Chapter Text
Four geese on a bed is entirely too many geese. And it isn't as if they were just nestling peaceably into the duvet, waiting patiently for Ron and Hermione to wake up, either. They stamped up and down. They flapped their wings and honked. One of them decided that the thirty seconds since they had materialised was entirely too long for its charge to have taken no action whatsoever, and started pecking.
"Whazzat?" grunted Ron. "Time'zit?" And then, "Oww! Bloody hell!" Hermione blinked her eyes open, and was buffeted in the face for her trouble.
"They don't have soulmate geese in the muggle world," she said, "and honestly, sometimes I think they have the right idea. All this fuss and bother, the mess and the hissing, just to confirm something we already... wait a moment. Ron."
"What?"
"There are four geese." Ron had hidden himself entirely under the duvet, which at least cushioned the pecks even if they could still be felt, but at this he bolted upright.
"Four. Two each," he said. "So we've got another soulmate." The nearest goose got him right on the nipple, and he yelped.
"Let's get rid of that one, at least," Hermione said briskly, and leaned over to kiss him. Ron experienced a moment of doubt - what if none of the geese were his, what if Hermione was far too good for him and the universe was dangling her under his nose only to snatch her away again, letting him marry her when extra-marital soulmate geese were grounds for an annulment - but kissing her felt as right as it ever had, and when he opened his eyes again, there were only two of the feathery menaces.
"Still too many for the bloody bed," he grumbled, and then realised how unromantic that was. "Er. I do love you, you know."
"Love you too, dear," his wonderful wife replied. "And I quite agree. Let's get dressed quickly so we can see about getting rid of the rest of them." Ron moved cautiously, carefully, doing his best to shield his bits from the bloody birds, and he was sure that one got him on the back of his hand just to make a point. And another on his bum.
"Do we just follow them?" Hermione asked over the chorus of hissing, poised to open the front door. Standing by the fireplace, Ron shook his head.
"Nah, I'm not walking all the way to sodding Devon. Let's just floo over to the Burrow."
"You're that sure it's Harry?"
"Worth a try, at least. Who else is it going to be? I don't get on with Neville. You don't get on with Luna. Great people, but yeah. I go drinking with Seamus and Dean sometimes, but they're spoken for, got their geese when we were still in school." He paused to remember the epic trashing of the Gryffindor common room on that occasion. "I've never even met most of your work colleagues, and aren't the ones you get on best with all the wrong side of sixty?" She nodded, visibly fighting back the impulse to kick the goose that had just ripped the hem of what had been a rather pretty frock. "I dunno who else we both even like, never mind might be soulmates with. I suppose Viktor's an all right bloke, and he'd be the next person I'd check in with if it wasn't Harry..."
"Viktor got his goose six months ago. Geese, actually. Three of them, if you can believe it, but he and his partners are all very happy together. I thought I showed you that letter." The goose was herding Hermione closer to the floo, head lowered and neck pumping away. Ron lit the fire, and Hermione grabbed a pinch of floo powder.
"Better now than after the wedding," she said, and then, before Ron could reply, "The Burrow!"
That was why Ron had been dragging his feet. Ginny. His sister was not going to be happy about this at all.