[BOOK THREE]
With Voldemort at large, the whole wizarding world is on edge. With the murders of wizards and muggles alike every other day, the only seemingly safe place in the continent is at Hogwarts.
With Sirius dead, and Cedric having to go into...
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02
Cedric had spent day and night in his room for the past month of summer, watching Cormac McLaggen's memories over and over again. So far, Cedric could play the part very well, and had a good insight of McLaggen's life.
To many, Cormac McLaggen came across as rude and cross and many other vile traits, but one memory changed Cedric's entire perception of the boy.
Cormac was around the age of ten. He sat by the lake with his pet toad, who he called Gregory. It was clear that Gregory meant a lot to Cormac. He held Gregory close, laughed at the toad's antics, how his chest would bulge out when he was about to croak, how the toad's slippery feet would tickle Cormac's small hands. Suddenly, the toad escaped from his grasp. It hopped through the rocks along the shore, Cormac chasing him. He eventually caught him, and turned back to go home, when he noticed a man standing in his way. It was his father. From the look on Cormac's face, Cedric could tell that Cormac feared his father. He was a tall, burly man with a bald head and a beard. He looked terrifying, even to Cedric, as an almost eighteen year old.
Cormac's father grabbed the toad from Cormac's hand and pushed the boy to the ground. "Listen here, son," he growled. "I told you that if you couldn't look out for your toad, it would have to go. That's the third time you let him go."
"No, please! Father, I love him! I never lost him, I always get him back!" Cormac cried.
"Don't you dare speak back to me in that manner! You should have listened! This is entirely your fault, Cormac."
Tears flowed down Cormac's face as he called out for his toad from the ground.
"Grow up, son! Men don't cry! Now, since this is all your fault, I shouldn't be the one to kill the toad, should I? No, I believe that's your responsibility." Cormac's father handed him a particularly large rock from the shore, along with the struggling toad. "Get up and kill the damn thing!" He ordered.
Cormac stood up shakily and grabbed both the rock and the toad from his father's hands. Trembling, he held the rock higher than the toad, and was about to strike when he dropped them both. Gregory jumped into the lake and swam away, and Cormac had a terrified look on his face. Both he and his father knew what he had done.
The memory finished there, but Cedric had a very good idea of what happened next, from the next memory, hearing Cormac's mother screaming at his father, as Cormac sat on the top of the stairs. His mother was forcing her husband out of the house as Cormac had bandages covering is face and arms.
Upon starting his journey to 'become Cormac,' Cedric never thought that he would pity the boy. From their interactions at school, Cedric always thought that Cormac was a prick, but watching the scenarios from the other boy's point of view, he saw the boy in a different manner. On the day that Cormac had pushed Cedric's mate Ian to the ground and got into a fight with him was the day that his mother sent him a letter saying that his father was back; the times when Cedric had heard the boy threaten a first year was the day he found out that his mother was in St. Mungo's with head trauma; when McLaggen had knocked over a shelf in the library then proceeded to shout at Madame Pince was after his father and his uncle had come to their house during the Christmas holidays, and when they were refused entry, proceeded to light their home on fire when Cormac and his mother were asleep. They had barely gotten out alive.
