Between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy and Helena Ravenclaw and Cedric Diggory as siblings.
The air of Hogwarts was thick with the scent of parchment and the distant echo of youthful laughter. It had been years since the grand corridors and ancient classrooms had witnessed the terror of war. Peace had settled over the castle as comfortably as a well-loved cloak, and the world outside had finally begun to heal from the scars left by Lord Voldemort. These days, the students knew Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy only as legends from a darker time—a time most were glad to forget.
It was during one such serene afternoon that Harry, now a dashing young man serving as an Auror, received a peculiar summons from Headmistress McGonagall. Within the hallowed walls of Hogwarts, a mystery as old as the school itself was unraveling.
Harry stepped into the Headmistress's office with a sense of nostalgia, the familiar sight of the whirring silver instruments on her desk and the portraits of past headmasters painting a vivid picture of years gone by. McGonagall greeted him, her eyes holding the weight of concern that her composed tone attempted to mask.
"Harry, thank you for coming so promptly," she began. "I wish it were purely a social call, but we have a perplexing situation on our hands. Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem, retrieved after the war, has vanished once again."
Just as Harry was digesting the news, another figure—a blond, sharp-featured man who bore the unmistakable mark of the Malfoy lineage—entered the room. Draco Malfoy, his childhood nemesis, had been summoned as well. Their eyes met, a history of animosity and grudging respect passing silently between them.
"The diadem is more than a heirloom, Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall continued. "It is a symbol of Hogwarts itself. And it seems it chose to unveil a hidden truth tied to the both of you now."
Unknown to the two men, the enchanted ceiling of the office shimmered softly as a ghost—fair and otherworldly—drifted into the room. It was Helena Ravenclaw, the Grey Lady, her eyes reflecting ancient wisdom and sorrow.
"It's no coincidence that you are both here," Helena's voice was a whisper of silk and secrets as she addressed Harry and Draco. "The diadem's disappearance is a sign. You are bound, not by fate, but by blood. In a past long forgotten, you were brothers, warriors standing side by side."
The room felt suffocatingly quiet as Harry and Draco grappled with the revelation. Brothers? The irony was not lost on them. They had spent their years at Hogwarts at each end of a seemingly unbridgeable chasm. And yet, here was a bond that transcended lifetimes, urging them to look beyond old enmities.
As they digested the words of the Grey Lady, another mystery presented itself—a young man stumbled into the office, as if he had walked straight out of a shadow. Gasps echoed off the walls, for he was a face admired by many and mourned by all—Cedric Diggory, the true and valiant Hufflepuff, thought dead since the tragedy of the Triwizard Tournament.
"I don't understand," Cedric said, his voice filled with confusion and disbelief. "How can I be here? The last thing I remember..." His voice trailed off, the memory of a grave too recent for those who had lived beyond it.
McGonagall, with a resolve built through uncounted adversities, stood. "What unfolds here today is a riddle wrapped within the annals of time. Together, you must uncover what has been set in motion. Our world may once again depend on it."
As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting elongated shadows across the grounds of Hogwarts, Harry, Draco, and Cedric looked upon one another. They were bonded by forces none of them fully understood—a hero of the war, a repentant scion, and a ghost from the past. They were at the beginning of a journey that would test the fabric of their reality, their convictions, and the very notion of death itself.
And so, beneath the gaze of headmasters long departed and the whisper of magic that danced within the walls, the quest for the lost diadem—and the truth of an ancient bond—began.