Olive woke up gasping and choking for air, clawing at the bedsheets as if they were strangling her. Her heart was racing in her chest, pounding so intensely it rattled her whole body.
Looking around, she saw that she was in her dormitory, her dormmates crowded around her bed. Natalie was gripping her shoulders with white knuckles, as if she had been shaking Olive awake. Cho and Mariette stood close to each other at the foot of the bed, staring wide-eyed at her as if she had been throwing in a fit.
From the way Olive felt, perhaps she had been.
"Ollie." Natalie gave her shoulders a squeeze, "Are you alright? Can you hear me?"
She couldn't seem to be able to catch her breath. Her shoulders heaved, her gasps rattling in her chest at an alarmingly fast pace. No matter how hard she tried, she still felt like she couldn't breathe.
Olive nodded, clawing at her throat with trembling hands. Her whole body felt exhausted, her muscles aching and sore, her head feeling heavy. Any moment she felt like she'd collapse back down onto her pillow.
"Hey," Natalie grabbed at her hands, "Stop. You're going to hurt yourself."
She pulled away from the blonde, shaking her head as she began groping at her throat, pulling on the fabric of her t-shirt. Even though the shirt was too large for her, it still felt like it was strangling her. Olive needed to breathe. She needed air.
"I-I can't-" She gasped, stumbling out of her bed. Her vision spun, her stomach tight with nausea, "I can't breathe."
Olive practically fell into the window sill, fumbling desperately with the latch until she got it open. Her clammy hands forced the panes apart, and immediately the cool nighttime breeze hit her face. She hung her head out the window, eyes closed, sucking in the air in large, gulping breaths.
Her entire body was visibly trembling, even as she laid over the window sill practically limp. Sweat had caused some of her hair to stick to the sides of her face, and coated her forehead and neck in tiny beads of moisture.
"Ollie," The blonde was the only one who wasn't hesitant to approach the raven-haired girl. Olive felt Nat's presence behind her as she took a seat beside her at the windowsill, "What happened? Are you alright?"
Her voice sounded muffled and underwater, making it hard for her to focus. Slowly she turned back to Nat, her head leaning against the cool glass panes. Like the rest of her surroundings, her friend was blurry and distorted.
"He's... he's alive." She spoke as slow as she could, gulping in a fresh breath of air between words, "Cedric."
Olive's words sent a heavy blanket over everyone in the room. Cho became visibly upset, tears pricking her eyes. Marietta frowned, turning to comfort her friend. Nat studied Ollie carefully, holding herself stiffly.
"What?"
"Cedric." Olive pushed herself off the windowsill. Her body swayed almost drunkenly as she stumbled back over to her bed, "He's in... where is it?"
She pushed around her sheets and blankets, searching the area for her notebook. With each passing moment, she became more and more desperate to find it. She needed to find it.
Cedric was inside that notebook.
"Olive." Nat sounded more serious, her voice wavering only slightly, "Olive, stop."
The Ravenclaw kept searching, tears pricking her eyes, a lump forming in her throat. She began throwing her things out of the way, stripping her bed down to the mattress. Sobs were caught in her throat, her vision almost gone from tears and the ceaseless swaying of the room. Her stomach heaved and clenched, trying to force down the retching that was starting to overtake her.
Where is it? I just had it!
"Ollie." Nat pulled Olive away from her bed, "Olive, you need to stop. Calm down. Breathe."
But the Ravenclaw couldn't hear her. She kept crying for her notebook, pleading, insisting that her deceased cousin was somewhere inside of it. She sounded like she was losing her mind, and maybe she was starting to with the way she was acting.
"I'm going to get Flitwick." Marietta ran out of the room, pulling Cho along with her. Neither of them wanted to be in the dorm, where Olive was collapsed into Nat's arms, crying nonstop about the terrifying experience she had just endured.
Cedric was alive, that much was true. The way he called out to her, begged her to get him out of that inky black enclosure could not convince Olive otherwise. She knew that there had to be some way to save him.
Natalie held Olive tightly, keeping her from fighting and thrashing around the room. Silent tears streamed down her face. She was terrified, knowing that in order for Olive to be crying and screaming in her arms as she was now meant that her heart must have been breaking a thousand times over.
A few minutes later, Cho and Marietta returned to the dormitory followed closely behind by Professor Flitwick. Their Head of House looked startled as he looked around the messy bedroom, which had been thoroughly trashed by Olive's fit as she tried to find her notebook.
"Merlin's beard." He whispered as he rounded the corner of Olive's bed, where the girl in question had fallen unconscious in Nat's arms, "What happened?"
Nat reached one hand up to wipe the drying tears from her cheeks, looking pale and exhausted from what she had witnessed. Taking a shaky breath, she started to explained to Flitwick what happened.
"She started screaming in the middle of the night. No one could get her to snap out of it." The blonde spoke slowly and carefully, "When she woke up, it was like she had been drowning. She couldn't breathe, and she started screaming about Cedric. How he..."
Her eyes fell on something under Olive's bed, partially hidden under the corner of her bedsheet.
It was her notebook, opened to one of the middle pages. Nat's mouth hung open slightly as she stared at it, a nervous feeling settling over her.
"What about him?" Flitwick asked, his voice low as it cut through the heavy silence.
Nat turned to the professor looking worried, "I think Professor Dumbledore needs to hear about this."
"Miss Lark, can you hear me?"
"Albus, give the potion a few moments to work. Besides, we shouldn't be bombarding her with questions when she needs to rest. Miss Lark is terribly exhausted and dehydrated."
"I'm sorry, Poppy, but I do fear that this situation might be time-sensitive."
"Make it quick, then, before the potion wears off."
Olive had never been hit by a car, but if she ever was, she believed it would probably feel similar to how she was currently feeling. Her entire body was trembling and exhausted, her head pounding strongly in tune with her heartbeat. When she breathed, her chest felt heavy and weighted.
"Miss Lark, dear, can you hear us?" Madame Pomfrey stood over Olive, shining light from her wand into the Ravenclaw's face as she checked her eyes. The light made her headache worse, but she didn't protest.
When the Healer was done, Olive nodded, coughing a few times to try and rid the sour taste from her mouth. That was probably the potion she had heard Madame Pomfrey talking about. Besides from how she physically felt, everything else was numb and eerily calm.
"Olive." Dumbledore was sitting in the chair next to her bed. In his lap, open to the same page as the Yule Ball memory, was her notebook. The pages were crumpled, a few tearstains smudging some of the words, but everything else seemed to be intact, "Can you tell me how you came across this notebook?"
"It's mine, sir." Olive was surprised by the calmness of her own voice. She was either in so much shock from what happened, or Madame Pomfrey had given her one hell of a potion, "That's my notebook."
Dumbledore nodded carefully, "You wrote everything that is inside here? Even the one dated from this past Christmas?"
"Yes." She took a slightly shaky breath, feeling rather uncomfortable under the gaze of her Headmaster and Madame Pomfrey. Suddenly, as she stared as her notebook, everything slowly came rushing back to her. Her eyes were more alarmed as they met Dumbledore's, who seemed to be waiting for her to elaborate.
So she told him everything. She told him about the first memory she wrote, how she could relive it whenever she decided to read it. Then, she told him about the Yule Ball memory, and how it had changed when she read it the previous night.
"He was in it, sir, but not in the way I wrote it." Olive traced the patterns of the blanket wrapped around her as she spoke, "He was wearing what he wore the day of the Third Task... and he kept asking for me to get him out. To wake him up. He was aware of what happened. He was aware that he's..."
Her voice trailed off, not having the heart to say it. If Cedric was in her notebook, preserved in that memory, then how could he possibly be dead?
"Professor, how can this be?" Olive asked Dumbledore quietly, "I don't understand."
He sat deep in thought for a moment, staring off into the distance. Olive watched him, her eyes almost unblinking. If it wasn't for the potion Madame Pomfrey had given her, she would have been in a similar state as she had been the previous evening.
"Albus." Madame Pomfrey said in a warning tone, her eyes shifting up to the clock hanging above the main doors to the Hospital Wing. She wanted him to finish his business with her patient and then leave them alone.
"Memories are powerful things, Olive." Dumbledore began, "They allow us to glimpse into the past, to experience moments and feelings even years after they have occurred. What you have done, writing this memory down in such detail... you have created a very unusual environment for your memories to thrive."
He tapped the page softly with a finger, "I have never seen a memory so well preserved, so well detailed, as this one."
Olive perked her head up, "You... you read it, sir?"
Dumbledore nodded, "Indeed. When Miss Arnold brought me the notebook late last evening I read the pages in question. I even spoke to Mr. Diggory myself."
Her heart began beating faster in her chest, "What?"
Madame Pomfrey reached over, feeling Olive's forehead with the back of her hand, "Perhaps the rest of this conversation can wait, Albus. We can't let her get too worked up."
"No... I-I'm fine." She turned back to Professor Dumbledore, "What happened?"
"The memory you have written preserved Mr. Diggory's essence so well... it created something quite peculiar." He explained, "When he was killed, his soul did not move on like most do. Instead, well, you were the one to discover it when you reread this memory from the Yule Ball."
Olive sat back against the pillows, releasing a shaky breath she didn't know she was holding. Her headache only seemed to get worse the more information Dumbledore told her. It was hard for her to process it, even with the potion Madame Pomfrey had given her in order to calm her nerves completely.
"So... he's in there?" Ollie pointed to the notebook, "I'm... I'm not going mad?"
Dumbledore chuckled softly at Olive's tone of voice, "No, Miss Lark, you're not going mad... though I suppose we all do, eventually."
He stood up, nodding to Madame Pomfrey. When he spoke next, his voice was a lot quieter than it had been before, "By writing down this memory, Olive, you were able to save Mr. Diggory. However, in doing so, you have put both him and yourself in danger."
"In danger?" Olive felt like she couldn't breathe again. Cedric is alive because of her... how could that be a dangerous thing?
"No one should be able to survive the Killing Curse. The only one to do so, as you know, faces a great amount of danger every year. No one must know that Mr. Diggory is alive." Dumbledore spoke so quietly it was almost impossible for Olive to make out what he was saying.
However, given the urgency of the situation, she hung onto every word.
"No one can know?" She repeated, "Then... what happens to him? What happens... what happens to me?"
"Cedric and his parents will be going into hiding as soon as he is awake and recovered. The world will continue to believe of his murder for both his own safety and for yours." He tucked the notebook under his arm, "I will keep this somewhere safe, where no one can find it. As for you, Miss Lark, you must tell no one about what you were able to do. I also suggest that you never attempt something like this ever again. This is dangerous magic, and as a result, it could have nearly killed you."
Olive nodded slowly, feeling overwhelmed from all the Headmaster had told her. She was elated that Cedric was alive, so happy she wanted to shout it from the Astronomy Tower. However, she was also terrified of what Dumbledore was saying she created. If anyone found out that Olive had brought someone back from the dead, especially now that Voldemort was back, she could put herself and her loved ones in danger.
"Will I ever get to see him again, Professor?" She asked as he started towards the door, "Will any of us?"
Dumbledore offered her a kind smile.
"Perhaps one day, Olive, once these dark days are behind us."