HP&SB: The Deathly Hallows

Chapter 12

It was sort of like floating in an ocean of gold.

Everything was a little fuzzy at the edges, a little blurry, but the world around me felt warm and soft. I yet to find any reason to voice a complaint. I could feel fingers run gently through my hair, and it was nice.

"You're making it hard to leave, Ced," I mumbled, tilting my face against the warm hand that moved to brush by my cheek. Cedric smiled, in the same crooked way he had always smiled.

"I can stop, if you like."

"Don't you dare," I told him, though it wasn't very convincing; every word came out as a broken whisper, my voice stuttered and quiet and barely there at all. Cedric always seemed to hear me though, because he nodded, and he didn't stop.

"You know you have to choose soon," he said. "And you know what you have to choose."

"What if I chose wrong?" I asked, more for the hell of it than anything. He shrugged, fingers pausing for a moment.

"You won't," he said. Strongly. Surely. I let out a sigh. He was right.

"I miss you," I said, and this time my voice was quiet because of the emotion stuck in my throat. It didn't help when he leant down either, press his lips gently to my forehead. He was warm, unlike the last time I had seen him.

"I miss you too," he said when he leant up again, peering down at me. I had woken up like this, only aware of the gold fuzziness around me and the fact that my head was resting on my long-dead-secret-boyfriend's lap. It wasn't the strangest thing I had experienced in my short life, but it did hurt a bit more than I had expected.

"I wish I could stay," I told him, and I meant it. His smile was sad.

"Harry needs you."

"And sometimes I need you, but you're not there," I told him, and the words were meant to come out harsh, but they didn't, and he sighed. I could feel him shift under me, my unmoving body– I had discovered my arms and legs were too heavy to move when I had first arrived. Cedric chalked it up to the fact that I was still, in whatever way, attached to my currently unconscious, immobile body.

The thought hadn't been comforting.

"You've grown," Cedric said then, a blatant change of subject, "You're beautiful."

"The scars must've not transferred with my subconscious," I murmured. Cedric grinned, giving his head a small shake. I smiled back, wishing for a moment I had the capability to reach up and touch his face, to feel his warmth under my palm, his smile under my fingers. To feel him alive, or at least as alive as he could be when he was dead.

"I think I loved you," I told him, because I hadn't before, way back when, but I could now, and he deserved to hear it. His grin fell a little, replaced by something serious, somber. He nodded.

"I think I loved you too," he told me, and smiled. "I met your father."

"Oh, Merlin," I choked out, a laugh willing itself out of my chest but never quite escaping. "I'm so sorry–"

"It's okay, it's okay," Cedric hushed, but he was still smiling. "He told me he was rooting for Harry, but that I wouldn't have been a bad second option."

"You were always my first," I told him firmly. "If you were alive, I don't know, but things could've been–"

"Don't play that game," he warned me. "You'll never win it. Things are how they are now. There's no going back."