Obliviate My Heart {Book 2}

34. Tears of a damaged soul

I felt my feet slam to the ground, and I felt Harry roll into me. Gently, I pushed him off, and looked around. There was no cheering from Hogwarts students--there was no Hogwarts. The three of us got to our feet.

We were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left. 

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at me.

"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked. "Is that why you didn't want to come?"

"Nope," I shook my head. "I just have a funny feeling about this..."

"Maybe it's part of the task?" Harry suggested.

"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"

We pulled out wands. Harry kept looking around him. I had the strange feeling that they were being watched.

"Someone's coming," I decided.

Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. I could tell that it was carrying something.

Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And - several paces nearer, the gap between them closing all the time - Harry saw that the thing in the persons arms looked like a baby ... or was it merely a bundle of robes?

It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second. We all stared.

And then without warning--my wrist shattered with pain. I'd never felt so much burning pain in my life. My shaky hands dropped my wand, and I clutched my bleeding wrist, in a lame attempt to calm it down. 

"H-Harry?" I stammered. Harry had fallen to the floor, his head in his hands. I knelt to his side, even though my wrist had started to spasm. "I-It's okay, I'm h-here."

From far away, above my head, I heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."

A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"

I dove for my wand, but it was too late. Green light flickered before my eyes, and Cedric Diggory was no more.

"No." I whispered. "No."

Cedric was lying on the ground, still as a statue. His eyes were open, shocked and surprised. He was dead. 

He couldn't be. He was Cedric. Cedric, my friend who I'd spoken to only moments ago. Cedric, who gave me the confidence to go through with this tournament. Cedric, who was so kind and lovely, that I'm sure I would have loved if it wasn't for Draco.

Who I could have saved.

Feeling numb inside, I could barely feel myself being dragged to my feet. The man in the robes dragged us to the headstone, and I faintly made out 'Tom Riddle'.

The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around us, tying us from neck to ankles to the headstone. I could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood; I struggled=I wanted to get to Cedric- and the man hit me - with a hand that had a finger missing. And I realized who was under the hood. It was Wormtail.

"You!" I gasped.

But Wormtail, who had finished conjuring the ropes, did not reply; he was busy checking the tightness of the cords, his fingers trembling uncontrollably, rumbling over the knots. Once sure that we were bound so tightly to the headstone that he couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth.