Godric's Hollow - Chapter Ten : Seasons - H/R - NC-17
Title: Godric’s Hollow
Author: shocfix
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Rating: NC-17

This is my Big Damn Table, turned into a multi-chaptered novella.

One hundred stories inspired by Broke Back Mountain.

Ron looks back on his life with and without Harry.


Chapter Ten : Seasons

Winter
My forty-second birthday was much better.

Hermione was planning a family dinner. Well, my dad was looking pretty frail, and she didn’t say anything, but I think she did it so he’d have a chance to see the whole family together.

I was getting on her nerves underfoot and it was bitterly cold in the garden, so she packed Teddy and me next door, under strict instructions not to show my face before seven o’clock.

Harry and I were having a friendly cup of tea, his calf pressed against mine under the table, while we watched Teddy and Alex play chess.

Everything was good between us. We’d only been together a couple of times in the past year or so, but we both knew we could turn to each other whenever we needed it.

That strong arms and deep kisses were there to make the world a better place.

The only stressfull thing in my life was Teddy.

He was about to turn eleven and had launched a preemptive campaign against his expected Hogwarts letter.

Not that he wasn’t crackling with magic. But he wanted to defer for a year, so he’d start school with Alex.

Hermione was adamant that that was not going to happen, but I could see his point; they’d never spent a day apart.

Hermione thought it would do them the world of good, but I wasn’t so sure.

But, as my reason wasn’t Hermione-proof, I didn’t share it with her.

It was just that Ginny and I had been so close once, when Fred and George started school, and then I left her at home and it was never the same again.

And I still felt guilty that I hadn’t noticed what was happening in her first year.

Not that Teddy would have to protect Alex from a Dark Lord. Or a basilisk.

God, that was thirty years ago.

Thirty years since Harry slayed the dragon and rescued his princess.

I looked at him, sitting opposite me.

He was watching the children and smiling gently and I pressed my leg against his and he looked up at me with such love that I nearly gasped aloud.

Suddenly he leapt to his feet and grabbed my sleeve, dragging me from the room.

“What?” I asked, stumbling after him.

He pulled me into the lounge and shut the door.

“Harry?”

“I want to give you your present now” he whispered, dropping to his knees and unzipping my fly.

“Harry, you can’t,” I gasped. “Not here!”

But Harry and my cock had other ideas and they ignored me.

And I wasn't very good at being the Voice of Reason, so I shut up and let Harry take me in his mouth.

Let him run his tongue over and over my most sensitive spots.

Let him moan deep in his throat as I gave in and jerked my hips forward, thrusting deeper as he sucked, stoking his face as his cheeks hollowed, biting my lip to stop crying out as I came in his mouth.

He knelt back on his heels and grinned boyishly up at me and my heart leapt.

What had I done to deserve him?


Spring
Something really scary happened that spring.

Well, Hermione wasn't scared, she snapped into action.

Lizzie had been off work, sick, for a couple of days before she told us she was pregnant.

Hermione immediately owled the Ministry that she, Kate and I wouldn't be in to work.

"Why me?" Kate asked.

"You are going to take Teddy and Alex out for the day, so we can sort this out," Hermione decreed, and, of course, that is what happened.

Lizzie had always been such a daddy's girl that it came as a surprise to me that she wanted to talk to Hermione about it.

Girl talk, I suppose.

And I really didn't want to discuss the whos and the whens anyway.

This was my little girl.

So I was kicked out and went next door, of course.

Harry was in the kitchen, as usual, leafing through a newspaper.

I don't trust a household that isn't centered around the kitchen. Though Harry says that it's a bit different in a Muggle house, because the television is usually in the lounge.

Anyway.

"What's going on?" he asked, as I pushed the door open. "Kate said it wasn't her business and just grabbed Alex and left."

I sat down at the table and grunted at him.

"I must say," he said, pouring a coffee for me, "it should be my business that my daughter is whisked out of here."

I stirred three sugars into my coffee.

"Ron? What's wrong?"

I know it was the selfish way of looking at things, and I'd never say it at home, but this was Harry, so I sighed and said, "I'm going to be a grandfather."

Harry whistled.

"I'm not ready to be a grandfather," I pointed out.

"How is this about you?" he asked reasonably.

I glared at him.

"Because next door I have to be the supportive husband and father," I said. "Here, I'm…"

"Still eleven-years-old and coming to your best mate with a problem?" he suggested.

I grunted.

"Will you hit me if I ask who the mother-to-be is?" he asked.

"Harry!"

"What?" he asked. "I'm assuming and hoping it's Lizzie, but Annie is, what, sixteen? And even Charlie…"

"It's Lizzie," I said firmly.

"Well, she's nearly twenty," he said. "It's not the end of the world. You were twenty when Kate was born."

"She's not married," I complained.

"Oh, don't be so old fashioned," he said. "That doesn't matter."

"Don't be so Muggleborn," I said. "You know the Wizarding World is more conservative."

"Which is a bad thing," he said.

"Not necessarily."

"Yes necessarily," he insisted. "In the Muggle world we could be together."

I blinked at him and he shook his head. "Not any more, I know that," he said sadly. "But we could have been. We could have been married."

"Married?" I echoed.

"Yeah," he said. "They changed the law about the time Ginny first got pregnant."

"About the time we became lovers again?"

"Yeah," he said. "Don't think I didn't laugh at the irony."

"If I'd gone with you, we could have been… married?"

He shrugged. "Yeah."

"Wow. Why did you never mention this before?"

He snorted. "Yeah, because the only reason we never left and lived in the Muggle world was because you didn't want to live in sin!"

I smiled wryly. "It's just… I had no idea things were so different with Muggles."

"Oh, there are enough bigotted Muggles, don't worry. But most of them try to be fair."

"Would you have asked me?" I asked him.

He rolled his eyes. "Why wasn't it your place to ask me?" he laughed.

"Because it's a Muggle thing."

He sighed overdramatically. "Oh, Ron, you are impossible. Yes, I would probably have wanted to ask you, but you don't even exist in the Muggle world, and it's a lot of paperwork to get something like that organised."

"Squibs get the paperwork necessary to live as Muggles," I pointed out. "And sometimes a wizard organizes it to marry a Muggle or a Muggleborn witch, if she wants a Muggle wedding."

"And you were already married to Hermione, it makes my head ache to think how we'd have got around that," he complained. "I think it'd still be bigamy."

"But you'd have wanted to marry me?" I pressed.

"Ron," he sighed, taking my hand. "We have been 'together', in our own inept way, for twenty-five years. I love you and yes, I would have wanted to marry you."

Summer
It really was twenty-five years that summer.

Twenty-five years since Harry had rolled over and kissed me.

Twenty-five years since I fell in love with him.

And the romantic idiot insisted we went away to celebrate.

I don't know how no one noticed how excited he was about a week's fishing trip, but maybe you had to know what to look for.

He had a ridiculous half-smile all the time.

He whistled.

I heard him singing as he mowed his lawn.

It was a bit embarassing.

And, when we arrived at the cottage, there was champagne and chocolates and fancy food and I wrapped an arm around his neck and kissed his forehead. "You are a romantic git," I said, shaking my head.

He shrugged. "I wanted it to be special," he said.

It was special. It was lovely. It was romantic.

I'd been cheating on Hermione for twenty-five years.

No.

I'd been cheating on Harry for twenty-five years.

I was a selfish bastard.

No.

Because what I wanted was to be with Harry.

But I'd messed that up.

So I was determined to make sure we had a perfect week.

It'd had been a while since we'd been away together, and we were both randy as hell.

I'd never really thought about it before, but after our fourth go I lay back and said, "Y'know it's a lot less tiring to sleep with a bloke."

He opened one eye and half-glared at me. "I don't want to know what Hermione does to you that is so tiring," he announced.

"No, she doesn't do anything that odd," I said. "It's just that I can't manage four times in a night with her anymore. And with us that's just twice each. Two cocks – half as tiring."

Harry snorted. "So that's why you're with me? Because I do half the work?"

"Oh, Hermione does plenty of the work," I assured him. "But I can't fake an erection."


Fall
It took a bit of persuasion, but Teddy went off to school in the autumn.

I got him his own owl, so he could write to Alex whenever he wanted.

Hermione frowned at me. "You shouldn't encourage him, Ron," she said. "He needs to make more friends at school."

Harry frowned at me, too. "You shouldn't encourage him, Ron," he said. "It's like we can't be together, so you want our clones to be together."

"Not together," I scoffed. "Just happy."

But I think he was right.

On some weird level, I wanted my son to have his raven haired soulmate.


Passing
And at the end of the year, Lizzie had her baby.

No, she hadn't married the father in the meantime.

Or even told us who he was.

He was a gorgeous baby boy, with stunning red hair.

Harry snorted with laughter when I told him that.

And Lizzie named him Arthur, which was lovely, and my dad held his first great-grandchild, which made the whole thing worthwhile.

And she took him to work with her at the shop, and Fred and George made a huge fuss of him, and took the piss out of me for being a grandfather.

And life was pretty good.