Like My Father
queenb23more was the kind beta for this fic. Gift for
magnolia_mama. Ron and Arthur fic.
When I was younger, I didn’t think about projecting myself in the future.
I mean, I could somehow see myself as an adult: holding a job, holding responsibilities, leading a life that is fulfilling, hopefully. I also had this very sketchy idea about what it really is to be an adult.
My father really got angry with me once, and it was on this very subject. I had decided to not return to Hogwarts, before journeying with Harry and Hermione on this path of danger and uncertainty we had decided to follow. As far as I can think back, this was the only time he yelled at me.
When Harry and I “borrowed” the car, he let Mum do all the yelling.
That day, when our wills clashed, he was furious with me, and he accused me of taking unnecessary risks. I told him I was of age, and I could take my own decisions He pounded his fist on the table, and I will never forget how stern his face got when he growled, “Being of age doesn’t mean you’re an adult, Ron.”
My father is not a stern man. He’s soft-spoken and easygoing. He’s unbelievably patient. He’s slow to react, he simmers a bit, but he’s unstoppable in his will when he makes a decision.
I was rude to him. It still makes me cringe. I’m sorry to say that I shrugged, and I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I accused him of not understanding why this entire scene was necessary. I accused him of not trusting me, of thinking that I was not up to the task of protecting my life and those of my friends.
When I said those things to him, he paused. He took off his glasses and closed his eyes. Then he completely caught me by surprise. “You don’t understand, son. I trust you. I’m quite certain that you can protect your friends, and that you would do anything for them. That’s why I’m very worried.”
Merlin. When you’re seventeen, you don’t know what to say when your father is this close to saying “I love you.”
When you’re forty-five, you really get how he must have felt to see you go.
That day, I saw another side of him. He was doing more than just parenting me. He was mentoring me; trying to make me understand that being an adult came with a heavier baggage than only owning rights. I wanted to be an adult: he was telling me that I also had responsibilities towards my own family.
I was shocked when I found myself yelling at my daughter a few months ago, when she decided to pursue one dangerous career. I think I was astonished I could finally get the understanding of what my father went through that night.
I felt it strongly. I got it. I understood that being a parent isn’t only about loving, educating, and caring for your child. Every day makes me realize that a child is born so he can become who he really is. In that, I do have limited powers, and so did my father.
In my mind back then, an adult was one of my parents or one of my teachers. An adult was old.
This is why I had trouble seeing my older brothers as adults, even if Bill was gone from the Burrow before I entered Hogwarts, and Charlie left to live his own life quite early. They were still big boys to me, you know, brothers that could tease me to no end and who know pretty well what buttons to push to make me react.
But time goes by. Bill’s oldest son got married last month. Charlie is greying.
When I passed from “of age” to “adult”, I started to think about having someone to share my life permanently. I knew who I wanted for this.
I got the idea that time goes faster, much faster than I thought I could fly on a broomstick. I started to want more than just the comfort of sharing a life with the woman I loved. I surprised myself at wanting to make those bonds tighter.
I surprised myself at wanting more from my life. I surprised myself at thinking about children. I surprised myself at understanding why my father made the choices he did. I got why he protected us so fiercely.
I got why he wanted to protect me, at all costs.
I surprised myself at thinking that my father is more a hero than I thought he was.
I kind of said it inadvertently. I said it just once to him, when I got this special award from the Ministry, after the War. People who wanted to congratulate us mobbed Harry, Hermione, and me. In the midst of handshakes, pats, and congratulations, I saw my father, clutching a goblet of cheap Goblin wine, as he looked straight at me. He smiled, and he nodded.
I made my way to him. He patted my arm. I patted his. He looked thoughtful: his eyes were crinkling because he was grinning, and I could see he was restraining himself from speaking.
So I did the talking.
“It’s not fair you weren’t on that stand, Dad. You should have been.” But he shook his head.
“No. You did it. You were in the line of fire.” He sipped on his wine and he had this twisted smile. “My son is a hero.”
I shrugged. That was really embarrassing. I wanted so much to be someone when I was younger, and I had realized when growing up that being me was going to be ok. “Awards don’t mean much at the end. I did what I had to do.”
He shook his head, and he looked me in the eye. “No. You didn’t have to do all this. You did what you wanted to do. You followed your beliefs. This is very courageous, Ron.”
So we stood there, sipping on our wine, and I was really trying to understand the silence that slipped between us. I mustered the courage to say what I’ve been thinking for a while. “But that’s the way you taught us, no? That’s the way you are.”
He didn’t reply to this. Bill came towards us, and the moment was lost.
~
I’m very lucky. I got a wife and best friend all in the same person. When I decided to get married, my father told me that I had understood what was the secret. “You’ll be happy, son, because you’ll marry the one you want to love in good and bad days.”
He also told me that marriage tells a lot about a man. That idea intrigued me. Marriage was telling about love between man and woman, right? How can it tell so much about me?
I had been thinking about what kind of life I wanted to have. I didn’t have the time to think about it earlier. I was really busy at staying alive and trying to shelter my friends and family for years after Voldemort was defeated. Death Eaters tried to rise again, but I participated in their captures as well as their trials.
But when the war was over, and when I looked at my family and friends that had survived, it was one strange feeling, to have all this time on my hands. It made me tense. I had to choose what I wanted to do with my life. I had participated, in my own modest way, to the destruction of one of the most powerful armies the wizarding world had known. I had devoted myself to fight against the Dark forces.
It was time to think about me. Hermione and me.
So I spent a lot of time thinking. That made people around me a bit uncomfortable. I asked Hermione if she would mind if I stayed with my parents for a couple of weeks. She understood.
I stared at the trees that line the backyard of the Burrow. I went for long walks around the Burrow, and Mum was so worried she sent owls to Hermione, to ask her if we had broken up.
I played Wizard chess each night with my father during that month. Pushing around the old pieces had the effect of fitting the pieces in my mind. One evening as we were playing our second game, and mum had gone up, I said, “Checkmate. I’m going to ask Hermione to marry me.”
He looked truly happy. He went for the bottle of Fire Whiskey, and we clunked our glasses. He didn’t ask with what money we would live on. This is when he said that marriage would reveal me as man.
Two days later, he asked me if I would like to work for the Magical Transportation Office at the Ministry of Magic. An opportunity had opened at the Broom Regulatory Control office.
So I decided to begin my life as an adult. I never turned back. I married Hermione. I had children. I’ve talked to Harry everyday.
I worked hard, and I have this great job where I can hold in my hands the most powerful and sophisticated broomsticks. But I still get worked up at how poorly the Chudley Cannons do each year. I’m still clumsy, and I still blush when things get to me. I still get sometimes into passionate arguments with Hermione, but instead of not talking for weeks, we fall into bed together.
My adult life is good.
~
My father is still going strong, even if he seemed to have shrunk a bit.
His red hair has turned almost white, and his eyes still sparkle with kindness. He works for the Ministry three days a week, and when I joke about retiring, he says with a wink, “Oh no, son. I’ll retire when I’ll die.”
The rest of his time he devotes to mum, and they travel. They still hold hands. It’s endearing. We keep joking that they’ll shock the hell out of us when they’ll decide to add a new member to our family one of those days.
My parents were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary recently, and there were a lot of redheads running around. I caught him in a corner, as he was reading quietly from a crumpled parchment. He looked at me over his glasses. “I’m rehearsing.”
I chuckled. “What?”
He flattened the parchment between his fingers. “I’m going to speak tonight.”
And sweet Merlin, he did. He spoke about lots of things. I learned about my parents and the rough moments they went through in their younger years. He was not intentionally funny, but he has this way of just being funny.
I found myself laughing aloud several times and feeling overly emotional when he talked about mum, who blushed like a newlywed. “He loves her so much,” Hermione slipped in my ear. I leaned in to kiss her.
Because when you’re forty-five, you get that. You get that your father deeply loves your mother. Because if you’re lucky, you’re living this kind of bond yourself. And you look at your children. You hope they’ll live it one day.
And then he said something that brought me back to the night I told him I was going to ask Hermione to marry me. He said, “Marriage revealed me as a man. I should have been selfless. But I wanted to be greedy, and that’s the path I chose.”
Whatever my father will say, he’s not greedy. He never was. Wanting to hold on to his wife and children is not greedy. It’s normal. Life is about holding on to the people we care about. What if he decided to protect us but not the ones that surround us? What would have happened to us?
So that’s what he meant. There is a difference between the kind of man I should be and the kind of man I want to be.
I should be strong, devoted, protective, and ambitious. I should never settle for less, and I should be respectful of what my parents fought for me to be and try my best at doing the same for my children.
But the kind of man I want to be…I want to love Hermione and to continue what we’ve built through the years. I still want to have silly arguments with her, and I want to make up with her over and over again.
I want to be there for Harry, whenever he needs me, and I want to say he’s acting like a git when he forgets that I’m here for him.
I want to act like a child sometimes, when the urge takes upon me to tickle my children, or to spoil their dinner with Chocolate Frogs, or to “humiliate” them in front of their friends by calling them by their nicknames, or to simply look like an arse when they beat me at Quidditch.
I want to get into ridiculous discussions that have no point at all with my brothers.
I want younger wizards come to me at the office to get advice and expertise. I want to share what I know.
You know, I think I may want to be a bit like my father.
The end