Why, why hadn’t she made the connection before? Cho mentally kicked herself as she followed her mother and her soon-to-be mother-in-law through the little gate of the churchyard. When Mark had said Butterleigh, she just hadn’t thought. After all, she hadn’t been here in years...
But the place still looked the same, though the trees were taller and several more headstones peppered the grass surrounding the church. Her eyes flicked towards the quiet corner by the hawthorn hedge where she knew Cedric’s grave laid and, to her surprise, felt a small pang of guilt. But before she could dwell on the cause of it, she felt a hand on the small of her back.
‘You going in?’
She jumped at the sudden noise, but turned to smile at the speaker, a tall brown haired man with friendly looking blue eyes. This was her fiancé, the man who in less than twenty-four hours time would become her husband. She smiled up at him and nodded, allowing him to escort her into the church after the tiny vicar.
‘I don’t see why we’ve got to have a rehearsal,’ the man, whose name was Mark, whispered in her ear as they entered the church. ‘All we’ve got to do is walk down an aisle and say some words. Well, you have, I won’t even have to do that! I’ll be here already! I swear it’s this silly, doddery old man that’s insisting on it.’
‘Mark!’ Cho hissed back, pretending to be scandalised. ‘You can’t say that, he’s a vicar! A man of God! Anyway, you’re the one who chose him.’
‘I chose his church, not him,’ Mark replied with the small, mischievous smile that Cho loved so much. ‘And you know we’re only getting married here because Reverend Michaels couldn’t fit us in back in Knowle.’
Their conversation was interrupted at that moment by the rather wizened old vicar asking her to move to the back of the church so they could have a run-through of the ceremony tomorrow. Standing in front of the heavy oak doors, her mind wandered back outside and to the small stab of guilt she had felt. Why was she feeling guilty? Was it the fact that she hadn’t been to visit Cedric’s grave for over ten years, or was it something else, something more than that?
‘Miss Chang?’ the vicar called down to her, waking her out of her thoughts. ‘If you could proceed down the aisle...’
Contrary to Mark’s adamant insistence that it would go on for hours and hours, the wedding rehearsal only took twenty minutes. The small group gathered again outside the church after having followed the happy couple out after the pretend ceremony. Cho’s eyes were sill flicking towards Cedric’s peaceful corner as if drawn there by a magnet, and something had settled inside her chest, something that made her feel uncomfortable.
Under the cover of Mark’s mother bursting into tears and sobbing about her son being all grown up, Cho sidled over to her own mother.
‘You know, it’ll be really rather strange seeing you getting married the Muggle way, but--’ she began, but Cho cut her off.
‘Do you know where we are?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘What do you mean where we are?’ her mother replied, looking slightly confused. ‘You’re getting married here tomorrow.’
‘No, I mean do you recognise this place? This graveyard?’
Cho saw her mother look around her, still slightly bemused, and then something seemed to click and a look of comprehension dawned on her face.
‘Oh!’ she breathed, turning to stare at her daughter. ‘This is where that Diggory boy is buried!’
‘Yeah,’ Cho said, glancing into Cedric’s corner. ‘I didn’t realise until we got here.’
‘And is... I mean have you... are you okay about it?’ her mother seemed to be teetering on her toes, evidently wanting to say something, words of comfort or consolation perhaps, but didn’t know if she should.
‘I don’t know,’ Cho replied truthfully. ‘I haven’t been here in years, even though I probably should have, and now I’m getting married here...’ Cho’s words trailed away and she looked at her mother, who was nodding, a pitying look on her face.
‘Would you like to go and see him?’ she asked.
Cho nodded and her mother smiled encouragingly. ‘I’ll take them all back to the house so you can have some time alone.’
As Cho strode away from the main party, gravel crunching under her feet, she heard her mother ushering everyone towards the car and smiled at her mother’s bossy nature.
She made her way past the rows of weathered headstones until she came to the quiet little corner beside the hawthorn hedge. There she knelt, staring at the headstone inscribed with Cedric’s name. She reached out and traced the letters with a forefinger, just as she had done when her grief was still fresh and painful. The stone was weathered now, chipped in places and covered in spots of lichen. She remembered with a small smile how fervently she had picked away these spots when they first appeared in the months after his death.
As she looked at the grave, some of the grief she had felt in that time returned, and she remembered the heartache, the tears, the sleepless nights she had spent yearning for him. He was all she had wanted back then, and she thought that her grief would last forever. She had longed, wished, hoped with all her might that he wasn’t gone, and that at any moment he would burst through the door and sweep her off her feet.
But that was years and years ago, so why did she feel guilty now? Was it because she hadn’t been to visit the place in over a decade? After all, she wasn’t just his girlfriend, she was his friend too. Or was it something else, something related to the guilt she had felt when she had been with Harry, and later Michael? She had passionately promised herself after Cedric’s death that she would never love again, that he was the one, the only one she could have ever loved. Yet here she was about to marry another man, about to betray that promise she made. She felt tears sliding down her cheeks and let them fall freely to the grass, old wounds opening afresh.
A breeze blew over her, a soft, warm summer breeze perfumed with the scent of honeysuckle and lavender, and she stopped crying. The wind seemed to bring with it reason and comfort, almost as if there was a voice in it telling her not to cry. She thought of Mark, her fiancé, and hastily wiped her tears away, and with them, her foolish teenage thoughts. Yes, she had loved Cedric, or come close to, but she had Mark now and she knew she loved him more. She needn’t feel guilty marrying him because she was breaking a promise she had made as a naive, heartbroken teenager. She had learned long ago that the world didn’t work like that, and while Cedric would always hold a special place in her heart, she had moved on. She knew for certain that Cedric would have wanted this.
Standing up, she ran one last hand over the top of the headstone before Disapparating to join her family at Mark’s
house.
The next day, under a great peal of bells and fluttering confetti, the happy couple made their way out of the church, huge grins plastered all over their faces. Cho shrieked in delight as Mark picked her up and swung her around in the air as their friends and family cheered. She knew that she had made the right choice; that couldn’t be plainer. Mark was definitely the one for her, her true love, and she smiled indulgently at him as he scooped up his little niece, who was one of the bridesmaids, and pulled a face for a camera.
It was impossible not to be happy today; even her scowling uncle was wearing something akin to a smile. She glanced over at her mother who was hastily stowing away her wand after reapplying her tear-smudged make up by magic. She caught her eye and Cho made the tiniest of nods over into the far corner. Her mother smiled, and marched over to the photographer, shouting loudly that he should start on the photographs, the groom’s family first.
Cho made her way over to Cedric’s grave, just as she had done yesterday, but this time unburdened with grief and sorrow. She ran her hand over the headstone and crouched down, careful not to stand on the train of her dress.
‘He’s a good bloke,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure you’d approve.’
After gazing at the stone for a moment, she stood back up and pulled her wand from the folds of her dress. From the tip, blossomed a beautiful bouquet of vine lilies, and she laid them to rest at the foot of the grave.
‘Rest in peace, Cedric.’
Swept Away by Sapphire at Dawn
Chapter Notes: Thanks very much to Sarah/TheCursedQuill for beta'ing this for me.
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks very much for reading. Please review!