Graces

Goodness, I’ve been productive lately. Unfortunately, I don’t know when I’ll be posting again. I leave for college tomorrow and I expect it will be a while before I have the time to devote to a new story. But rest assured, I will have it eventually and there is a whole passel of unfinished fics that I want to complete someday.

Thank you everyone who has reviewed this summer. It’s been wonderful to get such excessive feedback on my work.

Now enjoy this little slice of married life with Harry and Hermione.

June 3, 2010.

“Daddy, Jamie is crying. I think he’s hungry.”

He is not awake. He really isn’t. But there is a nagging, insistent tugging at his arm that is not letting him sleep. Cracking open his eyes will mean he has been defeated.

“Wake mummy instead.” It’s not fair, but he is so bloody tired.

“Daddy, she’s in Bermuda.” Six-year-olds can affect such a wounded tone when they really want to.

Of course she’s right. He opens his eyes and regards his eldest, who is looking woebegone at the combination of Mummy being gone and her beloved little brother wailing away in the nursery. Char’s wide, slightly watery green eyes are magnified by her specs, creating the look of only dark green orbs in an oval pool of pale. As gratifying as it is to have a little female clone running about, he can’t help but feel a bit sorry for the girl as his looks take a bit of growing into. She is beautiful to him, of course, but even he can recognize that objectively there is something a little off in her present looks. She will grow out of it, but at six there is an undeniable awkwardness to her.

These thoughts flash through his head as he pulls on his own specs and lumbers out of bed, past Char, and into the nursery. There Jamie was indeed crying his hungry cry. It is automatic to pull him out of the crib and comfort him with a finger to gum on during their journey down to the kitchen. There it is only a matter of warming one of the bottles that Mummy fastidiously prepared and setting Jamie up in his high chair before peace is restored to the Potter kingdom. He begins to fix some coffee for himself, accepting that although six is a bit bloody early to be up, it is a sight too late to go back to sleep.

Then a small herd of elephants clamors down the stairs.

It still amazes him how much noise two little girls can make together. When Char and Sophie do something together, the noise does not merely double. It quadruples or increases in some other exponential manner. One coming down the stairs is quite an event, accompanied as it often is by jumping or singing or shouting. But both together sound like the house is coming down on their heads.

In any case, rather than a group of pachyderms, two little girls enter the kitchen, in search of sugary breakfast cereals. He fixes up some Fizzing Whizbee Crunch and sits to finally enjoy his coffee as all three of his offspring enjoy their breakfasts.

Jamie is quietly chugging on his bottle, wide green eyes fixed on the remaining formula, watching the line move slowly down the bottle. At six months he does not have much hair yet, but the little tufts are a dark brown that grows like some crazy weed, in every which way. The family has yet to decide whether he has been cursed with Mummy or Daddy’s bad hair, but he will surely have a time controlling it.

Sophie is intent on removing all the pink bits from her cereal, creating a small, moist pile beside her bowl. Her dark brown eyes are like a hawk seeking out any of the dastardly rose-colored confections, and chestnut brown curls tumble onto her forehead as she gets onto her knees to get the eagle eye view of her brekkie. She is in a non-pink phase, which Mummy feels she will get over soon enough, but he isn’t so sure. She is certainly a fair bit more tomboyish than her sister, having already appropriated the toy broom that was gathering dust in Char’s room in order to whip around the back field after Daddy when he practiced Quidditch. Of course whipping at four means maxing out at three or four miles an hour, no more than a foot above the ground, but she is already quite good. Char hates flying almost as much as her mother.

Char is practicing her reading by dictating the morning headlines in the Prophet. They’d prefer the Quibbler, but that never arrives until closer to noon, since Luna doesn’t see the fuss about reading the paper with breakfast. Nevertheless, Char plows through words like “inquiry” and “fallacious” without missing a beat. She already knows the Prophet is a load of rubbish, having long since realized that if stories about Daddy are so wrong, the rest probably are too. She is so inordinately clever that sometimes he thinks that save the fact that she is his female clone, Mummy might have just sprouted her like a spider plant, budding a little one full of academic inquiry and frightful intelligence from the start.

“Well, good morning Potters!” comes a voice from the kitchen door.

All those seated at the table turn to the door and immediately comes the boisterous cry, “Mummy!” from the girls. Jamie expresses his excitement by dropping his bottle on the floor in order to gleefully clap his hands, realizing he no longer had his bottle and breaking out in tortured wails. Mummy manages to make her way over to his high chair, despite having a child clinging to each leg, and pops the bottle back in his mouth before Daddy can even react. So instead, Daddy takes a second to marvel at this wonderful woman he has the fortune to call his.

She is already listening intently as Char told her everything that had happened at daycare since Mummy had been gone, while helping Sophie fish the remaining pink bits out of her cereal. Once she finishes that she goes to burp Jamie and help the girls put their bowls in the washer. Then she ushers the whole crew into the den, where she puts on an episode of Barney, settling the girls on the couch and Jamie in his swing. Then she returns to the kitchen, where she finds her husband still slightly shell-shocked, and perches on his lap, her work heels falling to the floor with a pair of loud clicks.

“Good morning Harry.” Finding him still insufficiently responsive, she bends her head down to hers and once again finds that a morning snog was the best way to wake her husband. Eventually she finds herself running short of breath, and breaks away to find Harry a fair bit perkier.

“Bloody hell Hermione, I needed that. I don’t know if I’ve been properly awake since you left. Happy anniversary, by the way.” He kisses here cheek here and she turns her head to get a peck on the lips as well.

“Happy anniversary, darling. Eight years, my goodness. I hope you will take my humble presence as enough of a present, because the case has kept me so busy I haven’t had a moment to fix you a real present.” She looks genuinely repentant, but she shouldn’t be. After two weeks of her in Bermuda for a case, she is more than enough. He’d missed her desperately. There are some other concerns as well.

“Having you home is more than enough. Please raise the children. I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since you left.”

Hermione’s head tips back as she lets out a hearty chuckle. She always keeps a mad schedule while trying a case so she probably isn’t much better rested than he is. “Hmm, I was thinking we could let someone else raise the children, at least for tonight. I’ve owled Ron and he’s agreed to take the crew in with his tonight.” He’s trying not to be surprised, even after she had said she hadn’t gotten him anything for their anniversary. This is Hermione after all- though she considers whatever it is she cooked up insufficient, he has not doubt that he will not.

But for the moment he decides to feign offence. “So Ron knew you were coming back before I did?”

Her eyes roll a bit as she replies dryly. “Well, I meant to surprise you with breakfast in bed, but instead I find you and all three of our children already awake and you swilling coffee like it’s the end of the world.”

“It is the end of the world when you’re not here.” His tone is very earnest.

“That is very sweet of you.” She smiles. This is the sort of thing one would like the husband to say on your anniversary.

“Well, yes, I suppose, but I also really mean it. Have you seen the rest of the house?”

She groans a bit under her breath. Harry is usually somewhat deficient in the housekeeping when he is alone with the monsters. “No, but I imagine it’s a wreck. That’s why we are not sleeping here tonight. We are staying at this darling bed and breakfast. I think you know it, it’s called ‘The Blooming Mallowsweet.’”

This is typical. He is laughing as he replies, “See, you say you haven’t done anything for our anniversary when you’ve actually arranged for a night at the inn where we spent our honeymoon. Char gets all her chronic overachieving tendencies from you.”

This is really too much. “Harry, our children are in the other room. Stop talking, joking or even thinking about them for just a moment. Tonight, we will be Harry and Hermione and not Mummy and Daddy for an evening.” There is a dangerous edge in her voice. “Because it is our anniversary, the one day of the year when we celebrate us. And do you know how I plan to celebrate?”

Harry gulps a bit. He recognizes this Hermione, though he hasn’t seen her in awhile. This is Hermione Potter, sex fiend extraordinaire. “I can guess,” he manages.

“I bet you can.” And then she proceeds to give a small, but very thorough sample of what she has planned for the evening. When she is done, she fixes her hair while scoffing at the slightly shocked look on his face. “Well, honestly Harry. You didn’t think I finished my case in record time and sped back from Bermuda just to go to dinner, did you?”

“I suppose not. I must say, I like your plan a lot better.”

“I bet you do.” The last strains of the “I love you song” are echoing out of the den and they both sigh, realizing it is time to go back to being Mummy and Daddy for a bit. Hermione leans over for one last kiss. Harry breaks this one, at the sounds of little feet pattering in their direction. “Until later,” he whispers, receiving a wicked smile in return.

Happy anniversary, indeed.

If there are any Gilmore Girls fans out there, you will appreciate the date I’ve chosen for Harry and Hermione’s anniversary. It’s a very nice date, someone ought to use it.