"Professor McGonagall," Ron heard Harry hiss at the Head of the Order. "When are we going to get started?"
It was a valid question. Everyone had adjourned from the kitchen to the living room, having consumed bowl after bowl of Mrs. Weasley's hearty soup and generous slices of thick homemade bread. They were now milling around, seating themselves on sofas, chairs and some of the younger members on the floor. Jovial conversation floated on the air as the roughly forty most active members of the Order of the Phoenix exchanged greetings and news, some of them only recently back from outposts or undercover roles.
Ron saw his brothers Charlie and Bill engaged in coversation with Kingsley Shacklebolt and Nymphadora Tonks. Fred and George were standing just behind Moody and shooting him anticipatory looks that surely boded no good. Neville, who had arrived during dinner pale but cheerful, had been given the most comfortable spot on the sofa and Susan was wrapping an afghan around him. Hermione seemed deep in consultation with Arabella Figg (always looking out for the underdog, not wanting the Squib to feel left out, Ron though with fond pride). Mrs. Weasley was sitting on an ottoman looking up at a smiling Remus Lupin standing by the mantle, while Mr. Weasley seemed to be trying to interest Professor Snape in one of his Muggle plugs. Snape just scowled into the distance, hovering at the back like a small bat next to Hagrid's towering presence. Even Ginny was there curled up in an armchair in the corner, familiar freckles and red hair restored, looking tired but with a half-grin on her face as she watched Mundungus Fletcher pitch a suspicious looking burlap bag into a closet.
Ron, standing next to Harry near the front of the room, watched McGonagall cock an eyebrow.
"Mr. Potter, as you have called this meeting, it is up to you to chair it," she told Harry in her customary tone of slightly acid amusement.
Ron watched Harry as his eyes widened for a moment. Then he blinked, hitched up his khaki pants and cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, everyone? I'd like to call the Order, uh, to order," Harry finished rather sheepishly.
The volume of conversation had risen in the last five minutes and no one seemed to hear Harry.
"Could we get this meeting started?" Harry asked a little more loudly.
He remained completely ignored. Time to take things in hand.
"OI!" Ron shouted, and heads swiveled toward him as silence abruptly fell. Ron felt his cheeks heat up but simply gestured to Harry and sat down in a rickety wooden chair.
"Thank you," Harry said wryly. "Thanks to everyone for coming on such short notice. I'm afraid we've uncovered a new plot of Voldemort's that's taken a heavy toll already."
Seated next to Harry, Ron had a view of most of the Order facing front to listen. He watched their reactions as Harry began to explain.
"Two weeks ago during a skirmish a note from Voldemort was planted on me," Harry said, his gaze turning slightly cold as if daring anyone to cringe at the name. "The note reads as follows:
Dearest Harry,
Be not deceived by your own arrogance nor your pitiful allies. A sharp and silvered death will call upon you, but not before you draw your breath in pain to witness the demise of your friends. I am taking the battle to you, Harry. The time draws near.
In victory,
Lord Voldemort."Ron continued to study the faces of the Order as they listened to the note. Mrs. Weasley wrung her hands and looked worried, while Snape remained completely impassive, black eyes glinting coldly. Fred and George actually appeared to be paying attention and had identical squints of concentration, heads tilted to one side. Moody's magical eye swirled around erratically while Tonks' hair gently pulsed from green to blue and back again as she closed her eyes in thought.
Harry continued. "When Ron and I arrived home after Dean's and Seamus' funeral, I found that another note had been planted in my pocket." Harry read the second note and paused for the implications to sink in.
Kingsley Shacklebolt rubbed his forefinger across his lip contemplatively, while Hermione twined a curl around a finger with her left hand and furiously took notes with her right. Ron was surprised to look over and see Lupin with a fiercely determined glare and a clenched fist propped on the mantle.
"So what we've got here is essentially a carefully planned campaign by Voldemort to eliminate the people close to me in hopes of my surrendering to him. I don't have to tell you that each one of you is at risk to be his next strike. We believe Neville was the next on the list but Draco Malfoy intervened to help us save him," Harry said with a nod at Neville, who gave a tired grin.
"Here is where it gets complicated. We believe that Malfoy is in fact Voldemort's agent for these assassination strikes, his so-called 'silvered death.' What is also clear is that Malfoy has some kind of mixed agenda, which led him to prevent Neville's death covertly but not defy Voldemort openly. So I have called you here tonight to 1) warn you to watch your step more closely than ever, 2) discuss Voldemort's plan and ways of stopping it, and 3) decipher Malfoy's agenda and speculate on his motives. Headmistress, I'd like to turn the discussion over to you," Harry concluded and sat down with a relieved sounding huff.
"Well done, mate," Ron leaned over to say in Harry's ear, patting him on the leg and trying not to notice the power of the muscle underneath his hand. Harry nodded with only faint coloring of his cheeks. Ron wondered if that came from the compliment or from his hand on Harry's thigh.
For the next hour speculations and discussion swirled around the living room as the Order tried to hash out plots and counterplots and possible plans of action to offset the increased threat. With a loud and clearly inebriated hiccough, Mundungus Fletcher suddenly spoke up.
"Look 'ere, weren't Malfoy Harry's boyfriend? I caught 'em snogging out behind the Hog's Head more than once," with what he seemed to believe was a companionable leer at Harry.
There was a shocked and strained silence as everyone tried to decide whether or not to address what was clearly relevant data but also extremely taboo given the nature of Lucius' death, Harry's and Draco's breakup, and Draco's immediate joining of the Death Eaters. Ron glared as hard as he could at Dung but held back from standing up and shouting when he looked at Harry's pale, downturned face, eyes closed and fists clenched.
Professor McGonagall stepped in with Gryffindor courage.
"Mr. Potter's romantic attachments are his own business, much as I believe you would prefer the economic enterprises you run off of your Order connections to remain, Mr. Fletcher," she concluded sternly.
The laugh that ran through the crowd broke the tension. Dung was unphased, simply waving his firewhiskey jug happily at McGonagall before stumbling off down the hall.
Dung's departure seemed to signal the end of the meeting, and people began to shake hands and offer the occasional hug. They gradually filtered out of the house amid gathering of cloaks and scarves. Harry did not seem interested in hanging around so after quick kisses pressed to Hermione's cheeks, the boys headed for the fireplace to floo back to their flat. As he stepped into the hearth, Ron took a long look around the room at the familiar faces that had held the front so long, hoping against hope that his next sight of one of them would not be at a funeral.
Ron's dark thoughts of the evening before seemed far away as he turned his face up to the Saturday sunshine and drew in deep breaths of the bracing March air. Looking around at the noisily eating, talking and laughing group of people seated around the enlarged picnic table in the backyard of the Burrow, he realized that despite the war, it was a great time to be twenty-three years old. Mum had really outdone herself today, Ron reflected, happily biting into a drumstick of fried chicken. Harry seemed to concur judging by the single-mindedness with which he was shoveling down mashed potatoes.
Many of the Order members who had gathered for the meeting at Grimmauld were now talking shop between bites of shepherd's pie or breaded fish. While the menu may not have seemed to fit together by any normal standards, Mrs. Weasley always cooked exactly what her children loved best on their birthdays. As Fred and George loved meatballs and mint ice cream above all other things, Ron's combination of foods seemed normal by comparison. Speaking of Fred and George, he hadn't been subjected to a single prank yet nor had the wedding hair fiasco pictures surfaced. As birthdays were considered an absolute free-for-all joke opportunity on the person in question, Ron was concerned—this was merely the silence before the storm. God only knew what his actual present was.
Before he could worry himself into indigestion, Mrs. Weasley stood up from the table and refastened her apron around her waist.
"Ron, dear, are you ready for some birthday cake?"
Ron nodded enthusiastically through his mouthful of chicken and ignored Hermione's disgusted snort as this caused gravy to slither down his chin. The napkin she threw hit him directly in the face.
"Honestly, Ronald, are you certain you're turning twenty-three today or was it just three?"
Ron only swallowed and exchanged a grin with Harry as he mopped his face with the napkin.
"Hermione, I did not attain the ripe old age of twenty-three without applying due appreciation to culinary consumption, especially when it comes to Mum's food. Besides, if you expect me not to go all out when Harry and I were stuck with nothing but Ministry field rations all last week after the canteen house elves went on strike—and I have a strong suspicion of just who got that underway—"
A piercing scream from indoors cut Ron off.
The cheerful party fell silent for an instant and then glasses and benches were overturned in a mad rush for the house. Ron joined his brothers in pressing through the crowd to the back steps. As he gained the porch he glanced back to see that Harry had not joined the flight to the house but, wand out, was scanning the perimeter for threats.
Finally pushing into the kitchen Ron saw a hyperventilating Mrs. Weasley being guided to a chair by Fred and Ginny while everyone else seemed frozen in shock.
Sprawled haphazardly on the table, head in the now destroyed birthday cake, was Luna Lovegood.
Dead.
Struggling for breath, Ron wondered at how his brain catalogued minute details, like how her long, blond hair spread through the blue icing that matched her now severely protruding blue eyes. That plus the purpling bruises circling her neck made it clear that she'd been strangled. The blood on her hands that was concentrated under her fingernails showed how hard she must have struggled.
Ron barely registered the pop that was Harry apparating into the kitchen next to him as a low murmur of shock from the partygoers rose to an angry roar. Moody went to the kitchen hearth, presumably to call the Ministry, and everyone else seemed to erupt into a bustle of activity, fetching restorative glasses of brandy, a sheet to drape the body, or simply talking loudly and bumping into one another.
Everyone but Harry, who Ron dimly realized was still poised at his side, one hand at Ron's elbow.
Feeling his birthday dinner come surging up his throat, Ron shoved his way outside and ran for all he was worth.
He didn't even realize Harry was still with him until he finished throwing up, having collapsed to his knees in the far paddock. Harry supported him as the heaving slowed and brushed Ron's hair back from his sweaty forehead.
"She…she…she w-was the first girl I ever dated. The f-first girl I ever kissed," Ron tried to explain, horrified at how broken his voice sounded.
"I know, mate, I know." Harry's eyes were haunted with his own pain, which he was clearly forcing down to help Ron. The meadow was still mostly brown from the winter but the few shoots of new life matched Harry's steady green gaze, his hands warm on Ron's shoulders. They seemed the only warm thing anywhere as Ron shivered in the stiff March wind away from the backyard's warming charms.
"I always felt so bad because even when I was dating her, I used to watch Hermione and hate that prat Smith she was seeing," Ron couldn't seem to halt the spurting confession. "But I did love Luna, I really did—" He broke off as Harry's face seemed to blur and his voice wavered more alarmingly than ever.
"She knew you loved her, Ron," Harry assured him. "She told me that once after a Quidditch game our seventh year. 'Ronald is such a good boy,' she said in that dreamy way that she has—had. 'It's such a shame that he loves me but is not in love with me, but it's probably due to the wrackspurts. I love him too but I think I might be in love with Professor Snape—he's so masterful when it comes to wrackspurts.'"
Ron gave a choked laugh and sniffed loudly. The wind was drying the tears on his face but he couldn't bring himself to get up and walk back to the Burrow just yet. Harry seemed to know without him needing to say anything and they just sat silently in the sun for a long while.
Later that night Ron sat at the kitchen table of their flat with a hot cup of tea and tried not to think very much.
"All right, mate?" Harry asked, emerging from their shared bathroom in a cloud of steam, toweling his hair and making it stand up more wildly than ever. Harry often responded to stress with brutal, grueling workouts. He'd gone for an hour-long run tonight and come in red-faced and wheezing but slightly calmer.
Ron couldn't answer at first but tried to dredge up the will so Harry wouldn't be even more worried.
"Dad firecalled while you were gone and said the funeral will be on Tuesday. Moody's letting us have the day off," he finally mustered and took another sip of tea.
Harry sat down at the table and pinned him with emerald eyes dark with worry.
"Ron, I'm so sorry this happened, and I'm even more sorry it happened on your birthday." He leaned closer and gazed at Ron for a long moment before taking Ron's teacup from him and setting it in the saucer.
Before Ron could puzzle at his behavior Harry had leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to Ron's lips.
Pulling back and seeming to seek permission with his eyes, Harry raised a hand to Ron's cheek. Then Ron's eyes fluttered closed as the soft lips were back, slanting against his more insistently this time. Ron gave in with a groan and opened his mouth.
Suddenly Ron was consumed in wet heat as Harry's tongue feverishly explored his mouth. Ron tentatively tasted Harry back and was rewarded with Harry's reciprocal groan. Ron didn't remember when it had happened but became aware that he and Harry were standing pressed against each other, Harry's arousal like a burning brand against his thigh.
Ron wrenched free and looked down into Harry's face, eyes bright with desire behind his now crooked glasses. With a boldness and certainty he didn't know he possessed, Ron deliberately reached down and cupped Harry's arse, drawing him sharply up against him.
"Yes, Harry. Yes," Ron said, trying to imbue the words with as much meaning as possible.
Harry raised both hands to Ron's face and searched his eyes.
"Are you sure?" Harry asked intently.
"I'm sure," Ron whispered. Harry closed his eyes and let out a breath before taking Ron's hand and pulling him towards his bedroom.
Before Ron knew it Harry had pushed him back on the bed and clambered on top of him, scattering hungry kisses all over his face and neck, smoothing his hands across Ron's torso over and over.
"We don't have to do anything you're not ready for," Harry said between kisses. Ron felt dizzy and hot but knew he wanted this, wanted Harry.
"This isn't just to make me feel better about Luna, is it?" Ron demanded suddenly, pushing Harry away slightly with a hand on his chest. He could feel Harry's hard nipple under his palm through Harry's thin t-shirt but tried to focus on Harry's response.
"No, this is most definitely not a pity fuck," Harry said with molten heat in his voice. "I've been planning to take advantage of you on your birthday for some time now, if you would have me," he said with the first hint of uncertainty in his voice at the end.
"Oh, I'll have you, Potter," Ron growled back. "I'll have you flat on your back and screaming my name."
Harry's eyes glinted with mischief as he gave a short thrust of his hips that caused Ron to moan.
"Is that so, birthday boy? Well, let's just see what we've got here," Harry said playfully and began to peel Ron's shirt off. He proceeded to map every inch of Ron's skin with hands and mouth as he exposed it while Ron struggled to divest Harry of his clothing. Surely getting a t-shirt, pajama pants and boxers off of one slightly smaller wizard could not possibly be this difficult. Well, maybe if it weren't for said wizard driving Ron to distraction with a hot little tongue dragging all over his body and leaving wet trails to cool in the night air.
Finally they were both naked but when Harry laved his hipbone for the third time without coming near Ron's desperate cock, Ron was fed up. He gave a guttural growl and reared up, grabbing Harry's arms and twisting so that he now lay atop Harry.
Harry seemed to have no problem with this and merely opened his thighs with a look of such simple trust that Ron was undone. He crushed his lips to Harry's and ravaged his mouth for a delirious moment before pulling back.
"Can I just stick it in?" Ron said, grabbing his eager cock and aiming for Harry's enticing-looking entrance.
"NO! No, no, no," Harry said and Ron jerked back in surprise and dismay until Harry's grin relieved him. "I'm not a girl, mate, I need a little preparation," Harry said, twisting over to the bedside table and fishing a jar of lubricant out of the drawer.
"Oh, okay," Ron said nervously, his arousal still acute but damped a little in the face of this unknown procedure. "What do I--?"
"Just watch," Harry said, dipping his index finger into the jar and spreading his knees wide. Ron watched in fascination as Harry circled his hole with a finger before sliding it in to the first knuckle with a little grunt.
"Merlin, Harry, that's…" Ron could not finish as he watched Harry's prick jump with each finger he carefully inserted.
"Okay, I'm ready," Harry said after he had taken three fingers. "Go ahead, but take it slow—I haven't done this for awhile."
Ron took one last glance at Harry's desire-laden eyes and flushed face before carefully guiding the head of his cock into Harry's entrance.
Oh. Oh, God.
Hot. Tight. So very sweet.
Oh, God.
Ron pushed in further, fascinated by the vision of his swollen prick vanishing into Harry's stretched pucker. A pained-sounding grunt brought him back to reality and his eyes flew back to Harry's face. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was gripping the bed sheets with white knuckles. Shite, he was hurting Harry!
He tried to jerk back but Harry only cried out.
"No, Ron, that'll hurt more, just hold still a minute. I just need a minute," Harry gasped. His eyes opened and then narrowed in concentration. Ron felt the hot passage surrounding him ease slightly as Harry relaxed minutely.
"Okay, a little more," Harry said. "It's okay, Ron," he insisted.
Trembling now from the effort to move slowly, Ron pressed in a millimeter more and felt the sweat trickling down his back. Harry raised his hands to pluck at Ron's nipples and Ron's control slipped further.
"Come on, Ron, I won't break," Harry said, and when Ron still hesitated, canted his hips up with an impatient little thrust.
Ron could take no more and surged forward until he was fully seated. He had to pause and try to slow down his breathing, feeling his heartbeat pulse in his cock now surrounded by soft, impossibly tight heat.
Harry drew his head down for a slow kiss and then spoke against his lips. "Okay, now move. I'm all yours, Ron."
Ron began to thrust slowly, feeling a little clumsy but gaining confidence. How could this be the same but so different from doing a girl? Reminded by that thought of Harry's neglected prick, he reached down and grabbed it at the same time as he angled a thrust slightly upward and was alarmed when Harry bucked and screamed his name.
"Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" Ron asked, suddenly frozen and terrified again.
"No, God, Ron, that was exactly…nngh…just do that again," Harry groaned in a strangled voice.
"Do this?" Ron inquired, matching word to action. Harry's hips jerked violently and Ron grinned, trying to hit the angle again.
"Yes, oh, fuck, Ron, fuck me," Harry chanted, throwing his head back against the pillows. At the sight of Harry's smooth white throat exposed to him, Ron could do nothing but lean down and clamp down his teeth on that tempting pale flesh, laving Harry with his tongue just as he gave a forceful thrust and jerk to Harry's prick.
That seemed to be all it took to drive Harry over the edge and he was suddenly shaking and gushing hot jets of come. The feel of Harry's arse clenching around him pushed Ron over as well and his vision seemed to white out as he came hard, on and on until he thought he'd fly apart.
When Ron came back to himself he was collapsed on Harry, panting into Harry's neck as he felt fingers trailing soothingly through his hair.
"Okay?" Harry asked softly, pulling Ron's head back to look into his eyes.
"Brilliant. I—brilliant," was all Ron could come up with but was rewarded with Harry's lopsided grin.
Ron reluctantly pulled out of Harry with an audible squelch but found himself clean and dry with a wave of Harry's wand.
"Can—can I stay?" Ron asked hesitantly.
"I insist that you do," Harry said playfully, squirming down under the covers after setting his wand on the bedside table.
Ron lay down behind Harry and gathered him back against his chest. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard a soft "Happy Birthday," as he felt a light kiss pressed to his hand. Ron entwined his fingers with Harry's and drifted into warm slumber.
Reviews requested!