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it’s late, and there’s rain pouring down outside, and harry should be asleep. but he isn’t. he’s sitting in the alcove by the window, watching the rain coat the glass; it feels like he’s back in his first year, almost, except that everything is different. and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
objectively, he supposes, it’s good. the war is over, voldemort is gone, and the wizarding world can let go of that breath they’ve been holding since the murder of harry’s parents. but there’s bad, too. the weight of the losses are heavy at hogwarts, impossible to ignore. harry can’t even look his best friends in the eye. if hermione hadn’t been able to restore her parents’ memories, she would’ve lost her family because of him. and ron… well, ron lost a brother. molly and arthur lost a son. all because of harry.
he leans his temple against the cool window, and thinks of hedwig. he misses her more often than he would’ve thought before. it’s like he’d said, it almost feels like first year, except everything is different.
harry’s startled out of his thoughts by the gentle brush of fabric against his ankle, and he looks over to see ron sitting across from him in the alcove. in first year, they would’ve fit in here together without a hitch. now, harry’s squashed in by the window, and ron can only fit one half of his body on the edge.
“are you alright?” ron asks gently, quietly so as not to disturb anybody else in the room. “is it nightmares? no shame if there is. i think most of us still get them from time to time, and you’ve been through so much more than the rest of us have, so—”
harry interrupts, “it’s not nightmares.” he only does it because he doesn’t want to hear ron go on about how harry had it the worst, because it isn’t a competition, and if it was, there were definitely people worse off than him. “i just can’t sleep.”
“oh. why?”
“too much thinking, i suppose,” harry murmurs. he doesn’t meet ron’s eyes, because he can’t. all he can see when he looks at ron is fred, except for when he looks at ron and he sees the way ron sobbed over fred’s body.
it’s a wonder the weasleys don’t hate him, for what he caused.
ron sighs, scoots closer. “look, mate, i don’t… i’ve been trying to give you space and time, but i’m really worried about you. hermione and i talked the other day and we realized that since we’ve been back at school, you hardly ever talk to us. blimey, you won’t even look at me. i promised her i’d speak with you about it, and i think now is a good time because you’re kind of starting to scare me.”
for a long moment, harry is quiet. he wonders how to tell ron about all the guilt he’s carrying, for causing so many deaths and for being a survivor when he, really, is the one voldemort truly wanted dead. he wonders how to tell ron about how unfair it is that all of those people died but harry gets to live, and return to hogwarts, and move on. he wonders how to tell ron that he doesn’t know how to move on.
he wonders if his eyes are glistening with the ghosts of his past, like rita skeeter had written in his fourth year. it feels like a lifetime ago.
he wonders how to tell ron how difficult it is to look at him, because all he can think about is how different things could be if harry had mentioned his… feelings before.
if he even understood his feelings. he’s not sure that he does. he isn’t sure that he knows the real reason why he’s been avoiding ron, and why the thought of him makes his heart race.
“you can talk to me,” ron continues, when harry’s been quiet for too long. “you’ve spent too many years keeping things to yourself, mate. but you don’t have to do that anymore.”
harry’s eyes begin to burn. “it’s just… i don’t talk to you and hermione because i don’t know what to say,” he admits, his eyes still transfixed on the running water outside. “i don’t even know how to begin to apologize for everything. everyone lost so much because of me.”
“harry—”
“i loved fred,” harry pushes out. “i don’t know how your family can bear to look at me, knowing what i caused. knowing that he died because of me. i wish i knew how to apologize for that, but i don’t think the right words exist.” i loved you, too. i love you.
ron scoots even closer. “mate, you don’t have anything to apologize for. fred didn’t die because of you, he died saving the world. really, if it weren’t for you, more people would’ve died. you saved more lives than voldemort took away.” he reaches over, rests a hand on harry’s knee. the touch is so warm, almost electric, and harry can’t stop himself from immediately snapping his gaze over to ron’s. ron just takes the eye contact in stride, giving harry a soft smile. “besides, you’ve been risking your life for the wizarding world since you were 11 years old. before you even fully understood magic. that’s nothing to apologize for.”
harry smiles a little bit, and gently knocks his knee into ron’s knee. the action makes ron remove his hand, and harry finds (curiously) that he sort of misses it. “and you were the unlucky git who got stuck with me,” he teases softly, to distract himself from the ache that the absence of ron’s touch has left behind.
“i was the one who sat with you on the train, harry. i think that means you’re stuck with me.” they both laugh a little bit, still softly because the rest of the room is sleeping—though, harry notes, it feels like they’re alone. like nothing in the world exists except for them.
after a short moment of silence, ron fills it again. he does that, sometimes. over the years, harry has learned to make peace with the silence, to exist within it—and, after voldemort spent so much time in his head, he learned to be grateful for it. but ron comes from a house of six other siblings, and he doesn’t know what to do with the quiet. so he fills it.
“it was the best thing i ever did, you know,” ron murmurs, and suddenly he’s the one that’s avoiding eye contact with harry. “sitting with you on the train. meeting you was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
at first, harry doesn’t know what to say. he should, probably, because ron is his best friend and it isn’t exactly a secret that they’re close. they’ve been inseparable since the hogwarts express in 1991, and it’s now nearly 1999, and harry and ron will probably see the turn of the century right at each other’s side. he doesn’t know where else in the world he’d be, because nothing about this life makes sense if ronald weasley isn’t doing it with him.
then, harry thinks, he might as well just say that.
“do you remember the triwizard tournament in fourth year?” he asks, as if ron could forget that. as if ron had simply let the dragon, the yule ball, and the death of cedric diggory slip from his mind.
but ron doesn’t tease him. he just nods, and waits for harry to continue.
so harry does. “before the second task, dobby told me they’d taken you because…” he pauses, glances up at ron, and notices that ron is holding eye contact again. harry forces himself not to look away. “dobby told me they’d taken you because you were the thing that i would miss the most. and it’s still true.”
this summer was the first summer that harry hadn’t spent with the weasleys.
he’d split his time between 12 grimmauld place and godric’s hollow, artfully avoiding ron and hermione and everybody else who’d tried to contact him. he rather spent his time trying to build a home out of the rubble, out of the destruction that had been left behind. and, when he wasn’t too busy distracting himself with home building, he was mourning those that he lost, and those that he never even had.
every day, it seemed, he missed his parents more. he wondered how grief could be so all-encompassing, when it was for people you never even remembered. people you never even properly knew. it was common, most nights that summer, for harry to sit in the dark and quiet with a cup of tea and just yearn for a hug from his mum, which he would never receive.
but more than that, he’d missed ron. he’d missed talking to him, laughing with him, and the way ron’s eyes would soften whenever he thought harry wasn’t looking. harry was always looking.
not speaking to or seeing ron was the most difficult thing he’s ever done. and he’s done a lot of difficult things.
“merlin, i missed you this summer,” harry tells him, while the stone walls of the alcove press uncomfortably into his back. “more than anybody else.”
this time, it’s ron that doesn’t speak for a long few moments. harry’s seen this particular expression countless times before—shock; ron’s mouth slightly gaped and eyes wide and cheeks rapidly reddening. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that ron has guessed at harry’s true meaning.
but the reaction makes harry anxious. he’d only been suggestive because he’d thought ron was being suggestive, but now ron is so shocked that harry wonders if he’d misread everything. if maybe he didn’t know his best friend quite as well as he thought he did.
“it was quite funny, really,” harry rushes to tack on, trying to fill the space like ron would do, just to make him comfortable. “dobby also referred to you as ‘my wheezy’ when he was telling me about the second task. he kept telling me i had to go in the lake and find my wheezy, and that he wouldn’t let me lose you.”
harry tries to laugh, so desperate to lighten the mood so he doesn’t push his best friend even farther away, but ron doesn’t laugh. ron just stares, eyes still as wide as saucers, and harry feels the dread filling his stomach.
he’s seconds away from apologizing, from asking ron to please say something, when suddenly ron is moving and then even more suddenly, ron’s lips are pressed against his.
at first, harry’s too startled to react. but then he takes in ron’s warmth, the gentle touch of his hands on harry’s face, and the press of his lips… and harry’s kissing back. he wraps an arm around ron’s neck and tugs him closer, deepens the kiss as much as he can in a cramped alcove in the middle of a room filled with sleeping gryffindor boys.
they kiss like they’re breathing, until they actually do run out of air and they have to pull back. they separate with a smacking sound that echoes through the entire room, but harry doesn’t even spare anyone else a glance. right now, he and ron are the only two people that exist.
“shit,” ron says, at the same time that harry says,
“that was brilliant.”
they both laugh, then. ron scoots as close as possible in that cramped alcove, and rests his forehead against harry’s. it would be a hell of a situation to anybody who might wake up, but harry doesn’t care. all he can think about is ron’s hands on his hips, and the way ron is about to kiss him again.
“i’ve always been yours,” ron breathes, and then his cheeks go bright red, like he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
harry just smiles, trying his hardest not to laugh. he should’ve known that ron was the remedy to his awful feelings—he’s always been the one to make harry feel the light, even in the darkest of times.
it feels like something that’s been right in front of him the whole time, but that he’s only just seen.
they don’t say anything else, just kissing one more time before climbing into ron’s bed, drawing the curtains, and casting a muffliato in case of nightmares (or, of course, any prying ears).
ron’s arms feel more like home than grimmauld place or godric’s hollow ever could, and harry curses himself for being so dense for so many years, and for forgetting that a house doesn’t make a home—love does.