Chapter 7
Cedric Diggory had always been as kind as he was good-looking—two compliments rolled into one. He’d been in George’s Charms class third year, and once when George had gotten cramps so bad his knees almost gave out on the stairwell Cedric had sat next to him, pretending not to notice the tears that he was holding back and spewing Quidditch strategy without asking any questions until Fred came sprinting back from the hospital wing with a flask of pain-relief potion clutched in one fist.
The twins were obligated to be slightly salty towards him now, of course, after the disaster that was last year’s Quidditch match—and especially considering the way his father had just brought it up straight to their faces—but at the moment everyone was more concerned with the Quidditch game of tomorrow than what had transpired last year. Still, while they trudged up the moorish hill and towards the campsite Cedric fell in step with the two of them and pulled a sheepish face. “Sorry, I’ve told him so many times—”
“‘S alright,” George grinned. “Taking the house pride serious, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Cedric ducked his head a little, angled cheekbones going pink. “We’ve all been Hufflepuffs, my whole family, y’know, so he’s always—well, look, I mean—” George tracked the line of his pointed finger to find that the scarf Amos Diggory wore was dyed with the signature yellow and black of the house, and the Hufflepuff crest had been embroidered into the middle of it.
Fred snorted. “Not very inconspicuous, is he?”
“We saw worse on the way to Stoatshead, really. You would’ve had a laugh… woman in one of those enormous dresses Muggles have at weddings, but charmed to get Ireland’s colors moving in different patterns all over the lace, and a guy wearing a full diver’s suit under a beach shirt with Ireland’s colors making this absolutely atrocious clover print…” Cedric laughed at the twins’ wide eyes, shrugging the strap of his pack over his other shoulder. “Quidditch on the brain for us all now, really.”
“Not him.” George pointed up through the mist at a square stone cottage. In the doorway stood a man, and as the nine of them drew closer he raised a hand to wave them over.
“Would you be Mr. Roberts?” Mr. Weasley hollered up the hill.
“Aye—” He nodded, just as Mr. Diggory reached the three boys, puffing slightly under the weight of his pack, and took Cedric by the arm. “We’d best go on, Ced, we’ve got to find Mr. Payne in the next field.”
Cedric nodded, though he looked slightly reluctant to leave the twins. “Well, I’ll see you, then.”
“See you,” George nodded, reaching forward to pat Cedric’s arm as he stepped away. “Bye, then…”
“Bye, Cedric,” Fred added. “See you later.”
“Alright, alright, let’s get walking, c’mon now,” Mr. Diggory began to pull his son up the hill, turning back to wink at Fred and George over his shoulder. “Have fun at the match, you two, and remember… may the best man win!”
With that, he trudged off into the mist, but Cedric turned around and pulled another face. George laughed, and even Fred’s reinstated scowl faltered. Yeah, Cedric wasn’t bad at cheering people up.
George wrote him after the world cup, asking if he was alright, and Cedric’s response arrived during breakfast not three days later carried by a white owl so large it could barely fit through the kitchen window.
To George:
All is well here. Dad and I got out fine, we left before daybreak. My mum was scared, though, ‘cause she’d seen it in the profit already by the time we got back. But everything’s okay now.
What about you lot? It must’ve been worse trying to keep track of that many kids. Was your mum hysterical when you got back too? Is Ginny alright? And Harry? Everyone’s been saying stuff about You-Know-Who, so I’d imagine he didn’t go unnoticed. If you get the chance, tell him to keep his head up, yeah? He’s a good person.
Anyway, it was really good to see you at the match. Tell everyone hello from me if you get the chance, and I’ll see you again at King’s Cross.
Cedric
“Cedric says hello,” Fred announced to the room at large, having read the letter over George’s shoulder.
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Mrs. Weasley was going round the table again, scooping another helping of potatoes onto Ron’s plate. “He’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”
“Ymph,” was all George could manage through his mouthful of potatoes. He could see Fred smirking out of the corner of his eye, and stepped on his toes beneath the table.
“Oi—” Fred stifled the exclamation with his spoon and Charlie snorted into his bacon, raising his eyebrows in George’s direction. His kick missed and hit the leg of the table instead, and he choked on his potatoes while Fred attempted not to spit out his orange juice with laughter.
“Cedric Diggory, huh?” Fred mused, flopped onto his bed and sorting through order slips.
“Shove off,” George muttered, tying another package of fake wands up with string. “I don’t fancy him, he’s just good-looking.”
“Damn straight.”
George grinned, twisting in his seat at the old desk. “Straight?”
“Damn gay, then—” George laughed at that “—point is, you’re right, he’s an objectively handsome bloke.”
“He knows it, too.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t let it make him cocky. No wonder girls are all over him. Some guys, even.”
“Aren’t you into Lee?” Fred had come out to his twin at the beginning of the summer, blushing furiously when George pointed out that their best friend checked almost every box on the list of things Fred liked about boys.
“I never said—”
“You literally told me you were into blokes, and then when you were saying why you liked them you basically just described Lee Jordan, and I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I— You—” Fred sputtered, turning red again.
“Bullshite, the whole lot of it, I swear—” Fred chucked a balled up order slip at the side of George’s head. “Ow!”
“I’ve got another,” he warned, crinkling the paper menacingly.
“Alright, alright, truce.” George rubbed his head in mock exasperation, but both of them were smiling.
And now Cedric Diggory was dead. People were screaming, crying, rushing off the stands as though their feet were burning, professors were calling for order, Madame Maxime was shrieking desperately in French, Durmstrang boys pressing into the crowd around his body like black and red ants. In the distance, someone was limping along towards the castle with Harry, Fudge standing pale as a sheet next to the corpse while Dumbledore pushed through the crowd. But above all was the sound of Cedric’s father, shouting and choking and shoving people aside as he reached Dumbledore but passed him too, stumbling forward as he cried, the sound he made as he dropped to his knees next to his son, a wail of anguish so terrible and broken that the air seemed to ring with it, and then the deafening silence that followed, only disturbed by the noise of a father weeping over the dead body of his child.
George couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Dimly, he became aware that someone was grabbing his arm, that someone had sunk onto the stands, that he was trembling all over and he could not stop.
“George,” someone was saying. “Georgie, George.”
Fred. Fred was saying that. Fred was here. Yes, his brother was here. Fred was sobbing, gripping his wrist hard.
“George. George.”
His knees gave way and he collapsed into the stands.
“George. George,” and Fred was throwing his arms around him, sobbing uncontrollably, choking on the pain and the shock of it all, and George closed his arms around his brother in return. There was pressure now against the backs of his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Cedric Diggory was dead.
Dead.
George pressed his face into Fred’s shoulder and cried.