Love is the Child of an Endless War

"Molly! Molly Weasley! Yoo-hoo!" Molly looked up from her garden where she was harvesting magical winter strawberries for breakfast. They were Remus' favorite, and she'd perfected the technique for growing them in frozen solid, frost-hardened ground. She was planning on authoring a book on the subject of growing your own fresh freezing fruit but hadn't gotten around to starting it, yet.

What with it being the Christmas holidays, she'd hardly had a minute to herself. For a full week before the big day her house had been filled with guests. Ron, Hermione, and their passel of five had been stuffed into the attic with the ghoul. The stipend she'd earned from her last book, "The Art of Raising Seven Children Getting Under Your Very Last Nerve" had paid for the attic's renovation and enlargement, but accommodations had still been close. Once Hermione popped out the next Weasley, Ron's family would only fit into the barn. Maybe she would earn enough money from her next book to have the barn re-done as a guesthouse of sorts? Something like George's guesthouse, only more rustic.

Muggles had benefited for decades from some amazing inventions that Wizards were only beginning to have widespread access to now that the war was over. Shaking her head in fond memory Molly reflected that her husband Arthur really had been a Wizard ahead of his time. What with his fascination for all things Muggle related. She'd have thought that Hermione, growing up in the Muggle world as she had, would have heard of some of these things before now. Birth control pills were an incredible Muggle invention she'd read about. They were tiny tablets that contained a sort of human hormonal potion and if taken every day they allowed people to make love whenever they liked without the threat of producing a child every time. If those had been available to Wizards during her child bearing years The Burrow might not be stuffed quite so full at Christmas time.

Charlie, and his wife, Mo, a perfectly fine girl who rather gave Molly the creeps because she had unnatural physical acuity, slept in the twin's old room, which had been quite nicely redone by a professional decorator. Clearly, Mo had the good sense to take that pill. Or possibly Charlie's neck wasn't the only portion of his anatomy scarred by his year with the vampires. Mo and Charlie roamed the world like a pair of vagabond gypsies these days, hunting up dark creatures for no apparent reason, at least none they would ever tell. They were in no state to be raising children.

Bill, and what's her name, his paramour of the moment, had stayed in Ron's old room. It still had the single bed, which was Molly's way of implying her thirty-eight year old son had no business getting intimately involved with an eighteen year old girl. Bill left The Burrow with a crick in his neck, and a stitch in his back. Molly assumed he'd received the point when he hobbled out the front door bestowing on her cheek only the slightest peck of affection by way of saying good-bye.

Thank heaven, Fred, George, and Ginny all lived nearby and could go home at the end of the night. Penny and George had their guesthouse available and had offered it for Molly's use, but she didn't see some of her children often enough. She rather liked having them all under the one roof, for an extremely limited period of time. Although they'd never really all be under the one roof ever again. One of them was lost to her forever. Almost lost forever, Molly amended. He'd left behind a little. Actually, he'd left behind a considerable bit of himself in Jasper and Phillipa.

Grandchildren, Molly had discovered on the day of Jasper's birth, were the mighty reward a mother received for raising her children right. She adored her grandchildren, all of them, but she was closest to Jasper. He was her first grandchild, technically, if you didn't count Charlie's daughter who had been kept a secret for too long. He lived nearby, but most importantly he was Percy's son. Having him there on Christmas day, him and his gorgeous, but spoiled, red headed sister Phillipa, was no small consolation to Molly. Unfortunately, Jasper had spent the better part of the day sulking in the fireplace corner over the spanking he'd received on Christmas Eve because he'd transfigured Phillipa into a mule and loaned her to the neighbors for their holiday party. Fred had let her and Remus in on the story after George and Penny took the children home. He'd been sworn to secrecy until Jasper's birthday was over.

Tragic as the loss of her favorite son had been Molly got the faintest delicious twinge of ironic pleasure whenever she saw George trying to raise Jasper in his stead. If she'd told him once, she'd told him a thousand times; "When you have children, George, I hope you get one just like you." And so he had. She'd just never imagined that Percy's son would be the one who paid George back for his troubled legacy in full measure. Jasper was the most blatantly obvious combination of the three influential people in his life that Molly had ever imagined a child could be. He was always worried about trying to do the right thing, even if he had to break the codes of standard convention to accomplish it. He could turn himself into quite the anxious, gloomy Gus when things didn't go just right, very like Percy in those respects.

Even the party they'd thrown for his twelfth birthday, held on Boxing Day, rather than Christmas, because he always complained his birthday was lost in the rush, hadn't completely lifted his pique this time. When he was wounded, he was wounded, and it took him a while to recover from his injuries. Conversely, when he was ready to do it, he threw off the gloom and dazzled the world with sunshiny brightness exactly like Fred and George. And he shared his mother's sweet, sensitive, soul. He was not a bad boy. Well, not too bad, anyway.

Shielding her eyes from the late rising sun coming up over the horizon, Molly wondered who in the world would be scurrying up the road from Ottery St. Catchpole, at seven o'clock on a freezing cold January morning, calling out to her. The rushing figure got larger and Molly stepped out of the garden to meet her in the lane. It was Mrs. Finkle, the Muggle taxicab driver. Molly had known her vaguely for some years as a Muggle person who drove one of those crazy automobiles. Her late husband Arthur had known her as a person with unlimited amounts of information regarding the internal workings of the combustion engine. One who had made his hobby of magically enhancing Muggle objects a positive delight.

Molly tried to keep an open mind. She despised prejudice, but magical peoples had kept to their own kind in her day, and there was no denying that in some ways that had not always been a bad thing. There was no point in fighting change, it happened whether she liked it or not. That didn't mean she had to approve of the fact that Muggle culture was infiltrating itself into every aspect of Wizarding life, diluting their values and traditions, and giving the children strange ideas. It was one thing to share their world with a magical being sprung from Muggle parents, like dear Hermione. But Charlie's wife didn't have a drop of magic in her, anywhere. This crazy war that had cost her a husband and a son hadn't done much but confuse things so far as she could tell. Confuse things plus obliterate Voldemort and Cornelius Fudge; both worlds were clearly better off in the absence of those two pathetic losers. Molly hadn't had a lot of choice but to become accustomed to Muggle doings and trappings. What with the children feeling perfectly free to involve themselves in mixed marriages. She was not one to engage in idle socialization with non-magic peoples from the village, however.

"Hello, Mrs. Finkle," Molly offered coolly polite.

Mrs. Finkle, bundled up from head to toe, was barely visible beneath her fluffy down parka. She seemed to be wheezing for breath, but Molly wasn't sure because she couldn't see the whole of her face behind the bulky blue cashmere scarf that matched her parka.

"Why don't you come inside and warm up a bit?" Molly suggested, because by nature she really was a friendly, if suspicious and sometimes narrow minded, soul. Once inside she offered her very unexpected guest a cup of hot tea.

"Oh, thank you," Mrs. Finkle said when her lips had defrosted around her teacup. "It's freezing out there! That's why I came today. I've been worried about your son in this terrible cold snap. And this must be your..hmmm...very nice...uh, werewolf friend?"

Well, once you've admitted to your children that you're shacking up with a werewolf, what more is it to admit the same to a virtual Muggle stranger from the village? Obviously the rumors were flying anyway. Or maybe the villagers just figured it all out from the relentless howling. Molly thought while correcting her etiquette error. "Yes, I apologize for not introducing you, Mrs. Finkle. This is Remus Lupin."

"How do you do, Mr. Lupin? I've never had the pleasure of meeting a real werewolf." Mrs. Finkle smiled at him in genuine friendly fashion. She seemed the sort of Muggle too fascinated by the Wizarding world to be shocked or afraid of what she found in it. Remus rather liked her on the spot. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Finkle," Remus returned relieved to be out of the closet. It was a slow time in coming, but werewolves were finally being accepted in both worlds for who they were. Wizard's prejudiced attitudes were changing with the times. It was becoming accepted fact that Werewolves did not choose to be what they were. Remus' lifestyle was dictated by an accident of fate, and nothing to be ashamed of.

"Pardon me, Mrs. Finkle, but what was that you'd begun to say about my son and the weather?" Molly queried refilling Remus' tea and sitting down to the table. What son could she be referring to? After the New Year Ron and his family had returned to the States. Bill had gone back to curse breaking in Hong Kong. Charlie and Mo were traveling to Australia to look up the possibility that tribes of pygmy vampires existed somewhere in the outback. Molly supposed it would be all right if they found some so long as they didn't tie Charlie up and snack on him, but it still seemed like a twisted fascination he shared with his wife.

She'd just spoken to George on the mobile Remus had given her as a Christmas gift. She had to admit that mobile phones were considerably more convenient than an owl. Her new mobile fit nicely into her apron pocket or her gardening jacket. It hardly weighed a thing, and worked almost instantly to connect her to anyone in the world who had one as well. Besides, it never molted, and didn't leave filthy droppings or desiccated voles all about the house. Muggle inventions were not altogether too bad. Some Wizard backwaters, like Hogwarts, were still too enchanted to pick up a good signal, but Molly was confident that Fred and George would change that. When she had spoken to George, he and Fred were just going into a meeting at W.W. Wheezes with a Wizard who claimed he'd invented a magic sensor and it was just the sort of thing that they needed for their project.

"Yes, Molly, I knew him for your son right away," Mrs. Finkle explained. "Although I haven't seen him in such a long time." She'd always been curious about this house, aptly named The Burrow. It used to appear ram shackled and poor, yet continued to stand year after year despite its apparent defiance of all physical laws in the universe. Back then it had always been spilling over with a very great amount of red headed children and Mrs. Finkle had worried that the Weasleys didn't have enough money to fix up their house, not to mention feeding all of those children.

The identical ones, she knew, were supernatural beings. There could be very little doubt of that. Normal children couldn't possibly get up to the sorts of mischief those two had. The rest of them had always been suspect, too. They all had a way of showing up suddenly and unexpectedly in the village, and disappearing just as fast. Strange things often happened in their presence. Objects floated in mid-air. Innocuous looking items had a way of exploding in the vicinity of those twins. One time old Mr. Findley's cat turned an inexplicable purple after the little girl paid a visit to his shop. The next day her older brother came in and it mysteriously became orange again. Her old friend Arthur was always surreptitiously questioning her about the workings of her taxicabs. Finding out that the Weasleys were magical peoples had gone a long way towards explaining some of the odd goings on out here with The Burrow and its inhabitants.

"All of my sons were just here visiting at The Burrow," Molly said with a curious expression. "They didn't go into town very often, but I think they all popped in once or twice for something or another."

"Oh, quite right," Mrs. Finkle agreed. "Your children were popping up unexpectedly all over town last week just the way they used to do. But the one I'm speaking of is the exceptionally tall one. He fixed Mr. Findlay's cat once after your daughter turned it purple. I saw him at King's Crossing Station in London and I offered him a ride home because he hadn't any money. But he told me he'd just as soon walk. He said he hadn't been on good English soil for a very long time and he wanted to feel it beneath his feet. That was two days ago, Molly. I wanted to make sure that he'd managed a way to get here. He always acted so proud, you know, almost seemed to be a little bit arrogant in a way."

Molly's teaspoon clattered into her saucer then onto the floor. Remus snorted tea out of his nose onto the front page of The Dailey Prophet. "You are mistaken, Mrs. Finkle, I'm certain," Molly said choking on a sob. "That particular son is dead, and has been for a very long time. We lost him to the Wizard's war."

"Well, Molly, I apologize if I'm wrong and I've upset you. But I must tell you now that I've been observing your family closely for very many years. Your husband, Arthur, was a friend, and I have met all of your children personally. There is no mistaking a Weasley. Extremely tall and red headed, he wore spectacles that were forever slipping down his long nose and he was always supervising your younger children while they were in the village. What was his name again? Peter?"

Molly slid out of her seat and onto the floor in a dead faint, and Remus said very slowly and clearly, "It's Percy."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"I have not said that, Penelope," George stated quietly emphatic behind gritted teeth. Neither one of them had gotten any sleep last night. They were both feeling cross and terribly edgy from the stress that accompanies severe shock. He didn't want to start a quarrel with her here, in Malfoy's office, of all places. But Penny was as surly and disagreeable this morning as he'd ever seen her in his whole life. Where in the hell was Jasper? They'd sent a prefect to summon him almost twenty minutes ago. There was an oppressive bleak tension hanging over their heads that was growing apace in the interim. "If Jasper doesn't get here soon," George figured silently, "the two of us will be jumping out of our seats to have a go at one another." He could feel the storm brewing.

"You haven't needed to say it, I know what you're thinking," Penny reproached him with words and her body language. She was sitting with her arms and legs crossed defensively, and pointing away from him.

"You were gone with him all night," he reiterated his gripe with her irritably. "What else am I to think?"

"How about thinking that your wife loves you and has a little bit of moral character? Unfortunately, I'm not certain I can say the same for my husband! You sent me to find him at the shop without so much as a warning that I might be a little bit surprised by what I saw there! What a sick thing to do me, George. I haven't seen him in eight years! Goddess! I thought he was dead! Of course I was gone all night. It was everything I could do to walk away from him this morning. I keep thinking that this has got to be a dream." She was crying again, although struggling desperately not to.

George tried explaining his actions to her. "I didn't do it to be cruel to you. How can you accuse me of that? Haven't you thought that I might be in shock here, as well? You aren't the only person that's been affected by this."

"Did you pass out when you saw him?" she queried fitfully.

"Out like a light. You too?"

"You might have warned me! You know, you might have even gone with me! Did you never think of that?" Penny accused wrathfully.

George bounced out of his chair and loomed over her. "I thought you might like some time alone with him! I didn't realize that you would stay out all night with him having reunion sex!"

Injured by his lack of faith in her Penny leapt out of her seat, putting her face mere inches from his own. "You get your mind out of the gutter, George Weasley! I did not have sex with him last night, but since you apparently think so little of my moral fiber, I rather wish I had!"

"I suppose you'll tell me next that you weren't kissing him either!" George roared, finally pushed over the edge. "But your lips tell me a different story! The last time I saw them looking that red and puffy was when we spent the better part of the night necking in the backseat of your new Jaguar!"

Ominous looking storm clouds started forming on the ceiling of Draco Malfoy's office at Hogwarts. Swirling threateningly over Penny and George's heads. The air all around them crackled with ozone, and a thunderous booming sounded at a distance. They were so busy sparring with one another they didn't even notice the internal rainstorm increased its intensity exponentially with their quarrel.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Jasper was a nervous wreck. He got the summons in Potions that his parents were both waiting to speak with him in the headmaster's office. Scurrying through the dungeons, up the big staircase, and into the corridors, he rehearsed his story. Somehow they'd managed to discover that it was him who'd frozen over the flood in the girl's second floor lav before Christmas holiday. He wasn't sure how they'd found him out, but that was fairly irrelevant. He'd done it all for a good cause. They couldn't find fault with an indoor sudden death Quidditch match played between Slytherin and Gryffindor on the ice in the lavatory, rather than on the field outside. Could they? He'd only charged the admission fee for charity's sake.

There was the slight little hiccup of that idiot Slytherin Chaser who swore in Parseltounge when he dropped the Quaffle at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. But how was Jasper to know that the school officials had never bothered to seal up that passageway? Pretty stupid of them, wasn't it? Nor could he be held responsible for the fact that the entire Slytherin team slid down into that chamber, thinking it was so cool, until they realized that there was no way to get back up out of it. That situation might have happened to anybody.

Now the betting ring thing was quite a lot more complicated, but he had most of that money still and it could be returned. 2 to 1 odds on Gryffindor, who had won by default, so really the kitty was only worth a few hundred galleons. Jasper's synapses were snapping at twice the speed of a normal person's. Regular intellects produced enough brain energy to power a light bulb. Jasper figured his brain could charge up a power grid, but he didn't have time enough to cover all the possibilities here. Talk about an ambush. Mum and Uncle George were already here. It was perfectly possible they'd listen to reason. Then again, it was always a good idea for him to just say nothing, thus avoiding further incrimination.

Panicked, his brain still roiling with excuses, Jasper breathlessly slid past the huge wooden door into the headmaster's office to find Penny and George standing nose to nose in the middle of the room. Surrounded by crackling lighting bolts, and the roar of peeling thunder, but still bellowing at one another in the midst of an unfathomable row the likes of which Jasper had never seen before. As one they turned their wrathful gazes onto him and he briefly debated throwing himself at their feet to beg for mercy. But, as is generally the case when a person reacts to heartfelt terror, self-preservation rules over all else. Instinctively Jasper stammered out his denial, "I didn't do it! What...whatever it is, I didn't do it."

George quirked an irate red eyebrow in Jasper's direction, for half a second he was distracted from his real troubles. "What is it that you think that we think you did?"

"Never mind that, George!" Penny sighed. "Let's go someplace else, I don't want to tell him in this hell hole, plus it's starting to rain."

George raised his eyes to the stormy black ceiling and an icy cold dark raindrop dripped down his neck, followed by another, and another. They were quickly engulfed in a torrential downpour. Pulling up his jacket collar, and hunching his shoulders, he complained, "Malfoy's going to hit me up now to have his office redone, just you wait and see."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Situated comfortably at a corner table in the Three Broomsticks, Jasper was drying out nicely by the fire. He was feeling undeniably grateful that his mother and his uncle had not engineered this impromptu visit to Hogwarts with the expressed purpose of spanking the living daylights out of him. So far so good, they'd been sitting across the table from him for over half an hour, letting him drink as much butter beer as he liked. Without giving a single cautionary warning that he'd have a stomachache before bedtime.

Clearly, however, something was wrong. Uncle George had taken off his jacket and laid it around Mummy's shoulders because she was drenched to the skin and freezing, but they weren't saying much to one another, or to him for that matter. George sneezed into his tea, and Penny offered him a grudging "Bless you." He replied with a snide, "Thanks very much." And Jasper did start to get a stomachache.

"What's going on?" he demanded. "Why were you having a row? You never have a row."

"Jasper, we have some good news to tell you," Penny began, still shivering and sipping her tea very slowly.

Well, if the news was so great how come she looked so tired, and pale? Why was Uncle George glowering into his tea? "You're going to have a baby!" he interrupted her. Mummy had always been tired and pale when she was making Phil. He knew they'd been trying to make a baby. They'd never not tried to make a baby; so far as he knew, but lately they'd seemed to be putting rather more effort into the enterprise. Jasper supported the endeavor whole-heartedly. With a new baby in the house they'd have less opportunity to watch him so closely and he could avoid getting into so much trouble.

Penny's fingers clenched around her teacup, and she bit her lip. George spared her of answering by saying, "No, Jasper, we aren't having a baby. We've come to tell you different ..um...good news today. Mummy and I, we've seen your father. It would seem that he hasn't been quite so dead all these years as we'd been led to believe."

Jasper's butter beer bottle slid out of his numb fingers and clattered to the table with a crash. "Where is he?"

Penny leapt up to catch the bottle before it smashed onto the floor and George absently handed her a napkin to wipe up the spill, his attention still focused on Jasper. "I think he's probably with Gran Weasley just now. We wanted to break the news to you first but he wants very much to see you."

"He's not dead?" Jasper repeated, trying the thought out in his head. How did he get not dead? Where had he been all of this time? Why would he want to see him now when he hadn't seen him once in all of these years? His mind was suddenly racing again; it made his stomach spin. His father, who had taken on a sort of 'hero who died fighting the good fight' mythic glow, had turned into a living dead-beat dad. Jasper knew all about dead-beat dads. Stubby Wood had one for his father. They were men that made children and then left them. Intentionally left them to struggle through life as best as they could, generally seeming not to care if they managed it all right, or not.

Stubby's father had once been a very famous professional Quidditch player, but he'd gotten involved with a bad crowd. Started partying too hard, didn't practice enough. He'd been thrown off his team. Now he played the occasional exhibition match, and still signed autographs for fans who remembered him in his hey day. He'd left Stubby's mom when Stub was just two years old, and had taken up with a Quidditch cheerleader on the Turkish squad. Jasper saw the Turkish squad cheering once at an international tournament, they wore a handful of silk scarves onto the field, and not much else. Stubby's dad saw him rarely, and sent money for his support less often than that. Well, now Jasper had one worse. His father had pretended to be dead rather than raise his son.

"Nope, he's really alive," George reaffirmed with a disbelieving sigh, and a worried look at Jasper's expression.

"Well, you needn't sound quite so disappointed about it!" Penny snapped at George, tossing the butter beer soaked napkins into the rubbish and giving him a glare.

George whirled on her in his chair, "You think I'm disappointed that my brother's not dead? I appreciate your high esteem, Penny."

"You sound terribly melancholy for someone who isn't disappointed! I know you never got on with him well, but..."

George interrupted her with, "I'd probably sound a whole lot less melancholy about it if he hadn't been back from the dead for less than twenty four hours and already found the time to start snogging my wife!"

"George!"

"Penelope!"

Jasper went into the lavatory and vomited. Leaning his curly dark head against the cool tile next to the toilet he felt the heaving in his gut slowly subside, but his head had begun to pound something fierce. He was alive. His father was alive. Reality was spinning him faster than he could assimilate it. He'd spent a good twenty minutes that day working himself into an upset stomach because he was fairly certain that even if managed to get himself off on the indoor Quidditch match thing he was definitely going to get spanked over the illegal gambling ring. Then he'd experienced a dizzying sense of relief that they hadn't found him out after all and floated his worry away on a surfeit of butter beer. All of which was quickly followed by the resurrection of a ghost, and the horrifying spectacle of his parents ripping each other apart in public. Jasper threw up again.

"I want to take him home," Penny insisted in a determined whisper. She and George were standing shoulder to shoulder in the narrow corridor outside the gent's room at the Three Broomsticks.

"He's only been back in school for a few days since Christmas holiday!" George protested quietly.

"Percy wants to see him!"

"He can visit him here at school!"

"I don't think he's feeling well," Penny said staring anxiously at the inner brick wall that was standing between her and her son. "He looked awfully pale when he left the table."

"I think he's upset because we were quarreling," George said, following her gaze as though the two of them together could stare hard enough to penetrate the barrier between them and their son.

"I think he drank too much butter beer on an empty stomach. I should have thought to buy him some lunch." Penny started gnawing on her fingernails, a very old habit that George had not seen her engaging in for many years.

"Well, we can have him checked out in the infirmary before we go," George offered trying to placate her, but thinking that having Jasper at home right now was the very last thing any of them needed.

"Madame Pomfrey is not his mother!" Penny objected crossly. The infirmary indeed! How could a sick child ever be comfortable stuck on a lumpy infirmary bed, being cared for by a paid employee! More to the point, what sort of parent left their sick child alone at a boarding school being cared for by a paid employee!

"I'm going to see if he's all right," George said, giving into his parental instinct that something was wrong, despite his desire to convince Penny of the opposite.

Jasper leaned against the wall between the toilet and the sink. Penny was right. George agreed with her silently, he didn't look well. He had shadows under his eyes that had not been there at the end of Christmas holiday. The change in his schedule disrupted his sleep cycles. He'd always been sensitive to change that way. George remembered that he couldn't fall asleep by himself for months after they'd moved into the new house. Plus, he was white as a sheet, his face gleaming with a pale sheen of sweat.

"Hurling your guts out in here, Jasper?" George inquired forcing himself to sound casual.

"Yes," Jasper replied clutching his heaving stomach with both arms.

"Do you think you might feel better at home with Mummy and me for a few days?"

"I don't know."

"Are you feeling ill, or just upset?"

"Is there a difference?"

George crossed the room to lay his hand against Jasper's forehead. "You don't have any fever. I think maybe you're just upset."

"I think I'm going to hurl again," Jasper replied fleeing in the direction of the commode.

They ended up leaving Jasper and Rufus at Hogwarts. George thought it was the best thing for him at the moment, Penny disagreed, but they had other pressing problems to deal with. Penny acknowledged that she'd spent a segment of the previous all-nighter in the arms of her first husband, French kissing like the teenaged lovers they used to be. But she patently had not had sex with him. They'd gotten carried away, but not that carried away.

George informed her that he'd be carrying his stuff away into the spare bedroom, carried away, but not that carried away. He was still just down the hall because he didn't want to traumatize the children. He flopped down on the double four-poster bed in his spare room, feeling an over whelming angst filled exhaustion mixed with a pervasive sense of confused guilt, too wounded to sleep. So, this is what Jasper felt like most of the time. No wonder the little monster suffered from insomnia.

He rolled over to see Penny standing in the doorway. "Now what?" he grumbled at her in rare irritation.

"George, what are you doing?"

"I'm giving you some space," he apostatized.

"Don't do this," she disputed his relocation with a plaintive gesture. "Do you suppose you'll slip out of my life as easily as you slipped into it?"

"I'm just giving you some space," he replied, declining the debate.

"I want to go back to Hogwarts and bring Jasper home. I'm worried about him."

"Let it go, Penny," George sighed. "He has Quidditch practice tomorrow; he doesn't want to miss it. He's not ill; he's just upset and who wouldn't be? Let him go out onto the Quidditch field with his mates and work off some of his anxiety before we have to start giving him a draught of peace every night to get him to go to sleep."

"I'm not sure that playing Quidditch is the cure for all of life's many woes that you seem to believe it is," Penny stated feeling more than a tad disillusioned with her mate.

"You're smart about a lot of things, Penny, but you just don't understand about Quidditch. Trust me on this. Percy will go to Hogwarts tomorrow and sit in the stands to watch Jasper play. Then he can start a pleasant, non-personally invasive conversation with him regarding his phenomenal Keeping technique. They'll bond over Quidditch, and everyone will live happily ever after."

"Percy doesn't play Quidditch." Penny denied her second husband's absurd logic.

"You've never seen him play Quidditch," George corrected her. "Percy's actually a decent Keeper. He was just always too self-important to play with us. Maybe now he'll take the time for it."

Penny, who had never seen Percy play Quidditch, although they'd always enjoyed watching it together, had seen George spend entire days at a time coaching Jasper on the broomstick, while playing every position on the team himself. They'd play Quidditch all day until they were both so encrusted with mud that Penny made them hose off in the garage before coming into the house. George had the knack for dealing with Jasper, so she considered him carefully, "Will you go with him to Hogwarts tomorrow?"

"I think Percy can handle this by himself," George replied shortly. "I'm not at all concerned that he's going to try stealing my son. The better question might be; will you go with him to Hogwarts tomorrow?"

To George's credit, and to Penny's, she didn't challenge the 'my son' part of the slam aimed in her direction. Jasper was undoubtedly George's son, in every single way that mattered, and Penny would not ever take that away from him. She did, however, give him an understatedly quiet, "Ouch", before leaving the room.