The Triwizard Tournament was over, and a boy laid motionless on the grass. Elated cheers erupted from the surrounding stands and rang out until the crowd realized why the boy had not yet stirred.

He was dead, and Harry Potter wept openly atop his chest.

I was among those in the crowd who jumped to their feet. Cheers quickly transformed into screams around me, and my hands flew to my mouth to muffle my own cry of horror. Only moments ago had we all prepared to applaud the student who was to be crowned victorious. We were ready to congratulate the other contenders for their valiant efforts. A celebratory feast awaited everyone, student and spectator, back inside the castle. This was meant to be a joyous night.

Now one child laid dead before us, his eyes open and peering up at a sky he would never see again.

The fearful shouts and concerned mutters of those around me had a distantly familiar quality to them, like something long buried away, and with the unearthing of it came a terrible thought that struck me like lightning, and I knew that same thought was now running through the minds of every adult here who had lived through an era when this was not uncommon— that this tragedy was the sort that belonged to the era of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

He's back, I immediately thought, he killed that boy, and I began to tremble. But that was simply ludicrous. Impossible. The dead don't come back. Voldemort could not live again, just like Cedric Diggory never would.

The father of Cedric had fought his way down to the grass and now did as Harry had done, sobbing and howling with inconsolable agony atop his son's chest, his voice carrying farther than anyone's. I could not bear to witness any longer. With my hands still stifling my whimpers and my cheeks wet with tears, I looked away, and I glimpsed Harry being pulled from the clearing by Professor Moody.

For a moment I wondered, once again, why such a young student had been forced into the tournament, and now as a result, forced to witness death. It was undoubtedly connected. But the tumult around me grew, more people bustled from the stands, and soon my thoughts were overpowered, leaving me numb where I stood.

Eventually I glimpsed Dumbledore and two professors hurrying in the same direction Harry and Moody had disappeared. Victor Krum and Fleur Delacour were then carried, both unconscious, from the maze.

Someone near me was shouting. When the shouting didn't stop, I reluctantly turned my awareness back to the present, and I realized they were shouting for Dumbledore. "Where has the headmaster gone? We need him back here!"

My feet carried me forward on their own. I'd seen where Dumbledore went, but perhaps I simply wanted to distance myself from the clearing, because soon I was sprinting up the vast stairs to Hogwarts and down the winding corridors. Dumbledore's office would've been the obvious place to go, but something told me he'd be looking after Harry Potter, who I'd last seen leaving with Professor Moody.

I heard voices before reaching the door to Moody's office and knew I'd guessed correctly, but what I saw when I finally crossed the threshold— or rather, who I saw— gave me a shock so tremendous it made my heart falter as I froze in my tracks.

His was a face I never thought I would see again.

He sat bound in a chair against the far wall, evidently breathless from the way his shoulders were rising and falling so heavily. Moody's overcoat sagged from his thin frame. His hair, damp with sweat and darker than it had been in our adolescence, hung in his eyes, which now held my gaze from across the room. Years ago those big brown eyes had been warm when I last saw them, and hadn't been set above such a horrible snarl. His face had lost its youthful softness and become lined with age and horrors. The one thing I knew hadn't changed, without a doubt, was his nose; it had always been ever so slightly crooked.

I could see such traces reminiscent of the boy I'd met in Hogwarts more than a decade prior, but even as my eyes drank in every single inch of him, I still couldn't recognize the man before me as the boy I'd once loved.

Bartemius Crouch Junior stared up at me from under his brow with a malice unlike anything I'd have ever thought him capable of. To my right I saw Dumbledore watching him with equally unsettling revulsion, but Barty paid him no mind.

He only had eyes for me.

There was a time long ago when I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.