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They get a few nice days.
There was a day in April that felt like the first time Harry had seen the sun in years. He'd managed to convince Cedric to not spend one Saturday studying for exams that he wasn’t yet due to take for another year. It wasn’t an argument he usually won, but that day he did.
Scotland was still cold, the air whipping around with a sharpness that charms never seemed able to touch, and so there was hardly anyone else out by the lawns near Hagrid’s. There was an inter-school gobstones tournament being held in the great hall too, and apparently Fleur Delacour was something of a master in the game; her skill earning her an audience that left the rest of Hogwarts almost entirely bare.
So Cedric had brought along a blanket that they were laying on, and Harry and he set about doing not much of anything, together. Cedric had brought along a book or three; Harry was pretty content to just look at his boyfriend. His mind had plenty to think about without a book to drive the thoughts into forming.
Mostly, he found himself fascinated on that day that this person, this beautiful person, laying beside Harry with their knees brushing and his mouth mumbling academic terms Harry would never understand was holding his hand. Cedric could’ve been doing anything he wanted at that moment, with anyone he wanted, and he’d chosen to spend that day with him. He’d chosen him.
Never mind that Harry was quiet and awkward, or that he’d hardly been able to string a sentence in front of Cedric to begin with, or that all of his clothes were massive on him. Cedric hadn’t cared.
He’d said Harry’s clothes made him look cute. Cedric thought he was cute.
It’d been months since he’d said so and Harry still remembered the moment it happened — he could recall perfectly the slight hesitation before Cedric had said so, the red glow of Cedric’s cheeks as he did, and the smile of his that looked like he’d stolen the sun that followed.
Harry’s own face started to warm at the thought, and he curled up in Cedric’s side, nose pressed against the soft cotton of his jumper.
“Are you okay?” Cedric asked, his voice lovely. He let go of Harry’s hand so that he could push his fingers through Harry’s hair, and the sensation soothed him beyond words and so he could only nod against his hand in response to Cedric’s words.
His four months or so with Cedric had taught him that he’d liked many things, though none more than that he liked being held. Or no, perhaps not even that, but that he’d actually been waiting for quite a long time to be held as Cedric held him, in the soft way that he did that seemed to settle parts of himself that he’d begun to accept as broken forever.
The world couldn’t help but seem brighter with Cedric, now that Harry knew that all it took for the pounding of his heart to settle was for him to rest his head against Cedric’s chest.
Cedric looked away from his book to look down at Harry. “Are you sure something’s not the matter?” he asked. “You seem a little off.”
Harry shook his head, peering up at Cedric. “Just happy.”
With gentle hands, Cedric pulled Harry up so that he could kiss him, first pressing his lips against Harry’s forehead, and then onto his mouth. “I’m happy, too.”
Harry wrapped his arm around Cedric’s waist, and Cedric pushed his hand through Harry’s hair. And Harry, then, decided that he might finally be getting better.
“Do you mind if I do this?” Cedric asked, stroking Harry’s fringe between his index and middle finger.
“Please do,” Harry whispered.
They were happy like that for a while.
“Do you want to know what I’m thinking about?” Cedric asked after a long while, dropping his book off to one side. He sat up a little bit, but Harry didn’t want to move at all so he settled back down again. “I’m thinking about summer.”
“What about summer?”
“Well I have my internship at the ministry, for one, which is going to be amazing. And I won’t be in this tournament anymore either, for another.”
“You chose to be in it,” Harry muttered, smiling up at Cedric soon after. He shifted along his boyfriend’s chest to kiss the edge of his collarbone exposed under the sweater he was wearing.
“I never said I was very smart.” He tugged gently at Harry’s scalp so that they were face to face. “I’m so dumb, honestly. But you’re the one that likes me, so who’s the real idiot here?”
Harry couldn’t stop looking at Cedric’s lips. His bottom lip, in particular, looked quite mesmerising then. “You. You’re just really hot; you can’t call me stupid for you being hot. That’s not fair.”
Cedric laughed; the sound reverberated through the pair of them. It felt essential, somehow. As if in his joy, there was the tune to the music of life, and that the very same energy that made once-bare trees grow green shoots again was in the two of them then.
“So you only like me for how I look?” Cedric asked, smiling all confident and crooked. “I’d be offended if I was smart enough to understand the feeling.”
Harry kissed Cedric because he needed to, and he’d come to love seeing him breathless.
“So what else about summer?” Harry asked.
Cedric took a moment to get his breath back. The sight made Harry happy in ways that he didn’t have words for.
“Well, I think mum and dad are planning a holiday for just the two of them, too, so I’ll have the house to myself for a couple of weeks in August,” Cedric said. “And even though all you do is insult me, I think I might spend quite a bit of it with you.”
“Yeah?” Harry was beaming up at Cedric by then.
“I think so, yeah,” Cedric said, scratching at Harry’s scalp with his fingertips and turning his eyes heavy-lidded. “And I can apparate now so we could go into the city whenever we want. We could go to Puddlemere games together.”
“And you wouldn’t mind doing all that with me?”
Cedric sighed. “Why would I?”
Harry shrugged. “It’ll be so annoying being in public with me for you, though. I don’t want to ruin all of your favourite things basically just by being there.”
“You say that now.” Cedric gave him a smile, “but when I win the tournament, it’ll be like you’re not there. You’ll end up being my bodyguard.”
Harry found himself smiling.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Cedric asked. “Free reign to fight everyone that tries to bother me?”
“Sounds more fun than being bothered, yeah,” Harry said. “I am serious though. You shouldn’t have to deal with all the stuff that being with me brings.”
Cedric’s hand cupped Harry’s cheek, his thumb brushing along Harry’s skin. He was the only person that had ever done that to Harry. He didn’t know what to feel about it. Some days, it made him feel small and safe and protected, and yet on other days, it felt like pushing his bruised knuckles beneath hot water.
And looking up at Cedric, he felt so, so safe then.
“I can’t lie to you and say that I don’t care about what people will say when they find out about us, but I can promise you that nothing they say will change what I feel about you.”
In Cedric’s grey eyes, he thought for a moment he could see eternity, infinite and endless. That was forever his feeling with Cedric, that he was being shown a wonder he wasn’t worthy of seeing. Each kiss seemed to hold that tenderness, that sort of softness not meant for him.
It was the same as Cedric kissed him then. His lips seemed like an apology, not from Cedric but from magic, from fate and from everything above. I’m sorry, they said, that you’ve been hurt, that you are hurt, but now you have this beautiful, brilliant boy in your life that pulls you into broom closets in between lessons to give you forehead kisses and make sure you’ve been eating enough, and that teaches you next years curriculum and sends you gifts just because he thought it would make you smile. I’m sorry, they were saying, but you’ll be okay.
You’ll be okay. It will all be okay.
Harry could feel his eyes begin to well with tears. Cedric’s thumbs caught them before they could even begin to dampen his cheeks.
“Sweetheart, we’re going to be okay, alright?” Cedric said, his voice soft. Harry couldn’t look into his eyes anymore, and buried his head against his boyfriend’s chest. “We’re okay, I’ve got you.”
Harry let himself just be held.
He wanted to beat himself for it, and for being upset for such a silly little reason, but he didn’t because he knew Cedric wouldn’t want him to, and in his mind that was beginning to be enough. So he just let himself be held and let Cedric’s hands run through his hair, and he let himself let go.
“I’m sorry,” Harry couldn’t stop himself from saying.
“It’s okay,” Cedric said, dropping a kiss to the crown of Harry’s hair. “I’m glad you’re here with me. I’d hate to think of you upset alone — well, I-I’d hate to think of you upset at all, really, I-I guess I’m glad I can be here for you.”
Harry didn’t leave Cedric’s chest until he felt settled again.
There was a tinge of melancholy to Cedric’s eyes as Harry looked up to him again. He felt a stab of guilt in putting it there, though it was gone in a moment as Cedric was smiling again.
“You know, I really hope you never get your haircut,” Cedric said, and Harry was so grateful that he was moving quickly on. “Or at least never cut it short again.”
“How short is short?” Harry asked, his voice a little rough.
“Too short for me to play with,” Cedric said, doing exactly that. “And I like how much of a mop it is.” Cedric ruffled Harry’s fringe so that it fell in front of his eyes. “You look so cute.”
Harry was never getting a haircut ever again.
“Unless you want to change it, obviously,” Cedric added with a nervous laugh, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from playing with Harry’s hair.
“It might get a bit hot in the summer,” Harry said.
“I can cast as many cooling charms as you need.”
Harry smiled, threading his arms around Cedric’s neck. “Then I have no reason to ever cut it again.”
And he kissed Cedric again and again and again.
They missed both Lunch and Dinner as they stayed outside together, watching as the sky faded from the light life of the day into the darkness of night and only turning inside as frost began to take the grass around them, and their warming charms lost their use.
They disappeared away into the kitchen and ate, and then spent the evening in Cedric’s common room, and by the sheer charm of Harry’s boyfriend, they were mostly left well enough alone as they sat beside the fire.
Cedric would read his book, and he’d occasionally read aloud the parts he thought Harry might find interesting, and Harry always did. Hearing his lovely voice sound enthralled with what he was saying was just enthralling.
“So what are you looking forward to?” Cedric whispered into Harry’s ear. As it got later and later in the day and more and more of Cedric’s housemates went to bed, Harry crept closer and closer to Cedric, and so by then, as they were very nearly alone, he was wrapped in Cedric’s arms completely.
“I don’t know. I don’t really think about that sort of thing very much.”
But that was the thing about being with someone special, Harry realised then. They changed you.
With truly special people, like Cedric was, their virtues were reflected in you, and so then, despite himself, Harry allowed himself a droplet of Cedric’s eternal, infinite hope.
“Just spending more time with you.”
But the words were more than that, they both knew. It was the promise of holding hands together while they walked through beautiful places and new countries, and sleeping in each other’s arms and waking up tangled in one another, and learning everything about one another, and being young and together and happy. That this tournament, that school, that growing up, that all of that was a temporary pain that they would share together, in the knowledge and the trust that there would be joy at the end, together.
And eventually Harry did have to trudge back to his bed, but he did so with Cedric’s voice still in his ears, and with thoughts of summer to keep him company all the way back.