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“Dun, dun, dun-dun! Dun, dun, dun-dun! Dun, dun, dun-dun, dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun!”
The group of six-year-olds belted out the wedding march as Pansy Parkinson, wearing a veil made out of paper towels and carrying a bouquet of weeds Daphne had picked from the edges of the playground, made her way across the sandbox toward Ronald Weasley.
His red hair was slicked back from running his head under the drinking fountain a few minutes before the ceremony, and he wore a red and green Christmas tie that he’d stolen from his father’s closet that morning.
This wedding had been the talk of the class for days now. And finally it was time.
Pansy took one last step and then she was standing right beside him. All their classmates cheered. Ron blushed cherry red under the spring sun.
“Dearie be loved,” announced Anthony Goldstein. “We are here today to see the wedding of this man and this woman in holy mater money. If you have reasons these two should not be together, speak now or forever hold your peas.”
The children held their breaths, not daring to utter a sound.
Anthony smiled and turned to Ron. “Now you say what I say, okay? I, Ron—”
“I, Ron…”
“Take this woman—”
“Take this woman…”
“As my awful webbed wife—”
“As my awful webbed wife— I don’t think that’s right.”
“It is,” Tony insisted, before turning to the bride. “I, Pansy—”
“I, Pansy…”
“Take this man—”
“Take this man…”
“As my awful webbed husband—”
“As my awful webbed husband.”
“Okay, now the rings. Ernie!”
Ernie Macmillan stepped forward and presented his folded up sweater, two rings made of braided grass blades perched on top.
Ron and Pansy each grabbed their rings and placed them on their own fingers.
“By the powers in bested to me, I call you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
There were some “oohs” from the group of kids, and Ron blushed again as he stared at his new wife. He made no move toward her and, for a long moment, they just looked at each other.
Then…
“Just kiss me, Weasley,” the girl said, tossing her dark hair over one shoulder with an exaggerated impatience.
Ron leaned closer, pursing his lips. He kept inching forward until his lips pressed against Pansy’s for one quick moment. Then he pulled away, his cheeks on fire.
The giggling children celebrated until break was over.
Ron and Pansy got divorced during lunch.
***
Ron woke up from a fitful nap, the last vestiges of his dream slipping away. He groaned as he righted himself in his father’s old armchair. His neck was stiff from the angle he’d been sleeping in. He glared at the book in his lap.
“Of course,” he muttered. He pointed an accusatory finger at Wuthering Heights. “You just had to be the most boring book on the planet, didn’t you?”
“Hey, now. Somewhere in Cambridge, Hermione just flinched.”
“Har-dee-har.”
Ginny set down her basket of laundry and gathered her long hair up into a high ponytail. “I’m serious. I once folded a page down to mark my place in a book and I heard her scream in the next room over. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.”
Ron snorted until Ginny began packing her freshly cleaned clothes and footie kit into a duffle bag. His gut twisted at the sight.
He wished Ginny wasn’t so bloody enjoyable to be around all of a sudden. It would be so much easier to say goodbye when she had to return to Uni tomorrow if she was still that annoying little sister who blushed whenever Harry came round to revise. Now Ginny had a football scholarship and an engagement ring on her finger, with an indeterminate wedding date set for when Harry returned from active duty in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.
This girl who’d spent the weekend washing what looked to be her entire wardrobe was marvelous and fun and Ron never wanted her to leave.
Ron held up the book he’d been reading for his further education class. “Have you read this one?”
Ginny paused in her packing and squinted at the cover. “Can’t say that I have. Sorry. But I bet there’s a movie for it. Let me check Netflix.”
As she whipped out her phone and began tapping at the screen, Fred came waltzing through the door, swinging the spare house keys around his finger. “‘Ello, ‘ello!”
“What are you doing here?” Ron asked.
“A shift opened up at the restaurant tonight. Wanted to see if you were available, Won-Won.”
Ron looked down at the book in his lap. “I kind of have to finish this before class tomorrow…”
Fred looked at where the bookmark stuck out of the pages, barely one third of the way through the book. “Yeah, because that’s gonna happen. Look, I can try to find someone else, but you’re the one who said you wanted more hours—“
“I know, I know.” He sighed.
Ron was slowly (very, very slowly) saving up enough money to get his own place. The twins actually paid their waitstaff quite well, especially since Triple W was quickly becoming one of the nicest restaurants in town. Ron had to practically beg to be considered for one of their full-time staffer positions. This might be exactly the opportunity he’d been looking for.
And honestly, Ron was only taking a few courses at the local campus to kill time while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. His 19th Century Literature class had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, inspired by a late-night phone call with Hermione, and he was starting to think he’d die of boredom if he had to read one more page of this flowery drivel.
Ron tossed the book away and stood up, his leg twinging from the abruptness. “What time do you need me there?”
“Seven.”
“Alright, I’ll see you then.”
***
It was well into his shift when Ron was tasked with taking a bottle of wine to table twelve.
“Finally,” enthused a man with a thick black mustache and a receding hairline when he spotted Ron hobbling his way toward him with a bottle of 2007 Sassicaia Cabernet Sauvignon. Ron marked him as a pretentious prat instantly. He also looked a little familiar.
His companion had her back turned toward Ron, but she was clearly much younger than the man. Ron held back an eye roll.
“Took you long enough,” the man grunted.
“My apologies for the wait, would you like—?”
Ron startled when he finally caught sight of the girl’s face. He’d only just been dreaming about her.
What were the odds?
“Dear boy, we don’t have all night. Just pour the glasses,” the man ordered. Ron snapped out of his strange trance and grinned politely at the man.
“Of course.” Ron popped the cork and felt Pansy’s gaze on the side of his face as he began pouring the 300-pound bottle of cab first into Pansy’s glass and then Mr. Parkinson’s.
Mr. Parkinson had returned his attention to his daughter. “Now, remember, we made an arrangement when you went away. I hope you will keep to your word, darling.”
“I remember, father,” Pansy replied tersely.
Ron tuned out the rest of their conversation as best he could. He had always been very good about not eavesdropping on diners… mostly because he usually didn’t care. Ron placed the bottle on the table with the label facing the hosts, just like he’d been taught, and left quietly.
***
It was a busy night, so Ron rarely had another opportunity to check on the Parkinsons. It was a half an hour later when he popped his head into the kitchens and announced he was going on his break.
“I’ll get Eddy to cover your tables,” George replied, his focus on a pan of pasta sauce.
That was all the acknowledgment Ron knew he was going to get, so he left through the staff exit doors and twisted around a corner, only to bump into...
Who else? Of course it was Pansy Parkinson, because the universe was being weird today.
“Oh, sorry. I’m probably not allowed here, right?”
Ron’s eyes widened. Had Pansy Parkinson just… apologized?
“You’re okay. I don’t own the alley.”
Pansy glanced up at the sound of his voice, her mouth forming a little “o”. “Ronald Weasley,” she stated.
Ron raised a playful eyebrow. “Pansy Parkinson.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Ron pulled out a pack from the inside pocket of his blazer. “Cigarette?” he offered.
Pansy smirked. “Yes, please.”
Ron shook two cigarettes loose from the pack as he pondered Pansy’s use of the word “please”. She’d clearly changed since secondary school. He rather liked the change.
Ron handed her a cigarette which she brought to her lips instantly. He pulled out his lighter and Pansy leaned in, cupping her hands around her mouth to keep the flame from blowing out in the gentle breeze. Once it was lit, she stepped back and Ron went to work on his own. He breathed in the nicotine and relaxed against the brick wall of Triple W.
“So… when did Ronald Weasley start smoking?”
Ron chuckled, pleasantly surprised that Pansy started the conversation before he could. “Since I hurt my leg in a car accident and found I couldn’t play football anymore.” He tilted his head toward Pansy, who looked a little pale in the sparse light from the moon. “Suddenly, keeping my lungs clean didn’t seem like all that much fun, you know?” He nodded his head towards Pansy. “What about you?”
“Oh,” replied Pansy, flicking her wrist casually. “All the actors smoke on The West End.
“Ooh… The West End. Very fancy. So, what brings you back to our illustrious hometown, Miss Parkinson?”
“Illustrious? Big word.”
“Well, I did date Hermione Granger for nearly a year. Some of her intelligence was bound to rub off on me. Unfortunately I got her ridiculous vocabulary.”
Pansy chuckled and took a drag from her cigarette. There was a beat; then, she blew out the smoke in concentric circles. Ron smirked, weirdly impressed.
“Now,” he said, pulling a drag from his own cigarette, “you didn’t answer my question, Pansy. Why are you back in town?”
Pansy ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, you know.”
“I don’t. That’s why I asked.”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “Well, as it turns out, I’m not a very good actress. Also, I hate London… and acting.”
Ron laughed. Then his grin twisted into a grimace when he remembered the tense conversation he’d heard between Pansy and her father not even an hour ago. “I heard what your dad said. What’s this arrangement he spoke of?”
Pansy scowled.
But she didn’t leave.
“Hey,” said Ron, holding up his hands. “No judgement. I’m a washed-up footballer who still lives at home. And I’m only able to work here because my brothers own the restaurant.”
Pansy raised a curious eyebrow. “Which brothers?”
“I’ll give you one guess,” he deadpanned.
Pansy smirked. “Well, the twins make delicious food.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Alright, your turn to share.”
She took a deep breath. “I—” She stopped and then tried again. “I made a deal. With my father. I told him if I didn’t land a part on the West End in two years, I’d come back home and—”
Ron rubbed his nose and waited. “And…” he prompted.
“And I’d marry Marcus Flint.”
“Eurgh,” Ron blurted out instantly. He thought of that troll of a man who’d “accidentally” injured Harry during a football match. He scrunched up his nose like he’d just smelled something awful. “Why him?”
Pansy shrugged, unperturbed by Ron’s obvious repulsion. “Marcus is a junior partner at my father’s firm. Apparently he is well-loved there, and my father basically wants to make him his son.”
Ron blinked for several moments, and the silence in the alleyway was… actually kind of nice.
“An arranged marriage,” he mused. “How novel. How very nineteenth century novel.”
Pansy barked out an uncharacteristic laugh. She gasped, clearly surprised by her own outburst.
Ron smiled around the cigarette between his lips. “So, I take it you’ve decided to back out of this arrangement.”
Pansy’s smile dimmed and she met his gaze nervously. He’d never realized how big her eyes were before. “Well…”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I don’t know, okay? It’s as good an option as any. What else would I do?”
“Whatever you want to do!”
“What if I don’t know what I want?!” Pansy shrieked. She paused, furrowing her brow. Then, she took a drag from her dwindling cigarette. “I mean—” She glared up at him with righteous indignation. “Do you know what you want, Weasley?”
The dreaded question.
Ron had been asked this so often over the past couple years, and he’d never really had an answer. But tonight, with Pansy Parkinson, he might have come up with something.
“Do you remember primary school?”
Parkinson blinked, startled by the abrupt subject change. “Er… maybe?”
“I’ve been thinking about that time a lot lately,” Ron admitted, shrugging his shoulders and leaning against the brick wall of Triple W. “I loved primary school. I was friends with everybody, and we got nap time, and we got to eat all the food we could get our grubby little hands on. And there was just… something about how freeing it all was. I could say I was going to become a pro footballer when I grew up, because being grown up seemed so far away, you know?”
Ron swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat and caught Pansy’s gaze with his own once more.
“That’s what I want, Pans. I want to be a part of that effortlessness that you only get by being a child.” Ron huffed. “But I’m an adult now, and I don’t see how I’m ever going to feel that kind of childlike wonder again.”
“You become a parent, that’s how.”
Ron blinked and watched Pansy do the same across from him; the ashy end of her cigarette was about to fall under its weight if she didn’t remember its existence soon.
Ron opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what to say.
“You’d be a good dad,” Pansy whispered reverently, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.
Ron choked on air. He floundered a bit. “I— you— well… What makes you think so?”
“Because…” Pansy looked up at him, her head tilting slightly as if she were reading a very unusual book and something had caught her interest. “Because I wouldn’t agree to marry someone at six years old if I didn’t think they’d be a good father to my children.”
Ron took in the scene. The two of them alone, but together, in the dark, little orange lights illuminating from the tips of their cigarettes. There was a stillness in the air, as if they— he and Pansy— were on the precipice of something. Something monumental. He hadn’t felt like this in… he’d never felt like this.
“Do you think Marcus Flint would be a good father?” he asked.
More silence.
Then...
“No,” she breathed out.
Ron took an unconscious step closer to this girl, this woman with her big dark eyes and tiny pursed lips. Those lips had uttered magical words under the stars in the back alley behind his brothers’ restaurant.
Ron and Pansy had been married once upon a time. They’d lost touch in their later school years, but somehow, she’d always been in the back of Ron’s mind. This felt inevitable, in a weird way.
Pansy huffed and flicked her black hair over her shoulder. “Just kiss me, Weas—“
He didn’t let her finish this time. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t blush
He just kissed her.