I just realised something about Harry Potter that turns the whole series on its head | JOE is the voice of Irish people at home and abroad

harry potter killed cedric diggory.

bear with me here.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the titular character and a handsome Hufflepuff boy named Cedric Diggory compete in the Triwizard tournament. Long story short, they end up walking headlong into Lord Voldemort’s evil plan and spoiler alert, one of them ends up dead. (that’s cedric.)

It has long been accepted that peter pettigrew aka wormtail kills cedric on voldemort’s orders, and the film adaptation of jk rowling’s fourth book works with this hands down. But I’m pretty sure we’ve all been wrong since the year 2000. I’m pretty sure there’s one suspect we’ve all looked at: Harry Potter. Let’s examine the evidence.

Harry had both the motivation and the opportunity to kill Cedric.

• harry meets cedric and his loving father amos at the beginning of the book. He is jealous of Diggory’s relationship with his parents.
• He was bullied by Cedric’s friends during fourth year, who were wearing “potter sucks”. badges and tormented him. he was humiliated.
• cedric was known to be dating cho chang, the girl of harry’s dreams. He invited her to the Yule Ball, but she was already going with Cedric, which further compounded her humiliation. harry watches them throughout the dance.
• they were competing against each other in the triwizard tournament, a chance for harry to redeem his pride.
• harry learns how to perform avada kedavra from barty crouch jnr (playing grumpy) just weeks before the incident. this is the spell used to kill cedric.
• in the final challenge of the triwizard tournament, the two disappear together.
• cedric returns dead.
• harry blames “voldemort”, a wizard the world believes died 15 years ago.

Now, if this were a true crime podcast, you’d expect the police to have arrested Harry on the spot. but they didn’t do that. Despite all the evidence pointing in Harry’s direction, they’re prepared to let this go without a proper investigation.

This is no doubt due in no small part to Harry’s status as a protégé of Albus Dumbledore who, on multiple occasions, has allowed Harry to break the Hogwarts rules and even allowed him to go back in time to the previous year. Dumbledore is not impartial when it comes to any matter related to Harry, and once again uses his influence to protect Harry.

but I know what you’re thinking. jk rowling tells us that wormtail kills cedric on voldemort’s orders. but here’s the thing.

not her.

on page 412 of goblet of fire, in chapter 32, voldemort gives the order to kill cedric. a “second voice” yells avada kedavra as harry sees green and closes his eyes. when she opens her eyes, cedric is dead. Wormtail is there, but we are never told who the second voice belongs to.

This is how it works, in jk’s own words.

“from far above his head, harry heard a cold, high voice say ‘kill the spare.’ a hissing noise and a second voice, shrieking the words into the night: ‘avada kedavra !’

“a burst of green light shone through harry’s eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar was so bad it made him gag, and then subsided; terrified of what What was he doing to see, he opened his itchy eyes. Cedric was lying on the ground with his arms and legs outstretched beside him. He was dead.”

harry “sees green”. not just the flash of avada kedavra, but envy. Cedric has the popularity, the girlfriend that Harry wants, a loving father. he sees green. that universally accepted metaphor of envy. And in a flash of jealous rage he follows Voldemort’s order and kills Cedric.

It’s also worth noting that Harry doesn’t seem to be able to identify the voice casting the spell… even though he’s heard Wormtail’s voice several times before, and is well aware of what it sounds like.

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The opening chapter of Order of the Phoenix tells us that Harry has nightmares about Cedric every night. an obvious sign of a guilty conscience and attempts to suppress memory.

Harry’s relationship with Cho Chang also tells us a lot about the type of man we’re dealing with.

in the fifth book, harry thinks: “although if he had asked her to the dance before cedric, things might have been different”. and what does that mean? Different like? that she wouldn’t have had to kill cedric?

read this section on harry and cho’s valentine’s day date:

“‘I came here with Cedric last year,’ said Cho. In the second it took for what she had said to sink in, Harry’s insides had gone ice cold. He couldn’t believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, as kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub hovered above their heads.

cho’s voice was quite louder when he spoke again. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time…did cedric-me-mention her before she died?’ This was the last thing on earth Harry wanted to discuss, least of all with Cho.

‘Well, no-‘, he said quietly. there was no time for him to say anything. erm… so… do you… get to watch a lot of quidditch over the holidays? you support tornadoes, right?’…’look,’ she said desperately, leaning in so no one else could hear, ‘let’s not talk about cedric now. Let’s talk about something else…'”

what the hell is changing the subject of the answer? “how about the red sox?” I’ll have to do better than that to fool myself, radcliffe. he couldn’t believe she wanted to talk about cedric. how self-centered is this guy? Self-centered enough… to kill?

later, when seeking hermione’s advice on the matter, harry makes himself look even more of a total nutcase.

“‘Girls don’t usually ask questions like that,’ Hermione said.”

“‘well, they should!’ Harry said forcefully. ‘Then she could have told her I liked her, and she wouldn’t have had to worry about Cedric dying again!'”

harry is speaking forcefully. this yelling is blaming cho for being “excited” about the death of the boy she loved.

is a microcosm of how unstable he is throughout the entire fifth book. Harry’s guilt and denial for killing Cedric is eating away at him, causing him to fall further into Voldemort’s trap, culminating in his delusion that Sirius is being held hostage. this leads to the showdown at the ministry which actually ends up killing sirius.

The strongest refutation against this theory is the a priori incantatem state that voldemort and harry’s wands are in as they duel, minutes after cedric’s death. harry and voldemort’s wands match thanks to their shared phoenix feather, and “priori incantatem” occurs, a rare situation where the wands essentially share their browsing history and reveal their most recently cast spells.

Cedric’s ghost supposedly appears from Voldemort’s wand, suggesting that Voldemort’s wand was the one used to kill him. of course the other wand involved in the a priori enchantment is… harry’s. And conveniently, nothing comes out of Harry’s wand. I take it he’s never cast any spells before?

A simpler explanation is this: the a priori incantatem is a hallucination. every part of the messy fantasy world he’s had to create since he murdered cedric in a moment of rage. During the A Priori Charm, Cedric’s ghost asks Harry to return his body to his parents, another sure sign of guilt. Harry also sees his own parents emerge from Voldemort’s wand.

since wormtail has been using voldemort’s wand for a whole year, it seems unlikely that the spell to kill harry’s parents all those years ago is one of the most recent. he also says that when the “ghosts” of harry’s parents emerge, they have somehow been communicating with each other: his father says “your mother is coming” and advises him to return to the portkey, which they would have no way. to meet.

While some kind of enchantment may have occurred a priori, many of the details surrounding it are highly implausible. Furthermore, the only one to suggest this theory is Dumbledore, well known for being Harry’s sworn protector against all consequences. Even Severus Snape (who is present as Dumbledore explains) had never heard of this effect before, which casts serious doubt on its legitimacy.

what we do know is that harry had every reason to want cedric dead, he knew how to kill him and he had the clearest opportunity he would ever have. we know he was exonerated solely on the testimony of albus dumbledore. We know that as soon as Cedric died, Harry set his sights on Cedric’s ex-girlfriend. we know that as soon as he knew that she still loved cedric, he became aggressive and forceful.

just saying. investigations have been reopened for less.

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