Never • The Lost Daughter | A Draco Malfoy Love Story

Chapter 31 - Goodbyes

As for me, the feeling of guiltiness would never leave me, because I knew that I was partly responsible for his death. From that day, till the end of my days, I would forever blame myself for Cedric's death.

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Harry was leaning against the window, looking at the cloudy sky. Even the sun was sad and hidden. He must have sensed me closing up because he turned around to look at me. He seemed sleepless himself. He didn't say a thing, only went back to gazing at the lake.

"You knew, didn't you?" he asked. I couldn't detect if he had said that with bitterness. "How." It was a demand.

"It's crazy to explain... It was in a dream..."

Harry turned to look at me with eyes full of dissatisfaction.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me he would be back?"

"You would have thought I was mad..."

"I would have believed you!" Harry didn't shout. He seemed disappointed and lost. He looked in my eyes with honesty. Harry would have believed me. I tried to trace my thoughts.

"If none of you took the Cup, then he wouldn't be back," I explained. "I thought that if I warned you about it, it wouldn't happen. I'm sorry, Harry... I should have thought of something better."

"There was a moment in the game. Cerdic was trapped. The Cup was only a run away from me... I had the choice. And your voice came in my head. It told me not to take the Cup. I knew it was the moment you meant."

A fearful use of words. That was all it took for me to kill a man. I closed my eyes slowly. I needed to disappear from this world. I wanted the earth to split open and swallow me until I burned.

"I didn't mean that..." I said apologetically. It needn't be said by any of us that it was still my fault. I couldn't blame Harry for misunderstanding something. I could only blame myself for not saying more, for not spitting out the whole truth. I stood motionless. How could I have been so stupid? I should have explained. If not for my fear of speaking the truth, Cedric was killed.

Harry's green eyes were full of guilt himself.

"It was enchanted. We didn't have a chance, to begin with. Even if there was a shred of me that understood what you meant with your warning, it wouldn't have survived. It was consumed. In the end, we decided to take it together. It was a moment, just a second. I didn't... I didn't think too much."

"It's not your fault Harry. You did what you thought was best." I burst out and took a step towards him but he drew back.

"Let's see things for how they really are, Anne. We both killed him."

*     *     *

Albus was wearing his black robes, a color I never saw him wear.

"It's all on me," I said with a shake of my head and a tear trickling slowly.

"It's all on fate. I warned you, you can't change the future."

"I should have tried harder. I should have gone into the maze and stupefied Cedric before he touched the Cup," I said.

"After your warning, I made the maze impenetrable with the strongest of spells. It could keep Voldemort out - you couldn't get in even if you tried."

"I should have told Cedric to step back from the task."

"A boy you didn't know and that would think you were mad if you told him something like that. He wouldn't listen to a stranger."

"We could have told the Ministry."

"A Ministry that would also never believe you. I took more precautions than the Ministry could even muster. I put his fate into the hands of a man I thought I could trust. I instructed Alastor to guard the Cup. However, as we now know, Professor Moody was a Death Eater in disguise," said quickly. He wanted to seem as if he had all the answers for me. His words made sense but my feelings didn't.

"I will have to live with this, Albus!" I cried out. "We could have done more! We could have always done more!"

"There are always going to be things you won't be able to predict. You only see one image. It would be crazy to expect from yourself to know everything - every little step, every microscopic thing that will lead you to a different outcome. The future is a hard thing to change. You mother almost always failed to do so." He was saying again, what he had said before, a reality stiff as iron, a reality hard to bite and even harder to swallow.

"We can always try..."

"So we did," he explained.

For the first time in months, I wasn't angry at him. My emotions had shifted. Now, I was only angry at myself. However much Albus tried to explain anything different, make me feel like it was not my fault, make me believe I did all I could, I couldn't help but feel Cedric all around me. He was in the room with us, watching while I was studying. His ghost, he soul, was left behind. His kind eyes felt to be piercing me now.

"There is a lesson that you have to learn, Anne. Your mother tried to change the future as well. Whenever she saw something terrible in the future, she tried to take as many precautions. She tried to do as much as she could to protect people around her as well. I see the same in you. But it's hard to change the outcome of a situation. It takes great precision and even then, it hardly ever works. There are countless factors that contribute to a result. It's almost impossible to calculate it all. 

"You thought that warning Harry not to touch the Cup was not enough. You never saw Alastor Moody enchanting the Cup in order to make it irresistible to the touch, or you couldn't have foreseen that the maze treats people in a way that you beg for it to end, you beg to be the one who wins. If, on the other hand, you saw a vision of Voldemort discussing with his Death Eaters about his plan, we might be having a totally different conversation at the moment. Of course, these kind of visions are rare."

"What are you saying? Are you implying that I shouldn't try to protect people because my visions are going to come true either way?"

"I am not suggesting anything of the sort. If I did, I wouldn't help take as many precautions as we could. But fate is too hard to alter. Your mother tried time and time again. It tore her down when she realised how hard it is to actually do that," he said.

"Maybe she didn't try hard enough, or in the right way," I said, the words slipping out stubbornly.

"Be careful how you talk about your mother, Annalise!" said Albus with a slow pace and a strong voice, Albus' way of being furious. "That woman saw her death months before it happened. Do you think that she wouldn't save herself if she could? Do you think she wouldn't have chosen to keep you?"

"That was different; it was a sickness. She couldn't prevent it," I said.

"Yes."

Albus watched as if he was watching an ignorant child ask for candy after already eating. He seemed like he couldn't be bothered to answer. 

"Albus..." I shouted when faced with his silence. "Albus!"

I knew the truth for now. I knew that I couldn't put my faith onto this man. A moment after helping me, he was lying again, or at least hiding truths away. I left without asking further questions and swore myself that next time I would meet him, I'd rain the truth down on him the way he rained lies down on me all these years.

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