supper, ate enough to not wake up light-headed, and went straight to bed, knocking back the potion as he walked.

It was disheartening to learn that as Harry had indicated, Dreamless Sleep potion couldn't prevent the vision from returning, but could make him so groggy on waking that he spent fifteen minutes thrashing around alarming what he thought was three separate House-Elves, who collectively decided he was in need of emergency assistance and fetched Poppy, which was just embarrassing, because she took him directly to the hospital wing, still flailing, and explaining to her why his throat seemed to think he was dead, under circumstances which were clearly not related to a nightmare hex given the potion, while trying to organize his scrambled thoughts, didn't go well.

Finally, sometime around three, which by Cedric's reckoning was when he'd managed about four total hours of sleep in two nights during which his body had become convinced it had died four times, she cast a series of monitoring charms, then a sedation charm. "You'll stay under, and I'll wake you in themor--"

He woke again, with a splitting headache and itchy palms, just in time for breakfast, and tried to sit up. "I think not," Poppy said.

Cedric groaned. "Look, I've got to go--"

Poppy glared. "You've got an unexplained mental or psychological situation, and I'm certainly not clearing you to leave this room." She propped a pillow behind him, so he was partway upright.

"I've got, all right, look. It's all." He brought up his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, and stopped, almost there, to stare at the itchy rash, which was only describable as rash because it was clearly a skin condition, and itchy. It was also multi-colored (mostly purple; it looked like bruising), swollen, and rather fuzzy-looking. "What the--?"

"You had a bit of what could be called an allergic response to the sedation charm. I've noted it on your record, but you'll just have to wait that out, I'm afraid."

"Will it spread?" His hand was still in mid-air above his eyes.

"It shouldn't."

"I've been sedated before. When I had my appendix out when I was nine."

"Yes, I believe it had something to do with the presence of the Dreamless Sleep, plus whatever was wrong with you in the first place. Ah, and here's breakfast. Open up, there's a good boy."

"Oh, for the love of--I'm not six. I can feed myself." He reached for the spoon, which she held away and then used to feed him another bite. "Also," he said once his mouth was empty again, "I've an appointment to, uh. Perhaps clear up some of this."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific. Open."

Cedric sighed and let her feed him another bite, and another, until he'd finished his porridge, then pushed his way the rest of the way up. "Look. It's not mine to tell, it's a war thing, and my appointment isn't until Thursday but I have the feeling I need to go now. Am I going to collapse if I Apparate?"

"Possibly."

"Floo?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"I'm nearly sure the rules that applied to me as a student, injured on the Pitch and whatnot, do not apply now. I'm a grown man."

"And a foolish one, evidently." She sighed. "Fine. Do wait half an hour or so, because I assure you, if you Floo right now, you'll wind up with all that porridge on your shoes."

"Fine. I feel about like day-old shit, so half an hour should be about enough time to get dressed anyway. If you don't mind."

She shook her head again, but put up the privacy screen.

"Oi," he said as he lifted the sheet. "I thought you said it wouldn't spread."

"That's not spread. You reacted there, too."

Cedric gingerly pulled on his (clean, he noticed; the Elves had clearly been busy) shorts, then trousers and jumper, and finally socks and shoes. He mostly remained seated, and didn't stand and try to go anywhere for several minutes, then put on his robe and poked his head about the screen. "I'm going to the Ministry," he said.

He walked along the corridor from the hospital wing, and down the stairs, stopping in his office for the Pensieve on his way to the staff room. Hogwarts' Floo access was still, of course, pretty heavily restricted, but getting out of the castle from the staff room was doable, since it required being able to access the room in the first place. He shuddered as the room's doorway checked him and apparently didn't much like him; it held him for a moment before letting him on in. Maybe it was the rash.

The room was empty, probably because everyone else was teaching at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning. He frowned. Had someone taken his classes? He probably ought to have checked. He considered going to see for himself, but he'd told Poppy he was going to the Ministry, and he didn't make a habit of being a liar.

He tossed powder into the Floo and enunciated his destination (the wizarding pub down the block from the empty storefront that Muggles saw, since Ministry Floo access was even tighter than Hogwarts'), then stepped through.

When he came out the other side, it was all he could do not to do a severely undignified dance of itching. The move through the network had, if anything, intensified the sensation in his palms, and--possibly at least in part because he now knew the rash was there--in other areas his mother had taught him not to scratch in public. He clenched his stomach muscles tight in an effort to ignore the problem, and set off out the door and down the block, trying not to squirm or shimmy or any of the other things his body was notifying him of as immediate needs. By the time he'd made his way into the Ministry's great entrance hall, he thought probably the effort of not responding had made him a good thirty points stupider, which was probably why his first effort to locate Hermione went poorly.

"Hermione Granger's office?" The Ministry had undergone a great deal of renovation after everything, and he had no idea where her office might be.

The receptionist arched a brow at him. "And what department would that be, sir?"

He blinked. "She's in the Department of Mysteries."

"Is she, then?" The witch made no move to direct him.

"Yes. Here in the Ministry. We've an appointment for Thursday."

"Well, I'm certain today is Tuesday--"

"Oh! Right, no, I know. Oh, excuse me. For interrupting."

"And therefore," she went on, ignoring the interruption, "I'm certain your appointment with anyone for Thursday is not for today."

"Right, I know. Things became more urgent overnight, and I hoped perhaps she could squeeze me in?"

"Who?"

"Hermione. Granger."

"In which department?"

Cedric frowned and took a deep breath, then shook his head as he remembered a vague statement his father had made one time. "In general, could you tell me, is there a system in place which causes staff at this desk to be unable to remember information about employees whose work is classified unless they've been specifically declassified, such as for an appointment?"

"Of course, sir. It cuts down on interruptions to important work."

"Right. All right." Cedric wondered how on earth he was going to get to the Department of Mysteries, since he hadn't been there since the post-war rearrangement of the place--he should have asked Snape. "Can you tell me where the Department of Mysteries is located?"

"Whom did you wish to speak to?"

He sighed, then pursed his lips. "Percy Weasley."

"Ah, excellent. Did you have an appointment?"

Cedric was starting to sweat, not because he was doing anything wrong here, but with the effort of not jumping about and scratching himself raw. He was decidedly going to have to get something for the itch. He thought fast. "I'm afraid it's a rather unconventional family emergency. His brother sent me."

Well, it was almost true. Ish. Sort of.

"And you are?"

"Cedric Diggory. Could you just direct me?"

She handed him a tag, recoiling slightly from his skin when he reached to take it. "Affix that to your shirt, please, and stop for wand inspection just there. You'll want fifth level, south corridor, third right, seventh door, and remember to wipe your feet."

Cedric looked at the label. Cedrick Diggory, unconventional family.

Huh. Maybe the trouble with her capacity to engage in conversation wasn't entirely a charm issue, after all. He stopped at the next desk and handed over his wand, then headed for the stairs. Fifth level, south, third, seventh. He looked down at the mat on the floor--the only one in sight in the endless corridor--and paused, then stepped onto it and wiped his feet.

The door sprang open, and Percy Weasley, who was not aging particularly gracefully and looked a bit gray, lifted his head from behind a mountain of colorful papers, leaving one hand positioned oddly on top of one of the stacks. "What?"

Cedric stepped forward. "Actually, I’m looking for Hermione Granger, but our appointment isn't until Thursday. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I thought perhaps since she is--or was, anyhow--close to your family, you might be able to remember her name and location for long enough in a row to direct me."

"And you are?"

Cedric looked more closely, and realized Percy had lifted his head, but wasn't, in fact, looking directly at him. Oh. He'd been blinded, which explained the hand; he was reading with it. Cedric had heard, and it wasn't as though lots of people hadn't suffered, but he felt foolish for forgetting. "Sorry. Cedric. Diggory."

"Ah. Diggory. And you need Hermione, why?"

Cedric sighed. "It's not my story to tell, I'm afraid. Would you rather contact her yourself and ask if it's all right? I could wait outside." If I don't succumb to terminal itch, at least.

Percy carefully marked where he'd left off and Stuck the paper in place so it couldn’t blow or be knocked free, and stood. "Perhaps that would be best. Be sure to wipe your feet."

Cedric backed out onto the mat, and, puzzled but compliant, wiped his feet, then waited. Thirty seconds later, the door reopened. "She says she'd rather wait until Thursday as planned, but if it's truly urgent, you can come to her office. From here, third level, northeast wing, third right, second door, and in the back. Can you remember?"

"I can. Uh, and it is urgent, so I'll just do that, then. Thanks."

"Yes, well. It's good to be occasionally useful, even as a middle-man." Percy sat back down and picked up a quill, and went back to his reading as the door swung shut. Cedric wondered, fleetingly, why he still wore the glasses, but didn't think now was a good time to ask--even had the door still been open. He headed for the stairwell and made for the Department of Mysteries.

"Hello?" The front room was empty, a large table and single rickety stool being the only furnishings, besides three empty picture frames. Well, Percy had said back room, and there was a second door at the far right of the long back wall, so he made his way around the table and to the door. He was debating whether to knock when it opened, and he was looking down at Hermione Granger, who looked thinner than he recalled. "Uh. Hi."

"I'll assume you believe it's urgent."

"Rather." He looked around to assure they were alone. "I'm now dreaming the dream Harry is remembering, and it's not actually a dream."

"How can you know? If you've seen the image--"

"Dreamless Sleep doesn't knock it out; I wake up choking; and somehow all of this interacts with a Sedation charm to do this." He turned his hand palm-up.

She grimaced. "Hurt?" She leaned forward to examine it more closely.

"Not much. Itches like a motherfucker--sorry."

She grinned, and if he didn't know it had been nearly a decade, he'd have felt like they'd just seen one another last week. "You may recall I learned a number of equally nasty words from Ron and Harry." She sobered at the mention of Harry and stepped over to a set of shelves. "Why… did he say why? He contacted you?"

"Yeah, actually. Because the dream or vision or memory or whatever this thing is, it's about me." He paused. "Have you seen him? Snape said not."

"No. Is he still in Romania? Also, here, let me see that."

Cedric blinked when she took his hand. "Uh. Poppy couldn’t--what do you have there?"

"Oddly enough, Muggle cortisone lotion. Around here, we occasionally find ourselves with weird rashes that happen from convergences of different types of magic working at odds. We've learned a bit about what happens when one tries to fix them with charms, and unless you really think I'm going to make it worse, well, you said it itches like, I believe the word was, a motherfucker. It might help enough to ease the distraction, anyway." She was close enough now that he could see she also looked tired and perhaps a bit haggard. He hoped she wasn’t ill.

He shrugged and, rather than commenting on that, went on with the conversation. "True. And yes, he's still in Romania. Ew." She'd put on a sort of glove before smearing ointment on his hand, and while he'd figured that made sense anyway, the fuzzy dark stuff was melting into the ointment, leaving a purpley-black mess.

She shrugged and conjured a towel and wiped off the mess, which did at least leave his hand looking a great deal cleaner, then Scourgified her glove and reapplied the ointment. "Still liking it there?"

"I think so. He's …pretty well disguised. No one bothers him, and I can see the appeal."

She pursed her lips and nodded. "Well. I suppose I'll continue on with not bothering him, then. Other hand?"

He grimaced. "I didn't mean you. You probably. Anyway. He thought I should come here, but evidently didn't know you were here, or he'd probably have come to you anyway. Have you been, for long? Have you been here, I mean?"

"Six years," she said. "How's that?"

He made fists and opened both hands. They were still swollen and red, and itchy, but nothing like how they'd been. "Better. Uh. Do I need to know anything special about applying that?"

"No."

"Good." He didn't elaborate, and figured he'd just take the stuff with him. Or get some from a Muggle chemist. All at once, the exhaustion he'd felt when he first awakened crashed back over him, and he swayed. "Shit. Sorry. Could we sit, with this? I should show you."

"Oh! Right. Sorry." She Summoned chairs to the table as they approached it, and gestured for him to go ahead. "What, exactly, happens?"

"To me, or in what's in here?"

"Both, actually."

Cedric sat cautiously, grimacing as this only folded his trousers against his skin. "In short, it's a memory of the night Harry went to the graveyard, at the end of the tournament. In which I go there with him, and die. When I watched it, I started to choke--not physically, exactly, but more like, my mind thought my body was dying, and tried to comply."

She raised her eyebrows and turned to catch several small measuring devices sailing toward her. "I imagine I ought to watch it without you, then," she said. "Also, are you uncomfortable? You're squirming."

He blushed. "I have more of the rash."

"Oh, well let's deal with that first, then. Where is it?"

"Uh. Sensitive areas." He gestured vaguely toward his body. "If I could just borrow your equipment…?"

She nodded. "I'll watch this while you take care of yourself, then. How long is the memory?"

"Not long. Couple of minutes. Why?"

"Because since I won't be 'here,' I imagine you could just deal with your problem here. But if you'd prefer, there is a loo. It's the door in the side wall, far end."

"What? There was no--"

"Visible, no. You can't see anything here you don't know is here."

Cedric couldn't help himself. "Cool. Is it charm-based, or is there transfiguration, or… uh, can you tell me?"

"To an extent, but we can discuss that another time, perhaps? For now, I'm going to look at this." She picked up each of her devices, checked settings, and then pitched forward into the memory. Cedric looked at the ointment, glove, and cloth, and thought about just taking advantage of her 'absence' as she'd suggested, but in the end, he couldn’t do it. Massaging any ointment into his groin in a woman's office really seemed not something he could take casually. He stood and went out her door, and when he looked, sure enough, the other door was there. He caught a flicker out his eye as he walked, and turned, but it was only Snape, nodding to him from the third frame. The other two were empty. He nodded back and went about his business, which took longer than it ought to have given that the sheer relief to the area led to inappropriate arousal that he had to wait out a little.

When he returned, she was just pulling herself up out of the memory, and before he said anything, she held up one finger and picked up the first of the laid-out instruments. She Summoned a quill and parchment to her and started noting measurements, then turned. "Hand me that book?" She pointed to her shelves, which were nearer the door (and him) than her. "The Halliwell one?"

He found the book in question, which the subtitle indicated was on number theory, dynamic recursion, and rune interface as they applied to paradox, and handed it to her. She flipped through the well-worn pages and found a chart, then went back to writing, one finger on a column from the page, the other hand balancing a series of highly symbol-ridden equations. "Make yourself some of the tea in the green tin," she said as she wrote. "It'll help with the rest of the stomach and all, if what you're experiencing is much like what we've seen before in paradox situations, though this one is considerably more complex, in terms of time and change, than what usually come up."

Cedric, who had been watching over her shoulder, had taken two years of Arithmancy and found it interesting in general, but not something he wanted to develop a deep understanding of, so he only followed in the most general sense to the point that she'd canceled figures until she had an impossible result, in which one side of the equation was both equal, and not equal, to the other. Making tea came to seem like a fine idea, and he went to do that at the small kettle in the corner, glancing back at her as she kept working.

She chewed on her knuckle for a minute, then looked over her shoulder at him. "I should probably watch it with you present as well, to see how that alters the measurements."

Cedric nodded and swallowed the rest of his tea, which really did help. "I expected I'd have to watch. But, uh. I'd prefer not to die, so--"

"If it doesn't actually kill you, just makes you think so, I can fix you when we get back," Hermione said. "I also think it won't make that rash any worse, but it might."

"Well, it was already worse, so while I'd just as soon not go back to that, I do already know what it's like," Cedric said. "Let's get it over with, then?"

She nodded. "Hold on." She reset each instrument, then laid them out around the Pensieve in the same order as before. "Ready?"

"Sure."

"Come on, then." She held out her hand and nodded toward the Pensieve. "On three. Best for the microspectroaltimeter's accuracy if we get there right together, though we can always just take additional readings by repeating the event."

"I'd rather not go with that, no." Cedric said, shuddering because it was bad enough he was going to have to look at this again once. "I'm ready. Three?"

"Three. She counted, and then they entered the memory together. He watched himself and Harry land hard, watched the approach of the man he'd worked out, since the first viewing, was of course Peter Pettigrew. He listened and clutched Hermione's not so corporeal hand as Pettigrew killed him, and then, as the choking panic grew, as Harry dueled. He was sure he was turning blue, that his chest wasn’t moving and surely soon his heart would stop for lack of air, but he pressed his lips together and tried to just wait, this time.

As the two wands arched and sparked and spit out ghosts, he watched his own spirit rise, and that was as far as he could stand it. He felt his knees buckle and hit the ground, waking on his back in the Department of Mysteries.

"What's it say?" he asked, his voice raspy and sore. "Also, what happened?"

"I stayed. Your heart stopped. You're fine. Don't get up."

He blinked. "My heart stopped, but I'm fine?"

"I told you I could restart you if you'd only died because you thought you did. And I did."

Cedric tried not to react to that. "Did it help? With your microwhatsit?"

"Microspectroaltimeter. And yes, the measurements went to several more degrees of accuracy, with two watchers in the same space and time. The equation's still impossible, though."

"Which means?"

"It depends. I haven't done the calculations from the amplimorph, either run, and the phase change in your body is still stabilizing. I ran that one earlier, but of course you've just changed again."

He frowned. "Um. Of course. You do understand I have no idea what any of that means."

"Well. The microspectroaltimeter measures the spiritual relationships--not relationships in the sense of, how they get along, but their relative degree of belonging to the same space and time--between the parties to the memory. The amplimorph offers degrees of probability that the memory, at varying points, is memory or dream or other. The phase change in you will--"

"Wait, so you have actual tools which offer physical evidence that something is accurate, as a memory?"

"Well. Not conclusively. It's all about the probabilities, and the relative probabilities, and then from there I'd have to say the rest is more a branch of philosophy than mathematics."

"…Oh."

"Don't worry. I know how to run the calculations, and I know what the equipment does and how to calibrate it, but I don't entirely understand the maths, nor the details of the philosophy."

"Oh. And that should keep me from worrying?"

"In the sense that you're not hopelessly behind. Also, well, if you like, you're welcome to read up; I've been working my way through the notes of my predecessor in my spare time over the years, and some of the earlier texts she wrote probably wouldn’t be too badly over your head."

"Thanks. I think. Where?"

A bell tinkled before she could answer. "A moment. Oh, no, don't try to sit up. It'll only hurt."

Cedric had discovered this for himself; he was, evidently, being held still by charms at his collarbones and hips. His stomach muscles had tried to pull him upright, but the bones were going nowhere, and now he thought he'd pulled something. "Why?"

"Just a precaution, after the heart and all."

"Oh. Right. Precaution." He shuddered again at the whole concept of having had his heart restarted, but thought probably any sort of panic response would only cause her to send him off to St. Mungo's, and he did want to learn how this went. "What was the bell?"

"Time to record the numbers, was all." She nodded at the quill doing so on the table.

"Ah. So, when can I get up?"

"Another twenty minutes, I think," she said.

Cedric groaned, but didn't complain. It was for his own good. "Maybe while I wait, unless it'll interrupt too much, you could tell me bit about the theory involved? Not with the heart; though that'd probably interesting, too. With the gadgetry."

She grinned at him. "You may be sorry you asked."

He found himself grinning back. "I remember you can go on rather a lot, but look, captive audience! Literally!"

She chuckled and launched into an explanation of quantum realities as they related to dreamspace in a magical world.

"What the hell?" Cedric asked the air in front of him.

After all that explaining, Hermione had let him up, fixed up his hands again and sent him to the loo for the other, then to his irritation made him go to St. Mungo's just to make sure. They'd thought it odd that he'd been the subject of confluent hexes that stopped his heart, but didn't express any particular doubt, and pronounced him fortunate to have been in the presence of someone who knew resuscitation techniques.

He'd come back, full of questions, and realized that the easiest way to find his way back to her office--since he didn't very badly want to converse with the receptionist again--was to go back via Percy's office.

He'd stepped onto the mat, lifted his hand to knock, just to say thanks for the help, and found himself out on the street.

Weird.

He marched back in and down the stairs, then stopped short of the office and reached across to knock.

The corner of the mat flipped up and back down, and Cedric frowned, then stepped onto it and …wiped his feet. The door swung open.

Percy looked up. "Yes?"

"Sorry. I just was stopping back to say thanks. Hermione's got about seven hundred measurements going, and I had to, uh, step out for a bit." He paused. "Just a few minutes ago made a try to do this and something dumped me back out front?"

Percy chuckled, which Cedric noticed reduced his grayness quite a lot. "It's just a funny little protective device, since I can't see you to gauge intent. If you don't do it, it dumps you. If you do it and have bad intent, it dumps you. It's a little silly, but the Minister of Reconstruction Affairs thought any veteran with a disabling condition should be offered help in readjusting. It makes her happy, and keeps out the lunatics. So, she can help you?"

"I think so," Cedric said. "Anyway. Thanks for getting me to her and all. I should get back." He turned to go.

"Any time. Oh, and Cedric?"

"Hmm?"

"First, wipe or step over, and second, I imagine my mother would enjoy your company at supper some Sunday. Or Hermione, actually. She's constantly lamenting that all the young people moved out of the area, and the time Luna Lovegood dropped by, it really made her day. She doesn't get out much, since everything."

"Oh. Right. I'd heard."

"Anyway. She still does Sunday dinner every week, and the invitation stands, I'm certain."

"Thanks." Cedric went back out into the corridor and headed back down to the Department of Mysteries.

"So what's it say?" he asked as he came back in.

"A lot," she said. "You?"

"I'm fine. They were impressed with your skills."

"Good." She'd moved out into the main office, to the long table, because she wanted the room to spread out the materials. "Now, I think we have to apply the readings, inversely, to the memory of an event from the same time frame… what would be good?"

"How close a time?"

She shrugged. "We should try a couple. Within a year, at least."

"What happened the year after, then? Or would before do?"

"After would be better, I think. Let's see. Arthur--"

"Oh! I stopped back by Percy, who says his mum doesn't see enough of the old crowd and would love to have either of us drop by for a Sunday dinner."

"I'll… think about it. Anyway. Arthur was injured, that winter. That's a big enough one, I imagine. It has to be something big enough that we'd have clear memories. Do you remember the Order stuff that went on that winter?"

Cedric thought back. He'd not been aware straight away, because most students hadn't been, but once he'd gone home he certainly had been. "Not the same ones you do, so much."

She nodded. "But they'd be the same time, same set of events. We'd have to watch separately. I mean, both watch, two separate events."

He returned the nod. "Right. What else was big?"

"The battle in--well, this department, I suppose. Down where we had the time and prophecy artifacts relatively unprotected."

"Of course. That was a whole year later, though."

"Yes, but it will be good to see how the differences show. There should be some, if we recalibrate the memories."

"Should we go ahead and do it, then?"

"No time like the present, is there?"

"So, your memories first, or mine?"

"Mine. I've already got them organized." Cedric chuckled at the predictable notion that Hermione would already have worked out what she needed to pull for the Pensieve.

"Of course." He waved at Harry's Pensieve. "In here, or do you have your own to use?"

"I do have one, as it would be difficult to work in memory research if I hadn't, but it'll be better for the effect to use this one." She Summoned out the threads in the pool of silvery medium and deposited them in one great clump in a vial, then pulled a long and tangled knot out of her own head.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone pull the whole lot at once," Cedric said, pointing.

"It isn't difficult, if one's thoughts are organized," she said absently, watching the strands swirl and mingle. "All right, now I'll just need to set the projectors..." She fussed for a moment, adjusting dials and switches, and then turned to look up at him. "Right, then. Off we go." A flick of her wand started the devices doing whatever it was they did, and then they were dropping into another memory.

They were at St. Mungo's; that part Cedric knew. However, he'd not been to this ward before. He'd rather avoided the place, after the injuries inflicted by the faux Moody when Harry had survived. He wondered whether Karkaroff were improved any, down in the memory ward--he hadn't thought about him much in quite some time, but he thought he'd have heard if he'd improved enough to go home, so most likely, he was still there. Krum had gone home once his bones had healed, but the damage to his coordination had been great, and Cedric hadn't heard from him in years, either.

He chastised himself when he realized the scene had gone on without him, and went back to paying careful attention. Arthur Weasley was propped up in the bed, the family around him, looking paler than he ever had in Cedric's memory, explaining to his wife that really, no, honestly, he wouldn't try Muggle "stitches" again.

Cedric frowned as the bed in the corner emptied, then refilled. A moment earlier, a blond had been there nursing what had looked to be the tearing lashes of a Thestral's tail, and now, it was a darker man, darker and frightened and oddly pale around the mouth and eyes, his shoulder and side heavily bandaged. Cedric almost started toward the man just as Arthur explained who he was, two sets of words overlaying: Muggle, poor bugger, bitten at the last full moon growing and overriding infected, when he refused the treatment. Before he could take more than a step, though, he remembered he couldn't change anything here.

He watched as a nurse brought in a plant, looking at the Hermione watching with him. She grimaced; again, there was nothing they could do, and that plant, they both remembered. Cedric had been of age, for all he was still a student then, and he'd known most of what went on in the Order.

Nothing else of interest happened, so they pulled up out of the memory and Cedric waited while Hermione tidily replaced her memories in her head, recorded her readings and reset her equipment before he dragged out the relevant bits of his own and they dropped in again.

Little had changed at 12 Grimmauld Place, though the heads hadn't ever been pulled down off the wall. Otherwise, the news was relayed just as Cedric remembered, from Arthur Weasley's condition to the ongoing frustration of Sirius Black. He turned to Hermione and shrugged as the memory played out with no particularly notable changes, and out they went.

The rest of the experiment was shocking, and since they had both their memories to add together, both the original and the replacement scenarios played out in a sort of rich three-dimensional field, which made no sense since Pensieves always played their scenes three-dimensionally, but somehow this was different. Cedric watched in horror as his absence--presumably due, he thought with a squirm, to his death--utterly shifted the dynamic of the battle. Voldemort's party was more confident, and with reason, and after his version of Ron dashed past, the altered one stopped, struck down by a brain. As Hermione went down, and that wasn't so far off, he thought analytically, Neville was up and Cedric wasn't there and the entire arrangement was off. Where his memory insisted Bellatrix Lestrange had dropped through the veil, Sirius had fallen instead.

He looked at his Hermione, who was standing shocked, her mouth in an O, and as the rest of the battle unfolded, it was hard for Cedric to draw his attention away from that and notice the rest.

They were both quiet while she noted the various recordings and measurements, and then they went back into her office, still quiet.

"How the hell did Harry get through Dumbledore?" He asked finally. "That must have just. Shit."

He wasn't sure when he'd come to fully accept that this other reality was a sort of truth, but Hermione looked up sharply, and whispered, "I don't know," and he realized she thought so, too.

He absently scratched at his hand, then looked. "Uh." He held up both hands, which were still essentially clear of the fuzzy rash, but were mottling purple again.

"That's weird," she said, taking his left hand to examine it.

He wiggled the fingers experimentally. "It feels all right. Except for the itch."

"Still. Maybe… something about visiting memories you should be in but aren't is exacerbating it?"

He shook his head. "That seems kind of… memory shouldn't have physical effects, you know?"

She arched a brow. "Well, memory is integral to our identities, and you've developed this rash thing twice after seeing scenes in which in one version you played a role, and in the other you were dead."

"Right, well." He scrubbed his hand through his hair, uncertain what to add. "What do the numbers say?" he asked at last.

She scowled at the lines of scribbling. "It's going to take me a little while to work through them," she said. "Do you want to stay?"

He sighed. "Now that it's started, I don't know, I guess I should? Unless you'd rather I didn't." He scratched his head again. "I can't really see going back to school and pretending everything's fine. Though I probably should contact Minerva. Also, is there anything I can do to help?"

"You can handle the basic cancellation and reductions if I set up the equations, right? And you can read off the charts? You understand what I said before, about the axes and how the secondary shift sometimes brings the pantropic level into the mix?"

"I think so. I had a lot of the basics at one time, so it's not like any of this is conceptually brand-new, even if I've not thought about much of it in a decade. Let's give one a try?"

"Great. Because we have, let's see, three, and then twice, but also, the comparison… thirty or so cross-comparisons, and it's going to take a bit."

He nodded. "Right, so--" he gestured toward the table. "You have another quill and all?"

She blinked. "Uh. No, actually, hold on. No, I'd rather not transfigure, for this. Sometimes the equipment makes hash of transfigured or duplicated objects. I'll just pop next door." She went out into the main office, and Cedric, following, stopped before the portrait of Snape, who was still there.

She shook her head and moved along the wall, then knocked on a door that had only just appeared when Cedric had realized it must be there for her to knock, and then she vanished into another office. "Huh."

"I assume your meeting is going well?"

"Hmm?" Cedric dragged his gaze back to the portrait.

"You've been here most of the time for hours, and Miss Granger hasn't thrown you out, and while I couldn't listen, it looked as though you were getting along all right there at the table. She never works with anyone, you know."

"Oh. Well, we've always got along, I suppose, and now we've been--" Cedric was about to explain what they were working on when the word caught in his throat. Snape scowled. "What?"

"Bloody wards to prevent my spying arse from learning anything useful."

"I'll tell you when I get back to school?"

Snape brightened slightly. "Honestly?"

"Of course. It was your idea that I come here!"

"Yes, but I thought… I shall look forward to it, Diggory."

Cedric grinned, and turned to see Hermione coming back out with a spare inkwell, a handful of fresh quills, and a rather bedraggled copy of the book she'd been using, presumably for him to use for the charts.

"We good, then?"

"What? Oh. Yes. And Caldwell had some thoughts about order of setup, so that was good. I didn't tell him exactly what, of course, and he's more interested in the theory of intent and deliberation as it relates to creative charm development--actually, you and he should talk sometime. But anyway, he's been at this a lot longer than I have, so it was good to at least get a little guidance there."

"Right." Cedric got out his tablet and made a little note about that because it did sound interesting, and looked back at the door that was still there (so was the one to the loo; evidently once known, they stayed), then followed her back into her office. She set the inkwell and quills at one end of her desk and flipped through the book for the relevant charts, then gestured for him to sit and went to collect her notes, muttering as she ran her hand through her hair, leaving it (astonishingly) even more tumbled, and why on earth was he noticing that? He shook his head and picked up the tube of ointment to put a bit more on his hands while she got started, on the theory that he'd not want to be distracted while he worked.

Then, she handed over the first set of equations, which contained, at a quick estimate, thirty-seven expressions and eighteen variables. Merlin. Well, he'd just have to get to it, then. He set about simplifying the mess and setting the pieces on to the axes for resolution.

She finished the second set and half of the third while he was still working on the first, which was a little depressing since she'd been setting things up as well, but at least he was doing something. He checked back over his work while she finished the one in her hands, then set down his quill and watched her until she looked up.

"What?"

"I was wondering, do you eat?"

"What?"

"Well. I'm starving, and it appears to be getting late. And I think we must have both skipped lunch?"

She nodded. "But we should--"

"Finish this, yes, but given how much there is, we're probably going to have to stop to eat at some point, don't you think?"

She wrinkled her nose and muttered something about boys and their stomachs.

"Oi, I'm not a boy."

She cocked a brow. "Oh?"

Cedric rolled his eyes. "I meant, I'm no teenager to eat constantly. It's been hours and hours, and honestly, we'd probably be more effective without listening to our stomachs rumbling."

"My stomach isn't rumbling," she said.

Cedric leaned sideways and casting a Revealing charm under her desk. "Whatever it was making that noise must have moved, then."

She pursed her lips, but nodded. "Fine. We could go up to the cafeteria--"

"Oh, I don't think that'll work. Come on. Real food. It'll only take an hour, and then we can come back here and work all night if you want." He'd concluded she probably simply wouldn't stop unless he forced the issue, so he went on, "Besides. I've had a rough couple of days, you see. I need some serious calories. Something really good, maybe kind of rich… Even a nice dessert, don't you think? My treat, of course." He was fairly certain his Hogwarts salary was considerably less than hers here must be; this department was demanding and rewarded accordingly. However, he also had damn few expenses, and a single supper out with someone for the first time in… Merlin. Two years? A long time, in any case, wouldn't break him. Though he wasn't suggesting they go anywhere fancy anyway.

"Your treat?" Her tone didn't demonstrate pleasure at the thought.

"Sure. My forcing the issue, my treat," he said. "Unless you have an idea I intend to then hold over you some absurd notion of being owed some sort of compensation."

She blushed. "Of course. You wouldn't want." She cut herself off and pressed her lips together. "Fine. One hour."

He nodded. "Good doesn't have to mean slow." He didn't respond to what she hadn't said, but noted it anyway; once this was done he might want to say something. "Do you need to …I don't know. Do anything girly before we go?"

"Anything girly?"

Cedric got the sense this might have a faux pas on par with complimenting Rita Skeeter on her antennae, and blushed. "I just meant, uh." He scratched the back of his head. "Pretty girls often want to, you know, pretty up. I hear. Not that you need prettying. I." Merlin. He was just putting his foot in it deeper. "Just don't take anything bad from the question, Hermione. I just wondered if you needed anything before we went."

She shook her head. "If it's not somewhere I can go like this, I'd just as soon not go."

"All right." He took stuck out his elbow for her. "Off we go, then?"

"You're not going to suggest I put up my hair?"

He wasn't at all sure whether she was testing him because of his previous question, or genuinely expecting him to insist, or something else. "No, Hermione, honestly," he said. "This was one of those times when a cigar is just a cigar. Though I also think when you want to, you can given anyone a run for their money, as far as choosing to dress for something and whatnot. I just wondered if there was any primping or some other word for checking one's reflection in the mirror which doesn't have such a negative connotation as primp. I figure I personally am guaranteed to look ill, given the whole purple thing, or I might, uh, comb my hair or something?"

She arched a brow (again; he'd concluded from that eyebrow alone she thought he might be something of an idiot) and chewed her lip, then nodded. "Right. Well, I'm not much of a primper. For future reference, you'll want to comb your hair ahead of time, since I'm unlikely to want to." She took his elbow. "Where?"

He grinned and also noted the future reference part, because that was more promising than the eyebrow. "Just a little place in Diagon. More or less." He looked down the corridor as they emerged from the front off ice. "Is there a quicker way out? I'd rather not waste half our hour jogging about Ministry corridors."

She chuckled. "Guest Apparition isn't allowed, but me, that's different." She slid the hand in the crook of his arm across and around his waist, then looked up. "Ready?"

He grinned down at her. "You won't Splinch us? As I recall--"

"Shut it. That was just the one time, and I was exhausted."

He shrugged, and she took them up, out, and directly into Diagon Alley, just inside the entrance from the Leaky Cauldron. He made a show of checking for all his limbs, then nodded to the left. "This way."

She returned her hand to his elbow and let him lead her up the street and onto a secondary offshoot, to the little Thai place that had been brought in in the old-fashioned confectioner's after the war was well and truly over. Cedric had found it three summers past, and had been pleased with the fast service and varied menu. "This all right?"

"How long has this been here?"

He smiled. "A little while. It's out of the way, though, so it's not surprising you haven't seen it. You basically like rice and Asian food and so forth, right?"

She shrugged. "I'm pretty easy as far as food. I don't much like lamb, but otherwise, anything goes."

He opened the door and ushered her through, then nodded to the server, who took them promptly to a table out of the flow of traffic and asked if they'd like a few minutes to decide. Cedric looked at Hermione. "You?"

She glanced down the menu and looked up. "I can order, if you're ready."

"Not much for taking your time, are you? No, no, that's not an insult. And it's not new. I'm ready, as well."

"Good." She ordered a beef and vegetable dish, and he asked for a sweeter chicken one. The server assured them it would be only a few minutes, and brought a teapot and tiny cups while they waited.

"So. How'd you end up in… that department?" Cedric asked. He thought probably even though there was no formal and explicit rule forbidding civilians from mentioning the Department of Mysteries, there was a practice of discretion.

She poured her tea and took a sip. "Well, it was one of those things. I'd just done so much research. I mean, so'd you, but it was pretty much all I did, and then I just." She stopped and offered a dry chuckle. "Do you remember how I was always on about going back and getting the N.E.W.T. scores?"

"Yeah."

"Well, when it was time to do it, I just couldn't seem to much care. So I didn't do the work, took the tests in the subjects I'd learned in the field, so to speak, and got scores that were, in the words of the testing administrator, 'completely ridiculous' for anyone with no practical experience. And of course, since my actual practical experience was expansive but classified, they concluded I had huge natural aptitude for this sort of thing."

"But the classified stuff--"

"Oh, I know. I got down there and Wiltford had my file in front of him. But, he decided that actually, whether it was natural aptitude or not, I knew what I was doing, and he was willing to take a chance. And since I had the interest in time, right when Connie Morton was about to retire, it was kind of perfect."

"And that was that?"

"It was. What about you?"

"Actually, it's kind of a similar story. Filius was ready to go; I was ready to come. I'd gone as far as I wanted to with Gudrun."

"Gudrun?"

"I did an apprenticeship in Switzerland?"

"Right, I remember. I don't think I ever knew your mentor's name, though."

"Ah. Anyway, I'd gone about as far there as I was going to, so the timing was perfect."

"Do you like it? Teaching, I mean."

"Mostly, yeah. You?"

"Mostly. Except. Hm. I like theory, but I wish I could more frequently get something more concrete."

"Yeah, I think that's what would drive me spare about it--and is why I didn't stay in theory and research in Switzerland. I like the immediate reward of getting the charm right, and I like the immediacy of seeing the little ones--you know, eleven-year-olds just keep getting younger?--seeing them lift that feather. Especially the Muggle-borns."

"Hey."

"That's not an insult, either, nor is it a comment on anything regarding why bloodlines matter. At all. It's just that with them, usually--usually--Charms is the first place they really, really do something completely magical completely on their own--no ingredients, no broom, just their wand, and their minds, you know?"

She smiled almost dreamily. "I, yes. I remember." She chuckled again. "LeviOHsa, not LevioSAH."

"What's that?"

"It's why Ron and Harry didn't much like me at first, for correcting them in the very early days of Charms." She looked away as she said their names, and Cedric remembered again how close the three of them had been. It had to be hard for her, with Ron gone and Harry in Romania.

"Good thing they came 'round; they'd have been entirely screwed without you," he said after a moment.

She smiled, a little wistfully. "They'd have had you, though."

"Sort of. Maybe. Not if I'd--"

"Perhaps that's a discussion for later."

"Oh. Right."

The server reappeared with their food, and Cedric looked at hers. "Want to share?"

She looked over. "What is that?"

"Sweet peppers. Chicken. A sort of sweet sauce."

She nodded. "We've got forty-seven minutes left; might as well take one to swap food about."

He laughed. "That we do."

They shuffled food and tucked in. Cedric was unsurprised that there was little conversation while they ate, though Hermione did pause once to ask about his work in Switzerland and what sorts of applications it might have, which led to him asking what she was hoping to understand about time. Thirty minutes passed quickly, and then he was paying the bill and they were walking back out into Diagon Alley proper, heading for the exit.

He stopped and snapped his fingers. "Forgot dessert!"

"We don't need dessert! I'm full, and that was perfectly nice, and we've work to do!"

Cedric grinned. "Yes, but we've nine minutes left, and I did say it would be my treat. I wouldn't want you to think I was such a terribly cheap date as all that."

"This isn't a date," she pointed out.

"I know, but we have eight and a half minutes, unless your trickery with time can change that--"

"I would never--"

"I know. Eight and a quarter, and surely that's time for ice cream." She started to speak, so he quickly added, "To take back with us. We'll take it back with us. We'll have a couple of minutes to spare. And I'll charm the spoons undrippable so there won't be any issues of fouling up the work."

He'd already started ushering her toward the ice cream parlor, and they were nearly there, so she sighed and folded her arms over her chest, but went along. "Plain vanilla cone for me," she told the girl behind the counter.

Cedric sighed. "Hold on," he said to the girl. "Hermione, honestly. There are a hundred flavors here. Look, chocolate with bits of mint cookie."

"Yes, well, I was aiming for simplicity."

He nodded. "And here. Come on, look. This is another chocolate--"

"You can always get chocolate for yourself."

"Ah, but I'm not the one who savored that truffle, that one time, raspberry filling, dark chocolate, some sort of cocoa something on top, remember?"

She scowled, then blushed. "Honestly. That was years ago! Why would you remember that?"

He frowned. "No idea, actually, but I do, and that, right there, is dark chocolate ice cream with raspberry swirl."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll have that. What are you having?"

He grinned. "Strawberry cheesecake with hot fudge."

"God. If you don't die, er, some other way, might as well gain twelve stone and drop off of heart failure, is it?"

"Well, no; this is a special occasion, but even so, I'd rather go out enjoying myself anyway."

The girl behind the counter was waiting, wand poised over the chocolate-raspberry ice cream, and Cedric winked at her and nodded. "We're good." She waved a pattern, which pulled perfect round scoops up and onto the cone, then moved on to his, adding thick fudgy sauce and handing over the dish and the cone. He paid and they went out the door.

Cedric didn't bother waiting for her to start eating, catching up a spoonful and taking a bite. "Mmm."

"You've chocolate on your chin."

"You're supposed to discreetly ignore that until I have an opportunity to wipe it off!"

"There's a rule?"

"Absolutely. Also, were you going to take us directly back, or--"

"Ah, right." She shifted her ice cream into her far hand and wrapped her near arm around him to take them back. The materialized right back in her office, which he'd thought wasn't actually possible--leaving the Ministry was one thing, but coming back was something else entirely. He started to open his mouth to say so, but she beat him to it. "It's a relatively high-level clearance. Most of us in here, of course. The Minister herself. High-ranking Aurors."

He nodded. It made sense, sort of. Or at least, not less sense than anything else this week. He nodded at her ice cream. "Better lick."

She blinked at her dripping ice cream, and swiped her tongue all the way around, twisting her hand.

Cedric bit back a groan, and remembered he'd promised to charm for no drips. He considered forgetting again, if it was going to cause that to keep happening, because honestly, Hermione had been …fun, when he'd first arrived, teasing, and he got the sense she needed to do things like lick ice cream and perhaps go to the theater, fun things, more often. But he'd said he would, so that was that. He charmed hers first, then his own, and took another bite. "You've raspberry on your chin," he said after a moment.

She swiped at it with the back of her hand. "I thought there was a rule."

"I apply it preferentially."

"Ah. Good to know." She pointed at the desk. "Shall we? There's quite a lot left to do."

He sat back down on his stool and went back to transferring chart data onto the page.

"Hermione?" Cedric blinked his eyes open, taking a moment to press across his eyelids and into the bridge of his nose with the hand not still holding the quill despite the ink in the end having all run out onto the page.

Bugger.

He charmed the mess clean quietly, then looked over at Hermione, who had also fallen asleep over her work. The candles were all but burned to nothing, the room dark because the false light from the fake window down here had faded many hours earlier. It was utterly still but for their breathing.

This was ridiculous. They'd pulled more memories to look at sometime around ten, based on the vectors they'd worked out from the first bunch, and it had been, if anything more weird, watching these. They were memories from his seventh year and the subsequent summer and autumn, of Hermione's view of Horace Slughorn's first class, his own work with Sirius toward acquiring a series of records of Black family heirlooms, and the first Order meeting with Dumbledore's arm dying. The images had been …spotty, fading in and out, and as soon as he'd pulled up out of them, he gone straight for the miserable ointment again, because his hands and now his chest and thighs, were driving him crazy. It had helped less each time, and he had the sense the itch was now actually coming from inside, under his skin

He stood, wincing as he stretched his back. He wasn't a boy of fifteen any more, to fall asleep halfway leaning on a table, for heaven's sake. He scrubbed his hand over his face, grimacing as he realized he had a deep crease in one cheek where he'd lain on the edge of the book.

He looked around, considering again the sparseness of the office, which was all shelves and tables. The clock on the wall noticed his attention and flared gently to allow him to see the time in the dim. Three twenty. Lovely.

Minerva was going to have a …cat, he supposed. Staff vanishing off the premises overnight, unless they were Snape, was frowned-upon. Shit. He wondered if he could get a message to her, then wondered whether he could get back anyway. He was too bloody tired to find his way upstairs, and at this point, this felt like something he had to stay and finish, anyway.

He considered for a moment, then shook his head and began carefully placing Hermione's instrumentation on a silver tray, then took the whole thing to the shelf on what by his best guess was the east wall. There was nothing else there but books, and as far as he'd understood, she'd deactivated them all after the last go-round with the Pensieve, so he thought it would probably be all right to transfigure some sort of couch.

He went to the west wall and pushed together a low table and a pair of chairs; transfiguration was always easier if one were starting with something shaped approximately like the desired object, after all. He took a deep breath and created a low wide couch, then set his hand on it, feeling the cushion. It would do. He looked at it critically, then widened it a bit because while probably they'd both have fit on it, probably Hermione would feel weird snuggled up against him.

He told the little voice pointing out that he wouldn't feel so very weird about that to shut it, now, thank you, and went to take her quill out of her hand. She woke at his touch, wand in her hand and at his throat before he even realized she'd stirred. "Oi. Shh. It's me, Cedric."

"Sorry," she said. "Some habits stay."

He nodded as she put her wand down, and said, "I know. I remember." He pointed behind him. "I moved your equipment away so it wouldn't mess with the transfiguration, and made up a bed-thing. Unless you'd rather go, but I thought, since I'm too bleeding tired--"

She brushed past him and lay down on the couch, tucked back against the cushions. "Practical is good," she said. "Come on. Looks like you need the sleep, too."

He toed off his shoes and lay next to her on the soft surface, feeling himself immediately dropping back to sleep. Damn, he was tired.

"Cedric?" The tone of the voice rousing him was concerned, and he struggled to open his eyes.

He'd never been very fond of morning, and it had to still be quite early; the light was gray and thin.

And he seemed to be surrounded by pillowing. And covered in cranky girl. He pried his eyes further open. "What the hell?"

"It would seem our makeshift bed has been made to shift," she said.

"Wh'time is it?" He was groggy, possibly disproportionately so, and tried to work a hand free to scrub at his eyes. Since the hand in question was trapped under Hermione's hip, this led to a rather awkward moment when he managed to catch the bottom hem of her jumper and slide his hand up her shirt, but that only took a moment to get sorted (and he wasn't going to think about soft skin and the bottom band of smooth silky bra he'd encountered, he instructed his body. No.) He finally got the hand free and his eyes to focus, and realized the reason the light was dim was that they were actually fairly surrounded; the "back" of the couch had folded over above them and the front lip curled up, and while there was a relatively narrow strip of free air up and to his right, the gap was closing. "Shit."

"Quite. My wand won't come to me. You try?"

"It's here. Uh, well, there." He pointed down to where his wand was in the long thin pocket along his thigh. "I think. I can't exactly reach. Can you?"

She felt her way down his hip and leg. "Right, okay, there it is."

"Can you get it?"

"Hm. Maybe." She rolled a little, shifting to his left to give her left hand more room to move, which incidentally meant she was breathing against his neck and right, he was not thinking about soft skin. Fortunately, given the way this position had her thigh rubbing against parts of him that were doing a seriously poor job of listening, just then she worked the wand free and tried to hand it to him, jabbing him in the ribs. "Sorry!"

"Ow. No, it's all right. Though. Ugh. I imagine that's going to leave a mark." He took the wand and aimed at the closing gap in the cushion. "Uh." He held it steady, then looked at her. "I can't think of the charm to keep something from closing."

She had been looking up, too, and her gaze dropped to him, startled. "What?"

"Stop gawping and help me out, here?"

"Uh. Right. You could just untransfigure these, what'd you use, a table? Chairs?"

"Right. Finite Incantatum."

The cushion hardened and dumped them on the floor as the backs of the chairs came down onto them, the seats flying out from under.

Cedric hit the floor hard, but the chairs themselves weren't so hard to move, once they'd got disentangled. He got to his feet and scratched his head, then pulled up the side of his shirt to see about that bruise.

And then he realized Hermione was staring in the much brighter light coming from the 'window.' "What?"

"You're …a lot worse."

"What?"

"Unbutton your shirt."

"Uh." Well, all right, she was trying to look at whatever the hell was going on with him, and there was nothing weird about that except he felt shy. He pointed out to himself that he was being silly, and unbuttoned his shirt.

She gasped and he looked down. Oh. "I look as if I've been beaten," he said.

"That's not just weird allergic response, Cedric," she said.

"I thought probably not, yes."

"I think we should take you to St. Mungo's for real now," she said.

"But we've got a lot of--"

"Work to do which you won't be doing if you up and die of whatever the hell that is."

"All right, now you're scaring me," he said after moment. "I assume you don't have anything for this?"

"No, and I also don't have anything for you forgetting a Freezing charm, or not being able to think about the most reasonable charm for the situation, and that wasn't just about being half-asleep, was it?"

"Shit." He started rebuttoning his shirt. "Perhaps I'd best go back to Poppy?"

"She'll probably send you to St. Mungo's, though," Hermione said. "It isn't as though she's just going to kiss it better."

"If I were going for kissing-better treatment, I think I'd probably ask you, not her."

"I'm not a Mediwitch."

"I think I might have noticed that. No starched hat, for one thing." He buttoned the last button. "What did we end up with, last night?" He pointed at the desk.

She flipped through her notes and shook her head. "It's as though the effect is getting stronger, as though the false memories Harry started with are becoming more real somehow. We're not doing that, though. I've absolutely certain that returning a memory set through a Pensieve doesn't actually make changes; it just shows them. So we need to work out what's causing…" She looked up and arched a brow. "You're stalling."

"Maybe a little."

"Well, stop. You need to go, so the only question is whether I take you, or you go on your own."

Cedric put up his hands in mock surrender. "Fine. I'll go. I'll go. I'll start with Poppy, not least because I certainly need to see Minerva, and then if she can't do anything she can send her notes with me to Mungo's. All right?"

"Yes. I'll come visit you at Mungo's after I've finished this up, then."

Cedric grinned. "Excellent. I should be nicely bored by five-thirty or so. If I'm not there, you'll know where to find me."

She nodded and sat behind her desk, starting in on the analysis they hadn't yet finished. He was effectively dismissed.

"Any chance I get a goodbye kiss? Or a kiss better?"

"No." Her tone was firm, but she was grinning, so he sighed theatrically and turned to go.

"But if you're worse later, well, then, I suppose it'll be more urgent."

He laughed and opened the door.

He went out through the main room and would have gone straight on through when Snape's voice stopped him. "Diggory."

He spun. "Snape!"

"We need to--" the image scowled when he was cut off. He glowered for a moment, then tried again. "Recall your promise."

Cedric frowned, then nodded. "Right."

"Also, I took the liberty of notifying Minerva you were here and all right. You're welcome."

Cedric laughed. "Thank you. I'll see you soon."

"You look like shit. Keep the promise regardless."

Cedric nodded and went out the door.

Once he'd made his way back up to the lobby, it was simple enough to get back to Hogwarts by Floo, so he did, not bothering to check in with Minerva just yet, given that Snape apparently had taken care of that. He headed straight for the medical wing. "Poppy?"

She stuck her head out of her office, then made a face. "Oh, dear. Minerva said Snape had told her--well, that's neither here nor there. What on earth?"

"Her--the person I was visiting believes this is a direct result of the sort of memory into which I fell, and that somehow. It's a bit difficult to explain, but that something is effecting a change in a single moment, a decade ago, and this is the result."

Poppy said nothing for a long moment, then went to fetch a device which had rings rotating in three dimensions and made the hairs on his arms (and to a lesser degree, her head) stand on end. The rings spun crazily backwards and forwards as she approached him, and he felt electrical crackling along his skin. "Something is definitely off," she said. Lie down?"

He stretched out on the same bed he'd used the previous day and she pushed up his shirt and briskly unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his trousers.

He squirmed slightly, but didn't move while she set the device on his belly, centered on his navel, and watched the rings speed and slow. When she removed her hand from the carrying knob on top, a spark flared from the centerpoint, and it felt as though the device burned its way to sink into his skin, though he could see with his eyes it had not.

And then, the center ring stopped, dead still, while the other two continued to whirl, and a chill spread through his torso, nauseating him, causing gooseflesh to tighten and his nipples to harden with shuddering chill.

He didn't realize she was about to take the device off until she did, and he looked down at the scorched ring on his belly. His stomach rolled, but he hung on as she stepped back, until she returned with a long towel dripping with something that smelled astringent and cold. She stripped off the rest of his clothes with a quick charm--and damn, she might have warned him--and lay the towel to cover him from knees to chin. A second, smaller, towel was wrapped around his head, and just as he noticed a horrid burning sensation in his low back, she levitated him enough to slide another under him. Then it was just his feet burning, but before he could ask for an explanation, she looked at him. "The heat is temporary. You, Cedric Diggory, are experiencing some sort of fairly severe discontinuity in time. This is forcing the residues out of your body, but they'll reaccumulate. I'm afraid you'll need to go see St. Mungo's after all."

He nodded, but said, "Do I have a couple of hours before I have to go there?"

"Perhaps."

"I need to talk to Snape. The portrait, of course."

"You'll need to stay covered in that for twenty minutes or so, and then we'll need to wait for the blisters forming on your feet to heal. After that, you should be able to dress and speak briefly with Mister Snape. Whatever it is you've got yourself into, it's quite troublesome. Possibly more than troublesome."

"Yes," he said. "Quite." He lay still and let the astringent stuff do its work.

Twenty minutes, he discovered, not for the first time in his life, was a long damn time when one was waiting for something important. Still, he lay there and didn't complain, since that certainly wouldn't make the time go faster and would only annoy the person in charge. Finally, she removed the towels, covered his lower body with a sheet, and let him up. He looked down at the improved, but still apparent, burn on his stomach. "Will that scar?"

"I depends," Poppy said, "though truly, that isn't your biggest concern just now."

"Right, I know. It was an academic sort of question. Depends on what? Also, did you evanesce my clothes away entirely, or might I get dressed?"

"Entirely. Hold on." She snapped her fingers and one of the House Elves appeared. She sent it for clothes from Cedric's quarters, and it went out again, then was back immediately with freshly-pressed trousers and shirt.

"Thank you," he told it. It giggled and popped out again as Poppy put up her screen "Now. Depends on what?"

"What's causing it, whether you experience further exacerbation, whether we have to do it again..."

"Right, well. Am I free to go?"

"Yes, but I'm quite serious about sending you to the hospital. Two hours, no more. This can become very serious for you, Cedric. Possibly terminal. Your body can't tolerate that kind of residue building and building."

He nodded soberly, then slid off the bed and put on the shoes the elf had left neatly at the foot. "I just need to find out what Snape needs to tell me." He looked up as he tied. "It's a little complicated."

"I see. Well, best of luck," she said, waving him out of the room. "I'll give a firecall and let them know your status so you'll have less to worry about when you arrive."

Cedric stifled a groan, and headed for the Hufflepuff common room.

Snape was there, waiting, drumming his finger on the armrest.

"Sorry," Cedric said. "Small matter of staving off mortal peril."

"Of course. We should avoid saying anything here."

"Where, then?"

"There's a landscape in the staff room pantry."

Cedric shook his head. "Didn't know there was one."

"Yes, I didn't learn of it until late 1994. Go into the staff room, look left at the cloak hooks. You may have noticed one of them is of the right height to be manipulated by a House Elf--no, I've no idea why; it isn't as though the bloody things can't just use magic. In any case, turn it anticlockwise, one quarter revolution, and see how the door in the corner slides open.

Cedric shook his head. "Right. See you there in a couple of minutes, then." He turned and made his way out and up to the staff room. "So," he said once he arrived. "What are we discussing?"

"You first," Snape said.

Cedric grinned. "Why am I not surprised. Harry's dream or vision or whatever the hell it is is, per Hermione, becoming more real. The changing point in time, as best we can figure, is in the labyrinth at the TriWizard tournament, in which I die instead of being, as I am now, not-dead." He explained briefly what they'd worked out, including his fairly sketchy understanding of Hermione's formulas, then at last stopped and folded his arms in front of him. "Now you."

"The situation is worse than you believe," Snape said. "I cannot hear much of what goes on in that office, as I have mentioned. However, no one thought to obscure my capacity to see the events in the main room, and this morning I saw something quite strange, indeed."

"What?"

"I saw Lewis Atteby, who works in the next office beyond Miss Granger's. That alone was not unusual. However, what's unusual is that he had a Time Turner, which usually isn't his area, and he was windblown and covered in bits of shrubbery and twigs and--and here is what I believe is most important--it seemed, from those words I heard and the others I may have correctly understood from the movements of his lips, he was initially rejoicing about the successful results of his attempt to resuscitate Voldemort."

"He was a Death Eater?"

"I never saw him, but, I was certainly not privy to everything, including spies within the Ministry. It's possible."

"And you think… why would a Death Eater decide changing the outcome of the tournament would make a difference?"

"I'm sure I've no idea, though as you may have discerned, I said that was initially his apparent position. He went out, and came back in a considerably less cheerful mood."

"So he hasn't been successful."

"Not entirely, no. Clearly he has had an effect, and perhaps he needs to alter something else now, something that will work. I can't say what that might be. However, it is my belief you must stop him before he sets anything else into motion, because right now, you know where he is making the change."

Cedric frowned. "Why wouldn't he just go back and change the night Harry defeated Voldemort in the first place?"

"He cannot. The Potters were under the protection of their Secret Keeper, and Pettigrew is long dead."

Cedric frowned. "So he couldn't change whether Pettigrew told him?"

Snape sighed. "Time paradoxes give me a headache," he said. "But either that has not occurred to him, or he's concluded he cannot effect that change. Remember, the change he has tried to effect, he had a fairly private moment in which to do it, in a setting already altered by a different Death Eater and filled with very unusual magic. The Ministry at the time would not have been able to note the difference. I expect there are other moments which meet the criteria, but working out when they are, among all the moments of the war, would be time-consuming and difficult. Also, you look as though you're suffering the effects rather badly."

Cedric thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose. Hermione needs to know this. Whatever she's doing, I expect this Atteby might not like it? And she needs to know not to talk to him about it, as she has the other bloke, at least vaguely."

"Of course, although there is this. Miss Granger is the time expert. Atteby works with prophecies. His position there allows him excellent access to equipment, but he will be at least a step behind her for the time theory."

"Good." Cedric tilted his head to the side. "Er, although there was the furniture incident this morning." He explained about the transfigured couch. "I'm not sure whether that was the predictable result of the equipment in there fucking with my work, or--"

"Or some sort of attempt to slow you down. Hard to say, but I think if he actually knew you were actively working against his efforts he'd be acting more directly."

"In any case, Hermione needs to know. And I have to go to Mungo's. Poppy was quite firm about that."

"I cannot--"

"Right. Though, can you write and hold up something for her?"

"I have never tried," Snape said. "It's a worthy concept. I shall make the attempt."

Cedric thought another minute and nodded. "Good, then. I should go. Even if you can't tell her everything, you can hurry her along toward coming to see me, I think she intended to come see to it I'd brought myself there anyway, so--"

Snape whirled and walked to the left out of the frame, apparently finished with the conversation. Cedric shook his head. The portrait was no more patient than the man, which was only as it should be.

"You've a what?" The receptionist at St. Mungo's was, evidently, some sort of twin to the one at the Ministry, Cedric decided, despite the lack of physical resemblance. He also thought probably if they were actually related, some sort of inbreeding was the most likely explanation, but he kept all of that to himself and tried again.

"I've had a reaction to a time-and-memory situation. It's a distortion of sorts. Poppy Pomfrey was going to send word?"

"I have no Mister Poppy."

Cedric sighed. "I know. She works at Hogwarts."

"That's in Scotland, it is."

"Yes, quite. I wonder if you've a message from her? Or if you've put through a firecall from her to anyone here?"

She considered this for a moment, and he was about to rephrase when a different witch approached the desk and thanked this one for covering for her, then sat down. She waited a moment, then leaned forward and said quietly, "Sorry, I just can't leave the desk unstaffed. Now, where were we?"

Cedric nodded and explained again.

"Oh, right. You're to go to Artifacts, though Melworth wasn't entirely sure he was going to be able to fix you up. Apparently the combination of effects was quite unexpected?"

"Quite. Also, er, will you be here until evening? Friend of mine likely to come looking for me."

"I'm here until seven, so unless he's quite late, I should be able to direct him."

Cedric nodded. "Thanks. Which way, then?"

She pointed him toward the stairs and offered directions, then said, "Tell them to let Elisabeth know where they send you, all right?" She winked, and Cedric blushed.

"Uh, right. Elisabeth. My friend is Hermione, if that helps jog your memory, too."

She nodded and then looked at the woman behind him who--Cedric tried not to actively do a double-take, but for heaven's sake, the woman had the trunk of an elephant growing out her navel, more or less. At least, it was gray, so he hoped it wasn't some sort of completely alarming gender experiment gone horribly wrong. He hurried off toward the stairs and up to Artifact Damage. "Hullo," he told the wizard collating sheaves of parchment at the desk. "I think I'm to see a Healer Melworth?"

"You Diggory?"

"Yes."

"This way, please." The man put Cedric in a room and measured him thoroughly, then instructed him to remove his clothes and put on a flimsy threadbare robe, and left him to wait.

After he'd looked at everything in the room, he lifted himself up onto the examining table and waited, counting minutes. Finally, after he'd been there some half an hour, a wizard hurried in. "Sorry, bit of an urgent--" he looked Cedric up and down. "Oh. You're Diggory. You're probably more urgent, but you weren't here first."

Cedric wasn't quite sure what to say about that, but then the wizard, presumably Melworth, didn't much seem to require an answer. He went on, remeasuring things and splitting open the robe at various points, to poke at the scabby burn on Cedric's belly or check the rate of change in kidney function as he asked questions too quickly for Cedric to answer: where he'd been at which point in any of the chain of events, who had seen him, with whom he had interacted where, whether he'd felt ill, or tired, or hot, or cold, or about a hundred other things, and if so when, and for how long.

Cedric kept up as best he could for several minutes, then held up his hands and asked whether it might not work better for him to simply tell as detailed a narrative as he could, and go from there.

Melworth hemmed and hawed a moment, then agreed that might work. Cedric took a deep breath and began with the letter. Then he stopped and asked, point blank, how he could be certain Melworth could be trusted. "It's not you, you understand, but there are aspects of the story I have to tell here which involve other people and what I understand to be fairly serious misuse of time and artifacts and I don't know what else."

He expected blustering anger, given the man's overwhelming behavior so far, but to his surprise, Melworth pursed his lips. "Poppy said you might ask, so I shall tell you this. When I was a young man, I spent several years in a relationship with another young man, whom I believe you'll have heard a bit about. We worked together for another man, whom I also believe you knew."

"Could you aim for a slightly lower level of crypticness?"

"I would have remained with Gideon Prewett indefinitely. He and his brother died because they were working for Albus Dumbledore, against Voldemort; I wasn't with them that day because I was in Wales dealing on a different assignment."

"I'm sorry," Cedric said automatically. "Prewett was Molly Weasley's brother?"

"Indeed. And it was a long time ago, so thank you for the sympathy, but it's old sorrow. But if, as I've gathered, this is to do with anther effort to resuscitate Voldemort, you should, and can, tell me."

Cedric took another deep breath and began again, though he did leave Hermione mostly out of it, other than to say he had gone to do this work in the Department of Mysteries. Melworth interrupted quite a bit to ask which symptoms had come on first, and exactly how, and he did keep remeasuring things, but on the whole, this more linear approach to the story seemed to go a great deal faster.

Finally, he shook his head. "You have symptoms of two things, and while they make perfectly good sense together, they also aren't something I've seen before," he said. "First, it seems to me as though your body is attempting to, well, behave as though dead, while being not dead. As you might imagine, this can't be allowed to continue, though it may take a bit of investigation to work out how to effect noncontinuation. Poppy's initial effort has reversed some of the worst of it, and slowed the progression, but it's also not something we can keep doing to you--the cure would wind up worse than the disease."

"I doubt that. What with the disease apparently being 'being dead,'" Cedric said dryly.

"I suppose there is that to consider, but then, living, but with dead flesh, seems like it would at least be not better."

Cedric made a face but didn't interrupt.

"As I was saying. Second, the differential phasometer is showing incremental change. You are, in effect, becoming mismatched with the world. This indicates that the alternate reality is in fact, for lack of a better term, real, and that somehow you are becoming aligned with it. Now, we've known for quite some time, at least in fairly well-documented theory, that there were such alternative places, so that's not the surprise. However, I've never seen any report of anyone spontaneously realigning, which leads me to believe this is something being done deliberately. It's quite troubling. As I said, it makes sense that if you are, in this other reality, dead, then as your body aligned toward that it would, er, behave as thought dead."

"So basically, someone is trying to kill me by degrees a decade ago, and I can't make it stop?"

"Well, that is one way of summing up--"

"Cedric?"

Cedric looked past Melworth at the door, where Hermione was standing. "Uh. Hi." He spared a fleeting thought to wondering whether his robe was actually currently at least a little bit not-indecent, then frowned. "Uh, what are you--"

"Young lady!" Melworth had stood and turned away from Cedric, toward Hermione. "You can't just barge in here!"

She ignored him and told Cedric, "I got your message."

Cedric frowned for an instant, then before he thought about it too hard, said, "It's all right, Mr Melworth. She's my …fiancée."

It was just as well Melworth turned to look at him when he spoke, since this gave Hermione a moment to compose herself, because since this was probably all coming from someone in her own department, and clearly even this healer, evidently the best in the field, wasn't entirely clear on how to stop it, he was going to need her to hear anything that might jog …anything, actually.

"Fiancée, eh?" Melworth said. "You hadn't mentioned--"

"Well. That aspect of things wasn't really part of the story, you know."

"You think it's not relevant that you're engaged to marry the girl who was the best friend of the person whoever is doing this must be trying to harm?"

"Of course we've thought of that," Hermione said smoothly as she came to stand beside him, "though it hadn't occurred to us earlier that it could be deliberate."

Cedric picked up the thread of that. "Yes, we'd thought it must be some bizarre confluence of events, and of course, we know that bizarre confluences pretty much followed their lot around, there for a time in the late nineties, so in that sense, I suppose you could say it would be relevant, but it didn't really seem to be that sort of thing. I mean, Hermione's experienced quite a lot of that, though not recently--"

"And Cedric himself seemed to be the target, since he's the one who seems to be, whatever it is he seems to be doing."

"Uh-huh. And I suppose you would be the person with whom he consulted at the Ministry?"

"I can't confirm anything about that."

Melworth rolled his eyes, but let it slide, and started scribbling instructions on a pink parchment, on page a time. Each page vanished as he finished writing. "Unless you'd like me to wait and explain in private?"

"Go on," Cedric said.

"I'm writing instructions that you be kept on this ward even when or if it begins to look as though you've poison damage, which would be Potions. I rather expect if the result accelerates, and I think it will, and probably quickly, that you'll essentially be under the effect of a poison, if a rather gruesome one."

"What kind?"

"Toxins from your nondead body trying to decompose."

Cedric grimaced, but nodded. "Go on," he said again.

"I've written out what they're to do--as I said before, we can't keep applying the technique Poppy used. It'll start to do entirely different damage pretty quickly, and I expect you plan to keep using things like your kidneys, so we'll want to avoid liquefying them."

Hermione made a sound that Cedric interpreted as disgust, and without thinking, he put out a hand to settle on her back. She startled slightly at the contact, but then relaxed back against his palm, which in turn relaxed his hand, fingers curling slightly against the waistband he could feel through her shirt. "Er, yes, I do think I'd prefer my kidneys, and pretty much all my other organs, remain intact."

"Now, some of this is rather specialized potionsmaking, and I'm frankly not certain whether everything would be available on short notice," Melworth went on, "but I'll see what I can do."

Hermione cleared her throat. "I'm reasonably good with Potions," she said.

Cedric blinked. "I remember, the tale of the Polyjuice, but--"

"But, I'm on good terms with someone who will help, and I have other advantages," she said, rather sharply.

"Actually, I wasn't doubting you; I was just going to ask, is there anything you don't do well? Because I'm beginning to wonder."

"Divination." This time, her tone was firm, and final..

"Right, I recall. Still, you do keep surprising me."

She gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret, then turned back to Melworth, who evidently found them amusing. "In any case, if you've any trouble, you should let me know. I really have resources."

Cedric moved his hand in little circles on her back, unaware he was doing so until he noticed he was, and then unwilling to stop. She moved a little closer, more of a lean than a shuffle, and he took that as permission to continue, so he did. Melworth nodded and went on. "I'll need to check with Poppy exactly how long she used that thing to burn you that badly--"

"You're burned?"

"Just a bit ago. She used something that sort of sunk into my skin." She was looking at his hands and arms, but since his robe had, in fact, proved to be mostly closed when she came in, his stomach wasn't exposed. He set his hand on it. "It's here. My understanding was that she was sucking some sort of residue of time discontinuity out of my body, with a thing that spun in three directions?" He sketched a little figure with his hands of the concentric spinning rings, and she nodded.

"Four, actually. Three spatial, one temporal. I'd no idea she had one of those, though of course, she may well have had it since the year I--er."

Cedric shrugged. "Would it still be working?"

"Of course. It doesn't age."

"Ah. Right. And the fourth ring moves without being seeable, which is how it burned down into me without me being able to see it."

"How long was it on you?"

"I dunno. A couple of minutes?"

Hermione grimaced and said nothing, and Melworth looked up. "That long?"

"Maybe not. It felt longer, but it didn't seem as though all that much time had passed, so it's hard to say. Would that be bad?"

"It would explain the burn, but it would also mean she was drawing a hell of a lot out of you," Melworth explained. "Now, about the memory issue."

"What?"

"You forgot how to remove yourself from the furniture this morning, I believe?"

"Oh. Right. Well, I can't really say whether that was a memory issue or just a combination of exhaustion, unfamiliar surroundings, and waking up with the need to act already pressing."

Melworth clucked slightly. "I believe you fought in a war, Mr Diggory? Surely that combination of events has occurred before."

"Yeah, but I was younger."

"You're hardly ancient now. In any case, I'm unwilling to assume it was nothing. So, I'd like to do some very simple tests--yes?" A young man had opened the door just a crack.

"Your first three doses," the man said.

"Ah, thank you."

"We haven't any more on hand, though, so--"

"Would you please give the recipe to Miss Granger, here?"

"Sir?"

"She'd like to brew it herself, and has connections to get the ingredients faster than our bureaucracy will manage it."

The man frowned, but then gasped. "That Miss Granger?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, which only made Cedric chuckle again, and folded her arms across her chest. He started rubbing little circles again. "Yes that one," she said snappishly, "if it will make you get the recipe faster. If you're really fast, I'll see if I can get Harry to sign something for you."

The man vanished so fast he might as well have Apparated, and Cedric found himself pulling her fractionally toward him again, in the tiniest of hugs. Melworth watched them for a moment, then went back to his previous concern: Cedric's memory. He started reeling off questions about anything and everything, and Cedric started answering. Tomorrow would be Thursday. He'd left school in 1996. His mother's favorite color was green. His childhood pet had been a. Had been a. What the hell? He could see it, there on the lawn, glossy black, it was a. Damn it.

"Cat?" asked Melworth.

"No, the other one. Sometimes starts like cat."

"Kneazle?"

"No. Not a cat. The bigger one."

"Cow?"

"God, no."

Hermione interrupted, "Canine, of course. Since 'dog' doesn't start with a C."

"Yes! That."

And so they went on for quite some time. His memory was mostly fine, with weird holes that seemed to have no particular pattern, and eventually Melworth administered the potion, which involved a long slender stick of some sort of light wood drawing stripes of the stuff around his skull (under his hairline all the way around, over the crown of his head in both directions, down his nose and throat, and under his jaw) as, evidently, specific protection for his memory or mind, before the rest of the potion was vaporized with a spell. Cedric was asked to remove the robe so the vapor could soak into all of him. He paused for a second, then stood and pulled the mostly useless thing over his head, back to Hermione. After all, if they were pretending, even obviously, to be engaged, he likely wouldn't hesitate at that.

The potion tingled and felt like cold sand on his skin, but then, after another once-over with the measuring device, he was proclaimed fit enough to go lie down in the Artifacts ward.

The man who had come with the potion in the first place came back to give Hermione the formula and led them--once Cedric had put his pathetic robe back on--down the corridor. Cedric felt the discomfiting breeze up under, then felt the robe thicken and become less threadbare. He glanced over at Hermione, who just shrugged and made a face which he decided meant something like, "Well, it needed it." He kept walking, turning right into the ward and taking his place on the second bed.

"You think you can spring me from here soon?" He asked. "I really would rather, I don't know, help figure out the problem."

The man--who was evidently a nurse, of sorts--shook his head. "I think you're here for a bit. That shite's for when they don't know how to contain the problem another way." He set some sort of monitoring device over the bed, and left the room.

Hermione leaned over Cedric and kissed his forehead. "I'll bring what I can to you," she said. "I remember, you don't like being out of the fight."

Somehow, that made him feel a little better, though his skin was starting to really itch from the gritty potion. He lay back and pulled up the cover. "Fine, but could you also bring a book or two, for when you're not bringing what you can?"

She nodded. "I'll firecall Minerva as soon as I leave here, and also does your mum still--"

"I don't think she's still lucid enough that it would make sense to upset her. Actually, I don't know that she's lucid enough that it would upset her, but I'd rather not take the chance if it would be only upsetting. I don't know. She's at St. Dympna's, out west. You might ask there, if you've time."

"I'll see what I can do. I think I might also write to Harry."

"He'll like to hear from you, you know?"

"You think?"

"I know."

"All right. I should go, then." She brushed his hair out of his face again, and went out the door.

Cedric sighed and turned onto his side. This was going to suck.

When Cedric woke, having finally fallen asleep after several hours of being bored and one more late-evening application of the treatment, surrounded by inadequate screens and an irritating lack of privacy, the ward was in uproar and he felt like hell.

He tried to focus, struggling to work out that it was because he had the blanket partially pulled up over his face that was why his field of vision was obscured, and made it through a moment of panic that somehow he had forgotten how to see--which of course made little sense, but he'd dreamed of forgetting things, his body falling apart, the world changing, and he'd awakened disorganized and upset--then batted back the blanket and sat up.

Ugh. That felt worse. He looked down the front of the robe at his body, which actually looked better than it had the previous day, but ached, and wondered if it was time for his next dose. Then, he wondered whether Hermione had been back.

Then, he wondered why the ward was in a state of uproar.

He stood carefully, feeling dreadfully off-balance and hating that in the space of… he counted back on his fingers and decided it was a week, he'd gone from healthy and hearty to this. The screens were in place yet around his bed--not that they enclosed him entirely, because he could see people moving back and forth, and could hear a cacophony of general upset. They were looking for someone, and just as he reached to pull the panel back and see what the commotion was about, it was jerked away, two panels folding back as a wild-eyed young wizard said, "Is he in here?"

"Uh. Who?"

He didn't listen, barreling on, "He's vanished entirely. It shouldn’t be possible, with the protections, so surely he's in the building."

Cedric reached out and grabbed his shoulders; he was raving, for one thing, and for another, he bobbed his head as he talked, and he was making him dizzy. "Who vanished?" he asked again, quietly.

The man looked him up and down, apparently at least somewhat calmed by the touch. "Oh. You should be in bed. Karkaroff, of course. He's gone."

Cedric blinked. "From the memory ward? He was still there?" He was struck all at once by the memory of another man Vanishing, inside a memory, from St. Mungo's.

"You know him, then. Have you seen--"

"No, no, but. Vanished? Did someone else appear in the bed? Was it. Did he vanish like Apparating, or like fading?"

"What?"

"What did it look like, when he disappeared?"

The wizard shrugged. "How should I know?"

"It." Cedric stopped. "When the search is complete, or if someone has time, could someone who saw it come talk to me? It might be related to something really… classified. Sorry."

"Right. You haven't seen him, and you think you know what happened." The wizard was suspicious now, but Cedric decided that could work for him.

"Perhaps I should talk to the Aurors, if they're--"

"Of course they're involved," the man snapped. "He was a--"

"Right. Well, yes, perhaps I know something, but I'll only tell the Aurors, or the person who was working on Karkaroff." Cedric wasn't about to explain this whole mess to this bloke, but he just felt as though this couldn’t help but be related to what was going on with him.

The wizard looked at him, squinting as though attempting to gauge just how crazy he was, then backed away and left the ward.

Cedric sat back down on the foot of his bed and waited.

It wasn’t long.

Shacklebolt and Proudfoot were there in ten minutes, with an unfamiliar Mediwitch behind them. She gaped at Cedric. "You've got--"

He blinked. "What?"

"Before Karkaroff went, he bruised and blurred, and then--"

"Shit," Cedric said. "And when he went, he faded away, and someone else showed up in the bed? And people around him didn't remember?"

"Of course they didn't; he was in--"

"Memory. Right. Shit." Cedric looked down at the mottling and shook his head. "Right, so. This is a time-displacement issue, and it's. There's Ministry involvement, and it's related to the. The." He shook his head. Holes in his memory were not gong to prevent explaining this. "The what we've had, with people on both sides hurting each other. Which ended years ago."

Shacklebolt was looking at him as though he were crazy, but he did supply the word 'war,' and the Mediwitch was surreptitiously reading his chart, but he went on. "Look. All right. If you go out of here, if you ask, you'll find other people think Karkaroff died in, I don't know what year, but earlier. They'll think the bloke in his bed has been there all along. The reason you don't is you have. You have. Shit. It's when you do the thing that guards you against all the things that can go wild."

"Personal protection charms," Proudfoot said.

"Yes. Aurors. Healers. People who work in the Department of Mysteries."

"And you."

"Yes, me. I'm specifically, individually that way. Poppy did something with a time device, no, not moving me in time, something about residue. Hermione--"

Shacklebolt had pulled out a quill and was making notes, but he looked up. "Granger's working on this?"

"Yeah."

"Huh." He shoved his quill in his back pocket and pulled out his wand, sending up his panther into the air and out through the wall.

Cedric nodded. "She's working on a bunch of stuff-the theory, the practice, the potion. Oh." He looked at the Mediwitch. "Can someone do my treatment?" His skin was itching and he wasn't looking forward to the spray of sand stuff, but he figured it would probably be best not to lose the rest of his mind before someone worked out how to stop this.

The Mediwitch read the chart and shook her head. "I don't know the protocol for the exact way he's got the set up. I'll be back straight away, but I'll have to go check."

Cedric nodded. "Anyway, a lot of things. I don't know how quickly she'll respond to a message."

Shacklebolt and Proudfoot nodded, but seemed content to wait. Hermione's otter was back before the Mediwitch was, and two minutes later, Hermione came in, carrying a box of rattling vials and looking utterly exhausted. Cedric stood and took the box, setting it on the side table, then assisted her to the chair by the bed, where he sat back down. "What happened?"

"No good choices," she said. “When I got back, Snape's portrait was gone, so I went looking. In the new version, he died before anyone knew his true loyalty, which meant no help with the potion, which meant I needed to go to somewhere he was alive. Going back years and convincing a very wary spy one needs help brewing a complex medicinal potion and knows everything without revealing anything one shouldn't is, it turns out, exhausting. I had to stay there long enough to brew it"

Cedric grimaced. "How far--"

"Never mind that," Shacklebolt said. "Karkaroff--"

"Is gone. I know. I took the Pensieve and equipment with me for between. In that reality he died in 1996. Snape died near the end of the war, but not quite near enough. Ron."

She stopped short and Cedric reached and took her hand. He remembered how hard she'd taken Ron's death in this reality, and it couldn’t have been easy to revisit. "Did he survive, there?"

She nodded, then shook her head. "He's in spell damage. Curse damage. It's not reversible. It's not surviving. I imagine he's upstairs now."

Cedric nodded. "What else?"

"The war is shorter, there. Your death brought people to Harry's defense a little sooner. Your father helped with that. He died later. The death toll is smaller, on both sides. Lestrange lives; she's back in prison. The twins are the other way around--George dies, Fred doesn't, though that happens exactly the same way. Moody--"

Shacklebolt interrupted. "Moody dies?"

"No, but his paranoia… He managed to cock up his personal protection charms so that when a curse did get through, it couldn’t get out. Imperius. He's in with Lestrange. He's also not sane." She held out a thick scroll. "A copy of my notes. Everything I saw change. It's not, of course, complete; I didn't have enough memories of every single event of the war to draw on."

"But it was shorter," Proudfoot said. "The war. Shorter, less devastating…"

Hermione glanced up. "Yes. But the outcome wasn't different, and a lot of things were worse. There, Bill Weasley is a broken half-werewolf because Greyback was free the night Dumbledore died. Which, bizarrely, played out almost exactly the same. Moody's worse. Cedric's dead. Hagrid--"

"Right." That was Proudfoot.

The two Aurors were perusing the scroll, heads close together as they pointed and muttered. They looked up. "And you've a plan to stop this?" Shacklebolt asked.

"Not really," Hermione said. "Just one to delay until we figure it out."

"Good. Perhaps it shouldn’t be stopped straight away. Perhaps we should see about whether this other reality is the better one."

Hermione stood up. "Now, wait. The person doing it has to have an intention--"

"You know who's doing it?"

"Not for certain; I haven't had time to work on that yet."

Shacklebolt stepped closer. "Find out. And do not stop it until we've had time for analysis."

Hermione looked pointedly at Cedric, and Shacklebolt had the grace to look somewhat sheepish, but he didn't reverse his opinion, and Hermione said nothing else. A moment later the Mediwitch was back to paint the potion onto Cedric, and Hermione stood to go.

"Stay," he said.

"I should get back."

Cedric shook his head. "How long since you slept?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's all right. I brewed some Pepper-Up while I worked on the other. Oh, obviously, this is your potion." She pointed at the box she'd brought in. "You should use it instead. Fresher."

Cedric nodded at the Mediwitch, who just shrugged and picked up a new vial. "Of course," he said. "Still, I'm bored. Stay? Please?"

She shook her head, looking at him as though he were quite ridiculous, but sat back down, turning away a bit while he received his treatment, which did, in fact, seem to help more than the previous iterations. He wondered whether she and past-Snape had in fact improved on it, which he wouldn't put past her-or actually, either of them. When the Mediwitch left, Cedric waited for a minute, watching his skin revert to normal, sort of, then realized she'd in fact fallen asleep in the chair. That wouldn’t do; he reached for his wand and sent her slightly more deeply asleep, then got up and picked her up, putting her in his bed.

He sat in the chair for a little while himself, reading a magazine he filched from the other side of the screen, where the patient was sleeping anyway, but soon enough, he got tired again. Hermione was curled up in the bed, and he couldn’t stay in the chair, so, after a very brief consideration, he shrugged and got back in the bed with her. He was exhausted and more than half dead, and she was at least as tired; he didn't think it was even possible for anything remotely improper to occur, even if he were worried about it.

The bed was a little narrow, but that was easy enough to fix with a hand on his wand, and here, there would be no alarming instrument malfunctions. He closed his eyes, pulled Hermione back against him, and went to sleep.

He woke this time at the jolt against his chest when Hermione sat up. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up as well, only to find he'd at some point forgotten how to organize his body for that. He rolled onto his back, and she looked over her shoulder at him to shush him.

"What?" His whisper was quiet but he shushed him again anyway.

She listened for a moment, apparently to something he either couldn’t hear or wasn't picking out the background noise, then turned to him and lay back down to whisper. "We have to get you out of here. Also, you should have wakened me. I didn't have time for--"

"Wait. Why?"

She'd rolled out of the bed and was refastening her hair in a band at her nape, apparently not especially concerned about it appearance so much as its being out of her way. "Just get up," she murmured.

"Can't actually."

"What?"

"Can't. Can't quite organize my muscles to get up." He tried to say it steadily, though probably the shakiness he felt wouldn’t come through in a whisper anyway.

She bent over him. "Muscle or mind?"

"Not sure."

"Fuck. Right, then."

Cedric wasn't sure what she had in mind to do next, though, it occurred to him, perhaps she'd told him, and he'd forgotten. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility. So when she yanked off the blanket and unceremoniously stripped him with her wand while she Summoned another potion bottle into her other hand, he had to bite his lip to keep from complaining--and honestly, what was it with the no warning about this? She vaporized the stuff and dropped it on him all at once, then Levitated him and rolled him over to get his back. He lifted up onto his elbows. "Um. Maybe better," he said, moving his legs experimentally.

"Good. This is going to be enough to do without having to carry you. Stand up."

Cedric did, though clearly despite the treatment, thing weren't very well-controlled; his knees were knocking and his balance was questionable. Still, he was determined not to make anything any more difficult, so he carefully held himself upright and ignored that he was naked. "What are we doing?"

"Getting you out of here. The Aurors are--"

The Pops of Apparition into the room startled him, and before another word was uttered, she wrapped an arm around him and picked up the box of potions, then Apparated them out. He fell as soon as they landed, which wasn't much of a surprise to him, though it was quite a feat that he managed to catch the box when she tumbled onto him as well. "Sorry." He looked around. "Where-"

"My parents' house, which Shacklebolt will think of soon enough, but fortunately I put up a bit of a Apparition-dissuasion charm on it a long time ago. It lets me in, of course."

"Ah."

She pulled a bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door, and enlarged it a bit, then threw it at him. "Put this on. Also, those Potions need better padding. Can you cushion that box?"

"No wand."

"Damn it."

"Sorry!"

"Not your fault." She put a cushioning charm on the box while he struggled his way into the robe, then tossed him a pair of rather absurd slippers with bunny ears on them, which grew as they flew so they'd fit him.

He stood up again, shakily, once he had them on, and tied the bathrobe shut.

She stopped still a moment, then Summoned a stream of items from the bath and her wardrobe that shrunk and dropped into a bag, then she stood before him and looked up. "Ready?"

"Where are we going?" He was willing enough, and thought probably he could choose not to go if he weren't--an uncooperative Apparition partner could certainly make a Splinch occur--but he was curious.

"Not saying, here."

He shrugged one shoulder, which took him enough off balance that he staggered. Damn. He was going to have to be more careful. "Ready."

"Good." She held the potions-box in both hands, wrapped around his waist, and her bag of whatever all else she had was in the pocket of his robe.

"Hermione?"

"What?" She looked up.

"Just. For..." He lost the word he wanted, but didn't bother explaining as he carefully leaned down to kiss her lips, making sure not to overbalance them somehow.

She squeezed him tighter and nodded. "For luck. Also, don't say anything when we get there." To his surprised she rose up on her toes to return the gesture, and then, just as he heard the front door opening, she took them away.

He managed not the actually fall down this time when they arrived, though he did find himself puzzled. He barely managed not to ask where on earth they were, but he remembered she'd said not to say anything, so he waited while she helped him to a dusty chair, then went and carefully pushed back a series of books in the dry old shelves, checking each title in turn. The chandelier flared overhead and he looked up, then looked back at her.

"It's Snape's old house," she said. “The Aurors know about it, of course, but for one, I'm hoping it won't occur to them I'd come here, and for another, he had passive charms set." She pointed at the books. "I told him I might need a bolt-hole. He told me how to ward the place."

"And what the hell is going on?"

She pulled a device out of her left ear. "I left the other end of this in the Auror offices before I brought the potion back. I had a feeling, and while I suppose technically it was treasonous or something, I popped forward with the Time Turner, too. That's always tricky, because there are multiple possible futures, but this one was pretty strong.."

"How the hell--"

"I've known most of them a long time, under stressful circumstances," she said. "I took the chance they wouldn't look in the rubbish bin. They've decided the other reality is better for everyone."

"They. What?"

"Fewer deaths. The opportunity to interrogate Bellatrix Lestrange regarding additional spies; clearly some got away. No need to keep caring for Karkaroff. That sort of thing. They've likely got someone in dealing with Atteby, so he won't further alter… anyway. The fact you haven't actually died is what's keeping the whole thing from fully resolving into a whole new world."

"But that's... How can they think they have the right?" Cedric was angry, and wanted to stand upright and pace, but knew he'd just hurt himself.

"They think it serves the public interest." Hermione sighed and sat on the other chair, another cloud of dust coming up from around her. "They can't actively try to do harm, of course, but they can be wrong."

"I don't know, I think that's actively harming me," Cedric said. "Shit, that's just. They were coming to see to it I died."

"Yeah. Which is why I had to get you out. Now I just have to work out how to fix this."

Cedric pursed his lips. "Simple is good, right?"

"Right."

"Right." He paused. "Why aren't you of the opinion it's for the public good?"

"Because it isn't what happened."

"Neither was a hippogriff rescue."

"Actually, it was. We just didn't know it had already happened when we made it happen, is all. Except it was clear it had, only… Never mind." She rubbed at her temples.

He grinned. "Right. Time paradoxes give people headaches."

"Exactly." She looked at her hands for a minute. "Also, I've had a couple of weeks to think about it," she added.

Cedric frowned, then remembered she'd created time to make the potion. "Oh. Right."

"And I concluded something possibly selfish, but also in line with my basic belief this would be wrong." She looked him over carefully. "It's not lasting nearly long enough. Things really are accelerating."

"What was the selfish thing?"

She flushed but looked him in the eye. "I concluded I'd had more and better conversation with you in the last, well, for you, two days or so than with pretty much anyone else in the last five years. I remember we used to be friends. I've lost Ron, and Sirius, and Viktor--not that he's dead, but he's more reclusive than I am. I've lost surrogate parents because when Ron died, well. And that wouldn't be better in the other reality. I've lost Harry, mostly, and I just. I don't need to lose any more friends."

He blinked. "Oh."

"I don't mean I expect any sort of, I don't know, anything in particular, but I just can't take losing anyone else. I can't. And it's not better for anyone I care about, in the new one, and damn it, I'm a bloody war hero, and I can make it not happen."

He looked down for a moment, then back up. "You can expect things, if you want, and also, yes, you bloody well are. As am I, if not quite in the same degree."

She nodded, and went back to rubbing her temples, then jumped to her feet as light flared in the corner. He turned suddenly, and found himself leaning back more than he wanted to be, and he couldn't see her, but he could see the Patronus. He corrected himself. Not just any Patronus; it was Prongs.

"What is it?" she said, behind him.

Prongs went past him and to her, then the light faded out and she came around in front of him. "Right, and if I wasn't already sure, that's just the last bloody straw."

"What is?"

"Oh. The message was just for me?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Right. Charlie's bruising all over, and Harry's apparently… I didn't actually realize they were together. I owled him the gist, and he rightly thinks it's related."

Cedric gaped. "Shit, neither did I. And in the other reality, Charlie must have died."

"Yeah. This has to stop. If my own selfish reasons weren't enough, I am not letting Harry lose that. It's bad enough--"

"You don't have to convince me," Cedric said. "I'm right there. What about. Can you…" Bugger, and there went his vocabulary again. He looked at her. "Potion, a lot, my remind. Thinking."

"You have an idea?"

He nodded and waited while she went to get the stuff from the pile she'd set down on coming in. She didn't vaporize it, instead simply painting it onto his brow and massaging it into his hair and scalp. "Better?"

"Yes, and also feels nice. Can you just go back and make all this not happen? Re-alter the same time that already is?"

"I. Perhaps that would work, except, well, there were charms on the maze, and I don't know if I can work out how to get around Dumbledore to get in, and also, oh hell. I can't leave you here alone."

"What?"

"If I fail, you die, and then that's that."

Cedric thought about that for a moment. "All right, we know one person who is, in this time frame, living and trusted and probably can get into that maze."

"Who?"

He stared at her. "Who? Harry."

"Oh. Oh, right, because it would be, only he. And I'd need--"

Cedric convinced his left arm to lift up and bump its hand into her shoulder. "I'd shake you a little if I could. You've been great up to now, and you're exhausted, and Hermione, stop panicking."

She looked down at his hand, which had fallen back to his lap, then bit her lip. "Right. He can't get in here, though."

"It's okay. Go get him. I can hang on for a little while. I think the Apparition might have made it fail faster or something." This was, of course, utter bullshit, as Cedric had no reason to think any such thing, but they were just plain going to need Harry for this, because there was no way that potion was going to keep working long enough to come up with a better plan. They were coming up on desperate, so he looked her in the eye and lied. "Give it another go on vital stuff--brain, heart, lungs--before you go, and come straight back. I assume you can get to a Time Turner."

She pulled the chain up out of her shirt, and he grinned. "See? We're good. Send your Patronus, fix me up, and go."

Hermione took a deep breath. "And then--"

"And then when you come back, we can talk about you not losing me." He winked, glad that applying the potion to his head gave him control of his facial muscles as well as his mind. "Meanwhile, I might need another kiss for luck."

She stepped back. "Flirt."

"What? I was serious! Hey! I can't reach you if you step back… not that I can actually reach you anyway, other than by flinging my hand in your general direction." He was getting better at being casual about the fact that his body was a disaster. "Course, I suppose I'm probably a bit disgusting for kissing at the moment, but I was hoping you might overlook--"

She glared. "That's not it. I don't care that you're multicolored and floppy; I'm just composing myself to sent the message to Harry first. To give him time to get it and be ready to go."

"Oh, right." He waited while she sent her message, then lifted the hand a little toward her. "Now give him a few minutes, which should be perfect."

"You don't have to kiss me because I'm saving you, you know," she said, starting to kneel then frowning as she tried to work out how, exactly to arrange them.

"Please."

"Please, what?"

"Please, that's not it. I want the kissing, but not if it's making you uneasy."

"Even with no primping?" She finally literally rearranged him in the chair, then sat on his lap.

"Especially with no primping, and I'm pretty sure my hair is uncombed."

"And currently sticky with potion."

"Ah. I see why you mightn't want to kiss me, then," he said as she still hung back. As he'd hoped, that was enough to goad her to lean forward and she kissed him, lightly, which he couldn't do anything about because he couldn't much change the pressure, or anything else. He opened his mouth against hers, then dropped his chin to make her follow. It was a dirty trick, but it brought her effectively closer, so when he lifted again, there was better pressure and a firmer kiss. He hoped the potion lasted long enough to let him leave her a little breathless, at least.

She pulled away, a moment later. "Will that suffice? For luck purposes?"

"Oh, not nearly," he said, lifting his chin again to barely reach up for another.

She pecked his lips again, then climbed up off him. "It'll have to do for now," she said. "Also, I find it interesting, purely academically of course, that you can be practically dead and react like that."

"Like what?"

She looked down his body, and he dropped his eyes to his lap, then chuckled. "Okay, that is funny. I can't feel it, though."

"Too bad." She fetched two more vials of the potion and rubbed on into his head again, and the other into his torso. "I'll be right back," she said with one more peck on the lips, and then she Apparated out.

Cedric sat and counted heartbeats until she returned, wondering whether it was useful to attempt to guess how much time was passing, given his pulse was racing.

"Cedric!"

He woke up, confused, to find Hermione leaning over him, "Hmm?"

She started rubbing the potion into his hair again, then on his body, then, muttering about letting his body get too horrible, Vanished his robe and Levitated him into a vaporized cloud. It returned some feeling, but not much control. "How long were you gone?"

"About twelve minutes, plus one to work out you were failing already once we got back here," she said as she settled him back on the chair and Summoned a blanket for him. "Harry, you're going to have to haul your arse as fast as you can. At that rate, I have enough of this to keep him alive for maybe ninety minutes, maybe not. And it's going to take some time to get far enough back and exactly on time..."

"Will that matter, once it starts?" Cedric asked. "I mean, because his now will be before ours, so it won't matter if-"

"Sort of. Because the potion is protecting your time, it'll also hold you in tune with the passage of… look, I could draw you a diagram, but I'd rather not, all right?" She stood and transferred the loop of chain off her head and over his, then described how to control hours versus days versus lunar months.

He nodded at Cedric as she moved, then settled to paying attention. "Got it," he said.

She repeated to him the date and time of the TriWizard maze, which caused him to roll his eyes, but he nodded. He looked at Cedric. "Sorry to get you into this," he said.

Cedric shook his head as best he could. "No worries. I think I'd rather you had than not, given the other choice. How's Charlie?"

Harry shook his head. "Dying, and pissed off. I won't fuck this up."

Cedric nodded. "I know. You never do."

"Thanks."

Hermione stepped between them. "Lovely, but could you go already? You're wasting time.”

Harry nodded and said, soberly, "Hang on, mate. I won't be a minute, all right?"

Cedric nodded and watched Harry lift his hand to commence turning the time back. Harry vanished, and Cedric looked up at Hermione. "He'll get it done, you know." Of course, if he didn't, as far as he could tell, he'd just fall asleep and never know.

She chewed on her lip and went to bring the remaining potion closer, then rearranged him again and curled upon his lap, vial in her hand.

He had enough control of his shoulders to roll one up and back, encouraging her to put her head down there. "He tell you about the hair?"

She shook her head, hair rustling against his neck and ear.

"He used that Hydra charm. He's adaptable, Hermione. He'll get it done. Come on. Tell me about something."

She pressed her forehead against his neck and muttered, "You should keep talking, so I'll know when it's time for more."

"What do you want me to talk about?"

She lifted her head so he could see her, worried but trying to smile. "Anything but Quidditch."

He laughed, and began listing the top ten most impressive Quidditch plays in history. She smacked his shoulder, but he kept going because she was also laughing. He got up to number three before he needed more potion to keep talking, and after that, he changed the subject.

The clock on the wall behind him chimed, and he looked up, as though he was going to be able to see it. "When'd he leave?"

"It's been about eighteen minutes."

He nodded. "How long you think it was going to take him to get there?"

"Maybe twenty. That kind of control is hard, over that much distance, and I didn't have time to look up how many lunar months and whatnot."

Cedric nodded. "Still, easy enough to get a fair approximation."

She set her head down again.

"We could go back to passing the time by kissing more."

"I think I want to wait for you to be a bit more whole for that."

"A proposition, is it?"

"No, not really. Just, I want you in control of yourself."

"Particular."

"Only regarding purple people."

He laughed, then coughed when his stomach muscles refused to cooperate with breathing. She crawled down off him and applied more potion to his abdomen and then up his torso.

"How, exactly, are we going to know?" he asked once he had the capacity to speak again.

"I'm not sure, really. I didn't have time to investigate that part."

"I guess, if I stop needing more potion, though?"

"Well, yes, that would be a sign."

"Or if, for instance, I start feeling more."

"That would be another, yes."

He looked down his stomach at her, kneeling between his thighs. "Or if my skin started to stop being so weird-looking."

"Or that."

He ran his hand through her hair, noting he wasn't actually strong or coordinated enough to disentangle when he ran into a knot. "Or my hands started working."

"Or. Oh!"

He smiled. "I think maybe he's on his way back."

She crawled up to straddle his lap, and well, now he could feel it, which was both better and worse, and damn it, everything was going back to itching, but considering her purpose was apparently to kiss him senseless, he concluded he thoroughly didn't care.

"'Mione?"

"I'm not mostly asleep," she muttered against his ear.

"I know. The 'her' got lost against your neck. Would I recover more quickly with more of the potion, and is there any reason not to use it?"

"I'm not sure. Hold on." She bit his earlobe and slid her hand up the other side of his neck into his hair.

"All right, but what I was thinking was, if it were a good idea, perhaps we might do that so I could be all better when Harry gets back, which will probably be in a few minutes? So then as soon as he leaves I can find a shower, wash this shit off, and possibly see about being in control of my not-gross body?" It took him a while to deliver this speech, what with needing to stop every couple of words to nibble at her chin or throat or ear, but as feeling returned he found he couldn’t help it; the need to use the feeling was strong.

She stopped and pulled back, hair thoroughly mussed and lips swollen, which sent a fairly impressive jolt of sensation from his throat to his thighs. "Or you could just keep doing what you were doing," he finished weakly.

She shook her head. "You're right. Harry will be back, and I can't imagine he won't stop here when he arrives. God. I probably ought not be mauling you when he gets here!"

"He might be alarmed, yes," Cedric said, sitting up straighter and enjoying the ability to do so with his own legs and feet, though he was startled to find he ached rather badly. "Ouch."

"What?"

"Nothing. I just hurt. Feel like I ran a marathon or something. Oh. I imagine it's like when you work hard and it leaves whatever stuff in your muscles?"

"Probably." She backed off the chair, feet on the floor still more or less straddling his knees. "Sorry."

"God, no, I wasn't complaining. I am completely fine with winding up more sore, just--"

"No, you'd asked about the potion and I forgot. I didn't mean I was stopping. Exactly. Only, do you really want to sit up in a chair while we do it?"

"Do I want to know?" interrupted Harry from behind her.

She whirled. "You did it!"

Cedric remained seated, conscious of the problem of his erection, relatively hidden by the blanket across his lap, and also aware that since he still looked like hell, probably Harry wouldn’t expect him to get up. "Thanks, Harry."

Harry looked back and forth between them. "I think I was interrupting, though," he said. "I should go."

"Well, of course you should go check on Charlie," Hermione said. "We were, in case you were considering some other interpretation, considering whether to apply the rest of the potion to Cedric, to speed his healing. Oh, do you want to take some to Charlie?"

"You think he'll need it?"

"I don't know." Hermione frowned. "I hadn't actually considered what the process would look like for anyone caught in the middle of all this. It should be, in theory, that Charlie is perfectly fine and unaffected, though."

Harry chewed his lip. "Do you mind if I take some, in case?"

"Not at all," Cedric said. "I can always heal the old-fashioned way, really, so it's just a help."

Hermione frowned. "Harry, why don't you just send Prongs to check on him? So you know he's all right, before you get there."

Harry brightened; he'd been a bit fretful-looking. He immediately sent the Patronus through the wall and went to hug Hermione, who hugged him back gladly. Very quickly an irate-looking Welsh Green (who was white, of course, but the snout was unmistakable) returned, and Harry listened for a couple of seconds, then grinned. "He's fine, he has no idea where the fuck I am, and what do I mean is he feeling better and I should get my arse back there because they have scaling going on."

Cedric smiled broadly. "You should tell him, course."

Hermione nodded. "It's only fair. You shouldn’t have to keep that to yourself, though I expect you probably have to swear him to secrecy. Anyway, though, before you go, can you say exactly what you did?"

Harry hesitated, then nodded and got out his wand. "I'd rather only show you the once," he said. "Later, Hermione, if you need the memory for analysis after I show Charlie, you can have it. Legilimens!"

Cedric hadn't known a Legilimens could jump into two heads at once, but he was aware Hermione was also seeing the scene through Harry's eyes: The maze, Young Harry and Young Cedric looking at each other, far down the narrow path, nodding, agreeing to both go. Neither of them had noticed a third party in the shrubbery, and they started toward the glowing cup. As they did, still another presence materialized behind the lot of them. "Atteby," Hermione confirmed.

Atteby looked at Young Harry and Cedric, and behind them, the man that had been, at that point, believed to be Alastor Moody. Moody put up his wand to stun Cedric, but Atteby acted first, stunning Moody quietly. The two boys hadn't noticed a thing; it was loud in the maze, in the wind.

Present Harry put up his own wand. "Stupefy!" he shouted, then "Stop! Cedric!"

Both boys stopped just short of the cup and turned, eyes wide as they saw two bodies that hadn't been there a moment before. "What--?"

Present Harry ran up behind them, levitating neatly over the tangle of vines that had tried to trap them earlier. "Sorry," he said. "This has to happen this way." He grabbed Cedric's arm and cast a memory charm, then stunned him.

Young Harry stared. "What--"

"I can't explain, and you can't remember this. Legilimens." Young Harry's jaw went slack as Present Harry worked, and then, after a moment, Present Harry gave young Harry a shove toward the cup, inches away, leaving Young Cedric sitting slumped on the ground.

Harry ended the memory and looked at them both soberly, then Disapparated from the house.

Hermione looked at Cedric and bit her lip. "But it worked," she said. "It worked."

Cedric nodded. "I'm glad it was him that went back. No one else could have done what needed done, to make it all match, could they?"

"Probably not. It's always been Harry that's the only one," Hermione agreed. "It's totally unfair--"

"But not really optional. Yeah." Cedric frowned. "Do you suppose the Aurors are still looking for us?"

"I." Hermione paused to consider. "Possibly, but I'm not sure whether their personal protection matrices would keep them remembering a wrong timeline. You do. I do. Harry, because it's his timeline to fix."

"So we should probably stay here."

"At least until you're feeling a bit better," she agreed.

He pressed his lips together. "I actually feel pretty all right," he said. "A bit weak, but no worse than after I've been in bed with a cold or something. Still, if you don't mind, I think I'd rather like to see about the rest of the potion. And a shower. And possibly a nap that doesn't involve dreaming of choking to death."

"Anything else?" She looked up

"There might be something else between there, yes," Cedric said. "Possibly after, or during, the shower part."

Hermione nodded and bent to retrieve a vial, pouring the stuff into his own hands to cover himself.

"Help, would you," he asked, rubbing it in quickly and standing to turn so she could get his back, his legs, his arse… He held his hands out before him and watched the healthy pink returning--mostly, and certainly enough for him--then stopped to pick up the blanket from where it had hit the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders. "Snape have a bath here?"

She grinned and said, "I suspect he did, yes." They went looking for the bath, hoping for soap and settling for running hot water and the suds they could get from Hermione's wand.

"So," Cedric began, as they watched the shower splash steaming water into the ancient tub. "Uh, you want to just leave me your wand? I suppose I might be able to come up with something wandless, but I'm not entirely sure how reliable I am at the moment."

She shook her head. "I don't share my wand."

She looked completely serious, and he was starting to point out that that was going to be completely inconvenient, with her having to keep producing soap for him when he realized she was pulling her shirt over her head. "Oh. Right."

She shrugged. "I do believe you suggested during, which I surmised might involve my presence, unless you were hoping I'd stand out in the hall and offer suggestion for how you might entertain yourself?" She arched a brow, and he grinned back and didn't argue, instead dropping his blanket again and stepping over the high edge of the tub, biting back a groan as this stretched things that were still a little sore. "Besides," she added belatedly. "I may have concluded in the last forty-eight hours--give or take ten years, I suppose--that not taking advantage of being stuck somewhere together, not taking advantage of an opportunity if we want to, what with being both alive and all, is just silly." She paused. "You asked, before, for a goodbye kiss, and I find I don't want to ever again find myself saying goodbye before I've got around to saying hello, is all."

He did groan when the hot water hit his back, then he pulled the curtain most of the way shut to minimize the splashing and just stood there, eyes closed, head dropped back into the spray as she talked. He smiled at her point, though really, about a third as many words might have got the point across. Ten seconds later the draft warned him the curtain was being opened, and he looked up. "Uh. Hi." He managed not to comment that she was in fact even thinner than she'd looked (or felt), and instead smiled more broadly and tried not to think about how sappy it probably looked, nor that he was single-handedly making up for her wordiness. Honestly, Uh, hi?

She pointed her wand at his chest and sent a heavy stream of soap, dripping and foamy, across his collarbones and shoulders, down his belly and back up one arm, across again, down the other, on and on until he was practically covered in stiff peaks of foam.

"That might be enough."

She set the wand down on the dish for the soap that wasn't, and set her hands flat against his chest. "One must always be thorough." She started scrubbing, hands moving up over his shoulders, shoving soap into his hair, scrubbing there too.

He rolled his eyes and scooped a handful of the soap off him and flung it onto her belly. "As long as we're being thorough and taking advantage," he said.

"I thought you wanted to get this all off you," she said.

"I do. I just thought there might be better scrubbing mechanisms."

"What?"

He smirked and stepped forward, feeling stronger all the time, until they were touching. "Soap, and rubbing," he said.

She scowled. "Or we could go with a faster approach, in which you turn 'round and rub that soap on you, I wash your back, just like we did with the potion, only now we're getting you all cleaned up." She frowned up. "Uh. Your hair is running."

"What?"

"Rinse your hair."

He ducked under the water and watched muddy brown water swirl down the drain. "What the hell?"

She shook her head. "As I was saying. You wash, I'll scrub your back, and then we can go from there." She picked her wand back up to soap his back and scrubbed his hair again--which was reasonable enough given that's where so much of the potion had gone. The water was muddy again, but he was quickly clean. He insisted on at least quickly washing her off, too, and then they stepped out.

"Huh. No towels," Hermione said, looking under the sink and in the cabinet above the decrepit toilet.

Cedric picked up the blanket and rubbed off his hair, then shrugged. "It's not cold, at least." He handed it to her, and she dried off as well, then picked up her clothes. He took them from her and dropped them right back on the floor. "The blanket, I can think of a use for," he said. "The clothes, unless you have a game in mind…"

She blushed, and he laughed, then stepped forward. "Enough going round and round, wouldn't you say?" He pulled her close and warm against him and ducked down for a proper kiss. It hadn't been more than half an hour since she'd been straddling him and arching and kissing him in the sitting room, but this was different--deliberate and slow and eager without being frantic.

He thought on the whole he liked it better, and nipped at her lip, then slowly kissed his way along her jaw to her ear.

Finally she pulled back slightly and looked up. "Any primping to do?"

"What?"

"Just checking. If not, we might move this to somewhere more horizontal."

He pursed his lips and pretended to consider. "It's an advantage to being a wizard, you know. Horizontal is fairly unnecessary."

She shook her head. "Not without your wand."

"My 'wand' is just fi--ow!" He chuckled. "Fine. No crude wand references. However, so, you're thinking one of Snape's beds?"

She grimaced. "Maybe not." He brow furrowed as he thought about where to go, and he leaned down and whispered "Actually, I don't care where, but I have a thought."

"What's that?" she asked.

"You can make a Portkey, I expect."

"Of course."

"Then, I think since this mess all started at Hogwarts, and more importantly, since I have quarters of my own there--"

She blinked up at him. "You want me to make a Portkey and 'port' us, naked and wet, into a school?"

"I do. I have a perfectly good bed, a warm fire, soft blankets, the services of well-compensated House-Elves…"

She shook her head. "We can't get into Hogwarts like that."

"No, but we can get to Hogsmeade."

She sighed, but nodded. "And then through the tunnel. I'm sure this breaks about seventeen different protocols," she said. "But I also think even if the Aurors are still looking--"

"They're unlikely to look there, now everything's gone back to how it should be." He nodded, and she Summoned her wand and transfigured the blanket into a couple of barely-adequate cloaks. Cedric thought the blanket was getting quite a thorough workout with all the uses to which it was being put, but it didn't matter; he didn't plan to be wearing it long. Several of the empty potion vials became badly-fitting but good-enough shoes, and then she picked up an old empty soap dish from the counter, collected her thoughts and cast the Portus charm. A moment later they were in the Shrieking Shack and heading for the school.

It was a quick trip to his quarters, and much as he'd suggested it, he was almost surprised they weren't interrupted. He opened the door and led her through, past the sitting area and into his bedroom. He Summoned his spare wand from the wardrobe and Banished the temporary clothes as soon as the door swung shut behind them, and pulled her up against him again.

"Now. Where were we?"

She smiled. "We were at Spinner's--ow!"

"No crude wand jokes, no over-literal answers to my questions."

She grinned and lifted her chin. "Right."

They kissed again, slowly, and he danced them toward the bed, the shuffle to get there feeling neither awkward nor hurried. When the backs of his thighs hit the mattress, he sat, parting his feet to pull her close without actually dragging her onto the bed, but she shook her head and put up a knee outside his hip, pushed him over backward, and brought up the other knee to straddle him.

"I think, in fact, this might be where we were," she said, bending forward over him so her hair hung in his face. "Only, in a chair."

He grinned. "It might, and as my feet are now hanging in midair, you're going to have to let me move if you want there to be any sort of leverage--"

"Why Cedric Diggory," she said, eyes wide. "It's an advantage to being a witch, you know. Leverage is fairly unnecessary."

He laughed and ceded the point, pulling her down onto his chest. "You're in charge of leverage, then. Meanwhile--" he slid his hand down her side and cupped her arse. "I'm in charge of making sure no part of your body goes untouched."

She arched a brow as she shifted to press against his hand. "I don't think you can reach my feet."

He caressed her hip for a moment, tangling his other hand in her hair to pull her down for another kiss, then winked and levitated them, flipping them in the air so she landed amid the pillows with him over her, his knees between her thighs. "It's an advantage, being a wizard, you know."

"Levitation trumps leverage?"

"Something like that." He dropped his head to her chest and nuzzled for a moment, then kissed his way down her ribs, and around under her breast, coming back up to suck the nipple between his lips. He gasped and arched up under him, and he decided perhaps some of the touching could be accomplished out of order. Such as after he made her make that noise several more times. He nuzzled again, across, to attend to the other nipple, weight on one hand, other hand caressing the back of her thigh now.

"As long as you're touching," she said, lifting her head to look down her body at him.

"Hmm?" He didn't much want to lift his lips from her breast.

She reached between then and found his hand and moved it where he wanted it.

He disentangled himself from around her leg and came back to the same place. "Demanding, aren't you?"

"Usually."

"You want this, then?" He slid his thumb down from damp curls and pushed it into her. "There?"

She arched and pushed her hips up against his hand. He took that as a yes, and shifted his weight again, pulling his thumb up to his lips. "I think I can do better than that."

She watched him put his thumb in his mouth to suck it clean, then scowled and pulled at the backs of his thighs with her ankles.

"Demanding," he muttered. "Not that I mind."

"Just as well."

He nodded against her shoulder as they moved. "Mm-hmm. Just as well."

Cedric was nearly asleep when the sound of a throat clearing roused him. He looked around.

"Diggory."

His eyes fell on the landscape over the dresser. "What the--" He stood and grabbed for a sheet to wrap around him then crossed the room to whisper, roughly, "Snape! You can't be going in the quarters of--"

"I am familiar with the rules, Diggory."

"You weren’t watching, were you?"

"No. Though I did hear you mention my old home. I assume you left it in as good condition as you found it?"

"What?"

"Nothing, I just thought it might introduce a legitimate reason for my concern."

"Why are you here?"

"I thought you might be interested to know, Atteby was caught, somehow a decade older, and was arrested for tampering. The portrait of Walburga Black in the court wing has decided I'm worthy of her conversation, and it seems they weren't able to remember what the effects had been, but they'd evidence aplenty that he'd been tampering. She thought he'd probably be in prison for quite some time."

"Good."

"In any case, they aren't looking for you."

"Excellent," said Hermione over Cedric's shoulder.

He turned. "Thought you were asleep."

"You were discussing the ramifications of all this. I woke up."

"You wake up over conversation quite a lot."

"It's a talent."

"I guess I'll have to learn not to talk in my sleep, then."

"Not if you only issue compliments."

The portrait made a face and mimed gagging when he turned and tipped down his chin to kiss her, and then Snape's image turned to go. "Oh. Diggory. Interesting new look." And he was gone.

Cedric looked down at Hermione, puzzled. "What?"

She rolled her eyes and took him to the mirror, which hemmed and hawed and finally let him see. The color had rinsed from his hair. All of it.

"Good lord. I look seventy."

"Please. You look prematurely gray."

"You think it'll come back?"

She shook her head. "No idea, but meanwhile, it matches your eyes, and besides, the students will just think you're more authoritative."

He wrinkled his nose.

"You could dye it, I suppose. Of course, then I would be forced to comment on the primping, and also it would leave less time for me to enjoy your authoritative professorial image."

He groaned, then gaped. "My what?"

"Isn't that every girl's wish? For the hot professor to--"

"Hermione! That's--"

"Perfectly legitimate. I'm not fifteen, and I'm nearly sure all my uniforms are long gone. You'll have to tolerate me like this."

Since she was wearing nothing in his quarters in the middle of the night, Cedric thought he could live with that.