Authors note: A huge thanks againto my beta's Soulscarcity and hmweasley, for their help. I am retty sure I have driven you mad.
Chapter Four
A Year and A Half after the War...
(A few weeks before Christmas)
The end of the war had left the bond between Harry, Ron, and Hermione sturdier than ever, and there was no questioning that they would still all be best of friends when they died, but that didn't mean that the Golden Trio didn't lead different lives. Of course not–it wasn't like they were in school anymore.
Hermione, her enthusiasm for SPEW undaunted, had gone on to work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as an intern. She was steadily climbing the ranks, leaving the five other witches and wizards whom had joined with her in the dust.
Harry and Ron had, appropriately so, begun training to be Aurors. Ron, however, had only lasted a few months–not for lack of skill but out of concern for George. Ron had left Auror training to drag George's arse back to the joke shop. They had to get the twins' little business back on track, after all.
Harry had persisted in his Auror career. Before he'd gone into the funnyman business, Ron had acted as Harry's partner, and once he'd left, Harry was like a coin without his other half. So, Harry had been reluctantly assigned Draco Malfoy for a partner. At first, there had been animosity between them rivaled only by the sheer hatred they'd spat at Hogwarts, though they soon found their cadence. They complemented each other, they found, and much better than any other of the seven pairs in training. Draco made up for Harry's lack of finesse, and Harry balanced out Draco's admittedly lacking magical prowess.
Once they'd pushed their petty school rivalry aside, the two had even grown friendly with one another. It was practically impossible to separate them–not that anyone in the Auror Department wanted to. Their record was pristine, so much so that it had already been decided that they'd remain partners after graduating training. An office with "Auror H. Potter" and "Auror D. Malfoy" emblazoned across the door had been made a certainty for them.
Anything else, until then, they'd refused to divulge.
That is, until Harry just couldn't wait any longer–as was his nature–and decided to tell Ron and Hermione all about it. What's bound to happen will happen anyway, he reassured himself.
The trio shared a modest home, where they would meet up and maintain the familiarity of their relationships on a near-nightly basis. Usually, dinner conversation consisted of Hermione going to extraordinary lengths to tell Ron all about how much better he would look if he wore less ill-fitting pants. That night, Harry had fixed things to be slightly more eventful.
"So, 'Mione said you wanted to say something? Wassup, mate?" Ron asked, sipping his butterbeer and eyeing his chicken quite possessively. As their home was, as mentioned earlier, modest, the three of them couldn't always be bothered to eat in the kitchen. They'd taken their food into the considerably less-cramped sitting room, as was their custom.
"Yeah, Harry, is something bothering you?" Hermione added in her most motherly tone.
"Umm, yeah," Harry began, wondering how exactly to phrase this. "So, there's, err, this thing that I wanted to confess. Err, so see here, the thing is, I mean, what I wanted to say is, that..."
Ron got tired of listening to Harry stammer. "Harry, mate, just spit it out: did you knock up a girl and need free babysitting?" Ron's eyes twinkled in a vaguely Dumbledore-esque sort of way.
Harry blushed furiously. "What? No—Merlin, no. It's just that, well... I'mkindagay." The words tumbled out of Harry's mouth with the grace of an angry rhinoceros with malformed limbs.
"What? Come again?" Ron said, his eyebrow cocked in a confused manner.
"You heard me right," Harry said through gritted teeth. His fists were clenched in his lap, and his palms were sweating. Did he really have to say it twice?
"No, Harry, we did not hear you at all. Repeat, please," Ron continued, waving his fork whilst he spoke. Hermione sat on the armrest of the sofa and kept on smirking.
Harry sighed. "I just said that, well, I -" He paused to take a deep breath. "Um, am-" Oh Merlin! "-gay."
"Oh, that. Tell us something new," drawled Ron, apparently having lost all interest in Harry's confession. He'd returned his full attention to his plate of delicious chicken.
Harry blinked, mouth dry, heart in his throat. "Ah, what? Wait, you knew? Oh." It felt anticlimactic. Harry almost felt cheated in a way. He'd heard plenty of heartfelt and dramatic coming-out stories. They'd involved tears, shouting, hugs, and understanding. Not just "tell us something new" and chicken.
"Is there something more you need to say, Harry?" Hermione asked, simultaneously swatting Ron's hand away from her own meal. Ron hissed at her and stole a few scraps of food from Harry's plate.
"Yeah, well," said Harry, remembering the other thing. "There's one other thing. I mean, I know this is most upsetting to you, positively disgusting, but I need to get this out." Maybe this would get him his dramatic coming-out story.
"Get it out, mate. You can't be pregnant, you know?" Harry, again, resisted the urge to slap Ron. Hermione did not.
"Ronald!" Hermione resorted to another swat, this time at his head.
"Oi! That was not necessary," Ron said indignantly, rubbing his noggin. He sighed. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"Yeah. Right. Er, I was saying that I'm, uh, kind of...dating, you know?" Harry said. He put his words together as carefully as he could. Admittedly, Harry found the idea of a tearful confession to his friends oddly fanciful. It had the potential to really add to their friendship when all was said and done. At the same time, Harry wasn't sure if he was emotionally prepared to deal with one of Ron's moods again.
"Well, who is it?" Ron said, feigning impatience.
"Draco," came a hardly audible reply.
Harry expected an outburst or at least a painstakingly long silence. What he got instead was a prompt and somewhat exasperated response from the resident ginger. "Um, mate, I think I asked you to tell us something new?"
Harry choked on his butterbeer. A few pats on the back later, he replied, "H-how in the name of Merlin's pants did you know that?" His voice cracked unexpectedly on the last few syllables, and he flushed.
"Mate, I have eyes," said Ron, rolling said eyes. "I can actually see when he comes home to drop you off or when you disappear for those night assignments and return with hickeys instead of scars. I don't always need 'Mione to put two and two together for me. Although, technically, it was her who discovered you kissing Malfoy all over the patio."
"Yo-you saw that...? But you weren't even home!" Harry nearly knocked his food onto the floor. Luckily, he didn't. Hermione would have taken his head for such an offense as she'd chosen the carpet herself.
"We weren't supposed to be, but we canceled," Hermione said with a wide smile. Her eyes glinted deviously.
"Rr-ight. Why didn't you tell me, and… and you're all okay with it?" Harry demanded, still befuddled. He supposed it wasn't fair of him to assume his friends would naturally be vastly more immature than him,especially considering Hermione's history of open-mindedness. But, still.
Ron, who was silently shaking with laughter over his mate's discomfort, composed himself and said, "Of course we knew, but we didn't say anything because we wanted you to tell us when you were comfortable with it." He continued grudgingly, "Yeah, it's true that I would rather you stick your tongue down someone else's throat, but if it has to be that ferret, then it has to be that ferret. It is evident that he's changed, or either of you would have resigned by now. And besides, it's time you did something because you just wanted to. If you think we put our lives at risk and fought a war with you only to disown you for being gay, then, blimey, you're just a git. A daft one."
"Harry, I am so happy for you," came a small, strangled voice, and Harry found himself with a facefull of bushy hair. Hermione was surprisingly strong for such a petite young woman. She lovingly choked the air straight out of Harry's lungs.
"Thanks," he whispered, a bit raspy due to Hermione's love-grip of certain demise, and Ron "oh, please'd" and went back to his food. Hermione just looked at him with a strange sort of expression that could have been packaged and sold as "pride." She released him almost hesitantly.
Harry cleared his throat. "So, we're in a relationship, but it's still casual and-"
"Oi! I said I was fine with it. Don't push it, mate," Ron interrupted, having shoved half of a chicken in his mouth by this point.
Harry chuckled and knew that everything would eventually be fine. And his ex-girlfriend and ex-to-be-mother-and-law would eventually be persuaded that there was, indeed, someone better than him for Ginny.
He, personally, was thinking of one Mr. Longbottom.