“You look tired,” Hermione said quietly. She slid Harry a plate filled with eggs, toast, and sausage. “Eat something, please?”
Harry didn’t even have the energy to push the plate away. He let it sit in front of him, the smell mocking him and turning his stomach.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Mm, beans and toast,” Ron said, holding his breakfast sandwich up in what was meant to be an enticing way. “Yum!”
Harry scowled and ducked his head rather than push Ron’s food out of his face.
“I said I’m not hungry,” he snapped, harsher than he meant to.
Ron and Hermione didn’t understand it and Harry didn’t expect them to. With everything that happened in June, then Harry’s Ministry hearing over the summer, being shut out by his friends, ignored by his mentor… Harry wasn’t hungry.
He wasn’t tired either, not tired enough to sleep through the voices that followed him even to his dreams.
“Kill the spare!”
“Take my body back.”
How could Harry sit there and eat food he didn’t deserve when Cedric died because Harry wasn’t enough?
“Morning!”
Harry jolted in his seat when someone sat beside him - too close - and a long-fingered and warm hand rested on Harry’s lower back.
Fred smiled at Harry when he peeked up at him and Harry saw when the warmth in his eyes shifted to concern. Harry ducked his head again; he didn’t deserve to have Fred feeling concerned about him.
Harry was precisely what the Dursleys had spent years beating into him- worthless.
It didn’t matter that Fred didn’t think so, not since they’d gotten together just before the Yule Ball last year, Fred would see reason soon. And then he’d leave.
Everyone Harry cared about eventually left him.
“Harry isn’t eating again,” Hermione tattled to Fred immediately, earning a look of death from Harry. He wasn’t choosing not to eat, he just couldn’t. The smell of food churned his stomach and he knew if he tried to swallow a single bite that it would hit the lump in his throat and he’d end up gagging.
It was like the first few weeks of being back at Hogwarts all over again, but worse.
Fred hummed and made a show of ignoring Hermione while he poured two cups of warm tea. One he added a slice of lemon to, the other he added two spoons of sugar and a single spoon of honey to.
“Drink,” Fred said, sliding the tea with honey in it to Harry. “Aht,” Fred raised a hand, frowning when Harry twitched lightly. “Just drink it, Potter, or we’re going to Madam Pomfrey and telling her you’re sick.”
Harry rolled his eyes at Fred then slowly curled his fingers around the hot cup and let the warmth remind him how to work his body. While Harry simply warmed himself up through the contact, Fred began a cheery and bright conversation that took the heavy eyes of Harry’s friends off him and emboldened Harry to take a small sip of the tea.
It was lovely, it always was when Fred made it.
“Whatcha doin?”
Harry jumped a foot in the air and his hand flew toward his side for his wand he had tucked in the waistband on his pajamas. He spun around and had it aimed at the shadow in the kitchen doorway before he could even process that it was Fred standing there.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” Harry hissed at him. He’d just arrived at Grimmauld Place that afternoon and he’d barely seen Fred since he arrived. But Fred looked…
Good, honestly.
Fred sloped slowly over toward Harry, prompting Harry to tuck his wand back in his waistband and hastily hide the food he’d pilfered from the cabinet.
“I missed you,” Fred said. He lifted his hand to Harry’s face and cupped his cheek gently. “How was hell?”
“Same old, same old,” Harry whispered while his face lit up shamefully.
“Anything I need to heal?”
Harry shook his head and refused to look in Fred’s eyes.
“No, I’m fine,” he said, a partial truth. He didn’t have anything Fred could heal - insomnia, scars, and ghosts haunting him weren’t easily removed.
Fred searched Harry’s face for any trace of a lie and nodded when he didn’t find one.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Are you hungry? You didn’t eat much at dinner.”
Harry turned his head to look at the worn down cabinets instead of Fred’s face, suddenly feeling embarrassed about the slice of bread he’d pilfered from the pantry.
When Harry shook his head, Fred sighed almost imperceptibly.
“Okay,” Fred said again. He kissed the top of Harry’s head, nearly breaking Harry’s composure with his tenderness. “How about some tea? Let me show you all my wicked magic I’m allowed to do now.”
Even when Harry couldn’t stomach the thought of forcing food down his throat, he could make exceptions for tea when Fred made it.
Being back at Hogwarts that year was a different kind of hell. Harry constantly faced either students who sneered at him and avoided his gaze - too frightened of the mad lad who made up such a wild story - or approached him and told him they believed him - as if Harry would lie about Cedric’s death.
The second was just as painful as the first, and much more rare.
“Ignore them,” Hermione told Harry firmly. He’d been sending scowls down the table toward Seamus and Lavender, as they’d both made recent points to say they believed the Prophet over Harry.
It was bloody unfair, it was. Harry had been friends with Seamus for years, and classmates with Lavender just as long.
“Easy for you to say, nobody’s talking about what a lying bit of scum you are,” Harry snapped at Hermione. Hermione’s eyes flashed with annoyance at Harry’s tone before she inhaled deeply and then turned her attention back to her book.
“Eat, Harry,” she said from behind the thick book on Runes.
“Or what?” Harry asked scathingly. He arched a brow at her when she lowered the book to look at him. “You’ll tell my mum?”
Hermione turned red and Ron sputtered on a bit of potato he was suddenly choking on. As quickly as Harry’s wave of anger washed over him, it was gone and he sat there feeling like a prat.
“Sorry,” he muttered. He shoved himself off the bench and got to his feet. “I’ll see you later.”
Harry silently chastised himself as he left the Great Hall, went straight out the doors, and began walking aimlessly around the lawns. It was chilly out, but the sting of the cold air felt good against Harry’s heated skin and helped him clear his mind.
Not that a clear mind did much for Harry. He just kept circling the same shit parts of his life, then felt guilty for having a pity party, then blamed himself for his problems, and around and around he went.
Harry’s fingers were numb, as were his cheeks, when he finally stopped to rest beside a tree in front of the lake.
He should have been surprised when Fred caught up to him, but he wasn’t.
“Remember when you rescued me?” Fred asked. He wrapped his arms around Harry’s waist from behind and propped his chin on top of Harry’s head. “I reckon I was the luckiest bloke in the castle that day.”
Harry huffed and his air came out in a cloud. “It was my fault you got tossed in the bottom of a lake and you think you were lucky?” he asked disbelievingly.
“Yup.” Fred sounded confident. “I was the thing you’d miss the most.”
Harry’s stomach clenched at Fred’s earnest tone. Harry didn’t deserve Fred, he never had. Maybe before- before the third task, before Cedric, before Voldemort, before his summer -Harry could have one day deserved Fred, but Harry knew that eventually he’d lose Fred due to his own thoughtless actions.
“You didn’t eat,” Fred murmured, nuzzling his nose in Harry’s hair. “When’s the last time you did?”
Harry shrugged and his skin heated up from shame. “Dunno,” he whispered. “I’m not hungry.”
Fred gently grabbed Harry’s right hand from his pocket and held it up in front of Harry’s own eyes with his fingers looped around Harry’s wrist.
“You’re going to end up in the Hospital Wing again,” Fred said quietly.
It had been a fluke, but Harry fainted.
He’d been walking in Hogsmeade with Fred and George one minute, then everything went black and he woke up in the Hospital Wing.
Madam Pomfrey called it anemia, anorexia, and a variety of other terms that made Harry want to scream.
She’d wanted to keep Harry in the Hospital Wing and pump him full of potions, but Harry had to be released to go fight a dragon.
The Dursleys got information on Harry’s ‘condition’ mailed to them and it was a contributing factor to the misery Harry dealt with over the summer.
“Come on, let’s go get some chicken and hot chocolate from Dobby,” Fred said cajolingly.
“I said I’m not hungry,” Harry snapped, yanking out of Fred’s grip. He took a step forward and spun around to cross his arms around his shivering torso. “You never listen.”
Fred leaned against the tree and crossed his own arms. “You’re picking a fight because you don’t want to talk about anything important.”
“You want to talk about something important?” Harry demanded, ignoring Fred’s accurate jab. “Let’s talk about how everyone thinks I’m crazy or a liar or how I’ve got detention all week because of Umbridge. Let’s talk about how I HATE THIS PLACE! I WISH I’D NEVER LEFT THAT GRAVEYARD!”
Fred let Harry scream at him until Harry’s chest was heaving and he had nothing left to say.
“Yeah, let’s talk about how you wish you’d died,” Fred said, his voice breaking at the end of his sentence. “Let’s talk about how you’re depressed and angry and you’re punishing yourself by not eating. And then when we’re done, let’s go talk to McGonagall about it.”
“Don’t you dare,” Harry hissed. “Fred, I mean it, I’m fine.”
Fred and Harry stared at each other for a long and tense moment. Harry was willing Fred to just drop it and Fred was… Harry had no idea, actually. He never really understood what Fred was thinking when he’d harp on Harry about eating food Harry didn’t want or sleeping when Harry couldn’t.
Harry didn’t understand why he was still outside. Anyone else would have stormed off the moment Harry started yelling.
Harry didn’t understand why Fred didn’t leave.
“One piece of chicken and a roll, then I won’t go to McGonagall,” Fred finally said.
“I have detention,” Harry scowled. He checked his watch and saw that he was cutting it close as it was. “I don’t have time.”
“Okay.” Fred straightened up and shrugged his shoulders. Harry couldn’t believe he won so easily, Fred was usually much harder to dissuade when he’d gotten an idea in his head.
“Might as well meet me in McGonagall’s office afterward,” Fred said as he offered his hand to Harry. “Cause that’s where I’ll be.”
Harry bit back the urge to scream. If Fred went to McGonagall then there was almost no way it didn’t end with Harry in the Hospital Wing again.
The last thing Harry needed would be his classmates wondering if he’d been locked up because he was too crazy to be in classes.
“I’ll grab a roll and eat it on my way,” Harry bartered with Fred.
Fred snagged Harry’s hand and warmed his cold fingers in his own.
“Eat a buttered roll on your way and eat a piece of chicken after,” Fred countered with. “I’ll wait up for you.”
Harry watched their shoes as they crunched their way back to the castle quickly enough to leave Harry breathless.
He really didn’t deserve Fred.
Harry stuck his bleeding hand in his robe pocket on his way to the common room after detention and felt the crumbled remains of the roll he’d promised to eat.
“You deserve this, don’t you?”
Harry did.
Not for lying, like Umbridge had implied, but for having the audacity to live when Cedric hadn’t.
“We’ll take the cup together.”
Harry took Cedric to the graveyard. Harry hadn’t moved in time when the curse came.
Harry did nothing to stop Wormtail from taking his blood and bringing back Voldemort.
Harry was weak, worthless, never enough.
Fred jumped up off the rug in front of the fire when the portrait opened and Harry stepped into the common room. Ron and Hermione were sitting on the sofa, carrying on a whispered conversation ended when Harry walked over to them.
“Hey, love.” Fred grinned at Harry and then sat back down, cross-legged, in front of the fire. He patted the spot beside him enticingly. “Have a seat.”
“How was detention?” Hermione asked kindly while Harry silently sat on the rug.
“Fine,” Harry said shortly. He picked at the edge of the rug with his right hand, focusing very hard on the frayed maroon rug. “Sorry again,” he said without lifting his eyes.
Ron snorted, “Mate, forget it. You don’t have to apologize for being in a crummy mood.”
Harry glanced up at Hermione and her eyes were warm and soft when she caught his gaze.
“We’re just worried about you,” she said. She reached out for Harry and he let her squeeze his fingers briefly. “You’re scaring us.”
“You’re not scary,” Fred said swiftly. He gave Hermione a frown when Harry ducked his head and felt guilt consume him.
He wished people wouldn’t worry about him. He wished they’d all leave him alone- leave him, period.
“You deserve this, don’t you?”
Harry would deserve that.
“I brought you food,” Fred said brightly, trying to drag Harry from the thoughts that swirled in his eyes. “C’mon, you promised.”
Harry glanced uneasily at the plate Fred brought him. It was buried in foods- grilled chicken and green beans, roast potatoes and rolls -and Harry thought he might be sick just looking at it. Harry looked from the plate up to Fred and begged him with his eyes to just drop it.
“You promised,” Fred reminded him softly. “Three bites, love.”
Harry felt like a rat in a lab with his friends and Fred pretending not to watch as he took fifteen minutes to scoop up three green beans and choke them down.
They settled like lead in his stomach, but Fred looked pleased all the same.
“So how was detention?” Fred asked, leaning back on the rug and holding himself up with his hands. “What’d old toady have you do?”
“Er… lines,” Harry said. He kept his left hand securely in his pocket and felt a spasm go up his arm at the half-admission. Ron and Hermione exchanged a loaded look at the way Harry avoided looking at anyone when he said it.
“What lines?” Hermione pressed. “What exactly did she have you write?” she clarified when Harry said nothing.
“‘I will not tell lies’,” Harry quoted bitterly. His shoulders curled up defensively. He’d probably have that scar forever, especially if he did the same thing every night that week.
Another bullshit scar to add to his collection, anyway.
Harry was going to be branded a liar for the remainder of his life.
“What a load of dung!” Fred cried, infuriated on Harry’s behalf. “Merlin, Harry, that’s so unfair!”
“It really is,” Hermione said vehemently while Ron nodded beside her. “At least it’s just lines though, right? Honestly, I expected something terribly foul.”
“Like whips and chains,” Ron quipped in a jest.
Harry gave him a weak smile for his efforts, but Fred rolled his eyes.
“Sure is getting late,” Fred told Ron and Hermione in a pointed manner. He raised his brows up Hermione finally sighed and made her way to bed after wishing Harry goodnight, Ron not far behind her.
“Thanks,” Harry told Fred after they left, genuinely grateful. “I know they mean well, but it’s exhausting when they stare at me.”
Fred grinned and licked his lips slowly. “You like it when I stare at you,” he said in a way that had Harry blushing hotly.
“You don’t stare at me like I’m a freak.”
Fred’s playfully coy act was dropped in an instant and Harry was smacking himself for ruining his mood.
“You’re not a freak, love,” Fred said firmly. He turned around so he could lean against the sofa and spread his legs so Harry could scoot between them and lay against him. Fred wrapped one arm around Harry’s waist and the other across his torso, oddly making Harry feel like he was buckled in a car.
Safe, that was the word Harry struggled to find. He felt safe, laying there with Fred holding him.
“It’s a rough patch, it won’t last forever,” Fred murmured. His cheek rested on the top of Harry’s head, a comforting weight.
Harry snorted quietly while he watched the flames flicker in the fireplace.
“It’s a rough life,” Harry said in a small voice.
“I know, love.”
Life only got worse when Harry continued to have detention the rest of that week.
By his third night, Harry was so exhausted that he collapsed on the sofa where Fred was waiting for him at.
“Wake up and eat,” Fred called softly. He brushed Harry’s hair off his face and kissed his forehead. “C’mon, I’ve got treacle tart.”
Harry groaned and shook his head. “Not tonight,” he protested. “I’m sick.”
Fred sat back with a sigh and Harry felt terrible for being such a constant disappointment. They didn’t have a relationship, Fred was a caretaker, and that wasn’t fair to Fred.
Harry didn’t want to be a burden to someone else in his life, holding them back from happiness.
“Just go,” Harry mumbled miserably in the cushion he had his face mushed in. “I understand, no hard feelings.”
It would hurt, but Harry could pretend it didn’t, just like Harry pretended nothing hurt. Not his hand, not his head, not his stomach, not his chest.
Harry was fine.
When Fred didn’t say anything, Harry assumed he was finding the right way to word his acceptance of Harry’s offer. Then Harry felt Fred’s fingers curl up in his hair and he knew that Fred wasn’t as easy to push away as everyone else was.
“Do you want me to leave?” Fred asked, sounding so horribly vulnerable that Harry lifted his face enough to look up at him. It was the wetness in Fred’s eyes that triggered Harry’s own tears, as much as he tried to keep them at bay.
“I don’t know,” Harry said truthfully. He forced himself to look Fred in the eyes and be just as horribly open as Fred looked. “I think it would be easier if you left, I wouldn’t feel like a burden or that you’ll be someone upset when I drift away.”
Fred kept his fingers in Harry’s hair and cupped his face with his other hand.
“Where are you drifting to?”
“Anywhere but here.”
Fred lower lip quivered and a tear zigzagged down his cheek. “I don’t want you to drift away, I want you to stay here and get through it,” he said hoarsely.
Harry pulled his legs beneath him and then sat up on them so he could mimic Fred and reach out and trace his fingers on Fred’s freckled skin.
“Do you think everyone is made for a long life?” Harry asked quietly, voicing the darkest part of his soul that told him if he was destined to die young, why wait?
Why participate in the shit parts of life if Harry would never grow to make it to the good ones?
“I think that you’re destined for a short life and you’re going to miss all the brilliant things in your future if you don’t decide to live,” Fred said after a long moment. “I think that life is beating the hell out of you right now and it seems like it’ll never get better, but it will.”
Harry smiled wryly, a mocking smile. “Everyone says that, but they don’t know it.”
Fred shook his head. “It’s you who doesn’t know it because your brain is tricking you,” he insisted. “You need help, love, or you’ll prove yourself right.”
Who didn’t love being right?
Harry shied away at the mention of ‘help’. Help was the Hospital Wing and nutrition potions. Help was Dreamless Sleep and talking about his feelings.
Help made him feel like he was being flayed raw with the minor possibility of having a new skin appear afterward.
“Please?” Fred asked him quietly. “Please, let’s go to McGonagall’s office, I’ll walk with you.”
“Or what?” Harry asked. “Or we’re over? Or you’ll go anyway?”
Fred bent his head slowly toward Harry until he caught his lips in a slow kiss that gnawed inside Harry’s chest.
“Or nothing,” Fred whispered. “I can’t make you, love, it won’t work unless you want it to.”
Harry bit his lip and nodded.
“Then I don’t want to,” he said firmly.
Fred’s eyes closed and he inhaled slowly through his nose.
“Okay, love, then you have to eat something.”
Harry was winning arguments left and right that night, apparently, because he only ate a couple bites of chicken before he was able to slip away to bed.
While he laid in bed and tossed and turned, buried beneath three quilts as he couldn’t get warm, Harry wondered why he didn’t feel very victorious.
Everything stayed the same for a while. Nothing got better, but nothing got worse.
Professor McGonagall held Harry back after class a couple of times, hemming and hawing about his health. Harry brushed her off, and she let him.
Maybe if she pushed, Harry would have cracked.
Maybe if Harry had cracked then, he wouldn’t have after their first quidditch match where he’d been banned from playing ever again.
Maybe if Harry had cracked in McGonagall’s office, or took Fred up on his offers to help, or sat down with Ron and Hermione then he wouldn’t be at the Astronomy Tower, looking down at the ground like it was a bright exit sign.
Harry sat on the ledge for a long time, staring down at the ground. But every time he tipped forward, his fingers scratched at the rail desperately to hold himself from falling.
Harry screamed his frustration out in the pouring rain, confident it wouldn’t be heard inside the castle.
If he knew he wanted to end it all already, why wouldn’t his fingers let go of the rail?
Why was Harry never in control of his body?
Why was Harry never in control of his life?
Harry was frozen to the rail; his eyes swollen and dry, aside from the rain that blew in his face and soaked him. His chest felt heavy and his entire form was slumped in dejection.
Too cowardly to save anyone, too cowardly to even end his own life before he got anyone else killed.
So wrapped up in his own failures he was, Harry didn’t hear anyone approach until a pair of arms snaked around him and quickly yanked him backward, off the rail and on to the Astronomy floor.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Fred cried.
Harry wrestled from his grip, but was too tired to truly fight him.
“Nothing,” Harry told him. He rolled on his side and used to wall to climb to his feet. He looked at Fred’s hair rather than his panicked eyes. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
Fred gripped Harry’s shoulders hard until Harry finally looked him in the eyes.
“Don’t lie to me,” Fred said quietly, but forcefully. “You’ve been up here for hours, Harry, you’re frozen.”
Harry opened his mouth but nothing came out. He swallowed, dropped his eyes to the floor, then tried again.
“I was thinking,” he said evasively. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Fred pulled Harry to him and wrapped his arms around him. Harry greedily melted in the embrace, finally taking note of how cold and wet he was.
“You weren’t trying to jump?” Fred whispered.
Harry felt a lump rise in his throat and he shook his head against Fred’s collarbone, but then the word slipped out against his will.
“Yes.”
Fred’s body shuddered and Harry thought it was from the cold until a sob broke free and Harry couldn’t tell which one of them made the sound. Suddenly, they were talking over one another in a mess of apologies, begging, cursing, and declarations of love.
“I’m sorry! I couldn’t do it!”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why wouldn’t you come to me?”
“You wouldn’t understand! I don’t want to feel this way!”
“Then ask for help, Harry! Everyone wants to help you!”
“I don’t need their bloody help, I need to not be so broken and worthless!”
“You’re not worthless, not to me!”
“You’re just saying that because you fancy me!”
Fred pushed Harry away and glared at him with red-rimmed blue eyes. “I don’t fancy you, I fucking love you. I love you so much and it is killing me every day to wonder if you’re going to make it through the day or not! EVERY MORNING I CAN’T BREATHE UNTIL I SEE THAT YOU HAVENT STARVED YOURSELF TO DEATH OR SLIT YOUR WRISTS OPEN! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I. CANNOT. BREATHE!”
Harry froze with his mouth wide open. He couldn’t even blink through his shock.
“You… you love me?” Harry asked him so quietly he didn’t know if Fred could even hear him.
Fred stepped up to Harry and cupped Harry’s chin and smiled gently in his eyes when he lifted Harry’s face to look up at him.
“Of course I do,” Fred told him, simple and honest. “I love you so much and it’s killing me to watch you kill yourself.”
Harry felt his eyes sting and his vision blur when he looked in Fred’s perfectly earnest eyes.
“Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” Harry admitted in an impulsive whisper.
Fred tilted his forehead down to touch Harry’s and his nose rubbed along Harry’s nose.
“Then I’ll tell you every day,” he swore. “All you have to do is stick around to hear me say it.”
“I don’t know how,” Harry said, hating how weak he sounded. “I don’t know how to want to stick around.”
Fred pulled his face back and placed his hands on either side of Harry’s face.
“Let people help you,” he implored. “Please, love? If you can’t do it for you just yet, try now for me.”
Harry felt something break inside of him when Fred spoke so earnestly for Harry’s life.
“Am I a terrible Gryffindor if I say I’m scared?” Harry asked with a quivering lip that Fred was quick to kiss.
“I reckon it takes a lot of bravery to ask for help,” Fred said seriously. “Can we go to McGonagall now? Are you ready?”
Harry clutched at the front of Fred’s robes, afraid to let go. “You’ll stay with me?”
Fred kissed Harry’s forehead again and Harry could swear he felt his love seep through his touch.
“Until the very end,” he said.
And he did.
All the way up to May 3rd, 1998, when Fred Weasley was struck down by a Death Eater in the Battle of Hogwarts, he never left Harry’s side. Even after his death, Fred appeared again with James and Lily Potter to walk Harry to his death, reassuring Harry that he was just as brave to choose to die as he’d been when he finally chose to live.
It was no wonder that, when given the choice, Harry went on to the afterlife to spend an eternity with the people that loved him.