He could trace it back about five years, to the time he and Ginny had been allowed to come along when his mum was taking Charlie, Percy and the twins to King's Cross to catch the train. After the fiasco with the twins and Percy and the dungbomb two years earlier, Molly had been especially nervous about the two troublemakers starting school, so Ron and Ginny had been forced to promise that they would be as quiet as mice and would touch nothing and speak to no one.

And so it had happened that when Cedric Diggory had looked right at him and said, "Alright, there?" Ron had dropped his eyes and pressed his lips together in silence.

He could trace it back even further, though, to his earliest memories. The Diggories were one of the wizarding families who lived nearest the Burrow, so Cedric and the occasional visiting cousin had often come over in the summers while their fathers and Cedric's mum were all at work. They'd played games of chase and hide-and-seek, and of course Quidditch once they were old enough. Ron's own love of flying dated back, for sure, to the first time he'd seen Cedric on a broom. If a person could look like that in flight, he'd decided, then it was something he had to learn to do.

All in all, Ron reckoned he'd been mad about Cedric Diggory for most of his life.

In a way, it had made it easier for him to become friends with Harry. Sure, Harry was extra-special, being the world-famous Boy-Who-Lived, but Ron had long since learned how to act as normally as possible when he was in an advanced state of awe, so talking to Harry had been easy. As it had turned out, all Harry had needed had been to be treated like a normal person, so making friends with him had happened without any effort at all.

Being friends with Harry had presented its share of challenges, though, as Ron grew older and started to understand more about what it meant to be this fascinated with another bloke. It meant having secrets, even from your very closest friends. Having a friend as close as Harry had made it even more excruciating to keep his secrets to himself.

It got harder, too, during Ron's Third Year, when Cedric had grown taller and more handsome than ever. Ron remembered feeling his breath dry up every time Cedric walked by. He'd even caught himself rooting for Cedric in the match between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. He'd wanted Harry to win, of course, but since that had always happened up until then, it had seemed harmless to allow himself a little fantasy, watching Cedric fly through the air.

And then the Dementors had shown up, and Harry had fallen, and Ron had feared he might never be able to forgive himself for his disloyalty.

That time had been the hardest for Ron, and not only because he was keeping secrets from Harry, or because he was flogging himself over his moment of selfishness. It had been the hardest because that had been when Cedric had taken up with Oliver Wood.

Ron couldn't talk about it, of course. He never breathed a word of it to anyone, not even to Harry. He thought about it constantly, though: about what he'd thought he'd seen in the changing rooms, late in the evening after the match between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

Ron had seen the fiasco as Cedric and his team had been humiliated by Davies and Chang and the rest of the Ravenclaw side. When it had all been over and the figures in bright yellow robes had slunk slowly off to the showers, Ron had hidden in the shadows, trying to drum up the courage to go after Cedric and say something encouraging, something that might make Cedric smile at him in that particular way that always sent a bolt of electricity to a point deep in the pit of Ron's stomach. And so it had been that he'd seen Oliver Wood ease into the changing rooms, and not emerge for what felt like hours.

Ron had waited in the stands for them to come out, eyes fixed to the door. The silence had seemed interminable. His pulse had raced in panic, telling him he knew exactly what was going on in there, although every corner of his mind dug for alternative reasons why Oliver would be hanging around in the changing rooms while Cedric showered. Maybe they'd made plans to study together (even though Oliver was two years ahead of Cedric). Maybe Cedric and Oliver regularly discussed important Captain business (even though all the Houses were competitive enough that the teams almost never interacted). Maybe Oliver had gone to console Cedric over the humiliating loss against Ravenclaw (well ... precisely).

Maybe, Ron had thought as his curiosity had overruled his caution and he'd crept around the side of the shed and found the window above the showers, Oliver was ... oh. He'd tried to look inside, but the glass had been too fogged to see clearly. The lights inside had outlined the blurry edges of two forms in the showers, which had meant Oliver was in there, too. Unless Ron's brain had been playing games with his unwilling eyes, Oliver had been in much closer contact with Cedric than was strictly necessary for showering. In fact, Ron's brain had convinced him that he was seeing two naked, soap-slicked, muscled bodies slipping over each other on the padded shower floor. Unable to look away, Ron's eyes had teared up as quickly as the blood had rushed to his groin and his hands had found his zipper.

Ron had been blindingly jealous for days. Harry and Hermione had never understood why he had suddenly turned nastier about blaming Crookshanks for Scabbers's failing health. He'd never really cared about that stupid rat, anyway, even before he'd found out it had been a worthless Death Eater who'd helped murder Harry's parents. He'd been angry about the possibility of losing one of the few things he'd ever had for himself, sure. Mostly, at first, it had only been a bit of fun, winding Hermione up about her maniac cat. And then, after almost seeing Cedric with Oliver, it had given him a good excuse for being in a foul temper.

The only saving grace, in the whole situation, had been the nugget of very important information it had afforded him: Cedric fancied blokes. Or, at least he fancied one bloke. And, Ron surmised, if he fancied one, he could perfectly well fancy another, at some point in the future ... especially once his boyfriend had left school.