PRANKSTER [1] ↝ C. DIGGORY

forty-nine

"He's back!" Harry cried, his sobs echoing through the stands, the spectators stunned in silence at the weight of his words. "He's back! Voldemort's back!"

Harry's words hardly registered over the ringing in Clary's ears as she rushed out of the stands after Cedric's parents, trying desperately to reach the unconscious boy on the other side of the Quidditch Pitch. She felt as if she were running in slow motion, moving through Jell-O as she pushed through the crowd of spectators in the stands below her, taking off into a run the second her Converse-clad feet hit the grass. 

Amos reached Cedric first, just as Mad-Eye had managed to get Harry up, dragging the sobbing fourteen year old away from the scene and out of the Quidditch Pitch. Clary reached the boy next, kneeling down next to him and running a hand softly through his dark hair to get it out of his face as Amos began to scream. 

Cedric was sprawled out in the grass, his wand a little ways away from him, where Harry had brought it back. His shirt was torn, and he was covered in dirt and dried blood, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping, if not for the fact that he didn't appear to be breathing. Clary hadn't even registered the fact that she was crying until she saw the teardrops landing on his shirt, and she buried her face in his chest, not caring about the hundreds of spectators watching from the stands.

"No," she mumbled over and over, voice muffled against the fabric of his shirt, which was balled up tightly in her fists as she held onto him. "No no no no no."

"Clary," a gentle voice said as a hand rested on her back. "Clary, come on. We have to go."

Clary finally looked up to see Bill kneeling next to her, and he pulled his blubbering sister into a tight hug, his chin resting on top of her head.

"They have to move him," Bill said, gently moving to help her off the ground, but she shook her head.

"No," she said, "I can't leave him."

"They'll take care of him, I promise. We're going to McGonagall's room," Bill explained to her, and Clary finally noticed Professors McGonagall and Flitwick escorting Amos and Anne away from the scene, both of the Diggorys' eyes still trained on their son. "We'll meet Mr. and Mrs. Diggory in there."

Clary knelt down, giving Cedric a light kiss on the forehead before she allowed Bill to pull her off the ground, treading lightly as they walked up the hill and feeling as if she were about to collapse at any moment.

"You're doing great," Bill encouraged her, though Clary hardly heard him, her thoughts swimming in her head, the image of Cedric laying in the grass popping into her head whenever she closed her eyes.

Bill helped her over to a desk as they entered McGonagall's classroom, Amos and Anne huddled in one corner, holding onto each other for dear life as their cries echoed throughout the room. Bill sat next to Clary, holding her tightly as she buried her face in his shoulder. Bill hadn't seen her cry since she was nine years old, when she took a bad fall off a broom in the Weasley family garden, and it wasn't an experience he was accustomed to. But he held onto his younger sister, encouraging her to let it out.

It seemed like an eternity later when the door to the classroom opened, and Dumbledore entered the room, causing Clary to finally look up from Bill. If it was possible, it looked as if the elderly wizard had aged ten years since the beginning of the evening, the lines in his weathered face even deeper than normal.

"I'm sorry it's taken me so long," Dumbledore began.

"What went wrong?" Amos asked, his voice coming out in a croak, rising from the bench he and Anne sat on. "What happened in the maze, Headmaster?"