VI.

"What did you see? How much?" demanded Ron in a low growl, spinning Harry to face him. "What's the last thing you saw?"

He looked utterly furious.

"Her- Hermione, breaking the cup!" stuttered Harry. Ron was holding him by the upper arms and their faces were a hand's-breadth apart. There was silence for a moment as they searched one another's eyes.

"Why the bloody hell did you look at that memory?" Ron still looked worried and confused, but less angry. Harry's eyes went to the small glass bottle that had started his bizarre journey of discovery, standing now on a packing crate that they'd never got round to taking away.

Regulus's room had become a sort of disused museum of a time they still didn't discuss much. Mrs. Weasley had sent over most of the contents of Ron's old room, and Hermione had added some crates from her parents' house. Items of furniture unwanted elsewhere in Number 12 had found their way there too, and even some of Remus Lupin's possessions that he'd left to Harry until such time as Teddy was old enough for them, including the Pensieve. Their Hogwarts trunks were in one corner, Ron's and Harry's mostly untouched, Hermione's neatly repacked with items she rarely used and adorned with a neat inventory of contents.

Her need to organize and categorize things, always strong, had bordered on the obsessive-compulsive for a while after they had all moved into Grimmauld Place. Her room was exceeding levels of tidiness that Petunia Dursley had only dreamed of, and still she continuously rearranged it. "I just need to be able to put my hands on what I need, whenever I might need it, as quickly as possible," Hermione had said in the same way that she might have explained that she needed lungs in order to breathe. She had attempted to extend this process to the rest of the house, but fortunately the cheerful chaos of Ron and various visiting brothers, and Harry's now habitual absentmindedness, thwarted her. Hermione didn't accept defeat lightly and started leaving notes everywhere, reminding them to please keep things in their proper places.

Harry, more concerned with rebuilding his internal world that turning his external one into a filing system, had mostly let it pass him by. Ron on the other hand had found her exhortations of order both amusing and irritating. However he had realized that it was Hermione's way of working through everything that had happened to her, and therefore tolerated it with badly concealed public amusement and occasional private grumbling, as he explained to Harry one night.

They had been sitting in the kitchen. Hermione was out at a meeting of her Post Voldemort Stress Disorder Survivor's Group. Harry was nursing his third, or possibly fifth, shot of firewhisky and Ron was writing on small scraps of parchment with an air of industrious contentment. Once each one bore a word or string of initials Ron flicked his wand, to send the scrap soaring around the kitchen, then adhering to an object or surface. His own, second, glass of firewhisky stood mostly empty on the battered wooden kitchen table.

"She's been on at me for ages to organize," said Ron. "And y'know what? She was right. It really is "quite fun" once you start doing it." He took a swallow of firewhisky and looked around, grinning. Harry sloshed more into their glasses, drank too and followed his friend's gaze.

Nearly every object in the kitchen now bore a label. Many of them were obvious nomenclature: 'chair' on all the chairs, 'table' on the table, 'cupboard' on the cupboard, 'other cupboard' on the other cupboard, and so on. These were neatly lettered and Harry guessed they were the first ones Ron had made. The initialed labels, however, became trickier to interpret: he worked out 'R.F.M.' on Ron's favorite mug quite easily, then 'T.J.O.F.P.' on the jar of Floo Powder and 'T.B.B.' on the bread bin. 'A.T.K.F.A.S.' on the cutlery drawer gave him trouble for a minute, until he heard Ron muttering "all...the...other...eating...stuff..." as he lettered 'A.T.O.E.S.' on another scrap of parchment and flicked it towards the other kitchen drawer.

'W.A.T.B.A.B.A.S.G.' on the closet door left him completely stumped and he turned his attention back to Ron, who was looking smug and finishing another label. "This one's for you, mate," he chuckled, and drained his glass of firewhisky. Ron picked up his wand in preparation, then frowning put it down and picked up his quill again, adding a few more letters. "That's more like it," he said. Harry raised his eyebrows at his friend, then looked down to see the small piece of parchment now attached to his shirt. 'T.B.W.L.W.M.', he read, with underneath in smaller letters 'A.I.F.B.'

"It was going to be The Boy Who Lived," explained Ron, "but you're much more than that." He poured more whisky in their glasses and his ears tinged pink. "So I made it The Boy Who Lives With Me And Is Fucking Brilliant." It might have been intended as a joke but neither of them laughed.

Harry rolled another mouthful of firewhisky over his tongue, savoring the bite and burn and trying not to stare at Ron, who looked like fire and whisky himself in the glow from the grate: red-gold and amber, warmth with an edge to it. He had felt Ron's gaze shift away from him after what seemed like an hour, and wondered why his best friend's comment had left him strangely speechless.

Harry had gone to bed soon after and slept restlessly until he was awoken by a banshee-like shriek of "Ronald Weasley! This is in no way amusing!" He thought for a moment that Molly had popped round, before realizing Hermione must have come home and discovered the fruits of Ron's organizational binge.

"Harry?" said Ron, probably not for the first time, and Harry suddenly found that he was still silently staring at the small bottle. He reached over and picked it up. Ron released his arms, but Harry didn't step away from him.

"I thought it was about Hedwig," he said slowly.

"Why the bloody hell-" Ron began, but Harry interrupted "Lumos," and held up the bottle in the hand that wasn't glowing, tilting it so they could both see the label.

"I read it as HEDWIG. What on earth does H.I.D.W.I.T.G. stand for?"

"I.T.W. You missed that, look, underneath, the letters are tiny... You do know you're doing wandless magic, don't you?"

Harry sighed and nodded, as though Ron were pointing out that Harry's hair was untidy.

"Um... How I Didn't Want It To Go In The War." Ron turned away and the last of the tension seemed to leave him, dissolved by the realization that Harry had not been intentionally prying through one of his more intimate memories.

Harry heard the clink of glass and the soft sound of a cork being drawn from a bottle, and then Ron stepped over to a mattress that had been folded in half, tied, and propped against a heavy wardrobe. Hands occupied with glasses and bottle, he kicked at it until it flopped over onto the floor. Harry got the idea and moved to help him push the mattress over to the wall whilst musing over the thought that Ron had come looking for him, with two glasses and a bottle of firewhisky.

They both sank down onto it. Ron passed Harry one of the glasses and poured them both a substantial shot. There was a comfortable, contemplative silence as they drank. Harry leaned his head against Ron's shoulder and let out a deep breath, as though they'd just finished a long and complicated conversation instead of being about to have one.

"So, when did you know?" he asked Ron after a moment.

Ron watched his own foot nudge up against Harry's and replied, "There were a couple of moments, really. Obviously, the- what you just saw. Kissing Hermione just didn't... It wasn't..." He stopped, and Harry felt his shrug. Rather than dislodging Harry's head, it somehow brought them closer together. Ron took a drink and continued, "And seeing Neville coming out of the portrait in the pub, every inch the revolutionary hero."

There was an amused affection in the way he said this that even Harry couldn't fail to notice. He lifted his head from Ron's shoulder, took a gulp of whisky and welcomed the burn.

"You and Neville?" he said; and he meant to say it lightly, but the words came out shaded with something almost bitter.

"Yeah, me and Neville," said Ron and now Harry could hear that rare smile in his friend's voice, but Ron tilted his own head so that it rested on Harry's shoulder.

"Just for a couple of months, after- afterwards, you know. Nev joked it was an aftermath romance instead of a holiday romance." Harry couldn't help but smile. There was no hint of longing or regret in Ron's voice.

"We kept it quiet because we both knew it was never going to be serious. No point getting his gran's hopes up that Nev was finally going to settle down, and you know what Mum's like. But it was a hell of a lot of fun, and it- it taught me a lot, you know?"

Harry sniggered and Ron jabbed him gently, repeatedly, in the ribs. Harry, horribly ticklish, wriggled against Ron's side until they were in danger of spilling firewhiskey everywhere.

"No, listen!" exclaimed Ron, hooking his arm around Harry's shoulders to keep him still. "Girls confuse me sometimes-"

"Yeah, I know the face," interjected Harry. He drained his glass and leaned across Ron's lap to reach the bottle. Ron's arm somehow came with him.

Ron is holding me face down across his lap! thought Harry suddenly as something like a tidal wave of desire crashed over him. He watched his own fingers (still glowing with faint light) close around the long neck of the bottle. Oh great, now I have to try sitting up without him seeing how hard I am.

"What face?" said Ron, who was acting as though having Harry sprawled across his lap on a mattress in a darkened room was the most natural thing in the wizarding world. Nev must be one hell of a teacher, thought Harry.

"There's a face, a very specificic face, you pull when you're being confused by girls," he explained. Still unwilling to sit up, and because Ron didn't seem to mind him being there, Harry put his glass on the floor next to the firewhiskey bottle and rolled over so that his head and shoulders were resting on Ron's thighs. Thankful for the large, heavy hoody he was wearing, he put his hands in the pockets and pushed it down to cover the tops of his thighs.

"You just said specificic," giggled Ron. "Anyway, they do, girls confuse me. Sometimes. Even our Ginny. And trying to be a girl's boyfriend, bloody hell..."

Ron finished his own drink and placed the glass next to Harry's. As he sat back, one of his hands ended up playing with the tips of Harry's hair.

"But blokes- it's a different story. It's like, you might not agree on everything, but at least most of the time you're looking at things from the same perspective."

His fingertips had found the curve of Harry's ear, and as they traced it Harry felt his spine shiver and flashes of heat ignite in his belly and thighs, sending pulsing insistent urges to his cock. His entire focus had narrowed to the tiny points of contact between Ron's skin and his, and he had to fight back a gasp at the idea of what Ron's whole hand, his body, his tongue might feel like. His hands in his hoody pockets might be covering what felt like the biggest hard-on he'd ever had, but it was difficult to refrain from stroking it.

"So, you and Neville now?"

"Just friends. He's seeing one of the England Quidditch Team," said Ron, and his fingers drifted to Harry's neck, just below his earlobe.

"And you and Hermione?" Harry arched slightly into Ron's touch.

"Just friends," Ron said with a laugh.

"And you and-"

"Just friends, Harry, I am currently just friends with everyone I know." Ron looked down at him with mock exasperation, but didn't stop caressing his neck.

"I was going to say you and me," said Harry, opening his big green eyes wide and gazing at Ron, who actually grinned and cocked an eyebrow.

"Well, mate, that all depends, doesn't it?"