The Hell of Fourth Year.
Cedric woke up when he felt something light jump onto his chest, and he heard the sound of a cat purring. He lifted his head and in the darkness he found the outline of a cat on his chest.
"Hello," Cedric whispered, pulling out a hand from under the covers, feeling the soft warmth of Charlotte who was curled up next to him, and taking care not to wake her, he stroked the cat gently. "You must be Nightstar."
Nightstar purred, and he smiled as he felt the cat gently push her head into his hand. Cedric smiled and rewarded the cat with a few more strokes before she settled down on his chest, purring away. Cedric patted her gently on her flank, wondering to herself why Weasley had tried to kill the cat. A part of him wondered what Charlotte would have done to the redheaded twat. He shuddered when he realised he really did not want to know. Knowing Charlotte, Weasley would probably have died.
Cedric let out a soft sigh as he rested his head back down on the pillow, smiling as he felt Charlotte shift slightly in her sleep before he took in the rest of the bedroom. Light was only just starting to come through the curtains, so Cedric guessed it was nearing daybreak. He turned his head to check the clock. It was almost six in the morning, but he didn't care while he lightly kissed Charlotte on the head, and he thought about the night before, and he also had time to reflect on how he saw Charlotte.
He wasn't sure if he loved her. Cedric had felt sorry for the girl when the entire school had turned on her while nobody bothered to help her, and as the weeks had passed, going through the Wand Weighing, the First Task…Cedric had found himself fascinated by Charlotte, but the problem was he didn't know if he loved her or not, and if she did love him or not.
A groan next to him announced Charlotte was waking up, and he looked down at her as she woke up. But as Charlotte woke up, the light outside which was slowly brightening up, shone on her body. Cedric watched her. And then he paused as something about Charlotte's body caught his attention, and he leaned in closer, making sure he didn't get in the way of the light.
There were scars on Charlotte's back. They were old, but they looked so deep when they were inflicted, they must have seriously hurt like hell. Cedric leaned in closer, trying to think of what in the name of Merlin had happened, and who had done it to Charlotte in the first place.
But as he leaned in to take a closer look Cedric noticed something else, the scars were partially healed despite being deep. It showed they had been left like this for years, and only now it looked like she had undergone some really strong magical therapy to repair the damage. But why hadn't it happened as soon as Charlotte walked into Hogwarts in the first place?
"My muggle relatives."
Cedric almost jumped when he heard Charlotte's voice. The girl was wide awake, and he wondered when she had woken up and became alert enough to ask that question with such clarity. He lifted his gaze and saw her face. Charlotte didn't look angry, rather resigned and solemn.
"What?" he whispered, halting the automatic apologies that wanted to burst from his throat at invading Charlotte's privacy in this manner with some effort.
"My muggle relatives," Charlotte repeated, a dark look entering her one remaining eye as she thought about the people who had hurt her. "They did this to my back. I've got other scars on other parts of my body."
"They look partially healed, " he commented, for lack of anything else he could say to her, but what could he say now he knew the Girl Who Lived had been abused?
"It was a long time ago," Charlotte shrugged like it was no big deal, but Cedric could see from her angry expression that Charlotte had taken the pain and had done something with it. And she had forgotten and forgiven no-one. He had seen that expression before, when she had turned Weasley into a spider.
That reminded him, he needed to find out what was going to happen with the obnoxious fool.
"Why, what happened?" Cedric asked, deciding to push the subject along so he could satisfy his immediate curiosity. In any case, the implications were horrific; Cedric had heard rumours brought home by his father about the horrors muggles inflicted sometimes on their children if they exhibited signs of magic, but this was the first time he had ever seen a confirmed case. The fact it was Charlotte Potter, the Girl Who Lived….
Cedric had no idea what could happen if the news broke out, but he knew one thing; many people would seriously begin hating muggles, and if he were frank with himself he doubted he could care.
Charlotte sighed as she shifted around so she was sitting on her buttocks and she brought her legs up under her chin. "My….relatives," she said the word as if she couldn't find the right word to describe them, "hated magic. I don't know when it started. My guess is, in my aunt's case…it started around the time my mother showed her powers. I never found out the full story, and it makes little difference to me now. My uncle…he always hated anything he found abnormal, freakish…that's how he described it. I didn't know my own name until I was in primary school," she lifted her head at the horrified Cedric. "My name was always girl, or freak, depending on the day."
She looked away with a sigh, cursing the fact this whole mess had just come up. But she knew it had only been a matter of time before Cedric had seen the scars. He wasn't stupid, at some point he would have noticed them. In some way it was her own fault, she should have realised the danger, but truthfully with so many people waking up to the fact she wasn't the pushover they'd assumed she was, she didn't care. Besides, what could Cedric do? Charlotte had realised long ago she could stand up and scream about what the Dursleys were doing to her in that House of Horror they lived in on that boring street of mindless simpletons until either Vernon smacked her on the head, or Dumbledore interfered. No one would help.
Even now no-one had asked her questions about her upbringing. Pomfrey had noticed the scars, but Charlotte had known nothing would happen then, and Dumbledore would hush everything up.
She blew out a breath to assemble her shattered thoughts when Cedric asked the most logical question of all. "But why, why would anyone leave you there? Who left you there?"
Charlotte lifted her head, and in the light of the room, obscured by curtains, her expression alone showed the ice-cold rage she still felt. "Dumbledore. Dumbledore left me there. He left me, on the doorstep, shortly after my mother and father were murdered."
She turned her head away and looked down between her legs. "I learnt occlumency early when I went into the magical world, Cedric; I got my hands on a reputable book, and I practiced. Did you know your mind is always gathering information and storing it, even when you're asleep? I never did, not until I read that book. I heard the voices of McGonagall, Hagrid, and Dumbledore. All three of them left me on that doorstep; McGonagall made some effort to stop Dumbledore from leaving me there since she had been watching the Dursleys all day and saw from that one day what kind of people they really were, although that's putting it mildly since the old bitch quickly stopped since Dumbledore overrode her."
Cedric had been listening, transfixed with disgust that two senior members of Hogwarts would just leave a baby on a doorstep after her parents were murdered, and that one of them had seen what they were like and yet had still gone along with it. It was an open secret McGonagall mindlessly obeyed all of Dumbledore's instructions; you picked that up after a bit of time at the school, but for it to come out like this….It was unthinkable that the transfiguration mistress would be a party to abuse.
"Those scars….they look….healed," he commented awkwardly, unsure of what he could say, but he quickly kicked himself when he realised he was repeating himself, but he couldn't suck the words back into his mouth.
"I recently saw a….specialist, and they immersed me in a bath of a healing potion which repaired some of the damage," Charlotte replied, "but the problem is some of them will stay with me until I die. Oh, some of the scars I had are gone; it was like a kid had taken a pencil and left squiggly marks all over my body, but the really deep ones will remain."
Cedric didn't know what unnerved him the most; the fact Charlotte had said it so matter of factly, in such a tone, or the fact it had happened at all. "Dumbledore didn't do anything, did he?"
It was kind of disappointing for the wizard that someone as renowned as Dumbledore would be like this; ever since he had woken up and had seen the rotten flesh right beneath the appearance of Hogwarts, Cedric's view and opinion of the old wizard had started to look bleak. His parents had always respected Dumbledore, but they weren't diehard fanatics like the Weasleys or some of the other Gryffindor aligned families, and they had taught him to be respectful in turn.
Not anymore.
Cedric had sent letters to his parents to let them know of what had happened as the year had passed, and what had been happening to Charlotte; his father had been happy to boast about his achievement at the Quidditch match last year against Charlotte, ignoring conveniently the match in question had been when Dementors had swarmed over the pitch, but when Cedric had sent back pensieve memories of what had happened and what he had seen, his parents had been just as horrified, especially when they saw the memory of Charlotte sobbing in his arms and the one where he saw close up the empty cavity where her eye had been.
Okay, he had taken a perverted pleasure with that. His father had been all set to boast that not only had he won against the Girl Who Lived in a Quidditch match, although what good that would do for him long term was beyond him, but he was a competitor in the Tournament as well!
The sight of Charlotte crying and the loss of her eye had killed that, stone dead. At last his father had gained some degree of humility and had opened his eyes to the pain and trauma Charlotte was going through.
Well, from what he had heard from the messages from home, it would be more accurate to say his mother had ensured his father saw that it wasn't a good thing everyone was tormenting the younger Champion. Charlotte had never planned or even wanted to be a part of the farce the Tournament had turned out to be.
"No," Charlotte's voice was cold and harsh. "He never bothered to check on my progress. No-one did; McGonagall didn't give a toss, and even if she did I would have seen or noticed her. I...learnt the mind arts, Cedric. A benefit of that is I have a great recall over my memories, even when I'm asleep. The bitch raised concerns, yes, but a few words from Dumbledore, and she didn't say anymore. That's it. Her brain isn't wired up to be subtle since she lets Dumbledore make the decisions for her, and if she had arrived she would have stood out although her cat form would have been impossible to detect, I don't remember seeing a cat like that at any point during my childhood there. But Dumbledore certainly didn't seem to care much to visit. But even if he had….I doubt he would have done anything. He wanted me in that house, and after everything he has done so far, I think he is deliberately shaping my entire life and my outlook."
"What do you mean?" Cedric asked in concern, not liking what he was hearing although he filed away the mention Charlotte knew the mind arts. He wondered what else she knew about the more obscure magical arts.
"Dumbledore has spent all of these years influencing me, Cedric. I read the Hogwarts by-laws; all muggleborns or muggle raised children - me, in other words, should be met by a professor, one experienced with muggles enough to not be noticed."
"So?"
"Why did Dumbledore send Hagrid, of all people?" Charlotte asked, looking at him strongly. The fact she was doing it all with the one eye just emphasised it even more. "Loveable guy aside, Hagrid is the last person anyone would send. Cedric, he was mouthing off about muggles, and his size made it impossible for him to blend in. For muggleborns to be introduced into the wizarding world, you need someone who will know how to be subtle and would know to keep their comments to themselves. Hagrid isn't discreet, and he can't keep his mouth shut. On top of that, when we were in Diagon Alley, he kept dropping hints about Slytherin House. You know, the usual crap; Slytherins are evil, no witch or wizard who went bad didn't pass through that House. Cedric, I lived in an abusive home, and I grew up in the cold alleys of London, I also saw the cruelty of human beings like one time when I came across a corrupt politician wanting to level a neighbourhood to build something for his mates in its place, or when I met a paedophile who got his kicks torturing and raping little kids."
Cedric stiffened at the little story behind that, and he wondered what Charlotte had done.
His feelings must have shown because Charlotte noticed. "It's a long story, Cedric but the point is, I don't give a damn about the Houses. Why should I? They're just houses, each one of them is different from the others, and I know for a certainty they're not all black and white; some of the Death Eaters came from various Houses, including Gryffindor. I fooled Dumbledore and Hagrid into thinking I was agreeing with them. I only went into Gryffindor because Draco Malfoy was acting like an obnoxious little cumstain. Actually," Charlotte cocked her head, "not a lot has changed."
Cedric snickered although he was concerned about the story and the fact Charlotte wouldn't drop hints about what had happened.
"But the point is, it wasn't just Hagrid shoving that propaganda down my throat. Weasley was as well, and it made me suspicious of him. I just played along with them. But you know what, all Houses have their good and bad points. When the Gryffindors disowned me, I already knew I wasn't welcome. When I was under the Sorting Hat, it said I would have done well in Slytherin."
Cedric gaped in surprise. In truth he wasn't surprised by the admission considering what he had just learnt about her, and what he had seen of her so far given how she had brought down the Alliance, how she'd cut down Skeeter, and set the record straight. From a prejudicial point of view, Charlotte had even fought like a Slytherin from one of those stereotypical stories about how vicious they were, but he was surprised she would admit it. Perhaps she no longer cared. She was no longer a Hogwarts student anymore, why should it matter if everyone knew that she had gone really close to wearing Slytherin colours?
But still….the sudden revelations made it hard for Cedric to concentrate on what it was they had been discussing just now. "Why would Dumbledore do that?"
"To control me. He had this…scheme when my name came out of the Goblet, that's why he ordered the teachers to do nothing for me. Got Pomfrey to bar me from the Hospital Wing. Allowing those stupid badges, and all the rest. I met him in McGonagall's office on the day you asked me to the Ball. He practical admitted to me that he regretted what Bones had done, but I don't doubt if he had the chance, he would make it all happen again. What makes it worse is the teachers let him get away with it."
Cedric looked troubled by what he was hearing; it was one thing witnessing and hearing about Dumbledore's acts of stupidity from someone like Madam Pomfrey, but hearing this from Charlotte made him wonder what was going on with the old headmaster.
"And he kept trying to push me towards Weasley as if my life and my relationships were his to tamper with," Charlotte finished.
Cedric didn't know what was worse. He didn't know if hearing how the Hogwarts Headmaster was going to such lengths to control people, even going as far telling people who to date and love, was something he did for kicks. For his own amusement. Sure, some would say Dumbledore was doing it for the good of the magical world, but Cedric didn't see how.
But the thing was many families set up betrothal contracts, but even some allowed their children to have separate dates if they wanted. The truth was they knew better than to meddle to that degree. In any case Dumbledore didn't have the right; he was a school teacher, and while he had important political positions, that did not give him the right to play games like this.
Merlin, no wonder Charlotte was angry with him.
Charlotte sighed. The subject was depressing enough, and besides, she wanted to go jogging. Hmm, that's a thought, she thought to herself when she glanced at Cedric. "Cedric, how would feel about jogging with me?"
She knew the Hufflepuff regularly went jogging to keep in shape, unlike several other witches and wizards, but she knew there were some students who jogged around the Black Lake to keep fit; they were mostly half-blood or muggle-born students, though the odd pureblood was added into the mix.
Cedric looked at her, surprised by the question.
"You don't have to, not if you don't want to," she pointed out.
Cedric smiled. "I'd love to, only," his smile faded a bit, "I haven't got anything."
Charlotte smiled back. "I think we can rectify that."
XXX
It never failed to amaze her how lovely and simple a jog was, and as she lightly jogged with Cedric jogging with her, Charlotte thought it was one of the best jogs she'd ever had.
Charlotte had sent Winky to the Hufflepuff dorm and Cedric had given the lovely House elf directions to where he kept his jogging clothes. Within a few minutes Winky came back with the clothes, and he and Charlotte headed off. Cedric had commented on how similar Charlotte's jogging routine was with his own, although different. Cedric jogged around a number of paths which interconnected several fields, dirt tracks. Charlotte jogged through a forest with a number of dirt tracks, and some nearby streets near fenced railway tracks.
Jogging through the forest, Charlotte saw the trees, the ones she used to perform stomach crunches upside down while she used her animagus form to provide her body with flexibility and the type of animal reflexes her human form simply did not possess. She had no intention of showing off to Cedric; while she liked him, she did not want anyone to know anything about her animagus abilities.
When the two returned to the windmill, both panting and exhausted from the jog even though their bodies were both fit enough to take the strain, Charlotte grabbed some glasses from a cupboard, and she poured water from the tap into them. She handed one of the glasses to Cedric, and she gulped down some water, thanking her lucky stars she'd placed some purification runes on the taps which removed all the muck muggles placed in the water these days.
Cedric also drank his water with relief. "Thanks," he whispered.
"My pleasure," Charlotte replied, sipping more water. "Do you want to hit the shower first, or do you want me to?"
Manners had been drummed into Cedric since he had been a child, so the response was quick. "You go first," he said to her.
Charlotte nodded. "Okay," she said, "Come with me."
Cedric followed Charlotte upstairs to where the shower was. She opened a cupboard and she pulled a large towel out and handed it to Cedric, who took it.
Charlotte then pulled out another which she took for herself. "Okay," she smiled. "I'll see you in a few minutes."
When Charlotte went into the bathroom, a few minutes later there was the sound of running water. Cedric felt rather silly holding a towel, so he laid it down on a couch, and he decided to have a quick look around while Charlotte was busy. As he looked around her windmill on the upper floor above the living room where they'd watched that movie the night before, he was attracted to a number of photographs.
Cedric walked over curiously, and he saw a handsome man with messy black hair and glasses with a beautiful woman who had a striking resemblance to Charlotte. They looked happy. Some of them showed a baby. "Her parents," he realised, looking sadly at them.
All this time, the British magical community had been lauding Charlotte as an unthinking hero as if the deaths of her parents had never happened, and they kept demanding more and more as if Charlotte was just something to mine from. Ever since Cedric had realised the truth of the Girl who Lived myth, his views of the magical community's treatment of its so-called heroes had become bleaker.
He sighed as she looked at the pictures. What had they been thinking at the time, he wondered. Had they been looking forwards to raising Charlotte, looking forwards to seeing her grow from a baby into a teenager, dreading tantrums, even having other children and raising them as well. Having a family, building a life….All gone. Lily and James Potter were both dead. Charlotte had been left on her own, without protection, without her parents to stop people and others from meddling in their daughter's life.
And no one cared that Charlotte was on her own, the last Potter. It disgusted him that everyone failed to see that, but what disgusted him the most was that everybody else, including Dumbledore, wanted more and more from the girl. It was no wonder Charlotte had snapped when she had.
Cedric sighed as he considered the waste of the loss of life.
He walked away from the pictures sadly, and he walked around the room. There were a number of bookshelves, but what interested him the most was a lit lamp. Curiously he walked over and saw a small mirrored box with a spider inside, a spider which was freaking itself out, moving from one corner of the mirrored cube and skittering around, doing it again and again.
Cedric snorted as he looked down at the spider. He knew who this was. Like most people who lived close to the Weasley family, Cedric knew Ron Weasley was frightened of spiders; the twins had joked about it for a long time, and while it was boring to listen to after a while he knew Weasley's fear of spiders was really acute.
As he looked down at the spider as it ran in the box, Cedric wondered what this would do for Weasley in the long term. He didn't really care, but it would be interesting to find out.
Like most people who knew him, Cedric had never liked Ron Weasley. Obnoxious, loud, ignorant, disgusting….and those were the polite adjectives to use on the bastard. As a spider, he was harmless, but Cedric hoped when Weasley was returned to normal, he learnt a lesson even if he wasn't intelligent enough to understand it. In any case, it would probably scar him, but Cedric found himself not caring.
Cedric turned around and looked around the study before he spotted something that caught his attention. There was an open scrapbook on the desk. Cedric went around the desk and looked.
There were newspaper articles in the scrapbook, muggle newspaper articles since none of the pictures were moving. Cedric narrowed his eyes before he flicked through before he stopped when one caught his eye.
TOWER OF LONDON BREAK-IN!
Cedric leaned over and read the story, becoming more and more surprised with each sentence which jumped out in front of him. Cedric knew, thanks to his father, the muggle Queen had jewels, but as he read the article and the scale of what the thief had achieved and how difficult it should have been to steal them in the first place, he realised it must have been protected in such a way that would have made it virtually impossible, or at the least extremely difficult for any thief to steal them.
But if the thief was a wizard or a witch….
Cedric flicked through the scrapbook, and his eyes popped when he saw a number of photographs.
Charlotte was sitting in an armchair, with a crown on top of her head, a crown glittering with jewels while she held a jewelled sceptre. In all of the photos, Charlotte was looking smug and proud of what she had managed to do. He looked closer at the photos and realised the girl was close in age to the one he knew.
Curious of when this theft even took place, Cedric flicked the pages back and he checked the article. The date jumped out at him. This theft…it took place before Charlotte's Fourth year!
Cedric flicked through the pages, and he found another article with a massive photograph of what looked like a painting of a woman sitting serenely in front of a countryside, this one in French but there was another one in English which made it easy for him to read. The painting, the Mona Lisa, was stolen from its art gallery, and from a photograph nearby he could see Charlotte had kept the painting in her windmill before he found an article where the painting was returned. But on the adjacent page, there were a number of what looked like receipts written in various texts, with numbers. Cedric cast a quick translation spell and saw they were for copies of the painting but he didn't understand why they would have copies of it when the painting was returned to the French.
After deciding to forget it, for the time being, Cedric went through the scrapbook, finding more articles of Charlotte's thefts, and he wondered what had possessed her to become a thief. And then he understood the truth.
She had been on the streets of London, or wherever, for a long time. At some point, she would have needed money, money for food, clothing. She would have had no choice but to steal it, and she would have gotten better. He remembered how she had fought in the First Task, how she had fought against everyone else, badly injuring them…
As he thought about it, Cedric realised the truth of the matter.
From what he had picked up from Charlotte, she had been forced to survive on the mean streets for virtually her entire life. Without anyone to protect or care for her, Charlotte would have needed to grow up quickly and she would have needed money, and he knew there were a few unpleasant ways it would have happened.
Theft was probably the best way Charlotte could have survived, it would have preserved her dignity. The thought of Charlotte selling herself for money disgusted him, but from what he knew of her, although this scrapbook certainly threw up doubt he knew Charlotte Potter at all although he knew that despite her being a criminal who stole, Cedric found it unthinkable Charlotte would sell herself for money. The young woman had an independent streak over three miles wide, for Merlin's sake.
"I wondered where you were."
Cedric turned around.
Charlotte was standing there, her hair wrapped up in a towel while she wore a fluffy dressing gown. Her expression was solemn, but what scared him the most was the wand in her hands.
