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‘I know Harry really well, Mum,’ he’d said to her. ‘He’s a really nice guy, he wouldn’t-’
‘He might well have been! But madness can come on suddenly! I don’t want you sharing a room with him - you don’t know what he could do. You know old Uncle Artie? In the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad? He says Potter blew up his aunt a few years ago because she offended him somehow. He said he’d never seen magic like it, not accidental.’
‘He told us about that, it sounded funny,’ said Seamus. ‘She was really horrible-’
‘He’s clearly never been able to control his emotions,’ said Mam. ‘His own aunt! Don’t think just because you’re friendly you’d be safe.’
Eventually, he had persuaded her, promising that he would get out of Harry’s way if he ‘goes off on one’. He told Dean all about it on the train, and they both agreed that Harry probably wasn’t mad, but both of them wondered…
‘It’s all a bit vague, isn’t it?’ Seamus said. ‘What actually happened. I mean, Diggory was old enough to just disapparate away, wasn’t he? And if it really was You-Know-Who, you’d think he would just kill Harry right away, wouldn’t you?’
‘Dunno,’ said Dean, struggling to unwrap his pumpkin pasty. ‘The other two times it sounds like they’ve stood around and had a chat for a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah, that’s what he says,’ said Seamus, and Dean looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing.
Then, that evening, the argument happened. It was clear to Seamus now that what she had insisted was true - mammies truly did know best.
Harry looked so different to what he remembered, so fierce and somehow surly at the same time, his eyes flashing with anger and his every movement sudden, as though he wasn’t really in control of it. Even Ron looked a little frightened, in Seamus’s opinion, and he spoke to Harry in a placating, calm way, like he was his bloody carer or something, like this temper tantrum was something to be expected.
‘If it were me,’ Seamus said viciously the next morning to Dean, Lavender and Parvati as he recounted the incident, ‘if I really wanted to defend myself against those sort of accusations, I would have told my side of the story. I wouldn’t be so lofty to expect everyone to blindly believe me without bothering to actually tell anyone what it is they’re supposed to believe.’
‘He probably didn’t want to go into any details,’ said Parvati awkwardly. ‘He might not even be allowed-’
‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Lavender dismissively. ‘They’ve already done an inquest, they found that Diggory’s death was accidental. He’s probably just bitter it overshadowed him winning - I still don’t believe he didn’t put his name in that cup you know.’ She glanced down the table to the far end, where Harry, Ron and Hermione sat, then leaned in to speak in a low voice, as though they would hear her. ‘Hermione Granger absolutely raged at me last night too, but she couldn’t tell me what actually happened either. “It’s not my story to tell”.’ Lavender mimicked Hermione’s sanctimonious voice. ‘Pur-lease.’
‘You should have seen him, Lavender, honestly,’ said Seamus darkly. ‘He certainly looked mad. Doesn’t exactly help his case, yelling his head off and pointing his wand at me.’
The girls gasped. ‘He didn’t?’
‘He did.’
‘Look,’ said Dean uneasily, ‘whatever did happen, it’s clearly shaken him up, maybe he’s just…’
‘How can you defend him?’ Seamus demanded. ‘Having a go at my mother like that, he’s cracked.’
As though to prove Seamus’s point, Harry went mental in Defense Against the Dark Arts that very afternoon.
‘So according to you,’ he demanded, his voice shaking with rage, his fists clenched as he stood, ‘Cedric Diggory dropped dead of his own accord, did he?’
Hermione was tugging at Harry’s robes to get him to sit down, her face desperate and pleading, but Harry didn’t appear to notice. He was staring at Umbridge, his expression thunderous. Seamus watched, his heart thudding, unsure if he was afraid or not, half expecting Harry to attack her.
‘Cedric Diggory’s death was a tragic accident-’
‘It was murder,’ said Harry darkly. ‘Voldemort killed him and you know it.’
This was the only time Seamus had heard Harry specifically acknowledge the story Dumbledore was pushing, the closest he had come to telling his side of the story. Selfishly, he was disappointed when Umbridge sent him out of the room - he wanted to see Harry rage more, he wanted him to just say his piece already, so they could make their minds up.
Harry slammed the door so hard behind him that the paintings on the walls rattled, leaving the class in a breathless kind of silence.
Umbridge smiled sweetly at them all, as though they had all experienced something very embarrassing together. ‘I understand that must have been rather scary for you all,’ she said soothingly. ‘But Mr Potter has always been a troubled little boy, and it’s not unusual for children with difficult upbringings to become attention seeking. We musn’t indulge him - for his own good.’
Hermione Granger burst into tears; Ron Weasley put his arm around her, staring furiously up at their Professor. ‘It’s nothing to do with any of that,’ Ron insisted. ‘He-’
‘Mr Weasley, would you also like to receive detention?’ she asked lightly. ‘Now, if you could all return to your reading, please, and we will hear no more about it.’
By dinner that night, the word had spread - Seamus was eagerly telling everyone about it himself. He felt oddly shaken by it. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he told a group of Hufflepuffs, who listened, opened mouthed. ‘He looked deranged. I thought he’d attack her.’
‘And he actually said it?’ squeaked Hannah Abbott, ‘he said Cedric was murdered by You-Know-Who.’
‘He used You-Know-Who’s name.’
There was a ripple of shocked mutters. ‘Well that settles it,’ said Zacharias Smith pompously. ‘No one who had actually seen him would use his name, they’d be too scared. He’s just trying to be edgy.’
‘Sounds more like the poor chap was just getting really upset by her,’ said Justin, looking alarmed. ‘It happens, you know, when people have seen nasty things, they go a bit funny. My old man was in the army, he saw loads of decent-’
‘He wasn’t in a war, Justin, he was in a school tournament,’ said Zacharias impatiently. ‘And yeah, maybe he saw something nasty with Cedric, but it’s not the same, is it? I haven’t once seen him looking upset, just really furious all the time.’
There seemed to be a belief that if they saw him angry again, he might tell the rest of the story. Seamus kept an eye on him all through dinner, expecting it to happen at any moment, but instead he just saw him storm out with Ron and Hermione.
‘I bet they know,’ muttered Pavarti. ‘That little clique.’
‘Well you know what Hermione’s like,’ said Lavender scathingly. ‘Quite happy to listen to gossip, never actually gives any out, does she?’
But then, as time went on, Lavender and Pavarti started swinging the other way. Like Dean, uneasiness entered their voices when Seamus flippantly mentioned the subject.
‘Neville said he could hear Harry moaning in his sleep the other night,’ said Lavender in a hushed voice. ‘Said he could hear him telling Cedric to get away and to run.’
‘He’s putting it on,’ said Seamus aggressively, though if he was honest with himself he wasn’t sure. He too, had heard Harry’s choked, fearful sobs at night, had even heard him crying out for his parents, who Harry had never seemed particularly emotional about mentioning. But the thought of admitting that he might need to reconsider was embarrassing. He wanted to cling to it, wanted to seek vindication, because the alternative was that it was he that was being unreasonable.
‘Have you heard about that club Hermione Granger’s starting?’ Dean asked. ‘I reckon I might go, it’d be good to learn from him-’
‘What?’ spluttered Seamus.
‘Yeah, I was thinking I might, too,’ said Pavarti. ‘I just keep thinking, if he was lying you’d have thought he’d have given up by now. And,’ she added irritably, ‘I would actually like to pass my Defence O.W.L.’
‘I’ll do it if you do,’ Lavender told her. ‘I’m not going on my own.’
‘Are you all mad?’ asked Seamus, but none of them listened to him. When Dean returned from the meeting in Hogsmead about joining, and Seamus had asked him how it was, Dean had shrugged.
‘I reckon it’s going to be pretty good, you know. It was clearly Hermione driving it to be honest, it wasn’t an ego project like you said at all.’
‘Did he say anymore about-?’
‘No, and he got pretty shirty with Zacharias Smith when he started prodding about it,’ said Dean firmly. He squinted at Seamus, who felt strangely as though he was disappointing a parent or beloved teacher. ‘I… I’m sorry, mate, but I reckon he might be telling the truth, you know, or it’s somewhere in the middle. Diggory’s old girlfriend was there too. Even she believes him.’
Seamus didn’t answer, just shook his head vaguely and turned away. He did not want to admit to himself that the squirming sensation in his stomach might be guilt. They had all been hoodwinked, he told himself fiercely - tricked by a compulsive liar, or perhaps Harry even believed his own delusions.
They bloody well should have listened to him, Seamus thought viciously as Christmas approached. Harry had awoken them all, screaming, thrashing around in his bed, his back arching as he yelled and spat out odd hissing words, Ron standing over him and shouting his name, gripping his arms to try and pin him down.
‘What the fuck,’ he heard Dean whisper, standing close to him as they watched.
Harry seemed to wake now, with a gasp, his eyes wild - he immediately grabbed at his forehead, rolled over and vomited violently.
‘He’s really ill,’ said Neville, trembling and looking close to tears as he stared at Harry’s pale, clammy face. ‘Should we call someone?’
But Harry was babbling about Ron’s dad being attacked, and Ron was trying to calm him down, and Seamus couldn’t stop staring. Clearly something was wrong with him, something horrible, something dark.
‘He’s mad,’ Seamus muttered to Dean as Neville hurried out of the room to get help. ‘This is… There’s something not right with him.’
‘Mate, I really don’t think he’s been lying,’ said Dean quietly, though he too, looked disturbed by Harry’s lunacy.
‘I dunno,’ Seamus whispered back. ‘I dunno, but… He’s not right.’ He didn’t feel safe in that dorm, not with someone so clearly mental just a few beds away. Even if it wasn’t Harry’s fault, he had been fighting so violently against Ron’s grip, thrashing about so viciously, that what if something awful happened? Suppose he walked in his sleep and attacked one of them without realising?
But after Christmas, he sat in the Common Room and watched as Harry came in and joined Ron and Hermione. He looked extremely pale, extremely shaken. He saw as he sank into a chair beside them, murmuring something quietly, running his hands over his forehead, and looking down at them as they trembled.
You can’t fake that, said a cruel voice in his head. You can’t make yourself pale like that. That’s not someone making their hands shake, that’s like shivering, that’s involuntary.
He squirmed uncomfortably as he tried to finish his homework, wondering if it was too late - even if he changed his mind, was it something that could just be forgotten? Like the girls, he was starting to think that if he was lying, it might have changed by now. He might have given up, or exaggerated.
The next day, when they saw that there had been an Azkaban breakout, he looked up at Dean and admitted that perhaps there was something going on the Ministry was covering up. ‘They made more of a fuss when Sirius Black escaped, didn’t they?’ he said. ‘And they still haven’t found him. I bet he helped get all this lot out - this is dozens of Sirius Blacks, really, and they don’t seem half as worried.’
Dean hesitated, and looked at him carefully. ‘Yeah… It might be because of… You-Know-Who.’
It was strange, because You-Know-Who clearly meant Voldemort, but both of them looked automatically, in complete synchronisation, at Harry, as though he was a you-know-who as well. Harry was reading the paper silently, ignoring Hermione and Ron’s concerned looks, his expression utterly unsurprised.
It was not until March that Seamus finally had to admit to himself what he had suspected for so many months. He was wrong, and he had been unpleasant, even cruel.
‘Have you read that article about Harry?’ Lavender whispered to him as they sat on the back row in Muggle Studies.
‘No?’ he whispered back. ‘I didn’t see anything in the Prophet-’
‘Not the Prophet, the Quibbler.’
‘The Quibbler?’ he asked, baffled. ‘Hey - is that why it’s been banned? I did wonder.’
‘Yeah,’ she whispered, then fell suddenly silent as Professor Burbage walked past. When she was out of earshot again, neither of them looked up from the parchment they had been scrawling on, but their quills paused as she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. ‘He did an interview for them. About what happened.’
Seamus scoffed quietly. ‘Course he did. Got to grab a bit of extra fame even if it’s through the-’
‘No, Seamus,’ she urged. ‘I really think you should read it. Honestly - I was in tears when I did. I don’t really know what to say to him.’
She pretended to be getting another quill out of her bag, but as she bent down to rifle under the desk, he felt her slide something onto his lap. One eye on Professor Burbage, he subtly shoved it under his shirt. When the bell for morning break rang, he was one of the first out the door, slipping quickly into an alcove behind a tapestry and pulling out the magazine that had grown slightly warm against his skin.
HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: THE TRUTH ABOUT HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN
Harry’s face grinned awkwardly up at him from the front cover - whoever had taken the photograph had focused mostly on his scar and his eyes, they seemed to glare out at him. He opened it, and read.
Harry Potter meets me, Rita Skeeter, in The Three Broomsticks pub on Valentines Day, deciding not to join his classmates in youthful, romantic pursuits of love, but to instead speak the truth of what happened the night He Who Must Not Be Named returned to full power.
He is uncommonly preoccupied with facts - forcefully interjecting when he believes he may have been misunderstood or misheard. ‘I only want to say this once,’ he tells me, early on in the interview. ‘I don’t like talking about it, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to have to keep clarifying anything.’
Why, then, has he decided to reveal the details now, nine months after the incident? The answer, for him, is simple - the public deserves to know the truth.
Readers will, of course, be aware that Potter was a champion in last year’s ill-fated Triwizard Tournament, but few realise that, according to Potter, he never wanted to be a part of it at all. ‘My competing was part of a larger plan,’ he said. ‘It was admitted by a Death Eater, in front of witnesses, that he entered me illegally. I never wanted any part in it, but it provided a cover for my eventual disappearance.’
It was in the third and final task of this deadly tournament that Potter’s true horror began. He recounts how he battled his way through the maze to find himself facing the Triwizard Cup - at the same time as the late Cedric Diggory, who he describes as an uncommonly good, fair student. In a decision that would ‘haunt [him] for the rest of [his] life’, the boys decided that rather than argue over who reached the cup first, they would take it together, securing a win for Hogwarts.
‘The cup was actually a portkey,’ describes Potter. ‘It transported us to a graveyard. We weren’t sure if it was still part of the tournament or not, we had no idea where we were or what was happening.’ Potter describes the graveyard with great detail, painting a clear picture of weathered Victorian graves leaning haphazardly in the grass, a dark house looming on the hill above them. Potter, already with an injured leg from an event in the maze, had no idea of the horrors that were in store.
That the cup was only supposed to take one boy to the graveyard, rather than two, sealed Cedric Diggory’s tragic fate. ‘A Death Eater approached us, carrying Voldemort. On Voldemort’s orders, he murdered Cedric within seconds. There was no time to react or realise what was going on. One moment he was beside me, and the next…’ Potter trails off, and seems to collect himself for a moment. I am reminded, quite suddenly, that he is only fifteen years old. ‘Cedric Diggory died in front of me,’ he says at last. ‘It was no accident, it was murder.’
I ask him to explain what he meant when he described the Death Eater carrying Voldemort, and to my surprise he refers, quite calmly, to the night that made him the legend he is. ‘When [You-Know-Who] failed to kill me as a baby, his body was destroyed, but he himself was not killed. I have come across the remnants of him since then - when I saw him in June he had gained strength enough so that he appeared in a very weak form.’
This was the night, I point out, that he gained the scar for which he is so famous. He nods, and tells me that the scar causes him great pain when He Who Must Not Be Named (who Potter insists on calling by his true name - we have redacted all instances of this for sensitivity) is close or doing something particularly dark. These, then, are the ‘funny turns’ the Daily Prophet describes? ‘I suppose so,’ he replies. He then informs me that the sudden, agonizing pain in his head was his first indication that He Who Must Not Be Named was there that night, that it caused him to drop his wand and fall to his knees moments before Diggory was killed.
He describes the Death Eater dragging him to a gravestone - one he recognised as having the same name (Tom Riddle) as You-Know-Who, before he renamed himself as a Dark Lord. The Death Eater bound him tightly to the gravestone and gagged him, his wand still lying by the body of his fallen class mate.
What happened next is truly the stuff of horror novels. Sensitive readers may wish to stop reading here.
The Death Eater performed a dark magic ritual, one Potter describes with horrifying detail. A large cauldron was set before him, and from the grave at his feet the dust of the bones of You-Know-Who’s father was taken. ‘Then he took my blood,’ says Potter, pulling back his sleeve to show me a long, thin scar on his forearm, caused by the knife of the Death Eater. ‘It was important for the ritual to have blood from an enemy - [You-Know-Who] himself explained that he believed it would make him more powerful if it came from me.’
But it is what Potter describes next that causes him to pale slightly. ‘The ritual also required flesh of the servant. The Death Eater raised the knife again, and cut off his own hand.’ I suggest that the image has stayed with him, but Potter’s response is simply, ‘no - the sound.’
Next, Potter explains his first sight of the ruined form of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. His face visibly winces in revulsion as he does so. ‘He was almost like a baby. As small as that, but red and raw and almost scaly looking - a complete monster.’ In a heart-breaking moment, he recounts how You-Know-Who’s wrecked form was dropped into the cauldron, and how he, having guessed what was happening, desperately prayed that something had gone wrong and that it had drowned. ‘It was all I could think about. Let it have drowned, please let it have drowned.’
Yet it was then that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named rose from the cauldron, restored to full power and returned to his body.
But how, then, did Potter escape? At this moment, he was still bound and gagged against a gravestone, helplessly watching darkest magic be performed in front of his eyes.
‘He summoned his Death Eaters,’ Potter informs me. It will shock many readers to know that Potter then named those that appeared, many of which are prominent and established members of the wizarding community. He rattles off their surnames easily - Malfoy. Avery. Nott. Crabb. Goyle. MacNair. He explains that they surrounded he and You-Know-Who in a large circle, and that You-Know-Who spoke to them about his years of exile and his fury that none of them had sought him out and come to his aid in the years since. He spoke, too, of his downfall due to the boy before him, many years ago.
‘He described how my mother’s sacrifice meant that he had been unable to touch me,’ says Potter. ‘But because he had taken my blood, that magical protection was now gone.’ He pauses - it is clear that he is struggling with the story now, despite his calm voice. ‘And then, to prove it, he touched my cheek.’ Potter raises his hand slightly, gesturing vaguely, but does not touch the spot that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named touched. This, then, caused him pain in his scar? I asked.
‘Yes. Agonising,’ is his only response. But then he describes an even worse pain - that while he was bound to that gravestone, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named used the cruciatus curse on him. He describes the effects with chilling detail - my regular readers will know that over the years I have interviewed many victims of atrocities, and that sadly I can confirm that Potter, who described feeling as though his very bones were aflame, the overwhelming desperation to simply die rather than endure any more pain, is hauntingly accurate.
He then describes how You-Know-Who magicked a silver hand for the Death Eater that his cut off his own and performed the ritual, and instructed him to untie Harry and give him back his wand. Why? I ask.
‘I suppose he wanted to humiliate me,’ Potter responds. ‘He did not intend for me to have a quick death.’
As part of a sick game to torment the boy, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named forced Potter to duel him, including the traditional, courteous bow. ‘He used some sort of spell that forced my spine.’ He looks suddenly awkward, and reminds me that the Death Eaters were all there, watching. It is clear to me, as I hope it is to my readers, that Potter is a proud young man, and that describing an experience he regards as, in his own words, ‘humiliating’ to a wider audience is difficult. I suggest this to him, and he admits that You-Know-Who was aware of this too - that he taunted him by instructing him to die straight-backed and proud, the way his father had.
Potter maintains that he does not remember the night his parents died, or how his father met his fate, but says that he is aware that James Potter faced Voldemort in an effort to protect his family.
Potter then describes being placed under the cruciatus curse once more, as the forced “duel” begun. Once again, he describes all-consuming pain, so much so that he was no longer aware of where he was, hoping desperately that he would die from it. How long was he under the spell? I ask. ‘I don’t know.’ Longer or shorter than the previous occasion? ‘I don’t know.’
He describes the curse being lifted and finding himself on the ground, shaking, scrambling up and stumbling to get away but being pushed back by laughing Death Eaters, being taunted by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named once again, who then used the imperious curse on him.
‘He was taunting me again - he said “that hurt, didn’t it, Harry? You don’t want me to do that again, do you?” and he wanted me to respond no.’ Potter seems unable to look at me at this point, his eyes remain fixed on the table before him. ‘He used the imperious curse to get me to say it, but I threw it off.’
This is unusually impressive magic, I point out. To be able to throw off the imperious curse is something very few wizards can do, not least at the age of fourteen.
Ever modest, Potter merely shrugs. ‘When I said I wouldn’t, it made him angry. He went to torture me again, but I threw myself sideways and hid behind the gravestone.’
This was, he says, a desperate attempt he knew wouldn’t work. There was no hiding or escaping. ‘I knew I was going to die. But I didn’t want to die like that.’ Potter pauses again, this time for a very long time. ‘He was right - [You-Know-Who]. I was going to die upright like my father did. I was going to go down fighting, even when it was hopeless. I didn’t want to die… Like that.’
Potter heroically burst out from behind the gravestone, and cast the first spell at You-Know-Who he could think of. The disarming curse.
What he describes next will astound, bewilder and baffle many readers. ‘Our wands connected,’ claims Potter. ‘The two spells hit each other, and our wands… I accidentally caused an effect I’ve now been told is called Priori Incantatem. It caused shadows of the last spells [You-Know-Who]’s wand to appear.
What this means, in the most heart-breaking twist of the tale of all, is that the shadows of You-Know-Who’s victims appeared, including Cedric Diggory, who asked Potter to return his body to his parents, and Lily and James Potter themselves.
What words of comfort did they speak to him? I asked. After all, he has never had the chance to meet the parents who died when he was just fifteen months old.
Potter does not cry, or even look particularly upset, but he is silent for several moments before replying. ‘There wasn’t… time for that. The shadow of my father told me that the cup would return me to Hogwarts, and that when I broke the connection I should run to it. When I did break the connection, they, and the other shadows, they surrounded [You-Know-Who] so that I was shielded from view. I pushed through the Death Eaters and ran for it, back to Cedric’s body. I summoned the portkey to me. I was returned to Hogwarts.’
The first thing, Potter tells me, that he did was inform Albus Dumbledore. He has been shocked and appalled to learn of Dumbledore’s expulsion from the Wizengamot and the vendetta against him in the press. I ask him if they are close, as many rumours suggest them to be. His face is unreadable as he replies, ‘no. I just knew he had to know.’
I ask him how he feels about the Ministry’s statement that Cedric Diggory died in a tragic accident. He is, he tells me, frustrated and worried. ‘The longer people refuse to accept [He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named] is back, the easier it will be for him to gain further power by stealth. And what about the accusations against him? That he is a liar? Deranged? Attention seeking?
‘[You-Know-Who] wants me to feel isolated and vulnerable, and the Ministry is playing into his hands,’ states Potter. When I ask him if he does feel isolated, he glances over at the friends who have escorted him to his meeting with me. ‘No,’ he says. ‘My friends know the truth.’
Seamus closed the magazine, and wept. It was a ludicrous story. Ridiculously dramatic. Insanely heroic. Horrifying. And he believed every word.
So many more things made sense now. When he had heard Harry pleading in his sleep for his father to tell him what to do, when he had been unable to control his fury with Umbridge for her refusal to acknowledge anything about it, why he had been so quick to anger all year. He knew, instinctively, that the end of the article had been a lie - that Harry had felt isolated, and he, Seamus, had contributed to that.
He had refused to believe any of it, because it was easier not to. It was warmer not to. Safer. But the images he could now see so clearly of Harry in that graveyard made him feel as though he wanted to vomit with shame. He had known, really. He had seen the difference in the boy he had shared a room with for several years. He used the rest of his break to walk to the owlery with Lavender’s magazine, to send to his mother, and resolved to tell Harry that he believed him the moment he saw him next.