HP: "Partners in Love and War" by Minisinoo

Title: "Partners in Love and War: 10 Years as Aurors" by Lavender Brown
Author: Minisinoo
Summary: Witch Weekly's lead story ten years after the fall of Voldemort.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/characters: Harry/Cedric
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all subsidiaries belong to JK Rowling and her publishers.
Prompt: (Any fandom) Coming out as public figures in a same-sex relationship.
Author's Notes: This is an AU, as Cedric survived the graveyard. I blame rozarka for the fact Lavender Brown is a journalist. Thanks to muridae_x for Britpicking and to laurel_tx for her constant enabling. (g)

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Witch Weekly
lead story, april 14, 2008

Partners in Love and War:
10 years as Aurors
by Lavender Brown



"Aurors don't marry. And those who do, don't stay married."

So the maxim goes, and statistics would bear it out. Almost one third of all Aurors never marry, and the divorce rate for the other 2/3s is -- to be frank -- a bit shocking (67%). The odd hours, the jealousy of a spouse's work partner, or the stress of the job itself all conspire against stability. One might expect, then, to find more Aurors married to each other -- after all, a spouse who's also an Auror would understand.

One would be wrong.

The list of Aurors married to other Aurors is quite short, and they almost never work as partners. The most notable recent exception was Frank and Alice Longbottom, a husband-and-wife team whose story didn't end happily.

But there's a more famous pair yet -- a pair none of us knew about until now.

Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory.

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"It's been an open secret around the Ministry for years," says Malfalda Hopkirk. "Invitations to Ministry socials are addressed to both together rather than each separately, and new girls who start eying one of them . . . we warn them off pretty quickly. The boys don't flaunt it, though. I think that's why everybody knows but nobody talks about it much. They're very private."

"It's sort of sweet," said an anonymous source in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "You see them arrive together every day, and leave together at the end. It's not like they hold hands or anything, but you can tell. Couples who've been together a long time -- you can tell."

Together a long time indeed -- a little over 11 years, in fact.

"Since I was 17," says Harry Potter -- the newly appointed head of the Auror Division, and at 29, the youngest head ever. Cedric is 32. "We never discussed it, really. It was at the height of the war and we were both in the Order of the Phoenix. There was limited space at Headquarters so sharing a room was pragmatic as much as anything. We were working together, looking for Horcruxes. Ron had just died and I was having a hard time with that. I wasn't fully an Auror yet. Cedric was, and he'd been assigned to watch over me. He decided the easiest way to do that was to sleep in my bed."

Harry laughs; it's a charming sound. "There was more to it than that, but yeah -- he showed up one night with his rucksack and pillow and told me to move over. The bed wasn't really big enough for him -- he's tall. We had to Stretch it. But he's been in that spot ever since. I've got used to feeling him at my back. That's comfort for me, knowing he's there. I never sleep well when he's off on assignment away from me."

Holding up his left hand, Harry shows off a plain silver band. "A year later, when the war was over, he gave me that and said he wanted to get a flat. I gave him one to match it. So yeah, I suppose you could say that's when we knew it was a permanent arrangement. Ten years ago next month." [The month of this article's publication, in fact.]

And after ten years, Potter and Diggory have decided it's time to go public.

"It gets quite tiring," Harry confesses with a grimace, "playing games. After all, how much more respectable can we get? We've proved this isn't a fly-by-night affair. We've proved we can make it work. And we're hardly mentally unstable or we wouldn't have our jobs in the first place, much less be any good at them. People can deal. Or not. But really, I don't much care anymore."

That's been Harry's attitude to fame for much of his life. In the eye of the Wizarding World since the age of 11 when he first arrived at Hogwarts after a childhood in concealment, he's been the subject of fantastic hopes, violent verbal attacks, prurient interest, libel and slander, and more interviews than one can shake a stick at. Harry's well-accustomed to fame in all its vagaries.

Cedric is more private. "I was the hold-out," he admits. "Harry would've done this years ago. I wasn't ready."

If everybody knows the story of Harry Potter, Cedric Diggory's tale is less publicized. He's lived in Harry's shadow since the Triwizard Tournament fifteen years ago. At first, it wasn't intentional. Diggory was the chosen Champion for Hogwarts, but the irregular selection of Potter as a fourth eclipsed Diggory's selection. "I didn't resent it really, even then," Cedric says. "Fame sounds more appealing than it is. I'm content to stay in the background." And that's where he's remained -- standing at Harry Potter's back, first as protector, a paladin, and now as his partner, at work and at home.

"Harry was always the front man of that pair," says Gaius Dawlish, current director of the Auror Academy and former head of the Auror Division. "Matching up Aurors is a tricky business, and sometimes it takes a few tries before we hit on the right combination. Potter and Diggory weren't paired up initially. Some of us knew about their relationship, of course, and we weren't sure they could work together because of it -- feared they might overprotect each other. In fact, they asked not to be paired. But they wound up working together on a lark about two years after the war and functioned so well, I think it took everybody by surprise -- them, not least. When that case closed, I put them on different jobs, then put them together again a few months later, just to see what happened. Same thing. Sometimes living together grants this . . . second language. The Longbottoms had it. And now Potter and Diggory. I just kept putting them together every now and then on big cases until Diggory showed up in my office and asked if he was supposed to consider Potter his partner now. I asked him if he wanted to. He didn't answer, just left and moved his desk from the cubicle he'd been in to the one next to Harry's. That was that.

"Like I said, Potter's the front man, the force, the talker, the maverick. Diggory's the brains -- but he's the muscle, too. You wouldn't expect it. He's very soft-spoken and polite -- and pretty. But cross him and he suddenly straightens up and you've got over six feet of very imposing, very powerful wizard. When those two play good cop, bad cop, Diggory's usually the bad cop, and he convinces. But the one who pulls tactical rabbits out of hats -- that's Potter. Diggory does strategy, Potter handles tactics."

How do they juggle their home life and their work? Especially now that Harry is technically Cedric's boss?

"There's a very firm line," Harry says, "and we learned early that we had to keep it. When we first started working together, we didn't have that. Being partnered wasn't something we expected, so we never much talked about the pitfalls. It almost broke us up until we realized we had to have lines. So now, when we Floo home at night, work stays here. If we're on a case at odd hours and eat together, then that's the job and we discuss the case. If we go out to eat from the house, though, work is a forbidden topic. It's easier than you'd think, really. What's harder is leaving home at home. If we're quarrelling about something at home, it tends to follow us to work even if we try not to let it."

Do they quarrel much?

Harry laughs. "Oh, absolutely! Ced's as stubborn as a mule and he's got a temper, but you don't see that temper till you get to know him. In fact, that's how you know you know him. He'll argue with you. So yeah, we quarrel."

"If you don't quarrel," Cedric adds, "there's something wrong -- the relationship isn't honest. Of course, if you quarrel all the time, that's not healthy, either, but I don't think we quarrel to an excessive amount. And we know how to compromise, or we wouldn't still be together. In a lot of ways, we're very different people."

Do they quarrel more about work or homelife?

They look at each other a moment, as if consulting silently, then Harry says, "Probably work, although it depends on how much one or the other of us has invested. There are certain things I may give input about but let Cedric make the final decision on, and vice-versa. That's usually how we compromise, in fact. One of us backs off -- but it's very important it's not always the same one."

Which of them wears the trousers in the relationship?

"Both!" Harry answers instantly. "Or neither. We don't play that game, especially not now."

"Harry's the forceful one," Cedric adds. "But not the dominant one."

Harry nods. "When we were first seeing each other, the age difference coloured things a bit -- and so did the height difference, honestly. But not so much as we age."

"It's probably better he was the younger," Cedric says. "He made up for age in aggressiveness. If things had been the other way, we might have fallen into a dominant-passive pattern -- and that wouldn't have been good. I doubt we'd have lasted because I'd have wound up resenting him."

"Cedric's quiet, not passive," Harry agrees. "A lot of people equate the two and that's a mistake."

I'm reminded of Dawlish's remark that Diggory plays the bad cop. It's more than his height or muscle, or the scar from the end of his left eyebrow down to his jawline that mars an otherwise classically handsome face -- a far more visible mark than the lightening bolt on Harry's forehead. There's a certain hardness about him beneath the mild manner. "War does ugly things to you," he replies when I ask about it. "I killed people. It's not something anybody should brag about -- I never marked my wand for Death Eater kills like some Aurors -- but it changes you. You take a life . . . you can't give it back. You use the Killing Curse, even with Ministry sanction, and it marks you if not your wand." He touches the scar; it seems to be an almost unconscious gesture. "I haven't cast that curse since the war. I hope I never have to again."

How do they divide up household chores?

"By whatever one of us hates least," Cedric says, laughing. "We're not very domestic."

"Well, you cook," Harry reminds him.

"That's about all I do. I detest housework of any kind. I'm a bit lazy."

Which makes Harry lean over and hold his stomach, he's laughing so hard. "Lazy is honest enough! He'll sit there and watch a match on the television and let me clean up all around him, the bastard. But he cooks, because I can't, and he does the washing. What it boils down to is that I have a lower tolerance for mess than he does, and I used to clean the house for my aunt and uncle -- the Muggles I grew up with. But I only learned to cook in Muggle fashion. Cedric's actually pretty good with a wand in the kitchen, so he cooks. And he does the laundry."

"Harry gives me the chores that, if they don't get done, tend to be noticed -- so I remember to do them. And yeah . . . cooking. I like that. Otherwise, it really is a chore."

I ask about the reference to the telly.

"We live in a flat with electricity," Harry explains. "Cedric likes his Muggle toys. He's the one who wanted electricity. So we've got a television, his laptop computer, a stereo, lamps and such -- all that."

"My mobile," Cedric adds, holding up a small item that I assume is a mobile phone. "I made Harry get one of these, at least, even if he laughs at me otherwise. It's funny. He grew up a Muggle but doesn't want much to do with it now. I'm the one addicted to Muggle things."

"It's because you didn't grow up with them."

"Probably."

I ask what he watches on the telly.

"Sport, mostly," he says.

Obviously not Quidditch.

"Ced likes anything. Football, rugby, tennis, motor racing -- he was impossible during the Olympics two years ago. I had to drag him to work."

Cedric's smile is charmingly shy. "I do like sport," he admits. "A bit obsessed, really. Made Harry agree to get a satellite dish just so I could get Sky Sports -- that's a special Muggle television channel -- to watch the premier league football matches. He thinks I'm insane."

It's not something one expects in a gay man -- although that is, itself, a stereotype. And Cedric's very blunt about his sexual preference, too, now that he's decided to come out. "Harry's bisexual," he says. "If anything, he leans towards women. He just happened to fall in love with me. But me -- I've always been gay."

Even in school?

"Even in school." He admits, looking off. "It wasn't something I was ready to deal with then. I didn't even have a word to name myself that wasn't an insult. You don't want to go around calling yourself a 'poof', you know? I tried to hide it from everybody . . . myself not least."

Abruptly he leans forward and his face is very serious. "That's why we're having this conversation right now -- why Harry and I agreed to come out. I went through hell as a teen. I hated myself, thought I was a freak.

"But I'm not. I'm different -- yeah, that I'll grant -- a minority. But not a freak. I can't remember a time I wasn't attracted to my own gender. It was never a choice for me; it just was. Nothing I did changed it -- I just twisted myself all up by trying to change. I don't want other Wizarding teens to go through what I did. It took a while for me to get the courage to speak out. I wasn't sorted into Gryffindor." He smiles faintly. "But it's important to have a role model. I never had one. I never knew somebody like me could be normal -- have a normal life and find somebody to spend it with. Forever. Technically, Harry and I aren't married because we can't be. But in every way that counts? Yeah, we're married. And we fully intend to beat the statistics about Aurors and divorce."

He holds up his left hand with the silver wedding band. "Some gay couples wear this on the right hand. We decided not to. It's silver, not gold, but that's just because I prefer silver. People do ask me if I'm married and I say 'yes'. Sometimes they don't ask -- just see the ring and back off. And that's fine with me -- and not because they're usually women. I'm taken. I have the person I want to grow old with."

Once more, his smile is a bit shy, and Harry -- who's been silent whilst Cedric talks -- lays his arm along the back of Cedric's chair. It's an act of both solidarity and possession. "All we want," Harry says, "is for people to recognize that what we have is as legitimate as any other couple's relationship -- and neither of us are 'eligible bachelors.'" [Two years ago, Witch Weekly listed Harry Potter as one of the 10 most eligible bachelors in Wizarding England. Obviously we didn't know then what we know now.]

"I love him," Harry says simply in conclusion, and Cedric shoots him a smile. That, more than anything, characterizes their partnership -- on and off the streets.

After all, all is fair in love, and war.

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Additional notes: The author's fic notification journal is minisinoo_fic.