He began to walk towards her. This was a nightmare. Cho was terrified. She had never kissed a boy, and couldn't believe Marietta had gotten her into this. 'Anything happen, please save me! Something, anything...' Cho thought deseperately.
"Stop," Cho finally found her voice when Cedric put his hand on her arm. "I-don't-want-to-do-this-sorry!"
Cedric blinked. For one wild moment, Cho thought he was going to kiss her anyway. Then her took his hand off her arm and said, "You're right. We don't know each other. Let's just talk. But... can people think we made out? You know, I've sorta got a reputation..." Cedric's eye's pleaded with her, nearly begging.
Cho smiled with relief. "Whatever, Diggory."
"You can call me Cedric. You're really pretty..."
"Thanks, but we're still not going to kiss." Cho actally laughed at Cedric's look of disappointment. "You don't want to kiss me anyway. I've never kissed a guy, I must be terrible." Before Cedric could say anything to change her mind, Cho tried to start a conversation. "So, uh, what's your favorite class?"
"Class? Tch. I like Quidditch. I'm on the Hufflepuff team, you know."
"I know. I've seen you fly, you're really good. I'm thinking of trying out for the Ravenclaw team next year. I loved flying in first year. I wonder why we didn't keep having lessons? It was great!" Cho gushed. Cedric seemed easy to talk to, and without the daunting idea of having to kiss, Cho was quite at ease.
"You can ride my broomstick sometime, if you like." Cedric suddenly blushed furiously, wincing with embarassment. "I mean -!"
"I know." Cho smiled again...
The mourning Cho in the graveyard, a little over three years later, smiled too. They had gotten to know each other quite a bit that day. They had a lot in common. Over the months, they both participated in every Saturday's game of Seven Minutes. Quickly, "God" stopped drawing names from a hat and began picking the people that seemed to like each other. Naturally, this meant Cedric and Cho were always alone in a clearing, and they began to meet in empty classrooms on their breaks too. Always just to talk, and always just as friends, but they never once said anything against the rumours that they were dating and second-basing it daily.
Finally, a day nearly six months after that first day in a clearing, they found themselves once again in that same spot, same predicament.
"You know..." Cho said tentatively, "everyone thinks we're kissing... why bother... pretending, you know, um leading them on... we could, really... um..."
"..." Cedric flashed her his trademark smile, the one full of affection that was reserved only for Cho. He had not tried to make a move on her since that very first day, and it seemed ages ago. "Would it be your first?"
"Well... yeah..." Cho blushed faintly and looked at the ground. Suddenly Cedric's trainers were in her line of vision. She felt his hand on her arm and she looked up slowly. His expression was, for the most part, serious, but his eyes were full of happiness and love.
"It's OK..." he said softly. They were very close now, close enough to feel each other's warm breath. Closer and closer and closer, everything in slow motion. Cho instinctively closed her eyes, and then their lips met.
Bliss erupted in Cho's mind, she could swear she was seeing fireworks, floating away. Was she still standing? What was she wearing that day? What was her name again? Everything was lost but for the happiest, warmest feeling Cho had ever experienced. This, truly, was more magical than anything they were taught at school...
Three and a half years later, forty two miles to the southeast, and on a rainy summer's day, Cho Chang began to cry softly. The greif was becoming too much for her and soon she was sobbing like her whole world had ended. And, in a way, it had.
"Cedric!" she choked. "CEDRIC! Come back, come back..." Her voice was strangled with tears and it rang like a mourning bell through the misty graveyard.
Cho slowly stopped crying, and slumped into the mud near Cedric's grave. She was being ridiculous, and overly dramatic, she knew. But nothing was enough anymore, not now that her Cedric was gone. Food had no taste, and she was still hungry afterwards. Everyone else was moving on around her, but it was like she was stuck. She could see no way that it could possibly get better.
Cho could remember turning to Harry Potter, trying to find some consolation in associating herself with the boy that had been there when Cedric died, but that hadn't helped at all. Harry seemed unable to feel pity for anyone but himself.
Lying in the mud, Cho could feel the cold dead of the ground beneath her, and the warm life of the rain above. She wanted to go into the ground and never come out. The living were too happy. The dead would understand how much this hurt, wouldn't they?
Cho realised with an odd pang that she must be losing her mind. Lying in the mud of a graveyard, letting rain run into her eyes so that she couldn't tell if she was still crying or not, miles away from home, and no one around to hear her scream.
"No one to hear me scream..." she mumbled aloud. "CEDRIC I STILL LOVE YOU! I'M SORRY! I'm sorry..." She crumbled into a fresh wave of tears. Being overly dramatic again, but she didn't care.
Cho could remember the first time she had ever screamed Cedric's name. She had snuck into the prefect's washroom and waited for him, because she knew he was going to come in there sooner or later. It was the night before the first task of the TriWizard Tournament. She wanted to wish him luck, and one thing led to another and before long Cho had lost her virginity to Cedric Diggory. She was OK with it though, because at that point she knew they would be together forever. She had once jokingly told him that she thought Cho Diggory sounded odd and wanted to keep her last name. He said that was fine, as long as he got to name their first three kids. It became a sort of inside joke, and for a while, in front of all their friends, Cedric would suddenly say a rather dumb sounding name like "Cho Junior," or "Pinky.. not as a nickname, just Pinky..." or "Hubert!". No one else ever knew why this made Cho laugh so hard.
Cho put a trembling hand into the mud near her face, starting to make a nice handprint. As she did, she saw Cedric's ring on her finger, the one he had given to her before the start of the third TriWizard Tournament event. He had given her this ring just hours before he died...