"Happy Christmas, Mrs. Weasley," came the familiar voice that turned Harry's insides to stone, while at the same time made his muscles melt to jelly. He could do nothing but stand and quiver slightly.
I am not ready for this, he thought to himself, and the prospect of Neville turning and seeing him made his legs give a little jerk so that he was slightly closer to the stairs than he was before, though it was far from stealthy. He'd take what he could get. Anything to get out of this room.
His attention, however, was so firmly set upon memorizing every detail of Neville's face and body and posture and voice, even that little eyebrow quirk he always got when he felt awkward, the tendency to lick his lips just slightly more than they needed...Harry felt himself rooted thoroughly to the spot, his hand on the banister of the stairs, and he hoped against hope that Neville would look over and notice him, while at the same time wishing fervently that he would be able to escape unseen. For he had not gone to get that haircut and thus looked disheveled and wild, as though he'd only thought about using a comb, nor had he shaved since Friday morning, and he was in a tee shirt and pajama bottoms besides, whereas Neville looked as neat and trim as though he expected to be called to teach a class at a moment's notice—under his overcoat the collar of his robes was pressed and sharp, his hair combed, and if his cheeks had not seen a razor that morning then Harry would eat his broomstick.
Neville had been welcomed into the living room now, shaking hands and exchanging hugs. Hermione looked with empathy over Neville's shoulder at Harry, but perhaps Neville had sensed where she was looking, because he pulled away from the hug and—
It seemed to happen in slow motion. Harry sucked in a gasp as Neville began to turn. His heart suddenly seemed several sizes too large for his chest and was thumping like a trapped animal against his ribs. He tried to swallow, but there was no moisture left and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
"Harry."
Oh tiny gods, it felt good to hear him say his name. Harry continued to stare, not even daring to blink. This was not how he thought their first meeting would go. He was supposed to be cool and confident, showing off how well he was getting on, not frozen like a rabbit cornered by a wolf.
Somehow Neville was right in front of him now. When had he moved? Harry nearly shivered as he caught a whiff of Neville's aftershave and it brought back memories of mornings spent getting ready together, of that slightly spicy tinge to the embraces at the end of a long day, and his knees nearly let go right there and deposited him on the floor. Harry tightened his grip on the banister and tried to channel the reassurance of being solid from it. He had nearly regained his voice when Neville opened his arms and stepped forward and Harry's eyes bulged and breath caught, but his body knew what to do and he found himself raising his own arms and returning the hug.
It was a friendly hug, nothing more, lasting only a second before Neville began to withdraw. Harry let him, though every fiber of his being screamed at him to hold on, don't let him go, don't let him leave again. In front of him once again, Neville looked into Harry's eyes.
Harry nodded once, briskly. "Good to see you," he forced out, and was proud that it didn't come out as a squawk or warble.
"It is," Neville said, and he sounded so much more confident than Harry felt that he wanted to dissolve into a little puddle. "It's been a while."
Harry resisted the urge to tell Neville exactly how many days it had been. "I suppose it has," he said instead. "I've been...it's been busy at work. Makes time go by faster." The more he talked, the easier it became.
"Same here. I didn't realize how much work being a teacher is. Sometimes I miss dodging curses."
"Neville, let me take your coat and you can stay awhile," Mrs. Weasley said, bustling up to them. Harry jumped—he had been paying absolutely no attention to what had been happening around him, and her approach had come from nowhere. She glanced between the two of them as though suddenly realizing what she'd interrupted. Neville slipped out of his coat and Harry used the opportunity to bolt like a rabbit up the stairs and slip into his room, hastily closing the door behind him.
He'd really much preferred the feeling of the ground dropping from beneath his feet as Ginny had revealed her pregnancy to her family. He leaned against the door, face burning, hot tears pricking his eyes that he adamantly refused to let fall. He wasn't ready for this. He had to get out of here.
"Did I say something?" Neville asked as he watched Harry take the stairs two at a time and disappear around the corner of the floor above.
"Yes," Ron said. "Though you probably could have recited the Floo directory to him and he'd have reacted the same."
Neville gave his heart a stern command to stop beating so fast as he turned to face Ron. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Ron lowered his voice as he stepped closer. "He won't appreciate me telling you this, mate, but really, it's for his own good." He looked around to see if anyone was listening in. "He's in a bad way. Ginny told me she thinks he's not sleeping well, definitely not taking care of himself right. I had no idea, as I haven't seen him outside work and he always seems so together there, but..." Ron shrugged. "And he said it blunt as you please yesterday, he's not over you."
"Oh," Neville said, his mind racing to figure out what to do with this information. "Isn't he...I mean, is he seeing Ginny, then?"
Ron bit his lip. "Well, er...maybe Harry should explain that bit. Or Ginny."
"Maybe I should explain what?" Ginny asked as she emerged from the kitchen and stepped up next to them. Ron gaped.
"How did you hear that all the way over here?"
"I was waiting for my cue. Neville, you should really come with me."
"Actually, I..." Neville had thought that maybe two months of distance and perspective might make him more kindly disposed toward Ron's younger sister, for whom he'd always before had a soft spot, but apparently he was wrong. Seeing her and knowing that she'd had his arms around Harry, that she'd stolen him away...
"I know," Ginny said, as though she could read his thoughts. Maybe she could; he'd never been good at keeping his face smooth—his eyebrows always seemed to move independently of the facial expressions he had control over. "I'm about to make it a lot worse. Come with me." And to make it clear she would brook no argument, she grabbed him by the forearm and began leading him upstairs.
"Cryptic much?" Neville said a bit touchily as he followed. She didn't respond, simply steered him up two flights of stairs into what had once been her room. There were three beds in it now, and not much room to move. She practically tossed him onto one of the beds and he crossed his arms and looked at her, trying not to glare or pout.
"I'm pregnant and Harry's the father," she said bluntly, crossing her own arms.
She was continuing to speak, but Neville didn't hear it. He felt as though his blood had been replaced with ice water. Surely she was joking. This sort of thing only happened in dramas. He stared at her, unhearing, until she snapped her fingers in his face.
"Are you even listening to me?" she demanded.
"No," Neville said honestly. His eyebrows knit together and he looked down at his hands, surprised to find they were shaking. With what? Anger? Anxiety? He couldn't figure out what it was he was feeling, and that was disconcerting. If he didn't know how he was feeling, how was he supposed to react?
"I said, I never meant to come between you two. And if you want me to disappear somewhere..."
Neville's head snapped up. "What?"
Ginny swallowed hard. "Harry's determined to be a good father. But you and I both know he's always determined to do the right thing, even if it kills him. Neville, he's actually pining. He's sleeping on his bloody sofa because he doesn't want to go back to the bed you used to share. I don't know what he's eating, that kitchen hasn't seen use since autumn. Ron says he's spending all hours at work, he's there when Ron gets there and leaves long after Ron's left."
Neville bit his lip. "He's hurting. It wasn't the best breakup in the world."
"It's more than that. You...you didn't see him after he told you what we'd done." Ginny knelt down so that Neville could see her face, even when trying to study his shoes. Neville closed his eyes; he didn't want to see her. "It was the end of the world for him. He couldn't do anything for days. It destroyed him."
"And I bet you were there to dry his tears," Neville said bitterly, then bit down on his tongue. Letting his anger get the best of him was not going to help.
"No, actually," Ginny said coolly. "That would have been the worst thing I could have done." She put her hand on his arm, and he opened his eyes. "Do you remember a couple years back, when I said I didn't want to be your rival?"
"Yes," Neville said grudgingly, leaving out "liar" though he desperately wanted to say it.
"I still don't. And really, I'm not. Even with all this...he's only got room for you in his heart." She looked into his eyes intently. "If you ask me to, I'll go."
Neville saw something glinting on her right hand, then, and his breath caught. "That's his mother's ring."
Ginny's eyes flicked to her finger. "Yes. That would be another of his terrible judgment calls. He proposed with it. I refused," she added quickly when Neville opened his mouth angrily. "I don't want him, Neville. I honestly and truly don't. We're tied together by this baby, now, but it's out of duty to him, not because we want to have a life together. I promise you that."
"Then why are you still wearing the ring?"
Ginny grimaced in an expression of uncertainty. "I don't know," she said finally. "Maybe because it means so much to him that I have it. He gave it to me again this morning, telling me that I'll never be his wife, but I'll always be the mother of his son. You know him, Neville. He's all about big dramatic gestures and wearing his heart on his sleeve. He doesn't really know how to be subtle."
Neville sighed. Yes, he knew that very well. That was part of their problems in the first place, that he was always in a state of high drama, elevating their simple lovers' spats into insurmountable fights.
"I'm going to ask you something," Ginny said, breaking the silence. "And I want you to answer me truthfully. It's very, very important, do you understand?" Neville nodded, his face smoothing somewhat. Introspection he could do. Ginny took a deep breath and once again made that intense eye contact. "Do you still love him?"
Neville licked his lips. "Yes."
Ginny nodded as though expecting the answer. "Do you still want him?"
Neville didn't respond. How was he supposed to answer that? He'd been trying to figure it out himself for the past two months. He'd felt like he was smothering a little bit every day when he woke up without Harry next to him, every night felt like he'd completed one more braid in some unseen hangman's noose as he fell asleep alone. He'd almost lost control of himself when he'd embraced Harry not five minutes ago, almost hadn't let go, almost crushed Harry to him and then kissed him for all he was worth. It had taken every ounce of self-control he could muster to step away.
"Neville. Do you want him back?" Neville furrowed his brow, fighting the two warring answers inside his head, feeling his chest start to rise and fall faster, as though he were running a race. He didn't know the answer. They'd argued so much, fenced with petty little jabs that cut deeply, starting with the house they'd painstakingly made their own over the years and ending with the stupidest accusations about hours at work and laundry undone. Laundry, of all things. Neville had gotten home and tripped over a laundry basket in the hallway and realized, to his dismay, that being with Harry didn't feel good anymore. He'd sat and thought about it and had come to the very painful conclusion that the relationship had played out. They'd been up all night arguing it, but in the end, Harry had left and Neville had begun to pack...and had had the epiphany that love didn't always feel good. He'd sent the owl begging Harry to come back, had stayed up all night jumping at every noise, and then he had returned, with that damning news that flayed Neville bare, exposed his raw emotions like he almost never did and...
"Answer me!" Ginny demanded.
"Yes! Yes, god damn it, yes! I want him back! More than anything," he said, his voice cracking on the last word. He lowered his face into his hands. "I just don't know how anymore...so much has happened, and...this, now..."
Ginny nodded grimly and stood up. "I'll get out of your way, then."
Neville's hands dropped abruptly. "What does that mean?"
Ginny took a trembling breath. "I've come between you and as long as I'm around, and our son's around...I'll always be between you. It's best if I just...disappear for a while. I'm good at it, it's what I do."
"You'd deprive him of his son?" Neville asked in disbelief. Ginny winced, then nodded.
"For his sake. And yours."
"No," Neville said firmly, straightening from his hunched-over posture on the bed. "I refuse to be party to this. You talk about his big dramatic moves, what the hell do you think this is?" Ginny looked stricken, but Neville continued, relentlessly. "You're putting me in the most unfair position I've ever been in in my life, and considering my life, that's saying something. You want me to make the decision that will take his son away from him? It's one thing for you to make that decision and disappear, but no—you want me to make it for you, so you can have an excuse, so that it's not your responsibility. That's not only unfair, it's childish. No. If that's what you want to do, then do it, but don't you dare make me out to be the reason you do it. I won't play that game." He stood up. "I'm leaving now. Happy Christmas."
"Please don't go," Ginny said, stepping between him and the door, trying to sound collected but a waver to her vowels belying her true emotions. She used the end of her sleeve to wipe a tear away from her eye. Neville paused; this was the closest he'd ever seen her come to dissembling. "You're right, I'm being stupid. Just like he does. Fire, ready, aim, it's what I've always done, it's what he's always done, that's why we've ruined what you two had—I'm trying to fix things, can't you see? He insists that what happened was his fault but it's not, it's mine, and I'm trying to make it better but I just keep making it worse and...Neville, I don't know what to do!"
And for the first time in the decade and more he'd known her, she burst into tears.
Anger slowly gave way to astonishment. Ginny had turned away from him, was leaning her forehead against the door, her hands covering her nose and mouth, and she was letting out great coughing sobs the like of which he'd never known she would ever allow.
He sighed. He wanted to despise her right now, wanted to have somewhere to aim his frustration and anger that wasn't himself, but all he could see in front of him was the girl who had wanted so badly to prove herself that she had forged a hard armored shell to keep out the bad and keep in the invulnerabilities—and that shell had finally cracked.
Harry always did the right thing. It was one thing that he and Neville had always had in common. And so, despite his deep-seated grudge, despite knowing that this woman was carrying the child of the man he loved to distraction, despite knowing that child meant he would never again have the man he loved to himself, Neville gently turned Ginny around and brought her to him in the hug it seemed she so desperately needed.
"You're not going to run away," he said softly, patting her back as it shook with sobs. "You're going to stay right here where you belong, and you and Harry are going to have an absolutely brilliant son." Something dawned on him then, something so profound that it seized every muscle and made him tense. Ginny must have felt it, because there was a slight catch to her indrawn breath. "And..." he said, working it out into words, even though the notion was so simple that it didn't need words, "if I can't get past that...then I'm the one who doesn't deserve him."
The crying girl in his arms suddenly became peripheral to this new train of thought. It was so blindingly simple. He loved Harry dearly, deeply, madly, and the thought of withdrawing that love from him because of one bad decision suddenly seemed petty and ridiculous. Withdrawing that love because of the consequences of that bad decision was not so much, but...
He'd come across a quote once in his reading that had stuck with him: "Love is that state in which the happiness of another is essential to your own." The pregnancy was a consequence to a bad decision, but an oddly happy consequence—Neville knew Harry well enough to know that fatherhood would agree well with him. If Neville could not love Harry despite his devotion to a son, something that would make Harry irrevocably happy, then he couldn't rightfully call it love, because love was not selfish in that way.
Ginny had been talking to him for several seconds, and he wrenched his attention back to her.
"...so sorry, Neville, I—"
"You can stop being sorry. In fact, you've helped me figure something out, or start to, anyway," Neville said, squeezing her once and then letting her go. He stepped around her. "Now. Which room has Harry closeted himself in?"
Harry was pacing in the small space between the beds, running his hand through his hair to keep his fringe from falling into his eyes. He could hear Neville's tenor somewhere upstairs—were they giving him a room? He felt like he was falling apart like a clockwork toy that had lost all the screws.
He didn't know what to do. He could command a squadron of hit-wizards, make split-second life-or-death decisions on a battlefield, but he didn't know what to do now. His bag was packed, he'd even considered Disapparating right there in the Burrow, rude as that was, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
He needed air, that's what he needed. He needed to get outside where there was more room to pace. He could pace all up and down Ottery St. Catchpole if he needed.
Having made a decision, even if that decision was to delay making a decision, he opened the door and nearly ran headlong into Neville, his left hand raised as though preparing to knock.
He stared and Neville stared right back. Harry could feel the blood draining from his face, had to remind himself to breathe. He knew he looked a mess, was painfully aware at how unkempt he'd made his hair by combing his fingers through it, knew his tee shirt was rumpled and sticking to his back from the cold sweat he'd broken.
"Hi," Neville finally said. He'd lowered his left hand and now simply stood framed by the doorway. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as he seemed to take in the way Harry was practically twitching; Harry clasped his hands together behind his back to stop them shaking. "God, Harry. Calm down. Please." He placed one hand on each of Harry's shoulders as though to steady him and Harry flinched at the touch as though it burned.
"I can't," Harry was dismayed to find himself saying, but it was like a leak had sprung in a dam and suddenly he couldn't stop talking. "Do you have any idea what this feels like? I've spent two months climbing the walls, and it's like nights never fucking end, and then you just show up and—" He stopped talking abruptly as Neville drew him into a tight embrace, holding his head against his shoulder. Every tense muscle in Harry's body suddenly relaxed and he felt like he was going to fall over, and would have, had Neville not been holding him up.
"Harry, I'm sorry," Neville said simply, still cradling Harry to him. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get my head on right. And I'm sorry this situation makes things harder. I should never have let things get this far."
"Ginny's pregnant," Harry said uselessly.
"I know. She told me."
"It's mine."
"She told me that, too. She also tried to run away so that you and I could be together."
"She...wait, she what?" Harry wrenched himself out of Neville's arms, looked at him sharply.
"Relax. I headed that nonsense off. God, she's just like you, ready to dive before you even make sure there's a pool there." Neville smiled that crooked little smile of his and Harry shakily sat down on the end of the bed. The smile melted away as Neville sighed. "I'm not going to lie," he said seriously, leaning back against the wall. "I'm...I don't know that I'm strong enough to handle this. I don't know that I'm...selfless enough."
Harry's heart was beating so hard that the sound pounded in his ears.
"Do you love her?" Neville asked suddenly. Harry jerked in surprise at the question.
"I...yes. But not like you think," he said, struggling to make his thoughts make sense. He closed his eyes, trying to remove the distraction of the sight of Neville, but he could swear he felt Neville standing there, could smell him, and it was driving him mad. "She's...it's more than just friendship, but I can't...couldn't ever be with her. Couldn't imagine going home to her at the end of the day, sharing a life with her. Not like I always imagined with you." With his eyes closed, it was a little easier to say what was in his mind, could pretend he was saying it to someone else. "We're having a son. It...makes things complicated. I don't know how to handle it."
"I don't either," Neville said. All illusion that someone else was standing there fled at the sound of his voice, and Harry's eyes popped back open. He could quite literally feel his heart ache at the sight of him. "All I know is...Harry, I want to try. I think. I..." he ran his hand through his hair, making half of it stand up on end. "I don't know if I can handle it. And it's going to suck for a while." He smiled in what was almost a grimace, and Harry found that he was barely breathing. He took a deep breath, trying to breathe in slowly to make it less of a gasp.
"What are you saying?" he asked in a shaking voice. "Use small words. I'm a bit wound up right now."
Neville laughed, and it had a very slight hysterical edge to it. "Harry, life is hell without you. For all your outbursts and overreactions...I'm going mad, knowing I don't have you. But..." he hesitated. Harry held his breath. "I really need some time," Neville finally said. "I need to figure out if I can be the man you need me to be, someone who can be okay with watching you raise a child with someone else. I don't know if I can be that for you." He knelt down then, and Harry let out his held breath in what was almost a shaky sigh of longing as Neville gazed deeply into his eyes. "I know this two months has lasted forever. Believe me, I know. But if you can give me some more time, so I can think, I promise...I'll try to figure out a way for us to give things another go."
Harry swallowed and was surprised to find a small smile creep to his lips. "You always ask for the weirdest things for Christmas."
Neville snorted and wrapped his arms around Harry. Harry closed his eyes and reveled in the warmth of it, let the spark of happiness in his breast fill him to bursting. He didn't have Neville back—not yet—but this closeness, this confession...it would do.