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It started as a simple thing. He was the only one in their dorm that knew the charm. But he never expected it to spiral so far. Not that he was complaining of course.
He taught the other boys the charm, sometimes performing it for them on the mornings before they mastered it and felt comfortable doing it themselves. Later he found that several of the boys didn’t know how to tie their own tie, despite it being part of the school’s uniform. Apparently, they had gotten someone else to do it the first day and just never untied it, instead treating it as a slip-knot to get it over their head. So again, he taught them and helped in the mornings before they mastered it. In fact, after teaching them to do it by hand, he taught them a charm that could do it for them in a hurry. Some complained about why they had to do it by hand when there was a spell, but bloody hell was he going to teach them the shortcut before they learned the theory! But it didn’t stop there, oh no. They came to him from all sorts of things: reminders of the charms he taught them, maybe they found someone else for him to teach, advice on girls that he himself had gotten from his brothers, etc. They leaned on him in ways he didn’t know was possible, but he didn’t mind. It made them happy, and by extension him.
Sometimes he would reprimand them, though it started out as filling in when Hermione wasn’t there to tell them whatever they were doing was idiotic. But again, it escalated, and he’d tell them off for roughhousing too much or going too far with insults or hexes. The oddest part was they seemed to know when it was coming. He’d start speaking and they’d immediately look guilty and stop. The teachers gave him strange looks when this happened in their presence, but they usually behaved themselves around adults. He could never figure out why they acted that way but decided not to dwell on it.
But then came one day, his mother had invited his dormmates for dinner. They started acting up when he asked them to help clear the table and wash dishes afterward, so he did what he usually did and reprimanded them. “She gave you free food, so now you’re going to do her dishes, understand?” Once they agreed, he turned back to his family as if nothing had happened, only to find them all silently staring at him. “What? Have I got something on my face?” Ginny was the first to answer, “You sounded just like Dad telling off Fred and George. You even had that specific tone.” He was stunned, was that it? Was that the odd thing? Though he wasn’t sure what exactly the odd thing was, he thought it had something to do with that, and resolved to ask the boys outright after they finished their tasks.
“Is what Ginny said true? Do I really have a specific tone?”
The boys looked confused, and one said, “We thought you knew about your dad voice?”
Again, he was stunned, “What the bloody hell’s a dad voice ?” Clearly, he missed something.
Another spoke up, “Dunno, but it’s the one you always use when you’re telling us off or trying to be patient. You do it all the time. You really never realized?”
Apparently not, but he was starting to understand what all the strange looks from teachers and students were about, and the notion warmed him from the inside. “Do you guys… mind this… ‘dad’ voice?”
They glanced between each other, “Not really, it lets us know when you mean business and keeps us out of trouble.”
He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, and so awkwardly ended the conversation, with a sneaking suspicion that his friends viewed him as a father figure. He realized most of them were lacking one, or at least didn’t have a magical father, and decided that if that’s what they wanted, that’s what they were going to get.
He fell into the role easily, realizing how much of it he already filled, but the boys seemed happy, and that’s all that mattered. They were an odd group. He viewed them as friends but also sons to be corralled when they were too rowdy. They saw him as a friend to banter with but knew the moment he put on that voice, there was no messing with him, lest he devise a punishment, which was never very severe, but they knew they would comply with whatever it was. Truly, an odd friendship. But whoever said odd was bad?