FIC for slantedknitting
For: slantedknitting
From: marseverlasting
Title: Glitter and Doom 1/2
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 12,508
Summary: Harry, thick in the wilds of sixth year, celebrates Christmas at the Burrow and confronts all the questions that come along with it. A lesson in self-doubt, escapism, and the warm oblivion of family.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: slight angst, major fluff, overly-idyllic sex scene, drug and alcohol use, canon pairings, annoying big brothers, comeplay, dirty talk, the French, vague adultery, Christmas, overuse of descriptive paragraphs.
Author's Note: A tale rife with over-sentimentalisation. Blame Christmas! Title comes from the inimitable Tom Waits. Lastly, Thank God for T. I would be dead in a ditch covered in petrol on fire if it wasn't for her hand-holding, back-rubbing, whip-cracking, confidence-boosting, beta-reading, loveable self. xox
Glitter and Doom 1/2
"I've got tea." Ginny stood in the doorway imitating the vrksasana yoga pose, standing on one foot with the other flat against her inner thigh, holding in one hand two steaming mugs of tea and a piece of buttered toast in the other.
"Whatimesit?" Ron mumbled, turning over in bed.
"Ten."
"God, Ginny, we just got home, go away," Ron groaned, turning away from his sister, digging his fists under hard pillows and snuffling uneasily. The room, and Ron's hair and Harry too, smelled strongly of smoke and the ionized spark of fresh Floo powder, their faces made up with pale ash streaked like guerrilla war paint.
"Bill's coming," Ginny said calmly. "I thought you wanted to see him." She took a bite of her toast. "I've got tea."
Ron leaned over to squint at his sister, absently drawing thin blankets to cover his naked chest. "Bill's coming?"
"Portkey. Ten thirty." She set the mugs of tea down on Ron's night table and sat by the end of his bed. "He's bringing Fleur too." The bitterness was a ripe fruit in her throat. "I can't believe they're going to get married - oh, don't give me that look, you pig, you just like her tits." Ginny tossed back her sleep-tangled mess of hair. "Anyway, mum wants you to say hello when they arrive."
Ron struggled to sit up against his headboard, scratching his bare chest and fumbling for the scalding mug of Irish Breakfast, cradling it in cold hands and sipping at it sugarless. "Charlie?"
"Not this year," Ginny said in a small voice, leaning back on the bedspread, resting her neck in the blanketed crook Ron's ankles. "Romania calling, you know."
Ron took a long drink of tea, a new smear of pink flush raw along his cheeks. "Harry."And then, louder. "Harry?" And then, a thrown pillow. "Oi, Harry."
"Wha?" Harry turned from the wall, curling in his camp bed to blink, wink, watch Ron with morning-tired eyes. "Ginny?"
"Bill's coming," Ron said, scratching his chest again, the tight laced bone of his rib cage a notched ladder under his fingertips, skin bristling with a dark plague of freckles. "And breakfast."
"I've got tea," Ginny said again, treading softly to sit cross-legged next to Harry's camp bed and offering him the second mug of tea. "Mum's made you eggs. Soft-boiled, right?"
Harry swept his legs off the mattress, drawing the sheets around his naked waist and gathered tight in the vice of his pale thighs. He nodded. "Thanks." Ginny offered Harry his glasses in an outstretched palm. Harry set them right, hooked behind the ears, a finger pushing them up the bridge of his nose. They steamed opaque as he drew the mug to his lips. "Cheers."
"Ten thirty," Ginny said as she stood up, her bare feet smacking on the hardwood floor with sticky steps as she left the room. "Don't go back to sleep."
Ron drank the rest of his tea, suddenly overwhelmed by a great buoyant flush of heat that painted his chest in tones of red. He stood up naked and Harry watched with a sleepy disconnect as Ron pulled a bathrobe from a clawed brass hook, a long white cotton robe stitched with Charlie's initials in red on the left breast. He cinched it loosely around the waist. "I've got to make a call," he said, rubbing his eyes.
"What?"
"Lavender," Ron said, giving a pale shrug as the heat and blood of steam faded from his shoulders. "She wants me to give her a call. Over the holidays." He cuts Harry to the question: "I dunno."
"Oh." And Harry couldn't resist. "How romantic."
Ron gave Harry a withering look. "I don't know, okay."
"Course," Harry said, pulling a blanket over his shoulders and drawing it tight like the cape of a childhood superhero. "But, honestly, Ron - Lavender?"
"Okay, okay," Ron said, dismissing him with a shrug, stuffing his hands into the deep cotton pockets. "I get enough from Hermione."
Harry fell back into bed - pleasantly dark again, surrounded by the sleep-mellowed sounds of taps running and murmured conversation, the sharp snap of Apparition like sparks being launched from a roaring fire. The Burrow seemed to breathe around him, rising and falling with the gasps of winter wind, swelling and collapsing in a regular pattern of creaks and rattles and ghoulish moans. Harry's hands went numb, crushed between his legs all curled tight into a ball, the taste of tea going bitter with tannin in his mouth.
In the precise symbolism of dreams, Ron's sudden hand on his shoulder was that of a furious angel, a holy force pulling him from the purgatory of half-sleep, shaking him awake: "It's snowing." The grin, the shaggy red hair, the warm stretch of skin at Ron's collar beneath the robe were described suddenly in warm proximity as Ron's gangly body swept Harry into a sloping hug to drag him to the bathroom window.
It was snowing, earnestly storming, fat bullets of snow blown sideways by a silent gale. A five-inch layer of heavy, cold sediment had settled along the bottom edge of every window, and the North face of each tree was coated liberally with the wet paint of winter. Ron's face, reflected in plate glass, was the grin of a toddler, a freed prisoner, an excitable Jack Russell Terrier. It begged unasked questions of snowball fights and Christmas cheer, a wild and childish abandon and a cavalier disregard for responsibility. He glanced at Harry. "What?"
Harry shrugged noncommittally.
"What?" Ron asked again, his lofty expression punctured the thorn of Harry's frown.
"It's just - they're out there, you know?"
"Who?"
"Draco."Harry shrugged, flicking a fingernail at the ripple of ice that had formed along the edge of the poorly-insulated window. "Snape.
Ron sighed wearily. "Harry -"
"You weren't there, Ron. I know what I heard at Slughorn's party." Harry readjusted his blankets about his shoulders, wrapped tight against his pale nakedness. "They're planning -"
"What? Planning what?"
"- something."
Ron stuffed his hands in the bathrobe's pockets, his shoulders twitching in a half-shrug. "It's just - are you sure Snape is helping and not just -"
"Yes! I told you, he was trying to help, I heard him say it."
"Did you ask Hermione?" Ron asked.
"No. I barely saw her at Slughorn's. She was gone when I got back."
"Yeah?" Ron fiddled absently with the hem of his sash, playing with the lose strings at the cord of his bathrobe. "Did she - uh. Did she have a good time?"
Harry frowned, lost somewhere in the thicket of his own doubt. "I don't know."
"I mean." Ron paused, scratched at the thin scruff along his jaw, his chin. "Did she like Cormac? Did they, uh - you know."
"I don't know, Ron," Harry said quietly, not sure how to treat Ron's fragile questions, the thin shell of his jealousy. "I didn't really see them."
"Were they kissing?"
"No," Harry said in exasperation. "Does that matter? Are you listening to me?"
Ron seemed to brighten somewhat. "Listen, I think you should drop it, mate. We've been wrong about Snape before." He caught sight of Harry's furrowed brow, the cold roll of his eyes. "I mean, I don't doubt you at all, you know what you saw," he added quickly, "but, I mean, it's our hols -"
"And Draco gets the castle all to himself," Harry said sharply. "I should have stayed -"
"Harry, just drop it," Ron said. "You sound like you're -"
"What?" Harry interrupted coldly. "Like I'm what?"
"Like you - fancy him," Ron said defensively. "It's weird, okay? No one should ever worry about a Malfoy this much." He punched Harry's side gently. "Just, relax, okay?" He swung an easy arm over Harry's shoulders, drawing him in for a rough half-hug, a playful nuzzle against Harry's bare shoulder. "Come on, time for breakfast."
Mrs. Weasley had cleared a spot in the living room, worn furniture all pushed up against the walls to make room for Bill and Fleur's imminent arrival. Harry, Ron, and Ginny sat three-abreast on the couch pushed against the far wall, eating toast and eggs from plates balanced in their laps. Harry was dressed in a set of Ron's old maroon pyjamas, too long and bunched loosely at his feet and hands, endlessly being pulled and pushed and readjusted. Mrs. Weasley hovered anxiously by the fireplace, glancing every so often to the unique Weasley clock, Bill's arrow still stubbornly pointed at mortal peril.
"Calm down, mum," George said, sitting relaxed on Fred's lap, the two of them piled together in their father's overstuffed wing-backed chair and sharing a large mug of coffee. "He isn't due for two more minutes."
"I don't like keeping the barriers down," Mrs. Weasley said, fidgeting her hands absently around her wand. "I do hope they're all right."
"Mum, come on," Fred grunted, trying to shift George from one aching knee to the other, "it's Christmas, even Death Eaters've got families. Merlin your arse is bony, George."
And with that, something began to happen. Harry had never seen a portkey appear from the other side before, but he assumed this was it. The effect was incredibly unsettling. All at once the cleared space in the living room began to shift and change: the air began to ripple, like the haze of a hot day or wafting gasoline vapours. The ripple became a distortion, refracted images of the living room splintered and twisted as a silent vortex peeled apart the texture of the air. And then, quite simply, there was Bill and Fleur. Harry had half-expected the backfire crack of an Apparition, or maybe a loud rush of air or flash of light, but it all happened in relative silence, a uniquely serene form of Wizarding transport, here and gone again.
Bill and Fleur each clutched the spines of a dimly-glowing umbrella. Suspended between them was a heavy, brass-handled steamtrunk, similar to Mad-Eye Moody's seven-locked relic, hovering gently with a slow kind of magic. They were beautiful, a really beautiful couple. Bill was still that icon of casual cool, ruffled in a roguish manner, some modern highway man in a half-buttoned black shirt and artfully torn acid-washed jeans. His hair was cut unusually short, just below the ear, and a number of new silver bolts gleamed from a nostril, a lip, an ear. Fleur filled a low-slung satin cream chemise and flared jeans similar to Bill's, clothes tight enough to outline in great detail her silken curves and Ginger Rogers body.
The Wealseys grinned and jeered, laughing and standing from their chairs to sweep Bill once more into their tangled nest of family. Bill dropped the trunk with a satisfied grunt and then threw himself into the ritual of welcome, kissing his mother, catching Ginny in a tight hug to press a hard kiss into the shampoo-fragrant crook of her neck. Fred and George trapped Bill in a double-barrelled hug, a chin over each shoulder, trying in competition to see who could slap their brother's back the hardest. Ron caught his brother next; Bill tousled his hair and planted a firm kiss on the crown of his head, slapping Ron's cheek warmly like an Italian Mafioso.
Fleur serenely ignored the red-headed tangle to slip in next to Harry, kissing him brightly on each cheek, right left right left. "'Arry, I had hoped you would be here." She tucked an arm around Harry, leaning in to him with the ease of an old friend. "I think I could not bear a week alone."
Harry smiled, suddenly remembering Ginny's unkind nickname. "Ah. Yeah."
"I do not think the women enjoy my company. Perhaps my hair is too long," she continued airily, curling her silvery mane behind one ear. "You and I will have to build a fortress to hide, I think."
Harry smiled. "We're the odd ones out."
"Yes, we do not fit with the red hair," she said, waving a well-manicured hand. "We are just observers of nature. Jacques Cousteau," she said, putting a hand to her brow and scanning their surroundings like an explorer. "Looking for our wild animals."
Harry grinned and glanced at his feet, back up to Fleur. "I guess."
"But I think you fit in perhaps more than I," Fleur said, resting her head slightly on his shoulder. "They seem very much to love you."
Harry blushed, and said nothing.
"It is not hard," Fleur continued matter-of-factly. "I am thinking that Ginny may be sweet for you."
Harry shrugged, remembering for an angry moment Dean's grinning face. "I don't think so."
"Or perhaps Ronald -"
She was interrupted by Bill who, though Harry was deliberately standing apart from the crowd, pulled him into a warm bear hug of welcome, the kind of easy brotherhood that seemed inherent to the Weasley line. Fleur followed Harry and gently made the necessary rounds, first into the eager arms of Fred and George, planting a flutter of kisses on freckled cheeks, and next to a rather star-struck Ron, the touch of her lips enflaming his face with a burst of sudden heat. Ginny offered Fleur a firm handshake and a steady stare while Mrs. Weasley allowed her future daughter-in-law to wave a number of indistinct kisses absently in the air.
"Where's dad?" Bill asked, finally removing himself from the mesh of freckled arms.
"Work, of course," Mrs. Weasley said, a touch irritated. "He's been working much too hard, Bill."
"I've barely seen him," Bill replied, nodding. "He never seems to be in his office when I drop by." He found Fleur's hand with his own and laced their fingers, sitting next to her on the hovering steamtrunk. "Where's Chuck?"
"Romania," Ginny said. "Stuck at work for the hols."
"He sends his love," George said.
"And about a gallon of vodka - oi," Fred grunted as his twin elbowed him swiftly in the ribs. "Yeah, right, about a gallon of love."
"Quiet Christmas, then," Bill said, nuzzling his lips into Fleur's neck, kissing her with lingering affection.
"Oh, oh, not necessarily," Mrs. Weasley said loudly, moving her arms in broad strokes. "I've invited Nymphadora to spend the holidays. I imagine she'll want to catch up with you, Bill. Have nice long, wonderful talks. And Remus is coming too," Mrs. Weasley added, seemingly trying to overwhelm Bill with people, enough to keep his lips from that sweet spot behind Fleur's earlobe. "And - Ron! Why don't you invite this Lavender I've heard so much about?"
Ron choked on his orange juice, dribbling it down the front of Charlie's bathrobe. "She's - got her own family," Ron said, coughing.
"Who's Lavender?" Fred and George asked in an echo.
"She's - no one," Ron said briskly. "Just a girl."
"A girl?" George said.
"Surely not," Fred replied. "Is she a special girl?"
"Just a girl, move along," Ron said between gritted teeth.
It was decided aloud that the living room would remain as it was for Christmas, the ragged Turkish carpet clear of debris and the walls outlined by plush furniture and lacquered tables. By magic, big boxes of Christmas decorations drifted from the basement landing and into the living room. Ginny began to sort through the mounds of glitter and gold, separating garlands and wreaths from bags of baubles and strings of Mr. Weasley's coloured electric lights. Mrs. Weasley prepared Bill and Fleur a quick breakfast as the rest of the family enjoyed a second steaming pot of tea.
Ron was fast to fall asleep, all full of warm tea and a heavy breakfast, leaning snug against Harry's side, head on his bony shoulder and snoring softly, mouth falling open with deep breathing. Fred, now sitting on George's lap in their father's armchair, spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to toss pieces of toast into Ron's open mouth, a cruel carnival game of brotherhood. Harry's ribs cramped with restrained laughter, trying to keep still under Ron's weight. Fleur had to leave the room entirely to stop from crying out with laughter.
George soon became bored with this game and dug with a bored finger at the dregs of the pot, plucking out a used tea bag. It hit Ron with a great wet slap, the Earl Grey missile striking the middle of his forehead.
"Fuck!" Ron yelped, starting suddenly awake to shower a rain of toast on the carpet, crumbs stuck in his hair and on his eyelashes, stuck to his skin in the shadows under his robe. "What the -"
Harry laughed, laughed so hard he started to cry, shaking and clutching to Ginny as Ron spat and coughed in outrage, grabbing a nearby ceramic lamp and throwing it at George as hard as he could -
"HAVE I RAISED CHILDREN OR TROLLS?" Mrs. Weasley bellowed, stomping in to the living room, catching the lamp mid-air with a quick spell. "OUT! Ronald, out!"
"They covered me in toast!" Ron protested.
"Out, all of you! If you aren't going to decorate, out! Out!"
Harry quickly followed Ron up the long stairs to his attic bedroom, still consumed by lingering laughter, his cheeks aching from the deep dimples of his grin. The bustle of the living room gave way to the solitary hiss of the wind outside, the silent bedrooms echoing in their cracks the howl of the blizzard. The snow had grown so thick as to entirely cover Ron's bedroom window. They stood in the bathroom instead and watched it for long while, the great exhalations of winter building one foot, two feet, three feet outside.
"White Christmas," Ron said.
Harry nodded.
"Don't worry about Draco," Ron said, his hand brushing palely against Harry's.
"I will."
"I know you will," Ron said. "But I'll try to keep your mind off it."
"I don't want my mind off it," Harry replied quietly, any humour gone from his face.
"I've still got toast in my hair," Ron said, trying to catch Harry's eye.
Harry ghosted a smile. "That was brilliant."
"Well, I'm for bed," Ron said, shrugging his robe from his shoulders to pool on the floor like a great cotton snowdrift. He wore plaid boxer shorts and woollen socks beneath. His shoulders and arms were still decorated with the thin red crosshatch of Hermione's little yellow birds. "You?"
Harry nodded again. "I could use some sleep."
+
It was nearly dark when Harry woke, groggy with midday sleep. His wristwatch read fifteen past five of the same day. Turning over, his ribs ached in complaint from the thick bars of his camp bed. Harry rolled over and drew his blankets up to his chin, blinking slowly and adjusting his eyes to the uneasy twilight.
"Ron?"
There was no answer. Harry leaned up from his fold-out camp, scratching his bare chest, his pale pink nipples, and yawned. Ron's bed was empty, his comforter and blankets on the floor, Charlie's bathrobe missing from its peg.
Harry stood up. He dug through the open chiffonier and pulled on a pair of Ron's olive green pyjama pants, threw a thin sheet over his naked shoulders to cut the cold, drawing it around his body like a cotton cocoon.
The silence in the Burrow was almost tangible, a dense fog that seemed to seep through the walls. Ron was missing, the usual rustle and chatter from the living room gone, only the rush of wind and flash of snow breathing around the house seemed to interrupt the curious tension. Harry tiptoed down the crooked stairs, beyond the landing of Ginny's bedroom, the landing of Bill's room, Fred and George's open door. The stairs creaked, even under careful steps. The last landing, on the second floor, was that of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's bedroom.
"Yeah? God, I want you so much."
It was a murmur, but clear enough when Harry put his ear to the door.
"I want to -" hesitant laughter "- taste you again."
The bedroom door was not closed properly, copper bolt loose from the strike plate and a half inch of cold shadow. Harry nudged it open, just slightly, with a toe. It was Ron's voice he had heard, Ron with his back to the door and a telephone receiver to his ear. Harry eased the door open another fraction, and then another.
Harry knew, just from the position, just from Ron's arched back and the familiar sound hitched breath that he should not be watching, should not be here. Harry put his eye to the gap between the doors, held his breath, and watched his friend jerk off.
"I want it so bad," Ron said into the telephone, tucking it between his shoulder and ear as his hands worked slowly, rhythmically in shadow. "I want you to suck me off."
Harry bit his lip, drew his tangled sheet more closely around his body. His fingertips prickled with unwanted pins and needles, a warm glow in his belly swirling and burning like a growing star.
"Lav, please, I want you to suck me, like you did after - after Herbology," Ron groaned, the hoarseness of his breath growing faster, deeper, matching the frantic rhythm of his hands. "Suck me off. Tell me you want it."
Harry watched as Ron let the bathrobe fall from his back, down the freckled wings of his shoulder blades to pool around his naked hips. Harry felt the knot in his stomach tighten, the flush in his skin grow alive with caustic blood. His hand grew sweaty as he held tight to his make-shift toga, as his fingers slid gently under the elastic waistband of his pyjama pants.
"Tell me you like it," Ron said, his words growing sweet with intensity, his back glowing freckle-pale in the dim light as he arched his body fitfully. "Oh, God -"
Ron came silently, more silently than Harry had ever imagined. He saw the chemistry in subtle ways - the flex of a muscle, the tightness in Ron's shoulder blades - but Harry knew without a doubt that Ron was there, was glowing with that fission of dream and reality, his world divided into pleasure and pain. Ron's groan came later, nearly a satisfied purr as he held a hand to the light, the sticky mess of come webbed between slender fingers.
"Did you come?" Ron asked Lavender, his voice all mellow -
Harry closed the door as silently as he could. The bolt made the quietest of clicks, not nearly enough to interrupt Ron's vibrant afterglow. With a sick taste of bile, Harry swallowed back the knot in his chest, so tight and sharp it might have been heartburn. The three flights of stairs back to the attic were strangely steep, and by the time he stepped into Ron's furiously orange room Harry was out of breath. He rolled back into his camp band, back into the winter-stiff blankets and scratchy woollen socks and sleep.
"Harry?" Ron asked quietly. And then, more loudly, "Harry?"
Harry feigned waking from a deep sleep, made a great show of blinking widely and stretching and yawning, curling his toes and scratching his bare chest. "Yeah?"
"It's almost six," Ron said. Even if Harry hadn't seen the orgasm, the evidence was obvious: the warm pink glow in his cheeks, the fringe of his hair dark with sweat. Ron even smelled, obliquely, of sex, of the chlorine-sweet smell of come.
"Yeah?" He rolled out of bed, his feet still cold. "We slept all day."
Ron gave a bashful, obvious, incriminating grin. "Yeah. You hungry? I'm starving."
Harry pulled on one of Ron's old t-shirts, some unknown magical rock band, and Ron dressed in jeans and a knit sweater rolled up at the sleeves. They wandered downstairs barefoot. Their hands brushed lazily against one another, stray pinkies hooking in off-beat swings.
"There you are!" Mrs. Weasley said, wiping down the kitchen counter with a wet rag. "I wondered when you two would wake up." She was dressed in her best dress robes, a deep purple with intricate gold paisley designs. "Dinner's in the oven, Ron. Shepherd's pie. It'll be ready in an hour, you can get it yourself."
"Why? Where are you going?" Ron asked, sitting at the kitchen table and helping himself to Bill's coffee, his older brother absorbed behind a copy of the Prophet.
"A Christmas party, the Dearborne's," Mrs. Weasley said, tossing the wet rag into the kitchen sink. "Come now, say hello to your father."
"What? Oh - hi dad," he said, just noticing Mr. Weasley, who was watering the house plants with a mug of water.
Mr. Weasley set the mug on the kitchen table and ruffled Ron's hair. "Out late, eh? Slughorn still hosting his little parties, then?"
"Yeah," Ron said quickly, nudging Harry's foot gently with his own. "Quite late."
"Yeah," Harry agreed, smiling slightly at Ron's lie.
"Harry," Mr. Weasley said, touching the back of Harry's neck. "All right, my boy?"
"Great, thanks," Harry said, taking the sweet and milky coffee from Ron. "And you?"
"Oh, busy, busy I'm afraid," Mr. Weasley said, sighing in a way that reminded Harry strongly of Ron. "Lots of things to do, as I'm sure you know." The hint was not dropped lightly, and Harry thought he could feel Mr. Weasley's hand tighten slightly in its gentle grip. "But we manage, eh?"
"We manage?" Fred's disembodied voice asked sarcastically. Craning his neck, Harry saw Fred on the couch with his twin, watching a television movie of an Agatha Christie mystery, a comforting and melodramatic Death on the Nile. "Is that why you raided our store, huh?"
"Policy, Fred," Mr. Weasley said. "We needed to investigate all the businesses in Diagon Alley."
"But honestly, your own sons?"
"You were our main suspects," Mr. Weasley said warmly. "I know firsthand of your disregard for the law."
"Scare off business," George mumbled, balancing a bowl of boiled sweets on his chest and crunching on them lazily. "Honestly, our own father."
"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "It's six, we best leave."
"Right you are, Molly," Mr. Weasley said, sweeping in to kiss his wife on the cheek. "You boys," he said, raising his voice for Fred and George's sake, "you listen to Bill. And no peeking at your presents."
Harry glanced at the tree. The trunk was newly surrounded by a spectrum of gifts, boxes of every size and shape with coloured wrappings gleaming in the pale glow of electric light. Harry's cheeks burned red as that acidic feeling of inadequacy rushed painfully through his gut again, those all-too-familiar questions of family winking and taunting like a candle's flame
Call it a mother's intuition, but Mrs. Weasley seemed to understand Harry's doubt and rested her hands on his shoulder. "Don't you worry, Harry, you've got some under there too." She kissed the top of his head, and Ron's too. "Behave," she commanded finally, readjusting her cloak over her shoulders, fixing her black velvet gloves. "We shouldn't be back later than one." Her anxiety was obvious, her worry of leaving the house unprotected obvious in the twist of her hands and the furrow in her brow. "Bill?"
"Mm?" Bill murmured, not putting down the newspaper.
"Be careful."
"Always am."
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley vanished on the spot, their twin-fold crack of Apparation like sudden gunfire, leaving that lingering smell of burnt matches strong in the air.
The thick tension of remarkable silence and parental dominance was split as Bill stood up and folded the newspaper under his arm: "Eggnog, anyone?"
Two bottles of Jameson were brought down, fresh from Bill's bedroom, and a carton of pre-made eggnog from the fridge. They were poured in fifty-fifty combinations, amber whiskey transmuting rich eggnog the colour of crème caramel. Everyone took a glass, even Ginny, and they drank their whiskey-strong cheer to good health.
They sat at the table and Bill served mounds of shepherd's pie, the best Harry had ever tasted. Fleur picked at hers with a certain note of distaste, settling finally only to eat the sweet corn. Bill slung an arm over Ron's shoulders and kissed him sharply on the cheek, nudging his ribs about girls, making Harry laugh and spit mashed potato on the table.
They drank their second glass to a happy Christmas.
Fred and George played a game, jabbing a knife between the open spaces in the other's splayed fingers. Fleur watched anxiously, and Bill laughed until Fred stabbed George in the ring finger and blood spurted from the joint. He slapped Fred upside the head and sealed the cut with the kiss of his wand.
They drank their third in memory of Bill's whiskey.
The wireless was tuned to the Christmas ubiquity of American big band music. Fleur stood, swaying slightly under the heat of Irish whiskey, to dance with Bill, linking their fingers and pressing her head into the warm muscle of his shoulder, kissing him there brightly. Ginny offered her hand first to Harry (blushingly refused, stammers of clumsiness) and next to Ron, trapping him with her freckled hands and dragging him out to spin in time with Frank Sinatra's Old Devil Moon.
Their fourth eggnog was to silence and family, to arms wrapped over shoulders and the bright flush in their cheeks, to the coloured lights of Christmas and the waiting bundles of gifts. To Dean Martin's carols and the promise of another glass.
Fleur was outside, on the back step of the snowy garden patio, when Harry sought her out. Her breath rose in great clouds of steam - no, that actually was smoke, and the stick in her fingers a cigarette.
"I didn't know you smoked," Harry said, sitting down beside her, wrapping Ron's fur-collared parka closer around his body. The air was dry and cold, the sharp wind a butcher's cleaver through bare skin. The sweat in his hair froze to glass and even his nostrils were stiff in the winter air.
"I'm French," Fleur said, smiling, "and I'm lazy, which means I smoke and I don't exercise and I drink too much. It is what we do, yes?" She took a drag of the cigarette, a neat cylinder in pastel pink, and offered it to Harry. "You'll have a smoke?"
"No, thanks," Harry said, huffing his hot breath on cold hands.
"I think everyone should have a vice," Fleur said, withdrawing the cigarette and tucking it back between her small lips. The effect was transformative: she was already obviously beautiful, but the cigarette only served to accentuate that beauty, shaping her suddenly into a 1920s noir heroine, bright eyed and long-nailed, her pale skin glowing with supernatural brilliance in the ghostly tallow of the moon. She plucked the pack of cigarettes from her jacket's interior pocket, flicked open the lid and offered Harry a fresh nail. "Try one."
Each cigarette was a different colour, a rainbow of pastels, the filters a brilliant gold. Harry took a blue stick from the packet and put it experimentally between his lips. They were labelled as Sobranie Cocktails. Harry knew they were dangerous, unhealthy, but the beauty of that glowing ember between Fleur's lips was enough, and he accepted her offered flame without hesitation.
He sucked.
"No, no," Fleur said, her hand lingering about his shoulder. "Inhale."
Harry coughed. He brought the cigarette to his lips again and inhaled. He reeled. He coughed, a great cough of smoke into the December air. Fleur laughed and touched him lightly on the back.
"Good?"
Harry's head swam - from the nicotine, from the carbon dioxide, from something - and a dizziness immediately filled his brain with cotton. "Weird."
"A first cigarette is not very good," Fleur said, taking a slender puff of her own. "But you have least tried now, yes?"
Harry shrugged, held the cigarette between forefinger and thumb and considered it quietly. The dizziness did not subside as he took another breath of smoke, another sickly perfumed gasp. "I'm dizzy," he said.
"It can be like that sometimes," Fleur said, her hand still on his back. "You do not need to finish."
Harry put the cigarette out in the snow. The dizziness was neither pleasant nor awful, just a lofty kind of detachment, an out-of-body swirl of chemicals. "I don't belong," he said, surprising even himself with the words.
"Belong?"
"Here, at Christmas." He left the rest nestled neatly between the lines.
"Of course you do, Harry," Fleur said. "I would be very sad if you were not here."
"I'm not like them," Harry said quietly. "They're so - together."
"They can be very close, yes," she said, smiling. "Were they not family, I think they might be lovers." She rested on this thought for a moment, considering her own cigarette. "But if you are alien, then I do not belong here as well," Fleur said gently. "And that is not true. They love me, and they love you. I think maybe it is enough."
Harry hesitated. Fleur, even despite the harsh words of Ginny and Mrs. Weasley, felt welcomed by this clan. She belonged, another puzzle piece to their immense mystery, another beautiful face for the Weasley collage. Harry glanced at his hands, his trembling fingers still fiddling with his dead cigarette. Where Fleur was grand gestures and vivid life, he was nothing but an awkward body and silent affections. "I guess," he said.
"There is a story in France - well, I think maybe it is not French, but I only know it in French." She smiled. "There is a faun in the forest who goes to drink from a stream. This faun is always looking around for the wolf, always looking behind because he worries the wolf will attack. The faun, so scared, keeps looking behind, keeps worrying that the wolf will sneak up - and eventually dies of thirst." Fleur paused for effect. "I think you are the faun."
"I - I'm going to die of thirst?" Harry stumbled over her metaphor, struggling just to keep from falling over in the snow.
Fleur sighed, and smiled. "Harry, you are very easy to fall in love with," she said warmly. "I think they are all in love with you." She paused, finishing the last of her cigarette. "Non, non, this I know. You are very easy to love," Fleur repeated, touching his cheek. "Oh! - your skin is like ice," she said, pale eyes wide. "Go inside, my love, it is no good to be out here so cold."
Harry stood up. He moved to say thanks, but the words cluttered uncomfortably in his throat, so he turned and left, pushing open first the swinging screen and then the heavy wooden door, kicking the snow from his boots on the threshold before stepping again into the warm kitchen.
"Harry!" Ron yelled, stumbling away from Fred and George, collapsing on him with a rough hug. "You smell like smoke, want another?" he asked, holding up his empty glass.
Harry nodded, unzipping the parka and resting it on the back of a chair. His t-shirt clung to his skin with cold, and Harry shivered as Ron handed him another brutal mix of whiskey and eggnog.
"Ron, slow down would you?" Bill said, boiling a fresh pot of coffee. "That's like, your sixth."
"It's for Harry," Ron said sharply, spilling nutmeg all over the kitchen counter. "If Ginny makes us dance one more time I'm goin' to fuckin' scream," Ron said in an undertone, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulders defensively and leading him to where Fred, George, and Ginny were sitting, cross-legged on the floor and playing poker.
"Wanna deal in?" George asked, a fan of Bicycle playing cards in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey in the other.
"No, thanks," Harry said, sitting down behind Ginny, his heart thrumming with a sudden thrill as she leaned back against his legs. For all the clichés, the feeling truly was electric, the weight of her warm body a sudden shock through Harry's drifting, lazy, drunken head. The barest touch was enough to make snakes writhe in his stomach, the barest brush of her hand enough to set his heart into arrhythmia.
Ron sat next to Harry and leaned in tightly, his head resting in that fateful spot between neck and shoulder. It was a shock strangely familiar when Ron grappled uneasily against Harry's clothes, clinging to his belt, lazy fingers tucked in the hem of his pocket or else digging under his T-shirt, resting in a soft press against the ridge of Harry's hip. Ron murmured nothings, a simple language Harry knew as purposeless affection, those same murmurs Harry had heard whispered to Lavender from between their crushed lips.
Ginny, the most sober, won round after round of draw poker, eventually wrenching from her brothers the not insignificant sum of fifty galleons. Her glee was tangible, and she rounded on Harry to give him a tight a hug, a wet kiss on the cheek, disturbing Ron unhappily from his liquid half-sleep.
"Guys," Bill interrupted, Fleur linked at his hip, his careful eyes locked on Harry, on his hands fidgeting with Ginny, at his clothes gripped almost possessively by Ron. "Go to bed." He watched his siblings with a glint of pride, their rolling drunkenness some kind of achievement. "Mum'll be home soon and I still value my life."
There was a kind of sleepy togetherness as Fred, George, Ginny, Ron, and Harry stumbled up the stairs together, an uncoordinated mesh of arms, a blood clot of red-hair and obvious love. They trudged dutifully up the endless flights, slowly breaking apart as drunken Weasleys wandered into their bedrooms, ghosts of indistinct hugs and kisses left trailing their affections through the air.
Harry stumbled. Ron's bedroom was lit only by the hazy glow of Christmas lights and cloudy moon. Ron undressed in that half-light, pulled off his jumper and jeans, swiftly kicked off his boxers. Caught in the palest of light, Harry could trace Ron's naked body in a single line; the roll of his shoulder and ribs, his firm side, the round of his arse, the pale line of his thigh, the aristocratic curve of his calf to the ball of his ankle. Harry could trace that one lit line of flesh from Ron's turned cheek to his foot, could understand his friend in the single brush stroke of light. He looked up and saw Ron's eyes flash in the darkness, and thought for a moment they had caught glances.
"Ron." Harry's mouth was still thick with the smoke of whiskey and cigarettes, every inch of skin tingling with a curious numbness. A headache buzzed behind his eyes, and Harry twisted in bed to face the wall. Even his sweat smelled of booze. "I'm not -"
"Course you are," Ron interrupted, submerging himself once again in total darkness. Harry could hear him fall into bed, the small gasp of air as Ron crawled under his comforter. "This feels - I feel like stars, all over," Ron murmured stupidly.
"I need - I don't know if I can be -"
"You're here," Ron said indistinctly, in a rough kind of voice, "that's good enough."
"But I'm not your - how can I be one of you?"
"One of us?" was Ron's sleepy reply.
"I'm not your - I don't fit."
"You're here - you're here, aren't you?" Ron repeated.
There it was again, that feeling of seeing a fully-formed puzzle, the jigsaw of the Wealseys already solved and without room for another piece, another jagged boy in the picture of their family. Harry was silent, silently considering the boy in the bed, and his fidgeting hands, and that absurd feeling of being covered in stars. "Lavender -" Harry said.
"She's - I know," Ron murmured, "I think I'm gonna break -"
"Her - her lips," Harry stumbled. Ron was suddenly silent, and so Harry continued. "Her - tits. Did she show you her -" Harry froze. "Padma. She's so - her arse, she probably screams if you -" Harry could feel sweat prickle at his forehead, at his lip. He spoke with a kind of wild abandon, barely registering anything but the hot flow of blood through his limbs and the pins and needles that coursed up his skin like a wave. If not for the ready flush of embarrassment, Harry might not have been speaking at all. "Let you - finger her, in class."
Ron's groan was quiet, unexpected. Harry could hear Ron shift in his bed, the rusty ache of springs as he turned - towards or away, Harry couldn't tell. He swallowed thickly.
"Padma - and Pavarti, s-sucking you off," Harry stammered, stretching a hand under his own boxer shorts, fingers digging into the bristle of black hair, hoping in a sick kind of way that Ron was doing the same thing. "Together, one mouth on - on your cock, the other -" the fantasies rolled and tumbled, little more than ill-conceived stories, nothing Harry had even considered before this very moment. "Swallowing you, wanting you," Harry said.
Ron's groans were more than a rumble, they rose and fell like a slow crash of waves. It was too dark to see, but Harry could hear the soft rustle of hands, the brush of a blanket. "In your - in our dormitory," Harry invented, "you can hear us, but you have them - fuck her in plain sight. We could walk in -"
These stories unravelled in equations of dominance, Harry's stomach twisting with pleasure as he controlled Ron with words, simple words. Every sentence drew a gasp, eased a moan from between Ron's lips; it was a conjurer's game of sex, the right incantation summoning a tone of pleasure. "Could get caught," Harry murmured for Ron, "but you do it - you want to get caught - Lavender - Pansy - Hannah - you fu - fuck them on your bed, on Seamus' bed, on - on my bed," Harry closed his eyes tight. "You - you come inside them - you taste it on your lips -"
"Fuck," Ron moaned, the steady rhythm of his hands pulsing and growing, that tell-tale rustle a shifting frequency.
"- suck you," Harry all but groaned, " - I want - you grab them - me - you grab them by the hair, you feel their tongue on -"
"Suck me," Ron groaned, gasped.
" - you taste them, you taste -"
"Fuck, please," Ron gasped, the hitch in his breath like the final gasp of a drowning swimmer.
"- you come -"
"Oh, God," Ron moaned.
"- you come, fuck -"
"Fuck," Ron moaned, sighed.
" - you come."
On to Part 2
From: marseverlasting
Title: Glitter and Doom 1/2
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 12,508
Summary: Harry, thick in the wilds of sixth year, celebrates Christmas at the Burrow and confronts all the questions that come along with it. A lesson in self-doubt, escapism, and the warm oblivion of family.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: slight angst, major fluff, overly-idyllic sex scene, drug and alcohol use, canon pairings, annoying big brothers, comeplay, dirty talk, the French, vague adultery, Christmas, overuse of descriptive paragraphs.
Author's Note: A tale rife with over-sentimentalisation. Blame Christmas! Title comes from the inimitable Tom Waits. Lastly, Thank God for T. I would be dead in a ditch covered in petrol on fire if it wasn't for her hand-holding, back-rubbing, whip-cracking, confidence-boosting, beta-reading, loveable self. xox
Glitter and Doom 1/2
"I've got tea." Ginny stood in the doorway imitating the vrksasana yoga pose, standing on one foot with the other flat against her inner thigh, holding in one hand two steaming mugs of tea and a piece of buttered toast in the other.
"Whatimesit?" Ron mumbled, turning over in bed.
"Ten."
"God, Ginny, we just got home, go away," Ron groaned, turning away from his sister, digging his fists under hard pillows and snuffling uneasily. The room, and Ron's hair and Harry too, smelled strongly of smoke and the ionized spark of fresh Floo powder, their faces made up with pale ash streaked like guerrilla war paint.
"Bill's coming," Ginny said calmly. "I thought you wanted to see him." She took a bite of her toast. "I've got tea."
Ron leaned over to squint at his sister, absently drawing thin blankets to cover his naked chest. "Bill's coming?"
"Portkey. Ten thirty." She set the mugs of tea down on Ron's night table and sat by the end of his bed. "He's bringing Fleur too." The bitterness was a ripe fruit in her throat. "I can't believe they're going to get married - oh, don't give me that look, you pig, you just like her tits." Ginny tossed back her sleep-tangled mess of hair. "Anyway, mum wants you to say hello when they arrive."
Ron struggled to sit up against his headboard, scratching his bare chest and fumbling for the scalding mug of Irish Breakfast, cradling it in cold hands and sipping at it sugarless. "Charlie?"
"Not this year," Ginny said in a small voice, leaning back on the bedspread, resting her neck in the blanketed crook Ron's ankles. "Romania calling, you know."
Ron took a long drink of tea, a new smear of pink flush raw along his cheeks. "Harry."And then, louder. "Harry?" And then, a thrown pillow. "Oi, Harry."
"Wha?" Harry turned from the wall, curling in his camp bed to blink, wink, watch Ron with morning-tired eyes. "Ginny?"
"Bill's coming," Ron said, scratching his chest again, the tight laced bone of his rib cage a notched ladder under his fingertips, skin bristling with a dark plague of freckles. "And breakfast."
"I've got tea," Ginny said again, treading softly to sit cross-legged next to Harry's camp bed and offering him the second mug of tea. "Mum's made you eggs. Soft-boiled, right?"
Harry swept his legs off the mattress, drawing the sheets around his naked waist and gathered tight in the vice of his pale thighs. He nodded. "Thanks." Ginny offered Harry his glasses in an outstretched palm. Harry set them right, hooked behind the ears, a finger pushing them up the bridge of his nose. They steamed opaque as he drew the mug to his lips. "Cheers."
"Ten thirty," Ginny said as she stood up, her bare feet smacking on the hardwood floor with sticky steps as she left the room. "Don't go back to sleep."
Ron drank the rest of his tea, suddenly overwhelmed by a great buoyant flush of heat that painted his chest in tones of red. He stood up naked and Harry watched with a sleepy disconnect as Ron pulled a bathrobe from a clawed brass hook, a long white cotton robe stitched with Charlie's initials in red on the left breast. He cinched it loosely around the waist. "I've got to make a call," he said, rubbing his eyes.
"What?"
"Lavender," Ron said, giving a pale shrug as the heat and blood of steam faded from his shoulders. "She wants me to give her a call. Over the holidays." He cuts Harry to the question: "I dunno."
"Oh." And Harry couldn't resist. "How romantic."
Ron gave Harry a withering look. "I don't know, okay."
"Course," Harry said, pulling a blanket over his shoulders and drawing it tight like the cape of a childhood superhero. "But, honestly, Ron - Lavender?"
"Okay, okay," Ron said, dismissing him with a shrug, stuffing his hands into the deep cotton pockets. "I get enough from Hermione."
Harry fell back into bed - pleasantly dark again, surrounded by the sleep-mellowed sounds of taps running and murmured conversation, the sharp snap of Apparition like sparks being launched from a roaring fire. The Burrow seemed to breathe around him, rising and falling with the gasps of winter wind, swelling and collapsing in a regular pattern of creaks and rattles and ghoulish moans. Harry's hands went numb, crushed between his legs all curled tight into a ball, the taste of tea going bitter with tannin in his mouth.
In the precise symbolism of dreams, Ron's sudden hand on his shoulder was that of a furious angel, a holy force pulling him from the purgatory of half-sleep, shaking him awake: "It's snowing." The grin, the shaggy red hair, the warm stretch of skin at Ron's collar beneath the robe were described suddenly in warm proximity as Ron's gangly body swept Harry into a sloping hug to drag him to the bathroom window.
It was snowing, earnestly storming, fat bullets of snow blown sideways by a silent gale. A five-inch layer of heavy, cold sediment had settled along the bottom edge of every window, and the North face of each tree was coated liberally with the wet paint of winter. Ron's face, reflected in plate glass, was the grin of a toddler, a freed prisoner, an excitable Jack Russell Terrier. It begged unasked questions of snowball fights and Christmas cheer, a wild and childish abandon and a cavalier disregard for responsibility. He glanced at Harry. "What?"
Harry shrugged noncommittally.
"What?" Ron asked again, his lofty expression punctured the thorn of Harry's frown.
"It's just - they're out there, you know?"
"Who?"
"Draco."Harry shrugged, flicking a fingernail at the ripple of ice that had formed along the edge of the poorly-insulated window. "Snape.
Ron sighed wearily. "Harry -"
"You weren't there, Ron. I know what I heard at Slughorn's party." Harry readjusted his blankets about his shoulders, wrapped tight against his pale nakedness. "They're planning -"
"What? Planning what?"
"- something."
Ron stuffed his hands in the bathrobe's pockets, his shoulders twitching in a half-shrug. "It's just - are you sure Snape is helping and not just -"
"Yes! I told you, he was trying to help, I heard him say it."
"Did you ask Hermione?" Ron asked.
"No. I barely saw her at Slughorn's. She was gone when I got back."
"Yeah?" Ron fiddled absently with the hem of his sash, playing with the lose strings at the cord of his bathrobe. "Did she - uh. Did she have a good time?"
Harry frowned, lost somewhere in the thicket of his own doubt. "I don't know."
"I mean." Ron paused, scratched at the thin scruff along his jaw, his chin. "Did she like Cormac? Did they, uh - you know."
"I don't know, Ron," Harry said quietly, not sure how to treat Ron's fragile questions, the thin shell of his jealousy. "I didn't really see them."
"Were they kissing?"
"No," Harry said in exasperation. "Does that matter? Are you listening to me?"
Ron seemed to brighten somewhat. "Listen, I think you should drop it, mate. We've been wrong about Snape before." He caught sight of Harry's furrowed brow, the cold roll of his eyes. "I mean, I don't doubt you at all, you know what you saw," he added quickly, "but, I mean, it's our hols -"
"And Draco gets the castle all to himself," Harry said sharply. "I should have stayed -"
"Harry, just drop it," Ron said. "You sound like you're -"
"What?" Harry interrupted coldly. "Like I'm what?"
"Like you - fancy him," Ron said defensively. "It's weird, okay? No one should ever worry about a Malfoy this much." He punched Harry's side gently. "Just, relax, okay?" He swung an easy arm over Harry's shoulders, drawing him in for a rough half-hug, a playful nuzzle against Harry's bare shoulder. "Come on, time for breakfast."
Mrs. Weasley had cleared a spot in the living room, worn furniture all pushed up against the walls to make room for Bill and Fleur's imminent arrival. Harry, Ron, and Ginny sat three-abreast on the couch pushed against the far wall, eating toast and eggs from plates balanced in their laps. Harry was dressed in a set of Ron's old maroon pyjamas, too long and bunched loosely at his feet and hands, endlessly being pulled and pushed and readjusted. Mrs. Weasley hovered anxiously by the fireplace, glancing every so often to the unique Weasley clock, Bill's arrow still stubbornly pointed at mortal peril.
"Calm down, mum," George said, sitting relaxed on Fred's lap, the two of them piled together in their father's overstuffed wing-backed chair and sharing a large mug of coffee. "He isn't due for two more minutes."
"I don't like keeping the barriers down," Mrs. Weasley said, fidgeting her hands absently around her wand. "I do hope they're all right."
"Mum, come on," Fred grunted, trying to shift George from one aching knee to the other, "it's Christmas, even Death Eaters've got families. Merlin your arse is bony, George."
And with that, something began to happen. Harry had never seen a portkey appear from the other side before, but he assumed this was it. The effect was incredibly unsettling. All at once the cleared space in the living room began to shift and change: the air began to ripple, like the haze of a hot day or wafting gasoline vapours. The ripple became a distortion, refracted images of the living room splintered and twisted as a silent vortex peeled apart the texture of the air. And then, quite simply, there was Bill and Fleur. Harry had half-expected the backfire crack of an Apparition, or maybe a loud rush of air or flash of light, but it all happened in relative silence, a uniquely serene form of Wizarding transport, here and gone again.
Bill and Fleur each clutched the spines of a dimly-glowing umbrella. Suspended between them was a heavy, brass-handled steamtrunk, similar to Mad-Eye Moody's seven-locked relic, hovering gently with a slow kind of magic. They were beautiful, a really beautiful couple. Bill was still that icon of casual cool, ruffled in a roguish manner, some modern highway man in a half-buttoned black shirt and artfully torn acid-washed jeans. His hair was cut unusually short, just below the ear, and a number of new silver bolts gleamed from a nostril, a lip, an ear. Fleur filled a low-slung satin cream chemise and flared jeans similar to Bill's, clothes tight enough to outline in great detail her silken curves and Ginger Rogers body.
The Wealseys grinned and jeered, laughing and standing from their chairs to sweep Bill once more into their tangled nest of family. Bill dropped the trunk with a satisfied grunt and then threw himself into the ritual of welcome, kissing his mother, catching Ginny in a tight hug to press a hard kiss into the shampoo-fragrant crook of her neck. Fred and George trapped Bill in a double-barrelled hug, a chin over each shoulder, trying in competition to see who could slap their brother's back the hardest. Ron caught his brother next; Bill tousled his hair and planted a firm kiss on the crown of his head, slapping Ron's cheek warmly like an Italian Mafioso.
Fleur serenely ignored the red-headed tangle to slip in next to Harry, kissing him brightly on each cheek, right left right left. "'Arry, I had hoped you would be here." She tucked an arm around Harry, leaning in to him with the ease of an old friend. "I think I could not bear a week alone."
Harry smiled, suddenly remembering Ginny's unkind nickname. "Ah. Yeah."
"I do not think the women enjoy my company. Perhaps my hair is too long," she continued airily, curling her silvery mane behind one ear. "You and I will have to build a fortress to hide, I think."
Harry smiled. "We're the odd ones out."
"Yes, we do not fit with the red hair," she said, waving a well-manicured hand. "We are just observers of nature. Jacques Cousteau," she said, putting a hand to her brow and scanning their surroundings like an explorer. "Looking for our wild animals."
Harry grinned and glanced at his feet, back up to Fleur. "I guess."
"But I think you fit in perhaps more than I," Fleur said, resting her head slightly on his shoulder. "They seem very much to love you."
Harry blushed, and said nothing.
"It is not hard," Fleur continued matter-of-factly. "I am thinking that Ginny may be sweet for you."
Harry shrugged, remembering for an angry moment Dean's grinning face. "I don't think so."
"Or perhaps Ronald -"
She was interrupted by Bill who, though Harry was deliberately standing apart from the crowd, pulled him into a warm bear hug of welcome, the kind of easy brotherhood that seemed inherent to the Weasley line. Fleur followed Harry and gently made the necessary rounds, first into the eager arms of Fred and George, planting a flutter of kisses on freckled cheeks, and next to a rather star-struck Ron, the touch of her lips enflaming his face with a burst of sudden heat. Ginny offered Fleur a firm handshake and a steady stare while Mrs. Weasley allowed her future daughter-in-law to wave a number of indistinct kisses absently in the air.
"Where's dad?" Bill asked, finally removing himself from the mesh of freckled arms.
"Work, of course," Mrs. Weasley said, a touch irritated. "He's been working much too hard, Bill."
"I've barely seen him," Bill replied, nodding. "He never seems to be in his office when I drop by." He found Fleur's hand with his own and laced their fingers, sitting next to her on the hovering steamtrunk. "Where's Chuck?"
"Romania," Ginny said. "Stuck at work for the hols."
"He sends his love," George said.
"And about a gallon of vodka - oi," Fred grunted as his twin elbowed him swiftly in the ribs. "Yeah, right, about a gallon of love."
"Quiet Christmas, then," Bill said, nuzzling his lips into Fleur's neck, kissing her with lingering affection.
"Oh, oh, not necessarily," Mrs. Weasley said loudly, moving her arms in broad strokes. "I've invited Nymphadora to spend the holidays. I imagine she'll want to catch up with you, Bill. Have nice long, wonderful talks. And Remus is coming too," Mrs. Weasley added, seemingly trying to overwhelm Bill with people, enough to keep his lips from that sweet spot behind Fleur's earlobe. "And - Ron! Why don't you invite this Lavender I've heard so much about?"
Ron choked on his orange juice, dribbling it down the front of Charlie's bathrobe. "She's - got her own family," Ron said, coughing.
"Who's Lavender?" Fred and George asked in an echo.
"She's - no one," Ron said briskly. "Just a girl."
"A girl?" George said.
"Surely not," Fred replied. "Is she a special girl?"
"Just a girl, move along," Ron said between gritted teeth.
It was decided aloud that the living room would remain as it was for Christmas, the ragged Turkish carpet clear of debris and the walls outlined by plush furniture and lacquered tables. By magic, big boxes of Christmas decorations drifted from the basement landing and into the living room. Ginny began to sort through the mounds of glitter and gold, separating garlands and wreaths from bags of baubles and strings of Mr. Weasley's coloured electric lights. Mrs. Weasley prepared Bill and Fleur a quick breakfast as the rest of the family enjoyed a second steaming pot of tea.
Ron was fast to fall asleep, all full of warm tea and a heavy breakfast, leaning snug against Harry's side, head on his bony shoulder and snoring softly, mouth falling open with deep breathing. Fred, now sitting on George's lap in their father's armchair, spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to toss pieces of toast into Ron's open mouth, a cruel carnival game of brotherhood. Harry's ribs cramped with restrained laughter, trying to keep still under Ron's weight. Fleur had to leave the room entirely to stop from crying out with laughter.
George soon became bored with this game and dug with a bored finger at the dregs of the pot, plucking out a used tea bag. It hit Ron with a great wet slap, the Earl Grey missile striking the middle of his forehead.
"Fuck!" Ron yelped, starting suddenly awake to shower a rain of toast on the carpet, crumbs stuck in his hair and on his eyelashes, stuck to his skin in the shadows under his robe. "What the -"
Harry laughed, laughed so hard he started to cry, shaking and clutching to Ginny as Ron spat and coughed in outrage, grabbing a nearby ceramic lamp and throwing it at George as hard as he could -
"HAVE I RAISED CHILDREN OR TROLLS?" Mrs. Weasley bellowed, stomping in to the living room, catching the lamp mid-air with a quick spell. "OUT! Ronald, out!"
"They covered me in toast!" Ron protested.
"Out, all of you! If you aren't going to decorate, out! Out!"
Harry quickly followed Ron up the long stairs to his attic bedroom, still consumed by lingering laughter, his cheeks aching from the deep dimples of his grin. The bustle of the living room gave way to the solitary hiss of the wind outside, the silent bedrooms echoing in their cracks the howl of the blizzard. The snow had grown so thick as to entirely cover Ron's bedroom window. They stood in the bathroom instead and watched it for long while, the great exhalations of winter building one foot, two feet, three feet outside.
"White Christmas," Ron said.
Harry nodded.
"Don't worry about Draco," Ron said, his hand brushing palely against Harry's.
"I will."
"I know you will," Ron said. "But I'll try to keep your mind off it."
"I don't want my mind off it," Harry replied quietly, any humour gone from his face.
"I've still got toast in my hair," Ron said, trying to catch Harry's eye.
Harry ghosted a smile. "That was brilliant."
"Well, I'm for bed," Ron said, shrugging his robe from his shoulders to pool on the floor like a great cotton snowdrift. He wore plaid boxer shorts and woollen socks beneath. His shoulders and arms were still decorated with the thin red crosshatch of Hermione's little yellow birds. "You?"
Harry nodded again. "I could use some sleep."
+
It was nearly dark when Harry woke, groggy with midday sleep. His wristwatch read fifteen past five of the same day. Turning over, his ribs ached in complaint from the thick bars of his camp bed. Harry rolled over and drew his blankets up to his chin, blinking slowly and adjusting his eyes to the uneasy twilight.
"Ron?"
There was no answer. Harry leaned up from his fold-out camp, scratching his bare chest, his pale pink nipples, and yawned. Ron's bed was empty, his comforter and blankets on the floor, Charlie's bathrobe missing from its peg.
Harry stood up. He dug through the open chiffonier and pulled on a pair of Ron's olive green pyjama pants, threw a thin sheet over his naked shoulders to cut the cold, drawing it around his body like a cotton cocoon.
The silence in the Burrow was almost tangible, a dense fog that seemed to seep through the walls. Ron was missing, the usual rustle and chatter from the living room gone, only the rush of wind and flash of snow breathing around the house seemed to interrupt the curious tension. Harry tiptoed down the crooked stairs, beyond the landing of Ginny's bedroom, the landing of Bill's room, Fred and George's open door. The stairs creaked, even under careful steps. The last landing, on the second floor, was that of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's bedroom.
"Yeah? God, I want you so much."
It was a murmur, but clear enough when Harry put his ear to the door.
"I want to -" hesitant laughter "- taste you again."
The bedroom door was not closed properly, copper bolt loose from the strike plate and a half inch of cold shadow. Harry nudged it open, just slightly, with a toe. It was Ron's voice he had heard, Ron with his back to the door and a telephone receiver to his ear. Harry eased the door open another fraction, and then another.
Harry knew, just from the position, just from Ron's arched back and the familiar sound hitched breath that he should not be watching, should not be here. Harry put his eye to the gap between the doors, held his breath, and watched his friend jerk off.
"I want it so bad," Ron said into the telephone, tucking it between his shoulder and ear as his hands worked slowly, rhythmically in shadow. "I want you to suck me off."
Harry bit his lip, drew his tangled sheet more closely around his body. His fingertips prickled with unwanted pins and needles, a warm glow in his belly swirling and burning like a growing star.
"Lav, please, I want you to suck me, like you did after - after Herbology," Ron groaned, the hoarseness of his breath growing faster, deeper, matching the frantic rhythm of his hands. "Suck me off. Tell me you want it."
Harry watched as Ron let the bathrobe fall from his back, down the freckled wings of his shoulder blades to pool around his naked hips. Harry felt the knot in his stomach tighten, the flush in his skin grow alive with caustic blood. His hand grew sweaty as he held tight to his make-shift toga, as his fingers slid gently under the elastic waistband of his pyjama pants.
"Tell me you like it," Ron said, his words growing sweet with intensity, his back glowing freckle-pale in the dim light as he arched his body fitfully. "Oh, God -"
Ron came silently, more silently than Harry had ever imagined. He saw the chemistry in subtle ways - the flex of a muscle, the tightness in Ron's shoulder blades - but Harry knew without a doubt that Ron was there, was glowing with that fission of dream and reality, his world divided into pleasure and pain. Ron's groan came later, nearly a satisfied purr as he held a hand to the light, the sticky mess of come webbed between slender fingers.
"Did you come?" Ron asked Lavender, his voice all mellow -
Harry closed the door as silently as he could. The bolt made the quietest of clicks, not nearly enough to interrupt Ron's vibrant afterglow. With a sick taste of bile, Harry swallowed back the knot in his chest, so tight and sharp it might have been heartburn. The three flights of stairs back to the attic were strangely steep, and by the time he stepped into Ron's furiously orange room Harry was out of breath. He rolled back into his camp band, back into the winter-stiff blankets and scratchy woollen socks and sleep.
"Harry?" Ron asked quietly. And then, more loudly, "Harry?"
Harry feigned waking from a deep sleep, made a great show of blinking widely and stretching and yawning, curling his toes and scratching his bare chest. "Yeah?"
"It's almost six," Ron said. Even if Harry hadn't seen the orgasm, the evidence was obvious: the warm pink glow in his cheeks, the fringe of his hair dark with sweat. Ron even smelled, obliquely, of sex, of the chlorine-sweet smell of come.
"Yeah?" He rolled out of bed, his feet still cold. "We slept all day."
Ron gave a bashful, obvious, incriminating grin. "Yeah. You hungry? I'm starving."
Harry pulled on one of Ron's old t-shirts, some unknown magical rock band, and Ron dressed in jeans and a knit sweater rolled up at the sleeves. They wandered downstairs barefoot. Their hands brushed lazily against one another, stray pinkies hooking in off-beat swings.
"There you are!" Mrs. Weasley said, wiping down the kitchen counter with a wet rag. "I wondered when you two would wake up." She was dressed in her best dress robes, a deep purple with intricate gold paisley designs. "Dinner's in the oven, Ron. Shepherd's pie. It'll be ready in an hour, you can get it yourself."
"Why? Where are you going?" Ron asked, sitting at the kitchen table and helping himself to Bill's coffee, his older brother absorbed behind a copy of the Prophet.
"A Christmas party, the Dearborne's," Mrs. Weasley said, tossing the wet rag into the kitchen sink. "Come now, say hello to your father."
"What? Oh - hi dad," he said, just noticing Mr. Weasley, who was watering the house plants with a mug of water.
Mr. Weasley set the mug on the kitchen table and ruffled Ron's hair. "Out late, eh? Slughorn still hosting his little parties, then?"
"Yeah," Ron said quickly, nudging Harry's foot gently with his own. "Quite late."
"Yeah," Harry agreed, smiling slightly at Ron's lie.
"Harry," Mr. Weasley said, touching the back of Harry's neck. "All right, my boy?"
"Great, thanks," Harry said, taking the sweet and milky coffee from Ron. "And you?"
"Oh, busy, busy I'm afraid," Mr. Weasley said, sighing in a way that reminded Harry strongly of Ron. "Lots of things to do, as I'm sure you know." The hint was not dropped lightly, and Harry thought he could feel Mr. Weasley's hand tighten slightly in its gentle grip. "But we manage, eh?"
"We manage?" Fred's disembodied voice asked sarcastically. Craning his neck, Harry saw Fred on the couch with his twin, watching a television movie of an Agatha Christie mystery, a comforting and melodramatic Death on the Nile. "Is that why you raided our store, huh?"
"Policy, Fred," Mr. Weasley said. "We needed to investigate all the businesses in Diagon Alley."
"But honestly, your own sons?"
"You were our main suspects," Mr. Weasley said warmly. "I know firsthand of your disregard for the law."
"Scare off business," George mumbled, balancing a bowl of boiled sweets on his chest and crunching on them lazily. "Honestly, our own father."
"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "It's six, we best leave."
"Right you are, Molly," Mr. Weasley said, sweeping in to kiss his wife on the cheek. "You boys," he said, raising his voice for Fred and George's sake, "you listen to Bill. And no peeking at your presents."
Harry glanced at the tree. The trunk was newly surrounded by a spectrum of gifts, boxes of every size and shape with coloured wrappings gleaming in the pale glow of electric light. Harry's cheeks burned red as that acidic feeling of inadequacy rushed painfully through his gut again, those all-too-familiar questions of family winking and taunting like a candle's flame
Call it a mother's intuition, but Mrs. Weasley seemed to understand Harry's doubt and rested her hands on his shoulder. "Don't you worry, Harry, you've got some under there too." She kissed the top of his head, and Ron's too. "Behave," she commanded finally, readjusting her cloak over her shoulders, fixing her black velvet gloves. "We shouldn't be back later than one." Her anxiety was obvious, her worry of leaving the house unprotected obvious in the twist of her hands and the furrow in her brow. "Bill?"
"Mm?" Bill murmured, not putting down the newspaper.
"Be careful."
"Always am."
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley vanished on the spot, their twin-fold crack of Apparation like sudden gunfire, leaving that lingering smell of burnt matches strong in the air.
The thick tension of remarkable silence and parental dominance was split as Bill stood up and folded the newspaper under his arm: "Eggnog, anyone?"
Two bottles of Jameson were brought down, fresh from Bill's bedroom, and a carton of pre-made eggnog from the fridge. They were poured in fifty-fifty combinations, amber whiskey transmuting rich eggnog the colour of crème caramel. Everyone took a glass, even Ginny, and they drank their whiskey-strong cheer to good health.
They sat at the table and Bill served mounds of shepherd's pie, the best Harry had ever tasted. Fleur picked at hers with a certain note of distaste, settling finally only to eat the sweet corn. Bill slung an arm over Ron's shoulders and kissed him sharply on the cheek, nudging his ribs about girls, making Harry laugh and spit mashed potato on the table.
They drank their second glass to a happy Christmas.
Fred and George played a game, jabbing a knife between the open spaces in the other's splayed fingers. Fleur watched anxiously, and Bill laughed until Fred stabbed George in the ring finger and blood spurted from the joint. He slapped Fred upside the head and sealed the cut with the kiss of his wand.
They drank their third in memory of Bill's whiskey.
The wireless was tuned to the Christmas ubiquity of American big band music. Fleur stood, swaying slightly under the heat of Irish whiskey, to dance with Bill, linking their fingers and pressing her head into the warm muscle of his shoulder, kissing him there brightly. Ginny offered her hand first to Harry (blushingly refused, stammers of clumsiness) and next to Ron, trapping him with her freckled hands and dragging him out to spin in time with Frank Sinatra's Old Devil Moon.
Their fourth eggnog was to silence and family, to arms wrapped over shoulders and the bright flush in their cheeks, to the coloured lights of Christmas and the waiting bundles of gifts. To Dean Martin's carols and the promise of another glass.
Fleur was outside, on the back step of the snowy garden patio, when Harry sought her out. Her breath rose in great clouds of steam - no, that actually was smoke, and the stick in her fingers a cigarette.
"I didn't know you smoked," Harry said, sitting down beside her, wrapping Ron's fur-collared parka closer around his body. The air was dry and cold, the sharp wind a butcher's cleaver through bare skin. The sweat in his hair froze to glass and even his nostrils were stiff in the winter air.
"I'm French," Fleur said, smiling, "and I'm lazy, which means I smoke and I don't exercise and I drink too much. It is what we do, yes?" She took a drag of the cigarette, a neat cylinder in pastel pink, and offered it to Harry. "You'll have a smoke?"
"No, thanks," Harry said, huffing his hot breath on cold hands.
"I think everyone should have a vice," Fleur said, withdrawing the cigarette and tucking it back between her small lips. The effect was transformative: she was already obviously beautiful, but the cigarette only served to accentuate that beauty, shaping her suddenly into a 1920s noir heroine, bright eyed and long-nailed, her pale skin glowing with supernatural brilliance in the ghostly tallow of the moon. She plucked the pack of cigarettes from her jacket's interior pocket, flicked open the lid and offered Harry a fresh nail. "Try one."
Each cigarette was a different colour, a rainbow of pastels, the filters a brilliant gold. Harry took a blue stick from the packet and put it experimentally between his lips. They were labelled as Sobranie Cocktails. Harry knew they were dangerous, unhealthy, but the beauty of that glowing ember between Fleur's lips was enough, and he accepted her offered flame without hesitation.
He sucked.
"No, no," Fleur said, her hand lingering about his shoulder. "Inhale."
Harry coughed. He brought the cigarette to his lips again and inhaled. He reeled. He coughed, a great cough of smoke into the December air. Fleur laughed and touched him lightly on the back.
"Good?"
Harry's head swam - from the nicotine, from the carbon dioxide, from something - and a dizziness immediately filled his brain with cotton. "Weird."
"A first cigarette is not very good," Fleur said, taking a slender puff of her own. "But you have least tried now, yes?"
Harry shrugged, held the cigarette between forefinger and thumb and considered it quietly. The dizziness did not subside as he took another breath of smoke, another sickly perfumed gasp. "I'm dizzy," he said.
"It can be like that sometimes," Fleur said, her hand still on his back. "You do not need to finish."
Harry put the cigarette out in the snow. The dizziness was neither pleasant nor awful, just a lofty kind of detachment, an out-of-body swirl of chemicals. "I don't belong," he said, surprising even himself with the words.
"Belong?"
"Here, at Christmas." He left the rest nestled neatly between the lines.
"Of course you do, Harry," Fleur said. "I would be very sad if you were not here."
"I'm not like them," Harry said quietly. "They're so - together."
"They can be very close, yes," she said, smiling. "Were they not family, I think they might be lovers." She rested on this thought for a moment, considering her own cigarette. "But if you are alien, then I do not belong here as well," Fleur said gently. "And that is not true. They love me, and they love you. I think maybe it is enough."
Harry hesitated. Fleur, even despite the harsh words of Ginny and Mrs. Weasley, felt welcomed by this clan. She belonged, another puzzle piece to their immense mystery, another beautiful face for the Weasley collage. Harry glanced at his hands, his trembling fingers still fiddling with his dead cigarette. Where Fleur was grand gestures and vivid life, he was nothing but an awkward body and silent affections. "I guess," he said.
"There is a story in France - well, I think maybe it is not French, but I only know it in French." She smiled. "There is a faun in the forest who goes to drink from a stream. This faun is always looking around for the wolf, always looking behind because he worries the wolf will attack. The faun, so scared, keeps looking behind, keeps worrying that the wolf will sneak up - and eventually dies of thirst." Fleur paused for effect. "I think you are the faun."
"I - I'm going to die of thirst?" Harry stumbled over her metaphor, struggling just to keep from falling over in the snow.
Fleur sighed, and smiled. "Harry, you are very easy to fall in love with," she said warmly. "I think they are all in love with you." She paused, finishing the last of her cigarette. "Non, non, this I know. You are very easy to love," Fleur repeated, touching his cheek. "Oh! - your skin is like ice," she said, pale eyes wide. "Go inside, my love, it is no good to be out here so cold."
Harry stood up. He moved to say thanks, but the words cluttered uncomfortably in his throat, so he turned and left, pushing open first the swinging screen and then the heavy wooden door, kicking the snow from his boots on the threshold before stepping again into the warm kitchen.
"Harry!" Ron yelled, stumbling away from Fred and George, collapsing on him with a rough hug. "You smell like smoke, want another?" he asked, holding up his empty glass.
Harry nodded, unzipping the parka and resting it on the back of a chair. His t-shirt clung to his skin with cold, and Harry shivered as Ron handed him another brutal mix of whiskey and eggnog.
"Ron, slow down would you?" Bill said, boiling a fresh pot of coffee. "That's like, your sixth."
"It's for Harry," Ron said sharply, spilling nutmeg all over the kitchen counter. "If Ginny makes us dance one more time I'm goin' to fuckin' scream," Ron said in an undertone, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulders defensively and leading him to where Fred, George, and Ginny were sitting, cross-legged on the floor and playing poker.
"Wanna deal in?" George asked, a fan of Bicycle playing cards in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey in the other.
"No, thanks," Harry said, sitting down behind Ginny, his heart thrumming with a sudden thrill as she leaned back against his legs. For all the clichés, the feeling truly was electric, the weight of her warm body a sudden shock through Harry's drifting, lazy, drunken head. The barest touch was enough to make snakes writhe in his stomach, the barest brush of her hand enough to set his heart into arrhythmia.
Ron sat next to Harry and leaned in tightly, his head resting in that fateful spot between neck and shoulder. It was a shock strangely familiar when Ron grappled uneasily against Harry's clothes, clinging to his belt, lazy fingers tucked in the hem of his pocket or else digging under his T-shirt, resting in a soft press against the ridge of Harry's hip. Ron murmured nothings, a simple language Harry knew as purposeless affection, those same murmurs Harry had heard whispered to Lavender from between their crushed lips.
Ginny, the most sober, won round after round of draw poker, eventually wrenching from her brothers the not insignificant sum of fifty galleons. Her glee was tangible, and she rounded on Harry to give him a tight a hug, a wet kiss on the cheek, disturbing Ron unhappily from his liquid half-sleep.
"Guys," Bill interrupted, Fleur linked at his hip, his careful eyes locked on Harry, on his hands fidgeting with Ginny, at his clothes gripped almost possessively by Ron. "Go to bed." He watched his siblings with a glint of pride, their rolling drunkenness some kind of achievement. "Mum'll be home soon and I still value my life."
There was a kind of sleepy togetherness as Fred, George, Ginny, Ron, and Harry stumbled up the stairs together, an uncoordinated mesh of arms, a blood clot of red-hair and obvious love. They trudged dutifully up the endless flights, slowly breaking apart as drunken Weasleys wandered into their bedrooms, ghosts of indistinct hugs and kisses left trailing their affections through the air.
Harry stumbled. Ron's bedroom was lit only by the hazy glow of Christmas lights and cloudy moon. Ron undressed in that half-light, pulled off his jumper and jeans, swiftly kicked off his boxers. Caught in the palest of light, Harry could trace Ron's naked body in a single line; the roll of his shoulder and ribs, his firm side, the round of his arse, the pale line of his thigh, the aristocratic curve of his calf to the ball of his ankle. Harry could trace that one lit line of flesh from Ron's turned cheek to his foot, could understand his friend in the single brush stroke of light. He looked up and saw Ron's eyes flash in the darkness, and thought for a moment they had caught glances.
"Ron." Harry's mouth was still thick with the smoke of whiskey and cigarettes, every inch of skin tingling with a curious numbness. A headache buzzed behind his eyes, and Harry twisted in bed to face the wall. Even his sweat smelled of booze. "I'm not -"
"Course you are," Ron interrupted, submerging himself once again in total darkness. Harry could hear him fall into bed, the small gasp of air as Ron crawled under his comforter. "This feels - I feel like stars, all over," Ron murmured stupidly.
"I need - I don't know if I can be -"
"You're here," Ron said indistinctly, in a rough kind of voice, "that's good enough."
"But I'm not your - how can I be one of you?"
"One of us?" was Ron's sleepy reply.
"I'm not your - I don't fit."
"You're here - you're here, aren't you?" Ron repeated.
There it was again, that feeling of seeing a fully-formed puzzle, the jigsaw of the Wealseys already solved and without room for another piece, another jagged boy in the picture of their family. Harry was silent, silently considering the boy in the bed, and his fidgeting hands, and that absurd feeling of being covered in stars. "Lavender -" Harry said.
"She's - I know," Ron murmured, "I think I'm gonna break -"
"Her - her lips," Harry stumbled. Ron was suddenly silent, and so Harry continued. "Her - tits. Did she show you her -" Harry froze. "Padma. She's so - her arse, she probably screams if you -" Harry could feel sweat prickle at his forehead, at his lip. He spoke with a kind of wild abandon, barely registering anything but the hot flow of blood through his limbs and the pins and needles that coursed up his skin like a wave. If not for the ready flush of embarrassment, Harry might not have been speaking at all. "Let you - finger her, in class."
Ron's groan was quiet, unexpected. Harry could hear Ron shift in his bed, the rusty ache of springs as he turned - towards or away, Harry couldn't tell. He swallowed thickly.
"Padma - and Pavarti, s-sucking you off," Harry stammered, stretching a hand under his own boxer shorts, fingers digging into the bristle of black hair, hoping in a sick kind of way that Ron was doing the same thing. "Together, one mouth on - on your cock, the other -" the fantasies rolled and tumbled, little more than ill-conceived stories, nothing Harry had even considered before this very moment. "Swallowing you, wanting you," Harry said.
Ron's groans were more than a rumble, they rose and fell like a slow crash of waves. It was too dark to see, but Harry could hear the soft rustle of hands, the brush of a blanket. "In your - in our dormitory," Harry invented, "you can hear us, but you have them - fuck her in plain sight. We could walk in -"
These stories unravelled in equations of dominance, Harry's stomach twisting with pleasure as he controlled Ron with words, simple words. Every sentence drew a gasp, eased a moan from between Ron's lips; it was a conjurer's game of sex, the right incantation summoning a tone of pleasure. "Could get caught," Harry murmured for Ron, "but you do it - you want to get caught - Lavender - Pansy - Hannah - you fu - fuck them on your bed, on Seamus' bed, on - on my bed," Harry closed his eyes tight. "You - you come inside them - you taste it on your lips -"
"Fuck," Ron moaned, the steady rhythm of his hands pulsing and growing, that tell-tale rustle a shifting frequency.
"- suck you," Harry all but groaned, " - I want - you grab them - me - you grab them by the hair, you feel their tongue on -"
"Suck me," Ron groaned, gasped.
" - you taste them, you taste -"
"Fuck, please," Ron gasped, the hitch in his breath like the final gasp of a drowning swimmer.
"- you come -"
"Oh, God," Ron moaned.
"- you come, fuck -"
"Fuck," Ron moaned, sighed.
" - you come."
On to Part 2