He sat there, on a chunk of a stone pillar, and stared out on the surrounding grounds. It looked strangely peaceful, yet strangely eerie. The place Ron Weasley had called home for several years was a pile of disconnected rubble, crumbled stone and cinders mixed with huge wooden beams and a bridge which was missing its centre.
Beyond, in the grounds of what had been Hogwarts Castle, the world looked so calm; the grass clean and bright; the sun beginning to creep from the edges of a greyed cloud in the early morning light.
The red of the sky reminded him of the fire, the explosions and the screams of the day before. Of thinking his best friend – almost a sixth brother – had died. Of learning, Harry had lived and of knowing, finally, once and for all, that Lord Voldemort was gone forever.
He glanced down at the clean bundle in his hands. Ron himself was dressed in clean and crisp clothes taken from a tall fifth-year student. Even though the student must have been tall he was shorter than Ron, the legs of the trousers barely touched his ankles and there was a chilling gap between the bottom of the trouser leg and the top of his socks.
A gap that couldn't be filled. It made him think of Fred, everything did. It was hard to believe that his older brother was gone. Dead. Killed at the hands of Death Eaters only hours earlier. And yet he wanted to be happy, wanted to be relieved and ecstatic due to the happenings as the battle closed. He looked at the little creature in his arms and didn't know what he was supposed to feel.
That, his tangle of emotions not represented by words, was why he had come out here.
Hermione was asleep, she had slept on and off for most of the night and into the morning. His mum said it was well-deserved. She had lost a lot of blood and gone through a reasonably traumatic delivery. He didn't know much about all the medical words being thrown about but all that really mattered was that she was safe.
And He was safe. Ron looked down at the little one in his arms, Aaron. He had to keep reminding himself that it had a name – and a gender for that matter. It was a little baby boy, it was Aaron Ronald Weasley. This tiny thing, with the wrinkliest hands and a general look of not fitting his own skin, was his. He was perfect, and every time Ron looked at his son he felt his heart swell in his chest.
They had made it, all three of them with a separate task to complete. He had fought, Hermione had endured extreme pain and this little lad had survived without damage despite being a little on the small and early side. Harry was alive, Voldemort was dead and he was a Dad. There could not have been a more perfect ending.
Ron thought back to the legend he had grown up with, the legend of a baby boy – around his age – who had defeated Lord Voldemort. Harry Had ended the first Wizarding War, and, Ron decided in that moment, being sure Hermione would agree, that Harry's Godson had been the baby born to end the second war. There were, after all, parallels round every corner.