Today's line: "Stephen Badass. Wait, is that really his name? Oh, no, read it wrong. Barlass. Much less brilliant."
They don't talk on the way home; Oliver picks up a Daily Prophet just so that he can hide behind it the moment they step through the door. He can feel Aidan bristling with curiosity, but the other man says nothing, for which Oliver is stupidly grateful. He doesn't want to have to explain the way Charlie Weasley has always made him feel.
Isabel keeps Aidan busy by showing off the three pairs of new shoes she's managed to justify buying to herself and Oliver keeps himself busy with an article about Hermione Granger's upcoming marriage to Ron Weasley, both of whom he vaguely remembers as Harry Potter's friends from Hogwarts. He reads parts of the article aloud because they're sweet, and heartwarming, and full of the spirit of new hope that Oliver loves so much about the world after the War.
"Who wrote this?" Aidan asks suddenly, interested.
Oliver glances at the author's name. "Stephen Badass," he reads, then pauses because that's amazing. "Wait, is that really his name? Oh, no, read it wrong. Barlass. Much less brilliant."
Aidan snorts. "Well, I'm happy for them, anyway," Isabel says lightly. "I've seen Hermione around the Ministry a few times, always says hello. Remembers everyone's name." Oliver smiles as Isabel leaves. It's always nice to hear the happy endings of the people who had it worst in the War, and Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were certainly among those.
"So," Aidan says quietly when Isabel has left the room. "Do you want to tell me about Charlie Weasley?"
Oliver sighs. Not really, he wants to say, but apparently the redhead is always going to have some strange hold over him, and Aidan deserves to know why. "He was the Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team when I first started playing," he says dully. "He was seventh year and I was thirteen – he seemed so grown up."
Aidan chuckles. "Charlie Weasley was never grown up. I remember him, too. Fantastic Seeker."
"Yeah," Oliver says. "Well, I… I completely idolised him even before he accepted me into the team. Everybody did, he was the Gryffindor hero. And then, when out of all of those people who had tried for the position he chose me, and he told me I was by far the best flyer out of all of them, I completely fell in love with him.
"The stupid thing was, he must have known. I could barely string two words together when I was around him – I still can't. But he was so nice to me, always, scheduling extra practises just the two of us when I was really stressed and always making time for me. I was thirteen, no-one could blame me for being completely overwhelmed with how much attention he paid to me – me! And what was a stupid little crush became sort of all-consuming." He sighs again. "It's more than a little disconcerting to discover that even though I'm twenty-four now and I haven't seen Charlie in five years I still can't form sentences around him."
Aidan smiles weakly. "I think the people we fall in love with when we're young and completely naïve never stop having that sort of effect on us," he says gently. "I mean… we fall in love with them because we admire them, and that doesn't really stop when we get older. And Charlie likes you, it's obvious."
Oliver snorts in incredulous amusement. "Likes me, yeah, I'm sure he does. In an abstract, he's-a-good-bloke kind of way. And even if he ever did like me the way I used to like him it would never work because you've seen the way I am around him. I could never actually have an equal relationship with someone I can't think straight around."
There's silence for long enough for Oliver to realise that he's been talking as though he still wants a relationship with Charlie, and backtrack hurriedly. "You know I don't still want him, right?" he asks, looking up at his lover, who's biting his lower lip in a vulnerable gesture Oliver hasn't seen from him before. "I have you. And you only make me lose my mind in the right ways."
The Irish Seeker chuckles. "That's good," he says softly, leaving his own armchair in favour of squashing himself into Oliver's and kissing him gently. "That's very good."