A thought I couldn't shake. I don't own Harry Potter.

She couldn't seem to breathe.

He was lying down there, Harry draped over him, his eyes staring up at the sky, but so empty, so, so empty and so devoid of anything at all that she knew he had to be—

No. No. No no no no no no nonononononononono.

She couldn't seem to think either. Time seemed to be moving so slowly, so frozen and stiff. There was a hollow space inside her and she looked down, searching for the hole it must have made but there was no sign, no evidence that anything had happened at all.

There wasn't any sound, though the crowd was on its collective feet all around her. Just this strange rushing that over-powered the tinny silence. It wheezed in and out, slowly seeping its way around her.

Cedric Diggory was dead. And, she thought, maybe I have died with him.

There was a pressure behind her eyes, and she shuddered with sudden chills. He looked so unchanged, just laying there. His mouth was open as if paused in mid sentence and his eyes were open as well, staring into the dark sky. She almost would have sworn he was alive, but his eyes gave it away. His stillness gave it away. His emotionless body gave it away.

Cedric had always been warm and kind. Strong and just. Never cold, never frozen. And yet… there he was now. Frozen in time. Forever.

And that was when she started to cry. Because there he was, and yet there he was not, because a heart like Cedric Diggory's could never be frozen. Not ever.

So she let the tears fall, crying for the boy who would never live to become a man, crying for the family he had left behind, the friends with whom he would never again laugh or joke around with, and also for herself. She cried for the thought that she would never have the chance to get to know him. To like him. To love him.

She grieved for what she had lost with the boy lying before the maze. She cried for the chances she would never have.