Perfect Loss

She sees his body sprawled out on the grass Harry crouched over it, and hears the soft thud of flesh against hard grass and out. The tears that flow down Harry's face as he is racked with panic and anguish, only serve as a reminder as to why there screams being emitted from the mouths of people around her. The shouts and sobs are muffled, a low dead noise in the back of her mind, and everything around her seems to slow down. She feels like she's been charmed, a numbness blanketing her and shrouding her senses.

She can't breathe. Part of her has just died at the sight of him, there, immobile on the grass of the Pitch.

Her mind is blank, her world is numb, yet she feels a wetness on her face and lifts her hand to her cheek, slowly, emotionlessly, and pulls it back to examine what the damp is and sees that there are silent tears flowing from her eyes.

She hadn't noticed.

She looks at the remnants of tears on her hands and uses her tear filled eyes, vision made blurry by water, to look down at the world below her once more. Harry is gone, taken away by Moody, and he's still there, his body being sobbed over by his father, clung to as if love could bring him back.

The first true thought to grace her mind in the minutes (or hours or seconds) since she first saw him lying there is that she wishes it were so. That her love and his father's love could bring him back from the dead; call him back to them.

She knows that is impossible without even having to give it a second thought. Flights of fancy have never been her strong suit.

There is only one word on her mind and it's being repeated, over and over again.

Cedric.

He didn't deserve this end and she didn't deserve to bear witness to its aftermath. They both deserved happiness and something better, be it for a month or eternity, together or apart.

Cedric.

His name dies on her lips, wet with tears, once bruised by kisses hard and soft. She feels someone touch her arm, say something to her, ask her a question, but she doesn't understand the words nor fully realize who it is. The only thing that is clear to her is what might've been, what she's just lost, and how she'll miss it forever.

She wants to run down to the pitch and wrap her arms around him, cry out his name, wet his face with her tears, kiss his lips and see if it will bring him back to life. She wants to be irrational, hysterical, everything she's not, if only to prove she's still alive and that she's not dead with him.

She wishes she were. She wishes she had her time turner still, so that she could go back in time and tell him she loved again, kiss him again, prevent him from going to the maze, prevent him from entering the tournament, prevent the two of them from ever meeting. She wants to erase this heartbreak.

She moves towards the stairs to head off the stands, and because she wobbles, her legs unable to support her, she sits down again a moment later.

A voice breaks through the cloud, familiar, concerned, warm. It's his and not his at the same time.

"Hermione? Hermione, are you all right?" the voice asks. It's Ron, and he's touching her arm, looking at her, worried for both of his best friends.

She nods her head, lying, feeling the burn of the lie on her face where the tears are still going strong. She can only think of one thing to say, one word that is all she'll love for a good long time, possibly forever, and be the burden of everything she's lost.

"Cedric," his name falls from her lips, her voice cracking and soft, expressing her sorrow and heartbreak in a single word.

She'll love him forever, because what they had, never really had a chance to start, and because of that it will always be, just perfect.

Just like he was.