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Bill is forty when he comes to the realization that he’s made the wrong choice.
He’d thought it would all make sense eventually. Eventually, everything would fall into place, and he’d feel what everyone has always told him he would. He’d love being a husband and father as much as he loved being entirely himself and free and with someone who makes his heart feel like it’s going to explode.
He’d believed that. He’d tried, given it his all. He likes being a father, likes being a husband. He likes routine, and having the hottest wife of anyone at the office, likes when people whisper that for him to land a woman that gorgeous with the way his scars look, he’s got to be more than he seems. He likes when his coworkers see his three clever, beautiful children. He’s proud of them. He loves them.
And on his fortieth birthday, he looks in the mirror and realizes that every single moment he’s spent with them feels like he’s playacting a role.
He likes performing well. He likes being praised for it. It feels real, sometimes. Sometimes, he can even convince himself that he’s been present in his own body, behind his own eyes, more than a handful of times since he was twenty-six.
“Nothing will change,” he’d lied, the night before his wedding. Charlie’s shoulders had been tense, unhappy, hands braced on the windowsill of the room they’d shared a lifetime earlier. “As long as you don’t mind…you’ve never minded sharing before.”
“Yeah, okay.” Charlie hadn’t believed him, but was willing to play along. “If this is what you really want, then I’m happy for you.”
Everything had changed. He’d thought stepping out on a wife wouldn’t feel any different from running around on his girlfriends, and he’s always done that. Never with another woman, only with Charlie. Only ever with Charlie. Charlie’s different. Doesn’t count the same way. Means something different. Means something more. Isn’t a threat, because it’s not like he’s ever going to choose Charlie for real.
He can’t. That would mean giving up their family, for both of them. It would mean stepping outside of the life he’s entitled, not being the reliable oldest, the smartest, the coolest, the one everyone can count on. Not being the respected one. Charlie isn’t willing to give up his life, either, and says it all the time.
Bill playacts at believing him, when he says that. Maybe it leaves Charlie a little of his pride, to let him insist he wouldn’t give up working with dragons to shack up with Bill. It sounds an awful lot like when Charlie had insisted he didn’t want a new broom, that he was loyal to his Cleansweep Two, despite it having the acceleration of a lazy flobberworm, killing his chances of making the National Team. That pride is all Bill has to offer–-all he’s willing to offer, when he knows deep down that Charlie would do it, if only Bill would.
Now he’s forty, and doesn’t know the look of his own eyes in the mirror. Charlie isn’t at his birthday supper; they’re rowing, because Fleur had balked at the idea of his brother, the acknowledged invert, taking Louis on a camping trip, just the two of them. She wanted Bill to ask, as though Charlie would say, “Oh, thanks, I was thinking of molesting your son, but since you asked me not to, I won’t.” Charlie’s right to be angry. And that’s how Bill realizes that he cares more about the empty chair than he does all the full ones, and always has.
It was the wrong choice. There’s a comfort in knowing that. He shouldn’t have given it up. He should have chosen Charlie, all those years ago. Should still choose him. Can still, because even if Charlie isn’t talking to him now, there’s too much between them for Charlie to ever be done with him. He still has time. He can still make it right. He can still live, properly, and be the man he wants to be.
He writes to Charlie–
I’m sorry. I was wrong, you were right, in every fucking particular. Come over?
Charlie makes him wait, but not long. He never could hold out long. He hasn’t got Bill’s self-control. It’s less than a month before Bill gets his owl.
Happy birthday. This summer?
Yes. You can take Louis on that camping trip. He’s looking forward to it.
Truth be told, Louis is more than half of the reason he needs Charlie back in his life. Charlie fucks other men, makes no secret of it, always has. Bill likes it, likes hearing stories about it, makes Charlie tell him in excruciating detail what he lets them do to him. But that isn’t the same as liking it when his son is the one casting speculative, hungry looks at his favorite brother.
He’ll wait to speak, until after their trip. He takes Charlie hard the night before they leave, feeling an odd surge of possessiveness, wanting to claim that powerful form for his own, wanting to leave marks, even if they’re lost in a sea of other marks. He’s always been able to be brutal with Charlie, because even if it hurts, Charlie always begs for more, tapping into something Bill only doesn’t hate about himself when they’re together. He’s such a nice man, everyone thinks. Everyone except the brother who’s always begging, “make me bleed, Billy, make me hurt for a week, choke me until I pass out, hit me harder…”
Every time he sees another man’s mark on Charlie, it drives him berserk. It makes him even angrier knowing Charlie isn’t even submissive in bed, hates when men try to boss him around, just endures it because he likes sex to hurt, likes everything to hurt, needs that edge to feel alive and powerful and vital, and the men that like to hurt him during sex always want him begging and kneeling. And Charlie only likes that coming from Bill.
It’s perverse, he knows, wanting to send Charlie on a camping trip with his son bruised and limping, but Bill does it anyway, even if Charlie looks none the worse for wear in the morning. He hasn’t said anything yet–hasn’t said, I’m going to leave my wife, I want you, if you’ll have me I’ll be yours, but he will, when they get back.
Fleur returns the day before Charlie and Louis do, though, and she’s excited about her sister’s upcoming wedding. It’s only in a month–he can’t possibly leave her, rip their family in two, right before an event like that. Charlie’s waited for him for twenty years, he can wait another month.
Louis comes back from the camping trip looking relaxed, tan, and happy, but he doesn’t speak much to anyone, the rest of summer holidays. Never a very chatty kid, it’s still a noticeable difference, though he smiles and says there’s nothing wrong whenever anyone asks.
Bill knows in his heart that Charlie wouldn’t betray his trust. The part of him that feels the need to play at being the Good Father wants to ask anyway. He wrestles it down.
The wedding comes and goes. It’s fine. No one really cares that Bill is there. He’s Fleur’s husband, and plays that role well. No one will remember a thing he said or did. He starts writing a letter to Charlie that night, then pauses. Louis will be back in school in three weeks, off to his last term at Hogwarts. Surely, it can wait three weeks. He doesn’t want to upend Louis’s last summer vacation at home.
Louis doesn’t really say anything to him those last few weeks, and spends the time writing letters. He does ask Bill for some of his old Hogwarts photos, and Bill sees him staring at all the ones of himself and Charlie, and wonders what Louis knows. Charlie wouldn’t have made a pass at him, never–but had he said something that made Louis wonder, about the two of them?
The thought should freeze his guts. It just makes him mildly uncomfortable. Because this is someone else’s life, and he’s so, so ready to break free at last, to finally be himself, to make the right choice.
He writes a letter to Charlie, asking him to come and visit, just the two of them, once term starts. Charlie writes back, agreeing eagerly. The week before, Gringotts sends Bill to a dig site in Ethiopia, and he has to cancel. No problem, Charlie assures him. Plenty of time.
By the time he gets back, it’s nearly Christmas. His mother is already fussing about everything being right, because there are so few Christmases left with all of the grandkids, before they start branching off to have families of their own. Bill isn’t going to ruin Christmas. He and Charlie de-gnome the garden together, Charlie and Harry play Seeker against each other when everyone separates into Quidditch sides, and Bill mouths, later, when Charlie hints that the two of them might go off together for a few hours. Soon, he tells himself, when Charlie has too much Firewhiskey that night, and snores loud enough that Fleur makes Bill Floo home with her instead of staying over. Soon.
It’s always something. It always feels real. It’s three years before Bill has to admit he’s making excuses to put it off. He’ll do it this summer–but after Victorie’s birthday–but after Dominique starts her new job–but after Louis moves–but after Fleur’s birthday–but after his own birthday–Christmas–moving–wedding–job–birthday–birthday–birthday–Christmas–Christmas–Christmas–
Bill is forty-five when the news comes from Romania that a new hire had lost control of the dragon he was wrangling, and Charlie had dived out of the air, like only Charlie Weasley could dive, to help him. Saved the new recruit’s life, they said. The gout of flame knocked him right off his broom, they said. Nothing left of the broom, they said. Should be very proud of him, they said. Over instantly, didn’t suffer, they said.
Bill vaguely thinks that’s a shame. Charlie had always loved being pushed beyond the limits of what was comfortable to endure. He should have at least gotten to experience a few moments of indescribable agony before it finally killed him. Maybe he would have reached a whole new level of ecstasy.
There’s an appropriate level he’s allowed to grieve, he knows. As much as he did for Fred, all those years ago. Bill isn’t sure who he thinks is keeping watch, filing his behavior away in some ledger of appropriate grieving time and intensity, but he’s conscious of it all the same. It’s part of the role he has no choice but to play, now.
Except.
Except, the thing is.
There’s a certain level of intelligence and power that you hit as a wizard, when people start speaking to you a little differently. They treat you a little differently. Around twelve O.W.L.s, Bill thinks, because that’s when they started being really honest with him. That’s when people stopped talking to him about what he might be capable of, and started talking to him about the ethics of what he might do. At Gringotts, he handles objects that can enable a wizard to do all sorts of things wizards mustn’t ever do. It isn’t a matter of whether someone can. Someone built Time Turners he’d used to get to classes in third and fourth year in the first place, after all.
They don’t give positions of power to just anyone who can handle them. They give them to wizards and witches who have proven that they’re grounded, they’re not only intelligent but wise, they’re clever enough not only to do forbidden magicks, but to know not to. Bill has proved himself worthy of that trust over and over.
Which is what makes it so easy to break.
The greatest wizards of the world have learned that they must not meddle with time to save a loved one. Everyone tries it, he’s been assured, time and time again. Everyone can be tempted by that awful possibility. It never works. Why else does anyone die? Why does anything bad happen, if one could simply un-happen it?
Bill rather thinks that’s because by the time most wizards become powerful and arrogant enough to think they’re the exception to that rule, they have something to lose. Fortunately, he doesn’t.
Not a Time Turner, he decides. He doesn’t want to go back, as he is. If he’s going to break all of the laws of the world, if he’s going to throw away everything he’s ever had, he’s going to do it properly, and he’s going to get what he wants.
It takes him another three years to finish the spellwork, and another two years to find all the items he needs. There are probably easier ways, but he knows Gnostic Egyptian spellwork best, knows what he’ll need there.
He doesn’t hug or kiss his wife or children before he goes. There’s a chance that one of them might interfere with the spell, which has to run concurrently until he breaks it. And it seems oddly meaningless to say goodbye to someone he plans to erase from existence. He’d only be doing it to assuage his own guilt, and he doesn’t deserve to do that.
In his shed, spelled and warded and fortified over the past five years beyond even what it had been before, he sets his spell, arranges artifacts so ancient he might be the last living person to know how to work them, and says the words he’d written, in a clear, calm voice, his purpose utterly set. If he’d had any doubts, they’re long gone, because of course they are. It’s too late for doubts.
If he had known how much the spell would hurt, he would never have had the courage to do it. Even forewarned by gruesome hieroglyphs, he hadn’t been prepared for feeling as though he’s being boiled in acid, a torment that cannot possibly endure, because surely, the spell has killed him, it’s gone wrong, he can’t survive this, no human could endure pain like this, this is far worse than the times he’s had the Cruciatius Curse used on him, he would happily, easily give anything to make it stop, but it doesn’t, not for what feels like a lifetime–
And then, suddenly, it’s gone, leaving him shuddering, shellshocked from the pain, shivering all over. He gulps in a breath, reaches up to his face, feels tears on smooth skin, unmarked by scars.
Unmarked by scars?
He bolts for a mirror, as the room settles into familiarity–his room, his and Charlie’s room, and he doesn’t look any older than his early twenties.
A snore splits the air.