A Harry Potter fic, just something I've been working on in order to work out a few things in my own mind. Comments are greatly appreciated.

It's been months now since Cedric died. I still wake up at night and find my pillow wet from the tears I stifle during the day. I dreamt of him last night, dreamt of the way it should have been; him returning from the maze alive and with the trophy, winner of the Triwizard tournament. And the dream turned to a nightmare, because I woke up, woke up and remembered that he had returned from the maze not as the handsome, intelligent, charming boy who escorted me to the Yule Ball, but as a lifeless corpse.

I remember the funeral; his parents were there, crying and the silence, oh, the silence of the quiet cemetery. The sun had been shining and the flowers were brilliant, and that seemed wrong, so wrong, because Cedric wasn't there to see them.

When Hogwarts started again all my friends seemed distant. The boys on the Quidditch team understood when I said I could not play; the girls in my House don't often meet my eyes, but always offer to help me with my work, as if because I had a broken heart I had a damaged mind as well. Truth be told, only when I am working can I forget even a particle of my pain, the aching of my soul that follows me every moment. I cannot even watch Quidditch; that was a passion we shared. It's worse when Gryffindor is playing, because of Harry. I like Harry; I might have gone to the ball with him had he asked me first. But it's Cedric I love. And it's Harry who came back.

Why must we lose something to know how much we prize it? How could it be that it was not until the moment that I saw him dead, I did not know my heart? My family does not realize how truly I loved – and still do love –Cedric. Because I am not yet seventeen, I cannot love? Because I am still legally a child, I cannot have a broken heart?

I know Cedric would not want me to mourn him this long, but I do none the less. I weep for him, for the future we might have had together and now will not. I wonder if something I might have done could have saved him. I wish, more fervently than I've ever wanted anything, that I had told him I loved him. But how could I have, when as I said before I did not know my love until it was too late?

I do not know what shall become of me. Perhaps I shall join in the fight against the dark lord. It was, after all, he who killed my Cedric, he who I hear laughing when I wake, cold and clammy, in the dark of night.

Must I weep and mourn forever? Would it not be better to die than to live like this, unable to taste the sweetness of life because of this bitter taste in my heart? It is winter in my soul. Will spring ever come again?