A/N: Hopefully, this chapter will clear the confusion a bit. Enjoy. Review.
Brynn

x

Dragon Den

x

It's about six hours since Bill and I slept together for the first time. I still don't know what to call it. He has started out light, with just touching. It kept me occupied for a while, but not a long one. It was nice, but not nice enough. I needed something destructive, a force that I couldn't control. I needed to lose myself.

And he gave me that. After a while, when he saw that I wasn't going to relent. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if he knew I had been a virgin. I didn't offer that particular piece of information, and it didn't even cross his mind to ask. Suppose the stigma of the Boy Who Lived is good at least for something.

He had waited until I was strong enough to hold my own against him, which was smart of him, although it didn't make me any happier. In the end I won, though, as evidenced by the aches in parts of my body I haven't experienced aching before… It has surprised me (pleasantly) how much pain there was involved. It's not masochism – at least I don't think it is – just a way to wrench me from inside my head. It's worked perfectly.

Yeah. Perfectly. I wore Bill out; he had been awake for about twenty hours straight before and needed the sleep. I can watch myself for a while and make sure that I don't commit suicide. I'm lying on my side with my back to the wall, facing the dusk of the room. Bill's rather long body is in similar position alongside me, gently curved so that we would fit onto the bed designed for one. He's made of shades of grey, all of him except his hair.

His hair, for the first time that I can remember, is loose, splayed all over the pillow, Bill's neck, shoulders and the upper part of his back, hanging over the edge of the bed… it's just everywhere. Here, sleeping like this, he doesn't seem so human. I trace the outline of his body with my fingertips, less than an inch from actually touching his skin. Even at that distance, I can feel the warmth and magic he radiates. I'm afraid it would seep out to the room, so I pull the sheet higher, almost to the half of his upper arm, to the dent between his biceps and triceps. A tremor runs through his body, dislodging a single lock of hair that falls on my hand, where it rests between my chest and the back of his neck.

He sighs and opens his eyes.

I can't see his face from my position, but I'm certain that he has opened his eyes, and as soon as he's registered where he is and what's happened, they've gone wide and blank while he ran the last quarter a day through his head again and again, wondering if he'd made a mistake. I rest my forehead on his shoulder and shamelessly slip an arm around his ribcage.

"Do you regret it yet?" I query, and my voice betrays more anxiety than I would like it to. I don't mind him knowing that I don't want him to regret, that I enjoyed it and would enjoy it again should he offer. I just abhor displaying my weakness. As a proper Slytherin, I fancy.

Bill, however, sighs again. He has no words for me, no easy answer, and him clasping my hand is not enough to subdue the doubts. I would hate creating a martyr. If he feels like a victim, I'm leaving in the morning, no matter where we are stuck and no matter how unhealthy I am.

"You are very welcome, Harry," he says in the end. I suppress the urge to follow his example and sigh as well, but such gesture seems pathetic to me in the small room with nothing but darkness to pay attention to it. My exasperation is my own to deal with.

It comes only because I feel guilty. Not about having sex with Bill – that part was exciting and definitely worth whatever rules we may have broken in the process – but about Charlie. It was him I wanted in the first place. I feel guilty because I still think about what it would be like, if it would feel different, and, above all, why did he reject me.

Which leads me to wondering about why Bill did not. The depression obviously still reigns over me, and I'm going to need more than an orgasm or two to rise above my black cloud.

"What is worrying you?" he asks, voice still raspy from the sleep. I notice I've been gripping his hand way too tight. I let go, press an apologetic kiss to his shoulder, and rest my forehead on it again.

"Yesterday," I say truthfully, unwilling to specify more. But then I feel him tense and the fragile balance teeter, and remember that we have trust between us. Trust doesn't work like this. "Not you… I'm grateful for that part of yesterday. It's more the part before it that stings."

"Charlie?" he says, almost sure that he guesses right. He does, of course, and I am glad that I face his shoulder blade rather then his face as I give a mumbled positive response. Bill lets out a muffled cut-off chuckle. "It's not personal, Harry, not at all. I… It's not really my secret to tell, but it goes with the rest of the package – the radiance and strength and integrity. I don't think I can imagine Charlie feeling physical desire."

"Oh."

There really isn't more to tell. The idea never crossed my mind – I have never known (or heard of) a person like that. I should have expected some con, though – it's always like that in nature. If Charlie had children with a woman altered like he is, they might create a whole new superhuman race. Predators, or natural rulers of the mankind. Who knows what they would be capable of? With them having no in-built Achilles' heel, how would we defend? Still, this is just too cruel. Infertility would have been enough. Even that would be cruel to a Weasley.

But Charlie doesn't seem affected by it. His placidity in the face of adversity is eerie, like a drug addict's, or a heavy smoker's. He seems so detached from all negative… but, on the other hand, he reacts to positive impulses with the same attitude I had witnessed when I first met him. As if he was happy and let nothing disrupt that happiness.

"Charlie loves dragons so much, that he became one…" Bill speaks again after a while of silence. I listen, letting his explanation wash away the dirty feeling the shame had left me with. "To a point. It did not happen at once. It's gradual. He's been changing over the years, bit by bit, but he's taken to wearing Illusion Charms from the beginning…"

"So, you're the only one who knows?"

Why did he tell me? Why didn't he tell his parents, his siblings? Why does he wear an Illusion around himself even at home? What makes him trust me so much? And why am I here in the first place?

Come to think of it, where is here?

"Charlie and I are a lot like Fred and George, except that we were born on two separate occasions. Have you seen some older pictures of us? When he started Hogwarts, it took the teachers a while to realise he wasn't me. We looked almost the same."

"You grew different."

"Yeah. I'm taller, Charlie's stronger… I am fascinated by raw magic, he loves dragons… creatures generally, in fact."

"I've felt that. He treats me like a creature… it was… amazing."

Bill laughs; it is a deep rumble that vibrates through his body and, via the touch, through mine also. His hair moves with it, and I reverently stroke his arm, because he's so special, so improbable, that I want to get as much of him as I can before the universe re-aligns itself and he's taken from me.

"Sleep, Harry," he mumbles, rolls over on his back, and kisses me. It doesn't do much to encourage me to sleep, but he quickly returns to the original position. Within a minute, his breathing is slow and regular, and he marginally relaxes. Driven by instinct and want, I put my arm around him before I surrender to the darkness again.

x

I wake up alone, with a jar of lemonade on the table and persistent rays of sunlight invading the room. After a tentative attempt to get myself out of bed I realise that my body is working – belatedly recalling the events of yesterday afternoon and today early morning, I'm not surprised that I'm able to move on my own. I'm merely slightly surprised that it doesn't ache anymore.

My clothes aren't in sight, so I take the white silk cover and wrap it around my waist. It creates a kind of skirt, and feels nicer than just about anything I have ever worn. I pad over to the jar, dragging an inch of the cloth over the floor because my legs are too short, and drink a few gulps of the wonderfully cool liquid. I can see dunes behind the curtains. The world stubbornly refuses to align itself back into the place I thought I knew for sixteen years.

With no one to stop me, I walk out of the room. There is an almost bare hall, with only sparse decoration to make the house look inhabited, and three more doors. The one leading outside is open; I survey the site and, after ascertaining that it is not accessible to public, exit.

"Hello, Harry," says a voice from the left and I don't have to look to recognise Charlie. I can hear that he's smiling, which relaxes me marginally, since I likely won't have to face his wrath for attempting to seduce him or seducing his brother. "I thought you might feel up to flying out of your cage today."

I suppose I should say something, but I don't know what. It's true that I haven't left the room for days, but I slept through most of the time and there were no locks on the door and no bars on the window… after living at the Dursleys, this didn't seem like a prison at all.

"Are you scared, Harry?"

Am I? I don't think so. Never was much for the fear thing… And since Sirius died, I lost the last vestiges of self-preservation instinct. No, I'm not scared.

"Confused…" I offer. That is, after all, to be expected. The clarity of everything, the blissful straightforwardness of my actions and obviousness of answers to the difficult questions is gone. Why couldn't they have let me die?

"It will get better," Charlie promises and, strangely, I get the feeling that it isn't an empty platitude. I wish he was right. I abandon watching the horizon – it's golden and cerulean, by the way – and pace over to the red-haired man, leaving shallow hollows of footsteps in the sand. He's sitting on a low wall made of burnt brick, dressed in a long sweeping white robe, or dress or habit or whatever it is. The rim trails on the ground; obviously the garment originally belonged to Bill.

"It would have already been," I say flatly. "You should have left me alone." The reprimand, however, falls on deaf ears. Charlie runs a hand through my hair. It feels unfamiliar, but he cares about me and the touch makes it undeniable. It's so strange that he would be so tactile and at the same time completely asexual. Or maybe he's not (so tactile), and only forces himself into it because he thinks that I need to be touched?

"Why are you doing this? And why did you stop me on Halloween?"

The hand moves from my head onto my shoulder and pulls me closer. Charlie strokes my biceps in a manner that makes me doubt Bill's words. I bite my lower lip to contain the moan that threatens to escape.

"Why?" I demand.

"Voldemort's death is not worth your life, Harry." Of course it is. I don't have much of life either way, but what I have is worth a lot less than Voldemort's death. How could they be so selfish? Why did they force me to continue this feckless existence, to count the victims of the war and the Cruciatus Curses in the dead of night? Don't I have enough on my conscience already?

"How many more lives is it worth? Who are you to doom tens or hundreds of people to save me?!"

"I don't require your forgiveness, baby, and neither does Bill." Charlie's voice is quite suddenly low and dangerous, more of a whisper, close to my ear. His hand clutches my upper arm in a vice-like grip. I'm still not scared. "We did what we believed to be the right thing to do, and we did it because we wanted to. Maybe one day your point of view will change, and you will understand. But until you have walked a mile in our shoes, don't you dare judge us."

"It is my life," I bite out, suicidally unconcerned about angering a dragon. "It was my decision, and you robbed me of that right."

Charlie forcefully turns me around. The white cloth I've bound around my waist flaps in the wind and falls back down in folds; I feel its softness, staring into Charlie's blue eyes. There is lightning in them, so small but so overpowering…

"You don't love, Harry. You care for a select few, but you love no one and nothing. You cannot understand."

I pause, all of sudden forgetting my indignation. I don't love? But Dumbledore said… he said that love was the power… have I stopped loving? Or have I never truly loved in the first place? Charlie is right, though. I feel no need to live for anyone or anything; I'm an island on my own, tied just to Voldemort, who is to be either my murderer or my victim. I must love, but I cannot…

I'm fucked. And the wizarding world with me.

"Cold?" Charlie asks softly, returning to petting my hair. This time it's even more intimate, since he does so while I face him. I'm not cold. Far from it, actually. The day is sweltering. "We are doing what we can to help you."

No. No, you're not. You are helping only yourself, mistakenly believing that saving my life could grant you absolution. But I'm ill and hurting and don't want to be saved.

"I'm not only a depressed boy, Peace." He doesn't react to the provocation. "I'm also a person."

"Are you scared?" Weren't we through this already? No, I'm not scared. I'm not bloody afraid of anything – a side effect of the depression, naturally, but it feels great. "Or do you think that Bill objectifies you?"

My eyes widen in surprise. How exactly did we make this jump? I wasn't even thinking of Bill…

…though maybe I should have been. I have to admit that yesterday was different than all the other days in my life… somewhat more pronounced, as if the colours were sharper, my mind more aware, and my senses more sensitive. Everything was more real. It was almost… as if I've lived.

But Charlie raises a good question – does Bill objectify me? I remember our middle-of-the-night conversation, and… goddamn it, don't let it be so. I still want Charlie – the knowledge of his unavailability doesn't just make it go away – but I want Bill more. He made me feel human and alive, and I yearn to repeat the experience. I know I have to return to Britain and re-join the war, and he has to play the faithful boyfriend to Fleur, but I want to take every chance we have.

"Does he?" I gasp, breathless in the anticipation of the answer. Charlie sighs and presses a kiss to my temple. His fingers once again trace my upper arm – I'm going to have bruises there. Not that I care, but it's kind of satisfying to know that my body's going to complain on my behalf.

"No, Harry." I would smile if I felt like it, but at least I start breathing again. "Bill is… jaded, but all the hardness inside him – the one that enables him to bed you despite the threat of the damnation society has for such conduct – is balanced out by limitless tenderness-"

"That prompted him to give in to me when I asked for sex?" I ask coldly. Pity isn't much better than detachment. Actually it might be worse…

Charlie shakes his head, though.

"There you go again with that assumption. You are wrong, Harry. Bill might not be in love with you and you might not be in love with him, but does it make the experience cheaper when you feel 'only' friendship and tenderness?"

No. No, it definitely does not. At least now I understand why I was so confused at night.

"So… he truly wants me?" Me – the deranged, twisted child with tragic past and tragic future?

"He wants to help you," Charlie answers without really answering. Either the true answer is irrelevant, or negative. I like to believe it's irrelevant. Or perhaps he doesn't really know it – this is a question to ask of Bill, not anyone else. "He is not averse to the idea of bedding you." I'd say. I suspect he might even like it and… probably it's just wishful thinking on my part, but at times it seems like he's actually not imagining someone else in my stead. How fucked-up am I, when just the conception is balm on the tears on my soul?

I consider asking if Bill could ever love me, but I don't really want him to. I now see what he's doing: he's building me anew, separate from himself so that I won't crumble when left alone. If he succeeds – oh, how I hope he will – I'll be better than before. My metamorphosis, while unseen because happening on the inside, will be akin to Charlie's.

Looking at Charlie now, as he stands in the patch of sunlight, absorbing the warmth like a human lizard, he is more beautiful than any other mortal. However, with sudden clarity and a burst of joy in my chest, I realise that I don't love Charlie either. I admire him… worship, more accurately, but the rift between our levels is such that we could never meet, anyway. I'm grateful to him, and cherish his presence.

"Will we be able to go back to platonic friends when we return to Britain?" I muse aloud. Charlie shrugs.

"Does it really matter? Everyone in marked by war, Harry, one way or another. They will learn to respect our marks." And if not, they can bugger off and find themselves another Saviour. Right. In the end, it is well that love has nothing to do with it.

x

When Bill returns in the evening, it gives me an understanding of why the hall remains empty. Strewn on the floor are blueprints, photos of sparsely lit rooms and transcripts of hieroglyphs and Jeli Thuluth. I have always thought that curse-breaking was an adventurous, at times life-threatening job. I imagined teams of outstandingly powerful wizards scouting the depths of temples and fighting Dark Arts woven by some ancient long-since-dead mages.

I never realised how much academic preparation went into it. Bill sits cross-legged in the centre of the room, surrounded by open tomes – dictionaries, textbooks and history guides, riffling through one of them and making notes on a parchment covered with artlessly scribbled likeness to runes.

"Working?" I ask quietly. He looks up, startled, and smiles.

He smiles. At me. Just because he sees me.

"Yeah. There was a bit of cave-in in one of the temples that uncovered a new set of hidden corridors. It was either take it home with me, or work overtime." He stretches out his hand, beckoning me to come closer. I tiptoe among the parchments and volumens, holding the sheet I refused to exchange for real clothing (due to its unmatched comfort) in my left fist so that it doesn't drag behind. I halt about a step in front of him, but his hand remains extended. I squat down, since there is no other way to come yet closer to him.

He leans forward, over the books, and kisses me.

Gods, but I never imagined it like this. It's not love, and it's not a real relationship, and it shouldn't…

Whatever I thought is forgotten as I melt into the kiss. His tongue maps my mouth as he has mapped out the darkened secret corridors of the tomb.

Love is over-rated; I'll gladly make do with desire.