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“Ced, look out!” Cedric Diggory instinctively dropped to the ground, and a spell blew over his head and blasted away the acromantula that had been just about to leap on him. He rolled and fired his own salvo at the beast before it could recover. He stared at the monstrous creature’s corpse, adrenaline coursing through him, but his gaze was drawn by his boyfriend’s approach.
“Alright, Ced?” Harry asked, the worry evident on his face.
“Fine.” The older boy held out his hand, and Harry helped him stand. With his feet under him, Cedric swept the younger boy into his arms and dropped a tender kiss on his lips. “Thanks to you, anyway. You saved me, again.”
“Always,” he said fiercely, returning the kiss with one of his own. He tilted his head to gesture to their left, and Cedric turned to look at the gleaming golden Cup standing on its marble plinth. They separated and walked towards it together.
“There it is,” Harry said. “The TriWizard Cup.”
“Yeah—it’s almost hard to believe this is the end.”
The younger boy snorted. “I can’t honestly say I’ll miss it. Anyway, go on: take it so we can get out of here.”
“No, you take it. You earned it, far more than I did.”
“That’s ridiculous! I didn’t even want to join this mad tournament, and it’s not like I need the money or fame.”
“That’s not fair, though. I would never have got this far without you—you saved me twice, just tonight!”
They stared at each other in a long silence, Harry’s eyes narrowed and Cedric’s jaw set. Finally, the younger boy rolled his eyes with a sigh.
“Together, then?” he asked.
“Together,” Cedric agreed. They reached out for each other and then grabbed the cup simultaneously with their free hands. With a sickening lurch, they were wrenched off their feet and spun around and around before dropping unceremoniously to the ground once more. After a stunned moment, both boys scrambled to their feet, wands up.
“Lumos,” Harry murmured, lighting the end of his wand. His glasses had come dangerously close to flying off, and he pushed them higher on his nose as he looked around. “Did you know the cup was a portkey?” he asked the other boy.
“No. Er, where do you reckon we are?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but then groaned and clutched at his head, eyes clenched shut.
“Kill the spare,” came a high, thready voice that sent shivers down Cedric’s spine.
It happened so fast: the unknown wizard raised his wand, and shouted “Avada kedavra!” Harry yelled “No!” and leapt towards Cedric, bowling him over and taking the spell instead. Cedric gasped out the younger boy’s name as Harry sagged against him, like a marionette whose strings had been severed; he was already dead. Cedric took one ragged breath, then another, and a wave of enraged grief washed over him.
Well, he wasn’t a Triwizard Champion for nothing; his wand snapped up and he funneled his fury and pain into the most overpowered bombarda he could manage. The spell blasted the cloaked figure away from them, and Cedric scrambled to his feet. He hauled Harry’s corpse into his arms, and staggered the few feet to the Triwizard Cup, grabbing it up and letting the portkey whisk him and his boyfriend’s body away into the night.
Moments later, he collapsed onto the grass of the quidditch pitch back at Hogwarts, and began to cry. The cheers of the crowd died down quickly, replaced by shouts of consternation, and then a sharp wail rose up. Hermione shrieked “Harry!” as Headmaster Dumbledore ran towards them.
“He’s dead,” Cedric sobbed. “We—there was—we landed in a cemetery, and he was murdered. It should have been me! He took a curse that was meant for me!” He curled around Harry’s body, shuddering.
Dumbledore murmured a spell over them that lit the boy’s skin blue and then faded rapidly. The headmaster slumped, looking infinitely more tired and aged than before. “Oh, my child,” he breathed out. “I have failed you…”
Ron was holding Hermione back, his mother crying onto Bill Weasley’s shoulder behind them. Cedric couldn’t seem to focus on anything. The noise of the crowd eddied around him—he knew time was passing, knew there was shouting nearby—his father was trying to speak to him—but he couldn’t process any of it, couldn’t think of anything except Harry. His Harry, who was dead.
He buried his face against the cooling skin of his boyfriend’s neck, eyes squeezed shut. He almost thought he felt the flutter of a heartbeat under the skin, and sobbed harder. Then, the body in his arms gave a distinct twitch. He reared back, eyes flying open as Harry sat up with a gasping breath and looked wildly around. “Cedric!” the younger boy cried.
“Here, I’m here!” Cedric said. Harry spun around in his arms, hands flying up to run over his arms and chest. “I’m okay,” Cedric assured him, heart bursting with love and relief and wonder as Harry wrapped both arms around him and started to cry. He pressed a kiss to his boyfriend’s mouth and Harry clung to him, kissing back fiercely.
“Poppy,” Dumbledore called urgently above them, and her rapid footsteps approached.
As the mediwitch fussed over them, Cedric pulled back. “I can’t believe you did that, Harry,” he said. “What were you thinking?”
“I couldn’t let him kill you!”
“How do you think I felt, then? Merlin, Harry—you died!”
“I know.” The younger boy looked solemnly up at him, something unreadable about his eyes.
“How did you…?” Cedric wasn’t even sure how to ask the question.
“I believe there are several of us interested in the answer to that question, Mr Diggory,” the headmaster said. Both boys blinked up at him, seeming to realize then they were in the center of a large circle of adults, who were all standing around and peering down at them. Harry blushed deeply, eyes wide, and unconsciously tightened his hold on his boyfriend.
“He’s the picture of health, Albus,” Madame Pomfrey declared, looking faintly puzzled. “In fact, this is the healthiest I’ve ever seen him.”
“Thank you, Poppy. Well, let’s move this gathering somewhere a little more hospitable, shall we? And then you two can tell us your tale, my boys.” He peered down at them, wearing a bemused smile.
“Of course, Headmaster.” Harry popped to his feet. Cedric stood up as well, taking firm hold of his hand. Harry glanced up at his boyfriend with a bit of a shy smile, and then looked back at Dumbledore. “After you, sir.”
The tall old wizard smiled at them and turned to the professors standing nearby. “Severus, Alastor, Minerva, if you would join us in my office? Yes, Cornelius, you are welcome, as well—and you, Amos. Come along, Mr Potter, Mr Diggory.” He levitated the Triwizard Cup and then turned to lead the way towards the castle. The crowd parted to let them pass.
Hermione darted over to keep pace with them for a moment, grabbing onto Harry’s free hand and squeezing it fiercely. “We’ll be waiting in the common room when you’re done,” she whispered to him.
“Thanks, Mione,” he said, giving her a wan smile. “I’ll see you later.” With a last squeeze, she released his hand and dropped away, hurrying back over to Ron and his family. Harry continued on, Cedric still clinging to his hand as the whole party crossed the grounds and entered the castle. They climbed up the stairs to the Headmaster’s Tower, where the gargoyle leapt aside without a password.
“Thank you, Gil,” Professor Dumbledore said genially to the statue, which grunted and nodded in reply. They filed onto the rotating staircase and rode up to the office above. The headmaster floated the Cup to rest on a small end table to one side. That done, he conjured several additional chairs before his desk and gestured for them all to sit. Snape remained standing, taking up a position near the fireplace, while the others seated themselves. Circling around to his own seat, Dumbledore nodded at Snape before turning his attention back to the youngest two in the room.
“Harry, Cedric, please continue your story.”
“There’s not really much for me to tell, sir,” Cedric said. “We both thought something was off when Krum hit me with the Cruciatus in the maze, and Harry saved me. It seemed like he might have been controlled by someone else, but we didn’t know. After that, we separated again, but we somehow managed to reach the center of the maze at the same time and Harry saved me again—from an acromantula that would have taken me down from behind—and then we decided to take the cup together, only it was a portkey. We landed in a cemetery somewhere.”
“I thought at first that might be another part of the third task, but it wasn’t, was it?” Harry asked.
Dumbledore shook his head. “No, my boy, it was not. When a champion took hold of the cup, the maze was to open a safe, unobstructed path back out. It was not meant to transport the champion anywhere.”
Cedric nodded and picked up his story again. “Right, well, we kept our wands out—just to be safe, you know? And then this cloaked figure came toward us, and this terrible, cold voice said ‘kill the spare,’ and the cloaked wizard shot the killing curse at me, but Harry pushed me out of the way and got hit instead.” He swallowed suddenly, his grip on the other boy’s hand tightening almost painfully, as he relived that horrible moment. He took a deep breath, ignoring the prickling of his eyes, and continued. “I shot off the strongest blasting curse I could, and then I grabbed Harry’s body and ran for the cup, hoping it would bring us back here, and it did.”
Harry tugged on Cedric’s hand until the older boy looked at him, and then smiled encouragingly at him. “I’m alright now, Ced,” he murmured.
“Ah, my boy…would you happen to know how that happened? You see, I performed a diagnostic on your body when the two of you reappeared, and you were most assuredly dead.”
“Yeah, I was,” Harry said. “Uh, okay, let me just…so, I grabbed the portkey with Cedric, and we landed in the cemetery, and the strange wizard approached us, and then I got this stabbing pain in my head, like when I was around Professor Quirrell in my first year—that was from being too close to Voldemort, because he had possessed Quirrell. I thought my head was splitting apart, but then I heard the wizard cast the killing curse at Ced, and I just had to stop him getting hurt, I couldn’t lose him, so I pushed him away. It’s a weird sensation, dying,” he mused, voice soft. “Kind of…warm? Anyway, next thing I knew, I was in this big empty stone chamber, and my parents were there—that’s how I figured I’d died—only they said I wasn’t quite dead yet, that it was some kind of an in-between place…”
He trailed off, staring into the distance with an odd expression until Dumbledore prompted him with a quiet “Harry?”
Harry shook himself and glanced over at the man, before dropping his gaze to his lap, where his fingers were tangled with Cedric’s. “Uh, so, my mum and dad were there, and Mum was holding this weird bundle of blankets. They said that when Voldemort tried to kill me, the rebounding spell ripped off a piece of his soul, and it lodged in my scar, and that he’d done it on purpose before, and that was why he can’t die, because bits of him are lodged in these hidden objects, so his soul is anchored to this world. Anyway, ever since the night he attacked me my body had two souls in it, so Mum said they could send me back, and take the bit of Voldemort into the afterlife with them instead. We talked a little bit, and they told me they were proud of me, and then they disappeared through a glowing door and I woke up back here at Hogwarts.”
“Astonishing,” Dumbledore whispered, lapsing into a thoughtful silence. After a couple of minutes, however, he shook his head and smiled. “Why don’t you boys return to your dormitories? I’m sure your friends would like to assure themselves of your continued wellbeing.”
“Just a moment, Albus,” Professor Moody said. “We still don’t know who sabotaged the Cup. As it seems Potter was the target all along and the saboteur seems to be somewhere on the grounds still, we can’t be too careful with his safety. I’d like to escort these two back to their houses.”
“You are right, an escort might be prudent, Alastor. Very well, then—goodnight, Harry, Cedric.”
“Goodnight, sir.”
Moody clomped from the room, wand held aloft, and the two boys followed behind him, hands still clasped as they leaned tiredly against each other.
Dumbledore turned back to those who remained in the room. “Amos, now you have heard this evening’s events, would you leave us? I’m sure your wife would like to know that her child is quite well, and we have delicate matters to discuss here.”
The wizard started from his reverie, pushing his spectacles further up on his nose. “Yes, of course, Headmaster. I’d like to bring her by to see Cedric tomorrow, if I may?”
“I think that would be quite alright, Amos. I shall look forward to seeing you and Evalyn in the morning.”
“Thank you. Good evening, all.” Giving a little half-bow, he departed.
Fudge was twisting his lime green bowler hat in his hands, and he spoke as soon as the elder Diggory had left the room. “It seems Moody is correct—young Potter was the intended target all along! How could such a thing happen, Albus? And who could have tampered with the Triwizard Cup?”
Professor McGonagall frowned. “Some Dark wizard, no doubt, plotting revenge on the defeater of You-Know-Who!”
“That is certainly one possibility,” Dumbledore said, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
“But what else could it be?” Fudge exclaimed.
“I believe it would be premature to commit ourselves to one explanation, Cornelius. After all, we have not yet examined the cup for signs of tampering. I would like to see if we can discover the location to which the boys were taken; perhaps there may be more clues to be found that would reveal our saboteur’s motivations.”
Professor Snape cleared his throat. “Headmaster, do you require my further presence? The culprit has surely departed the scene by now and I have brewing to which I must attend.”
“You may well be correct, Severus. Very well; if I have need of you later, I shall send a message, but I doubt there is anything more that can be done tonight.”
The Potions Master gave a nod and departed without another word. He sighed in relief at being freed. He could not have borne the presence of the Minister for Magic much longer; already he felt a headache forming behind his eyes. Sweeping down the stairs, he strode towards his dungeons at a fast clip, but muffled shouting nearby drew his attention.
“Master Snape, you must come,” one of the portraits called. “Quickly—something is amiss!”
Flicking his wand into his hand, Snape turned aside from his path and took off in the direction he was pointed. Sprinting around a corner, he came across a startling scene: young Diggory lying against a wall while a frothing Moody held Potter under the Cruciatus. Snapping into action, the professor disarmed the former auror. “Expelliarmus! Incarcerous! Stupefy!” He scooped up the other wizard’s wand, keeping his own trained on the bound man, and stepped towards the two victims of his attack.
Harry dragged himself towards Cedric’s prone form so he could slump against the wall beside him. He swiped at the tears and blood on his face while Professor Snape sent off a patronus for the headmaster. That done, the man turned and looked him over critically.
“Can you walk, Potter?”
“I think so, sir.” He pulled himself shakily to his feet, but when he stepped away from the wall, his legs buckled beneath him.
“Grasp onto my arm, then,” the professor said, holding his arm out. When the young man had a firm grip on his forearm, he levitated Cedric’s unconscious body and set off for the hospital wing at a pace slow enough to accommodate Harry’s shaky gait. It took quite a bit longer than it usually would, but Snape never expressed frustration with the boy’s uneven movements.
At last, they reached the hospital wing. Harry let go of his professor and lowered himself gratefully onto one of the beds, watching as Snape floated his boyfriend to another one nearby.
The dour man summoned a potions vial full of a milky red potion from the cupboards and held it out to him. “Drink this, Potter—all of it. It will prevent permanent nerve damage from the Cruciatus.”
“Thank you,” Harry murmured, drinking the potion in one long draught. It was one of the more tasteless that he’d encountered—a small mercy, as it seemed every single nerve in his body was painfully overstimulated. After a moment’s hesitation, Harry straightened and looked up at the man.
“Sir, I wanted to speak with you alone, actually. My mum…Mum said you’re a good man. She told me to tell you that she forgives you—she said you’d know what for.”
Snape gave him an unreadable look; it was probably the most neutral expression he’d ever worn while looking at Harry, and the boy blinked up at him, seeing him properly for the first time since he began at Hogwarts. He held the man’s gaze until Snape broke it himself, turning away to look out of the windows that lined one wall. There was a long silence. Harry watched the professor and the professor stared out over the grounds. Finally, the boy cleared his throat and continued awkwardly.
“Anyway, she also told me to tell you I’ve been living with her sister’s family, and something about how they remind her of someone named Tobias, and you’d…also know what that meant?”
At the name Tobias, Professor Snape whipped around to stare at him. Harry startled at the sudden movement, his last sentence coming out more of a question than he’d originally intended. The man had gone pale and his expression was pinched.
“Uh, sir, are you alright?”
“Potter, I…would wish to verify this information. With your permission?”
“…sure?”
“This…may be uncomfortable.” Before Harry could react to that rather alarming statement, the man had pointed his wand and cast. “Legilimens!”
A dizzying wave of memories rushed over him: seeing his mother and father between worlds, the soul shard, the cemetery, saving Cedric from the acromantula. Then, a shift, and he was suddenly on Privet Drive, a ten year old gardening under the hot summer sun, a nine year old running from his cousin, a seven year old cooking breakfast and watching the others eat it, Uncle Vernon locking him into his cupboard at night, Aunt Petunia hitting him with a frying pan, Aunt Marge’s dog chasing him up a tree while Dudley laughed, staying home from school with a sprained wrist, sweating out a fever in the solitude of his cupboard, bars on his bedroom window, getting cold soup through a flap in his door…it went on and on, a parade of miseries and disappointments. When it finally ended, Harry groaned and rubbed at his forehead. A sharp pain was blooming behind his eyes.
He jumped when a hand appeared in front of him holding another potion, this one a sedate blue. “For your headache,” came the silky voice of his professor. He took it gratefully, sighing in relief as the throbbing eased and then disappeared.
“Thanks, sir,” he said.
The man only grunted in response, and he looked up to see the professor once more staring out the window, but this time Professor Snape looked livid. There were two spots of red high on his cheeks, and his mouth was pressed into a firm line as he glowered through the glass.
“Er, did you…see all that?” Harry asked.
“I did, Mr Potter.”
His stomach swooped uncomfortably. “Oh. How, uh, how did you…”
“Unimportant. Who else have you told about your childhood, Potter?”
“Well…no one, really, but Hermione and Ron have figured out some of it, I think, and I’m pretty sure the headmaster knows.”
He whirled to face Harry once more. “What?!” he hissed.
“Uh, I mean, my first Hogwarts letter was addressed to my cupboard—the cupboard under the stairs.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I see. Rest assured that I shall be investigating this further, Mr Potter, and you will not be returning to that home ever again!” Without another word, Professor Snape marched away between the beds and out of the hospital wing.
“Harry?”
He turned from where he’d been staring after the man to see that his boyfriend had woken and was now half-sitting, propped up on his elbows.
“Cedric! Are you okay?”
“Mostly I’m confused. What happened? Last I remember, Professor Moody was going to bring us back to the dorms.”
“Well, it turns out Professor Moody was probably an impostor. Or maybe under the Imperius?”
“How do you know?”
“I mean, he stunned you and then cast the Cruciatus Curse on me, so…”
“What?! Are you okay?” Cedric leapt up and hurried to Harry’s side.
“Yeah. Professor Snape gave me a potion for nerve damage.”
Just then, Madame Pomfrey bustled in, followed by Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum, both of whom looked exhausted and confused. She directed the two visiting students to beds on the other side of the aisle and hurried over to Harry and Cedric.
“Mr Potter, Mr Diggory—I apologize for the delay. I was tending to your fellow competitors on the field, but Severus asked that I see to you as soon as possible. Has there been another incident?”
“We were attacked by someone posing as a professor. He knocked out Ced and cast the Cruciatus on me, but Professor Snape already gave me some kind of red potion for the aftereffects of the curse. Oh, and something for pain, I think?”
“The Cruciatus? Merlin!” Her wand came up, and she cast diagnostic spells over both of them, tutting at the results. “Are you feeling well, Mr Diggory?”
“Just tired, ma’am—it has been a very long day.”
“Indeed! This ridiculous tournament has been one fiasco after another. Dragons, a loch in winter, and now two of the three Unforgivables cast right here on Hogwarts’s grounds! I shall certainly have something to say to the headmaster when next I see him…” She summoned several potions, dispersing them between her newest patients, and stared them down until they both drank. Once they had, she gave an approving nod and vanished the vials. “Now, the two of you need rest, but if you need anything, I shall be in my office.” With that, she swept away.
Fleur and Viktor both dropped off to sleep soon after, but Harry and Cedric stayed up some time afterward, squeezed into a single bed, lying on their sides and whispering loving words to each other. Eventually, however, they too drifted off into dreams, soothed by the presence of the other.
Harry blinked awake sometime later. He could hear the soft breathing of the other three teens sleeping around him, but he was sure that something else must have woken him. Looking hazily around, he saw a dark figure seated beside his bed.
“Hello?” he murmured.
“Go back to sleep, Potter,” said the shape. It was Professor Snape.
“Is everything alright, sir?”
“It is well. I merely wished to keep an eye on you, after the earlier attack.”
“Er, thanks, I guess. Oh, did they figure out who was posing as Moody?”
“An escaped Death Eater. Barty Crouch, Jr.”
“Was he the one stealing your ingredients, then?”
“Indeed.”
There was a long silence, then. Harry stared into the darkness, putting together the pieces in his head. The map had shown Barty Crouch skulking around the castle at night several times, and Moody in his office. Presumably, he had been holding the real Moody prisoner somehow, for his hair, and keeping polyjuice potion in his flask. That demonstrated extraordinary dedication to his cause; Harry remembered his own experience drinking the potion with revulsion.
After several minutes, the professor abruptly interrupted his thoughts. “Potter. Harry. I…am not a good man—”
“You may not be a kind man, sir, but I think you are good. And so does my mum.”
“Well, that is…certainly a debatable point. Regardless, I have made mistakes. While my own past does not excuse my actions, I wish to…apologize. I have treated you very ill these past four years, largely based on a misconception.”
“I don’t blame you, sir.”
“Please, let me finish. I have made mistakes, and they have caused you a great deal of harm, harm which I can never fully reverse. I wish, nevertheless, to make my amends. I have spoken to the Headmaster, and he has agreed that I may remove you from your aunt’s custody. If you agree, we will be removed to a remote property under extensive wards, and you will spend your summers henceforth under my care—”
“Yes! Er, I mean, yes please, sir, I would like that. Very much.” Harry felt a blush heating his face.
The dark figure of the potions master bowed its head. “Very well. I shall inform Albus of your decision in the morning. We will speak further about this then, but in the meantime, you ought to rest more—you’ve been through a great deal in the past day.”
Harry chewed on his lip for a long moment. “Professor? I, well, I want to thank you, for everything. I know I haven’t been the best around you, but you’ve saved my life so many times, and you are saving me from, uh…them, and, well, I just appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
“It is the least I could do, Mr Potter.”
“No, sir, the least you could do was leave me to go back to the Dursleys like normal. I know that taking me on is more than anyone could expect you to do, and I really do want to thank you.”
The professor huffed in exasperation. “Mr Potter, if I say you are welcome, will you stop arguing and go to sleep?”
“Er, yes, sir.” Harry bit his lip, glad that it was too dark to see his blush. “Goodnight, then, Professor.”
“Goodnight…Harry.”
Smiling to himself, the young man snuggled back down into his pillow, cautiously optimistic about his future. He didn’t know what the morning would bring, but if it was anything like the past day, things would be alright. Gripping at Cedric’s arm where it wrapped around his waist Harry let himself fall back to sleep, knowing for once that someone was there to watch over his rest.