It was late afternoon on Saturday and I was alone in the dorm. Dakota and Maisie were spending the day in the library and Evelyn had disappeared early this morning before any of us could ask where she was going. She'd seemed stressed, and I made a mental note to ask her what was up when she returned.
I was sprawled across my bed trying to paint a Japanese street from memory, brushes and pencils scattered around me.
It was a complicated sketch, with many intricate signs and wires, so it had taken up most of my day. I'd felt insistent on painting it, keen to remember the pleasant memory of walking the streets over summer.
My hand ached from the effort and I exhaled a breath as I examined the page so far. Some of the lines appeared wobbly and I attempted to straighten them with more black ink.
I hadn't had the chance to paint lately, too caught up in my boyfriend, NEWT prep or spending time with my chaotic group of friends.
I'd even taken Amara under my wing, tutoring her on subjects she struggled with and making sure she wasn't being hassled any further about religion. It was nice addition to my school life, distracting, and it helped me feel like I was doing something worthwhile with my time.
There was a swoosh sound and I looked up, glancing in the direction of the door. A small piece of paper had been slipped underneath.
I quickly untangled my limbs, padding over to the door. I plucked the paper from the ground and unfolded the parchment, reading the carefully typed letters.
Lila,
Meet me in the courtyard in 5 minutes.
Cedric
I smiled down at the note. We hadn't planned anything for the day, I'd just assumed I would go back to his room after dinner and spend the night. We'd built up a blissful routine as of late, losing countless hours to one another between the sheets.
I placed the note onto my bedside table and checked the clock.
I began rushing around the room, pulling on my shoes and brushing my fingers through my hair. Cedric seemed to prefer it down and natural, so I left it that way, happy it required less effort.
With a last glance and adjustment in the mirror, I exited the dorm and made my way downstairs.
There was no one in the hallways which appeared strange to me; the younger classes hadn't been allowed to visit Hogsmeade this weekend and I was surprised that there wasn't a babble running around the castle.
I knew that likely meant one thing: Snape must have been assigned warden duties for the day. The halls usually emptied once the rota reached his turn, most students fleeing in fear of being punished just for breathing too loudly.
Finally, I reached the doorway to the courtyard, but the sight there made me stop abruptly under the arch.
The whole space was deserted apart from Cedric's familiar lean figure. He had his back angled slightly towards me, and he wasn't alone.
Penelope was against the tree in the centre, her features twisted into a sickly sweet smile. The exact same expression she seemed to save just for him when she came to say hello at dinner times.
I hated it really, the girls and I had agreed that it held all the authenticity of Rita Skeeter's weekly gossip column.
My lips set into a thin line at the sight of the pretty Hufflepuff, she seemed to be around us even more over the last week, and I had tried desperately hard to be pleasant.
My patience had been wearing terribly thin, especially since if she spotted me in the hallways alone, she usually tried to bump into me, claiming innocently that it was an accident.
My eyes drifted back to Cedric who had his arm above her head as he leant into her, there was an intimacy to his body language that didn't sit right in my heart.
They appeared to be talking in hushed voices, but Cedric said something and Penelope giggled in response, batting her eyelashes.
I tried to ignore the knife twisting in my gut as I watched them converse. Their unusual snug stance told me one thing: they were completely unaware of my presence behind them.
I frowned to myself, deeply displeased at how close they looked in my absence.
My mind screamed at me to say something or move, to make my existence known, but I couldn't bring myself to do so.
Some greater instinct told me to continue watching, that there was something more to see.
It felt like when you drive past a car overturned at the side of the road, you know you shouldn't look, because you're not going to see something you like. And yet you can't help it, wanting to watch the disaster unfold for yourself.
Crumpled vehicles.
Metallic debris.
Wounded victims.
Bodies.
The entire horror show.
Cedric leaned even closer to Penelope and his hand cupped her face, stroking tenderly along her sharp jaw like he'd done it a thousand times before.
My breathing hitched in my throat, stuck there like thick slime. I felt the inkling of nausea rise in my stomach as I stared.
This wasn't right. Very wrong in fact.
That was Cedric, my Cedric.
And he was touching her like... like how he touched me. With such extreme affection and care that only he was capable of.
I felt my hands beginning to shake with anger, wanting to tear them apart. I knew I could do it with ease, tear some of Penelope's perfectly sleek hair from her head as I did so, claim it was an accident afterwards.
My eyes stung as I watched them remain so wrapped up in one another, every blood vessel in my eyeballs twitching with tension.
Finally, devastatingly, Cedric leaned down and kissed Penelope forcefully on the lips. She reacted back instantly, and I watched her hands snake into his hair.
They were embraced, intoxicated with one another.
I could see it so clearly, even from where I stood. There was so much affection between them that I was certain you would have been able to see it from the astronomy tower.
And I hated it profoundly.
Even so, I just stood there speechless, unable to move or scream or whisper. My body remained entirely static as I watched a nightmare unfold in front of me.
Like a car crash unfurling in slow motion, my own personal one.
But there were no air bags.
No safety cushion to lessen the impact.
It was my feelings splattered all over the ground in the place of blood.
But as my boyfriend gripped Penelope's neck, pushing her against him in a desperate, crushing lock of bodies, I wished that it was my blood instead.
Gallons of it, a puddle thick enough to stain the concrete ground.
Because anything was better than this.
My mind felt scrambled as it struggled to pull a coherent thought together, my Ravenclaw instinct searching desperately for a logical explanation.
My Cedric, and Penelope?
I blinked hard, hoping that each time I reopened my eyes it would all just be a mistake. But of course it wasn't.
It was real.
They stood there kissing one another as if their lives depended on it; I had the desperate urge to be sick, to empty the contents of my body onto the ground as I watched the way they touched one another.
But finally, after what felt like an agonising amount of time, they broke their locked lips and Cedric pulled Penelope close to him.
His strong arms cradled her just as they did to me in the intimate moments of the night and my mind screamed in agony for him to stop.
Before I could even digest what I'd seen, the second bomb came.
He opened his mouth and delivered the final painstaking blow to my heart.
"I love you Penelope."
That's the thing about the second bomb.
You never expect it, quite the opposite in fact.
You assume that you are entirely safe.
That the war-zone had passed.
That you have survived.
That you got lucky.
And then your world implodes in on itself.