Fic: Companionship Is You for shocolate
Title: Companionship Is You
Author: nekare
Giftee: shocolate
Rating: PG-13
Word Count (for fic): 2048
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Ron
Author/Artist's Notes: Got a bit carried away with the magic descriptions, but I still hope you'll like it, shocolate. :)
Summary: June. Ditching work to have lemonade. Trying new spells in the empty Auror department. Life goes on, for Harry and Ron.
It really hasn’t been that long since they last did it, but Harry still presses Ron to the wall of the Ministry’s men’s bathroom, licks a path from his collarbone to his ear, (and) murmurs “Miss me?” just loud enough for Ron to hear him.
“The door is still open, you know?” says Ron in between pants, his eyes closed and smiling broadly. “Hermione’s right, you actually like danger.”
Harry laughs a bit, kissing Ron’s nose chastely. “Nah, you know me. It’s more like danger likes me.”
Ron chuckles, and then there’s no more talking, no other sound other than the one of sweat-slicked skin against skin.
It’s always easy like this, when they’re just alone and carefree and open for the other one to see.
That’s why Harry keeps on stealing these moments.
---
“You know, I’d love to count all of your freckles one day,” says Harry as he fans himself with a granny-like fan and nudges Ron’s right ankle with his index finger. They’re on Neville and Hermione’s porch, the wooden floor cold with all the Cooling Charms Neville has on the entire house to keep his plants in good shape. It’s June, and Ron lies on the floor while he covers his face with his forearm as if trying to keep the heat away, his feet on Harry’s lap.
Harry stops his poking momentarily to sip at his lemonade, finishes the remains in one drink, and stares at the green trees ahead through the melting ice on the bottom of the glass.He squints a bit at the way it all looks smudged and multicolor - almost like a kaleidoscope.
“If you would do it your tongue, I’d more than welcome it” Ron says languidly, and Harry chuckles.
“You do realize I’m still here, don’t you Ron?” says Hermione from Harry’s right, and he’s aware of how she doesn’t blush anymore with any of their crude remarks, just smiles and tells them naughty stories involving Neville and plants that they really didn’t want to know (revenge, she calls it). They’ve all grown up.
“As if I could ever forget you, Hermione, with all the reading you’ve put me through in my innocent life. I’ll never recover from Pseudo-Seventh Year.” It’s been six years already, but their voices always go a bit dark when they speak about their seventh year at Hogwarts, two years after Dumbledore died and the war really started.
They go on, the three of them, and don’t let it affect them (much).
“Honestly Ron, it’s not as if I held a gun to your head and forced you to read, you know.”
“A what?”
“Forget it,” says Harry, and he starts moving his blunt fingernails on Ron’s legs in an attempt to make him quiet. His hand goes higher steadily, and just when Ron’s toes are starting to curl Hermione nudges him with her elbow.
“Would you mind not disgracing my floor?”
“Don’t you have some house-elf to save, or something?” asks Ron almost groggily, and Harry bites his lip to hold in his laugher.
“Don’t you have a job to do?” She talks back haughtily. Oh. Right. Both he and Ron are supposed to be ditching work today, he had almost forgotten. The Benton case is just not going anywhere, and both of them had been too frustrated to actually work.
Ron shrugs. “Fair enough.” He rubs his nose, and speaks just seconds later. “So absolutely no shagging on your porch?”
“Ron!”
They laugh, and Hermione pinches Ron’s foot. They just stay quiet for a while, sipping lemonade and watching Hermione’s three-year-old kid playing in the grass. Neville gets home after a while, and he babbles excitedly about the new plant he discovered that day.
Ron kisses Harry, slowly, as Neville goes on and on in the background about the what’s-its-name flower, and this, this feels like family.
---
“What exactly is that supposed to be?” asks Ron dubiously from behind him, and Harry rolls his eyes at him. It’s noon, the Ministry is almost empty, and there’s an eerie silence about the Auror department, something that rarely happens in the crowded building. Harry’s stomach is grumbling with hunger, but he really wants to finish this before he goes to get lunch.
“A tracking spell.”
“Then why does it look like you’re drawing a butterfly?” Ron rests his chin on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry turns to bite Ron’s earlobe in revenge. Ron yelps a bit, but he doesn’t sound entirely like someone in pain.
“It is not a butterfly. It’s supposed to be a bird, only I’m apparently crap at drawing.”
“No kidding.”
“Would you mind stopping criticizing my drawing abilities and actually help? This is meant to help with the Benton case. Here, this is where I found it,” Harry signals vaguely to a thick book on the corner of his cluttered desk, his eyes still on the paper in front of him. He hears a rustle of cloth as Ron goes to see the yellowed book and he keeps on erasing furiously at his rather lacking sketch of a bluebird.
“This is quite strong magic, Harry,” says Ron as his eyes move over the blurry words, his voice going back to business mode.
“You up for it?”
Ron sends a lop-sided smile his way, and Harry nearly melts. “That’s a very stupid question, mate.” Harry smiles as well.
They set to work immediately. Harry finishes the drawing, figuring nothing too bad would happen if one of the legs still looks as if it came out of nowhere. They ultimately decide Harry’s desk is far too full of junk to be of any use, so they move to Ron’s, clearing the surface before putting the drawing between them.
Ron picks the lock of a coworker’s cabinet (an ability he has Fred and George to thank for), the one from the potion expert in their department, and gets the herbs they need. He crushes the dry leaves with a hideous paper-weight Percy had given him at Christmas for lack of anything better to do the job, and they both take turns sprinkling the herbs on the paper as they mutter one of the incantations the spell needs to fully function. Thyme for the energy the spell needs, for activity; Rosemary so it’ll ‘remember’ its target, to keep the spell from side-tracking; Valeriana for the astral projection. Ron says it sounds almost like a song.
The book is sideways to the sheet of paper so they can both read, and they both wave their wands over the paper while muttering the long incantation, both of them switching to the correct Latin accent by force of habit. The contours of the bird start glowing faintly as they keep on reading along. When they’re finished with that, the bird has already begun to color itself: orange on the neck, white on the belly and pure indigo on the wings.
“Looks better like that, doesn’t it?” Harry asks as they both put their wands down and reach for the dust of Wild Cherry Bark.
“You’re just fishing for compliments,” says Ron with a smile just before he puts the dust on the tip of his tongue. Harry does the same, and it tastes horrible. He moves the dust around his mouth as the book says, and finally swallows with a grimace. The element of this herb is air, and it should give the spell invisibility and the ability to overcome obstacles. He doesn’t swallow again, even if he’s itching to get the flavor out of his mouth, and instead he leans over the paper, his hands braced on the desk. Ron mirrors his movements in front of him.
Harry inhales strongly, makes the air fill his ribcage and expand his lungs; he can hear Ron doing the same. They look at each other briefly, Ron’s fingers doing a regressive count. They reach zero, and they both blow on the paper at the same time, their breaths-turned-wind coming out a bit brownish from the bark powder. The colored breath permeates the bird drawing, but the rest of the paper remains white.
The color seems to bleed from the figure, and soon there’s an indigo-colored wind swiveling around the drawing. Then the wings twitch and flutter as they start to come out of the paper. It becomes almost corporeal as it lifts itself, almost gassy in texture, see-through. The bird tears itself out of the paper, its legs struggling to get out. The beak is the last thing to break free of the paper, and it opens and closes without any sound as it starts flying around Ron’s head, surrounded by a blue and orange mist that shines a bit after it passes and then fades slowly. This is the magic Harry always dreamt about as a child - colorful and showy and so different than McGonagall’s practical spells. Both he and Ron are smiling, even with the foul taste still in their mouths.
Ron picks up the cloak fragment that a fellow Auror had brought along when his curse only managed to affect Benton’s clothes instead of the Dark wizard himself. He offers it to the light-made bird, as if trying to feed it, and the magical bluebird takes it with its beak.
“Go on, boy, find him for us.” Ron says quietly, bending a bit to be eye level with the bird. He tries to caress its head, but his fingertip only goes through it. The bird flies around the office one time, leaving blue sparks on its wake before going out of the window.
Harry turns to look at Ron, finds him sitting at his desk with a smile on his face. “Wow,” he says and Ron laughs.
“I keep forgetting you didn’t grow up with magic around you,” Ron says.
“When I first entered Hogwarts, I used to think that I shouldn’t get used to it, just in case it suddenly went away. That’s why I love it when I can do something that cool, just to remember that I actually can.”
“You’re so weird, Harry,” Ron says with a smile, and tugs the front of Harry’s robes until he’s close enough for a kiss. They both taste like the bark still, but they ignore it - it’s not that bad after Ron’s tongue touches the roof of his mouth and the bark dissolves faintly. The room still shines blue vaguely, indigo-colored sparks that fall onto their hair like glitter. Harry cups Ron’s face between his hands, pushes harder into the kiss with a contented sigh. Ron hoists him up, helps him so he’s straddling him on the desk, in the middle of the empty office.
“My, my, isn’t this kinky?”
“Any complaints, Harry?” Ron whispers against Harry’s mouth, and Harry can only shake his head as Ron starts to bite his lip. He pushes Ron a bit more roughly that he had intended, and they both end up sprawled over the desk, the remaining herbs and the paper with a bird-shaped hole beneath Ron’s back. They both groan, and Ron’s hands go under Harry’s shirt.
“…That was a quite easy report to do, Bones, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to include the twenty feet high dragon attacking the town. I really don’t know how you could have missed it…” Comes Kingsley Shacklebolt’s voice through the hallway outside the office, and Harry lifts himself up from Ron too fast for his head to handle. Ron kicks him as he sits up and tries to rearrange his clothes. The door opens.
Harry falls to the ground.
“Er, you alright Weasley? You look a bit flustered,” says Shacklebolt, and Harry thanks whichever deity that made him fall hidden from his boss’ sight.
“Quite all right, sir. The, uh, heat, you know. Um.” Harry hears Ron say with his head against the grey carpet, and then there are just footsteps. “They’re gone, you can come out now.”
Harry jumps to his feet and takes Ron’s wrist, dragging him away. “You, me, bathroom, NOW.”
They run through the Ministry’s hallways, laughing and slipping on the tiled floor.
---
It really hasn’t been that long since they last did it (only last night when they got to their flat after dinner at Hermione’s), but Harry still presses Ron to the wall of the Ministry’s men’s bathroom, licks a path from his collarbone to his ear, and murmurs “Miss me?” just loud enough for Ron to hear him.
Harry’s determined to steal as many of these moments as he can.
Author: nekare
Giftee: shocolate
Rating: PG-13
Word Count (for fic): 2048
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Ron
Author/Artist's Notes: Got a bit carried away with the magic descriptions, but I still hope you'll like it, shocolate. :)
Summary: June. Ditching work to have lemonade. Trying new spells in the empty Auror department. Life goes on, for Harry and Ron.
It really hasn’t been that long since they last did it, but Harry still presses Ron to the wall of the Ministry’s men’s bathroom, licks a path from his collarbone to his ear, (and) murmurs “Miss me?” just loud enough for Ron to hear him.
“The door is still open, you know?” says Ron in between pants, his eyes closed and smiling broadly. “Hermione’s right, you actually like danger.”
Harry laughs a bit, kissing Ron’s nose chastely. “Nah, you know me. It’s more like danger likes me.”
Ron chuckles, and then there’s no more talking, no other sound other than the one of sweat-slicked skin against skin.
It’s always easy like this, when they’re just alone and carefree and open for the other one to see.
That’s why Harry keeps on stealing these moments.
---
“You know, I’d love to count all of your freckles one day,” says Harry as he fans himself with a granny-like fan and nudges Ron’s right ankle with his index finger. They’re on Neville and Hermione’s porch, the wooden floor cold with all the Cooling Charms Neville has on the entire house to keep his plants in good shape. It’s June, and Ron lies on the floor while he covers his face with his forearm as if trying to keep the heat away, his feet on Harry’s lap.
Harry stops his poking momentarily to sip at his lemonade, finishes the remains in one drink, and stares at the green trees ahead through the melting ice on the bottom of the glass.He squints a bit at the way it all looks smudged and multicolor - almost like a kaleidoscope.
“If you would do it your tongue, I’d more than welcome it” Ron says languidly, and Harry chuckles.
“You do realize I’m still here, don’t you Ron?” says Hermione from Harry’s right, and he’s aware of how she doesn’t blush anymore with any of their crude remarks, just smiles and tells them naughty stories involving Neville and plants that they really didn’t want to know (revenge, she calls it). They’ve all grown up.
“As if I could ever forget you, Hermione, with all the reading you’ve put me through in my innocent life. I’ll never recover from Pseudo-Seventh Year.” It’s been six years already, but their voices always go a bit dark when they speak about their seventh year at Hogwarts, two years after Dumbledore died and the war really started.
They go on, the three of them, and don’t let it affect them (much).
“Honestly Ron, it’s not as if I held a gun to your head and forced you to read, you know.”
“A what?”
“Forget it,” says Harry, and he starts moving his blunt fingernails on Ron’s legs in an attempt to make him quiet. His hand goes higher steadily, and just when Ron’s toes are starting to curl Hermione nudges him with her elbow.
“Would you mind not disgracing my floor?”
“Don’t you have some house-elf to save, or something?” asks Ron almost groggily, and Harry bites his lip to hold in his laugher.
“Don’t you have a job to do?” She talks back haughtily. Oh. Right. Both he and Ron are supposed to be ditching work today, he had almost forgotten. The Benton case is just not going anywhere, and both of them had been too frustrated to actually work.
Ron shrugs. “Fair enough.” He rubs his nose, and speaks just seconds later. “So absolutely no shagging on your porch?”
“Ron!”
They laugh, and Hermione pinches Ron’s foot. They just stay quiet for a while, sipping lemonade and watching Hermione’s three-year-old kid playing in the grass. Neville gets home after a while, and he babbles excitedly about the new plant he discovered that day.
Ron kisses Harry, slowly, as Neville goes on and on in the background about the what’s-its-name flower, and this, this feels like family.
---
“What exactly is that supposed to be?” asks Ron dubiously from behind him, and Harry rolls his eyes at him. It’s noon, the Ministry is almost empty, and there’s an eerie silence about the Auror department, something that rarely happens in the crowded building. Harry’s stomach is grumbling with hunger, but he really wants to finish this before he goes to get lunch.
“A tracking spell.”
“Then why does it look like you’re drawing a butterfly?” Ron rests his chin on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry turns to bite Ron’s earlobe in revenge. Ron yelps a bit, but he doesn’t sound entirely like someone in pain.
“It is not a butterfly. It’s supposed to be a bird, only I’m apparently crap at drawing.”
“No kidding.”
“Would you mind stopping criticizing my drawing abilities and actually help? This is meant to help with the Benton case. Here, this is where I found it,” Harry signals vaguely to a thick book on the corner of his cluttered desk, his eyes still on the paper in front of him. He hears a rustle of cloth as Ron goes to see the yellowed book and he keeps on erasing furiously at his rather lacking sketch of a bluebird.
“This is quite strong magic, Harry,” says Ron as his eyes move over the blurry words, his voice going back to business mode.
“You up for it?”
Ron sends a lop-sided smile his way, and Harry nearly melts. “That’s a very stupid question, mate.” Harry smiles as well.
They set to work immediately. Harry finishes the drawing, figuring nothing too bad would happen if one of the legs still looks as if it came out of nowhere. They ultimately decide Harry’s desk is far too full of junk to be of any use, so they move to Ron’s, clearing the surface before putting the drawing between them.
Ron picks the lock of a coworker’s cabinet (an ability he has Fred and George to thank for), the one from the potion expert in their department, and gets the herbs they need. He crushes the dry leaves with a hideous paper-weight Percy had given him at Christmas for lack of anything better to do the job, and they both take turns sprinkling the herbs on the paper as they mutter one of the incantations the spell needs to fully function. Thyme for the energy the spell needs, for activity; Rosemary so it’ll ‘remember’ its target, to keep the spell from side-tracking; Valeriana for the astral projection. Ron says it sounds almost like a song.
The book is sideways to the sheet of paper so they can both read, and they both wave their wands over the paper while muttering the long incantation, both of them switching to the correct Latin accent by force of habit. The contours of the bird start glowing faintly as they keep on reading along. When they’re finished with that, the bird has already begun to color itself: orange on the neck, white on the belly and pure indigo on the wings.
“Looks better like that, doesn’t it?” Harry asks as they both put their wands down and reach for the dust of Wild Cherry Bark.
“You’re just fishing for compliments,” says Ron with a smile just before he puts the dust on the tip of his tongue. Harry does the same, and it tastes horrible. He moves the dust around his mouth as the book says, and finally swallows with a grimace. The element of this herb is air, and it should give the spell invisibility and the ability to overcome obstacles. He doesn’t swallow again, even if he’s itching to get the flavor out of his mouth, and instead he leans over the paper, his hands braced on the desk. Ron mirrors his movements in front of him.
Harry inhales strongly, makes the air fill his ribcage and expand his lungs; he can hear Ron doing the same. They look at each other briefly, Ron’s fingers doing a regressive count. They reach zero, and they both blow on the paper at the same time, their breaths-turned-wind coming out a bit brownish from the bark powder. The colored breath permeates the bird drawing, but the rest of the paper remains white.
The color seems to bleed from the figure, and soon there’s an indigo-colored wind swiveling around the drawing. Then the wings twitch and flutter as they start to come out of the paper. It becomes almost corporeal as it lifts itself, almost gassy in texture, see-through. The bird tears itself out of the paper, its legs struggling to get out. The beak is the last thing to break free of the paper, and it opens and closes without any sound as it starts flying around Ron’s head, surrounded by a blue and orange mist that shines a bit after it passes and then fades slowly. This is the magic Harry always dreamt about as a child - colorful and showy and so different than McGonagall’s practical spells. Both he and Ron are smiling, even with the foul taste still in their mouths.
Ron picks up the cloak fragment that a fellow Auror had brought along when his curse only managed to affect Benton’s clothes instead of the Dark wizard himself. He offers it to the light-made bird, as if trying to feed it, and the magical bluebird takes it with its beak.
“Go on, boy, find him for us.” Ron says quietly, bending a bit to be eye level with the bird. He tries to caress its head, but his fingertip only goes through it. The bird flies around the office one time, leaving blue sparks on its wake before going out of the window.
Harry turns to look at Ron, finds him sitting at his desk with a smile on his face. “Wow,” he says and Ron laughs.
“I keep forgetting you didn’t grow up with magic around you,” Ron says.
“When I first entered Hogwarts, I used to think that I shouldn’t get used to it, just in case it suddenly went away. That’s why I love it when I can do something that cool, just to remember that I actually can.”
“You’re so weird, Harry,” Ron says with a smile, and tugs the front of Harry’s robes until he’s close enough for a kiss. They both taste like the bark still, but they ignore it - it’s not that bad after Ron’s tongue touches the roof of his mouth and the bark dissolves faintly. The room still shines blue vaguely, indigo-colored sparks that fall onto their hair like glitter. Harry cups Ron’s face between his hands, pushes harder into the kiss with a contented sigh. Ron hoists him up, helps him so he’s straddling him on the desk, in the middle of the empty office.
“My, my, isn’t this kinky?”
“Any complaints, Harry?” Ron whispers against Harry’s mouth, and Harry can only shake his head as Ron starts to bite his lip. He pushes Ron a bit more roughly that he had intended, and they both end up sprawled over the desk, the remaining herbs and the paper with a bird-shaped hole beneath Ron’s back. They both groan, and Ron’s hands go under Harry’s shirt.
“…That was a quite easy report to do, Bones, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to include the twenty feet high dragon attacking the town. I really don’t know how you could have missed it…” Comes Kingsley Shacklebolt’s voice through the hallway outside the office, and Harry lifts himself up from Ron too fast for his head to handle. Ron kicks him as he sits up and tries to rearrange his clothes. The door opens.
Harry falls to the ground.
“Er, you alright Weasley? You look a bit flustered,” says Shacklebolt, and Harry thanks whichever deity that made him fall hidden from his boss’ sight.
“Quite all right, sir. The, uh, heat, you know. Um.” Harry hears Ron say with his head against the grey carpet, and then there are just footsteps. “They’re gone, you can come out now.”
Harry jumps to his feet and takes Ron’s wrist, dragging him away. “You, me, bathroom, NOW.”
They run through the Ministry’s hallways, laughing and slipping on the tiled floor.
---
It really hasn’t been that long since they last did it (only last night when they got to their flat after dinner at Hermione’s), but Harry still presses Ron to the wall of the Ministry’s men’s bathroom, licks a path from his collarbone to his ear, and murmurs “Miss me?” just loud enough for Ron to hear him.
Harry’s determined to steal as many of these moments as he can.