Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and, surprisingly, nor do I want to. I would probably do something completely horrible with them, and the characters would act, well, out-of-character, as in this story (I tried, I really did). So J.K.Rowling can keep her job, and I'll just keep reading.

Enjoy!

Ronald Bilius Weasley stalked up the stairs of #12 Grimmauld Place, slammed open the door, and stomped his way over to a very shocked and very surprised Harry Potter. He towered threateningly over Harry for a moment, then, before Harry could react, grabbed him by the shirt and growled, "What the bloody hell is wrong with you?"

Harry's jaw, agape moments before, snapped shut, his eyes narrowing. "What the bloody hell is wrong with me? What the bloody hell is wrong with you?"

Ron let go of Harry's shirt, but otherwise ignored him.

"I don't care what Hermione says about "processing" and "dealing with it in your own way." I get the whole mourning thing, but this is stupid. You've spent the entire summer rotting up here, moping and acting like no one understands. You're done processing. We get it, okay!"

Harry glared fiercely and turned away. "No, you don't get it."

Ron, his Weasley temper reaching heights beyond those even Hermione had reached, grabbed Harry's shoulder and jerked him around. "What don't we bloody well get?"

"You have no idea what happened that night!"

"Only because you won't tell us, you stupid prat!"

"Well maybe if you hadn't spent the entire time playing with some stupid brain, you'd have seen what happened yourself!"

Ron stepped back, momentarily stunned. Harry had never so purposefully insulted him like that. Vaguely he saw Harry reach forward, looking completely horrified and intensely sorry, but Ron had had enough.

"Now you're insulting me because I followed my great, stupid friend into some trap? Get a grip, Potter!"

Instead of returning anger with anger, as Ron expected him to, Harry looked away, drooping with a weariness far too old to belong to a sixteen-year old.

"I know," he half whispered. "I know."

Ron looked startled. "Wha—" he began.

"I know, okay? Are you happy? That I'm admitting it? It's all my fault. I was too stupid to realize that maybe Voldemort was setting a trap, that maybe, just maybe, I should listen to the smartest witch of the century and not go bursting into Ministry headquarters like some sort of hero to the rescue. You don't get...you didn't see...you should have died. They should have died. We all should have died. Hermione wasn't moving. I thought she was dead. You were fighting some sort of freakish brain—it was killing you. Only Neville was left standing, and he couldn't say a spell to save his life—literally." Harry gave a weak, sort-of hysterical laugh and raked his hand through his hair.

"Finally, I stopped being lucky. Sirius died—he's dead, Ron, and he's never coming back." He paused. "And it's all my fault."

Ron barely caught the last sentence, but the tensely silent room wasn't enough to drown it out. He didn't know whether to laugh nervously, cry, or grab Harry and hug him, so rather than put his manliness into question, he brought his hands together in a half-hearted gesture of strangulation.

"Aaah!" he cried in frustration. "Enough with the "it's my fault" routine. It's g e t t i n g o l d!"

A flash of annoyance flickered across Harry's face. "Who else do you think led his best friends, part of the D.A., and the Order into a death trap?"

"YOU DIDN'T KILL SIRIUS YOU BLOODY IDIOT! VOLDEMORT DID!"

Harry registered shocked surprise, but Ron didn't even notice he'd said You-Know-Who's name, though his ears looked about ready to burst into flames, as did the rest of his face.

"Wow," Harry said weakly, "you just said Vol—"

"Yeah, whatever," Ron cut him off, not even hearing what Harry was saying.

Uncomfortable silence descended on the room, and Ron tried not to twiddle his thumbs nervously. "Well...er..."

"Yeah," broke in Harry sarcastically, "I'm glad we've had this little chat." He turned suddenly away, and Ron, in a sudden flash of intuition, realized that that wasn't it.

Oh no. That wasn't it at all.

"Harry," said Ron calmly. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you?"

Harry snorted, but refused to turn around. "Haven't we been through this already?"

"No way, Potter. You are not getting out of this conversation, whether I have to beat it out of you or not. I'm not exactly the most patient guy in the world."

Harry snorted again, this time in amusement. Understatement of the year.

Ron pretended to ignore Harry, but was inwardly pleased and slightly mortified at the sudden realization that this was the first time all summer that Harry had showed some sign of laughter.

"So what's it going to be, huh? Fist, or talk?"

Harry turned around and looked first at Ron, then at Ron's fist, poised in deadly seriousness.

"It's nothing," he finally said, turning back to the window.

In a few short strides Ron was there. He jerked Harry around for the second time that day and shoved him with one hand against the wall, fist still raised.

"What was that? Didn't catch what you said."

Glare met glare, neither boy backing down. Harry finally broke the tense silence. "Knock it off, Ron."

"Knock what off? Your bloody head? Because I'll do so gladly."

"Look, you don't want to know, okay?"

"Uh, yeah, I think I do. Why else do you think I'm up here, threatening to pound your bloody nose into your face? Talk to me!"

"And tell you what? Huh? That I'm going to die? That I'm probably never going to live past school, that if I don't die, I'm going to have to murder someone!"

Ron's eyes widened. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Harry was on a roll, and there was no stopping the torrent of words rushing from the angry Boy-Who-Lived.

"You think I enjoy my role in life? You think I enjoy this hero business? Saving the world is great and all, but not when you have to do it! None of this "make your own destiny" crap for me! Prophecies don't give a damn about who you are, what you want, or even what sort of hell they turn your life into. I've had enough, I've..."

Ron suddenly cut him off. "Wait. What prophecy? You said it broke."

"It did. But dear, old Dumbledore was there when it was originally made by our, get this, very own dear Professor Trelawney. Turns out she isn't as much of a fraud as we would all like to believe."

Ron knew he was onto some great breakthrough just by the fact that Harry was still talking, but his morbid fascination would have driven him forward anyways. "What. Did. It. Say?"

Harry smiled bitterly. "I get to kill Voldemort," he said bluntly, ignoring Ron's flinch. "Well, actually, it went something like 'either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.'"

It hurt to just look at Harry's haunted, haggard expression, and for a second time Ron had to fight the urge to hug Harry, or slap him on the back sympathetically, or something. But he brushed it off, and the glare was back.

"So. What."

Harry's eyes opened wide and his jaw gaped open. This was not the reaction he had been expecting. "What do you mean, 'so what'?"

"I mean," said Ron, as if explaining to a stubbornly ignorant child, "So. What."

"But...I have to...well..."

"You have to what, Harry? Okay, okay," he quickly amended in response to the look Harry was giving him. "You have to kill You-Know-Who. No pressure, right? But honestly, you're sixteen. Get a grip. You don't have to jump out the window right now and chase down You-Know-Who. You've got plenty of time to snog quite a few girls senseless first."

Harry interrupted Ron suddenly, taken aback.

"Wait," he said. "Snog a few girls senseless? First, where did that come from? And second, who is going to snog me?"

It was Ron's turn to look incredulous, as if amazed at Harry's stupidity. "Tell me you're joking. Please tell me that my friend did not just ask me that." When Harry very well did not tell Ron that he hadn't just asked him that, but rather continued looking serious, Ron went on fiercely.

"You are Harry Bloody Potter. Who won't let you snog them?"

Harry's eyes narrowed again, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Draco Malfoy?" he asked innocently.

Ron's look of disgust rivaled that of Hermione's when he had been barfing slugs in second year. And he could honestly say he would prefer the slugs. "Wow, Harry. I wasn't annoyed enough with you already without you putting that lovely visual into my head. Thanks a lot." He shuddered.

"What, snogging Malfoy doesn't do it for you?"

"Oh, no," said Ron in mock surprise, his voice dripping sarcasm. "I wouldn't mind snogging Malfoy. It's you I don't want to see snogging him."

Harry looked abruptly surprised, but then in what Ron would later describe as an act of God, he laughed.

Long, hard, and from somewhere deep in his gut.

Ron froze, struck dumb by this nearly foreign sound emanating from his best friend. But then he joined in, not because anything was particularly funny, but because Harry was laughing. He was laughing.

Ron smirked and felt supremely pleased with himself.

"Come on," he was finally able to gasp out. "Let's go downstairs and show everyone else that you're still alive."

"Pleased with yourself, are you?" asked Harry harshly, though his smile belied his tone of voice.

"Duh."

"Hmph. Fine. Let's go, you prat."

"Shut it, Potter."

"Watch your mouth, Weasley."

Ron snorted disdainfully. "Who's going to stop me? You?"

"Savior of the world, remember? I think I can handle one especially annoying member of the Weasley clan."

"You and what army?"

"Actually, I'm thinking I can get the entire Weasley clan on my side."

"And I could blackmail the Malfoys onto mine. Especially after snogging Draco."

Harry tried to make a retort, but whatever he was about to say got lost in the laughter. Ron pretended to ignore him, reached for the door, jerked it open, and Harry's second attempt at a proper insult died on his lips.

Three Weasleys and a Granger stared up at them from the floor and tried to look inconspicuous.

"Uh...hi, Ron. Hi, Harry," Hermione managed while surreptitiously trying to pull an extendable ear out of sight. "Imagine meeting you here!"

Ron slammed the door and turned toward Harry, bewildered.

"Did I just see what I thought I saw?" he asked.

Harry choked on his laughter but managed to get out a "I'm thinking you did."

Ron jerked the door open again, this time to what appeared to be an impromptu conference between Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George, still half-sitting on the floor.

"Why," said Ron, acting delighted, "What a pleasant surprise it is to see you four outside mine and Harry's room with, oh, what are these, expendable ears!"

Hermione at least had the decency to look ashamed of herself, but Fed and George merely grinned cheekily, waving as if they hadn't seen Ron in ages, while Ginny crossed her arms in front of her and said, "Took you long enough."

Ron snorted. "With what? Figuring out that you were listening?"

"No, stupid," she said. "Beating some sense into his dumb head."

"Well, I figured his dumb head needed it."

"You know," said Harry. "I'm standing right here."

They ignored him.

Ginny continued. "I was about ready to go and give him a piece of my mind myself before you beat me to it."

Harry grumbled something under his breath about kind, understanding friends.

"Well," said Ron, blushing slightly. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

The twins, after an uncommonly long silence, finally chimed in.

"Oh, aye, good thinking little bro'."

"Bloody brilliant, really, shouting at Harry like that."

"Oh, shut up, you two," Ron said, his ears now bright red.

"Wait," cut in Harry suspiciously. "How much did you hear?"

Silence shrouded the group as abruptly as if someone had just literally thrown a wet blanket over the group, and this time, all four looked down at the ground, the ceiling, and at the fascinating pattern a water stain was forming on the wall—all but at Harry.

"Well," began George, "we were forced to start using the expendable ears after you stopped shouting, since we couldn't hear anymore otherwise..."

"Good set of lungs you got there, mate," broke in Fred, winking at a highly embarrassed Harry.

"...And we heard...well..."

"Enough," finished Ginny flatly.

Harry looked at the ground. "I...well, I guess..." he started, trying to somehow explain what couldn't be explained away.

Hermione didn't let him get far.

"Oh, Harry," she said and threw herself at his neck. "I'm so sorry!"

Harry was alarmed to see tears in her eyes, and a deer in the headlights look crossed over his face as Hermione continued to babble.

"It's so stupid, and unfair, but of course it's unfair, you know that, but what can you do? I'm so sorry, if you ever need to talk we're all here for you..."

Harry cut her off, pushing her gently away in order to look her in the eye.

"It's alright, Hermione. I already had a good...er...talk ("Damn near broke the windows," interjected George) with a really great friend of mine," he said, tilting his head toward Ron.

Ron was startled but rather pleased when Hermione suddenly launched herself at him.

"Oh, Ron, thank you thank you thank you, he so needed that," she whispered into his ear, then, kissing him on the cheek, stepped back, flustered.

Ron felt himself smile dazedly, but he missed the four amused glances that Fred, George, Ginny, and Harry shot at each other.

"Erm...right. Shall we, um...go downstairs?" he asked after trying, and failing, to shake it off.

"Sure," said Harry, amused. "You must go show off your handiwork."

"Watch it, Potter. I can still take you."

"Actually, Ron," said Fred, sidling up and placing a conspiratorial arm around his shoulders, "I'd be the one to be careful. He does have the entire Weasley clan on his side after all."

"Too true, dear brother, too true," agreed George, sighing dramatically and placing an arm around Ron's other shoulder, "despite your connections to the Malfoy family."

Fred suddenly grabbed George and pulled him away from an enraged Ron. "We must tell Mother the good news." He glanced at Ron. "Ikkle Ronniekins has finally found himself a boyfriend!"

Fred and George took off down the stairs and a second later Ron sprinted after them, bellowing like a wounded hippo.

Ginny laughed and grabbed Harry's arm, beginning to drag him down the stairs.

"Come on," she said. "Wouldn't want to miss all the fun."

Hermione tried to look admonishing but botched her attempt miserably by laughing and grabbing Harry's other arm, helping Ginny pull him somewhat haphazardly down the stairs. Harry decided it would be a good idea to take charge of the situation before falling to his death, and ended up dragging the girls along with him instead. And, as Harry glanced at a certain red-headed, laughing Ginny, he was struck with the sudden urge to snog at least one person before fulfilling any prophecies, urgent or not.

Somehow, he suspected that Sirius would be pleased.