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From the moment her lungs took their first breath, Iris knew something was different.

Maybe the air was crisper. Perhaps the absence of the smell of debris that had encapsulated her senses what seemed like only moments earlier. Most troubling of all, she quickly realised, was not the scent or the feel, but the complete and utter lack of noise.

Her hazel eyes flung open and her body followed in their wake, shooting upward. Iris looked around in confusion, noting that she was still on the floor in the Ministry of Magic, but with a distinct lack of people anywhere to be found. Completely alone, Iris stood and carefully made her way through the grand lobby. It was so strange— everything looked exactly the same, only it was not yet destroyed by Voldemort.

Iris wound up making her way onto the streets of London, and what she found outside made a chill run down her spine. In every direction she turned, there was no one there. It was midday and sunny, and yet every street was deserted.

It didn't take Iris long to come to terms with the frightening fact that faced her: she was all alone.

In under a half-hour, the girl had walked from Whitehall to Charing Cross Road, trying to remain calm as she pushed open the rugged wooden door tucked away under a rusty sign reading 'The Leaky Cauldron.' As was outside, the usually bustling pub was also void of any life.

Cutting through the hidden entrance in the back, Iris found Diagon Alley the emptiest and saddest she had ever seen it. Without the hundreds of busy witches and wizards that normally were parading around, it was just a quiet brick alley. The brightly coloured shops seemed duller in the silence. Iris slid her back down a wall, coming to a sit on the cobbled road. She swiped her hair out of her face, trying to come to terms with her feelings at that moment.

Was she dead? Was she alive? If it was the latter she wasn't quite sure if she might prefer death in comparison to an eternity of this. Limbo seemed more accurate... not yet one thing or the other really. Iris figured this was her new reality until a solution was found to keep her from actually dying.

With the impact of the realisation that she likely would not be leaving anytime soon, Iris took advantage of being the only person in the world and helped herself to the shops of Diagon Alley.

She got herself new clothes and raided the restaurants for food. The brunette found herself soon walking through the shelves of Flourish and Blotts, grabbing books off the shelves in preparation for the most dangerous task ahead of her. She took every advanced magical textbook she could find and threw them onto a table tucked away in a corner, plopping down and flipping the first one open to the chapter labelled 'Apparition.'

With no one to stop her and no transportation to the places she wanted to go, Iris knew she would have to rely on her own use of magic for transportation.

It took her all day and night to successfully pull off her first apparition. She didn't dare go further than just down the alley, and it was a good thing too because on her first try Iris ended up accidentally splinching herself and chopping half of her hair off just above the shoulders.

Once she managed to consistently from one end of the street to the other without casualties, Iris took a break and raided the Leaky Cauldron for food. It had gotten dark, but that didn't stop her. After refuelling, Iris increased the distance of where she was apparating. The first time she went further than a kilometre, she threw up. The second time, Iris passed out for five minutes. Finally, on her third time, Iris teleported from one end of London to the other with no side effects.

Sometime after three o'clock in the morning, Iris broke into a random flat and made herself at home in their bed. When she woke up in the morning, for a brief, beautiful moment, she forgot where she was.

And then she remembered. Iris wondered how long it would be before she saw another person again... how long before she would see her brother, her other half, again.

The loneliness set in quickly in the following week.

She moved from town to town through the West Country, searching for something— anything— to take up her time. It was quiet. That was the thing that unnerved her the most. Not a single living thing resided in whatever half-life dimension she was suspended in. Nature still moved; a breeze would blow through the leaves on the trees, but there were no birds chirping in the background or squirrels hopping around the terrain. Nor was there the hum of aeroplanes flying distant above or the whirring of cars and trains going down the streets and out into the country.

No laughter. No whispers. Just Iris.

As soon as she got away from the city, Iris noticed something that was previously obstructed by the tall buildings: on the horizon, in every direction she looked were large, dark black cumulonimbus clouds. They never moved any closer to her, but as Iris travelled they followed her like a constant threatening reminder that her debt still had yet to be paid.

As she apparated around, the only noise following her was the sharp crack that echoed in the empty streets, Iris found herself after a few days in a small village where she recognised the name.

Godric's Hollow.

She had come home.

After fifteen years of trauma, she was reunited with the cobblestone pathways beneath her feet. She breathed in deeply the country air that smelled of grass and the sun's warmth. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road and a short way ahead she could see where the road converged with others indicating the centre of the village.

Iris walked down the path staring at the cottages. Any one of them might have been the one in which James and Lily had once lived. Iris gazed at the front doors, their thatched roofs, and their front porches, wondering whether she remembered any of them, knowing deep inside that it was impossible, that she and Harry had been little more than a year old when they had left this place forever. She was not even sure if she would be able to see the cottage at all; she was unsure what happened when the subjects of a Fidelius Charm died. The little lane along which she was walking curved to the left and the heart of the village, a small square, was revealed to Iris.

There was what looked like a war memorial in the middle, the sun beaming down and illuminating it. There were several shops, a post office, a pub, and a little church whose stained-glass windows were glowing jewel-bright across the square.

Curiously, Iris walked closer to the war memorial. As she approached, Iris suddenly gasped— it had transformed. Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there was a statue of four people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and two babies sitting in either of their arms: father with daughter and mother with son.

Iris drew closer, gazing up into her parents' faces. She had never imagined that there would be a statue... How strange it was to see herself and Harry represented in stone, happy babies without matching scars on their foreheads...

She felt her eyes start to well up for the first time since she woke in this place. Iris reached out to touch the hand of the stone version of her twin, her chest growing extremely tight. Harry was her everything; her rock, her world, her other half. Never had she felt so incredibly disconnected from him or so lost.

Iris looked at the baby version of herself, sitting in her father's arms so happily. She gazed at his face, and then her mother's, truly seeing them in a physical form for the first time ever. Seeing her mother's face three-dimensional, Iris finally understood why she had always been told she looked just like her. If Iris was a bit older, the stone could have been a replica of herself.

Just behind the memorial was a large church. What was behind it caught Iris' eye. There was a kissing gate at the entrance to a graveyard. Iris pushed it open and stepped through it.

Behind the church, row upon row of tombstones protruded from a blanket of green grass and wildflowers. Holding her breath, Iris moved toward the nearest grave. She wandered through the aisles for a few minutes, searching for the one bearing her parents' names. Finally, she read the words that made her throat catch.

It was made of white marble, making it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the sunlight. Iris did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.

JAMES POTTER
Born 27 March 1960
Died 31 October 1981

LILY POTTER
Born 30 January 1960
Died 31 October 1981

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Iris read the words slowly, as though she would have only one chance to take in their meaning.

The tears came before she could stop them, melting down her face in waves, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? She let them fall, her lips pressed hard together, looking down at the fresh grass hiding from her eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their half-living daughter stood so near, her heart barely beating, alive because of their sacrifice and dead from her own, and wishing, at this moment, that she was sleeping under the grass with them.

The next week was a lonely existence. Every passing day reminded Iris more and more of how completely alone she was. She had found her old house after leaving the graveyard, looking like an explosion had gone off inside of it. Iris moved into the neighbouring house, deciding to settle down for at least a while until she got bored. She had no idea how long it would be until Kai and the others found a way to save her. She could be stuck there for a week, a month, or (Iris tried not to think of it) years.

She kept herself busy by taking care of the house and the town. Iris dusted the whole house, changed all the sheets, did the dishes, and when her lodging was all tidied up she moved on to the rest of the town. Every day she would go over to the shops and make sure they were all put together and not collecting dust, and she would pull weeds if anything new popped up in the gardens, but nothing made the time go by faster... every day was agonising being away from everyone and everything she knew.

That loneliness began to take a toll on Iris, and it caused her to shift her priorities. She became desperate for any sort of connection to another person and so she thought to herself that if she was trapped in the state between life and death, perhaps she could still be able to use her living mind to reach out to those around her. For days she sat inside just reaching out as far as her mind could go. She couldn't hear a thing. It was the quietest and most still her mind had ever been.

On the third day of trying to breach the bounds of her sanctuary, something strange happened. Though she was indoors, a gentle breeze swept up the hair falling down her back. The sensation made her skin crawl, and her eyes, which had been closed in concentration, opened instinctively. Her hazel gaze swept the room but as usual, she was the only person in it.

"Iris—" a voice whispered behind her.

The girl's head snapped toward it but there was no one there.

After that, Iris knew she was close, which only made it all the more frustrating when she kept trying and nothing would happen. More days passed and Iris began to lose track of them, growing sadder and angrier. She was angry with herself for being incapable of doing something she felt she should be able to, and alongside that grew her sadness from missing human interaction.

It had been at least two weeks since the events that had landed her there at her halfway point, and she was beginning to wish Kai had just let the curse take her. She had learned the rules of the place by then: nothing breathed in the entire world but her, and every day she would go to the shops for food and it would be magically replenished, as though everything reset overnight. The black thunderous clouds remained along the horizon every minute of every day, never moving closer. It never rained but the grass was always freshly green and neatly trimmed.

It was unbearably lonely.

The longer she was there, the more her hope slowly died. Old habits die hard. She found solace in the bottles of firewhisky left in the houses.

After a glass or two one day, Iris continued her attempts of reaching a connection with someone outside of her limbo.

It didn't work.

A loud scream of frustration sliced through the silence of the world. Iris grabbed the bottle of firewhisky off the table and threw it at the wall sending glass shattering everywhere. All of her anger built up to this release and suddenly things were being thrown in every direction. She swung her arms across the desktop and sent every book, parchment, and drinking glass crashing to the floor. In her fit, Iris failed to notice the red hue springing to life in her hands or the darkness that crept onto the very ends of her fingertips and threatened to grow. She ripped a painting off the wall and threw it to the floor, red magic trailing after it. Hot tears were rolling down her cheeks but she could barely tell.

"COME ON—" she yelled, throwing a small desk mirror at the wall.

She turned away to grab something else to throw but midway realised... she never heard the shatter.

Iris didn't want to turn around. Her eyes were blurry with tears and she was shaking with adrenaline, but she did not want to believe something had stopped the mirror mid-air.

"Seven years of bad luck, you know... I think you've already had enough for a lifetime."

She strangled a sob at the familiar voice. It had been a full year since she had heard it last, but she would never in a million years forget his dulcet tones. Like a deer in headlights, she was frozen, turned away from him in fear that if she looked he would be gone. Iris heard footsteps walk closer until he was just behind her. Her breathing turned shallow.

She had gone in the wrong direction. Iris had meant to reach out to the living, not the dead.

His hand grazed her upper back and landed on her shoulder. Iris sobbed, her knees almost buckling at the feeling of real human touch.

"I'm here," the dead said softly.

Her shaky hand reached up to her shoulder and when her fingers touched his she jolted. With this confirmation that she was not imagining it, Iris finally turned around to face him. Those same sparkling grey eyes looked back at her as if not a day had passed.

Cedric Diggory: her first love, her true love, her eternal love.

Ollivander had once told them their wand cores had come from the same unicorn. Iris had giddily thought about that fact for weeks after, but after so long she had to wonder if it truly was all the stars aligning for them. Somehow after everything, the two always found their way back to each other.

"You're real?" Iris mumbled in disbelief, her voice breaking.

Cedric lifted his hand to the side of her face, also misty-eyed, "As real as you can get."

Iris fell into his arms, her hands winding around his back and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as though she were afraid he might vanish at any second.

She wasn't alone anymore.

Her new routine with Cedric brought her intense bliss. All of the things she ever wanted to say or do, she suddenly had the chance. He listened to her stories, heard her fears, soothed her worries, and was exactly what Iris needed. She wanted to stay there with him forever and forget about all of her troubles, but the conversation was inevitable. Not too long after he appeared, they got into the argument.

"Iris... we need to talk about the very real reality that this isn't going to last forever."

"No," the words broke from her lips, "No, don't say that." Her head shook in denial.

"Iz, you aren't even dead—"

"Stop. Please."

"How are we meant to build a life here when you could disappear any day with no warning?" He said softly but sternly, tears budding in his eyes, "How could I forgive myself for breaking your heart all over again when you go back to living and I'm still dead?"

"Please..." she begged quietly, unable to look at him, "Just— just let me have what time we do have together."

Cedric relented after that, and they continued every day normally trying to cherish the unknown time they had left.

Iris tried to lose track of the days, but truthfully, she couldn't. No matter how much she tried to forget the circumstances of her arrangement and just enjoy her time with Cedric, there was always a voice in the back of her head saying 'you'll lose him again, it's only a matter of time.'

The mental strain of keeping the door open to him was also beginning to cause strange effects.

At first, she tried to ignore the odd things occurring. She tried not to hear the rising whispers that would periodically flood her brain, or the feeling of someone standing behind her when no one was there. She tried to ignore the ghostly human figures that would loom in the corner of her vision but disappear when she looked directly at them. She avoided looking at her hands, where the inky black that had risen over them just before she was put to sleep had reappeared and was slowly creeping back up her fingers. Most of all, she tried to ignore the way her body began to phase through the objects around her. 

She knew why it was happening. Her magic had gotten her into the situation she was in, and using it, especially in this way, was only accelerating her impending death, threatening her in-between world and drawing her closer to the other side. 

Iris ignored all of the warning signs. She hid them from Cedric, pretending as though all was well in their little world together. She told herself he didn't need to know, but deep down Iris knew the real reason she wouldn't tell him was because he would insist on her shutting down the connection to the afterlife in order to spare herself. The girl refused to even let herself think those thoughts, instead faking a smile and trying to drown out the extra voices in her head.

The truth has a way of catching up to people though, and in Iris' case, it came when she went to hug Cedric one night after cleaning up dinner. Her arms went straight through him. There was no missing it, no avoiding the conversation.

Iris stepped back, staring terrified at her arms for only a second before she brought them down to clasp behind her where she couldn't see. Her waterlines pooled with tears as her hazel met Cedric's mournful grey.

"Show me your hands," he said, resigned.

She stared at him for a moment, wide-eyes fearful as they threatened to release her tears. Finally, she blinked and brought her hands toward Cedric. They trembled as she slowly lowered them into his waiting palms. A wave of relief fell through her body when they connected solidly instead of passing through.

His thumbs rubbed gently over her blackened fingers as his words choked out, "It's gotten worse."

She clenched her eyelids closed, turning her head away from him. A stray tear rolled down her cheek.

Cedric dropped her hands and pulled her into him, holding her securely in his warm embrace. His hand combed her hair back softly as her head rested against his broad chest, still muscular same as when he was at Hogwarts training every day for quidditch. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"It'll be ok... we'll be ok."

"Please don't leave me," she whispered, her voice cracking, "I don't want to be alone."

But even as she said it, Iris could hear the dozens of people frolicking in the town outside and she could feel the watching eyes of ghostly figures standing all around them that only she could see. 'Alone' was impossible.

Months passed and Iris grew happy. She became satisfied with her little life. Every day she would wake up and make breakfast with Cedric, something new each week, and then they would tidy up the house and get ready for the day. They would play board games and Cedric, after weeks of persuasion and begging from him, began teaching Iris how to fly on a broom and play quidditch. Iris was also reading more than ever— any book she could find. She didn't mind how her hands eventually became drenched in the inky black colour once again, growing a little bit more with every passing day. Cedric's gaze would linger on them for a moment too long on occasion, but besides the wrinkle of his eyebrows, he never said anything of it. Stolen kisses turned into longer and more frequent occasions. Longing, adoring looks were held from across the room as they each drank in every moment of having the other right before their eyes. Iris fell in love with their domesticity.

There was nothing in the world to stop their stride. One dead, one near dead, both stuck in a single moment of time, remaining in limbo as both life and death fought over her body.

One evening after making dinner together, Iris and Cedric were sitting out in the back garden of the house they had inhabited. The decayed structure of her childhood home loomed next door, surrounded by beautiful blooming trees and flowers like a morbid metaphor for her life.

The two of them were sitting on a creaky swinging bench placed under a weeping tree in the corner of the fenced lawn. Wrapped up in each other's arms, they watched as the burnt sun set and turned the sky above them a dozen vibrant colours. Iris was sketching in a small notepad as she had gotten more into drawing in her free time.

"I'm just saying, I think some liberties were taken—"

"That is actually so offensive," Iris said, suppressing a smile.

While her sketch of the garden was beautiful, she had moved onto a caricature of Cedric off in the corner, and, needless to say, drawing people was not her forte.

He chuckled, "What's offensive is that you think my face looks like that."

"Look," she tried, mischief in her eyes, "It's not perfect, but it's got... some... qualities?" she cringed slightly. "Okay, I'd like to see you try, Mr Perfe—"

He captured her lips in a kiss, effectively cutting her off. It knocked the breath out of Iris, her eyes dropping closed. When they pulled apart, they remained within inches.

"I love you," she whispered with a giddy smile.

He nudged his nose against hers, a hand tangled in the hair behind her ear. "I love you too," he said.

Just as they were about to reconnect, something caught Iris' attention.

"Ced—" Iris said very suddenly, sitting up straight and staring off into the distance. "The clouds... the storm, they're closer."

Indeed, as he looked, he saw what Iris meant. The dark, threatening clouds that had hovered on the distant horizon every day since Iris had arrived were much closer than before. It looked like they would be over Godric's Hollow within just hours. A chill tickled down Iris' spine as she watched the whisps slowly churn.

The sudden change after so long of everything being the same left Iris with an icy cold feeling. Her ink-dipped hands twisted together anxiously.

"Hey, don't worry about it... I'm sure it's nothing," Cedric said with an unconvincing smile.

When Iris' face still displayed concern, he swung his arms down to have one under her knees and the other against her back and stood, lifting Iris. She laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck as he carried her inside, gently swaying Iris back and forth. Even as he dropped her on their bed and they fell asleep in each other's arms, the unsettled pit in Iris' stomach never left.

The next morning when she woke up, Iris didn't notice anything different at first. Her head was in the crook of Cedric's neck, and his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. Her eyes fluttered open to watch him. She always thought he looked so peaceful when he was asleep, and listening to the sounds of him breathing and the faint rise and fall of his chest was the most soothing thing in the world to her.

Iris was only awake for a minute or two before her ears clued into another sound. Her brows furrowed; it was impossible for there to be any other noises. With her stomach dropping and her heart pounding, Iris carefully sat up. She recognised the pitter-patter she hadn't heard in months, and it spiked fear through her whole body. The brunette stood from the bed, causing Cedric to shift from her absence, and slowly walked over to one of the windows.

She pulled the curtains open, and as her eyes met outside, her worst fear was confirmed. After months of reliving the same day, the dark storm clouds had finally rolled overhead.

It was raining.

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if you know me you know i will use absolutely any opportunity to put cedric in a chapter 🤭

anyway, i know it's been literally ages so i hope you're all doing well! i also hope you guys are excited for this new act of the story! I've got a lot of crazy stuff planned so stay tuned