Chapter 10: The Happy Ending

On a Friday evening, Harry sat at the kitchen table with his daughter and his son waiting for the oven to heat up, and the various charmed bowls and jugs to finish their whisking, mixing and pouring. He ran his fingers through his son's fine reddish hair, smiling contently as he bounced his teddy bear up and down on the table, chattering to it as if it could talk back.

The curtains were half open, allowing the sunset to stream into the kitchen over the table and bounce off the pots and pans hanging above them. Harry stood up, walking over to the cooker and peering into the various bowls placed on the counters, placing his two rings away from the food so they wouldn't get dirty. He clapped his hands together.

"All done I think." Harry murmured under his breath, levitating the duck breasts off the counter and scoring the skin with slicing spells.

"What ya makin' for dinner, Daddy?" Josephine asked.

"Hot smoked teriyaki duck with pak choi and ginger." Harry said, who then began to spoon the marinade into a pan which immediately started to smoke and bubble.

Oliver's face contorted.

"But for you," Harry continued pulling an orange bag out from the fridge, "fish fingers!"

"Yay!" Oliver squealed, throwing his arms up into the air.

Harry's home in the tiny village of Godric's Hollow was of reasonable size and mixed both muggle and magical appliances, making all five of its occupants feel very much at home. And although the house was very indiscrete - tucked behind a few oak trees and towering hedges - it attracted a lot of attention from the press and local villagers.

Harry, in his older age, was more apathetic towards the attention, and was known to do the odd interview (which admittedly, did help to pay for redoing the guest room into a nursery when Josephine, and then Oliver, were born). Not that money was tight, but it became considerably less when the kids arrived (who the hell knew kids could be so expensive?).

"Daddy?" Josephine asked.

"Yes, love?"

"Mummy tells us this story at night before we go asleep."

"Oh?"

"But she's not been home lately for us going to bed so can you tell us it?" Oliver jumped in.

"I don't know the story, champ." Harry shouted over the sizzling duck which he'd just thrown into the pan.

"It's about the Princess and the two Princes Prince James and Prince Bilius… and they lived in the tower, and there was a big bad man who-"Josephine stumbled.

"Wanted to catch them?"

"Yes! Because they'd hid all his toys!" Oliver crowed.

Harry blinked. "His…. toys?"

"Yeah! Like he had a book –"

"And a cup!"

"and … um…." Harry realized his children were talking about the Horcruxes. While Hermione was pregnant, they had agreed not to tell any babies of theirs the true story of their last, most dangerous adventures until said children were older. With a wave of his hand he silenced Oliver's chattering and chuckled to himself. "His toys, oh yes, I remember now."

"You do know it!" Josephine gawked.

Harry laughed openly, flipping the duck breast over, "Well it sounds familiar. Did this Princess happen to have long brown curly hair and she was very, very smart? And Prince Bilius, was he good at chess?"

"Yes!" Oliver bounced up and down on his chair, knocking his teddy to the floor. "And Prince James, Mummy said, was very handsome because he had cool eyes."

"What…. What bit in the story are you at, champ?" Harry asked, his face noticeably redder as he wrapped the duck breasts in tin foil and pierced it with it wand.

"The bit where they're nearly finished big school and the big bad man has captured the Princess and Prince James and Bilius are very angry."

Sliding the duck into the oven, and his wand into his back pocket, Harry removed Oliver and Josephine's fish fingers and put them on a plate along with some chips.

"Ketchup!" Josephine ordered sitting up on his knees so he could see above the large wooden table better.

"Ah, ah, what's the magic word?"

"Alohomora!" both chorused.

"Close enough." Harry sighed putting a plate in front of each of them and handing his daughter a bottle of the tomato sauce.

"Well," Harry began, sitting opposite his son, "the big bad man -as your mother so descriptively put it- had captured the Princess and taken her away from the school, which made the Princes very, very angry. They were so angry that they left the safe school to go and find her and rescue her, which was very silly because as you know-"

"You should never leave home without telling, or Mummy will lose her head!" Oliver and Josephine recited.

"You've heard it before," Harry smiled, all three of them giggling as he went about cutting up their fish fingers, the steam rising up and fogging his glasses.

"So anyway," Harry continued, sitting back on his chair, "the Princes did find her but she was very, very hurt, like she had a large cut running down her forehead and across her eye, and-"

"Like Daddy's!"

"Kind of," Harry shrugged, "more like Uncle Remus's because hers would eventually disappear and as you both know, Daddy's can't."

Oliver nodded, munching on a chip smothered in ketchup.

"Anyway, this made the Princes really mad, and Prince James wanted revenge, you know what that is, right?"

Oliver nodded.

"Because they were both very protective of their Princess-"

"Mummy said they were in love."

"Oliver, don't interrupt!" Josephine scolded, sounding like a clone of her mother.

"Did she now?" Oliver nodded as Harry raised an eyebrow. "Well, yes. I suppose they were."

Oliver giggled and Josephine let out a dreamy sigh.

"Anyway, the big bad man had a lot of followers, who found the trio and took them to him, which was very scary because the Princes and Princess thought they were going to be hurt. But thankfully, one of the followers owed Prince James a favor because he had saved his life years before, and the man alerted the Princes and Princess's school and their followers and er … servants to come help them."

"Was he a bad man too?"

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose, yes. But he helped them so they forgave him. Anyway, the army turned up and they helped the three fight the big bad man, lots of people got cuts and bruises -like you do when you play with Uncle Fred and George- but they were okay because they knew the big bad man couldn't win or there'd be chaos throughout the Kingdom."

"Did they win?" Josephine wanted to know.

"Of course, good always beats evil, you know that, love." Harry stared at his children's plates. They'd hardly eaten anything. "Aren't you lot hungry?"

"Nope, 'cause Aunt Ginny fed us squillions of sweets when we stayed at her house this morning.'

"Aunt Ginny is a naughty girl." Harry muttered, taking Oliver's plate, then its match from Josephine and scraping both of its contents into the bin. He could never fathom how he had once had a crush on his sister-in-law. Or thought he had. He had always been of the opinion that he had been projecting his desire for Hermione onto her.

"So what happened to the Prince and other Prince and Princess then?" Oliver sure was eager to hear the end of the tale.

"Well," Harry said, checking on the duck, "they got married because they wanted to be together forever and they needed each other, sort of like the way you always need Pooh Bear." Harry said, lifting the bear off the floor and handing it to his son. The bear had been given to Josephine when she was two weeks old and had since passed down to Oliver. The boy hadn't let it out of his sight since, much to his parents' annoyance, as the bear was ragged, frayed and rather smelly, and Oliver refused to allow them to wash it.

"They loved each other!" Oliver shouted, squishing his teddy bear to his chest.

"Yes they did," Harry smiled wryly, "they gave each other rings of platinum and gold, and had a big ceremony to say they'd be together forever and ever and lived together in a huge castle and ruled over the Kingdom from then on." He let out a long breath, having sprinted to the end of the story.

"They were happy?" Josephine pressed.

"Yup, very much so. Especially when the Princess had a baby Prince."

Josephine wrinkled her nose, something clearly on her mind. "Daddy, how are babies ma-"

"Ask your Grandma Weasley." Harry said quickly, not wanting to go down that path just yet.

"Kay."

"So it's a happy ever after?" Oliver asked after a brief pause.

"Almost," Harry said, "though I think Prince James would like a baby of his own."

Oliver blinked.

"Er," Harry tried to choose his words very carefully, "well, their baby Prince looks more like Prince … Bilius than it does Prince James … and their baby Princess looks like Prince Bilius and Prince James, and…. Prince James would like a baby who looks like him. Though, not that Prince James doesn't love the baby Prince and the baby Princess, because he does, very much so."

The front door opened and closed as Harry lifted the duck out of the oven and placed the pieces on top of some green vegetables, on three different plates, drizzling some of the sauce he'd used earlier on top.

"Oliver, Josephine, shouldn't you be in bed?" Hermione asked, slipping out of her shoes at the door, and hanging up her floor length black coat.

"Mummy!" the children yelled, running over to Hermione and jumping into her arms. In his exuberance, Oliver dropped Pooh Bear.

"Careful, my darlings," she grinned, picking them up both at once and hugging them, "Oh, you're getting too big for me to do that…. hi Harry." she smiled, walking over and kissing his cheek as he set the table.

"Hello, sweetheart, good day at work?"

"Oh yes and that smells wonderful, Harry."

"Thank you," he grinned, giving her a quick kiss back on the lips.

Ron followed, swooping into the kitchen and picking Pooh Bear up off the floor in one fluid motion.

"Daddy Ron!" Oliver squealed.

"Ollie-Bear!" Ron chuckled, putting Pooh Bear on the table and grabbing a knife and fork off the table and pretended to cut the bear up and eat it. "Yum!" Ron said, rubbing his stomach.

"Daddy's eating Pooh Bear!" Oliver shrieked, bouncing around in his mother's arms.

"Oh, well Daddy is hungry," Hermione explained calmly.

"I'm going as fast as I can here, being the only one who can cook and all." Harry grumbled, earning a laugh from Ron.

"I can cook!" Hermione gawked, swinging around to furrow her brow at her one husband.

"And here's Jo-Jo!" Ron was chuckling, as his daughter scrambled up onto the chair beside him.

"How was your day?" Harry asked Ron.

"Alright," he shrugged, slipping off his green jumper and unhooking a necklace from around his neck. "Same old, same old, really." He slipped the two rings off the chain and put them on the third finger on his left hand.

"Yours?" Hermione asked Harry, shifting Oliver to her other hip.

"Fine, just cooked and cleaned up, like the good little housewife that I am."

"When you're on paid leave, anyway," Ron grumbled. When Harry had been seriously injured on an Auror mission a few weeks before, he and Hermione had been terrified.

The Trio laughed, Ron and Hermione both cooing their praises as they each stood on opposite sides of Harry and kissed his cheeks, sandwiching him, blushing, in the middle.

"Right, mister, I'm taking you and your sister and Pooh Bear up to bed, it's way past your bedtime." Hermione announced, grabbing Oliver's scruffy bear off the table. "Josephine, follow me, dear." Harry and Ron wished their children good night and promised they'd go up and kiss him sweet dreams after their dinner. Oliver yawned in assent and put his head on Hermione's shoulder. Though if he hadn't, he would had seen Ron and Harry share a passionate embrace, and a kiss that page three of the more liberal wizarding papers would pay a lot to photograph. It was a relief that Josephine didn't think to turn around.

As Hermione climbed the stairs to Josephine and Oliver's room, her son started chattering again, a habit Hermione figured he'd taken from her.

"Daddy Harry finished off your story for me today."

"Oh? I didn't know he knew it."

Oliver nodded against her shoulder, "He say-"

"Said, my precious."

"Said that Prince Bilius and Prince James and the Princess beat the bad man with help from all of the Kingdom."

"That's right, they were very lucky, but then again they always had been."

Hermione walked into the children's room, and sat him on his blue bed, which had orange and yellow dragons embossed on the front. She took off his shoes, his clothes, and put on his Chudley Cannons pajamas and pulled the covers up to his chin, her silvery white and gold rings twinkling in the moonlight which was peering in through the open curtains. Turning around, she picked up Josephine with a grunt and lifted her into her pink bed.

"Said that the Princess was hurt." Oliver murmured.

Hermione felt her hand fly to the scar on her arm. "She was."

"And when they won, they got married."

"They did."

"And they had babies …" Oliver paused, as Hermione tucked Pooh Bear in beside him.

"Yes, they did, a Prince," Hermione's brown eyes were twinkling, "called Oliver."

Oliver gasped. "Mummy that's my name!"

"Oh! So it is!" Hermione said, her hand mock dramatically on her chest.

It was only then Oliver noticed his mother's two rings glittering at him, his mother's curly brown locks tied back and most importantly, a very faint scar over her left eye.

"You're the Princess!"

Hermione grinned in response.

"And Daddy Ron! He's Prince Bilius!"

Hermione nodded.

"And Daddy Harry is Prince James! Mummy, Mummy!" Oliver said eagerly. "That means it's really Daddy Harry who wants the baby who looks like him!"

"Oliver! Don't be a tattle-tale!" Josephine harrumphed from her bed, though she already sounded half-asleep.

Hermione's brow creased. "What do you mean, precious?"

"Well, Daddy Harry told me today that Prince James was really happy but he wished sometimes he had a baby that looked like him instead of Prince Bilius."

Hermione gasped, her mouth going into an 'o' shape. It was a long time before she spoke next.

"Well," She said, biting her lip, after a long pause, "Oliver, I've got a secret to tell you if you promise not to tell Daddy Ron or Daddy Harry, at least for a little bit until Mummy is sure."

Oliver nodded eagerly sitting up on his bed. Hermione took his tiny hand in hers, and moved it so it was pressed against her belly. She then whispered so quietly Oliver nearly didn't hear her.

"Prince James may get his wish."

Oliver smiled sleepily, looking up into his mother's deep brown eyes which were an exact replica of his own.

"Happy ever after," he yawned, falling back onto his pillow as his mother ran her own finger's across her tummy.

Hermione nodded. "Happy ever after," she echoed. Kissing him on the forehead, she turned out the light and slowly closed the door behind her. Then she padded downstairs to the kitchen.

Harry was sitting at the table reading the paper, brow furrowed and gaze solemn in concentration, his glasses pushed down to the bridge of his nose in that way that Hermione had always found quite sexy. Ron was at the sink, cleaning off two plates of the duck teriyaki; a third sat untouched at the head of the table. Sidling up beside her husband at the sink, Ron ghosted a soft kiss over her lips.

"Kids asleep?" he hummed low.

"Mm-hmm," she nodded.

"In that case, I can warm up your plate if you want, love. Heating Spell."

Hermione smiled. "Thank you," she murmured, pecking his lips chastely in return.

"'Mione, tell him to use the microwave. It's quicker," Harry rumbled, only half-listening to the conversation.

"Pah! Wanna bet?" Ron's eyes gleamed, but Harry was no longer paying attention. Hermione's focus shifted to her other husband. Striding over to him, she swung one leg across his chair so that she straddled his lap.

"Hermione..." Harry whimpered, nervous and a little confused.

"Ssssh... don't speak." Hermione brushed a finger along his lips. Then she replaced it with her own mouth. Her tongue quickly sought entrance, and she tickled it along his bottom teeth. Her fingers wove into Harry's hair, and she felt him kiss her back. After a few more deep kisses, Hermione began to peck her way down his jawline, stopping at his chin. She now ran her digits along Harry's stubble almost contemplatively. Then, she asked:

"Do you really want me to have your baby?"

Harry's mouth fell open, and he blushed as red as his husband's hair. Behind them, she heard a clatter as Ron dropped one of the just-dried plates into the sink.

"I... I... er..." When he finally found his voice, Harry let out a sheepish chuckle. "That little chatterbox! He got his Daddy's eyes and his Mummy's mouth..." He cleared his throat at his wife's expectant gaze. "Yes. But only if you want to!" He added the qualifier in a rush.

Hermione beamed. "I do, Harry. I want to bear your child." She brought Harry's hand to her abdomen, which looked flat and normal. But then, like before with her son, she leaned against Harry to whisper in his ear, "And it may happen sooner than you think."

Harry's eyes widened, but he said nothing at first, allowing Hermione to rise gracefully off him and sashay towards the stairs. "Wait, what... what does that mean?"

Hermione turned back, cocking her head innocently. "Nothing," she sing-songed.

"Damn it, woman!" Harry growled. "What are you trying to say?"

Hermione grinned impishly. "I think you know. Don't wait too long to come up to bed."

"But what about your duck teryaki?" Ron butted in stupidly.

Hermione huffed exasperatedly, remembering, and waved her wand. "Accio!" The plate flew into her waiting hand. Harry just shook his head.

"You're an evil, evil woman," he growled, his green eyes darkened by lust.

"Oh," Hermione spun back on the landing. "And I'm not wearing any underwear. It feels nice and airy and... wet down there. Just in case you need an incentive." She smirked at how Ron's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

Harry moaned. "Evil, evil woman!"

Hermione glided upstairs. The men looked at each other for a moment.

"I call dibs!" Harry sprang out of his seat.

"Right behind you!" Ron snarled lustily, trying in vain to catch his husband.

The platform at King's Cross Station was misty and cluttered as Hermione Potter-Weasley checked over Josephine one last time. "Bag," she cataloged. "Jumper," zipping it shut. Briefly overcome, she pulled her daughter in for a hug. "I'm gonna miss you."

To the left of her stood Ron, his arm slung over a 9-year-old Oliver. At her right was Harry, bouncing a 6-year-old boy with dark hair and green eyes on his shoulders. The youngest child was teary, wiping his sleeve noisily over his face.

"It won't be long now, and you'll be going off for your first year, too," Harry comforted him.

"Yeah, but Daddy, that's like a gazillion years away!" the boy sniffed. "I want to go with Josey now!"

"Albus Severus Potter-Weasley," Hermione chuckled as she lifted her youngest son down off his father's shoulder. "You have got to learn to be patient, my sweet!"

"He definitely didn't get that from me," Harry muttered.

"Yeah, well, carrying him wasn't easy," Hermione whispered. "Arriving early as he did - he wanted out of there!" She turned back to her baby, and stroked back his hair - classically untamed, like his father's. "Besides, don't you want to have fun with Mummy and Daddy and Daddy Ron at home?"

Albus's eyes shone, picking up on one critical omission from that list. "Does this mean you're sending Ollie off to Muggle boarding school?"

"No," Hermione deadpanned. "Whyever would you think such a thing?" Ron held back a laugh, even as his son stuck out his tongue in Albus's direction.

Harry checked the pocket-watch that had once belonged to Fabian Prewett. "It's nearly eleven; you'd better get on board," he prompted his daughter, who hugged him around his middle tightly.

"Bye, Daddy Harry!"

"Bye, babe."

Josephine scrambled aboard the train and quickly found a compartment window where she could look out at her family, as the Hogwarts Express began to pull away. Around her, other students were craning their heads in her parents' direction. "Why are they all staring?"

"Don't let it worry you," Ron called back with a smirk. "It's me; I'm extremely famous!"

Josephine's laugh was drowned out by the train whistle blowing. Harry strolled leisurely down the platform as the engine began picking up speed. Soon, Josephine's hair and the train itself were a scarlet blur, rounding out of the tunnel; Harry's hand was still raised in farewell.

He sensed Hermione amble up to his side. "She'll be all right."

Turning to smile down at her, Harry flicked his finger and lightly touched the lightning scar on his forehead.

"I know she will."

The scar had not bothered Harry for 14 years. All was well.

A/N: The start of this chapter was borrowed from (and expanded upon) another excellent Trio Fic, Happily Ever After.