[ON HOLD] Clara Diggory, Secrets Discovered - a HP fanfic

Chapter Three - Bruises and Blindness

Cedric's POV

The night Clara tried to run away, I found out why. Dad had sent me off to bed, even though it was practically the next day already and I wasn't tired. I trudged upstairs, shut the bedroom door and got unto bed.

My eyes remained wide open.

I couldn't sleep, no matter how still I was or the fact that I'd been awake all night. Something was off – Clara wouldn't just run off without a reason, and she'd never really been comfortable around Dad... Not since I went to Durmstrang, anyway.

Neither of my parents, nor Clara, had come up the stairs yet. What the hell was going on down there?

Slowly, I opened my bedroom door and crept over to the top of the stairs, listening.

“So you think you can just up and leave whenever you feel like it, do you?”

Silence.

“Answer me, you insolent little –”

“No.”

“What?”

Clara's voice wavered to start with, then grew stronger.

“Clearly I can't, because if I could, I wouldn't be here.”

I smiled to myself. I knew she'd grow up to be sassy, I just knew it.

“How dare you! Do you think it's funny, making a fool of me?”

“Well, I never thought of it like that, but now you mention it, it is quite amusing.”

A sharp sound echoed up the stairs – like someone being slapped. My breath hitched in my throat.

“Ohh, there we go. I was waiting for that.”

My body went cold. Surely Dad hadn't just hit my sister? Surely... there was some way to explain this, there had to be.

“It's funny how you're apparently a Pure, when you're evil. I can see it in you – you're rotten to the core.” My father's voice sounded so different from normal, harsh and venomous.

Wait – Pure? Despite our mothers' attempts at convincing me otherwise, I was right?

A cry of pain tore me from my thoughts.

“I knew you were evil, and I was right, wasn't I? You've always been set on that path. And you always will be.”

“Like you've told me every time! Now get to the part where you almost kill me, why don't you?”

Every time.

Every time.

Every time.

The words echoed around my head like they were on repeat, and my fist clenched at nothing, my jaw set.

Every time.

How many times had this happened? How many times had our father done this?

I thought back. Ever since I'd gone to Durmstrang, Clara had seemed different. She'd been quieter, more guarded, flinching away from people – even me and Mum.

So... five years? This had been happening for five years, and I'd never found out?

How? Surely there was something else to explain it; my father wasn't like this.