On Livejournal, there's a community that gives you 15 minutes and a word to base a fic on. This was my shot at it.

A tear falls down her cheek and shatters like glass on the cold stone floor. She stares unblinking at the casket in front of her, eyes glassy and unseeing. A tall man steps up behind her and lays a hand gently on her shoulder and tugs her away but she does not budge.

The bleak walls of the chapel fade from her view and she is transported back to the grounds of Hogwarts. And she is with him again, underneath the stars, laughing joyfully as he tells her of the star he’s had named after her. Her heart constricts as she recalls how wonderful his lips felt as they kissed, now officially a couple.

The grass disappears under her feet and she is suddenly in his room, giving him his birthday present. His kisses are addictive and she cannot get enough and there is passion and happiness and love and it is the best birthday he’s ever had. She gets light-headed and nervous and ridiculously giddy because that’s how it felt just being with him.

And suddenly, she is in the cave behind the waterfall and he is proposing with the most beautiful ring she’s ever seen and she feels her insides literally turn into mush and tears of happiness leak out of her eyes and she feels very much like she’s in a dream. Except, it’s real and she can’t quite breathe when he goes down on one knee and tells her that he wants to prove his love. She says yes without hesitating and he kisses her with the fire of a thousand suns and swings her around, and she finally understands that it’s possible to die of happiness.

Now she’s walking down the aisle, in the most beautiful dress she’s ever seen and she just about dies when she sees him at the altar looking like a prince straight out of a fairy tale. He mouths ‘I love you’ to her all through out the ceremony and pulls the most ridiculous faces when the reverend’s not looking that she has to use all of her willpower not to burst out laughing. And when the words ‘you may kiss the bride’ finally echoes through the small church, his kisses are long and gentle and full of promise that for a moment, she forgets about the rest of the world.

On the morning after their honeymoon she wakes up to the sight of him bringing her breakfast in bed and she thinks that that smile is more than enough to keep her happy for the rest of her life. Later that day, he has to leave for a mission and he promises to stay safe and tells her that he’ll love her no matter what and disappears after kissing on the lips. And that night he comes home and finds her in the dining room, eyes puffy and a cold meal sitting in front of her untouched. He is cut up pretty badly and it gives her something to concentrate on, which is both a good and bad thing because she cannot get the grisly images out of her mind. She closes her eyes and wraps her arms tightly around him, half-afraid that he would disappear, the knowledge that this was what her life was going to be like settling over her like a blanket. She breathes in the scent of his cologne and oddly enough, she doesn’t regret her choice.

“Cassie,” a voice breaks through her reverie and a hand lays itself on her shoulder. The hand is warm, the most heat she has felt in days. “Cassie, come and sit down.”

It is her brother, the ever-vigilant protector and she shrugs off his hand because the concern only reminds her of Gideon and how he should be the one there. She pushes him away, thankful for the tears that are obscuring her vision because she doesn’t want to see his face; she doesn’t want to see anyone’s face for fear that she’d see some fragment of Gideon hidden somewhere among them.

She has been standing there for three hours now, although even a minute feels like an eternity without him, and she finally takes a step nearer, her movements stiff and robotic and her body completely numb. She looks down on his face and feels her heart dying at the knowledge that this is the last time she’s ever going to see him. She reaches out and lays a hand on his, a sob clawing its way out of her throat at the feel of his cold skin against hers. She wonders how she could have allowed it to come to this, wonders if there had been some way to stop this and why she hadn’t found it.

‘Do you regret it?’ he had asked, after coming home from a battle heavily wounded. She never did.

She places a necklace in his cold hands, the very first he had ever given her, and steps away quickly wiping the tears from her eyes. She takes a deep breath as the word forms on her lips.

“Farewell.”