His initial thought when his wedding is interrupted is that they ought to have expected it. Bill has thought for a few years that the universe is conspiring against his family- first Ginny and the Chamber of Secrets, then Percy had left, then Dad at the Ministry, then Ron and Ginny at the Ministry, then Ron and the poison, then Bill himself, then George a few weeks ago.
It's only fitting that the Ministry crash and burn during his wedding of all things. Merlin knows the rest of the process had been hellish enough.
Bill had worried and worried over the wedding- his mother was absolutely frantic over it and his family was enormous and overbearing and he wanted desperately for Fleur to be happy in the end- but it turned out the real danger isn't in the Weasley cousins or Auntie Muriel or the financials of the whole thing or Hagrid's drunken singing.
No, the real danger is external, which is a nice change of pace.
He holds Fleur's hand and they sit together on the floor, surrounded by the wreckage of their wedding. Shattered glass strewn around, tablecloths crumpled mournfully. The flowers are knocked over. They hadn't needed a reason to destroy everything, they'd just done it.
It's his instinct to get up and argue the Death Eaters, still prowling around the premises and snapping at his parents, but Bill can't let himself be irresponsible at a time like this.
He has his family to think of, after all. He doesn't want the Death Eaters to move onto snapping at his siblings. Ginny sitting red-faced with the twins and Lee Jordan, Charlie withdrawn and guarded nearby.
No- there are fights to win and there are fights to lose and there are fights that can't happen in the first place.
Fleur leans her head into his neck and he squeezes her hand.
His father, looking surreptitiously over his shoulder, sends a Patronus as soon as the Death Eaters release them back to their house. Probably to Ron and his friends.
"I'm so sorry," Bill says. The Delacours are long gone- Fleur had told them to get back to France quickly and he knows it hadn't been a proper goodbye.
"It's fine," says Fleur.
"I wish it had gone like you wanted," he says.
She presses her thumb to his face, over one of the long scars down his cheek. "Bill," she says, a little amused. "Do you remember that I chose to marry you?"
He smiles. He knows his smile must look gruesome- he's got the scars on his face, and he's unhappy even with Fleur at his side. He looks around at their wedding again.
"If this is how it happens," she says, fiercely, "if it's in the middle of a war, it does not matter to me."
Bill can't help but think she doesn't know what she's promising.
In 1982 Bill had been the first Weasley to go to Hogwarts, with his secondhand robes and a new wand. There'd been a long rip in the right sleeve but his mother had stitched it back together.
"You can't even tell," he'd told her, but he'd known it was there anyway.
Hogwarts in 1982 had been awkward and tentative, only just out of the shadow of the war. Students had distrusted each other, Houses had split down the center based on Pure or Muggle blood. Whispering in the corridors, as though the war wasn't quite over yet.
Once a second year had shoved Bill into the wall roughly, when there weren't any teachers around. "Blood traitor," he'd spat. "It's people like you that make wizards hide like rats."
There are fights to win and fights to lose; Bill had clenched his fists and lost one.
As the oldest in his family he knows he's the most responsible. This isn't wishful thinking, or self-aggrandising. He knows it as surely as he knows that Percy is the proudest or Charlie is the quietest or Ginny is the meanest.
He was the only one who had gone to Hogwarts in proximity of a war, up until now. His first year had been hushed and tense, but the Ministry had still been in control. He can't even imagine what changes You-Know-Who must be making now, but Ginny writes him and Fleur that she's fine, that the teachers are strict, that Quidditch was cancelled.
There's obviously something else going on but Bill is too much older than Ginny to read between the lines. As the oldest in his family he is also the most distant.
Second most distant, he reminds himself. Percy and his stupid pride.
He goes to work as normal, attends meetings, comes back home and cooks and waits for Fleur to get off work. It's baffling to him that the wheels of the Wizarding World are still turning. By all rights everything should be falling apart, but then again he should have realised that the world is somehow able to keep on turning. After all, it'd done the same in 1982.
Even when he wasn't living at home- when he lived in Egypt or London or at Hogwarts- he had never lived somewhere that could be called quiet. Here by the sea, in their lonely cottage with only the gulls and waves in the distance, he is dwarfed by their surroundings. It's incredibly lonely, but Fleur had grown up by the sea and if there is anything he can do for her he will do it, and that includes living on the beach.
And of course he doesn't hate it. He loves their cozy rooms and the sand on his bare feet and the sun and the wind. It's not the Burrow but he knows in a few years it will be home just the same.
Besides, everything in the world is shifting anyway. Moving to the seaside is the least of it.
Ginny writes that she's been banned from Hogsmeade and will have to cancel meeting up with him; he's desperate to know what she's done to get banned but he doubts she would put it in a letter. It's only October and he can already sense his family fraying.
Mum writes a few weeks later to ask about a Sword of Gryffindor and why Ginny might want to steal it. He reads the letter in the kitchen of the Burrow and frowns. "I have no bloody idea," he admits.
The Sword goes to the bank; Bill, too famously a blood traitor, is not allowed anywhere near it.
Ginny at Hogwarts. Ron gone. The twins working the most blatantly anti-You-Know-Who store in Diagon Alley. Percy gone. Charlie in Romania. And Bill, still working nine to five the way he has for years.
He'd gotten the job through Professor Flitwick. He'd been interested in learning Gobbledegook- it was stupid that Hogwarts didn't teach any foreign languages- and Flitwick had a dictionary and could use it conversationally.
He'd tried to get Professor Sprout to teach him German, and Professor Burbage to teach him French, but neither language had interested him as much as Gobbledegook..
"It's been a few years since I've had a student interested in goblin history," Flitwick confided once. "And before Dirk Cresswell there hadn't been anyone. Of course I've only been teaching for twenty years."
Bill had been fifteen at the time, of course, so twenty years was an awfully long time.
"Greket," he'd said, which was an acknowledgement that he was listening. Bill was if nothing else a good listener.
"Good," murmured Flitwick. "You'll want to be careful with that though- it's an informal saying and you shouldn't use it on professional terms."
"Kir," Bill said, and Flitwick nodded.
He'd started, funnily enough, by teaching Fleur English. How to smooth her accent, and how the grammar differed. He remembered enough French from Professor Burbage to say hello or thank you or where is the toilet? or cheese sandwich or up yours, which were all mostly unhelpful. She wound up teaching him more than he ever taught her, which he supposes was how they'd wound up flirting.
Le pauvre, she'd say, when he'd complain about his lunch. He'd been offended at first before she'd explained the idiom.
It is late November when his brother Apparates into their living room, with a crack and a scream and a shouted curse.
Fleur has Ron tied up before she recognises him; she undoes her hasty spell and Ron sits heavily in the chair by the fire. Bill comes in from the kitchen with his wand raised.
"What happened?" says Bill, suddenly registering who this is. Not just his brother Ron but Ron Weasley. Ron Weasley who was supposed to be laid up with spattergroit, who was on the run with Harry Potter. "Where's Harry? Hermione?"
Ron's mouth falls open for a moment and he struggles to speak.
Bill feels a rush of fear. "What happened?"
"Oh, Merlin," says Ron. "Oh Merlin. I left them."
"You what?" says Bill.
He is not happy, of course, that Ron left Harry and Hermione. He is in fact unhappy. But Ron sits with his hands around a mug of strong tea, his hair still sopping wet, miserable and regretful, and when he starts to cry, half past midnight, Bill lets some of his latent anger go a little.
At least Ron is sorry for what he's done. When Percy had visited Bill at his job, just days after he'd fallen out with their dad, he'd been bitter and proud and painfully unapologetic. Percy and his stupid pride.
Fleur must be uncomfortable with Ron like this; she's long since retreated to their bedroom. Bill can't blame her; he too is uncomfortable with Ron like this.
"Mum'll kill me," says Ron. "I was supposed to- oh, Merlin."
"I won't tell Mum," says Bill. A small favour.
"You won't?" asks Ron miserably. He doesn't look up from his tea.
Bill knows Ron only came to him so he wouldn't have to go to their mum, which says pretty clearly that Ron doesn't want Mum to know he's not with Harry and Hermione. Ron must think he deserves to be murdered for it, though, or he wouldn't be feigning surprise at this.
"No," he says. "But you have to stay in. We don't get the Aurors calling as much as Mum and Dad do, but there's one every now and then."
"I won't stay long," says Ron. "I just- I didn't have anywhere to go. And it was raining."
Bill nods and looks out the window. It is indeed raining, drumming steadily and dismally on the roof. The sky is dark over the sea, the wind blowing in the trees. It would be beautiful on any other day.
Ron puts his head in his hands. "You hate me now."
"No," says Bill. "No, I don't."
At least he doesn't think he does. And anyway he can't possibly hate Ron as much as Ron must hate himself just now. If Percy is the proudest, and Charlie the quietest, then Ron is the least sure of who he is, the most likely to put himself down. And he always has been.
Ron shakes his head. "You should."
It's months after Ron sets off again that he returns, a few minutes after a house-elf brings them two teenagers and Mr. Ollivander then disappears again.
"Ron sent us! Ron sent us," says the taller teenager, when Bill and Fleur have them at wandpoint. "Don't-"
He fills them in once they're all convinced they're trustworthy. None of them have wands, which helps. "We- we were at, I think, the Malfoys' house," Dean says. "Huge."
"How-"
"I- I don't know," says Dean. "Harry Potter and-"
"Ron!" says Bill, remembering. "He was with them?"
"Yeah-"
"Did they recognise him?"
"I don't know," says Dean, who is pressing painfully at a bruise over his eyebrow. "He said he was a Weasley but he didn't say he was Ron-"
Bill swears; he's got to warn his parents.
Harry and his friends show up later, after they've all gotten Ollivander inside and resting. Hermione looks like she's been tortured, Ron looks horrible and shaken, for whatever reason they've got Griphook the goblin with them, and Harry's clutching that house elf. It's a terrible picture, the five of them in the sand.
Bill has always been responsible; it's him who extricates the wounded goblin from the clutch of people and him who tells Ron to get Hermione inside to sit down. It's him who sends a Patronus to the Burrow, it's him who tells Fleur to look up how to do a Fidelius charm. He gets clean, dry clothes for everyone. He digs Skele-Gro out of the cabinet when Fleur asks if they have any. He stares out the window at Harry and tells Ron in a low voice that he needs to know what's going on. now.
Ron refuses to say anything and Hermione's being aggressively served soup and Harry's still outside digging a grave for the house elf. The cottage has been protected for months but Bill wants to go and tell Harry to come in, that the house elf's body can wait. They surely can't risk Harry Potter over a dead house elf.
But he stays put, watching, and finally goes back inside.
"What is he doing?" Fleur asks, and Bill shakes his head.
"I have no idea," says Bill. "Grieving."
"You probably can't- I mean," says Dean, the next day. "It's been- ages, since I've been around another wizard. I mean, one I could trust."
"That's me," says Bill.
"My family," says Dean. "I haven't- it's been months."
Bill nods. "My brothers- they run this radio programme- they've been keeping track of missing Muggleborns. They might have an answer for you."
Dean blows out a breath. "Thanks."
"You got siblings?" says Bill absently. He has nothing better to do than talk, right now.
"I- yeah. Three sisters," says Dean. He prods at the bruise on his eyebrow. He is tall, thin, unsure.
"They'll be glad to hear from you," says Bill.
Dean is quiet for a moment. "I didn't say goodbye," he says. "I mean- I left a note. They'll hate me for it. I know I would."
Bill doubts Dean really means to tell him this. Probably it's just eating him up. "Don't poke at it," he says, of the bruise. Dean looks away.
He's sure Fleur was caught off guard by this- five teenagers, an old man, and a goblin, all of them needing somewhere to live for the foreseeable future- but she doesn't let on. She just disguises herself to go to the nearest grocer and stock the icebox, and then they work out the sleeping arrangements and they contact the Order and protect the cottage and try to patch up their seven weary guests.
And they stand in the doorway and watch Ron and Harry sitting quietly together. They must be wary of Dean; they send him furtive glances and don't say much. Dean is valiantly not noticing, sitting hunched over some scraps of paper Bill had found him and sketching something in light pencil.
It is Bill's nutty family, once again, that has disrupted their comfortable married life- Bill apologises on the first night but Fleur scoffs at him.
Frankly, he's ashamed to admit that he likes having five teenagers and an old man and a goblin. It's familiar, even with the decidedly insane circumstances. He's glad to be of some use, maybe.
"I'm still sorry," he says. "We're having a weird honeymoon."
"We probably should have waited until after the war," agrees Fleur. "But I prefer this to London."
Bill does too. "The view is better. But you're still the most beautiful thing around."
"Oh shut up," says Fleur, and smiles.
Bill has always been responsible. In his first year, he was from a famously traitorous family and could barely afford his supplies- somehow the combination convinced him that his presence at Hogwarts was precarious, balancing only on his good behaviour.
Besides, he was the oldest of seven children by then. He was responsible by default.
He broke up fights between other students with all the skill he'd gained pulling the twins and Percy apart. He helped his classmates when they couldn't figure out a spell or a potion. He made friends fast, smiled easily, and practically worshiped all his professors.
When he'd gone back home for Christmas, though, he'd realised how much he'd been missing back at home. Percy had lost another tooth; Ron's haircut was different. Ginny could form short sentences- Charlie told him that she'd said "love you Georgie" once, and that Fred had cried in his room for hours and refused to talk to George.
Bill had found it hilarious but had hated having to hear it from Charlie. As much as he liked Hogwarts, it was unthinkable that his family could operate without him.
When he and Dean talk in the sitting room, Dean talks about his friends at Hogwarts and his sisters. He must feel disconnected from his family in the same way that eleven-year-old Bill had, his first year of Hogwarts.
Even now he is disconnected, isn't he? Off in Shell Cottage with a ragtag gang of refugees. He misses Charlie dearly; he misses Fred and George and Ginny and even Percy. The twins and Ginny must be driving Mum mad.
But Dean is good company, and Luna is good company, and Mr. Ollivander is recovering his spirits, and there are Ron and Hermione and Harry, and even Griphook, and with the house full, Bill almost doesn't mind that he's not at home.
Harry Potter leaves Shell Cottage after a few weeks- nearly a month- with Griphook and Ron and Hermione, and Bill and Fleur don't realise they've gone until breakfast comes and they're nowhere to be found. They must have Disapparated away in the early morning.
"Will they be alright?" says Luna, spreading jam on a piece of toast. She looks over at Dean. "Did you know they were going to leave?"
Dean had been sharing a room with Harry and Ron for weeks. He shakes his head.
"They were never going to stay long," says Bill. "Honestly, it's incredible that they were here for more than a week."
Harry had hated the feeling that he was putting Shell Cottage in danger. He's a selfless person. Remarkably, annoyingly so.
Dean shakes his head slowly. "I reckon he's got to save the world, hasn't he?"
"I reckon so," agrees Bill. This is a fight that Harry has to win.
And while Harry is saving the world, Bill is going to work the logistics of feeding his two remaining guests when he's now a fugitive, and Bill is going to contact the Order and tell his family about Harry, and the war is going to come and meet them.