Behind the Lines
Part three: Bittersweet
The ministry is very good to people like me. I have more ambition than heart, and more bitter than sweet. I wasn't always like this, but I've had to make myself dispassionate to escape a lot of things, not the least of which is fear.
I'm always afraid. Always. I close my eyes and I see green, the green of a sudden death, the green of a curse I can't stop. It happened to so many people I knew, it won't happen to me. It won't.
But this little boy with eyes as green as death keeps saying that he's back, he's back, and Cedric Diggory was murdered by that green. What does he hope to gain? Attention? Admiration? Respect?
It seems like so many people are taken in by his lies, but I won't believe it. It isn't going to happen because he isn't coming back. He isn't back; he's dead. Dead as Cedric Diggory, dead as James Potter, dead as Armando Dippet.
People who are dead don't come back to life, and it isn't funny to claim that they have. The ministry won't be able to handle it if he ever comes back so he won't.
I know that most people don't really enjoy my presence. I'm far too sarcastic and my voice is far too honeyed and sweet to be truthful. And it isn't. I don't talk like I used to because I used to speak with fear marking every syllable, fear creeping into every word I said. If I have to sugarcoat my voice until it sounds as bittersweet as poisoned honey to disguise my terror, I will.
Nothing will shake the ministry down, because if it falls, so do I. And I've come too far from being a sniveling and terrified woman in the midst of a war to turn back now. I won't falter, I won't fall, I won't die like they did.
My life is everything to me, and surviving is what I'll do no matter what it takes. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is not back because he's dead and dead people don't return from the grave to wreak havoc in the Ministry and turn lives upside down. It doesn't happen like that.
Life has been bitter before, but now it's sweet. Now the poison has receded and the honey remains. Cedric Diggory died in a tragic accident while trying to win glory for himself and his house. He wasn't killed by a dead man. He couldn't have because dead men don't come back to life and don't torment the living and kill people who get in his way.
Dead men stay dead. He's not coming back.