Can A Phoenix Love A Lion? (Hermione Granger x Male Reader)

45. Blood, Flesh and Bone

Y/N felt his feet slam into the ground, and he fell forward; his hand let go of the Triwizard Cup.

He raised his head. "Where are we?"

Neither Harry nor Cedric seemed to know, with all their looking around.

They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously travelled miles—perhaps hundreds of miles—for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone. They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left, with an old house on the hillside.

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup. "Y/N, Harry, the Cup is a Portkey."

"I've been here before," Harry murmured.

"Get your wands out," Y/N said. "I don't know what's happening, but we're not out of trouble."

They pulled out their wands. Y/N kept looking around him; he had the strange feeling someone watched them.

Suddenly Harry said, "Someone's coming."

Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure of a man walking steadily toward them between the graves. From the way he was walking and holding his arms, Y/N could tell that he was carrying something; it looked like a baby.

The man stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. They still could not see his face.

And then, without warning, Harry fell to the ground, holding his head and yelling in pain.

"Harry!" Y/N said, panic in his voice, kneeling beside Harry. "What is it?"

Then, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the other."

He raised his head at once. The man had raised a wand. Time seemed to have stopped; a light gust of wind brushed through his hair.

A second voice screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"

There was a blast of green light and a loud crack. The afterimage blinded Y/N, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him. He turned his head toward the sound, slowly, terrified of what he was about to see.

Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. Dead.

For a second that seemed an eternity, Y/N stared into Cedric's face, at his open grey eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before he could register what he saw, he felt himself being pulled up; a hand was around his throat; he heard Harry struggling against something.

The man, who held Y/N, kept his face hooded. He had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging Y/N and Harry toward the marble headstone. There he slammed Harry against it, and the statue above it moved so as to tie Harry with its scythe.

Then the cloaked man dragged Y/N to another headstone and conjured tight cords around Y/N, tying him with his arms outspread. Y/N could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; he struggled, and the man hit him—hit him with a hand that had a finger missing.

"You!" he cried.

Wormtail drew some black cloth from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Y/N mouth. Then he snatched his wand from him, throwing it carelessly to the ground, and went away. Y/N couldn't make out a sound, except for Harry's moans.

Cedric's body lay twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. What Y/N thought was a baby was at the foot of the grave above which Harry was tied.