LUCY:

Someone danced across my vision, bathed in golden light.

Cedric was there with me again, standing in front of me, just out of reach.

"You need to go, Lucy," he said softly.

I lunged forward with a hand extended, but no matter how far forward I strained, he was always just an inch away from my fingertips.

"I want you," I choked out. "Cedric, please, I just want you."

He shook his head. "Not yet, Lu. You're not done yet."

"You weren't done yet, either!" I cried.

"That's life," he said with a sad smile. "It doesn't always go the way we think it will. But you're not done yet. There's still more for you to do."

"What am I supposed to do without you? Please don't leave me again, Cedric, I don't know what I'll do, I don't know what to do without you, I just want to be with you again, I don't care what it takes anymore, I just want to be with you again-" I paused to catch my breath. I pulled my hand back to my chest, looking at the boy in front of me with a more critical eye. "It's not really you, is it? Cedric would never have let me spiral so long, uninterrupted. He... he always stopped me. He always knew when to stop me."

The Cedric who wasn't really Cedric stepped closer. I didn't reach out again.

Just the same, his eyes were soft.

"You know you need to leave the cave. You know you're not done yet."

"I just needed to hear it from Cedric?"

"Exactly," he replied with an encouraging nod. "Here. Maybe you need to hear it from a couple other people, too."

Cedric vanished in a flash, and the scene around me shifted.

The Gryffindor common room.

"Well, there you are!" George called from across the room.

"Get over here, Cub!" Fred shouted, laughing. "It's your turn!"

I hesitated. I glanced behind me. The Cedric who wasn't really Cedric was standing behind me, gesturing for me to walk forward.

"This feels too much like moving on," I said in a voice little more than a whisper.

The Cedric who wasn't really Cedric nodded at someone over my shoulder. I turned back around to see Harry standing in front of me.

"That's okay," he said. Merlin, the sound of his voice... "You don't have to move on by yourself. We can take the first step together."

He extended his hand. I found it hard to breathe.

I'm not done yet.

I closed my eyes, and reached forward.

Harry's hand touched mine, and in that moment, the dream disappeared like a bursting bubble.

I'm not done yet.

I was still lying on my back on the floor of the cave. A dim light was reaching me through the opening, so far off.

Cedric was right. I needed to go.

I'm not done yet.

I couldn't wait here for Voldemort to come. He would kill me for refusing to join him.

I wanted to see Cedric again. Mum and Dad, too. But I had other people I wanted to see first.

I'm not done yet.

My first family, from my first life. Claire who was my best friend and my mom who put my hair in buns on my birthday and my dad who called me Sky Eyes.

And the family I had found in my second life, everyone I had seen in my dream and everything they meant to me.

I'm not done yet.

When my eyes had fully adjusted, I could see that the wizard who was supposed to be guarding me had fallen asleep.

I could also see that his wand lay in the dirt, six inches away from him.

I'm not done yet.

I pushed myself to my elbows. I had broken the ropes while writhing around at one point while being tortured. They had deemed me too weak to be worth tying up again. I forced myself to concentrate.

Stupefy and petrificus totalus are my best defensive spells. Impedimentia will be helpful, too, if someone's chasing me.

But these spells are challenging. I can manage just fine at school, but now? With a stranger's wand?

And these are grown wizards. They'd be able to defend against such predictable attacks.

A sudden thought occurred to me. Flash-bang spells, from Uggla Uzely's Guide to Utterly Useless Spells.

Cedric had always been around to rescue me.

It was up to me to rescue myself now, using the tools he had given me.

Sure, it wasn't the intended use. Cedric meant for me to use the spells for fun, for entertainment, I was never supposed to be in this situation.

But I knew Cedric would have been so proud of me just the same.

I'm not done yet.

I pushed myself to my knees. Then stealthily, silently, slowly, I reached for the wand.

My sleeping guard did not stir.

I pushed myself to my feet. I waited for dizziness to overtake me, to ruin everything, but it didn't come.

I was alive. I was alive. And I was going to stay that way.

I'm not done yet.

I gripped the wand and backed up to the furthest part of the cave. I was going to need a running start to jump over the guard, whose sleeping form was conveniently blocking the better part of the tunnel.

Three.

I recalled every time I had slipped between the twins at a meal. I was going to do that again. I wasn't going to leave a hole at the Gryffindor table the way there had been a hole in the Hufflepuff table.

Two.

I recalled the way it felt when Ron laughed at a joke I told, the way it felt when Hermione told me she thought I was brilliant, the way it felt to be next to Harry knowing I was safer there than anywhere else in the world.

One.

I saw the faces of my family with the clarity of my own memory because of the only way Hermione had said being obliviated could be overcome: torture.

I will find you one day.

I'm not done yet.

I sprinted forward, launching myself into the tunnel. I sent nonverbal spells in every direction as I ran. Glitter rained down from the ceiling. Fireworks exploded from the dirt behind me. The walls came alive with twinkling lights of every color.

It was chaos.

I kept running.

I'm not done yet.

More and more Death Eaters joined the chase, but I couldn't be stopped. I fired spells over my shoulder. One made a Death Eater grow a clown nose the size of a Quaffle. Another Death Eater's eyelashes grew down to his chin. I hit one with a spell that made him blind to every color except purple. When he tripped and fell, he took three others down with him.

That left four.

"Stupefy!" I hissed.

I hit one of them. The other three didn't even stop to help him, they just kept charging forward.

I reached the mouth of the cave.

I knew this cave.

I knew these woods.

I was less than a mile from home.

I whirled around and pointed at the boulder I knew rested in the earth just above the entrance. Cedric and I had landed there many times in the middle of the day after we'd been flying for hours. We always joked that it would fall eventually, because it really did hang precariously over the entrance, but it had never fallen.

I'm not done yet.

"Reducto!" I shouted.

The boulder exploded into a million pieces with a thunderous boom that nearly knocked me to the ground. I didn't stop to imagine what had happened to the Death Eaters on the other side of it.

I held the stolen wand flat in my hand. "Point me!"

It swiveled a couple of times before settling on a direction. Home was to the east.

I continued sprinting, just in case anybody managed to get past the rubble. From time to time, I sent a jinx over my shoulder to be safe.

But within five minutes, my house was in view again.

The Dark Mark was gone. And there were lights on inside.

I slowed to a stop.

The sun was low on the horizon, but I didn't know yet if it was sinking or rising.

Just the same, it reminded me of all of the times I had staggered home from the woods at sunrise, seeing the lights on. Cedric was always waiting outside the gate to sprint forward at the first sight of me.

I realized with a pang he would never do that again.

Just the same, I started running again.

I froze when I reached the gate and dropped to a knee, out of sight of any windows.

What if they wanted me to think I'd escaped, only to trap me here?

But one of the windows was open. The voices inside seemed familiar, but they were too quiet for me to identify.

Suddenly, a crack.

Percy's voice, louder than the others. "She used magic! She activated the Trace! She's alive!"

This was no trap. I pushed myself to my feet, my legs trembling worse than ever beneath me. I opened the gate, holding the stolen wand out in front of me just in case.

"Percy?" I called tentatively, once I was close enough to be heard. My throat was raw. The words were more of a weak croak than anything. "I-Is that you?"

His face appeared in the open kitchen window. Professor Lupin's appeared next to his.

"Lucy," he breathed. "I'm sorry, but we have to make sure it's you. What form does your patronus take?"

"A bear," I replied, the words requiring monumental effort.

The door opened, and Percy sprinted toward me.

"Are you hurt badly?" he asked, taking my hands and studying my face. "St. Mungo's? You want to go to St. Mungo's, right?"

I shook my head. Mr. Weasley jogged over to us then.

"Let's get you inside, Lucy," he said gently.

The stolen wand clattered to the ground as the adrenaline wore off and I slipped from consciousness.