He was no longer seeing someone.

This wasn’t news. Cedric had taken great care to make it wasn’t news yet nothing had happened. Not that anything should’ve happened. Not that he’d been expecting anything to happen. Hope wasn’t for fools but he’d always taken great pride on being realistic.

And yet.

It’d been a while. He knew because he kept a journal and his journal did not lie. Was he a hopeless fool? He’d thought there had been something. A something that made his heart erratic; a something that made him think the world had quietly aligned itself differently, without his permission but with his full approval.

He was baffled. Which came from a place of entitlement he’d not known he possessed. Perhaps there was some truth to Men and Power. Not that he’d ever considered his badge a privilege; or his looks to be anything more than a lucky accident caused by genetics. Or his marks to be the result of anything other than hard work.

As if called upon by a summoning charm, Cho appeared in front of him. Or maybe he appeared in front of her. He always did gravitate near her orbit,

Breathlessly, Cedric said, “Hi.”