Chapter Text
Hermione slept terribly. Her dreams, when she managed to drift off, were filled with werewolves and house elves and being squashed up into tiny, dark spaces. When she’d open her eyes to crushing blackness, it would be to see that almost no time had passed since she’d last looked at the clock. She’d snuggle closed to Arthur’s reassuring warmth, count out his breaths until she fell back into sleep. But then the werewolves weren’t just hulking shapes: it was Fenrir Greyback in his human form, trailing his long, dirty fingernails over her body in the ballroom at Malfoy Manor. And the house elves weren’t just screaming: they were dead, a whole battalion of them lying in a mass grave, Dobby right on top.
After that, sleep was an impossibility, but it might have been for the best because Alfie was unsettled too. Recently, he’d only been waking once a night for a feed and a change, and some nights, not at all, but tonight, he was stirring barely three hours after he’d gone down. Hermione snatched her wand from the bedside table as soon as the first buzz came. Nothing would chase the last darkness away like her warm, soft baby.
Alfie gurgled as she crept into the nursery, the soft yellow glow of the nightlight illuminating him as he knelt up in his crib, hands wrapped around the vine-carved rungs of his crib. “You’re supposed to be asleep,” she murmured.
He babbled.
Hermioine gave his nappied bottom a quick squeeze. “Come on, then,” she murmured. “Let’s get you changed, hmm?”
A change wasn’t enough to settle Alfie. Nor was a feed. She read him a story, then two stories, but every time she put him down, his tiny face crumpled up and her heart broke. So Hermione settled herself into the nursery chair , covered herself with the dinosaur blanket and cradled Alfie in her arms until he finally drifted off.
She didn’t sleep, or not for more than a few moments. If she did, Alfie would wake, grizzle, wiggle. And so she sat in the dim room, staring unseeing at the leaf-patterned wallpaper Arthur had picked and hung, at the bright crib Arthur had designed and carved and painted. The shelf of books Hermione had already filled with enough stories to see Alfie through at least until he went to primary school. The next shelf up, stuffed already with cuddly toys of every description, though most of his gifts from his older brothers and his sister had kept on the dinosaur theme.
She thought about a great deal of things as she sat with Alfie warm and heavy in her arms, his soft ginger curls tucked into the crook of her elbow. She wondered what Ron had found at Malfoy Manor, if Eljes the werewolf was alright. Tip had said he was ill and getting worse, and she knew well enough how Magical Law Enforcement treated werewolves. Should she, she wondered, have tried to help? Was there anyone to advocate for Eljes? He was in a strange country, recovering from what must have been a traumatic transformation in an unfamiliar place. The aurors would probably treat him as responsible for the attack, but a werewolf couldn’t control their actions during a transformation, not without wolfsbane. They weren’t like vampires, who, even in the grip of a blood rage, knew what they were doing.
Did Eljes even know he’d bitten? Did he know he’d turned another wolf?
She thought about Lucius Malfoy, in Azkaban. Now, if anyone was to be blamed for this attack, it must surely be the man who’d knowingly allowed an unmedicated werewolf to roam. Why on earth had he done it? He knew Hermione’s work. He funded Hermione’s work! One floo call. One letter. One mention to one of his auror guards that he needed to see her. That was all it would have taken. He knew - he must know! - that they had procedures in place. But then, he’d allowed a whole pack of unmedicated wolves to roam his grounds during the war. How there hadn’t been disaster then, Hermione could not imagine.
She thought about him offering up a werewolf as a sperm donor for Lavinia, and without even telling Lavinia. Yes, evidence suggested that children with one lycanthropic parent were fine: Teddy certainly seemed happy enough. But that wasn’t a guarantee, and Teddy wasn’t completely unaffected. Lavinia deserved to know. Lavinia deserved to make a choice about the father of her child. Otherwise, it felt like selling her womb to the highest bidder. But then, wasn’t that what everyone was doing now? Cuddling Alfie closer, she felt tears prick in her eyes. Her son stretched in his sleep, his little feet extending, then coming to rest on her arm. Not many, she thought, had landed as well as she when the dice of the marriage law fell.
But Lucius, she suddenly realised, did not know that Hermione had decided she could not break his fidelity bindings. Nor did Lavinia; there just hadn’t been a good time to tell them. Somehow, the time just seemed to be vanishing at the moment. A small, satisfied smile curved her lips: Lavinia would not be going to bed with anyone, werewolf or not. Though the knowledge that Lavinia had not been given all the details didn’t sit well with her anyway, for sex with a werewolf was not an entirely risk free activity.
About six, or maybe seven years ago, Hermione had arrived at work to find Liam lurking outside her office door. He’d not been with them long, really - he was barely eighteen and he was still working in a mostly secretarial capacity, not yet with his own caseload, but he’d started to help them build the framework for the wolfsbane access scheme and bringing in other werewolves for help. She’d assumed he wanted to discuss work, but she’d been wrong. No, Liam had wanted to discuss sex, and it was a conversation for which Hermione had been wholly unprepared.
Before Alfie was born, she’d have said that all of her clients were a bit like her children. Now, she knew that wasn’t quite true: she cared deeply for every last one of them, and she did everything she could to help, but if she shared that visceral connection that had grown with Alfie… no one could have sustained that connection with so many people without exploding. But she did know that she was there for them, for anything they needed, and Liam was special. Not just because he was a colleague, not just because he was a friend. There was something in him she couldn’t have resisted - his determination and his combination of disarming innocence and world-weary cynicism. He reminded her a little of Harry, that way.
One day, she’d have to have a conversation a little like that with Alfie, she realised, though it seemed impossible that the baby sleeping softly in her arms would ever be a teenage boy navigating the new and murky waters of relationships. But Liam… Liam had been alone. He’d never known his father, and his mother had been killed in the attack that turned him - Greyback preferred young wolves, and a middle-aged muggleborn witch was not a priority. And now… now Liam had stumbled across a witch that drew his eye, and apparently, he’d drawn hers too, for she’d bravely asked him for coffee. Three months of coffees and walks in the park, and he needed advice on where to go next.
Hermione didn’t consider herself a prude; and until Arthur had taken her to bed and shown her the difference between sex and lovemaking, she hadn’t considered herself particularly inexperienced either. Oh, yes, she’d thought that sex was perhaps a little base, a little animal. But humans, after all, were animals, when it came down to it. She’d had needs. She’d fulfilled them. Everyone (well, she corrected, thinking of Fred, almost everyone) had those needs. So, she’d done her best. She’d stumbled, probably as red-faced as Liam, through a discussion of contraception and venereal disease from a magical point of view. After all, sex education at Hogwarts was all but non-existent, and she’d had to discover this for herself too. She understood.
But there were some things she did not understand, could not understand. For Liam did not want to discuss contraceptive potions. Liam wanted to know if there was anything he should be concerned about when entering into a physical relationship as a werewolf. And there, Hermione was floundering. There were no books. No publications. Not even any research studies that she knew of. But she’d taken a deep breath, and told him what she knew. That there was no evidence that the curse was genetic: Teddy Lupin was not a werewolf. But she could not guarantee that fact. That a werewolf in human form who bit another human passed on a lesser form of the curse: no transformations, but changes like the ones that had affected Bill Weasley; could leave that human possessive and difficult around the full moon with a craving for meat. Not the end of the world, but not something Liam would have wanted to bring to Laura’s door.
They discussed the potential implications of the enhanced strength that came as a silver lining to lycanthropy. The moods and altered thought processes that came in the hours preceding the zenith of the lunar cycle. They even talked over the societal implications of involvement with a werewolf, and poor Liam looked more and more hopeless. But Laura: Laura, Hermione discovered, was not just any woman. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be put off by something as trifling as lycanthropy.
Less than a year later, Hermione had attended Liam and Laura’s wedding. It had been lovely. Simple. A muggle ceremony, in a registry office, carefully planned around the new moon. It was small - Laura’s parents had been killed in a Death Eater raid and Liam hadn’t yet been friendly enough with the werewolves to invite any of them. Hermione stood as a witness, alongside Laura’s oldest friend, who gave Liam a narrowed glare each time he looked her way.
Maybe Lavinia could love a werewolf too.
There was a creak on the landing, startling Hermione out of her reverie. She looked up, expecting Arthur, but no sleep-tousled head poked into the nursery, no soft ‘everything alright, my loves?’ was spoken. Another creak, then another. It wasn’t Arthur at all, she realised: Charlie was an early riser, and even earlier when he was in a time zone two hours behind his usual body clock. She could, she supposed, go down and have coffee with him. Instead, she gathered Alfie closer - he didn’t even stir, but she suspected he would if she put him into the crib - and crept across the hall to the bedroom.
The nursery had been dark, the first trickles of dawn kept out by the thick curtains they’d added to stop the summer light keeping Alfie from sleeping, but in the bedroom, the weak light was filtering through, lighting Arthur’s slumbering form in a greyish cast from the lilac curtains. He’d migrated during the night, ending up on her side of the bed with one arm outstretched almost to her bedside table. Chattox was nowhere to be seen, the blankets cold in the spot she usually chose to sleep. “Arthur?” whispered Hermione, but he did not stir. Carefully, she eased in on his side of the bed, laying Alfie next to her, on the open side where Arthur could not squash him if he rolled over in his sleep.
She didn’t think she’d want to sleep. She certainly hadn’t wanted to sleep in the nursery; her mind had whirled too fast. But here, with Arthur’s warmth sinking from the blankets into her bones, with her foot tucked up against his leg, she was having to fight her eyelids. She shouldn’t sleep with Alfie in bed with her, she remembered. She’d read the safety studies; she’d insisted that the crib Arthur had made had complied with the best practice on measurements. She’d read all the guidance on sleep positions from all the latest studies, and all of them warned against using blankets and pillows with children under one, and certainly putting them in bed with you. But if she was awake, she rationalised, it should be fine. Alfie couldn’t be smothered with his mother watching him.
She should have gone for coffee first.
Beside her, Arthur stirred. “What?” he mumbled, then rolled over to blink at her sleepily. “Why are you over there?”
“Because you were on my side,” she explained. “Good morning.”
If his furrowed brow and rapid blinks were anything to go by, this didn’t make much sense to Arthur, but he just mumbled out a, “morning.”
Seeing Arthur without his glasses still felt odd, somehow. It was like he was a bit naked, missing some vital piece of himself. She saw him without them often enough, of course: they got in the way of enthusiastic kissing. But putting them on was the first thing he did in the morning, before even reaching for his wand. Today, he had to reach over Hermione, and the hand questing for his bedside table first found Alfie. He made a questioning noise, rising onto one elbow and peering short-sightly at his son. “Hello, there, little chap. I didn't expect you.”
“He couldn't sleep,” explained Hermione sheepishly. “Nor could I.”
Arthur located his glasses and perched them onto his nose. He looked far more himself now that he had them back in place and the sleepy cloudiness was fading from his eyes. “What’s the matter, my darling?” he asked, brushing the side of his finger against Hermione’s cheek. “Are you not feeling well?”
“Just a lot on my mind,” she said. She didn’t want to tell Arthur about the nightmares: it wasn’t that he didn’t know she had them, of course, because he’d seen plenty. There just wasn’t anything he could do, and there were things that she didn’t want to tell anyone; images in her mind that she didn’t want to relive.
There were memories that would make people look at her differently if they knew.
Arthur traced her with concerned eyes, looking down from his semi-propped position. “Anything you want to talk about?”
Hermione summoned up a smile and shook her head. “I’m fine,” she told him, and then, beside her, something moved. She tipped her head to the side on the pillow to find that Arthur wasn’t the only one watching ehr: Alfie’s honey brown eyes were fixed on her face as he stretched and kicked, folding himself almost double as he waved his legs in the air. Arthur laughed: such a pure sound despite the hoarse rasp of sleep not having faded yet.
“You, my little Alfie, are quite the acrobat,” he said, and was rewarded with a big gummy smile and a crowing call.
“Did…” Hermione bit her lip. “Did you hear him say ‘mama’ yesterday?” she whispered. “Only, I thought I might have, when he came in from the garden, but then, there was so much going on, and I know that maybe it’s just experimenting with sounds, and he’s still quite little for talking, and M is a common first consonant, and-” She stopped as Arthur’s hand curled around her cheek, easing her to face him.
“He did,” he murmured. “I wasn’t sure if you’d noticed.”
“Really? You’re sure?” After all, Arthur had far more experience with babies than she did: he’d listened for a great deal of first words, watched for a great deal of first steps. “Because he might not have even meant me - he might just have been making noise, and-”
Arthur silenced her with a kiss, and she couldn’t even bring herself to care that neither of them had cleaned their teeth yet. “Yes, my love. I’m sure. Because he’s been at it every time you leave for three days, and stubbornly refusing to say it when you’re around.”
Hermione stared at him. She could hardly breathe past the crushing weight in her chest. Alfie had been asking for her, and she hadn’t been there. He’d been calling for her, and she’d been… gone. Helping other people, yes, but she should have been here! She should have been there for him!
Arthur gave a rueful smile. “I wanted you to hear it for yourself,” he explained. “I missed Bill and Percy’s first words. And Ron’s. I came home one day for Molly to tell me all about it. I didn’t want that for you.” He searched her face. “I’m sorry, love. Should I not have told you? I didn’t really know what was best.”
Hermione wasn’t sure herself. But then she said, “you told me that for a marriage to work, you had to be honest.” She thought back on the moments of dishonesty in their marriage - lies of omission, all. How awful she’d felt in the hours before she’d admitted the kiss she’d shared with Aleks. Arthur’s desire to hide his injuries, and the hurt it had caused her. Even the delay in sharing the news when she’d known she was expecting Alfie. “I think you’re probably right. It’s easier when we’re honest.”
For a very long moment, Arthur just watched her, that impossible little smile tilting his lips. Hermione squirmed beneath his gaze until it flicked off to her left. “Well, good morning, Alfie,” murmured Arthur. “Did you hear us talking about you? Hmm? How about you tell your mummy how much you love her, hmm? How about a little ‘mama’?” Sitting up, Arthur reached over Hermione to scoop Alfie up. “Can you say mama?”
And Alfie did say mama, only he also said quite a lot of other noises too.
Whilst Hermione gave Alfie his breakfast, Arthur slipped his arm around her shoulders, cuddling close and twining some of Alfie’s curls into shape around his finger. “I think we might need to get his hair cut, you know,” he said. “It’s getting quite long.”
“I know,” said Hermione. Arthur had mentioned it a few times. But Jamie hadn’t had his first haircut until he was a year old, and now he looked even more like a mini Harry, with his hair cut in just the same style Harry had worn during his first few years at Hogwarts. And the thought of Alfie’s lovely little baby curls fluttering down to lie on the hairdresser’s floor made her want to cry. He was far too little!
They fell into silence, the only noise the soft suckling of Alfie at her breast. It was soothing: warm and comfortable against her pillows, Arthur so close that she could just about hear the steady thrum of his heart. Quite without meaning to, Hermione found herself nodding, her eyes drifting closed. She jerked suddenly when she felt Alfie slip, only to discover that he hadn’t slipped at all: he’d finished feeding and Arthru had lifted him gently out of her arms. “Sleep, love,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’ll look after this chap.”
She didn’t have it in her to protest, and the last thing she knew, Arthur was tucking the blankets up around her shoulders.
Her sleep was mercifully dreamless, and when she woke, it was fully light. She blinked sleepily at the clock to find that it was after ten. Slowly, she sat up, rubbing her eyes, and as she did, she heard a distant rumble of laughter from downstairs, and then the high-pitched squawk of Alfie’s delight, and she couldn’t help but smile. She wondered what they were up to.
They must have heard her stirring as she washed and dressed, for when she arrived downstairs, there was a fresh pot of coffee waiting, along with a croissant from the bakery in the village. Charlie had a copy of the Quibbler folded open, reading snippets aloud to Arthur and showing Alfie the bright pictures. The story about brorgroves, whatever they might be. Boris sat at his feet, for all the world looking like borogroves were his favourite thing in all the world, and Chattox lay sprawled across Charlie’s lap, purring so loudly that she could be heard clear across the room.
Arthur sat across the table, reading a letter, but he looked up with a smile as Hermione came in. “Sleep well, my darling?”
She bent to kiss the top of Alfie’s head. “Yes, thanks.”
“Coffee’s fresh,” Charlie told her.
“Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t pour herself a cup. There was something more pressing than coffee on her mind - and not much was more pressing than coffee in the morning. She knelt at the hearth, threw in some floo powder, and placed a call to the Gatehouse.
It was Astoria who answered, though Hermione could hear Sorcha in the background. “Is Ron home?” she asked Astoria.
“Yes, but he’s asleep. He didn’t get in until almost five this morning. Is it very important?”
Hermione sighed. “It can wait,” she decided, though she didn’t like it. “I just wanted to know what happened last night. With the werewolf. Did he say anything?”
But no, Astoria told her. He’d been far too tired to say much more than he was fine. So Hermione had to content herself with waiting until she saw Ron that afternoon - Astoria promised that they still intended to go, because Ron was keen to see Charlie. She ended the call on a ‘see-you-later’ and returned to the table, where Arthur had already poured her a cup of coffee and warmed her croissant. As she sat, he pushed a letter and a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and twine across the table towards her. She recognised the handwriting immediately, her name curled out in Anne’s elegant cursive. Eagerly, she unwrapped the parcel to find a little jar of saskatoon jam. She opened it immediately, spreading some on her croissant, and set to reading the letter.
As always, Anne was a chatty correspondent - Hermione feared she was nowhere near so good. By the end of the epistle, she was up to date with the comings-and-goings on the homestead: the growth of the babies, the long days as the harvest began in earnest. Somehow she managed to make the physically and magically exhausting work sound delightful, full of song and laughter and general Weasley cheer. There was a letter from Matthew, too, easily her favourite child of the Canadian clan. He’d read a great deal of books over the summer (in fact, Anne’s letter contained stories of some of his more inventive hiding spots so he could escape the harvest and read instead) and wanted to tell her all about them
It was getting on for half past eleven when Arthur said, “well, I suppose we should be making a move.”
Charlie glanced at the clock with the single hand pointing to ‘water the garden’, then at his own wristwatch. “I thought you said lunch wasn't until one?”
“Well, love,” said Arthur, squeezing his son’s shoulder as he stood, “I'm not sure how many times you've tried to leave the house with a six month old baby, but it's a bit of a process.”
And a process it was. Charlie watched in something like bewilderment as Alfie was changed in preparation for going out, as the bag was packed with not one, but two spare sets of clothes, with a selection of toys and a few jars of the vegetable puree Arthur had made along with some baby biscuits they’d found in the muggle supermarket that were supposed to help with teething. Alfie seemed to enjoy them, at any rate. And all the while, Alfie had to be entertained. Then Hermione realised that she really should do something with her hair, and Arthur noticed that a good deal of Alfie’s breakfast porridge had splatted up his sleeve, so had to go and change into a clean jumper. It was only after a second nappy change that they were finally ready to go.
Even so, they were the first to arrive. The party was being held at the Hogsmeade House - not only was it the largest house in the family, but with three newborns and a toddler, getting out of the house as one group was not an easy task for the branch of the family Ginny had designated ‘the Wheezes’.
When Hermione stepped through the floo with Alfie tucked into her favourite purple babywrap, she thought she’d be forgiven for thinking that there was a banshee on the loose in the Hogsmeade house, if banshees were not quite three feet tall and sky blue. A twin rushed by in hot pursuit. “Goodness me, Fred,” chuckled Arthur. “Best get little Lee out of those Tutshill Tornado robes before Ginny sees him - she’ll be horrified that you’re not teaching him to support the Harpies!”
“Try telling Angelina that!” panted Fred, then pulled up sharply as Charlie stepped through after Hermione. “Hey, Charlie!” He caught his brother up in a hug. “Bloody hell, you look like a mountain man!” Pulling back, he pinched a bit of Charlie’s beard and tugged, laughing at Charlie’s wince. “God, imagine the kittens Mum would have if she saw you!”
Charlie wasn't having any of it. In one Swift movement, he grabbed his younger brother around the shoulders bending him into a headlock. “Cheeky bugger!” he said, laughing almost too hard to talk. “I'll show you mountain man!”
In moments, the two brothers were wrestling on the hearth-rug. Hermione might have been worried, only she knew the Weasleys, and she knew the difference between a real, hair-pulling, arm-twisting, hex-adjacent fight and the horseplay that could include any or all of the Weasley siblings. It had taken time to get used to, but she’d finally accepted that the childhood of an only child and the chaos of six siblings simply couldn’t be compared. Either that, or it was something genetic, and based on the sudden reappearance of a small blue cannonball flinging himself into the tussle, it might well be genetic. Or maybe little Lee was just practicing for when his sisters and brother grew up enough to play.
Arthur just stepped around them and popped the kettle on.
It wasn’t clear who emerged victorious from the tussle: it descended into tickling and finally, a panting heap of two men and one giggling toddler. “Good to see you,” panted Charlie, flat on his back. “Hear there’s some new sprogs for me to meet?”
Fred grabbed little Lee, blowing a very loud raspberry on his son. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”
Before the boys (men, Hermione reminded herself, no matter how silly they were) had peeled themselves off the floor, a large something had zoomed through the floo, something large and heavy enough to shove Charlie out of the way. He let out a winded ‘ooof!’. “What the buggering blazes was that?” he asked, rubbing his hip and turning to glare at the offending object. A large wicker hamper sat in the middle of the kitchen.
“Must be the food,” said Fred. “Gin promised to bring everything.”
Sure enough, Ginny followed the hamper, James on one hip and a large, clinking bag hanging from the other shoulder. “Oi!” cried Charlie. “Your bloody great box almost killed me! A little warning, next time?”
“I only have so many hands!” protested Ginny. “It was that or leave the food behind!”
Hermione looked past Ginny, waiting for the floo to flare again, but it stayed stubbornly yellow. “Harry isn’t coming?” she asked, trying not to sound desperate.
Ginny paused in her bickering with Charlie for a moment to flap an unconcerned hand. “He’ll be along later,” she said. “He had to go to work for something-or-other.”
Work. That could only mean one thing - Malfoy Manor. Ron had said Harry was on the investigation into recent happenings there, and with last night’s developments, Harry was sure to be involved. Questions bubbled up in Hermione’s throat, but before she could ask a single one, Ginny put James down. Charlie gasped, and a beat behind, Arthur chuckled. “Goodness me, Jamie, I like your top,” he said. Hermione sidled around to see what had entertained him so: it looked to be just an everyday yellow t-shirt. But then she caught sight of the rainbow letters emblazoned across the front: ‘Big Brother in Training’. Arthur snaked a hand around Ginny’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Congratulations, love. I couldn’t be more delighted for you.”
“More kids? I swear, I have more nieces and nephews than I’ve hatched dragons!” sighed Charlie, but his grin belied his words as he caught Ginny up in a crushing hug. “Congratulations,” he murmured before Fred had joined in, wrapping his arms around them both.
“Did you know that James and little Lee have gone?” asked Hermione mildly, watching the toddlers hare off around the corner. She patted Alfie’s back, being quite glad that he wasn’t walking yet, because the speeds a toddler could reach were astounding.
Fred swore, and he and Ginny vanished after their children, calling unheeded demands to stop, to stay, to come back immediately. Charlie snorted. “Try ‘heel’,” he called after his younger siblings. “Maybe that’ll work.”
“Never did with you.” Arthur bent down to lift the hamper and grunted in surprise at the weight. “Help me with this, Charlie, love?”
Ginny had promised food, and Ginny knew Weasley appetites. But this was no average picnic: when Charlie lifted the lid, he gave an appreciative whistle. Beneath the lid of the hamper was a layer of tissue paper stamped with the delicate golden-filigree motif of the Brasserie Licorne, the most exclusive restaurant on Witches Crescent in Edinburgh. “We’re going to eat well,” he said. He folded back the tissue paper, but before he could even lift the first elegant box, there were a set of squeals so loud, and so high-pitched that Alfie startled against Hermione’s chest, and he wasn’t the only one. She jumped. Charlie swore and dropped the box he’d just started to pick up, but Arthur only laughed.
“I think Alicia and Angelina have just spotted Jamie’s t-shirt,” he said, wandering out into the hall. Hermione followed him, finding him leaning against the jamb of the living room door and watching as Ginny and Angelina and Alicia hugged and bounced as if this were news of the first Weasley baby. Tears poured down Alicia’s face, though her grin was surely hurting her cheeks. As Hermione watched, Angelina lifted Ginny a few inches off the ground, laughing.
Arthur’s arm snaked around Hermione’s shoulders as he pulled her close, planting a kiss against her temple without taking his eyes off the scene before him. “Doesn’t it feel like five minutes since Ginny was drowning her dollies in the pond or throwing them to see how well they flew?” he murmured. “And just look at her now.”
The breath caught in Hermione’s lungs, sticking like a hedgehog in her throat. No, she could have said, it didn't feel like five minutes, because it had been most of Hermione's life. Those words, she realised, weren't meant for her. They were meant for Molly. This moment wasn't meant for her: it should by Molly who was here to see her children become parents, to celebrate with them. Molly, who'd have exploded with joy at each new grandchild.
Molly, who lay cold in the ground.
Perhaps, Hermione thought, Arthur had a reason for his turn to religion following Molly’s death. It gave him the certainty that Molly and Bill were safe and well somewhere, that he would see them again, that they might, perhaps, be looking down upon him. That Molly might be celebrating this exact moment, up in heaven.
Alfie fussed in his sling, twisting to see what all the commotion was, straining towards the hubbub and gabbling. “Hold your horses, Alfie,” she said, easing the sling away. “You really are a Weasley, aren’t you - always wanting the action.”
“Here.” Arthur reached out to help her, lifting Alfie free. “Come on, Alfie-lad, let’s find you something to play with, hmm?”
Hermione would have followed - and she still hadn’t actually congratulated Ginny, at least not today - but before she could even move, an arm linked into her left elbow, then another around her right. She looked up with a question already on her lips, expecting to see Harry and Ron, only to find that she had Fred on her right and George on her left. “Got a minute?” asked George.
“We’ve got a question for you.”
Despite her protests, they frog-marched her off into the kitchen, where Charlie had abandoned the hamper in favour of joining in the festivities. “We’ve been thinking,” said George (it was George, wasn’t it? She tried not to be too obvious as she squinted at his ears). “You do house elves, right?”
“I work with house elves, if that what you mean.” Hermione wasn’t entirely sure where this was going. “I advocate for house elf rights and lead a programme to ensure compliance with the laws on elfish welfare.”
Fred nodded sagely. “Right,” he said. “And how do we get an elf?”
“Get an elf? What do you mean, ‘get an elf’?”
“Well…” George boosted himself up to sit on the counter. “You know it’s been a bit busy here, right? The babies, the shop… and Ron’s said more than once that he doesn’t know how they’d have managed without their elf, so…”
“It’s not going to get any easier,” Fred added. “We’ve seen that with little Lee - in another year, we’re going to have three little demons running about, and, well…” he gave a wry smile that reminded Hermione of Arthur. “There’ll be a fifth, sometime.”
“I still want to shoot for seven,” George said. “It’s got a ring to it.”
Fred rolled his eyes. “You would!” he muttered.
Part of Hermione was infuriated that she hadn’t thought of it herself. She’d seen just how fulfilled Topsy was in her work, and she wasn’t the only one. There were plenty of elves enjoying the challenges of helping their families through the arrival of new children. And it was all very well Arthur telling the twins to get some help, but it wasn’t that easy. In the muggle world, they could have hired a housekeeper. They could have a nanny. But in the wizarding world, things weren’t so simple. Housekeeping tasks were done by magic or delegated to house elves: no self-respecting witch or wizard would work in another’s home. In another timeline, Molly Weasley would have been the help they needed. But women like Molly, up and down the country, were caring for their own families. They’d never agree to employment looking after someone else’s children. Younger women had babies of their own, and there was an employment crisis among the roles typically filled by witches. St Mungo’s were offering generous training bursaries; the Ministry were paying over the odds for secretarial staff. She’d caught Aleks eyeing up a newspaper advert for a shop girl at Slug and Jiggers. She’d looked herself later: it was more than she could pay him. It was more than she took for her own wages. For a sales assistant! And Aleks was more than qualified to be a potioneer, let alone a sales assistant. Aleks could leave, and then she’d be stuck trying to find a member of staff for herself, a role that could not be filled by a house elf.
“It’s not as if I have a cupboard full of house elves,” she told Fred and George. “I’m not some sort of elf sanctuary. But I suppose I can make enquiries.” She hesitated, thinking of families with house elves that might be willing to make a gift to the Weasleys, and the list was short. And elves tended to cling hard to their roots - even if they were gifted to another family, they probably wouldn’t be happy about it. They were prone to depression, and she wouldn’t put an elf in that situation. “Would you - would you be willing to pay an elf?” she asked.
Fred looked at George; George looked at Fred. “Yes,” they chorused.
“Honestly?” Fred added. “I think I’d be willing to pay one of Charlie’s dragons if they could wash nappies.”
“House elves don’t look after babies,” warned Hermione. “They’re not nannies, though a lot of them become attached to the babies in their care and do enjoy playing with them. But you can’t get a house elf to feed or change or soothe a baby. Cleaning, yes. Laundry. Cooking. And all house elves are live-in, so you’ll need to provide a suitable place for them to sleep.”
“Hermione, we have seven bedrooms and a pile of laundry the size of Yr Wyddfa. We will gladly pay a small army of house elves.”
Across the kitchen, the floo glittered, then flared green. “Let’s just start with one, shall we?” Hermione suggested, her eyes fixed on the floo. Surely, this would be Ron! “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see if we have any elves on our books who’d be willing to work for you.” She lunged towards the floo, already saying, “Finally! I’ve been desperate to see you!” as someone stepped out, someone with red hair and… oh. Ron did not wear deep green robes. Ron did not comb his hair neatly into place like that. She met Percy’s cool grey eyes.
“Have you?” he asked as he turned back to the floo, holding out his hand for Audrey as she stepped through the floo with little Molly one one hip.
“I… no. Sorry, I thought you were Ron,” she admitted.
“I see.” Percy had a basket looped over his arm. He looked about the kitchen, and then, seeing the hamper, placed his much smaller basket next to it. “I, however, have been intending to speak to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” Turning to Audrey, Percy said, “would you give us a moment, my dear?”
“Of course.”
Audrey took Molly away, and Percy arched a brow in Fred and George’s direction. Fred’s brow furrowed. “If you think we’re just going to leave you alone with her, Perce-”
“I assure you, I mean Hermione no harm,” he said stiffly.
“You can’t just waltz into our house and start telling us where to go, you know!” added George
Hermione sighed. “Come on,” she told Percy.
She led him through the hall, up the stairs. She knew the Hogsmeade House well, having spent so much time here during renovations. She’d helped to paint this landing. She’d breastfed Alfie in almost every room at some point or another. She’d napped with him in the spare bedroom she picked to take Percy into, mostly by virtue of proximity to the stairs. “What is it?” she asked.
It wasn’t often that Percy looked uncomfortable, but he did today. He glanced around, taking in the sparse spare-room furniture. Perhaps, one day, this room would belong to Wren, or Willow, or Max, but for now, there was just a plain bed, an unremarkable, shop-bought blanket, a chair. “Is everything alright?” asked Hermione.
Percy’s attention snapped back to her. “I fear that I owe you an apology.”
“An apology?” She couldn’t think what he’d have to apologise to her for! Arthur, yes, but her?
“Yes.” Percy gave a decisive nod. “I had intended to visit your offices sooner, but I regret, I have not found the time. But now, I can no longer ignore the issue. I assure you, we will be reviewing our processes and procedures, and beginning a retraining exercise to ensure that this does not occur again. One failure was an unfortunate mistake. A repeat in such short succession is unforgivable, and I wanted you to know that we are treating it very seriously indeed.”
“Treating what seriously?” asked Hermione, bewildered.
“Creatures entering the country,” he said. “I have this morning been informed that the rumours of an attack at Malfoy Manor were founded, and that the perpetrator was a foreign wizard, and a werewolf. Under the terms of the Protection from Magical Harm act of 1924, no creature with a communicable malediction may be allowed passage through national borders. And yet, somehow, we have allowed both a vampire and a werewolf through our screening in a very short space of time. It is a gross failure, and I understand that both failures have added additional strain to your work, and have caused life-altering injury for a member of our auror corps. I take this failing very seriously, and I will be addressing it personally and with the greatest urgency. I have been in my office this morning, and I shall be back there as soon as I have given my apologies to my family for being unable to stay here today.”
“Oh, don’t do that!” Without a thought, Hermione lunged forward to take Percy’s hand, only for him to stiffen, his eyes widening. She dropped his hand and stepped back. “Things happen, Percy. I’m sure neither Eljes or Owen announced that they were creatures. You couldn’t have known.”
“No,” agreed Percy stiffly. “But our processes-”
“You can’t spot a werewolf or a vampire,” she said, though from what Eunice had said, Owen, their new vampire, had been on the verge of a crisis when he arrived, so he’d have been visibly ill. “It’s not as if they have flashing signs over their heads! Yes, look at your processes, but please, don’t leave now.” He wouldn’t show it, but it would break Arthur’s heart to see Percy remove himself from yet another family gathering. “Everyone’s here, even Charlie. Have you even met the new babies? I’m sure Molly would like to meet her new cousins? And there’s some news you should know,” she wheedled. “Please, Percy?”
He held up a hand, though he didn’t look at her. “I should-”
“It would make your Dad so happy if you stayed,” she added. “He misses you. Can’t this wait until Monday? Are there really hordes of werewolves battering down our doors?”
His eyes flicked to hers. “You really are an insufferable woman,” he said, and she wasn’t even particularly offended - she’d heard that plenty of times before. “Very well. Perhaps I could stay, for an hour or two.”
Hermione resisted the urge to hug him. Instead, she said, “Thank you.”
They were halfway down the stairs when she added, “and you really should go and find Jamie.”
“Ginny’s James? Why?”
She grinned. “You’ll see. And then she spotted something else, something much better: Harry and Ron were in the downstairs hall, James clinging to Harry’s neck and Ron slapping his best friend on the back. Harry still wore his work robes, unfastened to show jeans and t-shirt, though Ron was in casual clothes.
“Congratulations, mate,” he said, just loud enough for Hermione to hear. “It’ll be great! Merlin, a new baby!” Glancing up, he noticed Hermione on the stairs. “Hey, ‘Mione!” he called, plucking James from Harry’s arms and holding him up towards her. “Have you heard? There’s going to be another baby Potter!”
“I saw,” she said, meeting Harry’s eyes and giving him a smile to reassure him that she wouldn’t reveal just how long she’d known.
“Congratulations, Harry,” said Percy stiffly, and a moment too late, Hermione remembered that he and Audrey had lost a baby only a couple of months ago. She turned, ready to make sure he was alright. But he merely gave her a nod and turned sideways so he could get past her on the stairs. He stopped to murmur another brief congratulatory word to Harry before striding in the direction of the noise.
Hermione hurried down the last few steps and flung her arms around Harry’s neck. “You okay?” she whispered, and he gave her a squeeze.
“I’m okay.”
“Right.” Ron bopped his nose against James’. “Come on, then, trouble - I think we need to get you back to your Mummy before Aunie Hermione actually explodes with all the questions she wants to ask about what we’ve been up to all night!”