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Ron liked to think that he’d gotten better at noticing when people were upset. Hermione had once told him he had ‘the emotional range of a teaspoon’, but he’d practiced faithfully since then, and had even helped Luna work through her feelings when Rolf proposed on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Hermione had been very impressed.
He’d be the first to admit, though, that he was still not brilliant at knowing why someone was upset. So while he could tell within the first three days of holiday break that Hugo was angry (slamming his door, avoiding his mother’s questions about Hogwarts, not sending owls to any of his friends)…he wasn’t quite sure why.
But Hermione had her hands full with Rosie that day (she was having a ‘woman crisis’ and Ron barely waited for his wife’s permission to flee the scene “until we’ve had a girl chat”), and Ron decided to help out by finding out what was wrong with Hugo. So he knocked on his son’s door.
“Hugo? It’s Dad, can I come in?”
The door opened a crack and a pair of blue eyes looked out. “What do you want?”
“Just a quick chat. I noticed something was bothering you—”
The door slammed.
Bloody hell…Ron tapped at the door again. “Hugo?”
“Go away! I’m fine.”
“No you’re not.”
“Well….you can’t help me!”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not Mum!”
That stung a bit—to be honest, it stung a lot. Ron tried very hard to be there for his kids as much as Hermione, and he loved them dearly, but there were some things that Hermione was just better at dealing with.
“Do you want me to get your Mum, then?” Ron asked. “Only she’s very busy right now with Rosie…I just want to help, Hugo.”
There was a pause, then the door opened, a bit more than before.
“I s’pose you can try,” Hugo said ungraciously, letting his father into the room and slamming it behind him.
Ron looked around his son’s bedroom, covered in posters of the Chudley Cannons (like father like son), family pictures and Hugo’s ‘best drawings’, a collection of his son’s art that ranged from his first scribbles at the age of one to recent portraits of friends and teachers at Hogwarts. Ron’s special favourite was the drawing of Professor McGonagall mid-shift from a cat.
Hugo sat on his bed and crossed his arms, pouting. Ron sat next to him, unsure what to say next. He noticed several scrunched up pieces of parchment littering his desk and floor.
“Are you having trouble with homework?” he asked, knowing that Hugo hated Potions nearly as much as his Uncle Harry before him.
The eleven year old shook his head, still pouting. Ron put his arm around him.
“Hugo, what’s wrong?”
Hugo mumbled something.
“Eh?”
“I don’t want to write to Lily.”
Ah. “Did you two have a spat?”
“No. I’m not angry with her.”
Now this was odd. The cousins were usually inseparable, often spending detention together (to Hermione’s dismay and Ron’s great amusement—of course Harry and Ginny’s daughter was a troublemaker.) They quarrelled sometimes, as all good friends do, but they normally made up as they were arguing.
“Then why don’t you want to talk to her?” Ron asked. Maybe if he kept the questions simple…
Hugo stared out the window. “Dad, what was it like being friends with someone famous?”
Oh.
“So that’s what’s happening?” Ron asked, trying to stall for time.
Hugo sniffled, increasing Ron’s alarm. “Lil’s awesome, and she’s my favourite cousin, but everyone knows who she is, even the teachers! And everyone tells her how much like her mum or dad is, and everyone wants to be her friend…and no one wants to be friends with me.”
Ron’s heart sank. “That’s not true,” he tried to deny.
Hugo shook his head violently. “It is! Lil’s got loads of friends besides me, and they all want her to do things with them all the time, and they never ask me, ever! And she always brings me along anyways, because we’re mates, but I know some of them don’t want me there!” He crossed his arms. “So I decided to stop bothering her, because she’s got all these nice new friends who aren’t weird and are scared of talking to people, and she’ll forget about me and we’ll just be cousins.” There were tears in the little boy’s eyes now.
Ron pulled Hugo into his arms, letting his son sob against his chest. This was something he knew how to do, so he just held Hugo tight and tried desperately to think of what to say.
“Has she ever said anything to you about all of this? Have you asked her what she thinks?”
Hugo shook his head. “No…but I don’t want to m-make her choose.”
My poor boy. “Hugo, listen to me, alright?” Ron felt Hugo’s sobs begin to slow, but he didn’t let go of him, couldn’t bear to. “When I first became friends with your Uncle Harry, I didn’t have much idea of what I was getting into. I didn’t really think of him as ‘the Boy Who Lived’, not after we really started talking on the train, and he just seemed like a fun person to be friends with. Then we got to school, and I realized that being friends with him meant people didn’t always see me.”
Hugo looked up at him. “But you’re tall!”
Ron laughed. “Yes, and Harry was a scrawny little git back then…still is now, come to think of it.”
Hugo managed a giggle at that.
“It was weird,” Ron admitted. “But I suppose I was used to it—I was the youngest of all my brothers, and being ‘one of the group’ was sort of how I grew up. I just thought things might change when I went to school. But everything I did was with Harry and your mum, and people…people seemed to notice Harry much more.”
He remembered the bitterness, the anger that he didn’t want to have, that he tried so hard to push down but came out at the worst times, when Harry needed him most. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for leaving them in the woods.
“So what did you do?” Hugo asked innocently.
“Well…we fought sometimes,” Ron admitted. “I was jealous of him, and I tried to hide it by being as angry as I could. That didn’t work—your mum saw through me, and so did Harry after a while. It was stupid of me not to tell him.”
“Why? You thought it was wrong to feel that, why would you say anything?”
“He was my best mate, Hugo,” Ron said gently. “I was supposed to tell him if I had a problem, not go off every now and again when he really hadn’t done anything.”
Hugo pulled away, small hands still clutching Ron’s jumper. “So do you still feel like that?”
Ron smiled. “No, and it’s because of something he did, of course.”
“What?” Hugo asked impatiently.
So Ron told him.
Just days after the last funeral, he got an owl from Harry asking if they could meet at Grimmauld Place. He went to the old house, and was shown in to the kitchen by Kreacher, Harry sitting there with Firewhisky and soup.
After toasts to the dead, the two of them sat back, Kreacher having disappeared after bringing them steak and kidney pie. Harry had dark circles under his eyes, but the hunted look in them was gone. Ron wondered if he looked the same way.
“You all right, mate?” Ron asked.
Harry shrugged. “I’m as good as can be expected, I suppose.”
Ron was suddenly very angry that he still had no idea what to say to his friend, even now that he knew exactly how awful it felt to put people you loved in the ground. He reached across the table, then stopped.
“You know, I never told you something important,” Harry said suddenly.
“What?”
“I told you that I love Hermione like a sister, that she’s family to me.” Harry looked him dead in the eye. “I never told you that I feel the same way about you.”
Ron was speechless.
“You’re my best mate, Ron,” Harry said, tone serious. “You’re —well, you’re the closest thing I have to a brother, you know? I’ve no idea what I would have done without you. You were my first friend, and everyone in your family…they’re my friends and family because of you. Including Ginny—I didn’t want to ask her out for the longest time because she was your sister. I didn’t know if you knew that, if you knew that I don’t see you as anything less than Ron Weasley, my brilliant, mad, amazing best friend. But I do. So…yeah.”
“I…” Ron searched frantically for some way to answer, to apologize for not understanding what was so clear now. He hadn’t had to be jealous of Harry. Harry thought he was important.
“I realized that I hadn’t told you before I…well, before I died, so I wanted to do it now to make sure, before it happens again,” Harry said, blushing a bit as Ron continued to gape at him.
Then Ron had it.
“You’re not allowed to die,” he blurted out. “I’m not burying another brother.”
Harry’s smile, tinged with sadness as it was, still made Ron feel like he’d done something right.
Hugo was quiet for a moment when Ron finished talking. “So…that was it?”
“Yes?” Ron asked, nonplussed.
“But…but that was two minutes!”
Ron couldn’t help laughing. “We’d been friends for almost eight years at that point, lad. Maybe that’s all we needed.”
Hugo looked pensive.
“And how long have you been friends with Lily?” Ron prodded gently.
“As long as…I don’t know, as long as I can remember,” Hugo said, brightening.
“Why don’t you send her an owl, son, and see if you can have a chat. Don’t you worry—the Potters are good at sorting things out.”
Hugo leapt up to go to his desk, then whirled suddenly and threw his arms around Ron. “So are the Weasleys,” he mumbled. “Thanks Daddy.”
Ron’s heart swelled—Hugo had abandoned that name at the age of nine, and he’d missed it. He put his arm across his son’s shoulders. “Anytime, lad.”