A/N: Oh yeah! I wrote this ages ago on rhrlove for the 2012 Baby Challenge and had completely forgotten to repost over here! For the record, I am terrible with imagining anything related to pregnancy, having a child, etc. I don't have any of my own and have never intended to, so it was actually a serious challenge for me to figure out what to do for... the challenge, ha. Anyway, I've been working insane hours with really no time to write for weeks, so I figured I'd post this here so my page wouldn't look completely abandoned!
If you have some spare time, check out the other challenge entries on rhrlove! Lots of great stuff over there.
They settled halfway under a thin sheet, Ron's hair spreading out as he allowed the weight of his head to sink fully down into one of their fluffy feather pillows.
Hermione slid her naked right leg over his, and he smiled as he closed his eyes.
"That was nice," he grinned.
"Nice?" she laughed, closing her eyes as well, lungs deflating pleasurably as she snuggled against his side. His right arm remained draped around her, fingers lightly patterning over the smooth skin of her back. She reached her right hand up to gently play with the hair just behind his ear as his chest shook with a chuckle.
Silence blanketed them as they breathed. But then, Hermione opened her eyes and licked her bottom lip.
"I've been thinking," she started, twirling a bit of Ron's hair around her index finger. "What if we had a kid?"
Ron's eyebrows shot up as he tilted his head right to look at her.
"You mean a 'what would it be like if we did' sort of what if, or a 'we should maybe think about really doing this' sort of what if?"
She met his eyes, awkwardly tilting her head against his shoulder.
"The second one."
"Bloody hell."
He blinked a few times, and she shrugged against him, looking away again.
"Haven't you ever thought about it?" she asked, sure that he must have. It wasn't as if their relationship was so new now.
"Well, sure," he contemplated, but his tone drifted to something light and teasing, "so much as we both drink a potion every day to make sure you don't get pregnant accidentally. And so much as I assumed that one day we might stop drinking it..."
"We haven't ever really talked about this before, have we?" she realised, feeling slightly odd about the whole thing, all of a sudden.
"Reckon not?"
"We were really that busy, weren't we," she reasoned, "since the war ended."
"It's hard to get a second with you," he teased, "with everyone at the Ministry demanding your perfectly brilliant brain... and your autograph."
She laughed, closing her eyes as she smiled... biting her lip as she pondered again.
"It's funny," and she breathed out a heavy sigh, a bit nostalgic as she remembered years past, "I honestly never knew for sure if I'd even want kids. But then you said you loved me, and I realised I wanted your kids..."
She felt his chest move as he breathed and heard his grin through his words...
"I'm flattered."
"Git," and she rolled her eyes before closing them, resting the hand that had been previously occupied with his hair against his bare, left collarbone.
"No, really!" he said, serious to the point of her feeling rather light and shy again, as if they were back to the beginning...
She laughed, rubbing her cheek against his bare shoulder, her eyelashes tickling his warm skin.
"Okay, but hang on," he continued, shifting gears, "being serious for a second, I'm sure this, kids, must have come up through the years as a topic of conversation..."
"I can't recall it," and she opened her eyes again, moving her head back to glance up at him as he cringed, giving her a pointedly apologetic grimace.
But she merely smiled at him before burrowing back into his shoulder.
"Do you want to have my kids?" she teased.
"Well, yes. Of course."
Her eyebrows shot up high, though he couldn't see them.
"Well."
"Honestly?" he breathed. "I have thought about it before, what it would be like."
She wrinkled her nose against a sneeze as a bit of his chest hair tickled her face.
"Yeah?" she asked through a sniff.
"Sure."
"And?" Her eyes remained focused on her own hand, splayed out across his shoulder as she waited for him to reply.
"It'd be alright, yeah," he shrugged, grinning as she turned her head up to gawk up at him.
"Alright?" and she smacked his chest lightly. He laughed, catching her hand in his own easily with his Auror-impressive reflexes.
"It'd be brilliant," he smiled. "You just caught me off guard is all."
"Any conversation could catch you off guard after a shag."
His eyes darkened as he settled more comfortably against his pillow...
"Fair point."
They breathed for a long moment, lost in thought.
"Does it make you nervous?" she asked, at last.
"Shagging?" he teased. "Nah, not unless you get that devious look like last week and blindfold me and tie me to the bed-"
"I meant about having a kid, you prat!" she laughed.
He settled into silence again, and she waited for his answer, one she could almost feel him thinking through so very carefully.
"Actually... no," he finally sighed. "It doesn't make me nervous. Well, except, maybe, for the simple fact that you'd know so much more about it than I would by day two that I'd feel like a complete twat and might be worried you'd hex me..."
She arched an eyebrow and placed her chin lightly down onto the right side of his chest, sliding her hand easily out of his now-slack grasp to float her palm down his naked body and land splayed across his left side.
"You'll have to stop swearing so much, that's for sure..."
"Oi!" and her head bounced against him with his sudden outburst.
Arching an eyebrow, she lifted her head to stare up at him.
"I learned all the best words when my older brothers failed to listen to that particular rule." He grinned toothily at her and she rolled her eyes.
"I don't want our kid's first word to be 'fuck'," and she lowered the side of her head to his chest again, closing her eyes.
Ron tried and failed to suppress his laughter, which erupted in a puff of air through his nose as he pressed his lips together.
"I'm not saying I disagree with you," he finally managed to choke out, "but you can't say it wouldn't make for a wonderful story if this imaginary kid's first word was 'fuck'..."
Hermione's eyes popped open again and she held her breath, stuck on one word.
"Imaginary?"
"Hm?" and Ron reached up to scratch at the stubble along his jaw.
"I just don't know if..." she trailed off, heart beating strong enough for her to feel it against her own ribs.
"If?" Ron breathed.
"Do we want imaginary kids or real kids?" she forced out, swallowing hard.
A few seconds ticked past before Ron cleared his throat. She couldn't force herself to look up at him, to face seeing what he was thinking before he told her...
"Well," he started, "I think we'd be committed as completely mental if we decided to have imaginary kids..."
"Ron!" she shouted, half-amused, half-frustrated by his joke as she finally lifted her head again to gape up at him. Sometimes it was damn difficult to get him to be serious enough about something for a moment to actually finish a conversation that, in her mind, had started out as something very real.
He grinned at her and visibly softened, lifting a hand to run his fingers through the hair that was bunched up at her left shoulder. And he licked his lips, finding her eyes as his fingers delicately brushed over her ear, beneath her curls.
"You actually want this, don't you?" he asked, softly.
"Dunno..." and she blushed, breaking eye contact. But he pressed on, refusing to let her duck away from him, moving his hand to the back of her head, gently.
"Been thinking a lot through this conversation, and I'm sorry that it seemed like I wasn't taking it seriously. But... I want it, too. Not just theoretically. I think it's bloody brilliant. So, yeah. Let's do it. Let's have a real kid." Her eyes snapped back to his, wide and hopeful and happy. "And it's not as if we'd have a baby in the flat tomorrow. We'd have plenty of time to plan it all out, yeah?"
"Ron, are you serious?" she finally choked out, pushing to sit all the way up in one quick movement.
"Why not?"
And she grinned at him, which he returned just as enthusiastically.
"Okay," she breathed. "Okay. We'll need at least six months to read up on... you know, getting pregnant and how to do it properly, and how to make sure the baby has what it needs all the way through. And we'll need a bigger flat. We'll have to save up a bit, maybe a year for that-"
"Hermione!" Ron gaped. "A year and a half just to plan? I can answer everything on your list so far for you right now!"
"How?" and she arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm listening."
"I've... got a bit of extra money saved up," he confessed. "Been thinking of taking us on a holiday or something. But it's plenty for a bigger flat."
Her eyes widened as he shrugged, still lying comfortably on his back and gazing up at her.
"Really?!"
"Yeah," he sniffed. "And about that first thing, I can tell you exactly how to get pregnant. You won't need books for that."
"Oh, you are a twat!" she shouted, shaking her head.
"Told you."
She breathed thickly for a moment, taking in his now-relaxed expression, a gentle smile across his face as he watched her.
"You really think we can do this? We're ready for this?"
"Well, sure," he said, confidently. "We bested Voldemort and saved the whole bloody world when we were barely of age. I think now, nearly six years later, we can certainly handle changing nappies and reading bedtime stories."
She laughed and shook her head, but she felt very light all of a sudden, and full of such a wonderful new purpose.
"I have a lot of reading to do," she smiled. "I'm sure I've got some books on the subject in our library..." and she hopped up from the bed, watching Ron's eyebrows lift comically as she fetched one of his shirts and slipped it on.
"Right now?" he asked, incredulously. "It's nearly 2 o'clock in the bleeding morning..."
"No time like the present," she smiled, and she turned, rushing from the room with building excitement.
"Well," he called after her, "let me know when you need me... you know... for sperm, and things of that nature. The bits of this that I'm going to be good at..."
"Wanker!" she shouted from out of his sight.
"Now that would sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it," he called back, and she laughed, already surrounded by books, ready to memorize every word of every one of them.