I

The sun burns through the window of his bedroom like a glorious reprimand, throwing light around the room as though it is angry words being hurled through the air by irate parents. Cedric Diggory sits at his desk, quill in hand, trying desperately to think of something coherent to write for his History of Magic essay. He knows he has to do it, but with the textbooks spread in front of him and the remembrance of Professor Binns' monotone droning in the back of his head, his willpower – already wobbling – crumbles.

He can do it later. Really. It won't kill him.

Sighing, he shuts the textbooks and stacks them in a neat pile on the corner of his desk, pulling his list of summer work closer. He's already finished everything for Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Potions, Charms will wait and Muggle Studies…

Merlin's pants.

Muggle Studies. He really hasn't planned this well, has he? What with the excitement of the Quidditch World Cup and the holiday to his grandparents in the South of France, homework hasn't exactly been at the forefront of his mind. He looks down again at the note at the bottom of his list, scrawled in ink that feebly switches from one colour to another.

Muggle Studies – read a Muggle book to prepare for the first unit on Muggle literature.

He stands, stretching. Where on earth is he going to find a Muggle book? It's not like he knows any Muggles, being a pure-blood himself, and it's not like his parents will have any of their literature hanging around on the bookshelves downstairs that groan with magical books on getting rid of pests and biographies of Albus Dumbledore and Cornelius Fudge.

His eyes light on his broomstick leaning against the wall by a window like an idle student waiting for a lesson to begin. He decides he'll ask his parents later. He wants to feel the fresh, clean air on his face as he whizzes higher than the trees, he wants to feel the warmth of the sun beating down on his bare head. He grabs the broomstick.

Quidditch always needs practise.

"What do you want a Muggle book for?" Amos lowers the Daily Prophet, his eyebrows furrowing like small, hairy caterpillars.

"Homework." Cedric flops down into the armchair opposite the fireplace, which sniffily reminds him to plump up the cushions when he eventually gets up. "It's part of a project for Muggle Studies."

"Oh. Right."

"There's a Muggle bookshop in the village," his mother offers, popping her head around the door from the kitchen. "You could go tomorrow morning."

"Okay," Cedric says, leaning back and putting his feet up on the coffee table that gleams a proud mahogany-gold from his mother's endless polishing spells. They lapse into silence for a while, the rustle of Amos' newspaper and the gentle bubble of dinner cooking the only sounds. He thinks about Quidditch tactics for the upcoming season, plans and lines forming themselves behind his eyes.

This year, Hufflepuff are going to win.

Late the next morning when both his mother and father are out at work, he drags himself down to Ottery St Catchpole – the village five miles away from his family's manor house that is nestled amongst the hills and trees of a local wood that apparently has a reputation for being haunted. It takes a good two hours to walk there across rolling emerald hills, crossing the river that cuts like a brown rope across the countryside, twisting and turning, laden with the silver bodies of fish.

The village itself is ancient, leaning in on itself like a decrepit old man, moss caressing the sides of the houses with soft green fingers and cracks spreading in a web across the faded tarmac. A few people are out and about – a woman unloading bags of something from her car, a man sitting on a bench with a newspaper – and he wanders aimlessly for a bit, trying to recall the directions his mother left lying on the kitchen table for him before she left for the Ministry.

Eventually, he finds the bookshop, buried in the back of a tiny alley that he almost walks right past. A rusting sign swings forlornly in the whispering breeze – Avalon Books, it reads, with a fading picture of a green island surrounded by silver-blue waves. It doesn't look like much, he decides, but since he can't Apparate yet, this is his only chance.

He pushes aside the door that screeches like it is being murdered and ducks inside, his head brushing against wind-chimes that tinkle gently. He stops, blinks, and looks around, barely believing the sight that greets his eyes. Books everywhere, stacked up like the battlements of the Hogwarts Castle, towers of them leaning against old, dusty shelves that are laden with even more books, tattered old ones and shining new ones all mixed in together. The smell of old paper almost chokes him. This isn't what a bookshop should be like, a bookshop should be neat, tidy, everything with its own place, books in smart jackets and smiling assistants ready to help you with the list in your hands.

"Hello?" A voice says, and he starts, turns. A girl has appeared from a door in the back, a Muggle girl, her long hair hanging nonchalantly down her back, her ears loaded down with silver and coloured earrings. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a book."

"Obviously." The sarcasm in her voice makes him feel like a complete moron. Why couldn't he have just asked one of his Muggle-born friends for help? She steps closer, blue eyes glinting in the light that filters through the dirty windowpanes. "What sort of book?"

He shrugs helplessly. "I don't know. A book."

"What do you need it for?"

"A school project. I've been told to read something."

"Anything in particular?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Well," she huffs. "Would you like something classic, or something more modern?"

"Uh, modern, I suppose."

"Hmm." She regards him for a second, thoughtfully. "Wait here."

She disappears into the maze of shelves in a flick of her chestnut-coloured hair and a clatter of bangles. He stands in the middle of the shop awkwardly, stuffing his hands into his pockets, feeling the small, strange shapes of the Muggle money from his parents' emergency stash hard against his fingertips. The moments tick by, endless.

Finally, she reappears, a book held in her hand. "Found it," she says. "Here you go."

As their fingers brush, a tingling warmth makes itself known in his hand, threading its way up his arm. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to ignore it, looks down at the front cover. It's a picture of a man, hunched up with his head buried in his knees. As still as a dead thing, unlike the front covers of wizarding books which spark and move with life. Birdsong, the title proclaims.

"It's new," the girl says, offhand. "Came out a year ago. It's about World War One."

He nods as if he understands. They don't do Muggle History until after Christmas this year.

"I'll take it."

"Three pounds, please."

He rummages in his pocket, pulling out a handful of change and picking out three 'pound' coins and giving them to her. She dumps them on the counter, and he turns to go.

"You'll have to come back and tell me what you thought about it," she calls as he opens the door.

He looks over his shoulder at her. A small smile pulls at the corner of her mouth.

"Okay," he says, before he can change his mind.

She nods, and then he steps out, back into the cobbled alleyway with the book in his hands, wondering if all Muggle girls stare at you like they can look deep into your soul, like they can read your secrets as though they are reflected in a mirror somewhere in your face.

He shakes his head to clear it, and begins the long walk home.

His father comes in late that afternoon when Cedric is still sitting on the armchair with the book open on his lap, the pages spread wide like the wings of a bird in full flight. A mug of coffee lies abandoned on the table.

"So you found one, then?" Amos asks, sitting down opposite his son.

"Yeah," Cedric murmurs absently, turning a page. He'd never realised books could be this engrossing, that they could make you forget about your own life, that they could draw you into a world where all you cared about was the characters whose lives were being acted out before your very eyes.

"What's it about?"

Cedric looks up, absently. "A war."

"Those goblins again?"

"No, Dad. A Muggle war."

"Is it good?"

"Very."

Amos shakes his head as Cedric goes back to poring over the book, the print marching across it like an army of words, spears and swords at the ready to take over the unwary reader's mind. "Right then. Your mother will be back soon."

"Yes, I know."

Amos leans over to ruffle his son's hair. "You want me to go away, don't you?"

"That would be greatly appreciated, yes."

"Fine. I'll see you at dinner."

"Cool." Cedric turns another page. "See you later."

It only takes three days to finish the book, and when he snaps it shut for the last time, he can barely think. Stories, words, sentences – they're not meant to affect him so, they're not meant to worm their way between his ribs and stab at his heart until it bleeds. They're supposed to be removed from emotion, a cautionary tale, something to be learned from like the fairytales his mother used to tell him when he was small.

He stares at the book lying innocently on his bedside table. The war it describes – how terrible it must have been for the poor soldiers who lived through it and died on the bullets that rattled through the air. At war for four years. He knows that his parents lived through the First Wizarding War, but that was clean cut, good versus the evil ambitions of the darkest of wizards ever to draw breath, but this Muggle war – it seems so pointless! Men died for no reason other than to claim inches of land, people killed each other in horrific ways for nothing more than to beat the other side.

He can't believe that he never knew about it, that wizards don't know about it, this awful history that the Muggles carry with them like lead weights. He leans back against his headboard, staring into space. All this time, and he never knew…he shakes his head. He has to get answers to the questions that have burrowed into his brain and dance wildly behind his eyes.

He has to know.

"How can you never have heard of the First World War?" she asks disbelievingly, her legs kicking the air from her perch on top of the counter. Her black-lined blue eyes burn into his. "It was the eighty-year anniversary at the end of July."

"I just haven't," he says. "Are there any more books about it?"

She fiddles with the flowers that are laced into her hair, their petals of purple, yellow and white falling onto the shoulders of her white t-shirt. "Plenty," she shrugs. "Do you want me to help you find them?"

"Yes, please," he says. She hops down off the counter.

"Do you want fact books or fiction?"

"Either," he says, following her through labyrinth of shelves. She stops in front of one at the very back of the shop in front a carved bookshelf that brushes the ceiling. Paper poppies are stuck into every book. She pulls out two slim books, and hands them to him. "That one's technically a children's book, but it's very good."

"Okay."

"And then there are loads of fact ones. Have a look, and take as many as you like."

He nods, looking at the titles that are crammed haphazardly together, wonky, lopsided, old and new. She pauses by his elbow, so close in the tiny space, penned in by walls and shelves. He tries to keep from accidently touching her, tries to keep the heat from burning in his cheeks. "If you want, I can get my granddad to see if he can find his father's letters from the war. They're up in the attic somewhere."

"That's very generous of you," he says, surprised. She looks away.

"It's no problem."

"Isolde!" A creaky voice echoes from near the door, and the girl, Isolde, rolls her eyes.

"I'm coming, Granddad."

She flits away down the aisles, and he is left, staring at the shelves of books, trying to make sense of his thoughts. How can he be so affected by someone he has met twice? Sure, he's gone out with girls at school, but they never steal his breath the way Isolde does, they never talk as if they know more about the world than he does, they never look at him like he's not Cedric Diggory, the smart, popular, handsome one…

He bites down on his feelings, and picks a few books at random from the shelf. These should keep him going for a while.

He begins to spend more and more time at the bookshop, browsing amongst the stacks and shelves as Isolde does accounts at the counter, and her grandfather snoozes in the rocking chair by the door with a fat, tortoiseshell cat purring on his lap. They talk about the books he buys, she makes recommendations, and eventually, they start to go for walks together, ambling along the pavements and out into the fields that are studded with wildflowers poking their faces above the coarse golden-green grass, sitting in the shade of walls, and just being.

But then September is bearing down on them like a gleaming train roaring down the tracks, and it's two days before he's due back at school when she meets him at the door, gold dust sparkling around her eyes, barefoot and loaded with jewellery. Her fringe flops in her thin, freckled face.

"Walk?" she says.

"Okay."

They go to their field on the edge of the village and sit down by the stream that tinkles across the round, grey pebbles, catching the light as it falls gracefully from the sky. She looks pensive.

"I'm going back to school soon," he murmurs pensively, watching the way she fiddles with the beads around her wrists.

"Same. AS-Levels. Oh joy."

"What subjects are you doing?"

"English Literature, History, Art and Psychology. What are you doing for yours?"

"We don't do them."

"I thought they were compulsory."

"Not at my school." He can't tell her about magic that runs in his blood, he can't tell her that he's a wizard. It would be breaking laws, and he knows he's not prepared to do that, not even for her. "I have internal exams."

"Ah."

"Where's your school again?"

"Honiton. Is yours close? We could meet up in the evenings, maybe."

"Mine's in Scotland."

"Well, that scuppers that idea."

"We can write to each other."

"I suppose so." She turns to look at him, and to his bewilderment, tears glisten at the corners of her eyes like rain falling from a cloudless sky.

"Hey, don't cry. It's not the end of the world. I'm home at Christmas, and Easter too, usually." He reaches out to touch her cheek, but she swats his hand away as though it is an irritating fly.

"I'm not crying."

"Suit yourself."

They sit for a long while, watching as the sun dies in a blaze of gold and orange splendour over the horizon, as night swoops elegantly down across the world, wrapping it in her soft, velveteen cloak.

"We'd better be getting back," she says, eventually.

He stands silently, helps her up, and they walk back towards the blinking lights of the village. Outside the bookshop, they stop, and he looks at her, a shadow veiled in gloom. "Bye, then," he says.

"Bye." Her voice is thick with something he can't name. "I guess I'll see you at Christmas. Write to me."

Quickly, he bends down, kisses her cheek. "Of course." And then he turns, and strides away, wishing he'd been braver.

A/N Yes, I know this isn't Crimson Field, if any of you are reading it. I have loads of Crimson Field things begging to be posted, and they will be soon, I promise. I have a little bit of an obsession with Cedric Diggory, and not because he's played by Robert Patterson in the film. I just feel he's incredibly underdeveloped as a character, and though J. was like 'here, have a nice character with loads of potential - now die.' So, I hope this kind of develops him, a bit. Perhaps. I'd really like to hear what you think. N xxx