I read the Harry Potter fanfiction, "Stupid", just over six months ago; it was one that I fell in love with immediately, for the plot, characters, and the writing style. I'm going to be honest here - I was disappointed, to say the least, with the way the 7th book turned out. Rather like Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox, to be sure - but if you look at the fic "AF and the Book of Ages", you'll see how the author there managed to make something stunning from the rubbish. Seamonkey did the same for Deathly Hallows and its epilogue.

I didn't intend to write this when I read "Stupid" - I have my own fanfics to worry about, for chrissakes, to be busy writing something in honor of someone else's work but, well...this one really just wouldn't leave me alone once my mind picked at it.

For those who want to jump down my throat about The Marauders - I can't deny that I've been slacking. A lot. Next chapter's got two-ish pages left, though, so it should be up soon. *shrug* Sorry.

Now, obviously, this is not a ficlet to be read if you have not already read "Stupid". Wonderful little thing, Harry x Hermione pairing, set a number of years after the Epilogue of Deathly Hallows. Hermione lets her feelings for Harry slip one night when they're alone in the kitchen, and they have to deal with the feelings between them and for others around them - be it husband, wife, or children - for years upon years. Things go bad, things go good, and in the end it is an amazing work of fanfiction.

This ficlet is placed in chapter 8, about halfway down, just after Hermione and James make up.

And thusly, without further ado about nothing...

"Avoiding the Question"

- a 'fan'fanfiction / companion piece to "Stupid" by The Seamonkey -

He stares at me – my son stares at me, with the most odd expression on his face; something between a smirk, a full-blown grin, and the natural reaction of letting his mouth fall open and hang there. I just stare back with what I'm fairly certain is blank confusion, but was probably geysers of love, gratitude, and a whole slew of caring emotions, mixed with anxiety and relief and the overwhelming urge to run after Hermione and snog her senseless.

I scratch my hand nervously as Albus stares.

"Are you going to go after Lily?" I ask him. My daughter had just run out of the room, near in tears, saying something about how it wasn't fair to mum and it wasn't fair to me and it definitely wasn't fair to her for me to drop something like this on them, and that she couldn't talk about this right now and she needed to start on her homework.

"In a minute," Albus tells me. "I figured you'd want to ask me why I was less-than-shocked about seeing you and Aunt Hermione sucking face."

Oh. Well, now, that did make sense, didn't it? I raise an eyebrow in question and he grins back. He clears his throat and ran a hand through his hair.

I had to stop thinking for a moment when I realized that every single one of my kids do that. So does Hermione. Wow, who else have I influenced with that 'run my fingers through my hair when I'm nervous' thing? Hopefully, not too many. Wouldn't want to cheapen the suave, sophisticated smoothness of that move, would we?

"Well," he says, pausing to clear his throat again, "I guess I first started getting, uh, signals, I guess, one – two? I think it was two – years or so before Mum left." I balk, and he can't help but laugh at what I assume is the look on my face.

Two years before Ginny left? Merlin's balls, I've been transparent enough for my children to pick up on things since before they started going to school; I feel somewhat ashamed.

"It was when we were in our 'million questions' phase."

Ah. That. Day after day, week after week, of nothing but 'where do babies come from?' and 'So-and-so said you're famous and amazing – why didn't you ever tell me?' and 'can Saint Mungo's really put you back together if you blow yourself up?'. I think I preferred it when they were infants without teeth, when all they could do is scream day in and out; at least they didn't expect complicated, concise, verbal answers.

"Yes," I say, wondering how their random and usually-useless questions from that time helped him put things about us together. "I remember that." Like Ron remembers spiders.

"Whenever you got asked a question that you didn't know the answer to, or didn't want to say because it was embarrassing or whatever, you always said 'Go ask your mother'."

I shrug. A lot of parents do that sort of thing. 'Go ask your mother', 'Go ask your father', until it's a veritable spar between the two in order to force the other into answering the question in question. Ginny and I did that, sometimes. She didn't like it when I 'won', so to speak; it usually ended with me camping out at Hermione and Ron's place for another night or two.

"Well, um…" Albus trails off and scratches his head and licks his lips before continuing. "Well, there were sometimes questions that neither you nor Mum could answer, because you simply didn't know, right? Like, 'why is the sky blue', or 'how is lightning made', or 'why are there waves in the ocean' and 'why is there wind', and so on."

I grimace as I recall that particular category of questions. Those ones started popping up after the majority of the naïve, world-learning questions such as 'do babies really get carried to our house by a Bowtruckle?'. Those intellectual ones were definitely the most annoying, because any parent worth his kid doesn't enjoy it when they can't answer a curious question due to a lack of information.

"You started out by saying the usual 'Go ask your Mum', but when, um, when it was obvious that she had no clue either, you started taking advantage of how often Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione came over and hung out. And for those questions, when you knew that Mum couldn't or wouldn't answer them, you'd change it from 'Go ask your mother' to 'Go ask Aunt Hermione'." He shrugs. "And after months of having to use the second option instead of the first, it just became the one you used, permanently. Even when we got into school, and owled you a question, you'd always start off the reply with 'I didn't know, so I asked Aunt Hermione' or something, and you ended with 'Ask Aunt Hermione if you want to know more'."

I blink in near-astonishment. He was right. By gods, my son was right; I did do that. In fact, I could remember one particular argument that little habit ended up spawning. It was when Lily ran through a quick 'learn, study, cram' phase half-a-year before she started school; she wanted to make sure she wasn't behind when she got there and, even though her brothers and I both assured her she'd be fine and she didn't need to memorize eight different books on each subject, she dutifully ignored us and read them all. Naturally, she got stuck on a lot of parts she didn't understand, and asked me what they meant, at which point the question was immediately reflected to Hermione. Lily would usually Floo her if she thought it was too urgent to wait, which was a lot of the time.

If memory serves, it had been a question about Transfiguration. We'd been in the kitchen, I think; James was off somewhere and Albus had eaten his dinner and left to do something in his room. Lily was reading her book, switching between mouthing words and taking bites of meal. Ginny was fuming from something I'd already said, and I was sitting across from my daughter. She'd looked up at me and asked me her question – I recall her pointing at her book with a lost expression on her face – and I, without a thought, had responded with 'Go ask Aunt Hermione'. Ginny exploded.

"'Go ask Hermione'?" she yelled. "Why do you always say that – you don't think I'd be able to answer a simple question for my children?"

"It's not that," I'd said, bring up my hands in a clearly-defensive gesture. "I-I just, I didn't think-"

"So you don't even think about me anymore, is that it? You don't even fathom the possibility that I could know the answer?"

"Well," I responded a little sharper than I had meant to, "do you?"

Her cheeks had burned red, and her eyes were little more than brown slits as she spat out, "That is not-"

"Stop yelling!" Lily had cried and slammed her book shut. "It was just a question!"

"Don't you tell me to stop doing something, Lily Luna Potter!"

It had gone downhill from there. Needless to say, I did not return to my house for three days after that; neither did Lily.

"Dad?"

I blink, shake my head, and look at my son. I shoot him a small smile and he nods, the not-so-cleverly-hidden concern easing off his face. "Yeah? Sorry, continue."

"It was around then that Mum started getting distant, and Aunt Hermione was over more, to hang out with us, or play with Lils, or help James with his summer homework from whatever bloody heathen assigned them." He shakes his head. "I swear, people who assign homework over an entire summer should be declared mental and become Lockhart's best buddy."

I hold up a hand, shaking my head; not at what he finished with, since I'd told them a little bit about Lockhart before, but at the entire idea that was being presented to me. That my son had thought that I like Hermione because of how often I directed their questions to her? I didn't even realize there were 'signals' that could be sent while doing that. It could be because I'm old, fat, and grey, though, so I won't chase my mind around in too many circles.

"You seriously got all this from that little bit?" I ask him, a bit of disbelief creeping into my voice.

"Well, there were more obvious things after Mum left, but this was the starting point, yeah." Albus shrugs again.

I suppose I'll just have to accept that, then. I'm too old to try and figure these things out any more. I moved past it and went to the next subject. "You said that you're okay with…with me? And Aunt Hermione? Being together?"

He just lets off a short laugh. "Well, I don't think I'll be calling her 'Aunt' much longer-" I can feel my cheeks heat up, and for a moment I feel like a boy talking about his first crush "-but I would say that I'm cool with it, yeah." He shrugs again. "I've always liked Aunt Hermione; she's been a great…replacement parent, I guess. After Mum left, I mean, she sort of took over a lot."

"So you don't think it's weird?" I was trying to keep up with a conversation with my own son, and I was failing miserably. Fantastic. "You don't…have a problem with it, or anything?"

"Oh, no, it's weird all right," he assures me, grinning all the while. "But it won't be much of a difference, I don't think." He stands up off of the desk where he'd been sitting – I really should scold him for doing that; you sit at the desks, thank you very much, not on them – and stretches. "The only new thing's gonna be the noises coming from your bedroom when you two start having sex, but we're at school most of the year so that's not much of an issue."

My mouth falls open at the way he says it, so blatantly; I honestly hadn't even considered going that far yet, and suddenly found myself rather pleased and eager with the notion.

I snap out of the whirl of thoughts, images, and surprisingly-still-active-hormones when arms wrap around me; my son, Albus, is giving me a hug. Me. His dad. That was, like, seeing a white dragon or watch a unicorn give birth to three. It wasn't about to happen again anytime soon, and I manage to get my arms around him before the inevitable pull-away.

He speaks, his mouth slightly muffled in my robes, "I'm just glad you're gonna be alright, dad."

I smile into his hair. That means more to me than almost anything in the world. I want to tell him that, but all I say is, "Thanks, son."

He thumps me on the back once and breaks the hug. He – oh, look at that, there goes the hand through the hair again – gives me another smile, coughs and says, "Well."

I clear my throat. It was time to do the classic male thing: pretend what just happened – a mushy moment between two guys – did not, and ignore all signs and evidence that it did. "Right," I say.

"I, um…" He looks back at the door. "Oh, I should probably go talk to Lils."

I nod sagely and say, "That would be a good idea." I need to rest my head on my desk and let my brain ooze out of my ears as I try and digest the last hour. "You should do that."

Albus grins. "Yeah, someone needs to knock some sense into her fat head, huh?"

There goes the atmosphere. "Be nice," I warn him.

He just rolls his eyes. "I'll be nice when she stops being stupid." I sigh, knowing I really can't stop him from insulting a sibling; it'd be akin to running up a hill. Of water.

"Out." I point to the door. He grabs his bag from where it had been lying and slings it over his shoulder. He opens the door and looks back, smiles, and for the sake of one last cheeky remark, says, "Don't go making any kids too soon, okay?"

And he's gone.

It wasn't long before, after a lengthy stream of flustered and blustered denials and stammers to a now-empty room, I shook my head rapidly and stood up. I needed to find Hermione. She would know how to make sense out of everything I was feeling. She always did.

She always would.

.End.

I am eternally grateful to the honored and gracious Seamonkey for granting me permission to throw this up here and hope it sticks (I haven't had spaghetti in a long time...). I look forward to her next work of art.

'ta.

~troutpeoples