Author's Note:
Okay, so I'm not as comfortable with Harry as I am with Ron, but I tried. If he seems off to anyone, let me know. Also, if anyone has any ideas of Ron & Hermione moments that you'd like to see, I'd love to hear from you!
Special thanks to Niftygirl for reading through this for me. She's brilliant!
I think thats it...enjoy!
Reviews make my day!
Chapter Two: Warnings
He had managed to recite the plan to himself three times before he gave in to his drooping eyelids and laid his head down on top of his folded arms on his desk. The office was entirely quiet, save the constant ticking of his watch beside his face.
When he awoke to the sound of knocks on his door, he had no sense of how much time had elapsed. Was it a mere moment ago he had closed his eyes, or hours ago? He picked his head up off the desk. His neck was sore from having been sitting in such an awkward position. Gingerly, he turned it side to side. He rubbed his eyes trying to appear awake and peered down at the papers he had been sleeping on; half-finished paperwork he should have been working on this morning. There was a tiny spot of what looked suspiciously like drool on the corner of one of them. Hastily, he wiped it away with his sleeve.
"Come in," he croaked as whoever was on the other side of the door knocked once more. Ron cleared his throat and set about trying to appear busy. The door opened, and a man about Ron's age with very messy black hair entered.
"I wasn't expecting you to be awake," Harry joked as he settled himself into the chair opposite Ron's desk.
"I wasn't expecting you to turn up," he replied relaxing slightly and abandoning his rouse of working. As the Head of the Auror Department, Harry might technically be Ron's boss, but he was hardly afraid of Harry reprimanding him for his lack of productivity.
Harry picked up one of the many folders littering Ron's desk and flipped through it at random. Ron looked down at his watch, relieved to see that he had only dozed for half an hour or so. He waited for Harry to speak, but he simply continued to sit and look through the contents of Ron's folders.
"Hermione is sorry she dragged you and Ginny out of bed." Ron was slightly surprised when Harry chuckled.
"We have a month old baby, Ron; we haven't slept through the night in ages. Probably not since James was born." This thought filled Ron with sudden terror. His current exhaustion was bogging down his mind, making thought slow and cumbersome- but it would be nothing compared to the exhaustion he would feel after a year of lost sleep. His horror must have showed, because Harry laughed again.
"Don't worry Ron; sleep deprivation isn't as bad after a while."
He had heard it all before. In fact he had heard little else for nine months. 'It's terrible, but you'll go bonkers when you see the thing and forget it's so horrible'. Over and over again he had heard it, from his brothers, his parents, Harry, Ginny, anyone who had ever had children had seemed ready to share this helpful advice with him. After hearing it for a while, he had even grown to believe them. It couldn't be that bad, could it? And babies were cute after all.
He wanted this baby, he really and truly did, but that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. Nine months had seemed an eternity nine months ago. Ages and ages in which to prepare for it, but now they were up, and they were to expect the baby at any given moment. He felt that he had been standing in line for some horrific task, and his number had just been called. He wanted the baby to come, he was tired of waiting for it, but he couldn't help but doubt his preparedness.
"How is Hermione?" asked Harry after a moment's silence.
"Impatient," said Ron, trying to focus on how much he wanted to be a father, not how terrifying it was. "She's tired of waiting for it."
"It about drove Ginny mad." Remembered Harry, but Ron did not need reminding. At the time, he had thought that his pregnant sister was the scariest thing in the world. That was until he had met his pregnant wife. There had been multiple occasions in which Ron had been certain she was about to kill him, he shuddered at the thought.
"They say we don't need to be worried yet. It should be any minute now though."
"Don't worry Ron. It won't be long."
A yawn came on to him so suddenly that he couldn't suppress it. Harry laughed again.
"Shall I leave you to your nap then?" He stood up and pushed the chair he had just vacated towards the desk.
"What kind of brain dead idiot would I be if I admitted to my bloody boss that I was planning on sleeping all day?"
"You don't usually let the fact that I'm your boss deter you from doing what you like." Harry pointed out.
"I'm not usually responsible for keeping you up all night."
"Just finish up last's weeks paperwork, alright?" all the authority of his statement was lost in the broad smirk that he gave his friend.
"Yes, sir," Ron offered Harry a mock salute. "Apologize to Ginny for me, will you?"
"Sure thing mate." Said Harry as he closed the door and slipped out of Ron's office.
He contemplated returning to his nap for a moment but he didn't really feel like he could sleep. All the talk about the baby had reminded him of just how apprehensive he felt. He was certain that it was all this waiting for it to come that was making him nervous and the moment it arrived he'd relax. Or at least that was what he kept telling himself. Apart from what his friends and family had told him, he had absolutely no idea what having a baby would actually be like. Yes, he understood that he would have to get up in the middle of the night, and change diapers, and all of the stuff that he could have explained to him, but that still did not leave him with a clear picture of what it would actually be like.
Any day now, he would be a father. So what'd that mean exactly? Did it mean that he was going to suddenly emerge from a puff of black smoke middle-aged and balding the way he had always known his own father to be? Of course he wasn't, Harry and his brothers had not become suddenly old when their children were born. On the outside, they had seemed exactly the same. But they weren't; it was just that whatever had changed in them was much more subtle than hair loss. Ron had asked Harry about it once, not long after James was born, and he had told him that he couldn't possibly explain what it was like.
He'd understand soon enough, Harry had said when they'd announced that Hermione was pregnant. But what if he didn't? What if he didn't undergo whatever change was necessary to enable you to successfully raise a child and therefore failed at it, condemning his poor child to a life of misery. The thought nearly paralyzed him with fear. For months and months he had thought he'd gotten over his doubts about his ability to be a parent, but as they'd arrived at his child's due date, they'd all come flooding back to him.
He knew what it was to have no belief in your own worth and that was something that he never wanted to his baby to know. But it wasn't like his parents had intentionally raised him to be riddled with insecurities, it had just happened. And what if he unknowingly made the same mistakes with his baby and doomed it to the same doubts and fears he had known for so long?
He shook his head, willing himself to focus instead upon how nice it felt to say 'his baby'. He'd get to meet it soon. He wondered what it would be like. Was it a boy or a girl? Would it look more like him, or Hermione? Would it have red hair? He found himself feeling increasingly impatient, albeit slightly nauseous, to know his child.
Glancing at his watch, he sighed and turned his attention back to the papers on his desk. He should be grateful; he supposed that his boss was his best friend. How else could he have been given permission to sleep all day on the soul condition that he finished work he should have had done days ago?
He supposed that the least he could do to show his appreciation of Harry's generosity was to finish the paperwork before he settled in for another nap. Smiling quietly to himself he set to work, resisting the urge to doodle 'Chudley Cannons' in the margin, but allowing his mind to wander to what it would be like to bring his baby home for the first time…