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Celebrity as a Parent – Hugo & Ron
Hugo stared at the newspaper, he was used to seeing his Uncle Harry in the black and white photos, the same with his mum. But there was something strange about seeing his dad there too, his uncle and mum were important, his dad was just another Auror.
“Dad?”
“Yeah Hugo?” said Ron, from by the stove, a spatula in hand. He was making pancakes for dinner, it was supposed to be a boy’s night apparently. Or at least it was a boy’s night because Rose was off with Becca and Hermione was working late on a case.
“Why are you in the paper?” asked Hugo, reaching forward and tracing his dad’s outline on the paper. His dad didn’t look happy in the photo, in fact he had the same look on his face as when he cleaned the litter boxes.
“Eh, they took that while we were bringing in Sterling,” said Ron, not sounding to happy even now. “I didn’t know that they published the photo of me until your mum said something.”
“Sterling was that American Auror, right?” asked Hugo as a plate of pancakes hovered over to the table and sat down in front of Hugo, another plate following after Ron as he walked over. “I thought he came over to work on a case with you and Uncle Harry.”
“Well he came over to cover up a mistake he made in case and thought that Harry and I were stupid enough to not catch on to him,” explained Ron, sitting down across from Hugo and reaching over to take the newspaper from him. “Come on and put that away, you want to eat before it gets cold Mijo.”
Hugo nodded, tucking into his pancakes, but his mind was still racing, thinking about his dad. He usually stayed out of the newspaper, usually was barely mentioned in articles about his uncle or mum. It was what made this photo and article so weird, his dad stayed out of the limelight, he usually ended up working with the new Aurors when they got out of training or was part of the same team as Mrs. Sue Li-Collins. She was in charge of strategy, and one of the only people that Hugo had witnessed beat his dad at chess.
“Hey dad,” said Hugo later, the pair of them sitting in the living room and watching an old action movie. “Why aren’t you as well known as mum and Uncle Harry? I thought the three of you were best friends.”
Ron sighed and turned off the tv, running a hand over his face and back into his hair, the sigh a sound that Hugo only heard when his dad was annoyed at his siblings. Hugo suddenly felt a spike in his anxiety, it probably wasn’t the best way to ask the question, either that or he should’ve waited for his mum to get home.
“You know that there is a reason why your last name is Weasley right?” asked Ron, and Hugo just stared at him. “Okay, maybe this is a conversation we should’ve had sooner.”
“Your last name is Weasley, mum changed it when she married you.”
“Well yeah,” agreed Ron, turning in his seat to fully look at Hugo, just as Hugo’s cat Margo jumped up onto his lap. “But a lot of thought went into your name, yours and Rosie’s.”
“I thought I was named after Uncle Charlie,” said Hugo, and Ron nodded.
“And your last name is Weasley because it hides you within your cousins,” Ron told him, and Hugo looked at him confused. “You see the attention that James, Al, and Lily get compared to the rest of you, right? How hard it can be for them to go anywhere, especially in our community.”
“Is this why Uncle Harry taught Lily how to get out of any rope charms?” asked Hugo, and Ron nodded again.
“Your Uncle Harry is very famous because of the war, and your Auntie Ginny was a very famous Quidditch player and both of them are still in the public eye with their jobs. Your mum and I were with your Uncle Harry during the whole war, we were at his side through all of it and that made us pretty well known too,” explained Ron, and Hugo watched as he pet Margo, making sure to keep her in his lap as he nervously scratched her ears. “When your mum found out she was pregnant with Rosie, we had a very long talk about what we should do for her last name because if she was a Granger-Weasley, everyone would know she was our daughter, and the same for you being our son.”
Hugo turned his head and looked at the framed photos on the living room walls, so many of them were of him and his sister, of his parents from their childhood and all the years after, the four of them together as a family, and then of course the big family photos of all the aunts and uncles and cousins. He suddenly understood what his dad meant, how he and Louis were both called Mr. Weasley in classes and how confusing that could be for their professors.
He wasn’t just a Weasley, not really, he was a Granger-Weasley, but if someone was after him or any of his cousins, they would have to go through nine of them to find one of them.
His parents were famous, they were in the public eye because of the war and also their jobs, but they were also his parents and they were taking care of him as best they could.
“Harry hates getting his photo taken in the Prophet, that’s probably why they used me,” said Ron, and Hugo turned back to him, smiling at the sound of Margo’s purring. After all these years his dad tried to say he wasn’t a cat person, and yet he and Rose had cats and old Crookshanks used to sleep in his crib nearly every night of his infancy.
“Is it weird being famous?” asked Hugo, he never thought about it before, sure people had stopped them in the streets to shake his parents hands or say a few kind words, but it happened to all of his family.
“It gets annoying when I just want to spend some time with you kids,” said Ron, and Hugo blushed, “but this was different Mijo…now should we finish this movie or-“
“Let’s play some chess,” said Hugo, already getting to his feet as there was a woosh noise from the fireplace.
“Oh Hugo,” said Hermione, dropping her purse and stepping out of her heels, suddenly becoming the same height as him, “Mijo I missed you bebe.”
Hugo hugged his mum, letting her kiss his cheek and play with his curls, watching as his dad got up from the couch and started picking up after his mum. She started talking, mixing her Spanish and English like when she was tired, pulling Hugo along with her to the kitchen.
“I’m going to order a Chinese, you want some egg rolls?” asked Hermione as she started putting a kettle on for tea. “Oh and throw that paper out will you? They put the most horrible photo of your dad in there and I just hate it.”
“Sure thing mum,” said Hugo, putting the newspaper in the recycling, “and can you get potstickers too?”