This World (2)

While he was in the Hospital Wing, Cho Chang came to see him several times.

The first time was on the afternoon of his discharge. She stood at the door for a long time before gently pushing it open. He was propped against his pillows, looking out the window.

"Ced." Cho spoke softly as she placed a bunch of white camellias on the bedside table and sat down in the chair beside his bed.

They talked for a while. She said the mood at school had been somber since the competition ended, and that she had been very worried about him. He nodded, thanked her, and asked how her OWLs Examinations had gone. Their conversation had become very polite, like that of two friends who hardly knew each other.

Cedric watched the slight tilt of her head as she spoke, the way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and remembered a few days earlier by the Black Lake—she had stood beneath the beech tree, sunlight filtering through the leaves onto her long black hair.

He had stood beside her, his heart pounding as though he had just played a game of Quidditch, yet he had talked about inconsequential things, like "The weather's lovely today." But he could guarantee that, at that moment, his ears had been as red as a Gryffindor banner.

But now, those words would never be spoken. It wasn't because he no longer liked her. Watching her sit beside his bed, silhouetted against the light, he still felt his heart stir. But he was no longer the Cedric Diggory who could stand beneath a beech tree and talk about the weather with her.

She didn't come the next day. On the third day, she came with a copy of Advanced Charms and said she could help him catch up on the lessons he had missed. He took the book and leafed through a few pages, and then they worked through some exercises on spell theory together. When she came on the fourth day, Cedric was sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching a tiny petal. His head was lowered, and he didn't hear her footsteps.

Their conversations grew shorter, and their silences longer. Once, Cho asked him, "What do you think next term will be like?" He said, "I don't know," and neither of them said anything more.

Something had come between him and those unspoken words. That flash of green light had taken too much away, including the simple flutter he used to feel standing in front of her.

Cho didn't know any of this.

All she knew was that Cedric had changed. He still smiled as he always had, but he no longer stole glances at her or leaned slightly closer when she spoke. He simply sat there quietly, clutching a pendant she had never seen before, listening to her with a smile and offering a brief reply now and then.

On the fifth day, she paused at the door as she left.

"Ced." She spoke his name softly. He murmured in response. She opened her mouth, as though she wanted to say something, but in the end she only said, "Take care of yourself. See you next term." Then she gently pulled the door shut.

Cedric watched her retreating figure disappear behind the door. The camellias had already wilted. There were things he had once planned to say to her after the Third Task.

Now he wouldn't say them.

He never would.

Since leaving the Hospital Wing, this was Cedric's third visit to the Headmaster's Office.

Dumbledore picked up a Sherbet Lemon from his desk and told him, in the same gentle but unanswerable tone, that Clara had been a very brave girl. Her sacrifice had saved two lives and had also allowed more people to learn the truth. As for further details, he could tell him nothing; that would probably require her permission.

Cedric stood motionless in front of the desk.

"She's gone. She can't give me permission anymore, Professor."

Dumbledore folded the sweet wrapper and placed it on the corner of the desk. He said that precisely because she could no longer give her permission, he had to be all the more careful.

"Mr. Diggory, I don't think she would want you to know. It would be a burden to you." Dumbledore sighed helplessly. "Seeing you like this is the last thing she would have wanted."

The once high-spirited boy had visibly grown thinner after everything he had been through, and his already fair complexion had taken on a sickly pallor.

"Professor, I just want to understand why Clara was there at that time." Cedric's voice was firm. "Harry told me Clara had been training in Defense Against Dark Magic all term, even more than he had. He thought it was strange, but didn't give it much thought. Professor, Harry and I were involved. We should have the right to know more about what happened. That last spell was aimed at me. She died saving me."

He spoke the last sentence very softly.

He couldn't accept someone dying for him without knowing why.

Dumbledore didn't answer immediately. He took off his glasses and slowly wiped away a mist that wasn't there with his sleeve, remaining silent for a long time.

So long that the silver armillary sphere in the corner of the office made a complete revolution. Then he put his glasses back on and looked intently at the thin boy before him, his blue eyes visible through the half-moon lenses.

"You're right," he conceded at last. "You and Harry have a right to know. Perhaps my earlier reservations were only because I didn't want you to bear what she had already borne. But clearly, not knowing seems to be more painful for you. Sit down. I'll tell you everything."

Dumbledore took a small crystal vial from the shelf beside the Pensieve. It was no bigger than a thumb and contained a silvery-white substance. He placed it in front of Cedric.

"She left this behind." Dumbledore poured the memory into the Pensieve. "I spoke to her on the evening of June twenty-third. You should remember that. Before she left that day, she asked whether I could help her preserve a memory. She said that if someone else were ever unlucky enough to encounter something like this, the memory might come in handy. You only need to put your face into the basin, Cedric."

The silvery-white memory began to spin faster. Cedric felt the world around him tear apart and rearrange itself, and then he was standing on the Quidditch Pitch.

He saw Clara.

But this Clara was a little quieter than the one he knew. She was looking toward the center of the Quidditch Pitch, where another version of him stood, then walked into the maze.

Then he saw himself die.

The memory shifted, returning once again to the day of the Third Task.

She had thought the previous time was a dream, but his second death made her realize it wasn't.

After the darkness, she opened her eyes again. It was June twenty-third.

She began trying everything she could to save him. She slipped him notes, spoke to him in person, gave him sleeping pills, tied him up with rope, sought out the professors, and tried to persuade him through Cho Chang. Finally, she even ran onto the pitch to stop him. But not once did he believe her.

She began looking for another way. She went out at night for the first time, caught Professor Moody drinking Polyjuice Potion, and persuaded Dumbledore for the first time.

He saw her Mirror of Erised, but it was blurry. He could just make out two figures.

This time, she failed again.

He still died.

After the darkness, she opened her eyes again in the Owlery. She and Cedric ran into each other face-to-face, and she wished him and Cho Chang a good time at the Yule Ball. The scene shifted again, and it was still the two of them, standing outside the Owlery. She asked him if he would be her date to the Yule Ball, and he turned her down. This was probably an earlier memory, because he didn't remember it.

He saw her walk into Dumbledore's office and put the pair of woolen socks on the desk. Saw them propose using that ancient spell. Saw her begin special training with Snape, McGonagall, and Flitwick. Saw her chased all around the dungeon by Snape's Nonverbal Spells, struck by a spell and knocked to the floor, then push herself back up.

Saw her practice the Shield Charm with Harry.

Saw her hand him the Defense Against Dark Magic book that bit people.

Saw her drip blood onto the six-pointed star, and saw two Gabriel petals slowly take shape, one worn on her hand and one sewn into her clothes.

Saw her throw one letter after another into the fire in the fireplace. Saw her sitting alone in a corner of the Room of Requirement, turning the bracelet over and over as she looked at it.

Then came the evening of June twenty-third. Dumbledore's office. She and Dumbledore finished discussing all their battle plans. After a moment's silence, she spoke.

"Professor, could I ask you a favor?"

"Of course."

"I'd like you to help me extract this memory. All the cycles, all the attempts, everything I learned from the successes and failures—if another wizard ever runs into this kind of trouble, at least they'll have something to refer to. Or it could tell them they're not the only one that unlucky."

The memory ended there.

Then everything went dark.

Cedric lifted his head from the Pensieve. Without his realizing it, his face had become streaked with tears.

He had seen all her failures, all the times she started over, all the times she opened her eyes in the darkness. He didn't know why she had gone so far for him—they weren't even particularly close friends. But the answer no longer mattered. What mattered was that she had done it, and he was alive.

"Cedric." Dumbledore's voice sounded softly. Cedric looked up, his vision still blurred. "Live well. Avenge her and the people You-Know-Who killed or tortured—that is what you should do. And let her know that you were worth everything she did."

Cedric said nothing. He clutched the dim Gabriel petal tightly in his palm. On the day he left the Hospital Wing, his mother had told him she had found it in the collar while mending the outfit he had worn for the competition.

He didn't know how he got back to the Hufflepuff Common Room.

The barrel-shaped entrance closed softly behind him. The fire in the fireplace had gone out, leaving only a few dark red embers flickering in the ashes.

The common room was empty, and all the streamers and stickers had been taken down. He leaned back against the sofa and closed his eyes. The images from Clara's memory grew more distant, more faint, as though something were drawing them out of his mind bit by bit. His consciousness sank into a warm, soft darkness.

Then he heard birdsong. Not birds from the wizarding world, but thrushes in the oak tree in his backyard.

Sunlight fell across his face through a gap in the curtains, warm with the particular temperature of an early-summer morning. He smelled sausages cooking downstairs in the kitchen, and heard his father's famously booming voice, loud enough to wake the whole house.

"Ced! Get up! Come see what your dad got!"