Hey guys, long time no see! I'm sorry that I have taken so long in getting this chapter out, but there's a very good reason. Those of you who checked my profile will know, but for the rest of you, this is it; for the past three months, I haven't had a laptop, which means that I've been relying on using my university's computers to do any kind of work, and a lot of people use them, so getting to do anything other than assessments has been tough.

Written for: Connect the Weasleys Challenge - Bill/Ron - Nightmare/ Favourite Character BC Challenge using prompt 'Tell'/ Favourite Hogwarts House BC Challenge with 'Scar'/ The If You Dare Challenge using 'A Full Moon'

*Edit* - I'm an idiot, apparently and left out a paragraph. Copying this from google docs really did a number on me, but it's there now.


December 1986

.

As the oldest of seven siblings, Bill Weasley had always prided himself on being an excellent big brother. An assumption that was not misguided either; when Charlie had been a baby, he used to get into the cot with him and hug him until he stopped crying because he wasn't big enough to do anything else, he'd taught Percy how to tie his shoe laces, and he had been almost single-handedly responsible for teaching Fred and George how to walk (not that his mother would classify that as being helpful, exactly, but he counted it as an achievement anyway). When it came to the two youngest member of the family, however, there was often a feeling of regret, because by the time they were old enough to do anything other than eat, sleep or need a nappy change, Bill had been at Hogwarts. Being so much older than them could be incredibly disconcerting at times; he'd been gone for such long periods of time during the school year that every time he went home, they were completely different people.

This was especially true for Ron, who as a toddler had been afraid of almost everything (something Bill suspected the twins were at least partially responsible for, what with their love of pranks and using him as a test subject for their experiments). And yet, despite that, every time he went home for the holidays, his baby brother had conquered another fear, a big, mostly toothless grin lighting up his face whenever he did something for the first time. It was because of this, and because he missed so many important moments early on, that Bill had made it his duty to give the younger redhead lots of attention when at The Burrow. He wasn't stupid; he'd seen during his earlier years that Ron was often the most overlooked child. Not because he wasn't loved, but because he was the youngest boy. Bill and Charlie were at Hogwarts, Percy, even at the age of nine was clearly planning on going somewhere in life, and Bill really wouldn't have been surprised if he'd ended up in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor, and he constantly asked questions about the world around him, because knowing things made the world easier to deal with (or something, he'd stopped paying attention after five minutes of his brother's ramblings). Fred and George were always up to something, whether it was figuring out how to steal Percy's glasses without him noticing, or how to rig a dungbomb on top of the kitchen door without getting themselves caught in the mess, and Ginny was the only girl, so she got all of the attention from their doting mother because she was the 'miracle' child. Bill loved his sister, he did, but she was not something that he would voluntarily call anything other than a pain in the arse. But Ron was usually the most ignored child because he wasn't a troublemaker, he didn't have any ambitions of becoming the Minister and all he really wanted to do was play Quidditch and eat.

When he'd been eleven years old, and on the brink of going to school, he and Charlie had made a promise late one night when they should have been sleeping, to make sure that their littlest brother always knew that they loved him. They hadn't said it in those exact words, because in Charlie's opinion, telling someone that you loved them was "girly and something that only Ginny does", but the basis had been the same. As the years passed, Bill often regretted being quite so caring towards the youngest Weasley boy. Not because he didn't care, but because Ron had a habit of coming to him for comfort after a nightmare, of which he had a lot, and they always seemed to be about spiders.

There is a particular night that he's always remembered with perfect clarity, although it wasn't all that different from any other time Ron had ended up in his bed and holding onto him for dear life, his eyes screwed shut in fear and sweat covering his entire body. But it is this, and comments made by Harry and Hermione that make him wonder if maybe his baby brother is a tiny bit psychic, or if there's some Seer blood in their family somewhere down the line.

-xoxo-

It was the Christmas holidays of his fifth year, a Thursday, and it was very late at night, or in the morning, depending on the way that he looked at it. He'd still been awake, although the light was off, and he'd been staring at the ceiling, listening to Charlie's light, snuffling snores from across the room, thinking about a conversation he'd had with his parents earlier in the day regarding his future and the N.E. he was going to take. Telling them that he wanted to be a curse breaker hadn't exactly gone well, and his mum was in a mood with him, sniffing angrily whenever he so much as blinked in her presence. It was as he punched his pillows into a more comfortable position that he heard the soft pitter-patter of small feet crossing bare floorboards, and he stifled a sigh as the door quietly creaked open, Ron's head peeking around the frame hesitantly. When he saw the look on Bill's face he went to pull back out onto the landing, intending to go to Percy instead, but his brother's voice stopped him from moving.

"What's wrong, Ronnie?" The six year old pulled a face at the nickname, but pushed the door open to reveal the rest of him. Even as a kid, Ron had been tall; he'd reached their dad's knees by the time he was seven. His Chudley Cannon pyjamas, a birthday present from earlier in the year, were glaringly bright, even in the dark, were a little bit short in both the arm and the leg, proof of just how quickly he grew, and he had a sad-looking toy dragon named Levi (because he couldn't pronounce Leviathan - a name that Charlie had given it when it had been brand new), who was missing an eye and whose wings were lopsided, stuffed under one arm.

"I had a bad dream." The response almost made Bill smile; it was the same answer every time. Ron closed the door and shuffled further into the room, not quite getting to the end of the bed and giving the older boy a pleading look as he leant forward and whispered, "It was about spiders."

"Why'd you dream about them?" He asked, pretending that it was something unusual, because Ron hated anyone treating his fear like it was normal. He later said that it made him feel like he was being made fun of, even if that wasn't what had been meant.

"George put a spider in the chess box so I couldn't get it out." The little boy frowned deeply, his lower lip sticking out slightly in his unhappiness. "He did it on purpose, 'cause he knew me and Dad were gonna play after dinner. I hate him."

Bill sighed and shifted on the bed so there was space next to him, lifting an arm up and raising a brow. "No you don't, you just think you do." He almost laughed at the petulant "Same thing." that left Ron's mouth and instead cocked his head to the side. "Are you getting in or not?"

"I'm getting in!" Seeming to think that the offer would be rescinded if he took too long, the longer boy hurried to the edge of the bed, throwing Levi on to the mattress and clambering up after him, immediately snuggling into Bill's open arms, his messy red hair tucked underneath his brother's chin.

"So, what exactly happened in this dream of yours?" He reached down to pull the duvet up and huffed in exasperation when it was just below his fingertips.

"There were loads of trees and me and two other kids were running away from a bunch of big spiders." The look on Bill's face must have been unimpressed because Ron hastened to add that, "They were bigger than the car in Dad's shed!"

Internally frowning, Bill absently stroked the nest of red hair on his shoulder. They sounded like Acromantula, although Ron shouldn't have known about, because as far as he knew, no one had told him that they existed. "Okay, what else?"

"Well, the girl disappeared, but I don't think the spiders got her. Me and the boy ran for ages, but we were still in the trees, and then one of the spiders started talking to us." He shivered, burying his head into the crook of Bill's neck and the Weasley smiled at the wooden beam directly above his head. Ron's over active imagination was notorious in their family, and this was an example of why.

"What did it say?"

"'Goodbye'. That's when I woke up." Bill tightened the arm around Ron's shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, knowing that come the morning, he would be holding onto feet instead of a torso, and there would be toes digging into his shoulder.

"Well, they're gone now. They won't come back, either. Not while I'm here, so go to sleep." Beside him, Ron's body relaxed, the grip the six year old had had on his tatty t-shirt slowly slackening and his breathing became even.

-xoxo-

April 1998

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Despite being the youngest of six brothers, who had shied away from comforting his older siblings in their moments of weakness, lest they never let him live it down, Ron Weasley was shockingly familiar with the sounds of someone having a nightmare. It was the shout that came from the room across the hall, the one that Bill and Fleur shared, that woke him from his slumber, his best friend stirring slightly next him.

"Was that Bill?" Harry breathed, pushing the duvet off of his legs and lowering one of his feet to the floor. Ron gave a nod of his head and quickly got to his feet, his toes scrunching against the cold floorboards in protest and he reached out to grab his friend's wrist before he could open the door.

"I'll go. See if Hermione's okay, will you?" Ron asked, not waiting for conformation but seeing Harry agree anyway. The two boys left the room, Harry heading down the hallway towards Hermione and Luna's room and Ron taking the few steps towards his brother's room.

With a quiet tap on the wooden door, Ron pushed the handle down and eased it open, poking his head through the gap. Bill was lying on his bed, the sheets balled down around his knees, his face pale and soaked with sweat. One side of the bed was still relatively intact. Fleur had gone to visit her parents for the weekend, so she could celebrate her sister's birthday, and had Apparated straight there in order to avoid any trouble.

"Bill?" Ron asked in a whisper, edging into the room and letting the door slide shut behind him with a low thud.

The only response was a sharp inhale of breath and then a few jerky coughs. Blue eyes blinked open slowly, still groggy with sleep and the older Weasley lifted his weight onto his elbows so he could look at his brother. "Ron, that you? What's wrong?"

Ron almost smiled at that, regardless of the reason he was there. Of course Bill was more concerned about him and ignoring the obvious problem at hand. "Nothing, I'm fine. I heard you shouting, though. Are you okay?"

Bill flopped back down onto the bed, a hand rubbing over his face slowly as he sighed. "I'm alright. S'nothing to worry about. Go back to bed."

"Can't be nothing, if you're having bad dreams about it." The taller redhead muttered, approaching the tidier side of the bed cautiously and lowering himself onto the navy blankets, gazing out of the slightly ajar curtains at the cloudy sky outside as he waited for an answer, just able to make out the full moon behind one of the darkest clouds.

"Yeah, well, it is, so just drop it, yeah?" Bill turned his back towards his brother, punching his pillows as he rearranged his body.

"You dreamt of the battle, right?" Ron guessed, glancing at the older man's shoulder blades and picking some dirt out from underneath his thumbnail.

Rolling over to face him again, Bill frowned heavily, his right hand reaching up to scratch absently at one of the scars on his cheek. "How the ruddy hell did you know that?"

The eighteen year old shrugged and he flashed a grim smile in Bill's direction. "Lucky guess. The bad things have a habit of staying with you."

"And how would you know about 'the bad things'?"

"You don't want to know." A suspicious glare was aimed at him and he held his hands up. "My best friend's Harry Potter." He pointed out, as if it explained everything, his lips twitching when Bill nodded slowly. "What did you dream about?"

Bill's face immediately lost all emotion and he stared at one of the bedroom walls. "It was just a dream, right? It's in the past, so let's leave it there."

Blowing out a breath from between pursed lips, Ron laid down so his head was next to his brother's shoulder. "I want to help."

Bill snorted derisively and placed a hand on Ron's head gently. "Nothing can help, Ronnie. It's a thing that happened and nobody can do anything about it."

"You used to make me talk about my nightmares all the time!" He protested, tilting his head back so he could look the other man in the eye.

"That was different! You used to have nightmares about spiders, for Merlin's sake!" Ron flinched and before Bill could apologise, his younger brother was defending himself.

"We've all got things that scare us, you prat! So, what? Your nightmares mean more just because they're about something worse than a poxy spider? If we're going there then I think I've seen worse!"

"Okay! I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean it like that, it's just that I forget how much you hate them sometimes." Ron settled down again, his head mere inches from Bill's shoulder, some of the longer strands to tickle his arm.

"You'd hate them too, if you'd come face to face with an Acromantula." Ron muttered so quietly, Bill wasn't sure he'd heard properly.

Knowing that he wouldn't be left in peace until he'd answered the question, he sighed and rolled his shoulders back into the mattress, speaking to the ceiling. "It was Greyback. When he bit me. We'd been trying to push some of the Death Eaters back; there were a group of second years stuck in a classroom and we'd been trying to get them out safely, when there was this sudden crash, and then that bastard was there. There wasn't much time between him standing there and biting me, the last thing I really remember is that everything hurt and the world was starting to go dark."

"Bloody hell." Ron breathed, reaching out to tap reassuringly on his brother's hip, as it was the only part he could reach without it becoming painful. "That's what happened?"

"That's what I remember." Bill corrected with a sardonic smile. "That doesn't mean that it was exactly like I think it was."

"Shit. You dreamt that?" Ron asked. "No wonder you had a nightmare."

After a few minutes of silence, Bill spoke again. "It's not usually this bad." He admitted around a yawn, pulling the duvet up from around his knees so that it rested just above his waist.

"Why? 'Cause you have Fleur to make you feel better?" Ron teased, laughing when a large hand hit him around the size of his head.

"Shut up, brat. It's not just her; it's knowing that there's someone else there and that I'm not alone that makes them not so bad." Before Ron could say anything about him becoming a soppy git, Bill had clapped a hand over his mouth. "Not a word."

"I wasn't going to say anything!" Ron's voice was muffled and he couldn't breathe properly, so, in order to get free, he licked Bill's palm, shrinking away when Bill's immediate reaction was to wipe it on his hair.

"I'm sure." Bill grinned. "Go to sleep."

"Don't worry, Billy; I'm here to protect you."

"Piss off."

-xoxo-

Harry poked his head into Bill's bedroom after knocking softly on the wooden door, grinning to himself when he saw that the two Weasleys' were fast asleep, laying side by side on the bed. Ron's head was at the wrong end of the bed, next to Bill's feet and the toes of his left foot poking his brother in the neck. As he stood there, Bill's leg twitched, his knee lifting to dig into Ron's rib cage, causing the younger of the two to move away, almost rolling off the bed as he did so.

From down the corridor he could hear the sounds of Hermione or Luna moving around. Hermione had been fine, but he still wanted to double check that nothing had happened after he'd gone back to bed, so he withdrew from the room, padding down the hall until he was standing outside the girls' room, the smile from seeing his best friend's position still on his face as he lifted a fist to knock on the door.


I hope that you enjoyed this chapter as much as the last two! I'm incredibly grateful for the favourites, follows and reviews :) I'm entirely happy with the second half of this chapter, to be honest. I was writing this in two different places, one on my old, barely functioning laptop and the other on Google docs, so I'd forgotten the style I'd used for the first half.

There are two things that I want to explain about this chapter; the first being the toy dragon's name, Leviathan. I am indeed a Supernatural fan and that was a deciding factor in choosing the name, but it wasn't the only one. Because I knew that the dragon had belonged to Charlie (who else, let's be honest), I figured that he'd give it a traditional name, so a quick google, gave me the name. The second is when Ron says 'battle'. I don't mean the final battle, obviously. I meant the one at the end of Harry's sixth year. I know a lot people will know this, but battle is usually used to describe the end of the war, so I thought I should clarify.

Also, I've taken creative license and possibly bent canon a little bit to describe what happened when Bill was bitten (I can't remember if it ever says and I've left my copies in Cardiff).

Anyway, until next time,

-V