In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 4: Nebula

Chapter 171: Troubled Water

LUCY:

February 24, 1996 was a Saturday. It marked one year since the second task. It marked one year since the nightmare had started, too. The fact that it happened every month, every 24th, didn't make it any less terrifying. The darkness, the cold, the hopelessness, the knowledge that Cedric wasn't coming. It never got easier. Every 24th, I was launched back into reality feeling as if I really had been down there all night long. The first time I'd woken up from that nightmare, though, Cedric had been right there, pulling me swiftly to shore and assuring me over and over and over and over that he was there and I was safe.

A year later, when I jerked awake from the same horrible nightmare for the thirteenth time, I was all too aware of the fact that Cedric's presence was a comfort I would never have again.

I tried to steady my breathing as I swallowed my tears. The sun had not yet risen, but I needed to get out of the castle. I changed into one of Cedric's jumpers with trembling hands and practically fled the dormitory. I cast silencing spells all around me as I sprinted through hallways and corridors, and I was careful to stick to shadows as I darted out into the dawn. I didn't stop running until I reached the end of the dock on the Black Lake.

I lowered myself to the wooden planks and let my legs dangle freely over the water. It was then that the first sob escaped me, and the tears began to fall.

I wrapped Cedric's jumper around me as tightly as I could, but there was nothing left of him to hold. Never again would I get to hold him the way I once had, and never again would he get to hold me the way he once had.

Part of me wanted to jump into the water, to see if he would somehow come to save me again, but, unfortunately, I knew better. If I ever did find myself at the bottom of the Black Lake again, there would be no Cedric coming to find me, no Cedric to pull me to the surface, no Cedric to help me to shore, no Cedric to sit with me until the panic passed.

Even if I found myself at the top of the world, somehow, there would be no Cedric then either. I found myself thinking of the Quidditch match when I had first conjured my corporeal patronus, the time my bear had charged down Draco Malfoy and his goons. Cedric was woven into the fabric of that moment, that part of my story. He was there in the memory I used to fuel the patronus. He was the first person to find me on the field. He was there the last time I'd conjured that patronus too, last June before the third task, the night I taught him how to conjure a patronus of his own. He would never again be there for any patronus-worthy moments that I might experience in my life.

Sooner than later, everyone would believe Harry. Eventually, the world would know that Cedric had been murdered by Voldemort. But what would happen then? Would people still remember Cedric, or would people forget him in their realization of the threat that Voldemort was really back? Would Cedric become a martyr, a hero? Or would he be nothing more than a memory that faded more and more and more and more with time?

If I had learned anything in my fifteen years, it was that memory was fragile, it was fragile and it was complicated and it was a weapon and it was so valuable there was no way to possibly describe how much it meant to me. I had been making an effort to cling to the memory of Cedric, but already I could feel it slipping. As I tugged his jumper ever tighter around me, I found that I'd forgotten exactly how tightly he hugged me. I could remember feeling safe every time I was in his arms, I could remember the gentle strength of his reassuring hugs, but I couldn't feel it anymore. It was like his hugs had held my broken pieces together, but I hadn't yet found a way to pull everything together on my own. I doubted it was even possible. I found, too, that the jumper had forgotten how Cedric smelled, and I had too. I could remember the pine and the soil and the books, but I couldn't actually feel it either. I had my memories, sure, I remembered, but the difference between remembering and remembering left me feeling empty and cold.