Okay, Readers, this is just my take on what could've happened after Ron and Hermione's fight at the Yule Ball. It's not HG/CD, but I like to think of it as what could've been the start of a friendship. Sigh. I miss Cedric.

Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling. She owns Hermione, Cedric, the Yule Ball...everything, right down to the discarded streamer. I just borrow them.

Tearstains

The Ball seemed to be winding down, for all intents and purposes. Most of the tables were empty, except for the odd student or two who was resting their feet or making awkward small-talk with their date. On the dance floor, the few remaining couples swayed slowly on the spot, the girls' heads resting delicately on their dates' shoulders.

Hermione Granger sat at the foot of the marble staircase, her arms folded against the draft that issued from the open front doors. Not that the chill was what was bothering her; the cold of a December night was nothing compared to the ice that had slid into her stomach, freezing her insides. How could a night that had started so well end so miserably?

'Fraternizing with the enemy', she thought angrily, stupid prat! He doesn't have a clue, does he? Then, as quickly as it had come, her anger dissolved, bitterness welling up inside her to take its place as she watched couple after couple, some handclasped, all smiling, sneak off to the rose gardens for a little private time. Without her consent, her mind wandered back to the hours she'd spent preening in front of the mirror in a most un-Hermione-ish fashion. He didn't even say I looked nice…

She felt the tears coming before they escaped her eyes. Trying madly not to blink, she searched for a handkerchief, only to remember that she had no pockets. How could she be so stupid as to forget one? Well, I didn't think I'd end the night crying, she reasoned, fearing the teardrops landing on her dress robes, where everyone would see that she'd been crying. What if they knew she was crying over him? In place of a handkerchief, she brushed the newly-formed tears away with her fingers. The teardrops clung to her fingertips like morning dew.

The sound of footsteps caused her to look up in alarm; she wasn't ready for anyone to know she was crying, not now. Her heart fluttered a tiny bit at the possibility that it was Ron coming to apologize to her. But no, it was just Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang, arm-in-arm, headed out of the Great Hall and probably out to the gardens like all the other happy couples.

Hermione wanted to look away, but somehow she couldn't. She watched in fascination as they stepped into the Entrance Hall as though they were walking on air. For a moment, she could've sworn that Cedric caught her eye, but she dismissed the thought as ludicrous—she was invisible, as always. If it were anyone else, their laughing would've annoyed her, foul mood that she was in, but there was just something different about these two. The way he twirled her around to stand in front of him, the way her fingers caressed his cheek as they gazed into each other's eyes, the way he kissed her hand as she headed off in a different direction.

Cedric watched his date as she walked off, a dreamy smile on his face, and Hermione knew that even though he was standing there in the Entrance Hall, he was miles away, in blissful abandon. Then she was jolted back to her senses rather abruptly as Cedric Diggory look directly at her. Before she could take stock of the situation, he walked over and settled himself on the step beside her.

"Hello," he said, rather uncertainly. His smile was kind and his eyes—those eyes!—tugged at Hermione's heartstrings almost unwillingly. She barely registered that he was speaking to her before she heard herself responding.

"You're Harry's friend, right? I've seen you two together quite a lot."

"Yes…yes, we're best friends," Hermione replied, toying absentmindedly with a streamer that littered the ground. Cedric watched her for a moment before continuing.

"Didn't you come with Viktor Krum?"

Hermione sighed. It had been the talk of the evening, her fairy-tale transformation and arrival on the arm of an international Quidditch star, a Triwizard Champion to boot. She wondered briefly if Cho had felt as surprised, as flattered when Cedric had asked her to the ball as Hermione had when Viktor asked her. It had all seemed so exciting at first, but now she just felt like the whole evening had gone wrong.

Cedric was still looking at her inquiringly, his gray eyes questioning why the girl who, just a few short hours ago, was the envy of every girl in the Great Hall was now sitting alone, with red eyes, fighting off tears. She scrambled for an answer.

"Oh…yes, Viktor headed off a while ago…Karkaroff swept him out of here, said he needed an early night…I don't know, I guess I just wasn't ready to go up to bed myself." As soon as the words escaped her lips, Hermione wished they hadn't. She wasn't even sure she believed this rubbish herself; she was certain Cedric wouldn't. Yet there he sat, nodding in apparent understanding.

"You look sad," he said, catching her completely off-guard. How would he know? For that matter, why would he care? He was Cedric Diggory—handsome, popular, prefect, Quidditch captain, Triwizard champion. What did it matter to him if one awkward, bookish fourth-year girl looked sad?

And yet…

And yet, Hermione looked up into those gray eyes that every girl in school longed to get the chance to gaze into and saw that he genuinely wanted to know why she, Hermione Granger, bookworm, Harry Potter's best friend, one-time belle of the ball, looked sad.

"It's nothing," she said dismissively, looking away in case her eyes should well up again. "I'm just tired."

"I saw you and Ron…talking," he ventured hesitantly. For, of course, 'talking' was a very mild way to describe the manner in which Ron and Hermione had been communicating. But Hermione ignored this, just as she ignored the surprising fact that Cedric knew Ron's name. He's in Fred and George's year, she reasoned, he'll have heard mention of Ron from them.

"He's an idiot," said Hermione flatly. Cedric raised an eyebrow. "D'you really think so?" he asked lightly, as though he were asking her opinion on a set of curtains. "Amateur, maybe, but I wouldn't say he's an idiot. At least, not a total idiot."

She turned back to look at him in surprise, several unbidden tears escaping her eyes and leaving wet splotches on her new dress robes. Eyes full of sympathy, he pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to her. It smelled wonderful, and Hermione wondered what he washed it with to give it that clean, sunny smell, like it had dried on the clothesline under a lazy summer sun, even though it was December. It was oddly fitting, for Cedric. She blotted the tearstains and wiped the last remaining tear from her cheek.

"He ruined everything," Hermione murmured, more to herself than to the boy sitting beside her. What did he know of heartbreak? He was the perfect boy, it seemed—handsome, charming, chivalrous, kind. He would never break a girl's heart, even unwittingly, Hermione was quite sure. And what kind of stupid, heartless girl would dare to break his?

"He was scared, I reckon," Cedric replied with the detached analysis of an expert. Hermione scoffed.

"Scared? Of what? He seemed perfectly comfortable making his opinions known to the entire school, as far as I could see." Not that Ron was fearless, but sharing his opinions, misguided though they may be at times, was never a fear of his.

Cedric shook his head. "He was scared of losing you," he elaborated.

"Trust me, he wouldn't have even thought I was something to lose. He didn't even consider me a girl until he had trouble finding a date!"

Cedric listened, but continued to look doubtful. It was as though he saw a whole other side of Ron that Hermione just couldn't permeate. "He just hasn't quite worked out what his feelings for you are yet, that's all. I'll bet that when he saw you, all dressed up, dancing with Krum, laughing and having a good time without him, he realized for the first time that you could very well choose someone else and then he'd be feeling like a complete arse for not telling you how he felt before it was too late."

Hermione smiled reluctantly at the thought of Ron hating himself for losing Hermione to another boy. Somehow, she just couldn't see it happening…and yet, so far everything Cedric had said made some kind of sense. Cedric saw her smile and gave her one of his own, the kind of smile that other girls would swoon over.

"And how, may I ask, did you come up with all of this?" asked Hermione in a tone that was almost mocking, though in a gentle way. "Did you sit down with Ron and have a heart-to-heart, or something?"

Cedric chuckled. "No, but I'm a bloke, too," he reasoned. "I know what it's like to like a girl and not know how to tell her, because you're afraid of looking stupid. You'll go over what you're going to say in your head again and again, hoping you'll get it right, and then when you're actually there and she's waiting for you to say something, all your words just…disappear. And it's so much for practice, you're on your own."

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting this possibility, that Ron had perhaps spent the whole night angry with himself for muddling up his chance to take Hermione to the ball.

"I don't know," said Hermione doubtfully, "he tried to ask Fleur Delacour to the ball. He's been carrying on for weeks about how he'd better get a move on, or else all the good-looking girls'll be taken. I don't think," she added, as a couple of tears formed at the corners of her eyes, "I don't think I'm his type."

"He's fourteen! He doesn't have a type," laughed Cedric as Hermione blotted away her tears, vaguely wondering if Cedric was making a joke or not. "Look, I'm not inside Ron Weasley's mind (Who'd want to be, thought Hermione); all I can tell you is what I saw. And what I saw was him staring over at you all night, showing all the signs of being jealous. So naturally, that brings me to the conclusion that either Ron really wanted to take you to the ball and he's jealous of Krum, or he really wanted to take Krum and he's jealous of you."

He stood up, taking in Hermione, still sheltering on the cold marble steps with her knees drawn up to her chest in a rather undignified manner. She looked up at him, still clutching his handkerchief, as he looked around and said, "I'd best be off; no idea where Cho's got to and I promised I'd walk her up to Ravenclaw Tower. Hermione," he added, "you look beautiful tonight. Don't let him spoil your evening."

Hermione nodded, trusting that just maybe he was right, seeing the logic in his interpretation of Ron's overreaction and silently hoping that everything Cedric had said was the truth. As he turned to go, he leaned in close and whispered in her ear, "It'll happen. Just give it time." Suddenly, she remembered something.

"And why not a total idiot?" asked Hermione curiously, wondering what on Earth Ron had done right. Cedric paused and shrugged, as though this were obvious.

"Well," he said, flashing another of his devastating smiles, "he chose you, didn't he?"

She watched him walk away, the perfect boy, it would seem…and yet, Hermione no longer found herself caring that he was handsome, or smart, or popular. What mattered most was his kindness, and the fact that he'd take out the time from his evening to forsake his date and sit beside her when she needed comforting. Cedric Diggory, champion of broken-hearted girls? Somehow, it felt right. She sat there, on the cold steps, for a while longer, as students continued to file out of the Great Hall, until she finally pulled herself to her feet and drifted upstairs, Cedric's words playing over and over in her mind.

He never asked her for his handkerchief back. Hermione put it on her bedside table, hoping to return it to him, but as days turned into weeks, it was pushed from her mind. After a while, she forgot it was even there.

The next time she picked it up to dry her tears, it was because they had been shed for him.

She had barely known him; indeed, they had shared little more than that one night's conversation on the marble staircase. But when she trudged up the stairs to her dormitory that night, still numb with shock and disbelief at what had happened, the images of Harry's haunted eyes and Cedric's lifeless body flashed before her eyes, and the sounds of the anguished wails of Cedric's loved ones and admirers echoed in her ears. She thought she'd never be able to forget the sound of his father's heartbroken keening. Sparing her roommates nothing more than a weary glance, Hermione threw herself down on the bedcovers, still fully dressed.

She glanced up as she rested her chin more comfortably on her arms, still trying to make sense of the nightmare she just couldn't wake up from, and her gaze fell on the handkerchief, still resting on her bedside cabinet, as it had been since the night of the Yule Ball. She reached out and took it, in a haze of memory as the sound of his voice came back to her, reassuring her that sometimes, boys just need some time to work out their feelings for the girls they really like. It still smelled like him.

And then all of a sudden, without any warning, the tears came at last, and her body was raked with sobs as she lowered her face into the shelter of her arms. Only this time, she didn't try to stop the tears from coming, nor did she care about the tearstains on her sheets, his handkerchief or anything else, for that matter. And she didn't care who saw or heard her, because each tear she shed was a tribute to the extraordinary boy who had given her hope when she had none.

I hope you enjoyed this one-shot; it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it down, it seems. Like Hermione, I love that fresh laundry smell. If any of my regular readers are out there, don't worry! I swear to you the next chapter of Children Will Play will be up before the week is over.

In the meantime, I'd love to see your reviews!

On va se 'oir,

Delilah