Disclaimer: The characters still do not belong to me, and the song, "Goodbye," is Martina McBride's.
Part II: "Goodbye"
I'm sitting next to Katie Wellings in Advanced Divination. Professor Trelawney has just asked us to think of someone who we know, someone who is deceased. She wants to teach us to contact them from beyond…I want to tell her that I know that isn't possible. If it was, I'd be talking to Cedric right now, rather than sitting here listening to all this mumbo jumbo.
Occurred to me the other day
You been gone now a couple years
I don't think about him as much as I used to. It's not per minute or hourly, or even daily now. Now it's at weird times, times that you wouldn't expect I would think of him. Maybe when I'm eating lunch or when I'm walking by the Restricted Section of the Library. It's hardly ever right when I wake up or prior to falling asleep. Funny, I don't even think of him when I look at Harry.
Once upon a time, I had thought that's what would happen: that after Cedric died in our Fifth Year that looking at Harry would make me think of him. And for awhile, that was true. But then one day I looked at Harry and he was all I saw. Harry Potter was standing in front of me. Not The-Boy-Who-Carried-Out-My-Boyfriend. Just…Harry.
Now when I see him, I have to smile. He's such a nice person. From what I hear, a little angry sometimes (and little might be a tiny understatement) but he's nice. He's never been anything but honest with me, and I appreciate that.
I know Harry liked me. I liked him too.
But there was Cedric.
And now there's not.
Well I guess it takes a while
For someone to really disappear
And I remember where I was
Next to me, Katie snorts something and I break from my reverie for a moment to find Trelawney in one of her strange trances, talking to a dead brother. Sometimes, I admit, I think to myself that she has to be faking, and she has to be a flake but if that's the case, why would Dumbledore keep her on?
And that's enough thinking for me right now. At least, about other people.
It's weird, it really is, because sometimes I don't miss Cedric at all and it's like he never existed but then I'm pulled in the opposite direction because how can I forget him? It would be the most awful thing, I would think, to know (after you're dead) that you've been forgotten. At the same time, though, aren't I supposed to be getting on with my life?
I'm seventeen, for goodness sake! I want to move on! It's not that I necessarily want to forget about him but he can't be an all-consuming force in my world!
When the word came about you
It was a day much like today
The sky was bright and wide and blue
I let Terry Boot kiss me once, last week and it was wonderful, kissing someone again. Feeling normal and forgetting about him for just a second.
And I feel so stupid for hanging on to him like I have been. I am, after all, only seventeen. It's not like he was my soul mate or my one and only. He was only a date to the Yule Ball. He was only someone to stay up late with and talk to. He wasn't going to be in my future (when he was alive; now, he's obviously not). I miss him terribly so.
Katie nudges me in the ribs and I look down, to where she's written on a spare, yellowed piece of parchment: how was Terry? Does she expect me to spill everything?
I look at her and shake my head. Now isn't the time. I'm too confused and I need to figure things out for myself before I rattle on about them to my friends.
And I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye
I wonder if he had died by some accident…you know, died instead have been killed would I still feel this way? Would I still have such lingering doubts over everything? Him and over us? I don't think so. Not all the time, anyway.
My eyes wander out toward the window and I see how nice it is outside. Hope blue and sunny and hopeful everything seems to be. It's like the sky forgot about the war. It forgot about death and Harry and You-Know-Who. Like it simply woke up, yawned, and thought about what great spirits it was in.
I'm talking nonsense, I know. But that's what happens when someone close to you, someone you love, dies. A part of you dies with them. My sensible part, my dreaming part died with Cedric.
Today my heart is big and sore
Its trying to push right through my skin
Sometimes I resent my classmates. I resent my friends. I resent Katie and Terry and Harry because, even though they knew my Cedric they can still laugh. And I'm still laughing too, when something is funny but sometimes, I cry so hard it feels like my eyeballs might start to bleed. What kind of happiness is that?
Won't see you anymore
I guess that finally sinking in
Cause you can't make somebody see
Even before class has ended, and Trelawney given the homework assignment, I've decided that I'm ill and would rather go back to bed then into Snape's class. So that's what I do.
On my nightstand is the last photo that was ever taken of us. On it is Cedric's sloppy, boy-almost-man handwriting. You can bet that even as you're looking at this, Cho that I'm thinking of you. I painfully smile as I read and reread his short message. Then I thank him for giving me the courage to go on (slowly but surely) with my life.
I crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and fall, mercifully, into a dreamless sleep where things like death and pain and impending wars can't, and don't, penetrate into my mindless thoughts.
With the simple words you say
All their beauty from within
Sometimes they just look away
Somewhere, between the time I fall asleep and wake up, I effortlessly imagine Cedric kissing me one last time, on the forehead. And I wake up to the sound of late night talks and broken dreams.
And I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye