Revenge is Sweet

Chapter Five

Wedding Bells

We got married at the Burrow. I'd expected his family to make a big stink over the whole thing but...well, Weasleys are Weasleys, fertile as rabbits. This sort of wedding was hardly a novelty to them.

After the ceremony, I had to sit through a "celebratory" dinner. There were lots of people there--both Arthur and Molly are from large families--and I'd never been comfortable in crowds. I survived, somehow.

Afterwards we apparated back to my house. I showed him my room, which I'd fixed up to accommodate two people. We engaged in small talk about the décor for a while, then lapsed into an awkward silence.

It was Ron who spoke first. "I...I'm sorry I had to inflict myself on you for the rest of your life."

I stared at my shoes. "I'm sorry that of all the girls you ever slept with, you had to end up with the ugliest."

He strode over to me and grabbed my shoulders firmly. "Don't you ever say that again!" he commanded.

"Don't deny it," I said sullenly.

"Oh, but I will," he said softly. "Until I met you, I didn't realize what I liked in a woman. Most of my girlfriends were built like sticks. I was afraid to be anything but gentle for fear of...of snapping them in half!" I giggled at first, but the look on his face was completely serious. The earnestness turned to guilt as he continued to gaze at me. "I don't really remember much about the night we spent together..."

"Neither do I," I interrupted.

"But I do have a fuzzy recollection that it was rather rough-and-tumble, and I liked it," he said with a smirk.

"But I'm still not a supermodel," I said.

"Who is?" he asked with a shrug. "Every woman that I've dated has had some good points and some bad ones. The other girls I've...umm...been intimate with all had small breasts, for example. Whereas you...um..." He blushed as his gaze dropped to the low-cut neckline of my wedding robes; obviously, he liked well-endowed women.

"You really want me?" I asked incredulously. In response, he took me in his arms and showed me that he did.

***

At some point we realized that we were both thoroughly exhausted and downright starving. Not surprising, considering that we'd been going at it for several hours. We went downstairs to the kitchen to see what was left in the cupboards.

"Hey, Bul...er," Ron broke off lamely.

I looked up from the cupboard I was digging through. "What's that?"

"Er, I guess I can't call you Bulstrode any more," he said. "That's what I've always called you. Even Crabbe called you that. Don't you ever go by your first name?"

I rolled my eyes. "Bulstrode isn't a pretty name, but it's heaps better than Millicent. I hate my first name."

"Oh." He was silent for a while--considering the possibilities, I guess. Finally he said, "Is Millie all right?"

I rolled the name around in my head a bit. Millie. Millie Weasley. No, that wasn't too terrible. It actually sounded...feminine. Cute, even. Much better than my real name, which I'd always thought was better suited for someone's ninety-year-old spinster aunt. "I think that will work," I said after a while.

"Good," he said with finality. "So, Millie, did you find anything to eat?"

I opened some tins of soup and we chatted about names, of all things, as we ate. I told him that, if I had a girl, I wanted her to have a name that was beautiful. Maybe a floral name, if we could find one that wasn't tainted with unpleasant associations. Between the two of us we ruled out Pansy, Narcissa, Lily, and Petunia. We decided on Daisy.

If the child ended up being a boy, Ron insisted, he would have a name that was not too common, but not too uncommon either. In other words, not Fred or George but also nothing like Draco. We couldn't come up with a boy's name but, as I pointed out, we still had quite a bit of time to think about things.

Now that my stomach was full, my mind was finally functioning again. I suddenly remembered what I had planned to do tonight.

"Hold on a minute," I said. I raced upstairs, dug through my desk drawer, and found the envelope. When I returned to the kitchen, I handed it to my husband. "I almost forgot. Here's your wedding present."

He opened it, puzzled. I wish I could have taken a photograph of the moment when he pulled out the stack of tickets. His jaw dropped. After he'd flicked through the pile, he looked up at me in glowing admiration. "Millie! This is the best present ever!" And then he flushed and stared at the table. "I didn't get you anything," he finally mumbled.

I was damned if I was going to let him spoil my perfect wedding night. "You got me a husband," I said. "I was starting to wonder if I would ever have one of those."

He looked at me shyly and gave me a peck on the nose.

"And besides," I added, suddenly realizing the source of his embarrassment, "I only had to buy one of the tickets. I get a free pair to every game."

"Oh," he said with obvious relief. Turning back to the stack, he began flipping through them more slowly. "Two tickets for Puddlemere versus the Pride of Portree. Two for Puddlemere versus the Wimbourne Wasps. Two for Puddlemere versus the Holyfield Harpies. Two for...no, three for Puddlemere versus the Chudley Cannons! What's the extra ticket for?"

"I thought you might like to invite Harry," I said quietly.

"Aww, Millie," he said with a sigh, "Are you sure you haven't known me all my life?"

Someone once told me that it was easy to keep a man satisfied--you just had to take care of his two appetites. Ron's a little more complex than that. He does need sex and food, of course, but he needs a little more. Just a little more. Top those two ingredients off with a couple of friends and as much Quidditch as possible and you have one happy man.