December 2nd

I never really understood why adults kept saying growing up is painful...I thought they meant physical growing pains but now I know that's not what they meant at all. I wish I wasn't so riddled with insecurities. I wish I knew what on earth was going on in my head. Why isn't there like a magic door I can walk through and suddenly be an adult and handle everything brilliantly?

I was reeling from yesterday's events. Why was I so angry with him? He was telling me things that I had wanted to hear but it's not like there was anything more I could have wanted to know. He had done that Quibbler Interview last year, it was more than enough, but still...I was a little annoyed about his timing. If only he had done this last year. He was confusing! I was confusing! It was all so confusing!

Harry was waiting for me outside of the Ravenclaw common room this morning but I ignored him and walked out to the Great Hall and made sure he couldn't talk to me. I was in a foul mood for most of the day so this time I told people I wanted to be on my own. Charlotte's face...she looked like she didn't seem to know what to do.

So I was on my way, trailing at the back of the class, alone to Care of Magical Creatures...feeling sorry for myself...yeah yeah yeah...

Suddenly a hand grabbed me out of nowhere and a voice said "Silencio."

I did try to scream but nothing came out. I found myself under a cloak with Harry. I was mouthing silently all sorts of things at him... then gave up quite quickly. He couldn't hear me. We stood still for a minute while everyone walked on to the lesson. I remember thinking. But everyone is going to see this stupid cloak with two bodies under it

I suddenly felt the velvet like material ripple against my skin as he lifted it away from us. He had his hands out, palms in the air like I was pointing a wand at him or something.

"I know you're cross about yesterday...that really wasn't the reaction I was expecting," he said.

We were alone now standing somewhere in the forbidden forest.

I found my voice again.

"Why are you trying to spoil everything?" I said backing away from him.

"I'm not...it's just that I understand you now..." He said trying to calm me down.

"I don't think you do at all." Then I tried to relax my voice and made it sound softer, "If you understood me. You'd know that you don't know have to tell me anything anymore."

"But don't you need to talk about it?" he said.

I sat down on some kind of tree stump, "I did...I did want to talk about it ...all the time actually...you were the one person I really wanted to talk to ...but you were the last person who wanted to listen."

I looked around the dappled green light of the forest trying to find a good answer, "I knew it would be awkward but ...I had this need that wouldn't go away."

I felt I was pooling a tear in my eye.

I was sad and afraid...this conversation was going to bring up last year and the year before that...and remind me once again of one of the worst (and best) years of my life. I had buried it deep under the ground and now he was digging it up again. But how could I tell him that I was too tired to grieve anymore? It would sound so heartless. I quickly wiped the tear away. The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Harry.

"I'm ok...really I am," I said. It's not as if I hadn't had time to think about this whole thing. But the past is the past and that's where I wanted to leave it. Maybe Harry felt guilty...maybe he needed to be reassured that I was ok.

"I don't need to know anymore Harry. It happened, he's gone...It's over...I've moved on...of course at one point I wanted to know what his last words were. Was he in any pain? Was it quick? Did he have a message for me? But then I thought...and this was a very important question I should have asked myself long ago ... how did I want to remember Cedric?"

I looked to Harry who seemed to be listening carefully, "Not as a body…not as murdered victim…no… I wanted to remember him when he was out and about…being that boy so full of life!"

"Harry...I have moved on...and really... it is ok," I said.

I think I heard a bird flap away in the treetops. Harry was pacing around over the soft pine needles on the floor. His footsteps were silent and then he said quietly, "But I understand you now."

I looked at him. There in his own eyes, it was as if he wore every pain and tragedy that had ever happened to him. It was now so clear and open for me to see. Why hadn't I seen it before?

What happened yesterday at Quidditch... The events leading up to this moment were all about Harry and not me at all. I wasn't cross with him in the slightest. I could see he was suffering.

I started walking towards him... He had turned his back to me now.

"Harry?" I said slowly approaching him.

He sat himself slowly down onto the bed of pine needles on the floor. His arm was shielding his own eyes from me. Then his whole body seemed to shake and he let out this cry full of anguish.

It was the only sound I could hear now in the forest.

Now it was he who was freeing himself from the prison of uncontrollable grief. Yes, now I understood what he wanted from me. He didn't want a girlfriend...he came to me because he needed a friend and he needed to know he wasn't alone.

So I reached for his hand and his closed around mine. I put my other free arm around his shoulder. I would have shouldered some of his burden if he would let me.We stayed there for a long while saying nothing; we listened to the birds and watched the leaves blowing in the winter wind.

Finally he said quietly, "I don't know if there is a God maybe it's a force...or an energy... Sometimes I feel I have to rage against it. I think of myself running against this light. It's red, blurry and fast like pure white-hot anger. I'm ramming my fists hard into its face and I'll punch it till my knuckles bleed...I don't feel the pain anymore and all I shout is...why? Why did it happen and why does it still happen?"

His voice broke and wavered a little and he took off his glasses and wiped his tears with his sleeve. We were sitting apart now and he had his knees bent and his arms resting over them. He was looking at the floor muttering, "A pipe dream... that's all it was...a stupid dream..."

He did that sometimes. He'd refer to things that were happening in his life...or things that had passed... the serious things that I knew I was never to question. No details just feelings. I knew he had missions...some of them on his own, some with Ron and Hermione and some with the DA but he kept them all a secret from me. He said it was better that way.

"It's not one thing Cho...it's everything...everything is falling on top of me and I don't know how to handle it" he said looking deep in the forest, "Did you ever hear about what happened in the Department of Mysteries last year?"

Who hadn't? That was when You Know Who had come back to the wizarding world.

"I was there." He looked at me, "That was the day I really began to see that the world for what it really is...You see, my Godfather was part of The Order of the Phoenix...it was to help fight against Voldermort. I was watching him, he was fighting so well but... just...one second... he was there...then just like that ...he was gone. Where did he go? That's what I was thinking...where are you Sirius?"

He was shaking his head, "I was so lost and so desperate after that...I was so sure he was going to come back, running around talking to ghosts...asking questions...I wrote letters to him... I even sent them...how sad is that? One day Hedwig gave up... she wouldn't send any more of my letters because she knew they had no place to go to...I had to accept it. He was dead." he said.

"Harry..." I didn't say anything else because I knew I'd end up saying something really clichéd like...things will get better, I'm so sorry, life goes on...Those things aren't really a comfort at all. It doesn't change anything.

"The plan was after Hogwarts I was going to start a whole new life...I was going to live with Sirius. You know? Just me and him. He'd teach me how to ride a motorbike...tell me stories about my mum and my dad and...he'd give me advice about girls... . He didn't really have anyone else, not a real family...but he had me..."

A tear dropped from his eyes, "I would have taken care of him till he was really old and wrinkly. I wouldn't be like most adult children and send him away to a nursing home. I'd...keep him with me. I had so many plans...plans...but they weren't really were they? They were just dreams I could almost touch."

He was staring at the ground. "I never thought it was possible that my life could get more complicated than it is." He sighed, "I'll always be that boy who lived... in a cupboard under the stairs." His voice was bitter.

"Don't' say that...you aren't that boy...you're the boy who lived!" I said.

And then he let out a mirthless laugh and he was shaking his head, "the boy who lived?... more like..the boy too scared to die and too scared to live."

He added in a soft lost voice almost to himself, "That's what they might say one day."

I couldn't make out what that line meant. They might say? Living and dying? It seemed important to him. Now he was staring into space, his eyes shining bright, like he was looking into his future. He was hoping for something, something to happen to him. It made me frighten to think that he might want to give up on life itself. I felt my voice choke a little and I felt desperate, I had to speak now. I said whatever would come out of my mouth.

"There are good things too, life can be good...there's always something that keep us wanting to carry on and there's always something here that anchors you...that keeps you wanting to live... I know you have so many people who believe in you Harry...just... don't be afraid of the future... ...You'll make it."

He turned to me with a small smile on his face. Was it pity? Then I realised there was something more to what he was saying and what I was saying. I had pushed it so far out of my mind. I had never really thought about it. I couldn't. I didn't want to. I wanted it to go away...I didn't want it to be real. I don't think anyone did.

Everyone pretended that it wasn't going to happen. But it was going to happen... we just didn't know when it would begin. I realised that we were standing on the cusp of the Second War and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

I felt the tears prickling under my eyelids. And then Harry leaned forward and kissed me.

I closed my eyes and I remember thinking to myself as he did this... that it was like our very first kiss under the mistletoe. At that time I was struggling with my own grief but then I really wanted to be with him...I knew I did because when I was with him I could get lost...and I remember when we were under the mistletoe that evening I wanted it to escape with him in his kiss.

But this kiss in the Forbidden Forest... It was a similar kiss I might have day dreamt about in Charms on a hazy summer afternoon. But...I knew it was hungry. It was selfish and I knew it was empty. It was all wrong. We broke apart. I'm not sure who made the decision first. Then we stared at each other like two animals in trapped in a locked cage. Who would make the next move?

Harry looked at me strangely and said, "Why do we always do that?"

I felt a little embarrassed. The heat rising to my cheeks, "Do what?"

"Why is one of us always crying when we kiss?" he said trying not to smile.

I started laughing, "Yeah it's not very romantic is it?"

"Blubbering like little babies," he said. He stood up from the ground and dusted the pine needles that were clinging to his clothes. He was staring at me again.

"What?" I said as I stood on my own feet.

"I have something to confess." We were walking over the gravel path. I thought it was something bad. But then he had a funny grin on his face and put his hands in his pockets.

"Kissing you was scarier than all the times I ever faced Voldermort."

I whacked him playfully on his arm and said,"Oh shut up!"

Then we walked back as if nothing had happened. There was no point in discussing the kiss because I think we both knew what it meant.

It was a just a kiss.

A kiss that was trying to make everything better...to make us forget our future.