Chapter 3
touch touch touch touch touch touch
George awoke late on Sunday morning, the light from their windows streaming in through his open curtains. His head was foggy like he’d had too much firewhiskey the night before. He was momentarily confused and then he remembered last night. Cedric fuck, his head hurt. He could remember his mouth, Cedric’s mouth. And how it felt. Good.
And then it hit him. He. Kissed. Cedric. Or rather Cedric kissed him, and George had simply reciprocated the deed. But he enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. And maybe he wanted to do it again. And again. And again. That confused him to no end, and he had no one to help him sort the bloody mess that was his feelings. As if on cue to complete the cosmic joke that was his life, Fred and Lee bounded into the room.
“George! You're awake!” Lee said in mock shock, “We thought you died. I'm a little disappointed now mate. Would be so cool to have a corpse as a roommate.”
“It’s high time you woke up, we’ve got the match today!” Fred shouted, ignoring Lee’s chatter, “Also we’ve saved you toast from breakfast,” Fred handed him a plate as he sat up in bed.
“Huh?” He vaguely remembered Oliver Wood, Gryffindor’s captain, and keeper, shouting at them about it on Thursday but he was too wrapped up in his worries about Cedric to pay attention. Taking the toast from Fred, he began to start on it.
“Git. We have a match today. Against Hufflepuff remember? Wood was telling us about it on Thursday, he’s had some strange strategies for Harry because we’re playing Diggory.”
“Oh, er yeah, I do remember. What time is it?”
“10:30,” Lee answered him, “Your game is at 3. I really hope that Minnie doesn’t get too mad at my comments, this has the potential to be one exciting game.” Lee was the school’s Quidditch commentator and McGonagall or Minnie, as Lee liked to call her, got very angry with Lee sometimes about things he said in the past. Lee had tried out for Quidditch in his second year and hadn’t made the team and so he turned to be the announcer instead.
“Well Georgie, if you don’t need anything Lee and I are going to go to the library and try not to Avada ourselves over the essay Sprout’s assigned on the functions of Venomous Tentacula. Come join us when you’re out of bed.”
Fred and Lee closed the door behind them, the sound echoing around the room, leaving George alone in his bed with his thoughts. He almost couldn’t believe the whole of yesterday had happened, it felt more like a dream that George really didn’t want to wake up from. But it had, he’d gone on a date with Cedric Diggory. And then he had been snogged quite viciously, which he was fine with. It finally hit him, he needed Cedric like he needed air, like snogging him was more important than ever than taking a breath again. He needed to find Cedric. And to do so he needed some help from his old friends. He got out of bed, quickly dressing in a Gryffindor jumper and a pair of trousers splattered with paint and other substances, a result of Fred and his hours of product testing over the summer holiday. Checking himself in the mirror quickly, he headed down to the common room in search of a certain lightning-scarred fourth year.
Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs had been immensely helpful to Fred and George throughout their years at Hogwarts, proving their usefulness time and time again and so that was who he sought out when trying to find Cedric. He first had to borrow their creation The Marauder's Map from Harry, whom he and Fred had given the map to the year prior so that he could get into Hogsmeade (this did result in an unfortunate incident involving Draco Malfoy and Harry’s head). The map was a wonderful thing, he and George discovered it during their first year after being taken to Filch's office for rule-breaking. They saw the filing cabinet labeled "Confiscated and Highly Dangerous" and dropped a Dungbomb so Fred had a chance to grab anything in it, and the map has been with them ever since. The Marauder’s Map was a magically created map by past Hogwarts students (They had been informed by Sirius Black later on that it was him, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew who were “the Marauders”) and it revealed the location of every single person and all of the secret passages in the castle. Today, George had a mission.
“Cedric, Cedric, Cedric where are you?” He muttered to himself standing over the map at his desk. Finally, he spotted the little Cedric Diggory at the Clock Tower courtyard. He was alone. George quickly checked his watch 12:00, he’d lain in bed for that long?
George wasted no time leaving Gryffindor Tower and heading down to the courtyard. A small part of him was nervous though. What would Cedric say to him? Would he even want to talk to him? He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether this was a good idea or not. It probably wasn’t but George Weasley was the master of bad ideas. He reached the courtyard; the wind stung his face momentarily as he stepped out into the November morning. Cedric was sitting on a bench, bent over a book, the contents of his bag lying half dumped out beside him, looking ethereal in the soft glow of the muted sun, peeking out from behind the clouds.
“Cedric?” George called, tentatively. Cedric looked up in brief shock and began to stand up.
“Oh,” the sound was soft and quiet, but George could hear Cedric’s surprise in his exhale before he continued, “George. George, I’m so sorry,” he started to pack up, his pace quickening as George neared him.
“Cedric.” George repeated, “Why are you sorry?”
“Because I’ve gone and mucked everything up,”
“Everything?”
“Yeah...”
“Cedric, what’s everything?” George asked, facing the other boy and taking a couple of steps towards him, he was about an arm's reach away now.
“You. You're everything,”
George allowed himself to take another step closer to Cedric so that their faces were close enough to touch.
“What have you mucked up then?”
“I...I kissed you,” Cedric stuttered, his breath hitching as he forced himself to look away, anywhere but at the redhead in front of him. George was so close now, his voice echoing against Cedric’s neck.
“Darling, I don’t really see how that’s a problem?” George asked, pressing his lips to Cedric’s close neck, his hand reaching up to Cedric’s chin to pull the other boy’s lips towards his own. Cedric’s lips weren’t soft like one would imagine if they had studied them for hours at a time in the past like George had. Instead, they were rough, like someone had bitten them repeatedly (Cedric did it out of stress as George had noticed) but they were rough in a good way, scratching against George’s mouth, they would surely leave his lips swollen afterward, but he didn’t care. His bitten lips reminded George that this was very, very real.
If someone were to walk into the Clock Tower courtyard at that moment, they would’ve seen two boys curled into each other one dressed in a red and golden jumper, the other wearing yellow and black, two mouths colliding in a messy tangle of arms, reaching, grasping, searching for one another like there was nothing that was more important at that moment. George felt heavenly like all was at peace with the universe, he had Cedric in his arms, leaning into him, that was all that mattered to him. His mouth was on Cedric’s, drinking him in, pulling him closer and closer, until there wasn’t an inch between them anymore. Everything about Cedric was so distracting
Feels good...tastes good George’s half-muddled brain spat out at him as he tried, uselessly, to string more than one thought together.
Cedric’s hand was raking through his hair, slowly at first, becoming more and more frantic as George forced them closer to each other. He wanted to consume him, to swallow up the other boy, drink his blood as if he was a vampire and he needed it to survive. It was a sort of instinctive hunger, that George was feeling. And without eating he would die. Cedric traveled down George’s neck leaving a trail of kisses on his many freckles after him, pushing his lips underneath George’s jumper as he lifted up the collar. George buried his face into Cedric’s hair, noting senselessly that Cedric smelled like cedar and apples and suddenly.
He gasped, his breath catching as Cedric bit his collarbone slowly. Once George had regained his ability to function, his hands grasped the back of Cedric’s hair, his fingers burying once again in his hair as he pulled the other boy back up, their mouths finding each other once more. It was a long, long time until they finally broke apart.
“I...uh- I,” George stuttered out, his mind still fogged with the feeling of Cedric’s tongue in his mouth.
“I should probably go,” Cedric said looking at his watch, “It’s getting close to match time, innit?”
George checked his own watch 12:45 “Er, yeah?” He stuttered some more, his face definitely turning a bright shade of red, embarrassed at his own inability to form more than 3 words in his mind.
Cedric turned to leave.
“Cedric,” the Hufflepuff boy turned around, “Wait.” George commanded, taking a step to bridge the distance between them. He slowly brought his hands up to cup Cedric’s face, brushing his thumb along his cheek. It was Cedric who broke the space in the middle of their lips, pressing his mouth slowly against George’s in a quick but deep kiss.
As they broke apart again George started to speak, “So...uh...Gryffindor is having an afterparty for the match tonight, regardless of who wins, for us it’s just an excuse to get sloshed. Would you like to come? Or maybe we could meet and do something?” He asked hopefully.
“Uh...yeah, that would be nice,” Cedric said, a small smile lighting up his face.
“Ok” George cringed at his choice of response, you really couldn’t have come up with anything better than ok? George, really? If Fred knew what was happening, he would’ve smacked you for being such a bloody git and rightfully so, you are being a being a bloody git
“Ok” Cedric slowly repeated back to him and before George could open his mouth to say or do something fucking stupid that he would at once regret afterward, Cedric turned to go, leaving George standing in the courtyard, struck dumb by Cedric Diggory and his stupid, stupid, stupidly amazing mouth. He stood there for a long time, it truly felt like an eternity, before he could collect his racing thoughts and walk up to Gryffindor Tower to deal with the gits that were his brother and their roommate.
“George?” Fred called his name as he walked right past him into their dorm and over to their bathroom, “Are you alright?”
George almost didn’t comprehend that someone was speaking to him, his mind reeling as he walked away from Fred. He struggled, placing one foot in front of the other to keep himself from almost collapsing, almost falling into the bathroom as he shut the door behind him. He gripped the sink, glancing in the mirror as he drew shaky breath after shaky breath. He stared at himself for a long time, his hands and forearms shuddering as he pushed more and more force onto the edges of the sink. His expression was a mix of pure terror and yet he felt strangely joyous like nothing in his life had or could go wrong anymore because he had the memories of Cedric Diggory’s mouth on his. He finally looked away, stepping into the shower. He turned on the water, basking himself, trousers and jumper and all, in the warm water. He sat there for a long, long time, letting the water cascade over him like a hurricane as his thoughts raced, meshing together into a mess of both panic and delight. I snogged Cedric Diggory. I snogged Cedric Diggory
Cedric
Cedric fucking loved Quidditch. He’d been made seeker in his second year at Hogwarts and Captain 3 years later in his fifth year. It also didn’t hurt that he was good at it. Gryffindor was probably their biggest challenge. He could obliterate Ravenclaw (He taught Cho everything she knows) and the rest of their team wasn’t very good and Slytherin wasn’t much of a challenge knowing Lucius Malfoy paid his son’s way onto the team (They had new uniforms from him every year and coincidentally the entire had gotten new Nimbus 2001s the year Draco was made seeker). Slytherin also tended to go for bulk over skill, so their beaters were the biggest meatheads in the fourth year (Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle) who couldn’t tell a bludger from a snitch if they smacked them in the face.
“Gryffindor is going to be a tough game, but we can beat them,” Zacharias Smith, a fourth-year chaser, said slamming his fist on a table in one of the Quidditch changing rooms.
“Alright, Zach, good enthusiasm,” Cedric said encouragingly, clapping him on the back, “Now let’s talk strategy...”
Gryffindor had a solid team, Harry Potter “The Boy Who Lived”, his skills on a broom were mediocre at best but he was an insanely good seeker for being a fourth year. Their keeper and captain Oliver Wood was really good, and it was tough getting the Quaffle past him and the Gryffindor chasers (Alicia Spinnet, Angelina Johnson, and Katie Bell) were all really quite good on their brooms. And there were the beaters, Fred and George Weasley. They were good alright, but George was...George and Cedric cursed at himself for falling for him because he was going to be a bloody fucking awful distraction during the game. A fit red-headed distraction, but still, it would mess him up a lot. He sighed a little, remembering the events of that morning.
Cedric woke up with a headache, his skull throbbing as he sat up in bed, still in his clothing from the day before, his shirt now wrinkled and unbuttoned in some places. His face was wet with tears from the hysteric sobs that had shook his body the night before as he fell asleep. He dressed quickly and went down to breakfast, snagging a slice of toast at the Hufflepuff table and stopping to say hello and quickly converse with a couple of his friends, before heading to the library. He sat down at a wooden table, spreading out all of his revisions work. He checked his watch before he started, 10:15, he’d be able to get in a good amount of studying before he had to go get ready for the Quidditch match he had against Gryffindor that afternoon.
But something had drawn him to the Clock Tower courtyard. Maybe it was how cramped he felt in the library like the shelves were closing on him and he would be surrounded with books at any moment, or maybe it was the fact that everywhere he went, since he broke it off with Cho, people stared at him so much, he felt like he was a zoo animal, stuck in a cage or behind glass for people to look at. He could imagine it “Look everyone it’s the golden boy who mucked up his golden life with his golden girl, because that’s how everyone saw him, he was so done with being the picture-perfect poster boy for what everyone should strive to be in life. It wasn’t him; he couldn’t keep up the façade forever and he never really planned on it to begin with.
And so he went outside trudging over to one of the benches and pulling out the book he had boughten yesterday in Hogsmeade Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. Care of Magical Creatures wasn’t his favorite class, but he always found beasts interesting, and he had heard good things about it from his classmates, and from Cho.
He was still sitting on the bench, his legs crossed, book in his lap, when George Weasley came bursting into the courtyard his face a bright shade of red, especially noticeable on his otherwise pale, freckled skin. At first, Cedric didn’t notice him and then George had called his name and Cedric had started, his voice was instantly recognizable, breaking the thick silence that swept through the courtyard moments before.
And then Cedric, being the thick-skulled git that he was, tried to leave and George snogged him like he was a dementor, sucking his soul out of his body. Cedric’s mind wandered, he kept catching on that moment as he discussed how they were going to play the Gryffindor team and hopefully pull a victory for Hufflepuff as well.
His team headed out onto the pitch, the Hufflepuff section of the stands roaring with cheers. Huge black and yellow banners with slogans like Crush the Lions and Badgers for the Win stuck out amongst the crowd. It was nice to know that the Hufflepuff house supported them. The rest of the players mounted their brooms and he headed towards the center of the pitch where he was met by Oliver Wood, he was a fit bloke with floppy brown hair. It was quite a shame that he was taken by another one of the Weasley brothers, Percy. This wasn’t confirmed but the entire school was aware of it and had been since Cedric’s fourth year and everyone was especially aware since someone had walked in on them snogging (quite viciously too, he had heard) in the Quidditch changing room, last year, after Gryffindor had (rather spectacularly) beaten Slytherin in the final match of the year, winning them the Quidditch and the House cup.
The Weasley family was fit in general, he remembered catching students (girls and boys alike) staring endlessly after Charlie and Bill, the two older brothers, who were both endlessly handsome. It wasn’t a surprise that the two of them had left a trail of broken hearts behind them when they graduated a couple of years prior. And then there were the twins...
“Mates, let's get this game started,” Lee Jordan’s magnified voice boomed across the pitch and through breaking him out of the cage that was his own mind. He shook Oliver’s hand, the two of them mounting their brooms and flying up to meet the rest of their teams.
“Alright remember what we talked about and practiced on Friday, and guys,” He paused for a little bit of dramatic effect, causing the entire team that was huddled around him to look at him in suspense, “Let’s beat the shit out of Gryffindor while we’re at it yeah?” At that their entire team cheered in excitement, turning on their brooms to face the other team.
Cedric’s heart immediately stopped when he spotted George in his stupid Quidditch uniform with the stupid straps of the stupid harness he always wore poking out from points in his uniform. Cedric tried his very best and failed miserably not to picture George shirtless with just the harness on. The only reason Cedric knew he wore it when he played was because his uniform had been torn during a match the year before and the entire student population was exposed to George Weasley in a harness. People had always been enamored with the Weasley twins but between that and Halloween of the same year, where Fred wore a corset with his costume (he was a pirate) more and more people began to notice how bloody fit they actually were.
Cedric shook his head. Focus on the game Ced, you can daydream about George shirtless later. His mind whispered at him, prodding him to keep focused as the whistle blew and the match began.
He flew up above the pitch, glancing around at the chaotic game below him, eyes narrowed as he sought out the small winged golden orb he was looking for.
“Ladies and gents that’s Smith with the Quaffle heading for the Gryffindor baskets. I repeat Smith with the Quaffle getting ready to take a shot at the very fit Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor keeper. What’s that look for Professor? I'm only telling the truth. Ollie seems a little distracted today, maybe with a certain red-haired head boy? And Smith scores! 10 points to Hufflepuff.” Cedric genuinely enjoyed Lee Jordan’s commentary, though it was a little all over the place, he found it extremely entertaining.
The match drew on, Hufflepuff racking up a surprising number of points against Gryffindor. The 3 Gryffindor chasers seemed to wake up a little after Hufflepuff hit 50 points and they began to be more aggressive, scoring point after point on the Hufflepuff keeper. After an hour it was tied 70 – 70 and the snitch was nowhere to be seen. Cedric flew around lazily, scouring every corner of the pitch with his eyes strained for just a glimpse of gold. It felt like an eternity before Cedric saw the little glint of gold, accompanied by just the smallest beat of wings...
...right next to George Weasley’s left ear. That was unfortunate but Cedric desperately wanted to win so rolling his eyes a little, he broke into a dive, heading straight for George.
“And Cedric “Pretty Boy” Diggory...don’t look at me like that Minnie, it’s not an incorrect statement, Cedric Diggory is extremely pretty,” still rocketing through the air towards George, Cedric rolled his eyes again.
Lee continued, “Anyway, Diggory has tucked into a dive and is heading straight towards one of the Weasley Twins. Which one of them is it? I think it’s...George, no, no it’s Fred. No, George,” Lee knew the difference between them better than almost anyone, but he enjoyed messing with the crowd.
“Alright, I’m only messing with you all its George. Cedric Diggory is diving towards the Gryffindor beater George Weasley, though he’s not as fit as his twin brother is, George is still a very handsome bloke. Has Cedric spotted the Snitch?” Cedric stifled a small grin, shaking his head slightly at Lee. George was much more fit than Fred, he had no idea what he was talking about. He was getting close but as he extended his hand towards the flying golden ball, it occurred to him that he would hit George. He neared the Gryffindor beater, his hand still outreached, as he noticed Harry Bloody Potter diving down towards him, hand also reaching for the Snitch, which was still hovering near George’s head.
Cedric twisted in the air, his hand tightening around the orb as he abruptly pulled up to avoid colliding with George. He stopped next to George, facing the crowd and raising his fist above his head triumphantly as he clutched the snitch. The Hufflepuff section of the crowd burst into cheers and chants, drowning out Lee Jordan’s exclamations.
“Cedric,” he almost didn’t hear George’s murmur over the roar of the crowd, “You're still invited to the Gryffindor party, meet me outside the Fat Lady at 8?”