Nightmare

Title - NIGHTMARE
Author - Rina76
Email - rina762003@hotmail.com
Summary - One night at Hogwarts. Harry has a nightmare.
Pairing – Harry and Ron Weasley
Disclaimer - The characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Mmmkay?

Note - Part one is just a sweet little fic about sweet little boys who have a sweet little crush on each other. Perfect if you're after something light and fluffy that won't leave a sour taste in your mouth! :)

Later chapters will be more adult.


***

Harry woke gasping for breath, in a cold sweat, the claws of the terrifying dream he’d just had still gripping his chest like a vice. His hand went up to his scar, expecting to find it burning but it wasn’t. The zigzag shaped scar felt rough under his fingers but cool, his forehead slick with icy perspiration. Just a dream, it’s only a dream. Harry was trying to convince himself it had just been a figment of his imagination but then he’d had other dreams before and they had turned out coming to life. He had to be sure.

Wiping his face with his pyjama sleeve, he crept out of bed and gazed around fearfully, his bare feet padding on the floor. He didn’t have his glasses on and couldn’t see very well but he was fairly sure there were no big scary monsters lurking in the darkness, only sleeping boys, the soft snores and wheezes the only sounds in the air. Comforting sounds. Not like the horrible roar that had filled his head as he battled that thing in his dream, what was it? Some awful scaly, jagged-toothed creature with burning yellow eyes. He shivered involuntarily, looking around him as he reached the curtains surrounding his friend’s bed and parted the drapes. Squinting into the blackness, he could make out the huddled figure of a boy lying on his side and enshrouded in blankets, with his back facing Harry.

“Ron?” he whispered, kneeling on the bed. There was no answer. Harry touched Ron’s shoulder through the blanket and shook him gently. “Ron, are you awake?”

When there was no response, he shook Ron’s shoulder harder. For a completely frightening moment he was absolutely sure that there was a corpse in the bed in front of him and then, to his weak relief, Ron stirred and rolled over, rubbing his eyes.

“I am now,” he mumbled sleepily and sat up, focusing his bleary gaze on the outline of a person kneeling on his bed. “Harry? Is that you?”

Ron fumbled around under his pillow and found his wand, a twisted length of wood, no more than a stick really, but it was all he could afford. He spoke the word, Lumos, and the tip of the wand burst into green light, illuminating the dark haired boy in his pyjamas that had just awakened him. Ron was about to tell him off, irritated at being woken at this time of the night when he noticed how fraught Harry looked.

“What’s going on?” Ron asked, stifling a yawn and poking the glowing wand in the crack between his pillow and the bed head to hold it upright. “Are we sneaking out or something?”

“No, Ron,” Harry said softly, not wanting to disturb the other slumbering boys. “I just- I just had the most awful dream. It- it was so real.”

Ron heard the tremor in Harry’s voice and immediately got worried. “Blimey,” he exclaimed, the last traces of sleep vanishing like smoke in the wind. “Did your scar hurt?” He stared at Harry’s forehead as if expecting the scar to be glowing or something but it looked as it always did, red and kind of angry looking, showing through a part in his dark fringe.

“Not this time,” Harry said, bringing his knees up and wrapping his arms around his legs protectively. He rested his chin on his knees and gazed at Ron, his green eyes troubled. “I wasn’t dreaming about Voldemort.”

Ron relaxed visibly. “Well, that’s a relief. So, what were you dreaming about then?”

Harry looked away, biting his lip. Now that he was certain it was just a dream, he felt dumb and didn’t want to tell Ron what it was about. He would probably laugh at him. “It was nothing,” he muttered lamely. “Stupid, really.”

Ron’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Nothing? If it was just nothing then why did you wake me up in the middle of the night? Huh, Harry?”

“I’ll go and let you get back to sleep, then,” Harry said, avoiding the question and made a move to leave but Ron grabbed his arm.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Ron said sternly. “You’re not leaving until you tell me what it was about. You owe me that much, Harry.”

Harry met Ron’s searching blue gaze. He sighed. “Fine, I’ll tell you,” he relented. “But only if you promise not to laugh.”

“I swear I won’t laugh,” Ron said rolling his eyes. “Cross my heart. C’mon Harry, just tell me.”

“Well, there was this thing, some monster, like a dragon but different. Kind of a snake and a dragon mixed together with loads of teeth, like a shark and black claws. It had scales and wings and these horrible yellow eyes. Really scary,” Harry explained. Now that he was putting the nightmare into words, it didn’t seem quite so bad. He’d seen, and battled, worse creatures in real life.

Ron was listening enthralled like it was a fascinating bed time story. He reached under his bed and brought out a bulging brown paper sack. “Toffee?” He asked.
Harry politely declined, not wanting to get tooth decay by snacking on sweets between meals. Shrugging, Ron popped one into his mouth and replaced the sack into its hiding place.

“And?” Ron mumbled around the toffee. “What happened?”

“I was fighting it,” Harry said. “But I woke up before I killed it.”

Ron was looking at him half-amused, half-sympathetic. “It doesn’t sound too bad, Harry. At least it didn’t kill you.”

Looking away again, Harry said quietly, “That wasn’t the worst part, Ron.”
His chest squeezed painfully, remembering how he’d felt in the dream when he’d attacked the monster, screaming with rage and despair, shooting bolts of lightning at it from the end of his wand.

“The reason I was fighting it was because-” Harry hesitated and glanced back at his friend. Ron, still sucking on the toffee, made an impatient gesture, his blue eyes wide with excited interest.

“Because it ate you, Ron.”

Suddenly, Ron was making choking noises and his face turned purple. Alarmed, Harry thumped him on the back until the sweet was dislodged from Ron’s throat and swallowed. Gasping for air, Ron stared at the other boy.

“Blutty hell, Harry,” he wheezed, his face returning to its normal pale colour, his freckles standing out vividly. “Couldn’t you have dreamt about me winning the Tri-Wizard Tournament or something? Why do your dreams always have to be so dark and gloomy?”

“I’m sorry Ron,” Harry apologised weakly. “I can’t help what I dream. Besides, it was just a silly nightmare. It doesn’t mean it’s going to really happen.”

“I hope not,” Ron replied wryly. “If I get eaten by a dragon snake thingy, I’m coming back to haunt you.”

Harry couldn’t help a grin forming on his face. Ron always put things in perspective and had a knack for cheering Harry up. Seeing Harry grin made Ron smile too. It was something he loved to see, Harry could be so serious sometimes and when he was, he had this constant worried look on his face, making him seem like an old man. Without his ever-present glasses on, Harry looked sort of different, younger and a little bit vulnerable, his green eyes really quite striking.

“What?” Harry asked and Ron realised he had been staring.

“Nothing,” he quickly said. “I was just thinking how different you look when you don’t wear your glasses.” With horror, Ron realised he’d just said the very thing he didn’t want to say.

“Different?” Harry repeated, becoming quite self-conscious. “In a bad or good way?”

“Good.” Ron cringed, unable to stop the words coming out of his mouth. “Not that you look bad with glasses, ‘cos you don’t, not at all. If I wore glasses I would get the biggest ribbing ever but you, glasses really suit you, Harry.”

“Oh.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He felt his face heat. Did Ron just pay him a compliment? That was…odd. But strangely pleasing, nevertheless.

With mounting bewilderment, Ron wondered what was the matter with himself. Why was he rambling on about Harry’s glasses?

“Um, maybe I should go back to bed,” Harry suggested awkwardly. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

“No, don’t go,” Ron pleaded. “I don’t mind, really.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asked. He didn’t really feel like sleeping and it was comforting being around Ron, even if he was acting weirdly. If he went back to bed now he would probably spend the rest of the night trying not to think about that nightmare and why it upset him so much.

“Of course. I want you to stay with me, Harry,” Ron confessed, against his wishes, once again astounded at the sentences spewing from his lips.

Harry looked at him for a long while in the green light of the wand. Ron’s red hair was all mussed up from sleep, like a birds nest. Ron hated his ginger hair and his freckles but Harry liked them. He liked the way Ron’s sky blue widened in incredulity, excitement and occasionally, fear. He loved the cute way his lips quirked up at the corner. He liked the way Ron always looked on the bright side of things and his infectious grin, his dry sense of humour, his loyalty, his bravery. Just by being friends with Harry, Ron’s life had been in danger many times and probably would be again but he never blamed Harry or stopped being his friend.

And that’s why Harry had come to Ron’s bed in the middle of the night after that nightmare. Ron was his best friend and if anything ever happened to him, Harry would never forgive himself. He shivered involuntarily, recalling the horrid sounds of Ron’s bones breaking in that thing’s mouth.

“Are you cold?” Ron asked in misunderstanding, peeling the blankets back. “You can get in, it’s warm in here.”

For a second, Harry thought of refusing then decided impulsively to climb under the covers. Ron moved over so Harry could share his pillow and the two boys lay face to face, the blankets draped around their shoulders. Being this close together, in Ron’s bed, made Harry unexplainably nervous. It also gave him a chance to really look at his friend’s face, the familiar angles and contours highlighted with the magic green glow emanating from the wand. In the few years that he’d known Ron, he’d noticed the changes in him as he matured, the inches he sprouted up, the deepening of his voice, broadening of his shoulders, the subtle reshaping of his facial structure. Ron seemed to be studying him too.

“Stupid dream, huh?” Harry joked, trying to quell the intangible tenseness in the air between them.

“Yeah.” Ron smiled. “Thanks for telling me, though. Sometimes, I have dreams like that and you always come and save me.”

Immediately, Ron blushed, not intending to tell Harry that personal information but he had no control of his tongue lately. He expected Harry to make fun of at that revealing insight into his subconscious mind but he didn’t. He just gazed at him intently.

“I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Ron,” he said softly. “Not as long as I draw breath. You’re my best friend.”

Ron gulped and had a sudden urge to reach out and touch Harry’s scar. He’d often wondered what it felt like but he didn’t dare. He didn’t know if Harry would even let him touch it.

“You’re my best friend too, Harry,” Ron told him. “I dunno what I’d do without you.” Ron’s blue eyes widened in that appealing way when he realised what he’d just said. He decided to quickly change the subject before he said anything else daft and sappy. “Er, so who are you going to take to the end of year ball?”

Harry blinked. “Um, well, I’m not sure,” he mused. “What about you? Are you going to ask Hermione?”

“Hermione?” Ron asked in surprise. “Why would I ask her?”

“I thought you liked her,” Harry queried.

“Well, not in that way,” Ron stressed, an aghast look on his face. “She’s our friend AND she’s a girl. I don’t even like girls!”

“You don’t?” Harry raised his eyebrows. That was interesting. Very interesting.

Again, Ron flushed. “I mean, I like girls. I just don’t like any particular girl at the moment, that’s all. That’s what I meant.”

“Right,” Harry replied, not quite believing him. They were both fifteen and going through puberty and Ron was telling him he didn’t have a crush. There were plenty of pretty girls at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft and not one was even remotely attractive? There was another possibility…

“Who do you like then?” Harry asked deliberately. “It doesn’t have to be a girl.”

Before he could stop himself, Ron blurted out, “You, Harry. I wish I could take you.”

He clapped his hands over his traitorous mouth and his eyes went round with shock. What was making him spill his innermost secrets to the one person in the world he didn’t want to tell? It was as if he’d been put under a spell...

Fred and George! They had given him those sweets and he would bet a million dollars, which he didn’t have, that he’d just eaten one of his twin brothers’ magic Truth Toffees. He was gonna kill them!

Embarrassed beyond belief, Ron turned away from Harry and buried his face in his hands. This was incredibly awful. He wished he could conjure up a black hole and dive into it. He could just die. What must Harry think of him now?

“Ron?” Harry’s concerned voice filtered through the consuming haze of mortification that filled Ron’s head.

“Go away,” he whispered, blinking back hot tears that threatened to spill over. He would not, could not, cry in front of Harry. He was humiliated enough.

“Ron, come on. Look at me.” He didn’t respond to Harry’s gentle urging.

“Just go away.” Ron’s words were muffled by his hands.

“Did you mean what you said?”

“No! I mean, yes. Bloody hell! It was the toffee. It’s making me say things.”

“A Truth Toffee?” Harry had heard of those. Fred and George made all kinds of bewitched sweets for fun. Well, that would certainly explain Ron’s erratic behaviour.

“Yes,” Ron groaned. “Now leave me alone.” He felt the bed move as Harry shifted and was astonished to feel his friend slip his arm around his waist and press against his back, all warm and soft and very much welcome. Was he dreaming?

“I wish we could go together too,” Harry told him. He didn’t know at what exact moment he fell in love with his best friend but he’d wanted to know for so long if Ron felt the same and hadn’t dared to bring the issue up in case he was wrong. Now he knew. He was going to personally thank Fred and George for duping Ron with a magic toffee.

“You do?” Ron sounded flabbergasted.

“I really do, Ron.” Harry carefully prised Ron’s hands away from his face and threaded his fingers through his friend’s. Ron’s hands were trembling. “There’s nobody else in the whole world that I’d rather spend the night of the ball with.”

“Oh.”
Ron didn’t know how to respond to this information and Harry’s intimate touch. They’d never held hands before. Not that Ron hadn’t wanted to on the odd occasion. It was nice.

“I’m glad you told me the truth, Ron. Even though you didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. I’ve wanted to know how you really feel for ages.”

“Well,” Ron replied, his voice squeaky. “Now you do.”

They lay there for a while, just getting used to the contact of eatherther’s bodies and the feel of their fingers entwined.

Then Harry said, “Ron? Would you please roll over? I want to see you.”

The redheaded boy reluctantly turned over on the bed and met a pair of searching green eyes, framed with dark lashes. He inhaled quickly as Harry reached up and touched his face. Ron’s cheek was warm and smooth, covered with soft, fine down. They hadn’t started shaving yet but it wouldn’t be long before they did. Harry explored Ron’s face with his hand, getting to know the feel of every curve and plane, his brows, his nose, his cheekbones, and finally his lips. Ron closed his eyes for a moment as Harry’s thumb traced the outline of his full mouth, causing his lips to tingle madly.

“I want to touch your scar,” he whispered, still caught in the web of the truth spell.

“Go on then,” Harry encouraged softly.

Ron carefully fingered the zigzag wound on his friend’s forehead, acutely aware that he was the only one who had been given the privilege of touching the legendary remnant of Voldemort’s attempted murder. The patch of healed skin felt like any other scar, like one he had on his own leg from when he fell six feet to the ground right onto the corner of a table after a failed levitation spell. Still, it was the most fantastic gift he’d been given in his whole fifteen years of existence.

Ron and Harry felt each other’s faces with a sense of awe and wonder, a sense of discovery, of new and exciting possibilities within reach. Something incredible and wonderful was unfurling between them, something that had been there for so long, lying dormant, was now awakening. It made their breathing quicken and their hearts race. Their fingers appeared to be stirring the nerves under the skin of their faces until each feather light graze seemed to scorch and sear right through muscle and flesh to the bone underneath. Each brush of fingertips sent tremors of pure pleasure coursing through both of the boys’ chests, bellies and limbs.

“Wow, Harry,” Ron exclaimed, trying to keep his tone low. “This is amazing! This is…magic!”

“I know,” Harry breathed, marvelling that such a simple gesture of affection could feel so stupendously good. Ron touched Harry’s mouth and he parted his lips in a sigh, his warm breath sending skitters over the other boy’s fingers and down his arm. The tip of Harry’s tongue connected with the pad of Ron’s thumb. Ron shuddered and gasped at the exquisite sensation.

“I love you, Ron,” Harry said quietly, gazing deep into Ron’s sky blue eyes, letting him see the depth of his emotion, letting him see into his very soul. A solitary tear slipped down Ron’s freckled cheek, leaving a silvery trail of moisture which Harry rubbed away tenderly.

“I love you too,” Ron choked out. “I love you so much, Harry. I always have. From the moment I first met you on the train and my chocolate frog jumped out the window.”

Harry grinned, his teeth gleaming white in the light of the wand, tiny crinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. This was the boy he loved. Ron. Funny, sweet, cute, sensitive. His best friend.

And he was alive, not eaten by an imaginary monster. He was very much alive. His pulse fluttered in his pale throat, just under his jaw line, erratic and uneven.

“I want you to kiss me,” Ron said desperately, his eyes full of yearning. “Please, Harry. Please.”

He knew he wouldn’t have begged like that if he wasn’t under the influence of the spell, but Ron didn’t care at that moment. He just wanted something he’d only been able to have in his secret dreams. He wanted Harr
Ha
Harry’s expression turned serious and he cradled Ron’s face in his hands, thinking how beautiful his friend looked in his overwhelming need. He closed the gap between them and gently pressed their lips together. Ron shivered and sank his fingers into Harry’s dark hair, holding him there as if he was afraid he would recoil. But he didn’t.

Ron’s mouth was soft under his and Harry made a murmuring sound deep in his throat as he finally did what he’d been longing to do so badly for the last year or so. Harry kissed him again, firmer this time, wrapping his arms around the red-haired boy’s warm, pyjama-clad body, pulling him close in his embrace, shielded from prying eyes by the curtains enveloping the bed.

As Ron whimpered and melted against him under the bedclothes, the green glow of the wand sputtered out, plunging them into darkness once more.

They kissed for a long time. Nice kisses, soft kisses, gentle exploratory kisses that slowly gave way to deeper, harder, more insistent expressions of their feelings. The two young men tasted the inside of each other’s mouths, their tongues stroking and dancing together which was even more magical and electric than the touching they did earlier. The green-eyed boy and the blue-eyed boy lost themselves in wet, hot, delicious kisses and inquisitive caresses, running their seeking fingers through each other’s silky hair and getting to know the shape and heat of each other’s adolescent masculine bodies through the flannel material of their pyjamas, delighting in the extraordinary closeness and intimacy that they hadn’t had the joy of experiencing before.

Under the black cloak of night, within the heavy drapes around the bed and beneath the blankets, Harry and Ron lost track of all time and place in their own private world of burgeoning sensuality, until finally the sparkling intensity faded back into sweet, comfortable familiarity and they began to feel sleepy again. Without even saying anything, they ceased the love-play and snuggled together, happy, safe and secure.

They both knew, on an instinctive level, that kissing and caressing was all they should do for the moment. And when they were a little bit older and the time was right, they would go further and permanently cement their devotion by merging physically as well as emotionally. But for now, this was enough.

A short while later, Harry’s whisper floated out into the midnight air. “Ron? Are you still awake?” They still had their arms around each other.

“Yes,” came the answering whisper. “What is it?”

“Do you know what I think?” Harry replied to his own question. “Instead of trying to find partners, I think we should just go to the ball together.”

“Really?” Ron sounded both pleased and startled. “You and me?”

“Yes. You and me. How about it?” Harry squeezed Ron affectionately.

“Is…is that even allowed?”

“I don’t think we’ll get arrested for it, Ron,” Harry drawled.

“Well, I would love to but…but what would people think?” Ron said dubiously.

“Oh, I don’t think they’d be that surprised, actually,” Harry mused. “I mean, we do everything else together, don’t we?”

Ron was silent for a few seconds, wondering, Could we really do that? Could we just show up at the ball together? As partners? As…as boyfriends?

“Crikey, what about Malfoy?” Ron asked, remembering the nasty platinum-haired Slytherin boy whose relentless mission was to create as much trouble for Harry and Ron as he possibly could. He creased his forehead in mounting trepidation. “You know what he’s gonna say about us, don’t you, Harry?”

“My dear Ron,” Harry said patiently, planting a fond kiss on top of the boy’s red head. “I don’t give a flying broomstick what Draco Malfoy thinks about us. And neither should you. He can just take his expensive wand in his skinny white fingers and shove it right where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Ron chuckled at the amusing mental image Harry painted and squeezed him back. “In that case, you got yourself a date.”

***

The night of the end of year ball.

“My, my, look what we have here. Dumb and dumber,” Draco Malfoy sneered as Harry and Ron walked past him into the festooned, candle-lit hall, dressed in their finest robes but both without a girl by their side.

Harry and Ron turned around and faced their enemy. Draco stood there in a robe of the deepest royal blue, emphasising his pale skin and white-blond hair, which was slicked back in his regular fashion. He had his arm around his partner, one of the Slytherin girls who eyed the Gryffindor boys with distaste as if they were disgusting little bugs. Draco was smirking at Ron and Harry as he usually did, his two beefy sidekicks standing by ready to do his bidding like obedient, but stupid mutts.

“Why are you two all alone? What’s the matter? Couldn’t conjure up a date?” Draco’s buddies sniggered at his taunting.

“Oh, we have dates,” Harry declared and he and Ron pointedly looked at each other, smiled, and looked back at Draco, their meaning clear as crystal. The bully blinked at them.

“That’s right. We came together,” Ron stated, bravely taking Harry’s hand in his own and staring at Draco defiantly. The Slytherin boy’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. So did the jaws of the girl and the two lackeys beside him.

“So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it,” Harry told Draco. He unflinchingly met Draco’s eyes, challenging the blond to make a comeback.

“Yeah, Malfoy. Choke on it,” Ron added fearlessly, not afraid in the least of the other boy, not with Harry’s strong, warm hand in his. For once in his life, Draco Malfoy could not think of anything to say. Harry and Ron walked away hand in hand, leaving the blond wizard in a state of speechless shock.

“You made it,” Hermione cried, running up to them, holding the hem of her long glittering gown up with both hands so she didn’t trip on it. She looked very pretty, her normally wild hair sleeked back out of her face in a glamorous up-do and a big flower behind her ear. “Oh, doesn’t the hall look fabulous? And everybody looks so gorgeous and…”

She glanced down and her mouth made an ‘O’ shape when she saw her two best friends holding hands. Her eyes went round and she dragged her gaze back up, alternating between Harry and Ron who were thinking of how to break the news to her. Before either of them could speak, she squealed and threw her arms around them both, nearly crushing them in her enthusiastic embrace.

“I’m so happy for you two!” she exclaimed, sounding on the verge of tears. “I thought you were never going to hook up! Oh, this is so wonderful! This night could not be any more perfect.”

It was the end of the school year, they were here at the ball together, ready to celebrate and dance and have a great time, Malfoy had effectively been stunned into silence and Hermione had given them her blessing. Harry and Ron grinned at each other over Hermione’s shoulders and tightened their interlocked fingers.

No, the night could not get any more perfect.


END