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She liked to watch him when he didn’t know she was doing so, when he was working away in his workshop, charming the chess pieces he would lovingly carve by hand, or polishing one of his many racing brooms (among the rewards of adulthood was the luxury to buy as many of these as he could possibly want). Other times she’d watch him as he sat quietly beside her on the sofa, thumbing through The Prophet, his eyes crinkling in concentration at a particularly gripping news item, his thumb absently sweeping over the arch of her hand in a languid rhythm.
Most of all, though--more than anything else in the entire world--she loved to watch him when he was with their children.
There were those who had probably thought they were too young when they became parents. Hermione had given birth to Rose just shy of her twenty-sixth birthday—old enough, she thought, but still several years younger than her own mother had been when she’d had her. She supposed to a lot of people, she was practically still a child herself then, but she and Ron had spent the last remaining years of their childhood under the most unthinkable of circumstances, and when they had finally emerged from it, they had wanted to live as fully as they possibly could--to show all those who had made them suffer that in spite of everything, nothing had destroyed their will to rebuild.
The best revenge, her father-in-law would often say, was a life well-lived.
Ron would sneak into Rose’s nursery at all hours of the day, even when Hermione would remind him (and more than once, at that) how important it was for parents not to come running at the first sound of a baby crying. Sometimes she would catch him just staring into her crib, though, just watching her, as if to convince himself he had really been capable of making something so undeniably perfect.
“Aren’t they something, love?” he would often ask her. “I don’t think I could ever get tired of watching them.”
Hermione didn’t think she could ever get tired of watching him with them, either.
This afternoon they were all having a laugh out in the garden as Hermione was baking a pie. Occasionally she would look up and peer out the window, drawn by the sound of Rose’s inimitable giggle--so much like Ron’s, the one he used when he was really amused--and her husband’s full voice singing a chorus of Weasley Is Our King.
“One more time, how about it, yeah?”
“YES!!!” shouted the children, then more laughter would follow.
And they would all join their dad, singing at the top of their lungs, singing their very favourite song of all:
Weasley is our King,
Weasley is our King,
He didn’t let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King...
“Do the dance, Daddy!!” Hugo would beg.
Ron would indulge him, of course, doing a round of silly dance moves on his own before sweeping him up and placing him on his shoulders, shuffling in time to the children’s clapping.
Weasley can save anything,
He never leaves a single ring,
That’s why Gryffindors all sing:
Weasley is our King...
Even when the sun had begun to dip low in the sky, they were still out there and showed no signs of wanting to come in any time soon. Hermione brought dinner outside, delighting the children in the idea of a picnic, and hours later, when it was well past their bedtime, they protested having to go inside and brush their teeth.
“Did you ever think we’d be this happy?” Ron said to her, in the darkness of their room, after the children had both gone to bed. “During the war, did you ever... did you ever imagine this? A house, a marriage, a family?”
She turned over to face him, reaching up to brush a lock of hair away from his face.
“No, I suppose I didn’t,” she said softly. “But I always hoped it would happen. Someday. That we’d win and we’d get our lives back somehow.”
“Me too.”
He was quiet for a long time, then she heard him humming, softly, but unmistakably so--the melody to Weasley Is Our King.
After a while, he said, “Tell me the truth. You didn’t really start to notice me until I’d made Keeper for Gryffindor, did you?”
She laughed.
“Oh I noticed you before then, Ron.”
“I mean notice me. You know, fall for my smooth, winning ways.”
She laughed even harder, though tried to muffle the sound; Ron could be so sensitive about these things.
“Is that what you think?”
He rolled onto his back, eyes looking straight up at the ceiling.
“Dunno,” he said. “I reckon there wasn’t much to notice before then, was there?”
She propped herself up on her elbow, cupping his chin with her hand and turning his face back towards hers. “You really believe that?”
When he didn’t answer, she bent down to kiss him. She kissed him the way she kissed him then, full of wonder and promise and all the things yet to come. Perhaps, she thought, this would give him his answer. Perhaps he would come to realise he had won her long before he had ever realised there was even a battle.
“Slugs,” she murmured.
“What?” came the rather disoriented reply.
“When you threw up slugs for me,” she said, “that’s when I noticed you. Really noticed you.”
She saw him smile in the darkness, that smile he reserved only for her, then he kissed her, and he reminded her all over again what she had figured out long ago.