A/N: This is my entry for Dear. Dark. Destiny's Can You Write a Romance? Challenge. My characters were Cedric and Barty Crouch Jr. and my prompt, to be used three times, was the word Beelzebub.
And thanks to Tamari-Chan for her amazingness and betaing skills.
You walk around in a body that doesn't quite fit and you speak in gruff, cryptic words to hide the truth.
One boy sees through you.
He is seventeen. He is a Hufflepuff. And he is a champion.
You watch him watch you in class, and find yourself stuttering and stumbling over your words because he's right there and he's not intimidated like the other children. He's not afraid of big, scary Professor Moody.
No, he's intrigued. You can see it. It's in the way his eyes follow your clunky limp, the way his gaze runs along your arms as you gesticulate, the way he fixes his eyes on your mouth as if to watch your lips wrap around the words before you speak them.
You wonder if he knows your big secret (or the other secret you keep; how much you want him).
He finds you in your office after dark in mid-January and he stands still in the doorway. His shadow is thrown around the room, his silhouette encircling you from all angles, and you feel suddenly surrounded in the flickering candlelight of the corridor behind him.
"Professor," he says.
"Diggory."
"You don't want me to win, do you?" he asks, his head cocked to the side, a smirk on his lips. There is a certain cockiness about him. You see it curled around his folded arms and dripping across the set of his hips as he leans against the doorjamb.
"Want you to win? It's not about wanting to win, boy! It's about surviving!"
"How can I survive this without any help?" he asks slyly.
It is then that you look at him and you see not Hufflepuff's golden boy, but a hidden snake with a lust for glory.
"Are you going to get to the point, Diggory?"
He nods, his eyes never leaving yours, and steps inside the room. He closes the door firmly behind him and the air is suddenly warmer, heavier.
"I think you know what I mean, Professor," he says.
Was he ever the golden boy?
You look at him now and you don't remember having seen anything like him; how had you missed it before?
He stands with an air of royalty about him. His back is straight and his cheeks are flushed, his eyes bright. He is tall, commanding, and in the corners of his eyes are secrets he shouldn't know.
You search for your own secret in the eyes of this pseudo-prince.
The Prince of Demons,you think, as he takes careful steps closer to you with a suggestive swinging of his slender hips and that glint in his eye that tells you what he wants.
"I know you know, Professor. Who else would they trust with something as important as the Triwizard Tournament?"
His voice is like black silk. It twists around you, soft and smooth, binding you, and you know you're trapped before you can even process what's happening.
The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, your heart pounds. He's your own Beelzebub, this boy, he's your Satan.
The Dark Lord has told you not to let your feelings get in the way.
"Emotion is victory's worst enemy," he said.
But you let the Diggory boy kiss you and, in the moments between, when you draw deep, ragged breaths, you whisper into his mouth the secrets to success.
He'll tell Potter, you think, you're doing this because he'll tell Potter. But you know why you're doing this, and Potter has nothing to do with it.
He stays that night, curled up in your old blankets and sighing in his sleep as you rock back and forth on an old, wooden chair, terrified that you'll fall asleep and miss the potion and he will see you, the real you, and everything will be over.
You cannot fail. Failure does not sit well with the Dark Lord.
So you tap your wooden leg along the ground in an uneasy rhythm to keep yourself awake. The echoing noise is your only comfort. In the beats that you tap out are the reminders that this is real, that you cannot fall asleep, that the Diggory boy is the devil.
Somehow, you manage to slip into fretful slumber anyway.
You wake in the early hours of the morning to find yourself back in your own body. The strap of your gnarled wooden leg is broken where your real leg forced it off and that magical eye whizzes in circles around your feet. Your heart is racing and your tongue is so thick, so dry in your mouth that swallowing is impossible. Your hands shake as you turn slowly towards the bed and see that-
He's not there. The Diggory boy is not there.
Joy washes through you, relief and thankfulness and hope and, oh, you must have been hallucinating again.
This wretched potion.
But then you see it, fluttering slightly in the breeze of the draughty window.
A letter, folded up and stuck on your desk between your inkwell and the wall. There is a scratchy M on the front.
You hate yourself as you open it and read:
"Professor.
Thank you for the clue. I will be taking my egg to the baths later tonight. I'll be sure to mention you when I win.
Don't worry, I'll tell Potter about it too. We Hufflepuffs are nothing if not fair, after all.
So fair, in fact, that I'll even keep your secret, Mr. Imposter.
Your champion,
Cedric."
You were right; the boy's a snake among the badgers.
For the next few weeks you pretend not to notice his satisfied smirk as you attempt to ignore him.
You sit and watch the glassy surface of the lake and your insides fight over what you want to happen.
Potter. It must be Potter, you chant. But thoughts of Diggory can do this, Diggory is the true champion, Diggory Diggory Diggory echo in your mind so that you must shake your head vigorously and force yourself to tune into in the buzzing of chatter around you.
When Diggory breaks the surface first you are horribly torn. It fills you with a strange sense of pride, but the Dark Lord's face swims before your vision, unbidden, and you feel your fingers tremble slightly.
It's okay, Potter still has a chance, he has a chance, you think.
You overlook how Diggory plucks Chang's wet hair from her face with a loving caress to her cheek and listen as Dumbledore announces that Potter and Diggory have both come in first place.
For once, both sides of you are quiet.
He comes back the night after with a gleeful grin and says his thanks.
Guilt rises in you like a terrible wave, and you tell him to leave before you have any second thoughts.
"I'm sorry, Professor," your Beelzebub whispers into your ear. "But I'm staying right here."
The trail of kisses he leaves on your neck is soft and sweet and this time, when you fall into bed together, you stay there.
You wake up the next morning, cold and still so very tired, to a hand-written note and a waiting owl.
The note says:
"You have everything to lose, you know. Don't refuse me in future.
I'll be back soon.
Cedric"
And the scroll attached to the leg of the owl says:
"Be careful. He's watching."
Diggory is true to his word. His Prefect duties somehow tend to end around your office and his uniform somehow ends up on your floor again and again and you somehow end up letting yourself fall back into your own body and start smiling with your own lips and Cedric says nothing.
He doesn't ask your real name or who you are. He just lets you talk and lets you listen and even if you avoid the big subjects – Chang, the Dark Lord, the Tournament – you feel as if you know him after a few long nights of wrapping your own arms around him and falling asleep together.
A tawny owl comes at midnight on one of your rare nights alone, pecking at your window with its sharp beak and sending shivers down your spine. Who else could it be from?
"Alastor.
Remember who you are to save."
It is unsigned but you know that this is your warning. The Dark Lord knows somehow, as he always does, and you dig your fingernails into your palms and wonder how.
But he's the Dark Lord.
So you push it to the back of your mind.
Potter. Potter is to win.
You throw the parchment into the fire and watch it curl and blacken, smoke rising like familiar cursive.
You blink and the darkness has swallowed the smoke.
The maze is tall and towering and the Dark Lord's plan is seared into your brain.
So when the winners enter, you take deliberate steps around the high walls and begin your search. You find the Krum boy easily enough. His eyes darken and then go blank as you curse him, and you spit out your orders as if they are a poison you do not want on your tongue.
"Get the girl. Stop her."
You pause. You watch your victim as he breathes, his chest rising and falling and rising and falling and –
"Diggory. Stop Diggory, too."
And you resume walking around the never-changing walls and humming tunelessly to block out the screams you hope never come.
Everything falls apart.
Potter comes back, fucking Potter comes back, and Diggory – Cedric – is sprawled on the ground underneath him and you forget how to breathe. How did this happen? How did he die? He wasn't meant to be killed, no, he was not meant to die.
Potter clings to him, shouting in the unnatural silence. You cannot hear the words. You just look at him, Diggory, your champion, your Beelzebub, and you want nothing more than to close his eyes. They're empty and grey and you can feel the secrets pouring from them, the untold stories of the boy who got in the way.
It's Potter's fault, you think. It's always Potter's fault.
So you push through the crowd. You see Diggory's father drop to his knees and there is a soul crushing, guttural scream, and you swallow the vomit in your throat before placing a heavy hand on Potter's shoulder and leading him away.
Your blood is boiling and everything is wrong, you scream inside, everything is ruined.
It only gets worse.
They throw you into a dark room with bars on the windows and Dementors in the doorways. They ask you no questions and they give you no chances.
The hand is cold and clammy on your cheeks as it pulls your face upward. You think of Cedric and try to imagine that infuriating smirk instead of the emptiness of death. If they're going to take you, it might as well be with him on your mind.
As they suck your soul out through your clenched teeth, you imagine his cramped, curled writing on your skin. You pretend that he's scrawled I love you across your arms and mine across your chest and your last thought is that, maybe, he did.
And then you are nothing.
Another A/N: I'd just like to say that I know people will wonder why Cedric wasn't worried about Moody's imposter. I like to think that he thought it was part of the Tournament. Maybe he thought it was another judge who had to blend in? So he slept with him... What? He wasn't completely innocent, you know. ;)