What if Harry's name never came out of the Goblet of Fire? How would the other Champions fare without his "help" at key moments?
"And the Hogwarts Champion," Dumbledore announced, "is Cedric Diggory."
The Hufflepuff table exploded into applause, although amongst the noise there was still one shout of "No!" from the Gryffindor table. Despite this Cedric made his way to the front of the hall unable to hide his grin. He waved to the Hufflepuff table as he walked into the room at the side of the hall.
His smile quickly died when he once he was out of sight, the enormity of the tasks ahead of him suddenly clear. Meanwhile, in the Great Hall Dumbledore addressed the rest of the school, eventually sending them to bed while the light from the Goblet of Fire slowly faded.
"Not pretty-boy Diggory," Ron said with disgust.
"At least it wasn't a Slytherin," Harry said. Ron heartily agreed, but as they made their way out of the Great Hall Harry turned back one last time to look at the now faded Goblet of Fire and wonder what might have been.
#
The morning of the First Task Cedric was more nervous than he had ever thought possible. He pulled on his favourite Hogwarts robes, still having no clue what lay in store for him, and when he arrived in the Champions' Tent to see Krum and Delacour looking every bit as terrified as he felt he at least felt a little reassured.
Ludo Bagman entered and informed them that they'd be facing dragons. Krum and Delacour both took the news a lot better than Cedric. Their stoic determination in the face of the miniature forms of the beasts they would be facing was in stark contrast to the sheer panic of Cedric.
"Mr Diggory, you're up first," Bagman said. "Just come through once you hear the whistle."
The whistle came far too soon, and Krum gave him an unhelpful nudge out of the tent. His feet felt like lead, every step was torturous as he entered the stadium to face the massive form of the Swedish Short-Snout.
He remembered briefly his father talking about dragons during the course of his work. His father was no expert on such things, but maybe he might have been able to provide at least a few hints what to do.
Cedric gazed across the stadium to where the dragon crouched over its eggs. He could just make out the golden one, but he stood frozen, wondering how his time at Hogwarts was supposed to have prepared him to face a dragon. He frantically tried to think of anything that might help him subdue a fully grown dragon, but basically the only thing he knew about dragons was that they were invulnerable to traditional spells.
"Maybe I could brew a Potion?" Cedric said aloud, looking around the enclosure as if hoping to spot the ingredients to brew a dragon sized portion of the Draught of the Living Death.
"Mr Diggory appears to be taking a long time to assess the situation," the voice of Ludo Bagman boomed around the stadium. "Er, does someone want to poke him and make sure he's alright?"
"You can do it Cedric!" a distinct voice cheered. Cedric looked over to where Cho Chang was sitting in the front row, holding a large "Go Cedric" banner. For a moment he found courage he didn't know he had and his feet grew light enough to step forward again. He approached the dragon with his wand raised.
Up in the back row of the stands an unimpressed Harry watched on as Cedric was engulfed by flames. The dragon tamers rushed out to subdue the dragon and try and pull the smouldering remains of Diggory to safety.
"Do you think he's dead?" Hermione shrieked in horror.
"Nah, he'll be alright," Ron reassured her, dutifully offering a shoulder for her to sob into. Charlie Weasley gave the crowd a big thumbs up to signal Diggory hadn't died yet.
"I should be so lucky," Harry muttered.
#
HOGWARTS' HOPES GO UP IN A HUFFLEPUFF OF SMOKE
The Daily Prophet had not been kind about his failure to retrieve the golden egg. Both Delacour and Krum had been more successful in their attempts – Cedric supposed having longer than thirty seconds to prepare to face a dragon at least meant they could come up with some sort of plan. Putting it to sleep or attacking a weak spot – both better plans than walking slowly towards it with wand barely raised.
Later in the day Ludo Bagman had dropped Cedric's golden egg off at the Hospital Wing, where Cedric remained for several days while his burns healed. Madame Promfrey did not approve of him opening the egg while in the Hospital Wing, claiming it was disturbing his rest, so he was no closer to working out what the shrieking meant by the time he returned to the school.
The Yule Ball provided some much needed relief and a chance to unwind. He had a great time with Cho Chang, though it was a bit unnerving having Potter leering at him all night, ignoring his own date - a very pretty girl Cedric recognised as being from Ravenclaw. Apparently Potter had a soft spot for Cho, who was remaining tight-lipped about the matter.
Despite spending hours upon end doing everything he could think of with the egg (he had even tried drowning it, but to no avail) Cedric had no idea what was coming in the Second Task. Krum and Delacour had apparently had more luck with their eggs, since they turned up wearing swimming costumes, whereas Cedric was now wearing his second favourite set of Hogwarts Robes.
They were stood before the lake, and when Bagman announced "Go!" Krum and Delacour made their way into the water. Not wanting to look foolish in front of the whole school (again) Cedric followed them, musing that at least a simple Bubble-head Charm would help him breathe under water, and that hopefully once he'd gotten into the lake he'd work out what to do.
Krum and Delacour had both disappeared, but thankfully once Cedric had swam deeper into the lake it became clear. He found the Champions's Yule Ball dates lashed to a statue in the middle of the Merpeople village and it finally hit him – that ridiculous shrieking had been Mermish. He briefly wondered if Hogwarts had ever had a language class that he'd missed – maybe they taught Mermish at Durmstrang and Beauxbatons.
Attempts to cast a severing charm on the ropes binding Cho proved futile underwater, so he had to grab a particularly jagged rock instead. Cho was quickly freed, and Cedric began tugging her gently towards the surface. On his way up he swam passed a half-man half-shark monstrosity that was probably Krum, if the swimming trunks embossed with a Durmstrang crest were anything to go by. Cedric saw no sign of Delacour until he had returned to the surface of the lake with a very grateful Cho.
As Cho cuddled and kissed him after the Task Cedric decided that being a Champion wasn't so bad.
Up in the back of the stand Harry and Ron looked on in disgust, though for slightly different reasons. They had just spent the last hour staring at a boring lake, and now were watching the Champions emerge from said lake with their respective crushes.
Krum emerged from the lake slightly after Cedric shrieking in horror as he lifted with him Hermione's mangled body, the poor girl apparently having been half eaten by a shark. Meanwhile, Fleur Delacour struggled against the Hogwarts staff and tried futilely to get back into the lake to save her sister.
"I must save 'er, zere es a shark in ze water!" Fleur shrieked loud enough for the whole stadium to here. "You told me zey would be safe!" She levelled an accusatory finger at Dumbledore, who smiled and returned to his conversation with the chief Merperson.
#
Cedric thought random student death tended to put a dampener on the school year, so he was quite glad that Granger turned out not to be dead.
At least for the Third Task they were given some time to prepare – a maze full of monsters; that he could deal with. He'd always been quite adept at Care of Magical Creatures, and felt fairly confident the sort of thing Hagrid would have in store for them. At least there was relatively little chance of Hagrid getting hold of another dragon.
Cedric was first into the maze, having been the only Champion to rescue his hostage without maiming them in the previous task. Krum was shortly after and Fleur was last. Several times they crossed paths as they made their way through the maze. Cedric used the Point Me spell to get him moving towards the centre of the maze.
The Blast Ended Skrewts seemed to take a particular interest in him, chasing him around the entire maze and eventually getting into a fight with a sphinx over the right to murder him. Cedric took advantage of the distraction to slip onto the home straight. He ran forward towards the Triwizard Cup, but he was so focused on it that he failed to notice the seven foot tall spider that had decided to eat him.
Under the circumstances he felt he reacted about as well as someone being eaten by a spider was likely to, but eventually his Stunning Spells took their toll on the beast and it slumped and dropped him on his now quite mangled leg.
Despite the injury, Cedric was able to hobble over to the trophy. Triumphant, he reached out and grabbed it from the plinth.
Nothing happened.
Cedric looked around, expecting the ground to raise him out of the maze, or fireworks or some indication that he'd won. It was then he realised that he may have got the Triwizard Cup in his hands, but now he had to fight his way back through the spiders, sphinxes and Blast Ended Skrewts to get to the exit.
"They might have at least made it a Portkey," he muttered. He looked down at the ruins of his third favourite set of Hogwarts robes, convinced that this whole Triwizard Tournament couldn't get any worse.
Outside the maze Harry, Ron and a now patched up Hermione watched as Cedric's heavily battered body stumbled out of the maze. There was the usual screaming from the crowd at his injuries, but Harry still felt incredibly jealous as Cho rushed over to help him up, and gave him a kiss as he held the Trophy aloft with a sack full of galleons in his other hand.
"Oh look, Krum's coming out now," Ron said bitterly. Hermione grunted – she'd had enough of international Wizarding relations since he'd accidentally eaten her. Ron seemed fairly pleased by Hermione's reaction.
"There's Fleur. Doesn't look so pretty now," Hermione said. Ron wholeheartedly agreed – the Skrewts appeared to have gotten her quite badly. Neither however looked half as bad as Cedric, who despite the large grin was missing half the skin on his face and had at least one leg hanging on by a thread.
"I hate Diggory," Harry grumbled. "Was it too much to hope something in that maze might have killed him?"