A/N: This was written originally for the Valentine's Day Challenge on . I had a lot of fun with this story. I love Daddy!Ron and I love writing his kids and exploring that relationship, and I hope I've done them justice. Enjoy the story!
DISCLAIMER: These characters and this world do not belong to me. They are the property of JK Rowling and her incredible world. I'm just borrowing, but I'll put them back when I'm done.
Prompt: "What I really want to do with my life — what I want to do for a living — is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it." -"Say Anything"
The Continuing Adventures of Prince Billy and Princess Jean
Ron heard his children enter the room long before they wanted him to. Hard as they tried to sneak in, they were eight and five; they couldn't sneak. But it was part of the script, so Ron played along, pretending he couldn't hear them. As they approached his chair, giggling and shushing each other, he saw them out of his periphery, waiting to pounce. And he knew exactly what would happen next.
"Tell us a story, Daddy!"
"Yes, a story!"
"Story! Story! Story!"
Behind his paper, Ron hid a smile and continued to play the game. He yawned and stretched, folding his paper and setting it aside, ignoring the giggles and demands of his two children.
"Hmm," he said, looking around the room. "I've eaten supper and read my paper. I wonder what I should do now?"
"Da-ad!" his children chorused together through giggles.
"Oh, wait!" Ron said, stroking his chin. "Don't I usually tell a story to a couple of children about now? Yes, I think I remember. Now, what where their names? Ro . . . Rowena? Romilda? Ro—"
"Rosie!" Hugo yelled out, tugging on Ron's pant leg.
"Ah, Rosie! That's right! But there's a boy, too . . . Hugh . . . Hugh . . . Hubert? Humphrey?"
"Hugo!" Rosie said with a laugh.
"Ah, yes," Ron said, finally looking down at his two children. "Rosie and Hugo. How could I forget?" And he swooped down and scooped them both into his lip, though at eight and five, he wouldn't be able to do so much longer. "Now then," Ron said when they were settled. "What story shall we hear tonight?"
"Princess Jean, Prince Billy!" the two chorused, as Ron knew they would, bouncing up on down dangerously on Ron's lap.
"All right," Ron said with laugh. "Princess Jean and Prince Billy's Continuing Adventures it is! But which adventure shall we hear? Princess Jean, Prince Billy, and the Mountain Troll? Princess Jean, Prince Billy, and the Not-So-Evil Werewolf?" he asked, squeezing Hugo and tickling Rose in turn.
"Snake!" Hugo interrupted happily. Ron quieted him with a gentle hand.
"Shh," he said. "Rosie's turn to choose."
"I want a new story," Rosie said. "One we haven't heard before." At her words, Ron had a moment of mild panic. Frantically, he searched his mind, for exciting as his early life had been, he'd turned just about every adventure into a bedtime story in the eight years of his daughter's life. But the panic lasted only a moment, for Rosie already knew which story she wanted. "I want the story of Princess Jean and Prince Billy's wedding."
Ron sighed in relief even as he felt Hugo slump against his other side. He almost smiled. He felt for his son, but that was the deal. You couldn't argue with the chooser's choice, and Rosie had sat through Princess Jean, Prince Billy, and the Really Big Snake often enough. Hugo could sit through the story of a wedding.
"All right," Ron said with a smile. "Here is the story of Princess Jean, Prince Billy, and Their Grand, Magnificent, and Long-Awaited Wedding.
"Once upon a time, there was a Prince called Billy and a Princess called Jean who had made a name for themselves by having grand adventures and fighting the monsters that threatened their world. It took them a long time and many adventures, but Prince Billy and Princess Jean eventually fell in love, but it wasn't until Princess Jean took Prince Billy home to meet her parents that Prince Billy realized that the biggest challenge he would have to overcome would come not in the form of a monster or some dangerous creature, but in the form of Princess Jean's father, King Jonathan."
"Was King Jonathan secretly a monster?" Hugo interrupted hopefully.
"No, but he seemed to have some kind of strange power over Prince Billy," Ron said, and Hugo regained his slump. "Every time Prince Billy was in his presence, he found himself saying the wrong thing or stumbling when he walked or some other awful thing like that. Even though he'd fought dozens of monsters and was a well-known hero, around King Jonathan, he felt like he was no more than a little kid."
Ron wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up alone with Hermione's father in the Grangers' study, but, completely without preparation or warning, the door was closed, and Ron found himself face to face with his girlfriend's father.
"So, Ron," Mr. Granger said, inviting Ron to sit with a wave of his hand. "Hermione tells me you've finished your law enforcement training."
"Er . . . yes, in a way," Ron stammered, trying to find his footing. "I was hired on a three-year contract after the battle, and that's up this month. The Auror program says they'll accept that in place of the three-year training program for those of us hired after the war. All we have to do is officially join the force."
"Which you do when?" Mr. Granger asked. Ron swallowed.
"Well, sir, I haven't decided if I'm going to yet." He didn't wither under John Granger's gaze, but it was a pretty near thing. "The truth is, I – I joined the force because they needed us, but I – I don't know if it's what I want to do . . . with the rest of . . ." He found himself just talking without stopping to think his words through first, and the result was a verbal mess he couldn't entirely control.
"Well, if you don't mind my asking," Mr. Granger said over the top of his glasses, "what exactly is it that you want to do with your life?"
"Well, sir, what I really want to do with my life – what I want to do for a living – is I want to be with your daughter. I – I'm good at it." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ron wanted to find some way to stuff them back in. This time, he did wither under Mr. Granger's gaze. He wanted to crawl into a hole, under a rock, cast a Disillusionment charm and disappear, anything. This was why he shouldn't be allowed to be alone with Hermione's father.
"Is that your way of asking for Hermione's hand?" Ron stared.
"What?" he asked in shock. Mr. Granger raised one eyebrow.
"Were you just asking for permission to marry my daughter?"
"Merlin, no!"
It was, apparently, to be a day of putting his foot in his mouth, if the look on Mr. Granger's face was to be any indication. Furiously, Ron backpedaled, but he had a sinking feeling the damage was already done.
"What I mean is, I'm twenty years old. Hermione is scarcely older. We're not ready to start thinking about marriage."
"Then, if I may, why are you here?"
"I was in the area picking up something for my brother, and Hermione asked me to make sure we were still on for dinner this weekend."
"I see," Mr. Granger said, his tone unreadable. "In that case, you may tell Hermione that, yes. Our plans are still in place."
"Thank you," Ron said awkwardly before all-but-fleeing from the house.
"That must have made things difficult," Rosie said, looking up at her father.
"Oh, it did," Ron said. "And it also didn't help that King Jonathan decided to set up three challenges that Prince Billy had to face before he could marry Princess Jean. He had to prove his respect for Princess Jean, his understanding of Princess Jean, and his love for Princess Jean. King Jonathan never told Prince Billy when these challenges would be happening, and even after they had passed, he never told Prince Billy how he had done."
"So Prince Billy didn't know if he was passing the challenges?" Rosie asked, sounding shocked.
"Prince Billy didn't even know he was taking the challenges," Ron told her with a smile. "He suspected, but he was never quite sure."
Ron hoped that the issue of asking permission to marry Hermione was behind them and didn't need to be brought up again, but Mr. Granger clearly had other ideas.
"So," he said around the dinner table a few months later. Ron and Hermione were over to celebrate Hermione's birthday with her parents. "You two have been dating for, what now? Three years?"
Ron could feel the tips of his ears go red as Hermione tried to share a bewildered glance with him. "A little more than three years, actually," she said to her father. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no real reason," Mr. Granger said, looking significantly at Ron. Hermione didn't miss the exchange; she looked back and forth between her father and her boyfriend. "You know," Mr. Granger said a hair too casually, "your mother and I were married after two years of dating."
Hermione's eyes narrowed, and she said, "Dad," at the same time that her mother sighed and said, "John." Ron wanted nothing more than to hide under the table.
"What?" Mr. Granger asked. "I'm just pointing it out."
"Dad, Ron and I are not getting married any time soon," Hermione said in a slightly exasperated voice.
"Did I ask?" he asked, too innocently.
"You heavily implied it," Hermione countered. "I just turned twenty-one, Dad. You and Mum didn't get married until you were almost thirty."
"What does age have to do with it?"
"We have a variety of reasons for not getting married right now, Dad, but I don't think that is appropriate dinnertime conversation," Hermione said in a tone that Ron knew quite well – it meant the conversation was over. "Please pass the carrots."
After dinner, Ron ended up in the kitchen with Mrs. Granger, helping to clean up while Hermione answered an urgent Floo call that had been connected to the Grangers' fire and Mr. Granger read his paper. As much as Mr. Granger intimidated him, Mrs. Granger made him feel incredibly comfortable. He had never had any trouble talking to her, and indeed often ended up revealing more than he'd intended. "I apologize for my husband," she said to him as they stood together at the sink.
"He's holding last time against me, isn't he?" Ron asked. Mrs. Granger glanced at him with a furrowed brow.
"Last time?"
"I . . . made a blunder last time I talked to him about this. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said I wanted to be with Hermione." He watched Mrs. Granger hide a smile.
"You don't need to try so hard to impress him, you know," she said. Ron grimaced.
"It would be one thing if that had been what I was going for," Ron admitted dryly. "But it wasn't even that I was trying too hard; I just completely lost control of my mouth." Mrs. Granger laughed, not unkindly.
"Hermione loves you; that speaks a lot in your favor."
"You sure it's not actually another mark against me?"
"He thinks, for some reason, that he has to play the over-protective father," Mrs. Granger admitted.
"Hermione is more than capable of taking care of herself, especially against me," Ron said. Mrs. Granger let out a little laugh.
"You certainly seem to have learned when to fight and when to back off."
Ron shrugged and smiled. "I learned that a long time ago, actually."
"It will serve you well, in the future," she said. "And no, I am not going to push the marriage issue because Hermione's right. She's 21, you're 20. You're both young, and there is absolutely no rush. Also, what he isn't telling you about the two years we spent dating is that he was planning on proposing from the end of year one, which I knew, but he dragged his feet so long trying to work up the nerve that I ended up proposing to him."
Ron looked at Mrs. Granger with new intrigue. "Really?" he asked. She smiled.
"Use that information to your advantage, dear." Ron smiled, too. "I shall," he said.
"So, what did Prince Billy do?" Rosie asked.
"Well," Ron said with a smile. "He worried a lot, and he spent a lot of time being very nervous. Every time he was with King Jonathan, he was terribly conscious of all of his shortcomings. He knew he had to impress the king and pass the challenges, but he had trouble keeping up his confidence."
"But he fought dragons and trolls and werewolves!" Hugo yelled unhappily. "Why wasn't he a hero?"
"He was still a hero," Ron said, trying to placate his son. "But King Jonathan was looking for more. But one day, Prince Billy learned something very startling about King Jonathan."
"What?" Rosie asked.
"He learned that King Jonathan was just a man, and that he hadn't been too different from Prince Billy once upon a time. Prince Billy learned that King Jonathan had been nervous and awkward uncertain when it came time to win his princess, too. That changed the way Prince Billy interacted with the King, and when the final challenge came up, Prince Billy was ready."
Over the next few months, Mr. Granger continued to work in questions of marriage, little hints, little pushes. At any other time, Ron would have found this incredibly intimidating, but Mrs. Granger's information stayed with him, and it helped him to not be so awkward around the older man, and eventually, Ron felt able to push back.
His opportunity came shortly after he and Hermione celebrated their four year anniversary. By that time, Ron had gotten used to and had even come to expect the subtle questions asking when he was going to pull Mr. Granger aside for a private conversation about his daughter's future. So it was no surprise when the talk turned that way one night at yet another dinner at the Grangers'.
Hermione was immediately on edge when the hint came out of her father's mouth, but Ron stopped her response with a gentle hand on her leg. "Did you know that Harry just got engaged to my little sister? Our friend Harry?"
The question seemed to catch Mr. Granger off guard. "I did not," he said simply. Ron nodded.
"Three days ago. Hermione and I, of course, are best man and maid of honor, and this wedding, well, it will probably end up being the wedding of the century, Harry being the Boy Who Lived and all that. If I propose now, well. I'm just following Harry's example, aren't I? It's not my own idea, or at least, it won't be seen that way. Unfortunate side effect of being best friends with the biggest hero of the world. So I think one wedding at a time is more than enough."
Mr. Granger looked taken aback for only a moment longer, but then Ron could have sworn he saw a tiny smile. He had no idea what it meant, and his mind flashed back to that first, disastrous conversation, but Hermione's squeeze of his hand gave him enough reason to try and put it out of his mind.
"What did he do, Daddy?" Rosie asked. "To prepare for the final challenge?"
"Well," Ron told her, "by that time, he had figured out what the final challenge was meant to be, and he knew that if he just went along with it, he would be no better than the other suitors who had come to try and marry Princess Jean. All those other men had gone to the King. But, Prince Billy asked himself, shouldn't the question of who to marry be put to Princess Jean rather than her father? With that thought in mind, Prince Billy did the unthinkable."
To his credit, Mr. Granger avoided the topic of marriage for an entire year, the whole time that Hermione was wrapped up in helping Ginny plan her extravagant affair to please the wizarding world. He even kept quiet for a month or so after, but after Ron and Hermione had celebrated five and a quarter years of dating, the questions and hints returned, and Ron knew his old excuses were wearing thin. Hermione was about to turn twenty-three, and the ring he had bought for her two days before Harry had proposed to Ginny was burning a hole in his pocket. The time had come, but he was determined that the proposal would happen on his terms, and not her father's.
In times to come, he would never quite be sure where he got the nerve to do what he ended up doing. It was a far cry from the nervous young man stammering out that he wanted his life's work to be about loving a girl.
The after-dinner conversation in the study on the day before Hermione's birthday turned to the wedding that had taken place a month before. Not directly connected with Harry or Ginny, Mr. and Mrs. Granger hadn't attended, so they were more than interested in being filled in. Hermione's mother wanted to know everything about the gowns and the flowers and the rings, and Ron and Mr. Granger were willing to let the women chatter on about wedding details.
"So," Mr. Granger said when the conversation reached a lull. "I imagine the wizarding wedding industry will go through the roof after this. Harry Potter is nothing if not a trendsetter in the world, right?"
"People do tend to follow his lead," Hermione admitted, but she knew what her father was doing as well as Ron did.
"Any ideas as to which of your friends might follow that path first?"
"Dad," Hermione said as a warning, but Ron spoke over her.
"I have a few theories," he said, engaging in the conversation. "Seamus and Lavender will be getting engaged any minute now. And Neville and Hannah have been leaning that way for a while, though for all Neville is a huge war hero, he still can't quite believe a beautiful girl wants to spend the rest of her life with him. Which is nonsense, of course; Neville's a great guy. But I fear she may have to ask him, in the end." He looked straight at Mr. Granger when he said it, and was glad to see the older man shift slightly in his chair.
"And you, Ron?" Mr. Granger asked, abandoning the pretense entirely. "Would you like to step into my study for a private conversation?"
"Dad," Hermione said with a sigh, exasperated, but Ron laughed.
"You know," he said, "in school, Hermione had this habit that used to drive me up the wall." He glanced at her, and she returned the look with an arched eyebrow. He smiled and continued. "She would ask questions that she already knew the answer to. She knew the answer, and everyone in the class knew it, but she would ask the question anyway. And I always wondered, and still do, by the way, what's the point? Why ask when you already know?"
"Is that directed at me?" Mr. Granger asked.
"Not at all," Ron said with a shake of his head. "But it is why I don't intend to ask you for permission to marry Hermione." He silenced everyone with that pronouncement – Mr. Granger into a deep frown, Hermione into mild bewilderment, Mrs. Granger into hidden laughter. "I already know your answer. If you weren't going to say yes, why would you keep pushing the issue? And knowing what your answer will be, why would I ask? Furthermore," he said then, speaking over a half-formed protest from Mr. Granger, "while it may be tradition to ask the father's permission, it's an old-fashioned tradition that is not entirely appropriate in this age of building young women up to be independent. I will not ask for your permission to marry Hermione. I will ask for your blessing on our marriage, but not until I ask one far more important question."
"And what might that be?" Mr. Granger asked, as Ron had hoped he would. Ron smiled, reached into his pocket, and knelt before Hermione.
"Hermione," he said, opening the ring box, "will you marry me?"
There was a stunned silence in the room for a moment, and then Hermione let out one stunned, shaky laugh before saying, "Yes, of course," and kissing him right there on the sitting room floor in front of her parents. After he had slipped the ring onto her finger, he turned back to Mr. Granger.
"Will you bless our marriage, Mr. Granger?"
For one terrifying moment, Ron was afraid he'd gone too far. He was afraid he'd pushed too hard and that this was the one transgression from which he would not recover. But then, the older man smiled, a genuine smile, and looked from his daughter to Ron and back again. Then he said, "I thought you already knew the answer to that, young man." And Ron knew something very important had just changed, for the better.
"He just proposed?" Rosie almost squealed in happy astonishment. "He asked her instead of her father?"
"He did," Ron said with a nod. "And without knowing it, he won the challenge of King Jonathan. He had proved his love, his respect, and his understanding. And so, Prince Billy and Princess Jean were married. Their wedding was huge and grand, and everything one could have wished or expected, and they were incredibly happy."
Ron looked at his two children; Rosie was grinning from ear to ear, but Hugo's black look was almost frightening, and prompted Ron to continue the story. "But just before the final words could be spoken and their marriage finalized, a group of dragons swept down out of the sky and began terrorizing the guests! Knowing what they had to do, Prince Billy and Princess Jean pulled out their wands and prepared to do battle. This was what they were made for, and what they were good at – fighting side by side to make the world a better place. In the end, the dragons were vanquished, and the wedding finished without further incident, and Prince Billy and Princess Jean were sung as heroes throughout the land. They continued to have grand adventures together, and they lived happily ever after."
With Hugo mollified, Ron slid them both off his lap. "Now, upstairs with the both of you. Brush teeth and wash faces, and Mum and I will be up to tuck you in once you're done."
His children ran from the room, and Ron watched them go with a smile, lost in his memories. It wasn't until a voice from the doorway said, "To my recollection, there was not a single dragon at our wedding," that Ron shook off his reverie.
"Hugo was about to revolt, so I thought I ought to throw him a bone," he said, and Hermione laughed.
"I will never forget the look on my father's face when you proposed in front of him in my sitting room," she said with a half-smile, coming over and sitting on the arm of Ron's chair.
"He was asking for it," Ron said with a shrug.
"That he was," Hermione agreed with an exasperated shake of her head. "Though I have to ask you something." Ron looked up at her expectantly. "Why didn't you just tell Dad the truth? That you grew up poor and you wanted to ensure you didn't put your family through that? That you wanted some security before we got married? He would have understood, and he would have left you alone about it." Ron looked away and sighed.
"I couldn't admit that," Ron said. "Not after that horrifyingly embarrassing betrayal of my tongue."
"Ah, yes," Hermione said with a smile. "That what you wanted to do with the rest of your life was be with me because you were good at it." Ron grimaced briefly, but shared in the joke.
"Yes, that. After that, I felt like I had to impress him."
"Oh, Ron," Hermione said, smoothing his hair away from his face. "Haven't you figured out yet that that did?" Ron stared at her.
"What?" he asked.
"You had the guts to tell him that in a world filled with uncertainty, where not even the direction of your future was figured out, what you did know was that you wanted me to be a constant. Of course that impressed my dad. That's what your King Jonathan had been looking for all along."
"Well, huh," was all Ron could say to that. Hermione smiled and kissed him.
"Come on, Prince Billy," Hermione said, tugging at Ron's hand. "How did you come up with those characters, by the way?" she said as they headed for the stairs. "I never have asked."
"We agreed we wanted them to have as normal a childhood as possible," Ron said. "But everyone else is going to know the stories, so they have to, too. This is the best way I could come up with." Hermione smiled.
"It works," she said.
He said goodnight to Hugo, promising that Prince Billy, Princess Jean, and the Really Big Snake would get first priority tomorrow night, and then switched with Hermione to tuck in his daughter.
"Daddy? Can I ask you something?" she said when he came in.
"Of course, Rosie," Ron said, sitting on the edge of her bed.
"What's your middle name?"
It wasn't the question Ron was expecting, but once she had asked, he had a feeling he knew what was coming. "Bilius," he said with a smile.
"And Mummy's is Jean, right?" she asked.
"That's right."
Ron watched as she settled back against the pillows, looking at him more shrewdly than an eight-year-old should have been able to manage. "Did you really fight trolls and dragons and werewolves?" she asked then. Ron smiled.
"Sort of," he said, and a shared knowledge passed between them.
"Will you tell me the real stories someday?"
"I will tell you any story you ask for," Ron said.
"And did you mean what you said tonight?"
"You mean, did I get my happily ever after?" he asked. She nodded. "Yes," he said simply, smoothly the quilt over her. "You, Rosie, are my happily ever after."
She blushed very prettily and smiled up at him. "I love you, Daddy," she said.
"I love you, too, sweetheart," he told her, leaning forward and kissing her forehead. "Goodnight, Princess."
He slipped from his daughter's room and shut the door quietly behind him. "You are my happily ever after?" Hermione said softly at his shoulder. He could hear the grin in her voice.
"Shut up," he said, but with a grin of his own. Her hand slipped into his with a small laugh.
"I love you," she said, kissing his cheek. "For so many reasons."
They shared a smile, and as they walked down the stairs, hand in hand, Ron thought back to that first disastrous meeting in John Granger's study, and, thinking of Rosie, he could see what Hermione had meant. This, right here, was what he wanted his life to be about. Hermione and Rosie and Hugo, his family, together. They were his constant, when everything else was uncertain and changing, they were always the same. And while he knew someday Rosie and Hugo would grow up and leave home and start families of their own, they would still be a family. And as long as he had Hermione by his side, they would make it through any and every adventure that might arise, together.
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