The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|57| Loyal Servant

My face was against the ground, tears streamed down my face. We were back. I had closed my eyes while the Portkey transported us, and I kept them closed now. I did not move. All the breath seemed to have been knocked out of me; my head was swimming so badly I felt as though the ground beneath me sway like the deck of a ship. To hold myself steady, I tightened my hold on the two things I was still clutching: the smooth, cold handle of the Triwizard Cup and Harry's hand. I felt as though I would slide away into the blackness gathering at the edges of my brain if I let go of either of them. Shock and exhaustion kept me on the ground, breathing in the smell of the grass waiting for someone... something to happen... and all the while, my scar burned dully on my collarbone...

A torrent of sound deafened and confused me; there were voices everywhere, footsteps, screams. I remained where I was, my face screwed up against the noise, as though it were a nightmare that would pass...

Then a pair of hands seized me roughly and turned me over.

"Maisey! Harry!"

My hand was pulled from Harry's and I let out a sob. I couldn't lose him.

"Maisey! Open your eyes."

I did. I was looking up at the starry sky, and Albus Dumbledore was crouching over us. The dark shadows of a crowd of people pressed in around us, pushing nearer; I felt the ground beneath my head reverberating with their footsteps.

We had come back to the edge of the maze. I could see the stands rising above me, the shapes of people moving in them, the stars above.

I let go of the cup and reached for Harry's arm, crying as I did. And then I heard Harry:

"He's back," Harry whispered. "He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?"

The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over us; it looked white, appalled.

"My God— Diggory!" it whispered. "Dumbledore— he's dead!"

The words were repeated, the shadowy figures pressing in on them gasped it to those around us... and then others shouted it— screeched it— into the night— "He's dead!" "He's dead!" "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"

"Harry, let go of him," I heard Fudge's voice say, and I turned to see fingers trying to pry Harry's from Cedric's limp body, but Harry wouldn't let him go. Then Dumbledore's face, which was still blurred and misted, went closer to him.

"Harry, you can't help him now. It's over. Let go."

"He wanted us to bring him back," Harry muttered— it seemed important to explain this. "He wanted us to bring him back to his parents..."

"That's right... just let go now..."

Dumbledore bent down, and with extraordinary strength for a man so old and thin, raised me from the ground and set me on my feet. I swayed in my spot but leaned over to help Harry up. My injured leg couldn't support the heaving of his weight and I fell back into someone, trying to pull Harry up.

A thousand voices swirled in my ears, but I couldn't differentiate them— "What's happened?" "What's wrong with him?" "Diggory's dead!"

"He'll need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge was saying loudly. "He's ill, he's injured, she's injured— Dumbledore, Diggory's parents, they're here, they're in the stands..."

"I'll take Harry, Dumbledore, I'll take him—"

"I'll take Maisey, I can—"

"No, I would prefer—"