Dumbledore makes a lot of great speeches over the course of the books, but I think the one that impacts me the most is his end-of-the-year speech in Goblet of Fire. Cedric could easily have been portrayed as an obnoxious golden boy who walks around letting everybody know what hot stuff he is. But that wasn't his style. He was classy through and through, a worthy competitor indeed, and ultimately more a comrade than a rival. Here's a poem I wrote in which Harry struggles with survivor's guilt and the fact that jealousy over Cho's affections caused him to think badly of Cedric.
Incidentally, I read something today that made an interesting connection I hadn't considered before; Cedric's wand contained a unicorn hair, and in the first book, the centaur, commenting on the death of the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, said that the innocent are always first to fall. We didn't know Cedric as well as Sirius and Dumbledore, but his death was especially shocking because it was so random; he had no connection to Voldemort and was only disposed of because he was in the way, an act that really marked the turning point into a much darker tone for the rest of the series...
Remember Cedric
Remember Cedric Diggory. The words rang in his ears
As Harry, leaving Hogwarts far behind,
Recalled the lifted goblets and Cho’s swift but silent tears,
Replayed those final moments in his mind.
I had to be so noble, he reflected bitterly.
If only I had grabbed the Cup alone,
He would have been all right; Lord Voldemort was after me.
Lord Voldemort! It chilled him to the bone.
The evil eyes, the pallid face, the frigid, mirthless laugh,
The sudden flash of sickly emerald light
From Pettigrew, who cruelly killed on Voldemort’s behalf.
If he had just let Wormtail die that night!
His mercy led him to that awful moment when he knelt,
Transfixed by horror, paralyzed by pain,
As Cedric was extinguished. Every fiber of him felt
A hollow nausea he could not explain.
He’d seethed against poor Cedric, who was decent, who was good,
Who maybe was too high-minded to know
How Harry had resented him. Would he have understood
The raging beast that flared because of Cho?
Had Cedric been a braggart, had he strutted with a smirk,
Had he belittled blithely all year long,
Would guilt-encrusted Harry still have felt like such a jerk?
His envy, so acidic, had been wrong.
Whenever Harry thought about the gracious Hufflepuff,
He pictured Cedric zooming through the air
To snatch the Snitch spectacularly, only to rebuff
Applause because he found the win unfair.
Uncompromising principles. A self-effacing smile.
It dawned on Harry that he’d rarely met
A student whose accomplishments were so untinged by guile.
Remember Cedric. How could he forget?
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2 comments:
Wonderful job, Erin. This one feels especially haunting, and I think that's just right...because I think the memory of Cedric's death will always haunt Harry. Your last line gave me shivers.
Cedric's death has always seemed perversely horrid to me, simply because it IS so random, and so sudden. More than any other scene, I think it shows Voldemort's complete lack of respect for human life. JKR gave us just enough of Cedric's personality for us to begin to like him in spite of himself -- he may be a bit "ordinary" but he's a good young man, solid and dependable to the core, and someone who really believes in fair play. I can't remember the name of the actor who played him in the GoF movie, but I thought he did a very good job capturing that.
I really like the unicorn hair connection. I hadn't thought of that at all. I have a feeling wands really reveal something about their owners -- all the time Rowling spends on the details of various wands seems to show that there's some importance there.
It seems to me that I'd heard there would be a death in the fourth book but that Cedric's death floored me nonetheless. So sudden, so cruel, so cavalier: "Kill the spare." That's all he is to Voldemort, just a useless lump of flesh standing between him and Harry. Ugh...
I can't imagine that Harry ever will forget Cedric. But he should take comfort in the solidarity of their final moments together, an exemplification of just the sort of cooperation Dumbledore encourages in his memorializing speech.
And I agree, I thought he came off quite well in the movie. I wish they hadn't had him and Harry tousling with each other in the labyrinth, but it was a brief diversion, and they still wound up allies in the end...
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