Chapter 1 -The boy who lied-

Hogwarts had always been loud.

It was loud with footsteps echoing through corridors, with laughter bouncing off stone walls, with portraits arguing and staircases groaning as they shifted beneath students’ feet. It was loud with life. Harry had grown used to it, had even come to rely on the noise as proof that he belonged somewhere.

This year, the noise felt wrong.

As the doors of the Great Hall swung open for the Welcoming Feast, the sound inside dipped—not enough to draw attention, not enough to be obvious. Just enough that Harry felt it, sharp and unmistakable, like stepping into cold water.

He paused for half a heartbeat.

Ron bumped into his back. “Oi—move.”

Harry stepped forward, forcing his feet to obey him.

Candles floated high above, their light warm and golden, illuminating four long tables crowded with students who should have felt familiar. Instead, faces turned in quick, furtive glances. Conversations stumbled, then resumed at lower volumes. Harry’s name wasn’t spoken aloud, but he could feel it hanging in the air, heavy and unspoken.

Harry Potter.

Cedric Diggory.

Dead.

Hermione walked close beside him, her posture stiff with barely contained fury. Ron’s ears were red, his jaw clenched.

“They’re staring,” Ron muttered.

“Let them,” Hermione whispered. “They’ll get bored.”

Harry doubted that.

He slid onto the Gryffindor bench, aware of the small, telling movements around him. Someone shifting their bag away, someone else leaning subtly to the side. He didn’t comment. Furthermore, he didn’t look up.

Food appeared, steaming and plentiful, but Harry barely registered it. His stomach felt hollow in a way food couldn’t fix. Across the hall, Hufflepuff sat quieter than usual, several seats conspicuously empty. Cedric’s absence was a wound no one quite knew how to look at.

Harry’s fingers curled tightly in his lap.

At the High Table, Dumbledore rose.

The headmaster looked older this year. Not frail, never that, but worn, as though the summer had carved new lines into his face. His eyes found Harry almost immediately, holding his gaze with steady reassurance.

“Welcome,” Dumbledore began, his voice calm and clear.

“This year, Hogwarts welcomes you not only with joy, but with sorrow.”

The hall stilled.

“We mourn Cedric Diggory,” Dumbledore said. “A student who embodied kindness, courage, and fairness. His loss will be felt for many years to come.”

Harry swallowed hard.

“And,” Dumbledore continued, his tone sharpening almost imperceptibly, “we must not allow grief to become suspicion, nor fear to become cruelty.”

A ripple moved through the hall. Harry felt it like a physical thing. Dolores Umbridge smiled into her goblet.

The speech ended soon after, but the damage lingered. When the feast resumed, the whispers did too, quiet, persistent, venomous.

Harry stared at his plate until Ron nudged him.

“You’ve got to eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

That was a lie. He was starving. He just didn’t feel like he deserved to be full.

Across the hall, at the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy watched.

Draco had perfected the art of observation. Years of dinners at Malfoy Manor had taught him how to read tension, how to notice the things people tried hardest to hide. So he noticed how Potter’s shoulders stayed tense, how he didn’t look up once, how he flinched when Cedric’s name was mentioned.

That wasn’t arrogance.

That was pressure.

Draco frowned faintly, then smoothed his expression back into something bored and disdainful. Crabbe laughed at something Pansy whispered. Draco didn’t join in.

Interesting, he thought, and immediately dismissed it.

Potter was still Potter.

The Gryffindor common room that night felt smaller than Harry remembered.

Normally, it buzzed with energy on the first night back, people talking over each other, comparing summers, planning pranks. Tonight, the conversations felt cautious. Fragmented. Harry caught bits and pieces as he passed.

“…Daily Prophet said-”

“…doesn’t make sense-”

“…you never know with him-”

Seamus didn’t meet his eyes. Dean offered an awkward nod, then turned away.

Harry climbed the stairs to the dormitory without speaking.

He lay awake long after the others had fallen silent, staring at the red hangings of his bed. Every time he closed his eyes, the graveyard returned. Cold marble, flickering shadows, Cedric’s body hitting the ground with a sound that still echoed in his skull.

He was right there, Harry thought. He was alive. And then he wasn’t.

His chest tightened painfully.

“I didn’t kill him,” Harry whispered into the darkness.

The silence of the dormitory did not argue but it didn’t comfort him either.

～●～

The next morning, the Daily Prophet arrived.

Harry knew it before he saw it. He could feel the tension ripple through the Great Hall like a disturbance in the air.

Seamus unfolded his paper with a scowl.

“Oh brilliant,” he said loudly before Hermione could stop him. “Listen to this.”

Harry’s hands clenched around his fork.

||QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT DIGGORY’S DEATH

-Sources at the Ministry suggest inconsistencies in Harry Potter’s account.||

“Inconsistencies,” Seamus read.

“That’s a polite way of saying he made it up, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” Ron snapped, leaping to his feet.

Hermione stood too, furious. “You have no right-”

Harry pushed his chair back.

It scraped loudly against the floor, drawing every eye in the hall.

“I’m done,” he said quietly.

He left without looking back.

In the corridor, he leaned against the cold stone wall, breathing hard. His vision blurred, not with tears, but with anger so sharp it made him dizzy.

He hadn’t asked to be believed.

He had begged.

And no one had listened.

Down the corridor, Draco Malfoy watched Harry Potter walk away alone.

For the first time, Draco did not feel satisfied.

He felt unsettled.

And that feeling, he knew instinctively, was only the beginning.

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