Cedric Diggory was the first boy Cho ever fell in love with.
He was not Michael Corner, not someone who Cho kissed and held hands with just to feel something, even when that something was nothing more than shallow affection.
Cedric was different.
Cedric was the boy who made Cho look like the fool. The boy who made her dizzy, who colored her world rose-gold.
Cedric was the boy Cho took it upon herself to approach beneath the mistletoe that Christmas. And when she kissed him- her second kiss, she was still bitter- that rose-gold ignited into a crimson fire.
And Cho let herself be engulfed by the flames.
He was two years her senior, not that she cared.
Let them say what they would, Cedric would whisper to her, interlacing their fingers. It didn't matter. What mattered was him and her, and the future that lay before them.
The future that Cho worried Cedric would throw away, that fateful day he put his name in the Goblet of Fire. He reassured her a thousand times over that he would be fine. It wasn't like his name would be called, after all.
But then it was.
Cho's nails had been bitten into nothing more than pink stubs. She was afraid they might bleed soon. Her ears were ringing with the roar of the crowd and her eyes were glued to the spectacle before her, unable to look away no matter how it troubled her.
Cedric, standing up to face a dragon.
She had warned him, warned him that it was dangerous. It was not a challenge to be taken lightly, not by any means.
But what was she really afraid of?
Losing him, or losing the one person who'd ever truly seen her?
She reminded herself that they were one in the same.
It was only a moment later that she also reminded herself that he wasn't going anywhere.
In that moment, the fire dared to prove her wrong.
It was not the crimson-pink embers from before, the ones that had set her heart aflame.
No. This fire burned strong and true, from the snout of the dragon to Cedric's face.
Cho choked on a scream.
She embraced him later in the Hospital Wing, and was barely able to keep the tears from spilling over. She wouldn't break down, not in front of him.
It was only when she was alone that she let them fall.
Crying was disgraceful. It only served to weaken her.
And she could afford to show no weakness.
Cho no longer gave a damn about crying.
Let them see her cry, let them see her sobbing.
Let them see why, let them see her collapse beside Cedric-
Beside Cedric's cold, motionless, dead body.
They had not even closed his eyes yet.
She didn't care that she'd gnawed away at the last of her nails, didn't care that her own crimson blood now stained the grass where he lay.
She had warned him. She had tried. She had told him it was dangerous, told him that he should have never put his name in the wretched goblet in the first place.
But of course, noble as ever, he hadn't listened. He'd wanted to play the hero.
And Cho had been foolish enough to let herself become the damsel in distress.
She realized then that she was done playing that role.
The best way to not get hurt, she realized, was to let nothing hurt her.
They had to pull her away from him, but they didn't have to help her up after that.
Cho rose on her own, chin lifted with resolve.
She had let the fire warm her heart, but now she let it consume her.
Cho swallowed the last of her tears. She numbly took the automatic apologies, the whispers of I'm sorry for your loss.
She was sorry to have lost him.
But she was also sorry to have lost herself. The girl who'd fallen head over heels for Cedric, the girl who'd strung Michael Corner along, the silly little girl who'd cried like a fool in front of her mother so many times-
She was gone.
Cho brushed the last of her tears from her cheeks and did not let them fall again.
