Disclaimer: I own nothing. We know this.
I've never written anything this short. I hope it's decent. I've also never written for anybody other than Harry/Draco, so this Harry/Ron was a fun new challenge. I'm currently working on something longer, but have had writer's block, so I took a break and wrote this instead. Enjoy!
Roughhousing
Roughhousing was the most normal and consistent part of my life. Growing up with five older brothers, well, that's just what we did; especially the twins. Before we received our Hogwarts letters, when magic was still off-limits to us, that's how Fred and George raised the most hell. And since I was the only one younger than them, other than Ginny (and Fred and George would never hit Ginny, lest they risk getting their brooms taken from them for another month), I was usually their chosen target. The only options were to buck up and join in, or let them eat you alive, so I learned to hit back. Percy was sometimes thrown in the mix, though he tried to avoid it. Charlie thrived off of it. Bill would usually try to break it up before mum or dad came in, but even he had the occasional lapse. What more could you expect? We were boys! It was how we played, it was how we fought, it was how we communicated. When one of us grabbed the last roll at dinner or sat in somebody's spot on the couch or said something stupid or appeared to be vulnerable, we wrestled. We shoved. We yelled. We beat up on each other. We laughed.
It never got boring and it never got out of hand. It was the most normal part of my life, that brotherly "activity" of ours. It drove mum and dad up the wall, so we restricted it to outdoors as best as we could (though we still wound up breaking many a household object when we got carried away). Sometimes one of us would suffer a bloody nose from one of our little brawls, usually due to a careless elbow or flighty fist, and then mom would fuss and scold and berate and inquire as to who was responsible for inflicting this wound onto her child. No matter what had happened, the bleeding patient would swear up and down that it was a Quidditch-related incident and that we hadn't been fighting, and the rest of us would nod fervently. A code of honor, that's what it was. We wouldn't dare sell each other out.
So when the time came, I assumed it wouldn't be any different at Hogwarts. I mean, sure, we weren't going to cause a ruckus and get ourselves expelled, but I expected my future housemates to be able to take the occasional shove in the common room. We were eleven-year-old boys. That's what we did. And man, did I luck out by getting sorted into Gryffindor. They were a rowdy bunch. By the end of my first week there, my dorm mates were like brothers to me, and it was nothing but constant banter and play whenever we were together. Even in classroom settings, we threw spit wads at each other, cast stupid spells at each other, threw food at each other in the Great Hall, tripped each other up the stairs, shoved each other into suits of armor in the corridors, played pranks in the Gryffindor tower. Dean, Neville, Seamus, and Harry were the greatest pals I could have asked for.
Eventually, Harry and I became closer with Hermione, and Dean and Seamus and Neville had their own groups of friends too. The fun and play was still there, but not as often. The five Gryffindor boys weren't inseparable anymore, and the roughhousing happened less and less. We didn't do that kind of stuff when Hermione was around. She disapproved of it. She thought it was barbaric. Harry loved it, though. It was part of the reason why we were best friends; we were matched perfectly for each other and it became a constant for us too, like with my brothers. It was something that just was. Boys will be boys, and that was how our friendship worked.
The change of seasons induced long strings of snowball fights across the grounds in place of horsing around on the Quidditch field, as we would have done in warmer weather. Half of the students of joined in on these winter activities. It was nothing but good fun. Afterwards, Harry and I would trudge back to Gryffindor tower, sopping wet, shivering, and red-faced from the cold and laughter. We'd dry off by the fire with hot cocoa, and chatter on for hours, still breathless from laughing. Hermione would join in, putting her books away and conjuring another steaming mug of cocoa. We were so happy, all the time, always.
And then the spring would come and the grounds would beckon us once more with its delightful warmth and green grass. We'd lounge by the lake, occasionally pushing each other in, we'd play Quidditch for hours and then at night, we'd sneak around under Harry's invisibility cloak. Sometimes we went without Hermione, when it was just for the sake of sneaking out. Hermione didn't approve unless it had to do with Nicolas Flamel and his stone. If we were wandering the castle for something irrelevant to our cause, like food or adrenaline rushes, then she didn't want to be a part of it.
There were two sides to mine and Harry's friendship. There was the side when we were around Hermione, which was serious and realistic; the kind where we talked about our feelings and cared about each other's well-being and told each other our secrets and supported each other and helped each other out. And then there was the side when Hermione wasn't around; the carefree part of our friendship where we could act like idiots and play pranks and roughhouse and laugh at stupid things and make jokes and wrestle and banter and let off steam. Both were equally wonderful and equally important. There was a very healthy balance.
This was how it went, day in and day out, month after month, year after year. We spent all of our time together, and Harry wound up living me with part or all of every summer; eventually Hermione did too. The three of us were so close that we thought and moved and breathed in sync with each other. We practically had our own language of looks and touches and sounds. We were a cohesive unit; indestructible and bizarre to any onlooker, but it fit us perfectly. We knew what to say to each other, what the other person needed. We knew when to be serious and when to be goofy. Even when things became more difficult to deal with as we got older, we just knew. We understood. Sometimes we needed to talk about thing to make each other feel better, and other times, we needed something silly to make us laugh. Sometimes we just needed to let off steam. It worked so well for so long, that really, honestly, I didn't see it coming.
It would be an absolute lie if I said that I had never thought about either of them in the other way before. When you spend so much time with somebody, I don't think you can help it. I knew that Harry and Hermione had a tryst or two in the past, and Hermione and I had our own fair share of stupid and awkward kisses, but neither of us were gay. I never admitted to thinking about Harry. I told myself that it was normal and that it was nothing and allowed myself to think of it privately, as there was nothing wrong with healthy, natural curiosity. Again, it really only had to do with proximity.
Sometimes, I thought that maybe I wanted him. Sometimes, I wondered if the way he touched me when we were alone meant something more. Sometimes I wondered whether the reason we were so comfortable around each other was something other than friendship. But then I watched him date his way through the girls in our year and I didn't wonder anymore. The second he got a girlfriend, I put all thoughts of it out of my mind, convinced entirely that we were nothing but very, very good friends, and I was very much okay with that; relieved, even, for misreading the signs. I dated Lavender Brown for a little while. The curiosity and potential attraction towards Harry remained forgotten.
Truly, I didn't see it coming.
Harry and I had been spending more time with each other one on one ever since Hermione had started dating my brother Fred. We didn't mind; she didn't abandon us or anything. But sometimes she wanted alone time with her boyfriend, and Harry and I respected that. All it meant was that there was a lot more time for us to act like silly teenage boys, which we didn't complain about. We were sixteen and Harry had a lot on his plate. We found ourselves horsing around much more than usual. It felt normal. It was normal.
It was just like any other day, with an ordinary scenario that had been played out time after time. A sunny Saturday, an afternoon spent playing one-on-one Quidditch, a lot of laughing. We had just put the equipment back in the shed and were shoving one another as we began to make our way back up to the castle. The shoving escalated and all of a sudden Harry put me in a headlock and I found myself being dragged to the ground. We grappled for a few moments until finally we gave up, proclaiming mutual defeat, and lied on our sides trying to catch our breath. I was in the middle of telling him what a git he was when without warning, Harry's lips attached themselves to mine.
Something clicked in my head, a soft, mental oh. Kissing people in the past had two kinds of results. It was either slow, awkward and messy, like with Hermione, or it was heady, wild, and passionate, like Lavender. I always assumed that that was the difference between a good kiss and a bad kiss (not that Hermione was a bad kisser, but we were just bad together. We didn't fit. It happens.) But something different happened when Harry kissed me. Instead of my brain fogging up and clouding over as it usually tended to do in that kind of situation, my head felt clear. This made sense. This felt right. This was normal; new, yes, but normal. This was what it was supposed to be like.
I didn't expect it. I hadn't thought about Harry this way in two years. Kissing him hadn't been on my mind whatsoever and I certainly didn't have any idea that it had been on his. It was literally the last thing I expected to happen and it caught me off-guard. But for some reason, I didn't mind so much. After so many years of knowing each other so thoroughly, this made sense. Everything in my world was falling into place. My embrace around him tightened. I could feel him smiling as his fingers knotted through my hair.
I had repressed my feelings for Harry years ago. I had told myself enough times that I didn't have feelings for him; so much that I had truly believed it. However, the second he kissed me, the floodgates of knowledge and understanding opened up, and the realization dawned on me almost instantaneously. I loved him. I had loved him all along. It was as plain and as simple as that, and once I had figured it out, it became very easy from there. We fit together so well. There was absolutely no reason for us not to be this way.
It didn't last very long. Eventually, we both started laughing again and heaved ourselves upwards and continued back on our walk to the castle. We continued to bump into each other and push and shove and joke and banter. It was as though nothing had happened. Because really, it wasn't such a big deal, kissing somebody you fit so well with. It wasn't about lust and desire and passion and fire. No, it was about contentment and comfort. It was the calm thrill, knowing exactly what to do without needing to think, not worrying about having to perform well to please the other person, because just being there is pleasing enough. It was feeling them smiling, it was laughing into their mouths; it was being able to stop and continue onward with your day or your conversation, and still feel joyful and whole. It was feeling gravity move, feeling that cosmic shift in the universe, and knowing that while nothing had really changed, things were different.
If Harry never kissed me again, I'd live. We'd still fit together better than anybody. We'd still be best friends. We'd still be comfortable around each other. Nothing would change. And if we kept doing this, it would be fine. Even with a new title and relationship status, things wouldn't be much different between us. We'd still be best friends, we'd still be comfortable around each other, and we'd still fight like brothers.
Because, like I said, roughhousing had always been a constant, since I was a little kid. It made sense to me. The only other thing that had ever been so rock-solid, steady, and dependable in my life was mine and Harry's friendship. It was as easy and natural and necessary as breathing or falling asleep or blinking.
Loving him proved to be no different.
I just don't know how I didn't see it in the first place.