Rebirth?

Cedric suddenly noticed that Clara had become a little different.

She had stopped talking. Most of the time, Rowle spoke while the two of them listened.

All of that seemed normal enough.

It wasn't until the train reached school and Clara declined his offer of help, carrying her luggage off the train herself, that he realized she was keeping her distance from him.

The change was so sudden that even Rowle was a little baffled.

"Diggory, did you make her angry?" While Clara was carrying her luggage, Rowle blocked Cedric's path, looking furious.

Clearly, Cedric was even more bewildered than she was.

The strange atmosphere lasted until after dinner.

Headmaster Dumbledore smiled at them, then, as usual, announced a few new prohibitions for the term.

Clara had always let those go in one ear and out the other. None of the prohibited activities appealed to her anyway.

"I also regret to inform you that the House Cup Quidditch matches will not be held this year."

Wails erupted all around them, one after another.

Clara glanced at Cedric out of the corner of her eye. He showed little reaction, as though he had already known.

Her suspicion had been confirmed once again.

At that moment, Cedric was doing his best to comfort the wailing Hufflepuff players around him.

A door opened behind them with a deafening bang, and a man with a wooden peg leg walked in... Looking up, she saw that one of his eyes was false and spinning wildly.

It was him.

Everything was matching up with the world in her dream.

His false eye swept over the crowd and paused on Clara for an instant.

Clara's head began to ache faintly, reminding her of the night of the Quidditch World Cup.

But he quickly looked away, and the headache disappeared.

Another strange connection.

"Please allow me to introduce our new Defence Against Dark Magic Class teacher, Professor Moody."

Clara stopped listening closely and studied the new professor.

She could sense that all the students around her were afraid of him.

But she had another concern: if the magical eye really did affect her, could she still attend Defence Against Dark Magic Class without trouble? Over an entire year, it would be hard to keep anyone from noticing something was wrong.

Dumbledore stood in the middle of the Great Hall and coughed twice, interrupting her thoughts.

"As I was saying, over the coming months, we shall have the great honor of hosting a truly exciting event, one that has not been held for more than a century. I am delighted to tell you all that the Triwizard Tournament will take place at Hogwarts this year!"

Rowle started screaming, grabbing Clara and asking if she had been taking extra Divination lessons behind her back.

But Clara had no time to answer her.

Her mind was in chaos. Her dream was coming true. So far, nothing had deviated from it.

But the Cedric in her dream was clearly not the same person as the one before her. In her dream, he had looked surprised when he learned about the Triwizard Tournament, but the Cedric in front of her most likely knew a great deal.

Not only did he know the Triwizard Tournament was going to be held, he probably also knew he would become a Champion and knew everything that would happen afterward. That might include his death.

She desperately needed confirmation.

"Cedric, so you knew a long time ago, didn't you?" Cedric was sitting next to Clara, and she kept her voice low enough that only the two of them could hear.

All around them, students were chattering excitedly. Rowle was telling Cersei that she would wear the scarf that shouted "Krum" every day, while the twins were loudly plotting on the Gryffindor side to find a loophole in the age restriction.

No one noticed the two people speaking in low voices in the corner of the Hufflepuff table.

She could feel Cedric's body stiffen briefly.

"Didn't you know too, Clara?"

She turned to look into Cedric's eyes, and those eyes were looking back at her with a smile.

"You know that's not what I mean, Cedric." Clara paused. "By a long time ago, I mean... before the Quidditch World Cup. You knew back then, didn't you?"

The Quidditch World Cup was the only point in time she could pin down at the moment. Of course, it could have been even earlier.

Cedric didn't answer, but Clara could tell he was admitting it.

"Then... how much do you know?"

"Everything."

Clara fell silent. She couldn't bring herself to ask that question. Cedric watched her for a while, and when she said nothing more, he asked, "So... how much do you know?"

"You... died."

But she had a persistent feeling that this wasn't the truth. Or rather, not the whole truth.

"How do you know all this? Were you reborn? I've seen that kind of thing in some novels." Clara sounded uncertain.

"Reborn? I suppose so. That's a novel term. I've always called it going back."

"So you went straight back from the moment you died to before the Quidditch World Cup?"

Cedric was startled for a moment, then smiled. His voice held resignation, along with a trace of loneliness and disappointment. "Yes, that's right. More... or less."

"So that's why you ignored me all evening?" After a while, he folded his arms and looked back at her. "Because I didn't tell you about it? But honestly, I thought people might take me for a madman if I did, and it would make Mum and Dad worry, so..."

"You're right. I understand. I'm sorry about the train," Clara said, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Cedric. No, that's not it. At the time... I didn't know how to put it, and even now I still think it's strange. There are things I can't make sense of."

She kept feeling that there was something else she had forgotten.

For instance, did Sectumsempra have anything to do with the Triwizard Tournament? And their relationship-why had they suddenly grown so close? And didn't he like Cho Chang? Why hadn't he gone to see her all day?

And what about the Gabriel Protective Charm the wizard in Knockturn Alley had mentioned yesterday? What was that? Could this so-called prophetic dream not be changed? Why had he been reborn? If he had come back, would the events in the prophetic dream still be facts? Could they simply not happen?

There were too many questions, and her thoughts were in such a jumble that she didn't know where to begin.

And why her? Why was she the one who had this dream?

Also, why did he seem so... confident when he knew he might die? He really didn't look worried at all.

"If you can't figure it out, then stop thinking about it for now." After a long while, Cedric sighed and spoke gently. "Clara, there's no need to push yourself so hard. You've already done very well."

She had remembered part of it, a part concerning him, but she still didn't remember everything she had done.

His rational side hoped she would remember soon. That way, perhaps they could uncover Voldemort's plot more quickly and deal with the danger sooner.

But his emotional side was less eager for her to remember.

What if she remembered countless cycles and failures? What if she remembered death and despair? What if she remembered bitterness and hurt?

There seemed to be little good in those memories.

If she couldn't remember, she could set it aside and stop thinking about it.

He could handle it on his own.

Hadn't she done the same before? Going through it again and again, all alone.

The girl to his left stopped questioning him and silently finished the last bite of the beef wrap on her plate.

It was her favorite food. Every time Professor Snape's Defence Against Dark Magic Class ended, he would see her sitting in the common room, wolfing one down.

The soft light of the banquet hall fell across her profile. Her brown curls were tied in a ponytail, her amber eyes held a stubborn look, and the dimples that had once appeared faintly at the corners of her mouth had nearly disappeared.

In fact, he had recognized her on the way to the Quidditch World Cup, even though she didn't remember what had happened between them.

Hufflepuff was only so big. Even though he had barely spoken to her, he knew Clara Albert, who was a year below him.

She wasn't particularly bold and always liked to stay with Rowle Collins. She always wore a shy smile, with a pair of dimples at the corners of her mouth. She spoke quietly and slowly, and liked to wear her brown hair loose, perhaps so it could sometimes shield her from unwanted attention.

He had forgotten when she began to change.

She started keeping to herself. Although Rowle was still her best friend, she often went from one professor's office to another on her own.

She smiled less, her robes were always a little dusty, and she had taken to tying her hair in a ponytail. Her voice grew louder, she walked briskly, became confident, and even learned to insult people with cutting sarcasm.

That was what she had become later in his memories.

Unfortunately, in those memories, they had only been ordinary friends who spoke to each other, and he still knew very little about her.

On Stoatshead Hill, he had jumped down from a tree in front of her, but he still hadn't been entirely sure.

Not until the Portkey, when she fell onto the grass with Harry and the others, accepted his help with a smile, and then smiled as she retorted to him. At that moment, he knew it was her.

Memories could be sealed away, but a person's character could not be changed, and the marks time left on her could not deceive anyone either.

The same was true of him.

Starting from the day he came back and throughout the summer, Dad had looked at him in a daze more than once, then smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and said he had grown up.

There had been emotion, comfort, and a trace of barely perceptible sadness in it.

He had noticed it too: he had changed.

He was no longer the Cedric Diggory who knew only Quidditch and exams, who thought the world was black and white.

He had begun paying attention to things he would never have noticed before-personnel changes at the Ministry of Magic, every public speech Fudge and Mr. Crouch made, and which new prisoners had been sent to Azkaban.

He began to wonder whether, if something really did happen one day, he could protect the people he needed to protect at the first opportunity, and whether he could do anything more.

He even began to reflect on himself in the maze, in that very first timeline.

He wondered whether, if he had been a little more cautious and a little less competitive, he might never have died in the first place, or drawn the innocent Clara into his fate.

He didn't know how Clara had felt when she was first dragged into it, still less could he imagine how helpless she had been when she learned that her life was bound to another person's from then on.

But he knew there was no solution to it.

Perhaps only blood and death could extinguish a young person's desire for victory.

Like an endless Möbius strip, this was an outcome they had no choice in.

"Cedric, hey, I think Professor Dumbledore is calling you."

Seeing Cedric staring blankly at the plate in front of him, Clara couldn't help panicking a little.

Oh, Merlin's stinky socks, d-d-d-did she make him so angry he'd gone stupid? No... huh?

Although she admitted she had been a little sulky on the train, and there had been that one time she ignored him because she was thinking, but...

Urgent: what do you do when you've made your crush so angry he's gone stupid?

Cedric came abruptly to his senses and turned to see Professor Dumbledore raise his glass to him. His lips seemed to be saying, "Don't forget our agreement."

On the day of the Quidditch World Cup, he had written not only to Professor Sprout, but also a separate letter to Professor Dumbledore.

To make himself more credible, he had even had to ask Mr. Diggory to contribute a pair of woolen socks.

Thanks to the memories Clara had left behind, he at least hadn't had to rack his brains over how to make the headmaster believe a truth that sounded so much like nonsense.

Thank goodness, the woolen socks had worked, and Dumbledore had written back to him the next day.

"Dear Mr. Diggory,

I imagine your experience must have been extraordinary. At the very least, I have never encountered anything like it myself. If you don't mind, we can discuss it in detail on the evening of September first, since we both know how serious this matter is.

Yours sincerely,

D.A"