Four Weddings and a Dragon - Charlie Weasley

Chapter 19

AN: Short and extremely fluffy this week. I had some minor surgery and this was all I could manage.

Hermione tip-toed to the door of Grimmauld Place's main bedroom and tapped on the heavy wooden slab. Downstairs, Charlie and his dad were nearly finished the washing up. Molly, who had been up all night while Ginny laboured, was asleep on the drawing room sofa, and everyone else had left to get on with their busy days. Hermione was knackered herself and wouldn't be going into the office. But she couldn't leave without seeing Harry and his family one more time.

It was Ginny's voice that answered with an almost inaudible, "Come in."

Tucked into the bed, Hermione found Ginny lying on her side with the baby nestled against her front and Harry sleeping behind her, an arm thrown over her waist, his fingers curved in the empty space where her bursting belly had been a few hours before. His breaths were deep and steady, blissfully asleep. Baby James was in that hazy newborn state of being neither asleep nor awake, his little hands worked free of his swaddling and flexing in the air, as if he was casting spells.

"Oh, he is just perfect," Hermione said as she sat on the edge of the bed, letting James's tiny fingers close around one of hers.

Ginny deliberately misunderstood, reaching over her shoulder to tousle Harry's mop of hair. "I always thought so."

Hermione gave a soft laugh through her nose.

"This one, on the other hand," Ginny said, smoothing James's impossibly silky black hair. "This wee one is working himself up to start howling to be fed again."

"Do you want me to walk with him? Take his mind off it a little longer?" Hermione offered.

"No, it won't work. He's obsessed with me. Another way he's already just like his father," Ginny said. "It's alright, Auntie. He needs to eat and he's feeding better since Audrey showed me a few tricks. I imagine between you and Charlie you've already guessed she and Percy wrote that Wizards What to Expect book."

Hermione nodded. "Yes, we called the book's helpline and Percy answered. Charlie knew his voice right away even though he told us he was Perry Wazlib."

Ginny laughed. "They didn't tell me that bit. But Audrey did tell me the rest, Hermione." She was suddenly serious, looking up from her darling, restless little boy into Hermione's face. "She told me the Malfoys had the nerve to approach you and Charlie for help with a fertility spell - "

Hermione was interrupting. "Now, don't panic. We haven't - "

"And I think you should do it," Ginny finished.

Hermione sat back. "You what?"

"If you can bring yourself to help the Malfoys keep a pregnancy, do it," she said. Ginny was gathering up her baby, rising to sit close to Hermione, face to face on the edge of the bed, out of Harry's hearing should he wake up. "This little monster of ours has me thinking about the past. You know, the grandfather he's named for who he'll never meet. And more than that, he has me thinking about the future, and how vital it is that we don't keep fighting the same war every generation. Fred really isn't coming back. And Bill - he was literally chased out of Gringotts by the same families who keep bringing the Death Eaters to life. They don't need a Voldemort to get them plotting and murdering for money and power again."

Harry flinched and stirred on the mattress behind them.

"All I'm saying," Ginny went on, almost in a whisper, "is that after what happened with Bill, it seems pretty obvious that things haven't changed in our society nearly as much as we all wish they had. We need real change in order to have real peace. We need changes that trials and fines and prison terms can't make. We need changes of heart."