Cedric Diggory (character)

Template:HP character Cedric Diggory (1977 – June 24, 1995), a fictional character in the Harry Potter series of novels, was the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain and Seeker through Harry's third year of school. Cedric's father is Amos Diggory, who works at the Ministry of Magic; his girlfriend was Cho Chang. Cedric has been described as "the strong, but silent type" and "extremely handsome"; as a character he showed a notable streak for modesty and fairness. He was a very good student and a Prefect for the Hufflepuff House. In the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film, he is played by Robert Pattinson. Cedric's wand is twelve and a quarter inches, made of ash wood and contains a single hair from a male unicorn. Mr Ollivander describes it as 'pleasantly springy'. He is one of the students who embodied all four of the Hufflepuff traits -- loyalty, honesty, hard work and fair play.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, during Harry's third year, Cedric captained the Hufflepuff Quidditch team which beat Gryffindor when Harry Potter fell off his broom owing to the presence of Dementors. Cedric didn't know this until he caught the Snitch, and he demanded a rematch (showing the trait of fair play), but even Oliver Wood, the strict Gryffindor Quidditch captain, said they had won fair and square.

His father Amos Diggory was extremely proud of Cedric for "defeating" Harry Potter, saying that the better man won, but Cedric was extremely embarrassed about his father's bragging. The Weasley twins, Fred and George, however, continue to harbour ill feelings towards Diggory for that defeat.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Cedric was selected to be the Hogwarts champion in the Triwizard Tournament. After Harry was mysteriously selected as well, Draco Malfoy made Support Cedric Diggory badges for the Slytherins that could be changed to read Potter stinks.

For the first task, Harry clued Cedric that their task involves dragons. During the task, Cedric Transfigured a rock into a dog which distracted his dragon, but unfortunately, his dragon lost interest in the dog mid-way and went after him instead. Cedric successfully retrieved his golden egg but received a burn on the cheek in the process. Because of that, he lost points, resulting in him ending in third place for that task. He later took Cho Chang to the Yule Ball as his date, much to Harry's dismay.

Cedric, along with Moaning Myrtle, assists Harry in solving the clue of the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. He drops a very vague clue by telling him to take a bath in the fifth floor prefects' bathroom, take the egg along, and just "mull things over in the hot water". Cedric did this in return for the help Harry had given him for the first task. He was the second of the champions to reach the village of the merpeople and successfully saved Cho, his hostage, using a Bubble-Head Charm. He surfaced one minute over the one hour time limit earning him forty-seven points for the second task, placing him in joint first with Harry.

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Cedric during the Third Task in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

During the third task, Harry saved Diggory's life twice while in the maze, and in the race for the cup, Cedric refused to take the cup without Harry, so they grasped it together. The cup turned out to be a portkey which transported them to a graveyard where Voldemort and his servant Wormtail were waiting. Wormtail murdered Diggory with the Avada Kedavra, using Voldemort's wand. When Harry escaped the graveyard, he took Cedric's body with him (at the request of Cedric's shade, which appeared along with Lily & James Potter's shade during Harry's duel with Voldemort) and brought it back to Cedric's parents.

Professor Pomona Sprout was chosen to comfort Amos and Mrs Diggory, as she was Head of Cedric's House and knew him best. The Ministry of Magic instituted a coverup and publicly attributed Cedric's death to an "accident", which Harry and Dumbledore felt was an insult to his memory. At the year's end feast, Dumbledore revealed to the entire school that Cedric was murdered by Voldemort and stated that to attribute his death to an accident would be an injustice to Cedric. As a boy who was "good, and kind, and brave", he was the embodiment of all things Hufflepuff. Dumbledore ended the speech by saying "Remember Cedric Diggory".

Diggory's death had a profound emotional impact on Harry; he felt survivor's guilt over having been spared initially while Cedric was killed outright, just because he had insisted that they should share the victory. He was reluctant to talk about Cedric's death and offered the reward money to Cedric's parents with the words "It should have been his..." Diggory's parents refused the money and thanked Harry for bringing their son's body back to them. The summer after his fourth year, Harry was haunted by Cedric's death and suffered every night from nightmares, but gradually began to overcome his grief in the following academic year.

Cedric's wand had a unicorn tail hair in it. This association with unicorns is in line with Cedric's fate as it is remarked by the centaur Ronan, concerning the death of the unicorn in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, that "Always the innocent are the first victims."

It has been suggested that J.K. Rowling borrowed Cedric's last name from Digory Kirke in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series; Rowling claims Lewis as one of her favourite authors.