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A handful of years later, on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry’s home at Grimmauld Place will be full of survivors. Some day they will have children and the pain will have scabbed over, and they will only all meet at a bar to raise a solemn drink in remembrance, but for now they all tend to congregate in the place that’s big enough to hold them. Older survivors like McGonagall don’t spend the day in the Place. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley tend to stay at the Burrow and grieve on their own as well.
But the children of the Battle of Hogwarts, they come together. Often they’ll break off in clumps, huddled together somewhere in the building. Dean and Seamus, who came together, will be by one of the fireplaces. The Patil twins are going to be seated on the floor by the piano.
George, however, will not be present anywhere, nor will have been seen by anyone all day.
Now and forever, Harry has been loyal to his friends and his family, and while he has not yet married into the Weasleys, George is still the latter. So he will leave Ginny with a whispered word and a nod in return from her, and he will wander around the house, looking.
Eventually he will find George in one of the bedrooms. He will be sitting by himself on the bed, eyes red rimmed. Harry will sit next to him. They will not speak for at least an hour.
Eventually, Harry will recount the story of that day in the Great Hall, in an effort to remind George of good times. George will smile faintly.
“It was Fred’s idea,” he’ll say. “He saw you and Ron and Hermione talking about how you were getting headaches and said you could use a laugh.”
“He was right. That moment…” Harry will mull it over. “I don’t have a lot of good memories out of fifth year, but not only is that one a good one, it’s the best one.”
George will laugh, which will turn into crying. Harry, whose comforting abilities will have been forced to improve through circumstance, will stay with him the whole time.
“Thanks,” George will say after.
“Well, it’s the least I could do,” Harry’s answer will be, voice a little hoarse. He’d started crying too. “After all, you and I are in love.”
George’ll start laughing again. This time, he doesn’t cry.
It’s his fifth year and everything is terrible.
Statistically, Harry thinks sometimes, more than a little bitterly, everything is generally terrible for him. But this is the year after Cedric died, when everyone thinks he’s crazy or lying, when Umbridge is in charge. So really when he says everything’s terrible, he means more terrible than usual.
Harry rubs his head as he walks to the Great Hall for dinner. His headaches have been acting up even more than normal this week. Hermione’s blamed the stress. Ron’s blamed that time they were at Quidditch practice and he got nailed in the head with a Beater’s bat. Harry’s inclined to blame the Dark Lord that blasted him with a Killing Curse as a baby and then came back with a vengeance last year, but that could just be him.
He didn’t say that to Ron and Hermione. He’s trying very hard to be better.
When he arrives at the Great Hall, Fred and George are lounging by the entrance. They both grin and nod at him. Harry stops.
“Are you two planning something?” he asks suspiciously. He’s known the Weasleys for five years and he recognizes those smiles.
“What, us?” they ask simultaneously.
“Never,” Fred says.
“And quite frankly, Harry, we’re hurt by your presumption,” George adds.
“Wounded,” Fred agrees, putting his hand on his chest in mock-horror.
“Distressed, even. Brings a tear to my eye.” George wipes an imaginary tear for effect.
Harry looks between the two of them and decides if it doesn’t involve him, he doesn’t need to know. It might give Umbridge a headache, too, which is always good. She’s away for today and tomorrow to meet with the Minister, apparently, but if she hears about whatever this is when she returns, it could displease her. Harry doesn’t realize he’s rubbing the hand with his I must not tell lies scars until he sees George’s eyes flicker to it. He quickly puts his hand in his pocket.
“I’ll see you at dinner, then.”
“If we can bear to show our faces, considering the slandering of our honor and dignity you just committed.”
“We might not even be hungry after that, it was so stomach turning.”
Harry doesn’t have an answer to that, so he just heads into the Great Hall, sitting next to Ron and Hermione as always.
“What took you so long, mate?” Ron asks, heaping mashed potatoes onto his plate.
“Ran into Fred and George outside.”
“Yeah?” Ron puts the potatoes back. “Mum threatened to send them a Howler the other day, she doesn’t think they’re applying themselves enough to their schoolwork. She says they’ll never get jobs in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement or something.”
“I’m not quite sure where your mum is coming from on that one, to be perfectly honest.” Hermione sips her pumpkin juice. “Fred and George are really very intelligent and I know they do well in their classes.”
Ron shrugs. “I think mostly she just doesn’t want them to do the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes stuff.”
“Where are they, anyway?” Ginny asks, sitting down next to Hermione. She’d been conferring with Luna about something at the Ravenclaw table. “I saw them hanging out by the entrance when I came in, you think they’d be in here by now.”
Harry blinks. “They were waiting when you came in, too?”
As if on cue, the doors open with a bang and Fred storms in, George on his heels. Fred looks furious about something. George looks pleading. Everyone looks up.
“Please, Fred, don’t make a scene,” George begs, and that more than anything grabs everyone’s attention properly, because if there’s anything that Fred and George Weasley have never minded, it’s making a scene. He grabs at Fred’s arm.
“How dare you!” Fred roars, shaking his arm free. “How dare you tell me not to make a scene when you’re the one at fault in this situation!”
The professors, Harry notes, are watching with faces that look torn between interest and trepidation. Harry’s not surprised. When the Weasley twins start yelling, things usually start exploding. Dumbledore is the exception, seeming benignly and vaguely amused. Harry’s resentful of Dumbledore pretty much all the time, but he can still recognize that he probably knows what Fred and George are yelling about. Dumbledore may not know everything, but he certainly knows almost all things that goes on in the castle walls.
“We never meant to hurt you, Fred,” George tells him desperately. “We never meant for you to find out this way.”
We? Harry mouths at Ron and Hermione, who both give him identically blank looks of unknowing. He turns to Ginny, who shakes her head haplessly, clearly as lost as Ron and Hermione. We. Does George have a girlfriend they don’t know about?
“You’ve both hurt me, quite deeply!” Fred snaps, voice still so loud Harry wonders a little if it’s magically magnified. “You’ve stolen him away from me?”
Him? Harry looks back to Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, who look just as surprised.
“I didn’t steal anyone!” George yells, his anger finally appearing to rear its head. “He doesn’t love you anymore, can’t you see, he’s been only going through the motions! He never wanted to hurt you, because he’s just that good of a person! Better than you could ever deserve!”
“Do you think it’s Lee?” Hermione whispers. Ron turns startled eyes on her for a moment, then shrugs and whispers back.
“Maybe. It would make sense, I guess.”
“How dare you!” Fred cries again. “I’m as worthy of his love as anyone! How do you think you could deserve him and not me? No, you must have enticed him away, with- with a love potion or some kind of spell!”
“Noooo!” George bellows. “No, I never did! Face it, Fred: Harry Potter doesn’t love you anymore!”
The Great Hall, which had been full of whispers and speculation as to what was going on, exactly, suddenly falls silent for just one second. Then all the benches scrape as everyone turns around to stare at Harry. He sits there, gaping at Fred and George.
His sexuality hasn’t been a secret in Hogwarts for a while. It had especially not been a secret in the Weasley family, considering Ron had been the first one he told. Harry’s stumbling confession when he had gone to the Burrow for the Quidditch World Cup and the remainder of the summer had included him attempting multiple metaphors involving dragons, Nifflers, and gnomes. When Ron had continued to stare at him in bewilderment, Harry had given up and said “I like both girls and boys, Ron”. Ron had blinked and gone “oh, cool. Hey, can you help me find my Chudley Cannons poster? I think Ginny stole it and she’s tricky so I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it on my own”.
Hermione had been next, when she had been furiously reading their textbooks for the upcoming year and Harry thought she could use a break from the five hours solid she’d been at it anyway. She’d blinked vaguely at him.
“Oh,” she’d said. “I thought you were out already.”
Harry had gaped. “What?”
“I saw the way you looked at Oliver Wood, Harry, I just assumed it was common knowledge.”
“I didn’t know until last year.”
“Oh. Well. Um.” She’d patted his arm awkwardly. “Thank you for telling me.”
When he’d told Ron later, Ron had shaken his head.
“Figures. If anyone was gonna figure out how you swung before you did, it’d be Hermione.”
After Harry had given Ron permission to tell Molly, it had leaked through the family pretty quickly. Nobody brought it up (although Molly had given him an extra tight hug after when Harry suspected Ron had told her) and other than being inconveniently attracted to Bill for a few weeks, nothing really happened in relation to it. The news had gotten out around Hogwarts, and it was uncomfortable gossip for a while, mostly just whispers in halls but occasional pointed and disapproving looks. And then it passed when the latest test happened in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and then the names had come out of the Triwizard Cup, and everything had happened so fast. Looking back, he kind of misses the simplicity of that gossip.
So that he's interested in men isn’t what’s turning heads, necessarily. It’s only that this knowledge makes it entirely plausible that he’s in some bizarre love triangle with Fred and George.
Except, of course, that he isn’t.
All this flashes through Harry’s head in the space of about two seconds. He keeps staring at the twins, starting to put things together in his brain.
He remembers seeing Fred and George in the library when he was talking to Ron and Hermione. They were in the next row over when he’d been whispering, looking at some spellbook. He also remembers saying something along the lines of “I haven’t laughed in a while” when Ron had cracked a joke and Hermione had expressed surprise that he hadn't reacted. He thinks on how he’d recognized the looks on their faces to be plotting ones back at the entrance. He turns their fight over in his head, recognizes in hindsight how overdramatic their shouting and gesticulating is. He studies their faces now and sees the brightness of mirth in their eyes as they turn around to look directly at Harry as well as the others. It all comes together in a crashing moment.
They’re trying to amuse him.
For the first time in a long time, Harry’s chest swells with warmth. He knows his friends love him, knows they keep proving it again and again. He doesn’t discount their acts. But there’s something about this one. They’re drawing attention to themselves, starting rumors about themselves. This could affect their ability to get dates. It could cause people to give them trouble where Harry had gotten none probably due in part to his status as “the Chosen One”. And at the same time, it’s a very simple thing.
A whole production, just to try and prod him into a smile.
About thirty seconds has passed during this revelation, thirty seconds of total silence. Harry glances at the table of teachers. Snape looks disgusted. McGonagall has her eyes narrowed, her “the Weasley twins are up to something” senses clearly going off. Dumbledore’s amusement has sharpened somewhat as he looks out at the room. Harry looks next to Ron, Ginny, and Hermione. Ron’s staring at him. Hermione looks confused, an unusual thing for her. Ginny’s face is delighted and Harry’s pretty sure she’s figured out what’s going on.
He looks back at the twins.
Slowly, Harry stands up and walks to the twins. His footsteps echo in the hall. He stands next to George and looks up at him; he’s grown a lot since he met the Weasley family but Fred and George both still have about an inch on him. George looks back down at him, face now a little startled. Evidently they didn’t expect him to react in anything other than a laugh. He feels a little pleased that he managed to surprise them.
Harry slides his hand into George’s, still side-eyeing him to verify that this is okay. George’s whole face brightens as he clearly understands. Harry takes that as permission. He turns to Fred next, who almost looks like he’s glittering as he too gets it.
“It’s true, Fred,” Harry says. He would have been loud in the quiet anyway, but he still makes sure to boom. It’s part of the game they’re playing, after all. “George and I are in love. I’m sorry that you found out through gossip and not from us.”
Fred struggles for a moment to beat the grin back. He pulls together a face of misery and shock quickly.
“How could you, Harry? I thought what we had was special! And it was all just- just a fling?”
“It was never a fling, Fred. I just… got to know George better.” Harry gazes up at George, careful to avoid his eyes. He’s not sure he can keep it together if he meets either of their eyes. “Got to see a side of him I’d never seen before, after all this time.”
Fred purses his lips and his frame shakes. He appears distressed enough that he can pass it off as crying and not laughing.
“I loved you,” he chokes out. “More than anything.”
“It’s over, Fred,” George says grimly. “Accept it.”
Fred watches them for another moment, mouth opening and closing. Then he turns in as sweeping a fashion as Harry assumes he can muster and strides out of the Great Hall.
“We should go after him.” Harry tries to make his stare as soulful as possible. “For me?”
“Anything for you, my love.”
They leave the Great Hall in almost an ambling way, still hand in hand. As soon as they’re out, George walks ahead of Harry slightly, leading him this time.
“Come on.”
He takes him into a side hallway, where Fred is doubled over, wheezing with laughter.
“Unbelievable,” he manages as George lets go of Harry’s hand to press his face into the wall as he howls. “Absolutely unbelievable.”
Harry leans against the opposite wall with his hands in the pockets of his robes, grinning.
“You’re a bloody genius.” George turns around, face a little red from the laughing. “Utterly brilliant.”
Harry’s grin widens and he does a mock bow. “Thanks.”
“You missed it,” George tells Fred. “He said we should go after you and then said for me?”
That sets Fred off again, which sets George off again, and really, Harry can’t help it. He starts laughing, too. It’s hard enough that his sides start hurting, although it’s been long enough since he laughed that it could just be from disuse.
Harry’s laughter subsides after what feels like ages, he settles into a hesitant smile. “So did you… did you really do that just to get me to laugh?”
“Well, in part.” Fred shrugs. “At first we weren’t sure we should do it because you hate being the center of attention, mate, don’t know if you’d noticed-“
“I hadn’t, thanks,” Harry answers dryly.
“But then we realized that if we do this, you’re not going to have to hear people talking about whether or not you’re pulling people’s legs about Voldemort or not. You just get to hear about our sordid love affair and how it turned into tragedy and what have you.” Fred waves a hand airily. “So you get a break and you laugh a little. Both are good.”
Harry folds his arms. “Sort of like my second year,” he says quietly. “When you used to yell about me being the Heir of Slytherin to clear the way for me. To distract people from how serious it was and how scared I was.”
George snaps his fingers and points at him. “Precisely.”
“We’ve known you for five years,” Fred says, his turn to stick his hands in his pockets. “Since you were a scrawny stick figure. Well. Since you were a scrawnier stick figure. It’s kind of our job to prod you into feeling a little better every once in a while when you're not at your best.”
“You hadn't known me that long when you did that second year for me.”
Fred and George look at each other, share an identical sigh, and turn back to Harry.
“You’re one of us, Harry,” Fred tells him calmly. “You’ve been one of us more or less since Mum knitted you the first sweater.”
“Obviously we wouldn’t pull this exact same kind of stunt with Ron or Ginny or any of the others,” George puts in. “But we’d do something similarly ridiculous, if they were having the time of it you’re having. And again, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you are not having a good year.”
Harry snorts.
“So if we have a way to take the heat off the more serious talk about you and turn it into something that you know isn’t true, well. We thought it might be easier for you in the end.”
“We, er.” Fred suddenly looks uncertain. “We were right, weren’t we? We didn’t… that was okay?”
Harry rubs his arm a little, smiling slightly as he looks down at the ground. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah. Thanks, guys.”
Fred returns to cheerfulness. “No need to thank us. We still owe you from, you know.” He lowers his voice. “The leprechaun gold.”
Harry raises his eyebrows. “If I’m one of you,” he answers levelly. “Then you don’t owe me anything.”
They break into wide grins.
“Harry!” Ron appears, puffing slightly, having evidently run out of the Great Hall, Hermione and Ginny close behind. “Listen, Hermione and I have discussed it, and we’ve decided you’ve got our blessing even though I still think it’s an extremely bad idea- ow, Hermione, stop laughing, Ginny, you’ve been laughing all along and this is a serious situation-“
Ron stops, appearing baffled when Fred and George join in with Ginny. Harry doesn’t, but he grins at the wall in front of him.
“That was mad,” Ginny says with a grin. “Absolutely mad.” She looks at Harry. “Were you in on it from the beginning?”
Harry shakes his head. “I figured it out, though.”
Ginny punches Harry in the arm.
“Ow, what was that for?”
“Because if you do it again, I want to come in saying I’ve had an affair with you behind George’s back and I’m pregnant with your baby.”
Ron chokes on air, looking absolutely horrified. “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but- no. Absolutely not. I’m putting my foot down.”
“Ron’s putting his foot down.” Ginny tosses her hair. “That means we have to do it.”
Harry does laugh then. Ron and Hermione look startled. Ginny rolls with it, leaning against the wall next to Harry, arm up against his companionably.
“Do you think,” Hermione says carefully. “Someone could explain to me what’s going on?”
“Yeah, me too,” Ron adds. “Do I have to give Harry and George some form of talk about hurting the other one? Because I need some time to pull that together, I didn’t think I was gonna have to ever give that speech to either of you and I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
Harry grins at him. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Ron.”