Harry Potter had two cartons of milk delivered to his house every morning. He didn’t ever drink more than half of one carton, but he did it for the sake of the human interaction, not the calcium. The sadly misnamed Paradise Place could take any amount of deviant behaviour into its stride, but its tattooed and gold-toothed inhabitants drew the line at not ever appearing to eat. Harry didn’t fear them -- little, since Voldemort’s dying throes, aroused that emotion in him -- but he equally didn’t care to be the subject of more of their gossip than was usual in the ad-breaks between Coronation Street and Emmerdale. He’d found that the best way to remain undetected was to not do anything worthy of detection.

Harry suspected that some of his neighbours appreciated the necessity of a milk delivery, even if they did not themselves partake of it. The corner shop was so regularly raided that the young thugs who littered the vicinity knew more about its stock levels than the parade of nervous shopkeepers. Moreover, the shop changed hands more often than an enthusiastic Morris dancer. As a result, the likelihood of finding anything edible there was as low as the sweet levels in the jars behind the counter, which if nothing else had surely gained antique value by the time Harry moved in down the street.

The milk was never delivered at the same time every day, and often did not arrive at all. The same thugs who terrorised the corner shop regarded trifling with the milkman and his van as more of the same. Harry was often moved to wonder if they had a personal grudge against the dairy industry. If he had a true craving for milk, he would have been irritated; as it was, he was mainly entertained. He always magically repaired the van’s slashed tires and smashed windscreens if he was around when it arrived. He didn’t realise that his actions were causing the milkman to wonder if he was suffering from hallucinations, and making him angry that he was having hallucinations about getting rocks thrown at him and not about exotic dancers from a country where clothes were lamentably scarce.

So it was not an urge to fetch in his milk and thus protect it from the ravages of the yobs from Paradise Place, to whom everything breakable deserved a good kicking, which caused Harry to venture downstairs at seven o’clock on a May morning. Rather, it was an inheritance from his days ‘in the field,’ when sleep was a snatched luxury that rarely involved a bed. Even now, at the grand old age of twenty-two, Harry found that he could rarely sleep though a whole night.

It was cool in the vestibule, and Harry shivered in his t-shirt and jockey shorts. Most ordinary middle-class people would have quaked at the prospect of opening their front doors on to such scenery as Paradise Place provided dressed only in their underwear. Fortunately, whatever else Harry’s life had been, ordinary was not it.

What little of the sky could be seen over the chimney stacks was dishcloth grey. A light breeze blew empty MacDonald’s cartons and cans of lager across the tiny wasteland in the middle of the Place. A faint gurgling sound came from somewhere near Harry’s bare feet. He looked down and into the chubby face of a baby in a basket.

Harry gaped in shock. The baby screwed up its face in a solemn mimicry of Harry’s expression. It tired of the game long before Harry recovered from his disbelief, and emitted a nasal snuffling that boded of greater wails to come.

Harry crouched down, the balls of his feet resting on the jazzy tiles of his hallway and his toes curling away from the cold concrete step. He extended a finger to the baby’s fat cheek. The soft give of flesh beneath his hand and the wetness of the bubble that exploded against his palm reassured him of the baby’s corporeality, if nothing else.

“Can you talk?” Harry demanded of the baby. The baby sent him a knowing look, and blew another raspberry. If it was a magical bomb, Harry decided, it was a very cunningly disguised one.

Satisfied that the baby was going to indulge in nothing more dangerous than a burp for the present, Harry bounced to his feet and scanned up and down the street through narrowed eyes. All was quiet and calm -- a rarer occurrence in Paradise Place than a royal marching band. Harry judged that it was too early for anyone to be up, and too late for anyone to still be watching television or reeling home from a pub or club.

Yet someone had to have disturbed this disconcerting peace recently. Harry touched the baby again. Its skin was warm and the morning was not. If it had been here for long, it would feel and look cold and, from what little Harry knew of babies, would be announcing its discomfort to the world in no uncertain terms.

With a sick little lurch, Harry prodded around in the baby’s basket. A fuzzy memory of his first rescue by Hagrid, and the mention of a letter from Dumbledore that Harry had never seen, dominated his brain. His efforts, which included dangling the baby from his hands while he peered underneath it, yielded nothing in the way of explanatory maternal missives. There wasn’t even an indication of the baby’s name.

The basket was white plastic, the sort women in the area used to hang out washing in their postage-stamp backyards. The baby was dressed in a snug body-garment that turned its hands and feet into stumpy flippers, with a matching hat, both in sickening shades of pink. The basket was padded with a pink blanket festooned with ducks marching in regimental lines. Harry surmised that the baby was a girl, or at the very least that its previous owners had thought so.

A sharp breeze sprung up, ruffling Harry’s hair into even greater disarray. The baby began to whimper. Harry, although almost frozen with uncertainty, was moved with pity for it. It looked even younger than he’d been when Dumbledore abandoned him on the Dursley’s doorstep. It was the similarity between their possible fates, more than any other factor, that made Harry pick up the baby's basket and tote it inside.

Once the door closed behind them, Harry was able to drop the Muggle façade. He levitated the basket on to the kitchen table and set the kettle to boiling with another flick of his wand. The whistling of boiling water seemed to stir the baby, for it set up a tuneless burbling in time to it.

“Well,” said Harry, who in the last two years had evolved the habit of talking to himself, “I suppose we’d better find out if you’re a boy baby or a girl baby.”

He ventured towards the basket and scooped the baby out of it. With a flush of panic, he realised that he didn’t have the faintest idea how to even hold an infant. Its head lolled alarmingly in his strong-armed grip. “Okay,” said Harry, rather wildly, “okay.” Tucking the baby into one shoulder, he grabbed his wand and Transfigured a spoon into a thick woolly rug. Given his haphazard concentration, he wasn’t too surprised that the wool was silver and shone like metal.

He laid the baby on the rug and tugged off its ridiculous hat. It proved to be bald underneath, with only a fine smattering of downy hair between its skull and the world. This evidence of utter frailty made Harry feel even more tentative.

For a long while, he couldn’t find any way of unfastening the baby’s jumpsuit. Gently rolling it over once or twice didn’t reveal anything in the way of buttons or zips. Even though he was fairly sure that it wasn’t the case, Harry was beginning to contemplate whether or not babies came into the world fully dressed.

The baby flapped its stumps up and down. Well pleased with this acrobatic feat, it proceeded to do the same with its legs. It hit Harry square in the nose as he bent forward to investigate some gaping Velcro at its neck.

Eyes watering a little, Harry unwrapped the baby. It was sporting a plastic nappy underneath its jumpsuit. A few faltering investigations provided the following evidence: that the baby was female, and that it had recently answered a call of nature.

“God,” groaned Harry. His dismay was heartfelt. He could envisage nothing but fuss and trouble from this deposit on his doorstep. To think, yesterday, the worst thing he could expect to find there was a bundle of pamphlets from the more adventurous religious cults.

The baby blew another bubble, and matter-of-factly wrapped its miniscule fingers around one of Harry’s adult-sized digits. Its other hand waved in the air, curling and uncurling like an indecisive sea anemone. Harry held his breath as the baby held his finger. The baby had long eyelashes that were oversized for its face, making it look a little like Minnie Mouse. Its eyes were bright blue. Harry had seen eyes that blue before; Ron Weasley’s eyes were the very same shade.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” said Harry Potter.

::

::

Before Harry could sit down and think out a logical plan -- or even just an illogical plan -- the baby started to cry. It set about it in a determined manner that suggested it wasn’t just indulging in the exercise for its own amusement. Something Seamus had once remarked about his little sister -- “All she does is eat, shit and sleep!” he’d declared in disgust -- came back to Harry. The baby was hungry. Harry had yesterday’s milk in his fridge, but he reckoned women wouldn’t have come equipped with breasts if feeding young babies was as simple as hailing down the nearest cow.

“Okay,” he said again. In the days to come, it would be something he would say often, mostly in tones generally reserved for doom-laden prophesies of the apocalypse.

He retrieved another spoon from his cutlery drawer and Transfigured it into dummy. Dudley had been addicted to them right up until he started nursery school. Aunt Petunia had often dipped them in honey, which probably accounted for at least half of her son’s dependence. That had been yet another of the small comforts denied to Harry as a child. In some ways it had been fortunate. The legacy of the dummy had left Dudley’s teeth woefully crooked and requiring expensive dental work. Harry’s teeth grew as nature had intended, and even if they had not the Dursleys would never have paid for braces.

Harry didn’t want the baby to become addicted to dummies dipped in honey, but neither did he intend to keep the child long enough for such a craving to develop. At any rate, it kept her occupied for the time it took Harry to locate jeans and a shirt that were not actually rancid, and to perform a Shaving Charm of such rapidity that his cheeks burned. He had long since given up brushing his hair, which straggled down past his collar. Harry pushed it off his face and forgot about it.

It took far longer, and another two trips to the honey pot, before the baby was ready to travel. To solve the nappy problem, Harry dipped the baby’s lower end in a sink of lukewarm water, swishing her around a little to ensure that she got clean. The baby thought this a great joke, and blew him a bubble as a reward.

With considerable disgust Harry Vanished the soiled plastic, patted the baby dry with her blanket, and completely blanked about a replacement nappy. He’d have to buy some; but in the meantime, he compromised by swaddling the baby in a crisp tea towel. All Harry’s tea towels were crisp, because they were all unused housewarming gifts. Harry didn’t dry dishes. He’d had his fill of that when he was a child. Harry’s dishes lay in the drainer until they dried all by themselves.

Harry regarded the pink jumpsuit with distaste. “We’ll have to get you some more duds, kiddo,” he said. Unconsciously, he had already began to see the baby as a semi-permanent member of his household. In the meantime, he bundled her back into the jumpsuit and hat and fashioned a sling out of her damp blanket. He retrieved his stash of Muggle money from under the sink. It was hardly an original hiding place, but Harry’s wards were strong enough to negate any need for worry on that account.

Settling the baby against his shoulder, where she proceeded to blow bubbles -- her capacity for so doing was apparently endless -- Harry prepared to Apparate to Oxford Street. He had been doubtful of the baby’s capacity for travelling in this manner. He’d been right to do so, because the moment they arrived, she threw up all over his shoulder.

“Okay,” said Harry.

::

::

Mothercare overwhelmed him, in more ways than one. There was a whole new population of people who lived there. One set wore dungarees and were gloriously, carelessly pregnant, holding hands with husbands or boyfriends and even girlfriends who looked wispy and insubstantial beside them. The other set were bent with exhaustion and what looked like religious fervour; their hair was unwashed and their clothes crumpled, but the products of their labour were invariably impeccable and ensconced in prams that were the Mercedes of infantile transport.

Harry caught a glimpse of himself in the shop window. With his impossible hair and harassed expression, he fit right in with the second group. The baby lounged in his lax embrace, spit running down her chin. One of the expectant mothers sent him a disapproving look, and Harry turned aside to dab ineffectively at the baby’s waterfall of drool.

Steeling himself, he began trekking in between racks of scaled down clothing. The sight of the tiny skirts and enormous price tags gave him pause; he had no idea how old the baby was. Did she fit in the ‘three to four months’ category, or was she closer to ‘fourteen to twenty’ months? He could hardly ask someone else how old they thought his baby was. He resolved to stalk a parent who was toting a baby of about the same size as his; but for the moment, he needed to find milk.

He spotted a cash register and trotted over, heedless of the lagoons of baby saliva that were pooling around his collarbones. The middle-aged woman at the till smiled at him, but looked as if nothing would have surprised her -- especially when it came to men and babies.

“Um,” said Harry. He racked his brains for a way of asking for help that did not encompass the words ‘I found a baby on my doorstep this morning and she seems to be hungry.’ “Do you do, like, replacement milk, here?”

“Formula?” suggested the woman. Harry shrugged helplessly. He didn’t think it was the time to be quizzed on Arithmancy, but he didn’t like to say so.

“Is she still being breast-fed?” asked the woman.

“Um, no.” Seized by the need to lie, something he’d always had a gift for, Harry embroidered his answer with, “Her mother had to go back to work. She works a lot, you know, and she isn’t always around.”

“Often happens,” the woman observed placidly. “Has Baby been used to any one particular formula?”

“No,” said Harry. “We change them around every so often, for variety.”

The woman gave him what approximated to an odd look, but it was soon smoothed away into the folds of her wrinkles. “Well, Cow and Gate is a big favourite. However, we don’t actually sell formula here. You need to try Boots, or even Tesco, I’m afraid. Will you be needing anything else?”

“Some clothes. Only … I’m not quite sure what I should be buying. She grows so quickly, and everything.” Harry arranged his face into an expression of honest bewilderment.

“Jumpsuits are always your best bet at her age.” The woman gave a sage nod. “The six months stuff is over by the door.”

“Thank you,” said Harry.

“You’re welcome. Isn’t she a wee little thing?” The woman chucked the baby under the chin, skilfully avoiding the ropes of spit abseiling down the breast of her jumpsuit. “What’s she called?”

For an infinitesimal moment, Harry was stumped. Not knowing about formula was one thing, but it would be inexcusable to forget the name of your own child. The baby raised her big blue eyes to Harry’s face.

“Sky,” said Harry quickly. “Her name is Sky.”

::

::

Harry sat in his living room. The day before it had been a sparse cubicle, which would have suggested to a casual visitor that it belonged to an aesthetic monk who had shunned all worldly pleasures. The sofa had come with the house and sported more gaping springs than the Alpine source of Evian; Harry was always meaning to fix it tomorrow. Its splodgy brown colour blended so exquisitely with the walls and carpet that it was hardly distinguishable from the rest of the décor.

Now the room boasted almost wall-to-wall shopping bags. Harry had forgotten what a thrill it was to buy things for other people. He regarded shopping for himself as something of a chore, which was why homeless people had more impressive wardrobes than he did. He supposed that his upbringing was the reason for his drastic attitude towards generosity, but he’d had to suppress it for a long while. Given its head, the results were nothing short of galactic.

Sky lay cooing in her basket. Harry, although liberal with money, had not the first idea of what a six month old baby needed. He had a sneaking suspicion that the picture books and five hundred piece puzzles were for the moment beyond her, but there was no doubt that she was kitted out in the very pink of fashion. Harry was beginning to understand why girls played with dolls. Sky had very placidly submitted to being put through her modelling paces. At no point did Harry let himself stop and wonder why he’d bought a matching mini-Burberry mac, rain hat and gumboots for an abandoned baby whom he was going to have to relinquish very soon. Harry never admitted that he could be lonely.

His first attempts at feeding Sky had not been a huge success. The milk was too hot the first time, too cold the second, and Sky wailed her disapproval at his culinary skills; after which, Harry sat down to read the instructions thoroughly. The kitchen was in a right mess afterwards, which made a stark contrast to its usual pristine, unused state. The leaflet had provided suggested times for feeding, and Harry set his wand’s alarm to them.

As for the results of feeding, Pampers were a godsend. Harry didn’t like to think what happened to the Vanished nappies. He wondered if there was a plane of reality devoted to soiled diapers, but he was quite firm in his resolution never to find out for sure.

Harry Summoned the Tommy Hilfiger pyjamas from their tissue paper wrapping and reached out for Sky again. Although he knew several spells for removing and putting on clothes, and had employed them on many occasions when his hangover was so severe as to leave his hands trembling uncontrollably, he preferred to dress Sky himself.

By the time Sky was once more swaddled in her duck blanket and diligently sucking on one end of it, Harry felt exhausted. The big cold bed on the third floor held no charms for him. His living room, which was kept clean by self-renewing Deduster spells, had never looked so lived-in before. With Sky on his arm and surrounded by brightly coloured bags and clothes that glowed in the dusk, Harry drifted off to sleep.

::

::

If Harry had but taken it into account, he was well prepared for the broken sleep that was such a grievous consequence of procreation for most new parents. Although he was sleeping better than he had been used to, he was not sleeping longer; hence, he was almost always awake when Sky began chirruping her hunger to the world.

They got along famously well for the first three days, spending most of the time in the living room. Harry read all the children’s books he’d bought with guilty glee. The only access to books he’d had as a child had been a 1970s set of Encyclopaedia Britannica in the Dursley’s parlour. Although the Dursleys would no sooner have perused these out-of-date tomes than flown to the moon, they still did not want Harry’s hands contaminating them.

Thus, Harry had read them systematically when Dudley was away at piano lessons (before he broke twelve keys in a temper tantrum), soccer (before he flattened a portable goal, with the goalkeeper still in situ) and numerous other after-school activities that were little more than Dudley’s excuse for wanton destruction. As books went, the Encyclopaedia didn’t have much in the way of plot, or fanciful illustrations. They were fundamentally devoid of unicorns and fairies. Of course, most Muggle children were brought up thinking unicorns and fairies existed and finding out they didn’t. Harry’s education had been back-to-front. It was amusing to read Muggle fairy tales; it was equivalent to Ron writing a Muggle teen romance, complete with mobile phones and MTV.

Harry lived by his own hours. For someone whose life had been regimented for two decades, he adapted well to the shock of freedom -- by snacking instead of cooking, drinking himself to sleep and buying new clothes when everything else he owned was putrid enough to have contaminated a small African village. He was surprised and pleased to discover that babies’ internal clocks were calibrated the same way.

However, even Harry recognised the benefit of fresh air -- his stretches of time cooped up in closets and other even more insalubrious locations had instilled this appreciation in him. On the morning of the fourth day since Sky had appeared on his doorstep, Harry decided to take her for a walk.

He selected a hat for her -- anything from her vast new range of millinery far and away exceeded her original woolly cap, in Harry’s opinion -- and pulled on some runners. With Sky in the crook of his elbow, he opened the front door, and promptly stumbled over three days’ worth of milk arrayed on the stoop.

Such sudden contact with the outside world, or at least that part of it that was liquid, white, and dribbling into his socks, shocked Harry into awareness of his folly. For all he knew, someone had left Sky behind by accident and was even now frantically searching for her. He needed to alert someone of her existence or -- his suspicious mind already amending his statement -- at least conduct some inquiries of his own. Much as he disliked admitting it, covert investigation was a particular strength of his.

Harry snugged Sky’s blanket closer around her body to protect her from the bitter wind that he hadn’t realised was blowing. He didn’t willingly associate with the denizens of Paradise Place, but that didn’t mean he had no contacts there. Sighing, he went back inside to assemble the tools of his trade.

::

::

Harry fingered the Extendable Ears so often he was in danger of developing a nervous tic. He’d gone to extensive lengths to disguise them as Discman headphones; this, combined with a hooded jumper pulled low over his brow, completed his outfit. It was far from uncommon to wear headphones to such an assembly as the one Harry was currently attending, but he’d never done so before. He was so edgy that he’d even Transfigured yet another spoon into his impression of a Discman, just so there’d be something to make a bulge in his jeans pocket.

So far his usual companions had not noticed anything amiss. Then again, it would take a considerable effort to do so. These were men and, sometimes, women who prided themselves on their impassive demeanours and their ability to be completely unmoved by anything, be it armed raiders (thrice, in Harry’s experience) or the roof caving in because someone upstairs had left a bath running (only once, but it had left one or two men with an almost discernable pallor).

Mickey, who was the only one of them to not have a prefix like Old, Young, Big or Small attached to his name and was thus the focus of some respect amongst his contemporaries, shuffled his pack of grimy cards. Several people who professed themselves to be Mickey’s enemies had critiqued his handling of said cards, suggesting that there were more than four aces secreted into the stack. Mickey often felt it necessary to show them that there were no more and no less than four aces, and further that it was hardly his fault if they all ended up in his hand more often than not. Most of the time, Mickey’s enemies became his friends. The rest of the time, they became dead. It all depended on their grasp of elementary mathematics.

A long time ago, Harry had made a point of using magical means to discover just how many aces Mickey had. He was telling the truth -- there were exactly four aces in his pack. However, he had more than one pack.

Harry had an amused respect for Mickey, who reminded him of Mad-Eye Moody. Neither of them would have appreciated the comparison, which only served to amuse Harry more. Several things allowed for his amusement and prevented its replacement with eye-watering fear: they included, but were not limited to, Harry’s ability to disembowel someone with a single word, and his enormous bank account. That Harry owned a thirty percent share of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes did much to fill the dents that Harry regularly put in this bank account.

Harry wasn’t entirely certain how he’d fallen into the gaming hell. Although he was, and always would be, regarded as an outsider and posh nob by the locals, Harry’s taste for getting blink drunk in the local watering hole had done much to endear him to them. Early on in his residence in Paradise Place, the sharper of the sharks had obviously decided that he was a lamb prime for fleecing.

Harry later pieced together his first night in the smoky underground room that was to become more familiar than his bedroom. He’d been plied with drink that may well have been drugged, but either Harry’s fading poison wards or one of the many protection spells Hermione had weaved over him had stopped any ill effects. He’d been coerced into leaving the pub to go to the gaming hell -- Harry couldn’t imagine that it had been all that difficult for his enticers -- and roped into a card game.

Harry knew the rudiments of poker and a dozen other card games. The Weasleys were remarkably proficient at them, as it was obvious that a family of their size needed to be good at activities in which they could all partake. Compared to the Weasleys, Harry was a rank amateur. Compared to the card sharps in the gaming hell, he was several steps below even that, coming in somewhere behind cockroaches. However, Harry always had one advantage on his side in any sort of gambling: inexhaustible funds.

After Harry had lost the equivalent of a thousand Galleons that first night -- worth far more in Muggle money -- in under an hour, and appeared not to care in the least, the sharps relaxed. They were quite at home in the presence of the obviously insane.

Harry would never have said he had a gambling problem. To Harry, gambling wasn’t the problem: the rest of his life was.

In the months since he’d first met Mickey and his pals, Harry had come to see them in the light of friends. Now that he had something to ask of them -- beyond trivialities like ‘Do you want to buy my queen?’ -- he realised exactly how much this was not the case. He had no idea if he could even rely on them not to pull a knife on him, much less answer his question civilly and helpfully.

When Harry had nothing to lose, he didn’t even have to wonder if he could handle a situation like the one he might be about to face. He owned a wand, which was better than having an army’s battery backing him. Now that he knew that Sky was at home waiting for him and, if the Extendable Ears were to be trusted, snuffling a little in her sleep, he recognised with cold clarity every single flaw in his defences.

“So,” said Mickey. He shifted a wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other. Tiny flecks of brown-tinted spittle sprayed from his mouth. “You dealing, Potter?”

“Yup.” Harry reached out for the cards, his every move careful in case he should dislodge the Extendable Ears. He was quite proud of how he’d turned them into a long-distance auditory device. Even Hermione would be impressed by that. He might bring it up at the next investors’ meeting at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Of course, that would require him to actually attend one of the investors’ meetings.

He concentrated on the spill of cards for a split second, steeling his nerves. “Listen, I wanted to ask you guys something.”

The silence twanged.

“You ain’t getting no extensions on your payment.” Mickey’s voice was gruff and almost hurt. Harry could understand that. In almost a year, Harry had never tarried with the readies. He’d not asked for so much as an hour’s grace. The other men regarded Harry obliquely.

“I don’t wan’em.” Harry shrugged. “I got a tricky question.”

“We knows all the tricky questions,” said Little Joe. Little Joe was six foot six. Amongst less literal-minded people, Harry would have thought his name a sly joke. As it was, Harry assumed Little Joe had a small dick. He’d never felt any desire to find concrete proof for his hypothesis. Little Joe’s face bore a network of scars as dense and incomprehensible as a London road map. They were perhaps the only remaining mementoes of those who had also been curious about the origins of Little Joe’s moniker.

“Maybe not this one.” Harry took a deep breath. “I know this man.”

“I bet you do, love,” cackled Miss Melanie. Miss Melanie was a transvestite, albeit not a very good one. Her lipstick tended to be both off-centre and garish. She might be forgiven this because her usual mirror was the side of a beer can. Under Miss Melanie’s scrutiny, Harry’s own peccadilloes stood as much chance of survival as a one-man Gay Pride parade in the Deep South. Harry assumed Miss Melanie had silenced the others on the topic, for no worse retribution than a few coarse jokes ever came his way.

“Yeah, and something kinda weird happened to him recently.” Harry kept his eyes on his cards. It was important that he only hear what the men had to say, and not see what was in their faces. “He found a baby on his doorstep.”

The fraught silence that greeted his words convinced Harry that they knew something. When one of the men had confessed that he’d got his sister pregnant, there had been laughs of disbelief and more than one crude expression of disgust. The man had soon after succumbed to Mickey’s sharp sense of justice. All the same, his announcement had at least gleaned a response.

“Fancy that.” There was as a squelching sound as Mickey’s tobacco made another perambulation around his remaining teeth. “It ain’t somefing you hears about every day, innit?”

“Well, I don’t know.” The cards were dog-eared, almost identically so. Harry supposed Mickey needed some way of telling the packs apart by touch. “I haven’t lived here forever, you know.” A volley of grunts came in assent. “Maybe it happens here, and not in other places.” He let the statement hang until it gained enough identity doubts to become a question.

“There’s a fing,” said Mickey. “I sometimes hears about that, round here. Not everywhere else. Everywhere else’s got its own way of doing fings. And we wouldn’t be telling them how to do their fings.”

“Right.” Harry nodded and at last allowed himself to look Mickey in the face. “And they shouldn’t tell you how to do things, either.”

“That’s it.” Mickey looked unaccountably relieved. Harry felt a shot of horror -- could Sky be Mickey’s daughter? The idea of caring for the scion of such a bloodline was a minefield in which Harry had not the slightest yearning to tread.

“Yeah,” said Small Paul. “Like, in other places, you beat up your kid, you get carted by Social Services.”

“And here?” Harry prompted.

“Here, we takes care of our own.” Mickey’s voice was fierce.

Some primeval instinct glued Harry’s mouth shut. He dealt the hand, perhaps not with the greatest flair, but certainly not so poorly as to arouse comment. As the game progressed, the tension in the room dissipated. The throat-clearing, nose-blowing and lip-sucking of deep concentration resumed. Another two hands ensued before the breaks in the games yielded more fruitful conversation than ‘Want another beer?’

Baby Fox was one man whose nickname needed no explanation or fearful ponderings. He had a chubby face that could have come fresh from a nursery, and his hair was bright red. More than any other Weasley, he reminded Harry of Ginny -- every redhead he met did, to some extent. The Weasley men had sharp to chiselled faces, amongst which Ginny’s feminine visage stood out like a marshmallow among machetes. Besides that, all her brothers except the twins shared a more auburn than red shade in their hair; because of all the time he spent in the sun, Charlie’s was almost strawberry blonde.

Baby Fox was a man who laughed a lot. Harry often had the uncharitable thought that this was more to show off his teeth, which encompassed every shade of gold, black and brown imaginable, but missed white entirely, than from any well-cultivated sense of the ridiculous in life. He always giggled as a prelude to anything he said. He proceeded to do so now.

“I hear what’s the word on poor Lily White,” he said. Harry’s heart jumped at the mention of his mother’s name.

“Ah, poor Lily,” said Mickey, almost reflexively.

“What’s up with poor Lily?” asked Miss Melanie. Their eyes didn’t swivel in Harry’s direction, but it was a close-run thing. Harry hadn’t felt the focus of so much attention in years.

“Norm put in her the hospital again,” said Baby Fox. “Broke all her teeth off, and she had a bunch of stitches in her head. Nearly lost her eye too, from what’s I hears.”

“Jesus,” swore Small Paul.

Harry understood their distaste. These were men who lived, ate and breathed violence every day of their lives. It stood to reason that they put limits on how and when it was to be used.

Domestic violence was familiar to them. They cuffed their children, their wives and their dogs. They spoke approvingly of giving their women a few good ‘slaps’ or ‘smacks’ when they were ‘out of line.’ Yet there was never any doubt in their minds that they dealt in blows for a reason. It might be a twisted and immoral reason; it might be impenetrable to anyone outside their small, iconoclastic community; but it was a reason all the same.

More than that, they received it in turn and as their due. Baby Fox had proudly sported a shiner from his woman for the fortnight it took to fade. Small Paul’s girlfriend was not averse to laying about him with a rolling pin. Even Mickey had once accompanied his wife to the accident and emergency, both covered in blood from wounds they had inflicted on each other.

Harry knew a little about Norm. Norm worked on a merchant skipper and was away for months at a time. Norm did not come to the gaming hell. Norm did not drink. Norm was ‘high and mighty,’ and seemed to have a single-minded faith in God. It was the personal opinion of the card sharps that this was a one-way devotion, because Norm had a face only a mother could love. God’s will was a poor reason for violence in their eyes, probably because they never used it themselves. There were some depths to which even the scum of society would not stoop. God’s will was an even poorer reason for hospitalising your wife on a regular basis, especially one who was a ‘harmless crittur’ and had once been a looker. In fact, Harry had wondered if Mickey hadn’t been in love with Poor Lily White once.

“She ... lost the baby, too,” added Baby Fox.

“Ah, no,” said Miss Melanie feelingly.

“Still, and all,” said Mickey, clearly weighing each word with great deliberation, “it’d be an awful place for a bairn, yeah? Anywhere Norm is.”

He looked Harry right in the eye. Harry noted the way none of them had used the word ‘miscarriage,’ although they all knew it. He thought about life with the Dursleys, who had never hit him -- physically, anyway.

“I dunno Norm,” said Harry, “but I don’t think I’d leave a kid with him. If I could help it.”

Later, Harry realised that this was the point where he formally took responsibility for Sky. It didn’t take him long to puzzle out why Sky had been left with him, and not with the vast network of associates who would be only too eager to do Mickey a favour. Harry’s isolation was probably not as important as his money. Anyone under Mickey’s protection was safe. No, Harry had the cash to make Sky’s life far better than anything else she might have had -- although they might have revised this opinion had they seen the current state of squalor in Harry’s house.

“Okay,” said Harry. “We playing?”

There was a chorus of assent.

It wasn’t until long after that Harry realised that they might have been trying to do him a favour, too.

::

::

Harry balanced Sky against his chest with one hand and executed a series of complicated loops with his wand. The bare walls of the bedroom that Harry had designated as Sky’s suddenly exploded with colour. Sky blew a bubble of approval as the colours coalesced into a detailed mural. It featured one of Harry’s favourite pictures from Jewel and the Unicorn. Jewel was an insipid girl who reminded Harry strongly of Malfoy, and he didn’t include her in the mural; but he approved of the unicorn.

It had taken a week’s study to invent a spell that would transfer the picture from book to wall. Harry was glad of the esoteric Dark Arts books he’d picked up from various of the Death Eater mansions. He’d left behind the obviously armed and dangerous ones, but his cobbled-together collection was positively mild and probably only needed to be classed as ‘Dim Arts.’ Several of the spells had proved quite adaptable in terms of interior decorating.

Harry had become adept at Transfiguration during the struggle with Voldemort. He was nowhere near Hermione’s standards, but then again, who was? He was satisfied with his first foray into soft furnishings. They had produced a thick blue carpet and curtains of palest yellow. He was determined that Sky should realise there were more colours in the world’s palette than pink or any derivatives thereof. He was less proud of the crib, which was little more than a glorified box on hinges, but he thought that the thick blankets, pillows and innumerable teddy bears would prove sufficient distraction for her.

“And the finishing touch,” murmured Harry. He breathed a command, and the room was filled with sparkling lights. He smiled and pressed his chin to Sky’s head as they spiralled up to the ceiling, coming to rest in a perfect copy of the Dogstar constellation.

Sky was yawning, her eyes puckering with effort. Harry lay her in the crib and spelled it to rock gently. A Muggle music box hovered in the air beside it, emitting a twinkly tune that even Harry found soothing. Harry made sure the Extendable Ears were firmly tucked into both the end of the crib and his ear and made his way to his own bedroom.

It was cold and unwelcoming after Sky’s warm haven, but Harry had things to do. He seated himself on an upturned orange crate at his makeshift desk and Summoned some parchment and quills. He arrayed four sheets in front of him. He wrote a letter each month to Hermione, Ron, Remus, Neville, Seamus and Dean, who shared a flat. He wrote the same thing to all of them. He kept the missives short and charmless, and he never replied to any letters he received from them. Of late, even these had started to trickle off.

Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Two years ago, he couldn’t imagine feeling anything but relieved that he was finally free. Free from their love, yes, but also from their expectations, hopes, and the sense of responsibility they foisted upon him. At the age of twenty, fresh from saving the world (again), Harry was deadly tired of responsibility.

Sky had changed all this. Harry still didn’t want the responsibility that returning to his old life would entail. Least of all did he want to make the apologies needed, simply because he wasn’t sorry. Yet, he had to admit that he had not once considered simply abandoning Sky to her fate. There was clearly still a diseased part of his mind that clamoured for the responsibility that went with loving and trying to protect and saving others. He was determined that she would be the very last, however.

That was why he wrote the letters. He wanted no drama or passionate pleas for his return (although he’d got both, anyway). He hadn’t dropped out of his life in the wizarding world. From the outset, even before the war had fully ended, he had made his intentions plain. He wrote with military regularity and coldness because he wanted to deny his friends and public even the luxury of worry.

In theory, it had worked. Harry had even expected to miss his friends. He didn’t expect to wake up in the middle of the night with something to tell Ron, or look up with a smile to share a thought with Ginny. He didn’t think he would read things and automatically make a note of them because Hermione and Remus would find them interesting. He had defended himself from the frontal attack, but all the shots were from behind.

Laboriously -- because except for this practice, Harry hardly ever had a reason to write anything -- Harry began his letters.

Dear, he wrote -- he would fill in the names later.

I am doing fine. The weather’s good. Say hello to (here again, he would fill in names. He did not reply to letters, but he still read them. Tonks for Remus, of course. Hermione was dating Anthony Goldstein. Neville was still single, although Seamus suggested he was dangling after Ginny again. Seamus and Dean both had a string of conquests to their name, although none of them could trump the regard they had for each other. Harry would look up the relevant names later. Ron, who wrote faithfully, every week, at least three pages, sometimes as many as thirty, Ron seemed to have no significant other, and not one of the others had mentioned anything.) I hope you are well. Please don’t worry about me. I will be back.

After all, Harry thought, it wasn’t a lie if you believed it.

::

::

Harry stumbled downstairs to the kitchen. His hands and wand moving on automatic, he prepared three bottles for Sky’s consumption. He’d learned enough from Mr Weasley in his time to adapt a steriliser to work on magic instead of electricity. Harry had never felt the need for electricity, even though he’d glimpsed something of the delights of television and internet the last time he’d been at the Dursley’s house. As far as Harry could see, both of them involved more interaction with other people than Harry was prepared to commit to. And now he had a baby.

While the bottles were heating up, Harry went to check if the milk had arrived. It hadn’t. “Okay,” he said. His cupboards were practically bare. He scrabbled around the top-most shelf and discovered an ancient Mars bar. He chewed it stoically, although the caramel had caramelised further to the consistency and flavour of concrete. He resolved to go shopping soonest. At that moment, the timer on the steriliser went off. Harry levitated the bottles and sprinted upstairs.

To his surprise, Sky wasn’t cooing and blowing bubbles in anticipation of her breakfast. Harry had to peer into her crib to ascertain that she was awake at all. When he did so, his heart turned over in fear.

Sky was in pain. Her body was curled up like a fossil, her mouth opening and shutting like she was screaming with the mute button on. What was worst was her utter noiselessness, for Sky was a baby who was never completely silent.

“Okay,” said Harry, “oh, God.” He picked her up and cradled her against his chest as though she was made of porcelain. Then he feared that moving her would upset her further, so he hastily returned her to the crib. He compared their foreheads. Sky’s was warmer, but she was warm all the time. Harry made sure of that.

He Summoned every book he owned to the nursery. The picture books provided such helpful information as ‘Kisses make it all better’ (Harry, who had never done more than absently press his lips to Sky’s hair, leaned in over the crib and kissed everything he could reach; he found he liked it very much) and numerous improbable remedies involving bits of unicorns, mermaids and fairy wings, which would have been more helpful had Harry any potions ingredients on the premises. What few schoolbooks had survived the ravages of time and war didn’t seem to consider childhood diseases a curriculum-worthy topic of study. In despair, Harry turned to the Dark Arts books, rather surprised to discover he owned so many.

Although Harry searched their indexes under B for Baby, C for Child and I for Infant, he found nothing remotely pertaining to childcare, and several recipes suggesting that B, C and I were good with tabasco sauce. Harry chose to dismiss that implication for the foreseeable future.

An hour later nothing had turned up except Harry’s hair, which was standing on end from the dozen times he’d crunched his hands through it. His lap and the surrounding floor were covered with books and bits of parchment he’d started to write on before realising the hopeful information was yet another recipe. He’d tried to feed Sky, but she’d prissed up her mouth and refused the bottle. This coming from a child with two hollow legs worried Harry intensely.

He rested his head against the side of the crib and pressed a thumb to Sky’s pale cheek. One of her weakly flailing hands came up and wrapped around his fingers. The rush of love Harry felt then was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. It gave him the courage to survive the next ten minutes, as he took up yet more parchment and began to write.

::

::

Three hours later, Harry was beginning to give up hope on his plan ever coming to fruition. Sky was still refusing to eat and Harry was now concerned about the possibility of her starving to death. One more hour, Harry thought, and I’ll go find Mickey and ask him to help. He was loath to do so, because the fiction that Harry was not harbouring Lily White’s baby was fragile and required much deception to keep it alive. He knew if he admitted out loud that he was caring for Sky, even to get help for her, then the other men would have to admit out loud that they had connived to give a baby to a stranger, who had then turned out to be grossly incompetent.

All the same, Harry would do it. For Sky’s sake. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to -- even though the only alternative was almost as bad.

He was lying in a half doze, his stomach growling with hunger, when he heard the unmistakable pop of Apparition downstairs. Stumbling to his feet on legs that were weak as wet cotton wool, Harry made it to the nursery door in time to see a flare of red ascending the stairs. Harry blinked and the flare emerged out of the dusk, snapping into focus.

“Bloody hell, it’s dark in here,” complained Ron Weasley. “Haven’t you heard of candles, Harry?”

“What?” said Harry, with more than usual stupidity.

“Candles. Long yellow things, made of tallow, you light the wick with magic and you can suddenly see things in the dark. Like enormous great holes in the stairs.”

“I’ve been meaning to get that fixed.”

Harry meant nothing of the sort. He was adroit at leaping over the hole in question and in previous times had used it as a short-cut rubbish bin to the coal-hole below. He made a quick note to stop Ron going into the coal-hole, which probably housed an army of mutant potato crisps by this point.

Ron gave him an owlish stare that put Harry in mind of Percy. There the resemblance ended. A sudden shaft of light speared through the infantry of dust between the skylight and the corridor, throwing Ron’s features into sharp relief. His nose would always be large and more aqueduct than aquiline, and the freckles still seemed intent on their mission of world domination, but -- and the realisation made Harry grip the side of the doorframe, risking tetanus with barely a thought -- Ron had grown up. His hair was no longer stuck to his head like manically depressed seaweed, but was cut into a sweep that fell a little over his eye. The semi-permanent bits of blood-stained tissue stuck to his chin were not in evidence, suggesting that Ron had at last found a tameable magical razor. Lastly, his robes didn’t hang from him like a fistful of rags, but were tailored, dark-blue and made his spare tall frame appear unfairly macho.

“Harry,” said Ron in a soft voice that Harry had never heard before, “what’s going on?”

“Um,” said Harry diplomatically.

Ron sighed and scrubbed his hand through his hair. His action left it standing up at the back like a cockatoo’s ruff. Harry felt abruptly more comfortable. This was more like the old Ron -- the one he knew.

“Come in,” added Harry. He heard Ron follow him into the nursery and the resultant gasp.

“So you really did adopt a baby.” Ron sounded flabbergasted. In the light of the many crazy stunts Harry had pulled throughout his life so far, he thought this reaction a little unjust. After all, normal people who weren’t heroes had babies all the time. Harry’s method of acquiring one had just been a little more unconventional.

“Why are you here? I wrote to your mother.”

“I know.” Ron glanced around the room, which barring the floor was devoid of anything on which to sit. He frowned as he continued, “I was at home when your letter came. And a good thing too -- I thought Mum was going to have a coronary. It took me half an hour to figure out who’d written the letter and prise it out of her hand. I take it you never got a new owl after Hedwig died, then?”

“Muggles don’t use owl post,” Harry reminded him. Using a public Post Owl was as easy as casting a Summoning spell for one, but the real reason he’d never replaced Hedwig was because it would be a betrayal of her memory.

“I know that!” snapped Ron. “You’re not a Muggle. You’re a wizard.” He took a deep breath, but that didn’t stop the tips of his ears from blushing scarlet. For some reason this reassured Harry. “Anyway, Mum was half-crazy -- going on that you had a sick baby, and starting to make it some booties one minute and wanting to find you and shake some sense into you the next. When I figured out what was going on I convinced her to let me come instead. Once she’d calmed down she realised it would be a better idea than haring off herself although --” he jerked his thumb at the door “-- she sent a bunch of toys Bill and Charlie left behind.” His gaze appraised the nursery. “Looks like you might need them and all.”

“Wait a minute.” Harry shook his head, as if that would help him absorb the information faster. It had never been known to work before, but Harry was nothing if not optimistic. “You are a better option than your mother? She’s had seven kids -- how many have you had?”

“None -- yet.” Ron’s voice was cool. “However, I am a Healer. I think I might know something about illness, don’t you?”

Harry was too shocked by the news to marvel at the sarcasm in Ron’s rhetorical question, which was a rarer occurrence than nightingales singing in Berkeley Square. “A Healer? Since when?”

“I applied three years ago. You were occupied at the time. Drowning your sorrows and shagging your way through London.” Ron's voice was too carefully neutral, and he wasn’t meeting Harry’s eye. “I was going to tell you, but you seemed busy. And then you left.”

“I didn’t shag my way through London,” said Harry weakly. In fact, it had only happened the once -- a squalid encounter that left Harry feeling as soiled as the bed sheets. He’d paid twice what was owed and never went again. He couldn’t deny that he’d been drinking heavily when the war ended, or that he hadn’t paid attention to his friends during that time, because both were true. Acceptable, even in other people’s opinions, but true.

“Yes, well.” Ron’s face suggested that he was entirely indifferent to the knowledge. Harry was more hurt by that than was reasonable.

“You never told me since then,” said Harry, warming to the accusative.

“You never asked.” Ron pushed up his sleeves, and now Harry had a chance to notice the crossed wand and bone emblem of St Mungo’s.

Ron crossed the room and, after a moment’s hesitation, knelt beside the crib. He picked Sky up with competent expertise and pressed the tip of his wand to her forehead. Harry had to laugh -- the symbols and figures that floated out from under the wand’s tip were a bright, glowing pink.

“The preliminary diagnosis is colic,” said Ron. “Is she bottle-fed?”

“Yes,” said Harry, and had the impish urge to add, “My breasts just weren’t up to it.”

Ron’s look was scathing. “Colic can be a problem with bottle-fed babies -- air from the bottle can get trapped in their gastrointestinal passages and cause cramping pain.”

Harry immediately sobered. “Is it dangerous?”

“That depends on the severity of the problem.” Ron quirked his lips at Harry. “Look, we’re never supposed to tell people that a problem is one hundred percent fixable. That would be irresponsible. But I don’t reckon your kid is going to take lasting harm from it.”

“Oh.” Harry hadn’t realised how much tension he’d been keeping in before it disappeared. He sagged against the doorway, and his stomach took the opportunity to forcibly remind him of his hunger.

“Who’s her mother?” asked Ron, looking at the baby in his arms with a strange expression. Harry was too famished to analyse it closely.

“Woman called Lily White. Does she need medicine?”

“I can get it for you. I’m sure the Muggle doctors would have had something for it, but I don’t really trust them. Then again, I’m a wizard. Why didn’t you trust them?”

“I don’t not trust them.” Harry’s voice sounded thready even to his own ears. “I just couldn’t take her to them. It would have created too much … disruption.”

“So you decided to write to my mother instead -- a woman with no medical qualifications, whom you happily abandoned two years ago.” Ron placed Sky back in her crib. “Rollicking good idea, Harry. Well done.”

“You don’t understand.” Harry wilted further.

“That’s true. Not that you’ve ever given me a chance to understand, mind. Not that I couldn’t have helped you more if I did understand or anything. But it’s all fine, because I don’t understand!”

He ended on a shout. Harry leaped towards the crib to see if Sky was disturbed by this unique increase in decibels. She wasn’t, but her small face was screwed up in pain. The hand Harry reached out to her trembled without his prior knowledge or permission.

He missed the look on Ron’s face as he said, “I’ll be back with a stomach-calming potion in an hour. Less than an hour.”

“Okay,” said Harry. The pop of Apparition had already sounded when Harry remembered to say, “Thank you.” Wearied beyond all imagining, he closed his eyes.

::

::

Harry awoke to a sensation so unusual as to be almost unprecedented. It was the feel of sheets around his bare skin. During his life in Paradise Place, he slept on the sofa more often than not. His drunken stupors had led him to seek a place of rest in such disparate locations as the attic, the floor and, in one unfortunately memorable instance, the coal-hole. Since Sky’s arrival he’d spent more nights than he cared to count in the floor of her nursery, where the carpet was softer than his mattress.

Harry squinted against the glasses-deprived blur and felt his way down the bed. Someone, with great if ruthless efficiency, had tucked him into what felt like an apple-pie bed wearing nothing but his boxers and socks.

A slight creak preceded Ron’s entry into the room. All Harry could make out was an enormous red and navy blur, but it was enough to make him relax as much as the confines of the straightjacket sheets would permit.

“Your glasses are on the other pillow,” said Ron. His voice was as cool and featureless as snow; he seemed to be making up for his burst of rage by going to the other extreme. “I would have put them on a table so you didn’t crush them, but you don’t have a table. Of any sort. In the entire house. Either you’re being ridiculously frugal or you’ve just been robbed.”

“Neither,” sighed Harry. He fumbled his glasses on to his face. “I haven’t got around to buying anything yet.”

“Hmm. You just moved in then?” The bed sank slightly as Ron perched on the end of it, as far from Harry as the perimeter would allow.

“That’s right.” Harry nodded, grateful for the legitimate excuse for owning barely a stick of furniture. He noticed his ‘desk’ -- a broken floorboard propped up on two crates -- and wondered why Ron of all people had dismissed this as a table. Then he felt guilty for assuming that Ron’s previous poverty would allow him to recognise an admittedly crude piece of furniture as anything other than misplaced lumber.

“I guess I’m easy to lie to,” said Ron. He sounded as if this was a failing worthy of ritual castration. “The thing is, when I know the truth it’s hard to lie even to me. You’ve been living here for two years, although from the looks of things you’re squatting in a house marked for demolition. I think it would be a nice place if it were fumigated, completely refitted and moved to an entirely different neighbourhood. I also think you don’t care what I think. But I still don’t understand why you didn’t at least buy a sofa, Harry.”

“There’s a sofa here already,” Harry pointed out.

“There is?” Ron raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. Harry guessed that the camouflage sofa had outdone itself in the disguise stakes. “This is a terrible place to bring up a child. I can’t believe Muggle authorities don’t check out adoptive parents thoroughly, like wizard ones do. No offence, Harry mate, but you shouldn’t have made it past the first assessment.”

“I didn’t.” Harry wriggled, accidentally bringing his foot into contact with Ron’s leg. Ron jumped a little. “Hey -- how did you know I’ve been living here for two years?”

Ron’s expression was almost pitying. “I’ve known where you lived ever since you left. I made it my business to know -- just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case you hurt yourself -- in case you died, Harry! Believe it or not, not everyone in the world is the heartless bastard you’ve turned into. Some people actually care a lot about what happens to you and -- and would be bloody upset if you kicked the bucket.” Ron turned away, but not quickly enough for Harry to miss the way his eyes glinted with more than righteous anger.

Harry wanted to say he was sorry, but he wasn’t sure enough that he meant it. Instead, he said, “Look, the reason Sky is here isn’t because I adopted her. I found her.”

“Where? Under the cabbage patch?”

“Close. On my doorstep.”

“Now you have got to be kidding me.” Harry stared Ron down. “You’re not, are you? But you know who her mother is. Why don’t you return her?”

“It’s complicated,” Harry began.

“Try me,” Ron challenged.

“Well.” Harry tried to marshal his thoughts, but it was hard with Ron’s unflinching blue gaze fixed on him. “This is a kind of rough area.”

“I’d noticed.”

“But some people are sort of -- worse than others. I mean, they’re all pretty much violent and insane, but Lily’s husband -- Sky’s father -- puts her in hospital all the time --”

“Don’t tell me.” Ron’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “You just had to do your little heroic thing and rescue the poor, ignorant Muggles from themselves?”

Harry stared at his friend, wondering when he’d started to hate Harry. “Actually, no. I play cards with some of the men from around here and they’d sometimes talk about Norm -- Sky’s dad. I didn’t think anything of it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found Sky on the doorstep. From what I can tell, Lily knew that whenever Norm came back from his ship, he’d hurt Sky -- or worse. He doesn’t like kids. In fact he doesn’t seem to like anyone very much. They left her with me because Norm would never think to look for her here.”

“So what’s going to happen when Norm returns to his ship? Lily’s just going to pick up … Sky, and go on with life until Norm’s back for his conjugal rights again?” Ron scowled. “God, Harry. Talk about thinking things through.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that,” snapped Harry. “You were so excellent at it too, as I recall.”

Ron narrowed his eyes. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Any mission might or might not work, you idiot! Plans are for minimising the amount of people that die as a result of them!”

“We were talking about you and now, not me and four years ago,” said Ron. “Are you seriously expecting to hang around here for the next eighteen years until Sky’s old enough to move out, and look after her while her dad’s at home? Don’t you think she’s going to find that strange? What if you want to move away and actually start having a life of your own?”

“So I was supposed to leave her to die on my doorstep.” Harry tried to cross his arms, but found that his hands were trapped under the sheets, which in turn were pinned down by the weight of Ron’s body on them.

Ron ruffled his hair again. This time it flopped into his eyes as he bent his head forward, his wrists resting on his knees. “No. You were supposed to act like the sensible adult you look as if you are, take her in, alert some authorities, and let them deal with it.” He gazed at Harry, who wanted nothing so much as to be able to untangle himself from his sheets and walk away from the situation. He’d developed a taste for that, and a strong dislike of being brought to heel as he had been all the way through Hogwarts.

“But I forgot,” Ron murmured. “I forgot who I was dealing with.”

“Lay off. You sound like Hermione.”

“Really?” Ron stood up. With some relief, Harry extracted his hands. “Do you mean I sound like someone who possesses an iota of sense? I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t.” Harry tossed his hair. He realised too late that this would only serve to shake his long shaggy hair all over his face, so that he looked like a brunette German Shepherd.

“Just look at yourself.” Ron stomped closer and brought his face level with where Harry’s nose parted the sheaves of hair blocking his vision. “You’re dressed like a tramp. You live in a hovel! Your skin’s unhealthier than when you were fourteen and you have more spots than you did then. You haven’t washed yourself or your hair in God knows when and you smell. Even your bloody teeth are yellow.”

Harry recoiled from such a no-holds-barred appraisal of himself. True, it had been a long time since he’d tried to look even moderately attractive, but he was sure it wasn’t as bad as Ron was making out. He’d just been busy with Sky, who wasn’t the most stringent of fashion critics.

“Bloody hell.” Ron grabbed Harry’s jaw and pulled it down. Harry was frozen by shock and the strangeness of having Ron’s warm, dry palm against his skin. It had been a long time since anyone except Sky had touched him, and she didn’t really count. “Abstergo dentis.”

“Ow!” howled Harry. He clamped his teeth shut, narrowly missing the tip of Ron’s thumb, which was resting on his lower lip.

“I could say the same thing,” Ron grumbled. “You should either grow a beard or shave. Your stubble is in the enraged porcupine stage.”

“It’s always like that, even after one day.” Harry rubbed his fingers over his aching teeth. The sensation of having eaten a box of bicarbonate of soda was beginning to subside. “And don’t even think about shaving me!” he added, his voice muffled by the hands he clamped over his mouth to preclude such an event.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, mate.” Ron looked around the bare room, a frown furrowing his freckled brow. With the air of someone making a momentous and life-changing decision, he announced, “I’m staying.”

Harry, still sore about having his teeth cleaned by main force, did nothing but clench the same and swing his legs out of bed preparatory to getting up.

The wave of weakness that washed over him came as the greatest shock in a day full of shocks. He swayed, but before he could even consider the possibility of falling Ron was there. One arm propped him up and the other guided him back to bed.

From far away, he heard Ron’s voice. “You’re suffering from malnutrition -- you twat. I’m staying to look after you for a week. God knows someone needs to. I’m going to get some stuff from home and I’ll be back to make you something to eat. In the meantime, stay here, or I’ll Owl the police.”

Harry wanted to point out Ron’s mistake and congratulate him on mastering the pronunciation of ‘police’. He wanted him to go away and leave Harry in peace, and to feed him until the fuzzy greyness on the edge of Harry’s vision went away again. He wanted Sky. Above all, he wanted to apologise. However, he had energy for none of it.

“Okay,” whispered Harry. He felt Ron’s sigh against his forehead before Ron straightened up and prepared to Apparate. He couldn’t place the look on Ron’s face as he observed Harry falling asleep again. If he’d only known, it was the same one he himself wore every time he looked at Sky.

The last thing he heard was Ron’s voice. “Sky. What an abominably American name, Harry. You really should change it.” He was gone before Harry could explain his choice -- which, all things considered, wasn’t a bad thing. Even Harry still wasn’t sure why he’d named Sky after Ron’s eyes.

::

::

The next time Harry woke, night was trickling in through the spaces left by dust on the window. He had a vague sense that something had changed, but the sight and smell of a tray on the floor next to his bed distracted him. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing Harry had ever seen. It contained a glass of pumpkin juice, a chicken and ham pie and a bowl of treacle tart. Comfort food. Food from the childhood he had almost had, before his own sense of adventure had robbed him of the chance of ever having a real one.

His legs were still wobbly, but it was simply a matter of submitting to gravity to slide to the floor beside the tray. The first mouthful made him feel more alert. He kept eating as his gaze travelled around the room, taking in the cleanliness of the stripped wood floor, the absence of long peels in the wallpaper and the solid square desk in one corner. A squat leather bag sat by the door. Harry presumed that it belonged to Ron, unless a misshapen species of mushroom had sprouted there during his sleep.

His first full meal in -- how long? Harry was disturbed to find that he couldn’t remember -- if it did not restore him to full health, at least gave him the strength to don a pair of grey tracksuit pants. Ron had seen him in considerably less than boxers and socks and had tended to situations far more drastic than a bout of nutritionally-spurred fainting, but Harry didn’t intend to inflict the sight on him for longer than was absolutely necessary.

His first port of call was Sky’s nursery. The stars on the ceiling glowed like a celestial welcoming committee. Just stepping into the room relaxed him more than he could say, and the feeling was only compounded by the sight of Sky sleeping deeply and with no evidence of pain.

“There you are.” There was mingled worry and exasperation in Ron’s voice. “I thought you’d done a runner.”

“In this state, more like a crawler.” Harry reached down to tug Sky’s duck blanket closer under her chin.

Ron had a battalion of bottles tucked under his arms. He had changed into loose jeans and a fraying Weasley jumper. He would have looked exactly as he had at sixteen if it weren’t for the new, fancy haircut and an unmistakeable air of authority that separated him from his past self. He handed the bottles to Harry and watched in silence as Harry fed Sky.

“I have never seen a human being drink so much,” marvelled Ron. “Two bottles.”

“Is that abnormal?” Harry was instantly worried, and he wondered why Ron’s face broke into a grin.

“I doubt it. She’s probably comfort eating.” Ron looked around the room and made a tutting noise. It reminded Harry irresistibly of Mrs Weasley. “Do you have something against tables, Harry? Oh, and I brought some of my paediatric textbooks with me. From what they say, you should be able to introduce solids soon.”

“Solid what?” With practised ease, Harry dropped into an Indian squat.

“Solid food, Harry. You know -- mashed carrots and turnips and other gourmet delights? Haven’t you been around babies before?”

“Nope.” Harry leaned his head against Sky’s crib and prepared to spend the night watching her sleep, as usual. “When was I ever around babies? I held Bill's daughter once or twice, but I don’t think that constitutes a detailed working knowledge of their feeding milestones.”

Noiselessly Ron sat down beside him, almost startling Harry with his nearness. “At the risk of, yet again, sounding like Hermione, why on earth didn’t you buy a book? There are people who make fortunes doing nothing else but prating about how to deal with the under-fives.”

“I can’t go back to Diagon Alley. Not yet.” To Harry it was simple.

“So go somewhere else. Go to Muggle London. Go to New York. Sydney. Dublin. It’s not like you can’t afford it. I know Muggles aren’t that advanced, but even they can see when there’s a chance to make a quick buck. Hermione bought half a dozen Muggle baby books for Fleur when she was pregnant with Amelie.”

A laugh bubbled out of Harry’s throat. “I didn’t know that. What on Earth did Fleur do with them?”

“Well, she is French.” Ron paused. “I assume she used them for toilet paper.”

Harry smiled, the wood cool against his forehead. It was so long since he’d talked to someone like this that his voice felt rusty, but it still felt good. A large part of him still wanted Ron to leave in the morning so that he didn’t have to deal with all the concomitant issues he raised, but a growing opposition to this was making its position clear.

“I guess,” he cleared his throat, “I guess it just didn’t occur to me. At first it was such a hassle just figuring out how to feed her, and what she wanted when she cried … I bought some kid’s books with the formula at the grocery shop, but I just haven’t had time for much else since.” Except for gambling, but Ron didn’t need to know about that.

“Typical new parent. We see it all the time. Someone comes in complaining of exhaustion, or after feeding the kid a potion instead of breakfast. Usually, though, there’s at least one other person to take up the slack, if not several.” There was a hint of censure in Ron's voice.

“I didn’t have anyone else,” Harry reminded him.

Ron’s sigh came like a small localised hurricane. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Harry hid his smile against the side of the crib.

“Speaking of which --” there was a rustle of paper “-- Mum sent this along. If I’d known what your house was like, I’d have brought a furniture one too. As it is, we’ll have to go shopping tomorrow.”

“Oh, really?” said Harry, but there was no strength in his voice. For once, it was nice to have someone else saving the day.

“Yes, really.” Ron pressed something into his hand. Harry looked down, barely catching the gleam of his own skin in the starlight. There was an exasperated noise behind him, followed by a soft “Lumos.”

It was a baby catalogue. It didn’t sell babies, but it came pretty close. Everything Harry could imagine a baby would need, and plenty that he couldn’t, as well as a considerable amount of stuff that no one who wasn’t a millionaire Martian could need, lay expertly photographed between its glossy covers.

“Mum buys presents for Bill and Charlie from it,” supplied Ron, “and for use as a weapon in the face of the remitting failure of the rest of us to get hitched and procreate.”

“Never been tempted, then?” Harry kept his voice light as he flipped through the pages. “You never mentioned any girlfriends.”

“Nope.”

“Not even Lavender --”

“I mean, nope, you aren’t allowed to ask that question.” At Harry’s amazed look, Ron continued, “You forfeited the natural rights of a best friend for the last two years. You don’t just get them back like that.”

“But -- you’re here,” spluttered Harry. “You’ve taken time off work to look after me, you’re cooking for me -- you’re minding my baby!”

“Yes.” Ron gave a grave nod. “I’m a better friend than you are.”

“I -- I saved the fucking world!”

“Don’t wake the baby, you plonker,” said Ron, seemingly unfazed.

Harry took a deep breath and checked on Sky. She was fast asleep, blowing the ever-present bubbles.

“Concerning the world,” said Ron, “it would have been pretty nasty for you if you hadn’t -- one way or another. It wasn’t what you’d call a truly altruistic gesture.”

“And this is, I suppose.” Sarcasm seeped through Harry’s words like creeping damp.

“No.” Ron smiled a lazy grin that was entirely new. It was the sort of smile that could melt ice-sculptures. Perhaps it was a coming-of-age present from Ron’s genetics. “But it is personal. I’m here because I want to help you. For that, I’m getting a week of unpaid leave, missing out on a round on the Dai Llewellyn ward and spending time with a best friend who likes to pretend I don’t exist and his kid, whose most scintillating conversation consists of ‘baa’ and ‘gaa’ and blowing bubbles all over my shirt.”

“You’re an uncanonised saint,” said Harry. Ron didn’t look duly chastened, and Harry reflected that stealing Aunt Petunia’s rejoinders was perhaps not the canniest move in the witty repartee wars. “Anyway, I don’t just ignore you.”

“Well, that’s a step forward,” observed Ron. “I didn’t think I’d be able to get you to admit that’s even what you’re doing.”

“I --” Harry scowled. “What do they teach you in Healer School, how to be sneaky?”

“No, we throw that in for free.” Ron grinned again, and Harry couldn’t pretend indifference to its liquefying effects any longer.

“I had to,” he muttered. “My head was all over the place.”

“Sure,” said Ron. “Although how that made a difference from how it always was I can’t imagine. No, don’t say it. Your opinion of that is more important than mine. Are you coming to bed?”

“I am in bed,” said Harry before he could think.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Ron. He hauled Harry to his feet, inadvertently quelling Harry’s protests by wrapping his hands around Harry’s upper arms and propelling him forward. The casual intimacy of the gesture made Harry's cheeks flame. “I am not going to treat you for spinal curvature and osteopathic defects on top of everything else. There’s a reason why we in the modern world scorned sleeping on the floor post the invention of the twelve-tog duvet.”

“We’ll have to share the bed.”

“Logical reasoning! I never expected it of you, Harry.”

“If it weren’t for Sky, you’d be looking at some very nasty boils right now,” said Harry with deep conviction.

“I’ll always remember to use her as a body shield from now on.” Ron let go of his arms and fell into step beside him. “That’s the main reason I wanted you to have a sofa -- so I could kip on it. When I came to stay.”

“A sofa.” Ron nodded. Harry rubbed his left arm where Ron’s grip had left the faintest of pink finger marks. “I’ll buy one tomorrow.”

::

::

In Harry’s opinion, Ron had always had the best bottom in the dormitory.

It was mainly because of Seamus that Harry had noticed such things at all. He didn’t think Seamus was in the least bit interested in men as sexual objects; rather, he was purely and simply lacking in any kind of natural inhibition. Discussing the merits of his dorm-mates’ physical qualities was to him standard practice. It clearly disturbed Neville, who was the shyest of the five, but apart from him Harry had felt himself to be the only one who found it remotely uncomfortable. Dean and Ron had no compunction about accusing Seamus of eyeing them up and calling him a dirty fag, but Seamus took it in his stride -- often a completely naked stride. To be fair, he didn’t have anything to be ashamed about.

Harry was the only one who couldn’t take it as a joke. He'd blushed whenever Seamus brought up the topic. Neville blushed too, but as everything from a slight wind to Professor Sprout asking him to pass the marigold seeds made Neville blush, it was not overly remarked upon. It wasn’t like the other boys paraded around naked a lot, but even Harry admitted that it was silly to be humiliated by forgetting a towel and thus having to walk back to the dormitory in the buff.

After seven years, Harry had conquered his blush. He had also found multiple covert ways of doing what Seamus would unhesitatingly call ‘checking someone out.'

Neville was pudgy and Seamus scrawny. Dean was an undisputed beauty, an Adonis carved out of chocolate. It made no difference. Harry didn’t have eyes for any boy. But if he had had eyes, they would have belonged to Ron and Ron alone.

Harry had almost forgotten what Ron’s bottom looked like unclothed, and the baggy jumper he was wearing even obscured the sight of it in jeans. Harry made a show of flopping into bed from exhaustion, mumbling something incoherent to Ron’s query of if it would be all right to leave the light on a bit longer while he changed. As soon as Ron was bent over his bag, Harry quietly turned over inside the sheets. The rustle was miniscule. All the same, Harry waited a few moments before wedging one eye open.

Ron had already divested himself of his jumper. His nude back had deep dark hollows from the angle of the wand light, but Harry could still see the dark clusters of freckles on his shoulders. They lessened to sprinkles as Harry charted down his back, to where the slight swell of his bottom rose above the waistband of his jeans.

Ron moved the wand the better to rummage in his bag. This new slant illuminated Ron’s lower half completely as he shoved down his jeans and kicked them away.

That arse. Harry felt his chest tighten and his heart beat faster, and knew a moment’s despair that these night-time feelings, the ones he had hidden away in the depths of his mind, were as visceral as ever. They had not been a teenage phase after all. He had not grown out of them as he’d desperately hoped he would.

He couldn’t dwell on the guilt now, however, not with such beauty before him. There were freckles on Ron’s bottom. Harry had always wondered how on earth he got them -- after all, it meant that he’d have to be naked, outside, in the sun. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask. It also wasn’t the sort of thing you should imagine while you masturbated, but Harry did that regardless.

Then Ron leaned forward to pick his pyjamas out of his bag. Harry was almost sure Ron heard his quick intake of breath, for his legs stiffened -- but a moment later he was equally sure that he’d imagined it. As quickly as it had appeared, the vision of Ron’s long, firm thighs and rust-dusted globes had disappeared beneath his pyjama bottoms.

Harry didn’t wait for Ron to finish changing. With an orchestrated sleepy mumbling, he rolled over again, the better to curl around and hide his erection.

“Harry, you awake?” Ron whispered.

Harry didn’t reply, but feigned the deep breaths of sleep. He wasn’t sure if Ron was fooled, but he’d played this trick so often that Ron probably wouldn’t recognise true slumber if he heard it.

He felt more than heard Ron climbing into bed beside him. It was the strangest feeling in the world, to have someone else in the bed with him. He’d shared rooms with people, dormitories and wards, bedrooms and base camps; he’d had sex in beds; but never before had he simply slept beside someone in one.

Exhaustion claimed him before he could decide if it were a good thing or not.

::

::

Rolling into Ron’s abandoned warm space woke Harry the next morning. He decided it was the nicest awakening he’d ever experienced. It also made him instantly hard. He pressed his nose into the pillow that smelled faintly of Ron’s lemon aftershave as his hands slipped into his boxers. It didn’t take long. Eyes still gummed shut, he wiped one hand on his boxers before reaching for his wand and using it to clean up the rest.

The first time he’d wanked off to the thought of Ron, he hadn’t been able to look him in the eye for a full day. He was sure his dirty secret was scored on his eyeballs all ready for Ron to detect, like personalised invisible ink. When night fell and Ron still hadn’t bawled him out, or taken him aside and explained that he could no longer hang around with a boy who thought about him that way, Harry finally felt able to relax. Only for it to happen all over again the next day.

To credit Harry -- or perhaps Ron’s noted emotional denseness -- Ron never noticed anything. After a while Harry was better able to separate fantasy Ron from real Ron, and for the sake of an easy life to decide that they weren’t related, even distantly.

He went downstairs to search out Ron with a clear conscience, even though rubbing himself into the sheets where Ron had just lain brought fantasy Ron and real Ron into rather uncomfortable alignment.

Harry found Ron in the kitchen, which for the second time in as many months actually looked used. A number of bowls filled with things Harry couldn’t begin to name were being mixed, sifted and beaten magically with a variety of appliances that Harry hadn’t even known he possessed.

“What are you doing, opening a restaurant?” said Harry through a yawn. In a semblance of politeness, he covered his mouth with one hand. His fingers smelt of semen. One realisation lead to another: a heightened awareness of how low his tracksuit bottoms had slipped around his hips. He tugged them up as Ron turned to face him, his cheeks flushed and splattered with flour.

“I don’t get much of a chance to cook,” he said by way of reply. Harry tried to figure out if this meant ‘yes’ or ‘no’. “When I’m at home Mum does it, when I’m working I rarely have time …” He flashed that grin again. Harry’s stomach swooped. “I’m indulging myself! D’you fancy French toast, normal toast, pancakes or bacon?”

“Do I have to choose?” asked Harry. He hoisted himself up on to the tiny part of the counter that was free and swung his legs.

“Nope. In fact, you’d better not, or this lot’ll never get eaten.” Ron looked around with mild dismay. “I got a bit carried away.”

“Never mind,” said Harry, Summoning some toast with a wordless command. “Oh, shit! Sky!”

“I already gave her a bottle. She’s sleeping again.” Ron leapt forward to move some pans around Harry’s state-of-the-art oven, entirely missing out on Harry’s open mouth, mid-mastication gape of surprise.

Harry gathered enough wits to swallow and choked, “You gave her a bottle?”

“Sure thing.” Sensing doubt in Harry’s enquiry, Ron added, “I’ve done it hundreds of times. Sometimes the mother is tired, or just not there, or is Fleur … don’t worry.” He tipped half a gallon of cream over some pancakes and pushed them into Harry’s lax hands. “I didn’t poison her. Or you either. Eat up.”

Obediently, Harry stuck a fork into his pancakes. One mouthful assured him that there were as light and fluffy as treacle-drenched clouds. Ron had inherited his mother’s talent for cooking.

Ron rattled a drawer. “I’ve been meaning to ask you -- you’ve got six place settings of forks, knives and teaspoons, but only one spoon. Why is that?”

Harry opened his mouth to explain, and would have done so with his usual economy had it not been for one spanner in the works -- Ron’s hand. In the window of time between finishing his question and Harry beginning to answer it, Ron had spun around again and began groping around on the counter for something. Harry hadn’t even shaped a word when Ron’s knuckles brushed against the side of his leg. All unconscious of the effect he was having on Harry’s heart rate and adrenaline secretion, Ron leaned in and nudged firmly against Harry in his search -- his shoulder against Harry’s, his hip touching Harry’s knee, and his hand --

“Gotta piss,” mumbled Harry, downing tools and jumping off the counter.

“Have a shower while you’re there!” Ron called after him. “We need to get going soon.”

Harry thought a shower was a tremendous idea. It meant far less cleaning up afterwards.

::

::

Ron staunchly refused to go out with Harry looking, in his words, ‘like a tramp whose only qualifications are the odour and appearance of a dead rat.’ He made Harry return to the shower with the shampoo Ron had brought with him, against all Harry’s protestations that he was allowing his hair’s natural oils to come through. The only thing he found remotely presentable in Harry’s scanty wardrobe were a pair of jeans that Harry had owned since he was sixteen and a button-down shirt that was not much younger. Both of them were far tighter than Harry thought clothes should be, but he thought he could put up with the feeling of a shrink-wrapped crotch far better than having Ron’s impartial gaze constantly appraise him.

Ron was far more approving of Sky’s garments and did not attempt to interfere in Harry’s choice of the day’s attire. He only mumbled something that sounded a lot like ‘Wish you’d pay that much attention to yourself,' which was easy to ignore.

Ron’s organisational help was invaluable. It was he who pointed out the need for a bag containing nappies, bottles, and a change of clothes for Sky. He was astonished to discover that the only device Harry owned for carrying her about was his own two arms.

“First on the shopping list: a pram,” was Ron’s response to that.

“When did you get so responsible?” demanded Harry, nettled.

“A year and three months ago. You weren’t there to see it.” That alone called for fisticuffs at dawn, but Ron disarmed Harry with nothing more than a hint of his knee-weakening smile. This left Harry feeling angrier than ever, and also wretchedly confused -- not the best state of mind in which to go on a spending spree.

Their first port of call was Tesco. There was something strangely companionable about pushing a trolley down the aisles with Ron, with Sky in a baby seat gurgling her approval of Harry’s food choices. Ron, on the other hand, was not so free with his praise.

“Haven’t you heard of the food groups, Harry?” he asked, as Harry threw the fifth packet of Jammy Dodgers into the trolley. “In case you haven’t, they don’t consist of beer, biscuits and own-brand chocolate bars.”

“If you want something else to eat, put it in.” Harry shrugged. “I got a Club Card when I first moved here. I’ll probably get a discount if I actually buy some fruit.”

After a while, Ron forgot his horror at Harry’s nutritional nonchalance and became absorbed in fingering things like plastic vegetable bags and cat food.

“Look at this!” he whispered at one point, brandishing a packaged Oral B toothbrush dangerously near to Harry’s eyeball. “The effort Muggles go to for the simplest things is astounding!”

“Yeah,” said Harry rather mindlessly. He’d got a blast of Ron’s warm, pepperminty breath right in his ear and it was discomposing him. A lot. “But, like, they don’t have magic.”

“I know. You pity them really.” Ron returned the toothbrush to its brothers and smiled That Grin at a blue-rinsed dame studying the grey-cover hair-dyes. Harry looked back over his shoulder when they had moved on; the lady had popped Ron’s toothbrush into her trolley with a furtive air, as if she expected snipers to appear over the stacks of toilet roll and blast away the toiletries section.

Ron was so excited by the time they reached the frozen section that he didn’t even comment as Harry stuffed half a dozen pizzas into his labouring trolley. Even Sky had been drafted in to carry groceries, Harry tucking in a few yoghurts into her blanket to save space. He was affronted to see that she greeted them with far more enthusiasm than she’d shown for the vast majority of expensive toys he’d presented to her. By the time she’d got her hands around them to coo at them like long-lost friends, Harry was distracted by Ron’s raptures over the selection of Ben and Jerry’s.

“I don’t think even Mum could magic up ice cream to beat this!” Ron laughed. No one nearby seemed shocked by his choice of words, but Harry recalled from his very brief interaction with cookery books that this could be taken in the light of a baking expression. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blue-rinsed lady creeping up on them. Before she could reach them, Harry grabbed a tub of every flavour and toppled them precariously into the trolley.

“I’m paying for some of this,” insisted Ron. Harry, struck dumb by the combination of peppermint breath and lemon aftershave, both of which were wafting his way, shook his head vigorously.

“Having a party, are we?” asked the girl at the till.

“Something like that,” mumbled Harry. He unpacked as fast as his hands would let him, well aware that the blue-rinsed lady was behind them in the queue and shooting smouldering looks in Ron’s direction.

When they finally broke out of the shop, Harry was left with a hundred and fifty tokens for a bedside cabinet that he didn’t want and wasn’t collecting for even if he had. He managed to whisk Ron away from his octogenarian admirer by the skin of his newly cleaned teeth, but it was a close run thing. If she’d been fifty years younger she would have caught up with them.

“Do you usually react so badly to people’s admiration?” Ron wanted to know as soon as they were clear.

“What do you mean?” asked Harry. Even if Ron had been oblivious to the blue-rinsed lady’s appreciation of him, Harry hadn’t been. There was certainly no way that her sights had been set on Harry, except in terms of getting him out of the way so she’d have a clear run at Ron.

“The girl at the check-out!” Ron snorted with laughter. “Aptly named, I feel. She wanted to run her hands over more than your -- well, my -- bananas, from what I could tell.”

“Oh, Ron,” said Harry, condensed disgust dripping from every syllable. “She did not.”

“What’s wrong?” Ron bumped shoulders with him. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into a squeamish prude in your old age.”

“She was not checking me out.” Harry wanted to make his stand clear before Ron touched him any more and made his brain leak out of his ears, where it would be of no use to anyone.

“So she only charged you for half your pizzas and gave you twice as many tokens as she was supposed to out of the kindness of her heart, did she?”

“Well -- I mean --” Annoyed, Harry pulled the tokens out of his jeans pocket and inspected them. As Ron had said, they were given for each twenty pounds spent; Harry had spent nowhere near that much. He tossed the tokens into a bag. “Why’d she think giving me those would make me fancy her? That’s just stupid.”

“Totally,” Ron agreed easily. “Then again, maybe she was shy. Maybe this was the only way she could let you know she liked you.”

“On the basis of five minutes’ acquaintance? I could have been a mass murderer for all she knew!” There was a strained silence. “Yeah, exactly, so she was daft to even think about it.”

Ron picked up Sky and chucked her under the chin. She looked sad to see the yoghurts go. “What are we doing with these groceries? We can’t lug them around with us.”

This was far more easily solved than the till-girl dilemma. Harry pushed the trolley to a secluded part of the car park and simply Re-Located the groceries to his flat. It was a handy spell that Hermione had discovered for use in the field during the war.

Struck, Harry said, “How’s Hermione doing?”

“She’s run off with a coven of hippies to have their love children and worship the moon,” said Ron smoothly. At Harry’s aghast face, he added, “Not. Don’t be so gullible. And don’t ask me how she’s doing -- ask her.”

Harry detected more than Ron’s generalised bitterness over his defection in there. He pressed, “Seriously. Is she still going out with Anthony Goldstein? Is she happy?”

“She’s working in the Department of Mysteries, which has the biggest magical library in Britain. Of course she’s happy. She’s fucking ecstatic.”

“Ron?” Harry raised a cautious hand to Ron’s shoulder. He didn’t touch him; there was a very clear feeling of raised hackles that put him off. After a moment, Ron turned back to him with a sunny smile that was as genuine as a weather report from a compulsive liar.

“This kid is heavy,” said Ron. He tickled Sky’s stomach through her felt jumpsuit. “Let’s go buy her a broomstick.”

::

::

A week ago it would have been completely infeasible, not to mention a fire hazard, for Harry to have been toasting marshmallows in his own fireplace. The truth of the matter was that Harry hadn't even known the living room boasted a fireplace. He'd just assumed a large chunk of the wall had swelled from marauding damp.

Then again, a week ago Ron Weasley was not in residence. Ron Weasley who turned out to have something of a penchant for housekeeping. Now a small fire blazed merrily in the hearth, which when exposed turned out to have tiled insets of winsome women with bouquets of flowers peeping out of them. Harry thought they were nothing short of horrific. Ron had amused himself by animating them, so that they now simpered at him every time he leaned forward to stoke the coals. It was only a mercy that he hadn't charmed them to speak as well, in Harry's opinion.

The rest of Ron's home improvements were far more amenable to Harry's tastes. A few simple colour charms had started him off while Harry was in the toilet, ostensibly vacating the results of a huge slap-up lunch in a local hostelry. Harry wouldn't have been in the slightest surprised if he had contracted food poisoning, given the vast amounts of green-tinged salad cream swirled over everything, but in fact he had other matters in hand. His erection, for one. Spending all day in close proximity to this new, mature, flirty Ron, who used his grin like a ground-to-air missile and whose denim-clad legs were impossibly long, had blurred the lines between Fantasy and Real Ron -- possibly forever. It was imperative that he remain in the dark about Harry's confusion until his visit terminated, at which point Harry could resume his old life with relief and not a little regret.

He'd returned to find that the living room had blossomed into a cheery yellow salon, complete with a brown velvet carpet and a reupholstered sofa in yellow and brown candy stripes. It gave Harry the overall impression of living inside a bee, but it was nice nonetheless. Ron had installed Sky in her new bouncy chair, surrounded by a bevy of stuffed animals. She looked like the matriarch of a pastel menagerie; the role suited her.

When Harry claimed that he was still full from lunch, Ron didn't press the issue. Instead, with the very legitimate air of a conjurer, he produced a huge bag of pink and white marshmallows and a long toasting fork. Harry hadn't noticed him buying them. Then again, after the third shop he hadn't noticed much besides how Ron's arse moved as he walked. This was a terrible thing to think about a friend, even though his attention was wholly approving. Harry now addressed all his comments to Ron's top shirt buttons as being the least provocative items of his ensemble -- although it was amazing what Harry's mind could conjure even with so little stimulus.

They sat in companionable silence, taking turns with the toasting fork. Or at least Harry presumed it was companionable. They weren't arguing outright, or having a coldness, but Harry's mind was busily sewing all the glimpses of Ron -- the edge of his knee, a bare toe, the firelight on his hair -- into a huge patchwork quilt of porn.

On cue, Ron said, "Knut for your thoughts."

Harry stuffed a hot marshmallow into his mouth. It collapsed quietly all over his fingers, sticking them together more effectively than Crazy Glu. "Worf at leas' a Galleon," he glooped.

"Okay then," said Ron. He leaned back, dragging Harry's unwilling gaze with him. His checked shirt rode up a little to reveal a strip of freckled belly. "Let's play Truth. I ask you one question, you ask me one, and we answer truthfully."

Harry was a little saddened that they needed to resort to such measures just to keep the conversation flowing, but he was also relieved. As a consummate liar, he was sure he could keep from telling Ron anything Harry didn't want to become common knowledge -- particularly anything involving his tongue and Ron's bellybutton.

"Okay," said Harry. After considerable effort, he managed to swallow the marshmallow; it had been harbouring ambitions of remaining lodged in his upper oesophageal sphincter forever. "You start."

"Mmm." Ron inclined his head towards the fire's heat, although the room was anything but cold. Even Sky had drifted off, cuddled deep into her blanket. The white column of Ron's throat was gilded in gold. He looked like a warrior from a medieval engraving, which was why Harry was comforted to discover shaving spots marching down the underside of Ron's jaw. "How many people have you slept with?"

"Ron!" Too late, Harry realised his shock had been Ron's purpose in asking the question. He was grinning like the Cheshire Cat at Harry's discomfiture.

"Well, that's the kind of thing Seamus and Dean talk about all the time with me," said Ron. "If you'd been around ..."

"What about Neville?" Harry jumped on the chance to divert attention from himself.

Ron shook his head, his grin stretching to his ears. "Neville's a bit ... reserved. Even if he were having his end away, he's far too much of a gentleman to divulge the dirty details."

"And I'm not, is that what you're saying?"

"Of course you're not," said Ron amicably. "Did you, or did you not, describe your first kiss as 'wet'? That's not the phraseology of a gentleman."

"That was a long time ago!"

"Agreed. So you have what, seven or eight years to fill me in on? Except about my sister." Ron's ears flushed at this codicil. "I can't describe the way I don't want to hear anything about that."

Sensing a change in whose hand was uppermost, Harry let his mouth curl wickedly and said, "There was this thing she'd do with her tongue ..."

"I'm warning you," said Ron, his voice shaking.

"You were the one who wanted to know." Harry shrugged and stared off into the depths of the fire. It was surely only a trick of the light, but the flames looked exactly like a couple writhing in ecstasy. Harry closed his eyes. "There was a time with Susan Bones when we were both stationed out in the Yorkshire moors. There was another time I got drunk with ... someone ..." Zacharias Smith, he filled in mentally. "I don't remember much about that --" a complete lie, he remembered every detail with perfect clarity "-- but there were blow-jobs involved, so it probably counts as sex." What Zacharias did after the blow-jobs certainly did. "Then, just before I moved here, I went to a prostitute. It was absolutely horrible. And that's it."

During the ensuing pause, Harry listened to Ron's breathing. Was it his imagination or was it coming quicker? His imagination, he decided regretfully, and opened his eyes.

"Well." Ron's voice was unusually restrained. "Not quite the stud the media makes you out to be, then."

"We knew that since Rita Skeeter's love triangles. Don't you remember how she set me up as a love rival to Krum, of all people?" Pity he hadn't realised at the time that his admiration for Krum was based on more than just his flying prowess. Krum had enormous feet. "Now it's your turn. Tell me about Hermione."

"What do you want to know?" asked Ron guardedly.

Harry sifted through all the possible questions he could choose. He finally settled on a fairly innocuous one. "Did you two ever get it together at any point?"

"You mean aside from seventh year?"

"That's exactly what I mean. I don't think that really counts. Everyone was so scared of dying by then that they were doing it with anyone." That had been the basis of Zacharias' excuse for never returning to Harry's bed. It was probably even true.

"Well, not really." Ron cleared his throat. "I mean, I tried. I always thought we would eventually. Get married, have some kids. There was never anyone else I seriously thought about in that sense."

Harry nodded and curbed the urge to ask Ron to tell him something he didn't know. Even during Ron's smitten stages with various girls, Harry had known that they didn't command one tenth of the respect and regard in which Ron held Hermione. Harry had always presumed that the sexual attraction would come along eventually.

"At first, she said she wasn't ready for settling down. I got that. We were both going to be working really hard in the beginning, what with me trying to secure one of the attending Healer posts and Hermione climbing the promotion ladder in the Ministry. I told her I was prepared to wait. After all, it's not like we needed to get to know each other. We'd even lived with each other for years, practically."

"Living with someone is a bit different from seeing them every day," Harry was moved to remark. "It's not like she knows about the weird stuff you got up to with your spots in the bathroom, or how you snore if you lie on your back."

Ron sent him a searching look, filtered through very flushed cheeks. Harry made a mental note to stop prodding the fire; the room was obviously getting over-heated.

"No," Ron said eventually. "But it's not like she would have dumped me because I --"

"Pluck your nose-hair?" suggested Harry. "No, I don't think she would. Hermione's not that shallow."

"Not in the least!" Ron sat up to emphasise his point, cotton and denim shifting in far too interesting ways. Harry averted his eyes. "Anyway, I was busy, she was busy ..."

"You just drifted apart?"

"If only." Ron carded his hair in his hands, exposing his midriff again. Harry was angry that he saw it; after all, he wasn't even supposed to be looking in Ron's direction. "One day I realised we hadn't even seen each other in a month. We'd never ... slept together. I mean, we'd kissed and stuff." Harry didn't pump Ron for more information; he could imagine just what kind of stuff Hermione would allow Ron to do to her. 'Tame' would be too strong a word. "So I Owled her and invited her out to dinner. She accepted."

Ron rolled on to his stomach and propped his chin in his hands. It made his voice sound oddly throaty. "We went out to one of those posh new restaurants that’ve popped up in Diagon Alley. All black sea bass and chocolate fondue -- practically inedible food and snobby waiters. I could tell Hermione loved it, though. She knew all about the ingredients -- could practically have cooked the meal for us. She let slip that Anthony Goldstein had taken her out to a couple of places like it.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you blew a gasket,” groaned Harry.

“Actually, I didn’t think anything of it,” confessed Ron. “She works with Goldstein, so I just assumed that these were business meetings they were going to, probably with the rest of her office.”

“Were they?”

“Not quite. They never did anything, though. Hermione’s straight as a die, she wouldn’t have cheated on me. But it was obvious, later, that she was just waiting for the right moment to tell me that, and I quote, ‘we had no future together.’” Ron heaved a great sigh, which came out sounding like a trumpet given the way his knuckles were constricting his air pipe.

“Christ, that’s pretty harsh. Given that I and the rest of the Western World thought you were made for each other.”

“Did you?” The angle of Ron’s face made his smile come out crooked. “You know, I never thought of it like that -- as destined, I mean. I just thought, she’s a great girl, she’s got two brains to rub together and we’ve been through a lot. We’d have made a steady couple. I knew I could trust her to be a good mother and role-model. At first I thought it was all because she didn’t want kids, but no, she does. Just not with me.”

“Well, tell me then. She must have had a reason!”

“Yes. It was a good one.” Ron’s laugh came out even worse than his smile. “She said it was because I was in love with someone else, and had been for years.”

“Wow.” Harry rocked back with the impact of Hermione’s pronouncement. “Talk about coming out of the blue! You’ve certainly kept it under your hat, too. Who’s the lucky girl, according to Hermione?”

“Well,” Ron’s breathing was definitely losing the battle to the hands pressing against his throat, “as a matter of fact, she said it was you.”

“Ewe?” said Harry in some confusion. “I don’t know anyone called that. Is she Americ -- oh. Oh. My. God.”

“No, don’t take it the wrong way!” Ron scrabbled for a sitting position, reaching out a placating hand towards Harry. “What Hermione felt was that you were such a strong presence in my life -- you know I always seemed to rate myself by your opinion more than anyone else’s -- she was looking for any old excuse to back out of it really --”

Harry was truly stunned. “Me?” he whispered, a tiny interjection that in the flurry of reassurances Ron didn’t hear at all.

Ron looked on the point of an aneurysm. Harry could hardly let himself credit Hermione’s words. After all, Hermione using Ron’s esteem for Harry as an excuse to break up with Ron was a far cry from Ron getting down on his knees of his own accord and declaring his enduring love for Harry. Not that Harry wanted Ron, or indeed anyone, to do that -- it was the sort of thing that needed to be consigned to the frothy romances that Ginny read on the sly. He realised he was getting tangled in his own thoughts and shook his head in a futile attempt to straighten out his brain.

Ron saw the gesture and deflated. This made Harry twice as confused. A burble from Sky made him physically start. “The night feed,” he said, grasping at straws like a milkshake addict. “And I need to bathe her ...”

“We were out of marshmallows anyway,” said Ron, with a stiff smile.

“I’ll be back soon. I will. I mean --”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ron gave a brittle laugh. “I’ll go clean up the kitchen from this morning.”

“Okay,” said Harry, and fled.

::

::

The bouncing chair was a godsend.

Harry kept his thoughts firmly focused on Sky and her concerns. Usually he’d have to lie her on the floor while running the bath, and all the Cushioning Charms and fluffy blankets in the world wouldn’t convince him that she wouldn’t smash her head off the tiles at some point. The bouncy chair kept her fully occupied while he turned on the taps and stripped to his boxers in anticipation of the tidal-wave splashing that would ensue.

When the bath was filled just enough -- Harry didn’t want to risk adding drowning to the bargain of potential head trauma -- and lukewarm, Harry took Sky up and spelled off her Babygro. She was as plump and pink as a marshmallow. Though he blew some raspberries into her tummy -- making her blow riotous bubbles in turn -- he found that she was far less edible than her doughy look-a-like.

“Sky is going for a big bath now,” chanted Harry, swinging her gently over the lip of the tub. “Harry is going to hold on to Sky so she won’t fall down, but look!” He skimmed Sky’s toes over the surface of the water. “Sky wants to go swimming.”

As usual, within seconds Harry found it easier to get into the bath with her than manoeuvre from beside it. The water just covered his knees. Carefully supporting Sky's neck, Harry deftly wiped her all over with a soft sponge. He’d bought it on his very first shopping trip with her, along with enough plastic nipples and nappies to supply an army of precocious neonates.

He talked nonsense constantly in a sing-song voice. It seemed to relax her -- to Harry’s mind, she was not a natural in the water, always trying to wriggle out of it and back into Harry’s arms. Harry wasn’t about to let her go more than a week without washing, however, no matter how much she seemed to revel in filth. She takes after me in that, thought Harry fondly. With a jolt, he realised that he was thinking of Sky as his own daughter.

On impulse he scooped her up and sat back in the bath, with Sky languishing upon his chest. She liked the view and immediately set about investigating Harry’s nose and glasses, apparently unsure as to which was the most fascinating. Harry let her prod and poke, assured that she didn’t have enough strength to pull his glasses off, let alone do any damage to them.

Harry kissed her deliciously plump shoulder and repressed the urge to tell her that he loved her. After all, she wouldn’t understand the significance of being the first person to hear that from Harry Potter’s lips even if she knew what speech meant.

“You must be getting cold.”

Ron’s voice startled Harry out of his introspection. Ron was kneeling by the bath, a soft baby towel in his hands. Harry could feel the warmth radiating from it and guessed that Ron had performed a Warming Charm over it. It was this that allowed him to surrender Sky from his embrace, where she was falling into a damp doze. She wriggled as Ron took her, as if he was a more solid form of bathwater, but when Ron tucked the towel around her and pulled the hood (with kitten ears) over her head, she submitted to his ministrations. In fact, Harry felt a dart of jealousy that she so soon feel prey to Ron’s charms.

Then again, there seemed to be few people about who could resist them.

Cradling Sky in one arm, Ron held out another, adult-sized, towel. Harry was both gratified and embarrassed to see that this one also had ears and a hood.

“They were doing a two-for-one special.” Ron relinquished the towel as soon as Harry’s fingers touched it, leaving him grabbing air in an attempt to prevent it falling into the bath. “You were in the bathroom changing Sky. I couldn’t resist.”

Harry swathed himself in the crisp warm folds. As a last touch, he pulled up the cowl and vigorously rubbed the hair underneath it. Suddenly bubbling with happiness, he smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Ron cleared his throat. “I’ll take her to bed, shall I?”

“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Amazingly, Ron didn’t dispute Harry’s assumption that he would be incapable of performing the task on his own. Harry didn’t think that -- he just wanted to put Sky to bed himself -- but he hadn’t expected Ron to understand it.

It was just one of many ways in which he’d underestimated Ron Weasley.

Harry stared at himself in the mirror. Scraggly curls drooped over his forehead and ears. Behind the old-fashioned glasses that he’d never got around to updating, his thickly-lashed eyes gleamed like a cat’s. They were the one saving grace in an otherwise unsalvageable face. His stubble was rampant and was nearly ready to be upgraded to the status of a beard. Harry winced at the sharp feel of it. Hardly daring to think why, he retrieved his wand and ran it over his face in a complicated charm. Afterwards, his chin felt almost as smooth as Sky’s rose-petal skin, or close enough to satisfy Harry.

It was when he looked at his mouth, with its dry, chapped lips, and wondered what it would feel like if Ron kissed them that was his undoing. Ever before, his fantasises about Ron had been unspecific. For a while, Zacharias and even the angry boy he’d fucked for money had taken Ron’s place in them. Harry just needed to think about naked skin and wickedly talented tongues and he was ready to go. This skill had allowed him to gloss over the extensive length of time that had passed since a female body had aroused the same feelings in him.

Imagining Ron’s mouth against his own was more than specific, it broke all the rules that kept Harry sane. Although Hermione had decided that Ron loved Harry, Ron loved plenty of people. His mother. His father. His brothers. Harry hoped against hope that Ron didn’t want to kiss them senseless. Love was not the same as lust. Harry loved Ron, of course; he always had. Thus far were they equal. Harry was almost certain that Ron didn’t feel anything more for him.

His penis begged to differ. The dry rubbing of the towel -- the towel that Ron had picked out, bought, and warmed for him -- between his legs was driving him mad. Slowly, ears pricked for sounds that would signal Ron’s departure from the nursery, Harry slipped his hand under the towel to peel back his damp, straining boxers.

He couldn’t possibly go to bed with a hard-on, after all. For all the money they’d spent and shops they’d traipsed through, Harry and Ron had both forgotten to buy a sofa that wasn’t a cunningly disguised death trap like the current incumbent. For the sake of his own health, Ron would be sleeping another night in Harry’s bed.

For the sake of Harry’s health, he wasn’t going to let Ron know how much that excited him. Tomorrow, Harry could wank all night and pretend it was Ron’s hand on his cock. Tomorrow, when Ron was safely asleep on the sofa.

::

::

As Harry and Ron both woke at the same time the next morning, they both had to face the fact that they’d ended up sleeping back to back like a pair of bookends. Harry, at least, was grateful for this turn of events. It would have been far worse if he’d spooned Ron in the night. Ron would have discovered Harry’s erection pressing into his back the next morning, thus blowing Harry’s fragile cover sky-high. It was quite astonishing, given the number of times Harry had got up during the night to tend to Sky, that he still ended up right next to Ron, although he fell back to sleep each time with his body practically falling off the side of the bed.

He didn’t let himself think how nice it would be, to have someone to curl up against in the night. He didn’t let himself think how little he wanted anyone else but Ron in that position. Instead, he casually bent his knees so that his stiff cock was hidden in the fold of the sheets.

Beside him, Ron did the same thing.

“Any plans for today, Harry?” Ron asked sleepily. He had sleep trapped in the corner of one eye. For someone so fair, Ron’s eyelashes were very dark, and so long that they curled. It wasn’t the first time Harry had noticed this, but it was the first time that his heart had missed a beat because of it. He remembered his former resolution to stick to Ron’s buttons and was appalled to discover his pyjama top was a t-shirt advertising the 2000 Quidditch World Cup.

“Um, not really.” Harry stared at his hands. They were gripping the bed sheet tightly, as if to guarantee protection from discovery of his arousal. Harry staunchly thought about McGonagall naked -- usually a foolproof softener. Unfortunately, Ron’s warm body right next to his elbow wreaked havoc on Harry’s concentration. McGonagall in a cut-away bikini kept morphing into a golden-skinned Ron with a strawberry perched between his full lips.

The Ron beside him didn’t look much like his vision. Far less angelic and far more pale and crumpled was Ron Weasley at ten am on a Saturday morning. His hair was as tousled as a kitten’s and his face bore the red marks of his pillow. Yet even such seedy details made Harry’s chest feel tight. Surely that wasn’t anywhere approaching a normal reaction?

Ron stretched his arms over his head. The lemon and peppermint had become a bit musty now, and there was a distinct hint of Lenor from the sheets. “What do you usually do on a Saturday?”

Harry shrugged. “The same things I do the other six days of the week.”

“Oh, I forgot you don’t work.” Ron made a little grunt of contentment as his muscles cracked. “This is such a luxury, I can’t tell you. Sleeping in till all hours and not needing to get up at all if you don’t fancy it.”

“It palls after about three days,” Harry pointed out crankily. “Plus I have Sky to look after now.”

“Of course. I heard you getting up for her during the night. You’re very dedicated.”

“Well, I could hardly leave her to starve,” mumbled Harry, blushing in spite of himself. “Here, I’ll make breakfast this morning. You stay in bed for a while longer.”

“Thanks, Harry.” Ron sounded more than grateful. Perhaps he too was nursing a morning erection. It was only to be expected in a young male, as Harry knew only too well. “You’re a mate.”

Harry swung out of bed and grabbed a jumper from the floor. It provided enough cover for his crotch to allow him to sidle out of the room with Ron none the wiser.

Sky was still fast asleep. His enthusiasm for producing feats of culinary excellence rapidly dimming, Harry wandered into the kitchen. He rarely did anything more spectacular to break his fast than pouring cereal into a bowl. As often as not the milk wouldn’t have arrived, so he ate it raw. He didn’t think Ron, who’d eaten a hearty bowl of porridge liberally laced with honey every morning that Harry had known him, would be too impressed by this.

The coldness of the tiles under his feet woke him up enough to co-ordinate putting some water on to boil and rooting through Ron’s neatly stacked groceries for inspiration. True to form, there was a packet of porridge mix there. Contenting himself with a handful of leftover marshmallows, Harry set to following the instructions on the packet with reverential obedience. It was almost fun, although he doubted he’d think so if he had to do it every Saturday.

Saturday. He was supposed to meet the boys for a game this afternoon. It was all set up. There was no way he could back out of it and be guaranteed the future use of his limbs. At least, so Mickey would have them believe.

Harry could get out of such a sticky situation. And Mickey could probably take Sky from him just as easily.

His hands froze on the last spoon, which he’d extracted from the drawer to test the porridge. It conducted red-hot heat right into his palm, but Harry didn’t notice. He was too absorbed by the horrifying thought of life without Sky. He’d only had her for a few weeks. It wasn’t fair that she be taken from him so soon.

“Generally when we mix porridge we move the spoon around a little,” came a voice from faraway. Then a hand clamped down over Harry’s and started swishing the spoon around the pan of congealing oats. In a rush, Harry became aware of peppermint breath in his hair and Ron’s body encircling his own like an embrace.

“I just remembered,” said Harry, “I planned to meet up with some friends this afternoon. It’s actually kind of urgent.”

“No worries.” A waft of lemon teased Harry’s nose. He felt his knees weaken, but he would not let himself lean back against Ron’s broad chest. It would be the ultimate stupidity. “I’d like to meet your new friends. I’m quite glad you have some.”

“Not really friends, as such,” bluffed Harry. “More like associates. We play cards.”

“I can play cards,” Ron reminded him, stepping back. Harry turned to face him, the dripping spoon still in his hand.

“For money!” Harry burst out in desperation.

The words fell into a shell of silence. Ron regarded Harry through his eyelashes. He was once again immaculately dressed and somewhat intimidating. Harry, in his boxers and floppy jumper, barefoot, and with hair that hadn’t seen the business end of a brush since June 2001, felt abruptly inferior.

“So that’s it, then? That’s why you’ve stayed away -- because you gamble your parents’ money away? Jesus, Harry!” Ron's voice rose. “You can do that just as well in Knockturn Alley!”

“I didn’t -- that’s not why! I didn’t leave because I wanted to gamble. That just sort of happened by itself. I stayed away because there were things I couldn’t face back there!”

“What sorts of things?” Ron’s voice was insistent. “What sorts of things, Harry?”

But Harry just shook his head, mute.

Ron compressed his lips. His arms snaked around himself. “Fine then.” He turned on his heel. He was almost out of the door before Harry plucked up the courage to ask him where he was going.

“I think I have a pack of cards stashed in my bag -- for slow night duty. I can practise with them,” explained Ron. At Harry’s baffled face, he added, “If gambling’s what you do for kicks, then that’s all there is to it. But you didn’t think I was going to let you leave me behind again -- do you?”

Harry found his voice. “Three o’clock.”

“That leaves me plenty of time to brush up on my skills. And make some new porridge -- you appear to have burnt your lot.” With a nod to the skillet, Ron stalked out.

Harry tightened his grip on the last remaining spoon. He willed down his smile at the realisation that Ron didn’t want to lose him again and concentrated on the even better thought -- that with Ron as his poker partner, Harry might actually win for once.

::

::

Harry and Ron arrived at the gaming hell so early that only Mickey was there before them. It was better than Harry could have hoped. This way, he could thrash out his presumption in bringing Ron along before there were other card sharps around to cloud the issue -- or to make Mickey feel like he had to make a macho man stand.

Harry thrust his hands into the pockets of his oversized hoodie to hide the fact that they were less than rock-steady. "Hey, Mickey," he said. "Um, this is my mate Ron. He's visiting. I brought him along because, uh --"

"Can he play cards?" Mickey wanted to know.

"I sure can," said Ron, flashing Mickey a smile. Mickey was not fazed.

"He's got the readies?"

"I've got enough for both of us," Harry hastened to say. Ron might be earning a steady wage these days, but even his life savings wouldn't allow him to gamble in the style to which Harry was accustomed.

"Grand so," said Mickey. "Pull up a chair." He bared his tobacco-stained teeth in what had to be called a smile, because there was no word to describe the facial expression of a tiger preparing for the kill. Ron recoiled slightly.

"So, what's your friend's name?" said Mickey, watching as they settled down on the rickety dining chairs, not one of which matched. Harry was aware that some of them would fetch a tidy sum at an antique dealer's, but he had never mentioned it. If Mickey didn't already know, then he would not take kindly to having his ignorance highlighted.

"Ron," said Harry. "He's a medical student."

"Really?" Mickey inclined his head. "He got one of them specialities yet?"

"Nope," said Harry. "But he's thinking about maybe gynaecology -- or paediatrics."

Mickey's eyes narrowed in approval. "You like kids then, son?" He addressed this question to Ron by dousing him with a fine spray of brown spittle.

"I do," said Ron, steadfast in the line of fire. "I have lots of brothers and sisters -- and nephews and nieces. Babies are great."

"That they are." Mickey expectorated noisily. "Ah, here's the lads."

A gaggle of men came through the door. Harry saw Ron's eyes boggle at the sight of Miss Melanie and pinched his thigh in warning. For all his time in the magical world and the necessary exposure to freaks that working in a magical hospital entailed, Ron was still most susceptible to anything out of the ordinary. Worse, his face shouted his shock more loudly than his tongue ever could.

Ron subsided and Harry remembered to release his fingers. Miss Melanie had not missed this little interaction, for her eyes lit up like tops.

"Harry!" she crowed, descending on him to peck both his cheeks. Her lurid lipstick stained Harry's cheeks, leaving him looking like a victim of leprosy. Ron looked visibly affronted by such forward behaviour, but Harry's attention was too occupied with Miss Melanie to do anything about it.

"You didn't tell us you had a new squeeze!" accused Miss Melanie. "He's terribly pretty, Harry love. Did you order him out of a catalogue?"

"Er, not quite," muttered Harry, slipping out of her grip. "He's a mate from school."

"Mate? Too right." Miss Melanie gave Ron a very obvious once-over. To his credit, Ron's ears remained a normal shade of white, although there were deep grooves beside his mouth that suggested that he was clamping his mouth shut. "I'd mate him any day."

"Leave him alone, Melanie," barked Mickey. "This ain't no bagnio. You wanna chat him up, you wait till we've finished playing."

"Oh, very well." Miss Melanie pouted. "You'd better lay stakes on him, Harry love," she added in a stage whisper. "Otherwise I may just nab him for myself."

Harry gave her a sickly grin and turned his attention to the cards Mickey had just laid before him.

Ron had shuffled his chair closer to Harry's to accommodate the swell in numbers. His thigh brushed against Harry’s, sending tingles up Harry’s spine that were as delicious as they were alarming. If Harry had thought his concentration was shot the first day he’d gambled after finding Sky, then it was riddled with bullet-holes now.

Ron, meanwhile, was nodding and smiling around at the other players. Unlike Mickey, they were far more vulnerable to the charm offensive that was The Grin. To a man, they all nodded and smiled back, some of them even going so far as to grunt a greeting.

Ron didn’t drop the smile when play began in earnest. It wasn’t until they’d won the first round that Harry realised that The Grin was more than just a ploy for reducing females to gibbering piles of mush -- it was first and foremost the most disconcerting poker face Harry had ever seen. And he was Ron’s partner. The other players were shooting each other darkling looks. These lightened somewhat when Ron offered to stand the next round with his winnings.

The feeling of the rough gin sliding down his throat let Harry slot far more easily into his surroundings. He never paid very much attention when he was playing cards. His hands knew what to do with them. Had his brain been engaged he might have got on better, but that wasn’t why Harry did it in the first place. He played so that he could will away the emptiness for a while.

Except that the emptiness had been receding for weeks now. The Extendable Ears that informed him that Sky was gurgling to herself were the greatest proof of that, but even more so was Ron’s body next to his. The more gin Harry shipped, the more he started to loll towards Ron. That sort of behaviour was totally permissible in drunks and Harry indulged himself to the hilt, even going so far as to rest his cheek on Ron’s shoulder for the entirety of an intermission in play.

Harry had been far drunker playing cards than he was now. The difference between his intoxication then and now was that now, at least half of it was due to his proximity to Ron. Another quarter was due to the fact that he hadn’t had someone to slump against since the first time he’d got drunk when he was seventeen. And the person he’d slumped against that time had been Ron. It was like riding a very oddly-shaped bicycle. Harry could remember just how to do it.

He wasn’t tanked enough to remain ignorant of the fact that Ron was winning two games in every three, with precious little input from Harry and absolutely no change of expression. Mickey believed whole-heartedly in beginner’s luck -- it tended to make people believe that they would have intermediate and advanced luck as well, which was good for business -- but this was going a bit too far. The men’s brows were darkening again and the many rounds Ron had bought weren’t going to do anything to soothe their tempers. Harry didn’t like to think what would have happened if he had not heard something even worse through his Extendable Ears. Sky was crying.

Harry sat bolt upright, his hand clamped to his ear. Sky was sobbing to herself and the sound rent Harry in two. His drink-fogged mind was capable only of latching on to one thought: he had to leave. He had to get back to Sky.

The current game was nearing its natural conclusion, but for Harry every second dragged like a decade. At last it was over, and Ron reached forward to scoop up his winnings. Harry took the opportunity to tug his sleeve.

“Sky,” he whispered hoarsely.

That was all he could say, but fortunately it was all he needed to say. Ron dropped the cash as though it had suddenly become as hot as its origins and helped Harry to his feet. Harry wasn’t quite so paralytic as to require it, but he didn’t mention that. Even in the midst of his fear for Sky, he could appreciate how good it felt to have Ron’s arm about his waist.

“It was great to meet all of you,” said Ron warmly. “But now I think I’ve got to get this squiffy man home.”

The other players immediately brightened, all except for Miss Melanie, who looked considerably put-out.

“Aren’t you going to take your winnings?” asked Mickey.

“No, no. Have another drink on us,” insisted Ron. It was exactly the right thing to do. Harry hammed up his part, crossing his eyes and tripping over his feet as Ron led him out. Ron obviously didn’t realise that Harry was acting, for the fingers at his waist tightened and his other arm snaked around to press Harry’s shirtfront upright.

As soon as they were clear -- the night air hitting Harry’s face like a jackhammer -- Ron pulled his wand from under his shirt. “On three, I’m going to side-along Apparate you,” he said. “One --” Was it Harry’s imagination, or was the hand at his waist stroking the skin under his jumper? “Two --” Ron’s lips were right up against Harry’s ear, so the whisper boomed through his skull. “Three!” And Harry felt the lightest of kisses brush his cheekbone as they were swept away.

::

::

It had been Harry's intention to race to Sky's room as soon as they Apparated in, but he discovered that this was not to be as soon as he tried to take a step forward on his own. The disorientation of Apparation combined with the disorientation of alcohol made walking a precarious exercise in balance gymnastics.

"Steady on, mate," laughed Ron as Harry staggered into the doorframe. "Here." His arms came around Harry again, just in time to prevent him doing a swan-dive into the tiles.

"I didn't realise I was this drunk," said Harry thoughtfully. He became engrossed with the cornice surrounding the bare light bulb in the ceiling and didn't notice that Ron was shepherding him into the living room. When he felt himself being lowered on to the wasp couch, his protest was more vehement than he'd intended.

"I've got to get to Sky!" he protested. To his horror, he felt tears welling in his own eyes. "She was crying. She needs me."

"I know, I know," said Ron. Harry pressed his head against Ron's immovable chest to try and push him away. He only succeeded in getting a mouthful of Ron's shirt. "You're in no state to climb the stairs, though. I'm going to go get Sky and bring her down to you, how about that?"

"Don't -- patronise me!" Harry shouted. Or at least, that's how it started in his brain. By the time the message had travelled down several thousand gin-sodden neurons it was considerably garbled. The cerebral Chinese Whisper reached his mouth as a sad little moan that sounded like 'Down parry knee,' but not so much as it sounded like the product of a severely faulty digestion.

"Right." Ron gently disengaged himself. Harry was horrified to find that his arms had somehow twined around Ron's back like a persistent strain of poison ivy, but the discovery wasn't as bad as the difficulty he was encountering in removing them. Ron got hold of his wrists and tugged them away, but he clasped Harry's hands for a moment before leaving. Harry was left half-drugged from the feeling of Ron's breath on his face and the leg that had briefly been pressed between his knees.

Harry dozed off in the interim. When he woke up, his head was buzzing like a hive of pre-menstrual bees, but his thought processes were far clearer. Not willing to enrage the bees further, Harry kept his movements small.

The fire was lit and the room bathed in flickering yellow. Ron and Sky were sitting on a rug before it. Every so often Ron broke his contemplation of the flames to rock the bouncy chair, which action seemed to please Sky. All evidence of her earlier crying jag had been erased and she now looked perfectly content, if sleepy. A plate of toast was on the floor beside Ron, but it was untouched. Harry realised that he was ravenous.

Before he said a word, Ron's head swivelled in his direction. Harry wondered if he'd heard Harry's stomach grumble, or if he was just periodically checking that Harry hadn't died. Either way, Harry became aware of three things simultaneously: he was stone-cold sober, he had a thumping headache, and he wanted to kiss Ron Weasley very, very much.

"You feeling better?" Ron pitched his voice low in deference to Harry's condition and Sky's half-asleep state, but it only made him sound far sexier than usual. Harry wished his limbs weren't quite so leaden, so he could cross his legs and hide any embarrassing bulges from view.

He cleared his throat instead. "Still pretty rough. Did I fall asleep?"

"Yup. I didn't have the heart to wake you -- you looked so exhausted." Ron leaned forwards and deftly extracted Sky from the harness that secured her to the bouncy seat. "Don't move, I'll bring Sky over to you."

"I'm not an invalid," protested Harry.

"No." Ron grinned, melting Harry's defensiveness like so much snow. "You're disgustingly hungover." Even as he talked, he was moving across the room, coming to a halt before the sofa. He perched on the edge, Sky bundled into his arms.

Harry didn't want Ron to leave straight away. Instead of reaching out for Sky, he touched one finger to her soft cheek. "What was wrong with her?"

"Not a thing besides wanting some attention," said Ron cheerfully. "When I got upstairs she was grouching away to herself, but the moment I picked her up she cut it out. She's a baby who likes to be touched a lot, for reassurance."

"Yeah," said Harry, his voice sounding thick to his own ears. "You're great with her."

"It doesn't take much," laughed Ron. To Harry's surprise, he hoisted Sky up and kissed her noisily on the forehead. "At this age they want food and attention. It's when they start walking and talking that I get crap with them."

"I never noticed that," said Harry.

Ron sent him a speaking look. "Didn't you?" Before Harry could answer, Ron went on, "Do you feel up to holding her?"

"Of course," said Harry. To allay Ron's potential fears, he added, "I don't usually pick her up when I'm under the influence, but I'm not now -- and anyway, I won't be walking anywhere with her."

"I know you wouldn't, Harry," said Ron. Harry had to strain to hear him. "I always trusted you." He held Sky out to Harry.

Harry slipped his hands under the warm bundle. For a moment he got a firm hold, then he realised the thing he was clutching was in fact three of Ron's fingers. They both muttered 'Sorry' at the same instant and tried to pull back, leaving Sky dangling precariously between them. Harry grabbed at her and tucked her into his chest, but the sudden movement overbalanced him and his upper body tipped into Ron's.

"Sorry," he said again. His nose was practically in Ron's ear. Ron was, for some reason, deathly still. When Harry drew back he saw that this was because Ron's eyes were shut tight. He had probably fallen asleep; after all, he'd been up minding Sky while Harry slept off the gin.

Harry licked his suddenly dry lips. There was a split-second opportunity there and he took it. With Sky's head in the crook of his arm, he leaned over her body and pressed his mouth to Ron's as if he did it every day.

A second later he knew it had been a terrible mistake. Ron was not asleep at all. He tensed up; his mouth trembled under Harry's. Mortified, Harry turned his head away and looked down into Sky's drowsy face, wishing he could snatch back the last minute and live it again.

Then Ron's hand drifted up to his face. Shocked, Harry lifted his gaze and discovered that Ron's expression was curiously intense. As if in slow motion, Ron brushed the hair back from Harry's face, smoothing his fingers against Harry's skull again and again until Harry's skin was tingling. He parted his lips unconsciously, fascinated by the way Ron's irises had eclipsed the bright blue.

Ron's hand moved down to cup Harry's cheek, his thumb skimming over the skin under his glasses. Ron's hands were shaking. It was only when Harry's hold on Sky tightened that he found his hands were trembling too.

Tired of waiting, and certain that if he had to do so for a second longer he would physically explode, Harry extricated one hand from under Sky and used it to pull Ron towards him. At the last second Harry's nerve failed him, but Ron didn't hesitate. He closed the tiny gap between their mouths with a soft sigh, which puffed against Harry's skin for an instant before Ron's dry lips rustled against his.

Harry closed his eyes and gave himself up to the sensation of having someone else's mouth moving on his. Ron kissed with sweet hesitancy, pausing every so often for just long enough for Harry to throb with need. One pause lasted just a little too long. Rather than let Ron pull away, Harry shifted beneath him. He slid his fingers through Ron's soft hair and, without warning, tugged him into a deeper kiss. Ron opened his mouth before Harry's onslaught, but Harry's instinct told him that Ron was not going to initiate anything more than that.

For the moment, Harry concentrated on drawing Ron's lower lip between his teeth, scraping it gently in a way that had made him moan helplessly when Zacharias had done it to him. Ron was no stronger than Harry had been, but he panted instead. Harry dug his fingers deeper into Ron's hair, ready to push his tongue past Ron's defences and snog him for all he was worth.

At that moment, Sky let out an affronted squall. Ron and Harry jumped apart and snapped their gazes to the baby squashed between them. Sky had been sinking gradually as the kiss progressed and finally, just as things were getting interesting, she'd started to be suffocated by the sofa cushion.

"Shit!" exclaimed Harry. He snatched her up and dabbed at her drool tenderly, but with a usual level of ineffectiveness. Ron spidered back to the other side of the sofa, flushing scarlet.

Harry's heart was still thumping loud enough to awaken the rock and roll dead, but his brain was catching up with him. He was afraid to look at Ron. He didn't know what would be worse: that Ron would be horrified by his lapse in judgement, or that he'd found their making-out session as much of a turn-on as Harry had.

In the end, he took the coward's way out. His eyes riveted on Sky's downy scalp, Harry muttered, "I'd better put her to bed."

He watched Ron's bare feet leap from the sofa. "I'll have a shower I think!" he shouted as he dashed from the room.

"Okay," said Harry to Sky. "This has the potential to turn into a very sticky situation."

He didn't know how right he was.

::

::

Well aware that he was hiding out, Harry remained in the nursery for a good half an hour. As he rocked, soothed and even sang to Sky, he heard the shower blasting from the bathroom. After a long time, it stopped. He heard footsteps creak past the nursery door without ever pausing.

Sky was giving him looks that succinctly suggested that he bugger off and let her go to sleep. With a sigh, Harry blew her one last kiss, checked that the stars were still shining bright, and trudged towards his own bedroom.

But for one thing it was a much more welcoming place than Harry had ever imagined it could be. The deep red carpet and drapes that Ron had conjured, far from making it look like an austere womb, merely served to make it a cosy retreat. Harry now liked it almost as much as the nursery. If it wasn't for the fact that he was now going to face more music than a compulsive opera-goer he would be delighted to end his day tucked up in bed there.

Ron was sitting on that very bed in his pyjamas, scrubbing his hair with a towel. Harry coughed to announce his presence, then immediately wished he hadn't. Ron flung the towel away as if it had stung him and stared at Harry with a fearful and penitent expression. His wet hair stood up in tufts and whorls not unlike Sky's, and despite knowing what he had to do next Harry felt his heart constrict with both affection and pounding, throbbing lust.

Ordering his legs to move, he padded over to the bed and tucked his legs up beneath him. His face a mask of serenity, he opened his mouth to speak. So did Ron. In confusion, Harry shut his mouth again and gestured for Ron to speak.

Ron, when he spoke, sounded inordinately furious. "I know I should apologise -- for everything. For coming to stay here, for trespassing on your hospitality, but most of all for what just happened. I spent all -- well, nearly all --" his face turned two shades redder "-- of my time in the shower coming up with ways to say sorry to you. But I'm bloody noy."

"Ron --"

"No!" Ron half-shouted. He held up his hand as if to ward himself from Harry's gaze. "Let me finish. Please." He drew a ragged breath. "I'm not sorry. I think I've wanted to kiss you ever since I fucking met you, but first I didn't realise it because I was straight, wasn't I, and then because we were fighting a war and girls were practically throwing themselves at us and then, and then you left ... But I'm not sorry and I never will be. If you want me to leave tonight I don't mind."

"Ron, please shut up!" Harry was nearly giddy with joy. "You do love me, then? Hermione was right?"

"Hermione's always right," muttered Ron. He raised two anguished blue eyes to Harry's face. "I never meant to ... involve you in this. I thought the longer you stayed away the easier it would be to live without you. It didn't quite turn out that way. The moment there was a chance to see you again I grabbed it, and I never thought of the consequences. Perhaps if I'd been more honest with myself before I could have shielded you from this. I am sorry for that."

"I think you're forgetting something."

"What?" Ron's voice was very small and sad.

Harry crawled across the bed until his face was inches from Ron's. "Don't you remember?" He caressed the fabric that was stretched taut over Ron's knee. "I. Kissed. You."

"But I let you!"

"Not really," countered Harry. "I mean, it was a great kiss, but I didn't even get my tongue in before Sky so rudely interrupted us."

"You don't mean you wanted to --"

"A lot," Harry confirmed. He played an arpeggio on Ron's inner thigh. He was quite unprepared for the Ron's reaction, which was to flop back on the pillows and let loose a shriek that would have left a banshee seething with jealousy. After one stunned second, Harry realised that he was laughing.

"All this time," Ron said, "we've been circling around each other, assuming we didn't feel the same way about each other ... why were we so blind?"

"I, at least, have an excuse," said Harry, brandishing his glasses.

"Yes, you do," said Ron, his eyes darkening again. He sat up awkwardly, as if -- like Harry -- he was feeling hyper-aware of every move he made.

"So," said Harry. He bit his lip to stop the grin from sliding back on to his face, for he really was nervous. "What do you say we take up where we left off an hour ago?"

"Sounds good," said Ron shakily.

It was different from the last time, though. That had been a fusion of impulse and instinct, meshed with a 'Get out of jail free' card in the form of Harry's alcohol consumption and addled wits. Now they were both sober and making a conscious decision. Harry fumbled for Ron's waist at the same time Ron tangled fingers with him; Ron's attempt to remove Harry's glasses with aplomb nearly ended up blinding Harry. Harry started to laugh and, after a beat, Ron did too, which broke the tension.

"Here," said Harry, breathless from laughter and lust, and pressed both sweaty palms to Ron's face to bring it forwards. His mouth rubbed over Ron's lips; this time, they opened straight away. Ron's hands slid up under Harry's shirt, his fingers running lightly over the knobbles of Harry's spine.

When Harry stroked his tongue over Ron's lower lip, he started slightly. Harry kept pressing and, eventually, Ron's tongue essayed a quick swipe across Harry's teeth. The thrill this evoked in Harry took him completely by surprise. He arched his arousal into Ron, and was gratified to feel a similar response through Ron's thin pyjamas.

Ron was evidently not so elated. He broke away and rubbed at his spit-shiny mouth. "I'm not sure ..." he began.

"Ron," said Harry in frustration. "Look." He grabbed Ron's hand and thrust it towards his crotch. "I have a huge erection but guess what?" He slipped his own hand between Ron's thighs. "So do you!"

"It's not that." Ron was compulsively licking his lips. Harry, his mind going blurry around the edges, watched Ron's tongue as a hungry hawk might do a family of obese mice on a field trip. "I can't just do this for one night."

"Congratulations on your stamina," said Harry. "Me, I'm lucky if I last ten minutes."

Ron gasped with laughter, which was rapidly truncated when Harry flexed his fingers. "I don't mean like that -- oh God -- I mean -- please, you've got to take your hand away before I --"

Reluctantly, Harry returned his hand to his lap, where he clasped both over his tented jeans. For two pins he would have keep teasing Ron, but that would have denied him the chance to take a good, long look at Ron's erection before he came.

"What do you mean, then?" Harry was aware that he sounded sulky, but Ron's mouth was reddened and inviting and there was no denying that his cock looked like it could do with some tender loving care. Harry couldn't see what the problem was, aside from the obvious one -- that they had stopped.

"I could hardly bear it before," Ron was saying in a gush of words. "You kept giving me all these hot looks, like you'd discovered I was the last other human on the planet, and I wanted you so much. I wanted to fuck you in the middle of Tesco in front of that creepy blue-haired woman --"

"Oh God," said Harry, sniggering. "That probably would have done for her."

Ron ignored him. "But it's not fair. I've been falling in love with you for eleven years. You've fancied me for a week. I don't want to be a -- a one night stand!"

"So," said Harry, carefully, "you'd quite like to hang around, then? With me and Mickey and Sky in this dump of a house."

"Yes. No." Ron's hands curled into fists. "I don't particularly like your gambling habit. I don't like this house or this neighbourhood at all. I think Sky is wonderful but she's not yours, Harry. I -- yes. I want to stay with you. And Mickey. And Sky. In this dump of a house."

"Out of interest, do you usually subject your lovers to this sort of interrogation?" said Harry. "I mean, I love you, despite the fact that you're a blind daft plonker who never thought he was good enough to even hang around with me for some reason, but not everyone has this sort of leverage on their side."

Ron's eyes had gone very wide. "Do you mean that?"

"No, I'm just saying it for the hell of it, because I so often do that," said Harry irritably. "Could we please work out the logistics of it later? Deciding who makes breakfast and who makes dinner is slightly less urgent right now than my cock."

"Oh," breathed Ron. And he smiled.

"Fuck," Harry groaned, as his cock gave an almighty throb. "Please, Ron. I need you ..." In desperation, he stuffed his own hand down his trousers, squeezing hard to provide some small relief.

All at once, cool fingers were drawing his hand away. "Let me deal with that," said Ron, suddenly sounding every inch the authoritative Healer.

Harry allowed himself to be divested of his t-shirt and lay back on the pillows, guided by Ron's hand on his bare chest. His breath came faster and faster as Ron inched his jeans past his hips, his knees and, finally, his ankles -- and left them there.

"Ron," he said thickly.

"No." Ron's kiss was firmer than before, but just as shy. Abandoning finesse and any sort of technique, Harry kissed him back bruisingly hard. He was about to slip him the tongue when Ron's hand wrapped around his cock. Harry's head fell back as he forgot everything but Ron's touch in that most private and wonderful of places.

Ron was faster and rougher than Harry was on himself, but he found he liked it much better. He shamelessly thrust into Ron's hands, and tried to spread his legs wider only to find the jeans around his ankles constricting him. He made do with throwing his knees apart, presenting Ron with a fine view of his trembling thighs.

One of Ron's hands slipped away, but before Harry could protest at the loss Ron's tongue found his nipple and latched on. Harry barely had time to get used to this new sensation before Ron's straying hand found its way to his balls. He fondled them as roughly as he did Harry's cock, but this did nothing except bring Harry to the brink.

Another, almost brutal squeeze wrung a cry of warning from Harry, but before he even thought about coming Ron’s fingertip slid around his balls to rub against the tiny opening there. That Ron even knew about that place, not to mention the thought of what he might want to do with it, was the last straw. Harry cried out again and bucked upwards, splattering semen all over Ron’s waiting hand.

It took several minutes for Harry to come down from his orgasm, and several more for him to remember exactly how to breathe again. When at last he opened his eyes, Ron was stretched alongside him. When their eyes met, Ron smiled and ran the side of his finger down Harry’s cheek.

“Boy, were you noisy,” he said. “I’m used to girls only doing the ‘just stepped on the cat’s tail’ thing and squeaking a bit.”

“Wait till I get to you. You’ll be squeaking like a girl.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

“Both.” Harry reached for Ron, but he evaded him.

“Wait just a sec. Lie back.”

Obediently, Harry did so. He couldn’t resist toeing off his jeans, though, just so he wouldn’t look so ridiculous splayed out in the buff. Embarrassment fought for supremacy over determination in Ron's face. Fascinated, Harry watched as Ron opened out his hand to reveal Harry's come cupped in his palm.

"I'm going to claim you now," said Ron. He snorted. "It seemed like a better idea two minutes ago, but what the hell."

Dipping his index finger into the milky fluid, he touched a drop to Harry's forehead, each of his nipples and, finally, to his lower lip. Then he shoved down his pyjama pants and brought out his cock. With infinite slowness, he bathed his straining erection in Harry's come and began to pump.

Harry smiled. His muscles still felt like flax, but he shuffled around so that he was kneeling behind Ron, his body pressed up against Ron's back and Ron's firm arse pressed up against Harry's already stirring cock. Harry bent his head to kiss Ron's shoulder and up along his neck as Ron shuddered and his fingers flew up and down. At last, Harry deemed it time to lend a helping hand. A deep groan issued from Ron's lax mouth, but it was superseded by another when Harry curved his other hand around the underside of Ron's buttocks.

Harry let loose a throaty laugh. "It feels as good as it looks," he informed Ron, and began to lift and squeeze.

"Huh?" Ron turned a bleary eye on him. His arms were clenched with effort; he wasn't going to last long.

"Tell you later," whispered Harry, and leaned in to finally slide his tongue into Ron's mouth before Ron gave in to greater forces than God and gravity combined, and came.

::

::

"I can't help it," Harry said, but he was laughing.

"It's cooking." Ron shook a mixing spoon at him. "It is necessary for the continuation of life and the species, because no one seems to be able to live on raw meat. That's it."

"Exactly." Harry slipped off the counter and kissed Ron full on the lips. It turned out that Ron hadn't outgrown his blush after all; it was merely dormant, and all that was required to bring it to the fore was Harry's mouth on his skin. "The other thing required for the continuation of the species is sex. That's why they're both so hot."

"Speaking of hot --!" Ron leaped forward to rescue an enthusiastically bubbling pan from imminent conflagration.

Harry went back to contentedly eating Ron's supply of strawberries and observing him prepare salmon en croûte. There were certain spheres of life in which Ron was utterly competent: cooking, Healing, changing dirty nappies and making Harry come. In any of these, he was a joy to watch. He didn't realise his own appeal, which made it all the more enjoyable.

Harry was jolted out of his reverie by a most unprecedented noise -- the doorbell ringing. Ron dropped a whisk and turned to look at Harry with a questioning expression.

"I'll get it," said Harry. He grabbed Ron's dressing gown to cover the fact that he was dressed in extremely revealing boxers. He doubted the average passer-by would appreciate them to quite the same extent that Ron did. "It's probably the milkman."

To Harry's everlasting gratitude, Ron didn't mention the fact that he'd already brought in the four cartons of milk two hours before. Instead, he said, "Don't be too long, or the strawberries will be pleading wilful abandonment."

The tiles were cold against Harry's feet, but he didn't dare to perform a Warming Charm in case the caller was a Muggle. The last thing Harry wanted, now that his life was finally getting back on track, was a letter from the Misuse of Magic Squad.

There was a woman standing on his doorstep. For a June day, the weather was chilly, but Harry got the impression that this woman would have huddled into her coat in the same fearful way in the middle of the Sahara. She raised two dull blue eyes to his face, and Harry knew who she was.

"Lily," he said, even though the word stuck in his throat. "Do you want to come in?"

::

::

The kitchen table was Ron's pride and joy, a symphony of blue speckled marble and distressed walnut legs. Unfortunately there were only two chairs. Skinny and underfed as Lily White looked, Harry doubted that she'd fit into Sky's high chair.

"Please, sit down," he said. He wrapped the dressing gown tighter around himself. He felt caught out, although there was no denying that the rich, clean wool was a damn sight more presentable than Lily's street clothes.

"Thank you." Lily's voice didn't even deserve the accolade of whisper. A light breeze would have drowned her out.

"Can I get you something to eat?" asked Harry. "My boy -- Ron, my housemate, was making lunch. He'll easily stretch it to three."

"I don't want to put you to any trouble," murmured Lily.

"It's no trouble," said Harry, rather too strongly. He stuck his head round the door and hollered for Ron.

He needn't have bothered. Ron was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. Sky was in his arm, dressed in a Babygro, ra-ra skirt and frilly jumper, in addition to her duck-blanket papoose. Her bouncy chair sat on the stairs beside Ron.

"Problem?" mouthed Ron.

Harry shook his head and spoke normally. "Come on in," he said. Ron raised his eyebrows at the unnatural high C that Harry's voice was hitting, but he obeyed. Harry trusted that Lily noticed nothing amiss.

Harry positioned himself at the counter, in an ideal position to see the way Lily's eyes widened hungrily at the sight of Sky. With a distrustful glance in Lily's direction, Ron handed Sky over to Harry.

"Ron, this is Lily White." Harry swallowed. "Sky's mother. Lily, this is Ron, my housemate. He'll be making us lunch."

"Oh, I will, will I?" muttered Ron under his breath. All the same, he returned to dicing lettuce leaves. His back was stiff and he took care to keep it turned to Lily all the time, even when he needed to face her.

After a few minutes of tense silence, during which Lily's face became greyer and greyer, Harry couldn't stand it any longer.

"Look," he said in a harsh voice that he hardly recognised as his own, "I think we all know why you're here, right? You've come to take Sky back."

"Sky?" said Lily in her tiny voice. "Is that what you called her?" She shook her head in wonder. "I called her Matilda."

"Well, if you had perhaps informed me of the fact, I would have done so too," said Harry testily. "Obviously you forgot to leave a nametag when you dumped her on my doorstep."

"Oh, no." Lily shook her head. Her wispy hair was confined under a jaunty patterned scarf. It was at odds with the rest of her appearance, which seemed to suggest a desire to blend in with the pavement. "I didn't quite do that. Mickey suggested that you'd be able to give her a good home. A different home." For a moment, Harry felt vindicated. "I stayed until you opened the door and took her inside. You think I would have left my own child to die of exposure because Mickey's judgement was wrong for the first time in his life?"

"I don't really know what to think of you," Harry admitted. "It's been six weeks and this is the first time you've been to visit her."

"I was occupied." Lily's smile was as weak as the rest of her, but her face was grim. She shrugged out of her coat with visible effort and rolled up the sleeves of her shapeless jumper.

Harry's gasp made Ron turn around. His eyes narrowed as he took in the same sight that had greeted Harry. Lily's frail arms were an atlas of bruises. Most were an angry red, shading to purple, but there was evidence of older bruises fading to green and yellow beneath the newer ones.

"You don't know me," said Ron, "and I'm not really involved in this situation, but if you think I'm letting an innocent child go back to that sort of treatment you've got another think coming."

Lily rested her steady blue gaze on him. Harry watched Ron's face tense up. "Not really involved, you say? But aren't you involved with him? That makes you involved in Mat -- Sky's welfare too."

"We're friends," Ron blustered.

"I'm sure you are. You're also lovers." Lily shrugged. "Do you think I'm going to condemn you for loving someone like that? Given my own less than picture-perfect heterosexual marriage? No, if I had the chance you two have, then I'd take it quick as look at you."

"Mickey," guessed Harry.

"Partly. That is to say, Melanie told him her suspicions, and he figured out the rest himself. But give me some credit." Lily's smile was genuine this time. "I can see the way you look at him -- are looking at him now. If you weren't lovers I'd be getting a bit worried."

"Er, okay." Harry scratched the back of his head. "I take it Norm's gone back to the ship, then?"

"A ship," Lily corrected him. "He used to work on a Norwegian trawler. It kept him away for months at a time. But he got laid off and he's been taking work wherever he can get it." She hugged herself. "It means he's home far more often."

Abruptly, Ron pulled up the other chair, leaving the salmon to its fate. "Lily, I think it's time you laid all your cards on the table. It's not fair on Sky for you to turn up whenever Norm's off on his ship and take her back, to upset her like that. It's even less fair on Harry." He paused. "On Harry and I. You're right. We're a pair, now. And with Sky we make a family." Harry blindly grabbed for Ron's shoulder. Ron reached up to clasp Harry's hand with his own. "It's a bloody odd family, I'll admit, but we certainly don't beat the child around the place and nor would we. Ever. My father raised seven children without ever laying a hand on us." He tactfully left out the times Mrs Weasley had chased her spawn around the kitchen with a wooden spoon.

"I didn't come to take her back," said Lily quietly. "I came to say goodbye."

"Are you moving away?" Harry furrowed his brow.

"No." A flicker of warmth passed over Lily's face, and was gone. "I'm dying."

Ron sat back, stunned. He lost his grip on Harry's fingers. "Of what? I'm a He -- a doctor."

"That's good. But you can't help me. I have terminal cancer." At Ron's blank look, Lily added, "Breast cancer. It runs in the family."

"How long have you known?" whispered Harry.

"Since I got pregnant. I had the option of chemo, but I would have lost the baby." Lily's glittering eyes fell on to Sky's slumbering face. "But I knew I couldn't leave a baby with Norm after I died. That's why I asked Mickey to help me as soon as I knew. He started looking around for a new home right away."

"Why didn't you use the normal channels? Adoption? Foster homes?" asked Harry.

Lily's voice was full of derision. "And let Norm have the chance of finding out where she was? Never. And do you think they'd let me adopt her out when she has a living father, to whom I am in fact married? Don't be ridiculous. That just doesn't happen. By the time they realised Norm's true nature it would be too late for her. I knew Mickey's way was the only way."

"And is Mickey your -- was he --" Despite the three extremely dirty things he'd done to Ron only a few hours before, Harry found he couldn't finish the sentence.

"He's my brother." Lily's gaze swung between the three of them. "I knew what you must think of me. I doubt you would have understood at the beginning. That's why I waited until now. You've had the experience of being a parent. Maybe now you know that I'd never have left a child if I had any other way. If I wasn't dying, I'd have found the courage to leave Norm once and for all. I'd have done anything to give her a better life."

"Well." Ron's voice was oddly final. "You got lucky. Because that's just what we'll give her."

The last fierceness seemed to drain out of Lily, leaving behind an almost luminous serenity. "I'm glad." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I'm so glad."

"What are you going to do now?" asked Harry, as Sky started to waken.

"Mickey's bought me a private bed in a nice hospital," said Lily. "I've got my few bits together. He's going to visit me. It will be very ... peaceful."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"You mean, am I sure I don't want to take Sky anyway?" She sent Harry the ghost of a wink. "I'm sure. She's the only thing that's making it hard to leave. I didn't want to go without saying goodbye, though. I couldn't."

"Of course not," said Harry, although he didn't really understand why Lily didn't want to snatch Sky and make a run for it, cancer or no cancer.

Lily fumbled in her voluminous pockets. "I brought a few things," she said haltingly. "For her to remember me by. I hope you don't mind."

"No, no, it's good." Harry smiled. "I don't think she'll buy the story that Ron had her, no matter what he thinks."

"Thank you." Lily started laying out a few meagre possessions on the table. Harry saw a photograph and a necklace before he had to turn away.

He dropped a kiss on Ron's temple, realising afresh that he was luckier than he knew. Not only that Ron had turned out to love him back after all these years, but also that he wasn't a psychotic violent bastard. By comparison, the small matter of both of them being male and having to inform Mrs Weasley that she would be deprived of a whole set of grandchildren from Ron was small beans. After all, Sky might soften the blow.

Ron relaxed into the kiss and, after a moment, left the room and the bouncy chair behind. Harry approached Lily and held out his arms. Lily's face had a terrible hope in it.

"I thought you'd like to hold her," Harry explained. "I thought you'd like to hold Matilda for the last time."

::

::

Harry lay with Matilda on his chest while Ron blew raspberries on her tummy. He was starting to feel left out, what with all the soppy attention Ron was lavishing on her.

"Don't!" exclaimed Ron as Harry pulled him down into a sloppy kiss. He extricated himself before Harry's tongue had time to gain any purchase. "We're official parents now. We have to be responsible."

"Responsible my arse," growled Harry. He steadied Matilda with one hand and wedged his leg between Ron's knees, making him fall over -- right on to Harry's waiting mouth.

"We'll squash her," Ron mumbled.

"What, you mean again?" Harry flicked his tongue over Ron's stubbled chin. "I think she's getting used to it by now."

"It must be scarring her, though," Ron insisted. They both turned to look at Matilda. Ron's chin was wet with saliva and Harry wasn't much more respectable. Matilda regarded the both of them with bovine interest.

"Doesn't look too scarred to me," said Harry, grabbing Ron. "And I know about scars."

In a very short time, their kisses became more heated. A little careless of the baby on his chest, Harry pulled Ron down so that their thinly-clad legs were entwined.

"No!" said Ron again. "I'm sorry, but I refuse to expose myself in front of my daughter like this. If you want a fuck, she has to go for a nap first."

"Damn," grumbled Harry. "I thought parents' libidos were supposed to flag hopelessly after having kids. No chance there. I'm horny as hell."

"To be fair, we didn't actually have her." Ron's conscientious expression made Harry even harder with the desire to wipe it off in the most effective way he knew.

“Shut up and kiss me,” said Harry. “I promise I won’t cop a feel. But it’ll take ages to get her off to sleep and I’m dying.”

“Dying, is it?” Ron muttered into Harry’s mouth. “Do tell that to your cock, won’t you? It seems to have other ideas.”

With an effort, Harry broke the kiss. He sat up, carefully holding Matilda out of the range of his tented pyjamas, and rocked her. “Who wants to go to sleep? Matilda does,” he said, in hopes that it would invoke some sort of hypnotism.

Matilda gurgled. “Da,” she said. Harry froze. Behind him, Ron did too.

“Da,” Matilda repeated, smiling. Her hands waved in the air, patting Harry on the cheek. “Da Da. Da ... Da.”

“That’s right,” said Harry, an enormous silly grin on his face. “Da and Da.”

“Oh, great.” Ron was resigned. “Now she’s talking, we really can’t have sex anywhere near her. Even in the same house as her. Next thing we know she’ll have told my mother all about it and we’ll be getting nasty looks and extra helpings of greens for the rest of our natural lives.”

Harry shrugged. It seemed a small price to pay, as Matilda informed the door, the carpet and the light fixtures that she had a ‘Da’ and another ‘Da’.

Besides, he thought -- as Ron’s hand drifted across his arse before coming to rest on the small of his back -- it would be an easy rider to get around. After all, Ron had once said the same thing about Harry’s ideas concerning the whipped cream, the chive low-fat spread, the hot toffee sauce, and the handcuffs (strangely, he’d been less disturbed by them than he had by the deviant uses for cream cheese).

“Okay,” said Harry Potter, and grinned.

(Sophie B Hawkins)