In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter LXXIX: When the Nightmares Take Me

But now those lonely lullabies
Just dampen my tired eyes
Because I can't forget you
Because I can't forget you

I'll dissolve when the rain pours in
When the nightmares take me
I will scream with the howling wind
'Cause it's a bitter world and I'd rather dream

"Lonely Lullaby"
Owl City

HENRY:

I laid awake that night. I didn't toss and turn. I just stared at the ceiling and let the darkness overcome me inch by inch.

I had left the letter that had lived under my pillow since February under Cedric's.

He would never read it. He would never get to know how I felt about him.

I got the feeling Lucy understood, but it went unspoken. I got the feeling Lucy understood many unspoken truths, really, things I had never even considered once in my seventeen years of existence. She'd always had the look of someone who was tragically wise beyond her years, but without Cedric to bring light to those haunted eyes, it was more pronounced than ever.

But that night, it wasn't Lucy's eyes I was remembering.

Cedric's eyes were all I could see.

I had left a piece of parchment in Cedric's pillowcase to replace the one I had taken before leaving Hogwarts. I shot up out of bed and grabbed my wand, lighting it with a quick "Lumos!"

Cedric's handwriting on a scrap of parchment. Have faith in the sunrise. His handwriting had always been far neater than anyone else's in our year. Professors loved him for it. I asked him about it once. He blushed and said he felt bad if people had to work hard to read his handwriting. Because that's just who Cedric was.

"I've kept it in here for... years."

He'd been putting his faith in the sunrise for years. Was that how he was so unfailingly optimistic for everyone except himself? Had he always known there'd come a day the sun would rise for us and not for him?

"I pull it out whenever I have nightmares."

What I said to Lucy was true. His worst nightmares were always about losing her. Losing her to monsters in the Forbidden Forest. To the Chamber of Secrets. To Sirius Black. To the merpeople at the bottom of the lake. I let myself wonder for half a second if he'd ever had a nightmare about losing me.

"I never used it more than I did last summer. I just needed the reminder nearly every night that no matter how long the night is, the sun will always rise."

He wanted to help people. He wanted to heal people. He wanted to save people. He was born to do that. He was never meant to die before he got the chance to change the world.

I set the parchment on my nightstand and buried my head in my hands.

A couple nights before the third task, Cedric and I were drinking bottles of butterbeer with our roommates, having the time of our lives. Cedric was such a lightweight it was hilarious. Two bottles in, he was buzzed. Three, tipsy.

That night, we talked him into four.

He didn't have final exams, and none of the rest of us cared too much about ours. We still had seventh year to go after all. A couple of silencing charms, a dozen or so bottles, the radio loud, and a Golden Snitch flying around the room created the perfect atmosphere for chaos. Fun, mindless, youthful chaos.

"Magic Works" came on. I knew it was Cedric's favorite song. I jokingly offered to run up to get Cho from the Ravenclaw common room, but, drunker than I was, Cedric's eyes bugged out of his head.

"No time, no time!" he exclaimed. "Come on, Henry, dance with me!"

Our roommates shoved me toward him, laughing hysterically, and I danced with Cedric. It was hilarious at the time, not at all romantic. He twirled me and dipped me and we spun until we were dizzy. But toward the end of the song, he grew serious.

And don't believe that magic can die
No, no, no, this magic can't die
So dance your final dance
'Cause this is your final chance

The song had been right.

The magic between us hadn't died with him. It was evident in the way my heart felt as if it would break at the thought of him, the way everything within me still wanted him, the way nothing felt real about the past seven days, the past seven nights.

I knew in my head he was never coming back, but my heart was still waiting for him.

Cedric's nightmares hadn't come true. Lucy was safe and warm in her bed, back home in Ottery St. Catchpole.

My nightmares had come true. But never, never, not even on the darkest night, not even in my worst nightmare, did I imagine he would die the way he did.

I crumpled to the ground and sobbed.