Not Like Your Dad [Hugo/Lavender - 2100 - PG]
Title: Not Like Your Dad
Author/Artist: suitesamba
Character(s): Lavender Brown, Hugo Weasley
Prompt: 2015, Prompt #85 Hugo/Lavender - Better than your dad
Word Count: @2100
Rating: PG
Contains: None
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Notes: Obviously, the prompt assumes that Lavender survived the war. Hope this rare-pairing sparks a few holiday smiles. Thanks to M for the quick beta.
Summary: Hugo doesn’t particularly like working at the joke shop over his hols, but a drop-in by a woman who used to know his dad makes it all worth while.
Hugo Weasley hated the joke shop.
He’d never let anyone know that, of course, especially not his dad or his Uncle George. He’d even kept it from his mum, who wasn’t the biggest fan of the shop herself. But it seemed absolutely unWeasleyish to hate Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, where there was a special room just for the Weasley grandchildren to gather and try out new items before they hit the shelves.
He’d tried to be enthusiastic, but he just couldn’t get excited about fake wands that turned into rubber chickens or sweets that made you sick up. But here he was, on break from his second year at Uni working in his dad’s shop over the hols. Thank Merlin his mum had talked his dad into letting him go to Uni instead of starting right out at the Ministry.
Christmas was the busiest time of the year for WWW. The Diagon Alley shop got the most holiday traffic, but they’d put Hugo at the Hogsmeade location this year, as he could more or less run it himself when the Hogwarts students weren’t in town. At least here he could get a bit of reading done between customers, and his dad wouldn’t come by and sigh and ruffle his hair like he was eight again, and sigh again, then smile and tell him he was just like his mum.
At least he looked like a Weasley, because he was a Granger through and through inside. The red hair seemed inevitable - only a few of his cousins had managed to avoid it. He was horrid on a broom, no matter how hard his dad and Aunt Gin worked with him. Uncle Harry told them not to push it - not everyone was made to ride a broom, he said. He’d glanced significantly at Hugo’s mum, then hugged her and kissed her cheek jovially when she’d scowled at him. Hugo had always loved his Uncle Harry - he seemed to understand him almost as well as his mum did.
Still, people were constantly doing double-takes when they saw him, especially people who knew his dad when his dad was his age. Hugo and his dad got along just fine. They had plenty in common and could play wizard’s chess for hours and hours. They had the same appetite, too, and the same penchant for talking with their mouths full.
It was the twenty-third of December, a busy day all told, but heavy snow had started to fall just after noon, and the crowds in Hogsmeade had decreased significantly. Hugo glanced at the clock. Four thirty. He had another hour before he could close up for the night and Floo home. He briefly toyed with the idea of closing up early, but he was a rule follower at heart, much like his mum, and couldn’t come up with an excuse to close the doors before the official closing time. It wasn’t as if the car parks were getting dangerously icy. He refreshed the warming charm on the cobbled walk outside the door to keep it clear of snow, then settled back on his stool behind the counter and picked up his book.
The bell over the door jingled a few minutes later, and Hugo quickly stood as a woman hurried into the shop.
“Welcome to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes,” Hugo said in his best shopkeeper’s voice. “May I help you locate something? A puking pastille? A hybrid rainbow-coloured pygmy puff, perhaps?” That line had been his idea and nearly always made the customer smile.
The woman looked up at him, an artificial smile on her face. It soon fell away as her mouth dropped open. She stared at him, stammering.
“You - you’re not….”
Hugo pushed his hair back from his eyes, then held out his hand to the woman.
“Hugo Weasley,” he said. “Don’t worry - it happens all the time. Ron’s my dad.”
Her face softened and she gave him a smile, a genuine smile this time. He grinned back at her as she dropped her handbag on the counter between them.
“Well, Mr. Hugo Weasley, you look amazingly like your father.” She reached forward and tucked the same strand of errant hair back behind his ear - an oddly personal gesture. “I’m Lavender - Lavender Brown. I was at Hogwarts with your dad - in Gryffindor.”
And while Hugo didn’t particularly like the joke shop, he’d been helping out around here long enough to have learned a thing or two about sales.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “But you mean your mum was in school with my dad, right?”
The woman smiled as she rolled her eyes. “Nice one, Hugo. You’ve also inherited your dad’s flirting skills.”
He pulled the stool he’d been resting on closer to the center of the counter and sat on it, leaning forward. “Uncle Harry says Dad had a way with the girls,” he teased.
“Your dad and your uncle spent more time in Hagrid’s hut than thinking about girls,” she countered.
Hugo grinned. “Well, to be fair, Uncle Harry had a lot on his mind,” he said.
The woman smiled again. For the first time, Hugo noticed the faint lines of scars on her cheeks and forehead. They reminded him a bit of his Uncle Bill’s, in fact - old, and faded. He was sure they were battle scars. He wondered what had happened to Lavender Brown, but nearly everyone he knew had battle scars of some sort - Uncle George’s missing ear, his mum’s scars from Bellatrix Lestrange, the scars on his dad’s upper arms, and Uncle Harry’s locket-shaped star in the middle of his chest.
“That he did,” she said. “But we had some fun times and happy years, too.”
“So,” he said, after a long moment where they just looked at each other. He wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his robes. “Are you looking for anything special?”
“Mistletoe,” she said, glancing over at a display of holiday items. “Charmed mistletoe, of course.”
“Ah.” Hugo followed her gaze. “We have something that really took off last year - mistletoe charmed to hover over the head of a single person for the duration of your holiday party.”
“Hmm.” She appeared thoughtful. “Intriguing. Anything else?”
“Sure. Our newest mistletoe item - we just released it this year. Mistletoe with a built-in compulsion charm. Makes everyone within a two foot radius compelled to kiss the target.”
“Oooh. That might liven things up at the Prophet’s New Year’s party,” she said. She rested her elbows on the counter and propped her chin on her hands. “You must have a joke shop special - I can’t imagine George Weasley would stop at mistletoe that’s only about kissing.”
“Well…” Hugo blushed and the woman beamed.
“Out with it, Hugo. What are you keeping from me?”
“It’s not very nice,” he said, lowering his voice. He knew he was flirting, and with a woman old enough to be his mum, but she was sweet and smart and pretty and doing a good bit of flirting herself. “We don’t keep it on the shelves but quite a few people know about it and ask for it specifically.”
She reached out and pushed him lightly on the shoulder. “Tell me,” she said, leaning in closer.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. He hurried into the storeroom, appearing a minute later with three small boxes. “We carry one for her and one for him,” he said, sliding the boxes across the counter. “And we have an alternate version that can be worn frontwards or backwards - depending on your … er … preferences.”
“Oooh!” she exclaimed, winking at him. She’d opened one of the boxes and was holding up a man’s G-string, red and sparkly, complete with a very strategically placed sprig of charmed mistletoe. “Adorable! I’ll need one of each of these, of course. Now show me that lovely mistletoe with the built-in compulsion charm.”
They kept a ready supply of this best-seller under the counter, so Hugo slid off the stool and crouched down. When he popped up a moment later, he was holding a small glass box.
“We have to put dampening spells on the box,” he explained as he placed it on the counter. “People kept throwing themselves on whoever was working the counter, trying to kiss them. It was very awkward - and really entertaining when Professor Trelawney came in and crawled over the counter to attack Dad.”
“It’s really that strong?” Lavender asked. She had one hand on top of the box and was giving Hugo a look he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Of course it is - Uncle George came up with it, didn’t he? And if there’s one thing you can say about Uncle George….”
“Oh, there are definitely quite a few things you can say about George Weasley,” Lavender interjected, just as she flipped open the top of the box with one meticulously manicured fingernail. She lifted out the mistletoe and held it out between them, then tossed it upward. They watched as it hovered between them before shooting upward and circling them both, finally stopping to hover several inches above Hugo’s head.
“I do believe I feel compelled to kiss you, Hugo,” Lavender said, her voice low and a bit sultry. She leaned forward and placed one hand on his cheek and ran it down his jawline lightly until it rested on his chin.
His mouth was open in a small, surprised O when her lips touched his.
Lips that were warm and soft, that pressed against his as the hand on his jaw worked its way slowly around until it was cupping the back of his neck, drawing him closer. Closer to the delicious smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth. Before his brain engaged, her tongue was on his, and he was kissing her back, and Merlin, Lavender Brown knew how to kiss.
She started to draw away, but he followed her, leaning forward and hooking one hand over her shoulder. She laughed lightly and let him steal another kiss, slow and sensual this time, before she kissed one corner of his mouth, then the other, then pressed one last, long kiss on his parted lips.
Hugo had kissed girls. He hadn’t thought much of it, so he’d tried kissing a few boys. That did little for him either, and he had wondered what he was doing wrong.
Kissing the wrong girls, it turned out.
“Hugo Weasley, you’re even better than your dad,” she said, unembarrassed, as she gathered her things. “How much do I owe you for the mistletoe, darling?”
“Oh.” Hugo reached up and grabbed the mistletoe that was hovering above his head and pressed it back into the box. He dropped it into a bag along with the mistle-thongs and handed it to her with a blush. “No charge - you’ve already paid.”
“Ah.” Her mouth turned up at one corner and she smiled. Her eyes were soft and warm. “Don’t I get any change?”
He grinned, still blushing, and leaned forward again, pressing his lips softly on hers. How that soft goodbye kiss became an open-mouthed tangle of tongues he didn’t know, but a moment later she was sliding the very tip of her tongue along his gums, then softly biting his upper lip.
When she pulled back, she once again reached forward and tucked his hair behind his ear, then dropped a card on the counter.
“Merry Christmas, Hugo,” she said, nodding to the card as she stepped backward. “Owl me sometime - I have some excellent ideas for using that mistletoe.”
Then she was gone with a small jingle of the bell on the shop door, and he dropped heavily back onto the stool, running his tongue over this lips. He eyed the card, then slid it forward and turned it over. He smiled as he read it, then stared out the window, watching Lavender Brown disappear down High Street.
May to December Matchmaking - because sometimes, your mum does know best.
He smiled, then carefully tucked the card into his pocket. “Merry Christmas to me,” he murmured, touching his still-tingling lips.
He glanced at the clock, shifted uncomfortably on the stool and, fingering the card in his pocket, waited for closing time.
Fin
Author/Artist: suitesamba
Character(s): Lavender Brown, Hugo Weasley
Prompt: 2015, Prompt #85 Hugo/Lavender - Better than your dad
Word Count: @2100
Rating: PG
Contains: None
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Notes: Obviously, the prompt assumes that Lavender survived the war. Hope this rare-pairing sparks a few holiday smiles. Thanks to M for the quick beta.
Summary: Hugo doesn’t particularly like working at the joke shop over his hols, but a drop-in by a woman who used to know his dad makes it all worth while.
Hugo Weasley hated the joke shop.
He’d never let anyone know that, of course, especially not his dad or his Uncle George. He’d even kept it from his mum, who wasn’t the biggest fan of the shop herself. But it seemed absolutely unWeasleyish to hate Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, where there was a special room just for the Weasley grandchildren to gather and try out new items before they hit the shelves.
He’d tried to be enthusiastic, but he just couldn’t get excited about fake wands that turned into rubber chickens or sweets that made you sick up. But here he was, on break from his second year at Uni working in his dad’s shop over the hols. Thank Merlin his mum had talked his dad into letting him go to Uni instead of starting right out at the Ministry.
Christmas was the busiest time of the year for WWW. The Diagon Alley shop got the most holiday traffic, but they’d put Hugo at the Hogsmeade location this year, as he could more or less run it himself when the Hogwarts students weren’t in town. At least here he could get a bit of reading done between customers, and his dad wouldn’t come by and sigh and ruffle his hair like he was eight again, and sigh again, then smile and tell him he was just like his mum.
At least he looked like a Weasley, because he was a Granger through and through inside. The red hair seemed inevitable - only a few of his cousins had managed to avoid it. He was horrid on a broom, no matter how hard his dad and Aunt Gin worked with him. Uncle Harry told them not to push it - not everyone was made to ride a broom, he said. He’d glanced significantly at Hugo’s mum, then hugged her and kissed her cheek jovially when she’d scowled at him. Hugo had always loved his Uncle Harry - he seemed to understand him almost as well as his mum did.
Still, people were constantly doing double-takes when they saw him, especially people who knew his dad when his dad was his age. Hugo and his dad got along just fine. They had plenty in common and could play wizard’s chess for hours and hours. They had the same appetite, too, and the same penchant for talking with their mouths full.
It was the twenty-third of December, a busy day all told, but heavy snow had started to fall just after noon, and the crowds in Hogsmeade had decreased significantly. Hugo glanced at the clock. Four thirty. He had another hour before he could close up for the night and Floo home. He briefly toyed with the idea of closing up early, but he was a rule follower at heart, much like his mum, and couldn’t come up with an excuse to close the doors before the official closing time. It wasn’t as if the car parks were getting dangerously icy. He refreshed the warming charm on the cobbled walk outside the door to keep it clear of snow, then settled back on his stool behind the counter and picked up his book.
The bell over the door jingled a few minutes later, and Hugo quickly stood as a woman hurried into the shop.
“Welcome to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes,” Hugo said in his best shopkeeper’s voice. “May I help you locate something? A puking pastille? A hybrid rainbow-coloured pygmy puff, perhaps?” That line had been his idea and nearly always made the customer smile.
The woman looked up at him, an artificial smile on her face. It soon fell away as her mouth dropped open. She stared at him, stammering.
“You - you’re not….”
Hugo pushed his hair back from his eyes, then held out his hand to the woman.
“Hugo Weasley,” he said. “Don’t worry - it happens all the time. Ron’s my dad.”
Her face softened and she gave him a smile, a genuine smile this time. He grinned back at her as she dropped her handbag on the counter between them.
“Well, Mr. Hugo Weasley, you look amazingly like your father.” She reached forward and tucked the same strand of errant hair back behind his ear - an oddly personal gesture. “I’m Lavender - Lavender Brown. I was at Hogwarts with your dad - in Gryffindor.”
And while Hugo didn’t particularly like the joke shop, he’d been helping out around here long enough to have learned a thing or two about sales.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “But you mean your mum was in school with my dad, right?”
The woman smiled as she rolled her eyes. “Nice one, Hugo. You’ve also inherited your dad’s flirting skills.”
He pulled the stool he’d been resting on closer to the center of the counter and sat on it, leaning forward. “Uncle Harry says Dad had a way with the girls,” he teased.
“Your dad and your uncle spent more time in Hagrid’s hut than thinking about girls,” she countered.
Hugo grinned. “Well, to be fair, Uncle Harry had a lot on his mind,” he said.
The woman smiled again. For the first time, Hugo noticed the faint lines of scars on her cheeks and forehead. They reminded him a bit of his Uncle Bill’s, in fact - old, and faded. He was sure they were battle scars. He wondered what had happened to Lavender Brown, but nearly everyone he knew had battle scars of some sort - Uncle George’s missing ear, his mum’s scars from Bellatrix Lestrange, the scars on his dad’s upper arms, and Uncle Harry’s locket-shaped star in the middle of his chest.
“That he did,” she said. “But we had some fun times and happy years, too.”
“So,” he said, after a long moment where they just looked at each other. He wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his robes. “Are you looking for anything special?”
“Mistletoe,” she said, glancing over at a display of holiday items. “Charmed mistletoe, of course.”
“Ah.” Hugo followed her gaze. “We have something that really took off last year - mistletoe charmed to hover over the head of a single person for the duration of your holiday party.”
“Hmm.” She appeared thoughtful. “Intriguing. Anything else?”
“Sure. Our newest mistletoe item - we just released it this year. Mistletoe with a built-in compulsion charm. Makes everyone within a two foot radius compelled to kiss the target.”
“Oooh. That might liven things up at the Prophet’s New Year’s party,” she said. She rested her elbows on the counter and propped her chin on her hands. “You must have a joke shop special - I can’t imagine George Weasley would stop at mistletoe that’s only about kissing.”
“Well…” Hugo blushed and the woman beamed.
“Out with it, Hugo. What are you keeping from me?”
“It’s not very nice,” he said, lowering his voice. He knew he was flirting, and with a woman old enough to be his mum, but she was sweet and smart and pretty and doing a good bit of flirting herself. “We don’t keep it on the shelves but quite a few people know about it and ask for it specifically.”
She reached out and pushed him lightly on the shoulder. “Tell me,” she said, leaning in closer.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. He hurried into the storeroom, appearing a minute later with three small boxes. “We carry one for her and one for him,” he said, sliding the boxes across the counter. “And we have an alternate version that can be worn frontwards or backwards - depending on your … er … preferences.”
“Oooh!” she exclaimed, winking at him. She’d opened one of the boxes and was holding up a man’s G-string, red and sparkly, complete with a very strategically placed sprig of charmed mistletoe. “Adorable! I’ll need one of each of these, of course. Now show me that lovely mistletoe with the built-in compulsion charm.”
They kept a ready supply of this best-seller under the counter, so Hugo slid off the stool and crouched down. When he popped up a moment later, he was holding a small glass box.
“We have to put dampening spells on the box,” he explained as he placed it on the counter. “People kept throwing themselves on whoever was working the counter, trying to kiss them. It was very awkward - and really entertaining when Professor Trelawney came in and crawled over the counter to attack Dad.”
“It’s really that strong?” Lavender asked. She had one hand on top of the box and was giving Hugo a look he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Of course it is - Uncle George came up with it, didn’t he? And if there’s one thing you can say about Uncle George….”
“Oh, there are definitely quite a few things you can say about George Weasley,” Lavender interjected, just as she flipped open the top of the box with one meticulously manicured fingernail. She lifted out the mistletoe and held it out between them, then tossed it upward. They watched as it hovered between them before shooting upward and circling them both, finally stopping to hover several inches above Hugo’s head.
“I do believe I feel compelled to kiss you, Hugo,” Lavender said, her voice low and a bit sultry. She leaned forward and placed one hand on his cheek and ran it down his jawline lightly until it rested on his chin.
His mouth was open in a small, surprised O when her lips touched his.
Lips that were warm and soft, that pressed against his as the hand on his jaw worked its way slowly around until it was cupping the back of his neck, drawing him closer. Closer to the delicious smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth. Before his brain engaged, her tongue was on his, and he was kissing her back, and Merlin, Lavender Brown knew how to kiss.
She started to draw away, but he followed her, leaning forward and hooking one hand over her shoulder. She laughed lightly and let him steal another kiss, slow and sensual this time, before she kissed one corner of his mouth, then the other, then pressed one last, long kiss on his parted lips.
Hugo had kissed girls. He hadn’t thought much of it, so he’d tried kissing a few boys. That did little for him either, and he had wondered what he was doing wrong.
Kissing the wrong girls, it turned out.
“Hugo Weasley, you’re even better than your dad,” she said, unembarrassed, as she gathered her things. “How much do I owe you for the mistletoe, darling?”
“Oh.” Hugo reached up and grabbed the mistletoe that was hovering above his head and pressed it back into the box. He dropped it into a bag along with the mistle-thongs and handed it to her with a blush. “No charge - you’ve already paid.”
“Ah.” Her mouth turned up at one corner and she smiled. Her eyes were soft and warm. “Don’t I get any change?”
He grinned, still blushing, and leaned forward again, pressing his lips softly on hers. How that soft goodbye kiss became an open-mouthed tangle of tongues he didn’t know, but a moment later she was sliding the very tip of her tongue along his gums, then softly biting his upper lip.
When she pulled back, she once again reached forward and tucked his hair behind his ear, then dropped a card on the counter.
“Merry Christmas, Hugo,” she said, nodding to the card as she stepped backward. “Owl me sometime - I have some excellent ideas for using that mistletoe.”
Then she was gone with a small jingle of the bell on the shop door, and he dropped heavily back onto the stool, running his tongue over this lips. He eyed the card, then slid it forward and turned it over. He smiled as he read it, then stared out the window, watching Lavender Brown disappear down High Street.
May to December Matchmaking - because sometimes, your mum does know best.
He smiled, then carefully tucked the card into his pocket. “Merry Christmas to me,” he murmured, touching his still-tingling lips.
He glanced at the clock, shifted uncomfortably on the stool and, fingering the card in his pocket, waited for closing time.
Fin