𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐆𝐎𝐅 𝟑𝟐

Harry felt himself slam flat into the ground; his face was pressed into grass; the smell of it filled his nostrils. He had closed his eyes while the Portkey transported him, and he kept them closed now. He did not move. All the breath seemed to have been knocked out of him; his head was swimming so badly he felt as though the ground beneath him were swaying like the deck of a ship. To hold himself steady, he tightened his hold on the two things he was still clutching: the smooth, cold handle of the Triwizard Cup and Cedric and Emily's body. That's when he jolted his head up. Emily.

Everyone was jumping up and down clapping. He crawled over to Emily sobbing his heart out and pressing down on the still leaking wounds "Emily! Emily please! Help! Someone help me! She's bleeding heavily." His voice cracked "Emily please don't leave me."

He wiped the blood from her mouth and pulled her neck up holding her so her head was facing his "Emily! Come on stop playing around! Please! Everyone wants to see you! We did it okay? We all won! We tied!"

Then the cheering stopped until another noise filled his ears ,footsteps, screams. ... He remained where he was, his face screwed up with tears still falling violently trying to keep the blood inside Emily as though it were a nightmare that would pass. . . .

Then a pair of hands seized him roughly and turned him over. "Harry! Harry!"

He was looking up at the starry sky, and Albus Dumbledore was crouched over him. The dark shadows of a crowd of people pressed in around them, pushing nearer; Harry felt the ground beneath his head reverberating with their footsteps.

He could see the stands rising above him, the shapes of people moving in them, the stars above.

Harry let go of the cup, but he pressed down on Emily's wounds even more tightly. He raised his free hand and seized Dumbledore's wrist, while Dumbledore's face swam in and out of focus.

"He's back," Harry whispered. "He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?"

The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over Harry; it looked white, appalled.

"My God - Diggory! Lupin-Black" he whispered. "Dumbledore - there dead!"

The words were repeated, the shadowy figures pressing in on them gasped it to those around them . . . and then others shouted it - screeched it - into the night - "There dead!" "There dead!" "Cedric Diggory and Emily Lupin-Black!Dead!"

"Harry, let go of her." he heard Fudge's voice say, and he felt fingers trying to pry him from Emily's limp body, but Harry wouldn't let her go.

Then Dumbledore's face, which was still blurred and misted, came closer.

"Harry, you can't help her now. It's over. Let go."

"He wanted me to bring them back," Harry muttered - it seemed important to explain this. "He wanted me to bring them back to there parents. ... But Emily she's not dead right? She's just joking isn't she?"

"That's right. Harry . . . just let go now. . . ."

Dumbledore bent down, and with extraordinary strength for a man so old and thin, raised Harry from the ground and set -him on his feet. Harry swayed. His head was pounding. He took one look at Emily on the floor and fell to his knees.

The crowd around them jostled, fighting to get closer, pressing darkly in on him - "What's happened?" "What's wrong with them?" "Diggory and Lupin-Black dead!"

"They'll need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge was saying loudly. "There ill, there injured - Dumbledore, Diggory's and Lupin-Blacks parents, they're here, they're in the stands. ..."