author's note: hi. sorry this isn't an actual update. i wrote this back in the summer when i had a cedric phase (dont ask lol) and although i dont think cedric and mia would've ended up together (it makes Sense she ends up with george, in terms of growth) i wanted to entertain the idea a little. i was gonna wait for most noble to end but its been two months with no update lol and idk when i'll post one soon (most noble now feels like a very heavy thing for me to write) so i thought i'd post this finally. also, before you read: in this, both sirius and emilia are dead, but that isn't the actual most noble ending lol. i just felt like killing them off in this lol

so........ this is flesh and blood.

the mia x cedric au

flesh and blood

☀️

May, 1997

       MIA DOESN'T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENS — she knows she should've paid more attention back in school, when they learnt about the Deathly Hallows, but she never thought they'd affect her life. One second, the world is breaking at the seams, the walls of Hogwarts cracking and breaking as the Death Eaters made their way into the school, as Harry duels Voldemort one final time — and, just as Voldemort's grey body falls limp to the floor, the resurrection stone sparks, and a familiar shadow appears behind Mia.

       "Cedric?"

     She's standing in the school, golden flames providing extra protection as she stands her ground. Her wand slips from her fingers, as she looks in front of her, at the ghost of her best friend.

       But he isn't a ghost. He's real, all flesh and blood. Somehow the resurrection stone spat him out from Voldemort's wand; she doesn't know why, if anyone else returned, but she doesn't think she cares. In front of her stands Cedric Diggory, aged to be twenty, like he would've been if he'd survived. His light-brown hair's curly on the top of his head, hazel eyes she can see herself in. He's paler than he used to be, or maybe she just forgot, but he still has the light dusting of freckles across his nose, and his smile... She's got his smile back.

       "I... I missed you," he says.

       Mia doesn't know how to react. She feels as if she's dreaming. Maybe she is... Maybe she has died, and this isn't real. Maybe this is her heaven. Maybe Cedric is standing here, in front of her, his wings hidden, and he's going to lead her to heaven. Mia wouldn't be surprised, if Cedric was her guardian angel... Maybe he was...

       "You're not real," she says, quietly.

       "Emilia," he says. Only he called her that. Everyone — even her parents, when they were alive — called her Mia. Cedric first said it as a joke, but then it transgressed into what he called her, in the softest of moments. Her full name sounded like baby, when it came from him.

       But it wasn't him.

       "No," says Mia, shaking her head. "You're dead."

       "I don't know what happened," he tells her. "But it's me. I'm back."

       Mia didn't know what to do. She felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. This must be some Death Eater's cruel joke, their way of torturing her before she died. Cedric Diggory is dead. He cannot be here, in front of her. He's gone. He's been rotting in the ground for years. People can't just return.

       He extends his hand, to try and touch her, but she steps backwards.

       "Get away from me," she says, recoiling.

       "Mia," it says.

       Mia shakes her head furiously. "I don't know what you are, but Cedric's dead. You are not him. Leave me alone."

       The fighting ends a few minutes after that, the Death Eaters realising their leader's dead. The Great Hall turns into a makeshift hospital ward again; Mia sits on her own, to the front of the hall where the teacher's table used to be. She can see the Weasleys, celebrating what they have left. She can see Archie, kissing Hermione at last. She can see the shocked faces as people recognise Cedric, or at least the thing with his face. She's never felt this angry before.

       She ends up walking over to the Weasleys, to hug Harry. Awkwardly she speaks to George, and Fred, as Briar hugs her. Mrs Weasley asks if Mia's seen him, and Mia's teeth grit together.

       "Cedric's dead," she says.

       Briar looks confused. "Mia..."

       "He isn't alive," says Mia.

       She moved on from Cedric years ago. She will always love Cedric, of course she will, but he's dead. She's accepted it now, she's learnt to live without him. He isn't "back," he's fucking dead.

       Mia hasn't felt this lonely in years. She can't believe everyone is happily embracing this zombie into their arms, as if everything's fine. It isn't. Someone is here, torturing her alive. Cedric Diggory is dead.

       She starts to walk away from the Weasleys, too, giving up. She isn't going to be pressured into accepting this imposter, because other people think he's real — no one knew Cedric like Mia did, no one can tell her if he's real or not. They see the zombie with his face and they think it's fine. But it's not. It's not.

       "Mia," she hears George say, having followed her.

       Mia stops. They're out in the hallway now, the stone archway in front of them looking out at Voldemort's dead body, and the Order members discarding it. She looks back at him. She wants to cry.

      "It's not him," she says, softly.

       "How do you know?" says George.

      "Because—Because I know him better than anyone else!" she says, her brows furrowing into an angry glare. "That is not my best friend, I can tell you that for sure! Cedric is dead, and I don't know what that—that thing is, but it is not Cedric!"

       She's started to cry. She knows they'll never get back together, but at least she can appreciate the fact that George always made her comfortable enough to feel.

       "Look, I know you don't love me anymore, but I still know you," says George, frowning at her. Mia feels nothing but anger. Stop telling me what I think. "And I think you're only saying this because you don't want to admit he's back."

       "OK, genius, why wouldn't I want to admit it?"

       "Because you went through so much getting over him, you don't want him back."

       Mia scoffs. "So I want him dead?"

       "Well, that's what you're acting like," says George.

       She shakes her head. "You're wrong."

       "OK, Mia, maybe I am wrong," says George, giving her a look. "But he's back whether you like it or not. He hasn't seen you in how many years — and you're rejecting him completely."

       George walks away, back to his friends. Mia stays there, halfway up the stairs, her hands shaking. She watches the Order deal with Voldemort's body, and she remembers the night Cedric died. She remembers how painful it was, feeling her heart break like that. She remembers the scream of Cedric's father. She remembers her best friend's dead body, being brought back by Harry; she remembers how the dead body lay still on the grass, eyes glazed over, fingers holding onto his wand still, frozen in time.

       He can't be back — and maybe she's saying this, because she doesn't want to think about how long it took her, to realise Cedric would want her to move on. How can she move on, when he's back? Mia's lived a life where her boyfriend Cedric died and for months she felt guilty about liking someone else — she's lived a life where she lost her boyfriend and moved on, and had a whole new relationship after him. But Cedric's life stopped when she was still his. And now he's back... She feels as though she's cheated, almost.

       But it isn't him.

       "Emilia," she hears his voice say again.

       Mia crosses her arms, and says, "Tell me something only he'd know."

       The zombie steps closer to her, and she steps back. This isn't her best friend. Her best friend is dead.

       "Fine," he says. "Every time you lie, you blink... You can't leave the house without putting on Vaseline. Your emotional magic is linked to fire the most because of your mum, because fire saved your mum so you think it'll save you. You stole your dad's leather jacket when he escaped from prison and didn't come to find you—" Mia began to protest, but the thing continued, as if proving a point. "—You said you stole it because you wanted to get back at him, by taking his favourite jacket, but in reality it still smelt like him and you wanted to feel close to him..."

       She's shaking her head, as she starts to cry. "No," she says, her voice cracking. "It's not you—"

       "Emilia," Cedric tells her, "for Merlin's sakes, it's me."

       Mia looks up at him, feeling tears roll down her cheeks. "I moved on from you," she says. "I lived a whole life after you, without you. I—I went out with George, I left school, Mum and Dad both died — I'm not the same person you were best friends with."

       "I know," says Cedric. "I saw everything."

       She frowns. "Oh, because heaven's real now, is it?"

       "I don't know about heaven," says Cedric. "But I was watching over you."

☀️

       WHEN THE WAR ENDS OFFICIALLY, MIA says she'll look after Cedric — "I can look after him, he'll be fine with me," she said to the Order. They seemed apprehensive but gave in, figuring it was either Mia's sofa, or leaving Cedric at his family's home — a house that was falling apart now, anyway, now that his mother died, shortly after him, and his father was left miserable and unwell, now in a care home for elderly wizards. They decided it would be unfair on Amos, to see Cedric now. "The shock will kill him," they decided for Cedric. "Sometimes, in these situations... Seeing someone, after they've died... It brings everything back. Amos only has a few months left, it'll be too risky now."

       So all Cedric has is Mia, she realises, as he arrives at her flat with a selection of clothes he's been given. Briar's let him have a good majority of her dad's old clothes, now that he's died, alongside sneaking in some of Fred's old things, too, hoping they'll be a little more modern. Briar tells Mia, though, she tried to keep the clothes strictly Remus, save a couple plain t-shirts — "It's unfair on you, M, seeing Cedric in George's things." Mia won't say it, but she agrees.

       He only has a trunk of Remus' clothes. All of his things were thrown out by his parents. Mia remembers her mum telling her about it. When Cedric's mum died, Amos was so overcome with grief that in an awful rage he binned everything that reminded him of them, almost blaming Cedric's death for the corruption of the family. Mia told everyone not to tell Cedric that, though.

       "I think I suit this," says Cedric, as he appears in a pair of light-brown trousers, with a white t-shirt. Apparently, there's a matching blazer, too.

       Mia was sitting on her sofa as he walked down the stairs, having left his belongings in her office. She had offered to get him a bed, for him to use the office — she had been using the space to organise her jewellery business — but he said he'd be fine on the sofa.

       She looks up at him, and she looks away again. "Those trousers need taking up," she says. "They're too long for you. But the crotch... They're too tight around the crotch. They need shortening at the ankles, but widening a little... at the... at the crotch..."

      "How much are you going to say 'crotch'?" says Cedric, and he starts to smile like he used to.

       She doesn't look up at him. "I'm just saying."

       "Well... you could help me, if you'd like," he suggests.

       "I don't know," she says.

       "Mia," says Cedric, weakly.

       "How are you OK with all of this?" says Mia, finally, looking back up at him.

       It's raining outside; they say it's going to be a thunderstorm, from all of the humidity in the year during the start of June. She can hear the crackling and rumbling already, showering over London.

       Cedric shrugs. "I... don't have another choice."

       He sits down on the other side of the sofa. They still haven't touched; Mia won't allow it. He tried to hug her, when he first came back, and she refused. She doesn't want to touch him. She still feels strange, as if she's watching a ghost. Touching him will be too much right now.

       "I didn't see what you were doing, until about... Christmastime, after I died," he tells her. Mia hugs her legs, frowning. "I knew it would be wrong, seeing you at first. And I know it sounds stupid, because I was dead, but it killed me, knowing I could see you, make sure you were OK, but I couldn't. I knew you needed to have space. I really hope you don't think I was invading your privacy, because obviously I wasn't always watching you... I just wanted to see if you were OK."

       "What did you think?" says Mia.

       Cedric frowns. "What do you mean?"

       "What did you think, when you saw George?"

       Cedric pauses. It takes him a moment before he speaks; Mia thinks back to all of her anxieties about what he'd think, how he'd disapprove, and she thinks, I fucking knew it.

       "I wasn't... I wasn't surprised," he says.

       Mia frowns. "What?"

       "OK, if I'm being honest, the night I first died, I did look to find you. And I saw Weasley, uh, hugging you... And I saw your parents, talking about the Weasleys staying at your dad's house, and I figured, something was going to happen," says Cedric. He looked uncomfortable, she thought. "You didn't see it, when you first fancied him, but I knew he liked you too. I can't tell you the amount of times I saw him staring, so obviously at you... So I figured you'd both like each other again, if you ever stopped. And I was fine with that..." Cedric chuckled. "You can't exactly cheat on me when I'm dead, M."

       "Is that why you stopped looking?" says Mia.

       Cedric nodded, looking uncomfortable again. "I wanted you to move on, but shit, it still killed me, seeing you with someone else."

       "Oh," she says, quietly. She remembers the summer after his death, and she asks, "Did you—Did you see, when my parents died?"

       "If I could've come back then, I would've," he tells her, and she's never believed anyone more.

       Mia looks across at him, at the other end of the sofa she took from her mum's old house, where the upholstery was starting to fray in areas. "Let me go through your clothes," she tells him, as she gets up. "I'll tailor them for you."

       "Right now?" he says.

       "I've got nothing else to do," she says, and she starts to walk up the flight of stairs.

       The flat's placed on top of her shop in Diagon Alley; originally the flat was three storeys, but she left the bottom floor for the shop. Now, the flat sat on the top two floors of the building, the top floor housing her bedroom — walk-in wardrobe attached, of course — her office, and a bathroom. The bathroom's pistachio green, from top to bottom, which makes Mia happy.

       Her shop has a basement, too, but she still needs to clean it out. She bought the place during the war, having sold her mum's house, but she didn't want to open the shop properly, in case it was bombed. She had been spending her time designing pieces and figuring out branding; she was ready to go, she thought, she just wanted to wait until she knew things were safe and sound, for good.

       She goes through his clothes — she feels odd, calling them his, when they're so obviously not — and tailors them accordingly. Thankfully she found a spell a couple years ago, that stretched fabric out, so she could fix the, uh, crotch problem.

       "We can go shopping," says Mia, as she sews the legs of Cedric's trousers. These ones are an olive sort of colour, with brown stitching. There's a matching blazer, as with the rest of the trousers, and secretly Mia wished she could've been granted this big of a blazer collection, damn. "And get some clothes that you like..."

       "I like these ones," says Cedric.

       Mia raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

       "Yeah," says Cedric. "They're grown up, I like them."

       "Are you... sure?" says Mia, frowning.

       Cedric starts to laugh. "I wouldn't say it if I hated them," he tells her. "It'd be nice to have some jeans, maybe, but this stuff's pretty nice... Do you not like them, or something?"

       Mia shakes her head. "Oh, no, I think they're nice," she says, and Cedric starts to smirk. She feels herself blush. "You know what I mean. I just didn't know if you felt weird, being in clothes that didn't feel like yours."

       "I know I haven't been around for three years, but I think I matured a little, when I was up there," he says, and he gestures upwards. Mia still doesn't believe in heaven, but she knows what he means. "I don't know, these clothes make me feel grown up... I would love a Nirvana t-shirt, though."

       Just as he says that, Mia finishes the sewing on the trousers. She stands up, as she disappears into her room. A couple minutes later, she returns, holding a cream t-shirt.

       "I kept yours," says Mia.

       Cedric looks down at it, at the graphic of the In Utero album cover, that had since scrubbed away a little. He looked... surprised, she thought.

       "You can have it," she says, and she moves her hands out, to give it to him.

       Cedric reaches out, to take the t-shirt, and their fingers brush against each other's. Mia freezes, shocked at how cold he is, now.

       "Yeah, uh," he says, having noticed. "I talked to Harry... Apparently it's a side-effect of coming back."

       "Really?" says Mia, frowning.

       Cedric nods, taking hold of the t-shirt.

       "Wait," she says, and she moves her hand out, to hold his. He hesitates, knowing how she had refused touching at all, but he reaches out, with his free hand, and holds onto hers.

       She forgot what he felt like.

       It sounds silly, she knows it does, but holding his hands felt different to George's, or Oliver's, or anyone else's. It was bizarre to her, holding his hand again, because it felt so... so alien. She had gone three years, accepting that she'd never see him again, never hug him again, and yet here she was. Everything that had been pried away from her was back.

       And she thinks she's glad.

       "I missed you," says Mia, finally.

       Cedric smiles. "I missed you, too."

       She looks up at him, and she wraps her arms around his chest, hugging him. He hugs her back, and again, it feels like she's hugging a ghost. She knows it's Cedric hugging her, from the way he keeps her tight in his arms, to the way his chest feels, against her head. There used to be a warmth, too, but she supposes that's gone now... But she's got him back, so she doesn't care anymore. She has Cedric back.

☀️

       JUNE FADES INTO JULY, AND BEFORE MIA knows it, it's the start of August. The sun's still hot, save for a couple days' of rain every so often, and although Mia still hasn't gotten her shit together and opened this fucking shop, she has spent a lot of time with her best friend. They did end up going shopping, and one night in August, just as the rain started to pour down again, Mia found herself sat across from Cedric at the dining table.

       They had been drinking, Mia would like to clarify. They went out into London in the afternoon, and when they came back, they drank a little bit more, as they made dinner — maybe Mia made things worse, making the tomato pasta with vodka in, but Cedric laughed and thought it was funny, hugging her from behind as she tried to cook. They weren't together, in any means, but they were getting closer, Mia knew that.

       She finished her drink, vodka cranberry, and as she got up to get another, Cedric followed, bringing the empty bowls. He put them in the sink, to wash in the morning, as Mia poured another drink.

       "What do you think would've happened?" says Mia. "If you hadn't died."

       Cedric frowns. "Well... A lot of things would've happened, maybe."

       "I mean," she says, suddenly feeling very selfish. "With us."

       "Oh," he says. "What... do you think?"

       Mia laughs awkwardly. "I thought we would've broken up," she says. "Maybe we would've gotten back together, but I dunno, nothing ever lasts when you're in school."

       She's leaning against the kitchen counter, and he's standing next to her, his hands in the sink. He looks across at her.

       "We're not in school anymore," he tells her.

       Mia looks across at him. Cedric looks back at her. Quietly he dries his hands on the kitchen towel, and he moves to stand in front of her.

       He tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, one hand cupping her face, the other resting on her waist. He leans down, and Mia feels as though she's waiting an eternity, but finally, he kisses her.

       She wants to say it's the same as his old kisses, but it isn't. His lips are cold, sure, but this is different. He kisses her knowing there's been a three-year gap, that for those years they never thought this would happen again. He kisses her, knowing he's always loved her, knowing he spent three years watching over her, because that was the closest he could be. He kisses her and she knows how much he means it, because she means it, too.

       Mia had accepted she'd never have Cedric back. She had learnt that if she wanted to live, she'd have to move on; he was dead, so she'd have to live for him. If she moved on and lived the life she deserved, her best friend would be proud of her, he'd be happy. But everything has changed. Now, he's back, with his hands on her waist, his tongue in her mouth, and she doesn't know how she ever could've thought she could live without him.

       Because Cedric is her everything.

       And Mia is his.

hihihi hope u enjoyed!! let me know what u thought <3

(george x mia 4ever)