Chapter 28: In the Graveyard

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I felt my feet slam into the ground; the cup slipping out of my hand as I stumbled onto the ground.

"Where are we?" Harry said to my right.
Cedric, on my left, shook his head. He got up, pulled Harry to his feet, and then offered me his hand.

"Cheers." I muttered taking it and pulling myself to my feet.

Once we were all on our feet we looked around. We had clearly left the Hogwarts grounds completely; we had obviously traveled miles — perhaps hundreds of miles — for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone.

We were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to our left.

Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry and me. "Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked.

"Nope," said Harry.

"Not a soul." I said looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"

"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"

"Yeah," said Harry.

"Well no shit." I said, my wand already in my hand. The other two pulled out their wands, as I kept looking around. I had a strange feeling that we were being watched, and that I had been here before.

"Someone's coming," Harry said suddenly.
Squinting tensely through the darkness, we watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward us between the graves. I couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, he could tell that it was carrying something.

Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And—several paces nearer, the gap between us closing all the time—I saw that the thing in the person's arms looked like a baby...or was it merely a bundle of robes?

Harry lowered his wand slightly and glanced sideways at Cedric and then to me. I didn't lower my wand, only quickly taking my eye off the figure to glance at Harry.

It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second, Harry, Cedric, and me, and the short figure simply looked at one another.

And then, without warning, Harry keeled backwards, his hand clamped on his head, before he buckled over onto the ground, knocking into my arm, causing me to stagger slightly.

I heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."

A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"

A blast of green light blazed through the dark night and I watched as Cedric collapsed onto the ground dead, his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised.

Kinda fucked up that you're wishing you'd killed him. Don't blame you though.

I felt anger rose in my chest, mostly because I knew Tom was right.

The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and in my sudden lapse of concentration was able to send me flying into a tombstone, with thick ropes binding me to it.

I watched as the same thing happen to Harry.

"You!" Harry gasped, as I tried to get a look of the man, only to be met with failure.
But the figure, who had finished binding Harry, did not reply. Once sure that Harry was bound so tightly to the headstone that he couldn't move an inch, the drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth; then, without a word, he turned from Harry and hurried away.

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