InsaneJournal

It's Harry I'm Planning To Marry - R/Hr - PG
Title: It's Harry I'm Planning To Marry
Author: shocfix
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Words: 1424
Rating: PG


It's Harry I'm Planning To Marry
****
We’d spent a few tense weeks at the Dursley’s and, no, I hadn’t made things official between me and Hermione, not with the three of us squashed in Harry’s room and eating at midnight to avoid his family.

That’s not how I wanted to get together.

But then Harry turned seventeen, and we could leave the ‘safety’ of his aunt’s house.

We still had two weeks until Bill’s wedding and Hermione couldn’t go off Horcrux hunting without spending some time with her parents, first, and I wanted to avoid Mum and Fleur and Harry wanted to avoid Ginny, so she invited us to come with her.

“You gonna make things official before we go?” Harry asked me, while we packed and Hermione telephoned her parents.

“Me? What?” I said wittily.

“Ron,” he said. “Are you and Hermione a couple?”

“A couple of what?” I asked, stalling for time.

“Idiots,” he snorted. “Seriously, are you gonna make things official before we go?”

“No.”

He glared at me.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t wanna look back on asking her out in your aunt’s house, where everything is so miserable.”

“You don’t want to look back on never asking until it’s too late,” he said darkly.

I glared at him.

“And it’s best if we go to her parents’ house as friends, don’t you think?” I asked. “I don’t think my first time in a Muggle house I should be the boyfriend. I’m a really crap boyfriend.”

He laughed sympathetically and went on packing. We’d just about finished when Hermione came back upstairs.

“All set?” I said.

“Hmm,” she said, sitting on Harry’s bed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Not,” she said. “Not wrong.”

“Hermione?”

“Well, I asked my mum if you can both come and stay, until the wedding,” she said. “And that’s fine, she just asked if you’d be OK with sharing the spare room.”

“’Course we are,” Harry said.

“’Course you are,” she echoed.

“So, what’s the matter?” I asked, sitting beside her on the bed.

“My aunt is there,” she said. “Don’t worry, she’s lovely, it’s just she doesn’t know I’m a witch.”

“We’ll be on our best behaviour,” I promised.

“Oh, I know that,” she said, taking my hand. “The thing is, before I could stop her, Mum turned to Aunt Alice and said ‘Hermione’s coming to stay for a fortnight, and she’s bringing her young man and their friend’.”

“Oh,” I said, looking desperately up at Harry, who nodded significantly in Hermione’s direction. “I’m… that’s… you know that’s…”

“The thing is,” Hermione interrupted, looking rather flustered and adorable and biting her lip. “The thing is, I said we’d be right over, and she wasn’t to breathe another word about me having a young man.”

“It’s really OK…”

“And when we get there, I am going to introduce Harry as my boyfriend,” she said very quickly.

There was a ringing silence, as we both gawped at her.

“What?” I said coldly, dropping her hand.

“Oh, please don’t get all upset,” she said. “It’s not that we… we’re not even… that you’ve not…” She huffed noisily. “It’s mainly the Muggle thing.”

“What?” I gasped.

“It’s just that she’s going to pounce,” she said, looking stressed. “And she’ll grab the young man and sit beside him and ask what his parents do and which universities he’s applying to and what his team is and should Charles marry Camilla and should Diana marry Dodi and Harry will be able to cope better.”

“You’re ashamed of me,” I said pitifully.

“Ron, no…”

“Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m not your young man, anyway, am I?” I interrupted. “I hope you’ll both be very happy together.”

And I stomped out of the room.

Harry found me sulking in the garden, sat down beside me and watched me shredding a daisy.

“She loves me not,” I said glumly, throwing the stalk away.

“She loves you,” he said.

I snorted.

“What does your father do?” he asked.

“What?”

“What does your father do?”

“Works in Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects,” I muttered.

“Favourite team?”

“Chudley Cannons. Harry, stop it.”

“Favourite group?”

“Weird Sisters.”

“What are you gonna do when you leave school?”

“Vanquish evil and then fight Dark Wizards.”

He gave me a pointed look.

“She probably won’t see her family for a long time,” he said. “And she just wants this visit to go off without problems.”

“So, I’m just a problem?”

“At the moment, yes,” he said.

“I’ve been dumped before we even got together,” I muttered.

“You have not been dumped,” he said firmly. “You know perfectly well you’re gonna marry her and have hundreds of babies with scary hair. It’s just a total fluke that I was brought up by Muggles and can handle questions about it.”

“Babies?” I echoed, going cold.

“Also, I’m not in love with the girl,” he said, ignoring me. “So I will not get all flustered and humiliate myself.”

I grunted.

“Well?” he prompted.

“You gonna stand in for me on my wedding night, because you’re not in love with the girl and will not get all flustered and humiliate yourself?”

“Only if Hermione wants me to.”

We looked at each other.

“I over reacted,” I said.

“You did.”

“Is she very angry with me?”

“No, she’s upset, not angry.”

“Hmmm.”

“Go and sweep her off her feet,” he said.

I snorted.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”

“Look, Ron,” he said seriously. “You’ve waited long enough.”

“I know.”

“You’re in love with her.”

“Um. Maybe.”

“You want to fill her with your freckled babies,” he said, his lip twitching.

“Ew,” I protested, shoving him. “Stop this baby crap.”

He sniggered.

“So,” I said, leaning my shoulder against his. “You can answer all the aunt’s questions, can you?”

“Dead parents, uncle makes drills, Manchester or maybe Bristol, to read accountancy, Liverpool, Queen Camilla is fine, Dodi is just a summer fling.”

I glared at him. “I could say that, you know,” I said.

“Only if she asked exactly those questions in exactly that order,” he pointed out.

I sighed and got to my feet.

“Wish me luck,” I said.

“Luck,” he echoed.

I went back up to Harry’s room, to find Hermione sitting on the bed and looking sad.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, the moment I stepped into the room. “I just didn’t want you to be pressured or embarrassed.”

“Just looking after me, then,” I said, closing the door and leaning against it, my hands buried deep in my trouser pockets, to stop them shaking.

“Um. Yes,” she said. “But I do know you’re a big boy, now, and can look after yourself.”

“I like you looking after me,” I said.

She gave me a tiny smile. My favourite one; the one that makes me want to hold her tight and take care of her for ever – while simultaneously ripping all her clothes off.

“I should have just told her I don’t have a young man,” she said.

“Well,” I said, crossing my fingers inside my pocket and hoping she didn’t think I was fiddling with myself. “I don’t want to make you a liar.”

“Ron?”

“I’ll be your young man, if you like,” I offered. “I mean, only for real, not for impressing aunts. Harry can still say all that stuff about the Queen being an accountant.”

“Only for real?” she whispered.

“If you’ll have me.”

I stared fixedly at my trunk, all packed and waiting to take me into a world of Muggles who’d be the grandparents of my hundreds of freckled babies.

If she’d have me.

“Of course I’ll have you, idiot,” she said.

“Charming,” I protested, finally looking up at her.

She smiled.

I crossed the room and knelt at her feet.

“Look,” I said. “I didn’t want to ask you here, because it’s such a shitty place. So, let’s keep it a secret, and Harry can be your young man to keep your aunt busy, and maybe that’ll give us some time alone together. And, when we get to the Burrow, maybe you could be my actual date for the wedding?”

“I would love to!” she said, taking my hand and entwining our fingers.

And she was finally my girl and her touch felt more intimate than anything I regretted doing with Lavender and I tugged on her hand and she slid off the bed and into my arms and I pressed a kiss into her hair.

“Since when is the Queen an accountant?” she asked me.