naive: in defense of hannah abbott
After the first death at Hogwarts in decades, a death that tarnished a record and started a war, Albus Dumbledore stood up to address his student body.
"Remember, if the time should come, when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."
And at the Hufflepuff table a girl with pigtails fumed.
"Why are you giving him their word?" Hannah Abbott wanted to demand. "Call him loyal, call him fair, strong, steady. You're a billion years old, Headmaster. Surely you can think of a word for a hero that isn't Gryffindor's."
Dumbledore called him brave. You-Know-Who called him the spare. Cho wept, but never as much as Amos Diggory did.
Hannah climbed into cold sheets that night, in a room hung with yellow and black. She stayed curled up, eyes open, for hours. He was ours.
He wouldn't have bled black and yellow, no, but Cedric had lived it. He had died by it--sportsmanship in the middle of chaos, two boys taking the cup's handle together and disappearing into a place only one of them would come back from.
They say fairness is kind. Kind. Hannah kept tissues stuffed up her sleeves. If she burst out laughing in the library, no one asked why. If she cried they thought they understood.
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