Author's Note: I am reposting this after editing it a bit. Please let me know what you think! I love reviews!
Angel
By: ChoCedric
Amos and Eileen Diggory don't know what to think at first when Harry Potter and their son Cedric disappear with the Triwizard Cup. From the shocked whispers of the crowd, it is apparently not part of the task. After a few moments of stunned silence, it becomes clear that there is something very wrong.
Amos storms over to Dumbledore, who is talking to Professor McGonnagall and Professor Snape. They have their heads together and are speaking with extremely serious looks on their faces. "Where the hell is my son, Dumbledore?" he yells, holding tightly to his wife's hand. "You promised us he'd be safe, that you'd taken precautions to make sure this tournament was all right!"
"Calm down, Amos," says Dumbledore in that reassuring voice of his. "I'm sure everything will be all right. We are looking into what could be going on."
"He'd better be all right," Amos snarls, storming away. "You'll have hell to pay if he isn't." Eileen grasps his hand, terror in her eyes. All she can feel is a numb sense of foreboding that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
It is many anxiety-filled minutes later that a loud "thump!" is heard, and Harry and Cedric return. The first thing Amos and Eileen feel is incredible relief, but when they see that Harry isn't letting Cedric go and Cedric isn't moving, horror grips them once again.
Then come the shouts. "My God-Diggory! He's dead! Dead! Diggory's dead! Dead! Dead! Cedric Diggory! Dead!"
"Nooooooo!" Amos wails, and Eileen feels her entire body go cold. They both go running onto the field. "Let me through!" shouts Amos. "THAT'S MY SON!" They run to Cedric's body and he kneels over him, frantically searching for a pulse. Alastor Moody has made Harry let him go, and is currently carrying the exhausted and bleeding boy back into the school. "Cedric, talk to me!" Amos screams, while tears stream down Eileen's face. This cannot be happening. Their boy, their perfect son, their seventeen-year-old joy, the light of their life, is totally silent and still. Students are now running onto the field. Amos totally falls apart at seeing his boy, his wonderful, strapping young son, with his lifeless gray eyes gazing at the sky. He looks shocked and so alone, like he was caught totally off-guard by whatever killed him. Amos picks him up and holds him in his arms while Eileen starts stroking his face.
"Nooooo! Nooooo! Cedric! Nooooo! My son! My boy! Noooooo!" Eileen's heart clenches at her husband's verbal grief. As much as she wants to scream, as much as she wants to yell like he is, she feels totally numb. The only thing she can feel is the tears falling down her face. She can also hear someone else screaming, and she notices it is Cedric's girlfriend, Cho. Ced has told her and Amos all about her, about how much of a joy she is to him. Cho is shouting, sobbing, begging him to wake up, and Eileen touches her shoulders and then embraces her, letting the girl sob out her grief.
It is total chaos on the field now. "We have to move the body, there're too many people!" the arrogant Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, is saying. Dumbledore is there, and Amos turns to him, taking his fury out on him. "WHY IS MY SON DEAD?" he screams. "ANSWER ME, YOU FOOL! YOU PROMISED HE'D BE FINE!"
Incredible, agonizing guilt is churning inside Amos's gut; he was the one who convinced Ced to participate in the tournament in the first place. He should have appreciated his son for what he was, he shouldn't have wanted him to be perfect. Flashbacks of all the times he ever compared him to Harry Potter run through his mind, and Eileen can just sense what he's thinking by the look on his face. All she wants to do is take Cedric's place. It's wrong, so wrong, that her beautiful boy had to die, he was so full of life. He had so much to live for: tons of friends, a beautiful girlfriend, a great thirst for Quidditch, and a wonderful joy for life.
She doesn't know how she and Amos get through the next few hours; they are all a blur to them. They wish that their love alone could bring him back; they'd give anything in the world just to see him smile at them again. He was such a positive person, it just isn't fair! They sit with him in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey has covered him in a sheet, and he looks like an angel. They sit holding his hands and stroking his face, hoping he can hear them when they tell him what a wonderful boy he was. They spend the night by his side, and it is Eileen who lovingly closes his eyes for him. Dumbledore stops by later and takes Eileen aside, telling her what Cedric went through. Apparently he suffered very little, and was caught immediately by surprise. Amos does not join her for this, for he is too enraged at the Headmaster to hold a proper conversation with him. Eileen numbly thanks him and promises she'll relay the message to her husband.
A few days later, the funeral is held. Amos is too much of a mess to give the speech, so it is Eileen who does it. Many people are shocked at how well she is coping, and she honestly doesn't know how she's doing so well either. To be totally frank, she is too numb to scream, to shout, just like she was the night his precious life was taken away from him. She and Amos spoke with Harry, and he backed up the story Dumbledore had told. To think that that bastard Voldemort ruined Cedric's chances of ever having a full life almost kills her. Amos shows this in anger and tears, but she just shows it by total exhaustion and depression. Both of them are totally supportive of Harry; they do not believe the Ministry fools who claim Cedric's death was a tragic accident.
They get to stroke his hands one more time at the viewing. When it is time to bury him, they kiss him goodbye for the last time and watch as his casket is lowered into the ground. Amos grasps Eileen tightly as she almost falls to the ground in her profound grief, for it is then when she totally loses it. No parent should have to bury their child, it is the wrong order. She should be the one in that casket, she should be the one who's being lowered into the ground, not her Cedric. Not her darling, her angel, the apple of her eye. She becomes totally hysterical, and she doesn't even remember Amos gathering himself together enough to apparate her home. But the next thing she knows, she is in her bed, and he is coercing her to drink a Dreamless Sleep potion. At least she won't dream of his lifeless gray eyes tonight, is the last thing she thinks.
Over the following years, the pain never goes away, but she does start to live again. It is when Harry Potter defeats Voldemort that she finally feels that her Cedric has been avenged. Amos's personality has changed, too, and it takes a supreme effort for him to get through each day. Cedric was their only child, and a real blessing to love and care for. From the moment he opened his beautiful gray eyes on the day of his birth, he was the pride of the family. But the Diggorys know that Cedric would want them to go on living, for he never wanted to see anyone unhappy. So that is what they try to do, and they know he is at peace. Their son was too good for this world; Heaven was missing an angel, and it was his time to go home. And they know that he will wait for them, and when it is their time, he will take them home to be with him forever.