Harry Potter OneShots!

Cedmione- What Once Was

By LittleTree off Fanfiction.Net

Summary:Cedric struggles with his ever slipping sanity as his heart breaks upon finding out Hermione is leaving to marry Harry freaking Potter. (Cedric/Hermione UL; Harry/Hermione. PsychiatricHospital!AU & Muggle!AU)

Cedric Diggory stared down at the letter in disbelief. She was resigning her post as a resident psychiatrist and was going to focus on teaching and family responsibilities as she was also going to marry him. Sauve, uncaring, and smug egomaniac Harry bloody Potter. How could she do that to him? To them?

"Don't let go of this opportunity, cause there is no guarantee it will last," someone's cell loudly broadcasted throughout the small deserted nurses' station. The irony of the ringtone was not lost on Cedric.

"Hey!" Cedric dropped the letter back onto the desk by the medical records and backed away. "Cedric you know you aren't to be in here," nurse Paul said calmly as he approached Cedric cautiously. "Why don't we go back to your room? You can play with your snowglobes until dinner."

Snowglobes? Snowglobes?! His heart was breaking and he was simply told to, "go play with his snowglobes" like some child when he was a man. A man, dammit!

But he silently allowed Paul to escort him back to his room anyway. He wanted to play with his snowglobes. His bloody, useless snowglobes.

"What's wrong, Ric?" Fred asked after the nurse left.

Cedric ignored his roommate's question as he surveyed his shelve of various snowglobes he had started collecting three years ago. When he had been transferred from the long-term care facility to here, to Ollivander's Mental and Behavioral Health Hospital. When he had first seen her for the first time.

Cedric growled as he cast snowglobe after snowglobe against the wall, not stopping to watch the glass and liquid glitter splatter the wall with each new addition to the broken globes now littering the floor. He didn't have the time. He knew he wouldn't be able to break all of his collection - there were too many of the damn things - before he would be physically and chemically withstrained. Something that should have disturbed him but after her betrayal, he didn't care anymore... about anything.

He wasn't numb. No, he was angry, hurt, and heartbroken. Laughing and crying uncontrollably as he remembered each moment with her. With his Hermione.

He was truly mad, abnormal, crazy after all.

He mentally dismissed the staff even before they rushed into the room and began trying to verbally bring him down.

Ha! As if he would deny Fred the pleasure of seeing his deranged, madman of a roommate being forced down and carried away to the de-escalation room. He was not going to be simply talked down. Not this time. The madness he had fought for years to control for her was back and he reveled in it. The power. The thrill. The fear. It kept thoughts of what she might be doing with Potter away and he welcomed it.

Why keep his demons away when she had forsaken him and was now uttering vows that would forever tie her to that cold, detached businessman, Potter?

His laughter and tears slowed as he picked up his last snowglobe. The one that had started his once precious collection. The one that Dr. Granger had given him three years ago.

"We have five minutes remaining Cedric if you would like to say anything more about the dreams you experienced during your coma." Doctor Hermione Granger, the newly licensed psychiatrist, informed her new patient as she studied him again.

He was only a few years older than her but almost his whole life had been spent in a coma induced dream, ever since his eleventh birthday when he and his parents were in a terrible aeroplane accident over Scotland. Mister and Missus Diggory had perished instantly but little Cedric had clung to life. Miraculously regaining consciousness twenty years later.

That had been six months ago.

Now, after months of extensive rehabilitation, he had been recommended for a psychiatric evaluation which had resulted in his transfer over to Ollivander's and to her. He was having trouble distinguishing reality from his own dream fueled fantasies. Fantasies about a magical school located in an ancient castle somewhere in Scotland and his school years there.

"They weren't dreams," Cedric corrected as he looked around Dr. Granger's private office. She had furthered her career and education since he had last seen her at Hogwarts, but she had grown from bushy-haired, buck-tooth girl into quite a lovely woman, not that he had found her younger-self ugly. Oh, far from it. It had carried a certain charm back then, one that had caused him to form a small, silly crush on the young Gryffindor but that was back in another world. Back at Hogwarts. Why she didn't remember Hogwarts or him he did not know. "They can't be dreams," he picked up the small throw pillow beside him and began turning it over in his hands. "Hogwarts exists. Magic exists. I was there," the pillow stilled. "You were there."

Granger blinked. "I was there with you?" she repeated in measured, even tones, prompting him to continue.

"Yes. You were several years below me but you were there. We were in different Houses but you were there with me. I was Hufflepuff and you were Gryffindor. You were and still are a bit of a know-it-all. Always studying and waging protests against cruelty and injustice. You were friend's with Harry Potter."

After her denial of knowing anyone named Potter, she had given him a snowglobe with a lone snowman within it. It was something she did for all new patients but it had meant so much to him. To have something to hold and shake and say was his. He had nothing in this new world. No friends, no family, no past, and no magic.

She had been a much-needed constant in this strange new world. Something for him to cling onto and before he knew it he had fallen for her completely. He had concealed it, of course, not wanting to get her in trouble but he thought she had understood and knew he cared for her, deeply. He had thought she had understood that Potter was different here, that she knew that once he was discharged and was working with a place of his own that he would be calling on her. Taking her out to fancy restaurants and football matches.

Obviously, he had been a delusional fool and he was back to being alone as he rocked silently back and forth holding onto his snowglobe. Numb and tired and heartbroken.

Why hadn't he noticed her back at Hogwarts?

Why hadn't he asked her to the Yule Ball instead of Cho?

. . .

Why hadn't he kissed her last week when he had the chance?

Why, why, why . . . why?

If only. . . if only he had . . . if only.

Fini