Part 1: Queer
Cedric, 1986-1995
Minisinoo

Cedric first knew he was different at eight when he remarked to his father that the tall Scottish boy he'd met at his first junior Quidditch practice was quite fit.  His father glanced down at him with a frown that was half amused, half bemused, and ruffled his hair.  "Boys don't call other boys 'fit,' Ced.  Oliver's certainly a bloody good flyer, but, well, he's not a girl, y'know."

"I don't like girls, dad."

His father laughed.  "Of course you don't!  At your age, girls are repulsive.  But by the time you're twice eight, you'll have changed your mind about them."

He was more than twice eight now.

He still didn't like girls.

The recognition of what this meant -- and that it wasn't acceptable -- came slowly between eight and sixteen like a puzzle assembled in pieces.  He'd always been both more interested in, and more shy of, boys rather than girls.  His neighbor, little Luna, was a bit odd, but fun enough.  He was never nervous around her, and they'd gone hunting for blibbering humdingers in the woods near their homes until his father had told him to stop it, there was no such thing as a blibbering humdinger -- even if Luna's father insisted there was.

"The Lovegoods are absolutely nuts, Ced.  The death of Luna's mum sent them both right 'round the bend.  Be nice to her for heaven's sake -- they're good people -- but you can't believe anything she says."

Cedric thought that only partly true -- sometimes Luna was more observant than he was -- but he'd also begun to realize others laughed at her, so he learned to keep his distance.  He didn't like to be laughed at.

It was being laughed at -- or letting people down -- that he feared most.

His apparent lack of romantic interest in girls didn't change when he reached Hogwarts and found himself surrounded by more of them on a regular basis.  At first, his age-mates had little interest in girls either, but by his third and fourth year, they began to discuss tits and clits and other girl-parts in hushed voices.  And he just didn't care.  Girls made good friends, but he had no desire to find out more about their privates.

His mates' privates, however, increasingly intrigued him.  He wondered if they were intrigued by his -- but no one ever discussed that.  He once tried a round-about way of inquiring whether they ever 'checked out the equipment' of other boys in the showers, and was rather laughingly rebuffed by his denmate Ed.  "It's not your equipment I'm interested in, Ced!"  Ed had meant nothing cruel; Cedric knew that.  Nonetheless, he recognized that he'd asked an unacceptable question, or at least not one anybody else gave much thought to.

He was also learning less-nice words for things -- slag, twat, toffee, up the duff, queer, and poofter . . . He wasn't always sure what these things meant exactly, and pride prevented him from asking.  No boy wanted to admit to a lack of knowledge in that department, so he giggled with the rest as if he understood, and during summer holidays asked his father -- who grinned and defined them all for him.  But when his dad got to 'queer' and 'poofter,' Cedric was hard-pressed to keep his face bland when he asked, "You mean boys can like other boys?"

Frowning, his father nodded.  "It happens.  It's not normal, of course, but there are some.  You shouldn't make fun, though, Ced.  It's not polite.  They can't help how they are."

It's not normal, of course . . . they can't help how they are.  Acid words burning through his gut.  But at least now he had a name for what he was.

Queer.

Back at Hogwarts, he looked it up in a dictionary.

From the German quer, meaning across, at right angle, diagonally or transverse.

1.  Strange, unusual, or peculiar.
2.  Suspicious or not quite right.
3.  Someone mildly insane or who exhibits socially inappropriate behavior.
4.  Someone in financial trouble.  ('Living on Queer Street').

He stopped at that point and closed the dictionary, returning it to Madam Pince.  It was clear enough that being queer meant he was abnormal, and he could never admit to or explain it to anyone else, least of all his friends and admirers -- or they wouldn't be his friends and admirers.

Not if they knew he was queer.

He became adept at hiding his sidelong glances at other boys in the locker room, and made his hugs and embraces properly rough and manly.  When his denmates talked about girls, he talked about them too.  When they described what they wanted to do to female classmates, he learned to listen and repeat what he heard, adjusting the order a bit to be creative.  When they watched the girls walk past, he pretended to watch too.

Sometimes, though, he gave himself away by small things.  In his fifth year, he caught up to the Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, after the Ravenclaw-Slytherin match, to compliment her on her catch.  They'd happily chatted Quidditch all the way back to the castle.  But when his denmates teased him later for flirting, he was honestly surprised and replied (without thinking), "I'm not interested in Cho.  She's a great flier, that's all."

He must have sounded too sincere because Ed, Peter and Scott all blinked at him in surprise.  "What's wrong with your eyes, mate?" Peter asked.  "Cho Chang is gorgeous.  And she was all over you, to be sure."

Realizing his error, he smiled with false embarrassment.  "Well, yeah.  But, er, we were just talking Quidditch."

His mates cottoned on -- or at least, they thought they had -- and shoved at him good-naturedly, saying, "Yeah, right!" and, "'Just talking Quidditch,' we don't believe that for a minute."

Yet their reactions gave Cedric an idea.  What if she had been interested in him like . . . that?  Did she think him nice-looking?  Could he pretend to be interested in her too?  It would be a good cover, and certainly, he'd liked talking to her.  She was sensible and intelligent, and he thought they could be friends.  There were worse girls to pretend to like.

It never occurred to him the extent of the deception on which he was about to embark.  And he never meant to hurt anyone.

By the end of his fifth year, he and Cho were close friends, and he sometimes tried flirting, even if it felt very mechanical.  Yet it wasn't Cho whose eye he most wanted to catch, but that of Oliver Wood who he remembered from childhood.  Unfortunately, Wood saw him as an opponent, or the annoying younger boy who asked stupid questions in the hallways and pestered him unduly.  "Merlin's beard," Peter admonished, "would you stop following Wood around?  He's not God's gift to Quidditch, you know.  It's like you're mooning or something.  That's just queer, Ced."

Queer.

The word had been enough to shock Cedric out of his obsession.  He couldn't afford to obsess over boys, only over Quidditch and classes.

"I can't believe you're not in Ravenclaw," Cho told him once.  She meant it as a compliment, but it annoyed him.

"A person can be in Hufflepuff without being an idiot."

She blushed.  "Well, of course!  I wasn't saying that.  It's just . . . you study as hard as any of my classmates."

He shrugged.  He didn't want to admit that he studied because it kept his mind off other things and if he spent late hours pouring over books preparing for his exams, he was too tired to come in his sleep while thinking about Oliver Wood.

He earned eight OWLs that year -- not the most, but still top of his class.  His proud parents congratulated him and bought him a new broom in celebration and he returned to school for his sixth year increasingly twisted up inside.  He had no real friends because no one really knew who he was.  And if they did know, he wouldn't have friends either.  He'd be as much an outcast as Luna Lovegood.  It was bad enough that some in their year, like the Weasley twins, insisted on calling him 'pretty boy' and 'nancy boy' and 'sissy.'  He wondered sometimes if his own mates might suspect something.  The fear of potential discovery made him sick any time he thought about it.  So he didn't think about it.

He couldn't say exactly why he put his name in the Goblet of Fire, but he certainly hadn't expected his name to come out of it.  He was glad, though; it gave him a chance to prove himself -- his bravery, his intellect.  His masculinity.  Surely the Goblet wouldn't have picked him if he weren't worthy?  And if he was worthy, then it must mean being queer wasn't permanent.  He'd . . . outgrow it, or something.

So he asked Cho Chang to the Yule Ball.  She was ecstatic and told all her friends.  He didn't tell his until they found out through the grapevine . . . then they teased him no end.  He supposed that going with Cho was as good as going with anyone else.  Since Oliver had finished school, nobody had caught his eye and he was doing his very best not to think about boys.

He certainly wasn't thinking about Harry Potter.

Of course he'd been aware of Harry since the younger boy had arrived during his third year.  Who wouldn't be?  He was Harry Bloody Potter.  But Cedric had neither resented him nor been especially interested in him.  He was a great Seeker -- better than Cedric, if Cedric were honest with himself.  But otherwise, Harry wasn't Cedric's type -- too much the loner, too messy, too inclined to court trouble.

Too much of a glory seeker.

Cedric didn't believe him when he said he hadn't put his name in the Goblet, and continued to be skeptical until the day Harry sought him out to tell him about the dragons.  That made Cedric re-evaluate a number of things, and he paid a bit more attention to Harry afterwards.  Yet as Harry was two years younger, he didn't often cross Cedric's path.

At the Yule Ball, Cedric noticed him again.  He had eyes for Harry before he had eyes for his own date -- and she noticed.  "Why are you staring at Harry Potter?" she asked him.

Startled, he glanced down at her.  "What?  No reason.  Just, you know, wondering if he's figured out his egg yet."

Yet that began something, and Cedric found himself with a new infatuation -- and a rather inconvenient one.  Harry Potter.

He was glad to be able to return the favor Harry had shown regarding the dragons by telling Harry about the egg.  And if he'd had a bit of help from Professor Moody, well it didn't matter.  Fair was fair.  When they ended up tied for first place after the Second Task, he was surprised and oddly pleased.

Unfortunately, Cho made rather more of being his 'treasure' than she really had a right to, and Cedric wondered who'd made those selections anyway -- suspected his had been perfunctory.  Cho had been his Yule Ball date and they were still seeing each other.  Ergo, she must be his treasure.  It wasn't as if anybody could read his mind.  And even if they could, his 'treasure' could hardly be another champion.

As they approached the Third Task, Cedric's life grew more complicated.  He became obsessed with Harry the same as he'd once been with Oliver Wood.  But this time, his mates definitely noticed.  "What's with you and Potter?" Ed asked him, and Peter said, "The way you act, you'd think you had a crush on him.  Ced, he's your rival, not your best mate."  Scott just frowned when Harry's name came up, but didn't comment . . . and Cedric feared what Scott guessed most of all.

Cho was a problem all her own -- but a problem he'd created.  He couldn't blame her.  He'd made an effort to seek her out the year before, he'd asked her to the Yule Ball this year, and then she'd been chosen as his treasure in the lake.  Small wonder if she assumed she meant something to him beyond a pleasant Sunday afternoon conversation.  And how horrible was that?

She also noticed his preoccupation.  Once when they were up in the owlery messing about -- kissing hard and exploring with hands -- he put on the brakes because Harry's snowy owl suddenly showed up.  She glared and said, "Sometimes I think you're more interested in Harry Potter than in me."

And he froze for a moment -- because it was true.  But she was only expressing frustration in his distraction, and he was able to divert her attention

On the night before the day of the Third Task, what he'd most feared happened.  Cho tried to have sex with him.  And he couldn't.  He simply couldn't maintain an erection when faced with more than letting her bring him off.  He could close his eyes and imagine her hand was Harry's, but girl parts were girl parts and there was no getting around it.  They didn't exactly disgust him.  They just held no fascination whatsoever and he couldn't stay hard.

He apologized profusely, blamed nerves, and told her they should wait until afterwards to celebrate.  It gave him time to think of how to get out of it.  He knew she was confused and hurt and angry, but hoped she wouldn't say anything to anyone.  The evening of the task, she remained up in the stands with her friends, not coming down even to the edge of the seats to wish him luck.  He hated that he felt more relieved by that than upset, and resolved after the task to take her aside and quietly end the charade.  He wouldn't tell her the whole truth -- he wasn't brave like a Gryffindor -- but he was a Hufflepuff, and honesty mattered.  He'd at least admit that he wasn't feeling what he should -- and that it had nothing to do with her.  He probably couldn't avoid hurting her, but he didn't want her to blame herself.  Cho deserved better.

By the task's end, he and Harry found themselves united, teammates, not opponents.  Secretly ecstatic at this turn of events, Cedric agreed to take the cup together with Harry.  A shared victory meant a shared celebration afterwards, and he'd rather win with Harry than defeat him.

Yet as soon as they touched the cup, they found themselves transported to a creepy graveyard, and that wasn't right.  Cedric was alarmed, but more concerned over Harry's alarm and the pain from his scar.  The boy was younger and needed Cedric to protect him; that was Cedric's duty -- and not because of his crush.  So when the strange figure stepped out of an archaic crypt and started towards them, it was only natural for Cedric to raise his wand in defense of Harry.  "Kill the spare" was the last thing he ever heard, and brilliant green was all he saw.

As the Killing Curse sped towards him, in those last few seconds of life, he felt . . . peace.  Despite the suddenness of it, the 'tragedy' of his unfinished youth, he didn't regret dying.

Dying meant he never had to explain to his friends or family, "I'm queer."

Part 2: Crush

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