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Nobody really noticed, when Ron got pregnant. Not even himself. He didn’t have nausea, or felt any weird tiredness, or any other symptom that usually pushes uterus-havers to piss on a stick, just to be sure.
Yet, the evidence was irrefutable. The weird muggle imaging machine of the midwife showed him the little embryo… no, the little fetus, swimming in their little sack.
‘You are for sure yet in the second trimester, Ron.’ stated her, clicking on the keybord to measure Ron Weasley’s first kid.
‘How many… how many weeks?’ asked Ron, with a much more stable voice then Harry thought he could have.
The midwife clicked on the keyboard three of times, then turned to Ron: ‘I still have to make another couple of measures, but, for my experience, I think we are between fifteen and nineteen weeks.’
Ron turned to Harry, who was sitting right behind him, pale as a ghost, clenching Ron’s hand.
‘You heard her, Harry? Fifteen weeks!’ said to him, with a cautiously excited voice.
Harry was in total shock. He bareley had the lucidity to nod at Ron. And began retracing the last months in his memory.
1 – Appetite and accelerated fasting
‘Will you stop eating? Your best friend is missing!’ A not really surprised Hermione muttered at him, while hitting his arm with a parchment.
‘But wha- turn around, you lunatic!’ answered him, with half of his mouth full of chicken.
Ron kept eating even when Harry sat with them, his face covered in blood. Harry noticed Ginny stopped eating her currant sauce when she saw Harry’s bloody face, so Ron took it from his sister’s plate and kept on devouring it.
Harry was quite amused by this, and nobody really noticed Ron’s extra appetite. It was Ron, right? Ron loved to eat, expecially at Hogwarts welcome banquet. Even Ron could find nothing unusual.
Sure, he noticed he was very hungry on the train. Harry, as usual, spoiled him with his favourites sweets, buying about half a kilo of sweets from the Lady with the trolley, yet in the end of the travel he was feeling like he was going to faint for hypoglicaemia, his belly deeply growling. It was probably because he ate almost nothing at breakfast, said to himself, because he overslept again. Yet, he almost dragged Hermione to the carriages without waiting for Harry, to reach the banquet earlier (and not to risk to faint on the train steps).
In the following days, during the long hours of their intensive lessons program, Harry kept seeing Ron picking up snacks from his pockets, and mindlessly nibbling them during death periods. Some teachers looked at him like if he grew a second head, but nobody said anything. After all, Ron’s snacks only lasted a few seconds and when the lecture was over. Only Snape sometimes looked at him with more despise then surprise, and commented with some very unkind words.
‘Hey, mate’ asked him ‘Why do you always have all of that snacks, now?’, when they were both on Harry’s bed. It was late afternoon. The golden sunlight of late September painted Gryffindor’s dormrooms with an amber, pacific atmosphere. Harry and Ron didn’t study after lunch (and the black-haired could still feel Hermione’s stingy voice in his head ‘What do you mean you played Quidditch instead of studying? September isn’t even finished, and you two are late with homework yet!) but they just couldn’t resist to that fresh air and shiny sun, so, when Ron looked at him with his puppy eyes and said ‘Match?’ Harry abandoned his books under the tree they were studying under (Hermione almost had a syncope when Harry told her this detail) and they flew on their broomsticks until it became too cold.
Harry was still faking to write that boring Charms essay. Ron had kept yawning since when they got down from their broomsticks, with Harry affectionately mocking him for being always so sleepy. Ron just gave him a jokish push and gave a bite to the honey biscuit he picked from who knows where.
‘I don’t know. I just feel hungrier, between meals. Must be the growth spurt.’ He said, mindlessly. Harry nodded. Actually, Ron became way taller during summer.
After their short conversation, it took half an hour to Ron to begin snoring.
Harry got too lost watching the Golden Hour’s light shine in Ron’s hair to keep on with homework. That must have been the first sign Harry missed. What were the others?
Harry discovered a morphological ultrasound was pretty long, so he had all the time to think.
2 – Sleep
Ok. Ron has never been a morning bird, and everyone knew he liked to nap. Honestly, even thinking as hard as he could, Harry couldn’t remember any change in Ron’s sleep pattern. He just slept as always, he went to bed early at night and woke up late in the morning, and napped a bit between study sessions.
No, wait, actually, there was a time something was unusual. Harry and Ron stayed awake up to midnight speaking with Sirius and Remus about Harry’s suspects about Malfoy’s activities. They had to wait until everybody else had gone to sleep to use the fireplace. Harry was quite fervent with his arguments, and Remus was well stubborn with his ones. In the end, Harry felt Ron’s head lightly posing on his shoulder, half asleep, and convinced himself to posticipate the discussion. Before saying bye, Sirius gave him ‘that look’. The look that always preceeded some kind of unasked relational advice masked as a vulgar joke. Harry smiled nervously, said goodbye and turned the fire down.
Next morning they had Potions on the first period. Every person in the room, some more explicitly and some more discreetly, was totally fascinated from Amortentia’s smell. And Harry was too, until Ron, next to him, almost fell on the ground, and Harry had to grab him. It wasn’t that easy. Harry was undernourished and short, while Ron was well fed and a head taller then him. When Harry grabbed Ron’s arm, the red-haired shook his head, as if he just woke up.
‘My boy! My dear Wembeley, what happened?’ said Slughorn, getting to them. Ron immediately brushed it off: ‘Oh, nothing, Professor. I just didn’t sleep enough.’
‘Oh! Sleepless nights as a teen, I miss those moments so much!’ said theatrically Slughorn, going back to his desk.
Harry and Ron just ended to exchange a disgusted look, when Slughorn put in Ron’s hand a small ampoule.
‘Drink this, it will give your energy back! It comes from Muggle caffein, but way stronger’ added.
Ron thanked him and smelled it and immediately retched.
‘Weird’ commented Slughorn, with a thinking voice ‘The only people who dislike it are…’
Slughorn quickly came back to the lesson, to avoid anybody noticed his half affirmation.
Ron sniffed the potion again, risking to vomit. When the Professor was looking somewhere else, he made it disappear.
Slughorn knew it back then? And told Ron nothing? As if Harry needed another reason to hate him.
Harry thought about that moment for almost all the lesson. Ron used to sleep a lot, but when he had to skip some sleep hours once in a while, he never had tiredness problems.
3 – Stipsis
Hermione never felt more stupid. She was the only one of the Trio who attended Sex Ed class at her Muggle school, why didn’t she recognize symptoms?
Ron rareley ate green vegetables at Gryffindor’s table. Or, at least, in front of her. He grew up in the countryside and his family mostly lived of what they produced. Hermione suspected he just didn’t ate green vegetables in front of her to irritate her.
But a couple of weeks after their arrival, he began to. And ate them with the same voracity he usually reserved to chicken legs. Once he asked her about a green leaf vegetable on the table he didn’t recognize.
‘What is it?’ asked, with full mouth. Hermione was too surprised to comment the question. So she just answered ‘Black cabbage’ and watched him take a full plate of it.
That was weird. Even though she was the most knowing of the three, Harry and (mostly) Ron rarely asked her something that wasn’t related to an immediate necessity, like passing an exam or free them from the Devil’s Snare. Hermione just forgot about the unusual question during the dinner.
But then it happened again. With water, this time.
‘Ron?’ she asked this time ‘Why do you want me to teach you Aguamenti? It was in the Fifth Year programme nobody will test you on it.’
Ron made a face: ‘I know, but i was so thirsty in the last days. I can’t just take around a bottle, I prefer to keep a glass with me and fill it at need’
‘How is it even possible?’ managed to mutter Harry about the end of the scan. Ron was telling the midwife about when he saw a birth (John, his little brother born when he was six years old), but interrupted his tale.
‘What do you mean, Mr Potter?’ asked her, with a curious voice.
‘I mean… how didn’t he, I, we noticed anything? Pregnant people shouldn’t, like, vomit, have nausea and other things?’ Harry told her.
She smiled, with a knowing face, and watched Ron’s face before answering. Ron was very chill. Harry didn’t know how he could.
‘Early pregnancy symptoms have a meaning, mr Potter. To make the pregnant person adapt new biorhytms. You get more tired, so you have to focus on yourself and preserve energies. You have nausea if you smell foods or substances that aren’t good for the pregnancy. You get thirstier because you need more water. It may happen that a person who yet has a life aligned with pregnancy needs experiences less symptoms’ she explained him, taking off her gloves and drying Ron’s belly with a paper wipe.
‘But this pregnancy wasn’t totally asymptomatic, am i right?’ asked, to Ron this time.
+ 1: Smell aversion
For a long series of very unimportant coincidences, the Gryffindors didn’t have Herbology lesson in the greenhouses until about the second half of october.
Harry didn’t mind it. September was often still warm enough that the greenhouses often became literal ovens. In October, their temperature was much better.
He was between Ron and Hermione when it happened. They just entered the greenhouse, and a heavy whiff of flower odour invested them. Lifting his eyes, Harry noticed that the work board had about twenty vases on it, each one contained a plant with four or five big flowers. They were big, yellow and pink, their colours were disturbingly bright. They looked like sunflowers who were just back from a vacation in Chernobyl. Harry waved his hand in front of his face, to move away the heavy scent. Once in the greenhouse, the odour was way more bearable, almost pleasuring. He turned around to Ron to tell him a joke about the flowers, when he saw him as white as a ghost, and a little green.
‘Hey, mate, are you ok?’ he asked him, gently grabbing his arm.
‘Y- yes’ weakly replied him, retching again ‘I just’
Just then, Professor Sprout appeared in front of them, with a vase of flowers in her hands: ‘Good afternoon, guys! May I ask you to…’
They never knew what Professor Sprout would have asked them to do, because Ron bend in two and vomited all the lunch.
‘Weasley, are you ok?’ asked the Professor after putting the vase on the floor. Harry was keeping Ron’s hair up and Hermione was evanescing the vomit, anxiously asking him what was wrong. Ron pushed all three back.
‘Don’t w-worry, I –‘ and there goes retching again.
Harry took the situation in his hands. ‘Ok, out. Hermione, help me bring him out.’
Outside the greenhouse Ron could breathe again. He insisted to clean himself with his own wand, and that he didn’t feel ill anymore. They almost didn’t notice Professor Sprout had followed them outside.
‘Mr Weasley, I think it’s better if you go to Nurse Pomfrey for a check up.’
‘No, Professor, I swear I’m good, I must have eaten something weird…’
‘I didn’t explain myself, Mr Weasley’ kept on the Professor, with a lightly scared expression and a hard tone she rarely used ‘You are going to, and I’m bringing you there’
Harry pushed Ron to follow her without complaints, worried that maybe Ron got poisoned by those weird flowers.
‘Possibly alone’ stated the Professor, looking at Harry and Hermione.
Ron insisted to let them with him, crossing his arms. The Professor looked first at him, then at Harry. It was quite a non understandable look. Then she sighed, and allowed the other two to follow them.
‘What do you mean, we have to wait? What’s wrong with Ron?’ Insisted Hermione, following the Headnurse far from Ron’s bed. Harry stood with him, holding his hands.
Five minutes earlier, the Headnurse was casting her usual diagnostic spells, a ball of white magic surrounding Ron’s abdomen. Then, a light change of colour, and Nurse Pomfrey immediately stopped her spell as if her wand had caught fire. Muttering they had to wait to have Ron’s diagnosis, she almost ran away, her face constrained with something unusually resembling anger, or disgust. Hermione chased her. That girl wasn’t the kind of person who gives up on an answer.
‘We are with you, Ron, ok? Whatever is happening.’ Said Harry to Ron, squeezing his hands between his own. He was scared to death.
But Ron didn’t look at him, only recognized his sentence by squeezing his hand back. He watched the floor. Because…
‘I don’t understand! She won’t tell a word’ said Hermione, frustrated, going back to them ‘She just told me ‘Wait until Magdalene is here, and she’ll tell you everything’. Who is Magdalene?’ asked to nobody in particular.
Then Ron sighed, then smiled, then hid his face in a pillow of the bed. His hypotesis was confirmed.
‘Ron? What happens?’
Ron took a bit to answer: ‘I know a Magdalene.’ He began, the tips of his fingers massaging his brain temples.
‘Who is she?’ asked Harry, since Ron wasn’t answering.
‘Magdalene Bradshaw. She’s my mom’s midwife, and lives at Hogsmeade.’ Concluded, a thousand of emotions running through his face, with a solid base of tranquil terror.
Hermione got it immediately, and covered her mouth with her hands.
Harry took a little longer. He frowned, and looked at Ron: ‘A midwife?’
And then he got it too, his face unfrowning in comprehension, right before Ron finally looked at him with his shiny blue eyes, shinier then usual, and stated it out loud: ‘I’m pregnant’