Archive of Our Own

Britain has been blessed with sunshine on the bank holiday, and Harry looks beautiful in it.

He’s chatting with Viktor Krum and Hermione on the other side of the duckpond in the garden of the Burrow, ignorant of how the rays are lustring strands of his thick, dark hair Gryffindor gold.

Hermione and Viktor are officially an item. Have been for a few weeks now, and the three of them smiling over there look like bestest chums. It makes Ron’s stomach turn.

George lands noisily in the empty deckchair beside the one Ron is currently moping in.

“What’s with the sour face, Ronnie? Dung beetle crawl up your bum?”

“I wish everyone would stop saying I’m in a mood, because I’m not!” Ron snaps loudly, which admittedly doesn’t help his case.

“Yeah,” Fred drawls, appearing on his other side and making him jump, “You’re happy as Larry. Practically on cloud nine. Remind me to call you next time I need cheering up, won’t you?”

He can’t tell the twins to piss, fuck, or bugger off with the little ears of his nieces and nephews close by, so he struggles inelegantly out of the chair and sulks in the shade by the shed instead.

A garden gnome is digging for something in the soil beneath a nearby shrub. He can see its knobbly backside wiggling about. Well, he’d rather look at that than at his best friend worming up to Krum. What’s so great about him, anyway?

So what if he was the youngest seeker ever signed to a national team. Although, Ron still has dreams about that Wronski feint he did at the world cup in ’94. And, yeah, he might be good looking, in a Bulgarian way, but Ron’s taller. If Harry wants to laugh, he can laugh over here at something Ron said. He can be funny. Krum’s just boring, and stupid, and, oh, God, he’s coming over here.

“Hello,” says Viktor, attempting a smile and blocking Ron’s view of the gnome’s bare arse. His Bulgarian accent twists around the ‘H’, rasping the consonant as if he’s trying to clear his throat. Ron grunts back at him.

“You and Harry,” he says, twisting letters still, “You are being like buttocks to underwear.”

Viktor can tell he’s said something wrong by the way Ron’s head whirls round in a spectacular double take, face boiling tomato red all of a sudden.

Ron can’t make head or tails of what he’s just heard. Is this the Bulgarian way of calling him an arse bandit?

“Like buttocks… Er, rear end?” Viktor tries. He points to the relevant area of his anatomy, but Ron’s look of confused horror doesn’t abate. He watches Krum with suspicion.

Viktor shakes his head, uneasy. “Ah, perhaps is not same in English. I mean he is talking about you a lot. I am hearing you played for house team at Hogwarts? Quidditch?”

Ron grunts again and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“What broom you ride?”

“Cleansweep,” he answers briskly, not mentioning that it’s an eleven. The twelve came out the year after he got it, and the newest model is the twenty-five.

“O, I never try Cleansweep. My coach only buy goblin-made brooms. Like Firebolt. Speed is okay, but for sharp turns, is not the best, I think.”

‘Okay’? Ron thinks madly to himself, sharing an astounded look with the shrubbery. Nought to a hundred and fifty miles an hour in ten seconds is ‘okay’?

“Me and Harry — Harry and I — have idea to try each other’s brooms. Test out sometime. You join us, maybe?”

He’s torn. He can tell Krum’s trying to be friendly to him, Merlin knows why, and he’d give his left bollock to try out the latest Aeromancer. But not when all he has to exchange is a mouldy old Cleansweep eleven.

And not with Harry outflying him like he always does. He can picture it now, Harry and Krum speeding away on their brooms side by side while Ron chokes on their dust, overtaken by lazy pigeons.

“Maybe,” he says unenthusiastically. “Got to go.”

He backs away abruptly, turning and running into the house as if someone is calling him.

*

He helps with lunch, idly stirring a wooden spoon in a bubbling pot until his mum notices him doing it and shouts at him to get out of her kitchen. He’s more of a hindrance than a help, apparently, except when it comes to the eating part.

He trudges upstairs to see what Percy’s doing. He’s sitting at his desk, writing something on a crisp sheet of parchment.

“Shut the door, please,” says Percy.

Ron shuts the door. His brother looks up.

“I meant with you on the other side.”

“Oh, thanks!”

He stomps back downstairs. As he does he hears Bill’s voice floating from the bathroom, along with a particular pungent smell.

“Whoever that is, couldn’t pass me a clean nappy, could you? My hands are soiled.”

Ron hurries downstairs faster.

*

“Were you alright yesterday?”

When Harry asks this, Ron’s sitting up on the kitchen counter in the flat they’ve shared since Hogwarts. It’s filled with foreign dictionaries and phrasebooks, since Harry decided to take a leaf out of Dumbledore’s book after graduation instead of going into the Aurors. He’s a sort of self-styled Beast and Being liaison: he goes round and talks to communities that most wizards don’t want to talk to, or can’t understand. Doesn’t work for the ministry, but works with them sometimes, which is how he prefers it.

What Harry understands, consciously or not, is that communication is about getting your point across and listening to what the other person has to say. It’s about being open and curious, not about perfecting the rules of grammar so there’s never an awkward moment. He’s better at it than Hermione, though Ron would never dare say this in her hearing. Especially when it comes to house-elves.

“Yeah,” he answers, “‘Course.”

Ron moves A Modern Manual of Mermish away from the hob and tries to look less morose. Harry’s not convinced.

“We should go out tonight. Fancy the cinema?”

“Nah, not tonight.”

Ron doesn’t want to disrespect Harry’s Muggle heritage, but he doesn’t like the cinema. It’s unnaturally cold in there, too bright and too dark at the same time. He doesn’t mind watching films, just not on a screen the size of his flat.

“Pub?”

“Nah.”

“Club?” Harry suggests. “Wanna go out and get plastered?”

“Nah.”

“Wanna stay in and get plastered?”

“Nah.”

Harry gives him a long, hard look. Ron shrugs.

“Okay,” Harry says, and leaves the room. He returns a minute later carrying a pile of pillows and blankets, which he dumps on the living room floor. Ron follows him. Harry goes away again and this time comes back with Ron’s duvet and pillows. He pulls the sofa cushions to the floor and arranges them in a grid, then throws a blanket over the nearest lamp.

“Er, mate, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?

Ron’s not sure. He’s only vaguely aware of the concept of interior design.

“Feng shui?”

“What, they don’t have pillow forts in the wizarding world?”

Ginny once had a Wendy house that was bigger on the inside, but this is new.

“Join me if you want,” Harry offers.

He teaches Ron how to construct it, bringing in dining chairs as scaffolding. The blanket keeps falling down until they place some thick books strategically to weight it at the corners. Ron suggests a Sticking Charm, but in Harry’s opinion that’s cheating.

He takes his time adjusting the velvety canopy so their boxy television is included underneath it, without any other light getting in. They squeeze in together and lie like sardines in a tin.

It’s pretty damn cosy inside. It’s like the four-poster he slept in for six years at Hogwarts, only less red and without lions prowling across the tapestry. Dim, but colourful, and pleasantly liminal. Harry looks very orange under the glow of Ron’s Chudley Cannons duvet set.

The pointy thing digging into Ron’s thigh turns out to be the TV remote. He flicks through the channels until Homes Under the Hammer appears on screen, then settles in for a relaxing evening.

“I don’t know why you like this programme,” says Harry. “It’s the same every time. They look round the house, the house is shit, they do up the house, they sell the house.”

“I know,” says Ron, watching a couple on screen in matching fleece jackets being interviewed in front of a nondescript three-bed semi-detached. “Isn’t it great. Oof, they’re gonna go over budget.”

“You say that literally every episode.”

He does, and he’s right every time.

Ron didn’t grow up with a television, although there were pieces of one in his father’s shed, so it’s still a novelty for him. For Harry, daytime TV is emblematic of the banality of his Muggle suburban childhood, but he’ll sit through it for his best friend’s sake. He peruses a slim pamphlet on Gobbledygook while Ron tells the people on screen the choices they should be making in their lives.

Neither of them can be bothered to dismantle their fabric fort in order to go to bed, so they decide to sleep in it, summoning pyjamas and casting a few extra Cushioning Charms for comfort.

“Hey,” says Harry softly, as Ron’s beginning to doze off. “Remember when Percy got caught with his trousers down at that niffler sanctuary?”

“Yeah,” Ron chuckles sleepily. “Good times.”

Harry always brings that up when he’s trying to cheer Ron up. Does he need cheering up?

He’s not sure. Now that it’s just the two of them, he’s feeling alright again.

He can’t imagine Harry and Viktor Krum building a pillow fort together, put it that way. He wonders if Krum was serious about having a go on each other’s brooms. What if they’ve been hanging out together, without him?

Harry’s breathing slows as he drifts off, while Ron’s stomach twists uncomfortably like that time Fred and George hid cockroach clusters in his trifle.

*

Ron wakes up with a mouth so dry it feels as if its full of cotton wool, and nearly weeps in delight when Harry brings him a plate of sausages. As he finishes the last bite and wipes the grease off his mouth, he realises it’s an ambush. By then it’s too late.

“We need to talk about this,” Harry announces, with an expression like it pains him to do so, “‘cause it’s starting to feel like fourth year again. Why have you been acting so weird?”

“I’m not acting weird,” Ron lies quickly. Too quickly.

Harry says nothing. It’s a trick he picked up from Mad-Eye, to leave a silence until the guilty party anxiously fills it, and Ron’s not falling for it. Neither of them blinks for a good three minutes. Harry breaks first.

“Krum thinks you don’t like him because you’re in love with Hermione.”

“What? No, I’m not!” Ron says immediately, scandalised.

“While Hermione thinks you fancy Krum, and can’t bear to hang around with them because you’re jealous of her.”

Ron stares, open mouthed and flabberghasted.

“That’s insane,” he says, when he regains the ability to speak. “That’s crackers.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

Well, okay, it’s not that insane. It may, possibly, have been true at one point or another, perhaps during their aforementioned fourth year.

They’ve never talked about it, but Ron suspects he may have let it slip during a drunken heart-to-heart following his disastrous dalliance with Lavender that girls just don’t do it for him. He’s not sure if it didn’t happen or if Harry’s forgotten about it. Or what if he spilt an even bigger secret during that conversation and he’s the one who doesn’t remember?

Now he feels like his ribcage has been cracked open and his guts are on display for all comers to poke at.

“Yeah,” Ron says, choosing denial, which means it must be a day that ends in Y. “Barmy. Completely cuckoo.”

“Have you been reading the thesaurus Hermione got me for my birthday? Stop dithering and tell me what’s wrong.”

Ron gets briefly tangled in the blankets as he rolls across the floor out of the makeshift nest and blinks against the bright light streaming in through the window. This isn’t the kind of conversation that can be had inside a pillow fort. In fact, this isn’t the kind of conversation that can be had at all.

“Nothing.”

“Ron.”

“What? I’m fine.”

Harry looks concerned.

“You’re not ill. You seem… I dunno. Have you been thinking about the war? Because I get it. Like, it’s over, but it’s never really over. The pain, I mean.”

Harry has more scars you can’t see than ones you can. It makes Ron’s heart ache.

“I haven’t. Really. No problem. Except I’m late for work.”

Another lie. The perk of working in the Department of Magical Games and Sports is that no one expects him in before half ten. He darts into his bedroom and rummages for a clean pair of robes.

“See you later, alright?” he calls, and rushes through the Floo before Harry can tell him he’s put them on inside out.

*

Ron barges into Hermione’s office and manspreads viciously in her visitor’s chair. Her twitchy assistant rushes in after him and offers refreshments, but she waves Mariella away before Ron can open his mouth. Shame, because Level Nine almost always has chocolate doughnuts.

“I don’t fancy Krum,” he tells her firmly, folding his arms.

Hermione fixes him with a look. It’s one of her trademark looks, and he can only hold her gaze for a few seconds before he breaks.

“…Anymore,” he concedes, muttering to the beige carpet.

“I know.”

“What? But Harry said that you said—”

She interrupts him with a tremendous snort.

“I thought this might happen. Harry demanded to know why you’ve been acting so oddly lately. I said it’s completely obvious that you’re lovestruck by someone. I dropped a few hints: dark hair, famous, quidditch-obsessed… It’s not my fault he put two and two together and got five.”

“It absolutely is your fault.”

“Would you rather I had been more specific? Said his name, perhaps?”

Ron’s torn between making a sarcastic comment about what a supportive friend she is, and snatching her giant packet of Quavers and emptying them all over her hair. He won’t do either of those, because she actually is a supportive friend, despite everything. She’d drop everything to help him out of a bind if he needed it, even if he didn’t deserve it.

How does she know, though? He’s never told her. Is he that obvious? Then again, Hermione’s Hermione. She knows everything.

Right now, he can feel his face going hot.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. You can’t prove anything!”

Hermione looks pityingly at him. “Do you want my advice?”

“No,” he says petulantly.

“I think you should tell him. Confess your feelings and get it over with.”

Ron slouches as low as the chair will allow, sprawled and despondent like a melting daddy-long-legs. He doesn’t like that word, confess. It makes it sound like a crime.

“That’d just make things weird forever,” he mumbles.

“Are they not weird already?” she asks. “He’s worried about you.”

Ron groans. He sits in silent contemplation for a quarter of an hour while Hermione works on whatever she’s working on, then decides to shove off back to his own department.

“Tell him,” Hermione calls from behind her desk. “And be nice to Viktor!”

He pokes his head back through the doorframe.

“Fine. But you tell Vicky to stop talking about my underwear.”

She narrows her eyes suspiciously at his retreating back. On his way out, he pinches a doughnut from the tray floating next to Mariella’s desk.

*

At five o’clock he sticks his head in the fireplace and begs his sister to let him come over and hide at hers. He can’t go back to his and Harry’s flat yet; he still feels naked after that conversation with Hermione.

“What’s eating you?” Ginny asks as soon as he steps onto the hearthrug. “Is it your pathetic crush on Harry, or is it something else?”

When he’s finished spluttering, he realises he’s half-glad she’s said this: it saves him from having to awkwardly bring up the subject.

“You’re one to talk about having a crush on Harry!” he shouts indignantly, face as red as his hair. And hers, as it happens. She only shrugs at him, nonplussed.

“Yeah, I am. I recognise the signs.”

Ron doesn’t want to know what the signs are. It’s bad enough that Hermione knows, and now his sister. Merlin, if Fred and George ever find out…

“How d’you get over it?” he asks desperately.

“Go out with someone else. Then go to bed with them, instead of crying yourself to sleep at night about what a sad and lonely loser you are.”

Ron tried that, sort of, with Lavender back in fifth year. Only snogging of course, which was supposed to be nice but made him feel sick. She was a girl, though, so maybe he could try going out with someone more his cup of tea.

It would never work, though. It’s always been Harry, and it will always be Harry. He just knows.

“Or, failing that, at least wank over someone else.”

“Ginny! I— you— don’t say wank!”

“Cry-wank? Cry-wank over someone else. Have you ever thought about Krum? He’s not bad-looking.”

Ron flings a sofa cushion at her. Then another one, for good measure. Both come flying back and boff him on either side of the head.

“You’re my least favourite sister,” he informs her.

“I’m your only sister,” she says, “so technically that makes me your most favourite sister as well.”

He can’t argue with that logic. He can’t argue with Gin about anything; she always wins. 

They spend the evening playing hyper-competitive rounds of Connect Four over some spiced butterbeer and end up chatting about nothing over a takeaway.

It’s pretty late by the time he stumbles home. As he passes Harry’s room on the way to his own, he spots Harry’s trunk open on the bed. His heart drops to his stomach, his mind spinning. It was already spinning thanks to the butterbeer, but now he’s dizzier than a tossed gnome.

Is Harry moving out? Has he found out somehow about Ron’s terrible affliction, his horrendous secret, and is so horrified and disgusted he can’t bear to stay around him another day? Is this it? Is this how it ends?

On closer inspection, the trunk is full of gillyweed. Harry’s being called away urgently to mediate in some sort of mermaid-centaur argy-bargy up north.

“The Lake District,” Harry says. “Did you know there’s only one lake in the Lake District?”

Ron did know that. It’s the only fact anyone knows about the Lake District. Also, he’s not actually sure it’s true.

“When will you be back?”

“When both parties have reached an amicable and appropriate resolution,” Harry recites from the official-looking scroll in his hand. “Dunno. Few days, probably.”

“Right, well… see you.”

They stand facing each other awkwardly for a few moments.

Dean and Seamus have started doing this thing Muggle men do where they knock their fists together to say hello or goodbye or well done and that. Ron’s tried it, but it hurts your knuckes if you get the angle wrong. That’s what makes it such a manly gesture, he supposes: subjecting yourself to pain in order to be stoic about it. Hiding your true feelings.

He raises an arm, holding it out for a one-armed hug. It’s higher up the manliness scale than a two-armed hug, especially if you bang the other wizard on the back a bit.

But Harry tosses the scroll away and wraps both arms around him, turning his head so his cheek presses into the warmth of Ron’s chest, and sighs quietly.

It’s a hazard of hugging, when you’re a tall man: besides getting asked constantly how the weather is up there, the other person can have a sneaky listen to your heartbeat. Ron tries to keep it steady.

He pulls his other arm around him and squeezes tightly. He can’t resist, Harry’s just so… squeezable. Hermione says he didn’t get hugged enough as a child, and that’s why he’s so touchy-feely sometimes. Meanwhile, growing up with six siblings, Ron’s just touchy.

Should he let go now? This hug’s going on a bit long. And the longer it goes on, the harder it is to let go. They’re both lingering. Ron could happily go to sleep like this, if he’s honest.

The clock rudely strikes eleven and Harry jumps back. He takes his trunk, which is dripping out of one of the corners, and disapparates.

*

Late Tuesday morning, Malfoy slides into his office and daintily perches his pureblood bum on the corner of Ron’s desk, exuding grace and poise.

“Weasley, I wonder if you could spare a few minutes of your time to assist me?”

Draco Malfoy suits the dove-grey robes favoured by qualified members of the Ministry’s accounts department. He joined straight out of Hogwarts and now holds some kind of semi-senior position. It makes sense to Ron, given that Malfoy was top of his class in Arithmancy, but Hermione says numerology and accountancy are two completely different things.

“Nope,” Ron replies cheerfully, even though he currently has his boots up on the desk. He’s got a whole pack of Drooble’s in his mouth and is trying to break his personal best for largest blowing gum bubble. A candy bubble the colour and size of a peach bursts and collapses flaccidly across his nose. He managed one bigger than his head an hour ago.

“Of course, I would hate to throw a spanner into your busy schedule,” Draco oozes diplomatically, yet with a heavy tinge of sarcasm, “but you are simply the perfect man for the job.”

Ron sits up. Flattery like that shouldn’t work on him, especially coming from a git like Malfoy, but it does. Also, he’s bored. Outside of the busy season he doesn’t have much to do.

“I’m not hearing the word ‘please’,” he points out.

“Pretty please with a cherry on top,” says Draco, completely straight-faced. “I’ll even throw in a Bakewell tart, if that will seal the deal.”

Now he’s got really his attention. The mention of food will do that to a man who’s only had two breakfasts, elevenses, and a pre-lunch snack.

“Fine, what d’you want?”

Draco explains on the way to conference room five that proposed changes affecting the Ministry budget need to be approved by the finance department and that, on this occasion, he would appreciate a second opinion.

When they walk in, Arthur Weasley is sitting on the other side of the table. Intrigued, Ron picks up the stapled pieces of Muggle lined paper, on which an application has been drawn up in blue biro.

“What’s this you’re proposing? Oh, Dad! You want the ministry to use fellytones?”

“Telephones, Ron. I believe it will increase efficiency and incentivise communication between departments—”

“No, you just want to play with Muggle gadgets,” he interrupts, dropping into a chair. “How’s it going to increase efficiency when no one knows how to bloody use them?”

“Progress is impossible without change,” his father recites in wise tones. “A man who cannot change his mind, cannot change anything.”

Ron ignores this.

“No way. Think of the noise, for a start. No one could concentrate with eklectics ringing and buzzing at them all the time, the flying memos are bad enough. And we’d trip over the wires. You’ve seen the one at Hermione’s parents’ house, with those awful wires coming out the back.”

Arthur had taken apart the one at Hermione’s parents’ house, and Mr Granger had done a bang-up job of pretending he didn’t mind.

“How would the ministry even install them?” Ron continues. “This building doesn’t have any whatcha-ma-call-its, socket-to-mes. Muggle technology barely works in magical areas anyway. What would it cost?” 

Throughout all this Malfoy has been sitting impassively, with the dignity and placid composure of a vast, frozen lake. He slides a scroll of parchment, kept flat by intricately carved weights on either side of a detailed spreadsheet upon its surface, under Ron’s nose.

Ron takes one glance at the final figure and looks back at Malfoy.

“Reject it. Reject it now.”

“At this stage applicants may withdraw their application, should they desire,” Draco says smoothly.

Arthur half looks like he wants to argue, but he can see he’s not going to win and recognises the opportunity to save face. Pretty nice of Malfoy to offer that, Ron thinks. Maybe he’s grown out of being a massive pureblood prick.

“Fine, I withdraw my proposal,” Arthur sighs, and Ron tears the sheaf of lined paper in two.

*

“I thought it would be better coming from someone other than myself,” Draco explains afterwards as they make their way down to the canteen together. “I’ve already had to reject four of his proposals and I don’t want him or anyone else to think it’s down to personal prejudice. It isn’t. I’m not my father.”

“Nor am I,” Ron shivers. Thank Godric. “Why did you think I’d side with you and not my dad, though?”

Draco looks sidelong at him.

“Because his ideas are terrible. Telling-phones? He should know what kind of budgets I’m dealing with. The roof leaks up in Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and we can’t find funds to fix it; they’ve got buckets. One of these days, someone magical is going to have an accident and catastrophe…”

They each grab trays and join the lunch line. Draco takes a sweet pastry from a basket and puts it on Ron’s tray.

“That doesn’t count, I could have got that myself.”

“It most certainly does. I never specified I’d be buying you a Bakewell tart.”

They end up sitting opposite each other at an empty table, silent amidst the buzz of ministry workers eating and chatting around them.

“So, why magiaccountancy?” Ron asks, for lack of anything better to say.

Draco unfolds a pristine white napkin and places it on his lap.

“Numbers,” he pronounces, “are more predictable than people. They’re black and white. Data doesn’t judge; it doesn’t lie. Of course, it’s open to interpretation, and the risks and benefits of various courses of action are to be communicated to the relevant stakeholders, but overall I’m happier working behind the scenes. Why Games and Sports?”

Ron doesn’t have a deep answer to this, he’s afraid.

“I like games and sports,” he says.

Draco nods.

“Ever thought of starting a Quodpot league?”

He has, actually, and they jovially discuss the merits of this for the next hour and a half.

*

He and Draco end up having lunch together every day that week. It’s nice to be around someone who doesn’t accuse him of being too grumpy or try to meddle in his non-existent love life. They’re at a table together the day Harry comes back. Merlin, he’s missed the sight of him.

He trails into the canteen after Hermione, muddy round the edges, like he’s taken a dip in a lake to talk to merpeople and not had a chance to shower yet. Probably sweaty, Ron thinks, wondering if there’s something wrong with him for wanting to go over there and give him a good sniff.

He waves. Harry nearly waves back, but when he spots who he’s with, he drops his arm and glowers instead. He joins Hermione at a table opposite Ernie MacMillan and Terry Boot and throws suspicious looks at Ron and Malfoy every few seconds over a plate of lasagne.

“Does Potter know?” asks Draco.

Ron sighs. “I hate it when you ask questions like that.”

“Hm?”

Draco blinks innocently at him. He spoons another spoonful of soup without getting a single soupy drop on his robes.

“‘Cause it means I have to say something stupid, like, ‘Know what?’ You’re trying to draw it out because you think the next thing you’re going to say is gonna get a big reaction out of me.”

Draco grins. “Say it, then.”

“Does Harry know what?”

“That you’re in love with him.”

Ron chokes so violently on his sausage roll that a bearded wizard at the table behind him has to get up and slap him loudly on the back until he can breathe again.

This is beyond the bloody pail. This is outrageous.

“Just asking,” Draco says casually, like it’s not his fault Ron nearly just expired from a sausage going down the wrong hole. What would they have put on his gravestone?

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they’re talking out their arse. What bollocks.”

He does know: it was either Hermione or Ginny, and he’s going to batter them. Then it occurs to him that maybe Malfoy was joking, throwing random accusation spaghetti at the wall to see if it landed, but it’s too late to deny anything now.

“Hmm, the ginger doth protest. I haven’t been talking to anyone, I’ve known you since you were eleven. And you’ve been in love with him since you were eleven.”

A Malfoy would never do something so ill-mannered as to gesture with cutlery, but his silver spoon is poised meaningfully in midair.

“I could tell when he’d walked in,” Draco continues. “I didn’t even have to turn around. Your eyes went all big and round like a sad crup’s.”

“Shut up!”

“You know, between the two of you, I always took you for the thicker one. But Potter really has no idea?”

“Seriously, shut up! And you do know that’s my foot, by the way? What are you doing?”

Draco keeps putting the toes of his fancy Italian loafers on top of Ron’s scuffed boots. Each time he tugs his foot away Draco finds it again, so Ron has to put his boot over Draco’s to keep it still.

“Footsie. Thanks for playing along.”

“I’m not playing along, I’m, argh, oi, stop it! Okay, let me rephrase: why are you doing this?”

Ron can see Harry, Hermione, Ernie and Terry watching them out of the corner of his eye as Draco leans in with a catlike grin. If the choking fit hadn’t got their full attention, this does. The sudden proximity and heady scent of French cologne make Ron blush, which is happening far too often lately.

“Because,” Draco murmurs silkily in his ear, “it will drive Potter mental.”

*

It does drive Harry mental. He shouts at Ron as soon as he comes home.

“How can you be hanging around with that slimy prick? After everything he’s said about your family! He was such a dick at school, let alone all the Death Eater business!”

“Yeah, well,” says Ron, wishing he’d gone for a slash before stepping through the Floo. “We gave as good as we got, didn’t we? Even Hermione slapped him that one time.”

“Because he’d called her a Mudblood!”

“Come on, he’s not that bad nowadays.”

“Not that bad? Not that bad? Ron, your families have been feuding for centuries.”

He’s well aware of that, with his mum blaming all their ailments on a Weasley-Malfoy marriage back in 1486 that supposedly poisoned the bloodline, and their fathers having brawls in public. It all seems a bit childish.

“We’re grown ups now,” he says.

Harry stares. “I don’t believe this.”

Fuming, Harry snatches his blankets from the pillow fort and drags them back to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. The fort collapses.

*

He chances to run into both Draco and Harry in the same corridor at the ministry later that week and worries he might have to break up a fight. Draco glides over and touches Ron on the arm.

“Weasley, thanks ever so much for your help on that special project last week,” he smarms, making it sound like it was something salacious. “I simply couldn’t have done it without you.”

Ginny’s words echo through his mind. Go out with someone else. Could he? No way, it’s Malfoy. Eurgh. But? No, no. No. Unless?

Harry clears his throat. Draco turns and looks expectantly, fingers gently curled around Ron’s bicep.

“Piss off, Malfoy.”

“Charming. As you wish, Saviour.”

Draco does a stupid little bow with a flourish, but then thankfully does piss off.

“Party at Luna’s tonight,” says Harry, in a tone of someone who’s just been told that Christmas and Easter have both been cancelled. “Think you can bunk off early?”

Of course he can. He could bunk off at ten in the morning and no one would notice.

When he gets to the Rookery, as he calls it, all his troubles are briefly wiped from his mind due to the fact that there’s cake. It’s not even an occasion, and there’s two magnificent tiers. He bloody loves Luna.

Speak of the angel: she twirls down the spiral staircase, conjuring bubbles from her wand that don’t seem to be popping. One sticks to the edges of Ron’s plate and he gives it a wary poke. It smells of blueberries and wax crayons.

“Hello Ron, Harry. How are you getting on with the goblins?” she inquires, referring to Harry’s freelance work at Gringotts.

They get chatting and Ron floats off to see who else is here. He passes Hermione and Viktor tucked up in a corner exchanging words in rapid Bulgarian, so engrossed in each other they don’t notice him. A slightly peculiar-looking fellow introduces himself as Rolf and invites Ron to touch the rare speckled reptile in his hands, which he politely declines. He half-listens to Seamus and Dean bickering about football until he gets bored and agrees to spin the spinner for his old quidditch team in a game of Twister.

“Left hand, red. Right hand, green.”

It starts out alright, with Alicia Spinnet sliding her socked foot between Katie Bell’s legs to reach the correct circle. It ends with Ginny standing on her hands and falling backwards onto Angelina Johnson, who was spread out across all four corners like a flying squirrel and quaking with the effort.

“No points for showing off!”

The ladies tumble down in a heap and Ron decides it’s been long enough: it’s time to go hunting for a cheeky second slice of cake. Licking jam off his thumb, he wonders where Harry’s got to.

Heading up the spiral staircase, he overhears the tail end of a hushed conversation between two people on the landing. It’s Harry, saying in a low voice to Neville, “…find it difficult to be around him.”

The stair creaks and Harry looks round. His reaction is carefully neutral, but Neville’s blustering makes it obvious it was Ron they were talking about.

“Oh, er, hi! We were just talking about, er,” Neville flounders. “Cake?”

“Right,” says Ron.

Harry turns his attention to a row of clay sculptures on a shelf. Luna must have made them, because they bear resemblance to nothing on this planet.

“I’ll just, er,” Neville mumbles, and sidles past him down the stairs.

“Alright?” Harry says lightly, not meeting Ron’s eye. “Hermione about?”

“Downstairs. Like everyone else.”

“I’ll join them, then.”

Ron could stop him. Block his path and insist that if he’s got something to say, he should say it. But he doesn’t.

He lets Harry pass, and the fleeting glance between them adds another string to the Gordian knot of tension in his stomach.

*

Around noon the next day, Saturday, Ron is dozing on the sofa when Viktor Krum appears on the hearthrug, brushing soot off his heavily branded flying gear with one hand and holding a broom the cost of the entire flat in the other.

“O, hello. You fly?” asks Krum, surveying him.

Ron risks a swift glance downwards. Thank Merlin. His fly is done up, but, yep, he’s wearing his Bertie Bott’s Beans boxers. Many-coloured beans are dancing cheerfully across the fabric.

“Er…”

Harry appears in the doorway in a T-shirt and jeans with his Nimbus 44 slung over his shoulder. He joins Krum to stand over Ron with his hands on his hips, waiting for an answer.

“I think I’ll pass,” Ron decides airily. ”Since I’m so difficult to be around.”

The stony look on Harry’s face after he says this is a bit intimidating. He would have made a good Auror. The hands do not budge from the hips.

“That’s not what I said.”

“I heard you. At Luna’s.”

“You heard wrong.”

“What did you say, then?”

Harry doesn’t answer.

“Who were you talking about? Go on. I’m waiting.”

“Maybe is bad time,” says Viktor, looking nervously between them.

“No, we’re doing this now. Stay there,” Harry orders Krum with a pointed finger, then drags all six foot something of Ron into the kitchen, which is no mean feat by any means.

“What is your problem?” Harry hisses. “I know you don’t like Viktor, but—”

“I like him! Well, I don’t not like him. I don’t really know him. But I don’t have a problem with him.”

“So it’s ME you have a problem with?” says Harry, and the resulting silence tells him he’s hit the nail on the head.

“What do you care?” Ron hisses back, “You’ve got a new best friend now. He can replace me and you two can go off and be famous together.”

“Ron, don’t be an arse, you know I don’t care about that. I’m only hanging out with him because—” His gaze darts to the closed door and he lowers his voice. “Look, I’m making an effort for Hermione. It doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere anytime soon. You’re my best friend, but you’re not my only friend, alright?”

“Fine,” Ron snaps.

Harry sags against the fridge and takes his glasses off so he can pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I know we’ve been hanging around a lot lately, but Viktor doesn’t know anyone here besides us. I remember what that’s like, I didn’t… I didn’t have friends before I met you. It changed everything. And I like meeting new people, the wizarding world can feel really small sometimes.”

It doesn’t feel small to Ron; it’s the only world he’s ever known.

“You obviously have more fun with him, so.”

“We used to have fun, back when you weren’t in a mood. I’m beginning to forget what that was like.”

“Thanks.”

“God, you’re harder to talk to than the centaurs! Why won’t you come out and say what’s wrong, because it’s obviously something! And what on earth is going on with you and Malfoy?”

“What?” says Ron, playing dumb. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You seem to be having a lot of fun together,” Harry spits out bitterly. “He’s been sliming and slathering all over you.”

“What’s wrong with that? Maybe I like making new friends too. Got a problem with it?”

“Yes,” he grinds out through gritted teeth, fingers curled into fists by his side and then splaying out in exasperation. “He’s— he’s stealing you!”

This is thrilling. Is he jealous? Good. Let’s see how he enjoys the taste of his own friend-replacing medicine.

“And he’s only doing it to wind me up!” Harry adds.

There’s no point in trying to deny this. Ron could argue that Draco likes him for his sparkling personality, but he heard from the horse’s mouth that he is only doing it to wind Harry up.

Ron arranges his features like butter wouldn’t melt. He’s allowed to have other friends, even if they do have very incorrect ideas about Quidditch fouls.

“You’re not joining us, then,” Harry says grimly, evidently giving up.

“Wouldn’t want to third wheel. Go off and ride Krum’s broom, you’ll love that.”

Draco must have rubbed off on him, so to speak, because it comes out more suggestive than he intends. And it ticks Harry right off.

It’s his turn to go red for once. Since he’s not a Weasley, rather than blending in with his hair the apples of his cheeks become delicately suffused with rouge, like a cupid in a painting. Ron wants to touch his face to feel how warm it is.

Obviously, he doesn’t. Harry exits the kitchen and slams the door behind him. The glasses rattle in the cupboards and a few dictionaries topple onto the floor.

Ron lets out a long breath and clutches the edge of the kitchen counter, the tips of his fingers tingling with adrenaline. Arguing with Harry must be the worst feeling in the world. It’s like wearing a Horcrux again: itchy, unsettling dread crawling beneath his skin. He tries to keep calm by thinking about sandwich fillings.

He doesn’t have long, though, because footsteps come thudding back towards the kitchen. Harry storms back in, the hinges complaining as the door slams back against the wall.

“You drive me BONKERS sometimes, you know that?” Harry shouts, really shouts, trembling head to toe with anger. Ron has the self preservation to check he’s not armed.

“Er—”

“It’s not difficult to be around you, it’s impossible! As if I want to— when have I ever— not with him!”

“Huh?”

“Fuck it, I don’t care if this makes things weird. I don’t care. They’re already weird, so I might as well do it.”

Do what? Ron wants to ask, wishing everyone around him would be more specific when they talk. There’s no chance to say anything, however, because he immediately finds himself pressed up against the fridge and Harry’s mouth pressed against his.

His body reacts and kisses back before his brain can wake up and get its trousers on. Which reminds him, he’s not wearing any trousers.

He cradles the back of Harry’s head and spins them, dizzy, so he’s the one pressing Harry up against the fridge. A few magnets fall off and shatter. Oh well, that’s what Reparo is for.

They get lost in the rhythm of quick, quick, slow. Harry stifles a moan when Ron nips at his lower lip then swipes his tongue across it to sweeten the sting.

Kissing Harry is all he’s wanted for a long time, but the craving inside him runs deeper than he thought: he will never not be hungry for this.

“Oh,” Harry sighs, when Ron’s ducks his head and mouths at his neck, like he’s finally putting the pieces together of what Hermione and Ginny and even Draco sodding Malfoy think is totally obvious.

“Like you don’t drive me bonkers too,” Ron mutters. “When you pay attention to anyone who isn’t me. You’ve got to like me best, or I can’t handle it.”

Harry laughs breathlessly and catches Ron’s eye.

“Well, you’re in luck,” he murmurs with a lopsided smile.

Any tension left between them melts away like ice cream in July. Slow, quick, slow.

“I do occasionally have to pay attention to people who aren’t you, though,” Harry clarifies. “Work and so on.”

Ron exhales a sigh. “I can live with that,” he says, after another deep, lingering kiss. “Probably.”

*

It’s Harry who breaks away some minutes later.

“Oh shit, Krum.”

Ron’s eyebrows fly upwards. “Is he still here? I forgot about him.”

“Oh, Christ.”

*

Viktor looks immensely relieved when they return smiling sheepishly and with no visible injuries.

“Ready to go?” asks Harry.

Viktor turns back to the television, transfixed. It’s playing Homes Under the Hammer.

On screen, Dion Dublin lets himself into a house and closes the front door behind him. “Here we have your stairs…”

“Going up to the bedrooms,” Ron and Viktor finish simultaneously.

They look at each other, surprised, and share a bemused chuckle.

“I very love this programme,” Viktor says diffidently. “Watch all the time. Hermio-ninny thinks I am crazy.”

“Me too,” says Ron, nodding. “I very love it too.”

“Guys? Flying? Remember?”

Viktor looks briefly at his broom hovering in the corner, then longingly at the television screen.

“Harry doesn’t get it either,” Ron tells Viktor confidentially, vaulting over the back of the sofa and settling in. “Come on, let’s have a watch. This looks like a good one. I bet you anything they’re gonna go over budget.”

Harry rolls his eyes, annoyed to miss out on good flying conditions. Truth be told he’d prefer a rather different bit of wood between his legs. But at least the two of them are finally getting along.

“I’ll put the kettle on…”

*

Another bank holiday and England is gunship grey and swathed in pouring rain. Harry still looks gorgeous. He looks great whatever the weather. A bunch of them have gathered at Ginny’s and are drinking Pimm’s indoors by the fire.

Fred and George squash in noisily on either side of the beanbag Harry and Ron are sharing. Polystyrene beads spurt out of it like a fireworks display.

“You look a lot less like mouldy porridge warmed over lately, Ronnie,” says George.

Fred nods. “Everything alright between you two now, then?”

Ron looks at Harry. Harry looks at Ron.

“They made out,” Viktor answers for them cheerfully.

Everyone in the room turns their head towards them. Neville drops his empty glass, which goes rolling across the floor and shatters when it meets a lamp.

“Made up,” Hermione corrects hurriedly. “He means made up, not made out.”

Viktor’s got more confident speaking English recently (and three glasses of Pimm’s probably hasn’t hurt) so no one wants to discourage him by laughing too hard at his mistake. They have to laugh, though.

Everybody titters, Neville goes off to fetch a new glass and Hermione explains soothingly to Viktor about phrasal verbs being very easily mixed up in the English language. Fred and George’s eyes are twinkling and they look like they’re absolutely dying to take the piss.

Ron decides he may as well get things straight. So to speak.

“Actually,” he says. All heads snap back to the beanbag.

“No way,” says Ginny.

“Yes way,” says Harry.

Hermione doesn’t say anything, but she’s proudly wearing her patented I’m Not Going to Say I Told You So, But I Told You So look. And nothing can shock Luna; she only blinks dreamily.

“What did I miss?” says Neville, coming back into the room.

Harry clears his throat.

“Me and Ron, we’re, uh. Together.”

Neville drops his second glass.

“Like buttocks to underwear,” Ron wonders aloud. Fred, George and Harry look at him.

“You what?”

Ron thinks he finally gets it.

end.