Surprise

Surprise
part three

The sun was lowering in the sky when the rear door opened again.

"Molly, I said I'd be in shortly," Hermione said, rocking gently as she stared at the sunset.

"I'm not Molly," Harry replied, letting the door shut behind him as he stepped onto the porch.

Hermione shot up as if her seat were a spring.

Harry sighed heavily. "Sit down, Hermione." When she didn't move, Harry repeated himself, a general's command lacing his voice.

She hadn't heard that tone from him since the war and decided not to press him. She sat on the porch swing once again.

Harry moved to the railing, then turned to sit lightly on the edge. He ran a hand through his hair -- well, over it really, since it was so short -- and sighed again. Hermione pushed off with one foot, setting the swing in slow motion.

"How could you do that to us, Hermione?" he asked finally, looking up at her through his dark lashes.

Nervously swallowing the punch of arousal at his look, she met his eyes. "Do what?"

He straightened, staring incredulously at her. She raised her eyebrows. He scoffed.

"You're a piece of work, Hermione," he said finally.

The hurt that followed his words shamed her. Early on, just after she'd found out she was pregnant, she'd tried to put herself in their place. Obviously, she'd failed miserably. She'd misjudged their reactions so completely that her choices were now as much the problem as her tendency to run away.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?" Though the words were delivered without heat, Hermione gasped as if slapped. Harry glared at her, anger flushing his face. "Don't you dare play the aggrieved widow now."

"I...I..." Her voice trailed off when she realized that's exactly what she'd been doing, however unconsciously.

A sick feeling rolled through her. In trying to come to terms with all that had happened, she'd shut out the two people who could have helped her despite the fact they'd been the ones to impregnate her in the first place. She'd hurt them as much as she'd hurt herself.

He sighed again and sagged against the railing. "Ron sent me out here because I'm less likely to lose my temper, so what's the first thing I do?" The self-deprecating question accompanied a rueful smile.

"It wasn't my intention to keep your children from you," she began.

He met her eyes, raised one eyebrow, and said, "Yet that's exactly what you've done."

"Yes."

Silence stretched heavily between them until she broke it by asking, "What do we do now?"

"Ron and I want to know our children, Hermione."

Though a nervous panic skittered along her nerves at that idea, she nodded. They deserved the chance to know their children. After all, isn't that why she'd returned to England?

"How magnanimous of you," he said, a sarcastic bite adding teeth to the words. The words cut at her heart.

"Fuck," he spat, pushing off the railing again. "I can't do this without getting angry." Two strides put him at the door. One hand on the handle, he briefly met her eyes. "We'll talk later." After her sharp nod, he entered the house, the door slamming shut behind him.

She sat in silence broken only by the gnomes in the garden. Devin liked to watch them, but Alex was the one who wanted to chase them. Burying her face in her hands, she cried.

Full dark had set in before Molly fetched her for dinner. Molly said nothing, merely patted Hermione's hand, taking it firmly in her own. Hermione smiled wistfully, following the Weasley matriarch into the house.

Hermione froze in the doorway upon seeing Ron and Harry at the kitchen table with their children. Molly tugged her forward with the iron grip she had on Hermione's wrist.

At the close of the door, the boys looked up. Tension that hadn't been present before now filled Harry's expression. Ron looked more pensive than before but no less annoyed or angry. Hermione swallowed nervously, still not ready to face the situation she'd thrown them all into.

"Sit, Hermione," Molly ordered. After a quick glance at Molly, Hermione sat. Pleased with herself, Molly then turned to the boys, arms out. "The children." Slightly stunned, Ron and Harry handed over Devin and Alex.

With that, Molly left the room, casting locking wards on the doorways and windows afterward.

Harry ground his teeth in frustration before glaring at Ron.

Ron glared back. "What?"

"She's your mother," Harry spat.

Ron thrust a thumb in Hermione's direction. "And my mother is on Hermione's side."

"I didn't realize we were on different sides," Hermione said softly.

Ron pinned her with his eyes. "What are we supposed to think when you disappear after shagging the hell out of both of us?" Ron paused, but held up a hand when Hermione opened her mouth to respond. "When you show up eight months later, unharmed and hugely pregnant to tell Harry and I we're going to be fathers? What are we supposed to think?" The towel he'd been tangling in his hands ripped in two. "Then, after we offer you a place to live, the chance to let us into our children's lives, you fucking disappear again. What should we think?" He began to methodically shred the towel even as Harry walked to the rear door to stare out the window. "And this time you don't find us, we find you. With our children? What should we think?"

Hermione said nothing, her only noises were her sniffles as tears poured down her face.

"I know I probably won't be a good father," Harry began, making her gasp and spin in her seat to face him, "but that's no reason to prevent me from seeing my son." Harry turned to face her and Ron. His eyes were red-rimmed, betraying his emotion, but his face was hard.

She was astonished and horrified he believed that. That idea never entered into her thoughts, but she was angry at the Dursleys all over again for making Harry believe himself worthless.

"We love you, Hermione," Ron said softly, drawing her attention back to him. "However, we don't like you much right now."

A little voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Ron at age eleven said, "She's a nightmare, honestly."

Swallowing hard in an attempt to regain control of her emotions, she whispered, "How can I fix this?"

Harry knelt by her chair and gathered her hands in his. "Stop running."

"Andrew's dead," Ron said bluntly.

She flinched at the reminder of her husband, but didn't pull away. She knew he was dead. His death was a small part of her running away. "I know," she said in a choked whisper.

"We want to be part of your life again, Hermione," Harry rasped. She missed them, too, probably nearly as much as they missed her if their actions were anything to go by.

She looked down only to be shocked by the near-tears expression on his face. Harry rarely cried, another legacy of the Dursleys. She tugged a hand loose to cup his cheek. He nuzzled her hand briefly before pulling back, releasing her and standing.

"If we go forward together, you have to stop running," Ron said, voice as hard as Harry's had been. "We have to be able to know you'll still be there when something happens, or even when we get back from work."

Harry cocked his head at Ron, a smile teasing his lips. "You work at home, Weasley."

Ron waived a hand dismissively. "You know what I mean, Potter."

Focusing once again on Hermione, Ron continued, "You have to be there for us and let us be there for you."

"We used to be the Golden Trio," Harry added softly. "Now we're two poufs and a fag hag."

Ron choked back a laugh. "What?"

Harry had the decency to blush. "It's just something I heard."

"A fag hag wouldn't have slept with you," Hermione muttered.

Ron raised an eyebrow. "You only did it once. Are we supposed to remember?"

"I think it was more than once, if you count us both," Harry interjected. "At least twice each, if I recall."

After a glare at Harry, Hermione reclaimed her hands, crossed her arms on the table and buried her head against them.

"Don't you want a repeat?" Ron purred.

She lifted her head enough to glare at both of them. They were both smiling beatifically. After rolling her eyes, she dropped her head again. She wasn't up for dealing with their choir boy act -- they were anything but choir boys.

"Hermione?" Harry asked slowly as if testing the waters.

With a sigh and a groan, she lifted her head again, this time resting her chin on her arms. "Yes?"

"What are you thinking?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Other than the fact the two of you aren't innocent and there's no reason to pretend otherwise?"

"There may not be a reason, but it's fun," Ron said, grinning.

Her eyes darted between them again. Their fingers were entwined on the tabletop, even in their annoyance and anger with her. They still had that silent communication that annoyed her to no end, the ability to just glance at each other and speak volumes.

"Do you know why I left the night I showed at your flat pregnant?" she asked suddenly.

There it was, that look between them, before Ron said, "No. We offered you a place to stay and you left."

She straightened, leaning back in her chair, to eye them darkly. "You offered me a guest room. Eight months pregnant with your children and you offered me your guest room."

Harry caught on faster. She watched the confusion play across his face before understanding washed that away.

"You mean if we'd asked you to sleep with us all of this –" he made a motion with his hand encircling them before gesturing in the direction Molly had taken the twins "– could have been avoided?" He sounded incredulous, whether at her or the situation, she didn't know.

"Yes," she answered simply.

"Fuck," Ron muttered.

A stunned silence fell. I was all Hermione could do not to squirm uncomfortably. She refused to feel guilty for wanting to sleep with them despite the injured looks on their faces. If she had said something rather than Disapparating, none of the angst they were suffering now would be necessary. But at eight months pregnant, after eight months without her boys, to be treated like a guest had been too much to bear.

Her throat felt tight when she opened her mouth to break the silence, tight with tension and burning with unshed tears.

"If...if I moved in," she began, sniffling once again, "what would the situation be?"

She dropped her eyes, unable to look at them. They held her future and she was afraid.

A moment later, from the corners of her vision, she saw two hands, one freckled, one pale, reach across the table toward her. They waited there until she looked up. Ron had a goofy smile on his face; Harry looked nervous, biting his lip nearly to the point of making it bleed.

Her mind, fixated for so long on her -- their -- children, snapped. Tears poured down her cheeks as suddenly as turning a tap on full. Even as she reached out, taking their proffered hands, her only coherent thought was, They want me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Alex, get out of the tree!" Hermione yelled from the rear porch.

"Mum!" Alex protested, but climbed down.

She was glad he'd done it on his own because she was in no condition to physically remove him from the branches of the huge oak in the Weasley garden. She didn't dare attempt magic on him right now, either. At nine months pregnant, a witch's magic was the most unpredictable and she didn't want her son to end up in London by accident.

When the twins had turned five, Hermione decided it was time they had another sibling. Harry and Ron had needed little convincing -- they enjoyed the "practicing." Though Hermione had not elected the gender and paternity charms this time around, given the almost instantaneousness with which she became pregnant after her contraception charms were removed, it was an unspoken consensus that this pregnancy was a Weasley baby.

Watching Alex fall from the last two branches, she merely sighed. He was much more accident-prone than she or Harry; accident-prone to the point she was afraid to allow him on a broom, especially by himself, much to Harry's dismay. Alex hobbled to the porch and looked up at his mother with the same puppy dog pout his father had perfected.

Turning to Harry, who had just exited the house, she asked, "Could you heal his ankle? Again."

Chuckling, Harry did so, then levitated Alex up the steps. Collecting his son in his arms, he called for Devin as Hermione levered herself from the porch swing. Devin raced around the corner, dirt smudged over her face and hands, red braids trailing behind her like banners. Both Molly and Ron often said Devin reminded them of Ginny, a memory which became less bitter and more sweet as time passed.

This would be their last Sunday at The Burrow before the baby was born, or, at the very least, the last Sunday Hermione could stand to travel. She felt as big as she had with the twins, though the midwife had assured her she was carrying only one child.

Once in the door, Ron helped her to a comfortable chair before bringing her supper to her. She smiled in response, kissing Ron's cheek before settling back to watch her family.

Devin, once again, attempted to draw all eyes to her. She was a drama queen, but did it in such an endearing way that most couldn't be angry with her and walked away feeling bemused by her antics. Alex, on the other hand, was a complete daredevil, the worst of both his fathers but with as much charm as his sister. The easy affection between Ron and Harry no longer made her feel excluded, even now when their thighs were pressed together under the table and Ron was gently massaging the back of Harry's neck, but made her feel wonderfully included because they did the same for her. Well, when she wasn't nine months pregnant and cursing them, that is.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Three days later, Hermione went into labor. After getting nothing accomplished with Ron and Harry there, she made Ron Floo his mother. She arrived in her no-nonsense fashion, sent Alex and Devin to stay with Fred and Angelina, then settled in for the duration.

To everyone's surprise but her own, she delivered twins again: one boy with a tuft of red hair they named William Edward Weasley after Ron's eldest brother, lost in the war; and one girl with a full head of raven-dark hair paternity charms revealed to be Harry's and they named her Laurel Evans Potter.