Glad It Was Me

"I can't believe.... Harry! You didn't!"

I know my kid brother's donning his trademark expression--wide-eyed, mouth agape, totally disbelieving. It's the same look he would always give Charlie and me when we'd blow things up with our wands in the back yard.... Wish Charlie was here still to have another go out back.... Anyway, Percy would roll his eyes and march into the house to tattle. Fred and George would cackle and roll around like a couple of...well...kids. And Ron, ickle Ronnikins would just stand there, wholly dumbfounded.

Much like he's doing now.

But Ron's really the furthest person from my mind at the moment. My mind--or what's left of it, at least--is trained on the boy whose self-satisfied, smirking face is mere inches from mine. I wish I could smirk like that. I wish I had any reason to be so self-satisfied. But hell, I probably look far more like a twenty-seven year-old version of Ron. Wide-eyed. Mouth agape. Totally disbelieving.

"What, did you think I wouldn't?" laughs a smug, eighteen-year-old Harry Potter, and the one thing I'm really keying in on now is eighteen-year-old Harry Potter. Eighteen. As in barely an adult. As in barely legal. And this almost presents one hell of a moral dilemma for me, considering the thousand things I would love to do to him at this particular moment in time.

Almost.

After all, eighteen is eighteen. Legal is legal.

Too many butterbeers, Bill, old boy,

I think to myself. "Legal" doesn't change the fact that he's almost a decade younger than you. "Legal" doesn't change the fact that he's your brother's best friend. And "legal" doesn't change the fact that Harry Potter isn't gay. Is he?

"Sorry 'bout that, Bill, mate," says Harry, winking up at me, mouth still curled in that impish smirk. Funny. It's almost as if I can still taste that mouth on my own, can still feel the hand that's punching me in the arm now closing around the back of my head as he pulled me to him. And suddenly, it's as if he's kissing me all over again. I can feel it all, right down the heaviness in my chest that tells me I probably ought to relearn how to breathe.

"Wh...what for?" is the only thing I can manage to say as I shake my head, hoping to clear it. It doesn't help much.

Harry and the rest of the room--Ron, Hermione, Gabrielle Delacour, and the Finnigan boy--break into wild laughter. And then Harry looks up. My eyes follow.

Mistletoe.

Oh, right.

"We were playing Truth or Dare," Hermione explains, "and Seamus dared Harry to wait under the mistletoe and kiss the first person to walk through the door and, well, Harry is never one to back out on a dare."

"Oh." Boy, I'm really Mister Articulate tonight, aren't I? "I see."

"You aren't, like, totally freaked out?" asks Ron, managing for the first time in what seems like an eternity to pull my attention away from Harry.

I shake my head again. "No, it's.... Aren't you lot a little old to be playing Truth or Dare?"

Another collective laugh.

"Blame it on the kid," says Seamus, nudging Gabrielle with his shoulder, but Gabrielle nudges back. Hard.

"I'm thirteen, thank you very much!"

"Still a kid."

"Am not!"

"Are, too."

"Am not..."

And on and on the petty argument continues, but the sound of it is really nothing more than white noise in the background of my thoughts. My eyes again are trained on Harry, who's staring back with still enough swagger and conviction in those green eyes to make me feel like I'm the kid here. Of course, when you've just led the Order of the Phoenix in the battle that saved the Wizarding World at the cost of too many lives to count at present, you've got every right to fancy yourself grown up, don't you? Bully for Harry.

"Bill, there you are!"

I feel myself being yanked by the arm before my mother's voice even registers in my brain. Still, I manage enough self-control to hold my own against her determination to drag me bodily from the room.

"Mum, what do you want?" I grumble, righting myself as she huffs exasperatedly.

"Fleur has been looking all over the house for you!" she nags. "Would you leave the children be, and get in there with your girlfriend?"

"She isn't my girlfriend, Mum."

My mother gives me the look I know too well, the "she is if I say she is" look. I'm in no mood to argue with her tonight, though. We've been through this song and dance too many times to count.

"Fine," I sigh, and begin to follow her out the door.

"So long, Bill," Harry calls out to me.

I stop and turn to face him again, speechless for a moment, and then--

"Good luck...with the game."

Mister Articulate, indeed.

***

In ten minutes flat, I feel as if I'm in an altogether different place.

Different party, maybe, or same party, different year, or different holiday, even--Halloween, New Years. But not Christmas. Not this year. Not this place.

The way they all carry on, laughing and embracing and well-wishing to the point of exhaustion, you'd never guess a thing has changed. It's as if Sirius Black never fell through a veil, or Tonks and McGonagall were never captured and murdered, or Charlie and Ginny never lost out to the pain of the Cruciatus Curse that had been inflicted on our entire family. Merlin knows I'd suffer a hundred more Cruciatus Curses just to have them back. All of them.

Yet somehow, my mother can carry on gaily. You'd never know she's just lost two children. I realize that's hardly a fair statement to make, because deep down she's suffering far more than I could ever imagine, but would it kill her to show that pain just once? I've seen Dad cry. I've seen Percy and the twins cry. Hell, I sat up with Ron three nights in a row, letting him sob on my shoulder. But Mum's holding out, I guess, being tough for the pitiful Weasley boys.

I wish she'd just stop it.

But she's not the only one behaving this way. Remus Lupin's mingling through the party crowd as if he's still got Sirius on his arm. The twins are across the room, showing off their latest concoction to an enthusiastic Dung Fletcher.

Life really does go on, I suppose.

"Oh, Beel! Zhere you are!" cries out an approaching Fleur Delacour. She grabs me tightly by one arm and lifts a glass of something vile and terribly alcoholic to my nose. "You must try zhees pumpkin brew!"

"No, thanks," I reply, shooing the glass away. It occurs to me that Fleur probably oughtn't have any more of the stuff, either. As it is, it looks like one good gust of wind would knock the poor girl flat on her back.

It's only a matter of seconds before Mum, giddy as ever and wholly oblivious to the fact that Fleur is smashed, is posing the two of us for an endless procession of photographs and proclaiming to every passer-by what a handsome couple we make. Of course, what else could my mother believe? Sure, I've taken Fleur out on a handful of dates...all at my mother's request, of course...but there have been a dozen other dates I've yet to tell Mum about, dates with Jeff...and Terrance...and Marcus...and...what was his name? Todd? Tim?

It doesn't matter, I don't suppose.

The point is that my mother, after twenty-seven years, remains oblivious to my romantic...inclinations.

"Bill, sweetheart," Mum says to me in that polite, sickly-sweet voice she normally reserves for guests and strangers, "you could try smiling a bit more, couldn't you, love?"

Smile, right. That would be a wonderful idea, except my face is occupied with grimacing as I attempt to keep Fleur from toppling over.

And then suddenly, when Harry emerges alone from the back parlor and catches my eye, I can do nothing but stare blankly.

"Bill, darling boy, what seems to be the trouble?"

Long, thin fingers reach up to push back the mess of black hair that has fallen into his eyes.

"Bill?"

He flashes a crooked smile my way, nods, and then makes a near-silent exit out the back door.

"William Arthur Weasley!" my mother snaps at me. "Where has your mind gone?"

"I don't rightly know," I murmur.

Fleur laughs drunkenly at me, then stumbles away with one last absent-minded comment regarding the pumpkin brew.

"Would you excuse me?" I say quietly to Mum, ignoring the look of bewilderment on her face, and move as surreptitiously as possible to the back of the room, slide the door open, and slip out into the garden.

He's waiting. For me. Deep down, I knew he would be. Deep down, I knew this is what he had planned all along. Deep down, I'm glad he is. Poised under the oak tree, bathed in moonlight and a soft flurry of snowflakes, he's absolutely to die for. And that smirk...that damned smirk just won't seem to leave his face.

Just who the hell does he think he is?

"You know perfectly well who I am, Bill," he answers. I don't even realize I've asked the question aloud. "I'm Harry Potter, son of the late James and Lily Potter, savior of the Wizarding World. I'm the Boy Who Lived, or haven't you heard?"

That isn't what I was asking, but the bitterness in his tone warns me against pressing the matter further.

"Come here," he whispers to me and, surprisingly enough, I obey without question. My feet are unsteady, and my knees are trembling, and why in hell do I suddenly feel like a frightened little boy in Harry's presence?

He lifts a hand to my face, smoothing his thumb across my lips and then over one cheek.

"I like your freckles," he tells me.

I shake my head, disbelieving. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Merlin, he sounds so innocent. "Like your freckles? Oh, it's quite easy. They're adorable."

"That's not what I meant," I sigh.

Harry drops his hand from my cheek. "What, then? You mean, how can I have the bollocks to come on to you?"

I nod. Smart boy. "I mean, I didn't even know you were...you know...."

"A fag? A flamer? Shirt-lifter? Nancy?"

I wince. "I was going to say 'queer,' but--"

"And what about you?" he snaps, swiftly reclaiming that haughty smirk I'm growing to love. "You kiss boys like you mean it, and yet you're parading in there with Miss Delacour."

"You try refusing my mum's wishes!"

Harry chuckles. "Trust me, I have tried it, on several occasions! Unsuccessfully, I might add!"

I have to laugh a little, too. My God, he's disarming.

"You know," he says softly, arms reaching for my shoulders this time as he inches closer, "I'm glad it was you."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Under the mistletoe." He's so close now, close enough that I can see my eye reflected in the lenses of his glasses. "When I took the dare, I was kind of hoping you'd be the one to walk through the door."

"Really?" I whisper, smiling.

Harry nods. "I've fancied you for ages."

"You have?"

This time his answer comes in the form of a kiss, just as tender and wonderful as the one beneath the mistletoe. And I don't care anymore that he's barely eighteen. I don't care anymore that he's my brother's best friend. I don't care anymore about Mum or Fleur or anyone inside Grimmauld Place. All I can think of is Harry, and his mouth on mine, his hands buried in my long hair, and the tiny snowflakes that melt away to nothing the moment they fall upon my flushed cheeks.

Harry's mouth peels slowly away from mine, only to find a tender spot at the base of my neck as his fingers curl around my arms.

"Like I said," he whispers like a kiss against my skin, "I'm glad it was you."

I can't help but smile.

"I'm glad it was me, too."