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When Ronald Weasley was young, sitting at the kitchen table, he heard his father talking about Secret-Keepers in the next room. What a Secret-Keeper was, he didn't know, not really, but he figured that everyone should have one, so he found his eldest brother, who was fourteen and clearly the best one in the world, and said, "Bill, I want you to be my Secret-Keeper."
And Bill leaned in and said, "All right, what's your secret?"
And Ron looked at him like he'd just sprung an extra head. So Bill carried him to the sofa and tickled him until Mum told him to stop.
*
The first time he ever played Quidditch with his brothers, during the summer between first and second years, he played Keeper opposite Bill. Fred and George were Chasers (they'd've been Beaters, but Mum refused to allow Bludgers in her backyard) and Charlie was, of course, a Seeker. Percy refused to play, and Ginny was forbidden to, so they invited one of the boys in the twins' year who lived close by--Cedric, or something--to come play Seeker against Charlie. No one knew who won, mostly because Fred and George had foolishly been placed on opposing sides and kept switching places and scoring in their own goals. They'd all come down off their broomsticks and raided the kitchen and had a great laugh when Mum came in to find it completely in shambles. She scolded them all, and made them clean it up ("except you, Cedric, dear").
Before he left to take Cedric home, Bill took him aside and congratulated him on a good game. "Welcome to the big leagues, Ronald," he said and hugged him with a whomping pat on the back.
The next day, when he rescued Harry with the twins, he knew exactly what Bill meant.
*
The next time he heard from Bill was a letter he received on his thirteenth birthday. There was no package with it, no envelope with money, not even a snapshot. It was the shortest letter he'd ever gotten from one of his brothers:
As a newly-branded teenager, you should know that girls are confusing. Write me if you get one of them all riled up (in a good way or bad way) and need some advice.
He stared at it for a moment, folded it to put it in his pocket, and promptly forgot about it until a month later when Hannah Abbott cornered him and asked him what the bloody hell he though he was doing ogling her like that at lunch. In reality, he wasn't ogling her, he was staring off into space until Harry smacked him on the arm. (It had only seemed like a second, but it must've been longer if she noticed.) He thought Bill couldn't help him now, but he'd be writing to him as soon as he got back to his room that night.
*
He wrote to Bill several times during third and fourth years (most memorably, right after the Yule Ball, with six words: I think Hermione hates me. Help.), but his next letter of real consequence came during November of fifth year, when he had his first kiss, with Susan Bones.
He had been talking to Neville in the hallway about snogging, and how messy it looked, and how he would only snog someone if they snogged him first, thank you very much. And Susan must have overheard, because two days later, when she passed him between classes, she grabbed his collar and smushed their lips together and stuck her tongue in his mouth and he actually kind of liked it in a weird sort of way, but he wanted it to be over, because he could feel Harry and Hermione watching them. Finally, Susan broke it, said, "Messy enough for you?" and sauntered off. Hermione walked away in a huff when he glanced at her, grinning sheepishly, and Harry grinned back, though it somehow didn't seem sincere.
Bill wrote back within a day, saying that letting the girl kiss you was an excellent way to go about things, and to let him know about the next time it happened.
*
Ron's second real kiss, however, was Harry Potter, on Christmas Eve at midnight--or Christmas morning at midnight, he supposed. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against their beds, knees almost touching, talking about Cho and Susan and girls in general, by wandlight, mainly just to keep their minds off of Dad and Voldemort and everyone.
"What was it like?" Harry asked. "When she, you know, put her tongue in there. Cho didn't do that."
"Oh, it was all right." He wasn't really sure how to describe it, but he didn't want to sound like an idiot.
Harry pressed on. "But I mean, what was it like?"
"Well, er..." What he wanted to say was so unfathomable that he couldn't even bear to think it, so the words lurked somewhere between his brain and his throat.
Suddenly, Harry put his wand down, placed his his hand gingerly on Ron's knee and just sat there, in the dim moonlight, for what seemed like an eternity. Their breathing filled the entire room, the entire house, the entire world, and he didn't like it.
"Show me," Harry said.
"Er, all right." He cleared his throat and took a fistful of Harry's shirt and closed his eyes and kissed him like he thought Susan had kissed him, but very quickly realized it couldn't have been more different. Harry's lips were a lot sloppier than Susan's, and his hands were resting on his chest and and their pathetic day's worth of boy-stubble snagged together so that he couldn't move for a split second. But most of all, he couldn't seem to stop.
They didn't talk about it the next day, or the next, or the next. When he finally couldn't stand to even look at Harry anymore, his letter was five words long: What if it's a boy? And Bill's letter back was even shorter: Is it Harry? He scrawled yes on a piece of parchment and sent Pig off into the night. When Harry caught him at the window, he said, truthfully, that he was writing to Bill.
"You do that a lot," Harry said.
"Er," Ron said.
"Dinner!" Hermione called, and they both stared at their shoes and left the room.
He received Bill's response at their first breakfast back at Hogwarts.
"Letter from your eldest?" Harry asked over a plate of bacon.
"Mmhmm," he said, stuffing it in his pocket, where it stayed, heavier than that bottle of butterbeer he smuggled out of Hogsmeade for Ginny during third year, until long after dinner when he opened it, left it on his bed when he went to brush his teeth, and came back to find Harry with it in his hands, red in the face.
"Harry," he said, desperately, feebly, "Harry, I haven't even read it yet."
"I can't believe you told him." He sounded angry, betrayed, on the verge of tears.
"I didn't. I didn't tell him anything."
"You did!" Harry yelled, shaking the single line of smooth penmanship on parchment at him. "He says it right here, that he hopes you at least let me kiss you first."
"Harry--"
"I suppose your whole family knows, hm? I suppose they all think I'm a poof and you're a poof and we're bent for each other."
"Harry--" He heard someone open the door behind him. Probably Neville, but he couldn't bring himself to turn around to find out.
"What?" He gripped the parchment with such force that Ron was afraid it would rip in two.
He stared at his feet and nudged the edge of the carpet with his toe. "I haven't even read the bloody letter yet."
*
When he plays Quidditch with his brothers before Bill's wedding, Percy is gone and Ginny fills the position Diggory used to play, but everything is essentially the same. Afterwards, when they are all drunk, Bill--who doesn't even look like Bill anymore--pulls him aside, and asks him about Harry. He only asks, he says, because all of Ron's letters after January of last year were about Hermione this and Hermione that and nothing about Harry.
"If you stopped writing about him because you think I'd tell everyone, I never would." He doesn't seem as hazy as the rest of his siblings. "When you were just a little Weasley, you asked me to be your Secret-Keeper. You didn't know what it meant then, but I know you do now. That's why I wrote you that letter all those years ago." They sit on the sofa, away from everyone else, and Ron drinks another glass of Muggle wine as he tells Bill everything--how they kissed and touched that night, and how Harry found the letter, and how Harry wouldn't speak to him for a whole day and that was the worst day of his whole life, and how when they started talking again, Harry acted like everything was perfectly normal and pass the pumpkin juice, would you Ronald?
"And we haven't talked about it since, because he's so busy being the hero and it doesn't matter, now, anyway," he says slowly, "because I fancy Hermione and he fancies Ginny and it doesn't matter."
"You just said 'it doesn't matter' twice," Bill says, and ruffles Ron's hair.
Ron wants to say something--something profound, just like everything is when you are this drunk--but all that comes out is gibberish even he doesn't understand, and then he passes out.
He awakes the next morning to someone rapping on his door. He moans, "Go away!", but when the knocker won't leave, he shouts, "I'm sleeping, Mum!"
"Ron?" The voice that comes through the door is not Mum's. It's not Ginny's, it's not Hermione's, it's not Fleur's. In fact, it's not a woman's voice at all. It's Harry's.
He leaps out of bed, which can't be good for his head because it is spinning out of control, but he doesn't care. He flings the door open and says, "Bloody hell, I didn't think you were coming until tomorrow."
"I--er," Harry says, looking down, "I wasn't going to, but then I got this letter from Bill." He holds out a thin, fresh piece of parchment that reads, Ron needs to talk to you. in Bill's unmistakable handwriting.
And as Harry steps in the room, Ron thinks his brother is the worst Secret-Keeper in the world, but he doesn't mind, not really.