shocfix (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shocfix) wrote,@ 2005-04-28 01:00:00 |
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Uncle Ron - H/R - PG-13
Title: Uncle Ron
Author:shocfix
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Words : 3000
Rating: PG-13
Happy, happy birthday,magicofisis!
My gosh, it’s July 7th, and there’s just a couple of weeks to go, before we end up slitting our wrists over Deathly Hallows.
No, I’ll be brave – everything will be OK.
So, um, here you go – happy birthday – um, there’s major character death, but it gets better after that…. well, actually it gets ridiculously sappy, but I am so worried about my boys that I couldn’t even achieve an R rating!
Uncle Ron
****
So, we returned, in a kinda triumph, all a bit battered, a bit more scarred.
It wasn’t my idea to split up with Hermione – I only ever understood half of what she said, anyway, and I really didn’t mind that Dolohov’s Obliviate crossed with Goyle Sr’s Silencio and left her only able to speak French.
It was kinda sexy.
But, speaking through Fleur, after the Healers decided she’d never be able to learn English again, she told me she was setting me free.
And it’s frustrating arguing with someone who you can’t understand, and I let her make the decision for us, and I was in love with Harry, anyway, and it didn’t actually break my heart too badly.
Ah.
Harry.
Well, that wasn’t important.
Really.
He’d returned to Ginny and everyone thought it was adorable, and the Wizarding World needed them to be together and we never did get to share our bachelor pad, because he married her right out of school, and they lived in a cottage with roses round the door, and I lived in a permanent state of bewilderment.
I admit I just drifted, Harryless, for a while. I always meant to move out of the Burrow, but I worked for Fred and George and never earnt enough to afford my own place. I muddled through, and I received owls from Hermione, in French, that Bill’s five year old daughter translated for me, and I received invitations to dinner from Harry, in love, that I scrupulously accepted one in three of, so I didn’t seem too dependant on him.
And then everything changed.
Ginny had the twins and I Flooed to their cottage and sat in the lounge with Harry, each holding a swaddled frog-faced thing, as Mum and a hastily summoned Healer failed to stop Ginny from bleeding to death.
Mum came out of their bedroom, deathly pale herself, and I awkwardly accepted the other baby from Harry as Mum wrapped her arms around him and he shattered.
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Mum whispered. “There was nothing we could do.”
“No,” he gasped, wrenching away from her. “I’m the one who’s sorry – it’s my fault.”
“Nonsense,” Mum said. “You know how much she wanted these babies; these things just happen, sometimes.”
She turned and took one from me and laid it in his arms and it squawked loudly and he stroked the tuft of red hair and his jaw worked, silently, as he swallowed.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Uh, two in the morning,” I said, checking my watch.
“Good,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t want her to have died on their birthday.”
Well, you couldn’t get a more Harry reaction, and he was obviously going to be all self-sacrificing about things, but Mum offered to take the babies, and she should have known better. Should have known Harry’s feelings about poor, motherless babies.
He quit Puddlemere and stayed home and struggled to take care of them, alone, only accepting help in the form of expressed breastmilk from the ridiculously overabundant Angelina, who was still feeding her and Fred’s third.
Two months passed and we didn’t want to intrude, but one afternoon Angelina came downstairs to the shop with his milk supply and pushed me into the fire, to deliver it.
I found Harry asleep, wrapped in a blanket, on the floor beside two sleeping babies, naked but for their nappies, on a sheepskin rug.
I sighed and tidied round them, Evanescoed the empty bottles, like Angelina had taught me, banished the bag of dirty nappies and filled a bottle for the first baby to stir.
Twenty minutes later, Harry sat bolt upright and looked stricken at the sight of just one sleeping twin.
“S’OK,” I said swiftly. “It’s me. I’m here, I’ve got the other one.”
Harry blinked at me, pinned to the armchair by the baby asleep on my chest. He frowned and reached for her, but I shook my head.
“Why don’t you have a shower?” I suggested, wrinkling my nose. “I’ll take care of things.”
“Shower,” he said slowly.
“Sure,” I said. “How badly can I cope for ten minutes?”
“Shower, yes,” he said, hauling himself to his feet and sniffing an armpit. “Yes.”
I’d managed to wriggle out from under baby number one, and was feeding baby number two and meaning to ask him which one was which, when Harry dripped back into the room, looking much more human, if still in need of a shave.
“D’you make sure that’s the right temperature?” he asked, staring at the bottle in my hand. “The bottles in the fridge are much too cold…”
“It’s straight from the udder,” I interrupted. “I brought today’s supply with.”
Harry snorted.
“Don’t let Angelina hear you say that,” he said, his eyes looking a bit more Harrylike as he grinned.
“She’s married to Fred,” I said dismissively. “She’s used to it.”
Harry sat beside me and held the small foot that was resting on my arm.
He looked grey with exhaustion and I tried very hard to separate my best mate, Harry, who I wanted to help, from the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, Harry, who I wanted to fuck, and I made my decision.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said.
“Hmmm?” he said, his eyes rising from his suckling daughter to meet mine. “Deal? What?”
“I’m only moving in if you’ll still change all the nappies,” I said casually. “I’m not going near tiny girls’ bits.”
“Moving in?” he echoed blankly.
“Angelina said you only need change them in the middle of the night if they have a nightmare poo,” I went on, ignoring his gathering frown, “so I can still do night feeds and stuff. I just don’t think I could go down on a woman if I’d been Tergeoing shit out of foldy bits all day.”
Harry blinked at me.
“What woman?” he said finally.
I waved that away.
“Should I meet a woman with splayed legs while the girls are still in nappies,” I said.
“Ron!” he spluttered.
“What?” I asked, removing the bottle from the tiny sleeping mouth and draping her over my shoulder.
“I don’t know where to start!” he complained. “You can’t just…”
“I don’t mean I’ll meet someone and dive straight between her legs,” I protested.
“No,” he said. “I mean you can’t just announce you’re moving in, like that.”
I gave him a top of the range how-can-you-say-that-after-all-we’ve-bee
He huffed.
“Harry,” I said. “You do need help, look at you.”
“I’ll hire someone,” he said.
I glared at him.
“Then hire me,” I said.
“What?”
I shrugged. “I’m sick of working for Fred and George, but I can’t afford to be a lady of leisure, like you, so hire me.”
He frowned.
“You want to be my nanny?” he said.
Baby two burped breastmilk down the back of my neck.
“Who better?” I said.
He stared at me and fought to hold onto the frown as the weight seemed to lift visibly off his shoulders.
“You’d really help me?” he asked, gesturing round at the chaos.
“You don’t have to do everything alone,” I said. “I thought I’d got that through your thick head by now.”
“But this isn’t, you know, fighting Voldemort,” he said, trying hard not to look manically happy.
I rolled my eyes.
“Really?” he said, leaning into my side as he held the small foot again.
“Really,” I said, letting my hand close over his, as even two manly best mates are allowed a bit of a Moment.
So, I resigned at the shop and Angelina gave me a broad smile and trod on Fred’s foot when he attempted to protest; I moved my stuff out of the Burrow, while Dad kept Mum busy compiling a list of Domestic Charms she thought I’d need.
And I moved into the Charming Cottage, with my favourite person and his two spawn, and Dad added a third bedroom for me, and Harry waved away my protests and gave me a key to his vault at Gringott’s and said I was to spend whatever I needed to on household stuff and the girls, and to pay myself wages, if I really was gonna be that far up my own arse to still think that what was his wasn’t mine.
And it turned out that baby number one was called Elizabeth and baby number two was called Anne, and I learnt to tell them apart and Harry and I were both half as grey as he had been before I moved in and, her continued offers to take over and her insistence that at least one of the girls be named Ginny not withstanding, we had a new found appreciation for my mum.
Because how the hell had she managed with seven of us?
And I repeatedly wondered why the hell did she go ahead and have me, while up to her eyes in toddler Fred and George?
And Harry always said he was glad she had.
And time passed, and Ginny’s death hurt less and I loved him more and I knew it was a bad idea to be this dependant on him, and I dated the occasional witch that Fred found for me, and ignored Angelina’s raised eyebrow, just to stop Harry thinking I’d given anything up for him.
And, by the time the girls were two, and Harry went back to Puddlemere, even Mum didn’t suggest I go back to work, too, and let her have them.
And they turned three and I took them to see Harry play, and they turned four and I took them to ballet lessons at the local Muggle church hall and I had no idea what I’d do when Harry chose someone to be their new mother.
Not what I’d do for money. Yes, going back to the twins wouldn’t be the same as having access to the bottomless Potter and Black vaults, but I didn’t spend that much on myself, anyway.
What I’d do without my little family.
The girls looked so much like their mum and I didn’t actually pretend they were mine, but they were of my blood and they were Harry’s and I adored them.
Everything changed one afternoon.
I’d wanted to meet Neville for lunch and Harry had said he could leave practise early, to pick the girls up from ballet, so I’d thought no more of it and dressed them in matching tutus and left them at the hall with a nod at the knot of Muggle mums. I had never spoken to them much, not because they weren’t pretty, or they were married, or because I was desperately and unrequitedly gay, but because it would have been tempting fate for me to interact with Muggles too much.
I really had no idea if Muggle uncles would stay at home to raise their nieces, and I didn’t want to draw any undue attention to the girls.
I’m pretty sure they had mentioned that their gran was a witch, but that’s cute when you’re a four-year-old in a pink tutu. Not so much when you’re six foot plus, with huge feet and too many freckles.
So. I had my lunch with Neville and we even talked about what the ballet school thought of their uncle taking care of the girls, but Neville reckoned they looked so much like me that it was a non-issue.
I returned home to find a very flustered looking Harry pacing the lounge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t let me take the girls,” he said.
“What?”
“They said they had no idea who I was, and they wouldn’t hand them over.”
“What?”
“They wouldn’t believe that I was their father,” he complained. “They’re the image of you, and apparently everyone thinks you’re their father and they were gonna call the police, even though Annie tried to explain who I was!”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, stricken. “I never told anyone I was their father, honestly.”
“I know that,” he said, sitting down on the couch with a large sigh. “I remembered Angelina picked them up, once, and I had to come home and Floo her and we went back together and got them.”
“They look even less like Angelina,” I pointed out, sitting beside him, and he laughed.
“But she is their official aunt,” he said.
“Well, you’re their official father.”
“Some of the mothers…” He trailed off.
“What?”
“Some of the mothers thought… well, they assumed you were the dad, so, if I was the father… we must be a couple and had done some sort of surrogate thing.”
“Some what thing?” I asked, the hair on the back of my neck standing up at Harry even using the word ‘couple’.
“Muggles can… gay couples can have a baby with a surrogate mother, who hands the baby over to them,” he explained, flushing slightly. “I told them I’d been married to your sister, but they seemed disappointed that there was such a boring explanation. ‘Cept for the one who asked if that makes you available.”
I laughed nervously.
“I think I know the one you mean,” I said. “And I’m not!”
“You should be, if you want to,” he said. “I didn’t realise how it looked.”
“I’m fine,” I said, feeling rather uncomfortable discussing my availability.
“You’re so good with the girls,” he said miserably. “You should have your own family.”
“I don’t need… you three are my family… if that’s OK.”
“Why shouldn’t it be OK?” he asked. “I mean, we’re far too dependant on you, but you’re… well, we’re… we are a family.”
“Hermione says there’s a kind of bird where the big brothers and sisters don’t find mates, they help bring up the new baby birds,” I said. “And the girls, well, they’re Gin’s, and they’re yours, and well… I just worry about you finding them a new mother, actually.”
His eyebrows shot up under his fringe.
“I don’t really think I’ll… I can’t imagine,” he huffed. “I don’t want to find them a new mother.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’d never trust anyone with them.”
“Well, I guess in the Wizarding World everyone will always know who they are, so they’ll never be embarrassed by anyone thinking we’re… I mean, you know, everyone knows we’re not…” I sighed.
“It’s no one’s business what we are,” Harry said firmly.
“But we’re not,” I protested.
“But it’d be no one’s business if we were,” he insisted and my heart ached.
“Nobody’s business,” I agreed.
“Except…” He tipped his head on the side and looked at me through narrowed eyes.
“’Cept what?” I asked.
“’Cept the girls,” he said, leaning closer.
I laughed nervously. “Well, they’re only four, Harry,” I said. “I don’t think they know about the bees and the bees.”
He didn’t laugh.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “I promise I’ll always make it clear I’m just the uncle.”
He glared at me and made a noise like an angry cat.
“You are not just anything,” he said fiercely. “You… you’re… we… we are a family, the four of us. Look. I sent the girls home with Angelina, because I want to… we need to sort something out.”
“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“This,” he said, and he kissed me.
Despite the fact that I’d been dreaming of his kisses for the best part of a decade, I just sat there like an idiot and let his lips slide against mine.
He pulled away after a couple of very long seconds and looked defiant.
“I don’t want to find them a new mother,” he said firmly.
“Good,” I said, still trying to work out if I was allowed to tell him I was desperately in love with him.
“Ron?” he said slowly. “Did I… was that not…?”
“No,” I said. “That was. Very much so.”
“What you wanted,” he elaborated.
“Only if it’s what you wanted,” I said.
“Well, only if it’s what you wanted,” he said.
We looked at each other.
He tutted.
“It’s what I wanted,” he said.
“You… you said you didn’t realise how it looked,” I said pitifully. “I, well, I hoped that was how it looked.”
“I don’t care how it looked,” he said. “I care about you.”
I beamed at him. “Really?” I asked.
He smiled. “’Course,” he said, moving closer and wrapping his fingers round my wrist. “Ask Angelina; I told her I was gonna tell you.”
“She knows?” I asked. “Is that why she’s always raising an eyebrow and smirking at me?”
Harry’s fingers wandered up my arm and slid round the back of my neck.
“Does she?” he breathed, against my lips.
“Always smirky,” I confirmed, looking into his huge eyes. “Told her she’d better dye her eyebrows yellow if she wanted to raise one at me effectively – they’re barely visible as is.”
“Shut up, Ron,” he whispered, and kissed me.
And this time I kissed back.
He made an amazing, needy noise and literally crawled into my lap, his hands twined tight in my hair as he straddled me, his tongue lapping at my lips.
My hands slid round him and up under his shirt, feeling the muscles shifting in his back as he moved closer and ground against me.
“But you don’t fancy blokes,” I murmured.
“Do,” he said. “Hush.”
“You fancied Cho, then Gin,” I protested as he bit his way down my throat.
“Fancied Quidditch players,” he said into my skin. “Fancied Oliver first of all.”
“Wow,” I said weakly. “Me too.”
He laughed and pulled back to look at me.
“Fancied you something rotten,” he said.
“You make me support Puddlemere,” I admitted.
He smiled widely and touched my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“We really together?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, leaning in for a soft kiss.
“The gossip, Harry, it’ll be…”
“Don’t have to tell anyone,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” said a voice from the doorway. “Sorry.”
We looked round to see an apologetic Angelina and two wide-eyed little girls.
“Kissing!” Annie said, screwing up her nose.
“Sorry,” Angelina said again.
“S’OK,” Harry said, climbing out of my lap and adjusting his trousers.
“Kissing,” Annie repeated. “Like Granma and Granpa!”
“Uh, yes,” Harry said, as I tried not to think of Mum straddling Dad’s lap and pressing against his erection. “Um.”
Lizzie’s eyes narrowed and she looked more like her mum than ever and, the veteran of a shared childhood on the receiving end of that look, I braced myself.
“C’n I have your room?” she asked me.
****
[note:magicofisis? Sorry about Ginny bleeding to death on your birthday, but I like her too much, and Harry loves her too much, for him just to return at the end of the war and not want her anymore, so I had to give her a worthy death. And then the boys simply wouldn’t get any further than kissing, and this is the last thing I’ll write for you before the book comes out, and I really, really wanted to achieve penetration, but it simply was not to be…]
Title: Uncle Ron
Author:
shocfixPairing: Harry/Ron
Words : 3000
Rating: PG-13
Happy, happy birthday,
magicofisis!My gosh, it’s July 7th, and there’s just a couple of weeks to go, before we end up slitting our wrists over Deathly Hallows.
No, I’ll be brave – everything will be OK.
So, um, here you go – happy birthday – um, there’s major character death, but it gets better after that…. well, actually it gets ridiculously sappy, but I am so worried about my boys that I couldn’t even achieve an R rating!
Uncle Ron
****
So, we returned, in a kinda triumph, all a bit battered, a bit more scarred.
It wasn’t my idea to split up with Hermione – I only ever understood half of what she said, anyway, and I really didn’t mind that Dolohov’s Obliviate crossed with Goyle Sr’s Silencio and left her only able to speak French.
It was kinda sexy.
But, speaking through Fleur, after the Healers decided she’d never be able to learn English again, she told me she was setting me free.
And it’s frustrating arguing with someone who you can’t understand, and I let her make the decision for us, and I was in love with Harry, anyway, and it didn’t actually break my heart too badly.
Ah.
Harry.
Well, that wasn’t important.
Really.
He’d returned to Ginny and everyone thought it was adorable, and the Wizarding World needed them to be together and we never did get to share our bachelor pad, because he married her right out of school, and they lived in a cottage with roses round the door, and I lived in a permanent state of bewilderment.
I admit I just drifted, Harryless, for a while. I always meant to move out of the Burrow, but I worked for Fred and George and never earnt enough to afford my own place. I muddled through, and I received owls from Hermione, in French, that Bill’s five year old daughter translated for me, and I received invitations to dinner from Harry, in love, that I scrupulously accepted one in three of, so I didn’t seem too dependant on him.
And then everything changed.
Ginny had the twins and I Flooed to their cottage and sat in the lounge with Harry, each holding a swaddled frog-faced thing, as Mum and a hastily summoned Healer failed to stop Ginny from bleeding to death.
Mum came out of their bedroom, deathly pale herself, and I awkwardly accepted the other baby from Harry as Mum wrapped her arms around him and he shattered.
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Mum whispered. “There was nothing we could do.”
“No,” he gasped, wrenching away from her. “I’m the one who’s sorry – it’s my fault.”
“Nonsense,” Mum said. “You know how much she wanted these babies; these things just happen, sometimes.”
She turned and took one from me and laid it in his arms and it squawked loudly and he stroked the tuft of red hair and his jaw worked, silently, as he swallowed.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Uh, two in the morning,” I said, checking my watch.
“Good,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t want her to have died on their birthday.”
Well, you couldn’t get a more Harry reaction, and he was obviously going to be all self-sacrificing about things, but Mum offered to take the babies, and she should have known better. Should have known Harry’s feelings about poor, motherless babies.
He quit Puddlemere and stayed home and struggled to take care of them, alone, only accepting help in the form of expressed breastmilk from the ridiculously overabundant Angelina, who was still feeding her and Fred’s third.
Two months passed and we didn’t want to intrude, but one afternoon Angelina came downstairs to the shop with his milk supply and pushed me into the fire, to deliver it.
I found Harry asleep, wrapped in a blanket, on the floor beside two sleeping babies, naked but for their nappies, on a sheepskin rug.
I sighed and tidied round them, Evanescoed the empty bottles, like Angelina had taught me, banished the bag of dirty nappies and filled a bottle for the first baby to stir.
Twenty minutes later, Harry sat bolt upright and looked stricken at the sight of just one sleeping twin.
“S’OK,” I said swiftly. “It’s me. I’m here, I’ve got the other one.”
Harry blinked at me, pinned to the armchair by the baby asleep on my chest. He frowned and reached for her, but I shook my head.
“Why don’t you have a shower?” I suggested, wrinkling my nose. “I’ll take care of things.”
“Shower,” he said slowly.
“Sure,” I said. “How badly can I cope for ten minutes?”
“Shower, yes,” he said, hauling himself to his feet and sniffing an armpit. “Yes.”
I’d managed to wriggle out from under baby number one, and was feeding baby number two and meaning to ask him which one was which, when Harry dripped back into the room, looking much more human, if still in need of a shave.
“D’you make sure that’s the right temperature?” he asked, staring at the bottle in my hand. “The bottles in the fridge are much too cold…”
“It’s straight from the udder,” I interrupted. “I brought today’s supply with.”
Harry snorted.
“Don’t let Angelina hear you say that,” he said, his eyes looking a bit more Harrylike as he grinned.
“She’s married to Fred,” I said dismissively. “She’s used to it.”
Harry sat beside me and held the small foot that was resting on my arm.
He looked grey with exhaustion and I tried very hard to separate my best mate, Harry, who I wanted to help, from the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, Harry, who I wanted to fuck, and I made my decision.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said.
“Hmmm?” he said, his eyes rising from his suckling daughter to meet mine. “Deal? What?”
“I’m only moving in if you’ll still change all the nappies,” I said casually. “I’m not going near tiny girls’ bits.”
“Moving in?” he echoed blankly.
“Angelina said you only need change them in the middle of the night if they have a nightmare poo,” I went on, ignoring his gathering frown, “so I can still do night feeds and stuff. I just don’t think I could go down on a woman if I’d been Tergeoing shit out of foldy bits all day.”
Harry blinked at me.
“What woman?” he said finally.
I waved that away.
“Should I meet a woman with splayed legs while the girls are still in nappies,” I said.
“Ron!” he spluttered.
“What?” I asked, removing the bottle from the tiny sleeping mouth and draping her over my shoulder.
“I don’t know where to start!” he complained. “You can’t just…”
“I don’t mean I’ll meet someone and dive straight between her legs,” I protested.
“No,” he said. “I mean you can’t just announce you’re moving in, like that.”
I gave him a top of the range how-can-you-say-that-after-all-we’ve-bee
He huffed.
“Harry,” I said. “You do need help, look at you.”
“I’ll hire someone,” he said.
I glared at him.
“Then hire me,” I said.
“What?”
I shrugged. “I’m sick of working for Fred and George, but I can’t afford to be a lady of leisure, like you, so hire me.”
He frowned.
“You want to be my nanny?” he said.
Baby two burped breastmilk down the back of my neck.
“Who better?” I said.
He stared at me and fought to hold onto the frown as the weight seemed to lift visibly off his shoulders.
“You’d really help me?” he asked, gesturing round at the chaos.
“You don’t have to do everything alone,” I said. “I thought I’d got that through your thick head by now.”
“But this isn’t, you know, fighting Voldemort,” he said, trying hard not to look manically happy.
I rolled my eyes.
“Really?” he said, leaning into my side as he held the small foot again.
“Really,” I said, letting my hand close over his, as even two manly best mates are allowed a bit of a Moment.
So, I resigned at the shop and Angelina gave me a broad smile and trod on Fred’s foot when he attempted to protest; I moved my stuff out of the Burrow, while Dad kept Mum busy compiling a list of Domestic Charms she thought I’d need.
And I moved into the Charming Cottage, with my favourite person and his two spawn, and Dad added a third bedroom for me, and Harry waved away my protests and gave me a key to his vault at Gringott’s and said I was to spend whatever I needed to on household stuff and the girls, and to pay myself wages, if I really was gonna be that far up my own arse to still think that what was his wasn’t mine.
And it turned out that baby number one was called Elizabeth and baby number two was called Anne, and I learnt to tell them apart and Harry and I were both half as grey as he had been before I moved in and, her continued offers to take over and her insistence that at least one of the girls be named Ginny not withstanding, we had a new found appreciation for my mum.
Because how the hell had she managed with seven of us?
And I repeatedly wondered why the hell did she go ahead and have me, while up to her eyes in toddler Fred and George?
And Harry always said he was glad she had.
And time passed, and Ginny’s death hurt less and I loved him more and I knew it was a bad idea to be this dependant on him, and I dated the occasional witch that Fred found for me, and ignored Angelina’s raised eyebrow, just to stop Harry thinking I’d given anything up for him.
And, by the time the girls were two, and Harry went back to Puddlemere, even Mum didn’t suggest I go back to work, too, and let her have them.
And they turned three and I took them to see Harry play, and they turned four and I took them to ballet lessons at the local Muggle church hall and I had no idea what I’d do when Harry chose someone to be their new mother.
Not what I’d do for money. Yes, going back to the twins wouldn’t be the same as having access to the bottomless Potter and Black vaults, but I didn’t spend that much on myself, anyway.
What I’d do without my little family.
The girls looked so much like their mum and I didn’t actually pretend they were mine, but they were of my blood and they were Harry’s and I adored them.
Everything changed one afternoon.
I’d wanted to meet Neville for lunch and Harry had said he could leave practise early, to pick the girls up from ballet, so I’d thought no more of it and dressed them in matching tutus and left them at the hall with a nod at the knot of Muggle mums. I had never spoken to them much, not because they weren’t pretty, or they were married, or because I was desperately and unrequitedly gay, but because it would have been tempting fate for me to interact with Muggles too much.
I really had no idea if Muggle uncles would stay at home to raise their nieces, and I didn’t want to draw any undue attention to the girls.
I’m pretty sure they had mentioned that their gran was a witch, but that’s cute when you’re a four-year-old in a pink tutu. Not so much when you’re six foot plus, with huge feet and too many freckles.
So. I had my lunch with Neville and we even talked about what the ballet school thought of their uncle taking care of the girls, but Neville reckoned they looked so much like me that it was a non-issue.
I returned home to find a very flustered looking Harry pacing the lounge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t let me take the girls,” he said.
“What?”
“They said they had no idea who I was, and they wouldn’t hand them over.”
“What?”
“They wouldn’t believe that I was their father,” he complained. “They’re the image of you, and apparently everyone thinks you’re their father and they were gonna call the police, even though Annie tried to explain who I was!”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, stricken. “I never told anyone I was their father, honestly.”
“I know that,” he said, sitting down on the couch with a large sigh. “I remembered Angelina picked them up, once, and I had to come home and Floo her and we went back together and got them.”
“They look even less like Angelina,” I pointed out, sitting beside him, and he laughed.
“But she is their official aunt,” he said.
“Well, you’re their official father.”
“Some of the mothers…” He trailed off.
“What?”
“Some of the mothers thought… well, they assumed you were the dad, so, if I was the father… we must be a couple and had done some sort of surrogate thing.”
“Some what thing?” I asked, the hair on the back of my neck standing up at Harry even using the word ‘couple’.
“Muggles can… gay couples can have a baby with a surrogate mother, who hands the baby over to them,” he explained, flushing slightly. “I told them I’d been married to your sister, but they seemed disappointed that there was such a boring explanation. ‘Cept for the one who asked if that makes you available.”
I laughed nervously.
“I think I know the one you mean,” I said. “And I’m not!”
“You should be, if you want to,” he said. “I didn’t realise how it looked.”
“I’m fine,” I said, feeling rather uncomfortable discussing my availability.
“You’re so good with the girls,” he said miserably. “You should have your own family.”
“I don’t need… you three are my family… if that’s OK.”
“Why shouldn’t it be OK?” he asked. “I mean, we’re far too dependant on you, but you’re… well, we’re… we are a family.”
“Hermione says there’s a kind of bird where the big brothers and sisters don’t find mates, they help bring up the new baby birds,” I said. “And the girls, well, they’re Gin’s, and they’re yours, and well… I just worry about you finding them a new mother, actually.”
His eyebrows shot up under his fringe.
“I don’t really think I’ll… I can’t imagine,” he huffed. “I don’t want to find them a new mother.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’d never trust anyone with them.”
“Well, I guess in the Wizarding World everyone will always know who they are, so they’ll never be embarrassed by anyone thinking we’re… I mean, you know, everyone knows we’re not…” I sighed.
“It’s no one’s business what we are,” Harry said firmly.
“But we’re not,” I protested.
“But it’d be no one’s business if we were,” he insisted and my heart ached.
“Nobody’s business,” I agreed.
“Except…” He tipped his head on the side and looked at me through narrowed eyes.
“’Cept what?” I asked.
“’Cept the girls,” he said, leaning closer.
I laughed nervously. “Well, they’re only four, Harry,” I said. “I don’t think they know about the bees and the bees.”
He didn’t laugh.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “I promise I’ll always make it clear I’m just the uncle.”
He glared at me and made a noise like an angry cat.
“You are not just anything,” he said fiercely. “You… you’re… we… we are a family, the four of us. Look. I sent the girls home with Angelina, because I want to… we need to sort something out.”
“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“This,” he said, and he kissed me.
Despite the fact that I’d been dreaming of his kisses for the best part of a decade, I just sat there like an idiot and let his lips slide against mine.
He pulled away after a couple of very long seconds and looked defiant.
“I don’t want to find them a new mother,” he said firmly.
“Good,” I said, still trying to work out if I was allowed to tell him I was desperately in love with him.
“Ron?” he said slowly. “Did I… was that not…?”
“No,” I said. “That was. Very much so.”
“What you wanted,” he elaborated.
“Only if it’s what you wanted,” I said.
“Well, only if it’s what you wanted,” he said.
We looked at each other.
He tutted.
“It’s what I wanted,” he said.
“You… you said you didn’t realise how it looked,” I said pitifully. “I, well, I hoped that was how it looked.”
“I don’t care how it looked,” he said. “I care about you.”
I beamed at him. “Really?” I asked.
He smiled. “’Course,” he said, moving closer and wrapping his fingers round my wrist. “Ask Angelina; I told her I was gonna tell you.”
“She knows?” I asked. “Is that why she’s always raising an eyebrow and smirking at me?”
Harry’s fingers wandered up my arm and slid round the back of my neck.
“Does she?” he breathed, against my lips.
“Always smirky,” I confirmed, looking into his huge eyes. “Told her she’d better dye her eyebrows yellow if she wanted to raise one at me effectively – they’re barely visible as is.”
“Shut up, Ron,” he whispered, and kissed me.
And this time I kissed back.
He made an amazing, needy noise and literally crawled into my lap, his hands twined tight in my hair as he straddled me, his tongue lapping at my lips.
My hands slid round him and up under his shirt, feeling the muscles shifting in his back as he moved closer and ground against me.
“But you don’t fancy blokes,” I murmured.
“Do,” he said. “Hush.”
“You fancied Cho, then Gin,” I protested as he bit his way down my throat.
“Fancied Quidditch players,” he said into my skin. “Fancied Oliver first of all.”
“Wow,” I said weakly. “Me too.”
He laughed and pulled back to look at me.
“Fancied you something rotten,” he said.
“You make me support Puddlemere,” I admitted.
He smiled widely and touched my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“We really together?” I asked.
“Really,” he said, leaning in for a soft kiss.
“The gossip, Harry, it’ll be…”
“Don’t have to tell anyone,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” said a voice from the doorway. “Sorry.”
We looked round to see an apologetic Angelina and two wide-eyed little girls.
“Kissing!” Annie said, screwing up her nose.
“Sorry,” Angelina said again.
“S’OK,” Harry said, climbing out of my lap and adjusting his trousers.
“Kissing,” Annie repeated. “Like Granma and Granpa!”
“Uh, yes,” Harry said, as I tried not to think of Mum straddling Dad’s lap and pressing against his erection. “Um.”
Lizzie’s eyes narrowed and she looked more like her mum than ever and, the veteran of a shared childhood on the receiving end of that look, I braced myself.
“C’n I have your room?” she asked me.
****
[note:
magicofisis? Sorry about Ginny bleeding to death on your birthday, but I like her too much, and Harry loves her too much, for him just to return at the end of the war and not want her anymore, so I had to give her a worthy death. And then the boys simply wouldn’t get any further than kissing, and this is the last thing I’ll write for you before the book comes out, and I really, really wanted to achieve penetration, but it simply was not to be…]