Chapter Text
“Care to dance with me?”
Harry heard the words spoken somewhere to his right and didn’t pay much attention at first. Partly because no one had attempted to ask him to dance all night (or hardly even to approach him after Parvati had stalked off in a whirl of pink), and partly because the disembodied voice over his right shoulder was most decidedly male and therefore obviously not talking to him.
When no reply came from any of the giggling girls that had been standing near the refreshment table when Harry arrived, however, he looked up and around himself, finding a) no girls in the general vicinity (they seemed to have moved their giggling flock over to the Beauxbatons table) and b) a decidedly unaccompanied Cedric Diggory, standing immediately to his right, holding out his hand in what looked suspiciously like an invitation.
“Wh-what?” he stuttered, half-certain that he must have misinterpreted something. Cedric smiled.
“Dance with me,” he said, and no matter how Harry turned the words over in his head, he couldn’t find a way to make them plausibly sound like something else. “Harry,” Cedric added, as though suddenly remembering that they hadn’t said so much as ‘hullo’ to each other all night.
“Sorry, what?” He was vaguely aware of repeating the same thing and it not sounding any more intelligent the second time around. Coherence didn’t seem to be forthcoming anytime soon, however.
“I would like to dance with you,” Cedric clarified, as though this was a perfectly reasonable request and nothing out of the ordinary. “Fleur is dancing with Krum, so I thought it would be nice if we could join forces for a while. And I happen to really like this song.”
Harry tried to say something. His rather passable imitation of a fish caught out of water made this fairly difficult.
“But I’m not a girl.”
He’d meant to say ‘But you don’t like me,’ or ‘I thought you were dancing with Cho,’ or ‘I don’t dance,’ but for some, unfathomable reason, his mind decided to pick the most embarrassing (not to mention self-evident) alternative.
If Draco Malfoy had stood before him (or any of his other enemies—since the Triwizard Tournament started, he seemed to have quite a few of them), he would, most likely, have said something like ‘Really now, Potter? That’s not what the blokes on your Quidditch team say.’ But this wasn’t Malfoy, and instead of mocking him, Cedric only repeated his winning smile and shrugged slightly.
“So what?” Through the haze of his shocked and inarticulate state, Harry realised, to his horror, that Cedric had grabbed hold of one of his forearms and was steering Harry towards the side of the dance floor.
“I don’t know how to dance.” Great. Now the second most embarrassing reason decided that the first hadn’t been quite clear enough (Though perhaps it hadn’t, seeing as Cedric was pulling him into the circle of his arms with a smooth, deliberate movement that Harry wished he’d known how to do a few hours earlier, when Parvati was manhandling him all over the floor.).
“Shh, just relax,” Cedric said, cutting through the active monologue in his head. “Even Harry Potter should be able to unwind for an evening and just float along for a bit. So don’t think, alright. Just follow, and I will be the hero for a while.”
His voice was so openly earnest that Harry felt himself being drawn in and his hands guided to the right positions without really stopping to think. Cedric’s hand came up to rest against the centre of his back, and then they were moving, gliding across the floor.
It was nice, not having to think, not having to plan his next move or worrying that he might be doing things wrong or leading in the wrong direction. Cedric’s hands were firm on his back and steady around his own hand as he moved smoothly through the steps and turns, bringing Harry with him. Dancing with Parvati, his feet had felt somehow detached from his body, struggling to keep up with the beat of the music and the set movements across the floor, generally failing abysmally in their task. Dancing with Cedric, they seemed to be more of an extension of his spine, shifting automatically with the weight of his body, following the momentum of Cedric’s movements against him. It was almost like flying—the same sense of instinct, of letting his body surge through the motions, responding to every twist and turn. He felt the corners of his lips turn into a smile and breathed deeply, letting the last of his conscious mind go and falling into the flow of things.
Towards the middle of the next song, he started to feel the pull of the music, the different beats and harmonies of the tune. There was a trumpet in there—and the smooth, steady beat of a bass; the trill of a clarinet on high notes and the joyous, teasing workings of someone who clearly loved to play the piano. Cedric had let go of the closed hold now, laughing and twisting as he guided Harry through the motions of a less lethal version of the type of dance he’d seen Fred and Angelina do earlier. He let his body move to the little details of the music, pretending that he was another one of the instruments playing, and let out a laugh. This was not only nice, it was downright fun, and the things Cedric was taking him through, the intricacies of movement—far more advanced than he’d ever thought he’d be able to pull off with any kind of grace—it was… just kind of great. Another bout of laughter bubbled up inside him as they spun. Around and around, like clockwork.
Cedric laughed with him, cracking little jokes whenever he got Harry close enough to make himself heard over the music. Harry’s head joined in the spinning sensation as Cedric pulled him flush against his front and began turning with him, faster and faster across the floor. When they came out of a double turn (and Harry thought he was going to get a small reprieve and find his sense of balance again) Cedric changed his hold and leaned in close to Harry’s ear.
“Do you trust me?”
Harry nodded automatically, because he did trust Cedric. Trusted him to be a decent bloke, someone who valued fair play and would have your back in a duel. And he’d got Harry through two entire songs worth of dancing without stepping on his toes or having him fall on his head or crash into somebody. “Yes,” he clarified, nodding again before tilting his head back a bit to better feel the curve of his spine.
“Good,” Cedric whispered, grinning in a way that almost looked slightly evil.
And then Harry’s feet disappeared from under him.
It all went so fast. He had barely time to register the inversion of gravity before his feet were once again on solid ground. Cedric’s knee had come up against the back of his thighs, flipping him neatly around the length of his arm, sending the adrenaline of sudden shock pounding through Harry and rushing straight to his head.
“That was bloody brilliant!” he exclaimed, replacing the look of total surprise with a huge grin, which made Cedric laugh harder. “Do it again.” Cedric raised an eyebrow at the request, which looked quite silly paired with the look of complete delight on his face.
“Alright. Jump on three,” he said, and Harry did, hurling himself into the air and feeling Cedric’s arms grab hold of his back and legs, manipulating the movement of energy to send Harry flying, legs first, over the taller boy’s shoulder.
“Now hold!” Cedric yelled, and Harry did, spreading his arms and legs wide for balance as Cedric spun them around and around. Fast. Exhilarating. Just like flying.
A hand came up to his shoulder, running briefly through the hair at the back of his head before taking a firm hold of his neck, pulling Harry back towards the ground. He shifted his weight and fell into the hold, trusting Cedric completely as he felt his body plunge towards the stone. A second later, he was standing again, flushed and breathless on his own two feet, Cedric’s arm still wrapped firmly around his back, steadying him.
The sound of whooping and applause reached Harry’s ear, as though someone was quickly turning up the volume of an old radio, going from a faint murmur to a mind-cracking din in the space of a heartbeat. The magic of the moment came crashing down, and he instinctively tried to pull back. Cedric didn’t let him.
“Don’t think about them,” he urged, keeping Harry close to his chest as he turned, Harry awkwardly stumbling with him, momentum lost. “They don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know what it’s like to always have people’s eyes on you, to always have to live up to expectations.” Harry blinked, and for a brief flash, he saw Cedric’s face shift, the handsome, confident exterior of Hufflepuff’s shining star and the proud and smiling Triwizard champion falling away to show a naked, slightly desperate expression underneath. “They don’t know what it’s like,” he repeated, swinging Harry out into a twist and a turn. But I do, his eyes added, and Harry felt the message trickle into him like a stray drop of rain. Some of the tension left, and he could concentrate on the music again, on the subtle directions of Cedric’s hands and arms and chest and hips as they moved across the floor. The song was coming to a close, and he caught Cedric’s eye, reading his message of equal parts resignation and rebellion in them as the older boy pulled him close one last time.
“Time for a bow,” he stated wryly. “Lean your head back.” Cedric’s hands moved to his wrists, and Harry felt himself fall backwards, arms crossed before him, keeping him from crashing to the floor. He closed his eyes, feeling his hair brush the grey stone as they held the pose. Heat tingled in every part of him, adrenaline coursing through his veins with a sense of purpose he hadn’t felt since racing across the air on his Firebolt during the first task. Complete abandon and total trust—all thought and worry gone from his head.
Freedom.
Applause erupted all around them and turned into an inferno of sound, uncompromising and unceasing. Cedric pulled him up, but didn’t meet his eyes, letting go of his hands and stepping away from Harry with a friendly—and almost insultingly casual—pat on the back.
“Thanks, Potter, that was fun,” he said pleasantly, and Harry felt as though someone had just poured a bucket of icy water over his head. From the corner of his eye, he could see Cho approaching, no doubt coming to steal her date back. There was a new song playing—a slow, hauntingly beautiful tune that seemed to travel through the stone and go straight into Harry’s bloodstream. Forcing a smile to his face, he murmured something equally empty, clapped Cedric on the back with a short laugh and quickly moved away from the Great Hall.
***
“Harry!”
He had just put his foot on the first step of the staircase, and for a brief moment, he considered simply ignoring the voice and keep moving. He was tired, off centre and had just had to mediate in a screaming match between his two best friends. No matter what Cedric had caught up with him for, he was fairly certain he didn’t have the energy to hear it. Not now.
“Harry, please,” Cedric urged, touching a hand to Harry’s arm to turn him around. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, starting to turn away again. “Let’s just forget all about it, alright?” He moved to leave, but the hand on his arm held him in place, tugging him closer to Cedric’s tall frame.
“No,” the other boy said quietly, insistently. “I don’t want to forget about it. I liked dancing with you tonight, and I’m sorry I flipped out at the end.” That desperate earnestness was back in his expression, and Harry’s spirits couldn’t help but to lift a little.
“Apology excepted,” he said, managing a small, if rather tense, smile. “Good night.”
“Wait.” Cedric’s voice was very low now, and Harry turned back to him with a frown on his face. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” Cedric said, words falling in a quick, quiet stream from his lips. “About the Tournament. Can you meet me later?” Harry’s frown deepened.
“Why not now?” he asked, looking quickly around to make sure no one was listening. “What is it?” Cedric looked pointedly to the left, and Harry followed his gaze, finding Cho waiting a little nervously over by the staircase that lead to the Eastern parts of the castle. “Oh.”
“I just want to say goodnight,” Cedric explained hurriedly. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.” Harry nodded uncomfortably, thinking suddenly of his own manners as someone’s date that night. Parvati was probably going to hex him when he got back to the tower.
“Alright.” He didn’t know what he was replying to exactly, but from the way the tension dropped from Cedric’s shoulders, he figured that the older boy took it as confirmation of his earlier request.
“Great,” he said, flashing a quick smile at Harry. “Fifth floor, at the top of the staircase. Bring the egg. I’ll meet you there in an hour when things have quieted down a bit.”
A last tug of his lips, and Cedric was gone, moving swiftly across the hall to offer his arm to Cho with a flourish. Harry watched the two of them walk up the staircase together and felt something burn in his chest, leaving a painful sense of blackness in its wake. He stood there, completely still, until the handsome couple disappeared from view and then made his way back to Gryffindor Tower, conflicting thoughts swirling in his head.