Disclaimer: I have written this story using the characters and world of JK, meaning, I don't own it.

This is a response to hondagirl's First Love challenge on the HPFC; the challenge was to include the line "people don't marry their first love", and I immediately thought of Cedric/Cho. I'm quite happy with it, and I found it relatively easy to write, so here you go! Enjoy :)

Dedicated to everyone at the HPFC - you make that place awesome. Thank you. :)

They Say

They say people don't marry their first love. I wish they were lying.

My first love was a tall boy with a reasonable amount of messy brown hair, a gorgeous face and a set of even white teeth that flipped my stomach over every time he flashed them at me. He made me laugh and blush and feel things I wasn't used to, like being strong but weak all at the same time, and having nervous butterflies when I thought I was confident. I think that's what love is. When you think you don't know what's going on but really, somewhere in the back of your mind, you do, and you can't hide from it because it's just this one, great thing even though it feels like a thousand different emotions racing through your body. That must be love.

Cedric used to take me out to Hogsmeade, and we'd have a drink in Madam Puddifoot's because it was more personal, more romantic than the Three Broomsticks. It wasn't normally as pink as it was that Valentine's Day, but it always felt...cosy. It was perfect, for us. He would give me his coat in the winter and we would drink hot chocolate with our hats and gloves still on, even though we were inside and we could have cast a heating charm over ourselves anyway. He knew I preferred it the simple way, where we were just close and happy and together. Sometimes we'd skip the teashop and just walk down to the Shrieking Shack (or as close as we dared) in the snow. Once he took my hand and pulled me down, and we made snow angels like I did when I was a little girl. It was a lovely day and he was a lovely boy and people said we made a lovely couple, and for fleeting moments I wanted to be with him forever. If I could have him back, I'd marry him in a heartbeat.

They say that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, and they were right about that, too. I realised I loved Cedric Diggory on the night that followed his death, and the feeling of grief is the complete opposite to love. There's just one emotion that oozes through your veins like steel blood; cold, heavy, sorrowful emptiness that nothing can penetrate. Every comforting pat is an icy stab, every pitying hug a suffocating crush, and you feel so isolated, so completely and utterly alone.

I resorted to crying because that was the only way I could really release everything, the only way I could just let go without hurting myself in the process. It was two full days after the end of the tournament when I started. Until then I barely spoke to anyone, I barely acknowledged their or my own existence. I just lay in my dormitory, staring at the wall. During the first few weeks, I wished I had just stayed there, in my bed, because then I wouldn't have had to face anyone. I wouldn't have had to endure their pitiful glances, and see them look quickly away when I met their gaze with my own tearstained eyes. I saw them stare, and I heard them whisper.

I cried my way through my sixth year, earning me the reputation of the school's watering can. Some people did try to help me; my best friends refused to desert me and there were the DA meetings and Harry, but I always felt breakable, as if Cedric had been the only thing protecting me from the real world. It got better over time, by my seventh year my tears had dried and I felt like I could support myself again, but, as with every loss, it felt like a part of me was missing. I grew used to it after I'd lived without him for a few years, probably because I never tried to fill the void with drink or superficial friends or materialistic things. I just wept my sorrow away until it remained as a tight lump of despondency residing at the bottom of my heart. I think it lines the inside of my heart too, like sticky adhesive that never completely went away, but healed gradually as I grew up.

I married a muggle, a French man, with a sparkle in his eyes and a charming accent. He had Cedric's smile though, and that must have been why I let myself fall for him, as so many other nice guys had tried and failed to win me for reasons I can't even recall. Maybe I don't remember them because they didn't have Cedric's voice or Cedric's hair or Cedric's touch. I can still remember those things quite vividly.

Éric wasn't perfect, but with his smile he made me the happiest I'd been in a long time, and although I knew, deep down, that I'd never truly be over Cedric, he was certainly the next best thing. He did a much better job than a particular boy at any rate.

I don't think Harry counted as a love. A crush, yes, but a regretful one at that. I didn't love him, and I don't think he loved me. It was just a complicated crescendo of feelings that seemed to well up in both of us and fall apart just as quickly. My emotions were mostly guilt and grief and confusion, and his were… I don't really know what his were - we never talked about Cedric or the tournament or the past. Maybe that's why it didn't work, because we never talked. I guess I'm glad; I had no idea what was going on or how I was really feeling, and with Cedric's death and Voldemort's return and O.W.L's it was all just too much. A massive overload of important events that I just got lost in.

I don't know the full reason for why I went after Harry in my sixth year. I liked him, a lot, but I shouldn't have; not after what had happened at the end of my fifth and his fourth. How we could possibly have worked is beyond me, not when I was in a state most of the time and he didn't know at all how to handle it. Maybe the fact that he had been with Cedric when he departed had spurred some strange curiosity in me; maybe I thought that something had been exchanged between them moments before his death and by being with the boy that was still alive I could somehow feel the boy that had died. That was who I wanted to feel, in the end. Perhaps I went to Harry ultimately for comfort, because I thought that he would be one of the few people who would understand what I was going through, because he was going through it too. Maybe I went to him for comfort because I thought he needed it too.

I miss Harry sometimes; his awkward smile and his nervous stammer and the way he ran his hand through his hair when he saw me, but I miss Cedric more.

They say people don't marry their first love. I blame them for Cedric's death, because maybe if they hadn't said it in the first place, it wouldn't be true.

Thanks for reading. Please review, I really appreciate your opinion. :)