trans_9 | Unchained [Open]

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Unchained [Open]

Sirius Black was no longer in Azkaban. He had spent but a few months there, a small fraction of the time he would have spent had Stacy not ripped him free, but it had left its mark on him. He knew his mind had fractured, he could feel the pieces as surely as if he were holding them in his hands, but he couldn't fit them back together. He didn't know how. He couldn't do it on his own. He needed James. But James was dead.

He should talk to Remus. He'd always been the most sensible and resilient of them. Remus knew what it was like to break apart and then put yourself back together. He'd done that every month since before Sirius met him. But Sirius couldn't go to him, not yet. Not when he could barely string together a few sentences.

Sirius had gone to the city first but it was strange to look out across all those buildings, places that should be full of life hauntingly empty. He turned away and wandered more until he found somewhere full of life. He could forget that he was on board a- what had they called it? Spaceship? It seemed like the four walls around him had fallen away and finally, finally he was free.

He stood still, eyes closed, arms spread, feeling the air.

He remembered his life. There had been bad times, yes. Horrible, terrible times but he had endured. He'd survived. And James had always been there for him. James...

So many happy memories now bittersweet. They flowed over him like waves, each one threatening to take him under but each one he cherished. Life was hard. Life hurt. Knowing that the person who'd brought so much happiness into his life was gone, knowing that Sirius was responsible for his death, it was a pain he could not describe. A pain he never expected or wanted to diminish. But through the pain there was laughter. Through the pain there was love. And that was worth living for, no matter how deep he hurt.

It's what James would have wanted.

"I'll look after him, Prongs. I promise."

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"But it is," Cedric insisted stubbornly. "There were so many things that went wrong to lead to the deaths. Pettigrew made the choice, You Know Who targeted the Potters for his reasons, and the conditions were just right. It's the same with my death. Should I focus the blame on Harry for taking me with him and not being alert enough, myself for doing the same, the other champions not doing as well and leaving it up to us, the Death Eater who organized the whole plot, Pettigrew for killing me, him for ordering it? I know I can't fix it, Sirius." Of course not, though he wished he could. He hated to see the poor man suffer.

"But know that I don't have any ill will toward you at all."

"No offense, but I'm less concerned with what you think." Of course he knew James would forgive him if he were here. But the whole point was that he wasn't here and for that Sirius could never forgive himself.

He shook his head. "You shouldn't be concerned with any of this."

"Right, of course," Cedric's head bobbed as he gazed at the ground. His foot. The foot wrapped in this plantsuit material that still bothered him a little.

"I've never been happy with an injustice happening in front of me," he sighed, still feeling a twinge of worry about Azkban. "And the three of you are all that's left of that life for now. I'm meeting everyone as fast as I can, but at the end of the day it's nice to talk to someone who knows what a wand is."

"The injustice was about a dozen years before your time. It wasn't exactly in front of you." Sirius stretched his arms. "It's good to be talking to someone at all, especially someone who knows Harry."

Cedric shrugged, settling down into the grass to reach for one of the little moles rolling on the ground. They were cute, he had to admit.

"I know. I'm still glad you're free and have friends. I missed the last three years of his life, but I can tell you more if you'd like. You'd have been proud if you'd seen him last year, I promise."

"I'd love it. Tell me about the tasks. And then we can move onto Quidditch." He wasn't overly concerned with boring Cedric. Right now all he could think of was his godson. James and Lily's son.

Cedric didn't mind launching into the tale. He could see how happy it made Sirius to hear these things about the godson he'd missed, and keeping him calm was definitely an improvement.

"Right, so. As I said, the first task was getting past a dragon and retrieving a golden egg. We were supposed to be surprised by this, but all of us knew and prepared beforehand. We each had a different dragon---there was a Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball, I faced a Swedish Short-Snout, and Harry got the Hungarian Horntail. The nastiest one."

But that didn't mean Harry hadn't done well! "We all tried different things. Fleur put her dragon to sleep, but it snored and let out a flame that set her on fire. Krum used a Conjunctivitis Curse on its eye. I tried transfiguring a rock into a dog and using it as a distraction---well, it worked well enough for me to survive, but I could've done better. Like Harry, he was the best."

Cedric paused for effect. He knew Sirius would really care about this part. "He used a Summoning Charm on his broom and flew right around the Horntail, snatching the egg. He got sliced on the shoulder, but it was a shallow cut. He got first place for that task, and he definitely deserved it."

Sirius grinned and his eyes finally didn't look so empty.

"A broom. I never would have thought of that. That is brilliant. And he made it past a bloody dragon." He wished he could have seen it.

Cedric nodded encouragingly. "Yeah! And he really cares about people too. For the second task, we had to dive below the lake and rescue the person we cared about most from the merpeople, who were holding them hostage. I was rescuing my girlfriend, Krum had his, and Fleur was rescuing her little sister. Harry had Ron Weasley, his best mate."

Ah, the lake. It had been rather unnerving to be down there. "Harry reached the hostages before any of us. Fleur was attacked and never made it down there, but I got there next. I waited for a moment---he had Ron, he should've been coming with us, but he stayed behind. I reached the surface first, Krum was a while behind me, and we waited and waited for Harry. The time limit had passed quite a while ago, and we were worried about him."

He grinned. "But we shouldn't have been. Turns out he was late because he stayed behind to rescue Fleur's sister too. The merpeople fought him twice as hard, and of course it takes longer to drag two people up. I wish I would've helped him. But he placed second that round, his 'outstanding moral fiber' compensating for breaking the time limit, and we were tied heading into the third task."

This next explanation was short. "The third task was a maze filled with magical dangers, with the Triwizard Cup somewhere inside for us to find. We were all split up for most of it, but when we met Harry saved me from Krum's torture. Then we fought a giant spider together, and he got hurt. His leg was really bad. We argued for a bit about who should take the Cup, and then I helped him over to it. If not for You Know Who and the Death Eater who turned the tournament into a mad plot to catch Harry and resurrect the most evil wizard of our times, it would've been a great ending."

It was hard not to sound slightly bitter about that, but he knew dwelling there would do no good. Sirius wanted to hear about the things that kept Harry happy. "So. Quidditch?"

Well, Harry wasn't entirely like James then. Sirius doubted James would have been quite so generous if he could have won the Triwizard Tournament. But that was probably a good thing. He had some of Lily in him too.

"Quidditch." Sirius agreed. He doubted Cedric wanted to stay on the subject of his own death.

"I like to watch the other Quidditch teams to see what I'm up against," Cedric started. "I finally made Seeker in my fourth year. I never got to play against him then, because the match was cancelled. The Chamber of Secrets was open that year, and Muggle-born students were being attacked left and right. Luckily they were only petrified, not killed. Anyway, I watched Harry in a match against Slytherin before that. One of the Bludgers kept fixating on going after him for some reason. He managed to avoid it for most of the match, but it broke his arm just before he caught the Snitch. He did manage to catch it with his good arm, though."

There was always that! Oliver Wood had been so proud, he remembered. "Professor Lockhart taught Defence against the Dark Arts that year. He liked to think he was highly impressive---used to boast to me that good looks would get you everywhere, and that I ought to start trying as hard as he did. But he didn't seem to show that he knew much about defence...or anything, really. He insisted on trying to fix Harry's arm, and I think he ended up removing the bones. It was flopping like a rubber snake when I saw him being dragged off to the hospital wing."

He nodded, moving on to the more important things. "Then came third year. As I've already said, the dementors got him before he could beat me in our match. But he kept playing really well the rest of the year, helped with his new broom. A Firebolt, the fastest broom there is. He worked really hard, and Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup that year. Honestly...if he's ever up for it, I'd like to play again in a fair match."

"I'd like to see that." He wished...

"But what did you say about the Chamber of Secrets? I thought that was just a legend." The Marauders certainly hadn't found it in all their adventures and exploring and they'd done a lot of it.

Cedric ran his fingers over the grass. That had been another difficult year. "It was opened in my fourth year. We weren't told all the details, but something happened down there, something to do with the heir of Slytherin. Muggle-born students were attacked. There was actually a time when we believed Harry was the heir of Slytherin and was directing the attacks, since he can speak Parseltongue---and now I know it never could've been him."

Of course not, because he was a hero again. "Ginny Weasley was taken into the Chamber toward the end of the year, and Harry and Ron went down to save her. He slayed the monster in the Chamber by himself! We were all woken up in the middle of the night to hear the news, rushed down to the Great Hall in our pyjamas and dressing gowns to celebrate."

Sirius blinked. "He can speak Parseltongue?" That was... That was very odd. "And he killed the monster? But he had to have been- what year was he?"

"Yeah. One of the Slytherin boys who's sort of in a rivalry with Harry, Draco Malfoy, summoned a snake in their duel. It turned to attack one of the younger Hufflepuffs. I had to admit, I was worried. Then Harry started talking to it. To us it sounded like he was egging it on, but he must've been talking it down. Then that same young Hufflepuff was attacked a short time later, that didn't help. But we knew Harry was innocent when it attacked one of his best friends too."

He remembered the amazement they'd all felt when the news hit. "He was a second year then. He seems to get involved in something dangerous every year---his first year was even worse."

Draco Malfoy, Narcissa's son. Well at least someone was carrying on the Black legacy even if he didn't bear the last name.

"What happened his first year?"

Cedric took another breath before launching into this story. "That was my third year. We were told at the welcoming feast that the third floor corridor was forbidden to all who did not wish to die a most painful death, but we didn't know why until the end of the year. The professors had set up a trap to guard something called the Philosopher's Stone for Nicholas Flamel. Professor Quirrel went after it, and we think it had something to do with helping You Know Who, because the Stone's said to make an Elixir of Life. But Harry, Ron, and his other friend Hermione Granger followed him into the chambers and stopped him. They had to get past a lot of really dangerous things."

He didn't know exactly what, but there were rumours here and there. The dragon one obviously wasn't true---how could a first year survive that? Without any preparation? But stranger things had happened.

"Voldemort?"

Harry had faced Voldemort as a first year and lived? Could that rumor be true? Even if it wasn't something important and dangerous must have happened.

Sirius shook his head. "Incredible. I never would have thought..." He had always known Harry would grow up to do wonderful things but to face Voldemort and live not only as a baby but later on in life...

"Yeah. He battled him again right after I...well, after I died. He escaped then too, and then he started leading a rebellion or something like one. I don't have all the details, you should ask him."

Harry Potter. There was something special about him, and not for the reasons the rest of the world believed.

"I'll be sure to." Only later, after things had settled between them. "What about this friend you keep mentioning, Ron? Is he a good person?"

Cedric exhaled. That wasn't an area of his expertise. "He's Ron Weasley, one of many children...there were six or seven, I believe? I don't know him all that well, but our families lived near each other. We traveled to the Quidditch World Cup together last summer."

He grinned. "What I know about Ron is that he's another Gryffindor in Harry's year. The whole Weasley family has been in Gryffindor. Ron's from a family that's not well off. They're fed well, and they're happy, but they don't have everything they'd like. I think poor Ron was embarrassed at the Yule Ball---I saw him with Harry there, and Ron had some very...classic dress robes. It looked like he'd tried to sever some lace. He seems grouchy sometimes, but I think he's a good guy."

Sirius would probably want to know about their other best friend too, so he described her. "Harry and Ron are two thirds of a trio, actually. Their third friend is another Gryffindor in their year, Hermione Granger. She's said to be the smartest student in her year. I always saw her in the library when I was studying, she was one of the few there as often as I was. I've heard Ron and Hermione bickering when Harry passed by a few times, but the three of them are happy with each other. They do have a tendency to find themselves in trouble as a unit, though."

Sirius smiled. So Harry had found fellow Marauders of his own.

"Good. That's good. Thank you for telling me. I'm sorry it must have been somewhat tedious for you."

Cedric was quick to wave him off. "Not at all. I'm just glad I could help. Harry's lucky to have you, you know."

He lapsed into silence, preparing to give the man his peace. Hopefully he'd be feeling better and talking to his friend and godson soon. Best not to push things.

"I'm lucky to have him." And he meant it.

"Hm, is there something you want to ask me? I can't think of what but it's only fair I offer."

Cedric had to think about that for a minute. He knew not to hit on any sensitive topics...no...he didn't seem to be a Quidditch player, but everyone knew magic, right?

"What are you best at with magic?"

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