Everyone Loved Him
by AHS

A/N: Short one-shot, set sometime 5th year. Hermione has a talk with Harry about the dementors incident in Little Whinging, which quickly turns to Cedric.

"Dudley was winding me up, as usual, and I was almost managing to ignore him. Maybe not ignore, but I really wasn't letting the fat fuck get to me. Until... he mentioned Ced-ric." Harry quickly tacked the second syllable onto Ced's name and looked up, eyes flashing fire. "He had no right to even say his name."

Hermione took a measured breath and spoke softly. "How did Dudley know about Cedric?"

"He said he heard me talking in my sleep, moaning from my nightmares. That I kept crying out, Don't kill Cedric, Don't k-..." Harry didn't want to repeat those words. "Then he asked if Cedric was my boyfriend." He tried to laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea, but the sound came out choked and unbelievably sad.

"What did you tell him?"

"What do you mean, what did I...?" Harry looked at his friend, almost accusing, when she asked that. "I told him he was a liar... about everything, about me saying those things in my sleep." He cast his eyes down again, adding quietly, "But I knew it was true. I mean, about the nightmares."

A thoughtful silence stretched between them for several moments, until Hermione spoke again.

"Harry, I never told you how sorry I was, after the Tournament."

"Yes, you did, Hermione."

"No. I think I told you I was sorry for all you'd been put through, and that you had to fight V-Voldemort, and that Ron and I couldn't have helped you somehow, but... I want to say I'm sorry about Cedric. I'm sorry that he died. And I'm really sorry you had to see it happen."

"How about sorry that I got him killed?"

Hermione looked at Harry's face, how it was almost daring her to disagree, and shook her head gently. "You don't still believe that, do you?"

"What else is there to believe? It was because of me that Voldemort came back, because of me the damn Cup was a portkey, and because of me that Cedric ended up in that graveyard! A casualty of a fight that wasn't even his! He told me to take the Cup! He was that good and that fair, that he actually thought I deserved it more! Because I'd saved his life." His raging slowed with the bubbling up of more pained non-laughter. "Isn't that rich? But I couldn't stop competing with him. I had to be as good and fair and noble as Cedric Diggory was. So I insisted we take it together. And... so fast... the life I'd saved... given back."

"Harry... you didn't suggest you and Cedric take the win together because you were competing over who could be the bigger person. You did it because it was the right thing. Because you are good and fair, like Cedric. And you know you can't blame yourself for any of the evil things V-Voldemort does. You can't blame yourself for Cedric's death any more than you could blame your parents for V-Voldemort trying to kill you when you were a baby!"

Harry's expression was furious at the mention of his parents. Hermione looked at him sharply, yet compassionately.

"You know what I mean, Harry. I'm trying to make you see..."

"Yes," he sighed. "But, the difference is, my mother saved me. She gave her life for me. I couldn't even... Damn it, I was so focused on the pain in my stupid scar! And Cedric was... was worried about me, actually asking if I was okay. Then that horrible voice..." Kill the spare, those words that still made him wake up screaming, he could not make himself speak. "And Wormtail..." He ground the name out with pure hate. "And that flash of green light..." He felt the wave of nausea he always got, seeing that light in his mind. "If I hadn't been all about my own pain, maybe I could have blocked the spell. Maybe I..."

"Maybe you would be the one dead," Hermione said matter-of-factly.

"Maybe that would be better," Harry countered.

"Stop that! Not for me, not for Ron, it wouldn't! Not for the wizarding world. Harry, you're..." She knew not to say The Chosen One... and certainly not The Boy Who Lived. "You're special."

"And Cedric wasn't? He was. He... he was the true Champion."

"Okay. There's another scenario to consider. Maybe it would have been better if you'd just let Cedric take the Cup alone, right? Except that V-Voldemort would have been furious at not getting who he wanted, still would have ordered Wormtail to kill Cedric, and the only difference is he would have been alone. And his body would have been left there, without you to bring him home."

That thought made tears begin to prickle at Harry's eyes, but he blinked them back. "I should have taken the Cup myself, even if I didn't deserve it."

"You'd still be beating yourself up, about taking his victory."

"At least he would be alive! Even if he hated me, he'd be here."

"But maybe you really would be dead. Because it's not right, and it's not fair, but maybe Cedric had to die like that for you to be angry enough, have enough fight inside of you to be able to defeat Voldemort."

He noted how she said Voldemort for the first time without a nervous stammer, and - as when she'd recently stopped saying You-Know-Who and begun attempting to say the name itself - it got his attention. He realized how serious she was, and he stopped himself ranting at her over the injustice of it all.

"He forgave you, Harry. Not for anything you did, but because he knew you would blame yourself anyway. Even not having known you very long, he knew you that well. And he asked you to bring his body back, and you did. You did right by him."

Harry remembered the ghostly shape of Cedric appearing from the wand as he battled Voldemort. Hearing his voice for the last time as he made his request, sounding of trademark gentleness and kindness, and sadness for his parents losing their son. Maybe for Harry, too, at having to take them his dead body. His body that had felt so warm. Even after the time that passed between the green flash and Harry's narrow escape, even with the cold of the night, Cedric was still so warm. It made Harry want to refuse to believe he was dead, but his open, gray eyes were just... lifeless. All the light gone out.

"Harry, how did you feel about Cedric?"

It took him several moments to register that Hermione had spoken, and then his chest constricted strangely. "What do you mean, how did I feel about him?"

"I don't know, I just... I remember seeing you that day, when the portkey brought you back, and suddenly you were there on the ground, with Cedric. You were holding onto him so tightly, like... like he was all you had in the world, or all you wanted. And you were crying into his chest and screaming and you wouldn't let him go. You were so afraid not to touch him, I think. Dumbledore kept pulling at you, trying to help you, but... I don't know how long it took them to finally get you off of him."

Harry just listened to everything she'd said, trying to keep breathing. Trying not to relive it, but unable to fend off the chill that ran through him at the memory of losing contact with Cedric, or the stabbing sensation in his heart at Mr. Diggory's tortured cries of, "My boy."

"So?" was all he said.

"So... it's understandable, of course, considering all you went through... I'd want to hold onto anything, anyone familiar... And I know you thought a lot of him, and I could tell he did of you... But I was just wondering..."

"We were hardly even friends," Harry interrupted, with a forced shrug of his shoulders, though the truth of it burned. Friendly competitors was as much as they'd managed, really, and even that was a miracle of Cedric's grace.

Hermione didn't stop to dispute; she just kept on. "I was just wondering if you loved him."

There was silence, and then there was the rush of Harry's blood through his veins echoing in his ears, but neither could drown out what she'd said. "Everyone loved him," he offered weakly.

"I'm not asking about everyone, Harry. Everyone loved the good-looking, popular boy. The Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain. The Triwizard Champion. But how many of them really knew him? I think you did."

His head nodded slightly, but then seemed to be shaking no simultaneously. "I want more time. There wasn't enough. The year went by so fast, and I took too long to figure out... the clues."

She knew he wasn't talking about a golden egg or a secret song. "Harry..."

"There was only time enough to shake up my whole world, my whole self. Make me wonder and wish for things I shouldn't have wanted and probably never could have had. Oh, and time enough to take it all away. But what if... what if he...?"

"Harry..." She spoke to the tear running down his cheek.

"What if it wasn't just me?" There had been moments... moments of light in beautiful gray eyes, sparkling at him. Moments where he'd needed to know, but had been too afraid to ask... or answer. "What if, for once, I wasn't alone?"

"Harry, you loved Cedric Diggory, didn't you?"

"Yes."

End