Samuel

My name is Samuel Hallmanson. My cousin was Cedric Diggory.

I didn't know him very well. Before I went to Hogwarts, we saw each other maybe twice a year, for Christmas or Weddings, sometimes funerals. We never really spoke - he was four years older than I was, and I was always more interested in my books than socialising. I know he was kind though. Once, when I was five, we were at a party for my Grandmother's Birthday, and we were playing in the woods outside her house. I fell and hurt my leg, and he carried me all the way back to the garden, comforting me the whole time. He became my idol that day, though I never said thank you. At first I was too young, and then I felt foolish for bringing up something I was sure he'd have forgotten. Now though, I wish I had.

No one was surprised that he was in Hufflepuff. If anyone was ever loyal, hard-working and generous, it was Cedric. He wanted to be a healer. He would have been amazing. I wish I'd told him that, too. When I saw him at our house warming party in the summer, I never thought that the next time I'd see him in close quarters would be at his funeral. He didn't look right in that coffin. He looked dead. I'd read that people who got hit by the killing curse just looked asleep, but Cedric, Cedric looked dead. Because he wasn't smiling.

That was four years ago. Voldemort's gone now. Harry finally got him. It was Harry who taught me to say his name. He came to me after Cedric died. I'd no idea anyone even knew we were cousins - it never came up - but he did. He told me how Cedric had died - but I knew that already. It was the other things that I valued the most. He told me about how scared Cedric looked before facing his dragon, how he smiled when his date stepped on his foot at the Yule Ball, how he gave Harry the hint about the second task that saved him, how they took the cup together, and how Cedric finally asked him to take his body back home. He said he felt he needed to tell me, because I needed to understand. Not just because I lost a cousin, but because I lost my security. I no longer had a protector. And I needed to remember him as he was. Harry said that people would remember him as a war hero, bravely throwing himself in front of a curse to save the saviour. And he was right. There's a memorial to Cedric by the lake at Hogwarts. He's in the history books as the first 'heroic' death of Voldemort's second reign. But that's not Cedric. He wasn't a war hero. But he was a hero. Because he helped a little boy when he fell, because he smiled instead of fighting, because he cared for people without needing a reason.

Harry's gone now, too. I'm sure Cedric and he are having a great time playing Quidditch wherever they are. Maybe gobstones. As for me, I'm head boy now. Next year, I start training to be a healer. I'm engaged to a beautiful Hufflepuff girl, Fiona. Some might say we're too young, but Cedric showed me that life can be unexpected. Live it while you can. I didn't know him well, but he taught me a lot. About life, and about death.

My name is Samuel Hallmanson. My cousin was Cedric Diggory. And he was a hero.