Chapter Text
“Ron, are you sure this doesn’t look too tight?”
Harry asked as he turned to his best friend, T-posing to demonstrate how the arms pulled the material of his dress robes tight slightly at the shoulders. Harry had been worrying about this evening for days now, ever since he had invited Cedric to go to the Yule ball with him. Harry wasn’t usually this nervous about events like this, despite his socially awkward mannerisms - even though that’s what 11 years in a cupboard and being deprived of social interaction does to you. In fact, when the ball was announced, Harry didn’t even bat an eyelid, not caring that having a date was an important part of the event. Harry figured that he, Ron and Hermione would go together, none of them particularly being rushed to find dates, but then he remembered, that Ron and Hermione were obviously going to go together.
Harry had known he was the third wheel for some time now, noticing how sometimes he couldn’t join in with a joke that the two had between them. He noticed how Hermione would lean onto Ron for comfort, and Harry would awkwardly put his hand on her back, not being a part of the hug. He didn’t mind that much, not liking either of his friends in any other way than platonic. However, he did feel a pang of guilt now and then. Harry couldn’t exactly call what he felt jealousy, since he hadn’t really developed romantic feelings for anyone before, being too consumed with other things going on in his life. The closest word to what he felt must be guilt, as he felt like he was holding the two back sometimes. Ron and Hermione didn’t think so, but Harry was well aware that the two were careful not to do certain things around him. Harry would notice when Ron and Hermione would switch topics when they saw him walking into the great hall. He noticed how they would stop giggling and flirting when he came down from the dormitory and into the common room. He saw the look Hermione would give Ron when he brought up something that happened when Harry wasn’t around. He knew of course, that the two were only doing it to make him feel more included and to make him feel like he was in on everything they did together. They wouldn’t want Harry to feel like be was being excluded or removed from their lives, but it just made Harry feel guilty. As If his best friends couldn’t show how happy and comfortable they were together.
Harry told the two that he didn’t mind the two dating, and that he didn’t feel uncomfortable or left out - and it was half true. Harry did feel left out, but not in the friend group, just in general. He’d never been one to brag about his appearance, and he hadn’t half the confidence that the other students assumed he had. Harry just saw himself as a plain boy. A boy with no extraordinary talents. Just someone who happened to be casted this life, a life full of terror and mystery. He couldn’t envision himself being attractive to another human being, since he’d hardly the time to meet many people. Most people ‘liked’ him due to the legacy behind his name. But that’s all they liked, the name, not the actual boy. Harry Potter - ‘The Boy Who Lived’, the legend was what appealed to others, not his clumsy and awkward personality. He’d never experienced love before, and the only love he had in his life was taken from him when he was only a year old. He couldn’t remember his parents, and he couldn’t remember ever being told he was loved. Sometimes, Harry wondered what it felt like, to love. He gathered that love felt somewhat like excitement, from the way it had been described. How your heart would swell, how you felt like everything was perfect, how you were safe and content… like you were at home. Perhaps Harry loved Hogwarts. Hogwarts was his home, his heart would swell when he saw the turrets of the towers come into view when he rode the Hogwarts Express at the start of every year, knowing he would be back where magic was accepted and he was able to forget about muggle life. However, life wasn’t perfect at Hogwarts, not for Harry. He couldn’t say he was safe either. Every year there was always a threat. He was always hunted, and he doubted he would be able to escape the dark lord any time soon. So maybe Harry didn’t love Hogwarts, not the same way Hermione loved Ron and vice versa.
Once he realised that Ron and Hermione would be attending the Yule ball together, he knew that he couldn’t just tag along. It wouldn’t be fair on the two for him to third wheel this, not on the one night where the couple could truly enjoy themselves. Harry wanted his best friends to enjoy the night and to experience it as a couple, instead of watering it down to include their other friend too. This wasn’t an adventure the three would tackle together. After forgetting about the possibility of attending the Yule ball with his two friends, he racked his brain for other possibilities, his mind drifting over other people he knew. He thought about asking Luna, seeing as she wouldn’t have a date, however he knew that Luna was a lesbian, and so he didn’t want to possibly make her uncomfortable or have her go through the guilty feeling of declining his offer. He thought about other girls he had spoken to and girls that would agree to put up with his presence for a few hours, but his mind faltered. He could ask Ginny… but she was Ron’s sister, and he didn’t want to have any kind of tension between him and Ron, especially since Harry had no feelings for the younger girl and he didn’t want to appear like he was leading her on, especially since she had a crush on him.
It wasn’t until Hermione had suggested over lunch one day that Harry asked a boy to the dance, that Cedric drifted into Harry’s mind. Harry was in the middle of taking a few gulps of water at the table after Quidditch practise when Hermione blurted out that asking a boy was possible, and Harry ended up choking on his water, coughing and spluttering - covering his mouth to clear his throat.
“Blimey, Hermione. Don’t out me to everyone, will you?” Harry asked with his eyebrows raised, still coughing a little as he spoke.
“Well… it’s not a ridiculous thing to suggest.” Hermione said quietly, pushing her rice around her plate as she looked between Ron and Harry.
Harry hadn’t openly ‘came out’ about his sexuality, mainly because he didn’t see a need to. He hadn’t ever considered his sexuality, purely because he had no time to. His entire adolescence had revolved around surviving, and romance and reproduction never came into the picture. Harry never saw himself set to any specific gender, and so it was only natural that he ended up labelling himself as bisexual when he brought it up one night in the common room. The only reason why Harry was keeping it quiet, was because the last thing he needed was to endure the Ministry of Magic’s interrogations into his private, romantic life. They’d be sorely mistaken though, because there wasn’t one, and Harry could save himself the embarrassment of having to admit that he had no partner or significant other. Harry didn’t feel ready to announce to the world that the ‘famous wizard who defeated you-know-who’ had the extra title and tag of being bisexual too.
“She is right, y’know.” Ron stated, crossing his arms and leaning across the table a little, lowering his voice so others around them wouldn’t listen in. “Just because the tradition is to bring someone of the opposite sex, it doesn’t mean it’s a rule.”
“It’s called a tradition for a reason, it’s not broken. If I asked… a boy-“ Harry whispered the last two words as if they were cursed. “-to the dance, then I’d be the first to do so. I can hear them now, ‘The famous Harry Potter, the youngest first year to join the Quidditch team as a seeker, the boy who defeated the dark lord, the boy who stopped the heir of Slytherin from returning… is now the first to bring a boy to the Yule ball!’. No… I’d rather just stay in our dormitory all night.” Harry mumbles quietly, not having much of an appetite for lunch. Ron and Hermione looked at Harry, with Hermione sighing and shaking her head a little bit.
“Harry, you know that if you don’t attend the ball, Professor McGonagall will be chasing you down all night. Even with your invisibility cloak, I doubt she will let it slide. You’re the pride of Gryffindor, she won’t take it lightly if you don’t attend.” Hermione says. Of course, she was right, as always. Harry sighed and looked down from the pair, looking at the metallic plate, and his reflection shone from the perfectly polished silverware. He thought it over. He knew that he had to attend, he just didn’t know how he could attend without a date. He knew for a fact he couldn’t turn up alone, it would be too embarrassing. He supposed he could play it off as a platonic ‘date’ with another boy. Surely… nobody would need to know if it was purely platonic or not.
Harry’s heart skipped a beat, he looked up from his empty plate at the pair across the table from him and thought to himself silently whilst Ron and Hermione stared at him expectantly, wondering what the other boy had thought of. Harry’s heart did a mini somersault in his chest as he thought about asking Cedric. The boy who was three years his senior, in his final year. Cedric and Harry had bumped into each other in the corridor a few times, and it wasn’t rare for the mousey haired boy to ask to sit next to Harry in the library, choosing to help him with his studies rather than work on his own. If the perfect Hufflepuff was embodied in a person, it would be in the form of Cedric Diggory. He was kind, loyal, curious and caring. Somehow, Cedric would find Harry at the most random of times, often when he was on his way to or from Hagrid’s - always asking him how his day was. Unlike others, Cedric didn’t seem to care for his entire ‘boy who lived’ backstory. In fact, Cedric was the only person who’d never brought up any of his past adventures and mishaps at Hogwarts, apart from the Triwizard Tournament every now and then, but even still - he didn’t mention it an awful lot. He knew that Harry still struggled to sleep most nights.
He could only imagine how scary it must’ve been to have seen his body lying in such a way. Cedric had spent a few weeks after the incident thanking Harry for saving him, but he learnt quickly to stop mentioning it, since Harry only ever responded with how he didn’t want to remember it. Cedric remembered being knocked out by Wormtail, Harry deflecting the killing curse, just enough power hit Cedric to knock him into a comatose state, which was as close to being dead as possible while retaining his health. If it wasn’t for Harry being fast to deflect the curse, Cedric wouldn’t be there still. As grateful as Cedric was, he cared more about how Harry was doing. Harry didn’t speak of what happened after Cedric was unconscious, and Cedric respected that. He suspected it was too awful to speak, and he didn’t blame Harry for being traumatised either. Harry was grateful for Cedric being there for him, since he often asked about what Harry wanted to do in the future, and he tried to make Harry smile and laugh, and see the good in life. Harry didn’t see his future being bright, and he wasn’t entirely sure where things were going to lead. He never knew what danger would appear by the end of the school year, so he never planned his life out. Cedric was the one who kept giving him ideas, and they were never ambitious or ludicrous dreams, they were always tangible and achievable.
“What is it?” Ron asked after a few seconds of silence, not entirely sure what they were waiting to hear. Harry finally spoke up after collecting his thoughts, deciding what he was going to do.
“I’m going to ask Cedric.” He said quickly, as if he was definitive on it. Hermione looked at Ron and then back at Harry again. The two had heard of previous encounters between Harry and Cedric, admittedly not all of them, since Harry didn’t tell the duo everything about his crush on the older boy - but they most certainly knew enough to tell that Harry would fall apart like jelly in the face of the older boy when it came to actually asking him to go to the ball.
“Harry, is Cedric even…” Hermione looked sympathetic towards Harry. It was common for wizards and witches to hide their sexuality, especially up until the fifth year. There were a few who didn’t care and had been open their entire time at Hogwarts, such as Luna and Katie, but most magic folk kept it secret since there was no representation or display of acceptance. That’s not to say that Hogwarts didn’t accept it - because there was no rule or display of homophobia anywhere, and it wasn’t abnormal in the slightest. If anything, it was more normal in the Wizarding World, however… the fear of stepping out of line or standing out too much is what kept people quiet.
Harry thought about what Hermione asked, and for a second he felt his heart sink. Cedric had never specified what he identified as, most probably because it never came up in conversation and it had never even crossed Harry’s mind. Almost selfishly, Harry had just assumed that Cedric liked him. Perhaps it was the way Cedric would walk away from his friend group just to wish Harry a good day in the courtyard on the way to class, or it was the way he would occasionally sneak a pumpkin pasty to the library for Harry whilst he studied, even though food was completely banned in the library in fear it would stain the books.
“Actually… I’m not sure.” Harry admitted, catching glance of Hermione’s sympathetic face. Ron then cleared his throat and tried to change the sudden pessimistic atmosphere, since Harry was starting to doubt if he could ask Cedric.
“There’s only one way to find out.” The ginger boy suggested, and then continued to speak once Harry and Hermione turned their attention on him. “I mean, just ask him to the ball. His reaction should tell you enough. If he accepts is as if it’s no big deal, then he will go platonically with you. If he rejects… then perhaps he’s already found a date.” Ron says and starts to grab some food to put on his plate finally, feeling like the conversation was drawing to a close. Harry hummed in thought, it was a good idea. Hermione chirped in again.
“Yes, and if he accepts, and doesn’t brush it off… then I think it’s safe to make the assumption he likes you back. I definitely think you should ask him, Harry.” Hermione says, smiling a little at her best friend. “But…” She starts, her smile changing to be a little bit more wary. “You should remember that you always stutter in front of him. Perhaps try not to stutter much... or else you might end up backing out of it, and then you really will be going to the Yule ball alone. We don’t want that.” Hermione says and takes a sip of her own drink. It was true that Harry got all flustered in front of Cedric, and he seriously needed to try and control that before he asked Cedric to attend the ball with him.
“Maybe I should get some liquid luck-“ Harry suggested jokingly, to which Hermione and Ron both responded in unison,
“NO!”