The Fallen Hero [HEDRIC]

Chapter II - Unexpected

CHAPTER II

UNEXPECTED

The rain was falling heavily in the woods, the cold wind swaying the tree branches, entering through the cracks in the roof and windows of the small hut where he was.

Although tired, almost to the point of exhaustion, Cedric had failed to fall asleep the night before. Preferring to sit in the chair next to the window with the box on his lap, he watched the raindrops streaming down on the cold glass on which was pressing against his cheek, his face faintly illuminated by dim light of that morning.

"It's ironic..." he thought as his index finger circled the glass, the corner of his lips curving in a ghost of a smile "...how it all began because of a day like this."

Many years ago, when Cedric was a child, his mother always put him to bed with tales in which all the magical children heard from their parents, such as the "Tale of the Three Brothers" or the "The Warlock's Hairy Heart", tales that have always fascinated him. However, the story he always liked to hear before sleep was how his parents, Amos and Hellen met at Hogwarts, the two of them being soulmates, something immensely rare to occur.

It was a simple story, without "villains" or "plot-twists" but it was the most important one to Cedric - it was the story of how his adored parents find the true love.

Over the years, after entering at Hogwarts and slowly let his childhood behind as he grew up, Cedric secretly begun to idealize when would be the time that he would find his mate.

In his idealizations, he imagined meeting her on a quiet, sunny afternoon or perhaps a night with a star-studded sky, perhaps in his home village, Ottery St. Catchpole when he returned for the Summer break or even at Hogwarts, like happened with his parents: the two of them bumping by bad luck and meeting with pure luck, he feeling his magic connect with hers as two strands were joined as one.

But like everything else in his life, what Cedric imagined had fled — and a lot — from reality.

He was wrong about the weather conditions: he hadn't found his soulmate on a sunny day or on the starry night sky, but was thanks to a torrential rain such as it fell at that moment, cold, freezing wind, muffled sunlight through the heavy dark clouds.

He was wrong about the person: it wasn't a girl with a delicate beauty as Cho Chang, a former friend from Ravenclaw or any girl like that.

It was him.

A boy like him.

And it wasn't any boy...

Cedric looked down at the box, his fingers collecting his first precious relic from the ones he'd accumulated over time: a wood chunk. In the eyes of others, it was just useless garbage, but to him it was the material reminiscence of the day he found that Harry Potter was his soulmate.

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.

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November, 1993.

Within Quidditch, the function of a seeker was theoretically simple: to capture the Golden Snitch and secure 150 points for their team, which almost always led to a victory. The function was "theoretically" simple, because the snitch was a tiny object that flew at great speed, turning into a small golden blur in the field of view, under the good and normal weather conditions.

But the function of a seeker at that moment was almost an impossible mission: the rain was very dense, soaking him to the bones, the wind was unfavorable, making him feel even colder while the conditions of visibility were poor. The snitch could be on his side or a few feet away and he wouldn't even realize it.