This is my entry for the one-word prompt challenge at the Writers Anonymous forum. My word was "expectations." This story is very slightly AU to canon, in that I've made Rose and Hugo four years apart, instead of two. Otherwise, everything is canon compliant. Since we never found out Hermione's parents' first names, I named them Bob and Jules here, after another literary couple that I'm curious if anyone will recognize.

The summer sun shone on his red hair and seemed to set it on fire as he sprawled on the driveway. His grandparents had given him a wonderful Muggle toy called chalk, and he was drawing and writing words across the pavement in his favorite colors, pink and purple. A few robins chirped in the tree nearby.

"Look at all the words I know, Daddy," he said proudly, pointing, when his father came to call him in for lunch. Only a few months past his fourth birthday, he's already mastered the alphabet and moved onto short words. He was now learning the A-T sound, and cat hat mat were written across the driveway in huge, wobbly letters. Off to one side, in smaller letters, was a new word, one that he hadn't learned by sounding it out himself. He'd asked his Grandma Molly how to spell it when he'd seen the pink flowers growing near the front door of the Burrow. Rose.

"You're getting to be so clever, Oscar," Ron smiled, ruffling his son's hair, which was the exact same shade as his own. "I always knew you inherited your mum's brains. When your new baby brother gets here, you'll have loads to teach him, and when you get to Hogwarts, you'll probably wind up Head Boy."

Oscar giggled as he stood up and brushed the chalk dust off himself. "Head Girl, Daddy," he corrected.

Ron frowned, puzzled by this, but soon dismissed it. Lately James had been telling all sorts of tall tales to his younger cousins, and Ron didn't put it past the little troublemaker to convince Oscar that he'd turn into a girl someday.

"Son, when you get to Hogwarts, you'll still be a boy," he said reassuringly, but Oscar's face faltered, and as they went into the shade of indoors, the sunlit fire on his hair suddenly went out. Oscar had never spoken of it, but he had always expected that one fine day, he would wake up a girl. He had always expected it to happen long before he started at Hogwarts.

There was so much fuss over the new baby when Ron and Hermione brought him to the Burrow for the first time that Arthur wasn't surprised to see Oscar slip away from the crowd of relatives. Ron started to leave Hermione's side to go after him, but Arthur touched his shoulder and whispered, "I'll check on him."

He found his grandson on the back steps of the Burrow, gazing out at the overgrown field behind the house, bundled up in an old, familiar maroon jumper. Ron had always hated those jumpers Molly knitted for him, but out of guilt or obligation, he'd kept them, and since autumn settled in, Oscar had been wearing them almost every day. They were so big on him that they looked like dresses. He sat with his knees drawn up and his chin in his hands, the very picture of a pouting four-year-old.

"I guess it must feel awfully different," Arthur said as he sat down beside him, his old joints popping, "having a new baby brother."

Oscar didn't look at him, but kept staring moodily at the field. The grass was mostly brown now, with a few bright autumn leaves still clinging to stems here and there. "It's not fair," Oscar muttered, and Arthur, who'd been through this six times before, expected to hear some typical new-sibling complaint, perhaps that his parents liked the baby better.

But he didn't expect what Oscar said next.

"Hugo gets to be what he is," he burst out angrily.

Arthur frowned. "What do you mean, Oscar?"

"He was born a boy, and he gets to be a boy. But when I was born, I was a girl, and Mummy and Daddy did a spell on me and turned me into a boy."

"Oscar, sweetie, I don't know where you got such an idea, but that isn't true. Your mummy and daddy would never—"

"Then the Healer did it!" Oscar interrupted. "Somebody did a spell and turned me into a boy."

Arthur fell silent, unsure of what to say. He'd raised seven children, but none of them had ever wanted to be the opposite gender. Though after six boys, he suspected that Molly probably would've been thrilled if one of them had wanted to be a girl. "Oscar," Arthur said gently, "when you were born, you were already a b—"

"No, I wasn't!" Oscar yelled, with shocking venom in his voice. He balled up one little fist and pounded his jumper-covered knee, again and again. "I wasn't! I was a girl!" But his anger soon dissolved into tears.

Fortunately, Arthur did know what to do when a child was crying. He pulled Oscar into his lap and rocked him back and forth a bit, rubbing circles on his back, but it took a long time for Oscar to calm down.

Bob and Jules Granger had learned a great deal about magic in the fifteen years since discovering their daughter was a witch. They had become experts at connecting their chimney to the Floo network. They even knew what a Pensieve was and had asked Hermione and Ron to bring one with them. Hermione was brushing soot off the intricately-carved little bowl when she stepped out of the fireplace into their living room. Ron was right behind her, looking slightly annoyed; Hermione's parents were keeping Oscar and Hugo for the weekend, and it was supposed to have been their first time alone since the baby was born. They'd been in the middle of a romantic dinner when Bob and Jules called, saying no, it wasn't an emergency, but they needed to come over.

"But Dad, I don't understand why you can't just tell us what happened," Hermione said for the second time. She and Ron were sitting on the sofa with the Pensieve on the coffee table in front of them. Jules had been checking on Oscar and Hugo, fast asleep in the guest bedroom, but she joined them now and sat down beside Bob on the loveseat. Outside, the winter wind blew so hard that the glass in the window rattled.

Bob glanced at Jules, then slowly shook his head at Hermione. "I think you need to see it for yourself, honey."

So Hermione stood and raised her wand to his temple. It was strange, extracting a memory from her father's mind — too reminiscent of modifying their memories during the war. But she pulled out the memory of that afternoon, then slipped it from her wand into the Pensieve. She and Ron both leaned forward over the little bowl.

It was a bright winter day, cold but sunny, and Bob made sure the children were dressed warmly and took them to the park down the street. He was pushing Hugo in his stroller when he heard Oscar, walking just behind him, humming some happy tune. He turned — and startled when he saw that Oscar's red hair had magically grown quite long. It was down past his shoulders, and Oscar was running his fingers through it, smiling and humming. As he watched, the boy pulled a small yellow clip-on bow from his coat pocket and pinned a lock of his hair back with it. He looked for all the world like a little girl now.

Bob decided to act casual. "Where'd you get that, Oscar?"

Oscar's smile faltered. "I... I stole it from Victoire," he whispered. "Don't tell, Grandpa?"

At the park, Bob sat on a bench with Hugo and watched closely as Oscar played with a few Muggle children there. He introduced himself as Rose, and as soon as he said the name, all his recent moodiness disappeared. He played splendidly with the other kids, sharing and taking turns, and Hermione, watching the memory through the Pensieve, thought she'd never seen her son grin so wide or his eyes sparkle so bright. Ron's jaw dropped when he played with Hugo, too. He had been nothing but resentful of the baby since he was born, but after Bob got him settled into a bucket swing, Oscar pushed him.

"Don't push him too fast, now," Bob cautioned.

Oscar nodded. "I'm a good big sister, huh, Grandpa?"

It was almost frightening how hard the child fell apart later, when Bob said that it was time to go home. He crumpled to the wood-chipped ground of the park, sobbing and wailing. Hermione felt her heart break for him, and it was some time before she was able to understand his words through his tears.

"At home I have to be Oscar!" he cried, spitting out the name like it was poison. "I hate pretending to be a boy!" He clenched his fists around the wood chips so tightly that one punctured his skin, and a bright red ribbon of blood ran down his fingers.

"He carried on like that so for long," Bob said, making Hermione and Ron both look up from the memory. "The only way I could finally get him to calm down was to..." But he hesitated.

"Was to what?" Ron asked, a bit nervously.

"Was to tell him I'd talk to the two of you."

They talked for a long time that night. Bob showed them a letter he'd gotten from Arthur, who so loved using Muggle mail that he'd convinced Bob to be penpals with him years ago. It opened with, Bob, I'm getting worried about Oscar and closed with, I think I should to talk to Ron and Hermione, but I'm not sure what to say.

Ron ran his hand through his hair at one point, frustrated. "But this isn't quite, 'Oh, his vision is blurry, let's get him glasses,' is it?" he asked, blowing out a breath. "This is a really big thing. What if we let him do it, and he winds up regretting it?"

They talked for a long time, but what finally got through to Hermione was when her mother said, "Hermione, can you imagine what it felt like for us, finding out one day that our eleven-year-old daughter could do magic? That she had to go away to some school in Scotland we'd never heard of, to learn magic from a bunch of people we'd never met?"

Hermione fell silent for a moment, considering. Even now, a parent herself, she couldn't imagine how unexpected it must have been for them. Getting the news had probably terrified them as much as it excited her. "You didn't have to let me go," she said quietly.

"But we did," Bob said, "because we decided it was best for you. It would've been dangerous for you, being able to do magic but never learning to control it. You would've wound up hurting yourself, or someone else, sooner or later."

In her mind's eye, Hermione saw again the scene from the playground, Oscar crying and gripping the wood chips so tightly that he bled.

"You were already a witch," her father went on, "whether we liked it or not. We had to let you be what you were." He paused a moment, letting that sink in, then took a deep breath and said, "And I'm starting to think that Os... that Rose is already a girl."

She woke up at dawn on her fifth birthday, bounded out of bed, and flung open the curtains on her window. Outside, the spring weather was already perfect — the sun brightening the pink sky, flowers blooming in the back garden, birds singing in the trees. Inside, Rose's heart was singing, too.

"Happy birthday, dear Ro-ose," she sang quietly, grinning at her reflection in the glass.

Her parents gave her one of her birthday presents early: a new dress for her to wear to her party. It was white with a pattern of red roses across the skirt, and thick red ribbon around the waist. Rose twirled and twirled in front of the bathroom mirror until she made herself so dizzy that she almost fell over.

Ron caught her and began a little dance with her, out of the bathroom and down the hallway. "You like your new dress, Rosey-posey?" he asked, using his special nickname for her. Though Ron had been unsure, at first, of letting their child transition, it had brought him and Rose closer than ever before. She was getting along much better with Hugo too, always wanting to play with him and help feed him.

Rose nodded, still grinning. "I feel so pretty in it, Daddy."

Ron tucked a lock of her long hair behind her ear. "Well, you are. You're the prettiest, cleverest little girl in the whole wide world."

"Ron, you're making her vain," Hermione said, watching them, but she was smiling, too.

"No, I'm spoiling her," he corrected, spinning her around. "That's what daddies do. They spoil their little girls."

They were having a very full house for Rose's birthday party; both sets of her grandparents, all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, a few neighbors, plus Hagrid, Neville, and Luna. A few of them had not met her as Rose yet.

Arthur and Molly were two of the first ones to arrive. "Happy birthday, sweetheart," Molly said, bending down to kiss Rose's cheek. Then, as she always did on special occasions, she grew misty-eyed. "My granddaughter, already five years old."

"Rose, you'll never guess what happened at the Burrow. That rosebush we have, the one you love so much? Well, it must have known today was your birthday, because when we woke up this morning, it was full of roses."

"Really?" Rose asked. Her birthday cake had roses on it too, in pink frosting, just like the ones outside the Burrow.

"Really," Molly confirmed, "and that bush doesn't usually blossom till later in the spring."

"But you know, I have a feeling," Arthur said slowly, "that she'd been waiting to blossom for a long time."