CH 41: Discovering The New Normal

The following week Hugo started back up at school. The three of them had breakfast together before Hermione left for work that Monday, and Ron left to take Hugo to school. Once Ron had dropped Hugo, he headed home to clean up the breakfast dishes. After he put away the last plate, he sat down at the kitchen table and sighed. The quiet of the house echoed somewhat, and he realized he had no idea what to do next. Just then his phone buzzed and he saw a text from Hermione, Don't get overwhelmed by the blank slate, Ron. Start with what you know, and then embrace the unknown. And for me, when I don't know what to do, I start with making a list. Good luck…I love you.

Ron looked back at the phone smiling. What in the hell would I do without her in my life? he wondered. So, while lists had never been his thing, he thought he'd embrace this new chapter with a new approach. Huh, he thought. Can't make a list without something to write on. Note to self – first item on the list should be find parchment and quill so I can make a bloody list he mused. He rummaged around a few drawers in the kitchen, briefly considering making the list out of crayon and craft paper from Hugo's stash. Then he pulled open a drawer and found muggle paper and pens, and as he pulled that out, he notice a list in Fi's writing in the bottom of the drawer. He pulled it out and noticed it was a list of everyone's birthdays by month. He was on there in March, Rose in May, Hugo in August and Holy Shite! Hermione was in September!

"Thank you, Fi!" he said out loud to the empty kitchen. "It really is remarkable how you manage to keep saving my arse from wherever you may be. Don't know how you're doing it, but please don't stop."

Ron stood at the counter looking at his blank paper. He started writing, putting "Now What?" across the top. Then he scratched in a couple of things.

1. Send daily note to Rose – and probably one to Al too

2. Figure out what to do for Hermione's birthday

3. Finally move everything out of the flat and see if Teddy wants to move in if ok with George

4. Figure out what to do for a career

5. Make dinner

He stared at the list. Well, he mused, I can at least send off the notes and feel like I did something. So, with that in mind, he wrote notes to Al and Rose and sent them off to Hogwarts. Realizing he couldn't just sit in the kitchen all day thinking about what to do for Hermione's birthday, he decided to head over to WWW where he could say hi to George and work on getting the flat organized.

When he walked into WWW, he saw George re-stocking some of the shelves.

"Morning, Ron. What are you doing here?" asked George.

"Well, I dropped Hugo at school and realized I officially have nothing to do all day. So, I thought I would work on cleaning out the flat so that maybe Teddy or one of the other kids could have it in a bit."

George lifted an eyebrow at him. "Well, while I am sure Teddy and Victoire will be thrilled about that I am rather certain Bill won't be as excited to hear of it."

"Oh please. Those two have been as destined for each other as any couple ever. Might as well have them living somewhere we can at least keep an eye on them. And, it's your place naturally, so really you can do whatever you want with it. But it doesn't make sense to use it as a storage space for my old stuff. So, at the very least I'll get my junk out of there. But, I thought I'd leave the furniture and plates and such so whoever moves in next won't need to get new stuff. Between Hugo's house and Hermione's house and the flat, we have no shortage of furniture or kitchenware."

"That makes sense. So, she finally moved in, huh?"

"Yeah," Ron smiled. "She keeps telling me she will still spend time at her house every now and then, but I hope we can keep that to a minimum. Not sure what we'll do when Rose comes home at Christmas, but I can't get that far ahead yet. But, I luckily found an old list of Fi's this morning that had everyone's birthdays on it because it turns out Hermione's is in a few weeks, and I had no idea."

"Are you going to give her an engagement ring as a present?"

"I don't think so."

George just shook his head. "Well, I can't claim to understand while you aren't marrying her as soon as she'll let you. But, I have some fine gag rings you could give her instead."

"Right," scoffed Ron. "Just what I need to do – give Hermione a non-engagement ring that turns her hand blue and makes her cluck like a chicken for an hour."

"Well, a fall back idea then."

"Yeah, I'll keep that mind," laughed Ron. "I'm going to head upstairs and work up in the flat. Maybe I'll pop down and go pick us up some lunch later."

"Sounds good. I expect it will be very slow today with everyone back in school."

Ron walked up into his old flat. He looked at it, and it felt so, so empty compared to his life now. There were no art supplies or kids' books or stuffed animals. Hermione's cardigans and shoes and ridiculous amounts of books weren't there. He shook his head, once again amazed at how much his life had changed in only nine months. He worked in the bedroom for a while, cleaning out his personal items like clothes and shoes while washing the sheets and towels and storing them away for whoever may need the flat next. He separated his personal stuff into a small stack to take back with him, and a larger pile to send to a local thrift store, but there was also a pile of things to just vanish such as old ripped quidditch magazines, clothes worn threadbare and other junk. He repeated the process in the kitchen and living room, though there were less things to pack up in there. He left most of the plates, pots and pans, and only packed up his things from the shelves and the closet like pictures, his few books, his old overcoat and his old blanket on the sofa that his mum had made for him. Everything else would help launch whoever lived there next. He moved all of the packed up boxes back through the floo and sent the other boxes off to a thrift store. He spent a little longer making sure everything was clean for the next tenant, and then deemed it "good enough." With that he popped over to the Leaky and got lunch for he and George to have back at the shop.

"Took less time than I thought to clean out," mused Ron as they ate. "Seems odd. Took Hermione, Hugo and I all day to only move a little bit of her stuff on Saturday. It only took three hours by myself to pack up all of my junk."

"Well, it's not like you had it all decorated up like I'm sure Hermione's home was. You worked all of the time and lived a rather sparse bachelor existence. It's not a bad thing, it was just the life you had at the time."

"I know. But I am so much happier with the life I have now. Seems like a lifetime ago, and it was less than a year."

George smiled. "I'm happy for you. But what are you going to do with your time now?"

"Not a fucking clue."

"You know I've been trying to get you to come back here since the day you left for auror training. Offer stands."

"Thanks. I – well – I am actually thinking about it. But, I'm not really sure yet. There are parts of the auror work I worry I'll miss if I jump completely into wheezes."

"Well, think about it. And if you come up with an interesting hybrid idea, we can talk through it."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, you prat, that's why I said we'd talk through it if you came up with it."

"I'll never be the creative mind Fred was."

"No, you won't, but I don't want you to be. I need help with the business side and thinking through that part. I'm perfectly good at the creative charms and such. But I'm still shite at the rest of it."

"You're hardly shite at it, George. You have run this incredibly successful business for decades now! What started as a crazy idea from some prankster teens turned into a cornerstone part of the childhood of every magical kid in England."

"Well, anyway, think about it."

"I will. I promise. Well, I'm going to look through the shops a bit before I have to get Hugo. I want to see if I can figure out what to get for Hermione."

"Good luck with that."

Ron meandered through the shops of Diagon Alley, but didn't see anything that caught his eye. He looked in the window at the jewelry store, but just felt like it wasn't the time to start picking out a ring. He and Hermione knew they would be married, but he really thought she wasn't ready for that yet either. He decided he might ask Rose for some ideas too. But then he noticed the time and realized he had to head off to pick up Hugo from school.

The rest of the days began to fly by with much of the same routine. Hermione rushed home from work at night, they had dinner and helped Hugo finish his homework, they wrote letters to Rose, shared the ones they had received from her, and then did it all again the next day. Ron loved his evenings with Hermione and Hugo – eating dinner together, reading together and continuing to help Hermione learn magic. But between the time Ron dropped Hugo at school and picked him up again, he struggled. He filled a couple days putting away the things from the flat, and then filled a few more helping clean out and organize some things at The Burrow.

By the start of the second week, he knew he needed to figure things out. So that next Monday as soon as he dropped Hugo at school, he popped home to grab his broom and apparated to Shell Cottage. Bill and Fleur hadn't lived there in years, as it was too small of a place for a family with children, but they had kept it in the family. Ever since the war, Ron had found that he could clear his mind there. First he went to pay his respects at Dobby's grave, leaving a pair of mismatched socks he had found cleaning out the flat. Sitting on that hill looking over his grave and out to the sea, he thought the little elf would have really gotten a kick out of what his life looked like now. Ron really hoped that he was living his life in a way that honored Dobby's sacrifice for him all those years ago. Or at least that he had lived it well up to now. But he wanted to figure out a next chapter that would keep honoring him as well.

He got on his broom, and headed up the coast. He loved this type of flying, where he had to work hard to fight the wind in order to stay on course. It took total concentration and a lot of physical exertion to stay flying. After a while he landed on a rocky cliff where the tall sea grasses whipped in the wind. Dotted along the cliffs were the small flowers of early autumn shining in gold and deep purples amidst the rocks. He decided to hike up a path along the cliff's edge, as he always thought better when he was moving.

Thinking back to what Hermione had advised, he tried to figure out what he knew for sure. He knew he wanted to keep working and stay active mentally and physically, but he also knew he wanted to be in a job that was safe and that would allow him to be there for Hugo. He also knew there aspects of his auror work that he'd enjoyed – he'd loved keeping people safe; he'd loved the flexibility of planning his own day; he'd loved the problem solving and creative thinking involved; and he'd loved that he wasn't sitting at a desk all day but instead up and about to solve the case.

His mind kept returning to his brother, and the offer to work at the shop. There were parts of this idea that he loved. It would be fun to spend so much time with George, and he liked the idea of getting to focus on the business side instead of the product development side. And he liked the idea of being involved with a business that made people happy. But he really didn't want to spend day after day working in the shop. He never minded a few days working there, but day after day inside one building would suffocate him he thought.

Then he thought about the ideas Harry had mentioned – either a strategy position with the aurors or possibly teaching with the academy. While he liked the idea of a strategy job, he knew it would drive him mad to sit in an office while he watched other people implement his ideas and either have the fun of doing it right or get aggravated when people fucked it up. He was slightly more attracted to the idea of teaching new aurors, but he didn't want to have to live out at the academy, and many of those classes weren't things he was interested in learning, let alone teaching.

But as he hiked further up the cliff, it struck him that he really didn't need a paying job. If he could figure out what it is he wanted to do all day, maybe he could just show up and do it for a while. What if he just spent time at the auror academy each day and helped the recruits practice and learn? Or what if he helped find and evaluate the students who were interested in becoming auror recruits? Or served as something as a mentor to the new aurors? But would he be able to really mentor them without putting himself in harm's way? He wasn't quite sure on that. Maybe he could talk it through more with Harry.

With his ideas on his work at least closer to a plan, he let his thoughts shift to Hermione as he hiked back down the trail. He still couldn't believe he had found the woman of his dreams. In so many ways it seemed too good to be true. He was concerned that he'd had several more nightmares where Hermione was somehow intertwined with his memories of the war. All he could really take from is dreams was that he always awoke feeling inadequate. She was so brilliant that there was no need for him. He didn't always remember the details of the dream, but every time he bolted up in bed he had this sense that she would somehow wake up to realize her mistake of choosing him. It was odd – prior to this year, he never had much to lose. This always made it easy for him to jump in front of a curse to protect Harry or Fi or take the risk to solve whatever the problem was. But now he had everything to lose.

He got back onto the broom and flew down the coast back towards Shell Cottage. He could have apparated from there, but he had the time and it was a gorgeous early fall day. As he flew into the wind, he could feel his brain relaxing more, and focusing more on Hermione. What should he do about her birthday? He didn't want to get her a ring. And any other kind of jewelry seemed like a bad idea. She would always like books, but he'd already bought her every book he could think of that she would like and a gift certificate to Flourish and Blotts seemed terribly impersonal. One of the things he liked about Hermione was that stuff didn't seem to matter much. She didn't make a fuss over shoes or handbags or clothes. She lived relatively simply, and seemed to spend her time and money on experiences with the people she loved instead of more things. And if she could combine that with learning something, then it was even better. That's what he had to figure out – something that was an educational experience they could go and enjoy together.

While Ron was trying to fill his days, Hermione was feeling as if someone had snuck 12 hours out of each day. Work was busy, so she was easily putting in 50 hours a week. On top of that, she was spending her evenings with Ron and Hugo, trying to read and study magic, and then even her nights were filled up with Ron. While she loved being with him every night, having sex multiple times a week and always waking up in his arms, she was utterly exhausted. And she had noticed that now that Hugo was back in school, Ron seemed even more eager to talk late into the evening. She could imagine he needed the adult interaction, but she wasn't sure how much longer things could keep going at this pace. By the time Rose had been at Hogwarts for two weeks, she had decided something had to change.

When she got home that Friday evening, she found an eager Ron in the kitchen, having made a wonderful dinner for the three of them. She tried to stay attentive to both of them throughout dinner, but before she knew it, she woke up in Ron's arms as he carried her up to the bedroom.

"What happened?" she muttered.

"You fell asleep at dinner, Love." Ron said. "You are clearly exhausted and working yourself to the bone. So, I am putting you to bed."

"No, it's only 730. I can't possibly go to sleep now. I need to read at least the next three chapters in my history book because I'm due to go to Hogwarts on Monday. And I am so far behind."

"Hermione. You are exhausted. It's Friday night. You didn't eat anything because you fell asleep sitting up. Please let yourself sleep. The history will still be history tomorrow. You can tackle it then."

She started to put up an argument, but she was too tired. And soon, she had fallen asleep.

Ron was worried about her. He knew she was working too hard, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about. When he came downstairs, Hugo had cleaned up most of the kitchen.

"Is Hermione feeling poorly?"

"No. Hermione is working too hard and is simply really tired. She wanted to stay up and read more history books, but I hid them in the closet, so hopefully she will actually sleep through the night now."

"Ron, could you see if Lily Potter and I could play tomorrow?"

"You know, that is a brilliant plan, buddy. Why don't you run upstairs and get in the shower and I'll floo call Harry and Ginny and get it all set for tomorrow?"

Ron was thrilled that Hermione had actually slept almost 12 hours that night. She curled up on the couch with her books as Ron and Hugo headed over to the Potters after breakfast the next morning.

Ginny had offered to take the two kids to the park, leaving Harry and Ron at the house.

"I was hoping to bounce some ideas off of you this morning if you have some time, Harry," Ron said.

"Sure. What's up?"

"Well, I have been a stay at home parent of an in school kid for two weeks now, and it is so boring I am going officially batty."

"But you still don't want to come back, right?"

"Right. But, I have been trying to think of what I do want to do."

"You'd be great at an office based strategy job."

"I thought about that. But, I think just the idea of being in the office all day every day would make me insane. Just like I think I would like parts of working with George, but the idea of being in the shop 40 hours a week isn't exactly attractive to me either."

"So what's your idea?"

"Well, I think I need help nailing it down a bit. But, what about if I did sort of a hybrid teaching job. I could teach maybe one strategy oriented class at the training academy – I don't want to live there obviously – and then maybe I could do some work mentoring the new recruits and rookies, or maybe even help developing and evaluating potential recruits by working with some 6th and 7th year students up at Hogwarts."

"Huh. We never done anything with the students that young."

"I know. But I was thinking some more about that. You and I just got lucky getting into the aurors without having to do our NEWTs. And we turned out to be pretty damn good at it. I wonder how many potential aurors we have missed out on because we're demanding NEWTs in potions or whatever. If we had someone actually working with potentially interested students, we might be able to spot some real talent."

"I like that idea. But what about George? I think he really thought you were going to work with him."

"Well, I was thinking I would see if I could do just a little bit with helping on the business side. I really don't want to be there all of the time. But if I could be helpful a few hours a week, then maybe I'll try to do that."

"I like the idea of the teaching. The academy needs someone to teach the strategy classes who isn't a complete idiot. And if you start with just one class, the current faculty wouldn't feel threatened or anything. And I really love the idea of doing some work with the older Hogwarts students. Maybe we could go meet with McGonagall next week and get her take on it."

"Brilliant."

"So anything else going on?"

"Hermione's birthday is this week. She doesn't think I know about it. Actually, she may be as busy as I was in the spring, so she may have forgotten herself."

"Is there a ring coming?"

"No. I know it's not the right moment."

"So? What are you doing?"

"Well, I had this idea. But I need some help making it happen."

Ron talked through his plan, which Harry thought was brilliant. And he quickly offered to keep Hugo for a weekend that fall so Ron could pull it off.

When Ron came back through the floo, Hermione was still on the couch buried in her book. He decided he would join her on the sofa and read one of his old chess books. She smiled and curled up with her head on his lap while she read. They took a break for lunch, and enjoyed sandwiches and pumpkin juice.

"So, I know you want to get back to your book, but I was hoping we could talk through an idea I had for a minute," said Ron tentatively.

"Of course. What's going on?"

"Well, the last two weeks have taught me several things, but the top of the list is that I am no good at being a stay at home parent when there are no kids home to take care of."

"Not as decadent as it sounds, huh?"

"No. Especially for someone who never learned to lounge on the couch and watch the tele. So, I came up with some ideas that I've mentioned to Harry, but I only want to pursue them if you think they make sense for us."

"Ok, well, what's the idea?"

"I was thinking I would do a combination of teaching work – both at the academy where I could teach one class and then maybe work with the older students at Hogwarts trying to identify, recruit and evaluate potential aurors. And then I know George was wanting some help with the business side. And I think I could do that just a few hours here and there. And I think I would be able to get Hugo after school depending on the timing of my classes. And then obviously the Hogwarts work would follow the school term, so I could still be off most of the summer except for when I was in class at the academy, which wouldn't be too much. And I am sure our parents could help some on those occasions."

Hermione thought for a moment. "I think it sounds like a great plan. If you're happy about it, then I'm happy about it."

"That's it?"

"Were you expecting an argument?"

"Not really," Ron admitted. "But maybe at least some challenging questions."

"I don't know," Hermione said. "But ever since Rose left, I just feel like I've needed to reconnect with those passions and ideas as I had as an eager young woman right out of school. And if your passion drives you the same way, I want that for you too. So, if teaching new aurors or helping develop kids who want to become aurors does that for you and keeps you out of the mission work where people are trying to kill you, well, then I just don't see a down side. Am I missing something?"

"No. Your brilliant mind caught it all instantly, as usual."

She laughed at him.

"Speaking of your brilliant mind," Ron said. "I do have another question, though."

"Alright, what's question number two?"

"More of a general observation than an exact question. But, I know it's only been two weeks, but you seem like you are working harder at both your job and your studies, and you are more tired now than you were when Rose was home. And, I am just wanting to check that you're ok. I mean, you fell asleep at dinner last night. If you aren't reading legal briefings then you're reading magical texts. I just worry about you, and I don't want you to work so hard at everything that your burn out and find you can't do any of it."

"Sorry. I feel like it has been an especially busy few weeks. And it just unfortunately happens to overlap with our first two weeks actually living together."

"Please don't apologize. I'm not filing a complaint or anything. I just care about you and want you to be ok."

"Oh, I'm ok. Like I said – I feel like I finally am allowed to think back to who I intended to be before motherhood popped up unexpectedly. And I was this totally driven, knowledge seeking, workaholic. And I was going to change the world as I knew it. But then it turns out there was a whole bunch of the world I didn't know existed. And now that I do know of the existence of the magical world, I just have this driving need to learn everything I can as fast as I can to make up for lost time. And only once I learn what I missed can I figure out what my role in that new world can be."

"You're amazing, Hermione," Ron said earnestly as he reached for her hand. "But I hope you know that the place you have in the world has as much to do with your heart and spirit as it does with your mind. You don't have to wait to learn everything before you get to claim your spot. It'd been yours all along- you just have to live it."