ONLY LIGHT. harry potter

╰➢ remember cedric diggory

THE FIRST THING AURORA HWANG COULD HEAR when the three students emerged was the screams coming out from her sister. They were loud, painful, laced with excruciating pain— nothing like he's ever heard before.

"Blaise.." Aurora mumbled to her friend, trying to peek through, but she was far too short to see anything happening. "Blaise, what's going on?"

Blaise, who was far more taller than her, watched the horrible sight infront of him. There was so much blood, all of it coming from her sister, and he couldn't tell her just now; Aurora needed to see it for herself.

"We need to go down." Blaise whispered, grabbing her arm as they trudged down the stairs. "Now."

Nicole felt her­self slam flat in­to the ground; her face was pressed in­to grass; the smell of it filled his nos­trils. The girl immediately rolled over, letting out an anguished cry as she held her hands over her face.. her head hurt too much. Her body hurt too much. It seemed that everything hurt too much. Slowly, her senses started to send reports back to her brain. There were tears and rips, the writhing pain, combined with all the breaks. She kept her eyes closed, not because she didn't want to see where she was, but she thought it would hurt too much to open them.

She was sobbing, hands grasping onto her bleeding body as shock and ex­haus­tion kept her on the ground, breath­ing in the smell of the grass, wait­ing... wait­ing for some­one to do some­thing... some­thing to hap­pen.

They were still laughing... cheering.. none of them still had an idea on what was happening.

"Harry! Nicole!"

Nicole kept her eyes shut, yelling, groaning as a burning agony that tears through her whole physicality makes her think about nothing else other than the horrifying sensation of blood dripping down every corner of her body.

Fleur had come to a realization first, letting out a blood curling scream, alarming a few people around her.

Nicole, through blood and tears, could see her sister running up to the scene with Blaise beside her. Disbelief clouded her vision as she realized what was going on, eyes first trailing on her... then onto Cedric.

"Aurora..."

Aurora, who had leaned down, held a hand against his pulse. She couldn't feel him.

"He doesn't have a pulse, Blaise..." she whispered her friend, eyes widening as she grasped onto his hand. "W-why isn't he breathing?"

Nicole continued to sob, feeling two pairs of arms grab onto her, but she kept lying on the ground, not wanting to stand up. Wake up. Wake up... please.

Everything happening around her was nothing at this point; she didn't care at all. Girls were scream­ing, sob­bing hys­ter­ical­ly....The scene flick­ered odd­ly be­fore Nicole's ears, eyes wired shut.

"Nicole..." she heard Dumbledore's voice. As if time had passed by so fast, Harry wasn't beside her anymore, and all what was left was Cedric's dead body. "Follow me, Nicole. We'll go get Harry."

"My daughter is bleeding, Albus! She needs to go to the hospital wing!" she could hear her mother's loud voice. An arm grasped her, a much more familiar arm, which she recognized as her father's.

But then he let go, calling over the name of his other daughter.

Noelle let out a curse at the state her daughter was in, she knelt over Nicole, drew her wand and traced it over the deep wounds the deatheater's curse had made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like song over the screaming mess. The flow of blood seemed to ease; Noelle wiped the residue from her daughter's face and repeated his spell. Now the wounds seemed to be knitting.

When she had performed the counter curse for the third time, she lifted her daughter into a standing position. There was still a lot of damage in her body— burns, scrapes, and blood; but the the spell full of dark magic that she hasn't heard of in so much years was gone.

"I'll take you to the hospital wing—" she tired grabbing Nicole, but the girl couldn't stop crying; the shock still clouding her. It made Noelle wonder what she could've seen or felt back in the maze, because Nicole would rather jump off a cliff than let anyone see her cry.

Nicole tried to talk, but the fear of seeing Cedric's cold, dead body caught up to her and her words broke up and all she could say were stuttering sounds. Hot tears streamed down her face, and she squeezed her eyelids shut in the hope her tears would stop.

"Nicole, come on—"

"I don't—" she hiccuped, trying to regain her words. "Dad."

Suddenly, a pair of strong arms had engulfed her into a hug, her mother's footsteps leading the other way, probably with Aurora.

It was like Nicole was seven once again. But this time, instead of crying over losing a Quidditch game to a bunch of their neighbors, she was crying about the withering pain, being tortured, betrayed, a bunch of more events that would scar her for the rest of her life.

—

"Dad?"

"Hm?"

Nicole slightly winces at the pain in her burnt arm, but it didn't set her back from sitting down upright in the hospital bed. The question had been bugging her all night ever since her body had stopped shaking from the pain and when she could finally blink without seeing Ellis, back in the graveyard, torturing her to insanity. "Where's Aurora? Is she okay?"

Her father takes in a deep breath, hands covering his face in frustration. "Your mom took her home a few minutes ago. Noelle and I haven't talked yet, so I'm not entirely sure."

Nicole sighed, looking out the window. She could only imagine what Aurora had felt... seeing Cedric's dead body in the field. Cedric, who was the only person she's seen soften up to.

The thoughts of Cedric somehow eventually led her back to Ellis— and all of a sudden, she wanted to burst into tears once more. In those months, she'd never noticed it, but it all made sense now, especially after her father told her about the deal with Moody and the Polyjuice Potion. Ellis talking to Moody despite knowing nothing in common. Ellis never wearing anything other than long-sleeves. Ellis helping her with the spells.

She hasn't told her father yet.

However, just as she was about to say something, the door slammed open, with Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Ron, and Hermoine entering with frantic looks. By the tone of their bodies, Nicole knew that they were all about to come towards her and bombard her with a bunch of questions, but luckily, Atlas reacted quickly.

"Molly. Listen, Nic has been through a lot of shock tonight. I think what she needs is a bit of peace and quiet for the moment. If she would like you all to stay with her," he looked around at Hermoine, Ron, and Bill, "You can. But I think she needs to sleep for a bit before the questions start."

The door had suddenly opened once again. A black dog (a dog that Atlas knew by heart) was walking down towards the bed beside Nicole's.

Thankfully, the rest of their company grew quiet.

"Head­mas­ter," said Madam Pom­frey, star­ing at the great black dog that was Sir­ius, "may I ask what - ?"

"This dog will be re­main­ing with Har­ry for a while," said Dum­ble­dore sim­ply. "I as­sure you, he is ex­treme­ly well trained. Har­ry, I will wait while you get in­to bed."

As Harry sat down on the bed beside Nicole's, he caught sight of the re­al Moody ly­ing mo­tion­less in a bed at the far end of the room. His wood­en leg and mag­ical eye were ly­ing on the bed­side ta­ble.

"Is he okay?" Har­ry asked.

"I think he'll be fine," Nicole replied quietly, glancing at the burns in her arms.

Ron, Hermione, Bill, Mrs. Weasley, and the black dog came around the screen and set­tled them­selves in chairs on ei­ther side of them. Ron and Hermione were look­ing at them al­most cau­tious­ly, as though scared of him.

"Can you guys please stop staring at me like that?" Nicole questioned, but at the height of her sentence, her voice broke out into a crack.

Mrs. Weasley's eyes filled with tears as she smoothed their bed-​cov­ers un­nec­es­sar­ily. Atlas was biting his lip in anger, but his eyes that reflected under the moonlight were slightly glossy.

Madam Pom­frey, who had bus­tled off to her of­fice, re­turned hold­ing two small bot­tles of some pur­ple po­tion and two gob­lets

"You two would need to need to drink all of this." she said. "It's a po­tion for dream­less sleep."

For one last time, Nicole glanced at Harry, took the gob­let and drank a few mouth­fuls. She felt her­self be­com­ing drowsy at once. Ev­ery­thing around her be­came hazy; the lamps around the hos­pi­tal wing seemed to be wink­ing at her in a friend­ly way through the screen around her bed; her body felt as though it was sink­ing deep­er in­to the warmth of the feath­er ma­tress. Be­fore she could fin­ish the po­tion, be­fore she could say anoth­er word, her ex­haus­tion had car­ried her off to sleep.

——

Nicole woke up to a commotion.

It mustn't have been too long since she fell asleep, since the sky was still dim and she wanted to go back to slumber once again. However, there were too much voices talking all at once, and Nicole was forced to get up with a thud.

Once she opened her eyes, she squinted to make sure what she was seeing was real and not just a bunch of shadows. There were so much people. So much.

"I told you it would wake her up," she hears the angry voice of her father, a bunch of shuffling, then a sigh.

Nicole looked to her side. It seemed like Harry was awake, too.

"None of you managed to finish the potion. You two got to take the rest of it," Mrs. Weasley said at last. Her hand nudged the sack of gold on her bed­side cab­inet as she reached for the bot­tle and the gob­let. "Fudge just came over to hand you your winnings. Here's yours, Nic."

Nicole glanced at the sack. One thousand galleons. Honestly, she had no idea what she was supposed to do with it. She didn't even need it. Hell, she didn't even deserve it.

"Cedric should've won it..." she mumbled once again, tears threatening to fall out from her eyes. Stop it. she reminded herself. You've cried so much already and made a fool out of yourself. Stop it.

"He should've... I told him to..."

"It wasn't your fault. Har­ry," Mrs. Weasley whispered.

"I told him to take the cup with me," said Har­ry.

The thing against which she had been fighting on and off ev­er since she had come out of the maze was threat­en­ing to over­pow­er her. She could feel a burn­ing, prick­ling feel­ing in the in­ner cor­ners of her eyes. She blinked and stared up at the ceil­ing. "Dad? Can we talk? Outside?"

"Of course," Atlas' voice was sweet, sympathetic, unlike the anger that clouded it a few minutes ago. "Come on. Let's go to the balcony."

Once Nicole mustered up the strength to walk past her friends and a very teary eyed Molly, the two of them sat on the balcony, none of them speaking about what had just happened in the few hours that passed by.

Eventually, it was her voice that broke the silence. "Did Harry tell you?"

Atlas looks at his daughter with confusion, "tell me what?"

"Ellis was a deatheater," she mumbled, suddenly feeling the shame wash over her once more. Every time she thought of it, she would feel really stupid. "The reason he got... close to me was because of Voldemort. He put my name in the cup." Pausing for a moment, she regains her thoughts as she rapidly blinks her eyes, voice coming out as a broken whisper. "I shouldn't have... I'm so stupid. I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry."

"Hush, my baby." she bows her head as Atlas kneels over her. He kisses her forehead, and Nicole is a child again, helpless and hopeful, bursting with love.

—

When she looked back, even a month lat­er, Nicole found she had on­ly scat­tered memories of the next few days. It was as though she had been through too much to take in any more. The rec­ol­lec­tions she did have were very painful.

She only came back to Hogwarts at the end of the year feast. She didn't even know why she had to be there— but for some reason, she just had to.

"The end," said Dum­ble­dore, look­ing around at them all, "of an­oth­er year."

He paused, and his eyes fell up­on the Huf­flepuff ta­ble. Theirs had been the most sub­dued ta­ble be­fore he had got­ten to his feet, and theirs were still the sad­dest and palest faces in the Hall.

"There is much that I would like to say to you all tonight," said Dum­ble­dore, "but I must first ac­knowl­edge the loss of a very fine per­son, who should be sit­ting here," he ges­tured to­ward the Huf­flepuffs, "en­joy­ing our feast with us. I would like you all, please, to stand, and raise your glass­es, to Cedric Dig­gory."

They did it, all of them; the bench­es scraped as ev­ery­one in the Hall stood, and raised their gob­lets, and echoed, in one loud, low, rum­bling voice, "Cedric Dig­gory."

For a moment, Nicole looked at the Slytherin table, expecting for Aurora to be there, grieving. However, the girl was staring at her hands blankly, fumbling with some sort of necklace.

She knew what kind of bond she had with him.

"Cedric was a per­son who ex­em­pli­fied many of the qual­ities that dis­tin­guish Huf­flepuff house," Dum­ble­dore con­tin­ued. "He was a good and loy­al friend, a hard work­er, he valued fair play. His death has af­fect­ed you all, whether you knew him well or not. I think that you have the right, there­fore, to know ex­act­ly how it came about."

Taking in a deep breath, memories flashed by Nicole. It was true: everything Dumbledore had said. He was a good friend. A hard worker, and it wasn't fair that he didn't get to live out the rest of his life.

"Cedric Dig­gory was mur­dered by Lord Volde­mort."

"Cedric!" she yelled, trying to pull him over. "We need to go! We need to leave! Come o—"

"Kill the spare."

A swish­ing noise and a sec­ond voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Ava­da Ke­davra!"

A blast of green light blazed through Nicole's eye­lids, barely missing her, and she watched as Cedric's body fell onto the ground in front of her, her grasped arm pulling her down as well.

The girl fell down with a thud beside him, and her eyes wire wired shut, ter­ri­fied of what she was about to see, he opened his sting­ing eyes.

Cedric was ly­ing spread-​ea­gled on the ground be­side her. He was dead.

She sighed, attempting to take in a deep breath. It felt like she was back at the graveyard. The burns on her arms were back, the deep cut in her leg was burning— and once again, she couldn't breathe.

A pan­icked whis­per swept the Great Hall. Peo­ple were star­ing at Dum­ble­dore in disbelief, in hor­ror. He looked per­fect­ly calm as he watched them mut­ter them­selves in­to silence.

"The Min­istry of Mag­ic," Dum­ble­dore con­tin­ued, "does not wish me to tell you this. It is pos­si­ble that some of your par­ents will be hor­ri­fied that I have done so - ei­ther because they will not be­lieve that Lord Volde­mort has re­turned, or be­cause they think I should not tell you so, young as you are. It is my be­lief, how­ev­er, that the truth is gen­er­al­ly prefer­able to lies, and that any at­tempt to pre­tend that Cedric died as the re­sult of an ac­ci­dent, or some sort of blun­der of his own, is an in­sult to his mem­ory."

Stunned and fright­ened, ev­ery face in the Hall was turned to­ward Dum­ble­dore now...or al­most ev­ery face. Over at the Slytherin table. Aurora's eyes were glossy, and with every fibre of her body, she tried to not close her eyes.

"There is some­body else who must be mentioned in con­nec­tion with Cedric's death," Dum­ble­dore went on. "I am talk­ing, of course, about Har­ry Pot­ter and Nicole Hwang."

No, no. No. No. Nicole took in a deep breath. Stop it. Stop it.

A kind of rip­ple crossed the Great Hall as a few heads turned in their di­rec­tion be­fore flick­ing back to face Dum­ble­dore.

"Har­ry Pot­ter and Nicole Hwang man­aged to es­cape Lord Volde­mort," said Dum­ble­dore. "They risked theur own life to re­turn Cedric's body to Hog­warts. They showed, in ev­ery re­spect, the sort of brav­ery that few wiz­ards have ev­er shown in fac­ing Lord Volde­mort, and for this, I hon­or them."

Her heartbeat in her throat. She couldn't breathe. The room swayed. Nicole resisted the urge to put her head between her arms. Just breathe.

Dum­ble­dore turned grave­ly to ­the two and raised his gob­let once more. Near­ly everyone in the Great Hall fol­lowed suit. They mur­mured their names, as they had mur­mured Cedric's, and drank to them.

Just breathe. The walls were closing in. Nicole was suffocating. She felt sick and her body was weirdly tingling. Her vision tunneled. How am I supposed to breathe?

When ev­ery­one had once again re­sumed their seats, Dum­ble­dore con­tin­ued, "The Tri­wiz­ard Tour­na­ment's aim was to fur­ther and pro­mote mag­ical un­der­stand­ing. In the light of what has hap­pened - of Lord Volde­mort's re­turn - such ties are more im­por­tant than ev­er be­fore."

Dum­ble­dore looked from Madame Maxime and Ha­grid, to Fleur Dela­cour and her fel­low Beaux­ba­tons stu­dents, to Vik­tor Krum and the Durm­strangs at the Slytherin ta­ble. Krum, Har­ry saw, looked wary, al­most fright­ened, as though he ex­pect­ed Dumbledore to say some­thing harsh.

"Ev­ery guest in this Hall," said Dum­ble­dore, and his eyes lin­gered up­on the Durm­strang stu­dents, "will be wel­comed back here at any time, should they wish to come. I say to you all, once again - in the light of Lord Volde­mort's re­turn, we are on­ly as strong as we are unit­ed, as weak as we are di­vid­ed. Lord Volde­mort's gift for spread­ing dis­cord and en­mi­ty is very great. We can fight it on­ly by show­ing an equal­ly strong bond of friend­ship and trust. Dif­fer­ences of habit and lan­guage are noth­ing at all if our aims are iden­ti­cal and our hearts are open.

"It is my be­lief- and nev­er have I so hoped that I am mis­tak­en - that we are all fac­ing dark and dif­fi­cult times. Some of you in this Hall have al­ready suf­fered di­rect­ly at the hands of Lord Volde­mort. Many of your fam­ilies have been torn asun­der. A week ago, a stu­dent was tak­en from our midst.

"Re­mem­ber Cedric. Re­mem­ber, if the time should come when you have to make a choice be­tween what is right and what is easy, re­mem­ber what hap­pened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, be­cause he strayed across the path of Lord Volde­mort. Re­mem­ber Cedric Dig­gory."

Nicole looked at the goblet in her hand, still struggling to breathe.

Remember Cedric Diggory.

—-

—

The weath­er could not have been more dif­fer­ent on the jour­ney back to King's Cross than it had been on their way to Hog­warts the pre­vi­ous Septem­ber. There wasn't a sin­gle cloud in the sky. Nicole, Har­ry, Ron, and Hermione had man­aged to get a com­partment to them­selves. Pig­wid­geon was once again hid­den un­der Ron's dress robes to stop him from hoot­ing con­tin­ual­ly; Hed­wig was doz­ing , her head un­der her wing, and Crook­shanks was curled up in a spare seat like a large, fur­ry gin­ger cush­ion. Mcgonagowl, was once again, hooting loudly.

The four of them talked more ful­ly and freely than they had all week as the train sped them south­ward. Nicole felt as though Dumble­dore's speech at the Leav­ing Feast had un­blocked him, some­how. It was less painful to dis­cuss what had hap­pened now. They broke off their con­ver­sa­tion about what ac­tion Dum­ble­dore might be tak­ing, even now, to stop Volde­mort on­ly when the lunch trol­ley ar­rived.

When Hermione re­turned from the trol­ley and put her mon­ey back in­to her school­bag, she dislodged a copy of the Dai­ly Prophet that she had been car­ry­ing in there. Har­ry looked at it, un­sure whether he re­al­ly want­ed to know what it might say, but Hermione, see­ing him look­ing at it, said calm­ly, "There's noth­ing in there. You can look for your­self, but there's noth­ing at all. I've been check­ing ev­ery day. Just a small piece the day af­ter the third task say­ing you two won the tour­na­ment. They didn't even men­tion Cedric. Noth­ing about any of it. If you ask me. Fudge is forc­ing them to keep qui­et."

"He'll nev­er keep Ri­ta qui­et," said Har­ry. "Not on a sto­ry like this."

Nicole sighed, leaning on her chair. "Sometimes, I just want to push her off the astronomy tower."

"Oh, Ri­ta hasn't writ­ten any­thing at all since the third task," said Hermione in an odd­ly constrained voice. "As a mat­ter of fact," she added, her voice now trem­bling slight­ly, "Rita Skeeter isn't go­ing to be writ­ing any­thing at all for a while. Not un­less she wants me to spill the beans on her."

"What are you talk­ing about?" said Ron.

"I found out how she was lis­ten­ing in on private con­ver­sa­tions when she wasn't sup­posed to be com­ing on­to the grounds," said Hermione in a rush.

Nicole suddenly had a lightbulb in her head. "You were about to tell me when—"

"Yup." Hermoine grinned, "you see...Ri­ta Skeeter" - Hermione's voice trem­bled with qui­et tri­umph - "is an un­reg­is­tered An­ima­gus. She can turn -"

Hermione pulled a small sealed glass jar out oth­er bag.

"- in­to a bee­tle."

"You're kid­ding," said Ron. "You haven't...she's not..."

"Oh yes she is," said Hermione hap­pi­ly, bran­dish­ing the jar at them.

In­side were a few twigs and leaves and one large, fat bee­tle.

"I caught her on the win­dowsill in the hos­pi­tal wing. Look very close­ly, and you'll no­tice the mark­ings around her an­ten­nae are exact­ly like those foul glass­es she wears."

Nicole looked at it, noting that she was right.

"I've told her I'll let her out when we get back to Lon­don," said Hermione. "I've put an Un­break­
able Charm on the jar, you see, so she can't trans­form. And I've told her she's to keep her quill to her­self for a whole year. See if she can't break the habit of writ­ing hor­ri­ble lies about peo­ple."

Smil­ing serene­ly, Hermione placed the beetle back in­side her school­bag.

The rest of the jour­ney passed pleas­ant­ly enough; Nicole wished it could have gone on all sum­mer, in fact, and that she would nev­er ar­rive at King's Cross...but as she had learned the hard way that year, time will not slow down when some­thing un­pleas­ant lies ahead, and all too soon, the Hog­warts Ex­press was pulling in at plat­form nine and three-​quar­ters.

Suddenly, Nicole had suddenly remembered the sack of money she had from winning the tournament, then it was flooded with confusion. What was she supposed to do with the winnings?

From the corer of her eye, she could see Harry thrusting a sack to Fred and George.

Nicole broke out into a smile. It was the perfect idea.

Running, she landed beside her friend, "Take it," she said, and he thrust the sack in­to Fred's empty hands.

"What?" said Fred, look­ing flab­ber­gast­ed.

"Take it," Har­ry re­peat­ed firm­ly. "I don't want it."

Nicole nodded. "I don't want mine, too."

"You two are men­tal," said George, try­ing to push it back at Har­ry. Fred did the same thing, but Nicole glared at him and pushed the sack back with so much force.

"We arent," said Har­ry.

"You take it, and get in­vent­ing." Nicole added. "It's for the joke shop."

"They are men­tal," Fred said in an al­most awed voice.

"Lis­ten," said Har­ry firm­ly. "If you don't take it, I'm throw­ing it down the drain. I don't want it and I don't need it. But I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I've got a feel­ming we're go­ing to need them more than usu­al be­fore long."

"You two," said George weak­ly, weigh­ing the mon­ey bag in his hands, "there's got to be a thou­sand Galleons in here. Each."

"Yeah," said Nicole, grin­ning. "Think how many Ca­nary Creams that is."

The twins stared at them.

"Just don't tell your mum where you got it...al­though she might not be so keen for you to join the Min­istry any­more, come to think of it...."

"Har­ry. Nic...." Fred be­gan, but Har­ry pulled out his wand.

"Look," he said flat­ly, "take it, or I'll hex you. I know some good ones now. Just do me one fa­vor, okay? Buy Ron some dif­fer­ent dress robes and say they're from you."

Nicole raised a brow. Harry threatening people? This was new.

When Harry went to leave the compartment, Nicole trudged after him, not saying a word. She could already spot her parents amidst the crowd of people, but she tapped Harry before she left.

"I'll owl you. Expect Mcgonagowl to visit frequently," Nicole smiled softly, a thing that was becoming hard for her to do lately. "Bye, Harry. I need to meet Aurora."

Harry smiles as she engulfs him in a hug, the slightest disappointment taking over him. He immediately slaps himself when she turns around.

Silently cursing, he looks at her tied up hair as she walks away from him. Were you expecting something else, you idiot?

—

NOTES
teenage angst here we come