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"Reducto!"

Cedric had found a spot in the grass of this strange city's park from which to work on his spellcasting, starting with some target practice. He'd pushed back the sleeves of his plantsuit as far as was possible and made long movements with his wand, alternating between creating fast streams of bubbles and shooting them down. The almost childish game of bubble-popping was a simple diversion from the stream of thoughts that was flowng just as fast, one that hadn't stopped since the moment he realized he was alive: I'm about to die. It was hard to comprehend, when it seemed like his life had been going so well just hours ago.

Yet these Ohm had thrown everything off balance. Cedric had gone straight to Stacy to ask for his memories restored, as he'd never rest until he knew the truth of what happened. It had been just as hard to remember as that unicorn princess had predicted. Sure, the curse that was meant to kill him had been thrown off by another attack, but he'd heard awful yells. Harry's. When the sedation had worn off and he'd opened his eyes, he'd had to struggle not to scream.

That was what had happened to disrupt the course of history. For now, he had been given days, weeks, maybe months or a year or two to live, that long until he left this crew behind and met his fate. People had talked about their worlds being restored after the war. The Ohm were supposed had something that would fix things as they were meant to be, and 'meant to be' was his death. If he didn't die during the war, he'd be meeting his end immediately afterward. Time couldn't be changed, not even with a Time Turner. It had to happen.

Cedric was living on borrowed time. No one knew how long it would be until they won. They were going to win, he was sure. A small selfish part of him hoped that it would last a while, that he would have time to finish his unfinished business and learn more, but that was unfair. He couldn't allow the needless deaths to hang over his conscience any longer than necessary. The countless innocents killed during the Ohm's attack needed to live, not him. Billions of lives resurrected in exchange for his death, that was fair. He was the spare, not them. No matter what his father said or the Goblet decided, he wasn't special in the eyes of the universe, was he? He was just...

The spare who had been temporarily spared. A bubble waiting to be popped. Pop, pop, pop went the bubbles as his wand moved more precisely. If this was all the life he had left, he might as well do it right.

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Dark Arts, Lupin had mentioned that to him. He nodded along as Cedric spoke.

"I guess you can say that? We sort of all work together here. But he's a friend. He's pretty cool!"

"That's what we all said," Cedric couldn't help but smile. "We loved the lessons, they were actually useful for once. He really knows a lot."

He smiled. "Anyway, that's just one subject. I was studying all kinds of magic at Hogwarts. I'm going to miss it, but maybe with him here I can keep learning."

With that last happy thought in mind, he offered his hand. "Hey. I'm Cedric, it's nice to meet you."

"For once?" He'd hope defense against Dark Arts training would always be useful. On account of the subject matter of said defending seeming, well, dark.

Jr. took his hand to shake with a similar smile. "I'm Gaignun Jr., but you can just stick to Jr.," he said. "That magic stuff all sounded pretty awesome when Remus was talking about it. What else do you get to learn?"

"Well we haven't always had the best teachers. Professor Lupin's the best we've had, he taught us more than someone like Gilderoy Lockhart." Cedric understood a little vanity and handsome looks, but that man had gone entirely too far. He was quite rude, really---taking up their lessons in defencive magic by going on and on about how great he was.

"Nice to meet you, Jr. Hogwarts is actually a great place. We learn how to cast all kinds of spells---there's conjuring things, transfiguring one object into another, charms that change things, and the dueling spells. We also learn how to fly on brooms, how to chart the stars, how to brew potions, and how to care for magical plants. My head of House taught Herbology. We had all kinds of plants in the common room."

He missed Professor Sprout already. He hoped she'd made it. "We can also take electives, like Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy, Divination, and Ancient Runes. Charms was my favorite class all through. They're really useful."

He wondered about what Jr. did here. "Do you have magic?"

As Cedric started naming things, question after curious question piled into Jr.'s head. And by the time he asked the magic question the U.R.T.V. didn't know which one to ask first. First, he figured he'd answer Cedric's.

"Do I? Uh, not exactly..." he trailed off. It was always hard to compare what they could do in his world to magic. In some ways they were alike but in others, so different. "We have abilities called Ether, but those deal more with nanotechnology, but visual-wise I guess you can't make the distinction."

He laughed, a fake-joking kind of laugh. "You have no idea how many questions just popped into my head at all of those things you were just talking about. What kind of magical creatures are there?"

"Really? Muggles have technology that's just like magic?" That really was clever. He never could have done it.

"Don't worry, we've got time. I'll start slowly. Magical creatures are...well, there are a lot of them. I'll start with what we've got in the forest. We have centaurs---they're half-human, half horse. They're supposed to be very wise in ways that humans aren't."

He paused, thinking back on some of the creatures he'd just met. "Then there are the unicorns. They're rare, and very magical. One of their hairs is actually powering my wand. We use the horns in potions sometimes, and their blood's said to keep people alive. But I wouldn't do it. Anyone who drinks a unicorn's blood is cursed."

Not that he needed ways to stay alive anyway. He knew he couldn't. "Then we have the lake. There's a giant squid living there, and there are merpeople far below the surface. I've met them." Escaped from them is more like it.

Muggles, that was what Remus had explained non-magic people were called. Jr. nodded. "Yeah, but, well, where I'm from, we're sorta ... in the future, from a lot of places. And far away from Earth, too. So you know, technology's a little more advanced."

... of course once Cedric started talking who cared about Ether. Centaurs, unicorns and merpeople?! Jr.'s eyes were widened somewhat, mouth opening and closing every now and again as if he wanted to respond as Cedric went on. "--woah. Seriously?" was all he could choke out when he was finished. For a moment Jr. actually looked like a child filled with wonder. Sure, his own type of fictional dreams coming true landed more in the action area, but it wasn't as if he never deviated from the genre to know enough that those things being a reality to people? Was pretty damned cool.

"What else do they power wands with?"

Cedric grinned. "It looks like there are different kinds of unicorns, though. The ones I've met here are the first ones I've seen that could talk." Rarity and Princess Celestia. They were very nice, actually.

As far as wands? "Different wandmakers use different cores. I bought mine from Mr. Olivander in Diagon Alley. He uses unicorn hairs, dragon heartstrings, and phoenix feathers. But I've competed with Fleur Delacour, a witch from another magical school. Her wand had veela hair in it---veela are very beautiful creatures. Men can't help but be attracted to them."

He turned just faintly pink. They had almost tempted him back during the Quidditch World Cup.

"Dragons and phoenixes?" Phoenixes he liked the idea of. And he didn't have anything against dragons, per say. But when your code name was the Red Dragon and the power you possessed scared you, the word was just a touch more difficult to hear. "Woah ... but aren't you guys like ... trying to hide your world from people who aren't magical? Do you hide dragons, too? How do you manage that?"

Now he was imagining dragon heartstring wands shooting fire and phoenix ones reviving the dead. Oh, tropes. Veela sounded ... interesting. For some reason Jr. thought of succubi, even though Cedric didn't mention that they actually made an effort to ... well, do what succubi did aside from attract.

"Well it's tricky, especially with dragons and giants. We can hide the dragons on dragon reserves, but they might escape sometimes. If they're seen, we have wizards called Obliviators who alter the witnesses' memories."

It wasn't the most ethical thing to do, he knew, but the secrecy laws seemed to demand it.

"Sometimes I wish I didn't know about them either. I've almost had my head bitten off by one." That had been a fun little adventure.

Jr. gave Cedric and playful, nervous smile. "Ha, you guys aren't planning on doing that to us after this is all over, are you?" Stacy had already done it to people when they woke up. The idea of forcibly losing memories unsettled him. While there were ones he hated to think about, there were also the ones he treasured more than anything, and they were what made him him.

"How big are they?"

Oh no. Cedric quickly waved a hand, shaking his head vigorously. "No, I couldn't do it. It'd be pointless, as you're not from the same world. Besides, the erasure would have to cover a lot if we're going to be fighting together for a while." No, no, he couldn't do it. He only half-heartedly agreed with the practice in the first place.

"Huge. They'd stand above all the trees here. There are different breeds---the one I faced was a Swedish Short-Snout. It's not the most dangerous breed, but its flames are intense. I almost thought my face would never recover," he recalled, tapping his cheek out of habit. That had been one nasty bout of healing.

"Okay, just checking! That's some pretty useful magic to know, though." It was kind of like its own weird science. Fighting together for a while ... it had felt like a while already, to Jr. He wondered how long this whole thing would span.

"Woah..." Different breeds? If they were that big, wizard must have had a hell of a time trying to hide them from the rest of the world. And on the subject of the large, winged creatures...

"You said you guys could learn how to fly, too?"

Cedric nodded eagerly. "Yeah! Flying was my favorite subject in first year. We use broomsticks. They're good and comfortable for long distances, but the best ones are racing brooms. You can play Quidditch with those. It's a great game, I was captain of my team. I wish I could show you, but I couldn't find my broom with the other things."

He really missed his broom.

"That sounds awesome..." Cliche when you thought of the word wizard, but still awesome. "You can always use the Sensoriums. Hey, how about you tell me a little more about that game and I'll tell you more about those? If you haven't heard about'em already."

Cedric nodded, recalling some ramblings with the man in armor called Grif. He really hoped they didn't have another zombie invasion soon, necessitating all that extra armor. It was just paranoia, right?

"I've heard of them, but I haven't stopped by yet. Anyway, Quidditch is played in the air above a field, with three hoops standing in the air on each side. On brooms, obviously. You've got seven players on a team and they play with three kinds of balls."

It was always fun to talk about the game. "There's three Chasers per team, they're in charge of most of the scoring. They toss a ball called a Quaffle to each other, and they're meant to get it in one of the hoops on the other team's side of the field. Each goal's worth ten points, but there's a Keeper flying around the hoops to try to stop them. It gets a bit tricky sometimes, with keepers hanging upside down to block their hoops."

It was a silly stunt and Cedric would really prefer if his Keeper wouldn't do that. It was better to lose a game and walk away alive then to die trying to win. A painful thought given the circumstances, but he shoved it aside.

"Then there's the interference from two large flying balls, the Bludgers. They're bewitched to chase players around and try to slam into them. They're heavy, and I can say from experience that getting hit really hurts," he winced, remembering a hard strike to his ribcage from one memorable game. "Each team has two Beaters. They fly around with clubs and try to protect their players from the Bludgers by whacking them at the other team, especially the Seeker."

"And that's the last position, the Seeker. I was one. Our job's just to look for the smallest ball, a winged golden one called the Golden Snitch. It's the fastest and very hard to see, especially when the weather's bad. The other team tries to injure Seekers so badly because catching the Snitch earns 150 points, so we nearly always decide the game. That's Quidditch in a nutshell," he finished, slightly out of breath. It was hard not to talk fast when excited about Quidditch.

He tried to take that all in carefully ... or at least remember as much as he could from that explanation. "Heheh ... I probably won't remember all that. I guess I'll have to see it in action sometime to get a better idea!" It was always a little easier to get a visual of something like that to understand it better. "But it sounds like a ton of fun!"

Cedric nodded enthusiastically. "It is. If these Sensoriums work like you all say they do, I could show you there? You'd have to show me how to use them, though."

"I sure can! It's pretty easy though. You basically just walk in and think up the place you want it to construct from your memory. Stacy's pretty good at being elaborate."

He wondered about that, sometimes. The sheer detail of some things, almost as if Stacy accessed their actual memories for it than it being a system that created what you thought up. It'd make sense, considering she could mess with memories.

"Right. And it's painless? It just borrows my memories for a moment?" He hoped there were no likely side effects, but if everyone used them so much they were probably safe.

"Then I promise to show you sometime. Maybe you could even try a few positions---that is, if you wanted to."

"Painless so long as you don't ask it to bring up anything that could hurt you. I've never had any problems with it at all."

He beamed up at Cedric. "Hell yeah I'd want to!"

"Good. Then I'll definitely show you, whenever you're ready."

He grinned, then seemed to realise something else.

"Forgive me, I've been rude. What is it that you're about? I hardly know anything other than your name."

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