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It was funny really, that when he was younger Bill Weasley saw himself as a true independent spirit. He
was, in many ways. He often did just as he pleased to - he took the lead without necessarily waiting for people to follow, and didn't let what people thought about him bother him. It was only really as he got older that he began to appreciate how wrong he'd been in his youth - about where he got his real joy from. All the things that mattered to him,
mattered because of other people - he found, and always had found, his value in what he could give to the people around him. In the end, Bill Weasley was defined by the people that he loved.
SON
Arthur and Molly Weasley wouldn't under any circumstances say that they had a favourite child. No matter how much their family grew and developed, they were a pair with endless reserves of love for every new person. Still, he's aware that he's special to them - how could he not be? There were Prewetts and Weasleys all over the place - people weren't wrong when they made fun of the prolific nature of their families - but Bill was the first one that was
theirs. That meant something to them.
Molly could be a difficult sort of woman when she wanted to be, as him and his siblings found, her temperament didn't often mix well with moody pubescent teens, being as stubborn and forthright as she was. But, as Molly herself noted, Bill was much too like his father to let her bother him too much. That's what made Molly and Arthur work so well - she could be as bold as she was, and he was happy to stand by her side as she did so. Bill was similar in that he shared a kind of resilient passivity of Arthur's that meant any criticism Molly could throw his way as he grew up mattered very little - he didn't take it to heart the way some of his younger siblings could. It made their relationship all the stronger for it - she could moan as she pleased about his hair or his clothes, and he would just listen to her, and indulge her need to speak her mind and continue to do as he pleased without letting it bother him. It worked for them somehow.
He'd always known he had his father's laid back demeanour, but even as a younger man, he could recognise all the things he had in common in his mother. They shared a brand of determination that Arthur didn't particularly have - but more importantly they shared. a deep, abiding and
true love for their family which shaped so much of their life. He and his mother got each other, with their similarities and their differences. They never had to verbalise it, but even in his angstiest teen years, there never really seemed to be a moment where he came to resent how overbearing she could be. She may snipe about the small things, but he always did her proud.
It was strange then, that as he got older and adapted into his middle age - it really
truly became clear to him how much his was his father's son. He was sure a lot of men had the experience of stopping mid-sentence and thinking to themselves "
Merlin, I sound like my Dad," or pausing mid-activity and realising their transformation into their father was almost entirely complete. Still, he'd always so considered himself like his mother, that when it happened to him it took him by surprise. Somehow the Bill of his twenties who loved nothing more than to go out on a adventure into the depths of Ancient Egypt with a group of friends, now began to find quiet enjoyment fixing up his boat up with only the company of his dog.
Strange as it was, Molly and Arthur had shaped him so completely that it was almost laughable that he'd ever defined himself by his individuality. The man was, by name and by creed, a Weasley, and he'd never been anything but. All he could do was wear their love in raising him to be who he was as a badge of honour.
BROTHER
Being a brother was so much a part of Bill Weasley's fundamental understanding of himself, he would barely know where to start explaining what it meant to him.
Bill had to learn to be a brother almost as soon as he could begin to comprehend anything. Charlie had been born when he was two, Percy when he was six, and so on in steady succession until Ginny when he was ten. Bill found that completely involuntarily he had to change and grow as a brother alongside his own development as a child. Though, to clarify, even though involuntary, these changes weren't
unhappy. In the same way he took to a lot of new things throughout his life naturally and with ease, so did his assumption of leadership in their family.
Being a brother - an eldest brother, to so many - it meant being whatever they needed him to be.
As each new family member came along, Bill was forced him to understand how many different types of big brothers there were, and how he kind of had to be...all of them at once. Each of his siblings were different and unique, and brought with them different things to their family. And as Bill understood the position he was in, with all of them looking up to him, he took to trying to be the exact kind of brother they needed without fully being conscious of it.
To Charlie, he was more of a friend than a brother. That wasn't to say they weren't close - they were, incredibly so, and in the end their relationship ended with them feeling more like best friends than a somewhat unbalanced older/young brother dynamic. Being so close in age and temperament, he never had to be the voice of advice to lean on that a big brother might often have to be. He didn't really have to be that way with Percy either. Sometimes he had the instinct to be, but Percy had always, even from a young age, been too proud to seek him out actively for advice. He muddled through on his own, and Bill had to be a brother of quiet but constant encouragement and support. Fred and George were a completely new kettle of fish, and needed a little more handling. They were fun, boisterous and free-spirited to an extreme that even he and Charlie had never reached together. To them he was a brother that would happily stand between them and their mother - not so much as a protector as a mediator. He took their jokes in good humour, and they respected his warnings when he thought they were going too far.
Ron required more proactive brotherhood. He didn't have the tough exterior that his elder brothers had, and their family's boisterous banter didn't bounce off him in the same way. And little Ginny - no matter how old or tall she might grow up to be, she would always be to him that little girl who used to follow him around with a cheeky toothless grin and demands to be involved with whatever her brothers were up to. The two of them seemed to stick out to him distinctly as the younger ones - the ones that needed a little more...guidance, perhaps. He checked in with them more actively, and while it seemed like a priority to him to make sure all his siblings were living in harmony, the two youngest were the two he felt most 'big brotherly' with, in a conscious way. Frankly, it reached a point where they didn't even have to be blood - when Ron and Ginny brought home Harry and Hermione, and he met them properly, he felt himself accepting them under his wing quite involuntarily. He was like Molly in that regard - he just collected people.
And it wasn't easy, all the time. The nights he spent trying to console his mother over Percy's rejection of them, to try and patch up his father's quiet hurt. And he'd tried himself, secretly to reach out - he hadn't just want to let Percy
go, you know? And though he'd geared himself up to expect it, he couldn't deny how much it hurt him to have Percy not be there for his wedding.
And then to lose them - losing
siblings - when they were so much a part of himself, cut wounds so deep that he wasn't sure that they would ever properly heal. He took so much of what he was from his love of them, individually and as a unit. Any time that was even slightly shook, it devastated him.
But being the big brother also meant taking on responsibility when it was hardest to - to try and lead the rest through, and take on their burdens when they couldn't carry it all themselves. Bill was the one to put his own feelings aside, when he knew his siblings to be suffering - Bill was the one to persist in keeping George propped up when they lost Fred. Bill was the one to do the same for Ron when they lost Harry - and to bundle up Ginny and take control of everything so that she didn't have to. Bill knew his job was to keep them all going when they couldn't do that for themselves, and he threw himself into that task on instinct and without a second thought.
Sometimes being their brother was his own way of coping - so he was as thankful for them as they were for him.
There was strength to be found in brotherhood.
HUSBAND
Bill would be lying if he didn't say the first thing he noticed about Fleur Delacour was how unbelievably, devastatingly beautiful she was. He'd been married to her for over twenty years, and known all of her family for longer than that, and at some point you just had to come to terms with the unavoidable fact that Veela blood made that family irresistibly good-looking. It's kind of hard to be a young, straight man with eyes, see a Delacour woman and not feel like you've walked into a wall of sheer attraction. Such were the facts of life.
It was comforting if anything, when he was past his awkward new-boyfriend stage and was able to speak frankly with her father, that he found this to be a pretty universal experience. There was something of a guilt he started to develop after, you know, he'd actually got to know her, and especially after she confided in him all the struggles that the leering male gaze presented when she felt like she could never escape from it. That awful lurch of realisation like -
Oh Merlin, I'm a part of that - made him almost go back to the weird, uncomfortable reality he had to come to terms with when he had actually seen her for the first time.
He was at Hogwarts, with his mother and offering support for Harry during the Triwizard Tournament - a year that really, looking back, is really where his and all his family's lives turned around.
She was looking at him from across the room, and he saw her, and his thoughts didn't really register anything more than:
Wow. Until maybe three seconds later when he realised that she was competing against Harry, the kid he was there to support, and ergo also still in school. And like - he really never thought that he'd be That Guy, you know? After that first look over, he'd had to take a moment to think '
Bill, what the fuck,' before doing his best to forget that it ever happened. A little context of exactly who she was and her Veela heritage later thanks to Ron, went someway to making him feel a little better, and he didn't really think on it much more, until barely even a few months later and she was being presented to him at work, of all places.
An intern, the goblin told him as she was presented to him, who needed a tour of the bank that he didn't have time to give (something he was getting used to - being given tasks that the goblins thought were beneath them. Not that he minded particularly, it just helped him stay in their good books and somewhat under the radar). He remembered her straight away, but introduced himself like a stranger with a friendly handshake, and set off at a brisk pace around the bank. The bank was big though, and it took them a few hours to get around it together, and by the end of it Bill found himself agreeing to give her help with her English out of work hours.
Even if he thought that her English was already pretty good, and he wasn't sure if he'd be a good teacher, he said yes because he really couldn't help himself by that point - the smile she'd given him when she asked had utterly charmed him, and in that moment in time he convinced himself he was probably the best English teacher she'd find. Even now looking back he wasn't entirely sure when he went from being conscious of the fact that she was actively pursuing him, and he started pursuing her back - he was much too Gryffindor for that sort of reflection. Do now, think later - and in that summer he followed where his heart lead him, and that was happily circling back to being around Fleur Delacour as much as he could.
It certainly gave him something to look forward to every day, having had to give up his adventuring for the desk job he vowed he'd never have. Not that he regretted the choice - his family needed him back here, and he was happy to give up anything for that reason. Still, he found himself looking forward to the thrill he got when he found reasons to drop by her desk, or to take her out to lunch - or, even better, the time they spent out of work, with none of the formalities needed. The fact was that Bill Weasley was desperately in love, and he started to just follow where she led.
When she told him she thought it was probably time he asked her out, he did as he was bid, happily, and never looked back. What better a partner could he have found to go through not only the rigours of life, but through war and resistance, and the heartache and grief that came from it? He'd wondered briefly in those early stages - when he was at the bank by day, and being part of the underground resistance by night - because you had to wonder, at least a little bit, because not everyone was going to throw themselves into danger like that, were they? Was that something he could ask of another person. It was different when it was just himself - all those years he'd spent by himself and putting himself in harm's way were fine when you didn't have much to lose - but this was so different.
But she did, when the time came to bring her into the Order's circle, with barely a question asked. And Bill knew with perfect clarity then that there could not be a more beautiful soul on the planet - he asked her to marry him the next day.
DAD
Bill found the shift from Not Being a Dad, to Being a Dad felt...remarkably natural. He wasn't sure why - probably the years he'd spent keeping an eye on and caring for six younger siblings. There wasn't really all that much time to reflect on it, because once you have a baby in your arms and the Mediwitches are saying "
She's yours to look after now," and ushering you out of the door, there isn't much time left for thinking. The next thing you know is you've blinked and suddenly that same baby is a woman and moving out, and you have significantly less money and significantly
more back pain.
It was strange, for all the time they'd spent fighting for their future, and all their rights to exist freely without tyranny, Bill had never much considered what that had meant for him beyond vagaries. That fight had never been a question of why, rather why
not. He believed what he fought for, he actively hated what they were fighting against, and there were people who needed his help - why wouldn't he have fought and hurt and lost, when in the end, what they were putting themselves in danger for was bigger than just him alone?
Still, when he was bent over Victoire's crib and her tiny red hand clutched his finger for the first time and she wailed, Bill Weasley felt his heart skip a bit and he suddenly knew who it had all been for. And frankly, once he knew that, as exhausted and broken as it had left him, he'd have done it all over again if he'd had to. And to have that feeling three times? There was no part of him that doubted that it was the best thing he'd done in his entire life, even if he was making it all up as he went along. And really, that was the way that Bill had always liked it - parenting hurdles just became that new adventure he'd never been on before.
And look, being a Dad meant taking on responsibility for others, and that was something he had never shied away from - even, he supposed, when it wasn't his own children he was looking out for. He'd never said it in so many words to Ginny, nor to any of the kids themselves, but Bill had made a conscious effort to step up for the Potters when the unfortunate time came. Bill couldn't help but look at his own children, and that
awful gaping hole that had been left without doing anything to try and make it better. That's just what he did, whether he'd been asked to or not. Bill Weasley was a guy who stepped up, especially for the people he loved.
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