Work Text:
I have a surprise for you. x x
It's so good. Wicked good.
Prepare to be amazed.
Harry - Why is Ron using your stationery? More to the point, why is Ron in your office and not at work?
Are you guys fighting? He didn't seem upset. Never mine... I don't want to know.
Hermione: Ron wanted me to send you a note saying he's got something for you. Please don't bother writing back, I really don't want to know. Chucking him out now.
If my husband pays any of you a visit today, please feel free to throw him out on his ear and tell him I'm accepting no more missives from him on Ministry stationery. It's very silly. Very sorry if any of you are further disrupted by this. Ronald, I shall see you at home.
My love, Whatever you're thinking of sending as reply to Hermione, re-consider. x x
Hermione, If I didn't know any better, I'd think you actually found this amusing
Thank you, darling.
There has to be a better way, you two. PS: You'd be well within policy to have him detained for trespassing. Just saying.
“Did you have fun today running amok at the Ministry?” Hermione asked by way of greeting later that night, as soon as she’d stepped out of the Floo to see Ron mid-sip from a bottle of beer. There were damp patches all over the front of his shirt, presumably from having giving Hugo a bath.
Ron grinned as Hermione took a sip of his drink. “I miss it there sometimes, is all. Not enough to actually go back, mind. But Harry and I had lunch, so…” He shrugged.
“Mmm. And your reason for disrupting Seamus’s work?” she asked shrewdly.
He scoffed. “If Seamus does any work, I’ll eat my fucking shoe.”
“And what does George do whilst you’re off gadding about town?”
“Whenever he wants as long as it’s not being a pain in my arse and making unnecessary last-minute changes to products in final testing. Lunatic. Nah, have it,” he added, waving for Hermione to keep the beer she’d swiped from him. “I’m gonna have a shower. Rosie’s reading to Hugh, I’d be surprised if they’re not both asleep in about fifteen minutes. Eat something.”
He punctuated the last with an affectionate swat on her bum before heading off to shower.
When Hermione poked her head into the kids’ room, she found that Hugo was already out cold — very like his father in that way, without fail, as soon as his head hit the pillow. Rose’s eyelids were drooping as she made a valiant effort to continue reading aloud.
“Mummy!” she whisper-shouted, and Hermione pressed a finger to her own lips as she crept into the room.
Rose protested halfheartedly as Hermione tucked her in, but almost as soon as Hermione’s attention was turned to tucking in Hugo, she’d succumbed to sleep.
Hermione was tucking in to a plate of leftover spaghetti (cold, her favourite way to eat it, despite Ron thinking that was absolutely disgusting) when her eye caught upon a small, nondescript gift bag hanging on the coat rack next to an array of coats and hats. Hardly thinking about it, Hermione went to inspect, still holding her plate in one hand.
Curiously, she poked at the little bag. That obviously yielded no information. Throwing a quick look over her shoulder, she lifted the bag from the hook to peer inside.
“Aha, caught you snooping!”
Hermione jumped at his voice, fumbling the little bag. Ron managed to save it before it hit the ground, as Hermione focused on keeping her dinner from going all over her shirt.
“So you really do have something for me?” she asked with barely concealed interest. She set aside her plate.
“Said I did, didn’t I?” Ron’s hair was damp, a few droplets still falling onto the collar of his t-shirt.
“You’ll excuse me for thinking it was all some elaborate setup to a joke about it being something inside your pants. Particularly as there’s no occasion I’m aware of, which makes it extra suspicious.”
Ron snorted. “Well, you can have that, too. But no, as to this, there is no occasion, as I’ve been informed that Triple-W merchandise is not an acceptable gift for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, or any other holidays on a standard calendar. Therefore, you get it for no other reason than to celebrate my brilliance.”
But though he affected smugness, the look on his face was distinctly hopeful as he delivered the bag into her waiting hands. Hermione couldn’t recall the last time he’d looked this excited about a gift he’d given her. The resultant scoff she gave him, therefore, wasn’t nearly as lofty as she’d meant it to be.
“Oh, great, what sort of horrors…” She trailed off, a thought striking her with her hand halfway inside the bag. “This had better not be an experiment.”
“Not an experiment. Testing’s completely finished.”
That was only marginally less alarming.
“Great…” Warily, she withdrew a single item from the bag — an unlabeled glass jar filled with purple wax.
“It’s… a candle,” she observed.
“Light it.” Blue eyes gazed down eagerly at her as Ron leaned one shoulder against the wall, hands in the pockets of his pyjama bottoms.
“Why?” She eyed the jar suspiciously. “What does it do?”
When he merely responded with a mysterious look, she relented, placing the candle on a table and standing back two metres as she drew her wand. Ron stifled a laugh.
With a flick of her wand, the wick caught flame.
“This is entirely against my better — Oh. ”
Freshly mown grass. New parchment. And —
She glanced up, eyes wide, to see Ron smiling in satisfaction — but his eyes had also softened into a look of easy contentment once the candle had been lit. He looked the way she felt.
Hermione had never actually confirmed to Ron (or anyone) the third thing she smelled in Amortentia — and the look on his face suggested he was experiencing his own bliss at that moment. Which meant, she realised, as he produced a label from his pocket and handed it over, that this candle must have a unique scent to each person.
Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes
Amortentia Candle
We’ll set the mood, but the rest is up to you.
“Wait…” she breathed.
Ron shook his head, anticipating exactly what she was going to say.
“It doesn’t actually have all the same ingredients as Amortentia. Absolutely cannot function as a love potion. I’m not excited to tell you that I did, in fact, drink melted candle wax in order to test that theory, but the important thing is, when I did it, I did not fall in love with the first person I saw.” He paused. “And thank God, honestly, because the only other person in the room was George, and that would have been odd, to say the least.”
She decided to play with him a bit. “Well, not to insult George, but oughtn’t you have paraded some beautiful women into the room to really make sure?”
Ron crossed his arms. “Well, you were busy.”
“Oh, really. Who came up with that line, you or George?”
“George,” he admitted immediately, grinning again when he was rewarded with a fit of giggles.
“This is amazing,” she said at last, and she didn’t miss the way his face lit up under her praise. “Have you already started selling these?”
“Not yet. You and Angie got the first ones. Soon, though. We needed to get a few more reactions, make sure George and I haven’t just been hallucinating, you know, wishful thinking.”
She felt his eyes on her as she studied the jar. It had been years since she’d smelled Amortentia, and as love potions were now banned she’d never imagined she ever would again. It had that bizarre way of taking the scents one loved and making them more real. The grass smelled sharper and fresher, grassier than grass. The parchment, smoother and more crisp than real life, but that was undeniably what it was. And as for the third scent…
Well, in fairness, it was a bit hard to judge with the real thing standing right there.
“So…” Ron tilted his head. “It works? I mean… it’s right?”
“As… as far as I can remember…” Hermione closed her eyes, concentrating.
The Ron stood before her was fresh from the shower — all soap and clean skin and shampoo and toothpaste. But what she detected in the candle’s scent was something much more raw, warm and lived-in, like the way he smelled first thing in the morning.
She laughed, unexpectedly, from sheer astonishment.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, I just…” Hermione inhaled, slow and dreamy, letting her eyes fall closed as she turned it over in her mind. “It’s remarkable, it’s exactly as I remembered it…”
When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Ron had one hand curled in front of his mouth to hide a smirk.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“You, uh — ” He cleared this throat. “You look a little…” He mimed fanning himself. “Are you sweating??”
“What, no!”
Maybe she was a little warm.
Just as with real Amortentia, the aroma alone couldn’t truly intoxicate a person. But it was meant to make you want to be near it, consume it, swim in a pool of it, think about nothing else. And Hermione was transported back to the first time she’d ever experienced the scent of the love potion, when she’d crashed headlong into the realisation of what she detected in it.
Not only had she had to contend with the reality of certain feelings she’d been desperately trying to bury — she also, in that moment in Potions class, had been overwhelmed with the sensation of being surrounded by Ron. She’d had to dig her nails into her palms to keep herself from acquiescing to the voice in her head demanding in an insistent stage whisper: You should kiss him. It’s fine. It’s a good idea; our best idea. Everyone will understand — just look at them all! Or maybe just ask him to take his shirt off. Or do both. Do it do it do it, do it now. Poke that little freckle below his ear. Lick it. Has his neck always looked like that? I bet his neck smells amazing; you are RUINING this for us…
And eventually, of course, she’d confirmed that his neck did smell amazing, and she had licked that freckle, and —
“Should I leave you two alone?” Ron’s voice in the present sliced through the thick cloud of her thoughts.
Hermione tried to look as annoyed as possible. “Please, I’m sure you were hoping for that kind of… reaction.”
Ron laughed. “Not really. It's a happy bonus, though.”
He picked up the candle, pondering it for a moment.
“What does it smell like to you?” he asked at last, baldly curious.
Her face heated even more under the irrational feeling that he might be able to penetrate her thoughts through sheer will. “That’s a bit personal!”
Ron looked sly as he set the candle aside. “Really? I put two babies in you, how much more personal can you get, exactly?”
“Charming. Then I might well ask what it smells like to you.”
“Sunday roast,” Ron said without a moment’s hesitation.
Hermione bit back a laugh. “You are absurd. Why am I surprised?”
“But sort of… it’s hard to describe, but like if you were eating out of doors, and it’s going to rain soon.”
Hermione went back to examining the label in her hand, avoiding the way Ron returned to his keen study of her.
He touched her burning cheek. “I will have it out of you, eventually. It’s very important. For my research.”
Hermione scoffed. “Your research…”
“It’s probably something mad, like Gilderoy Lockhart books or the weakness of your enemies.”
Hermione’s laugh turned into a shriek as Ron threw her over his shoulder.
“Let’s see,” he mused, setting off toward the bedroom. “Something sixteen year-old Hermione Granger apparently found very embarrassing, and is mortified to tell me now… Oh, wait, hang on.”
He backtracked a few steps and shifted Hermione so that she clung to him with her legs around his waist. Then he picked up the still-burning candle and held it in front of her mouth.
“Blow.”
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “You’re an arse.” But she obliged, putting out the flame with a quick puff of breath. A few curls of smoke rose from the wick, concentrating the Amortentia scent more strongly for a brief moment.
“You’re drooling,” Ron teased.
“Have you quite finished being smug about it?”
“No.” He set the candle down and began kissing up her neck. “Told you it was good. Didn’t realise it was that good, though.”
Hermione rolled her eyes but tilted her head to give him better access. “I truly cannot believe that love potion just smells like dinner to you.”
“Mmm.” He nipped at her. “But like, the best dinner you can imagine. Besides, I don’t know why it’s weird. You said there’s meant to be nothing inherently sexual about the unique scent of Amortentia; it’s only supposed to draw your interest. Like — how did you describe it? — a bug to a carnivorous plant.” He chomped again for emphasis.
How dare he use facts she’d recited years ago against her.
Ron laughed, nudging open their bedroom door with his shoulder and kicking it shut behind them. “I love how miffed you are right now, considering I thought you were about to get off right there. Were you having thoughts that ridiculously naughty about it in Sixth Year, too?”
“I truly can’t stand you sometimes.”
Ron’s jaw dropped and his eyes had the devil in them. “You were. Now I must know.”
“Shut up and take my trousers off.”
“Yes, madam.” He dropped her on the bed, where she landed with a little bounce, and got to work.
Ron, however, was categorically incapable of shutting up for any extended period of time, and it was while he was flicking open her bra clasp and she had her nose in the dip between his collar bones that he teased, “It’s probably just me, I’m sure.”
“Wh-what?”
“The Amortentia. I said you probably just think it smells like me.” He gave her some playful friction with his thigh. “It’s okay, you know, you can tell me.”
His tone made it clear he didn’t actually think this at all; he was just playing with her — but Hermione was unable to devote much energy to pretense under these circumstances. Her mind must have been written across her face, because whatever Ron saw there made him go very still.
“Wait...” He laughed again, but it was softer now, a note of disbelief there, with colour high in his cheeks and a guardedly curious look like he wasn’t sure what to do with this unexpected flattery. “You’re kidding.”
It made Hermione want to take his stupid face in her hands and kiss it. So she did.
“Fine, yes, you idiot,” she said, deciding to give him no option to sidestep the compliment. “Is that very surprising?”
“But even…?” Ron jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, as if pointing backwards in time. He looked a little confused still, but pleased. “So is it just the aftershave that’s a real knicker-dropper, or what?”
Hermione sighed. “You really want to know?”
“I have literally never cared more about something you have to say.”
She ran her fingers through his damp hair.
“It’s not actually that weird…” she hedged, a little defensively.
“Tell me.” He nudged her with his hips.
“Fine. Well. You know how I’m always stealing your pillow?”
“Pillow thief, yes.”
“And I sort of like how your hair smells sometimes?”
“Sure.”
“It’s hard to explain it, but it’s just… like, your skin. And your hair. Especially right…” She pressed a kiss just behind his ear. “...there. There. I said it.”
Ron smoothed his hand over his hair. “Like after a shower? So, soap.”
“Mmm… no, more like when you’re a little sweaty. A shower usually ruins it.”
He smiled with delight. “You are secretly dirty when you want to be.”
“None of this has anything to do with what I want, it was a wild inconvenience for several years, let me tell you.”
This seemed to remind him that they were talking about something which had been exerting its aphrodisiacal qualities on her as far back as 1996.
“Like how many several?” he asked with ill-disguised eagerness.
“Quite enough.”
“Fifth Year,” he guessed, sounding like a negotiation. When she didn’t reply, he blinked. “Fourth Year??”
“I really could not put a date on it — ”
“Oh my God.” Ron looked nothing short of tickled.
“Hermione Granger, you have been smelling my hair since we were fourteen years old — I don’t know whether to be flattered or contact the authorities!”