Chapter Four: Bill Weasley and the Brotherly Advice

Disclaimer: All characters, places, spells and objects that are in JKR's books are hers. I do not own them. I am just having fun playing in her sandbox for a while.

Bill was on a mission, one that he had promised to take with each of his brothers before they got married. There were just things that you had to do as an older sibling and, according to both Ron and George, Harry needed a lot of help in this area. No wonder the visitor's badge that he had collected when he had arrived at the Ministry said 'Rescue Mission'; with Harry on your books, it was.

It actually took a long time to stroll through the ministry and get to the second floor and the level two offices where the Auror offices were located. It took even longer when he reached that floor, since so many war heroes had ended up working there, especially since Kingsley Shacklebolt had wanted everyone who was of age at the battle of Hogwarts to join up with the Aurors. Both he and Fleur had even done a few weeks themselves, as soon as the battle had finished. No one wanted Death Eaters escaping this time.

The real delay was when he bumped into his father.

"Bill," Arthur grinned, as he made his way over just before he had reached the Auror offices, "what you doing here?"

Bill did wonder how many times Harry bumped into his dad on a daily basis. He thought it must be unnerving to know that their father would see when he took a day off sick or came in late, as he was sure that Harry and Ginny were likely to do every once in a while in each of their respective jobs, especially after a big win for the Holyhead Harpies. Maybe it was much better that he worked at Gringotts. He was glad no one knew when, on the odd occasion, Fleur had given him good reason to go into the office late the next day.

"Harry," he replied as his father's smile grew.

"Ahh," his father laughed, "how's Fleur?"

Bill grinned. "She's really good."

"And that gorgeous little granddaughter of mine?"

"She's really good, too," Bill answered as he found his grin growing as he thought of his little girl. "She's looking forward to having someone to play with soon."

He really did like nothing more than talking of his little girl. She had already captured the attention of everyone who met her and he would openly admit that he was completely besotted with her and he could spend hours just staring at her. Her smile would have him grinning for hours afterwards. She really was perfect, and it was hard to believe at times that she really was his.

With Fleur — and now little Victoire — his family really was perfect and, if Fleur's suspicions were correct, as they had been with Victoire, then they would soon be adding to their small family. This was a secret that was becoming harder and harder to keep as the days passed because he was dying to tell the entire world. He loved being a father and the thought that he was about to become one again was sending him over the moon.

Arthur shook his head. "Harry and Ginny aren't going to have kids anytime soon. Ginny's far too young."

"She's old enough to get married," Bill pointed out, playing devil's advocate.

"Barely," Arthur observed. "Besides, your sister is a Quidditch player and Quidditch players don't have children at her age. She's not going to get pregnant any time soon."

Bill laughed. He was well aware that it would be career suicide for Harry and Ginny to start a family, but it was just so amusing to watch his father's expressions right now. "Harry and Ginny can get pretty passionate at times."

"Oh, we know that," Arthur replied with a grimace. "It was us that got a list of the spells she used just after the Battle of Hogwarts when she had just been reunited with Harry and still had the trace on her. That was not pleasant reading for any parent."

"Dad!" Bill protested. There was information to be had by playing devil's advocate, basically just having fun, and then there was way, way too much information.

Arthur laughed softly. "Well, you did bring it up, Bill."

"And I better be going," he said rather quickly as he forced a smile at his dad. "See you on Friday." He turned to leave but then looked at his father again. No, he could not keep this to himself any longer. If it hadn't been for the wedding coming up, they would have broken the news to his family earlier. His smile grew. "And by the way, we think it's Fleur who's pregnant again, but keep that to yourself until after the wedding. This is Ginny's moment, not ours."

"Congratulations! That's wonderful news, and your mother will be just as delighted when you tell her," he said as he clapped Bill on the shoulder, "and we'll see you on Friday."

"Bye, Dad," he said with a small wave.

Bill may well have been the one to start off the jokes about Harry and Ginny being passionate about each other. You'd have to be blind not to notice that, especially the way that were constantly touching each other and looking at each other. Half the time, they acted as if they had only just got together and not had nearly the number of problems that they'd had, but he didn't want to know any more details than what he did.

No sane person would want to know that about his sister, even it was the hero of the wizarding world that sister was fooling around with.

Without any other further delays, he made his way down the corridor and turned into the Auror offices. He gave a brief wave to another few friends as he weaved his way through the knot of messy desks.

"Harry," Bill called as he made his way into the Auror cubicles.

He had to stop himself laughing as Harry straightened himself from his slumped position, knocking over several papers on his very cluttered desk. It looked like he had a lot of overdue paperwork from the sheer number of piles littering his desk. Harry's desk, like many others in this part of the Ministry, was nothing short of a mess. There was hardly room for the photographs that shared their place on the desktop with the paperwork: one of Ginny in her Harpies robes and one of both her and Harry playing with Teddy.

Bill had to stop himself laughing even more as Harry scrambled for his paperwork, as if to show whoever had just walked in that he was actually working and not avoiding the paperwork that was piled there. His soon-to-be brother-in-law was a great wizard, there was no doubting that. Not only was he the hero of the wizarding world and a truly great Auror, but he was still just Harry in so many ways. He was a man who got as nervous as the rest of them when facing Bill's own mother and joined in the banter with such ease at the Weasleys' meals as if he had been born one. In fact, he was already part of the Weasley family in so many ways, had been for years. Maybe Ginny had been right when she had joked that he should be the one taking her name. But surname of Weasley or not, he was still going to get the real Weasley treatment here; he deserved nothing less.

"Come on, Harry," he said, "we're taking an early lunch."

"What?"

"We have an appointment," Bill told him with a small grin.

"What?" Harry questioned again, clearly confused.

"We don't let Weasleys get embarrassed, except maybe Percy, and he can already dance. And George has told me that I very much have a rescue mission on my hands today," Bill said with a small laugh. "We've booked you in for dance lessons; don't want you standing all over Ginny's feet on Friday."

They made their way into Diagon Alley and dived down to a dance studio that was owned by a friend of Fleur's. With the reporters following Ginny around (and Harry, to a lesser extent — being the hero of the wizarding world was at least giving him a little more privacy) and the daily articles in the wizarding press as Friday approached, they had two options when it came to keeping the details of this wedding private. The first was being used by Ginny as often as she could, as she had taken to disappearing into Muggle London to get things done. It would be very obvious if a reporter popped up in the Muggle world, as well as violating so many of the basic wizarding laws to Apparate in front of Muggles, so she was getting some relative peace. The second option was to go with trusted friends.

This time he was going with friends. Fleur had first met Julia when she had come into Gringotts to transfer some money over from her vault in France and recognised her straight away as a girl who had been two years ahead of her at Beauxbatons. The pair had hit it off straight away as they each looked for someone that they could just talk with in their native tongue. Fleur had explained that, although most times it was amazing to be in Britain and that she did not regret the decision to move here in the slightest, sometimes it was good just to be with someone from the same country who had a similar background, just as she sometimes craved a food that was simply French and not some of the horrible stuff that the British thought was food.

"Bonjour," Bill said as he pushed open the door, before kissing Julia on each cheek.

"Oh, bonjour, Bill. 'ow are you? Fleur? Petit Victoire?" Julia raced out the words. "Fleur must come and see me again soon."

"I'll tell her that, but we're all pretty busy until Friday. She has a lot she wants to talk to you about as well." Bill smiled at Harry. "This is Harry; he's the brave man who has agreed to marry my sister. Harry, this is Julia. She's one of Fleur's closest friends and an excellent dance instructor."

"It is a pleasure to meet you 'Arry, a real pleasure," Julia said as she offered her hand.

"Likewise," Harry said.

"We're not asking you to work miracles," Bill said with a laugh, "just enough to get him and Ginny around the dance floor in one piece a couple of times."

"Nonsense, Bill," she tutted, clearly not impressed at his downplaying of her abilities. "Everyone can dance, zhey just need ze training."

Julia soon regretted these words as she left the dance floor muttering, 'Merde!' under her breath and summoned an assistant to take over. She then spent an hour chatting with Bill with an icing charm on her foot as she continued to ask questions about his ever-growing family and making more claims that they needed to come over soon for a meal with her and Michael.

Michael was actually the reason that Julia had moved to England — after years of being pen pals — and they had got married almost straight away once they were both living in the country. They also had a little girl, Marie, who was six months older than Victoire, and it was highly useful to know another set of parents who had different mother tongues to contend with, and most of the same problems.

"So, about 'Arry," she finally said, "I know he is ze 'ero but a lot of 'eroes aren't zhat great in real life, it is why I tend to avoid meeting zhem. No one wants to see zheir 'eroes fall under closer security — too many flaws exposed, I think, but 'Arry… well, he seems different. Is he as good everyone claims?"

"Oh," he smiled, "he's all that. He really is pretty much a perfect fit for Ginny and we know that he's not going to hurt her and he makes her so happy. She's just a different person when he's around, especially if you compare her mental state now to how she was in the war. Ginny had a really tough war and Harry kind of completes her, in a way."

"I guess zhat makes your job as a bruzzer-in-law quite easy," she observed. "My leetle sister is marrying zhis real fool. It is a very good job zhat I no longer live in Marseilles so I do not have to see it every day." She shrugged then continued, "But I guess we all have our faults. Your 'Arry still can't dance."

"True," Bill laughed, "but I do think there is some improvement there."

"You tell zhat to my poor toes!"

A couple of hours later, he knew he had been right, as they sat back in the Leaky Cauldron for a couple of drinks. It had not been too hard to persuade Harry to take the rest of the day off and Bill was very glad he had taken Harry for dance lessons. However, he was sure the witch who had acted as instructor once Julia had refused to do the job any longer and now had black and blue toes, was not. Hero and great wizard Harry may be, but he was no dancer. Luckily, he had got slightly better as time progressed; he now seemed to recognise feet from floor so at least Ginny should still be able to walk on her feet when the night finished.

"Today wasn't really about dancing, was it?" Harry asked.

"Not that you didn't need the lessons, but no, it wasn't," Bill said as he poured Harry a large drink of Firewhisky. He figured, after an afternoon of dancing, he needed it. With drinks in hand, Bill continued, "Since you're really one of us now, Harry, I thought I'd check in on you, just like I'd do with the others, it's kind of a big brother's job." Harry smiled at him before Bill continued in a very serious tone, "How you feeling, Harry?"

"Nervous." He gulped out the answer and followed it with a fairly long drink. "Really nervous."

Bill grinned. "That's good, actually, and perfectly natural. Everyone feels nervous on their wedding day; we'd be more worried if you didn't." He softened his grin into a smile. "What are you nervous about, surely not the dancing, now?"

"No, I hadn't even thought of that, with so many things to do before I get to the dancing." Harry gulped. "What if I put on my robes back to front?"

Bill laughed. "I think you'd notice. Besides, Mum wouldn't let you do that."

"What if I trip over something as I take my place and send things flying everywhere?"

Bill smiled at him. "You won't if you look where you're going."

"What if I forget the words?" Harry rambled on.

"Well..." Bill started, as he remembered he'd had these same fears on his wedding day: what if he forgot the words with everyone looking and he embarrassed Fleur? "...that's actually quite hard to do, since you just have to repeat the words."

"What if I mess up Ginny's name? Say it wrong or something? Get it the wrong way? Call her Ginny instead of Ginevra?"

"Then I wouldn't want you marrying my sister if you can't get her name right." Bill grinned at him before adopting a much more serious look. "Seriously, Harry, there's only one thing that matters on Friday."

"Which is?" Harry looked utterly clueless as he spoke.

Bill had to shake his head at this; for Britain's hero, Harry was not overly bright at times. "You love Ginny."

"Of course I do," Harry answered this quickly and a huge grin spread over his face.

"Well, then, you'll do just fine," Bill told him.

"But what if…"

"Things go just fine and you have a great day?" Bill interrupted as he clapped his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Welcome to the family. Now let's get going before Fleur or Ginny come looking for us, I don't want to be on the wrong side of either of those wands."

They parted at the grate for Floo calls in the Leaky Cauldron, Harry claiming he had a call to make and Bill was pretty certain he knew who that call was to, due to the grin on Harry's face. No doubt Harry would be getting another lesson on being a Weasley and Ginny would be Flooing around in the morning, explaining to their mother that she had stayed with Bill and Fleur overnight. Ginny had asked each of them to cover for her so many times in the last few months that it was becoming a running joke: It's Wednesday, so Ginny must have stayed here last night.

It wasn't until much later that evening and they had settled Victoire down for the night, tidied up the house, Fleur had told him that she was positive that she was pregnant, and they were listening to music in the small living room, that the subject of Harry came up again.

"'Ow did zhings go with 'Arry?" Fleur finally asked as she settled her head on Bill's shoulder.

"Apart from the dancing, really well," Bill told her, "I think he's just about ready to become a Weasley. Even with the hints and lessons he gets from Ginny, I think he just needed someone else to welcome him to the family and tell him things would be okay."

"You really are a vonderful bruzzer, Bill," she told him in soft tones, "and an even better 'usband. If 'Arry is 'alf as good, Ginny will be very lucky."