It was the best night Harry’d had in a very long time. He still can’t quite put a finger on why.
So that’s…that. It’s not important; it’s just something he’s doing; it doesn’t really matter at all. It’s a nice distraction from work, though, because as it turns out, Ron was held back in Erhard’s office that day they were both called in there to be told he was getting promoted.
“It’s really incredible,” Ron gushed at dinner the evening after his first day as a Supervising Lead Auror. “I mean, I’ve been saying for years—'Mione, haven’t I been saying —that the department needs to take a more tactical approach to how they determine who works what case? How they allocate time and resources?”
“I have indeed heard you say that many times,” Hermione said, in a tone that suggested she had confirmed this for her husband more than once already. She gave Harry a fond, if exasperated, look. “And now you’re in a position to change that!”
“And now I’m in a position to—yes exactly, Hermione. That’s exactly right. God, you know me so well.” He leaned over the table to kiss her, a little tipsy, and put his elbow in the mashed potatoes, but Hermione didn’t seem to mind. “Plus, I mean, I don’t mind telling you —I loved my days in the field, I did, but being a father changes a man.” He gave Rose a serious look, which she returned by blowing a raspberry at him. Ron grinned. “It’s hard to be out risking life and limb all the time when you’ve got such an important set of lives and limbs waiting for you at home, you know?”
“Sure,” said Harry, who didn’t at all.
“Not that I won’t still be out in the field sometimes,” Ron said hurriedly, giving Harry an apprehensive look. He’d said the same thing, made the same face, when he told Harry about the promotion—like he was afraid Harry was going to fall apart without him.
Harry did, honestly, feel a bit like he might. He’d actually been thinking about…maybe asking, that night, if Ron wouldn’t consider sticking with his old job. Harry didn’t think it would be such a big ask; he couldn’t think of anything he, personally, would hate more than working any of the positions the department had to offer that were above his current one. They took you out of the field, and being in the field was the only part of Harry’s job that ever felt worth doing. He couldn’t understand why Ron would want to give it up, and— selfishly—he thought he might go a little mad without Ron there, at his side, joking around and reminding him to do his paperwork and just generally cutting through some of the mind-numbing despair and boredom.
He couldn’t say so, of course—not when Ron was so clearly thrilled, going on and on about how great even just the training was, how excited he was to get the opportunity to make decisions, shake things up. Harry ate his shepherd's pie and sipped his wine and said that he was happy, that it was great, that he couldn’t wait to meet his new partner.
He got assigned Trent, because of course he did.
“I want you to think of this as a teaching opportunity,” Erhard told him the morning he found out. “As in, it’s an opportunity for you to show me that you can teach. Your track record in this arena has not been stellar.”
“Hey!” Harry said, flushing. “That’s not true! People still talk about that seminar I did on defensive and protective magic!”
“That’s an excellent point,” Erhard agreed. “One that no one could argue. But I have your file here with me—let’s look at some of the complaints from previous Junior Aurors who have sought you out for advice on, oh, any other topic.”
Harry slumped down low in his chair, because: fuck.
“Oh, here’s a good one,” Erhard said. Her tone was even, but Harry could tell this was bringing her joy. “‘I asked Auror Potter how I could improve my stance and he said to stand better.’ Oh, or this one: ‘I went to Auror Potter for an evaluation of my civilian communications skills and he said there'd been a crime and walked away.’ Or this one, a personal favorite, the department heads discussed it at great length: ‘Auror Potter caught me crying after my first murder inquest and he hit me in the shoulder.’”
“I did not,” Harry said, appalled. He remembered that night, and Auror Wipple was clearly exaggerating. “I was—it was a pat! I was comforting her!”
“She said you left a bruise,” Erhard said, and gave Harry a stern look over her glasses. “I don’t think most people find bruises very comforting.”
Harry did not say I do, but it was distressingly close.
So now he’s stuck with Trent. It’s not as bad as he thought it would be, in the sense that it’s much worse. Harry’s operated for years on the assumption that he and Ron were both pretty good Aurors—they had a decent closing rate, not the best in the department but nothing to sneeze at, either, and all the work always seemed to get done.
Now, though, Harry is beginning to suspect that Ron is in fact a great Auror, and Harry is a small but committed dumpster fire cunningly disguised in an official DMLE robe. It’s… humbling. He’s trying not to think about it too much.
They haven’t even solved Draco’s case, which Harry can’t actually stop thinking about; it keeps him awake nights, nips worryingly at his heels all through the day. It’s not like he’s not working on it—they’ve made headway—but it’s not enough, and it needs to be, and it’s driving Harry slowly mad. He asked Draco about Slughorn’s suggestion about sentimentality magic weeks back and Draco told him, begrudgingly, that the Dreamless Sleep and the Draught of Peace were both potions he relied on to get him through the day, though he’d fixed Harry with a look of such intensely concentrated fury on admitting it that Harry hadn’t pressed him for why. The biscuits were obviously also of significance (though Harry still feels in his heart that the thief probably just swiped them because they were there), but the necklace, Draco assured him, meant nothing to him, so there was that theory scuppered.
The lack of resolution is obviously getting to Draco, too. Harry doesn’t blame him; he, personally, would probably relish the thought of some thieves out there that might come back and have another go at him, but he’s aware that his feelings towards danger do not exactly comprise what most might call a sane outlook. And anyway Draco’s nervy, in general, suspicious of everyone from his street’s Muggle postman (“Look at his eyes, Potter! They’ve never known joy! I think he’s an Inferi, truly I do,”) to the barista at his local coffee shop (“I made a comment about the temperature of my tea one time and now she’s out for blood— smell this, Potter. Does this smell dosed to you?”). It makes sense that it would eat at him, this unresolved violation, but Harry can’t seem to figure the bloody thing out, and Trent’s no help at all. It’s killing him, a little, to watch the way Draco’s eyes snap to the door at any little sound, the way he seems ill at ease even inside his own home.
It’s all ganging up on Harry a bit, though not necessarily in a bad way. He’s more frustrated and unhappy than ever at work, but after work—well, he doesn’t feel quite as guilty about going 'round to Ron and Hermione’s now that he doesn’t see Ron as much at the office, and it’s nicer to be at the Burrow now that things are sitting easier with Ginny and Nev, and there’s Draco. Harry maybe feels a bit overwhelmed every now and again but it’s better, he thinks, than the alternative; he hadn’t realized until he didn’t have time to do it anymore how much time he used to spend just sitting around, waiting for the next thing to happen, not thinking about anything much.
Anyway, that’s probably why he forgets, until the ignominious day is already upon him, the approaching Gryffindor pub night.
When Harry gets to the bar, Seamus and Dean are already at a table, and there are two coats thrown across chairs that look like Hermione’s and Ron’s.
Harry raises his eyebrows at Dean, who always rolls in after his gallery closes at eight. “Early tonight, aren’t you?”
Dean shrugs. “Ron Owled me and asked me to be here early if I could, and the gallery was dead anyway.”
“He didn’t tell me to be here early,” Harry says, a little put out in spite of himself.
“You’re always here early, though,” Seamus says, rolling his eyes. “First one in, first one out—that’s our Harry!”
Harry is spared having to think up a comeback to this frankly upsettingly perceptive jab from Seamus by the door opening. Neville, Ginny, Angelina, George, and then—to Harry’s absolute shock—Bill, Fleur, Penelope and Percy walk into the pub.
“Where’s Charlie?” Harry says faintly, just because—well, because it would be less weird to see Charlie here than Percy. Or Fleur, to be totally honest.
“Oh, who knows?” Bill says, waving a hand. “Last month he sent me an Owl that was just a singed piece of parchment with some coordinates and a smiley face on it. I’d’ve heard if he were dead and that’s about the best I’ve got. Blasted dragonette season,” he adds, sounding cross. Fleur pats him on the arm.
Ginny rolls her eyes at Harry. “It’s a sore subject, y’see, because last time Charlie was in town they started playing this game—”
“We are not discussing this,” Fleur says firmly. “We are all 'oping to 'ave a perfectly lovely evening and I will not 'ear another word about it!”
“Yes!” Bill says, looking a little wild about the eyes. “Thank you, Fleur! A perfectly lovely evening! We’ll hear no more about it!”
“Oh, all right,” Ginny says, tone suspiciously placating, and then waits until Bill and Fleur’s backs are turned to jerk a thumb at Bill and mouth, He’s loooooosing. Then she does a little pantomime of an explosion, which almost gets her caught because Harry laughs at it, but she’s got a sweet smile fixed firmly in place by the time Bill and Fleur whip around.
They all descend in a madcap rush on the tables and chairs—which Harry thinks were probably set up the way they were set up for a reason, but who is he to say—and, in true Weasley fashion, emerge having pushed several of them together to make one large place to congregate. Harry sits, and wonders just what the hell is going on.
Ron and Hermione come back to the table then, each of them carrying a drink tray. “First round’s on us,” Ron says, to cheers from the group, and doles out shots of Firewhiskey. “Don’t drink them now, we’ll have a proper toast in a minute—I mean it, George!”
“Oh, fine,” George says sulkily. His mood flips in an instant, though, and he grins, says, “What is it, then? Don’t think we haven’t noticed you’ve gathered the troops.”
Ron looks at Hermione, and she beams back at him, and Harry knows what’s going to happen a second before it does—the second he realizes Hermione doesn’t have a drink in her hand.
“I’m pregnant,” she says. The table descends into chaos.
Harry remembers this from the first time Hermione was pregnant, and from when Ron and Hermione got engaged, and from when George and Angelina got engaged, and—well, from a lot of times, in fact. The Weasleys take their good news with more enthusiasm than any other group of people Harry’s ever encountered, cheering and yelling and elbowing each other in trying to be the first to get in for a backslap or a hug.
Dean and Seamus both look a little frightened. Harry gives them a reassuring look.
His own strategy, developed over years of exposure, is to wait out the rush and slide in right at the end of the pack. “Congratulations,” he says, grinning, his hands in his pockets, and Hermione laughs and drags him in for a hug. Ron throws his arms around them both and for a second it’s—Harry’s so happy for them he can hardly think, and he can’t wait to meet the new little person they’re making, to see what parts of them are like their parents, like Rose.
Then Ron lets go and Hermione lets go and Harry shuffles back to his chair and sits down, and it’s like some of his happiness just…doesn’t come with him, somehow. He’s still thrilled for them, still excited, but there’s a cold, numb sort of sensation spreading out from the center of his awareness, deadening some of his joy.
“How far along?” someone calls—Harry doesn’t quite track on who—just as another voice says, “When’re you due?
“Late October, maybe early November,” Hermione says. “I’m about six weeks along; we only found out Friday before last.”
“Six weeks,” Ginny says slowly. “Does that mean—”
“That I subjected my unborn child to our last pub night?” Hermione says, and grimaces. “Unfortunately, yes. But my Healer assures me everything will be just fine, and otherwise the timing couldn’t be better if we’d planned it. The Wizengamot isn’t in session from Halloween to New Year’s anyway, so except for the occasional special hearing I won’t be missing important time on the bench, and with Ron’s promotion…” She leans into the circle of his arms; he kisses the top of her head. “It’s just all really good.”
“Well!” Bill says, and raises his glass. “To Ron, Hermione, and the newest Weasley! May the heart be true and the love be long.”
