A/N: It's my first fic that I've published so please read and review!
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. JK owns them. JK also owns me. JK probably owns you if we're being honest.
1445 words, oneshot, complete
Minister of Magic Hermione Granger stepped in her front door, shucking off her outer robes as she did so. She hung the deep blue robes in the entry closet between a magenta set and a few in plain black.
"I'm home!" she called up the stairs, listening for her husband. But all was quiet. Perhaps quieter than normal. Was he here? Hermione had been distracted all day at the Ministry, working on building up the courage to tell him, and if he wasn't at home she feared she might lose her nerve.
She proceeded up the steps, deep in thought about how best to break the news. They had only been married for six months, and he might panic when she told him. After all, it hadn't been so long ago that they were awkwardly dancing around each other at every encounter trying to avoid letting the other know about their crush.
Ginny and Ron had finally gotten tired of watching the two of them both thinking the other was out of their league and had borrowed a recent invention of the twins', an alohomora-resistant padlock, to shut them in a room together until they had both 'fessed up.
They were allowed out six hours later sporting shy but wide grins and holding hands.
Once at the top of the stairs, Hermione could hear faint humming coming from the kitchen. As she approached the sound of her husband humming, if she wasn't mistaken, a Celestina Warbeck tune (that would make good blackmail material for another day), she thought about their whirlwind romance and the proposal that had followed not far behind.
He'd knelt in front of her on the roof of 93 Diagon Alley with a perfect ring in hand, one whose diamond seemed to be brighter than any of the stars above them. She'd cried and laughed and said yes, letting him put the ring on her finger and kissing his constellations of freckles. That was the same day she had been elected Minister, and he told her later he'd been hoping to complete a perfect day for her.
"Hon?" she asked as she approached the small kitchen in their flat. Standing in the doorway, she watched him wiggling and humming as he worked. The kitchen was organized chaos, but his tall form clad in a navy sweater and muggle jeans navigated it with ease. It made sense, as chaos could have been his middle name.
Hermione leaned on the doorframe and looked at him with a smile. That was why he hadn't heard her; in his ears were Enchanted Earbuds, a product inspired by muggle music listening devices. The twins had been working on a line for WWW inspired by adapting the more ingenious non-magical inventions to use magic and selling them to impressed purebloods and to muggleborns who were happy to have magical equivalents to the technology that went staticky around magic from the interference.
He turned around to check on one of the many pots on the stove and finally spotted her.
"Ahh! Out, out, out!" he cried, trying to block her view of the messy kitchen. "It's not ready! Go read or something and prepare to be fully wowed. It's essential to the plan that you are impressed by my culinary achievements and it'll be more effective if you just see the final product. Go!"
"Okay, okay! I won't look. What's so special about dinner tonight anyway?" she asked. Well, she knew it was going to be eventful, but he still didn't.
"Not telling. Sit. Read. Be your bookwormy self in some other room that is not this one. Shoo."
Hermione finally agreed and went to the living room, selecting a book at random from one of the shelves and cracking it open to the middle. Her eyes looked at the page but the words wouldn't resolve themselves into meaning. She was just as distracted as she'd been at the office all day.
She thought back on their wedding day. It had been the best day of her life. As they'd spun around the floor in their first dance, he'd whispered to her that it was just the two of them from now on, for forever. What if he still wanted it to be just the two of them? And they were both so busy with work, and Hermione still felt the need to prove herself as Minister, especially with being only twenty-eight and the first muggleborn witch to ever hold the position.
She was still staring at the same page a half hour later and absorbing nothing, wrapping a curl around her finger, lost in thought, when he swept into the room with a flourish.
"Dinner is served, my dear. Please step this way." Hermione followed him to the kitchen table, her stomach clenching momentarily from her anxiousness. She half-noticed that he'd put a glass with a white gerbera daisy on the table, and that the room was basically tidy. He was making an effort tonight, and she was terrified that she was about to ruin the evening and possibly the next several to come.
They sat and she smiled and thanked him for making dinner. They both picked up their forks and started eating, telling each other about their days. At every pause, she considered breaking the news but always chickened out and told him some anecdote about her day at the Ministry instead.
Nearing the end of dinner, she reminded herself that she had been a Gryffindor for a reason and decided to do it quickly.
She started, "I—" just as he began, "so," and Hermione said, "you go first."
"Alright. So, you might have been wondering why I wanted to impress you tonight with my talent for pasta and why I actually cleaned the kitchen after cooking."
She hadn't been; she was too out of it and wrapped up in the news she was waiting to drop like a bomb on her poor, unsuspecting husband, but she nodded and he went on.
"Well, I wanted to talk to you about something I've been thinking about for the last few weeks. You might think it's too soon, and I know we're both busy but…"
Hermione started slightly, realizing he was voicing the worries she'd been dwelling on the whole day. She focused more closely on what he was saying.
"I want to talk about starting a family. I'm turning thirty in a month, and I believe this dinner shows I am a very responsible adult although I was an immature kid, but I guess you knew that since you married me and Hermione Granger would never have married someone who wasn't reliable at least in most ways, and I just love you so much and I think that any offspring we would have would have the perfect balance of brilliance and lawlessness and also my mum would absolutely flip and cry happy tears for at least a month, so…what do you think? We wouldn't have to start actively trying, although more practice is always good, we could just stop performing the charm and see what happened, I come from fertile stock so I'm sure you'd be knocked up in no time, but we don't have to start this second, but I will if you want to, of course. You're being quiet. It's probably because I'm rambling. I'll shut up. You weigh in on the issue. Any time now."
Hermione had been listening to his speech with a blank look on her face. When he stopped talking, she snapped her jaw shut, lurched out of her chair and sat in his lap. She kissed him hard, feeling her worries melt away and suddenly feeling silly for having had them at all.
"So…does this mean you want to start trying right this second?" he asked, resting his forehead against hers.
"I'm pregnant," Hermione whispered back. "I was worried to tell you, I didn't know if you were ready, but—"
It was his turn to suddenly kiss her, cutting her off. She could feel him grinning into the kiss. Between kisses, he asked, "When did you find out? How far along are you? Is it a boy or a girl? What do we name it? I'm going to be a dad! This is incredible, Hermione!"
Finally, Hermione let herself relax fully. Without the anxiety about his reaction sitting in her stomach, she started to feel a new sensation that was a blend of excitement, nerves, and love. She leaned against her husband's chest and smiled up at him.
"I love you, Fred Weasley," she told him.
"I love you too, Hermione Granger. I'm going to be a dad!"
A/N: Thanks for reading! Let me know if you liked it. I'm especially curious about use of British type words (I'm American but trying to reflect that this is set in the UK.) How's my writing style? Do Fred and Hermione seem OOC? Let me knowww. Thanks! - Liz