Part 2: Crush
Harry, March 1996
Minisinoo

"So, what do you think of Firenze?" Harry asked Cho.

"He's a bit . . . odd.  Not very emotional, compared to what I've heard about Professor Trelawney."

"Not exactly a bad thing that, is it?" Harry asked.  "At least he doesn't spend every lesson predicting someone's gruesome death!"

Cho winced, and only belatedly did Harry remember what she appeared never able to forget -- Cedric's murder.  But he'd been referring to Trelawney's predilection for predicting his demise.  Now he wondered (a bit morbidly) if she'd ever said anything to Diggory?  Not that it would have meant much.  Trelawney's normal 'predictions' had all the veracity of a newspaper horoscope.

"I meant me," he clarified now, face hot with both embarrassment and irritation.

She nodded.  "I know."  She was staring down at her book as one hand stole up to wipe surreptitiously at her eye.  Then she gave him a forced smile.  "Even if she had said something to Cedric, he wouldn't have listened.  He thought she was a head case."  Then she gave a little shrug.  "Perhaps it's best if we don't know the hour of our death.  I don't think I'd want to.  Except . . . well, maybe I'd do things, say things -- not put them off.  You always think there will be a later."

Harry puzzled over that a moment, wondering if she were speaking in general or had something specific in mind that she wished she'd said to Diggory . . . and did he really want to know what that was?  Did it matter?  Diggory was dead.  Except he wasn't.  He always seemed to be there haunting them both and everything they said to each other.

It was a stormy Sunday afternoon in mid-March, and he and Cho had met in the library to study.  These study sessions were all that made his weekends worthwhile -- ghost of Cedric or no -- now that Quidditch was out of the question and Umbridge had his Firebolt.  Ever since his interview with Rita Skeeter in The Quibbler, Cho had been willing to forget the disastrous Valentine's Day visit to Hogsmeade and Harry supposed they could be described as seeing each other again -- although he wasn't always sure what that entailed.  Cho seemed to have expectations, and behind those expectations Harry could make out -- once again -- the ghost of Cedric Diggory.

Diggory had been bad enough when he'd been alive.  How could Harry shadow-box an enshrined memory?  It would've been so much easier if he were able to hate Cedric -- if he didn't, himself, wake sweating from nightmares where he saw Cedric's dead face, or heard his voice begging Harry to take his body back.  But Harry suspected that Cedric would've been the first to tell him (and Cho) to quit mourning and get on with living.

Maybe Harry could have if Umbridge weren't so horrible.  Or if Cho weren't so immersed.  Or if the rest of the Wizarding World weren't so intent on denying Voldemort's return and chalking up Cedric's death to 'an unfortunate accident.'  Rival or not, Cedric deserved better.

So everything, everything, everything kept dragging him back to the night of 24^th June.

Sometimes he wondered what the year would have been like if Cedric hadn't gone with him to the graveyard, hadn't taken the cup after all --

Hadn't died.

"Harry?"  Cho had bent over the table, peering into his face.  "All right, Harry?"

"Yeah -- sorry.  Just thinking."

Smiling, she covered his hand for a moment with hers, then returned attention to her parchment.

A bit before dinner, they packed up and she asked him, "Would you like to go up to the owlery?"

Confused by the question, he glanced over at her.  "What's in the owlery?  Besides owls, I mean?"

"Oh -- there's a nice view.  And, well, it's, er, private.  People don't often go up there, and definitely not in the evening."

Harry wondered how she knew that (Cedric Diggory again?), and it made him nervous.  But also excited.  There were things he'd wondered about but kept mostly to himself, afraid to discuss them even with Ron.  Was a girl's breast soft or firm?  And what did the skin just beneath her ear taste like?  And how did it feel to hold someone so close he could make out every rib and curve?

They reached the owlery as the sun was setting; its light cast a brilliant red-orange-gold glow through the dust and feathers.  Harry did sometimes come to the owlery to visit Hedwig, and it did, indeed, have the nice view of which Cho had spoken.  But this was the first time he'd come up here to be alone with someone rather than with his own thoughts.  Unsure how to proceed, he followed her over to an open window, setting his book bag down beside hers.  Leaning her shoulder against the window edge, she looked out, then turned her head to smile at him.  The wind caught her long black hair, fanning it about her and wrapping it over her face.  Impulsively, he reached up to wipe it away and she bent towards him.  Their lips met.

He could probably count on one hand the number of times he'd kissed her -- really kissed her, not just a peck on the cheek.  He still wasn't entirely sure what to do with his tongue, or his hands, and they spent some minutes exploring mouths.  It was amazing how quickly his blood could boil and his brain disconnect.  He wasn't analyzing things now, just feeling them, his breath coming heavy and his hands wandering because he wasn't thinking.  Her waist felt good under his palms, and the flare of her hips, the curve of her back, the swell of her breast.  She leaned into him.  Before he knew what was happening, her palm had crossed the front of his trousers beneath his robes, gripping his erection -- and he nearly fell backwards, he jumped so badly.

She'd touched him there.

He gaped at her.  She stared back, pretty little mouth parted in surprise.  "Cho!" he squeaked, unable to say anything else.

Her surprise transformed into an angry frown.  "What is it with boys?" she snapped.  "One minute you're an octopus, Harry Potter -- hands everywhere.  The next, you jump like a Vestal Virgin if I dare to touch you back!"

"I just, er --"  Had his hands been everywhere?  He hadn't really meant that to happen.  "Well, I wasn't, um, expecting it.  I wasn't trying to be fresh.  I just . . . wasn't really thinking."

She made a disgusted noise.  "It's such a double-standard!  Boys get to look and touch, but if girls want to mess about, we're whores!  If girls want to have sex, we're slags!"

Harry was floored.  He hadn't even considered the possibility that they were coming up to the owlery in order to mess about or have sex.  She had?  The very idea she might've considered it made him almost painfully hard inside his trousers -- even while it scared him to death.  "What are you talking about?  I said I was surprised, not that you were -- "

"You and Cedric both!  The minute I try to initiate anything, you both shove me away like I'm . . . some leper!"

Oh, God -- were they back to Diggory?  "Why does everything have to come back to bloody Cedric Diggory!  He's DEAD!" Harry practically shouted.

And she burst into tears, but they were tears of anger, not sorrow.  "That's right!  He's dead!  And all he could talk about his last night was you and that damn Tournament!"

Harry blinked.  What?  But it was a momentary distraction.  He was more riveted by the rest of what she'd implied.  "Did you and Cedric try to have sex?"

He asked it more in wonder than in jealous surprise.  Quite honestly, he'd never considered that some of his classmates were sexually active, even as he recognized it was a really stupid thing to be surprised by.  After all, Cedric had been seventeen -- more man than boy.  Harry should've been more surprised if he hadn't wanted to have sex with his girlfriend.

Thus, her next words surprised him again.

"No, we didn't.  Though not because I wasn't willing."

"He didn't want to?"  Curiouser and curiouser.

Cho flushed and that was reply enough.  "I'm sure he thought I was easy."

"No," Harry said almost instinctively.  "Well, I mean, I wouldn't think that, if I were him."  What he didn't say was being easy would hardly have kept Diggory from doing her -- more likely the reverse.  As always, Cedric had played the gentleman.

"You're not him."

He grew angry anew.  "As you're constantly reminding me."

"Well maybe I think it's a good thing you're not!" she snapped, then abruptly sobbed hard, hand over her mouth.  "Maybe I think it's a good thing," she said more softly, and quite suddenly collapsed into a heap against the wall, bawling.

Confused, upset, still angry, but also guilty -- he remembered Hermione scolding him after the disastrous Valentine's date -- Harry squatted down beside her, trying to keep owl crap off his dark robes.  "Cho?  Cho?  What was going on with Cedric?"

"He . . . he was going to break up.  I know he was.  I could . . . could feel it.  Everyone thought we were this perfect, idyllic couple -- but we weren't!"  She sobbed again, hands over her face.  "And I couldn't tell anyone.  He was nice to me, but he never loved me."

Harry struggled to sort out the feelings her words raised in him -- a strange relief to see the icon that had been his perfect rival crumble, but also anger at Cedric for making Cho cry.  Most of all, though, he felt bewilderment -- why would Cedric have turned away the devotion of Cho Chang?  "How do you know he didn't love you?  I mean, well -- you're pretty special."

She blushed furiously when he said that, but laughed -- really laughed -- and raised her face to look at him, smiling.  "Thank you.  I needed . . . just thank you, Harry.  You're such a sweet boy."

Harry's insides froze.  That wasn't how girlfriends talked about boyfriends.  That was how a girl talked about the boy she thought was nice but didn't really feel for . . . and if Cedric hadn't wanted Cho, Harry now had a backhanded confirmation of what he'd privately suspected for a while: Cho didn't want him either.  He was just the last person who'd seen Cedric alive.  She was with him because he could tell her about Diggory.

She was looking down at her hands, twisting her Ravenclaw scarf between them, head tilted sideways.  "I don't know why he didn't like me.  Well -- that's not true.  I do know.  Or at least, I sort of suspect.  We started out as good friends.  Now, looking back, I think that's all it ever was for him.  I just . . . I wanted it to be more so badly.  And he was too nice to make it loud and clear that it wasn't; he hated hurting people's feelings.  Besides" -- her voice turned wry and bitter -- "he needed a date for the Yule Ball.  I was the one who thought it more -- tried to make it more."

Her words hit him like the stinging scatter shot of little pebbles thrown up by a bike wheel on gravel.  Maybe she needed to say them, but why pick him?  He didn't want to hear this, how she was still crazy about Cedric Diggory, as crazy about Diggory as Harry was about her.  "But you were his treasure," Harry said.

She laughed once more, but without amusement this time.  "Oh, yes, of course I was, because Dumbledore just assumed instead of paying attention.  Nobody actually paid attention to Cedric in the Tournament, none of the teachers except Sprout.  They were all worried about you."

Harry flinched, surprised by the bitterness even as he had to admit she was right.  The teachers, and the press, had focused on him.  "I wasn't supposed to be in the Tournament.  I'd've been happy to leave it to Cedric."

"I know."  She sighed and deflated a little.  "I don't blame you, Harry.  I know you didn't put your name in the cup.  Cedric didn't think you did either; he didn't resent you, even when he might've.  He wasn't like that.  He never put himself forward, never bragged, never sought out attention.  I still don't understand why he even entered that bloody contest.  But he didn't resent you.  Still, I think Dumbledore picked me because Cedric and I were still seeing each other, so Dumbledore assumed I was what Cedric would miss most."  She wiped at her eyes.  "Really, I'm not sure there was anyone at Hogwarts he'd have missed most.  Dumbledore may as well have put his broom in the lake.  He'd probably have cared more."

"But everybody liked him."

"Of course they did.  He was easy to like, but he never told much of anything about himself, did he?  The quiet one -- the big mystery, that was Cedric."  Her voice was bitter again.  "Nobody hated him because nobody ever knew him.  Including me."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and he was.  All these things he'd never known -- about Cho, about Diggory . . .  "Why didn't you break up with him then, if you didn't think he really liked you?"

She smiled at him, dark eyes amused.  "Because I wasn't thinking these things at the time, silly.  Cedric had a way about him -- he made you feel special.  He asked questions about you, got you to talk about yourself, and really listened.  But he never confided back.  I didn't see it then, but it was how he kept everybody at a distance."

"By being interested in them?" Harry asked, confused.

"Exactly.  Clever, isn't it?  Cedric always was clever.  And he was nice -- that wasn't a front.  So I didn't notice how he never told me about himself, never said he loved me, never even followed me around.  We had a 'relaxed' relationship, Marietta said; he didn't try to smother me.  Now I see it's because he wasn't really interested."

Harry scratched his chin, using the puzzle of Cedric Diggory to bury his own pain and disappointment.  "You said you think you know why he wasn't interested?"

Her wry, bitter smile returned.  "Suspect, yes.  The more I thought about it later, the more I put two and two together."  She eyed him a moment, before saying, "He wasn't interested in me because he fancied you.  He didn't want to have sex with me because I wasn't you."

And it took five whole breaths before the full import of what she'd just proposed hit bottom.  Then Harry almost fell over in shock.  "He WHAT?"

"He had a crush on you, Harry.  I think Cedric liked boys, not girls."

Part 3: Time-Turner

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