Uncles, Fathers, Brothers and Lunch
19th March 2023 (Ron is 43, Hermione is 43)
RON: Look at her. It's all very well for her to introduce the concept of her dad the horsy to every other kid in the family and then go to sleep in her mother's arms but what about my poor bloody knees I ask you?
As if I haven't done enough damage to my legs now I am crawling on all fours in and out of my mother's kitchen with my nephews and nieces taking it in turns to ride on my back. I may never walk again after this.
I tried to make that joke earlier but mum started crying and Hermione glared at me while Ginny and Harry stared at each other before laughing so deliberately loudly that the twins, Percy and Bill all got the message and joined in. Nobody wants to upset the little ones and there are about a dozen of swarming around the Burrow for Sunday lunch this afternoon. It's mum's enforced tradition.
I saw my favourite nephew, I know you're not supposed to have favourites but...well, let's just say I've known him longest so I know him better. Anyway Cam crawled up to me with Harry and Ginny's oldest boy on his own back and mumbled at me in passing.
"I thought you could use a hand Uncle Ron."
He was a good kid our Cam, he could have been a professional quiddich player but he decided to go into healing instead. He works part time at St Mungo's and part time at Puddlemere United as their match day healer. It makes him happy enough.
"What I could actually do with is a couple of feet if you've got 'em going spare."
Cam laughed and shook his head.
"I dunno, you're always leaving things lying around," he chuckled.
That's another thing I like about Cam, he always knows when to joke and when not to, I've been blamed many a time for Cam's personality and I'm quite proud of that.
Cam crawled underneath the dining table and accidentally knocked his cousin out in doing so.
"I forgot he was on my back!" he had protested when Ginny had screeched at him that he'd done it on purpose before turning to scowl at me, "I blame you for that, you distracted me."
I laughed so hard that George's little girl Mia climbed off me in a huff because 'horsy was shaking too much'. I saw a fight was about to break out for the next ride and rolled over onto my back.
"No more I'm afraid, horsy had to be taken to the knackers yard and be turned into glue," I groaned.
I felt a foot kicking me and looked up to see Hermione, our sleeping daughter fidgeting in her arms, looking down at me with an amused glare.
"You know they don't like it when you tell them what animals get minced up to make other things now stop it!"
"What?" I protested while Fred's two boys tried to roll me over by force, "Charlie told me all that stuff when I was their age and I'm not scarred for life."
Harry almost choked on his drink and lifted the tablecloth to look underneath at me with a raised eyebrow.
"Ok let me re-phrase that," I began.
"Please don't," Fred said as he lifted a devil child under each arm and carried them over to their mother, "mum's coming back in and if you set her off again we'll never eat."
"I'll save you," Charlie said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me up to sit beside him at the table, "I'm beginning to remember why Krista and I decided against kids now."
I shook my head and rubbed my aching back.
"You always were the wisest of us all," I muttered.
"Shut up!" he laughed as he gave me a firm brotherly shove that almost put me back on the floor again.
HERMIONE: I have to say that if it weren't for Molly's sporadic hysterics this would be the first normal Sunday at the Burrow in weeks, months even. Well as normal as this family will ever get.
I watch Ginny and Harry as they comfort their son about the bump on his head and Harry shows him his scar and tells him that scars and bruises are marks of bravery and battle.
"So you can go to nursery tomorrow and tell all the other kids about you and your valiant steed doing battle with the dining table."
James laughed at this and slid down from his mother's lap to go and play outside with his cousins and twin brother and sister. I smiled as I saw how much better suited Harry and Ginny were as an unmarried couple then they ever were as husband and wife. That divorce was the best thing that ever happened to them. Ginny Weasley was too much a force to be reckoned with in her own right to just be considered Mrs Harry Potter for the rest of her life and she simply adored it when Harry would introduce her in public as 'my flighty young mistress'.
Ron and Charlie were having an in-depth discussion about something, it seemed to involve a lot of teasing at first but now they were just talking and nodding furiously at each other. I absent-mindedly kissed our little girl on the head as I watched her father say something to make Charlie laugh that enormous booming laugh of his.
James soon came running back inside with Ally, Sean and Sirius and hurled himself at Harry demanding he tell them all about battle scars.
Ron and Charlie stopped talking and listened to Harry groaning and trying to explain that talking about scars at the dinner table was very rude while Bill called across to the gore-obsessed little ones.
"Well when my face got shredded there were chunks of it hanging off, dogs were chasing me and licking their lips, and at first they tried to stick it back together with spellotape but the blood kept taking away all the sticky gum on the back of it so I had to carry my face in a bucket to the nearest healer..."
The kids 'ughed' and 'aghed' throughout this graphic monologue while beaming with delight at the same time. Ginny was throwing napkins at her oldest brother to get him to shut up while Fleur picked them up and proceeded to jam them into her husband's mouth to muffle him.
"Thank you Fleur," Ginny said in her most proper voice.
"Thank you Ginny," Fleur said back to her, her accent almost perfect now after all these years.
"So Uncle Charlie," James turned to look up at his hero, "Tell us how you got all yours again."
Charlie rolled his eyes and looked at Ron with a shake of the head. Ron snorted and folded his arms as he sat back in the chair.
"Yeah Uncle Charlie, tell us about that big one on your arse!"
"Ron!" his mother snapped from the doorway, "There are children present."
Ron turned to a giggling Sirius and James and pretended to be grumpy.
"You've got me into trouble now!"
"Alright, listen," Charlie said as he raised his hands to get the attention of the growing number of Weasley offspring that were gathering around the table, "seeing as you've all heard these stories way too much for you still to be interested in them you morbid freaks..."
"Charlie, don't call your nephews and nieces freaks," Molly hissed as she fussed over the gravy.
"I will point at a scar and you tell me where it came from alright?" Charlie continued.
All the little ones were nodding enthusiastically; Fred and George seemed to want to play this game as well and leaned forward with wicked grins on their faces.
"Point at your arse, point at your arse, point at your arse," Ron chanted under his breath into Charlie's ear.
"Shut up Dobbin!" Charlie scowled before pointing at the crook of his left elbow.
There was a scar that looked like a smile when his elbow was bent but a chisel when straightened.
"A Himalayan tri-horned mountain dragon!" Ally said with his hand raised in a fashion that reminded me of myself.
Ron seemed to have noted this as well as he turned to glance at me with a grin.
"Correct, ten points to Percy's little genius!"
Ally beamed and Percy mimed applause.
"Now, how about this one?" Charlie said as he lifted his shirt to point at three dots, each an inch apart, and three more just above them in the same triangular pattern.
Sirius hoisted his hand into the air with such eagerness he almost knocked out his twin sister.
"Watch it there!" Harry said as he pulled Lilly out of striking range and over to his side.
"Yes, the scruffy kid with the glasses," Charlie said as he pointed at Sirius who giggled before answering.
"They're claw marks from when a Magenta Lizard-hawk fell in love with you and tried to pick you up and fly away with you."
Everybody laughed at this.
"She didn't fall in love with him, she wanted to eat him!" George shouted across incredulously.
"She loved me and wanted my babies!" Charlie shouted back.
"Charlie you're sounding worryingly like Hagrid these days," Percy said with a shake of the head.
I laughed and felt the warm sleeping figure in my lap stirring with all the noise. I knew I'd have to wake her up when lunch was served anyway so I didn't worry about it.
"Now what's this one?" Charlie said as he pointed at his neck where a deep burgundy mark was raised from the surface of the skin.
Fred's eyes lit up and he whispered into his son's ear.
"That's the love bite Audrey Watkins gave you in the fourth year!" the little voice shouted out cheerily.
Fred and George howled with laughter and Harry and Ginny turned away from Charlie to stifle their own laughs. Ron tugged at Charlie's arm and smirked.
"Is she responsible for what you've got on your arse as well?"
Charlie narrowed his eyes at Ron and pointed his finger into Ron's chest to put his little brother rightly in his place.
"You aren't too old to go over my knee young man."
"Is that what she said to ya?" Ron chortled.
Molly huffed at this raucous behaviour at her table and was about to spin around to shame the family into silence when Cam called out over the laughter.
"Falling out of the sky and getting hit by the Hogwarts express in 2011."
The room fell silent and everybody turned to stare at Cam who was holding his own little boy on his lap. Ron stared at him and blinked.
"Alex asked me what scar Uncle Charlie was pointing at now," Cam explained with a small shrug and a smile.
Ron looked down at his chest and saw that his brother was indeed pointing at the ugly slash that went from his armpit all the way across and to his collarbone on the other side. Molly didn't seem to know what to do. She didn't want to make little Alex feel bad, the poor boy didn't know that Uncle Ron's scars were off limits in an unspoken way, but Cameron definitely knew better. I thought I understood why he had done what he did though. I looked at Ron and saw him smiling back at his nephew.
"Ten points," he said and Alex threw his arms up in celebration while Cam smiled at his favourite uncle and winked.
Arthur put down the newspaper he had been hiding behind all this time and cleared his throat.
"What about those?" he said as he pointed to Ron's arms.
Ron turned to his father and laughed out loud before rolling up his sleeves and displaying his scarred arms to the awe struck crowd of red haired children before the two blondes sitting in the corner piped up again; Cam having whispered into Alex's ear.
"Brains at the Department of Minsteries..." Alex yelled enthusiastically.
"Mysteries," Cam corrected.
"Mysteries. When Uncle Ron was sixteen and still at school."
All the children looked back at Ron and gave an 'Oooh'. Percy laughed at this and shook his head.
"Look what you've started now," he said ruefully, "they're all going to go to Hogwarts looking for adventure rather than an education."
"Tsk," Ron scoffed, "who needs an education?"
Percy looked alarmed and covered Ally's ears.
"Don't listen to him, it's all lies I tell you, LIES!" he shouted to a chuckling Bobby at the kitchen door.
Ron and Charlie were laughing at this when Ron suddenly flinched and lifted the tablecloth to look down at his little nephew Sean as he rolled up Ron's trouser leg and stared at the space where a foot should have been.
"I'll thank you to ask before examining a person's stumps young man," he said with a blink.
Fred went pale and flung himself under the table to drag his son out from underneath it.
"Sean what are you doing?" he snapped.
The whole kitchen was dumbfounded. I wanted to put my hand on Ron's shoulder but I didn't want to let the lead weight of our daughter's sleeping form slide off of me and hit the floor. Ron's eyes scanned across all the alarmed pairs of eyes that stared back at him in shock.
"Right," Ron said quietly before pushing himself back from the table, his chair scraping on the floor so loudly that the sleeping angel on my lap jerked awake and sat up to look at her daddy as he swung his legs up to rest upon the dining room table and rolled up both trouser legs to reveal the two stumps at each ankle.
Fleur drew a sharp intake of breath and covered her mouth. Fred held his inquisitive son to him in shock and Charlie couldn't help but stare at the space where Ron's feet should have been. All the children were unabashed as they leaned in close to examine the strange sight before Sirius turned to Cam and Alex expectantly.
Alex looked up at his father to get the answer but Cam just stared back at his uncle and shrugged.
"Uncle Ron never told me how he got those ones I'm afraid."
All the faces in the room turned back to Ron who smiled very slightly before saying clearly and calmly.
"Aimez, why don't you tell everybody what happened to daddy's feet?"
I looked down at my daughter as she grinned and sat up straight.
"Once upon a time there was this little black buck called Bobby," I saw Molly grip Arthur's shoulder and dab at her eyes with a tea towel while Harry took Ginny's hand and Fred lifted Sean up into his arms and stepped closer to the legs as they lay across the table. Percy's face went pale and he looked back at his eldest son.
Ron had never talked about what happened. We all knew pretty much what had happened to him but he had still kept it to himself. I had no idea that he had explained it to Aimez. Well he hadn't obviously, there was no little black buck called Bobby, but he had given her a reason for daddy not being able to play with her they way he used to.
"Bobby was a very good-hearted buck but he was very mischievous too. One day while Bobby was playing in his garden in the mountains a man appeared out of nowhere. He had no clothes on and didn't know where he was or what time it was."
Ron smiled at Aimez as she paused to look up at him to make sure she was telling her story right. He gave her a nod and she beamed and continued to her captivated audience.
"Well Bobby was used to living in the mountains all alone so he was a little bit frightened to see a naked man climbing around on the rocks and snow in his garden so Bobby lowered his horns and ran at the man. The man was barefoot and couldn't move out of the way fast enough because of the pointy rocks of the mountain jabbing into his feet and when Bobby reached him he sliced off daddy's...I mean the man's foot with his sharp horns in one go. Chop!"
Aimez said as she made a chopping motion with her hand at Ron's left leg. Ron lifted his left leg and wriggled the stump in James' direction. The little red head flinched before giggling and putting his hand on Ron's ankle and peering closer.
"I can see where the horns cut him, look!" he gasped.
Aimez looked to Ron for direction.
"Very sorry," Ron whispered.
"Bobby was very sorry for what he had done when he saw the man's foot rolling down the mountain and being eaten by wild carnivorous badgers."
Harry snorted and fought not to laugh out loud. Ginny stared at him wondering why this horrible story was so amusing.
"Why is it always badgers with you?" Harry said as he wiped his eyes.
Ron shrugged.
"There's no such thing as a wild carnivorous ba-" Charlie began to lean in and mumble into Ron's ear.
"Shut up, she picked the animal," Ron nodded to Aimez.
"Oh right, yeah wild carnivorous badgers Aim, I've seen plenty of them in my time," Charlie nodded sincerely, "Vicious buggers they are."
Aimez giggled and looked back to her father who prompted her again.
"Wonky?"
"Oh yeah," she said, a look of delight on her face as she clapped her hands together and continued with the story, "So Bobby the buck was so sorry and told the man that he would do anything to make it up to him," Aimez put on a bleating voice that made Arthur and Molly chuckle, "Let me know what I can do and I will do it 'O naked footless mountain man!"
Ron's shoulders began to shake as he struggled not to join Harry in the lost battle of suppressed laughter. Aimez looked at him with a frown but Ron could only manage to wave his hand at her and squeak.
"Go on!"
"So the man thought about his life with only one foot and decided that hopping would cause him to spill his tea everywhere," I broke at the same moment Bill did and we both clutched out hands to our mouths while Aimez went on, "So he told the naughty black buck Bobby what he could do for him to make amends."
"Good use of the word amends," Percy mumbled to himself.
"Shut up Percy!" George snapped as his own laughter broke.
"So the man said, 'Can you please chop off my other foot so I'm not so wonky?' and Bobby agreed. Just after the mountain man had his other foot chopped off and fed to the ravenous badgers he disappeared just the same way he had come and Bobby the black buck had learned a very valuable lesson."
There wasn't a single member of the family, apart front the enraptured children of course, who wasn't crying with laughter by now, and Charlie managed to look Aimez in the eye and asked her exactly what lesson that was.
"It's better to be foot loose and fancy free then lopsided and spill you tea!" she declared with pride.
I couldn't help myself any longer. I threw my head back and laughed harder and longer than I ever had done since that day when my mountain man had come back to me with irreversible frostbite in both feet and I had to grant the healers permission to amputate them while Ron was unconscious. While Ron took Aimez onto his lap and praised her story-telling abilities his nephews and nieces crowded around his stumps and talked animatedly about the story of the mountain man and Bobby the black buck while touching the oddly creased skin beneath his ankles.
Ron had never let anybody get that close to them before, let alone touch them, and I rested my hand on the back of his chair and tugged at a lock of his hair with my thumb and forefinger to get his attention. He looked at me briefly, winked and turned back to heap more praise on his daughter who looked utterly delighted to have done her daddy's story justice.
This must have been the bedtime story she insisted he tell her every night, even when it had been a travelling version of himself who didn't know the truth behind the story he was made to memorise.
I could see that Molly was ready to start serving lunch now and as she turned with a huge roast chicken in her oven gloved hands she called across to Ron, whose legs were still draped across the table on show, to move them aside.
"Right Ron, feet off the table dinner's up..." she froze and realised what she'd just said.
Every one of us stared back at her with wide eyes before bursting into laughter as one and her sons started ribbing their mother mercilessly for her slip-up while she blushed and mumbled that it was just a figure of speech.
"No mum," George corrected as he put a reassuring arm around her shoulders, "a figure of speech is something like, 'hungry badgers ate my feet!' that kind of thing."
Molly elbowed George in the ribs playfully before chuckling and Ron turned back to me and kissed me on the cheek.
"That's a beautiful story Ron," I whispered to him before kissing him on the lips while Aimez made a disapproving sound at the back of her throat.
"Beautiful?" he frowned at me.
"Beautiful for Aimez yes," I smiled as I took her from his lap while Charlie held him steady so he could lower his legs back underneath the table again.
I wondered how I could feel so lucky when you considered what the two of us had been through over all these years but I was. I was the luckiest woman on the planet.
"See mummy?" Aimez smiled as she looked up at me.
"What's that angel?" I asked her.
"I told you daddy was going to be okay. I made him promise when I found his wand."