A Light in the Attic (Remus/Ron, NC-17)
Title: A Light in the Attic
Pairing: Remus/Ron
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3794
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's.
Summary: Remus has to help Ron—every one else has tried and failed.
Notes: Written for graceland428 in hp_springsmut. Originally posted to LJ on 3/1/07.



After a week, everyone began to worry about Ron.

It was understandable, of course, that he was upset—upset probably couldn't even begin to scrape the surface of what Ron must have felt after all that had happened. And Ron had always taken bad news a little harder than had anyone else—Molly always referred to him as her emotional child, and she always had a little extra love in her voice when she said it.

But the odd thing was that Ron actually wasn't being the least bit emotional—quite the opposite, really. He'd become a phantom after witnessing Harry's death, unable to help or even to move, trapped as he had been in a full-body bind with both arms broken besides. He ate little, slept less, and spoke not a word to anyone. He'd unofficially moved out of the flat he and Harry had shared, and back into the Burrow, spending most of his time holed up in his old bedroom or wandering listlessly about the halls. He sat passively whenever anyone tried—and many had—to engage him in conversation, staring past them as if he was in a world all his own.

No one could get through to him, and Remus didn't know why he should be expected to succeed where Ron's family and his closest friends—well, his closest living friends—had failed. Not even Hermione had been able to get through to Ron, and certainly she should've been, if no one else.

But Molly insisted.

"Please, Remus," she had begged, her eyes shining with unshed tears, "Do have a go. It can't hurt. And I'm—I'm at a loss." Her voice wobbled and she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, pressing it to her eyes, her breath coming in great shuddering shakes.

Remus put what he hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"All right," he promised, "I'll talk to him. You're right, after all. It can't hurt. I can go up there now, if you'd like."

Molly looked up at him with grateful, tearful eyes.

"Thank you, Remus."

"Of course."

***

Remus knew he'd get no response, but he knocked anyway when he reached Ron's door. There was no point in being rude, after all.

"Ron?" he queried.

Silence.

"Right," said Remus, and he turned the knob gently, opening the door just enough so that he could put his head inside.

Ron was on his bed, sitting with his back against the wall. He held something white in his hands and was absently shredding it as he stared out the window.

Remus entered Ron's room and shut the door softly behind him. Ron gave no sign that he'd heard anyone come in. He just kept plucking at the white thing that he held. Remus approached the bed and, after a moment, sat on the edge of the mattress.

"I know you probably aren't thrilled about this visit," he began, not looking at Ron, "but your mother asked that I—well, I wanted to see you as well, of course, just to—er—"

Remus's plan of action was fairly non-existent, as he'd had all of two minutes to think it up, and he trailed off. He turned to Ron after a moment. At least he could do the boy the service of looking at him while he said the words that everyone else had already said.

As he considered what those words might be, his eyes fell to Ron's freckled hands fidgeting in his lap, still destroying whatever it was that he held.

"What have you got there?" Remus asked. He reached over and extracted the thing from Ron's fingers. It was—or had once been, since now only the shaft and a bit of the vane remained—a large white feather.

"Where did you get this?" asked Remus. Hedwig had disappeared the day Harry died, and though her doleful hoots could sometimes be heard in the trees around the Burrow, no one had seen her since.

But Ron's gaze flicked up and over, and Remus's followed.

Hedwig sat on top of the wardrobe, her feathers puffed, watching the two men intently.

"Even his girl is concerned about you, Ron," said Remus softly. He tucked the remnants of the feather back between Ron's no-longer-fidgeting fingers and sat back against the wall with him.

They spent a few moments in silence before Remus spoke again.

"I lost my best friend, too," he said. More than once, he added silently, and another long moment of silence followed.

"Oh," said Ron, his voice dry and dusty from disuse. It had taken him far too long to speak, as if Remus's words had had to travel a very long way indeed to reach him, instead of a mere few inches.

Remus was quite surprised to hear Ron's voice, but he didn't let on.

"Yes," he said calmly, though his heart leaped a little to actually be conversing with the boy—if, indeed, a single word from Ron could be counted as conversation. "Not that I pretend to know how you feel, you know. I suppose others might've done, but I—well, it's just different, that's all, isn't it? Personal."

Remus hardly hoped dare Ron would respond—perhaps Remus had imagined that little oh in the first place—but in his peripheral vision, he saw Ron nod, just slightly, after a moment.

"You're not unreachable," Remus continued, softer, "You're just dealing with this in your own way."

Another hesitant nod.

Remus drew a breath and turned to Ron, putting a hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"Whatever you're feeling—" he began, but Ron bit his lip and shook his head and turned his bright blue eyes, so luminous in his pale, drawn face, upon Remus.

"What is it?" Remus kept his tone deliberately gentle. Now was certainly not the time for action, though it went against his every instinct—if he scared the boy now by appearing too eager to aid him, then that would put them right back where they'd started.

"I—" Ron began, casting his gaze downward and picking lint from his corduroy trousers, "That's the problem." His voice was soft and cracking, but he was talking, and Remus was determined to keep him talking.

"The problem?" he prompted.

"I don't—" Ron picked at a thread on his quilt, then, and paused.

"I don't feel anything," he said all in a rush, his voice growing stronger on every word.

Remus nodded.

"That's okay, too."

Ron shook his head. "I've been waiting to feel something. Anything. Hermione once told me I have the emotional range of a teaspoon. Maybe—maybe she's right; maybe that's true, but I should—" he raised his eyes to meet Remus's, and stuck out his chin defiantly. "I should feel something!" Ron was breathing hard, his outburst clearly having taken rather more energy than he was used to expending as of late.

Remus smiled gently and furrowed his brow.

"A teaspoon, did she really say that?" Ron nodded, and Remus put his other hand on Ron's other shoulder and surveyed the boy's weary, worried face.

"I hardly agree," he said, earning a disbelieving look from Ron.

"I'm serious," he said, marvelling at how easy it was to be talking to Ron. "Perhaps I don't know you as well as Hermione does, but I see things she doesn't, you know. Your emotional range seems perfectly healthy to me." He squeezed Ron's shoulders reassuringly.

"But I—"

"Don't feel anything right now, I know. That's all right. Everyone grieves in his own way, at his own pace. I'm not going to keep telling you it's all right, because you'll either believe me or you won't, and I can't change that. And anyway, that's not why I'm here. I haven't come up here to change the way you think."

"Then why?" asked Ron, shrugging his shoulders rapidly to free himself from Remus's grip.

Remus sat back, regarding Ron.

"Because I want to help you, if you'll let me."

Ron spread his hands in a gesture that clearly said Go ahead and try, and he sat back against the wall, a dark look crossing his face.

"You're angry," said Remus, his voice calm. Perhaps this was going to be easier than he had hoped.

Ron said nothing, but the cross look hadn't faded from his countenance. He folded his arms across his chest and slumped lower against the wall.

"You're angry with me," Remus continued, "as you should be. Who am I, now, to barge in here, when clearly you'd rather be alone? Who am I to force you into conversation when clearly you'd rather keep silent? Who am I to talk about—" Remus looked at Ron's set jaw and decided to go for it "—about Harry when clearly—"

"Stop it!" shouted Ron, sitting up quickly and turning on Remus. "Don't talk about that! Don't say his sodding name!" Ron's face was red and he was breathing hard again. He paused as if to steel himself for something, then gave an experimental shove at Remus's shoulder.

"Good," said Remus under his breath, and he suppressed a smile along with his retaliatory instinct. Ron pushed again, a little harder this time.

"Stop smiling at me!" he shouted, rising up on his knees. Apparently Remus hadn't suppressed the evidence of his satisfaction at eliciting emotion in Ron as well as he'd thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, Remus caught the movement of a flying fist, and he brought his hand up to catch it just before it connected with his face. He held Ron's wrist tightly and grabbed the other, too, for good measure. He brought their hands between them as Ron twisted his wrists to gain his freedom, but he was weakened from his malaise and from his injuries, and Remus held him fast.

"You can be angry," he said very seriously, looking dead into Ron's eyes, "but you can not hit me. Are we clear?"

Ron only stared at him defiantly.

"Anger is fine. Anger is good. But violence is not okay." Remus suddenly felt as though he were talking to a very small child. He held Ron's thin wrists a little tighter and shook him. "I'm not letting you go if you're going to try to hit me again."

Ron jutted out his chin, but his eyes moved back and forth across Remus's face as if trying to decipher the meaning of his words and, after a moment, he nodded.

"All right," said Remus, and he let Ron's wrists go.

"But you have to—I have to feel something," Ron said desperately, his voice straining as if he was choking back tears. "Will you—I have to—"

And suddenly Ron lunged forward and he kissed Remus.

It was unpractised, and it was sloppy, and Ron hadn't brushed his teeth recently, and his nose was running, and Remus was too shocked to do anything at all for a moment. Ron put his hands up to Remus's face, but Remus took Ron by his shoulders and pushed away.

"Ron—" he began, but the half-panicked, half-heartbroken look on Ron's face stopped him mid-thought.

"Please—please don't say we can't," Ron said in a near-whisper, clinging desperately to Remus, "Please."

But they couldn't. Remus knew this. Ron was young, too young—oh, he was of age, certainly, but that hardly mattered when Remus was old enough to have been Ron's father. Not to mention that Remus was fairly certain that Ron was even less homosexual than he was himself, which was to say not at all, despite the awkward fumblings he may have had with James after one too many firewhiskys.

But best not to think of James now, for Ron's face was so pleading, and he held onto Remus like a life preserver, and tears rimmed his desperate blue eyes and threatened to spill over, and Remus didn't need to be reminded of the friends he'd lost, too.

"Please," Ron repeated, his voice rasping, his fingers holding Remus's arms ever tighter, "I need—"

Ron's voice broke and he choked on a sob.

"You need to be—you need this right now," said Remus, realising, not saying the word loved, and Ron nodded, squeezing shut his eyes as if that would hold back his tears.

Remus drew a deep breath, then pulled Ron to his chest, already damning himself for what he knew he was about to do.

"All right," he murmured against the boy's tangled, unwashed hair, "All right."

There was so much he had to stop himself thinking about.

Remus took up his wand, then, and cast locking and silencing charms on the door. It would hardly do to be discovered in what Remus knew full well was an entirely improper situation, and he didn't much fancy explaining to Molly and Arthur that he'd only been comforting—not ravishing—their broken son.

Ron put his arms around Remus, sniffling against his chest, splaying wide, thin hands against his back, and Remus pressed the boy gently down onto the bed, planting a kiss on his creased and freckled forehead.

"You're certain?" he asked gently against Ron's warm skin.

Ron nodded, but there was a line between his eyebrows that hadn't been there before, and his lip quivered a little, and Remus took the boy's face in his hands.

"Have you ever done this before, Ron?"

Ron coloured and looked away. "No," he said after a moment, then he looked back up at Remus. "Harry was a virgin," he said, as if that explained everything.

Remus nodded, as if he understood.

Ron reached for him again, searching fingers running up Remus's neck and into his hair, and Ron pulled him down and kissed him again, this kiss less clumsy but just as desperate.

And Remus kissed him back, opening his mouth against Ron's and putting his tongue inside as the boy made hungry little mewling noises beneath him and tugged on fistfuls of Remus's hair and pressed himself up, up, and Remus realised with a jolt that the boy was hard already, and he gasped into the kiss.

Ron was hard, and it had been so long since Remus had felt another man's erection, and though he was no innocent, he was also no expert on the mechanics of gay sex.

But now was hardly the time to be considering such trivialities. Ron was opening up, and he needed help. Remus swallowed hard around the odd lump that had formed in his throat and he put his hand between their bodies, pressing it to Ron's corduroy-covered crotch, and Ron swore softly and sucked in a breath and clutched tighter at Remus's hair.

"Easy," Remus murmured, wincing, and he reached back with the hand that wasn't holding Ron's erection and extracted the boy's needy fingers from his hair.

"I need—" Ron choked, whining and pressing himself against Remus's palm.

"I know," said Remus, and he unbuttoned Ron's trousers and reached inside to find damp, soft cotton and under it, Ron's cock, hard and pulsing and straining and warm and alive.

Remus moved his hand along it as Ron writhed and whipped his head across the pillow, his lank, too-long ginger locks tangling ever more.

Remus closed his hand around Ron's length and pulled and stroked and just watched the boy, whose freckled face was screwed up as if he was in unimaginable pain, his teeth bared and eyes squeezed shut tightly, accenting the dark hollows there.

"Please," intoned Ron through his tightened jaw, and he kept his eyes closed and he clutched at Remus's arms and he pushed up, up into Remus's hand, desperate and panting, and Remus moved his hand ever faster, spreading the boy's precome over his rigid cock, and the slick slide and sharp smell had Remus biting his lip and remembering and—ohgod—growing hard inside his trousers.

He tried not to rub against the desperate boy beneath him, tried so hard to focus on Ron and what Ron needed, but the boy was in his own world now, leagues away, his head thrown back, his mouth gaping open, his breath coming in short, frantic gasps, and Remus pressed himself to Ron's leg and closed his eyes, still stroking Ron, but god, he needed to alleviate the pressure that was building, building within him—

—and god, it felt good, and a part of Remus's mind began to berate his body for giving into his baser instincts, for this wasn't sex, it was healing, and he should be focussing on that, shouldn't he? But his body pressed again, again, against Ron, and his hand never ceased its pumping on Ron's come-slick cock, and as Remus rubbed and pressed, the boy groaned and arched and tensed and came, spurting sticky fluid and crying out—

"Har-ryyy!"

—and Remus was jolted from the fog of accidental, inexcusable lust that had settled around him, and he put a hand behind Ron's head and coaxed the last of his orgasm from his cock and laid the boy down on the pillow, smoothing his hair from his reddened, tear-streaked face.

And yes, Ron had cried, and Remus hadn't noticed, and now the tears were drying against his flushed, freckled face, below the long ginger eyelashes fanned out on his cheeks, and Remus took his hand from Ron's pants and grabbed his wand and spelled the boy clean, quickly. He buttoned Ron's trousers again, all the while stroking sticky strands of sweat-damp hair back from Ron's face.

When Ron was all fastened and buttoned again, his shirt pulled back down to cover his white and freckled belly, Remus sat up, his neglected erection bordering on painful, and at the shifting of the mattress, Ron turned onto his side, drawing his knees up to his chest and curling in upon himself.

Remus stood slowly, the full realisation of what he'd done weighting him down. He gazed stupidly down at Ron, all long limbs and broad shoulders, hunched and curled so childlike on the little bed, his breathing evening out, interrupted every couple of breaths by a shuddering half-sob.

Remus pressed his palm against his (horrifyingly still raging; what in hell was wrong with him?) erection, then reached down and tugged the quilt over Ron, willing his protective instinct to take over.

He tucked the patched and faded quilt around Ron's hunched shoulders, then leant over, putting a hand to Ron's forehead as if checking for fever.

"Tired," murmured Ron, as if in answer to Remus's unasked question.

"You're tired?"

"Yeah." Ron was clearly dropping off to sleep, Remus could tell, as his words became ever less coherent. "Feel something now. Something's—'m tired."

And Remus wasn't entirely certain what Ron meant, but he forced himself to be calm, not to focus on what he'd done to the now-sleeping boy, and to walk slowly from the room, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets, nowhere near his ridiculously insistent penis.

***

Remus couldn't piss; he was still half-hard. He'd shut himself in the bathroom on the little landing just outside Ron's bedroom, trying to believe he was just in there to relieve himself, but relief came in more than one form, and his cock belied his body's true intentions.

Remus took himself in hand and gave a half-hearted squeeze and a half-suppressed moan.

He knew what he was going to do—had known, had just denied it, but now—

"Dammit," whispered Remus, and he made quick work of it, standing over the toilet, allowing himself to think in brief snippets—

—old patchwork quilt in the middle of a hazy, awkward afternoon—

—high up in the house, their own world spinning away from the mundane—

—an unexpected kiss, a broken young man confessing what he needs—

—sour breath, red cheeks, blood rushing in his ears, the room blurring, disappearing—

—flushed young skin and damp hair, limbs tangling, writhing, flailing—

—uncertain hands down corduroy trousers, everything so wonderfully, horrifyingly new, so bizarre, and just—

—James.

Remus choked out the name quietly, having cast no silencing spell, as he came, letting fluid spill from his cock but not from his eyes, and he immediately flushed the toilet and tucked himself back into his trousers, ridding the bathroom of any evidence of his transgression.

***

"He's asleep," Remus said wearily, taking a seat and accepting a cup of tea, though he wanted neither.

Molly sat across the kitchen table from him, her forehead creased, her mouth opening and closing, as if she didn't know which question to ask first.

"I don't know if he's okay," said Remus, staring into his cup, somehow unable to bring it to his lips, "But he's asleep. So I suppose we'll wait."

"We've been waiting," said Molly, her voice only a little shaky.

"There's always waiting to be done," replied Remus, finally pushing the cup away and standing. He walked to the fireplace and took up a pinch of Floo powder.

"If you'll excuse me, Molly," he said as graciously as he could, "I'm feeling rather unwell myself, and I—I think I need to go home now."

"Of course," said Molly, rising, but Remus gestured for her to sit, almost not remembering to smile at her before he left, and in a few moments' time Remus was collapsing out of his own floo into his cold flat.

***

Remus didn't return to the Burrow for three days. He didn't want to know what damage he had wrought. What good had he thought could possibly come from molesting the boy like that, when he was broken and reaching out blindly?

But on Sunday morning, he realised he couldn't pace around his flat one more time, or he'd go mad, and so he went.

Molly besieged him the moment he walked in the door, bustling him to the bottom of the stairs.

"He's asked for you," she said, her eyes shining, "Ronnie has. He came downstairs this morning and stared at us all for a moment, and—will you go?" She was breathing fast and clutching Remus's arm desperately.

He sighed inwardly.

Shit.

"Yes," he said after what might've been too long a pause, "I—yes, of course, I'll—er, is he in his bedroom, then?"

"Yes, I think so," said Molly, and she smiled up at Remus, and he smiled back, but only with his mouth.

There certainly were a lot of stairs leading to Ron's attic bedroom.