Belong

Belong

Summer quickly faded
And all the stars have turned to stone

We gazed at the Burrow and into the night sky, Harry and I; two best friends on the last day of summer holiday. We were on the eve of our fifth year of schooling at Hogwarts, and although I'll not miss Mum's constant nattering nor my weekly de-gnoming chores, I can't say I was going to enjoy Advanced Transfigurations homework or yet another year of Divination. Mum wanted us in our beds and asleep by eleven; getting to King's Cross with five children (Fred and George included, for they were the biggest children of all of us) and their luggage before noon was quite a task, and definitely not one to be tried while half asleep. She had strictly ordered us to our beds and not to wake up until the morning.

And, logically, that was why we were out in the woods on our broomsticks at midnight.

Out in the woods we waited
'Cause anywhere with you I knew I was home

"It's beautiful, isn't it." Harry gripped the handle of his Firebolt as he gazed up into the night, his glasses reflecting the twinkling lights of the stars. The one thing Harry liked to do most when he was with us at the Burrow - besides eat my Mum's cooking, for those terrible relatives of his nearly starve him all summer - was watch the stars. Out in the city, you can hardly see the stars even on the darkest of nights, and Harry saw even less of them during his horrific decade underneath the stairs. When he came to us, Harry blossomed in the night; the pale light of the moon danced upon his face, and it was here, at the Burrow - with me - that he was truly happy.

Almost to prove my point, Harry dove into a lazy loop on his broomstick, his gaze never falling from the bright stars. He looked so natural on that broom - his turns, his loops, his breakaway speed - that you believed that Firebolt was an extension of Harry himself. And when he played Quidditch, racing tirelessly after the Golden Snitch, I could almost call him - yes, I think I could call him - undoubtedly beautiful.

That was him: my beautiful, natural, Harry of the night.

And you were all I wanted to see there
And that's the way it was
When we belong together

I, of course, did not watch the stars, or the moon, or even the window of my parent's bedroom to see if we were found out. I watched Harry. Harry, in his element; Harry, completely at peace. Harry, slowly zipping through the trees of the wood, grinning as the cool night air embraced his pajama-clad skin. Harry; my Harry. What else on this Earth could possibly rival the beauty of that?

"You're beautiful," I replied softly, though in the silent night Harry heard me perfectly. He flew over to me - for he knew it was a miracle that my Cleensweep Seven, a hand-me-down from Charlie, could even stay aloft nowadays - and smiled at me coyly.

"Oh, Ron," he said playfully. He hovered a mere inches away from me. "Now you know how I feel about that romantic talk..."

"Yes..." I leaned over carefully, and huskily whispered in his ear, "You love it." My hot breath ticked his cool skin, and I heard him moan on the broomstick beside me.

Harry turned his head to face me, his eyes still dancing with starlight, yet they had something else there now, something I couldn't interpret. He raised both his hands from the broom - he mad much better balance than I in the air - and held my face in his hands. "And I love you," he whispered, his voice showing nothing but love and sincerity through his words.

I no longer had to search to see if those words were true; by now, I already knew they were.

I thought we were crazy
But we were so strong together

I remembered the first time he told me he loved me; I was so stunned I didn't even believe he said it. We were crouched behind a massive shrub outside Hogwarts during the Yule Ball, avoiding being spotted by a patrolling Professor Snape. We had both long forgotten about our dates to the Yule Ball; I, for one, was awfully glad to be rid of her, for I thought Ravenclaws were insufferably boring. Harry, on the other hand, had another reason for leaving the Patil twins in the Great Hall.

"Ron," he had said to me, in a hushed tone. "I'm not with Parvati tonight because...I don't want to be with her. I want to be with you, Ron. I...I think I love you."

In this world you gave me
I thought we'd go on forever
Isn't that strange
All these things I thought would never change

I blinked, startled at first by my best friend's confession. Then I tried to ignore what Harry had just told me; I busied myself with the scene of Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies snogging in the nearby rosebushes. I didn't want to believe Harry had said that; I didn't want to believe he loved me. I wanted him to love me, of course - it was agony when we had fought, and only when we were apart did I discover how much I truly cared for him - but the one thing I didn't want in our relationship was change. We had just come back to being best friends after more than a month apart, and I was happy with the way things were. I didn't want things to change between us, neither for the better nor for the worse. We were best friends then, and I wished to be best friends forever. I never wanted us to be apart again.

I want you right by my side
Cut through the fields out to the park

I never said a word to him about it for the rest of the night. It even took me a while - more than four months, long after the Second Task had shown me how strong Harry's feelings were for me - to say those words back to him, those simple words I knew he had been waiting so long to hear.

"Ron?" Harry's soft voice snapped me back to the present. "Let's set down somewhere." His slim face brightened, and a smile crept upon his lips. "I'll race you to the park..." Harry released my face from his tender touch, and jetted away on his broom, speeding through the treetops towards the nearby deserted Muggle playground.

I watched him go, smiling. I knew I would never catch a Firebolt, anyway. But looking at my receding Harry, so blissful in the summer night, I knew that this was what I wanted. It mattered not that our relationship changed, or that our lives together were different now. A change can sometimes work out for the better; I've learned that now, with the help of my beautiful Harry of the night. We were still together, our friendship even stronger now, and nothing else, matched against our friendship and our love for each other, could ever change that.

I started off slowly, grinning at the thought of Harry mock-scolding me for flying so slow upon my arrival, as I knew he would. And now I knew, that this was the way we did - and perhaps, always had - belonged.