AN- Iwik Prompt

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Collaborative Effort

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Harry and Ginny stood there in shock as they listened to everyone around the table in the kitchen talk about the months 'schedule'. The young couple had snuck over to The Burrow because it was supposed to have been empty. Every one had told them they had plans tonight, so tonight was when they were going to sneak into her childhood bedroom and shag on her old metal bed like they were a pair of randy teenagers.

Well, they couldn't do that now; Not when all of her family was sitting in the kitchen below said bedroom and dividing up who would be responsible for what in hers and Harry's relationship.

The two of them were hidden under Harry's invisibility cloak, standing out of the way, listening in on everyone in horror and feeling more than a little violated.

"I'm still popping over to do the quick cleaning spells," her mum said and checked something off a list.

"I'll remind Harry about their anniversary," said her father. "Start talking about how our first few had gone." He kissed his wife's hand at that.

"You mean how you kept on forgetting," she teased, smiling widely.

"I weel remind Ginny, so she weel 'av something to surprise 'im with," Fleur offered.

"I know what your anniversary surprises are, and I want this to be the last time we talk about that," Bill told her.

"Wonderful," her mum checked something else off her list. "Ron, you'll keep giving Ginny forewarning when he'd having a bad day at work?"

"Always do," Ron nodded.

"You know, I can't believe I never thought to ask this before, but did you all have anything to do with Ron's and my relationship at the start?" Hermione asked the table.

Most at the table politely averted their eyes, meanwhile George let out a laugh. "Hermione, there wouldn't have been a 'start' to your relationship if it hadn't been for me and Fred."

"What?!" Ron sounded offended. "What are you talking about? You and Fred were no where around when I finally went for it with her."

George scoffed at him and shook his head with amusement. "Not when you manned up and sealed the deal, no, but don't you remember that book we gave you before your sixth year? Ten Failsafe Ways to Woo Witches? Or how about at Bill and Fleur's wedding when we pointed out that she looked amazing and some lucky bloke was going to be dancing with her all night if he'd have the balls to simply ask."

Ron had no argument to that, he just kept on gaping at his brother.

"Darling," his mum told him. "We tend to interfere right up until there's a wedding."

Bill sat up straight at that. "You didn't with Fleur and I!"

She inclined her head to the side and gave a small, apologetic shrug, "not at the beginning, no. And I'm sorry I didn't notice how in love you were right away. But, after you got hurt and I did notice, that's when I properly got involved."

"Excuse me, but… 'ow did you get involved?" Fleur raised an eyebrow in question.

Her mum smirked, "I don't actually insist on couples not sharing a room or a bed before marriage."

"Oh! That's just cruel," Bill tossed a napkin at his mum and they all had a laugh, remembering how she kept them sleeping in separate bedrooms until the wedding night.

"I was eager to see my first-born married off!" she defended, a big smile on her face now. "With the way you two looked at each other I figured temptation was the best way to make sure we went through with the wedding as planned. There was talk up until that point of you postponing and I couldn't have that."

Ginny turned to look at Harry to see how he felt about all this; her family were trying to rush them to the altar, he must be freaking out. He looked down at her and their eyes met; there was only surprise there, no sense of being violated that she could read off of him. They remained quiet and he pulled her closer.

"Back to this," her mum tapped her list with her quill. "We were wrong in assuming he'd propose at Ron and Hermione's wedding, so when do we all think might be the next opportunity?"

"I'd say sometime around Christmas," Hermione offered.

Ron nodded. "I agree; and I'll ask him about his family vault again. I'm pretty sure he would want to give her his mum's ring."

"Has he said something?" her mum asked sharply, holding her breath for the answer.

"No, but he plays everything so close to the vest about Ginny."

As a group the whole table dropped their shoulders.

Ginny had heard enough. She tugged on Harry's hand so he would follow behind her as they left soundlessly through the other door and got a good distance away from the house before he pulled her close and they Apparated back to their flat.

"I can't believe them!" Ginny burst out. "They're trying to run out lives on their schedule?" She was smoldering with anger. How much of hers and Harry's lives had they interfered with? Had they all been working together to pull the puppet strings in this relationship? And why? So she and Harry might potentially get married sooner? She was only twenty! There was plenty of time for that. Right now their relationship was perfect.

Well, not perfect exactly, but it was great.

"What was that look?" Harry asked her from across the room. He'd taken up on the sofa while she'd begun pacing.

"What? Oh, um… nothing."

"That's believable," he smirked. "Seriously though, what was that look?"

"It's nothing, really. I was just wondering how much they are interfering when our relationship is already going along perfectly."

He started to nod and was quick to avert his eyes. "Oh, right. Er, yeah, it is."

She narrowed her eyes at him and he turned his attention toward the fireplace. "What is it?"

"Nothing, you're right. Everything is great with us. You're perfect."

She let out a single derisive laugh, more like a coughing 'ha' sound. "Me? I'm perfect? Please, you're annoyed about how you're constantly having to clean up after me, aren't you?"

His gaze wasn't avoiding her now, his eyes shot over to her immediately at that. "What? No I… you're the one constantly cleaning up after me! It never matters what state I leave whatever room I'm in, at the end of the day it's always tidied up and everything in its place." He held his hands out in front of him pleadingly, "and I'm sorry if I don't thank you for it, but I just always feel bad about you having to clean up after me and don't want to bring it up."

She had no idea what he was talking about.

Which meant only one thing.

"Harry, when was the last time you did the laundry?"

"Er… maybe a year ago?" From his expression after he answered, he'd caught on. "When was the last time you cleaned the bathroom?"

"I've never cleaned the bathroom in this flat." She threw herself down on the couch beside him in relief. "This whole time they've been cleaning up after us? Why? So we wouldn't have small arguments about who's turn it was to banish the garbage?"

"This is madness! Here I was thinking that you were too good for me, being all mothering or something. Whenever I'd come home from working late and see you'd gone 'round and cleaned up the entire flat again, I'd just feel so guilty."

"Same! A minute ago when you saw whatever you saw on my face, it was because I was thinking our relationship wasn't perfect because I wasn't pulling my own weight!"

"So you've never cleaned the flat?" he grinned.

"Not never, but I haven't ever done a thorough cleaning because I thought you always got to it first. I thought it might be something that was ingrained into you from living with that horrible aunt of yours in a spotless house."

"I hated that house!" He was grinning broadly now. "It sounds weird, but I liked coming home to my mess just as I'd left it before you moved in. The place felt properly lived in then. I thought you'd been doing all the cleaning and hated myself for how much it bothered me that you liked things that clean. And now that you've pointed it out, my aunt is probably the reason why I hated it so much."

She rested her head back on the couch. "Oh, this is such a relief."

"No kidding!" He too rested back in the same position and put his feet up on the coffee table and put his arm around her shoulder to pull her closer.

"So, what do you like about our relationship then? Let's try and figure out what's real and what isn't." She wrapped her arm around him and snuggled in closer, a huge weight being lifted off her chest at this new information.

"Let's talk little things first; the store bought biscuits that are always stocked in the cupboard above the fridge," he said.

"That's me," she smiled. "I know how much you love them so I try to make sure we've got a stash and alternate which one's so I can try them all too. We never had them growing up."

He took her hand and brought it to his lips then. "But the food in the fridge that was clearly made by your mum?"

Ginny shook her head. "I bring home some leftovers after Sunday dinners, but the rest of it must be her stocking us up."

"Okay. Because I like cooking, but I rarely get a chance to because I notice the dinners already there and can't stand letting food go to waste."

"You like to cook?" she perked up. "I know you've made me dinner a few times and it was always a special treat, but you do it so rarely."

"I make you breakfast in bed about once a week!" he protested.

"Yes, and it's always lovely, but dinner is a chance to enter the world outside of pancakes and breakfast cereal." She took her turn at raising his hand to her lips and kissing his knuckles. "What are some other things that you might think I do that you either like or dislike."

"Well," he grinned, "the things I like most mostly involve the bedroom."

She chuckled. "I promise you, those are either all me or ideas I've gotten from the Harpies locker room talk."

"Keep those coming please."

"I intend to. Now, is it really that Ron or someone else reminds you about our anniversary?"

"Yes," he said quietly with a blush.

"That's a relief, normally I forget too and Hermione just happened to have scheduled a girls day one or two days before and would casually ask what we were doing to celebrate."

He laughed. "You forget too?"

"Yep." She popped the 'p' sound. "I can remember my game schedule no problem, but our anniversary isn't something I would have remembered, or even made a big deal about considering we should technically have two of them. Thing was, you always made a big deal about it, so I had to pretend to be just as enthusiastic about it."

"You don't like celebrating our anniversary?"

"I like the anniversary sex, does that count?"

He grinned at her.

They sat there in silence, slowly settling closer to each other on the couch until she had her legs over his lap, each running their hands over the other; Ginny's hand stroking up and down his chest and his own on her back and up to her hair.

"If they kept on interfering without our knowledge, how long do you think it would have taken before you finally asked me to 'stop cleaning the flat'?" she asked him.

"Probably never would have. I assumed you liked it this way. And, how is that something one complains about?"

She only hummed in response.

She felt him shaking his head slowly before he ran his hand over his face. "You know, they were working so hard to get me to ask you to marry me, but really they were just delaying it with their methods."

"Oh yeah? There would have been no chance of a ring for me by Christmas then, would there?" she joked.

He laughed. "No, probably not. I do have an idea on how to make them stop though."

"Hmm? What's that? Booby trap everything so we catch my mum in the act?"

"No." He pulled his wand out and summoned something from the bedroom. "Ron was right about something."

Ginny sat up and saw a box sailing through the air toward him. He opened it up and showed it to her.

It was his mother's ring.

She knew he kept it in the flat, but she hadn't considered that he was keeping it there with the intention of giving it to her.

"Let's put an end to their meddling and get married. Soon."

She didn't dare pick up the ring, she just stared at it. "Are you sure this is what you want? It isn't because of the influence from my family?"

"More like this is to stop the influence from your family. If I could love you enough to keep this around even while I thought you were doing things that bothered me, then I certainly love you enough to be with you forever when they stop doing all the things that bother me."

"Let me get this straight," she grinned. "In order to stop my family from annoying you, you want to officially become part of the Weasley family tree?"

He had a mischievous glint in his eye and gave her his crooked grin, "I've had a lot of adventures in my life, I always turn out alright in the end. I think I can manage this one."

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Next Sunday at the Burrow

"You're engaged!" her mum shouted loud enough for everyone to hear and launched herself at the pair of them, nearly strangling them with her hug.

The crowd of Weasley's around them all shouted out their congratulations and clapped.

"Actually," Ginny called out once she was free of her mother, "we're married! We went down to the registrar's office and made it official!"

No congratulations were made to them then; the whole clan had gone silent and stared at them dumbfounded.

"But… but… but we wanted to," her mum stumbled over her words. "What about a wedding?"

"What about it?" Ginny shrugged. "We didn't want to deal with the press and such. The papers catching wind of The Chosen One and his Chosen One getting married would have been an absolute nightmare. So, we just got it over and done with."

"But, you didn't even invite us?!" Hermione asked, referring to she and Ron, her eyes glistening with hurt.

"Sorry," Harry told her. "We would have, it was just a spur of the moment type thing."

"Can we at least throw a reception or something?" her mum asked. "You can get all dressed up in a wedding dress."

"Oh, we don't need all that," Ginny dismissed. "This lunch today will be reception enough."

Disappointment radiated off of all the attendees through out the lunch, all except for Ginny and Harry who were happily locked in their own bubble of happiness.

Ginny was particularly happy when her mother pulled her aside after the lunch and admitted to her that she 'may have stopped by their flat from time to time to clean and stock up their fridge', but all that was going to stop now that Ginny was a married woman; because now the cooking and cleaning were all her responsibility.

Ginny made sure to look appropriately scandalized that her mother had violated their privacy like that, and threw in a comment about how she wasn't going to be a 'housewife', so Harry would just have to learn to live with that.

For four months following that lunch she and Harry lived in a gloriously untidy flat, he tried out several things in the kitchen for dinners, she tried out several different moves in the bedroom. In those four months they truly began to appreciate how comfortable they were living together as compared to what it had been like before.

Then it was time for another Sunday lunch at The Burrow.

Ginny and Harry had arrived early that Sunday to let in the party tent rentals and caterers through the wards, the harpist showed up an hour before the lunch was due to start, then Ginny's mother finally came outside and noticed all the ruckus.

"Ginny! Harry! What is all this? What's going on?"

Her father was not far behind her as they came towards the tent.

Ginny smirked at her parents, Harry came to her side then and wrapped an arm around her waist. "We're getting married today."

The pair of them gaped at her. "What? But you're already married," her father pointed out.

"No, actually, we aren't. That was just a lie we told you so you'd stop interfering in our lives and putting this day off any further."

Harry and she led them back to the house and made them sit down at the table, directing them to the exact seats they'd been in when the pair of them overheard the planning session those months ago. Harry then went to the floo and called George, Bill and Ron to come over early and bring their wives.

It took ten minutes for everyone to be assembled at the table.

"Right, you lot, Harry and I have been engaged for the last few months, not married," Ginny told them.

"And the only reason we've made it to this point now is because you've all stopped buggering up our relationship," Harry continued.

"I don't enjoy coming home every day and thinking that Harry's been the one always cleaning up after me at our flat."

"Nor do I enjoy thinking that Ginny is the one always cleaning up after me," Harry said.

"Yeah, we like things a bit messy."

"And I like cooking," he said to her mum directly. "But I hate wasting food."

"He's a good cook too."

Harry turned to Fleur next. "Ginny doesn't need a bunch of kinky outfits that are incredibly complicated to remove. Our love life goes along perfectly well with her just in one of my old Quidditch jerseys."

"Since you lot have budded out of our relationship things have been better than ever. And after we overheard your little planning session on who would be responsible for reminding us of our own anniversaries, that was when we decided to tell you all we were married so you would lay off."

"So, you aren't married?" Hermione asked.

"No. We will be getting married though, in just over an hour, so you all better go change into something fit for it because the guests will be here soon," Ginny grinned.

"Hold up," George raised his hand. "Do these guests know that you'll be getting married today before we do?"

"No," Harry told him. "They think they're just coming for lunch. Which they are, they'll just be watching us get married and having a few drinks as well."

Ginny allowed them all a minute to let them the information sink in. "Right then, chop chop, I've got my hair and make-up to deal with." She turned to Harry then and gave him a kiss. "I'll see you at the altar."

"Looking forward to it," he grinned at her.

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