Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition: Round 3
Team: Chudley Cannons
Position: Chaser 3
Prompt: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole: Write about someone who ignores an important warning.
Optional Prompts: 9. (relationship) father/daughter; 11. (genre) tragedy; 12. (plot point) funeral
AN: Thanks to Hannah for betaing!
She was in his hands.
Merlin, she was in his hands.
Ron couldn't hold back the tears that burned at the edge of his eyes as he cradled his daughter's head. She fit perfectly in his two palms, her pink face screwed up as she let loose a cry. Her head was covered in soft red fuzz—the trademark Weasley hair.
He wasn't sure what the standard of beauty was for babies, but he knew right then and there that Rose was the most beautiful baby he had ever seen.
And he and Hermione had made her—had made this miracle that he now held in his hands.
Ron looked at his wife now, tear tracks shiny on his cheeks under the harsh white light of the hospital room. "I love her." He reached out and squeezed Hermione's hand, taking in the shadows that had carved out a space beneath her eyes. She smiled back wearily. "And Merlin, I love you." He brushed a kiss over her sweaty forehead before moving away, Rose still in his arms.
They'd struggled to have Rose. They had struggled a lot. Ron still remembered the frequent visits to the hospital before Rose had even been conceived—the first miscarriage, Hermione crying as she looked at the empty nursery, Ron's arm around her waist as he tried to blink away his own tears, and then the second miscarriage.
He knew they would have still found a way to be happy if they didn't have a baby. He had Hermione, and Hermione had him, and that would be enough—he would have made it enough.
But still.
The girl in his arms was a blessing they had toiled for, and he loved Rose all the more for it.
He looked down at his daughter again, tracing the pale eyelashes, the pout of her rosy lips, her beautiful blue eyes. "I'll always protect you," he whispered, head bent down so low his nose almost brushed Rose's.
"Ron," came Hermione's voice, soft and admonishing.
He ignored her. "Always."
"Ron, I love you, and I love how much you love Rose, but you can't always protect—"
"For her, I can."
Rose gurgled, her eyes drowsy, and he felt something fierce in his chest. I'll always protect you.
Ron bent down to open the oven, letting loose a string of curses under his breath when he realized that he had let the cookies bake for too long. He knew he could have done it with magic, but Ron had found a sort of comfort in baking the Muggle way.
He pulled the cookie tray out of the oven carefully, the metal hot beneath the checkered mitts covering his hands. The cookies had blackened edges, the chocolate chips dark and crisped over, instead of halfway melted as they should have been.
No matter. He would just have to make another batch. He got rid of the cookies with a wave of his wand then turned to grab the flour again when he heard a shout outside.
He looked through the window and dropped the flour, white powder covering the floor.
Rose.
She hurtled past the window on a broom—how had she gotten that? Ron was sure he'd locked the shed after yesterday's mock Quidditch match.
"Shit," he muttered as he ran to the door. "Shit, shit, shit." He jerked the door open, nearly pulling it off its hinges in his hurry.
"Daddy, look!" Rose flew around him, now upside down on the broom. Her braided hair swung and almost hit his face as she passed him.
He would have been proud—he was, somewhere beyond the cloud of fear—if it hadn't been her first time flying.
First. Time.
"Rosie," he called out, his voice shaking. "Rosie, can you please slow down?"
"But, Daddy, I'm having fun!"
"I can see that, Rosie, and we can do that together, but can you slow down for me?"
His daughter looked at him, considering the idea, then shook her head, her blue eyes lighting up mischievously. She shook her head and leaned forward to speed up—how had she learned to do that?
"Rosie, please!" She was a natural flier—Ron would have considered it a travesty if she weren't, considering the Weasley genes—but he couldn't pause to enjoy that now.
Ron had realized, over the last four years as Rose's father, and then two years as Hugo's father, that everything became dangerous when you were a parent. It was as if the world had shrugged off an illusion, and now stairs were something Hugo could stumble over, the long curtains could choke Rose if she wrapped them around her neck, and the brooms he now kept locked—or should have been locked—could lead to horrible accidents.
He'd thought danger had left his life for the most part after they had defeated Voldemort, but he was most certainly wrong.
"Daddy!"
The scream jolted Ron out of his thoughts. He looked up, and his heart felt like it was about to jump out of his chest when he saw that Rose had sped up even more. Her smile had disappeared, replaced by rapidly paling skin and wide, terrified eyes.
She's heading towards the tree, he realized. Ron broke into a sprint and lunged for the tail of the broom. The bristles scratched his palm, drawing blood from the force with which he gripped them. Rose was crying now, her sobs ringing in his ears.
With one hand fighting to hold onto the broom, Ron wrapped his other arm around Rose's small waist and tugged her off the broom. He let go of the broom and cradled his daughter close to his chest, her tears soaking his shirt.
"I'll always protect you, Rosie," he whispered into her bright red hair. Hermione had said he couldn't, but he had and he would.
Ron supposed that he had done a pretty good job. As Rose turned five, then six, then seven, he'd somehow made sure that her ventures, growing wilder by the day, didn't end up hurting her. Sometimes, he wondered if Fred had somehow been born again in Rose, but then he remembered all the trouble he and Harry—and Hermione, too, despite her denial—had gotten in.
Considering that Rose was the daughter of someone who had decided to sacrifice his life to a chess piece as an eleven-year-old and someone who had broken out of Gringotts on a dragon, he thought he'd done pretty well at protecting her.
But there were some things you couldn't protect people from, the things you don't expect.
Things like your wife dying.
Things like your wife being killed a month after she had become Minister of Magic.
Hermione had been right, in the end. Ron wished that it wasn't this that had proved him wrong. Anything but this.
He glanced at the mirror and straightened his tie, trying not to look too closely at his reflection. He knew what he would see. Red, puffy eyes. Freshly shaven skin—he wasn't sure how he'd done it without cutting himself, considering how much his hands had shook.
The ring on his right hand, still glinting as if its pair wasn't about to be buried in the cemetery today.
He turned away from the mirror, only to see Rose standing in the doorway. Her hair, a mess of wild red hair, was a stark difference against her plain black dress.
"Can you braid my hair, Daddy?" she asked.
Ron felt the lump in his throat grow. He cleared his throat before saying, "Sure, Rosie. Come here."
He knelt down and gestured for her to sit in front of him, which she did with a small sigh. "When will Mum be able to braid it again?" said Rose as he started to untangle her hair with his fingers.
Ron froze. "Rosie…" He closed his eyes, willing back the tears. He separated her hair into three sections and began weaving them into something resembling what Hermione did everyday.
What she did before she had died.
When he had finished, he let the braid rest against her back, smoothing down the stray hairs. Rose looked at herself in the mirror and frowned. "You're bad at braiding hair, Daddy. I can't wait for Mum to get back." She made to get up, but Ron held her in place, turning her to face him.
"Rosie," he said, and he thought, I wish I could protect you from this, but I can't, I can't do it anymore, "Mum's not coming back."
Rosie shook her head. "She told me that she'd be back for dinner," she said matter-of-factly. "She's very late—not like Mum, right? It's been one, two, three days." She counted the days with her fingers with a look of intense concentration—so like her mother it hurt—before holding them up.
"Mum's not coming back," he repeated, swiping at his eyes. "That's why we're dressed up today. To say goodbye."
He shouldn't have put this conversation off.
But Hermione had always been the one to explain the hard things, Hermione had always been the one to admit that their children couldn't always stay protected.
Not him.
Never him.
But Hermione wasn't here to explain. He was.
So he took his daughter's hands into his own, the memory of her whole head fitting there when she had been born flashing through his mind—when he made the promise Hermione said he'd have to break.
And he told his daughter that her mother was dead, and she wouldn't be coming back, not today, not ever.
When Rose realized what it meant, her face crumpled in a way Ron had never wanted to see, and she nestled her head against his suit, turning the black even darker with tears. "I'm sorry, Rosie," he whispered into her hair as he held her closely. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."