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It was a miserably wet day, so Harry and Ron were spending their day off sitting by the fire in Harry’s living room debating Quidditch, the wireless softly playing music, the ceiling above their heads shaking as their children thundered around. The door creaked open, and a small red-haired boy came in, making a beeline for them both.
‘You look very serious, Hugo,’ said Harry, as his nephew marched towards him.
'I made this,’ said Hugo, in a business-like manner. He planted a spell-o-taped booklet in front of Harry.
THE BIOGRAFY OF HARRY POTTER
'Ah, brilliant,’ said Harry. 'I’ve been wanting one of these.'
With an extremely determined look on his face, Hugo turned the first page for him, where Harry saw an explosion of colour, stick figures, shaky lines and a poorly written story cramped into any white space. 'This is when you killed Voldemort the first time,’ said Hugo matter-of-factly. 'Those are your parents, on the floor.'
'Oh, Christ, Hugo,’ said Ron suddenly.
'Wow, that’s a lot of blood,’ said Harry.
Hugo nodded, and turned the page again, completely oblivious to Harry’s silent laughter. 'This is your family saying they don’t like you-’
'Right, Hugo,’ said Ron hastily, leaning forward and grabbing the book as Harry let out a bark of laughter. 'Why don’t you wait until this evening and show Mummy this, eh? Get her approval before you show Uncle Harry.'
'I want him to sign it first,’ said Hugo. 'It will be worth more then.'
'You’re a very shrewd businessman, Hugh,’ said Harry, trying to match the boy’s serious expression. He took Hugo’s crayon, and signed his name on the front cover, below the smiley face with a lightning bolt scar.
'Thank you,’ said Hugo politely. Harry waited until he had walked out of the room before laughing again.
'What have you been telling him?’ he asked Ron, who was shaking his head despairingly.
'Well he’s started reading properly now, hasn’t he? I turned around in Flourish and Blott’s, and there he was sitting in the corner with one of your biographies.'
'Damn, which one?'
'The Rita Skeeter one.'
Harry pulled a face. 'Can’t believe that’s still selling.'
'It was 70% off,’ joked Ron.
'Is he really reading at that level already?’ asked Harry, jerking his head to the door through which Hugo had left. 'Skeeter’s book’s not quality writing, but there’s still some big words in there.'
'Oh, yeah,’ said Ron. He said it in a casual sort of way, but Harry thought he seemed to sit a little taller. 'The issue is getting him to stop reading. We’ve had to take all his books out his bedroom or he just won’t sleep. But if he’s writing his own now, I’m not sure what else we can do.'
Harry was laughing again. 'I’m impressed, his is far more accurate than anything else that’s been published.’
'Well he had some pretty odd ideas after Rita Skeeter’s book, so me and Hermione sat with him for ages last night clarifying some details. It’s hard to stitch it all together, obviously he knew some bits, but there were huge gaps I realised we never really mentioned to either of them. I thought he’d find it upsetting, but-’
'Oh, they never do,’ said Harry. 'I frequently find my children acting out my most traumatic experiences.’
'It doesn’t bother you?'
'Nah, it’s pretty funny,’ replied. 'They don’t really realise, do they? I’ll admit to getting a bit of a shock when Teddy morphed into a poor impression of Voldemort to meet James’s demands though.’ He paused. 'I left it too late with him.’
Ron looked at him, surprised. Harry turned to look into the glowing embers of the fire. 'Too late? Ted, you mean?'
'Yeah, he was too old… Or, maybe because it was more real to him… I remember him being quite upset when I started telling him everything. Lots of difficult questions for weeks. But I’ve never had that with the others, they just sort of piece it all together and ask for stories about the tournament or escaping from Godric’s Hollow at bedtime, and I just skim over the particularly grisly bits and that’s all there is to it. They seem to find the stuff I want to talk about boring - the troll and the flying car and breaking into Gringotts, all that fun stuff.'
'Yeah, I’ve tried the troll a few times with mine,’ said Ron. 'They seem distinctly unimpressed. Makes me want to put them into a room with a troll and say “go on then, see how you fare!”, make them realise what a moment it was.'
'It was a moment, wasn’t it?’ Harry chuckled. 'But it’s not impressive for them. Not once you’ve told them about Neville lopping off a snake’s head right in front of Voldemort.'
Ron grinned, and leaned back in his chair, picking up his cup of tea. 'They’ll stop thinking any of it’s cool before long. Hopefully before they get to Hogwarts and realise it’s all just lessons and Quidditch.’
'Surely not.'
'Yeah I hear the kids there actually learn stuff now that we’ve gone.'
'Sounds awful,’ said Harry. From upstairs, they heard a whistling screech and an explosion. This bothered neither of them; Harry simply leaned forward to refill his cup of tea.