-1The Diggory Papers.

Cedric Diggory

As edited & arranged by Miranda C. Weasley.

Alone in the Prefects' bathroom, I dreamed. It started off well, Fleur was there again, warm and slick, but the water turned red around us, blood-red, and the colour came from a tap under the portrait of the mermaid. As the colour touched her, Fleur changed, as full Veela do when they transform. She didn't stop at the Harpy, the winged and beaked monster that's still on some level human (or at least human-shaped), she kept changing until I was cuddling a massive bird, an eagle or vulture or something. I was already scrambling back when an octarine flash hit the bird and it faded away to reveal Moody, towering over the bath as he'd never physically loomed in the real world. He bellowed "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!", exactly as he had every lesson all year, then spoke again,

"You must face this alone, Cedric. I can no longer intervene." But it wasn't Moody's bass growl anymore, it was Dumbledore's voice coming out of that scarred face… and it sounded like his heart was breaking.

I woke with a start, jerking upright in the bath and shivering from more than just the cold water. I'd heard those words from Dumbledore in a dream before, in November, and he'd never had any cause to say them to me for real. I believe in Divination as little as anyone taught by Trelawney, but she did say I had the Eye, and coward that I am I couldn't help but wonder if she was right for once.

Eagles and dragons, curses, and Moody always there, friend and foe both - my dreams were repetitive to say the least, for a while, but it was Dumbledore's voice that had really scared me, and I didn't hear it again. I wouldn't have had time to dwell on dreams anyway, I was too busy living. I'd told Cho about the Task, leaving out certain details, and she spent a lot of time researching things that I couldn't see were relevant - like crash courses in Mermish and the theory of how spells change underwater. Typical Ravenclaw really, face them with a charging Erumpent and they'll start analysing the properties of its horn. Oh, and lest I forget we still made the Marauders' bedsprings creak from time to time (generally from half ten to five the next morning). The same mayfly intelligence that made it so very frustrating to rely on her for life-saving ideas was put to much better use in bed. For sheer amorous invention Cho more than kept up her… impressive beginning at Christmas, and I can't say I've ever found anyone better.

Fortunately, I did find someone better than Cho at keeping me alive under the lake (I don't understand this business I hear now about it being the Black Lake, unless someone drowned that bunch of Death Eater maniacs in it). I'm not sure how lucky I was that it was still Fleur. We only slept together once more - after she all but cracked up testing a potion that was supposed to make air out of water and was developed from plant food. It failed rather spectacularly and, not for lack of gentle persuasion, it was the only time she let me have her again. 'Jamais' mon cul, as I never quite dared say to her.

For all that was frustrating, though, I can't explain the satisfaction that her attention gave me - it wasn't purely the ego boost, it certainly wasn't love, I'm not sure it was even sexual except that something so complete had to be, but somewhere between her usual arrogance and Veela ancestry just having her full regard turned on me with any sort of affection made something older and more primitive than my brain want to roll over and do tricks. Like I said, it wasn't just sex or beauty, and I should know the difference - it was Fleur, and small wonder I still can't hate her as much as I want to.

By and by, we worked well together. Fleur could tweak and twist any spell under the sun, and whatever she could devise I could cast, though some of it I preferred not to - one spell to enable one to hold one's breath longer would have made your blood literally boil, and we didn't find this out until after Fleur asked me to test it on both of us and I refused on the grounds that the original spell was meant for cultivating waterweed and I wasn't a bloody plant. We still worked in the dungeons or in odd corners of the grounds; by the time of the blood-boiling debacle it was February and so close to the Task people would have wondered if they'd seen me speak to Fleur, let alone disappear for hours with her. As usual, people wanted to believe I had a winning plan, so they did.

By the thirteenth of February, though, we were back to the start. Fleur had come up with the Bubble-Head Charm about five minutes before Cho, but there were a couple of major problems with it. First, it took constant, and I mean constant, concentration to stop it collapsing completely. Second, the killer, it couldn't stand up to changes in pressure – it was in every textbook that you shouldn't use it underwater, even a sudden climb on a broom would pop it. I wasn't a strong swimmer in the first place; the idea of my air supply giving out at the bottom of the lake (90ft deep, thanks Cho) was downright terrifying.

It took a week of desperate experimenting to get a bubble that wouldn't burst under pressure, even then it wasn't as strong as we'd have liked and you had to go down very carefully indeed – or so we thought, neither of us fancied a real test on ourselves so our practice was limited to throwing things in and watching for the bubble (Hagrid's Skrewts were good, the bangs made them easy to keep track of). Ironically enough it was Cho who came up with the final tweak that made the whole thing just about susainable under strain, and I was forced to pass it on to Fleur by the simple fact that it still wasn't finished and we were at that point down to four days left.

Somewhere in the middle of that crazy fortnight, Valentine's Day passed, I think. Cho insisted that I drop work for the day, and I was only too happy to comply. I wasn't anything like so happy to be dragged to Madam Puddifoot's flower-bedecked hellhole, and it was all I could do not to tear into Cho for her complete lack of anything vaguely resembling an imagination. Brains, yes, she had plenty of those, but Merlin forbid she should ever show the smallest sign of original thought when she wasn't half-cut. I bit my tongue, frequently (not to mention scalding it on Gods-awful ginger tea) and passed the time by plotting our evening... elsewhere. It was worth every bloody rose petal. What it wasn't quite worth was Cho mumbling something about growing old together. I like a compliment as much as the next man, but I wasn't thinking quite that far in advance. I'd settle for surviving into March.

By the last week, I hadn't time to be scared. For the first time in my life, I approached a dangerous task with almost complete calm, in the sure and certain knowledge that I knew what to do. Krum had been seen diving in the lake but Potter had, after sounding confident earlier in the term, vanished almost completely to do whatever Gryffindors do instead of thinking. I even thought I knew who would be at the bottom of the lake; I didn't have anything or anyone I'd sorely miss for themselves other than Cho or my mother and I was leaning towards the latter. I may not have been a Malfoy, but looking back I was still traditionalist enough to hold that blood is thicker than semen whatever the circumstances.

With three days to go, I still wasn't scared. I was furious. After my self-satisfied musings on the joys of family, two sets of parents decided to screw things up with a vengeance. First, my mother wrote to me in strictest confidence to say she was going to get a divorce(1) and would probably be moving away, maybe out of the country. It didn't take a genius to figure out good-old-Ludo was at the bottom of this. Second, Monsieur Delacour of the terrifying reputation actually showed up to watch his little girl conquer the world (or drown in a freezing Scottish lake, your call).

I know I keep saying I wanted to leave England more than anything, but I'd always imagined home being in Saleford(2), somewhere I could act as if I hated, and chafe against, and know was still there wherever I went and whatever I did. The idea that my mother might pack up and go to Bulgaria or somewhere was inconceivable, and she was going to do it anyway. And with Bagman, too – Bagman who was apparently in love with Potter already, who'd had to buy my silence with season tickets, Bagman the fat has-been clinging to a career that was fading when I was born. My mental rant didn't include Bagman who'd been called a Death Eater before and might be again, but it was at the back of my mind.

Delacour was a more immediate problem, not decently waiting for the end of the Tournament but present in the flesh on the 23rd. He was the single ugliest man I've ever seen – amazing that Fleur's beauty could be in any way connected to this short, hairy and incredibly scarred little man. If I was half as brave as I looked, I'd have quietly shoved him in the lake and done the world in general and the French in particular a favour. Unfortunately, I'm the coward you ought to know by now, and I balked at killing off a vampire-hunting Auror(3) just because he made my not-girlfriend miserable and sounded like he would cheerfully kill me, if not to clear the path for said not-girlfriend then if he found out I'd laid a finger on her. If you think I exaggerate, ask Fleur or read on.

I wasn't actually introduced to the old bastard until much later, but Fleur returned from meeting him in Hogsmeade and said we'd have to stay apart for a while or he'd kill me. I didn't really believe her, but I wasn't about to take the chance and in any case our Bubble-Head Charm wasn't going to get any better. Unfortunately, Delacour Sr's arrival did kill off the beginnings of our (well, my) nefarious plan to shaft Krum between us before going after the Mer-people. Fleur probably wouldn't have agreed anyway – she'd never liked the 'dishonourable' parts of the Tournament and as you remember it took plenty of fast talking for me to convince her that our cooperation was above-board.

The morning of the Second Task dawned bloody cold; I was in the Cellar that night and even there (normally the warmest spot in the castle by miles) it was cold. If the Triwizard organisers had wanted to kill off half the school and all the competitors by hypothermia, they could hardly have done better. With a lazy wind(4) freezing my bones, the fear I'd pushed to one side for the previous month finally hit me. I was going to the bottom of a deep and cold lake, using an experimental charm, to fight mer-people. Right. Whose idea was this again?

The adrenaline rush of being cheered to the heavens by half Scotland distracted me from my fear just long enough to cast the Bubble-Head and wade into the lake on Bagman's call. If I'd thought the air was cold, it had nothing on the water. We hadn't counted on the cold, reasoning that the exercise of swimming would be enough to keep us going, and we were right... just.

The shock of fully immersing myself was painful, burning cold, and I fought vicious cramps as I dove deeper and deeper into the slate-grey depths. I could only sustain the faintest lumos whilst keeping my air supply going, but by its dim glow I saw a shoal of Grindylows off to one side and swung wide to avoid them.

It didn't work. They spotted me and came round in pursuit, far faster than I could hope to follow. I swam as fast as I could, but they were close on my heels when I spotted another light, low to my left, and a silver glitter which had to be Fleur's hair. I immediately changed course towards her, at first thinking she could help get the Grindylows off my back, but as I got within a few yards and she still hadn't reacted to my presence I changed my mind. I doused my light and put on all the speed I could, leaving Fleur to be hit by a shoal of enraged Grindylows, and myself free to carry on hunting.

A few minutes after, though, I noticed my breathing getting harder, the air tasting worse. The Bubble-Head is supposed to renew air, even through water after Fleur's tweaks, but I'd been using a lot swimming around, I suppose. I surfaced just long enough to drop the Charm and renew it, to the accompaniment of loud groans from the crowd who thought I'd given up. Surfacing, though, also let me get my bearings, and a quick Four Point Spell had me heading south-east, towards the deepest part of the lake where the Mer-people most likely were. I must have cocked it up, though, because I ran into shallow water within a couple of minutes and had to surface (swearing loudly), try the spell again and set off in the right direction.

The Mer-people lived in a sort of crude village of mud huts (no, I don't know how they held together in water either; magic, I guess), which I didn't see much of because I came down almost directly on top of the massive statue with four bodies tied to it. Something that looked like Potter badly transfigured into a fish was wrestling with three mermen whilst a Weasley lay untied but asleep on the bottom of the lake. I don't know what he did to upset them, but I pulled out my pocket knife and slashed Cho free. As Potter struggled with his new friends, I mouthed 'got lost' at him and headed straight up as fast as I could swim, dragging Cho behind me.

As we broke the surface, Cho revived and promptly did her best to drown us both by kissing me right there in the middle of the lake as Hogwarts cheered itself hoarse. Once I'd shaken her loose (only slightly reluctantly) we swam slowly ashore, basking in glory even as our lips turned blue from the cold. With some satisfaction (OK, sheer delight) Cho pointed out Fleur, who was being restrained by McGonagall and a couple of other witches from throwing herself back in the lake, and had a few nasty scratches presumably inflicted by the Grindylows. Stebbins told me she'd had to be rescued and was thus disqualified. I can't say I was too sorry for her fate – after all, it made me first champion home.

Krum drifted in about five minutes behind me, half-Transfigured into a shark and having serious trouble hauling Granger in – I guess he really had gone mad, it wasn't just Ball-induced daftness that got them together. He un-Transfigured his head in time to congratulate me fairly politely before Karkaroff hauled him off.

After that, though, it was a long, long wait for Potter. Everyone seemed to forget about me in the horrified excitement as more and more time passed – I'd returned about on the hour, he was well past time by then and still no sign of him. Even worse, the judges couldn't announce the score until everyone was back and the Mer-people had given their report. It was a long, long twenty minutes before Potter broke the surface towing not just Weasley, but a tiny blonde poppet who was obviously Fleur's baby sister. The crowd cheered, more out of relief than support, but the volume redoubled when twenty Mer-people broke the surface to escort Potter to shore.

It's a good thing Potter was the other side of the grandstand from me when Fleur got to him, or I'd have knocked his teeth in with or without magic for standing there soaking up non-existent glory whilst Fleur kissed him and worshipped his bravery in saving her sister – as if she'd ever been in danger; Dumbledore didn't actually kill complete innocents. The judges even got in on it – they gave him 45 for moral fibre (Karkaroff doing me a rare service by dissenting from the others) – though I couldn't really complain as I'd got 47. Fleur received 25 for looking nice, though to give credit where it's due I might have been dead without her. I didn't grudge her the points half as much as I did Potter, anyhow. Since when does naivete equal moral fibre, especially in the Triwizard Tournament? More fool him, I'd have said, and come back when he was older. I did say it, once or twice, but my soppy housemates were all in favour of moral fibre, so I quickly shut up and looked noble, which is all people really want from their champions most of the time and usually gets you a damn sight more credit than anything flashy.

The next fortnight was probably the best and happiest time of my life. OK, I couldn't see Fleur because her pestilential father hung around for two weeks bothering Dumbledore about extraditing French Muggle-baiters or something, but Cho was dippier than ever about me, Hufflepuff loved me more than ever, Potter was keeping his head down for once and Rita Skeeter left me out of her articles on Potter and Krum's tangled love-lives (interspersed, naturally, with photos of Fleur) except to note that I was clearly the most responsible and respectable of the Champions, which shows how much the stupid cow knew. Of course, perfection never lasts long.

1) For Muggleborn readers, this was and is a much bigger deal in the wizarding world than outside – divorce without legal cause was only permitted from 1957 by the reformist Ministry of Niles Bevanage and social attitudes change but slowly.

2) Amos Diggory was, according to his acquaintances, touchy about living so close to two of the wizarding world's most notorious eccentrics, and always insisted that his house was in Saleford, a minuscule hamlet, rather than Ottery St Catchpole. Clearly he passed the habit on to Cedric.

3) Whilst Monsieur Jean-Charles Delacour, Sous-Ministre de l'Interieur, LdH MMM OM2nd MICW etc. was indeed a vampire hunter in his youth, his career in public service was spent not with the regular French MLE but with the Quatrieme Bureau, whose work was and remains as secret as its reputation was and is unsavoury. When Cedric met him he was nearing the end of his career and held the second-highest position in the French Ministry, responsible for law enforcement, justice and security.

4) Note for foreign readers: a 'lazy wind' is a particularly chill one, so called because it can't be bothered to go around you and so passes straight through.