Harry is eight and spending the time he isn’t locked up in his cupboard, or doing house chores, or running away from Dudley and his gang, at the nearby park. He sits on the swing and idly watches the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen.
His name is Malcom, his hair is light brown and his eyes are the prettiest blue Harry’s ever seen.
But— but boys aren’t supposed to be pretty. Boys aren’t supposed to think other boys are pretty, so he makes himself smaller in his worn out jumper and never approaches him again.
Harry is eleven when his life turns upside down and a gangly freckled kid sits next to him on the Hogwarts Express. He looks into his blue eyes and marvels at the bright red of his hair. He wants to reach out and clean the bit of dirt off his nose, but that would be getting too close to another boy, and he couldn’t afford that, could he?
Not when he could imagine tracing all the freckles scattered across his cheeks.
Harry is fourteen when Cedric Diggory falls from the sky and offers him help getting up after using his first Portkey. His hand is big and as calloused as he’d expect a Quidditch player’s to be. He doesn’t like dwelling on the thought of how nice he’d found it.
He asks Cho Chang to the Yule Ball and she rejects him because Cedric Diggory had been quicker. He ends up spending the night on a chair intently looking at the way Cedric’s hand curls around Cho’s waist. He was jealous of him, right?
He tells Sirius about the Yule Ball and he raises an eyebrow at the way Harry describes Cedric’s robes and styled hair but can barely remember the colour of Cho’s dress.
Harry is fifteen when Cho Chang finally agrees to go on a date with him. It happens after they kiss and Harry is eager, he should be, right? The kiss had felt wet and not particularly pleasant and his chest felt a lot warmer as he watched the way Ron laughed when he described it than it had felt when his lips had collided with Cho’s.
The date doesn’t go well, maybe Harry just doesn’t get women.
Sirius says it’s ridiculous, but he doesn’t miss the odd look he and Remus give each other.
Harry is sixteen when he dreams of red hair and freckled skin and in order to escape it he decides to stay up at night and stare at Draco Malfoy’s dot on the Marauder’s Map.
He decides the bright red infesting his dreams must be Ginny’s, because he doesn’t know any other red-haired girl. Even though she wears it long and when he dreams it’s short and spiky. And the freckles on her cheeks are not as numerous as the ones he marvels at after falling asleep.
He decides it has to be Ginny, and the thought of it can occupy his mind long enough to make him forget the weird pang and slight sick in his stomach each time he catches Ron snogging Lavender.
When Ginny runs up to him after winning the Quidditch up, he kisses her, because that’s what he’d been dreaming about, right? Hands tangled in red hair and freckled cheeks centimetres from his face, but it feels all wrong.
Ron nods at him and it all feels wrong.
Sirius is not here anymore for Harry to consult, so instead he takes Ginny outside their common room and, on the Hogwarts grounds, opens his heart to her.
Harry is seventeen when he has to die and he still hasn’t made sense of the feelings in his chest or why, no matter how much he tried, girls felt so wrong.
It’s not at the forefront of his mind, it’s not even close because the only thing he can think about is the warm bodies laying lifeless in the Great Hall.
But, as he approaches his death, he does spare a thought for the uneasiness he had felt when Hermione kissed Ron, and the discomfort every kiss he’d given before had provided him. He hadn’t lived in full, not even close.
A flash of green light approaches and he finds it silly, how his last thought is of red hair and freckles.
Harry is eighteen when he attends his first Weasley family dinner after the war. The grief is heavy and Fred’s chair is empty but Percy is back home and it does bring at least a shard of comfort to Mrs Weasley. He isn’t alone, Oliver Wood hangs from his arm.
He is eighteen and Percy Weasley introduces Oliver Wood as his boyfriend.
Harry blinks at them and something in his head just clicks.
Harry is twenty when he finally musters the courage to walk into a Gay Bar. He had to Confund the door keeper because he didn’t own an ID, the Dursleys had never bothered giving it to him, given he even had one.
It’s a Muggle place and he feels like the odd one out, terribly dressed down and completely clueless.
He ends up ordering a beer and sitting by the bar.
It’s not until his third visit that a stranger approaches him. He has red hair but his pupils are a soft hazel and his skin isn’t freckled at all. Harry thinks that if he shuts his eyes close, maybe, he could pretend.
His name is Lucas, his lips taste vaguely like strawberries and the kiss doesn’t make Harry want to turn his insides inside out. He smiles and the rush of adrenaline in his veins as Lucas nibs on his bottom lip feels both terrifying and terribly right.
Harry is twenty-three when the cat gets out of the bag.
It’s not because he wanted it, really, but sharing a flat with his best mates could be inconvenient, at times.
He flushed and urges his date to get dressed as he tries to avoid Ron and Hermione’s shocked looks. Their hands are clasped together and Harry has learnt to live with the uncomfortable twist of his stomach by now.
They come off it quickly, though. Ron laughs and pats Harry on the back, says everything is much more clear now.
Harry is twenty-five when he makes his best-man speech at Ron and Hermione’s wedding.
He chokes on his words both because he was never that good at public speaking and because each time he looked at the way Ron’s arm curled around Hermione’s shoulder his throat went a bit drier.
He drinks his glass of champagne in one go and relishes in the burn before fetching Gabriel, his date for the night.
Gabriel stood out like a sour note next to his exes: his hair were a dusty blonde. Harry had thought there would be way too many redheads at the wedding anyways.
Harry is thirty-one when Ron jokes he will never settle down if he keeps on changing men at the same rate he changes his pants, but Harry doesn’t care.
Ron looks thoroughly annoyed and Hermione coughs, worried and almost resigned eyes looking up at her husband.
Harry is thirty-three when Ron shows up at his place with a suitcase and bashfully tells him Hermione wants to file for a divorce.
He just nods and lets Ron in.
Harry is thirty-five when Ron brings back a bottle of expensive Firewhisky and decides they should celebrate the Cannons’ new victory streak on their own.
He hadn’t heard of the Cannons winning anything, recently, but he shrugs it off because it’s not really his thing anyways, Ron would know.
He is thirty-five and Ron, red-haired, freckled and now face flushed sits way too close for comport and traces his lips with a pinky.
He stands up abruptly and loudly declares it’s time for bed. Ron looks quite annoyed, but it will pass.
It must have been his imagination.
Harry is thirty-seven when his best mate breaks down crying in front of him and confesses his feelings through agonising sobs.
He keeps apologising and a tug at his hand breaks Harry out of his stupor. He was sure it must have been a dream, but Ron was real and crying and trembling.
He leans down wordlessly and, finally— sparks.
He is thirty-seven and this is the first time he’s ever felt so alive.
Harry is forty-two when Hagrid walks him down the aisle.
It’s clumsy and messy because they’re both trying not to cry, Harry being much better at it than the half-giant.
He catches a glimpse of Hermione, beaming at him from the front with a knowing smile.
He is forty-two and he is in front of Ron, in white robes. The voices around them nothing but white noise and then Ron leans down and all he can see is— red. Red hair and freckles.
