Midlands
He rode long and hard enough to discover his love of horseback riding had its limits. The first stallion he rode was a chestnut beauty and carried his weight effortlessly as they raced out and away from the capital City. Harry thought himself skilled but Harry tired before the horse did. Long before he spotted a coded sign and stopped at what could have been any barn to swap out the now exhausted horse for a dark gray replacement. Harry swapped out his clothes as well, hiding away anything that marked him as high born or military. He could have been any man, any farmer. Except his horse was thoroughbred and he took off at top speed once more. Those who saw him would mark him. Would tell others of his passing.
It was part of the plan. The trade off of being conspicuous was he could outrun those who would chase him.
They would chase him. Once they realized he was missing. If they realized who he was.
Maybe they wouldn’t have, if Harry had stuck to the actual plan. Said the words Lupin wrote for him. Done what he’d been told, like he had always been so good at doing.
Too late for that. Too late for anything but clinging to the horse underneath him even as his body ached and his mind drooped and parts of him grew numb.
He had to sleep after the third horse. He’d been up longer than he could say and was worse off for it. But he woke when the rooster crowed and he was back up and riding at top speed.
Harry maintained the pace as long as he could, always wearing out before the horses. Harry was as stubborn as the horses were well trained, and so they all powered on longer than would be wise. Harry found motivation from every distant noise that vaguely reminded him of battle. He found motivation in the morning fog and dark twilight, each prickling his skin from fear of ambush.
Strangely, he felt nothing the two times he actually encountered troops. His chest was ice cold when he spotted them. Perhaps the gaze he gave them was the same. Soulless and brutal. A threat so clear that the soldiers escorting their supplies down the highway averted their eyes. Better that than to challenge so dangerous a man. Even if he traveled where he did not belong.
In any case, Harry rode faster after passing them. Not with the fear of the unknown. Even sore and numb on top of his horse, he could kill those bands of soldiers. The same way he’d cut down everyone else who ever came against him. But the children conscripted into service weren’t his enemies. And whoever was would be after him, chasing him down in the hopes they could stop him from becoming something they would fear.
On the third day Harry reached his destination. He couldn’t say how far he’d gone. They’d shown him the map, but what sense was a map of unknown southern lands. Sirius hadn’t lived long enough to teach him what the lines on it meant or how long it took to travel the distances. His body ached too hard for his heartache to have any impact.
The first gate was crafted from lopsided stone, an ancient structure that delineated the point between spaces rather than serve as an effective barrier. Inside it were small huts and houses. Pins of livestock and chickens. The lives in between fields and the household that ruled them.
The second gate was stern. Maybe as ancient, at least the bottom layer. Stones of a different color stacked higher up, raising the defenses. The gate was rusty on its hinges, but beyond that were layers that could fortify the defense. In another era, before the country was consolidated to obey one king, this had been a stronghold meant to defend itself even as it was surrounded on all sides by potential enemies.
The building inside must be called a castle. It certainly was a fortress. But it was not imposing like Hogwarts had been. It was not elegant like the king’s home. It seemed to be built piecemeal, with each addition a new shape or style, expanding the castle far beyond its original footprint so that some features crowded up against the walls. One tower might even have been leaning.
Whatever this place was, it was where they’d agreed to meet. Where, apparently, everyone decided they should be. Made evident by the people waiting in the courtyard who must have had a look out to notify them of his arrival. An entire crowd to welcome Harry as he all but fell off the final horse.
Harry’s legs nearly gave out underneath him but he stumbled forward before they could. Right into Lupin, who held his arms out for him. Harry didn’t think he’d have hesitated even if he could. Still, he was thankful he couldn’t. Thankful his exhaustion took away the choice, and just let him fall into Lupin’s arms. Just let him accept that warm smile and embrace filled with sincere encouragement.
It must have been adrenaline that got Harry back to steady on his feet. A spike in energy that let him accept a hug from Ron and an affection backslap from Dennis. Let him say what must have been words to what must have been people he couldn’t remember. Had him acknowledge the familiar face of Hermoine and the woman with the violet hair, all the way down from Hogwarts. And the unfamiliar faces of everyone else. Got him walking through the well-loved lopsided castle, with its well-loved faded and dented furnishing, and well-loved paintings of affable ancestors sprouting freckles and red hair. Took him as far as a sitting chair at the head of a long table, more comfortable than any work chair had a right to be.
Everyone around him was working. Everyone had something to say. Near everyone asking Harry questions. His adrenaline failed him when it came time to talk. The journey had been too long and left him too weary. He fell asleep at the table to the sound of all his friends planning. He tried his best not to listen to whether they were planning for war.
They let him sleep, but the rest was short-lived. He woke up in a bed in what must have been morning, the sound of someone knocking at the door. Dennis, coming to collect him. Harry could have asked Dennis what was happening, and likely Dennis would have told him. But Harry had left any comfortable conversation in the north and he had no questions as he followed Dennis into the day.
Everyone kept talking. They talked around him. Sometimes they asked questions. Harry had no answers. He had only Lupin and Ron, who could steer every question away from him. He had Dennis, a constant shadow who made sure Harry had food and water. Going so far as to put it in Harry’s hand if Harry forgot the sustenance was there.
At some point, Harry must have told them what had happened. What he did. If not what Snape had accused him of.
Charging across the country for three days had been easier than following the conversation that followed. Gradually, everyone seemed to realize he was done. They left him alone. At least, as long as they could.
It was always Lupin who would force the issue. Put some question to Harry, some decision only Harry could make. Like at Hogwarts, when he’d forced Harry to decide life and death as if Harry had the right to make those choices. In those moments, everyone paused. Maybe they deferred to Harry because Lupin deferred. Or maybe, they knew who Harry’s father was and believed it was his call to make. Or maybe, they had stood at his side in battle and against all odds lived through it and after so many non-deaths there was nothing to believe in but the men beside you and so now they looked to him again.
How could Harry say anything. He didn’t even know what was happening around him. He hadn’t even known what he was doing when he spoke from the heart to the king. To the people who followed the king. He just wanted enough food to eat, not to go to war.
Harry stormed out of the room, decisions unmade behind him. Someone must have told the others to let him go.
By the time Harry made it outside he was stumbling again. A night’s rest wasn’t enough to heal his aches. Just long enough to sink them deeper into his bones. Stubbornly he trudged onward, wishing he was oblivious to the uncertain glances cast his way. He only went as far as an outbuilding. The stables, Harry thought. He was thankful to confirm his suspicion. The shuffling of horses’ hoofs and occasional huff and snort soothed Harry. Gentle noises to ease his nerves.
Harry wandered inside. He eyed each stall as he passed it, taking in the beautiful creatures. Clearly, they were as well-loved as everything else in the Weasley’s household, but these weren’t old odds and ends stacked together. They were some of the finest beasts Harry had ever seen.
He meandered until he found the one that had carried him the final leg of his journey. A beautiful white mare, smaller than the other horses Harry’s ridden but equally fierce. She’d been laying on a straw bed but she ambled up to standing. Harry leaned against the door to her stall and she drew herself to a man still unfamiliar despite the time they spent together. Harry held out an apple he’d snagged from a bin by the door and the horse took it eagerly. Tentatively, Harry pet her. She reacted by butting up against his hand playfully, pushing until her nose nudged Harry’s shoulder. Harry laughed then buried both his hands into her mane to scratch at her head.
“Oy!” a brusk voice called out from further in the stables. Harry pulled back immediately, embarrassed to have overlooked another person in the space. He turned immediately to said person and saw the most freckled man in the world. The brown dots ran down his face, curved over his neck, and spread down the man’s exceptionally toned shoulders. He was sweaty so the dirt speckling him stuck liberally and it was hard to know where his freckles ended. He wore sturdy trousers tucked into work boots, but at some point his shirt had been discarded. Possibly sweated through or covered in more muck than was worth wearing. Harry didn’t blame himself for looking at the man. Hard. “What are you doing here?” the man snapped Harry out of his daze.
Instinct told Harry to lift his hands away from the horse to prove himself unarmed. “Saying thank you to this one,” he nodded at the mare. A lie to cover the fact that he was hiding, but it came easy because it felt like what he ought to have done and he was glad he got the chance.
The excuse wasn’t a welcome one. Bushy brows narrowed and thin lips pinched. Anger or frustration led to a clenched jaw that enhanced the lines of the man’s broad face. Harry couldn’t help staring as the man stalked towards him. Even while the man’s fist squeezed a wrought iron hook at his side. A hoof pick, easily turned weapon. Harry noted the muscles flexing along the man’s arms as he clenched his fists around the tool. Those arms put Harry’s soldiers to shame. Harry knew how to take a hit, but he wasn’t certain he could take it from this man. Even if a dip in his gut told him there were other things he’d be perfectly eager to take.
“So you’re the bloke determined to kill off my horses, are ya?” the man was growling. Nonsense words that sounded good in his rough tenor.
Harry did have enough sense to judge himself for ogling the stranger. The stable hand was angry, flustered, rearing for a fight. There must be so many things wrong in Harry’s head that he didn’t care. That is, in addition to all the things physically wrong with Harry after too much exertion after too much stress with nothing near enough sleep. Not that any of that would be an excuse for acting on his interests. Harry had only acted before when he was sure of reciprocation. Harry’s gut might be telling him yes, this is right, but the man’s glower said nothing of the sort.
Harry licked his lips. It made him look nervous but really his throat was dry. He bit his bottom lip. It made him look uncertain. That was true. Still. Not about the topic at hand. The man was talking about horses.
Harry found his words. “I didn’t hurt the horses.”
The bark of laughter was unkind. “You call running my girl into the ground not hurting her?”
Harry looked again to the mare. She was watching the humans fight, ears flickering and tail swishing. Alert, but not worried. Harry tilted a bit closer to her so he could look into her stall and see her whole body. “Where’s she injured?” he didn’t mean to sound cold. He hadn't thought he’d worry enough about a horse to get cold over the thought he might have hurt it.
“You’re lucky she’s not injured, the way you treated her,” the man snapped on. “She was worn down and dehydrated, and you just dropped her in the courtyard like dead meat. Not to say of the state of the others you burned through. I won’t know for days if any of them made it, without care on hand to tend to them after your abuse. Assuming Voldermort’s soldiers don’t hunt them down and slaughter them. I knew it was a bad idea to help with this mad scheme, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. Don’t they teach you southern lords how to care for your horses?”
There was no feeling anything when Harry got cold. Maybe that’s why he went there, to that icy place. Maybe that’s why he settled there when this stranger scolded him for mistreating animals. Harry hadn’t known he was doing it. He hadn’t known there was a risk beyond what he put his own body through on the journey. But when he listened to the man’s words he looked back on his actions and remembered trembling, overexerted animals and their harsh breaths. He let ice run through him instead of guilt.
Which was a mistake. The ice was anger and it was too loud under Harry’s skin. When the man found a true insult it reared loud between Harry’s ears. This stranger’s judgment hung too heavy. It felt like the southern lords leering at Harry for having the wrong name. Only this was worse, because the man was angry Harry had the wrong character.
One heartless glance at the strange man and Harry let go of his doubt that he could take a punch. Harry’s perspective had shifted. This man was no one, just a body. He was tall and lean with compact muscle, but he was not trained by war. He was no bigger or stronger than the giants Harry slaughtered. No more powerful than the Gurg Harry was celebrated for killing. Harry had only a dagger but he knew how to dodge the hoof pick and shove his own metal precisely into the stable hand’s skin. Where it would puncture a vital organ or a major artery. The man would bleed out before the horses would reach true panic at their master’s death.
It was good that the man saw his death in Harry’s eyes. Good that he took a step backwards and put space between them. It gave Harry a minute to think before he did something monumentally stupid. It let Harry blink back his rage and remember the man in front of him was a person. Likely a servant to Harry’s own friend. Someone Harry had just been admiring in his own awkward way. More than a body to kill.
Harry swallowed down bile.
“I’m not southern,” he said. His voice was dull in his ears even as his heart pounded too loud. Not the point, but the only words he had. “You live too far south for me.”
The man looked Harry up and down. Harry couldn’t tell what the man saw in him but the man didn’t ease up his wary stance. Still, “You’re from the north?” the man said in an incredulous tone. “Don’t you have horses in the north?”
Harry’s eyes squeezed shut. He couldn’t push the anger down. He tried. Oh, how he tried. But this drummed up memories of a cousin almost forgotten, mocking Harry for not knowing lessons Uncle Vernon beat Harry for trying to overhear. Harry was able to stretch his mouth into something resembling a smile. More impactful for how he missed the mark. “Horses are bad for mountain fighting. Better for eating.”
The man ground his scowl down into a firm frown and held his face steady in disapproval. Eyes brown as tree trunks stared narrowly out under his bushy brows. His eyes were shiny. Like wet mud. Harry glared back defiantly. Both men digging in with their stubbornness and refusing to back down.
Despite everything, Harry caught himself staring not just in anger. He was looking at those intense brown, muddy eyes. He looked at them too long. Then too long looking at the man’s features. Too long staring at his dry, chapped lips.
Harry licked his own lips, his mouth once again dry. His scowl had faded into something else entirely. He didn’t stop staring.
The man lifted both hands to his bare waist - his trousers hung delightfully low on his hips. “You’re seriously going to nearly kill my horse, go all psycho, and then turn round and try to pull?” The man’s incredulous tone was back in full force.
Fuck, Harry thought. What the fuck. He tried to look anywhere but at the man in front of him. The man who had noticed all Harry’s staring after all. Who knew just as sure as Harry did what it had meant. “Fuck,” Harry somehow didn’t stop himself from exclaiming aloud.
“Do you just go around chatting up strangers in stables looking for a shag?” it was a toss up whether the man sounded more mocking or angry.
It was so uncommon anyone ever got angry at Harry anymore. Disappointed, sure. He got loads of that. But no one other than Snape or the King’s men had yelled in ages. Certainly not someone who wasn’t the enemy. Harry didn’t know how to handle it. He couldn’t get angry back. Couldn’t fall back into the trap of self-righteously out stubborning the stranger. Couldn’t look at this stranger as someone he was allowed to kill.
Also, aparently, it would be appreciated if he made it clear he was just really, really open to fucking.
There had to be another way to handle it. Some other thing to do.
Words crept out from the back of Harry’s mind reminding him what to do. Hell, he had practiced what to do. He wasn’t so completely out of control he couldn’t still follow instructions and pull himself out of this fucking mess. He could do this. He could absolutely do this.
He felt… the roughness of his shirt, given to him by a household that didn’t have the wealth for smooth cotton or silk. He heard… big huffs of air and the creak of floorboards as animals shifted. He smelled… dry hay and horse shit. He centered himself to the smell of literal shit. Counting deep breaths through his nose until he was calm. He named a fact: this man was angry that Harry mistreated the horses, and then he was angry Harry objectified him. Harry felt… embarrassed. Harry felt.. Shame. A twisting and souring in his gut that was beautiful because it wasn’t cold and it was so much more than anger.
Embarrassment was fine. Embarrassment was fleeting. Shame was hard, but it was fine. It wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t the threat of death. Harry didn’t want to respond to it with anger. When he thought about it he didn’t see any reason to kill someone over it. Once he realized he truly meant that he could breathe without anger tight in his chest.
He could just…
“I’m sorry,” Harry apologized.
“Sorry?” Harry tried to forgive the man his skepticism.
Harry nodded and said, “Yeah. I don’t… I wasn’t trained in horses. Not like you were talking about. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
The silence hung between them. Loaded, but not antagonistic. The air seemed to be waiting for how the man would react. If the apology would be accepted.
“Do you think,” he started, his words made slow because each word was carefully chosen, “that your ignorance is worth the lives of eight horses?”
Harry couldn’t hold back his grimace at the phrasing. He tried to parse through the facts and his feelings again but it jumbled in his mind and he didn’t have the muscles for it. “I don’t know how to measure the value of a horse. But I’ve mostly only got ignorance, and lately I’ve felt pretty worthless.” His words weren’t half as well considered, but they felt honest.
The man’s stern expression offered no slack. “You know you can go learn things so you can make better choices instead of doing harm. We make our worth.”
Harry reeled back. He had thought he could out stubborn this fellow but clearly he had underestimated his opponent. Harry tried to take another steadying breath. He tried to find a center like he’d managed just a moment ago instead of focusing on the anger radiating from the man he’d upset when he really didn’t want to.
Harry couldn’t help but remember the room with the large table and comfortably padded chair. He never wanted to go back to another room like that. He didn’t want to be tasked with learning and making better choices. He didn’t want to have to stand in front of his friends, or this stranger, and justify his worth. He didn’t want to stand in front of so many other people and have them assign a worth to him. He didn’t have a word for the sinking knot in his stomach or the slimy snarl in his chest. He wished Sirius was here so he could ask what the feelings meant. He wished Lupin was here to teach him what to do when he had them.
Something large pushed into Harry’s shoulder. He flinched back but stopped himself from lashing out before he struck at the horse next to him. The horse was still close, not wise enough to pull away from danger. Big brown eyes stared longingly at Harry. The unexpectedness of it broke Harry out of his dispiritedness. Harry cracked an authentic smile. He tutted as he reached out slowly to see if the horse would let him pet her. She did, angling her head so he could reach up and scratch her ears.
The man watched Harry a moment. “You know she just wants you to give her another apple,” he pointed out. His rye tone broke through the ill temper.
Harry offered the man an authentic smile, too. “I probably will. Apparently I treated her badly and have a lot to make up for.”
Maybe it was the shyness of Harry’s smile, or maybe the man just had a soft spot for his horses, but he finally cracked. He let the tension go and eased into a slouch. The slump of it should have lessened his physical appeal but it only made him look loose and touchable. “Nah, you’ll only spoil her that way. I think she’s ready to forgive you anyway.”
Harry glanced past the horse to meet the man’s eyes. “Is she?”
He gnawed on a lip as he considered it. “I reckon she overreacted.” Harry huffed out a laugh but didn’t push his luck. He turned back to the horse and nuzzled his face into her. He heard the man walk up closer to him until he could also reach out and scratch behind the horse’s ear, his hand very close to Harry’s. “This is Hedwig,” he cooed at the horse as his fingers slid away from Harry’s, down through the horse’s mane.
Harry pulled back to stare the horse properly in the eyes. “Hello Hedwig. I’m Harry. Thank you for getting me here safely and all that.” The horse huffed in answer, flickering her tail again. Then she butted her head against Harry’s shoulder once more and let Harry pet her. She probably did just want another apple, but Harry readily took her affection anyway. He glanced once again at the other man, staring at him out from behind the horse’s ears. Hiding behind the animal he looked somewhere between nervous and coy.
The man leaned against the post at the edge of Hedwig’s stall and smirked. “Keep making eyes like that at me and Hedwig is going to get jealous.”
Harry was mortified he was still doing it. Still. A notable change in reception.
Harry cleared his throat. He hoped the nerves and awkwardness could be swallowed away and he could look half as calm as the buff and bare man in front of him. “Sorry, Hedwig. You’re beautiful, but I don’t go for the ladies.” He flickered his eyes again to the stranger. Yep, he was still smirking. Harry leaned a little closer to the horse so he could fake whisper. “Say, do you know if there’s a bloke out here in the midlands who’s also… well… into blokes?” His cleverness failed him towards the end but it didn’t stop the stranger from chuckling and that’s what Harry wanted. The chance to hear that deep laughter rumble through him and warm him down to his toes. Chase the ice away and leave him yearning for something all together better.
“You’ve got a bit of cheek on you, don’t ya.” It didn’t sound like an insult but it didn’t make it to friendly either.
Harry’s face felt warm and it might have been due to blushing. Then he realized that despite Harry’s suspicions, this man had yet to do anything to confirm he was actually into other men. “That was, I mean, no harm meant,” Harry sputtered.
The man shook his head before putting Harry out of his misery. “Nah, no need to worry there. Hedwig would be happy to tell you I’m into blokes.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “But maybe tone down the flirting?” Probably Harry couldn’t hide far enough behind Hedwig that the man didn’t see his pained expression. It was enough to soften the man further. “It’s not all of this,” he gestured at Hedwig and then the empty stalls nearby where presumably other horses, until recently, had lived. “I just, well, if I’m going to shag a bloke it’s not going to be with a stranger. That’s the sort of thing that should mean something, don’t you think?” The man couldn’t quite manage to look friendly around his jaded smile.
And there it was. His judgment’s return. He probably didn’t mean to come off quite so patronizing but he managed it anyway. Once again making it clear that it wasn’t Harry’s name or status he took offense with. Just his values. His actions. His character. So much worse than the southerners’ taunts.
“Right,” Harry bit out. He knew he was just sounding bitter at being shot down. That was more embarrassing than actually having been shot down. “I guess some people would think that.” Harry recognized this sounded worse. He was being a prat and he knew it and he didn’t know how to stop his words from digging the hole deeper.
There was that incredulous look, all raised bushy eyebrows and shiny mud-colored glowering. “What, you think a quick fuck in the hay is better?”
Harry knew, he absolutely knew, that his shrug looked petulant. He bit his lip to stop himself from going off about how easy it was for this stable hand to look for something more than casual sex. He didn’t let himself ask the question of how often this man found himself far from home with no friends and no chance to lay down roots. He felt sickly at the thought of bringing up what it would mean to be in a war fighting alongside someone you genuinely cared about…
“I can take no for a no you don’t need to be a snob about it,” Harry said instead.
“I’m not being a snob,” the man snapped. He liked snapping. And arguing. And being stubborn. The tension was back in his body, pulling him taunt and accentuating the lines of his lean frame.
Harry didn’t stare. He could take no for an answer. He did, however, growl out just as stubbornly, “The last man I offered to fuck in the hay took me up on it and it was great. He liked it, I liked it, if you have any thoughts on that then fucking stop because it’s none of your business, ya?” he stretched out the last word pointedly.
The man ground his teeth, an answer not immediately on his lips. He was silent long enough that he had time to look at Harry. All of Harry. Then to glance back behind him where he could catch sight of the stable’s very own loft full of hay. As if maybe he was imagining it.
The clank of a door opening was loud enough to break the tension between the two men. Both Harry and the stranger startled. Each took a half step back from each other reflexively.
“Harry! Thank god you’re here. I’ve been looking high and low, mate.” It felt like Ron was walking in on something. Ron was normally very socially aware and Harry worried Ron might feel it, too. But he seemed oblivious. Which was better than if Dennis discovered Harry jumping away from a half dressed man. Dennis would read too much in. As it was, Harry could meet Ron’s eyes and it didn’t take too much effort to smile back at him. Still, Ron was a socially aware guy and he could see the strain. “We’ve thrown you into the deep again, haven’t we? I’m sorry, Harry, I told Lupin this would be too much.”
This was a bit much on top of the strain of just having been scolded and shot down. Harry tried not to fixate on how Ron and Lupin had been talking about him and measuring out how much Harry could handle. It had the same feeling to it as Harry discovering Dennis watching him exit from the whore house. Harry turned back to the other man, a natural alternative place to look while he tried to fight his feelings off his face before Ron could see the anger bubbling back up to the surface.
So the strange man got to see how Harry grimaced. He had the perfect view of Harry hiding himself from his friend. He watched Harry put his features back together to look respectable and turn back around to face Ron. It wasn’t hard to see all that and know Harry was lying when he said, “You don’t need to worry about me, Ron.”
“It’s not like that, mate,” Ron quite possibly lied. He was the good sort of liar, though. Noble and shit. The sort who’d chase after a friend in over his head and tell him he’d be okay just to buck him up when obviously he wouldn’t. “It’s okay to need a break sometimes. Tell him, Charlie. It’s not good to run yourself into the ground.”
Charlie did not actually tell him. “He had the fastest horses in the country, he did not need to push them so hard no one was going to catch up to him. If he’d been more responsible he’d have more energy now.”
For once Harry didn’t mind the man’s condescension because he was too distracted trying to remember how he knew his name.
“C’mon, if he’d gone as slow as you wanted he’d still be on the road instead of here and we wouldn’t have this time to prepare,” Ron countered.
Charlie’s tone somehow dropped deeper as he growled, “If you weren’t picking fights with the capital we wouldn’t need to panic over having enough time.”
This sounded like an old fight that had nothing to do with Harry.
“We’re not picking the fights when they’re the ones stealing our harvest and threatening accidents on Fred and George if we don’t get in line,” Ron snapping sounded near exactly like how Charlie did it.
“Fred and George are going to lose their limbs to accidents because they’re Fred and George!”
Harry didn’t have to think hard to recognize Fred and George. The twins in all Ron’s stories when he filled the space around Harry without ever making Harry feel left out.
Ron put his hands on his hips just like Charlie did, and blustered at Charlie in a way he never did to Harry, “If you still want to fight over this go take it up with mum. I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you Voldermort is evil and out to kill us. Not when you’re safe here in the burrow and I have to go out there,” he waved literally everywhere, “knowing damn well how easy it would be for a ‘random accident’ to be aimed at me next time.”
“You don’t have the moral high ground, Ron. I’m the only one in this family who actually brings in money, and mum was the one who made me gift the damn king my best horse. Which he ate! He ate it, Ron. That stud could have bred the next generation of war horses but instead the king slashed its throat in front of me and served it for dinner.”
The fight was spiraling the way Harry imagined fights do when you’ve had them over and over again with people you know well enough and care enough for that you keep sticking so you have time to do it again. In a story, Ron could make Harry feel included. But watching it happen, Harry was alienated beyond belief. The men vollied heated taunts back and forth as if the point wasn’t to win the argument but instead to keep it going. And while they were clearly blowing steam, neither man seemed half as angry as Harry over earlier comments that weren’t even personal. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d say they were having fun. Harry had never fought with his family. Nothing about Uncle Vernon yelling led to fun.
Harry found himself watching intently. Which, unfortunately, meant watching more of one than the other. He still caught most of what Ron said and the ways he intentionally riled Charlie up, but he didn’t miss a moment of Charlie gesticulating. Or Charlie shoving his hands back on his bare hips. Or Charlie turning his bright muddy glower to his brother while his lips thinned and his body strummed with a tension that drew Harry’s eyes down Charlie’s chest to the v shape of his abdomen.
Harry blinked rapidly and looked away.
This was Charlie. Charlie Weasley. Ron’s brother. Who told Harry no and condescended over Harry’s choices.
Still, Harry looked back. And Charlie was there waiting. A smirk on his lips like he knew Harry was watching the whole time. Like he was riling Harry up just as much as he was riling up his brother. Like the bickering and judgment and condescension might be what he put out in front, but maybe there was something else, too.
Of course, Ron was the one who had to give in to end the fight, because Charlie was just that god damn stubborn. But they hugged afterwards and let bygones be. Harry couldn’t see a bruise between them, on the skin or buried deeper.
And Harry didn’t get it. He didn’t get any of it. Nothing here was like anything he’d ever known. He didn’t know if it was something you could know, if you weren’t born into it. He didn’t know if he could ever belong here with people who knew how to have families that didn’t hate each other. Harry was sore, tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, and maybe Ron had been right when he told Lupin all of this would be too much.
But then Ron wrapped an arm around Harry, warm and supportive. Ron introduced Harry formally to Charlie, who hid his smirk well when he shook Harry’s hand. He had a good grip. Confident. Strong. Like his hands were good for lots of things. The sort of things Harry didn’t want to think about while Ron was snug up against him because he definitely did not think of Ron that way. Charlie laughed at Harry’s blushing and wouldn’t explain why to Ron. Which had Ron all bothered again and yelling at his brother. This round of bickering was more like Ron’s stories, which always floated around Harry as if there was a place for Harry inside of them instead of keeping Harry on the outs.
Whatever this feeling was… well, it was the opposite of lonely. And it made Harry smile. And suddenly Harry got what he needed to get. He knew he could handle it. All of it. As long as he had the people he cared about, like Ron and Dennis and Lupin. He would be able to get through.