A/N: This is my second and final entry for My Dear Professor McGonagall's Sibling Rivalry Competition. This time my siblings were Bill and Charlie Weasley (loves of my life, so excited). Unfortunately, this was really rushed because summer is turning out to be a beast. It's not proofread much, so if you catch any glaring errors let me know. Hope you like it! Gosh I love Weasleys.

The Night Before

July 31, 1997

The Burrow was one of those rare, wonderful places that never really changed, and yet seemed to grow up right along with the children who grew up in it. For Bill and Charlie, the Burrow had been many, many things- a magical castle guarded by ferocious fire-breathing dragons, the first place they'd ever played Quidditch, somewhere to come back to when the Real World became too much to deal with and they just needed a warm bed and a home-cooked meal. Now they were grown men, sitting on the Burrow roof with a bottle of whiskey between them and a clear view of the night sky- just as they had a decade or so before when they'd first come of age, or near it. The Burrow, steady, solid childhood home that it was, was doing Bill a final favor before he left it for his new home at Shell Cottage: tomorrow, he would get married in that old gnome-infested garden that he'd spent many of his teenage years brooding and hiding out in. Tonight, though, the Burrow was the place he would drink and laugh and remember with his closest brother and best friend in the whole world.

Crack.

"Is it just me, or was getting up on this roof a hell of a lot harder back when we were teenagers?" Charlie mumbled almost-to-himself as he carefully picked his way across the tin-clad Burrow roof, around one of the many smoke-exuding chimney-tops, and to the place where Bill was already sitting in the moonlight, propped on his elbows with his legs stretched out in front of him.

Bill grinned, rapping the spot of roof next to him with his knuckles as an invitation for Charlie to take a seat beside him. "We couldn't apparate back then. Had to get up here the old-fashioned way, didn't we?"

Charlie grimaced as he lowered his hulking muscular frame beside the longer, leaner form of his older brother, cautiously placing the unopened bottle of Firewhiskey between them. "Climbing out the window of that fungus farm Ron calls a bedroom, yeah." Charlie sighed, rolling his shoulders experimentally and grimacing when his muscles ached. "Not to rush you, mate, but your damn wedding can't get here fast enough. I can't take another day of Mum in her psychopathic pre-wedding rage. I mean," he paused, looking around furtively as if he expected their mother to be hiding behind the nearest weathervane, "bloody hell, if she's going to go mad as a bag of ferrets before every wedding, I reckon I'll do us all a favor and stay a bachelor forever."

Bill chuckled, pulling the whiskey bottle to him and prizing the cork out with his teeth. "Careful, there. Somewhere downstairs, Mum'll have just buried herself and then died so she can roll over in her grave."

"Yeah, well, it's not like she'll have a shortage of weddings with just me dropping out of the gene pool, is it? Percy'll settle down as soon as someone looks at him twice- whether or not that wedding involves our family remains to be seen. The twins- well, no promises there. Girls like them well enough though-" Here, the brothers grinned at each other. They liked to think of the twins' skills with the ladies as one of their greatest joint achievements; they'd taught them well. "If Ron and Hermione don't tie the knot, I'll swallow my wand whole. And the same goes for Harry and Ginny," he added as an afterthought, frowning slightly.

"Oh, don't get started on those two," Bill cut in quickly before Charlie could work himself out of his even-tempered norm and into a right state. "Better him than someone else, right?"

Charlie muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "nunnery", but dropped the subject. Bill finally managed to dislodge the cork from the bottle and spit it in a high arc off the roof and into the yard below. It was a long way down, but Bill's scarred face lit up with a triumphant grin when he heard the distinct, satisfying sound of a gnome yelling in shock as it was bonked on the head with a wooden cork.

"Fifteen points to Gryffindor," Charlie managed to croak out through a massive yawn.

"Cheers," Bill agreed, tipping the bottle back and forcing himself not to wince as the awful liquid inside burned its way to his belly. He wasn't quite successful and ended up coughing and spewing the last bit into the crook of his elbow. Charlie, admirable Best Man that he was, didn't even laugh. He graciously accepted the bottle when Bill offered and took a quick swig, managing to splutter only slightly less than his older brother.

They were quiet then, staring up at the inky blue-black sky, content. And that was so strange- being content, when for well over a year they'd all been living in nothing but constant fear. They didn't need to do that right now though- everyone they loved was safe inside the house below and, for one night, there was nothing forcing them to be soldiers or comrades-in-arms; they were just, for however short a time, brothers.

When the sound of Ron's not-so-faint snoring drifted up from the room below, Bill broke the comfortable silence between them.

"You think they're really going to do it- run off, I mean?"

His burly brother stared pensively at the bottle in his hands, sloshing the gold liquid in a slow whirlpool. "Reckon they haven't much of a choice, have they? If Harry's really the Chosen One, or whatever they call him now." He glanced sideways at Bill, whose face had darkened a little at his answer. "You don't agree?"

"It's not that," he said, sounding as if the words cost him something. "It's just- no, they're just kids. I mean, I remember myself at their age. If the balance of the world had hung on my shoulders…"

"We'd all be well and rightly fucked. Cheers," Charlie answered easily, pressing the glass container to Bill's chest. "It'd be the same with me. But they're not like us, Bill. They've been dealing with this since they were first years- they knew it was coming, in a way. Now-" he interrupted himself, grinning in that broad, good-natured way that set everyone around him at ease instantly. "You, sir, are not nearly drunk enough for this to be your bachelor party. Start chugging or I'm going to go fetch the twins to force you."

Bill promptly up-ended the bottle, and an hour later the two men were thoroughly sloshed.

"Youreally lover then?" Charlie slurred, making a gallant effort to look Bill in all three sets of his eyes.

"Stop- stop swayin' likethat," Bill hurled back, his own head turning side to side slightly to follow Charlie's rocking. "Yeah- yeah, reckon Ilover pretty good."

"'mnot swayin, you are." Bill snorted disbelievingly. Charlie ignored him and continued. "Reckon'd still me barryin 'er if tweren't for the war and who-know-you?"

Bill just blinked, his eyelids feeling a bit heavy as he tried to understand what exactly Charlie had just asked. "I…I don't want to bury 'er at all. I love 'er."

"No. No, no, no, no, no," Charlie groaned insistently, waving his hands in Bill's face. "Marry. Marry, not bury."

"Oh." Bill's face screwed up, thoughtful, and Charlie went back to staring up at the blinking, twinkling, shining stars, content to wait for his answer.

When Bill responded, a long while later, he sounded much more sober.

"I reckon I would marry her, Charlie. Not this soon, and not until I got a promotion or a big raise. But yeah, yeah I'd still marry her," he mumbled, more to himself than to his brother.

Charlie fell back suddenly, sprawling on the roof with his arms behind his head. "'m glad. Gin still hates 'er. Mum, too, sometimes."

Bill flopped back beside him. "Yeah, I can tell. What about you?"

Charlie shrugged. "She's pretty. Kind of a stiff to everyone but you and Harry, but eh-"

"I meant about settling down. Reckon you'll ever give in and meet someone?"

Charlie laughed- curling over his belly and booming the sound out over the rooftop. Ron's snores choked off and there was a brief irritated mumbling before they started up again at full force.

When Charlie finally regained control of himself, he had to wipe tears of mirth from his eyes.

"Wasn't a joke," Bill grumbled, but he was smiling in spite of himself.

"That's why it's funny," Charlie chuckled, his grin so large that Bill wondered if it would be visible from a Muggle space station. "We really should go check on Mum. She must've died when I said the thing about not getting married earlier because I think you're channeling her spirit."

"Shut up, I'm just curious. Here we all are- scrambling for people to love, for our shot at a family just in case the end really is near, and you're still sailing along in perpetual bachelorhood. It's not fair, you arse."

Bill glanced over in time to see Charlie's face cloud and clear quickly.

"I'm not…It's not that I don't want all that someday, I just…"

"We're not all going to make it," Bill offered, understanding exactly what Charlie was thinking, even if he didn't really want to.

Charlie sighed, whether from pain at the words or relief that he wasn't the only one thinking them, Bill didn't care to ask.

"We're a big family Bill, and we're right in the thick of it. Always have been. If I'm one of the ones to go when this war really sets in, I don't want to leave any more people behind mourning my loss than I have to."

"That's noble," Bill said quietly.

"No, it's not," Charlie refuted quickly, glaring at the sky. "I'm a coward because it works in reverse as well. If I make it and any of the rest of you don't, that's going to be…" he faded off- there were no words for it. "But if I lose any of you, and then lose a child or a wife or even just a serious girlfriend at the same time? I'm not as strong as the rest of you in that way, Bill. I'm just not. My strength has always been physical; emotions aren't in the realm of things I can handle."

Bill had nothing to say, though if he were honest he was full of things to say. He wanted to tell his little brother that he would never, ever consider him a coward. He wanted to tell him that his muscles weren't his only strength, that, bachelor or not, more people than he could ever imagine would miss him if he were to die in battle.

There weren't really words for things like that though- not on the eve of a war and a wedding day, not when a glass whiskey bottle lay empty on the roof between them, not when they were Weasleys, and male Weasleys at that. Words weren't how Weasleys expressed things like comfort and love and you'll always be my brother and my best man, every day for the rest of forever.

Bill, however, was a lifelong Weasley and knew exactly how to express all of those feelings in a way his little brother could perfectly understand.

"Come on, I bet Mum left the wedding cake unguarded in the kitchen. We can eat the center and fill it with those awful rock cakes Hagrid sent. No one will know til after the reception."

Charlie's face split into a wide grin and he had disapparated before Bill could even struggle to his feet. Tomorrow, Bill would be a married man. Tonight, he would spend what he now swore would not be the final night wreaking subtle havoc with his favorite brother.