It's the twenty-third of June, and the trees of the Forbidden Forest tremble in the wind that has suddenly sprung up. Cedric Diggory slants his eyes together so that they are narrow gray slits against the thick breeze, taking a resolute breath of chilly wind that coats his throat with a layer of tiny ice crystals. It is unseasonably cold for early summer, unseasonably and suddenly. Only a week earlier the air was warm, bubbling with teasing kisses and breaths of silky heat. It was the way the wind slipped like invisible fingers through the sheer waterfall of Fleur's hair that made him stop his brisk walk to the Quidditch field.
Thinking back on it now, his face colors with boyish embarrassment - no, more than embarrassment. Embarrassed is too weak a word for just what he feels, which is - shame? Humiliation? Revulsion? Revulsion, he decides, licking his lips nervously in the cold wind, the way his father was always telling him not to do, he would ruin his complexion. It's a good word for how he feels about himself.
But how was he to know that she would be there, how was he to know that she would be standing on the Quidditch field - his Quidditch field - his Quidditch field that was now destroyed and turned into a maze (although Bagman promised that it would be back to normal after the Third Task, and surely Ludo Bagman, famed Beater for the Wimbourne Wasps, would understand how important it was for Cedric to be able to play on that field again someday, even if it had to be as a Hogwarts alum)? How was he to know that she would turn to him with that slanted face and those eyes that were blue, or perhaps violet, or even silver like her hair, and the sensation that swept over him would be worse than the Imperius Curse that Professor Moody put on them in the first week of school? And worse, how was he to know what he would do?
I conquered Imperius, Cedric thinks resentfully, remembering that day in the beginning of the year that was so bright, so boundless with the promise of a brilliant, shining year. He remembers how proud he was, how eagerly he charged out of class so that he could hasten back to his room and scribble a delighted owl to his father, and how Dad wrote him back just as quickly, saying that he certainly didn't know why they the teachers were practicing their curses on their defenseless, innocent students, but if that was what Cedric wanted to do with his schooling, the choice was up to him. The wind makes Cedric shiver now, as he casts the hooks of his mind over the coolness of that note, and how he immediately owled back to his father to report that he got a 324% on the first Transfiguration exam, and how that earned him a much more receptive reply.
He conquered Imperius that time, but a week ago, standing next to the basil-scented hedges and trapped in the beam of light created by the curve of Fleur's hair, it was impossible to resist. And even more impossible were her kisses, her softly accented words, the invisible pressure of warm, slim fingers against his bare collarbone. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together in a silent whisper, and when he felt her small hands sliding over his stomach he blinked and then threaded his fingers through the weightless silk of her hair. It was warm, like the air that night.
Cedric Diggory shivers now, glancing around uneasily at the swaying black trees and brightly accusing moon, which combine to throw shadows like daggers across his hands and the path he is trying to follow. He still can't believe what he let her do to him. No, he corrects himself immediately, straining to take responsibility for his actions, what I did to her, too. He remembers Fleur backing him into the scratchy branches of the hedge, getting cuts all over his broad shoulders and back, as she slid against him. He remembers her small fingers and nails digging lightly into his chest, moving purposefully over his nipples. He remembers sinking deep inside her and rocking hard back into the hedge, surrounded by basil and bright silvery hair.
He remembers, with embarrassment, the time Cho offered herself to him, a bit shyly and nervously but honestly, as well, sliding the bright pink perfection of her lips down his body, and he pulled away and shook his head with its bright red cheeks. That seems like a lifetime ago, an entire person ago that he was.
Well, he was certainly different then. Now he feels dirty, guilty, and even worse was the way he tried to explain it to Cho tonight. He'd been going for a little bit of jocular guilt, perhaps some black humor, trying to say that he really had no idea why he had - he grit his teeth - fucked her. Instead it came out wrong, all wrong. And Cho had run, run faster than he had ever seen her fly in a Quidditch match, but not before giving him a Look that suggested he was perhaps kin to a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
Cedric feels his stomach roll over on itself, pushing and pummeling his other organs. He can't even begin to explain the liquid-pain feeling inside him, like his whole body has turned to one sloshing mass of a pudding gone wrong. It's not just what he's done to Cho. For a fleeting moment he remembers some of the younger kids talking about how people once died in the Triwizard Tournament and he thinks that might not be a bad option at this point.
The wind curls around his ear and whispers tiny songs of doubt and fear. Cedric brushes a stray lock of soft brown hair off his temple and slicks it back with a quick spat of saliva onto his fingers. Sometimes it seems at night that the forest sings to him, even though that's a ridiculous figment of his imagination that he never shared with anyone except Cho. But tonight he can hear it, the soft words of what might happen tomorrow and - a moan?
Cedric lifts his wand, orders "Lumos," and veers off to the left, where a single tree that looks like the epitome of every evil storybook tree is waving madly in the gusts of wind.
And then he sees them, stripped bare even in the chill, their bodies glistening with a light sheen of sweat that looks almost golden in the light of his wand. Cho is moving against Viktor, her soft pink lips parted in a strangled cry that she is making no move to hush, and he's sliding inside her, both hard and fast and yet so gently, and Cedric sees something in Viktor's eyes that he has never had when he looks at Cho, something that perhaps he had when he fucked Fleur a week ago …[p] He turns and runs the way Cho ran from the prefects' bathroom tonight, stopping only when the forest is behind him and the trees are snapping in the wind, as if to usher him away from this private moment.
The next day he curses Cedric with Cruciatus, and Cedric is livid that Harry Stupefied Krum before he could. Cedric takes the Cup with Harry and is transported to a strange and barren land where the wind is rising like it was in the forest last night, and then he dies with a single bolt of a green-lightning curse. When he slips from Voldemort's wand as a thick gray ghost, he lives for a few days looking like a puff of cigarette smoke before becoming invisible again, unseeable to everyone, even other ghosts.
He spends his days looking in on those he remembers from life. He cannot bear to spend time hovering unseen around his parents, his poor broken father who still has every note Cedric owled him, even those he responded too without a single word of encouragement. He spends most of his time at Hogwarts. He is in the forest when Cho cultivates the Mandrakes, and he is floating in Bulgaria when Viktor Krum dies. He is in the commons room when Professor Sprout remembers him to the new Hufflepuffs, the young boys who might grow up strong in spirit the way he never was and the little girls who could become temptresses like Fleur one day. Only time will tell.
Sometimes he glides through walls into the Ravenclaw rooms and spends the night curled around Cho like a shadow. And she shivers, and sometimes she wraps the blanket more tightly around every inch of golden Asian skin that he never saw in life, and he wonders if what she feels is nothing more than a breath of wind.