Shooting Stars
Harry loved holidays with the Weasley family. He loved helping Mrs Weasley (“call me Molly, dear”) bake treats. And helping Hermione explain Muggle concepts like fast food chains to Mr Weasley.
Watching Charlie and his fiancé Fleur dance happily in the living room made Harry feel wistful- happy to see their obvious love, but anxious for the day he’d find that kind of happiness with someone else.
Listening to Hermione and Ron bicker even felt homey to him. Was it even a holiday together if they weren’t arguing over something silly?
It was his last Christmas as a student, but he hoped it wouldn’t be the last holiday that he was invited to the Burrow. Even living with Sirius, Christmas would just never be the same to him without the Weasley family.
Harry wandered out to the back garden, looking to see what Ginny and the twins were up to since they had went out earlier and never returned to sip eggnog around the fire with the others.
Harry laughed when he saw Ginny playing a two-on-one quidditch game, quaffle only, against Fred and George.
They seemed oblivious to the snow falling around them as they viciously tried to steal the quaffle from one another.
“That girl’s got no fear,” Bill laughed, sneaking up on Harry.
Harry huffed out his own laugh at the comment.
“She’s a force of nature,” he agreed.
Bill gave him an odd look before turning back to the match going on in the sky.
“You and Ginny aren’t...?” Bill asked casually, his hands in his jacket pockets.
Harry stared at him for a moment trying to work out the non-question before bursting out in laughter when he’d figured out what he meant.
“Me and Gin? Merlin, no.” He laughed until he felt tears nearly forming in his eyes. “I- I thought you all knew, I’m… I’m gay.”
He suddenly felt his previous mirth at the idea of him and Ginny being together disappearing as he glanced nervously at Bill.
“Er, I hope that’s okay with you?”
Bill looked back over at him and grinned, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he did.
“Course,” Bill said easily. “Be a bit hypocritical if it wasn’t, since I prefer blokes to birds, myself.”
“You- you do?”
Harry eyed him critically. Nothing about Bill’s aesthetic screamed, or even whispered, gay to him. He had on his black leather jacket paired with black jeans with a hole in the knee. His long red hair was pulled back in its usual ponytail, and the whole look was topped off with his single fang earring.
No, Bill Weasley was way too cool to have even one thing in common with scrawny, shy, awkward Harry Potter.
Bill caught Harry checking him out, which triggered a furious blush on Harry’s face, and gave a deep laugh.
“What’s wrong Harry? Do I not look gay enough for you?” he teased.
Harry stuttered out a denial, even though that’s literally exactly what he had been thinking.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill waved his hand airily, refocusing on the match going on. “Nobody really knows much outside of my family. ‘Spose that’s why Fleur asked me out.”
“What? Charlie’s Fleur asked you out?”
Bill chuckled again, “Yep. She asked me if I wanted to get a drink sometime, right after she got the job at Gringotts. I told her she wasn’t my type, but I had a brother she’d be perfect for.”
Harry thought that the only wizards who weren’t Fleur’s type had to be gay ones.
“Lucky you have so many brothers,” Harry muttered, imaging how poorly Fleur may have taken his rejection otherwise.
“It is, isn’t it?” Bill gave him a smile, flashing his straight white teeth.
“So, er, what is your type then?” Harry asked, glad for the descending darkness to mask his red cheeks, even if it was making it rather cold out.
Bill shrugged, still grinning.
“I like people who are interesting, and adventurous. Smart, but like street smarts not just memorizing books, you know? Someone who could handle traveling with me for work and quick witted enough to keep up with me. I’m just more of a personality guy than a looks guy, ya know?”
Harry nodded, he felt the same way. Then he almost choked when Bill winked at him and added, “Doesn’t hurt though when a bloke’s easy on the eyes.”
“What about you then, Harry?” Bill asked casually after a few moments of comfortable silence. Comfortable for Bill, anyway, who probably never felt awkward a moment in his life.
“Er- what about me what?” Harry asked, still processing that wink.
Bill turned towards him, ignoring the match completely now.
“What’s your type of dream guy?”
“Oh, uh...” Harry tried to think of the type of people he’d fancied in the past. “I dunno, I guess it’d be good if they were nice, smart, and thoughtful, you know? Plus they’d probably need to be strong because I’m a bit of a magnet for trouble.” He thought more on it then nodded decisively as he added, “And yeah, it’d be great if they were good looking too, I guess.”
Bill just hummed thoughtfully and turned back to the field. They stood in an actually mutually comfortable silence then, although Harry was starting to shiver from the cold.
Ginny suddenly let out a whoop as she scored another goal and started descending and landed a few feet in front of them.
“Did you see that, Harry?” she asked breathlessly, her smile a kilometer wide. “Kicked their arses, didn’t I? Think McGonagall will make me captain when you’re gone next year?”
“Yeah, I reckon she will. If she asks me about it you know you’ve got my recommendation.”
Ginny’s smile was contagious and made Harry feel warm inside. He was happy to see one of his best friends so enthusiastic and passionate about the team he loved.
Bill, who had been quiet since Ginny landed, threw an arm around her shoulder and grinned at Harry.
“You quidditch fanatics are nuts,” he declared cheerfully. “It’s freezing out here and all little Ginny cares about is becoming Captain Weasley.”
Harry shivered and wrapped his arms around his torso more securely, it was getting pretty cold out. He should have grabbed his newest Weasley sweater to go over his thin long-sleeve shirt.
“Y-yeah,” Harry said through chattering teeth, “it’s c-cold now.”
“Here,” Bill unwrapped his arm from Ginny and began peeling off his leather jacket. “Have my jacket.”
Harry could practically feel the heat radiating off his face as Bill wrapped his jacket around him. It was a weird thing to notice, and Harry would deny it until the day he died, but it smelled nice. Woodsy, a bit, something similar to the occasional whiff Harry got of Bill’s cologne.
“N-no,” Harry stammered, caught off guard and embarrassed instead of cold. “Don’t be daft, now you’ll freeze.”
Ginny’s loud laughter brought Fred and George over to their group.
“What’s so funny, Gin?” Fred asked.
“And does it have anything to do with why Harry looks like a tomato?” George followed up with.
“Harry and Bill—”
Harry shut Ginny up with a sharp elbow to her side and a glare. God knew he didn’t need to willingly hand the twins more ammunition to tease him with.
“Hey, Freddy, d’you remember when I did your chores for a week because you were healing from the flu?” Bill asked, seemingly out of the blue.
“Uh, yeah? I suppose so.” Fred glanced at George, who shrugged, both mystified by the random change in topic. “Why?”
Bill just grinned, “Would you say that it was pretty nice of me?”
The twins looked at Harry, then Ginny, then back to Bill, with identical confused looks on their faces.
“Suuuure,” Fred said slowly. “I guess it was nice enough of you.”
Ginny looked between Harry, who was warm but drowning in Bill’s jacket, and her eldest brother a few times before smirking at Harry.
“C’mon, George, Fred,” she laughed, “I’ll race you to the house.”
“You’re on!”
The twins and Ginny took off, leaving a very confused Harry standing in the middle of the backyard with Bill.
“Er, wanna go inside then?” Harry asked hesitantly, uncertain what the hell was going on with everyone.
Bill nodded and easily wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulder as they walked slowly towards the house.
Which didn’t mean anything, Harry was sure. Bill did that with all of his siblings.
“Did Ron ever tell you I got all eight OWL’s and eight NEWT’s?” Bill asked him, once again, seemingly from nowhere.
“Um, he may have mentioned it.”
Honestly, Harry had no idea if Ron had or not but he assumed a curse breaker would need a variety of skills and grades.
“Smart, nice, thoughtful,” Bill sighed dramatically. “Really, Harry, I’m a total catch.”
Harry tripped over a tree root and would have landed in the dirt on his face had Bill not caught his arm. Did Bill… did Bill purposefully just quote back what Harry said his type was?
“Woah, falling for me already, huh? And here I pegged you for a taking it slow kind of guy,” Bill teased.
…Harry had no idea what was happening, but he kind of hoped it didn’t stop.
“Nope,” Harry replied, desperately trying to regain some dignity in the conversation. “You know me, pure Gryffindor I am, I jump in to everything feet first. Er… face first,” he grinned sheepishly.
They seemed to naturally stall by the large Chestnut tree behind the house. Harry firmly kept his eyes off of Bill’s arms, which were highlighted rather nicely in his light blue tee. Instead, he watched the sky. He watched as the stars seemed to wink and glow just for them.
It was nice, standing there with Bill, watching the stars.
“Pure Gryffindor, huh?” Bill murmured to him, looking over and momentarily looking quite a bit like the twins when they were in the middle of planning a prank. “I had no idea that the great Harry Potter was so adventurous.”
Harry chuckled at that, he was sure most of wizarding Britain was well aware of his ‘adventures’. “I told you, I’m a bit of a magnet for trouble, aren’t I?”
Bill leaned casually against the tree, looking like some sort of rugged jeans model in a muggle magazine. “‘Spose you are. You know what you need?”
Harry shrugged, looking at him curiously. “What’s that?”
Bill tilted the upper half of his body forward, his mouth only a few inches from Harry’s. “Someone who can keep you safe.”
Harry only barely repressed the shiver that his breathy statement caused to course through him.
“Yeah?” Harry breathed back, raising his chin challengingly. “I don’t know if there’s anyone up to that task.”
Bill’s lips curled up in a smile and it was as if he were purposefully causing Harry to breathe in his air. A thought that had Harry blushing.
“What if I told you I know a smart, nice, thoughtful wizard who was not only up to the task, but would excel at it?”
Harry got distracted a little by a star behind Bill’s head as it started falling from the sky. “Shooting star,” he murmured, unintentionally causing Bill to turn away from him. “Make a wish.”
Bill watched the star for a second before he turned back to Harry and slowly, so torturously slowly, reached out to cup part of Harry’s cheek and his jaw in his hand.
“Kiss me so it comes true,” Bill said in a soft voice, his blue eyes darker than before and smoldering as he stared straight into Harry’s soul.
And Harry, pure Gryffindor that he was, with enough Slytherin to not let an opportunity like this pass him by, leaned forward until his lips met Bill’s and they melted together in a kiss that surely should have scorched the earth with its passion and its fire.
Harry gasped for air a bit when Bill finally pulled back and Harry tried to force his lungs and his brain to work.
He got his lungs working, but clearly not his brain because as Bill smiled down at Harry, for some reason the first thing Harry thought to say was incredibly stupid.
“I don’t have street smarts,” Harry blurted before flushing from immediate mortification.
If a fit bloke snogs you beneath a sky of falling stars, on bloody Christmas no less, you just don’t fight against it.
It was perhaps definitely the most romantic thing to ever happen to Harry, and he had to go and say something stupid.
Bill’s brows furrowed together for a moment before his confusion was smoothed away with amusement as he pieced together what Harry was referring to. “Sure you do,” he said. His hand was still on Harry’s face and he ran his thumb across Harry’s lower lip. “You’re interesting, adventurous, smart, witty, and god damn are you easy on the eyes.”
Harry knew there was an entire star constellation phenomenon happening beside them, but he couldn’t convince himself to look away from Bill’s eyes to look. “Yeah?” he asked, hesitant and embarrassed in a pleased sort of way. “Says the spokesman for blue jean ads.”
Bill’s eyes that had been smoldering gained a new sparkle of mischief in them. He leaned down and Harry thought he was going to kiss him again, but instead he put his mouth right up against Harry’s ear.
“I look better with them off,” Bill murmured, his breath sending goosebumps across Harry’s arms and blood straight down his body.
Harry wasn’t going to be out Gryffindor’d, so when Bill pulled back to smirk at Harry’s red face, Harry thrust his chin out stubbornly.
“I guess you’ll have to prove that,” he said.
“Name a time and a place,” Bill quipped immediately with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
Bill was obviously much better at flirting than Harry was, but Harry wasn’t an idiot either.
He gave Bill what he hoped was a charming smile and paired it with a quirk of his own eyebrows. “I’m not busy now, for instance, and Sirius is at Andromeda’s with Remus for the night.”
Bill grabbed Harry’s hand and his smile was brighter than anything. “Excellent, let’s go make our excuses then.”
Harry tripped a little as he followed beside Bill—
This wasn’t really happening, right?
Not to him.
He wasn’t about to hook up with his best mate’s fit, smart, and interesting older brother, right?
He wasn’t about to take the bloke that he’d fantasized about before back to the same place where he first started fantasizing about him at.
There was no way that Harry would get that lucky.
Maybe Bill was just having a bit of a dry spell?
Bill glanced over at Harry and must have read some of the thoughts going through Harry’s head on his always expressive face. “If you’d rather, I could take you to dinner instead.”
Harry looked over at him and saw Bill looked entirely genuine. “Er, I mean, we just had dinner?”
Bill laughed, which made Harry laugh even if it was probably at his expense. “I meant before you go back next week,” Bill said. “I’m in no rush.”
Harry tried to analyze his words.
Did that mean he wanted to do this more than once?
Or did he mean he didn’t want to at all?
Was he looking for a lay or… or a date?
Bill sighed and pulled Harry to a stop outside the back door. He ran his open hand through Harry’s hair before settling it on the back of his neck.
“You look confused and I’m being too subtle,” Bill murmured with a gentle smile on his lips. “Let me start over, okay? Hi, Harry, I rather fancy you. If you want to go back to your place or my place and let me prove what an excellent lover I am tonight, that would be bloody brilliant. If not, that’s still brilliant, and I’d still like to have a chance to prove what an excellent person I am in general.” He bent down slowly and pressed a short and sweet kiss to Harry’s lips. “So, what do you want? If anything,” he added hastily.
“You,” Harry said confidently despite the fog in his brain that Bill’s mouth seemed to be putting there. He blinked and cleared his thoughts a little and grinned. “Excellent lover, huh?”
Harry was not an excellent lover. Harry knew that for a fact because Harry had never been a lover in general. But that was future Harry’s problem.
Bill brought Harry’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles while holding smoldering eye contact. “Excellent,” he breathed after he dropped Harry’s hand. “And I can prove it as many times as you’d like.”
Harry’s pupils dilated and he forgot to breathe for a moment. “Yes please,” he said in a slightly strangled tone.
Bill winked and opened the door, “After you then.”
And Harry, proving his smoothness and his sexiness, stumbled over the stairs on his rush to go make an excuse to leave.
Harry’s face was still red and Bill was still chuckling when Harry stepped in the sitting room where everyone else was.
“Where’ve you been?” Ron asked, a bit more suspiciously than Harry thought the situation warranted.
“Walking in the gardens with me,” Bill said smoothly as he leaned against the doorway with crossed arms and a satisfied grin. “Problem, Ron?”
Ron turned his suspicious look on his brother. “Maybe.”
Harry laughed, only sounding mildly nervous as Hermione and the Weasley’s were all watching him curiously. “Well… I should probably get going,” he hedged.
“What?” Ron quit glaring at his brother to frown at Harry. “I thought you were staying the night?”
Harry shrugged and messed with his hair for something to do. “Er… well…”
“You’re joking!” Fred cried, his face splitting with a wide smile as he looked from Harry’s embarrassed blush to Bill’s smug look. “Hey, Harry, why are you leaving, specifically?”
“And why are you still wearing Bill’s jacket?” George asked, noticing the heavy leather jacket that Harry forgot to remove before stepping inside.
“Yes!” Ginny punched the air and then leapt to her feet and turned to Charlie with a broad smile. “You owe me ten galleons!”
Thankfully, Ron looked as confused as Harry did, because he turned to Ginny. “What for?”
Ginny was preening as Charlie rolled his eyes and counted out ten gold coins for his sister. “I bet him that Bill would finally make him move over Christmas break,” she said. “Charlie said Bill was too scared of awkward rejection, but I said not our Bill.”
Harry would have denied everything, but Bill grinned and shrugged.
“Pure Gryffindor I am,” he winked.
Ron’s face went through a kaleidoscope of interesting expressions while Harry watched him nervously. First he was pale with shock, then red with outrage, then maybe a little green? That was a new look, even for Ron. Finally, he looked at Harry’s face and nodded determinedly before pointing an accusing finger at his older brother.
“If you hurt him, I will kill you,” Ron said.
“And I’ll help him, of course,” Hermione added absently as she poured over a new book she got from Percy for Christmas.
Harry didn’t think he could blush any harder than he was, but then Molly came striding in the room. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked around at her children, “What’s going on in here?”
“Harry and Bill are leaving together,” Fred told his mum quickly with a mischievous little grin for Harry. “Together, Mum, together.”
Harry certainly did not flee The Burrow, but he did finish his goodbyes quickly and moved with record speed to the floo. Bill followed at a more leisurely pace and smirked at Harry when they got to the fire.
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” he said playfully.
Harry tried to force down the blush burning his neck and face. “I’m not embarrassed,” he lied. “I just don’t need Molly knowing my business.”
Bill chuckled and stood beside Harry. He lifted Harry’s face with a finger on his chin and gave him a soft smile that was accented by his twinkling eyes.
“Am I your business, Harry?” he whispered.
Harry felt a shiver go down his spine while his stomach pooled with warmth at Bill’s dark and promising tone.
“You could be,” Harry hedged, hoping he sounded flirty and careless as Bill did.
Bill ducked his head and kissed Harry long enough that he had to suck in a breath to steady his spinning head once Bill straightened back up.
“I will be,” Bill said definitively. He smoothed a hand down his shirt, winking at Harry. “What’s the floo address?”
“Grimmauld Place, Harry’s room,” Harry said, only a little breathlessly.
Bill swept a soft graze of his knuckles down the side of Harry’s face. “See you soon.”
Harry watched him floo away and felt weak in the knees.
Never in a million years, not from a hundred wishes on falling stars, did Harry think that Potter luck would finally pan out for him.
Harry grinned to himself before throwing a handful of floo powder in the fireplace and happily following after Bill.