future people [r&h]

monday, 26 april 2004

The doorbell rang— “I’ll get it!” Hermione flicked her wand at the kettle and tea tray—boiling water poured into the teapot; the tea cups set themselves nicely into saucers; milk, sugar, and lemon slices found their ways into bowls—as she yelled up, assuming Ron could hear her through the floor of their bedroom above. She glanced at everything for half a second before swishing her wand at a bottle of brandy; it nestled itself onto the tea tray as she left the kitchen, tucking her wand inside her robes as she moved down the short hall to the door. She beamed as she pulled it open.

“You got them?” It was an unnecessary question— both of Harry’s hands were clutching paper carry-alls, clearly filled to the top with chocolate frogs. “Fantastic.” She stepped back and pulled the door open wider, letting him through. “I cleared space in the lounge.” She tilted her head toward the next room; she had moved the coffee table aside and grabbed most of the pillows in the house to make sitting on the rug a fair bit more comfortable-- sitting at the dining table to open boxes of sweets to find collector cards featuring them felt far too formal.

Hermione closed the door and leaned toward the staircase, yelling up again: “Harry’s here!” Obviously, but it was the least she could do. She had owled Honeydukes to find out when the new chocolate frog shipment arrived, ask how much it would be to post that many (because their chances of finding their cards was better if they bought them all, of course), then after she had balked at the shipping price, asked Harry if he could go get them; she had worked late (as usual) and Ron had closed the shop (and Harry had offered to buy them, so…).

The cat was sniffing around Harry’s ankles—and the chocolate—as Hermione returned with the tea. “Out, Crookshanks—“ she did her best to look stern, then smiled at Harry again, before set the tray on the coffee table and grabbed a pillow, squishing it from either side before tossing it on the floor. Shrugging out of her robes, Hermione flopped down to the pillow, crossing her legs under her, half staring at the Honeydukes bags. “Ginny napping?”

@Ron Weasley @Harry Potter

Ron had joked that they should probably have been owled their cards (and the accompanying Chocolate Frogs) but Harry had thought it would be more enjoyable this way, and in any case he felt like it had been quite a long time since he and Ron had an excuse to gorge themselves on candy. He wasn’t sure whether Hermione actually thought this was a good use of their time, or she was indulging them, but he was glad anyway for an excuse to drop by London anyway.

Harry had meant to make an actual order (as Hermione had suggested) and then had gone to work and forgotten, so he’d gathered his haul by shovelling handfuls of frogs into bags himself. The bags were sort of straining at his hands, partly with the weight and partly because a bunch of the frogs were hopping around their cartons; he had to use his little finger to ring the bell rather than knocking.

Hermione opened the door, and Harry hefted the bags of frogs in greeting – “Yeah” – and loped past her into the lounge, where she’d set up a spot on the floor. Harry dropped the bags with a thunk, nudged Crookshanks the cat away from them with one foot, then watched in resignation as Crookshanks came back for more. Harry sat next to Hermione and plucked a cup of tea off the tray, and said, “Yeah, she’s having a kip. I’ve got to be back soon, we’re still unpacking.” They’d been still unpacking for a while now; with Ginny so pregnant, and Harry so generally unsure where things were supposed to go, he suspected they’d still be unpacking when the baby was born.

Ron came in and joined them, then; Harry held up a frog in its carton (he could feel it hopping around through the card, like a beating heart) and chucked it over and picked one out for himself. “Grover Hipworth,” he said, and held the card out for Ron – “You still collect these, or are we going to have to stick a hundred of these in the bins?”

The specter of the rapidly approaching baby was over them every time Ron spoke to Harry or Ginny now, and half the times he spoke to anyone else. Mum had two grandchildren already and she still talked of nothing but. Complete strangers would ask him how Ginny was doing. Surely she was hating being fussed over more than Ron was uncomfortable witnessing it, but when she wasn’t personally present he tended to forget that.

Perhaps Hermione had picked up on it, as she picked up on too much about him, and she’d proposed holding this event at their house with just the three of them. It was too important, of course, to be overshadowed by anything. Being immortalized in glossy cardstock form, being collected and preserved and read about by children the country over… Ron had joked about it shortly after it all, but he’d never dared be arrogant enough to expect it. Chocolate Frog cards were simply the height of renown. Order of Merlin, who gives a fuck?

Harry's arrival was shouted up and Ron stuffed a mark in his book. He rushed down the stairs, but made an effort to be dignified about it. Harry and Hermione, though clearly in good humor, weren’t looking as if this were the number one most exciting day of their lives.

They were discussing Harry’s recent move. "There’s a spell for unpacking, I think,” said Ron, leaning over the banister on his way down. “Never had enough to unpack to bother, myself, so you’ll have to look it up.”

He clapped Harry on the back and drifted a fond hand over Hermione's shoulder. Harry tossed him a packaged frog, and then held out the card from his own. Ron laughed. “What, you don’t still?” He vividly remembered getting Harry started on it—his first taste of being a source of wisdom—and in some stupid way it hurt to learn that had been left behind. Stupid. Everyone else grew out of habits, even if he didn’t. And at least the Quidditch lessons had stuck. Surely Ginny’d file for divorce if that wore off too.

Ron turned the card over to skim Hipworth’s biography and scoffed to himself. “Does seem a shame, doesn’t it?” Tossing these glorified chocolate-liners had always felt unjustifiable. One of each card he owned was kept in the album Hermione had once given him as a birthday present, but he had a box of spares three times the volume under the bed. “Maybe Victoire’s old enough to start?” He remembered then, and looked up at Harry with a foolish grin. “Or we’ll start off baby Potter with a collection in trust.” The parenthood situation may have been unsettling him, but not too much so to take advantage of the comedic potential.

He flung Hipworth onto the coffee table and sat down on the other end of it, ripping open the frog Harry had thrown him. Paracelsus, an old standby. He went with Hipworth on the table. “We going to eat all these?” Ron asked around a mouthful of chocolate, holding up the back half of the frog. Harry knew he gladly would, but he wasn’t keen to invite Hermione’s judgment. “What can we do if we don’t, keep ‘em in a tank?” There was one sitting long empty in his childhood bedroom, if necessary.

Hermione smiled as Ron appeared, suggesting a spell. She imagined Harry didn’t want the help, but she couldn’t resist: “I’m sure I have something upstairs about it.” The extra bedroom had been transformed into a small library--Hermione had reinforced the floor for the extra weight of all the books--and she assumed offering a book was less annoying than telling him what the spell was right out.

She picked up a chocolate frog carton as Ron and Harry discussed collecting the cards; she had never really started, herself, giving the odd card she did have to a roommate or Ron. It wasn’t practical collecting something that required you to buy sweets. Or, more precisely, her parents weren’t keen on it and it hadn’t felt worth it for that to warrant an act of rebellion.

“I think we have enough to start both collections.” Surely. Hermione carefully opened her first carton, enough to slide the card of without releasing the frog, then resealed the box with a tap of her wand. She left the carton in her lap and looked at her card: Oswald Beamish, pioneer of goblin rights. She wondered if her card might include a bit about her work on house elf rights, decided a second later it probably wouldn’t. Being put on a card at the same time as Ron and Harry-- it was clear what their accomplishments might be. (The most public part of all of it--besides the battle--might have been the break in at Gringotts; including that would be worse than not including anything about house elves. Yikes.)

At least it would be easier to find her (and Ron’s) card than finding Harry’s, but she wasn’t about to mention that to either one of them.

Hermione twisted to put the card on the table behind her, picking up a cup of tea before turning forward again, raising her eyebrows at Ron along the way. “You can if you want,” she said, though it was clear she didn’t think it a good idea for him to eat them all. She stopped to consider what they would do with them all-- “I could take them to work.” Free food was hard to pass up in the break room, anyway. She leaned forward and tipped one of the bags out, making a pile of cartons on the rug, then put her cardless carton in the newly empty bag.

She sipped her tea, set her cup down, and grabbed another carton, repeating her process from before. This card was less thought provoking, though: Lockhart. Hermione’s jaw tensed as she swallowed, not failing to notice that it was the same photo from a decade ago; she scanned the text--also not updated--and turned to set it on the table behind her, sliding it under the top card on the pile.

Ron and Hermione seemed a little judgmental of Harry’s unpacking job so far, Hermione going so far as to offer him a book about it (he suspected, of course, that she knew the spell already and didn’t want to sound like she was boasting.) Harry carefully replaced his teacup on the saucer and grinned at Ron dangling over the banister in greeting. “Think I’ll try it when I’m not unpacking the china,” he said, getting himself comfortable on the floor.

He had mostly been joking – at least he hadn’t particularly expected Ron to still have a box of Chocolate Frog cards under his bed like he had in the Burrow – but Ron seemed to be shocked in the opposite direction. “Dunno,” said Harry, “Mine all might still be at the Dursleys’ somewhere.” But he doubted it – he’d packed everything he could take from his childhood into a rucksack before he’d left Privet Drive, and wouldn’t have put it past Uncle Vernon to have burned everything else. He scooted over to make more room, and popped his first frog into his mouth.

“‘S’pose so,” he said; Ginny would probably think it was funny. He was less sure about Fleur. The other two seemed less interested in announcing each card they got, but Harry thought that was more fun, so he announced the next two – Crispin Cronk and Laverne de Montmorency – before he stacked their cards on the coffee table and ate their corresponding frogs. (The empty cartons he tossed to one side before Hermione emptied the bag for them.)

Harry suspected he was used to eating Chocolate Frogs in even more massive quantities than Hermione suspected – he’d accumulated so many of them over his life through birthdays, Christmases, and hospital stays – but even he and Ron combined probably couldn’t get their way through this load without giving themselves stomachaches. Ron suggested a tank, and Hermione suggested bringing them to work, so Harry just nodded, figuring he would let them sort it out between themselves – he was taking a few home, regardless.

“Cliodna,” he said – she joined the heap he and Ron were growing. Hermione slid her second card underneath the others, and Harry leaned forward to fish it back out – Gilderoy Lockhart – and snorted. “God, remember he made me reenact his stupid books?”

“Oh,” mumbled Ron, sheepishly, “yeah.” It was, of course, unlikely Harry still had any of his possessions from school, and every time something came up Ron forgot about it. Let’s put on our school robes for a laugh, what a git. Ron had long gotten the sense things meant more to him than the others—at least stupid things, things that shouldn’t have been important—so he felt a little stupid whenever he failed to keep that under wraps.

It was only a little stupid, though. Harry forgot about plenty of his life events too. They all had too many individual traumas to keep them straight, that was the human brain’s fault before it was any of theirs. Ron was sort of fond of that neural quirk. Hopefully Healers weren’t fucking around with ways to keep memory sharper and just leaving well enough alone.

He looked to Hermione. She’d had done this in a smart way, of course—it had simply never occurred to Ron to open a Chocolate Frog in a way that kept the chocolate inside. He stuck the last frog’s legs in his mouth and savored the melting chocolate now that he no longer had an excuse to be indiscriminate about it. Maybe he’d eat every tenth one or so.

Less gracefully, he corralled the frog with his fingers before sliding the card out under them. A second Hipworth—“Wow, you’re right, we do.” This one started a different pile on the floor.

He opened another frog; Blenheim Stalk went back onto the table. Harry tossed Gilderoy Lockhart on top of him and Ron laughed cheerfully. “I still think you have a future as an actor, if this Chosen One hype ever falls through,” he said. “Either of you been round St. Mungo’s lately? I’ll bet Hermione still knows more about him than he does—oh, look—”

The third frog he’d been trying to keep in the package hopped out onto his knee; Harry, the Seeker, snatched it out of the air as it made for the floor. “Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived. The only known survivor of the Killing Curse. Famous for his defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts.” Ron held up the portrait on the front, where miniature Harry looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Shame the honor didn’t go to someone more photogenic, really,” he said. “’Course, I’m just waiting to see they said on mine that I’m a lifelong sufferer of Spattergroit.” He’d learned to live with it. Surely if the heroes of the wizarding world were any handsomer they’d never be left alone to do stupid shite like this.

Ron passed the card to Harry with a chuckle. “Wood’ll be devastated to learn your legendary contributions to Gryffindor Quidditch didn’t fit on there.”