#Yes- I gave Cedric a middle name. Seems like a lot of wizards have them

[forestwhisper3]

The segments below are for a fic that I may or may not post in the future. If I ever do, just keep in mind that these are rough drafts. Ideas and concepts could change if I ever decide to write it for real, so something you see here could be different in that possible future fic.

I just wanted to put up more pictures of my SIs, and figured I’d give you content to go along with them. Enjoy!

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Magic.

It's a heavy topic, full of wonder for some, and disdain to others. At some point in our childhoods, I imagine most kids dream of having it. When they grow up a bit, they instead immerse themselves in books or video games in order to fulfill the need for the fantastic. That had been the case for myself, at least, but now...Well...

"Oooh, your first bout of accidental magic! Mummy is so proud of you!"

I stared at the toy plush in my hand in shock, while my mother in this (now quite strange) new life of mine danced around in glee. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense, and I knew that the next couple of decades were going to be some of the most interesting, amazing, and dangerous I'd ever faced.

However, It did take me a bit longer after that to come to terms with what I'd learned. It felt like I had just come to accept the fact that I'd been reborn, and then I got this curveball thrown at me. Not that it was bad- I was actually kind of excited at the prospect -it was just...strange is all. Not to mention what lay in store, considering it was the year 1980.

Nineteen-Eighty...in a magical version of Earth...with British accented words and spells that were way too similar to be mere coincidence. If I was where I thought I was, then I was right at the tail end of a very dangerous time.

Of course, right as I figured that out, I had to be proven right in the worst possible way.

"The tapestry does. Not. LIE! Tell us where the child is!"

Blood-curdling screams ripped through the air, and it was all I could do to choke back the sobs that wanted to escape as my second mother was tortured in front of me. She had hidden me well when the Death Eaters had forced their way into our home, but I was still close enough that I didn't want to risk making noise.

The cruciatus curse...Book descriptions and movie scenes did not do the horror of it justice. Her body was twisting and writhing on the ground like she was being electrocuted, her eyes were wide open and bulging, the torn veins within turning them bloodshot, and a bloody foam began to gather at the corners of her mouth the longer she was subjected to it.

The screams continued, but I couldn’t look away.

Finally. Finally. After what felt like an eternity, shouts were heard outside, followed by hurried steps. The death eaters glanced at one another before huddling around something and vanishing, allowing a heavy silence to fall for a split second before the aurors rushed in.

And if one of those aurors happened to have dark, messy hair and round glasses, well that was just the icing on the whole fucking cake, wasn't it?

"Damn it!" the man- who could only be James Potter -cursed in frustration. "They had a portkey!"

He looked around, and I could see the moment he spotted my poor (brave, amazing, selfless) mother by the way his eyes widened.

"Edgar!" he snapped to someone out of my line of sight. "Look her over! Frank, check the house. Sirius, help him out. See if you can find out why they target-...ed...Sirius?"

"I-...I-I know her," was the weak response.

"What?"

"Sylvana Verinus," he continued, as if he hadn't heard. "We-...We had a thing...A couple of years ago."

"A thing?"

"It was mutual," he replied with a hint of defensiveness. "But we eventually broke it off. She felt things were getting too dangerous, and I wanted to stay as an auror. We decided it would be best to go our separate ways."

"Do you know why they would target her like this?"

"That's the thing. I have no idea why they would go after her, much less go through all the effort of seeking her out among the muggles! She's a halfblood, and as soon as we split, she pretty much fell off the map. There's no reason why they should have gone for her specifically- not with bigger targets in front of them."

I knew, though. I knew...and soon he would too. He would know it was because of me that she was-

"James!" another, more muffled voice called down from the second floor. "She has a kid! A girl from the looks of this room!"

"Shit, then where is she? Spread out and see if you can find her!"

Tired, stressed, and knowing I wasn't in danger anymore, I was no longer able to hold back the grief I felt for losing the woman I'd grown to love as a second mother. Once the first sob broke free, the rest quickly followed, until I was a bawling mess.

There was a bright glow, and the next moment, I was meeting James Potter face to face.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

James Potter had seen a lot since he'd decided to become an auror, but try as he might, he couldn't keep his heart from breaking a bit at the sight before him.

She couldn't have been older than two or three.

Heart wrenching sobs painfully twisted his heart, and gray eyes closed as the tears flowing down flushed cheeks became too much to handle. Her body was trembling, and she had her tiny hands close to her mouth, as if she'd had them pressed tightly against it. A glance down from his transfigured ladder (her mother had hidden her in an expanded air vent) showed that she would have had a direct view of the events below. With a grimace and another sharp pang of his heart, he turned back.

"Hey there," he murmured as gently as he could. "It's all right."

"No," she whimpered. "No. Mu-Mummy is..."

God, hearing that heartbreak was tearing his own heart apart. Not for the first time, he felt a deep anger towards Voldemort and all of those who followed him. How could they feel no remorse in doing something like this?

He could think (and rant) about it later. Right now, all that mattered was this little girl.

"My friends and I came to help you and your mum," he reassured her softly. "My name is James. Do you want to come down with me?"

She didn't answer for long enough that he was beginning to think she hadn't heard him, but then she nodded just the slightest bit, and he smiled.

"That's great. I'm gonna pull you out now, okay?"

Slowly, so as to not startle her, he reached in and carefully pulled her out. As soon as she was in his arms, he felt two small arms wrap around his neck and a small face bury itself into his shoulder. The fabric dampened immediately as the wails continued in earnest.

With a sigh, he squeezed her briefly before shifting her around until she was settled in one arm and made his way down. As he took that initial breath, however, he faltered.

One thing that was widely known amongst animagi, but never explicitly spoken about, was that it brought about enhancements. For example, those who could turn into birds of prey or felines usually tended to have sharper eyesight or focus. Rabbits and other small animals had faster reflexes. Almost everyone who had a warm blooded form had a more acute sense of smell- which was what was causing him confusion now.

Because this little girl smelled familiar.

He couldn't quite put his finger on why- he would need to change into his stag form to be sure unless the smell grew stronger -but something was being triggered in his brain.

"That her?"

And it seemed he wasn't the only one.

Sirius stared at the little girl in his arms, his eyebrows slightly furrowed and a strange expression on his face. He took a jerky step forward, stopped, then tried to move forward again, all the while looking as if he had no idea what to do with himself. It was a curious reaction, and if he hadn't had an idea as to what was causing it, he would have thought his friend had lost his marbles. Once Sirius got close enough, though, it all clicked into place.

'Fawn!' the animal part of his mind excitedly blared. 'Dark Fur's fawn! Must bring into herd! Fawnfawnfaw-'

He shook his head to quiet those thoughts and turned to Sirius, whose eyes were slowly growing wider and face slowly growing paler.

"Exactly how long ago was your thing with this woman again?"

Sirius swallowed visibly, but didn't respond. James couldn't really blame him. Instead, he just carefully unwound the girl from his neck and placed her in his best friend's arms with a flash of grim amusement.

"Congratulations, it's a girl."

"That's not fucking funny, James."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"...Aunty?" I prodded the figure on the floor, my throat tightening in tandem with my heart when there was no response. "Aunt Lily, wake up."

I knew- deep down I knew -that something so pivotal could not be changed so easily, but I'd hoped- James had even put up a fight this time...

Her red hair fanned around her like blood.

I choked back a sob, my heart crying out for the wonderful, kind woman who had been so full of life not even an hour ago. The woman who had paid the ultimate price in order to protect her child, and whose sacrifice would help pave the way for Voldemort's defeat. The woman who was so much more to me now than she'd been as a character in a book.

In this life, she'd been Aunt Lily, and I had loved her fiercely.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

But then, the first change. One I hadn't even been expecting, but one that filled me with almost debilitating relief.

James had survived.

I felt a sob escape me as I watched my dad try to get a response, doing my best to keep Harry from interrupting him. It seemed like whatever Voldemort had done to James kept him from waking up, but he was alive. He had a chance.

Harry still had his father.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Severus Snape was an embittered, petty, terrifying man. Seriously, I'd thought his treatment of Harry had been bad, but this?

This was so much worse.

I suppose I should have expected it- while Snape may have hated James, he had absolutely loathed Sirius. I doubted anyone would want to partner up with me after today, given the vendetta the other man seemed to carry against me. Was it even going to be possible to pass this class?

"Wrong," a voice hissed from beside me, my potion vanishing a moment later. "Can you not even follow basic directions, Black? Or do you find yourself above such a thing? Again! And twenty points from Hufflepuff for wasting my time."

I blinked back tears of frustration, my throat tight as I nodded and began anew for the fourth time.

In my last life, I had been fortunate to have never been bullied as a child. I never knew the sort of embarrassment, anger, or sorrow that came from constantly being picked on, teased, assaulted, or belittled. Being spared such treatment, as well as having decent friendships, had made me almost oblivious to the cruelties of people until I was blindsided by it as an adult. Although I quickly learned how to seem unaffected in the face of it, I had trouble keeping that countenance if I was unable to retaliate or defend myself for whatever reason (and I knew I could not afford to do such a thing now). As a result, I either ended up blowing up in anger or crying when I bottled up too much- sometimes both.

It seemed that today, it would be tears.

But I would not let them fall. Not here and now, when he would see them and feel nothing but satisfaction. Snape enjoyed drawing reactions from Harry and punishing him for them. I could only assume it would be the same for the daughter of the only man he'd hated more than James Potter.

"Snape isn't a good man, but he is a tragic villain. You can understand why he is the way he is, and I respect the hell out of him for still trying to do good after all the terrible shit he went through."

"Sev was-...he wasn't good, but he wasn't bad either. He just-...he made mistakes. Mistakes and choices that took him down the wrong path because he didn't see any other way. I wonder sometimes what might have happened if I hadn't-...If you ever make a friend in Slytherin, be kind to them, okay, Lia? Be kind, and don't give up on them no matter what."

I thought back on the words of two women I’d loved, and held back a bitter smile.

I wonder what they might have said...if they could see him now?

I had always frustrated my sister with the fact I still disliked Snape despite agreeing that her argument was a valid one. Something about him had always just rubbed me the wrong way, and I had hated the way he took everything out on children. No matter who you were, or how much you despised the hands life had dealt you, you should never take things out on a child.

I took fierce pride in the fact that Sirius had never done as much. He had his own faults- because there really was no excusing some of the actions of his youth -but at least he had never treated a kid badly as an adult.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Oh, man. I can't believe we lost so many points."

"Blame Black. She's the one who couldn't get the potion right."

"But you know? I was working near her and it didn't look wrong-"

"It had to have been! A professor wouldn't just vanish it so many times if it wasn't!"

"To be fair, I've heard some things about Snape from my brother."

"Yeah, about how he treats Gryffindors. We're Hufflepuffs! What could he have against us?!"

"That's true..."

"Don't forget who her dad is either. I bet she-"

"Shut-up, idiot! She's right there!"

The small group of Hufflepuffs shifted awkwardly as they were suddenly faced with Cordelia Black's stare. It wasn't that it looked angry- in fact, it looked rather flat -but there was something about it that seemed to pierce through them nonetheless. It made them look away and hasten their steps. The flat stare flashed with something he couldn't put a name to, and seemed to grow even more distant.

"Sorry about that. Here, let me help."

He doubted that she even remembered their meeting on the train, but he couldn't forget. Not when he could recall a small smile and sincere gaze that had warmed cool-grey into something almost unrecognizable from what her eyes were now.

It had been a nice smile. One that he hadn't seen since.

He knew about her, of course. Who didn't? Cordelia Black was the daughter of one of You-Know-Who's most devoted Death Eaters. The daughter of a man who was infamous for tricking the world into believing he was good, only to turn around and betray the Potters. Everyone knew the story by now- knew that you could never trust a Black no matter how different from the rest they seemed.

Still...

"It's fine. It was an accident, yeah? No harm done."

"If you're sure."

He couldn't help but wonder...

"Course! Thanks for helping me pick up my things, though. Anyway, my name's Cedric! Cedric Diggory! Nice to meet you!"

She blinked at him, looking almost surprised before something about her seemed to pull away even though she didn't take a single step back.

Was it really possible...

"...Cordelia," she introduced simply, her voice hesitant. "I-...I should go."

"Oh. Okay." He was a bit confused at the sudden shift, but brushed it off a moment later. She probably had friends to get back to. "Maybe I'll see you around the castle, then."

...for someone who was supposed to be evil...

Her smile shifted- (trembled) -even as it widened. "Maybe."

Then she was gone, and he pushed the strange encounter out of his mind until he was left gaping with the rest as Professor McGonagall called out her name for all to hear.

Black.

...to look so...so...

(Dark, despicable and tainted. Never trust them- can't trust them)

He thought of coolly distant eyes and blank expressions, and felt something in him ache.

(Nothing good ever comes from associating with that family)

She looked...lonely.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo

OoOoOoOoOoOoOo ~End

And shortly after, a friendship is born. By reaching out, Cedric will unknowingly make one of the best decisions of his life- you know, because it will increase his chances of actually living it. 

Anyway, hope you liked it. The image of Cordelia was made using this picrew:

https://picrew.me/image_maker/45252

and edited with ClipStudio. 

Let me know if you want to see more of her, or even if you want to see segments about my other SIs or OCs, and I’ll see what I can pull out.

[bludhavents]

hiii ☺️ whenever you want/can, could you do random/fluff prompt 11 with Cedric?

11. “just trust me on this one” reader x cedric.

omg i loved writing this i’m sorry it took an extra day for me to post, i wanted to make sure i was really proud of it before i sent it out. thank you so much for the request i hope you enjoy reading🤎

Felix Fly-icis: Cedric Diggory x reader

“Bloody hell, y/n i’ve been looking for you everywhere,” you heard Ron yell through the hallway. You turned around with a puzzled look on your face; Don’t be mistaken, Ron was a sweet boy who you’d talked to on occasion, but by no means were the two of you friends. You had no idea why he’d be looking for you, nevermind what could be so important he felt the need to shout it out in the hallway.

“Oh, uh. Sorry, Ron, I didn’t know you were looking for me, what’s going on?” You spoke once he was caught up to you. His eyes opened wide and he took a deep breath and began speaking.

“Well Cedric told Cho who told Luna who told Neville who told Dean who told Harry who told me to tell you,” Ron gasped for air before continuing, “Cedric wants you to meet him at the Quidditch field for lunch. Something about Liquid Luck. Or maybe it was Felix Felicis, I don’t remember,” his eyebrows drew together as he tried to think back to what Harry told him. “Either way, I’m almost positive he said the Quidditch field. Almost. You won’t be mad if I’m wrong, will you?” The expression on his face was nothing short of terror.

You let out a small laugh, “Ron, it’s okay. Liquid Luck and Felix Felicis are the same thing, genius. And I promise I won’t be mad. Thank you for passing the message on, see you later.”

With that, Ron turned around and made his way down the opposite side of the hallway, leaving you to ponder why in Merlin’s name Cedric would choose to meet at the Quidditch field. He knew how you felt about the sport.

Quidditch certainly was not for everyone. Neither was flying in general, for that matter. Despite the countless times Professor Sprout had tried her best to convince you that flying on a broomstick isn’t as terrifying as it seems, you refused to try and had no intention of ever doing so.

Poor Professor Sprout had truly done everything she could think of to help you overcome your fear of heights, but it was no use. The thought of not being able to put your feet on the ground, the possibility of falling, and the rare—but possible owl collisions always instilled the idea that flying was dangerous and had every right to be feared. Quite honestly you were surprised to be the only one in your class who was afraid of heights, in the Muggle world it’s a very common fear, almost every Muggle was some degree of acrophobic, but it’s no surprise that the Wizards werent afraid to defy the laws of nature.

You often didn’t even attend Quidditch matches even though you’d be tucked away safe in the bleachers; Seeing your housemates gliding through the air and trying to knock the opponent off their respective broom made you queasy. You thought Quidditch was a fine sport, in fact you always wished you could overcome your fear and learn to play, but the idea itself was laughable. Everyone at Hogwarts knew that you were afraid of flying.

So to say Cedric’s invitation to meet at the Quidditch field was strange would be the understatement of the century. Not to mention the Liquid Luck, it took six months to brew for goodness sake. Despite his own self-doubt, you were sure Ron got the right potion name. If he could remember the long list of people the message had gone through before it reached you, you were sure he could remember the message itself.

After you pushed your curiosity aside, you were excited to spend time with Cedric. You made your way through the corridor and sat in the back of the DADA classroom replaying the day you became friends with Ced.

You’d properly met him at the beginning of the semester after someone told him about your acrophobia. With this new information, Cedric had taken it upon himself to ask if you wanted him to teach you. He was very kind about it all, and you could tell he genuinely wanted to help you; There was no judgement or teasing in his tone. He was always a very admirable person in your eyes, and was without a doubt the most hufflepuffely Hufflepuff you’d ever met. Being a Hufflepuff yourself, you knew what true loyalty and compassion looked like, and Cedric was a shining example.

Your hesitation was seemingly very clear to Cedric after he proposed the idea of lessons. He spent almost an hour in the Common Room assuring you that he didn’t mind going as slow as you needed to, telling you that he wouldn’t pressure you to do anything you didn’t want to do, and saying that you could quit whenever you pleased. He just wanted to help you and get to know you.

The first lesson was absolutely dreadful. The typical anxiety you felt about flying was now paired with the nervousness that comes with being alone with a very handsome boy. Despite him being as empathetic and careful as possible, Cedric couldn’t get you to even watch him fly for more than sixty seconds at a time. Needless to say the first lesson was also your last. Cedric didn’t want you to quit, but he understood where you were coming from. The two of you got along really well, though, and he was the first person who made you laugh through your anxiety. After the two of you hit it off so well that day, Cedric proposed a lunch at the Black Lake.

So for the past six months you and Cedric spent four days a week eating, laughing, and sometimes even swimming at the Black Lake during lunch hour. It was easy with him. He made you feel comfortable, understood, and carefree, and you did the same for him. The two of you enjoyed each other’s company more than anything else; It was almost addictive. A lot of the moments shared between the two of you could’ve easily been considered romantic, and although neither of you had ever had a conversation about wanting to date, there was a sort of unspoken agreement that you each had feelings for the other. It wasn’t hard to miss, either. Cedric and you had such an intense chemistry that one would have to be a fool to not recognize it as love.

Professor Lupin pulled you out of your thoughts as he dismissed the class and sent you on your way to lunch. You were careful to blend in with the hallway traffic flow, so you headed towards the Dining Hall with the rest of the students before you broke away from the crowd and hurried off into the girl’s quidditch locker room. You knew all of the players would be off to lunch already, but that didn’t stop you from rushing across the room and leaving through the back exit that led straight to the field. When you stepped into the bright sunlight you didn’t see Cedric anywhere, and a quick moment of panic struck you at the thought that maybe Ron had relayed the message wrong and Cedric was waiting for you somewhere else. Your worries quickly dissipated when Cedric seemingly appeared out of thin air. He was barely hovering on his brand new nimbus 2000 over the grass in the middle of the field. His smile was as charming as ever and in his hands he held his old broom and a tiny potion bottle.

“Y/n!” He quickly flew to your side and landed on one knee next to you. Cedric held the potion bottle in his hand like a wedding ring, “Hi.”

You laughed, he surely could be extra cute when he tried, “Hi, Cedric.” You gave him a gentle pat on the top of the head.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat. “Oh Y/n dearest, I come today to present you with one bottle of liquid luck,” he was talking like Dumbledore, and his dorky grin grew bigger as he kept going. “The day we met you wouldn’t even touch a broom, and I made it my personal duty to have you try. So today, as I present you with the magic potion, you will fly.” By the end of his speech you were so lost in his sparkling eyes it took you a minute to process his words.

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah! Come on, it’ll be okay,” He reached for your hand and you helped him back to his feet.

“I don’t really understand what you mean,” you let out a nervous laugh as he handed you his old broomstick.

“I was thinking, you just have to take some liquid luck and you’ll have no chance of falling!” The excitement was evident across his features.

“Oh, uh-,” you stammered. “I don’t know how i feel about this.” His plan was good, but there was no way you were going to be able to talk yourself up onto the broom. You felt bad, he’d probably been brewing this since the week you met and you didn’t want to let him down.

“I promise I’ll be right there with you. Please, just trust me on this one,” you searched his eyes for any sign of insincerity, and before you could think about it you grabbed the bottle out of his hand and drank the liquid luck.

“Yes!” Cedric threw his arms in the air and hopped back on his broom, flying straight up and doing a backflip in celebration of your sudden boost in confidence.

The potion tasted terrible, but you didn’t have much time to think of your regrets before it took affect. Your whole body felt lighter and you became giddy with excitement before tightening your grip on his old broom. Cedric came back down to the ground and shook your shoulders, you thought he might’ve been more excited than you were.

“Okay, are you ready to try this?” He calmed down a tad and made direct eye contact. You responded without a moment’s hesitation.

“So ready.”

He cheered in excitement before taking both of the brooms and setting them on the ground, just a little bit apart from eachother. He moved to stand over his broom and you did the same to yours. The two of you simultaneously lifted your brooms into the air and shared a look of pure joy.

“On the count of three, okay?” Cedric reached out to hold your hand. “One. Two. Three!”

You let go of his hand as you both took off into the air, laughter ringing in your ears as you experienced the thrill of flying for the first time ever. Luckily you’d known how to fly, so the liquid luck was only calming your nerves, the rest was your talent.

“Cedric I’m doing it!” You looked beside you and saw how much fun he was having, the proudness overcoming his features as you conquered your biggest fear.

“You’re really doing it, you’re flying, y/n!” He shouted back.

The two of you were in the air for hours, forgetting about the rest of your classes and messing with eachother above the quidditch field. When the sun started to set, the two of you headed back down to the field and landed.

“Thank you, Cedric. This was the best day of my life,” you breathed out, wrapping Cedric in a tight hug.

“Mine too,” he said, hugging you back and resting his chin on top of your head. “You know that I have feelings for you right?” Cedric blurted out.

“Yeah, I know,” you spoke into his chest. “I have feelings for you too, Ced.”

[aidanchaser]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

beta’d by @ageofzero and @magic713m

Table of Contents

Chapter One The Next Minister

Cedric Diggory had a lot to learn and not a lot of time to learn it.

He’d often imagined his first day of work at the Ministry of Magic, but the real thing turned out to be vastly different. He did go to the Ministry with his father, as he’d always thought he would, but he’d always imagined he would spend his first day meeting everyone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, specifically the Beasts division, discussing field research, and reading the latest reports on new discoveries of beasts. The office he’d imagined was the office he’d visited so many times with his father, full of passionate and adventurous people with a thirst for knowledge about the natural world.

The office Cedric ended up in was not that office.

Instead of stopping at the fourth floor, Cedric waved goodbye to his grim-faced father — Amos and Fiona were still coming to terms with Cedric’s decision to abandon his research career — and continued on to the second floor: The Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Everyone on this floor looked as grave as his father. People bustled down hallways with urgency, and when they conferred over desks, they spoke in low tones and hurried whispers. There was none of the shouting and loud laughter Cedric had seen when he’d visited his father’s office as young boy. No one smiled at him as he headed down the hall for the Auror Department. Instead, they hurried quickly, and gave him little more than a glance as they passed him.

The Auror Department was no less busy than the hallways. Cedric could see the rows of desks that filled the office workspace and three offices against the back wall, clearly labeled with gold lettering. The Muggle Liaison office was dimly lit, and had no windows looking in, so Cedric could not be sure if anyone was on duty. Next to it was the office of the Head of the Auror Department, Rufus Scrimgeour. Through the frosted glass, Cedric could see the shape of someone moving around the desk, but it was impossible to know who it was or what they were doing. Finally, the office of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, was completely black and undisturbed. That seemed odd to Cedric, that the head of the entire department could be absent when the Ministry was in a crisis as serious as the return of Voldemort. The rest of the office was full of people, wanted posters, and flashing alerts as sightings, both real and imagined, of Death Eaters were called in. Among the Aurors hurrying about the desks, Cedric recognized Fabian and Gideon Prewett, but they were deep in conversation and did not notice him.

Tonks was there too, seated at one of the desks and staring vacantly at a piece of parchment in her hand. Her hair was mousy brown today, and her face was unusually striking, with high cheekbones and a sharp nose, almost like Sirius and Regulus Black. He knew she did not like the Black side of her family, so he could not imagine she intentionally tried to look like them. Usually, her face was softer, and her eyes more prominent. It struck him that her appearance had always been a conscious choice, and he guessed by the distant look in her eyes this was what she looked like when she was not trying.

“Can I help you?”

Cedric turned, and was startled to see a young woman leaning against a desk stacked with paper work. She had a paper in each hand and three paper airplanes hovering above her head. One poked insistently at her cheek, but she did not seem to notice it. A fourth zoomed around the corner and planted itself in her large hair, which framed her face like a halo. Her wide nose and sharp eyes made her look almost like a lioness on the hunt. Cedric tried to be disarming, afraid she might pounce otherwise.

He smiled. “Good morning. I’m looking for Kingsley Shacklebolt?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

The cold welcome startled Cedric. He wondered where he’d misstepped. “Er — I’m Cedric Diggory? I’m supposed to work under him. He agreed to take me on in the Auror Training Program.”

“Shacklebolt has been reassigned.” Her voice was unsympathetic. She set her papers down and picked up her wand. With it, she summoned a sheet of paper from within one of the stacks on her desk. She scanned it quickly, then set it down. She snatched one of the memos out of the air, read it, then crumpled it and tossed it into a waste basket. When she picked another from over her head and read it, Cedric realized she thought their conversation was over.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” he tried to be as polite as possible, “but I’m not sure what I should do if I’m not working under Kingsley.”

The secretary looked at him as if he were little more than a house-elf asking where to put away linens.

“Talk to the Chief Captain of the Hit Wizard’s Department. Marcus Charmstone.” She scribbled a note on a piece of parchment, turned it into an airplane, and sent it off down the hallway. “You’ve passed all the qualifications necessary for Aurorship, right?”

“Yes, though my N.E.W.T. results —”

“Excellent.” She had clearly stopped listening after “Yes.” She continued, “Then you’ll be competent enough to be a Hit Wizard. Their training is shorter, less comprehensive. Charmstone always needs more hands on deck.”

This time, she actually looked at Cedric when she spoke, and she seemed to register the disappointment on his face. The hardness in her onyx eyes softened.

“Look — this should all just be temporary. We’re going through a lot of transitions at the office right now, as I’m sure you can imagine with all this You-Know-Who business.” She glanced over to Rufus Scrimgeour’s office, then at the dark windows of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement office. “All it’ll take is another Auror to pick up your training. I’m sure someone will soon. Give it some time.”

Cedric tried to smile. He knew Tonks had already jokingly said she’d take him on when he’d discussed his career path with her. She, however, had only been an Auror for two years, and wasn’t eligible to take on any new recruits. Surely one of the other Aurors in the Order — the Longbottoms or the Prewetts — would volunteer to take him soon.

“Thanks,” he said. “Could I have directions to Chief Captain Charmstone’s office, then?”

At the young woman’s direction, Cedric made his way down the hall and around the corner to the Hit Wizard’s Department. He inquired after the Chief Captain, was directed to a large, dark, bearded man, and had barely introduced himself when a report of giants in West Country came through. As Charmstone barked orders, a dozen Hit Wizards hurried to the Apparition point. When Charmstone asked why Cedric was still standing there, Cedric ran after them. It seemed that his first day on the job had already begun.

Cedric had never fought giants before, but he learned quickly. They couldn’t be stunned; most dueling jinxes bounced right off their thick skin. The task required cooperation with the other Hit Wizards — whose names he didn’t know — and creative combat techniques. That, at least, he had some idea of how to handle, since he’d faced a dragon, grindylows, acromantula, Blast-Ended Skrewts, and several Death Eaters before.

Defeating giants wasn’t the end of the task. Hit Wizards were responsible for helping round up Muggles after a catastrophe and delivering them safely to the Obliviators. Cedric was in the middle of promising a Muggle woman that he could explain everything to her if she would just come down from the tree she’d climbed when another Hit Wizard came up behind him.

“This is faster,” the young man said, and flicked his wand. The woman gasped loudly as she was hoisted by her ankle into the air then carefully lowered onto the ground. “Come on, miss,” the Hit Wizard said, and helped her to her feet. “You’ll be fit as a Flitterby in a moment.”

Cedric helped support the woman on one side and together, the two carried her to the Obliviators, who saw to it she had no memory of climbing a tree to hide from giants, and instead felt foolish for climbing a tree in a hurricane.

“Is this what the job is?” Cedric asked, and wiped sweat from his brow. He and the Hit Wizard started another walk around the block, looking for any Muggles that might have been missed. “Rounding up Muggles and dueling giants?”

“The giants are new,” the young man said with a laugh. He held his hand out to Cedric. “Welcome aboard. I’m Christian Thelborne.”

Cedric took his hand. “Gryffindor, right?”

Thelborne grinned. “How could you tell?”

“Cedric Diggory. I was a prefect for Hufflepuff. You were Prefect with… Percy Weasley, right? I had only just started my prefect duties when he was made Head Boy.”

“Oh! Yeah, I know Percy. Such a pencil pusher. Worse than my sister.” “

Cedric struggled to remember another Thelborne at Hogwarts. He eventually landed on another Gryffindor Prefect, Anne Thelborne. He hadn’t known her well, but he did recall the two of them working together to stop a duel between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Outside of prefect duties, though, they’d hardly spoken. Cedric thought he recalled a second Thelborne girl, but he couldn’t place a name or face among his fellow prefects.

“And you,” Thelborne said, “you were the Champion in the Triwizard Tournament, right?”

“Yeah — Harry and I both.”

“Is that where you got that scar?” Thelborne pointed at the thick white line that ran along the inside of Cedric’s wand arm, from wrist to elbow.

Cedric shook his sleeve back down to cover the blemish. “No — that was from a Death Eater.”

Thelborne took the guarded tone in Cedric’s voice as a hint and didn’t press any further.

As they completed their circuit, Cedric tried very hard not to think about the night his arm had been sliced open, but of course trying not to think about something was never very effective. It was a fresh memory. The battle in the Department of Mysteries had been only a week ago, and the Death Eater Pyrites had cut Cedric’s arm open in an effort to convince Harry to hand over a prophecy. Cedric remembered the sharp pain as Pyrites’ wand trailed his arm, as if a knife had cut its way into his skin. The pain, though, hadn’t been the worst of it. The worst part had been the Silencing Charm. Cedric had screamed in pain, but no sound had come out. It was an indescribable kind of terror, to try to scream, to pour all your breath and strength into begging for help, but to be met with utter silence. It wasn’t as bad as the Cruciatus Curse, but it was a different sort of fear.

“Thelborne!” Charmstone shouted, as Cedric and Thelborne returned to the Obliviators’ temporary base.

Cedric tried to look alert and not like he was lost in his own head. He tightened his hand around his wand and felt the strain in his wrist. He coughed, just to remind himself he had a voice.

“New assignment,” Charmstone said to Thelborne. “You’re picking up a Muggle Junior Minister by the name of Herbert Chorley. He’s quacking.”

“What concern of ours is it if some Muggle’s cracked?” Thelborne asked. His deep green eyes seemed so tired.

“Get him to St. Mungo’s and find out. You don’t make the orders, just take them. And take the new kid with you. Show him how to move around Muggles.”

Thelborne made a face at his Chief Captain, then smiled apologetically at Cedric. “Here we go, then.”

Thelborne held out his hand, and he and Cedric Apparated back to London.

The moment they appeared in a small alley, Cedric felt the cold, damp fog soak its way through his robes and into his bones. He shivered and rubbed his arms.

“This is unusual July weather.” He tried to breathe warmth into his hands, but his core remained cold, frozen. He wished he could curl up by the fire in the Hufflepuff common room, the way he used to when he had nightmares about dying in a graveyard.

Thelborne frowned and sniffed the air, then wrinkled his nose. “Dementors. They’re breeding.”

Cedric shivered at the thought, then shivered again from the cold. “Finally left Azkaban, have they?”

“I think it was only a matter of time after Regulus Black broke out. Bit of an insult to their pride, I imagine.”

Cedric snorted. “I don’t imagine dementors have much in the way of feelings.”

Thelborne frowned. “Then you’re lucky you’ve never had to speak to one.”

Cedric had exactly one experience with dementors, and that was when one had boarded the Hogwarts Express in search of Regulus Black. It had been Cedric’s first year as a prefect. They’d only just finished up their meeting, and he was ready to take on his new duties. He’d found a carriage of first year students and was answering their questions about Hogwarts, helping to allay some of their worries about a new school so far away from home. All his hard work had been wasted when the train halted suddenly. One of them had started crying before Cedric even felt the cold.

He’d bravely stood between them and the door, wand ready, as the dark, hooded figure had glided down the corridor. He’d trembled while it passed, but he’d stayed on his feet, even as frost crept over the windows. Then it was gone, and he was left feeling desperately cold inside with five terrified eleven year-olds crying and begging to go home.

Cedric pulled his robes tighter in an effort to stave off the cold and tried to think about anything but talking to that thing that had left so much fear in his heart.

“Where do you think this Junior Minister is?” Cedric asked.

Thelborne shrugged. “Where do you find a quacking Muggle?”

“Where do you find ducks?”

It turned out that the Junior Minister wasn’t hard to find. He was wandering along the nearby bank of the Thames, hands on his hips and elbows flapping as he quacked. The hard part was how they ought to handle the Muggle photographers that had gathered to document this absurd event.

“This is the job,” Thelborne sighed, and ran a hand through his curly blonde hair. As he pushed his bangs back, Cedric was struck by the unusual elfin features in Thelborne’s face. He had high cheekbones, a lengthy jaw line, and a firm but fine nose. It reminded Cedric of a more vibrant version of the Black family.

“How are your Disguise Spells?” Thelborne asked.

Cedric blinked. “I mean, I don’t have a lot —”

“S’alright.” Thelborne tapped his wand on Cedric’s head, then himself. Their wizard robes vanished, replaced by crisp, freshly pressed Muggle suits. Thelborne’s blonde hair and fine features vanished as well. He looked plain, with hair and eyes in identical shades of brown, and a round shape to his face that struck Cedric as entirely forgettable. Cedric wondered what he looked like, but he wasn’t about to ask if Thelborne carried a compact mirror.

Instead, Cedric looked down at his clothes. “Suits?”

“A good, easy Muggle disguise. Indistinct, lends authority, handy to be able to create, or even to keep in your pocket if that’s easier.”

Cedric noted the advice. He was grateful to have been paired up with Thelborne, for however long it lasted. It may not have been the day he was expecting, but he was already learning quite a bit.

Thelborne told the paparazzi that he and Cedric were Chorley’s security and got the Junior Minister away from the river and flashing cameras. When Chorley struggled and tried to break out of their grip, Thelborne promised him they had bread crumbs where they were going, nice tasty bread crumbs, and Chorley settled down for a bit.

Once they were out of view of any Muggles, especially those with cameras, Thelborne and Cedric Apparated to St. Mungo’s. Their disguises vanished as they appeared in the hospital’s waiting room. For a moment, Cedric wondered if it had something to do with the magic of the hospital, but as Thelborne flashed the Hit Wizard emblem on his robe at a young, curly-haired Healer in bright green robes, Cedric thought dropping the disguise might have been intentional.

“Not sure what’s wrong with him,” Thelborne said to the Healer. “He’s a Muggle, though, so —”

The poor young man looked exasperated. “Hit Wizard or not, if none of you are on death’s door, wait in line, please. We’re a bit understaffed right now.”

And he was gone, leaving Thelborne looking miffed at the brusque treatment. It didn’t surprise Cedric, though. He wondered how many patients here were victims of the giant attack just hours ago, and how many more were here because of damage done by the Death Eaters just this week.

Cedric struggled to hold onto Chorley’s arm as he guided him to the line for the Welcome Witch. Chorley was still flapping his arms and quacking.

“Normally they’re a bit quicker to jump to the badge,” Thelborne muttered as he joined Cedric in line. “I guess this week’s been hard everywhere.” His bright green eyes clouded with worry as they drifted over the list of floors in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

“Something wrong?” Cedric asked.

“Just wondering….” Thelborne chewed on the inside of his cheek. Without the friendly smile and jocular attitude he’d had just a half hour ago, he looked almost dangerous. “Amelia Bones is in here somewhere. At least, they say she is. Death Eater attack last week. She’s the head of the whole Law Enforcement Department and they haven’t said they’re replacing her yet, so she must be alright still, but….”

“‘Bones’?” Cedric repeated. The name was familiar. “Does she have a daughter at Hogwarts? Susan?”

“Niece, I think,” Thelborne ran his hands over his face. The danger in his tight jaw seemed to wipe away beneath his fingers, replaced with worry and exhaustion, an expression Cedric was overly familiar with from his stay with the Order last summer, and from his own reflection in his final year at Hogwarts. “And rumor is that Rufus Scrimgeour’s getting moved out of his position, so that’s the Head of the Aurors out. Then Carter and Walsh disappeared last week.”

“Carter and…?”

“Just friends of mine. Other Hit Wizards. Walsh was my Squadron Captain. Carter and I were competing to be the next one to make Auror.” Thelborne’s green eyes were tinted with only a little jealousy as they flicked once over Cedric.

Cedric resisted the urge to defend himself, partially because he wasn’t sure he could, and partially because they’d arrived at the Welcome Witch’s Desk.

While Thelborne explained they’d been given orders to take in the Muggle Junior Minister, she raised an eyebrow at the quacking man. After a brief exchange where she tried to explain they didn’t treat Muggles just because they might be a bit mad and Thelborne tried to explain he had orders to follow and it could always be something worse, the witch directed them to the fourth floor, Clair Kazemi ward. Chorley came along easily now, looking almost giddy as he quacked at Cedric, Thelborne, and the lift doors. They found the Clair Kazemi ward and the Healer on duty, an elderly witch named Guinevere Highwater.

Healer Highwater frowned when Thelborne explained the situation to her. She directed Thelborne and Cedric to get Chorley seated in a nearby chair. Chorley settled into his seat easily and smiled up at Cedric. He opened his mouth, looking for all the world like he had something important to say — then he quacked.

Cedric was beginning to think that this assignment was a waste of time. There were so many other things that demanded attention, like missing Hit Wizards and loose dementors. Seeing to one addled Muggle seemed unnecessary.

Healer Highwater, even, looked rather bored as the tip of her wand lit with a gentle blue glow. But as she pressed the blue light against Chorley’s temple, the quacking stopped, and instead, Chorley lunged at her and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Thelborne leaped into action, wrapping his arms around Chorley and trying to pull the large man off the Healer. Cedric grabbed at Chorley’s fingers in an attempt to at least loosen Chorley’s grip around Healer Highwater’s neck, but Chorley was surprisingly strong. Cedric and Thelborne combined seemed to have no effect on the man who had been so easy to persuade only moments ago.

Highwater’s face began to turn blue and her eyes rolled into her head. Her wand fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. In a desperate attempt, Cedric stepped back and shouted, “Protego!”

There was a white flash and a burst of energy. Chorley and Highwater were thrown apart. The air shimmered between them as Cedric maintained the shield to keep them apart. Thelborne, too, did his best to hold Chorley in place, though he seemed to have difficulty keeping Chorley from pushing against the barely visible shield.

“If I were to guess?” Highwater gasped. “Someone attempted an Unforgivable on him, and did a very poor job of it.” Her hands brushed at her collar, checking for breaks in the bone. “I’ll need assistance.”

Cedric and Thelborne spent the rest of the afternoon helping Highwater and the other Healers treat Chorley. He only managed to get his hands on two more Healers, and Cedric and Thelborne were there each time to save them.

It was nearly an hour before Healer Highwater assured them they had Chorley well in hand, and Cedric and Thelborne could return to the Ministry and make their report. There were enough Healers looking after Chorley to keep him restrained and sedated as necessary. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement ought to know someone was cursing people close to the Muggle Prime Minister.

Both young men nodded; Cedric wiped sweat from his brow and Thelborne from the back of his neck.

As they waited for the lift to take them back into the lobby, Cedric asked, “Which is worse? Quacking Muggles or giants?”

Thelborne considered. “Giants. At least with this guy, we can leave the Healers to Obliviate him and not worry about casualties.”

Cedric mulled over Thelborne’s answer as they stepped into the lift. Cedric would have said this was worse. Giants were already magical, part of their world. It was more terrifying to think that Voldemort could be cursing people within the Muggle government. It made him wonder how many forays Voldemort had made into the Ministry of Magic. Anyone could be Imperiused. Even Thelborne.

That thought wasn’t helpful, though, so Cedric shut it down and Apparated back to the Ministry with Thelborne.

The two immediately briefed Marcus Charmstone on the situation. The Chief Captain listened with a grave expression. When Thelborne had finished explaining, Charmstone shook his head.

“Grave news indeed,” Charmstone said in a low voice. “You’ll need to report this directly to the Minister for Magic.”

“We need to what?” Thelborne raised his eyebrows.

Cedric swallowed down his own protest. He wasn’t particularly fond of Fudge. Their last encounter had been in Dumbledore’s office while the Ministry had nearly expelled him and almost arrested Dumbledore. Fudge had stood behind Umbridge, gleefully swallowing every lie she spouted. Cedric flexed his right hand, where faint white lines marred his skin. They were no longer legible, but he would never forget the punishment Umbridge had inflicted on him just for speaking out about Voldemort’s return.

“I’d do it myself,” Charmstone said, “but I need to settle an argument between the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Both seem to think today’s giant attack falls under the other’s jurisdiction. I need to head down there and make sure they each do all their work.” Charmstone picked up a scroll, rolled so tightly that Cedric estimated it was at least three or four feet of parchment long.

“Right,” Thelborne said, “but can’t —”

As the Chief Captain stood, it was clear there was no room for argument. All three headed for the lift. Charmstone pushed the up button first, and it wasn’t long before the lift dinged.

The moment the golden gates closed behind Thelborne and Cedric and they were out of earshot of their commanding officer, Thelborne whispered, “Have you met Fudge before?”

“A couple times.”

“Is he as big an idiot as everyone says?”

“More or less.”

The lift dinged and the gilded gates slid open once more. At least the lift ride had been short; it was only one floor between Law Enforcement and the Minister for Magic’s office.

The two were met immediately by Percy Weasley, who seemed to have no recollection that the last time he’d seen Cedric Diggory was that very same evening the Ministry had failed to arrest Dumbledore.

His smile was wide, but nervous. His freckled face seemed unusually pale, and there were dark bags under his eyes, magnified by his glasses.

“Diggory,” he greeted, and shook Cedric's hand. “Er — Thelborne.”

Thelborne hesitated, no longer than Percy had, before shaking Percy's hand, and Percy winced. and tried to laugh it off.

When Thelborne let go, Percy laughed, but the tension between them did not relax. After an uncomfortable pause, he cleared his throat. “Er — this way. The Minister is expecting you.”

Cedric wasn’t sure why the Minister was expecting them, unless a note had been sent before they’d even given their report to Charmstone. That meant this meeting was about more than just Herbert Chorley and the Muggle Prime Minister. Cedric wondered if Fudge was going to take away Cedric’s new position as Auror. He wanted to believe even Fudge wouldn’t be that petty, not in the wake of Voldemort’s public return, but his hope was weak. He couldn’t think of any other reason Fudge might be calling them to his office.

Cedric looked to Thelborne for an explanation, but if Thelborne had an answer, Cedric couldn’t read it in his face. There was nothing in Thelborne's face but exhaustion as he stared at Percy's back.

Percy Weasley led them down the hall, around what felt like the entire Ministry of Magic building before the hallway curved back in on itself, leading towards an office in the very center of the building.

The door was made of solid blue lapis lazuli, edged in gold runes, much like the shifting gold runes of the Atrium’s ceiling. Cedric blinked to be certain the runes weren’t moving, but these seemed to remain solid.

Percy knocked on the door twice, then pushed it open. “Minister — Cedric Diggory and Ma — Christian Thelborne have arrived, sir.”

A deep voice, that was definitely not Fudge, said, “Excellent. Come on in, gentlemen.”

Behind the warm, yellow wood desk of the Minister for Magic was seated a tall man with thick, dark, curled hair that stuck out from his head like a lion’s mane. His nose and mouth were both wide, and coupled with his intense gaze, he looked like a lion surveying the savannah for prey, not unlike the Auror secretary Cedric had met that morning.

“Rufus Scrimgeour?” Thelborne breathed.

Scrimgeour did not look up from the parchment he was scribbling on. “Yes. Thelborne, isn’t it?”

“Yessir.”

“I hear you were the one who brought in Herbert Chorley?”

Thelborne hesitated. “Diggory and I both did, sir.”

“Of course.” Still, Scrimgeour did not stop writing. “What is the verdict?”

“An Imperius Curse gone wrong, at least, that’s what Healer Highwater thinks.”

Scrimgeour’s quill paused its scratches for a moment. His lips worked their way around the name Highwater, but he didn’t speak it, not until he’d settled on the right witch. “Guinevere Highwater?”

“I believe so, sir.”

Scrimgeour returned his attention to the parchment. “Then she is probably right. Thank you, gentlemen, for your hard work today.” He signed the parchment with a hurried flourish, folded, and sealed it. He handed the letter to Percy Weasley, who hurried out of the room to see it delivered.

“Now,” Scrimgeour said, “I have important business to discuss with each of you and not a lot of time to discuss it. He glanced at a gilded clock face hanging over one of the many floating bookshelves mounted in the office. “I’m meant to be meeting with the Muggle Prime Minister just now, but I’ve sent Fudge on ahead to prepare him.”

Cedric blinked. “Fudge is still Minister, then?” He hadn’t meant to blurt out, but he’d been so relieved to see Scrimgeour behind the Minister’s desk, someone who knew how to face the Dark Arts, someone who seemed to have the situation so well in hand that it was horrifying to think Fudge was still Minister after all.

“No,” Scrimgeour said quickly. “I am replacing Fudge as the next Minister for Magic. He’ll only stay on in an advisory capacity. There are a lot of changes happening very quickly around here, and we’ll all need to adapt if we are to stay on our feet for this fight. Thelborne, you’re to take on the rank of Captain for your Hit Squadron.”

Thelborne blinked. “But sir — I’ve only been a Hit Wizard for two years. And Walsh —”

“Has been missing for a week now. He is either dead, dark, or on the run. In any event, he can no longer serve. I know your family has served well in the past. I expect you to excel in the position. And perhaps convince your sister to join as well.”

Thelborne’s face worked through a series of emotions — confusion, surprise, fear, anger, and finally acceptance. “I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“And Diggory, I believe you had your sights set on Aurorship.”

Cedric wondered for a moment why the Minister would know that, then remembered that Scrimgeour, as head of the Auror Department, would have had to approve his application in the first place. “Yessir, but Mr. Shacklebolt —”

“Has other duties, yes. We moved him to protect the Muggle Prime Minister, and it seems necessary to keep him there, given what happened with Chorley today.” Scrimgeour scribbled a note on a piece of parchment, signed and sealed it quickly. “Take this to Anne Scrimgeour, my niece. She’s still the secretary in the Auror office, yes? She’ll make sure Williamson takes you on. He’ll be an excellent mentor for you.”

Cedric frowned as he looked down at the sealed letter. He was not so quick to accept this personal attention from Scrimgeour as Thelborne had been. “May I ask why, sir? I’m happy to stay as a Hit Wizard for a few more years. It’s more traditional, isn’t it? And I did good work today, helping with the giants and the Muggle Junior Minister.”

Scrimgeour’s nostrils flared briefly. His eyes glittered like he had found the prey he’d been looking for. Clearly he was not used to having his orders questioned.

“It’s important to have you in the Auror office,” Scrimgeour said. “You have more experience fighting Death Eaters than many of the Hit Wizards do. You can learn more under Williamson in a week than serving in Thelborne’s Squadron in a month. You’re a valuable part of this fight. Take pride in that.”

Cedric didn’t like the way Scrimgeour said, ‘valuable,’ like he had a price tag attached to him. He wondered how many galleons it read, and if it was more than Thelborne’s. Or maybe the value wasn’t in galleons. It was hard to miss the Daily Prophet headlines about “The Chosen One.”

“Is this about Harry Potter, sir?”

Scrimgeour’s lips pressed into a tight line. “You’re a man of plain words. I can appreciate that. Your connection to Harry Potter, to his two most recent duels against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has not gone unnoticed by the Ministry, nor the public. I’ve just sent a letter to the Potter family requesting Harry’s assistance in this fight as well. Fudge assures me they will stubbornly refuse, but I will do my best to win this fight, and I cannot do it without help. Can I have your help, Mr. Diggory?” He extended the sealed parchment once more.

Cedric wondered what would happen to him if Harry refused, if his connection to Harry proved worthless to the Minister.

Reluctantly, Cedric took the parchment. “I’ll fight in whatever way I am needed.”

Scrimgeour smiled, but it was grim. “Spoken like a true soldier. Now, you both have your assignments, and I have a meeting.”

Cedric and Thelborne each shook Scrimgeour’s hand, and left the Minister’s office.

“Well,” Thelborne said and let out a slow breath, “you sure put your head in the lion’s mouth.”

Cedric shrugged and started down the long, winding hallway. “I don’t like being used or lied to. I just wanted to know why I mattered so much. What about you. What was all that about blood?”

Thelborne’s face twisted like he’d gotten a whiff of a Dungbomb. “My family name is pretty new. We can trace our lineage back just to the early 1800s, which is nothing compared to most of these families, especially not ones like Scrimgeour’s. But there’s a legend — more of a rumor I guess — that there’s elf-blood in our history.”

“Like… house-elf?”

Thelborne shrugged. “Supposedly my great-grandfather could do excellent wandless magic, and was an incredible duelist. Served in the war against Grindelwald, and died fighting Grindelwald, so I guess he wasn’t quite good enough, in the end.”

“Oh. Did he know Dumbledore?”

This time, Thelborne frowned. “Don’t know. Never asked. Anne might know. She cared more about our family history than I ever did. I just liked the dueling part.” He was quiet until they reached the lift, the kind of quiet that Cedric was afraid to interrupt with a question. It felt delicate, and fragile.

The lift bell broke the silence and the two stepped behind the golden gates. Thelborne leaned against the corner of the lift like he wanted to fall through it. Cedric wasn’t sure why Thelborne looked so upset suddenly, until Thelborne said, “About Weasley — what he called me —”

“You don’t have to explain anything you don’t want to,” Cedric said quickly. He had appreciated Thelborne not pressing him about his scars earlier and wanted Thelborne to have the same opportunity for silence.

The young man took a moment to consider Cedric’s words. The lift elevator arrived at their destination before he’d decided what to say. The golden gate slid open, but neither of them moved.

After another moment, Thelborne straightened. “Fine. Then I don’t want to explain.”

Cedric nodded, and gestured to let Thelborne out of the lift first. Thelborne headed for the Hit Wizard Department with a wave and a, “See you around. Thanks for the help.” Cedric took a deep breath before starting for the Auror Department. He didn’t know Williamson well, but he thought he remembered Tonks saying something about a duel with Voldemort that had turned Williamson’s hair white. Surely Williamson would be as good a mentor as Kingsley.

“Hey, Diggory!”

Cedric turned around, surprised to see that Christian Thelborne had come back around the corner.

“Neither of us are anyone else’s pawns, right?”

Cedric smiled. It was equal parts full of relief and the warmth of true friendship. He may not know Thelborne well, and he may have a lot more to learn about this job, but today had been a really good start. Regardless of the new Minister of Magic’s plans for the fight against Voldemort, both Thelborne and Cedric had their own challenges to face, and at least now they would be a little less alone in facing them.

[momo-de-avis]

So, as per @insanityisfine ‘s wishes, here is the story of how a hardcore catholic member of the Opus Dei repressed his homoeroticism with sexism and plagiarized Harry Potter thus teaching me a valuable lesson about writing.

So, let’ call this guy C.

C, as I said, was a hardcore catholic. By that I mean, of course, that you couldn’t actually tell until you actually met him. Though he kind of dressed like your average beto (but not so much, since he was kind of poor), he kind of came off as a regular dude who you could have a conversation with. Except, of course, if you were a girl. In which case you’d get a huge creepy vibe just from engaging with him shortly. He touched a lot, he leaned in, he smiled way too much and he had a really, really weird way of going about women.

First of all, a little background. C was like, the sixth brother of like, I don’t even remember, 10? 12? His mom was a super, hyper devote catholic and his dad—surprise, surprise—was a locksmith atheist who he venerated. The two—MOST SHOCKING OF ALL—were actually divorced. I know. The scandal.

They weren’t really poor, but they weren’t middle class either. They were adrift, you know. Which makes you wonder—how the hell does a family of like, 10 children and one single and stay-at-home mom manage to get this entire progeny into private schools (so Private they didn’t follow the regular, state-issued high school program, they actually had a list of banned books: I cannot tell you how much he despised Saramago lmao) and into high-end universities (like Católica)? Well, that’s where Opus Dei comes in. I never really understood how the fuck that works, but if you’re a member, you basically got a green card to live as a king even though you gotta mend the holes in your socks yourself.

The thing was, this guy was peak Mommy Issues. His mother was a goddamn viper. From what I gathered, because of her religion and the fact that she was divorced with so many fucking children at home, she was desperate to control her children. So the way she found of doing it was by simply playing mind games with them. She pitied her kids against each other. She clearly had a favourite one, and she compared all others to him. C was treated like waste, like he would never achieve the primal status of perfection his older brother achieved, and his sisters were constantly getting into fights because she used hearsay to pity them against each other. I also vividly remember him saying things like a kiss were banned from his TV, and his grandmother would smack whoever if they even dared to glance at the television when something as dirty as that came on. Mommy here would particularly pick on C. She specifically had him share a room with his youngest brother, who always went to bed earlier, specifically so she could complain about how late he got home, and she often hid his laptop away from him. She never even gave them a single phone, they always had to buy it themselves, with their money.

So you see, lovely home already. Which I would have accepted as an excuse, if he hadn’t grown up to be a huge dick. But you know, trauma or not, life in the end is made of choices, and boy, C chose to be a spiteful, humongous dick.

I met him in my first year of college. He was in this group with two other girls and another guy (C on the list I mentioned, let’s call him Z, cause he will be important for the story as well). We got together first because we were all, in 2010, some of the few who had been born in 1989. We were the ’89 group. And damn bitch, that was one fucking weird group. It was like Friends on a budget: they all tried to sleep with each other like there were no cast members left to fuck.

Initially, I thought he was nice, easy-going. We bonded over our passion for writing, mostly. You know the snippets I’ve been sharing of my WIP, with Selena as the protagonist? At the time, I was working on it, it was my second draft, and he was helping me construct the story, along Z (actually, Z is an even bigger dick, but he was the one who provided me the key ingredients into shaping the story. Literally, if it wasn’t for him, that WIP wouldn’t exist). We would sit for hours at this local café talking about it, and let me tell you, I hesitated, yeah, but C was quick to share his WIP with me.

Now, that WIP? When I explain to you what it was about, it’ll throw you off because the premise is actually cool as fuck. Basically, it’s about a young man who finds himself a victim of a curse. The curse causes his skin to fall off, and the only way he can survive is by killing other people and perform a skin transfer so his own skin can regenerate.

Sound rad as hell, doesn’t it?! Except this is C. And C really has a way of masterfully destroying things that look cool to the eye of the beholder.

Well, this cool ass premise? This how it kicks off:

The protagonist is a young kid, I don’t know, of 17 or 18, who’s hanging out Cais do Sodré at 4AM and somehow—somehow—that is weird enough for a police guy to approach him. For those not Portuguese: let me tell you as a person who lives across the river form Lisbon. Cais do Sodré is a liminal space, and the shit that happens there between 3 and 5AM? It stops being weird after a couple of months. Literally no police come near you unless someone’s fighting or someone’s pissing in broad daylight. So I really don’t get wtf this guy was going on about, but moving on.

This dude’s skin’s falling off, so he kills the police guy. Then, he takes off and sees a guy sitting on a public bench wearing, and I quote, «the habit of a monk» (yes, I have the document open right now). That guy tells him, literally, ‘I am a wizard and you can’t hurt me, my name is Cedric’ and this begins the long line of plagiarizing HP. Wait for it, it gets better.

Also, if you’re wondering if this is set in Lisbon, despite there being exactly one Portuguese name? Yes it is. In Sintra, too.

THEN it skips to summer (I have no clue what the fuck that intro is supposed to tell you) and we’re in Sintra, specifically Galamares (the story gets oddly specific). This guy’s out partying with his beto friends and shit, and one night he meets a 25 year old French dude called Goulage who invites him over to his mansion for the weekend and what does our protagonist do? He goes, of course.

This already feels like a premise for a horror story that will inevitably turn into an erotic romance, but remember: this dude’s hyper catholic, and to him homosexuality was not just… a Sin. You see, for it to be a sin, you actually have to think about it. Thing was, this guy pushed it down so far he was deepthroating that denial. He avoided it at all costs. And naturally, what happens when you do this, is your story gets an unnaturally homoerotic subtext that jumps off like a dildo slapping you across the forehead. That’s exactly what happened here.

It gets obvious in the way he describes this French dude: he mentions that going over to one of his parties was ‘a privilege’ for merely ‘a lucky few like [protagonist]’. When he gets to his physical appearance, it gets really neat: he had a smile that went ‘from ear to ear’, ‘glistening eyes, dark and full’ and his hair ‘could be described with one word: confusion, or in another: revolt’ because he had hairs that ‘turned against each other like someone who doesn’t comb their hairs after getting off the shower’. And then, the exact next bit of text says some of the funniest things in this piece of shit: ‘if I were an aspiring psychologist I would say there is a very profound reason for his hairs to be like that, perhaps an inner confusion’. He also says he ‘moves with extraordinary lightness, seemed to be everywhere and spoke with great expression coordinating his words with his gestures. He would be a great professor, if he were ever up to that’.

Two paragraphs later, the love interest, a girl, shows up. Her description? ‘She would look great in a bikini’—a direct thought of the protagonist

There’s this incredible exchange where Goulage snaps his fingers and fire spits out of his finger and he does this to light the protagonist’s fucking cigarette and the protagonist is like ‘wow you gotta teach me that’ and the dude’s reply is ‘I can teach you many tricks’. So the French dude promises a class that night, and off they go to ‘the basement, that was entirely dark’ lmfao. Goulage then prepares a drink for him and the protagonist slams down on the floor, unconscious. Yes, date-rape drug. When he comes to—and by god, bear with me on this one cause I fought against this little shit for this scene—he touches his neck and realizes there are two small wounds there.

What does this genius think?

‘I was bitten by a snake’

I remember SO WELL the conversation I had with him about this bit, because at this point the snake comes off as very, VERY evident homoerotic symbolism because in no fucking world would it make sense for a snake to bite you in the fucking neck, what are you talking about, and I tried to make him see that but boy—lost time.

When summer ends, our protagonist realizes the date-rape thing was actually the French dude’s way of cursing him with his skin disease from hell and the two get into a fight.

Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know there is a maxim I live by: there are no bad ideas, just ideas that need working. C was actually the one who taught me that, because he actually had a really, REALLY fantastic idea for a story that he completely fucked up because he refused to do any work besides sitting at his laptop and shitting a few words together. He did no revision (he thought himself above that), did no research (he couldn’t understand why that was needed, when he could simply copy it from existing books) and he did no fucking work on his plot—and if you tried to show him, he would take your criticism to heart.

Because not only is this a story about a protagonist who lives under a curse that causes his skin to fall off and his only way of survival is killing so he manages to make a new skin transfer, this is actually the Friends to Enemies trope, which I fucking adore. But he fucked it up completely by somehow—somehow I have no clue how exactly—doing it in light of the entirety of Harry Potter. (My favourite sentence in this WIP is—and I remind you, I quoting this shit: “I am going to the suburbs, so many people disappear there they won’t notice my presence”. Absolute fucking poetry, this little gem. Love it.)

This is set in a wizardry school and this somehow relates to elves in Lisbon (lmfao). Cedric dude from the beginning? He’s from the Ministry of Magic (YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN). They teleport to some fucking city that is like, magically concealed behind a barrier or some shit in Sintra (LMAO). Also, wizards are divided in Orders like, First and second and shit, which I understand also comes from HP (remember I never read HP, these comparisons were actually made for me by an HP aficionado I used to know who pointed them out for me, yet even I could see the plagiarism lmao). And what’s even funnier, most of the names are lifted from somewhere obvious: Gorbachev is there, so is Oskar Koskoshka (yes, like the painter) or Gorbunov. And guess what non wizards are called lmfao.

Also, the spells are exactly like HP: stupefy, stritia maxima, accio fogo, incarcerous and invicta are some of the few I caught eye of here.

I remember there’s a Brolyk somewhere in there as well, and someone called Polidoro, even fucking FREEZER is here (if you’re not Portuguese: that’s our version of Frieza lmfaooo). Oh, and Marowak as well (that’s a pokemon isn’t it?) The protagonist at some point is recruited to work for the, idk, FBI of the wizardry world? Or the Wizard Police Department or Wizard CSI or some shit?

I remember the climax of the story is a sword fight between he two former friends, totally-not-gay-nope dudes and the way he did it… It was in a poem that sounds like a DDR recital. Like, first he gets this swarm of anger that, as it always goes, propels him to be the Best There Is and the weirdest fucking modern poetry ensues, and then the fight scene is like this: “Step forward, attack through the right / step left, attack forward” etc etc. Just this fucking SHIT.

So yeah, when this guy showed me this my reaction was pretty much

Now, I TRIED to be critical in a constructive way. Because, as I said, his premise is actually super fucking original and, being well worked out, it could have been actually incredible. But C refused to take criticism. When he approached anyone with his ‘would you like yo read my story and tell me what you think’ mumbo-jumbo, he didn’t mean criticism, he meant praise.

So what happened was he did to me what he thought I was doing to him. He put me down constantly.

Joke was on him. He was so excited about my story, he actually went on google sketch to project some scenarios from my story. The School, where the story starts and introduces Selena to us, he actually fucking drew the whole thing, so I don’t really know what his problem was cause he was actually more excited about it than I was.

But he just couldn’t take the fact that I was being critical of his work. I started noticing that most people around him hesitated when it came to giving him real opinions. When he asked someone what they thought, he didn’t say ‘what do you think?’ He’d say ‘it’s good, isn’t it?’ and that left people cornered. But I just.. don’t take shit. And my friend back then, who knew HP back and forth, he jumped in as well because he could see that like, if this thing would ever see the light of day, JK Rowling would have a field day suing his ass (though it’s way too bad for it ever to reach publishing, trust me. He doesn’t know how to accent prepositions. He writes “fui áquela casa” or “vou á casa de banho” by fucking hand).

He constantly nit-picked my work. “Swords don’t wheeze, Ana” he said. “I know, C, it’s called a fucking metaphor”.

“This looks too much like the Chronicles of Narnia, I think you’re risking plagiarism, because of this Tiger symbolism”; “C, the Chronicles of Narnia has a Lion passing for Jesus, the Tiger is literally just a symbol of a god, what do you mean”.  

“This is too much like the Mists of Avalon”; “have you even read the Mists of Avalon?”, “no, but it’s celtic paganism all the same”, “???????????????”

Now, here’s another thing about C: he really had no fucking clue how to deal with women. They were alien concepts to him. And one thing he really believed (I mean he really believed this) worked wonders in conquering a girl’s heart was basically put her down and annihilate her self esteem. Call her ugly, say she’s fat, tell her she’s got ugly teeth—and then provide the compliments! So he was a professional sexist. And I remember when he started picking on me because I dared criticized his masterful magnus opus of a fucking piece of shit book, he went in for the looks. At the time, I was about to go on the table for my jaw surgery, and he actually said this to me: “Finally men will look at you, Ana, and you’ll look decent!” He would ell other people “Ana? She’s not a girl, to me she’s a guy—she’s even too ugly to be a girl”.

He really went fucking hard.

It didn’t take long for me to just… fuck off.

But I kept his fucking first and second draft

What’s outstanding is how a hyper-catholic dude who wasn’t allowed to see kisses on TV and who was a virgin at 24 years old out of religious beliefs but bragged about getting a boner for his female friends on the beach managed to just… Become my prime example of everything you shouldn’t be as a writer. I am not kidding. C was my life lesson. Whenever I can’t write, I go back to his first draft and like… It’s so fucking bad, I get a boost. IT’s not just poorly written, everything about it is bad.

But then I remember what’s so bad about it: he made it bad by being a shit person. C thrived off of attention, negative or positive, it didn’t matter, so long as he was the subject of the conversation. He used others to aggrandize himself, by putting them down and treating them like shit in front of others—specifically, in an environment where others couldn’t control but he could (his brothers used to make jokes in front of me—as well as literally everyone else, whether I know them or not, about how C was fucking me—he wasn’t—and say things like ‘is she the one you’re eating?’ in public). He hated women because of his mother, his mommy issues were down to his marrow and man, he projected that onto every girl he ever met. He specifically sough women with little initiative, little impulsivity and who submitted so he wouldn’t be challenged. For friends and girlfriends.

But I challenged him, and that wouldn’t stick. So he treated me like shit, constantly. So much at one point I stopped showing up, stopped talking, just.. walked away.

But those shitty first drafts? Oh, my friends… you wouldn’t believe the shit I have here in my computer.