Chapter Text
I.
In spite of the fact that Hermione kept pointedly referencing muggle articles about the importance of going to bed early, Ron found he could concentrate better when the sun had long gone down. Plus, not having to be anywhere in the morning meant there was no reason to rush off to bed. Hermione said this was the point of view of a depressed person. But now, entering his later years, he could unmake himself and start again.
Hermione opined that her early forties were hardly her later years, especially after all they’d endured, and the privilege she felt in aging was reminiscent of her gratitude for the ability to perform magic. That wonder, more so than her sharp intelligence, fueled her ambition. It kept Ron up at night; the shiny, gleaming newness of the Wizarding World stretched out before his Minister for Magic wife like a perfect canvas, while he counted his grey hairs and tended house.
Hermione would say this was anti-feminist. Which, it wasn’t that Ron wasn’t fulfilled by raising his children, or anything. It was just that he wasn’t sure how to suddenly start articulating his emotions, not when they were big and inconvenient. People didn’t expect much from him, as a general rule.
He’d had enough lectures from Hermione about lying by omission, but this felt different. There were worse things than sparing fucked up people from learning some fairly fucked up information, particularly from someone who wasn’t known to deliver any. Ron’s worst traumas were another Tuesday for Harry, Ron, or Hermione. His ennui, or misery, or whatever it was, embarrassed him, but it was stubbornly there all the same.
What exactly was the point of life, if more of it waited for you after death?
Maybe he never learned how to mourn Fred properly because the loss didn’t belong to him. Fred belonged to George, Ron’s parents, and to Harry, even, knowing the sacrifices people made for him. Ron gave people the humor he figured they needed, and clamped down on his own war wounds until they festered at inopportune moments.
At his wedding, Ron was determined to forget a joke Fred had made about getting married, and ended up too drunk to remember any of the reception. Ron continued to wrestle with this grief void, the void that made you believe everything was pointless if your brother could be twenty forever, at peace watching you from the next world, while your wife and children stop needing you in this one.
Hermione, of course, had guessed some of how he was feeling. He hadn’t stayed married for twenty-one years by completely closing himself off from his wife. She knew he felt directionless and missed his kids, and that he’d been unhappy, and these things were not untrue.
He was consumed by the idea that he was a loser. He was, in all likelihood, jealous of his dead brother. He was afraid vocalizing this would be the thing that made Hermione leave him, or Harry or Ginny to shake their heads and say there was no walking back from that one.
Cannaburst dampened the effects of these unwelcome thoughts. It would be wrong to attribute this rekindled love to Fred, but he knew Fred would appreciate it nonetheless.
Fred had given him his first puff for his seventeenth, a few days before he’d gotten himself poisoned. Fred and George had met him in Hogsmeade at a pub he’d never seen but was, if possible, even dodgier than the Hog’s Head. It was nameless and appeared to be more of a studio flat than a pub at all, sandwiched between Tomes and Scrolls and another private home with a miserable, peeling paint job.
“Cheers, happy birthday to me then,” Ron had said grumpily when the rain started pelting down on them before they’d even reached Tomes and Scrolls.
“Good things come to those who wait,” George said, with what he may have felt was enigmatic flair. A wizard in jeans and a low, snug cap answered Fred’s knock at the door, which involved a series of counts of three and pausing.
“Password?”
Fred and George looked expectantly at Ron. “I--what?”
“Just kidding, Ronnie. Accensum ,” said Fred, and the door swung open into a cloud of haze unlike any Ron had seen, or, for that matter, smelled.
The smoke flickered, but it wasn’t like when a flame caught the light. It was shinier than smoke should be, twisting this way and that, rapidly changing from gray to green. Ron couldn’t find the source of the smoke at first and stifled a cough, willing himself not to do anything stupid.
Shaking the rain out of his hair, he observed that the wizards and witches, seated on lopsided chairs and couches, were all smoking from pipes that glowed faintly in the semidarkness. Two witches did their best to circulate the tiny, cramped room with trays of beer and bundles of something floating overhead.
Ron watched as a man who didn’t look much older than he helped himself to a bundle of glowing green leaves, tossing a few galleons in its place and giving the pretty blonde witch an unnecessary pat on the arm. (Ron felt guilty for a moment, knowing what Hermione would say about that, and for that matter, the whole scene, but she wasn’t here, was she?) People were chatting quietly, some with red-rimmed eyes, sloshing their mugs of beer and laughing.
“Is this what I think it is?”
Fred clapped him on the back so hard he coughed, and Fred laughed. “Contact high already, are we? Lightweight.”
“But this is...I mean, it’s….” he was at a loss for words.
“Do you like it?” said Fred. His tone was light but there was a hint of genuine concern in his voice, which Ron should have been touched by but instead found patronizing. He was of age now, after all.
Ron rolled his eyes. “Obviously. I mean, it’s brilliant, actually. I had no idea this place…”
“That’s the point,” said George. “Inconspicuous, as we who partake in the healthful benefits of cannaburst are still tragically deemed criminal by ministry blowhards.”
“Sometimes those very blowhards snitch to Mum about the stash in your bedroom,” said Fred, who was trying to wave down one of the tray witches.
“Is that why she kicked you out?”
“We felt our years of being reared at the Burrow had reached a natural conclusion,” said George, but there was a tightness in his smile that suggested the subject wasn’t up for discussion.
A tray witch had found them. She was quite pretty, small and dark skinned, with corkscrew curls. Ron wished she didn’t remind him of Hermione, as he wasn’t up for a karmic test. He stuffed his hands into his pockets for lack of something else to do with them.
“Birthday boy’s choice,” said George. This may have been a little underhanded, as Ron hardly had the experience to make a choice without sounding like a dickhead.
Fred seemed to differ with George on this approach. He stepped in front of Ron and examined, with relish, the two different bundles of cannaburst on the tray in front of them. The first was darker, with more compact leaves and a silver undertone, whereas the other was a true green, and glowed a luminous copper. “You’ll want Merlin’s Magic,” said Fred, referring to the coppery one.
“We’ll want, er, Merlin’s Magic,” said Ron.
“I heard you the first time, ginge,” the tray witch said irritably. She was also dressed in muggle clothes. It was strange, to be in Hogsmeade and see people eschewing traditional hats and robes. Ron wondered what Hermione would say about that.
The witch held out her hand for payment. Ron was not about to vocalize his lack of funds to her, and figured Fred and George weren’t so cruel as to surprise him with a gift he couldn’t afford. Sure enough, George (who’d always been a show-off) placed several galleons and a few sickles on the tray. The tray witch giggled and Fred rolled his eyes.
“Thanks,” Ron muttered. He took the bundle of Merlin’s Magic and immediately handed it to Fred, not bothering to pretend he knew what to do with it. He followed Fred and George to an empty couch in the corner, where they all squished uncomfortably close together.
The rain drummed on against the lightly thumping music, a song by a band that sounded like the Weird Sisters, but wasn’t.
George produced a small, clear pipe from his canvas jacket while Fred broke a generous pinch of Merlin’s Magic off its stem. It seemed to twinkle more brightly once it was deposited into the pipe’s chamber.
“ Lumos accensum !” said Fred, holding the tip of his wand against the bowl. There was a pop as the contents of the pipe were set aflame, burning so intensely Ron couldn’t understand how it was meant to be smoked at all, until the sparks settled.
“I’m not going first and looking like a git,” Ron said immediately.
“We all cough the first time, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said George. “It’s bad manners for Fred to take the first hit.”
“I’ll watch you, then, George.”
George looked at Ron with what might have been fondness and took the pipe. “There’s nothing for it, brother. Just inhale, hold it in a bit, then exhale.” George blew out a smoke ring and flicked his wand lazily. The smoke became a twisty W before it faded into the ceiling cloud.
Ron held the pipe with obvious trepidation. “It’s not a clitoris, Ron,” said Fred lazily. “No need to be so delicate.”
“Well that’s just confusing, Freddie, he won’t know about that either.”
Ron bit back a retort and put the pipe to his lips. He inhaled. The smoke that filled his lungs was far sweeter than he’d expected it to be, though still herbal.
“You’ll want to blow it out now before it comes out your ears,” said George helpfully.
Ron exhaled. He coughed a little into his sleeve.
“That’s good, coughing,” said Fred. “Gets it moving through the system more.”
Ron watched the smoke join the cloud on the ceiling. He felt his body relax into the couch. There was a pleasant tingling sensation.
“Oh, go on, one more,” said George. “For the birthday boy.”
Ron obliged. The second time he was braver, taking a larger hit. He coughed harder but he didn’t mind. It was like the cannaburst gently massaged away the knot of self-consciousness in his stomach and chest. He had an unexpected rush of fondness for both his brothers, seated so closely on either side of him.
“We love you too, Ronniekins,” said Fred, catching Ron’s smile.
“I didn’t say--”
“The cannaburst will do that to you,” said George. “You’ll want to be careful with that, mind. Once I swore Fred was about to snog cousin Mathilde he was so--”
“Rich coming from someone who ate us out of pumpkin pasties twice in the last month!”
“Is it always like this?” Ron asked. His voice sounded normal to him, but a little far away. “I mean, I feel...good but...” He could go for a pumpkin pasty, come to think of it.
“Depends,” said Fred. “Merlin’s Magic is less stimulating, and it will definitely make you want to shag and eat everything in site. Great for aches and pains, you know? And stress, like.” Ron thought of Harry instantly.
“On the other hand,” said George, “Your Goblin Giggles will keep you nice and energized. Not as much of a couch melter. Some people get paranoid, though.”
“I want to try that, too,” said Ron.
“Think we’re made of money, do you?” said Fred.
Ron blushed. “No, I--”
“You’re all right,” said Fred. “Next time. Promise.”
Later, before the twins went back to their flat above the shop, Fred pressed something into Ron’s hand.
“A book?” Ron asked incredulously.
“I know, but I thought you might want to...give it a look over. I think Hermione will be pleased.”
“Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches,” Ron read. “Er, Hermione isn’t...we’re friends. I’m with Lavender Brown now.”
“Oh,” said Fred, looking surprised. “I thought...never mind. Well, this will help you along with Lavender, then, if that’s something you want.”
“Actually,” said Ron, growing confident after the evening’s events, “I’ve been meaning to ditch her.”
“Playing the field?” asked Fred.
“Not exactly,” said Ron. “Just, you know, there might be someone else, maybe, I don’t know. I’m not good at this.”
“This will tell you all you need to know,” said Fred. “Plus, I’m sure Herm--I mean, this mystery bird, whoever she is, already knows that and likes you anyway.” He ruffled Ron’s hair, then, apparently as surprised at Ron at this show of affection, said, “Assuming she’s as stupid as you, that is.”
“Unfortunately, she’s a genius,” said Ron. His cheeks hurt from smiling.
*
After the war, cannaburst restrictions were so loosened that Ron smoked it in the first flat he shared with Hermione. There wasn’t even an argument about it. She would have probably agreed to him keeping a hippogriff in the backyard for their emotional healing, in those days. He got Hermione to try cannaburst once, and she contended that it helped with the nightmares, but it made her a bit paranoid.
Then she’d gone to clerk in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and he got rid of his stash without being asked. He wasn’t about to add “shit husband” to his list of recent personal failings (he imagined it ranked somewhere between “drunken groom” and “generally a quitter”). Rose came soon after that, and then Hugo, and Ron liked his life as a doting dad.
As a new minister, legalization had crossed Hermione’s desk more than once, but she demurred, not wanting to seem like she had questionable priorities. Once there was majority support from both the ministry and general population, she signed the ordinance permitting cannaburst possession and sale.
It was Hermione who suggested Ron start smoking again, though he knew not even Harry would believe that one.
A few weeks ago, she said he was grinding his teeth in his sleep. Perhaps, she had said, they should go on holiday somewhere. Ron replied he didn’t have anything to take a holiday from, and that maybe she should go with Ginny instead.
“Ron,” said Hermione from her vanity mirror, “I think something is really wrong.”
“I told you last week, I haven’t noticed any difference with the new hair, what d y’call it, serum--”
“Do shut up. You’re grinding your teeth, you don’t want a vacation, you don’t want to go back to the shop, you haven’t been initiating sex--”
Ron did not care for where this was going, especially because she was right. He sat up from his side of the bed. “For fuck’s sake, you act like I’ve resigned us both to a lifetime of celibacy just because I’m having an off month--”
“Seventy days is not an ‘off month’, Ron!” Her voice was a bit high, but she was still applying her cold cream.
Ron laughed, then immediately said, “I’m not laughing at you, I’m just...do you have a tally in the kitchen somewhere?”
“Really funny, so glad you find this all amusing, and just because you can’t do sums in your head doesn’t mean I don’t know how many days make up more than two months!” Hermione had stopped her maddeningly intricate facial routine and was facing him, rubbing her temples. She seemed to be losing an internal battle not to raise her voice.
“It’s just interesting how two months is now spousal abuse but when the kids were young and I asked whether--”
“This isn’t about sex, Ron, that was just one example!” Evidently too wound up to sit next to him on the bed, she stood in front of him. “The point is, I’m worried about you! I’m really, honestly worried, and I’m not sure you grasp how serious this is.”
"Don’t worry about me,” said Ron automatically. His pajama shorts were loose, and he concentrated on tightening the drawstrings.
“Oh, cheers, that’s sorted then,” snapped Hermione. “I’ll just happily watch you mope about the house and...and waste away into nothingness, shall I?”
“That healer told me to lose at least a stone and that’s what I’ve done!”
“And you followed his diet and exercise plan to get there, hmm?”
The shorts weren’t going to be cinched into any kind of submission. Ron folded the waistband over. “Well, if the results are the same, that’s still good, isn’t it?”
Hermione lifted his chin to meet her gaze. “Ron, are you telling me that you honestly feel good right now?”
“No,” said Ron weakly. “I told you, the kids…”
“They’ve both been going every year for a few years now, though, is the thing.” Hermione looked at him searchingly.
“Well, fine, it’s that, but also, you know, Harry and Ginny, and Dad’s health…”
“I don’t know, Ron,” said Hermione. “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“By all means, then, if you know what’s wrong with me, I’d love to hear it.”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Hermione punctured the ends of her vowels with more force than was necessary, but there wasn’t any malice in it. “You’re depressed, that’s all!”
Ron understood the concept of depression, but not as it applied here. It seemed like too small a word for the dark thoughts that raced around his brain, eating him from the inside. “I haven’t been crying much,” he said, stupidly.
The tenderness in Hermione’s gaze made Ron feel worse. “I didn’t say you had been.”
She seemed to be waiting for Ron to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t get him put under observation in St. Mungo’s. What if he had to stay in the hospital for months before they found an answer? What if Hermione had to cut back hours at the ministry to visit him at his sickbed and she grew resentful, and left him? What if he turned out to be the problem, and there wasn’t any way to fix it?
He laced his hands around Hermione, drawing her closer, then said, “I do feel...off. Everything is just dull. It’s a bit...I don’t know, I keep waiting for something to happen and wondering why it doesn’t, and then wondering if I’d even care if it did. I just need…” he trailed off. Maybe Hermione would have the answer, even if he was only telling her half the truth.
“Perspective?” she asked.
“What, visit some sick children, the elderly, that sort of thing?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Well, what about jogging? Remember when you took that up?”
“Yeah, and stopped, you’ll recall, after that thing with my knee.”
Hermione hesitated. “Well...with the ordinance, and the kids out of the house till the holidays…”
Ron felt himself genuinely smiling. “Granger! You’re the minister for magic!”
“And I signed the ordinance, didn’t I? What kind of hypocrite would I be if I was against my own policy?”
“The worst kind,” Ron said into her ear. “A filthy one.”
Hermione pushed into his shoulders gently so she was straddling him on the bed. “Ron! There are new rules, remember, it’s not like when we were kids--”
“I love rules,” said Ron. His mouth found the spot where her collarbone met her neck. “Speaking of, Minister, I think the seventy days maximum is a good new rule--”
“Sod off,” said Hermione. “Let’s get you out of these fucking shorts.”
*
The basement was where Ron mixed cannaburst strains. The past few weeks he’d devoted hours to it, and the image of his father tinkering with found muggle objects in the garage came to mind more than once. He’d never before appreciated or understood Arthur’s hobbies until he found himself with the patience and time on his hands to become a tinkering man, himself.
He discovered spells that de-aged the plants, because a younger cannaburst leaf was more easily commingled with another. The right combination of silver and copper plant could quell anxiety without making his mouth dry, or relax him without making him comatose (or, if he did want to sleep, he had a strain for that too). He wasn’t sure what to call these new hybrids. In the basement lighting, they looked Gryffindor gold.
He felt lighter, with purpose. He bounded down the basement stairs with energy that had been dormant for years.
There was still the problem of the smoke. He didn’t like the way it clung to his clothing or hair--the lingering smell of illicit substance use made him feel like a criminal, especially at his age. He’d tried spells to evaporate the odor, but that only muted the actual effects of the cannaburst. He took to showering several times a day or night, cleaning his teeth so frequently he spat blood in the sink. Hermione said she minded this more than she would the smell, but Ron figured it was only a matter of time before it got to her.
There had to be another way.
Eventually, the deluminator showed him one. He still had a habit of fiddling with it, although Hermione had insisted on disabling the magic so he didn’t accidentally put out the lights on the whole block.
He’d already been making oils. He’d gotten this idea from the muggles across town, whom he believed had lost their minds one morning until Hermione explained about vaping. Through trial and error, he’d found a version of Reducto that ground the plant into a fine powder without reducing it completely to dust. From this, he would make his oil.
He’d excitedly proclaimed this to Hermione one morning while he cracked eggs and let the toast brown in the pan. “ Oil , Hermione. The muggles know how to smoke it, I’m going to make it so wizards can do the same!”
She gave him a crooked smile over her Daily Prophet . “When did you find time for a N.E.W.T. course in Herbology, darling?”
“I found Advanced Magical Herbs and Fungi ,” Ron said smugly. “In your N.E.W.T. exam preparedness kit, which, by the way, was still in that box in the basement. You’re welcome for clearing it out.”
“Lucky I saved it, then,” said Hermione, who steadfastly refused to admit her tendency to hoard. She floated the toast and eggs over to the breakfast table and frowned. “What, no bacon?”
“You said we’re off cured meats!”
“I thought maybe you’d have gotten the turkey bacon... What are you going to do for a solvent?”
“I’ll add it to the shopping list, you lunatic. What’s a solvent?” Ron had only just cracked open the book, and it didn’t exactly make for light reading.
“A solvent is a liquid used to dissolve the plant matter, unless you want to try snorting cannaburst powder like a criminal. Check the cleaning supplies, I bet something alcohol-based will work. If you heat the solvent, it will probably speed up the reaction time.”
“Sexy.”
“Hardly.”
“I meant you, when you talk like that. Also, you can’t snort cannaburst.”
And so, Ron had his oil. He was thinking of trying to cook with it when he spotted the deluminator on the table. The deluminator could put out and restore all lights, without real fire or smoke. Which meant it probably used some kind of lighter fluid. Which, when he thought about it, might not look so different from oil.
“Sorry, Dumbledore,” Ron muttered. He snatched up the deluminator and unscrewed the bottom end. And, sure enough….
“It’s fucking oil!” He immediately vanished the lighter fluid away with his wand, and replaced it with the custom strain of cannaburst. “Lumos accensum."
The deluminator glowed copper, then green.
“Bloody fucking hell,” said Ron. He put his lips to the tip of it and inhaled. He felt a kind of vapor fill his mouth and he let it into his lungs before exhaling. The vapor lingered a bit before it vanished. His body relaxed the way it always did when he smoked.
Ron ran upstairs to the living room. He tried it again. It was the same. He walked through where the vapor had risen, sniffing the air. Nothing.
“Accensum Nox,” he said, putting the deluminator into the pocket of his pajama bottoms.
He’d done it.
Somehow Ron didn’t think this would be Dumbledore’s preferred use for the deluminator, but he’d given it to Ron, hadn’t he? And this didn’t have to be the final product. It was the test run. He could make prototypes, devices that were made special for his cannaburst oil. He could take an ad out in the Prophet, maybe anonymously at first, see what the interest was like. Maybe register at the Ministry for a patent?
Ron was pacing excitedly around the living room when Harry’s head appeared in his fireplace. He stopped immediately, whirling around.
“Right, if You-Know-Who is reincarnated again I am going to Crucio my balls off.”
“It’s Ginny and me,” Harry said, stepping through the flames and depositing himself unceremoniously onto the couch. He looked fine, but his eyes were puffy. He cried far more often in front of Ron now that he’d begun seeing a litany of St. Mungo’s counselors and neurowizards. Ron didn’t mind the new emotionally forthright Harry, but it was an adjustment. Especially as he’d grown up with five brothers and a stoic sister.
Harry had barely mentioned Ginny in recent months, given their frequent rows, and Hermione’s insistence that Ron not take sides. Very occasionally Harry mentioned a strategy their marriage counselor suggested and Ron would attempt to invoke it in his own marriage, sometimes to Hermione’s chagrin.
For example, the counselor once said that maybe Harry and Ginny’s problem was that they didn’t make time to miss each other. Ron sometimes felt like missing Hermione was all he did during the day, and worried she had the opposite problem. Thus, he started keeping later hours while Hermione pretended to be asleep upstairs.
Ron summoned three generous measures of firewhiskey, knowing Hermione would find an excuse to join them any minute. “You’re done for good then.” He didn’t bother to hide the relief in his voice.
“Yeah, you seem absolutely gutted to hear it,” said Harry, standing to accept his drink and lightly thumping Ron on the back of the head with his free hand.
“Look, you know I love you both, but I think it’s fair to say this has been absolutely--”
“Ron!” said Hermione, who had appeared on the bottom of the staircase in her dressing gown. “Honestly, love, I am serious about a sleeping draught. You won’t even know until you’re out.”
“It’s fine,” said Harry, grinning. “I don’t pay Ron an obscene amount of galleons a week for his famed sensitivity. That’s what my counselors are for.”
“Plus, the blowjobs don’t come cheap.” said Ron. “What, Hermione? He could use a laugh!”
Hermione rubbed her face. “I’m sure he’ll have one when he hears something funny. Harry, I’m so sorry, I was just barely nodding off--don’t roll your eyes at me, Ron--and I heard you pop into the fireplace. I mean, I heard...well, I am sorry.”
Harry went to accept one of her suffocating hugs. “I would have told Ron to wake you anyway. I think people are going to find out as soon as tomorrow, you know what the Ministry is like.”
“But is it so bad as...I mean, do you need to move that quickly?” Hermione asked, wringing her hands.
Harry sighed. “It isn’t up to us, is the problem. The sooner we make a joint statement, the better. Either that or the papers speculate about one of us having a love child.” Ron’s stomach lurched as he thought of Albus, who had just recently repaired his relationship with Harry, and how might take this news, or the somewhat acerbic Lily, who had always been his favorite. He was worried about how to tell his own children, for that matter.
“But Harry, oh, I just can’t imagine how you feel right now, I can’t. I mean, when did this happen? Does she know you’re here right now?” Hermione was beginning to pace in front of the fireplace, and Ron gently steered her into a seat on the couch beside him. He motioned for Harry to do the same in the adjacent armchair.
“I wanted the both of you to hear it from me,” Harry said into his whiskey. “Ginny agreed, actually. She knows one of you would just tell the other straight away. Must be nice, to still communicate with your spouse,” he added, with uncharacteristic bitterness.
“Mate….”
“Sorry, I know, she’s your sister.”
“That’s not what I meant!” said Ron, putting his free arm around Hermione. He knew, without having to look over, that she was crying quietly. “I meant that’s shit for you. For both of you.”
“Still, Ron. It’s our families, I’m not dragging you into all that.”
“You’ve dragged us into enough, I’d say we’d have chucked you long ago if it was a problem,” said Ron, shifting slightly so his hand was stroking Hermione’s hair. She leaned heavily into his shoulder.
Almost immediately, Hermione sprang back up and Ron guiltily extracted his hand.
Harry made an impatient noise. “Relax. If I wanted to be around other failed marriages I’d have gone to the Hog’s Head with Teddy and his lads for ‘bants and brews.’”
“But, Harry, if you need us to be--”
“Hermione, it will not make me any happier to watch you pretend you’re unhappy.”
“Who says we’re happy?” said Hermione, putting her hand back on Ron’s knee and giving it a squeeze.
“I’m miserable,” said Ron, cheerfully, “now the kids are gone. We’re just lucky, mate.”
“And we work at it,” Hermione lied. This was something she’d taken to saying whenever any of their Ministry friends asked about how they stayed married, with what people apparently felt were staggering odds against them.
The truth was, they didn’t work at it. Ron wasn’t known for his abiding love of work in general, and Hermione certainly had her hands full, so why should marriage be work? A life without Hermione appealed to Ron about as much as a life without any of his limbs. After having children, fights started and ended themselves. It was like speaking a unique two-person language.
“You don’t work at shit,” Harry countered. “Look, I know I’m full up with trauma and should have been seeing someone since birth, but the kind of work we were doing in couples’ sessions helped fuck all. It just made us aware of how poorly suited we are to each other.”
Ron wasn’t sure if there was a woman on the planet Harry was suited to, even though he wanted nothing more for Harry. He’d been a child, to think Harry and Ginny would fit together the same way he and Hermione did. It was the kind of thing that might have been true for his mum’s generation, when fewer people married muggles or pursued secondary education or left the Ministry to work abroad. Their world was too big and scattered now.
“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione, tears pricking her eyes again. “Surely there is still love there. For your children’s sake.” And ours, Ron added silently. He wasn’t eager to play keep away or peacemaker next Christmas.
“Of course there is,” said Harry warily. Ron had never seen his forehead so heavily lined. “She said to send you both hers, actually. I think we only rowed so badly earlier because we’ve been worried about the gossip rags. Gin’s been helping me pack. She thinks if I do it myself I won’t remember everything I need.”
Hermione hiccuped loudly. Even Ron had to blink furiously a few times. The image of his sister sorting through hers and Harry’s belongings, making sure he had enough to start on his own, was painful.
“Good on you both,” said Ron, meaning it. “Hermione would probably burn all my underwear if given the chance.”
“Only the bloody gray ones,” said Hermione, from somewhere in the folds of Ron’s pajama shirt, which she’d apparently chosen for a tissue. “Look, Harry, it’s complicated, I’m sure. You don’t have to say it isn’t for our sakes.”
Harry shook his head. “That’s just it, Hermione. I’m not so sure it is. She’s the mother of my children. I’ll always love her, but we have no reason to stay married. We just hung on too long, you know? We’re awfully old to start again.”
“Will you both stop saying we’re old!” snapped Hermione. “I turn fifty before any of us and I’ve still got plenty of years before, thanks.”
Ron caught Harry’s eye and winked. For a brief moment, time hadn’t made mincemeat of them yet. Ron wished he could bottle the feeling, or figure out its name. Instead, he said, “If it’s a matter of getting back on the horse, I think--”
“Ron! Have you ever, just once, paused to think before you speak?”
“Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, as the muggles say,” said Ron. He had thought about it, as a matter of fact, but the conclusion he came to was that Harry would have found a tactful Ron weird. Also, whiskey hit him differently now.
“The thing is,” said Harry, picking up his glasses and beginning to polish them, so that he mercifully avoided making eye contact, “we haven’t actually, ah, been intimate, in several years. I didn’t realize how unusual...well, enough said.”
There was a silence during which Ron opened his mouth and Hermione dug her nails into his kneecap. They seemed to all strike a tacit agreement that everyone drain their glass. Ron’s ears burned as he recalled complaining to Harry about what he thought was an age-related issue but had turned out to be the other thing.
“You never know,” Hermione said carefully, “what’s going on inside anyone’s marriage. There are just some things you share only with your spouse. Even for the three of us, I think.”
Ron nodded manically, though Harry knew perfectly well how often he and Hermione had sex. He probably thought them a pair of nymphomaniacs.
“Actually,” said Harry, looking between them, “Ginny said I had to stop comparing us. The counselor said so too, said I brought you two up far too often, but it’s only because...well, I am jealous. She was right about that. I just didn’t realize because I was so bloody happy for you.”
“Well, two things can be true at the same time,” said Hermione, waving her wand to refill Harry’s glass. “I wish you had talked to us about the jealousy.”
“Yeah,” said Ron seriously. “I’m told it’s a really unhealthy emotion. Wouldn’t know, of course.” Harry laughed, and Hermione dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
The feeling Ron couldn’t name was, of course, nostalgia.
***
Draco read about the divorce in the Prophet , and allowed himself a small smile. It wasn’t that he’d been actively rooting for more trouble where Harry Potter was concerned. Their sons’ brushes with death were as fresh in his mind as he imagined they were in Potter’s.
He liked Albus. Why hold a son responsible for sins of the father? He couldn’t even muster any particular ill-will towards Harry these days. His smile was merely that of a man who hoped his misery would one day find company, and was delighted to find that it had.
Marriage Between Auror Harry Potter and Prophet Sports Editor Ginevra Wealsey To End Amicably
By Ginny Potter
Harry Potter, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, known for his defeat of dark wizard Lord Voldemort at the 1998 Battle of Hogwarts, together with his wife, Daily Prophet Sports Editor Ginevra Potter, regret to announce their separation after eighteen years of marriage. The decision is mutual, and both parties will file for separation later this month.
“Ginny is my family and partner in this life, and will remain so,” says Potter. “We are privileged to have the support of our family and friends, and will continue to co-parent our three beloved children. For their sakes, we ask that you respect our privacy.”
This editor is proud to continue going by the Potter name, as she has nothing but respect for the father of her children and the most extraordinary man she knows.
The Potters remain a loving and committed family unit.
Malfoy Manor was a house with old bones. In the glory days, portraits lining the entryway and gilded chandeliers reminded visitors of the Malfoys’ social standing. Draco had to dodge several hexes and curses while finally getting the last portrait down, and the stench of death still lingered in the walls. Even after Voldemort fell, the Manor had seen the deaths of Astoria, then Narcissa, and finally, Lucius. Grief rippled through him and made him a little softer, each time.
What primarily disappointed Draco about his life in forties was the lack of a scene .
He’d cut a lot of ties in his early adulthood. Some were severed naturally, with old families who’d made their allegiances clear. Sometimes it was for Astoria’s sake. On their seventh date, with her usual primness, she’d folded her napkin in her lap across the dinner table and said, “Gregory Goyle is an abomination of a man. It’s him or me.” Both the Greengrasses and the Malfoys were among a half-dozen or so families that made a point of being extremely cooperative with the new ministry order, and their sons and daughters married each other.
Astoria had kept up their social calendar--a cliche almost as terrible as the fact that the majority of their friendships faded away when she got sicker, and people stopped visiting. Daphne was the only one who helped Draco, in the end.
There was no reason for a man of Draco’s age, and frankly, reputation, to subject himself to the humiliation of picking someone up in a bar. The risk that someone would know who he was was simply too great, and besides, he didn’t want to have sex with just anyone. He wanted his wife back.
Nobody goes around bringing back the dead. That was medieval shit, even for a Malfoy. But there were spells that worked better than a memory, better than a Penesive, almost like the real thing. At night, alone in his bed, he could conjure Astoria’s soft form moving above him, her hair brushing against his chest.
It wasn’t the same but he made it work.
What he couldn’t make work was the lack of company. When he was a child, his father told him the house could breathe, and now it was holding its breath for him. The Manor seemed to age alongside him. It was as if, the smaller his world grew, the more hollow and empty the Manor became.
He wondered if Harry Potter got lonely like this. If he didn’t yet, it was only a matter of time, assuming he didn’t already have some secret girlfriend twenty years his junior waiting in the wings.
No, he’s better than that , Draco thought, thumbing the cheery Potter-Weasley wedding photo enclosed in the article. He thinks he’s better than that, at any rate. He’d been a newlywed himself when he saw the original, and the wedding announcement that accompanied it, and he’d sucked in his cheek at the look in Harry’s eyes. He looked more terrified than happy. But then, was that just what Draco wanted to see?
It wasn’t like Potter to quit. In spite of himself, Draco found himself curious about what had happened, what had come between them. Whatever it was, it had to be something ignoble, something Harry Potter couldn’t sully himself with.
Or maybe it was the kids after all. Potter’s poor parenting could have been the last straw. Women were like that about their children. Draco was like that, about his own son.
Maybe, if Harry had grown up in a normal family, as a regular, non-famous wizard, he’d have been a better father. Maybe being a husband was the same.
Draco missed having a nemesis. Parting on cordial, if not exactly friendly terms, with Potter, made his speculative brooding all the more unbecoming.
The price of fame, his mother had warned him, was the right to a private life taken away from you. Draco had always thought she was saying this to make him feel better, but perhaps she had been right.
Now Draco was a famous orphan too. Assuming his infamy and general status as a social pariah was anything like fame. Potter would probably say yes, but really, who knew?
He’d been mistaken about a lot of things where Harry Potter was concerned, chief among them that Draco’s own obsession would fade with time.
“I wish you’d just fucked each other at Hogwarts and gotten it over with,” Astoria had said one night, sounding bored.
“But...I hate him!” Spoken aloud, this was more pitiful than Draco had intended. It was the kind of thing a virgin who did not understand the specific machinations of desire would say.
It was the kind of thing Harry Potter would say.
The only bright spot was that twenty-year old Draco Malfoy learned this disturbing truth within the confines of a happy marriage, knowing that Potter was too repressed, too binary, and too bloody stubborn to ever name the thing, and would likely die that way. Or so Draco had assumed.
Was it because Astoria was dead? Was it as simple as the fact that he’d wanted to be inside Harry Potter for so long, the only thing that quelled this desire was the more wholesome desire to be inside the woman he loved, and her death had re-awakened the part of himself he’d buried? (Not literally. The army of men and women who’d marched in and out of the bed he shared with Astoria had satisfied him on some level.)
A midlife crisis was not outside the realm of possibility. It pained Draco to admit this: not aging itself, which he welcomed; he was practically marking the days until a natural, non-tragic death on his calendar, but the crisis part. Malfoys might be brooders, but they were not crisis actors.
Well, if he was having a midlife crisis, he could at least do with a haircut. He’d taken to wearing his hair long after Astoria got sick, at her request. She wanted something to braid. And he’d looked more like his father with a ponytail. At Lucius’ funeral, the few mourners seemed appropriately playcated that his legacy would live on.
Fuck that. Draco could love the memories of his father and wife without having to wear his hair in a way he never particularly cared for. He would be his own man, and he would embrace current fashion, instead of the old money stateliness his father had always favored.
He’d asked, once, about long hair being for girls.
“Only weak men are afraid to let their hair grow, Draco.”
Draco was nothing if not weak, so he took out his wand and sliced to the nape of his neck at the breakfast table. Holding the hair in his hands, he felt twenty years younger.
Definitely a midlife crisis, then.
He summoned his hand mirror from the washroom and used his wand to clean up the edges and add some texture to the sides and front. He certainly did not look twenty years younger, but he looked all right, better than he had. Less like his father’s dejected ghost. It was a shame, to still be relatively handsome and have no paramour to show for it.
He wondered if the next phase, after the haircut, would be topping some young, irritating, bespeckled twink. He had no idea where to locate discreet partners, and had a feeling a mainstream newspaper wasn’t going to help him there. His wife had always taken care of that.
His wife had also said (before Scorpius) that the only thing better than sex was drugs, and Draco was relieved to see that at least, here, the Prophet had him covered.
DISCREET CANNABURST SALES FOR WIZARDS AND WITCHES IN NEED . Can’t sleep? Job stress effecting your home life? Love cannaburst but don’t love smelling of it? Take advantage of the new ministry ordinance LEGALIZING CANNABURST FOR WITCHES AND WIZARDS OF AGE by purchasing discreet CANNABURST OIL. One hundred percent effective!! Free samples before you buy! Send your OWL to address below for pricing and other information. You will be AMAZED at the REAL RESULTS!!!!
While the literacy levels of whomever took out the ad might be questionable, Draco saw no reason to believe cannaburst oil wasn’t possible. He knew muggles puffed away at bizarre contraptions that left no smell in the air, because the muggle-born students smuggled them into Hogwarts and Scorpius told his father everything. It was only a matter of time before the wizarding world copied the muggle one on this front, as with everything else.
At his age, Draco couldn’t fathom smoking anymore, but this was probably worth a try before he resorted to hiring a male escort, so he sent the owl.
It was a dreary English morning, but a few rays of sunlight found their way through the Manor windows just before the clouds rolled in.