Hermione sat down in Ron's desk chair. Harry was off at Quidditch practice, so it was just the two of them- her and Ron- for the time being. A very small part of her was nervous about this– after all, it had not been long at all since they had all bonded together on Halloween. And without Harry there, things felt off, like a piece of their puzzle was missing.

This wouldn't do, of course. Harry and Ron were both her friends. Hermione just needed to spend more time with Ron so that they were more comfortable together.

Today she was prepared with a plan. A plan to make her friendship with Ron better.

"So Harry is going to be gone for a while," Hermione said.

"Yup," Ron agreed.

"And we're all done with our homework," Hermione continued, a small glow of accomplishment filling her chest.

"Er…yes…" said Ron, looking away and fidgeting.

"Do you want to play any games, then?" Hermione asked, her heart beginning to pound a little as she got to the point. "Like, maybe, we could play house?"

As she suggested it, she watched Ron's expression, her fingers crossed behind her back, hoping he wouldn't scoff and roll his eyes as so many boys she had known would.

Ron heaved a sigh and Hermione's heart dropped– sure that he was about to mock her–

"Alright," he said, "but I get to be the dad." He crossed his arms at this, his features set in a mulish expression.

"Oh–" Hermione said, startled. "Yes, of course you can be the dad! I'll be the mom, obviously, so we just need a baby."

Hermione already knew who she wanted to be the baby, but she thought it would make Ron feel more included and interested in the game if she asked for his input.

Ron glanced over at Harry's bed. "What if, what about Harry?"

Hermione beamed. "I was thinking the same thing! Only, we can't tell him."

Ron nodded, the motion emphatic.

It hit Hermione, then, that her plan had gone off without a hitch. She had always wanted friends to play house with, but the other students at her primary school had never actually wanted her to play with them. Whenever she would try to join their games, they'd either ignore her completely or they'd make her be the family ferret.

Over the years, Hermione had managed to mostly squash her desire to play house– to have friends to play house with– until she had gotten to know Harry. Something about Harry had awoken the urge again. So when Hermione had been making her plan to bond with Ron, the idea struck to do it by playing house with him. And now that her plan had succeeded, she would have to record this in her journal, because it wouldn't do to forget about it.

"Wait– but Harry's not here now," Ron said, frowning.

"That's alright! We can just get started now and, you know, keep going later, once Harry's back."

"Uh, okay."

"It'll just be that much more fun this way!" Hermione rushed to explain. "Because Harry is real and he's the perfect baby for playing house and–"

"Right," Ron interrupted, "so Harry's the baby and, and he's off at school. What now?"

Hermione shoved herself off the chair and bounced over to Harry's wardrobe. "I've noticed," she said, opening the wardrobe, "that our son is in dire need of a new wardrobe. Now we don't have the budget to just replace everything, but I thought we could learn how to mend clothing–"

"That'll take ages!" Ron protested. "And, uh, don't I have work to get to? Because I'm the dad?"

"Oh, you think that because you're the dad, you're the one who has the job?"

"Well, yes," Ron said.

"Women have jobs too, you know. But in this case neither of us have a job," Hermione said, prim, as she started to pull Harry's clothes out of his wardrobe. "We're both stay-at-home parents. That's why we have to mend Harry's clothes, rather than just getting him all new ones."

"So neither of us have a job?" Ron asked.

Hermione nodded, scrunching her face slightly at the state of the clothes she was removing from Harry's wardrobe. They seemed even worse, somehow, now that Harry wasn't wearing them.

"Huh. I guess that's kinda nice– to not have to work and all."

"Well, we do have work," Hermione said. "It's making sure our son is well taken care of."

Hermione had finished pulling all of Harry's clothes from the wardrobe and had sat down to sort the rest.

Ron sat down next to her and gestured at the piles. "Alright, I get it. So what do these mean?"

Hermione pointed at the first pile. "Garbage." Then the next, "Salvageable, but needs a lot of work. That pile just needs mending. That one needs to be resized. And," she picked up the single shirt that constituted the last pile, "this one needs no work at all."

Ron took the shirt from her. "This is it?"

"Yes."

Then Ron picked up a sorry excuse for a pair of trousers from the garbage pile. "You know, we could probably use this stuff to help mend this stuff," he said, gesturing at the 'mend-only pile'.

Hermione tilted her head to the side. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. That's–" she swallowed, shoving down the shock that had been about to color her tone. "That's a really good idea."

A smile crossed Ron's face. "I can occasionally have those."

Hermione took the single shirt back, then started packing the rest of Harry's clothes into a bag she'd brought just for this purpose.

"Wait, what's Harry going to wear while we're still working on fixing the rest of his clothes?" Ron asked.

This was the second trickiest part of Hermione's plan. The first was, of course, had been getting Ron to agree to play house in the first place. "Well," she began delicately, "I was thinking you could lend him some of your clothes. Just for a little while!"

"Oh," Ron said. "Oh, okay. That works."

Hermione turned to look at him. "And– and you're okay with that?"

Ron shrugged, uncomfortable. "I am used to it, aren't I? With five older brothers, you kinda have to be."

"And besides," Hermione added, more confident now that he had agreed, "it shouldn't be too long that Harry's borrowing your clothes, and it's only on the weekend that he'll need them anyways."

Ron nodded.

Hermione finished packing Harry's clothes into her bag. Then she got up and went over to Ron's wardrobe. "I am going to pick out some of your clothes to put in Harry's wardrobe."

Ron came over to help, and in no time at all, they had a small pile of usable clothes stowed away for Harry to wear. They wouldn't fit perfectly, but they would fit better than the rags she and Ron were going to fix.

Then Hermione started to make Harry's bed. "So I was thinking," she began.

"You seem to do that a lot," Ron said.

"Ha ha," Hermione said, mocking. "Anyways, I was thinking that maybe you could help comb Harry's hair. And, and at meals, we can make sure Harry's eating well, because it's so important for our baby to eat well. And maybe we could tuck him in sometimes?"

"And you think we could do all that without Ha– without our son noticing?"

"Of course we can. If he says anything, we can just tell him that this is what friends do!" Hermione said. "It'll be fun!"

Ron seemed to think this over for a moment. "I guess he wouldn't really know any better, would he? And– it's not like we'd be playing a mean game without telling him…"

"That's right! It is a nice game!"

"D'you think we have time to get started on figuring out how to fix his clothes before he gets back?" Ron asked.

Hermione pulled out her wand and cast Tempus. She thought for a moment before nodding. "Yes, I do think we have time. This is going to involve research in the library, but since we are stay-at-home parents, we have plenty of time to get it done."

Ron sighed as Hermione collected her bag and headed for the door.

"The things I do for our son," Ron said, exasperated.

"Ron," Harry said, holding up one of the shirts Ron and Hermione had put in his wardrobe, "where are my clothes?"

"Er–" Ron began. He should have made sure Hermione was going to be here for this moment, but after they'd finished up in the library, she'd gone up to bed. "They– they were taken away for cleaning while you were at Quidditch practice, and– and Hermione and I saw, so we went ahead and gave you some of my clothes to borrow."

"But– what about my clothes? I– those are my only clothes!" Harry said, absently wringing Ron's shirt in his hands.

"It'll be okay, Harry," Ron said. He got up and put his hand on Harry's shoulder, reassuring. "Your clothes will be back– better than ever!– in no time."

Harry still looked uncertain. "And you're sure you don't mind me borrowing your clothes?"

Ron looked at Harry, incredulous. "Of course not, mate. I put my clothes there, didn't I?"

Harry continued to stand there, shoulder tense under Ron's palm. They stood there in silence for several long, empty moments until Ron felt him slowly relax.

"Well, thank you," Harry said.

Ron released Harry's shoulder. Harry smoothed out the shirt he'd been clutching and replaced it in his wardrobe. Then he collected an outfit and headed into the showers.

Ron sighed with relief, glad that Harry had bought the story. Hermione wouldn't like it much if Ron gave the game up so soon.

When he heard the shower shut off, Ron remembered one of the other things Hermione wanted to do to play house. So he went and dug around in his drawers for his comb.

He gave Harry a few minutes, just to be sure that Harry would be dressed and everything, then hurried into the loo.

"Hey, Harry," Ron said.

"Ron!" exclaimed Harry, startled. "What are you doing?"

Ron had the fleeting thought that he ought to try and think of a more subtle way to put this, and then he tossed the thought out. "I'm going to help you comb your hair."

Harry had resumed the process of doing up the buttons on the pajama top that Ron had lent him. At Ron's statement, he stopped once more, and gave Ron an odd look. "You're going to… comb my hair?"

"Yes."

"Er– you know that's a lost cause, right?"

Ron shrugged. "Just let it happen, Harry."

"Alright, let me finish buttoning up my top, though," Harry said as he hurried through the last couple of buttons.

Ron stepped closer to Harry, then gently turned him around so that they were facing each other. Ron's hand was still clenched around the comb, but surveying the mess that was Harry's hair, he stowed it in his pocket.

"Giving up already?" asked Harry, quirking a sideways smile.

"No," Ron said, and then he attacked. He ran his fingers through Harry's hair, somewhat systematically trying to impose some order on the recalcitrant locks of hair.

"It's not going to work!" Harry protested. He tried to shrink away from Ron's ministrations, but he failed once his back hit the bathroom sink.

Ron shushed him, brow furrowed in concentration. "I've got this," Ron said, distracted. And he did, thanks to years of practice performing this very same function for Ginny in the various games of dress-up and house that she coerced him into playing.

Once Harry's hair became less resistant to Ron's fingers, Ron pulled out his comb again. Harry was short enough– not much taller than Ginny, really– that Ron didn't even need to force him into a seat to comb his hair.

Just like when he brushed Ginny's hair, Ron started by getting all the ends detangled, then moved on to the roots. Once Ron had pulled out the comb, Harry had stopped fighting, but for a bit of grumbling. And the first time Ron managed to run the comb through from root to end without it catching, Harry fell silent, eyes wide.

When Ron was finished, he rinsed the comb off in the sink, then ran it through his own hair. "See," he said, "no big deal."

Harry was looking at him with a shell-shocked expression on his face. "How did you do that?" he asked.

"You met Ginny– she loves making me do stuff like that," Ron said.

"Well, thank you," Harry said, his expression of shock shifting to one of gratitude.

"You're welcome."

Hermione woke up early the next day. She'd had another idea for playing house with Ron and Harry, and implementing it required her to be up early. She got dressed, then picked up her bag, which she had packed the night before.

The other girls in her dorm were still asleep, so she slipped out of the room, doing her best to avoid waking them up.

There were a couple of older students sitting around the common room. Hermione looked at her watch and saw that it was a bit too early to actually enact her plan, so she made her way over to a table that sat along the edge of the room.

Hermione passed some time reading. When a couple more students had come into the common room, and some others had left for breakfast, Hermione stowed her book away in her bag. Then she hurried up the stairs to the boys' dorms and into Harry and Ron's room.

All the boys were still asleep. Hermione checked her watch one more time, just to be sure it was a reasonable time to be doing this. Thus reassured, she stepped lightly over to Harry's bed and stopped by his shoulders.

"Harry," whispered Hermione.

Harry shifted in his sleep but didn't wake.

"It's time to wake up."

This was enough to cause Harry to blink his eyes open. As soon as she saw that, Hermione darted forward to wake him the rest of the way up with a hug. She slid her arms under his body, lifting him up, so she could squeeze him properly.

"Hermione?" asked Harry, disoriented. "What are you doing?"

"I'm waking you up so you're ready to face the day," Hermione said. She gave him one last squeeze, then released the hug, gentle as she set him back down.

Once she took a small step away, Harry squirmed into a sitting position and reached out to pat his bedside table.

Hermione realized that he was looking for his glasses, so she plucked them off the table and handed them to him.

"Er, thank you," Harry said, setting the glasses onto his face. Then he bunched his hands up in his blankets, fidgeting.

"I am going to wake Ron up now," Hermione said, deciding to give Harry space to wake up properly.

"Right," Harry said, voice hesitant and a slight frown on his face.

Hermione supposed that it would be confusing to be unexpectedly woken up with a hug. She stepped around Harry's bed and up to Ron's. Once she was in range, she reached out and shook Ron awake.

Ron made some indiscernible noise and half-heartedly pulled himself away from Hermione's grip. She released him and bent down to whisper in his ear, quiet enough that Harry wouldn't hear. "I woke our son up."

At this, Ron stopped fighting and perked up.

Hermione straightened. Making brief eye contact with both Ron and Harry, she said, "I'll meet you both in the common room so we can go to breakfast together."

She left the, 'as a family', unsaid.

That day, Harry had Quidditch practice in the afternoon, before dinner. As soon as he left, Ron and Hermione headed for the library.

"You have his clothes, right?" Ron asked.

"Of course," said Hermione, patting her bookbag.

Ron couldn't quite believe that, for the second day in a row, he was being dragged to the library to do extracurricular studying. He knew that it was worth it– the sight of Harry's shabby clothes spread out the day before had confirmed that– but it still felt odd.

"Yesterday we made good progress on Resizing Charms," Hermione said. "But we still need to figure out Sewing Charms, and maybe a charm for cutting fabric? I don't have fabric-cutting scissors with me, and I don't want to make things worse by using bad scissors."

Ron nodded. "Do you think we'll be able to manage all that today? Our son seemed pretty nervous about not having his clothes." Not that Ron could blame him, he would probably have also been pretty concerned if he'd come back to find all his clothes missing.

"I don't see why not," said Hermione, confident. "Let's hurry though, to give ourselves the best chance of succeeding."

With that, Hermione picked up her pace, fast enough that Ron had to work to keep up with her. They got to the library in no time, and Hermione seemed, as always, to know exactly where she was going. Ron just trailed along behind her, hoping the books she gave him would be decipherable.

Because he did want to help out. More than any other game of house Ron had been forced into, this one felt important. Real, even. So rather than dragging his feet and rolling his eyes as he would if they were doing something dumb, like homework, Ron would do his best to be helpful.

"You wait here. I am going to go find some books," Hermione said, setting her things down on a table.

Ron sat down, settling in for a long wait. Then, what felt like mere seconds later, Hermione plopped down into the seat across from him, a stack of books in her arms.

"These are all the books on household charms I could find," said Hermione.

There were several large, dense books in the stack, so Ron nodded faintly, visions of hours spent digging through the material running through his mind.

"And," Hermione added, pulling a stack of magazines from between two books, "these are all the editions of 'Housekeeping for the Modern Witch' I could find. Despite the sexist name, they should have helpful information and be quick reads." She held out the stack to Ron.

Grateful, Ron pulled the stack in front of him. This looked much more manageable than any of the textbooks Hermione was now sorting into piles.

"Thank you," he said, glad he wouldn't have to struggle to be useful.

And so the afternoon passed, with Ron occasionally showing Hermione a charm and Hermione taking furious notes all the while.

Ron startled at the sound of Hermione slamming a book shut. He looked at her curiously.

"I think we have all we need to do this," Hermione said.

Ron perked up. "You think so?"

Hermione nodded, decisive. "Yes, I do. I'll just take these to be reshelved, and then we can head out to get started."

In a rush, Ron restacked all the magazines that had gotten spread out while he'd been looking through them. Then he handed the stack to Hermione, who was waiting, expectant, for them. She left, then, and Ron got up to go wait for her just outside the library.

"Do you still think we could finish up today?" Ron asked as Hermione hurried out of the library. He watched as she checked her watch and made a face.

"If we really hurry," she said, once again picking up her pace.

They walked to an abandoned classroom not far from Gryffindor Tower. Once inside, Hermione made a beeline right for the teacher's desk and dumped all of Harry's clothes out.

"I think we should practice the spells on unsalvageable clothing first, so we don't risk damaging clothes we can save," Hermione said, her hands busy resorting the garments into piles.

Ron walked over to stand next to her. Sorting the piles took her less time this time around, so she was soon done.

"If I work on learning the Resizing Charms, can you work on learning the Fabric-Cutting Charms? Maybe by making patches that we can use to repair other clothing?"

"That works for me," said Ron.

The Fabric-Cutting Charm Ron and Hermione had decided to learn was familiar. Ron knew he had seen his mum using it when mending their clothes. Ron wasn't sure that this prior experience gave him an advantage when learning the spell, but the spell did come somewhat easily to him.

Once they had mastered all the spells that they needed, Hermione divied up the clothing so that they were each using the spells they were best at.

In this way, they quickly managed to repair and resize everything. Hermione finished her stack before Ron finished his, so she started folding all the clothes they had finished.

Hermione checked her watch. "Oh no," she gasped. Then she launched into motion, placing stacks of folded clothes into her bag, and swiftly folding the last garments. "We are so late."

Ron nodded, hurrying to push all the clothes into Hermione's range.

With everything put away, Ron went over to grab the door for Hermione. She rushed through it, arms wrapped around her bag.

"Oh, I hope our son's not back yet!"

Quidditch practice was over on time– for once. Wood must have been in a good mood.

Ron and Hermione usually waited for him in the common room, but when Harry stepped through the portrait hole, they were nowhere to be found. Frowning, Harry hurried through to his room, hoping he would find them there.

But they weren't there either.

Harry sat down on his bed, braced his elbows on his knees, and set his chin in his hands. Did they say they were going to be doing anything today? He didn't think they had.

But they had been… weird lately.

Harry wasn't sure what to make of their recent behavior. It was just– weird. First, Ron had combed his hair for him. Then Hermione had woken him up with a hug. At breakfast and at lunch, Ron and Hermione had been fussy. They kept piling more food on his plate, looking at him with wide, concerned eyes every time he tried to protest.

They seemed to mean well– but it all just felt so out of nowhere.

And now, when Harry had gotten back from practice, they were gone. Harry sighed and flopped backwards, flinging his arms out to the sides and staring up at the canopy over his bed.

Harry didn't have much experience with friendship, didn't know what he was doing. He'd thought he'd been doing alright– but maybe he wasn't? He couldn't think of any good reasons for Ron and Hermione to change their behavior.

More than ever, Harry wished he had more experience with friendship so he could figure out what was going on.

"Harry!" exclaimed Hermione, breathless.

Harry shot to his feet, whirling around to face the door.

"Hermione? Ron?" Harry asked. "Where– where were you?"

"Er–" Ron said.

Harry looked at the two of them, trying to figure out what was going on. They both seemed out of breath, and Hermione was holding her hands behind her back. But they both looked otherwise normal. Harry furrowed his brow, lost.

"We were busy in the library," Ron said, puffing his chest out.

"The… library?" Harry asked. "You were in the library, Ron?"

Ron nodded firmly. "Yes."

Harry sat down on his bed again. Something must have happened; nothing felt right, and nobody was behaving as they should.

Then Ron nudged Hermione with his shoulder and pulled at her arm. Hermione whispered something to Ron in return.

"Trust me," Ron whispered back.

Harry felt odd watching this interaction– and more worried than ever. It was clear they were fighting over something to do with him, but he could hardly leave while they worked it out. He didn't want to sit by himself in the common room for however long it would take. And, well, he wanted to know right away what the outcome was.

Ron seemed to win whatever their argument was, because then he turned to face Harry, holding a bag that Hermione must have been hiding behind her back.

"Here you are! Your clothes got back while you were gone, and we were hoping to surprise you," Ron said, thrusting the bag at Harry.

Harry took the proffered bag, his earlier worry transforming into sheer, overwhelming confusion. Ron's statement sounded odd to Harry– why would his clothes be given to Ron and Hermione? For that matter, why would his clothes have been taken in the first place, with only Ron's spares as replacement? It just didn't seem normal.

"Um– thank you?" Harry said, uncertain, as he took the bag over to his wardrobe.

He pulled the clothes out to put them away, and as he did, he looked them over. The clothes had definitely been repaired, but his gratitude and amazement at this was overwhelmed by his sheer confusion over the whole situation.

Because the repairs didn't quite look professional. Oh, they were well done and everything, but they didn't have the clinical look that something repaired by a professional would have. Harry knew enough to tell the difference between something mended by someone inexperienced and something mended by a professional. Aunt Petunia would have had a fit if her clothing had been returned from the menders looking like this.

Whoever did the mending for Hogwarts was certainly a professional. The few times he'd ripped his Quidditch uniform, he'd put it on again later to find it had been almost invisibly repaired.

So that meant that whoever had repaired his clothes was not a professional, and probably not official.

Harry finished stowing his clothes away and turned to face Ron and Hermione once more. They were both still standing where he had last seen them. Hermione was wringing her hands together, though she stopped the motion as soon as she saw Harry looking. Ron looked more calm, but he was also watching Harry closely.

Ron and Hermione had been there when his clothes were taken away. Ron and Hermione had been there when his clothes were returned. So they must have been the ones to mend his clothes.

With this thought, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and Harry could see what had been happening with a sudden clarity.

Ron and Hermione had been odd about taking care of him since last night. Ron had combed his hair, Hermione had woken him up for the day, and they'd both been vigilant about his eating habits. They had made sure he would have clothes to wear.

And now it seemed like they had been the ones to repair his clothes in the first place.

So altogether– it was clear that Ron and Hermione were parenting him. Because all the things they had done were things that Aunt Petunia had done for Dudley! But Ron and Hermione hadn't said anything about deciding to– to parent him.

Maybe they were embarrassed about it? That would make sense– it would explain why they had just decided to do things without telling Harry about them, and why Hermione seemed so nervous about Harry being there when they'd come to return his clothes.

Then Harry shouldn't mention that he'd figured out what they were up to. He should just say 'thank you'. Because the truth was that Harry liked all the things they'd been doing.

He never could manage to get his hair that orderly on his own. Waking up to a hug was possibly the most pleasant way he could imagine being woken up. Maybe he'd found it a tad annoying at the time, but having them make sure he ate well had felt nice. And then there was the way they had fixed all his clothing.

They must have had to learn a lot of magic to get everything so well mended so quickly. And they'd done that for him.

His chest filled with the warm feeling of having such amazing friends. Friends who cared that he was well taken care of. Growing up with the Dursleys as his only family had left a void in his heart, but Ron and Hermione cared to try and fill that void.

"Thank you," Harry said, voice laden with meaning. Then, because he didn't want them to worry that he might have figured it out, he added, "For making sure I got my clothes back."

Ron and Hermione exchanged a startled– and relieved– look.

"You're welcome," Hermione said in a rush, a wide smile breaking out across her face.

"Yeah," Ron added, "it was no big deal."

Harry closed the wardrobe door and walked over to them, glad the mystery of their odd behavior had been solved. "So do you want a game of Gobstones? I think we have time before dinner."

"I'd love one!" Ron said.

And so Harry followed them down to the common room, determined to never let them know that he knew what they were up to, lest they be too embarrassed to continue.

They were a family, after all, and that was all Harry could ask for.