It's hard enough to be fourteen. It's hard enough just to be at your most awkward when you want to be walking without awareness of your gangly arms and kissing people in broom closets without accidentally clacking your teeth against hers and she laughs and laughs and then it's all over and you never talk to her again. And Harry Potter was fourteen and scared to death.

Wasn't it enough to be dreaming of Dementors every night, reliving over and over the face of his godfather, blank and grotesque lying by the lake on just this side of death? And wasn't it enough to return to a school and live in a world still under the shadow, intangible as it may seem, of an enemy no fourteen-year-old should have to struggle with?

One crispy piece of paper settled that shadow firmly around Harry. The heads of the other schools might have suspected Harry of tampering somehow with the Age Line and the supposedly infalliable Goblet, but a boy as embroiled in conflict as he was had to suspect foul play of some sort. That night, after a fruitless meeting between himself, the three other champions, and what seemed like every adult the three wizarding schools could produce, he came back to the Common Room. Of course Hermione was still awake, reading but he knew she was waiting. Harry sat on the floor in front of her, prepared to force his way through a long discussion of what had happened and why, but when he felt Hermione's hand touch his head amidst a merciful silence he was too exhausted to be embarrassed as he started to cry.

It's hard enough to be an underclassman without being in direct, personal competition with older students. Harry did notice that when the Hufflepuffs got the chance to talk to Cedric they flipped the collars of their robes inwards, but it didn't stop his walks through the halls from being bombarded with his own face grimacing beneath button-sized banners of POTTER STINKS. He never cried again in front of Hermione — not that year anyway — but he did spend a few more nights propped at her feet, his head resting on the sofa next to her paper-strewn legs, his mind filled with the typical thoughts of a fourteen-year-old and overfilled with the worries of a Triwizard Champion.

Of course the students of Hogwarts would side with Cedric, of course they would. He was handsome and he was from Hufflepuff, probably the least the contentious of the Houses. Half the school looked up to him for — well, choose any number of reasons — and the other half resented Harry for living the exact scenario they had dreamed of for themselves. Cedric was a better option to cheer for than the Boy Who Lived to Break the Rules. Sigh after sigh ghosted from Harry's throat as pair after watchful and angry or teasing pair of eyes followed him down hallways and around corners. It just hurt the more that many of those eyes were his own, staring comically at him from those ever-present badges. Originally, irrationally, he had felt himself fuming at Colin Creevey for providing clearly ill-meaning students with his likeness, but then he remembered (as he so often forgot): to be famous is to be photographed. He held his tongue.

Being fourteen is hard enough without additional conflict. To be pubescent is to float through a stream of conflict, the kind of stream they say not to canoe in for fear of rapids and lurking carnivorous animals; no more is required to make every second one of strife and torment (inner or outer). Harry had survived the unusually difficult first years of his adolescence by clinging tightly to the first people in the blink of his life who had treated him with any sort of real kindness, and he felt, with a resignation that was frighteningly calm, that Ron's anger and subsequent distance might mean he would not be so lucky this year. Harry did not want to lose his life, nor did he want to end it; he had struggled far too mightily for that. He was a boy that should not have lived to be four, much less fourteen, and he was not going to let everyone down in a world where he was one of the few willing to acknowledge evil and thus protect others from it. But without Ron's support and skills, Harry knew better than to try to convince himself that he would have outlasted Voldemort's continued attempts to kill him (or the potentially crushing grind of day-to-day life at Hogwarts).

Yet there it was. Harry knew in his mind and in the very meek and small part of him that wasn't scared and angry that Ron didn't really believe he had somehow put his own name into the Goblet, but it didn't change the fact that he was behaving as though he did. By keeping his distance from Harry, and at worst (several times over) treating him with outright contempt and personal cruelty, Ron was aligning himself with those who believed he had somehow cheated much more powerful and skilled wizards. Sometimes, in carelessly vindictive moments, Harry hoped his near-certain underperformance in the upcoming first task would set the record straight: he clearly had no such talent. Dumbledore's Age Line was untrickable. Requiescat in pace.

It's challenging enough to be fourteen without being able to expect any help.

It was because of the badges that Harry ended up telling Cedric about the dragons. Hagrid (in cahoots, he suspected, with Ron) had told him, and he knew that Fleur and Viktor knew. Of course they did. They were seventeen and astounding, resplendent in the reassuring spaces of their grown bodies. Even as he approached Cedric — shyly, angrily, with sad vulnerability — he could feel the bumping of his bones, the snagging of his gangly legs on objects built for adults and children and no one in between. Cedric had to know, he had to know, of course he had to know. Merlin turn back now turn back he'll laugh at you…

Badges flashed at him all the way across the courtyard. POTTER STINKS; POTTER STINKS; CEDRIC DIGGORY, REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION. Cedric himself was alone, probably for the first time that Harry had seen since he got to school this year, and he thanked the flux of the universe for this smallest of small mercies.

Looking back, he couldn't even be sure if he'd said hello. One word was all he had come to say, and one word was all it took to bring the color out of Cedric's face. Harry noticed that Cedric's collar was bare of any decoration, minus the unknotted tie slung around his neck in a carefully choreographed show of carelessness — painstakingly calculated, as was almost every moment of Harry's post-Goblet public life, to cloak the unremitting anxiety each one of the champions was experiencing about the first task. It was strange to think of how much thought and planning and infinitesimal muscle adjustment had gone into this sculpture of youth only to have it all crumble as Cedric sat up straight, eyes wide, mouth open.

"Dragons?"

An evil word. Hagrid had been blooming with pride as he showed the scaled, winged skyscrapers to Harry — and, more ostensibly, to Madame Maxime — but Harry had nearly vomited beneath his Invisibility Cloak. He'd always thought dragons were interesting and beautiful in the abstract, but in the terrifying reality he was facing they were no longer such admirable creatures. Together he and Cedric discussed the first task in short, choked-off sentences. Some part of Harry warmed to hear his fellow champion's concern that Viktor and Fleur know as well; at least the two of them weren't so swept away by competition that they cared nothing for the lives of the other competitors. In fact, none of the people he had seen gleefully pitting school against school were actual Triwizard champions. Being faced with death wiped most other thoughts but survival from one's mind.

Most of the meaning in their exchange was conveyed through the heavy silences which stretched between each stunted word. Really, what words could express what went through their minds? Harry didn't know any, not that he was the most eloquent teenager alive — but Cedric didn't say anything either, though he wasn't the most forthcoming young man in the world. Strangely, though everyone seemed to be pushing them into rivalry with each other, Harry felt the least competition from Cedric. In fact, he felt strangely bonded to the person he'd only really met once, and mere months ago; already they had shared experience on the Quidditch pitch, even playing the same position. He liked Cedric. He wished they didn't have to share the weight of this new connection.

Another pause. "About the badges…"

He didn't have to say anything else, but Harry appreciated it when he did. Cedric Diggory was the real Hogwarts champion. Of course he asked people not to wear the badges. Of course he defended Harry, a boy he barely knew and had ample cause to resent. Despite all that, it never crossed Harry's mind not to believe the older Hufflepuff. He felt half in love with Cedric as his lips shaped the words, imagining him coming to his defense against smug Ernie Macmillan and hanger-on Hannah Abbot, his heart swelling with a happiness that felt hopeful and like being with the Weasleys. My hero.

That night when he sat at Hermione's busy feet he smiled and she asked what was wrong.

It's hard enough to be fourteen if you're a completely average person. It's nearly impossible if anything about you attracts extra attention. Even after Ron came back, after his somehow satisfying unapology brought everything back into balance, Harry thought of Cedric often. He thought about him as he went through the slightly friendlier hallways (nothing wins students over like a good performance for their school). He thought about him as he looked at the haunted golden egg, standing on his trunk like a cruel omen he simply couldn't escape. Strangest of all, he thought about him sometimes at night — not purposefully. For a while Harry believed (or wanted to) that it was just thought transference tracing its usual patterns; think of the Tournament, think of the champions, think of his school, think of Cedric. But soon he was thinking of Cedric too much. It's hard enough to be fourteen without being a card-carrying member of the GSM, so Harry just tried to forget. He would have forgotten too, and without much pain migrated seamlessly to Cho with the minimal heartache of aborted romance, if it hadn't been for the fact that even his underdeveloped fourteen-year-old sense of self could tell that Cedric thought about him too much as well.

Heartbreakingly, Cedric seemed willing to keep himself out of Harry's way. He had been fourteen not long ago, Harry imagined; he must know it was a challenging enough year without developing a confusing attraction to a boy three years older than you are. Harry liked him the more for it, pursued him the more for it in his own mind. When Cedric returned him the kindness of the dragons for a tip about the egg, Harry laid in the Prefects' Bathroom and imagined a thousand perplexing scenarios between himself and the boy who had given him the password and, quite probably, saved his life. Cedric walking in while he was in the bath — no, too sexually fraught and too humiliating for a physically confident near-adult to see his fetal body. Cedric entering the bathroom while he was on his way out, anxious to check on the younger champion — no, too paternalistic, and Harry didn't want their (for all intents and purposes) first encounter taking place in a lavatory, even one as nice as this. Cedric owling him the next day, asking to meet in a location secluded enough to give them privacy but not so lonely that it would be noticeable…

That night, he dreamed of Cedric for the first time.

That day, Cedric asked Cho to the Yule Ball, and Harry knew exactly why. As the group of boys walked by, he caught a snatch of words ("…just don't get it, he never seemed to notice her…") and understood. Cedric had seen the way Harry looked at Cho, the way he spit out his juice when she smiled at him, the way his eyes lit up at the thought of not having anything else piled on him to make him different from other kids — even the kids who were already wizards — and Harry knew it had to hurt Cedric and honestly? Cedric wasn't so far from fourteen years old that his life wasn't hard. And it hurt Harry himself to consider the fact that he would rather injure one of the kindest older children in his life than just admit the possibility that his sexuality might not be something as immutable as he'd previously thought.

Hermione knew, of course, as she always did, but tenderly she remained silent on the subject. Ron knew nothing, perhaps because he wanted to know nothing. Harry lived in constant fear that his talking in his sleep might give him away, but perhaps he didn't give the boys in his dormitory enough credit — he never heard anything from them about the subject. Perhaps he was just too exhausted to dream. He certainly didn't remember many. Hermione's only foray into his privacy came in the mornings over breakfast, when she would ask him if he had dreamed at all the night before. Sometimes he made something up if he felt sad for never saying it himself, even if she knew already. More often he said nothing. Say nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, be nothing. Most days Harry wanted to disappear into the ceiling above him, covering the Great Hall more often than not in ominous clouds which dropped snow to sleet to rain on Hogwarts as the weeks passed.

He danced the opening number at the Yule Ball next to Hermione and Cedric, and none of them knew that the other two were also crying alone in their beds by the end of the night. Evening came and morning followed. Life went on.

It's hard enough to be fourteen if you've already been kissed. Harry never had been, nor had he really thought much about it before this year. Occasionally he dared to imagine himself and Cho sharing a moment of strictly Muggle magic together, but even his most wistful pictures crumbled in a dissonant symphony of knocked noses or clicking teeth and sweaty palms. Cedric he refused to imagine in such a crass scenario; their interactions took place entirely on the ethereally aphysical plane of the angels, merely their casual voices meeting in a hallway or their eyes entwining in the courtyard. Periodically they were forced into more intimate settings at meetings between the four champions but never did either of them allow a moment alone. Either Harry looked up and Cedric was gone, the golden instant shattered, or he himself ducked out quickly, without even a greeting to Viktor, who he made a concentrated effort to be kind to for Hermione's sake.

She was wild about him, about having a boyfriend in general, and despite her best efforts not to be, Harry suspected she was a tiny bit star-struck. Not nearly so much as she might have been if she followed Quidditch at all, though, so both Harry and Viktor merely smiled down on her like affectionate gargoyles. It was Harry's turn to wait up at night, pretending to be doing his homework or researching ways to succeed under the lake, and he was happy to do it if his reward was his friend's beaming face peering through the portrait hole with another whispered announcement of "he kissed me goodnight!" wafting across the Common Room.

So. Hermione had been kissed. Harry was too shy to ask for advice and she was too kind to give it unsolicited, but really he suspected that a kiss would be easy to do when the time came. People said many things would come naturally to him, and so far a lot of things had — flying, magic, love. A kiss was an extension of that, and anyway, as he saw Cedric and Cho together a little more often each week that passed he felt more strongly that his first kiss was nowhere on the horizon.

It would be my luck that the two people I like are dating each other. He was still laughing about that when he came to the Common Room that night and slumped down next to Hermione, on the couch rather than the floor.

"Don't get too worked up about it, Harry," she said when he'd explained himself, and Harry felt his gratitude so deeply within himself that he almost kissed Hermione right there in front of the Gryffindor fire where he'd spoken to his godfather and burnt countless Skeeter-spotted newspapers. He thought of her having to tell Viktor (not because Viktor would make her, of course, or even expect her to, but because she was Hermione and how could she not) and decided not to.

Good thing, too.

It was February 24th — well, 25th really, in the midst of those witching hours which bring the world from one day to the next — and Harry had fished Ron out of the lake, performing more admirably than he thought he would, earning praise from even Cedric's staunchest supporters. Earlier that day he had felt the glow of being surrounded by grateful Beauxbatons students, all caressing his hair and arms and saying thank you in their low, musical voices; earlier he had felt the warmth he always did in Ron and Hermione's company, sitting in the Common Room as the fire burned low and the laughter still rang out; earlier he had maybe had a bit of smuggled-in Butterbeer from Fred and George, who as far as he knew were still overseeing the party in the Gryffindor Tower — a counterpart to the ones he had heard were going on in Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and even Slytherin dormitories.

But now was different. Now, alone on a balconic niche outside a window in a hallway that was meaningless and without portent save that it was the perfect distance from Gryffindor Tower to provide his anxiety-shredded muscles a place to recuperate, he felt the sting he had felt under the water's murky surface when he had swum into the mermaids' central square and seen Cho floating there, eyes closed, skin strangely mutated by whatever spell the teachers had performed to allow the prized companions of the champions to breathe underwater.

Cedric had forgotten him, had moved on completely. Of course he had. It's hard enough to be fourteen without trying to get the attention of older, better-looking students with older, better-looking prospects. It was only the chill of the air blowing on his elevated face that kept Harry from tearing up for the second time that year. Merlin's beard.

"It's bloody cold out here!"

MERLIN'S BALLS.

"And I'll bet your hair is still wet," Cedric continued as Harry whirled to see him standing in the doorway. He stepped slowly out onto the balcony to rest his elbows on the railing, back to the night-lit scenery, and let out a breath that puffed ephemeral steam into the air. "Jesus, Harry, I'm tired."

Harry knew he meant more than simply sleepy. Like Fleur and Viktor in their mobile homes, Harry and Cedric were both experiencing a fatigue that went deeper than bones, deeper than the mind. They were all tired of the pressure, tired of the competition, tired of being at school and feeling like they weren't really learning anything because they were just too exhausted to pay real attention. "I know what you mean," he replied, trying not to choke on his own tongue. Of course Cedric would be here, right at the time that Harry was most vulnerable, had just been thinking about how all his chances with this impossible boy were down the drain now if they hadn't been before. And all he could say was something stupid. All he could do was agree. It seemed to be enough.

A silence. Then: "I don't think they really chose the person who meant the most to us."

"No, I guess not." Pain shot through Harry's chest for an instant before his thoughts caught up. No parents appeared in the mermaid town, no far-away siblings or girlfriends at home, no friends from distant lands or meaningful teachers from Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. Hogwarts had chosen the convenient route, perhaps opting to commission a few teachers to keeping open eyes in the halls, watching who the champions were seen with most often. Of course that's what Cedric meant. But something couldn't stop Harry from recklessly pressing on. "I mean, I felt like Ron was a good choice for me. He's my best mate and all, him and Hermione Granger."

"I know who Hermione is," Cedric said, grinning a little, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. He looks soft, but those open bones make him steel beneath velvet. His statement is bizarre, an unnatural answer to Harry's total lack of a question, so naturally he waits for a followup. He is scared. "They didn't choose who was most important to me. My dad's still back home in Ottery St. Catchpole."

"You live near the Weasleys." Idiot. Harry's self-flagellation meant nothing, and in fact a moment later it seemed to him he had said the right thing. Anything was the right thing. He was having a conversation with Cedric, one which (though on the surface seeming to do just that) didn't revolve totally around the tournament. At a deeper level it was about something else, and they both knew it.

Mercifully, Cedric nodded rather than just ignoring what Harry had said or questioning why he had said it. He did know what it was to be fourteen years old and on some level in love, in love with a moment or a feeling or a person or the illusion of a person or the collected actions of a person turned into an idyllic pedestal-dwelling monolith. So he spoke first and he spoke with significance. "In fact, they didn't even choose who was most important to me at this school."

Merlin's beard. Harry let out a breath he didn't realize he'd exactly been holding.

"I mean, even if I did really like Cho, we've only been together for two months," Cedric continued, ever more candid and driving himself and Harry closer to an edge that they'd only just seemed to realize they were precariously near.

Heart pounding in ears. Sentences incomplete. "Wait, you don't even like Cho?"

"I like her all right, I guess." Shrug. Not callous, just accepting. "I think you know what I mean, Harry." And the name was magic in his ears the way it had never been before, screeched by his aunt or shouted by his cousin, boomed by Hagrid or whispered by Dumbledore, spoken with laughter or gentleness in turns by Hermione and Ron, stammered and stuttered over by Neville and Viktor, even purred by Fleur or sparkling from Cho's lips.

"I wish…" Harry didn't know exactly what to say, or even what he'd started to say. Cedric understood. He looked at him for a long moment, both of them wishing, wishing anything could happen and it would stick to them once they stepped back into the stifling hallways and out of the clarifying night air, wanting everything to be different and remain the same, hoping that somehow they were both thinking the same thing and both of them being sure that they were. "I wish something different would happen."

"Something different will happen," Cedric echoed, and the sky seemed to echo it back as he leaned across the vast gap between them, slowly and then all at once.

Harry had been right. It did come naturally. A kiss was just lips on lips and stillness followed by movement, it was hands like magnets searching for clothing to grab onto and skin to hold, and it was warmth and best of all calm, and soft slowness that penetrated minds that never stopped racing, muscles that never unclenched, eyes that never had time to blink. When the first kiss was finished Cedric pulled away, brows pulled together in a question, but Harry had no questions for once and felt only answers spiraling out into the night.

It's hard enough to be fourteen without having to hide a part of your life whose significance grows and blooms as much as a flower can without light. It's hard enough to be fourteen without someone you know being murdered. Just like that, the sun went out, the sun that had shone through the windows of the empty classroom where Harry and Cedric had met one afternoon to talk and, inevitably, share their mutual heaviness. The brightness was gone from the world the way it had been on the day he had run into Cedric in the hallway and told him about Barty Crouch, Sr., and Cedric had stood in confused but compassionate silence rather than asking inane questions the way almost anyone else would have. The moon had fallen out of the sky the way it had over the one night they had spent together, covered with innocence, speculating about the third task on the far shore of the lake until they'd quite forgotten themselves and fallen asleep (even that day was touched with fear; they'd woken up early but still in a panic that someone had seen and they had dispersed, though their hands had barely grazed during the night, without another word until the next and last time they saw each other).

Of course it's impossible to recover from something like that. Of course when Harry and the Cup and the terrible, terrible weight he had brought back that had once been someone he llllloov(SAYING IT MAKES IT REAL) he clung to the body, a body he had never and now would never have the opportunity to discover, and now everyone thought it was just panic and trauma and he went silently along with Moody (or so he thought) and wished he had told someone before it was too late. And later that night when everything was resolved and it was time to enjoy the end-of-the-year feeling free of the weight of the Tournament he dreamed again. And this time when he put his boots on to wander the halls he found Hermione in the Common Room and didn't sit by her. And she understood. And when he stepped out onto the front lawn he saw Fleur and Viktor at almost the same time that his eyes passed over the part of the shore where he had sat with Cedric and he walked to them and cried, and suddenly they were all crying and they all felt somewhere between fourteen and the confusion of young adulthood, some advanced childhood where death was real but immutable, beyond understanding. Viktor and Fleur were kind to him and kind to each other, and hung in the air besides the varying stages of love they were all feeling for Cedric were guilt-ridden thoughts of It could have been me.

Even Harry had those thoughts. It's hard enough to be fourteen without trying to be purely selfless about it. Eventually he returned to the Common Room and Hermione was still on the couch, dozing now, and once more he spent the night out of his bed, face pressed against her comforting leg and tears still dropping, unheeded, onto the floor. He woke up rested and without more dreams. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons departed once more to places he'd never been, doomed to grow dusty and cobwebbed in his mind. It's hard enough to be fourteen without having to remember to keep in touch with people.

And of course the next year everything was fine. It had to be, and even if it didn't the brain plasticity of the young is high. Harry returned to school and found someone else who was sad, even sad about Cedric, a companion in unique sorrow in a school that seemed sometimes to house nothing but despair. Cho would never, probably could never, compare to Cedric but who could? And who would want to compare partners? Harry had never seen the sense of it. And by the time they kissed under the mistletoe at Christmas, the same plants which had decorated the Yule Ballroom where Cedric had tried so hard to make Harry jealous or maybe (unfathomable thought) just make Harry notice him, he barely thought of Cedric's lips as Cho's rested against his, soft and wet and something different.

It's hard enough to be fifteen without allowing the tombstones in your mind to grow a little moss.