Being a Prefect, it was perfectly acceptable for Cedric to be out late. He paced the halls, wandered the dungeons, spent a while up on the Astronomy Tower, and even stopped in the kitchens for a quick snack.
The whole time, his mind was at work, constantly sorting and sifting through events that had happened, and were still to come.
The Yule Ball, and what had happened after it. How he was going to explain how he felt to Cho. If he even knew how he felt(which he was most certain he didn't). How he was going to explain to...
Stopping, he stared at the pale face which had snapped up when Cedric rounded the corner in the sixth floor hallway. Glasses had caught the moonlight and were covered in the reflection, so Cedric couldn't see the eyes that he knew were boring into his.
And even if he didn't have that damnable scar on his forehead, Cedric would know Harry Potter anywhere.
"Cedric...?"
"Harry."
"What... Why are you...?"
"I'm a Prefect, Harry. I'm patrolling." The terseness in his own voice disappointed him, and the feel in the corridor took on that of rejection as Harry turned his head away, staring out the window he stood at.
"Are you going to turn me in for being up?" His voice was so soft Cedric wasn't sure if he had even spoken, and before he could think about it, he shook his head. Brown hair was tossed about, eventually falling back to it's normal, slightly shaggy place.
"No, I'm not going to turn you in." When he turned again, the glare on his glasses was still there, hiding the eyes that Cedric wanted so badly to see.
"...Why?" The questin caught him offguard, and he felt his eyebrow raise a bit. Shifting his weight, he pushed his hands into the back pockets of his dark jeans. Leaning one hip on the wall, he kept his gaze on Harry.
The glasses hid the fact that Harry's gaze had dropped from Cedric's eyes, taking in the older boy's body, and the way his hips were so thin. Immediatly, the fantasy of wrapping his arms around them assaulted him, but he had long since become accustomed to it, and it no longer made him uncomfortable.
"I don't feel like walking all the way to a teacher's office." He watched the way Cedric's lips moved, and now the fantasy expanded, seeing in his mind's eye those lips nipping at his jaw, nibbling at his neck, and finally, colliding with his own lips.
A smile came onto Harry's face, and when he shifted, the glare left, and Cedric felt that usual sinking in his chest at the sight of the beautiful emeralds that Harry had. Luckily for the younger lad, he had just looked back up, so Cedric would never realize that Harry watched him, yearning for every inch of his body.
"Why are you up, Harry?" Oh, the way his name rolled off of those lips!
"I'm thinking." Ironic. So was Cedric.
"And?"
"About everything. This Tournament... and how I got entered. The tasks. Figuring out the second one-"
"I told you about the bath."
"I know. I did it." With out him. How disappointing.
Green met with gray, clashing for a moment as the boys watched each other in silence. Cedric, wishing that he had been on patrol that day and could have stumbled upon Harry bathing. Harry, fighting his legs from carrying him right up to the seventeen year old and ravishing him right there in the hall.
He'd accepted the way he felt and resigned to yearning for him, knowing that no matter how much he tried to convince himself that it was Cho he thought he wanted, in the end it would always be Cedric.
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