It wasn't that simple, of course. It wasn't as though Harry could pant, 'yes, oh, yes,' into Ron's ear and that would be the end of the discussion, as though Ron could stroll up to Cedric after lunch and ask, 'About your proposition, are you free at eight o'clock this evening?'

When Harry and Ron had drifted back to consciousness after a few hours of fitful post-coital rest, Harry had been evasively sheepish about his enthusiasm for the idea of - if Ron was contemplating doing it, he would have to get used to thinking it - a threesome with Cedric. Ron had had to coax him back to talking about it, to encourage without pushing until Harry admitted to a certain curiosity, even envy of Ron's experience with Cedric before the First Task, and to an attraction for this older student whose life had stood like a warped mirror before Harry's own throughout the course of the year.

It made sense, when Ron thought about it that way. Cedric was the easy, popular Champion that Harry should have been allowed to be. He was supported by his whole house, from the very beginning; people believed in him, people cheered for him, before they even saw what he could do in the grueling tests of the Tournament. Ron himself had even briefly slipped to Cedric's side, away from Harry's, and although the fascination had been there as long as Ron could remember, it had taken the row with Harry for the brief relationship to begin. And then, when Cedric had dropped Ron, he'd taken Harry's girl - what a strange pair of words to think, 'Harry's girl' - and escorted her to the Yule Ball in Harry's stead. So now that Cedric wanted to touch Harry, to be touched by him, to be close to him in a way that only Ron had been before, it felt like an organic sort of closing of a circle, bringing a cycle back to its beginning.

All of those philosophical, detached thoughts would enter Ron's mind later, though, when he ran the conversation back like a grainy recording. At the time that Harry was explaining his feelings, all Ron felt was that something hot went excitingly liquid in the pit of his belly, pooling heat in his groin again as they lay close together, still naked and starting to get chilled from their combined sweat in the night air. Harry nuzzled his neck, humming happily as he did. "You want this, too, don't you?" he murmured, and it was part statement, part question, part plea. Ron kissed Harry's forehead, involuntarily bucking once against his hip, and whispered his assent.

Once he'd agreed, once he'd admitted to Harry that he wanted this mad fantasy to be true, Ron was left with the matter of informing Cedric, which, naturally, he couldn't begin to imagine doing. He could imagine it, of course, but only in the sense of torrid, sweaty fantasies that made him have to walk with his bookbag held in front of him in the corridors between lessons, or in the sense of anxieties filling his head with pictures of Hufflepuffs laughing and pointing as Ron tried to pull Cedric aside after breakfast to tell him, sure Cedric would say something mocking or dismissive or, worst of all, perplexed.

Harry, meanwhile, grew enthusiastic again, to the point where Ron was getting almost no sleep from having it off all night, then was spending free periods being the practise dummy while Harry worked on his hexes and Hermione coached him along; as a result, Ron was sore all over and decidedly grouchier than might be expected for someone who was in the enviable position of being sexually desired by both Hogwarts Champions.

And then Harry fell asleep in Divination that day, and had that vision of Voldemort torturing Wormtail, and ended up in Dumbledore's office watching memories of Death Eaters on trial and learning that Bagman had once stood accused of involvement with the Dark forces, and that Snape had been a Death Eater but had supposedly turned spy for the Order and had been under Dumbledore's protection ever since. For a few days after that, everything seemed so heavy and important that even though he couldn't keep his eyes off Cedric and couldn't stop imagining how it might feel to have Cedric's strong, sure hands roaming over his back while Harry's smaller, more delicate hands stroked down his front, Ron simply couldn't imagine something as inappropriate as this idea belonging in a world so full of darkness that an air of danger hung over Harry's life like a giant cloud.

Looking at it that way, Ron shouldn't have been at all surprised the night that Harry rolled him over, pinned him down with both his hands and the intensity in his eyes, and asked whether Ron was ever going to talk to Cedric or whether Harry would have to do it himself. Ron blinked, tried to strain up to kiss Harry so that he would close his eyes and stop starting like that, but had to settled for blinking again in an embarrassed sort of confusion. Of course it was a great fantasy, an excellent idea, that they might be able to be near Cedric's fantastically toned body while still being with each other, but the level of urgency in Harry's manner came as quite a surprise.

Seeing Ron's expression, Harry lowered himself until Ron could meet his lips, sigh into his mouth, and wrap his arms around his waist. Harry let a minute or two pass that way before he pulled his face out of reach again. "It's only - I'm scared, Ron. I don't know what's going to happen in the Third Task, but I have a bad feeling. And I think, if we're going to do this, we'd better get on with it."

There was no response possible for this, of course, so Ron pulled Harry close with all his might until Harry's arms gave and he collapsed and Ron could press his lips to Harry's again, murmuring, "I will," and, "I promise," and "yes," against Harry's mouth as they began to move and slide, skin over skin, delicious friction building to a climax that was no less exciting for its growing familiarity.