Mummy's Boy

13th April 2034 (Ron is 21, Hermione is 54)

RON: I had travelled to the flat only to find it empty.

No people, no furniture, no pictures hanging on the walls but there was food in the cupboards. It was all long life non-perishable muggle food and when I wandered into the bedroom there were several plastic bags full of neatly folded clothes and row upon row of different pairs of shoes for all weather. I went into the bathroom and saw soap, shaving equipment and thankfully a full roll of toilet paper. Stuck on the bathroom mirror was a note.

Ron,

This isn't home anymore, you can floo to Gorecki and find me or go to the Burrow or the twins place, they still live in Diagon Alley, their place is much bigger now what with all the kids.

Please come and find me though, or send an owl and I'll come to you ok?

Looking forward to seeing you sweetheart,

Hermione.

I frowned, Hermione never called me sweetheart, before getting dressed and making something called instant noodles that burned my mouth and tasted like feet. I pulled out a scrap of paper and wrote myself a note, which I stuck on the small collection of instant noodles in the kitchen cupboard.

Dear Ron,

Don't eat these, they're vile!

Love Ron (kiss kiss)

I grabbed a handful of floo powder from above the fireplace and sent myself away to Gorecki, which I really hoped I had pronounced correctly, and stumbled out of the green flames and onto an oriental-looking rug in a cosy little living room. I smiled, now this felt like home.

There were photographs of Hermione and me and the rest of the family all over the place. There were also lots of pictures of little red haired children growing up from babies to adults. The only one I recognised was Cam, Bill and Fleur's boy, the only blonde in the bunch other than his own son but the one cursed with the most freckles too. He grew up to be a quiddich captain I see from one of the photographs.

"Well look at you," I heard a breathy whisper from somewhere behind me.

I turned and saw Hermione standing in the doorway, her hair tied into a loose French plait and her sleeves rolled up to the elbow with mud covering her hands.

"I've been making pots in the conservatory," she explained when she saw me looking at her hands.

"Oh its clay?" I smiled, "I thought you'd gone nuts and started making mud pies in the back garden or something."

She smiled and shook her head again, she was looking at me in a really strange way and I couldn't make out why that was.

"Look at you," she sighed again.

"You said that," I frowned.

I saw that she was about the same age as my mum was to me back in 2001 and looked at her flecks of grey and the lines around her eyes and her mouth. She went out a little more than I remember ever seeing before, other than when I saw her pregnant of course, but she still went in like she always had done too. Her eyes were so warm and the sun bounced off her hair making it light up like treacle.

"Do you ever stop getting more beautiful?" I asked her before I realised I was saying the words out loud.

She crossed the room with a grin that made her skin seem to glow from within and threw her clay-covered arms around me.

"Hello Ron."

"Hi Hermione."

She moved back from me and looked up into my face, beginning to giggle like a little girl.

"How old are you?"

"I'm of age don't worry grandma!" I teased.

Her eyes went wide and she shoved me in the chest with both hands, leaving two brown handprints on my sweatshirt.

"Cheeky sod!" she tried to look offended but she couldn't wipe the smile from her lips as she did, "and now look what you made me do. Come to the bedroom, you've got a wardrobe full of things in there."

HERMIONE: He's here, he's really here, I had worried that he would be angry with me for abandoning the flat and moving away but he seems to quite like the new place. Well it's new to him at least. I smile as I watch him pulling off his sweatshirt and dropping it to the floor, one thing about young Ron I never miss is the picking up after him, before pulling on a deep red t-shirt.

I marvel at how thin he used to be in his youth. Was I really ever with somebody that young? Of course I was, I was that young at the time as well, but I can't quite get over how incredibly youthful he looks. His adult muscle-tone is definitely beginning to show but there's something else about him that makes me feel as if I'm looking at an old picture of him from school. He doesn't look like he does in my memories of watching him dressing.

Then I understand what it is, his torso isn't scarred the way it will be, his bones haven't had to be healed repeatedly and I doubt if he's even fallen out of the sky yet. No wonder he looks so happy, he doesn't know what's coming.

"What are you so sad about?" he frowns as he crosses the room to stand in front of me.

He's so close I could kiss him. I could and want to throw my husband down onto our bed and ravage him. The thing is my husband isn't my husband yet and I am now an old woman. He would probably be sick if I even suggested it. I have to treat him differently but still be warm and loving so he doesn't feel out of place as well as out of time. I told myself to pretend that he's Percy's oldest boy Bobby, he's the spitting image of Ron, so much so that when he passed his apparition test and went straight to the Burrow to tell his grandmother she greeted him with the words 'Ronnie dear, when are you coming from?'.

"Hermione?" Ron was waving his hand in front of my face.

"Sorry, I was miles away," I wondered if I was blushing, I haven't blushed in years.

"I didn't come all this way just for you to drift off somewhere else," he said with a tut.

"Come on, let me get cleaned up and I'll take you out to get something to eat."

RON: Take me to get something to eat. She'll do anything rather than cook that woman. I took her hand as we walked out of Gorecki cottage, I reminded myself to ask her what on earth that meant later on, and down the quiet lane toward the sea front.

"We live by the ocean?" I say, delighted at this news.

"Yes we do," she smiles that weird smile again.

I watch her as she looks down at our hands and squeezes slightly before looking ahead to the crashing waves and shaking her head with a soft laugh.

"What?" I frown.

"It's nothing," she grinned, "it's just your timing. Your timing is, as ever, impeccable. You got here just as I was beginning to pine for you."

I understood now.

"Ah right, is my other self travelling then?"

She nodded and squeezed my hand again.

"He's been gone too long for my liking Ron."

That's started to happen to me too. I've been going away from my present for a few minutes and come back to find I've missed the whole weekend and have to go straight back in to work. I don't tend to like Mondays in general but Mondays like those are twice as bad.

I put my arm around her and give her a smile to try and keep her spirits up.

"Well I'll keep you company until he gets back then."

I feel her arm curl around my waist as we reach the beach and begin to stroll along the beach toward the pier a little way away.

HERMIONE: Well there it is, I just got my first outraged glare from a local busy body. There's that old strumpet corrupting a poor innocent boy, she should be ashamed of herself. I don't think Ron's noticed. In all honesty I don't think he's noticed that I'm as old as I am. If he has he's doing a very good job of hiding it. I really want to kiss my husband.

"Ron?" I almost breathe the word at him rather than speak it and he turns to look down at me with a smile.

"What's up babe?"

He's still calling me babe. I laugh out loud at this and shake my head, trying to get that silly little giddy feeling I used to get as a girl out of it and come back to my senses.

"You're making me feel like such a grown-up!" I laugh.

He looks mortified at this.

"Well we can't have that!"

He grabs me and throws me over his shoulder, carrying me towards the sea. I begin to scream and laugh at the same time.

"Ronald Weasley I'm a dignified older woman and dignified older women don't get thrown into the sea fully clothed!"

"Where did you read that?" I heard him laughing, "The dignified women's handbook."

We reach the spot where the waves just barely manage to crawl to before falling back into themselves and he puts me back down gently. He looks incredibly amused and I want to kiss him so badly that I have to scream inside my own head.

He looks just like your nephew that's disgusting. Stop this now!

He's moving in to me and I give him a playful peck on the cheek and ruffle his hair like the patronising auntie I now am. He seems a little thrown by this and watches me walk on ahead of him for several paces with a frown on his face before jogging to catch me up.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked.

"No of course I'm not," I didn't mean to confuse him, I'm doing a good enough job of confusing myself right now, "I'm just feeling old in your company that's all."

"Well you don't look old," he shrugged.

I snorted at this blatant lie.

"You don't!" he said again with incredulity, "You've matured...like a good cheese."

"Oh well that's what every woman wants isn't it? To be compared to cheese!"

He was laughing again now.

"What's wrong with that? I like cheese."

RON: I think I'm getting this now. She's feeling weird about the age difference. I wonder if I should point out the fact that her being older than me didn't bother her half as much when she was stealing my innocence away from me.

"When was the last time my other self, your Ron I mean, did something silly with you?"

She stopped in her tracks and stared up at me blankly.

"What do you mean silly?" she said after a considerable period of hesitation.

"I mean as opposed to sensible. When did you last do something silly just for the sake of being silly?"

She thought about this for a few steps before looking to me and saying, in all seriousness, that she once tried to make a long thin clay pot in her studio and it went a bit wrong and turned out like part of a gentleman's anatomy and she laughed about it for the rest of the day and even fired and glazed it and sent it to Ginny as a joke.

She smiled at me, slightly proud of herself, and waited for my comment on her anarchy.

"That's it?"

"Well I thought it was funny and you can't argue that it was very childish too."

"Yeah but I know the kind of child you were," I shorted, "you would have rolled your eyes and gone back to your reading material if somebody had been behaving that way."

"Oh Godric was I really such a bore back then?" she whimpered as she leaned on me and I put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

"You weren't a bore babe, you were unique, you were the ying to my yang."

"It's yin Ron," she said with a sigh, "and since when did you get all karmic?"

Since when? Well let's see, maybe since what goes around came around and around and around several times more for me.

"Well it's all about do unto others as you would have done to yourself ain't it?" I began to explain to her.

She nodded and waited for me to make my inevitable joke.

"But the thing with me is, I tend to have to do unto myself as I'd have done to me because if I don't I'd bleed to death or freeze or get the crud kicked out of me for being starkers in the Leaky Caldron on a Friday night."

She looked sad upon hearing this and I suddenly realised that I was speaking to her on a whole other level than I would speak to my Hermione. I could tell this Hermione anything because she was older and wiser and less likely to hit me.

"Did you know that I once had to give myself the Heimlich manoeuvre?" I asked her as if it was some lazy comment about finding a Knut in the street on the way home.

"No," she said, looking annoyed that there was something I had kept from her all these years, "what happened?"

What kind of stupid question is that?

"Oh it didn't work, I died," I shrugged.

She punched me in the arm, then the shoulder, then the arm and again and again until I ran out of her reach. So I was wrong, old Hermione's do hit after all.

"That's not funny Ron!" she screeched at me, "Why didn't you tell me that at the time?"

"Why didn't I tell you I was choking while I was choking?" I scoffed, attempting in my inept way to alleviate the tension.

"Don't be facetious Ronald," she snapped.

"I don't believe," I snapped before turning to walk up to the front of the pier," I do not believe that after all the years that have passed between us, that we still row like this!"

HERMIONE: As I watched him stomping off up the beach I realised that I wasn't seeing Percy's boy, I wasn't seeing a boyish version of the man I knew as my husband, I was seeing the man I loved and have always loved since I was too young to understand what I was feeling and I wanted to have him there and then on the sand.

"Ron wait!" I yelled out as I ran after him.

Running on sand is a lot tougher than all those old movies make it look.

"I didn't tell you for a fight Hermione, I wasn't looking for an argument, we don't play that game anymore. I wanted to tell you because I never did and I thought you'd understand," he said as he turned around and I clutched the stitch in my side and cursed that my plan of throwing myself upon him to stop him mid-sentence was ruined by my lack of physical fitness.

"I'm...sorry...didn't...want...to fight...with you," I panted while waddling in the most non-seductive manner the rest of the way over to him.

"Are you alright there babe? You look kind of purple," he said with concern.

I was still quite breathless, as I stood up straight and nodded.

"I don't tend...to run that much...these days."

He frowned at me before smiling a very little bit.

"Well if we have another argument I'll try to remember to crawl away in a huff rather than storm off ok?"

I laughed louder than I had done all year and soon the two of us were chortling like a pair of fools arm in arm up to the entrance of the pier.

RON: I would have liked to take Hermione on some of the rides but everything on the pier is closed at this time of year. I must stop time travelling to fun places out of season; it really is becoming annoying now.

There is a tiny cafe open though and if I can't buy her a stick of rock or some candy floss and a toffee apple then can at least buy her a cup of tea with three sugars.

We sit down in the empty cafe and I try to find out things about her life without asking to be told about the future. I like to be surprised.

"So there were so many kids in those photographs in the living room," I said while Hermione winced at the sweetness of her tea and I grinned as she rolled her eyes and persevered with it while I continued, "we don't have to buy Christmas presents for them all do we?"

"Ron!" she said, attempting to look outraged but not managing to keep from laughing as she did, "They are you nephews and nieces and we love them all dearly."

"They're all nephews and nieces?" I said with a raised eyebrow.

She looked stony faced. It was the enforced look of immovability she would get just before I beat her at chess.

"You know they're not all nephews and nieces."

I left it at that and took a slurp from my own cup.

"In fact," there it was, she was folding, I had to stop her.

"Don't tell me!" I said as I waggled a warning finger and she huffed before smiling, "Besides, I suspect I might have met...a certain person already."

"Mmmm," Hermione said as she gazed out of the window, "I suspect you may have."

We sat in silence before I rested my head on my hand and my elbow on the table and stared over at the pathetic display of cakes on offer.

"Don't tell me you are actually finding those things appealing?" Hermione said with an amused gasp.

I moved my eyes but not my head to meet hers.

"I may be."

"Oh good Godric no, I can see a bluebottle crawling all over one of those iced fingers from here, you are not putting that into your mouth Ron," she said in her wonderful bossy tone.

I shrugged and smirked.

"I've had worse."

She took a swing at me but I was too fast and jumped up from the table and ran out the door where I paused to see her calling after me.

"Hey you said you'd crawl for an old woman!"

I rolled my eyes and dropped to my knees, making my getaway back the way we had come.

HERMIONE: Merlin he was actually doing it, he was crawling. I'd forgotten how carefree he used to be, so shameless and careless and spontaneous. Considering the life I knew he had lived up to this point that made me quite proud of him and a tad emotional to boot.

I walked over to the woman at the counter who was chuckling at the sight of a twenty one year old man crawling down Walton pier on his hands and knees and took out my purse to pay for our teas.

"Oh no it's alright dear," the rosy-cheeked woman said as she gestured outside to Ron, "your son already paid."

I tried not to let my jaw drop, I really did, but down it went and there it stayed.

"They're a nightmare when they're that age aren't they? What to be treated like an adult one minute and the next they're making puppy dog eyes at you to get you to do their washing for them."

I forcibly closed my mouth and swallowed before nodding and leaving the cafe. I walked after Ron who, bless his commitment to this joke, was still crawling and I picked up my pace to catch him up. As I reached him I grabbed his arm and pulled him up to his feet, dragging him along behind me as I rushed onwards.

"Whoa babe, where are we going in such a hurry, you expecting rain or something?" he said as he strode along behind me.

I was practically running but his legs were so long he just had to walk double time to keep in step with me and I saw what I was aiming for. It was an abandoned Punch and Judy tent and I dragged Ron inside and snapped up at him firmly.

"Apparate to our bedroom and meet me there!"

And with that I disapparated.

RON: I wondered what was going on with all the mood swings, was Hermione going through the change, I must remember to ask mum when women do that. Then I must ask her exactly what it is.

I appeared back in the bedroom where I had changed my top and saw Hermione waiting for me with wide eyes and she was biting her bottom lip so hard I was worried she might draw blood.

"Hermione what's the..." I didn't get to finish.

She kissed me and ran her fingers through my hair, I just stood there for a few seconds before really joining in, she had caught me off guard after all. Soon I was returning her kisses and puling her hair out of that untidy plait, tangling my fingers in it.

I could still taste the sweetness of the tea on her lips and felt somewhat pleased for my older self that my wife was still just as passionate as ever even when we were a pair of old fogies. I felt her hand slipping under my t-shirt and rising up my back. I lowered my head and began kissing her neck while she raked her fingernails down my bare back and began to whisper into my hair.

"I love you so much. I've missed you so much."

I lifted my head again to respond but she closed her mouth over mine once more and she pulled my t-shirt up and around my shoulders before we broke apart just long enough for her to yank it over my head and toss it aside. I was unbuttoning her blouse when she lost patience and pulled back to tear it away from herself.

"Bloody hel..." I was cut off by her kisses again as we edged our way slowly over to the bed.

She was unbuttoning my jeans while I was lifting her skirt and the last words either of us spoke were.

"I love you."

HERMIONE: I've been lying here watching him sleep for almost an hour now. He's got one leg under the sheet and one on top and his right arm is covering his face while the left one is curled around the top of my right thigh.

I want to be like this forever. I don't ever want him to have to get up and get dressed. I don't ever want him to fade away out of this bed and go back home to the other version of me who doesn't know how lucky she is. I don't want to be alone again.

I weave the fingers of my right hand in and out of his fiery hair, that wonderful shaggy mess that I loved and then hated, missed when he cut it off and insisted he keep forever when he grew it back to be just the same copper haystack it always was. It was so soft and smelled so much like him. I actually thought about cutting a lock of it off while he was asleep.

What a juvenile thought that was. Here I was, a mature woman in her fifties, contemplating cutting a lock of her love's hair to keep at her side forever more. I'm like one of those pathetic novels of Ginny's that I refuse to read.

I must go back to that pier when Ron finally leaves me to return to his own time. I must find that woman and thank her. If she hadn't mistaken me for Ron's mother I would never have seen what I was trying to suppress all afternoon.

Ron Weasley, at any age and at any time, is mine and I will have my way with him at any age and any time. Damn what it looks like to the rest of the world and damn what it looks like to the shiny faced old bat at the cafe. Call me a dirty old woman if you must. I'm dirty and old and proud of it!

Well that any age thing obviously doesn't apply to him in baby form...I'm not that kind of dirty old woman!