[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Bloke Harry Definitely Doesn't Fancy, Harry/Neville, R
Title: The Bloke Harry Definitely Doesn’t Fancy
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Neville, Harry/Ginny
Content Notes: Angst, drunken sex, technically underage, minor background pairings
Rating: R
Wordcount:4600
Summary: Harry can’t stop thinking about the night he and Neville shared after the Battle of Hogwarts. And he can’t stop thinking about the way it seems to linger, ruining the other relationships he attempts. But that doesn’t mean he fancies Neville. It can’t.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year.
The Bloke Harry Definitely Doesn’t Fancy
“You were brilliant, Harry, leaping out of Hagrid’s arms and proclaiming you were alive like that.”
Harry turned to smile at Neville. They were seated at the Gryffindor table, or what was the Gryffindor table on an ordinary day, and relief was rising from everyone like steam. And so was laughter. Given the ale and the mead and the Firewhisky that the house-elves had rolled out of the cellars, it was no wonder.
“You were pretty brilliant yourself, Mr. ‘Let Me Chop Off a Giant Snake’s Head Like I Do It Every Day.’”
Neville laughed and took another pull of his Firewhisky. Harry watched the line of his shoulders, and the bulge of his muscles, and the bob of his throat. Why not? They were all friends here, and there was no one to stare at him and see where his eyes were going.
For a little while, Ginny distracted him from the conversation with Neville. Harry held her with one arm around her shoulders, sighing into her hair and letting her talk about Fred. But she left, and Harry watched her go but didn’t join her. Despite all the people who had died, right now he couldn’t think of this as a night of mourning. He just couldn’t.
“Harry.”
There was something heavier about Neville’s voice that made Harry turn back and brace himself for a discussion that would bring up mourning, after all. But Neville was simply watching him with a complicated expression. Harry didn’t know what he was about to say.
“Can I talk to you outside the Great Hall? Maybe-maybe on the stairs up to Gryffindor Tower?”
Harry nodded. It did seem like Neville had something he wanted to confess. Something that had to do with hiding in Hogwarts in the Room of Requirement, maybe. Not that Harry could blame him for anything that he’d done to survive. “Sure. Give me a minute to finish this.” He held up his own mug, and Neville flashed him a smile that seemed at least understanding and got up to leave. Whatever it was must not be all that urgent, then.
As Harry had silently anticipated, it took him a lot longer to cross the Great Hall. Some people had stopped Neville to shake his hand. But everyone wanted to talk to Harry, and he finally ducked out into the corridor feeling like he might need Madam Pomfrey to set his wrist.
Neville was pacing back and forth in the corridor, frowning in the shadows of the torches. He seemed nervous, almost. Harry shook his head as he drew closer. He wondered if this was going to be about Ginny, and whether Neville wanted to ask her on a date and thought Harry would be upset.
“What is it, Nev?”
Neville turned around, saw him, and gained that same expression of determination that he’d had when he approached Nagini. He reached out and drew Harry into the shadows of the torches with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry went with him, a little apprehensive now. There were so few things that Neville would want to do or say out of sight of the Great Hall.
And then Harry learned that his count had been too low by one.
Neville set Harry’s back against the wall, searched his eyes for a second, and then leaned in and kissed him firmly.
Harry’s head spun as Neville’s tongue slowly traveled along the curve of his lips, and Neville sighed and his fingers flexed back and forth. Yet despite how nervous he’d seemed, he didn’t back off, and his movements were slow and confident.
And Harry, vision swimming with warmth and wonder and the fact that it was the celebration night and it felt as if everything was permitted, kissed him back.
Neville gasped aloud as Harry’s tongue lapped along his and pulled back. Harry looked him in the eye, calm in the way Neville had been so short a time before, and smiled as Neville blinked at him from under tousled hair.
“What? Did you think I would turn away from you? Never, Nev.”
“Harry…”
Neville kissed him again, and then began guiding him up and along the stairs that led to Gryffindor Tower. Harry went willingly, his head entirely occupied by the feel of Neville’s chest and shoulders under his hands. How tall he’d grown. How direct and steady his brown eyes were now, and how Harry could make them glazed with warmth by just the tiniest movements, the smallest ones.
Neville finally brought them into what must be the seventh-year boys’ bedroom, and the bed that must be his. It had a flowering plant beside it despite the amount of time Neville had spent hiding in the Room of Requirement. Harry, sprawled back on the bed, panting and smiling, thought that was entirely typical.
Neville crawled in next to him and stared down at him with eyes as wide as the moon. Harry leaned up and kissed him, and that seemed to remove the last of Neville’s doubt. His hands went to work exploring Harry, and soon relieving him of his clothes.
It didn’t seem fair to Harry that Neville should be the only one having all the fun, so he joined in. Neville’s shirt and trousers joined the pile on the floor, and then Harry pulled his pants down and blinked.
“Bloody hell, Nev.”
“It’s okay?”
Harry grinned. He hadn’t heard Neville sound that uncertain since he came back to Hogwarts. He reached out and stroked Neville’s cock, and watched as it twitched a little. Flushed red to the tip and larger than his, it was a sight that made his mouth water.
“More than.” And Harry had had a thought, something that had to do with his mouth watering.
He slithered down the bed, making Neville blink at him again, and then spread Neville’s muscled thighs. He licked once at the red cock, which bobbed, and was joined by the bob of Neville’s throat above him. Harry found that a lot more enticing than it had been when he was watching Neville swallow Firewhisky.
“Harry-what are you-”
Harry winked at Neville and swallowed him down, ignoring the way he made shocked noises and arched. This was the life, he thought dreamily, the warm haze of the alcohol joined by the warmth in his mouth. A big bloke in his throat and the surprised grunts and then moans that escaped him as he abandoned himself more and more to what Harry could do with his mouth.
Neville, being Neville, reached down to try and urge Harry off him when he started to come. Harry swallowed, delighted to discover that it didn’t taste that bad and that he didn’t gag and cough. The few mumbled stories Ron had shared about his time with Lavender had made that seem inevitable.
Maybe it was different because it was two blokes, but Harry thought that was probably just because it was Neville.
He climbed back up the bed and kissed Neville, which made him splutter, probably from the taste. Then Harry arranged Neville’s legs and deflated cock to his liking, and started rocking on top of him. He sighed as Neville reached up and gripped his shoulders, which made it feel better.
“Harry-don’t you want-”
“I want you to move your thigh to the right so I can rub off against it.”
Neville did that, but he also went on staring at Harry, so intense and bright that Harry found he literally couldn’t face it. He buried his head in the side of Neville’s neck and shuddered as Neville’s leg flexed and Harry rubbed against him, pressure and heat that built and built until he-
Tossed his head back and came with a hiss that, from the look on Neville’s face, at least wasn’t Parseltongue. Neville’s arms tightened around him, and he held Harry close, not letting him withdraw any more than Harry had let him go when he had his own orgasm.
Harry finally shook out the last tremors, and sighed. “What do you want to do now?” he murmured into Neville’s hair.
Neville stroked up his neck and down his sides, as if he was memorizing the way Harry felt. “I want you to stay right here. And I want to go to sleep.”
Harry chuckled. “I think I can do that.” His eyes slid closed, and he honestly wasn’t sure when the warm, fuzzy happiness faded into warm, fuzzy darkness, or if he actually had heard the words that he thought Neville whispered to him.
“You’re amazing.”
*
“Um. Good morning, Harry.”
Harry opened his eyes slowly and turned his head. The curtains of Neville’s bed were open, and he was standing next to it, staring down at Harry. His face was dark because of the sunlight behind him, and maybe because Harry’s head was ringing like a gong. But he did become aware that Neville’s voice was slow and hesitant.
“Good morning, Neville,” Harry said, and sat up slowly, looking around. He couldn’t see any of their other roommates, but then, given the way the party had been heading last night, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were actually waking up in other beds.
“I-I don’t know that we should have done that last night.”
Even though Harry had been partially prepared for something like this because of the slow way Neville was speaking, the words still rammed into him as though someone had tossed a Muggle bomb. He blinked his eyes and managed to work his way through the agony of being rejected. He said, in what he thought sounded like a normal voice, “Okay. I can accept that. Is there a way that I can leave without implicating you?”
“Er. Implicating?”
Neville sounded uncertain, the way he only had when he was in Snape’s class. God, I upset him so much that I made him regress. Harry swallowed back the many, many things he wanted to say, and just inclined his head. “Yeah. If this was a mistake, then I think you probably wouldn’t want to be seen with me, right?”
Neville was biting his lip and running his hand through his hair when Harry glanced at him again. “Yes, I suppose so.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m not exactly experienced in this kind of thing.”
“Neither am I,” Harry said, before he could think better of it.
“Oh.” Neville’s voice was very soft. He stared at the floor, then at Harry. “Do you even like blokes?”
“I think I like both blokes and birds.” Harry kept his head averted a little as he stood up and reached for his shoes. He would go and find a potion for the hangover he appeared to have acquired. He would go further than that to nurse the pain that had sprung to life in his chest. “Never had a chance to find out before the war.”
“Oh. I-I, Harry, I’m sorry, but it just wouldn’t work out.”
Harry forced his tongue to work, because Neville sounded so anxious that he was going to upset Harry. Of course, he was right, but Harry could do him the grace of pretending. “It’s okay, Nev.” He slid his shoes on and then dragged his shirt on. Apparently he’d never taken his trousers off last night, so that was at least something.
Never took those off, but you were on your knees for him, weren’t you?
Maybe that was why Neville didn’t want to be seen with him now, or date him. Maybe he thought of Harry as some kind of slag.
A fresh wave of shame tried to wash over Harry. He ignored it the way he’d learned to ignore people snickering and whispering about him being the Heir of Slytherin, or Dudley’s freak of a cousin. “I’ll go down the stairs first, okay? Then you can follow whenever you want.”
“Wait, Harry-”
“No hard feelings, Neville.” Harry found his glasses and walked away, heading down the stairs and being careful of any jolt that might stir the broken shards he was carrying around in his chest.
*
It was ridiculous to still be so hung up on one night with Neville, Harry scolded himself as he sat by the fireplace in the Burrow with Ginny in his arms. So he thought about it now and then, and his breath had caught when he saw a picture of Neville on the front page of the Daily Prophet as one of the “hidden heroes of Hogwarts.” Those were reactions that might be normal for someone who had spent his first night with another bloke and then been rejected.
Like Harry had told Neville, he didn’t have any experience with this kind of thing.
“Harry? You seem like you’re flying on a broom without me.”
Harry blinked and focused on Ginny, soft and warm against his chest. She was the one he was dating, he reminded himself firmly. And after the way he had dashed off on the “grand adventure” of the Horcrux hunt and left her behind, he wanted to be especially careful. It would be easy to annoy her by seeming distant.
“Nothing, Ginny,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear and kissing her there, which made her beam up at him. Harry casually turned his eyes away from the front page of the paper that Mr. Weasley was reading across the room. “So tell me about trying out for the Harpies the way you want to do.”
*
“Harry? What are you doing here?”
Harry grimaced into the tub of chopped daisy roots in front of him, and then glanced over his shoulder and nodded casually. “Hi, Neville. Just grabbing a few of the ingredients that I need for some potions.” He used the scoop to find the amount of roots he needed and then walked briskly towards the counter at the front of the apothecary.
For someone who’d worried about being seen with Harry, Neville seemed pretty eager to match his stride to Harry’s. Maybe that was only when he was ashamed about the sex they’d had, Harry thought. “How are things working out with Ginny?”
“Oh.” Harry tipped the roots onto the counter and ignored the greedy silence of the apothecary as he listened. He didn’t mind sharing this, since neither Neville nor the apothecary would get any new gossip. “It didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Neville did sound startled, and sorry. He must have ignored the papers for a while, which had gleefully reported on the breakup. “So are you dating anyone else?”
Harry focused ferociously on the roots and digging out the right amount of Galleons. Why did he have to rub it in like that?
But, of course, Neville was too nice to do something like that. He was probably anxious for Harry’s happiness, and thought that he couldn’t have it unless he was dating someone. That was true of lots of people.
It wasn’t true of Harry. He did like both blokes and birds, but whenever he’d been in bed with Ginny, all he could think of was the instinctive, right-feeling warmth he’d had with Neville. He’d tried to talk himself out of it any old way, including that he had probably been drunk and mistaking the alcohol for some feeling of rightness. It hadn’t worked.
“No,” Harry said, after a pause that he knew was too long. It had been long enough for Neville to look at him in concern, anyway, and for the apothecary to take an inordinate amount of time measuring out the daisy roots. “I’ll probably meet someone at some point.” He stretched his lips and made himself smile at Neville. “What about you?”
“No one.” Neville gave an unconcerned shrug. “Gran thinks I should be married already. Mum and Dad were, by my age. But I’m like you. I’ll meet the right person at some point.”
He caught Harry’s eye and gave him a pointed stare. Harry realized that he’d handed the Galleons to the apothecary on pure automatic and that Neville needed to get past him and to the counter with his own handful of what looked like dried beetles. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped out of the way.
“Come around some time, Harry, yeah?” Neville asked as he dumped the beetles on the counter.
“Sure,” Harry mumbled, and ducked out, the daisy roots nearly burning his hand.
*
“And you don’t want to try again with Ginny?” Ron gave him a sympathetic look as he drank from the mug of butterbeer in his hand. “I suppose I can’t blame you for that, mate. She never did get over being left behind when we went, you know where.”
“Yeah.” They were near the fire in the Leaky Cauldron. Harry nursed his own Firewhisky and shrugged. “No. I think that things are best left as they are. She said I was distant when we tried to date, and she was right.”
“Well, not all of us can meet the right one at eleven.” Ron smiled reminiscently into his mug and then drained it and stood up. “Speaking of which, I’ll have a long night of words unless I get home soon. Take care of yourself, Harry.”
“Sure thing, Ron. Give my best to Hermione.” Hermione was studying frantically for a legal exam she needed to pass to join the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Harry would have asked Ron to pass on his good luck wishes as well, but it wasn’t like Hermione needed them.
“Will do.” Ron nudged open the door of the Leaky Cauldron, and Harry hid a grimace as flakes blew in. But the door shut soon afterwards, and he was left to the fire and the warmth of the whisky in his belly.
Harry drank slowly, intending to savor it before he headed out into the winter storm himself to Apparate. Someone dropped into the chair Ron had left behind and Harry looked up, prepared to tell them that he was leaving and they could have the table.
Words died in his mouth when he saw it was Neville. Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the steady pulsing in his chest. That was done. That was gone and over with. It had been three years since the Battle of Hogwarts. Dating Ginny had been a year-long experiment. Neville probably never even thought of their night together except as a drunken mistake.
Harry’s pulse didn’t want to listen to him.
“Ron and Hermione aren’t here?” Neville asked. He sounded as if he was continuing a conversation he and Harry had interrupted just yesterday. He leaned back with his own mug of Firewhisky steaming in his hand and looked around the Leaky Cauldron as if searching for Harry’s friends under tables or chairs.
“No. Um.” Harry cleared his throat and ignored the temptation to sit here and talk to Neville all night. He knew it would lead to nothing good. “Hermione has an important legal exam tomorrow and Ron went home to support her.”
Neville grinned. “Is that right?” He took another drink, and added, without any sign that the words were significant to him in any way, “And you don’t have someone to go home to?”
Harry strangled the hope that was growing up in him. Neville wasn’t cruel. He wouldn’t do that if he honestly thought Harry was lonely or should be with someone. He hadn’t even known Harry was dating Ginny that time they met in the apothecary.
And how pathetic was it that every detail of that meeting was etched on Harry’s mind, to the time that he frequently replayed it for himself?
Harry grimaced as he acknowledged that, yeah, he fancied Neville. But it couldn’t go on like this. It had been long enough.
“Harry?”
Neville was studying him with intense, intent eyes. Harry put down his mug and stood up with a small smile. “I do have someone, actually. We haven’t wanted to make it official yet, what with all the papers and that. But he’s lovely.”
“He.” Neville blinked.
You should fucking well know that I like blokes, Harry thought, but he kept all mention of that off his face. Neville probably never even thought of their drunken shag on the night of the battle. Harry just nodded with a small, easy smile. “Yeah, he’s a Muggleborn. Went back and hid in the Muggle world when things started getting bad during the war, finished his schooling at Beauxbatons. He only came back to Britain a few months ago.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this.”
“Wanted to stay out of the papers, like I said.” Harry made sure that his voice was gentle and inoffensive, while he wanted to cuff Neville around the ears. Of course he wouldn’t have heard of the boyfriend Harry had just made up. But he shouldn’t have forgotten what lay between them, either.
“Oh. Good night, Harry.”
And Neville stood up and bustled off into the crowd that filled the Leaky Cauldron. Harry watched him go until he realized that he was watching Neville’s shoulders and arse and not sniffing in disdain the way he should, at which point he shook his head sharply and turned back to his Firewhisky.
He did go home, but only after long minutes had passed and he was sure that he wouldn’t encounter Neville on the way.
*
“What’s this thing Neville said about you having a boyfriend?”
Harry shrugged. He was at Ron and Hermione’s flat, lounging on the gigantic couch that Ron had fallen in love with at a Muggle department store. “I told him that I had one, a Muggleborn who lived in the Muggle world and went to Beauxbatons.”
“But why, Harry? You don’t.”
Harry rolled his eyes. He’d never told his friends about the night he and Neville had spent together, because Neville hadn’t, either. He was probably embarrassed by it. “He sounded-as though he pitied me for not having someone to go home to.”
“Oh, Harry.” Hermione was a lot happier now that she wasn’t studying day and night for that legal exam and had managed to pass it, but she still gave him an absolutely exasperated glance. “You know as well as I do that Neville wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Not on purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
Harry glanced away. “You weren’t there. He made it sound as though there was something horrible about it. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but that was the way it was.” And Merlin, things would be easier if he could tell Ron and Hermione that he was pining after Neville.
But he still couldn’t, because it was private and it was pathetic. He had to let Hermione reassure him that Neville hadn’t meant it that way, and then he had to change the subject, so he wouldn’t have to hear more about it.
*
Harry opened his door to a knock late at night, yawning pointedly. It was probably one of the Weasleys, since few other people in the wizarding world actually knew where he lived, and Harry wanted them to know that he didn’t appreciate being awoken at this hour.
To his surprise, Neville was standing there, jaw thrust out the way it had been when he killed Nagini. “I need to talk to you, Harry.”
That was ruder than Neville was most of the time, too, but Harry didn’t see any point in acknowledging that. He simply nodded and opened the door further. “Come in, please, Neville.” In case there was someone else passing by who did happen to know where his house was, he didn’t want them to think something untoward was happening between him and Neville.
Neville stepped into the drawing room and glanced around once before focusing on Harry. Harry tried to ignore the way that his heartbeat picked up, and told himself again and again that their night together hadn’t meant anything to Neville.
“Hermione told me that you made your boyfriend up.”
“Gee, my thanks to Hermione.” Harry scowled. Hermione had probably noticed something in the way Harry talked about Neville that he didn’t want her to, or maybe she had thought she was preventing some kind of fight when Neville found out the truth. “Why do you care?”
“I want to date you.”
Harry stared at him in silent shock. Neville looked back, not wavering. At one point he would have stammered and blushed the way he had when they were kids.
The way he did after our night, Harry thought, and that gave him the bitter strength to say, “That’s a change of tune from it wouldn’t work out and we shouldn’t have done this.”
“I didn’t mean it exactly like that.”
“Funny. It sure sounded like you did.”
“Bloody hell, Harry. I woke up and you were still asleep, and all I could think was-” Neville swallowed. “All I could think was that someone would accuse me of having seduced you, and you were dating Ginny before the war and she would want her boyfriend back, and you were magnificent and I couldn’t have you.”
Harry stared at him. “I thought you weren’t one of those people who saw me as some kind of hero.”
“It had nothing to do with that!” Neville snapped, and then he grinned a little, that shy grin Harry had been dreaming about for three years. “All right, a little to do with that. But you have no idea what I felt when you showed up in the Room of Requirement.”
“No,” Harry whispered. His heart was pounding pretty hard again. “You thought I would regret being with you, so you decided to push me away before I could do it?”
“I thought it would hurt less,” Neville said softly. “That doesn’t excuse it, but that’s the way I thought. I’m sorry. But I did think that when you started dating Ginny again I’d been right, and you were going to marry her and have all the little red-haired kids that you’d been dreaming about.”
“You don’t know very much about my dreams if you think that.” Harry was aware that his voice had roughened.
Neville had heard it, too. He turned towards Harry, his eyes incandescent. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” Harry took a step forwards, and then Neville crossed the distance, or he had, and they were in each other’s arms and kissing the way Harry had dreamed about for three years.
It was a different kind of warmth that banished the hovering, fuzzy warmth he’d been dreaming about, and replaced it with something better, a blazing life that made Harry sigh into Neville’s mouth. Neville pressed him against an object that turned out to be the wall and kissed him harder.
“Want to go to bed?” Neville asked, panting at last, pulling back, and Harry’s head was spinning in a way that had nothing to do with Firewhisky.
“Hell, yeah,” Harry said. He wanted to fuck Neville, suck Neville, touch him all over, but he also wanted a memory to replace the yearning ones he’d been carrying around for years.
Neville grinned at him, and led the way.
*
When Harry woke in the morning, he kept his eyes closed for a moment. The last thing he could stand was if he opened them and Neville said the same words again.
But when he turned his head, there was the sound of soft breathing beside him, and when he opened his eyes, Neville was smiling, waiting for him, silent and patient.
Harry pressed close against his side and claimed a kiss. The memories were washing away, and his chest was alive with heat, and there were so many things they could do in the light of day, in the light of the years ahead.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1072629.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Neville, Harry/Ginny
Content Notes: Angst, drunken sex, technically underage, minor background pairings
Rating: R
Wordcount:4600
Summary: Harry can’t stop thinking about the night he and Neville shared after the Battle of Hogwarts. And he can’t stop thinking about the way it seems to linger, ruining the other relationships he attempts. But that doesn’t mean he fancies Neville. It can’t.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year.
The Bloke Harry Definitely Doesn’t Fancy
“You were brilliant, Harry, leaping out of Hagrid’s arms and proclaiming you were alive like that.”
Harry turned to smile at Neville. They were seated at the Gryffindor table, or what was the Gryffindor table on an ordinary day, and relief was rising from everyone like steam. And so was laughter. Given the ale and the mead and the Firewhisky that the house-elves had rolled out of the cellars, it was no wonder.
“You were pretty brilliant yourself, Mr. ‘Let Me Chop Off a Giant Snake’s Head Like I Do It Every Day.’”
Neville laughed and took another pull of his Firewhisky. Harry watched the line of his shoulders, and the bulge of his muscles, and the bob of his throat. Why not? They were all friends here, and there was no one to stare at him and see where his eyes were going.
For a little while, Ginny distracted him from the conversation with Neville. Harry held her with one arm around her shoulders, sighing into her hair and letting her talk about Fred. But she left, and Harry watched her go but didn’t join her. Despite all the people who had died, right now he couldn’t think of this as a night of mourning. He just couldn’t.
“Harry.”
There was something heavier about Neville’s voice that made Harry turn back and brace himself for a discussion that would bring up mourning, after all. But Neville was simply watching him with a complicated expression. Harry didn’t know what he was about to say.
“Can I talk to you outside the Great Hall? Maybe-maybe on the stairs up to Gryffindor Tower?”
Harry nodded. It did seem like Neville had something he wanted to confess. Something that had to do with hiding in Hogwarts in the Room of Requirement, maybe. Not that Harry could blame him for anything that he’d done to survive. “Sure. Give me a minute to finish this.” He held up his own mug, and Neville flashed him a smile that seemed at least understanding and got up to leave. Whatever it was must not be all that urgent, then.
As Harry had silently anticipated, it took him a lot longer to cross the Great Hall. Some people had stopped Neville to shake his hand. But everyone wanted to talk to Harry, and he finally ducked out into the corridor feeling like he might need Madam Pomfrey to set his wrist.
Neville was pacing back and forth in the corridor, frowning in the shadows of the torches. He seemed nervous, almost. Harry shook his head as he drew closer. He wondered if this was going to be about Ginny, and whether Neville wanted to ask her on a date and thought Harry would be upset.
“What is it, Nev?”
Neville turned around, saw him, and gained that same expression of determination that he’d had when he approached Nagini. He reached out and drew Harry into the shadows of the torches with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry went with him, a little apprehensive now. There were so few things that Neville would want to do or say out of sight of the Great Hall.
And then Harry learned that his count had been too low by one.
Neville set Harry’s back against the wall, searched his eyes for a second, and then leaned in and kissed him firmly.
Harry’s head spun as Neville’s tongue slowly traveled along the curve of his lips, and Neville sighed and his fingers flexed back and forth. Yet despite how nervous he’d seemed, he didn’t back off, and his movements were slow and confident.
And Harry, vision swimming with warmth and wonder and the fact that it was the celebration night and it felt as if everything was permitted, kissed him back.
Neville gasped aloud as Harry’s tongue lapped along his and pulled back. Harry looked him in the eye, calm in the way Neville had been so short a time before, and smiled as Neville blinked at him from under tousled hair.
“What? Did you think I would turn away from you? Never, Nev.”
“Harry…”
Neville kissed him again, and then began guiding him up and along the stairs that led to Gryffindor Tower. Harry went willingly, his head entirely occupied by the feel of Neville’s chest and shoulders under his hands. How tall he’d grown. How direct and steady his brown eyes were now, and how Harry could make them glazed with warmth by just the tiniest movements, the smallest ones.
Neville finally brought them into what must be the seventh-year boys’ bedroom, and the bed that must be his. It had a flowering plant beside it despite the amount of time Neville had spent hiding in the Room of Requirement. Harry, sprawled back on the bed, panting and smiling, thought that was entirely typical.
Neville crawled in next to him and stared down at him with eyes as wide as the moon. Harry leaned up and kissed him, and that seemed to remove the last of Neville’s doubt. His hands went to work exploring Harry, and soon relieving him of his clothes.
It didn’t seem fair to Harry that Neville should be the only one having all the fun, so he joined in. Neville’s shirt and trousers joined the pile on the floor, and then Harry pulled his pants down and blinked.
“Bloody hell, Nev.”
“It’s okay?”
Harry grinned. He hadn’t heard Neville sound that uncertain since he came back to Hogwarts. He reached out and stroked Neville’s cock, and watched as it twitched a little. Flushed red to the tip and larger than his, it was a sight that made his mouth water.
“More than.” And Harry had had a thought, something that had to do with his mouth watering.
He slithered down the bed, making Neville blink at him again, and then spread Neville’s muscled thighs. He licked once at the red cock, which bobbed, and was joined by the bob of Neville’s throat above him. Harry found that a lot more enticing than it had been when he was watching Neville swallow Firewhisky.
“Harry-what are you-”
Harry winked at Neville and swallowed him down, ignoring the way he made shocked noises and arched. This was the life, he thought dreamily, the warm haze of the alcohol joined by the warmth in his mouth. A big bloke in his throat and the surprised grunts and then moans that escaped him as he abandoned himself more and more to what Harry could do with his mouth.
Neville, being Neville, reached down to try and urge Harry off him when he started to come. Harry swallowed, delighted to discover that it didn’t taste that bad and that he didn’t gag and cough. The few mumbled stories Ron had shared about his time with Lavender had made that seem inevitable.
Maybe it was different because it was two blokes, but Harry thought that was probably just because it was Neville.
He climbed back up the bed and kissed Neville, which made him splutter, probably from the taste. Then Harry arranged Neville’s legs and deflated cock to his liking, and started rocking on top of him. He sighed as Neville reached up and gripped his shoulders, which made it feel better.
“Harry-don’t you want-”
“I want you to move your thigh to the right so I can rub off against it.”
Neville did that, but he also went on staring at Harry, so intense and bright that Harry found he literally couldn’t face it. He buried his head in the side of Neville’s neck and shuddered as Neville’s leg flexed and Harry rubbed against him, pressure and heat that built and built until he-
Tossed his head back and came with a hiss that, from the look on Neville’s face, at least wasn’t Parseltongue. Neville’s arms tightened around him, and he held Harry close, not letting him withdraw any more than Harry had let him go when he had his own orgasm.
Harry finally shook out the last tremors, and sighed. “What do you want to do now?” he murmured into Neville’s hair.
Neville stroked up his neck and down his sides, as if he was memorizing the way Harry felt. “I want you to stay right here. And I want to go to sleep.”
Harry chuckled. “I think I can do that.” His eyes slid closed, and he honestly wasn’t sure when the warm, fuzzy happiness faded into warm, fuzzy darkness, or if he actually had heard the words that he thought Neville whispered to him.
“You’re amazing.”
*
“Um. Good morning, Harry.”
Harry opened his eyes slowly and turned his head. The curtains of Neville’s bed were open, and he was standing next to it, staring down at Harry. His face was dark because of the sunlight behind him, and maybe because Harry’s head was ringing like a gong. But he did become aware that Neville’s voice was slow and hesitant.
“Good morning, Neville,” Harry said, and sat up slowly, looking around. He couldn’t see any of their other roommates, but then, given the way the party had been heading last night, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were actually waking up in other beds.
“I-I don’t know that we should have done that last night.”
Even though Harry had been partially prepared for something like this because of the slow way Neville was speaking, the words still rammed into him as though someone had tossed a Muggle bomb. He blinked his eyes and managed to work his way through the agony of being rejected. He said, in what he thought sounded like a normal voice, “Okay. I can accept that. Is there a way that I can leave without implicating you?”
“Er. Implicating?”
Neville sounded uncertain, the way he only had when he was in Snape’s class. God, I upset him so much that I made him regress. Harry swallowed back the many, many things he wanted to say, and just inclined his head. “Yeah. If this was a mistake, then I think you probably wouldn’t want to be seen with me, right?”
Neville was biting his lip and running his hand through his hair when Harry glanced at him again. “Yes, I suppose so.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m not exactly experienced in this kind of thing.”
“Neither am I,” Harry said, before he could think better of it.
“Oh.” Neville’s voice was very soft. He stared at the floor, then at Harry. “Do you even like blokes?”
“I think I like both blokes and birds.” Harry kept his head averted a little as he stood up and reached for his shoes. He would go and find a potion for the hangover he appeared to have acquired. He would go further than that to nurse the pain that had sprung to life in his chest. “Never had a chance to find out before the war.”
“Oh. I-I, Harry, I’m sorry, but it just wouldn’t work out.”
Harry forced his tongue to work, because Neville sounded so anxious that he was going to upset Harry. Of course, he was right, but Harry could do him the grace of pretending. “It’s okay, Nev.” He slid his shoes on and then dragged his shirt on. Apparently he’d never taken his trousers off last night, so that was at least something.
Never took those off, but you were on your knees for him, weren’t you?
Maybe that was why Neville didn’t want to be seen with him now, or date him. Maybe he thought of Harry as some kind of slag.
A fresh wave of shame tried to wash over Harry. He ignored it the way he’d learned to ignore people snickering and whispering about him being the Heir of Slytherin, or Dudley’s freak of a cousin. “I’ll go down the stairs first, okay? Then you can follow whenever you want.”
“Wait, Harry-”
“No hard feelings, Neville.” Harry found his glasses and walked away, heading down the stairs and being careful of any jolt that might stir the broken shards he was carrying around in his chest.
*
It was ridiculous to still be so hung up on one night with Neville, Harry scolded himself as he sat by the fireplace in the Burrow with Ginny in his arms. So he thought about it now and then, and his breath had caught when he saw a picture of Neville on the front page of the Daily Prophet as one of the “hidden heroes of Hogwarts.” Those were reactions that might be normal for someone who had spent his first night with another bloke and then been rejected.
Like Harry had told Neville, he didn’t have any experience with this kind of thing.
“Harry? You seem like you’re flying on a broom without me.”
Harry blinked and focused on Ginny, soft and warm against his chest. She was the one he was dating, he reminded himself firmly. And after the way he had dashed off on the “grand adventure” of the Horcrux hunt and left her behind, he wanted to be especially careful. It would be easy to annoy her by seeming distant.
“Nothing, Ginny,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear and kissing her there, which made her beam up at him. Harry casually turned his eyes away from the front page of the paper that Mr. Weasley was reading across the room. “So tell me about trying out for the Harpies the way you want to do.”
*
“Harry? What are you doing here?”
Harry grimaced into the tub of chopped daisy roots in front of him, and then glanced over his shoulder and nodded casually. “Hi, Neville. Just grabbing a few of the ingredients that I need for some potions.” He used the scoop to find the amount of roots he needed and then walked briskly towards the counter at the front of the apothecary.
For someone who’d worried about being seen with Harry, Neville seemed pretty eager to match his stride to Harry’s. Maybe that was only when he was ashamed about the sex they’d had, Harry thought. “How are things working out with Ginny?”
“Oh.” Harry tipped the roots onto the counter and ignored the greedy silence of the apothecary as he listened. He didn’t mind sharing this, since neither Neville nor the apothecary would get any new gossip. “It didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Neville did sound startled, and sorry. He must have ignored the papers for a while, which had gleefully reported on the breakup. “So are you dating anyone else?”
Harry focused ferociously on the roots and digging out the right amount of Galleons. Why did he have to rub it in like that?
But, of course, Neville was too nice to do something like that. He was probably anxious for Harry’s happiness, and thought that he couldn’t have it unless he was dating someone. That was true of lots of people.
It wasn’t true of Harry. He did like both blokes and birds, but whenever he’d been in bed with Ginny, all he could think of was the instinctive, right-feeling warmth he’d had with Neville. He’d tried to talk himself out of it any old way, including that he had probably been drunk and mistaking the alcohol for some feeling of rightness. It hadn’t worked.
“No,” Harry said, after a pause that he knew was too long. It had been long enough for Neville to look at him in concern, anyway, and for the apothecary to take an inordinate amount of time measuring out the daisy roots. “I’ll probably meet someone at some point.” He stretched his lips and made himself smile at Neville. “What about you?”
“No one.” Neville gave an unconcerned shrug. “Gran thinks I should be married already. Mum and Dad were, by my age. But I’m like you. I’ll meet the right person at some point.”
He caught Harry’s eye and gave him a pointed stare. Harry realized that he’d handed the Galleons to the apothecary on pure automatic and that Neville needed to get past him and to the counter with his own handful of what looked like dried beetles. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped out of the way.
“Come around some time, Harry, yeah?” Neville asked as he dumped the beetles on the counter.
“Sure,” Harry mumbled, and ducked out, the daisy roots nearly burning his hand.
*
“And you don’t want to try again with Ginny?” Ron gave him a sympathetic look as he drank from the mug of butterbeer in his hand. “I suppose I can’t blame you for that, mate. She never did get over being left behind when we went, you know where.”
“Yeah.” They were near the fire in the Leaky Cauldron. Harry nursed his own Firewhisky and shrugged. “No. I think that things are best left as they are. She said I was distant when we tried to date, and she was right.”
“Well, not all of us can meet the right one at eleven.” Ron smiled reminiscently into his mug and then drained it and stood up. “Speaking of which, I’ll have a long night of words unless I get home soon. Take care of yourself, Harry.”
“Sure thing, Ron. Give my best to Hermione.” Hermione was studying frantically for a legal exam she needed to pass to join the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Harry would have asked Ron to pass on his good luck wishes as well, but it wasn’t like Hermione needed them.
“Will do.” Ron nudged open the door of the Leaky Cauldron, and Harry hid a grimace as flakes blew in. But the door shut soon afterwards, and he was left to the fire and the warmth of the whisky in his belly.
Harry drank slowly, intending to savor it before he headed out into the winter storm himself to Apparate. Someone dropped into the chair Ron had left behind and Harry looked up, prepared to tell them that he was leaving and they could have the table.
Words died in his mouth when he saw it was Neville. Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the steady pulsing in his chest. That was done. That was gone and over with. It had been three years since the Battle of Hogwarts. Dating Ginny had been a year-long experiment. Neville probably never even thought of their night together except as a drunken mistake.
Harry’s pulse didn’t want to listen to him.
“Ron and Hermione aren’t here?” Neville asked. He sounded as if he was continuing a conversation he and Harry had interrupted just yesterday. He leaned back with his own mug of Firewhisky steaming in his hand and looked around the Leaky Cauldron as if searching for Harry’s friends under tables or chairs.
“No. Um.” Harry cleared his throat and ignored the temptation to sit here and talk to Neville all night. He knew it would lead to nothing good. “Hermione has an important legal exam tomorrow and Ron went home to support her.”
Neville grinned. “Is that right?” He took another drink, and added, without any sign that the words were significant to him in any way, “And you don’t have someone to go home to?”
Harry strangled the hope that was growing up in him. Neville wasn’t cruel. He wouldn’t do that if he honestly thought Harry was lonely or should be with someone. He hadn’t even known Harry was dating Ginny that time they met in the apothecary.
And how pathetic was it that every detail of that meeting was etched on Harry’s mind, to the time that he frequently replayed it for himself?
Harry grimaced as he acknowledged that, yeah, he fancied Neville. But it couldn’t go on like this. It had been long enough.
“Harry?”
Neville was studying him with intense, intent eyes. Harry put down his mug and stood up with a small smile. “I do have someone, actually. We haven’t wanted to make it official yet, what with all the papers and that. But he’s lovely.”
“He.” Neville blinked.
You should fucking well know that I like blokes, Harry thought, but he kept all mention of that off his face. Neville probably never even thought of their drunken shag on the night of the battle. Harry just nodded with a small, easy smile. “Yeah, he’s a Muggleborn. Went back and hid in the Muggle world when things started getting bad during the war, finished his schooling at Beauxbatons. He only came back to Britain a few months ago.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this.”
“Wanted to stay out of the papers, like I said.” Harry made sure that his voice was gentle and inoffensive, while he wanted to cuff Neville around the ears. Of course he wouldn’t have heard of the boyfriend Harry had just made up. But he shouldn’t have forgotten what lay between them, either.
“Oh. Good night, Harry.”
And Neville stood up and bustled off into the crowd that filled the Leaky Cauldron. Harry watched him go until he realized that he was watching Neville’s shoulders and arse and not sniffing in disdain the way he should, at which point he shook his head sharply and turned back to his Firewhisky.
He did go home, but only after long minutes had passed and he was sure that he wouldn’t encounter Neville on the way.
*
“What’s this thing Neville said about you having a boyfriend?”
Harry shrugged. He was at Ron and Hermione’s flat, lounging on the gigantic couch that Ron had fallen in love with at a Muggle department store. “I told him that I had one, a Muggleborn who lived in the Muggle world and went to Beauxbatons.”
“But why, Harry? You don’t.”
Harry rolled his eyes. He’d never told his friends about the night he and Neville had spent together, because Neville hadn’t, either. He was probably embarrassed by it. “He sounded-as though he pitied me for not having someone to go home to.”
“Oh, Harry.” Hermione was a lot happier now that she wasn’t studying day and night for that legal exam and had managed to pass it, but she still gave him an absolutely exasperated glance. “You know as well as I do that Neville wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Not on purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
Harry glanced away. “You weren’t there. He made it sound as though there was something horrible about it. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but that was the way it was.” And Merlin, things would be easier if he could tell Ron and Hermione that he was pining after Neville.
But he still couldn’t, because it was private and it was pathetic. He had to let Hermione reassure him that Neville hadn’t meant it that way, and then he had to change the subject, so he wouldn’t have to hear more about it.
*
Harry opened his door to a knock late at night, yawning pointedly. It was probably one of the Weasleys, since few other people in the wizarding world actually knew where he lived, and Harry wanted them to know that he didn’t appreciate being awoken at this hour.
To his surprise, Neville was standing there, jaw thrust out the way it had been when he killed Nagini. “I need to talk to you, Harry.”
That was ruder than Neville was most of the time, too, but Harry didn’t see any point in acknowledging that. He simply nodded and opened the door further. “Come in, please, Neville.” In case there was someone else passing by who did happen to know where his house was, he didn’t want them to think something untoward was happening between him and Neville.
Neville stepped into the drawing room and glanced around once before focusing on Harry. Harry tried to ignore the way that his heartbeat picked up, and told himself again and again that their night together hadn’t meant anything to Neville.
“Hermione told me that you made your boyfriend up.”
“Gee, my thanks to Hermione.” Harry scowled. Hermione had probably noticed something in the way Harry talked about Neville that he didn’t want her to, or maybe she had thought she was preventing some kind of fight when Neville found out the truth. “Why do you care?”
“I want to date you.”
Harry stared at him in silent shock. Neville looked back, not wavering. At one point he would have stammered and blushed the way he had when they were kids.
The way he did after our night, Harry thought, and that gave him the bitter strength to say, “That’s a change of tune from it wouldn’t work out and we shouldn’t have done this.”
“I didn’t mean it exactly like that.”
“Funny. It sure sounded like you did.”
“Bloody hell, Harry. I woke up and you were still asleep, and all I could think was-” Neville swallowed. “All I could think was that someone would accuse me of having seduced you, and you were dating Ginny before the war and she would want her boyfriend back, and you were magnificent and I couldn’t have you.”
Harry stared at him. “I thought you weren’t one of those people who saw me as some kind of hero.”
“It had nothing to do with that!” Neville snapped, and then he grinned a little, that shy grin Harry had been dreaming about for three years. “All right, a little to do with that. But you have no idea what I felt when you showed up in the Room of Requirement.”
“No,” Harry whispered. His heart was pounding pretty hard again. “You thought I would regret being with you, so you decided to push me away before I could do it?”
“I thought it would hurt less,” Neville said softly. “That doesn’t excuse it, but that’s the way I thought. I’m sorry. But I did think that when you started dating Ginny again I’d been right, and you were going to marry her and have all the little red-haired kids that you’d been dreaming about.”
“You don’t know very much about my dreams if you think that.” Harry was aware that his voice had roughened.
Neville had heard it, too. He turned towards Harry, his eyes incandescent. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” Harry took a step forwards, and then Neville crossed the distance, or he had, and they were in each other’s arms and kissing the way Harry had dreamed about for three years.
It was a different kind of warmth that banished the hovering, fuzzy warmth he’d been dreaming about, and replaced it with something better, a blazing life that made Harry sigh into Neville’s mouth. Neville pressed him against an object that turned out to be the wall and kissed him harder.
“Want to go to bed?” Neville asked, panting at last, pulling back, and Harry’s head was spinning in a way that had nothing to do with Firewhisky.
“Hell, yeah,” Harry said. He wanted to fuck Neville, suck Neville, touch him all over, but he also wanted a memory to replace the yearning ones he’d been carrying around for years.
Neville grinned at him, and led the way.
*
When Harry woke in the morning, he kept his eyes closed for a moment. The last thing he could stand was if he opened them and Neville said the same words again.
But when he turned his head, there was the sound of soft breathing beside him, and when he opened his eyes, Neville was smiling, waiting for him, silent and patient.
Harry pressed close against his side and claimed a kiss. The memories were washing away, and his chest was alive with heat, and there were so many things they could do in the light of day, in the light of the years ahead.
The End.
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