In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXXXIV: The Twentieth of October

HENRY:

All three hands of my watch moved to midnight. I set it down on my dresser and stared at the empty bed beside me.

It was the twentieth of October.

"Happy birthday, Ced," I whispered to the darkness. Sorrow ripped through my chest, and I curled around his jumper in my arms, pressing my face into it as if I might smell well-loved books and rich soil and evergreen-scented soap again if I tried hard enough. As if I could feel his warmth again if I tried hard enough. "You should be here. I'm so sorry you're not."

I pulled the curtains around my bed and whispered a silencing charm before I fell apart completely. I hadn't cried in a while, because, after a while, it had stopped helping. It stopped feeling like a release and started feeling like a chore. As if I had to cry a certain amount every day just to prove to myself that I missed him. When I confessed this to Mum in a letter, she said that even a healing wound was going to hurt, even if it hurt less and less with time. I didn't have to prove to anyone that it still hurt, least of all myself.

But I cried that night. I cried until I fell asleep, until I fell into a dream. Of him, of course.

It wasn't a nightmare. Not that night. It wasn't a memory, either. It was just nonsense. A hazy dream of disconnected images, the kind I usually had when I was sick.

It wasn't a nightmare, and it wasn't a memory, but it was nice. Golden sunshine and Golden Snitches and yellow jumpers and yellow ties. The sound of his laugh tied the images together with a cheerful melody. The specifics of the dream were forgotten as soon as I opened my eyes the next morning, but the warmth radiating off of the jumper still in my arms felt real. So real.

The mood in the dormitory was somber as we silently shuffled around grabbing robes and ties and books and quills for the day. We were all glad it was Friday so we could drink away everything we felt that night without having to worry about waking up for class the next morning. Or, well, that was the plan, anyway, until Lucy came to sit next to me, twisting a black and yellow scarf in her hands.

"Hi," she said. "Sorry, I-I know I'm in his spot—"

"Don't be sorry," I interrupted. "No better person to fill it."

She looked down at the scarf in her hands. "The first meeting is tonight, eight o'clock. Room of Requirement, seventh floor across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. Will you tell the others in your house?"

"Oh, I— yes, of course."

"I thought it seemed symbolic," Lucy mumbled, glancing back up at me. "Doing it today, I mean."

"Oh, yes, definitely." I nodded. "Great idea. Sorry, it just... caught me off-guard, I suppose. But I think it's a great idea, really."

"Thanks," she replied with half a smile. "So you'll be there?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

She smiled a bit wider and started to leave, but I reached for her elbow.

"Lucy?" Her eyes met mine, and I swallowed hard. They were his eyes, too. Just blue, not grey, and far more haunted than his ever were. I forced the thought from my mind. "If you need anything, today especially, just let me know. Alright?"

"Same goes for you," Lucy replied, nodding.

I nodded back. "We can be sad together, which is far less pitiful than being sad alone."

"Did Cedric tell you that?"

"Maybe," I said with a small smile.

"I thought that sounded like him."