𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕖𝕤. cedric diggory

6

     Fourth year, we encountered a real life chamber that inhabited a giant basilisk. I was terrified - students were getting Petrified and I didn't want you to be one of them.

     You told me it was going to be okay, rubbed my shoulders when I went into a panic. Your sister told me to man up. I told her to shove it up her arse. You made us separate.

     That was the year I started dating Alicia Spinnet. She was a cute bird and I was in need of a distraction.

     It was wrong of me to take advantage of her like that, but you had your own admirers and I couldn't sit around and watch as they flounced after you. Couldn't watch you give them beaming grins and lighthearted chuckles like the ones you saved for me. It pricked away at my heart like an angry rose had occupied the confines of it and was using it as it's own personal nest for its deadly thorns.

     Alicia allowed me to distract myself from thoughts of you but she knew I wasn't one hundred percent dedicated. I didn't know if she didn't care or if she just didn't want to ask and get her feelings hurt; either way, we were together and it wasn't perfect - it wasn't you - but we made it through.

     The hardest part was watching you encourage me. Watching you tell me that it was okay, I should be with my girlfriend was like telling me my affections were useless because you would never care for me in the unrefined way I cared for you. And I think that was the hardest part for me, knowing that you would never feel the same, but longing all the more.

     It ached deep inside of me, begging to be released, to break the shackles off and run. I almost let it, almost told you that I wanted you as more than a mate, that your eyes were the only thing I yearned to see when I opened my own. I almost told you that you were the only person who could make me feel so alive, yet so, so dead at the same time.

     It was like I was drowning, holding my breath as I was dragged deeper and deeper into the glacial waters. The thrill of fighting the waves, fighting the current kept me fighting, kept me alive, but there was also the promise of death - that no matter how hard I tried, I would never surface. I would stay down there, sinking, with no air, until I was defeated.

     Loving you was kind of like that.

     I broke up with Alicia before term ended and you comforted me as I waded further and further into the waters, your warm touch like ice to my fragile heart. You spoke uplifting words to me, told me I would find someone else and I agreed even though I didn't want anyone else.

     There was only you.

     And with every hug and every grasp of my hand, I was pulled deeper into the black abyss of the cool waters and it was you who was tugging me, coaxing me to give up my fight and just let go.

     You were drowning me, Cedric.