Harry Potter Short Stories

Capable Cedric

Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric. Cedric shot him a quizzical look. They both turned back to watch the approaching figure.

It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second, Harry and Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one another.

Then everything happened all at once. Harry screamed, his knees buckling and his wand slipping from his fingers as he brought his hands up to claw at his face; as Cedric caught him with one hand, wand immediately up and in a defensive position with the other, he heard a voice whose words he could not make out over Harry's screaming, then another shouting two horrifying syllables:

"AVAD–"

Cedric was an Auror's son, and his father had lived through the Dark Lord's war. Any responsible parent who'd survived those times, his father swore, trained their children not only to recognize the opening syllables of the Unforgivables, but to have their bodies begin to dodge before their minds could consciously choose to act.

That training saved his life, as Cedric wrenched both himself and Harry out of the way just as the night lit up in green light. Without thinking, he snapped out several nonverbal spells, only to swear under his breath as the hooded figure countered them; whoever this was, he was no slouch.

Only one thing saved him from being taken down himself, dragging a deadweight as he was, and that was the figure's bundled burden; he looked as though he'd prefer a much more mobile dueling style, but struggled not to fumble whatever he held under one arm. That meant Cedric's life would only end the second after he gave up his balancing act and managed to put it down.

As another spell rang off his Shield Charm, Cedric managed to get Harry behind a large gravestone and dropped him there. The boy let out one last retch of pain, then cracked his eyes open. "Cedric–" he groaned.

"Stay here!" Cedric snapped as a reddish-purple bolt sent a chunk of rock flying off from the headstone's corner. "I'll hold him off!"

As Harry tried to slur out a response, Cedric jumped out from behind the stone and began sprinting perpendicular to the figure's line of sight – fortunately, the assailant didn't seem bright enough to lead his target. "Look at me, coward!" he bellowed, slinging a nonverbal Exploding Curse for emphasis. "I'm the one you want!"

"End this game!" a voice hissed from the bundle – the bundle? That was no baby – "Kill him, then take Potter!"

Oh, lovely. Someone actually was out to kill Harry. Despite the unconscious portion of Cedric's mind keeping up the barrage of spells and counter-spells, the conscious portion deeply appreciated being an incidental causality in somebody else's story. Not.

His Seeker's vision caught sight of a short, straight stick on the ground amid the strobing flashes of many colors, and his Seeker's reflexes allowed him to hit the ground rolling, grab it, and spring back up without ever pausing in his mindless chains of spells. "HARRY!" he bellowed, swinging back one arm. "CATCH!"

The figure's head turned to follow it, wand instinctively rising to divert its path, and earned a bloody, burning wound to his shoulder for his trouble. Cursing, he returned his attention to Cedric just before another spell would have impacted his chest, and the wand reached its destination unhindered. Out of the corner of his eye, Cedric glimpsed a hand coming up to grab it, and grinned: say what people would about Quidditch being a waste of time for anyone not going professional after school, but there was nothing like a Seeker's skill –

"CEDRIC! YOUR RIGHT!"

Cedric's gaze snapped right, and time seemed to slow to a crawl: a monstrous snake, as big around as a strongman's thigh, reared up beside him, hood flaring and fangs glistening with venom –