HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLOTTE!

(...I really hope you didn't manage to find this before I told you about it.)

I had the toughest time writing this for awhile. I was all "I KNOW I WILL WRITE CHARLOTTE FANFICTION FOR HER BIRTHDAY WOULDN'T THAT BE COOL" but then I had to actually sit down and actually think of something, and problems started.

Things I knew I had to do:
- Ron and Hermione
- Happiness and love

These are, of course, amazingly vague. For awhile I thought I might write something about Hermione being all pregnant and crazy and Ron being like "oh no!" but that really didn't work. I wrote, like, three paragraphs and was like "Uh, what's the point of this again?" and scrapped it all.

But then I figured "HAPPINESS AND LOVE WEDDINGS, DUH" and things started to work themselves out.

So, without further ado, HERE WE GO, BITCHES!

PS. Disclaimer, disclaimer, blah blah, I am not JK Rowling, these characters and locations aren't mine, no one cares, everyone knows.

Stupid Things.

Ron had done a great many stupid things over the course of his life thus far. He tried to lie to his mother about finishing his chores that once when he was seven. He trusted Fred to teach him a bed-making charm, summer before fourth year. (It actually applied a sticking charm. His mother left him there all day as punishment for underage magic.) The time he managed to land himself in the middle of the biggest magical war in living memory… Yes, Ron thought with a curt nod, that was a pretty stupid thing too.

This was, of course, about twenty times worse. Marriage. The word that had been looming shadowlike and ominous in the back of his mind for the past few months had been suddenly thrust into sharp relief, revealing its horrifying true shape. Ron imagined it to be covered in spider legs.

"Harry, how the bloody hell did you do this so calmly?" Ron asked in a thin, wavering voice, if not for an answer, just to drown out the shrieking voice inside his mind.

'Stun them all and run!' it screamed violently. Ron ignored it with difficulty.

"I didn't," Harry answered, distracting Ron from his sudden-onset schizophrenia. "I was only pretending," he admitted absently from his position in front of the mirror. Frowning a bit and trying to tug his hair flat, he finished, "Felt like elephants were standing on my stomach, to be honest."

'Jump out the window! It's only three floors!'

Ron stood up, paced halfway around the room, and then sat down on the floor gracelessly. In a distant way he was aware of how inane he looked. "I can't even do that much," he complained mournfully. "I am hopeless, and terrified, and going to vomit." He fixed Harry with a very serious, very wide-eyed stare. "Everywhere," he whispered to emphasize the severity of the situation.

Harry was fighting a smile. Ron could see it. He felt suddenly, irrationally, furious.

'Kick him in the shins!'

Harry quickly got a handle on himself and moved to sit by Ron, who was angrily unpicking the threads on the sleeve of his dress robes. "Fancy a cheering charm?" He offered sympathetically.

Ron deflated and dropped his sleeve. "I'd prefer a large bottle of firewhiskey."

Harry scoffed. "Not bloody likely! Hermione would have an aneurysm."

"I think she'd be worse off if I threw up on her dress, myself." Ron valiantly attempted a nonchalant, matter-of-fact tone. Harry politely ignored his failure.

"And alcohol is going to keep you from throwing up?" With a pointed look, Harry stood up and offered Ron a hand.

Ron hesitated. "Yes," he answered decisively as he was hauled to his feet.

Before Harry could retort, George pulled open the door. "Get a bloody move on, we're ten minutes behind as it is! Mom's convinced you've done a bunk."

'Good idea. Run with it.'

Harry put a hand on Ron's shoulder to stop him from swaying. "We're ready. I'm just talking him out of showing up for his own wedding snockered now."

George barked with laughter. "And get murdered by the bride before your wedding night? Don't be a tosser, Ron, get out there." He ordered with a very Georgely smile.

Before Ron knew what he was doing, his feet – the traitorous bastards - were following George out the door. His panicked thoughts kicked into high gear. Oh God, oh God, I am going vomit, or faint, or vomit then faint. And then, irrationally, I think I forgot to put on pants this morning.

- -

With shaky, fumbling hands, Hermione tried unsuccessfully to put on her shoe. The clasp was too bloody fiddly. Horrendously impractical. Useless and aggravating and stupid, stupid, stupid! With an irritated yell and a loud, impressive string of curses, she gave up on the shoe, throwing it against the wall.

A picture frame swung tauntingly.

Ginny sniggered unhelpfully and retrieved the shoe. "I think you're making a mistake here today, Hermione. Ron is obviously a horrible influence on you and your vocabulary."

Hermione scowled. "Shut up and help me," she pleaded, wringing her hands to ward off the temptation of running them through her hair. No way in hell was an hour of meticulous hair-care getting wasted. For once it didn't look like a large animal had died on her scalp.

Ginny, still smirking, helped Hermione with the shoes – and was infuriatingly good at it. Flexing her shoe-clad foot, Hermione smiled as well, and said, "Stop being so competent, you're making me feel bad."

Ginny laughed, and rearranged a few estranged pieces of Hermione's hair. "Someone has to take up the mantle of being able to do bloody everything, what with you being temporarily out of commission."

Adopting a more serious air, Ginny sat next to Hermione, who was nervously twisting the hem of her dress and biting her lip. "You're alright though?"

Hermione thought about it. Could she really be defined as 'alright', by any sense of the word? So much was weighing on this. It was worse than taking an exam. It was worse than getting sorted. Yes, Hermione thought, this was even worse than having to stand up in front of hundreds of strangers, waiting for her fate to be decided, and her innermost nature revealed. This was…

This was…

This was standing up in front of the people she loves and declaring her undying devotion for the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with.

Well then.

"Yes," Hermione decided firmly, "yes, I am fine." She nodded, just to make it official.

"Good!" said Ginny brightly as she clapped her hands together, "because we're late." She then sauntered out the door without a second glance.

Hermione balked. "What?" she shrieked before running after her, stumbling over her heels (stupid, stupid, stupid!)and holding her skirt in her hands.

- -

Ron's hands were sweating. And shaking. And fidgeting with his robes. Ron had never hated his hands so much in his life. To be honest, he couldn't remember actively hating his hands, but that was beside the point.

The point was that Ron was in a very delicate emotional state.

And his insides were filled with something cold and wriggly.

And his hands were still sweating.

His arm gave a nervous twitch, and Ron decided that he would happily give up that arm to be anywhere but where he was, standing against the backdrop of the beautifully overgrown garden of the Burrow, being watched by what felt like (but probably was not) every person he had ever met, waiting to do the stupidest thing he had ever done.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be with Hermione for the rest of forever – quite frankly he had wanted nothing but for a very long time. But the whole concept was absolutely terrifying. There was something so dreadful and alien about saying, 'this is the person I am romantically involved with as recognised by magical law,' though he suspected that he might end up very unhappy should he ever introduce Hermione in this fashion. It was lovely and comfortable being able to hold her hand and say with a smile, 'this is Hermione.' Ron liked things like that better. Things that said in no uncertain terms, 'I love this woman,' (which, incidentally, he found himself wanting to shout to anyone that would listen about eighty percent of the time). He liked the things that were about them being happily and lovingly themselves without any paperwork involved.

Harry gave him a nudge and jerked his head towards the side of the house, where Ginny was waving and giving the 'ready' signal.

Ron had never felt less ready for anything.

But he couldn't help feeling just a little bit excited.

- -

Hermione took three deep breaths, and gave a shaky smile to her father as he tucked a garden flower into her hair. She straightened her dress out for a fourth time. She tucked her hair behind her ear, decided she didn't like it, and put it back. It was probably messy now.

She took another deep breath and tried to ignore Ginny, who was now signalling the music to start.

Don't start the music, she thought hysterically, I have no idea what I'm doing! And really, what was she doing? She was permanently attaching herself to quite possibly the most infuriating person in the known universe. He was inconsiderate, lazy, boorish, illogical, ill tempered, ill mannered, ill everything she always thought she wanted in a man. He said stupid things without thinking with such frequency that Hermione was sure he did it on purpose. Why, though, she could never figure out. Nothing about this whole relationship leant itself to logic, even in the slightest, and it was maddening!

But she was in too far to get out now that Ginny was giving her a hug and taking off down the aisle, leaving Hermione alone with her father who was going to give her away in a manner of seconds – 'traitor,' – because suddenly the music was changing, and it was finally time, and oh God.

Her father took her arm and gave her a brilliant smile. Breathlessly, Hermione found herself returning it. And then she was stepping into the golden glow of the waning summer sun, allowing herself to be led to what might have been disaster, but was more likely to be the craziest kind of love.

- -

Ron felt all the breath in his body whoosh out of him at once when he saw Hermione round the corner. He felt suddenly sure that this was one of those great moments he would remember the rest of his life. This made him instantly, horribly aware of his own gangly, twitching body, with its sweaty and fidgeting hands, and he wondered how he was going to screw this moment up, because he knew he would.

'I really am going to vomit on her after all.'

But then she was smiling at him, a beautiful and real smile that made his hands go a little numb and his stomach stop feeling like it was filled with living and squirming lead, and more like it was filled with amazing.

He found himself grinning, and he suddenly realised that he wanted to do this after all. He wanted to go through the ridiculous motions of making everything official, making sure that he and Hermione were recognised as romantically involved in the terms of magical law, if only so that the law really would recognise it. So that everyone would recognise it. By making an unnecessary and irrational fuss – and what about love isn't an unnecessary and irrational fuss? – he could do what he'd wanted to do for years; he could tell everyone, in no uncertain terms, that he loved Hermione with everything he had. Everyone witnessing them now would know. The bloody sodding law and their bloody sodding paperwork would know. There would even be an announcement in the Daily Prophet under a little picture of a stupid, smiling cherub so that every single member of the wizarding world within hundreds of miles could know.

And Hermione. She would obviously know as well.

When she finally reached him, laughing softly in her happiness, tears welling in her eyes, Ron kissed her then and there, not caring that he was jumping ahead a few pages in the program. She gave a surprised and happy noise and kissed him back.

Ron, deliriously happy, decided that as far as stupid things go, he was resourceful enough to find something much worse than this after all.