"Did you ever suspect?" Harry asks Cedric. "I didn't."

Cedric smiles; Harry is resting his head in Cedric's lap, and he looks up into the sweet gray eyes. "Well, I can't say I did," Cedric replies. "But I fancied you."

Harry laughs; it feels so good, after the last seven years, to be able to laugh as freely as he now can. It feels so good, and yet not quite real, but it is real, real in a way that he couldn't quite believe at first. "What about Cho?"

"Oh, I liked Cho too. She's a nice girl. But there was something about you that, I don't know, fascinated me…"

"My cousin Dudley said something once," Harry says, reaching up to cup Cedric's hand in his face. "I was yelling in my sleep, I think, I was yelling at Voldemort not to kill you. And Dudley told me, and he asked, 'Who's Cedric, your boyfriend?' I didn't think to say no."

They sit together on the hill, Harry with his head in Cedric's lap, both of them watching the enormous black dog run up and down the beach.

"He isn't suffering anymore," Harry says. "I'd never seen him like that, before I got here." He closes his eyes and feels Cedric's fingers tracing the curves of his face. The pure gentleness makes him want to fall asleep. "He misses Remus, though, but I think it's like how I miss Ron and Hermione. I know I'm going to see them, and when I do it'll feel sooner rather than later."

"I miss my mum and dad," says Cedric. "That's the only thing that's wrong here. Missing people."

The sun is setting; the sky is hazy purple and rosy red, and the stars are beginning to come out. A mild breeze blows through Cedric's hair.

"I never suspected," Harry said. "I never suspected you were the person I was meant for."

"Fourteen-year-old boys never suspect anything," says Cedric, and grins.

Harry sits up; he brushes Cedric's lips with his own and a moment later they're kissing, their mouths undulating together. Around them the night is falling and the crickets are chirping in the grass.

"Harry!" a voice calls. "Sirius! Cedric! It's time for dinner!"

"Coming, Mum!" Harry calls, breaking apart from Cedric, and the two of them grab hands and begin to run down the hill, eager for another night of feasting by the fire with James on their left and Lily on their right, with Dumbledore sitting across the table and Sirius at his side.