wishes bounce me weightless
With the escape of known fugitive Sirius Black came that persistent, niggling what if?
Everyone gossiped about the jailbreak, of course, because wondering what a lone Death Eater had in store was better than thinking about how futile you'd be in the face of a true resurgence. A smaller population took some more... proactive measures. Cedric had been one of them.
After all those months poring through Daily Prophet articles and old family bank statements, though, Cedric ended up doing nothing with the conclusion he’d reached. His pa would be angry, after all, and his ma would have never approved. Instead, it perched prettily in the back of his mind, doing nothing but echoing (softly, quietly, never loud enough for him to want to think back on it) that a place at that abhorrent table might eventually be worth something.
////
He awakens on his knees in front of a robed, snakelike figure, and does his very best to repress a shudder.
“Cedric Diggory…” muses (Voldemort? It can’t be) thoughtfully, drawing out his name with too much emphasis on the wrong syllables. Cedric debates bowing his head to buy enough time for his eyes to adjust, but considers that this may be taken as an affront by this ugly thing, and so he keeps his chin up. “What an interesting development.”
“Sir.” Cedric says, trying to think as quickly as he can behind the realization that his arms have been bound and his wand is not in his sleeve.
He has noidea where they are. The worn gravestones around them bear unfamiliar English names, and the only buzz of magic in the air is the anti-apparition ward that seems to stretch on for ages.
Somewhere muggle in the country, then. Which was as far from helpful as anything.
“What, Merlin tell, has deluded you into believing that you could join my ranks?” Cedric watches as a cold smile crawls up one side of the figure’s face. “Aside from raw cowardice…”
“As a wizard of- of pure blood, I believe that my intellectual prowess and considerable magical power and connections to the wizarding world would bring much to the table. Of the Death Eaters.” Fuck. Of all the times to cock up his language, now was not the best.
To his grim surprise, Cedric hears what can only be considered a chuckle, high pitched and raw and long winded and painful-sounding. “How verbose. Much to the table of the Death Eaters, says Diggory.”
The laughter is echoed by what sounds like a dozen men behind him- and one especially close that he notes as Wormtail- none of whom sound like they’re disguising their voice. Cedric bows his head this time, trying to ignore the horrified tears quickly stinging his eyes.
“Ah, well… at least the boy knows deference.”
And he’s hit with a CRUCIO that knocks him onto his side and drives blunt needles into every pore and beneath each fingernail, and Cedric screams for so long his throat goes bloody and his lungs die, and he screams for a long while after that, too.
The pain lets up after four or five hours, though when he raises his head from the dirt, neither Voldemort in front nor Wormtail behind him have moved very much at all.
“What year of schooling are you in, Cedric?” echoes the Dark Lord’s voice, cutting through the aftershocks, and Cedric is suddenly aware of how pathetic he must look as he shudders on the ground.
With some effort, he uprights himself, noting with some muted joy that the spell has left no physical mark on him. Slowly, he creaks his head up to look the Dark Lord in the eye. “I am in my sixth year, sir. Top of the Hufflepuffs and 4th overall. Professor Flitwick and I have conducted research together.”
A short nod. “That shall prove to be beneficial. And… what have you planned for beyond Hogwarts?”
Cedric tries to ignore the soreness of his hands as he thinks over what would be the best answer to give. “I have options available to me, sir. The Ministry would be standard, with my father as Chief Department Officer of Creature Control-” Cedric winces at the government shorthand, but figures that, of anyone, the Dark Lord would know it well. “I’ve also considered undergoing an apprenticeship with Professor Flitwick, or perhaps studying at one of the magiversities abroad. I could even work with the Chang broom dynasty. Whatever you ask of me, sir. Truly.”
The Dark Lord lets out a hiss between his bottom teeth as his sharp-toothed smile widens. “Ah, the pleasures of youth. How wonderful it must feel to have so many possibilities at your fingertips. Every action, a new life.” With a slow wave of his hand, he vanishes the binds around Cedric’s wrists and levitates him quickly, the whiplash pulling a muscle in his neck too loose. “And yet you are still so blind, Diggory. You are unable to see how you have been made for better things… power beyond your wildest dreams, stations above what you could have ever imagined.”
Cedric, despite every muscle screaming for him to, does not struggle.
“All of magic is yours for the taking, Diggory. You are a pureblood . Do you not believe in greatness any longer?”
Greatness is a fantasy pursued by weak men. And yet… “I do, sir.”
“That, at least, heartens me. Perhaps this world has not so far devolved as I’d imagined.” The Dark Lord says, then pauses to himself. “You shall find your greatness in my wake, Diggory. I will send one of my followers to you when the time is right. You will swear your fealty to me then, once you have proven yourself worthy of our plans. Before then… Wormtail, if you please?”
The rat-faced man called Wormtail scurries up from behind Cedric, his silver hand (had it always been silver?) wielding a long, dirty-looking dagger. Without fanfare, he grabs Cedric’s left forearm and stabs into it. Blood spurts and splatters on the ground beneath him, and Cedric emits a small groan of pain, which Wormtail shushes as he presses the wound against the opening of a small glass vial. It fills up quickly, like the free-flowing sap from one of the magical maple trees in the Diggorys’ backyard, and for a moment Cedric feels a bout of homesickness unmatched to any pain he’d felt today.
His eyes follow the vial as Wormtail takes it away and brings it to the Dark Lord, bending at the waist in offering. He watches as the Dark Lord takes it from him and dips the tip of his wand into the red liquid. He watches as the Dark Lord whispers a spell that sends a cold rush through each of his veins. He watches as the Dark Lord raises it in grotesque cheers, calls out “To your loyalty evermore,” and drains his vial like a shot. He watches as the Dark Lord licks his lips and smiles widely, eyes rolling back, and he does his best to repress the bile shooting up in his throat as he realizes just how fucked being bloodbound to He Who Must Not Be Named makes him.
“Now,” says the Dark Lord, twisting his hand, “take the brat back to Hogwarts. Engrave into your memory the look in the eyes of that champion of commoners when he sees what has become of his beloved Boy Who Lived. It shall be celebrated greatly.”
Midair, Cedric feels himself turning, turning, turning, and without warning he sees a small lump lying at the base of a gravestone.
///
Before he knows it, Cedric is carrying a lifeless Harry Potter in his arms. The boy’s legs dangle off of his elbow, looking too tiny to be real. There is no pulse that shakes his neck. There is no warmth around his heart.
Cedric is handed the Cup by an enormous man with a silver mask, and does not look up at him as he is whisked away.
They slam into the ground of the quidditch pitch and are met with a solid wall of noise and screams and cacophony and-
There’s movement, suddenly. A sudden weight lifts from Cedric’s arms as Harry Potter wriggles away and uprights himself onto his knees.
“How could you?” cries the boy, but cries isn’t the right word, because he’s quiet and furious and Cedric watches as the now-open scar on the boy’s forehead begins to drip down the side of his nose, and all he can think is dead boys don’t bleed . “How could you watch him try to kill you and then try to join him?”
“I didn’t-” Cedric is still breathless from the pain that had been inflicted on him only minutes prior. “It wasn’t that-”
“I thought the world of you, Cedric,” Harry says, and Cedric can hear footsteps pounding up distantly behind him and momentarily wonders if it’ll be their professors or his father or his girl.“Everyone thought you were the best that Hogwarts has to offer. What could you want from him ?”
“To live, Harry!!” Cedric snaps. Harry reels back like he’s been hit. “I didn’t want to die. That’s all it is, I swear .”
But Harry’s expression looks as if it’s hardened, and Cedric realizes he’s said something very wrong. “You should have died rather than join him. Anyone would have. That’s greatness.”
Would anyone have? A fat lot of the Gryffindors, maybe, ever the self-sacrificing bunch. The dregs of Hufflepuff. Some of the more prideful Ravens.
Cedric thinks of Cho, then, her face rising up in his mind like smoke. Cho would understand him. Cho would know just what to say. Cho knew how to talk down anyone with the tools she had at her disposal. She would be able to reason with Harry Potter, of all people, despite his having been murdered- twice- by the very man who brought Cedric to his knees, and convince him that maybe Cedric was all the better for it…
Then she wisps away and Cedric realizes how moronic that line of thinking is. Cho was human. She’d take Cedric’s side, of course, but there was no telling how she’d react once the reality of it set in. Being in a relationship with a Death Eater could never be sustainable.
Being a Death Eater could not be sustainable.
Especially when the Dark Lord’s downfall was a child who, apparently, could never die.
“Dumbledore will want to hear about this,” says Harry Potter, swaying to his feet despite being drenched in his own blood, and merlin above he should be dead . “He’ll be able to do something about it.”
All of a sudden Cedric sees, clear as day, what will happen if Albus Dumbledore catches wind that he’s been bound to Voldemort, and in that moment he knows there would be no life for him worth living if this word got out.
The realization sends a sudden calm spreading through his mind. Behind them, Cedric hears the jingling of Professor Sprout’s bell-laden hat and the quiet whoosh of Professor Flitwick casting a patronus, and for a moment he thinks of his fourth-year defense professor and the spell that he so lovingly taught the class.
“Harry…” Cedric says quietly, pushing enough remorse into his voice to give the boy pause as he pushes himself to his feet beside him.
Slowly, he leans in by Harry’s ear, traces a small movement into the back of his head, and pleads, “ Obliviate.”