trans_9 | On your broomsticks! [OPEN]

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On your broomsticks! [OPEN]

Following the instructions given to him by crew members here and there, Cedric stepped through a green archway tucked on a corner of the fifth floor and entered a grey void. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the sort of place that would be perfect for a day of flying. He imagined a bright grassy plain, a large lake, and a forest off to the side. Vague memories turned into vivid images surrounding him, so thoroughly convincing that he really believed he'd been taken from the ship and placed on a field back on Earth. It was quite a convincing illusion
.
All it needed now was the key piece: a group of brooms. He thought for a moment on which brooms to provide them with. Firebolts were the world standard, but he'd never known one well enough to be able to picture it accurately. The school brooms, Shooting Stars, were nice and safe for new riders but not quite reliable. In the end, he knew his own broom best: a sleek Nimbus 2001, gifted by his father. As long as he instructed the fliers to go slowly, they should be safe on those brooms.

Visitors would find Cedric side-mounted on a broom in his black and yellow Quidditch robes, gliding just slightly over the grass. As soon as he spotted them, he'd greet them enthusiastically and move to touch down. "Hi!"

((ooc: wide open for everyone to join in! We'll be doing some group exercises too, so thread around! Fly as a group when you're ready!))

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"Yes, plenty," Kaya said, "but in the Northern water tribe, girls weren't allowed to DO that sort of thing. I'm not sure when that was a rule, but it was tradition we learn to heal and do those things women do: prepare food, take care of children, while men hunted and used offensive and defensive waterbending. Eventually, I left my tribe to learn that kind of waterbending myself."

She paused. "Where are we going anyway?"

Cedric scoffed. How insulting! To believe that a woman couldn't do things...it had been true in the wizarding world in the past, and some of the attitude lingered, but that was foul thinking. "You showed them! That's shortsighted----not thinking at all. Some of our best Aurors and Ministers and researchers and professors have been women. The founder of Hufflepuff was a woman, actually. I'll show you her picture, come on!"

He led her down, past the strange painting of a bowl of fruit and around a corner that was hard to see. There was nothing here but a pile of barrels. "This is the entrance to the Hufflepuff dormitories!"

Even if it looked like just a pile of barrels.

"Oh, I never said I agreed with it," Kaya said, shaking her head. "But when you're a kid, you usually given no choice but to follow what the adults tell you. Once we had someone from the Southern Water Tribe defy that, some of us girls felt like doing the same: myself included. I just happened to want it s bad, and my parents were so much against it that I left for parts unknown. It wasn't easy, but in the end, it was worth everything I faced."

Kaya followed him then stared at the barrels. "Um, are you sure we're in the right spot? What's with all the barrels?"

"I understand," Cedric said softly as he found the barrel. "But I'm glad you followed through. We need more people like you out there."

Grinning, he simply reached out and tapped the correct barrel in a rhythm. One-two, one-two-three. Fortunately for him, he was not doused in vinegar and the lid swung open.

"It's a defence mechanism. We have to tap this barrel to reveal the tunnel. If you tap the wrong barrel or the rhythm is off, you'll be sprayed with vinegar. It's a bit of a crawl, but don't worry! It's bigger than it looks from the outside."

He started crawling through the stone corridor, gesturing for her to follow him.

"I am too," she said, smiling. "But I think I'm just one part in a while group of people, really. I know a lot of them. I should introduce you!"

Kaya eyes widened. Sprayed with Vinegar? That was just wrong!

What was Vinegar?

Not that it mattered. She crawled along the corridor with Cedric. "Why would anyone design something like that? I'm curious."

"You have friends here? I'd love to meet them someday, you'll have to introduce me! Anyway, the houses at Hogwarts have a sort of rivalry with each other. All of the houses protect their dormitories from the view of outsiders in some way. I believe Gryffindor and Slytherin's common rooms are protected with passwords, and Ravenclaws have to solve a riddle to enter theirs."

But enough of that, it was time for his common room! It was a comfortable, sunny place, as she'd see when she stood. Light filtered in from the ground-level windows, showing sunshine and blades of grass. Potted plants decorated the room, and cushy couches were present in abundance. They faced a fireplace, with a moving portrait of Helga Hufflepuff just above it.

"This is the Hufflepuff basement. I've always liked it here."

"I'll be sure to: I think you'll get along with them. So the houses even kept secrets from each other? That's pretty...well, actually, I'm not quite sure what to call it, but it at least lends an air of mystery to each of the houses. It's...inventive, that's the word!"

And Kaya was really quite impressed with the place: if there was one thing that Hogwarts seemed to have, it was places of comfort. She had to go and snuggle into one of the couches, sighing.

"Wait...did you say this is just the BASEMENT?"

"It's all part of the rivalry," Cedric explained. "We're sort of at each other's throats competing for the House Cup every year. We earn points for excellent academic work and lose them for breaking rules. Hufflepuff hasn't won in a long time, but we tried."

Stepping further into the room, he started toward the door of the mens' dormitory. "There are seven levels above, one for each year of students to sleep. This door leads to the mens' dorms, and the other door leads to the womens'. You can go through that one if you'd like, but I couldn't follow you. Only women can go in the womens' dorms, but women can come in the mens'."

"I bet that does inspire school spirit though," Kaya said, although now she was curious at the attributes of the other houses, Hufflepuff may not have won the cup, but how bad could they be if they had someone like Cedric in their house? She really wished she could see this place when all the kids were going.

She followed him to the dormitory, looking over one and the other. She wrinkled her nose when she heard the rule though. "Let me guess: there's an enchantment to make sure that the boys don't go into the girl's dormitories. Makes you wonder what sorts of things kids were doing where they put the enchantment on one place but not the other."

"Exactly," Cedric nodded on both counts as he opened the door, leading them to the sixth years' floor. This was the room that Cedric shared with his dorm-mates. Each bed had a patchwork quilt, there were bed-warmers hanging nearby, and everything looked absolutely comfortable. He'd really loved this place.

He moved to sit on his own bed, running his fingers over his belongings. Everything had appeared exactly as he remembered it---the newspaper clippings in a pile to send to his father, his yellow and black scarf, and the photographs: one of Cedric with a beautiful girl in a blue-accented Hogwarts uniform, one with his Quidditch team in yellow and black robes, and one at home with his parents. All happy scenes from his life, the people within the magical pictures smiling and waving.

It didn't occur to him that it might be odd for photos to move.

She followed him up, realizing in the back of her mind that this situation itself might have been very questionable to the people in her tribe. Most likely, they would have though the worse, considering they still arranged marriages and the like. For Kaya, she always thought that a boy's place that he called his own was just as interesting as a girl's in its own way.

Kaya did start when she saw the photos move, but then relaxed: Luna had TOLD her that this sort of thing happened, she just had to get used to it. She was rather interested in the girl with the blue in her uniform though.

"Who's that?"

Cedric's gaze fell to her. In the photo, they were happy---it had been over the winter holidays, not long after the Yule Ball. Their arms were around each other, and they were laughing and passing a Golden Snitch between them.

"That's Cho. She was my girlfriend," he whispered, looking longingly at the scene. It felt as though he'd been away from Hogwarts for a lifetime. And he'd never be back, not truly. "She's a genius, and she was a Seeker for her team too. That's how we met, on the field."

"She's very pretty," Kaya said, not being able to help but feel a little as if she might be intruding on a bittersweet memory. The two looked so happy together: obviously Cedric would feel sad, not being with her.

"It looks like she was a different house too," she commented, unable to take her eyes off the picture. "Did that happen often, dating someone from another house?"

Kaya was dancing away from the question she was actually curious about: what happened with the two of them.

"She's a Ravenclaw, like your friend Luna. I don't think they were friends, but they knew of each other."

Cedric watched her smile until he couldn't bear to anymore. "It happens sometimes. The rivalry doesn't keep all of us away, but some matches are less likely to happen than others. I've never heard of a Slytherin and Gryffindor in a relationship, for example. They tend to tear at each other's throats."

He longed to see her again, but it was likely impossible. Even if she was safe...how could they be anything anymore? Better for her to find someone else, he thought sadly.

Kaya could definitely see that this wasn't the easiest thing for Cedric. Something about the girl was painful for him, and likely he had been keeping it to himself.

"Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, I'm sure," Kaya said, "though I wonder why it would be between those two houses in particular. Did they just not like each other?"

Without really thinking about it, she had laid a hand n Cedric's shoulder. "It isn't my place to intrude, but you miss her, don't you?"

"It's an ancient feud that goes all the way back to their founders. Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin were always arguing, and the students picked up on the tradition. They both prize fierce competition, both are prone to anger, and they both attract exceptionally talented people. Sometimes they can become absorbed in their own brilliance."

He'd always been breaking up fights between students in those two houses. It got tiresome at times.

But back to Cho...he took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. He was grateful for the support. "Yeah, I do. I want to see her, but I also don't want to. Because I don't think we can be together anymore."

"That sounds a bit like feuds in our worlds, although I think its mostly because one nation chose to hold dominion over the other nations. It's likely that brilliance and pride can overshadow ones need to make compromise though, and that's a shame."

Kaya cocked her head. "Why would you think that? Is it because you think she isn't in the pods?"

"I hope she is," Cedric swore, clenching his hands. They had to have saved her. She was a wonderful witch, she'd help them, he knew it. "There's a fair chance that she is. But even so...whatever time we spent here would be the last she ever saw of me."

"I'm sure they did," Kaya said, feeling bad for Cedric. She could see there was something in him that he had kept to himself, that he wasn't really showing too many people, and she stumbled on it by mistake.

"Why would it be the last time?"

No reason not to confide in her, he supposed. Cedric ran a finger over the picture, longing for days that were gone forever.

"We still don't know how the world restoration would work, do we? It's possible that we'd be sent back to the exact moment we left from. If that happens, I'm going to die."

That was it. A certainty. No fuzzy margins, no loopholes.

Kaya looked horrified. "What? How? What happened to you? I can't believe that!"

The idea that a boy like him, full of promise and ideas and general friendliness killed? How could such a thing happen?

"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Cedric whispered. It was still hard to talk about, but he would try for her. "I was competing in the Triwizard Tournament with Harry. We reached the end of the maze at the same time, having saved each other from hazards there. The Triwizard Cup was there, and the winner was supposed to take it. We argued about who had truly won for a while, and then Harry had a brilliant idea. We took it together, but that turned out to be a bad idea."

He took in a rushed breath. "The cup was a Portkey, meaning that touching it transported us somewhere else. We landed in a graveyard, and suddenly Harry was in pain. People were coming. The last thing I heard was his voice saying 'kill the spare', and then the Killing Curse was being cast on me. I was a witness, they didn't want one for what they were about to do to Harry."

Kaya had to calm herself from screaming about, but there wasn't a doubt in her mind who had done the killing. She had heard enough stories from Luna about the person that had been after Harry, whose whole reason of being and terrorizing had made things s difficult for wixards in that world.

"It was Voldemore, wasn't it?" Kaya said, taking his hand. "I'm sorry, Cedric. I can already see how you would have helped Harry anyway you could, if you had been around still. But I don't believe Stacy would leave you dead after all of that. I CAN'T. You could do so much."

Somehow, she felt close to tears. It wasn't fair, the poor boy.

"One of his servants, yeah," Cedric confirmed bitterly. He hated the knowledge, still wishing there was some way he could go on and help. "But I'm here now. If I can fight this war, the others will have a chance at winning the war on our world."

He gazed one more time at the room he'd never walk into again, gently squeezing this girl's hand to thank her for the support. "Would you like to see some classrooms?"

Kaya put an arm on his shoulder. "I know you'll help, and I just can't believe that if you did, you would blink out of existence like that just because of what happened before! I have to believe that you were brought back here because you were meant to help, because you have your own story to make."

She squeezed back, then nodded enthusiastically. "Sire, that would be nice!"

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