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"It's perfect," Ron snickered under his breath, slowly pulling on the black skirt over his gangly legs. "Oh, Harry, this is bloody genius, they'll never see this coming."
"Keep it down, Ron," said Harry, though he was also trying his hardest to stifle a giggle as he struggled to pull on the tight khaki Quidditch pants. "Last thing we need is for them to come snooping 'round and find out before it's time."
"It's bloody brilliant, I tell you," said Ron enthusiastically, now wriggling into a black top. "Blimey, I think this is the most excited I've been for Halloween in a while."
Halloween at the Burrow had become a yearly affair ever since Teddy Lupin, in a shock of bright blue hair, declared it was his favorite holiday because it was the only day of the year he could freely Metamorph without earning weird looks. Of course, Ron thought fondly, it may just also be the only day of the year the little bugger knows he can outdo us all: having grown up between magic, Teddy whined constantly about not being able to do with his wand what he saw his family do, and telling him that he'd be able to do it when he went to Hogwarts seemed to be of little comfort. This was the one area where he knew he could do something not even Aunt Hermione's strongest Disillusionment charms could measure up to.
So the greatest event of the night was always seeing what Teddy had chosen to Metamorph into. Last year, he'd appeared as a porky, greasy short boy with a piggy nose and a nasty shock of blond hair, inspired —as he'd told them— by how "Uncle Harry always tells me about that mean boy from when he was my age", and Harry had had to leave the room wheezing at how well Teddy had incarnated Dudley. This year, Ron thought, he'd do something less revolting: he'd noticed him staring at Victoire, whose usual fairy princess attire accentuated her long silver-blond hair, and he thought this year he may go for impressing her.
Arthur and Molly always paired up and went as a variety of Muggle character duos, which Hermione happily kept supplying when they looked for new ideas: Archie (which paired nicely with the hair) and Betty, Gomez and Morticia Addams, Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Fred and Velma Flintstone... They didn't always get them 100% right, which was understandable, and Harry and Hermione didn't have the heart to tell them they highly doubted Bonnie and Clyde would've approved of Molly's bonnet.
Fleur, in an attempt to improve her English, had once purchased a thick book on the history of the United Kingdom, and had pulled images from it to dress like a new English royal every Halloween. The most notable one was where she dressed like Anne Boleyn and Bill (who always went as a rockstar, given all he had to do was wear a different band tee under his usual clothes) joked all dinner about how he was losing his head over how great she looked.
In a similar move, Hermione was partial to dressing like Jane Austen heroines, and she once had gotten Ron to don tails and a top hat to accompany her (which he'd sworn, gasping and pulling at the tight collar, he'd never do again), and she'd likely be going as one tonight. Ron found ways to dress up as every snack available at Honeydukes: a giant cardboard box became a carton of Every-Flavored Beans, a small Hover charm and some tulle made him a convincing Fizzing Whizzbee... His costume was usually Teddy's favorite, since he was too small to understand some of the adults' references, but candy? Oh, candy he knew. Ginny picked a different Hogwarts professor to embody every year, and so far, her McGonagall had been the most convincing, though her Flitwick had been funniest. Harry usually just wore jeans and a blue T-shirt and, to anyone who asked what he was supposed to be, he'd amusingly pull out his own Chocolate Frog card (where he was wearing the same outfit) and would say, in a mockingly insufferable voice, "I'm the Boy Who Lived, haven't you heard?"
But tonight, he and Ron were switching it up. They'd gone into town and made off with a couple of wigs, some dark black women's clothing, a Gryffindor scarf, and Quidditch robes they'd gotten at a fan store: in short, everything they needed to turn into their wives. As a two-year-old James whizzed around their legs, knocking into their ankles with the handle of a toy broom and dressed as a Hippogriff, Ron adjusted the bushy chestnut wig on his head and kept fussing with it, saying in awe, "Blimey, how does she manage with all this hair?"
"Beats me," said Harry as he struggled to button the tight pants that'd go under the emerald robes with WEASLEY in gold on the back. "How Ginny can fit into these and still look incredible, now, that's the real question..."
"Oi, mate, that's my sister you're talking about," said Ron in faux offense, tossing a box of hairpins at him, which he caught easily.
"Also my wife," Harry smiled, looking down at James as he made his way around them, hooting gleefully. "Say, Ron, how does it feel to be in the clothes of the brightest witch our age?"
"I wouldn't know, just last week the instructions to building a couch stumped her," said Ron, now draping the Gryffindor scarf around his neck. "I told her we were gonna do it with magic, but no, she said it had to be the Muggle way— granted, I almost impaled Rose last time I tried to charm a screwdriver..." he said, gesturing vaguely at baby Rose, who was bumbling contentedly on the bed. To complete the Hermione Granger look, her rosy toddler face was shrouded in ginger fur, part of the Crookshanks costume they'd gotten her into. "How about you, Harry? What's it like to be the youngest player ever signed by the Holyhead Harpies?"
In response, Harry merely did a whirl to send the tail of his uniform and the tips of his long orange-red wig flying, and attempted to pose defiantly, but lost his balance and tripped back onto the bed.
"Mate," said Ron as he pulled Harry to his feet again, "let's hope to Merlin she's not that clumsy on the field, otherwise the Harpies have lost the season already."
Giving the finishing touches to their costumes, Ron picked up Rose and held her in the crook of his hip, bouncing her lightly: "We're gonna give Mummy a surprise, aren't we, Rosie? She'll never see it coming... You ready?" he said, turning to Harry.
Harry nodded, his face split in a giddy grin, and opened the door slightly to let James whizz out on the broom— a herald of their eventual descent. Then, Rose in her father's arms and Harry clutching a broom, they tiptoed down the stairs stealthily, careful not to send any boards creaking so their appearance could remain a surprise, containing their snickering as they imagined the look on their wives' faces.
When, finally, they reached the landing, Ron turned for one last knowing look at Harry, cleared his throat, and put on a mock high-pitched voice as they swung into the kitchen: "Oh, Molly, do you happen to know whether Ron and Harry have come—"
He and Harry stopped cold in their tracks when they saw the sight that met them: Hermione bore a shock of red hair and an almost-exact replica of the dreadful dress robes Ron had once worn to the Yule Ball, while Ginny had appropriated Harry's usual blue tee and jeans, drawn a lightning scar across her forehead, placed glasses on her nose, and carried baby Albus —who was lost, just like Rose in the ginger fur, in a sea of white feathers, the Hedwig to Ginny's Harry— in the crook of one arm. Shocked, the two men looked at their wives with their mouths ajar, disbelieving the triumphant looks on their faces. Silence pervaded for a few more instants as the two couples (Harry and Ron in shock, Hermione and Ginny in victory) examined one another— and then shattered as they both broke out laughing at the same time.