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Harry first saw the boy seven nights after Cedric died.

No one else seemed to notice him. But then again, maybe they all did, but no one spared him a glance as he parted through them like a ghost as they all crowded at the gates near the hospital wing to speak to Harry.

Harry remembered the boy because he didn't look particularly interested in Harry, nor did he look as ruffled as the others, who had tears streaking silently down their cheeks. Harry remembered the boy because he was so odd.

His hair was white, and his face was young, and Harry couldn't see his eyes. He dressed strangely too, all in black. The boy wore a dark polo, and dark pants, and had a strangely shaped sword on his back. It was almost as tall as the boy himself and carved with intricate stars, as if the sky itself hung on the boy's back, frozen cold and icy blue. It was decorative and the sword felt strong, it hummed a soft tune, so low Harry had to strain to hear it.

Harry decided he didn't like the sword, as it's tune felt so cold and it made his scar hurt.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a dark creature cried out, a pitiful creature who had never known love.

Harry watched through the window as the boy placed a hand on the ground where Cedric and Harry had landed when they came back to Hogwarts. The boy felt the grass a little longer, a faint glow rising from his fingertips, then he turned, and stole silently into the maze.

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In his office, an old man (who was just as foolish as he was wise) stroked his beard. He sat in his too tall chair, a chair that had been made for kings and queens and those with power beyond, and fingered his canary yellow robes. The chair dwarfed him, he would have it removed soon, he thought to himself. Slowly, he turned to the letter from one Madame Umbridge, and made a note of exception.

He had noticed the boy when he had first stole onto the grounds, all the wards screaming silent messages of what the boy brought with him. He felt the Elder Wand shiver in his grasp as it remembered it's true owner.

'King and Queens.' he thinks to himself, and resolves to tell Harry of the horcruxes, it was beginning after all.

The beginning of the end.

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'The beasts daring enough to seek the new creature in the maze are foolish,' thought the sphinx. She flicked her long, golden tail as a cold wind washed over her fur.

'Never mess with a dragon,' she thought, 'For they are clever things, nearly as clever as sphinxes.'

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She heard the beasts screams from miles away in the maze, as the dragon found its way to the heart. She would let him in without trickery, for this boy was a dangerous thing.

She thought he could have warned the spiders, they had brains after all. But no, those hairy things had the drive to become the sole strongest, and arrogance like that would be their undoing. Let them know, she thought, that tonight in the maze, there are far more dangerous things.

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When the boy arrived, drenched in the blood of beasts, she gave him the hardest riddle she knew. He answered it perfectly, and raised a single eyebrow, as if unimpressed. She would have pounced on him, but his arrogance was deserved, and by that sword would be such an undignified way to die.

The boy gave her a sorry smile, and dipped his head in respect.

'Never mess with a dragon,' she thought once again, 'For they are clever things, nearly as clever as sphinxes.'

Perhaps, just as clever after all.

The boy reached forward onto the dias, and felt a shard of the broken cup. He vanished as the portkey whisked him away to a graveyard where broken souls were laid to rest, and those more broken made futile attempts to become whole.

She curls up on the stone perch and thinks that wizards are fools.

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When the boy arrived, the lingering soul of Cedric Diggory didn't have time to think.

The sword was pressed to his forehead and the boy gave him an almost pitying smile, before Cedric became a butterfly and flew through a gate and into the dark.

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