Chapter Text
Am I Catching Feelings, Or Am I Just Sleep Deprived?
CHAPTER 1
The patronus arrived just as Harry was dry-swallowing a paracetamol and setting his 3 hour old mug of coffee into the microwave for the 6th time. He probably should’ve just started a fresh pot, but Percy had droned on and on at family dinner a few months ago about how wastefulness fed into a person’s unhappiness and even if one has the resources to just replace things, doesn’t mean that it’s morally sound to do so. Or something to that effect, so really he’d better not risk making things worse on himself. Not that Harry was particularly unhappy, he was just so unfathomably exhausted.
It was as though the fiber of his being, his genetic makeup, his very soul was tired. Harry, for the past several months now, had been dealing with a gut-wrenching, all-encompassing, bone weary exhaustion. He’d first chalked it up to being a new (single) dad, which for the record, WAS truly exhausting.
Teddy was the sweetest, cutest, most beautiful baby in the entire world, and Harry didn’t even think that he was being that biased by believing so. But…he never seemed to stop crying. The healers had told Harry that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with Teddy that they could find, and that it was probably a phase that he would grow out of. That was over 6 months ago, and his son still wailed at all hours of the day and night. To add to the matter, Harry found himself an extremely paranoid type of parent. He struggled with sleeping when the baby slept for fear that something terrible would happen to Teddy while he was asleep, or that the baby would wake up and need him but he’d be so deep in rest that he’d miss it and Teddy would pass out from crying so hard or something equally horrible. At Molly’s suggestion, he had moved Teddy’s crib into his own bedroom for “the crying phase”, but even then he battled with his own mind over the safety of falling asleep every night until he inevitably tossed and turned fitfully for a couple of hours and then woke up unsatisfied and frustrated in the morning to the sounds of Teddy echoing his own inner shrieks of deepening madness.
Madness, it turns out, was exactly the correct word to describe how he was feeling these days. On top of a truly horrific crying-baby-induced sleep schedule, Harry was also going through something of an existential crisis. Hermione called it a “quarter-life crisis”, but Harry was only just beginning to really accept his new-found life expectancy and thus, couldn’t really wrap his mind around the phrase. Plus, Hermione had gone and fucked right off to Australia, and had taken Ron with her just to rub salt in the wound.
He could admit that they had a perfectly valid reason to fuck off to Australia, namely finding Hermione’s parents, undoing the obliviation their daughter had forced upon them, rebuilding a trusting relationship with said parents, and healing form war-time trauma far removed from the locale in which that trauma occurred. Not to mention the fact that whilst on the hunt for Hermione’s parents, Ron had gone and stumbled upon his dream job: Quidditch commentary. No no, not commentary as in live from the field, commentary as in play-by-play breakdowns and league predictions recorded and played on the Australian Wizarding Wireless Network (AWWN) for thousands of Australian wixen to tune in to and enjoy every Monday and Thursday. Ron, as it turned out, was something of a notable Quidditch strategist, and the general consensus around the magical population down under was that his show (which he really only started as a bit of an inside joke to cheer George up) was “funny, insightful, and sharp”. Ron’s near-immediate radio success had led to Harry’s best friends deciding to stay abroad long-term, even after reconciling with Hermione’s parents who also remained in Australia.
Harry had only just hit the start button on the microwave and turned around to throw away the wrapping of the pain reliever when a ghostly silver sparrow flew through his kitchen cupboard and fluttered around his head. She opened her beak and spoke in a familiar voice.
“Harry, we seem to be out of sugar. Do you think you could bring a bag around when you come by for dinner tonight?” she asked.
Her message delivered, the sparrow dispersed leaving Harry chuckling softly in her wake. He pulled out his wand, thought of a big hug and a treacle tart, and whispered “Expecto Patronum”. He looked down at his tiny wolf cub patronus and thought fondly of the proud stag he’d once taken shape as, before saying “Yes of course, Teddy and I will be there, sugar in hand at 5. Do you need me to bring anything else?” and watched the little guy scamper off to The Burrow.
The microwave finished re-heating his coffee soundlessly (Harry had utilized a permanent silencing spell on the beeper after the damned thing had woken the baby several times), and he slowly nursed it while waiting on Molly’s response.
It didn’t take long. Harry had just sat at the table when the sparrow returned with the short message “No thank you dear, just yourself and that sweet boy! And the sugar! Don’t forget!”
Harry rolled his eyes fondly at the predictability of Molly’s answer, both the rejection of him bringing anything else, and her reminder not to forget the one thing she’d asked him to provide. As he crossed his arms and used them to cushion his head, he thought of the last time Mrs. Weasley had asked him to bring something along with him and how devastating it had been when he forgot. She learned to never entrust him with something as important as the sandwich bread and he learned to always write himself a note, but made no move to do so this time, as his memory faded and he drifted off to sleep.