Golden boy. I guess that's a term I should be pretty well acquainted with. Everywhere I go it always seems to comeback to: Cedric's the best. Cedric's so handsome. Cedric's the greatest Seeker Hogwarts has ever seen. Cedric Diggory can do no wrong.
You'd think after a while I'd start to believe it. But it never happened. I was never good enough. I was never good enough for myself, and I was certainly never good enough for my father. Of course there were times when he SEEMED pleased enough with me: "My son, the Prefect. My son is the captain of his Quidditch team. My son beat that Potter lad."
But it was never good enough. I was raised to be the best. At everything. Failure was not an option. There was no middle ground, no compromise; all or nothing, win or die.
My father placed me on this pedestal, held me to standards I could never measure up to. But Lord knows I tried, out of my own desire to be on top, or in fear of what would happen if I failed, I tried to measure up.
I'll never forget the day he hit me. I was only seven then, my mother was out running errands, and he had just seen my report card. I had gotten two C's, in math and history, and my father was fit to be tied...
"What, you just don't care?" He was yelling at me.
"I do care!" I insisted; I was just struggling.
"You think you're just too good to bother with your grades," He protested, getting angrier and angrier.
"That's not what I think!" I protested urgently.
"You can do better than this!" He insisted, waving my report card around furiously.
"I'll try dad, I will," I promised. And then he hit me. It wasn't any sort of disciplinary slap or cuff. He punched me square in the face, and broke my nose.
My mother came home a few minutes later to find me with a bloodied nose.
"What happened?" she asked, throwing a bag of groceries down on the kitchen table, and rushing over, getting on her knees in front of me. I couldn't help but be immediately comforted by her presence. My mother was like that, the caretaker and protector.
"He fell out of the tree out back," my father explained from behind me. In fact I had quite forgotten that he was there. My mother was trying to stop the bleeding without hurting me.
"Oh Cedric, you really should use a little more common sense." She sighed, but she was smiling so warmly at me, and offered me a careful hug.
Lucky for me, my mother was much more understanding of my grades.
"You did just fine Cedric," she affirmed. "But you know if you ever feel like you need some extra help, you can always ask your father or me, or go see your teacher."
There were times when I found myself wondering if Amos ever raised a hand to her. If he did, he's lucky I never found out about, because if he did, I would have killed him. I wouldn't have even stopped to think about it, I would have just killed him.
Still, he never touched me again after that. But the scar would always remain. The fear never left me. Every time I fell just short of perfection I could feel the old wound spring to the surface once more.
I thought leaving for school would help, but there was still that desire to please within me. So at school I spent my time trying to make everyone happy, my teachers, friends, my teammates.
I tried to keep to myself to escape the pressure, but people sought me out. I did my best to come off as pleasant and cheerful, while deep inside the whole charade just made me sick.
I didn't really want to enter the Tournament, but of course everyone expected me to, and so I did. And I wasn't at all surprised when that Godforsaken Goblet spouted out my name, and neither was anyone else. So I was the Hogwarts champion...actually a Hogwarts champion, now that I think about it.
Somehow Harry Potter was chosen as well...just my luck, competing against the one boy that my father wanted me to beat more than anyone. One more opportunity to fail dismally. And I did...
Because I'm here in this accursed graveyard, just instants from my own untimely death...and I realized that I spent all of my seventeen years of life, living for everyone but myself. Dying having never lived, and if that's not failure, than I don't know what is.