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Let It Be A Dream...
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It wasn't reality, was it?

To Harry, it was a nightmarish blur. It was something that, on its way by, had hit him squarely in the back of the head and knocked him down in shocked horror.

Certainly, Harry mused to himself, he'd wake up at any moment now and it would only be some hideous speck of a dream. He hadn't, couldn't, have seen what he had just seen; not in real life. No— he hadn't just seen it, though...he'd *experienced* it.

Harry had seen too many things in his fourteen years of life: bad, shocking, unreal things— he shouldn't be so shaken by this, should he? This was different, though, Harry told himself...this was worse than everything else he'd seen.

It had already happened...Harry had already seen this nightmare; now it felt as though he were floating away from it, the memory of it still fresh in his mind.

'Oh, great, here it comes,' his mind echoed as he remembered those scarring events again.

And just like that, there was a circle of dark figures about him, seeming as it they were chanting incessantly of his demise.

It only got worse from there, however. The white, sunken, skeletal figure of his very own nemesis, evil in every mien, seemed to tower over him as high as the dark stars above. Harry had somehow, heedless to his memory, escaped his foe...but that wasn't the worst part of the whole ordeal.

The very worst part had come right at first.

Harry recalled that when he had found himself in that dark place, he hadn't come alone. He had been accompanied by another— someone who had become equal in skills to Harry; someone what had helped Harry in return for Harry helping him. Someone Harry had learned to trust, in a way...someone Harry could call a friend now.

Cedric Diggory.

What had been going through Cedric's mind as he had clutching onto that golden handle? Did he have any inkling of an idea what was in store? Harry was quite sure that he hadn't...neither of them had.

Nearly the moment that Cedric had appeared, it happened, and in a flash, he was gone. Not the kind of gone that is merely temporary, but a deeper, darker kind. Gone forever.

Dead.

The light that Harry had seen in that moment proved to be the darkest that he had ever witnessed.

Cedric, sprawled out on the dirt; motionless. Lifeless.

Harry had been too numb to do more than gawk stupidly. And how stupid he had been! Wasn't it because of him that Cedric had been killed?

That hadn't occurred to Harry then; not in that moment of stupor. It hadn't dawned on him that this had to be his fault— he had taken Cedric to that dark graveyard where all of this happened..

Minutes passed in that dark world, Cedric's body still in sight, and even in the midst of many events, Harry had felt a great and heavy grief. The kind of grief, Harry thought, he would've felt if he had really experienced the death of his parents.

If Harry had been the type to cry, he would have shed so many tears by now there would be none left to cry. He felt so terrible...

'No, no...I'm still asleep. This dream has already passed. I'll wake soon, and It'll all be over...I don't know what's happening to me now...but...that couldn't have happened. . .

'It'll all be just fine when I wake up again.. . .'

And Harry neither felt nor thought again until light filled his eyes. . .