Chapter Thirteen: Product may Need some Assembling

Tentatively, a young female healer stuck her head into the room, and everyone stopped breathing. "Which one of you is the father?" Her shrill voice could have been distressed, or just really excited it was hard to tell as her eyes quickly darted from Mr. Weasley, to Ron, To Harry, and finally stopped on Fred.

Slowly, Fred rose to his feet, and walked shakily out of the room after the woman.

"I think that was a good thing." Hermione ventured as the silence stretched out once more.

It was so much less stressful when I was having the baby." Mrs. Weasley muttered, bur the edge was gone from her worrying.

"Am I late?" the tension broke as everyone jumped and turned to face Ginny, who was standing innocently at the entrance to the waiting room.

"N-"

"It's a boy!" Fred burst back through the door, his face practically glowing with excitement.

The change in the room was immediate with Mrs. Weasley hurrying past her son, and nearly bowling him over.

"Congratulations." Mr. Weasley was a little slower off the couch; wrapping his son in a bear hug before following his wife.

"And I am still the only Weasley girl." Ginny hugged Fred as the final occupants of the waiting room gravitated towards him.

"Fred, a father? I fear for the poor child." Ron stifled a laugh, and dodged Fred's half-hearted swat.

"What are you going to name him?" Hermione quieted Ron with a look, her fingers entwining with his.

"George. George Phillip Weasley." Fred's silly grin faltered for a moment, but quickly reasserted itself. "He looks like his mother." Fred added, perhaps a little too dreamily, since Ron almost groaned as he rolled his eyes.

Harry, who had been standing off to the side, suddenly became aware of Ginny's arm, brushing against his own. "How are things at work?" His own words echoed awkwardly in his own ears, but then everything about this situation was incredibly awkward.

"Oh, nothing very exciting." Ginny turned to face him, slightly surprised, and offered him a shrug.

"You haven't been around."

"I do have an apartment."

Harry quickly cut in, after a short pause, as Mrs. Weasley reappeared to usher the mass into the hospital room. "We need to talk."

"Don't worry Fred." Molly brushed aside her son's worries. "She'll be ok; this is the first of a new generation." And pushed Harry through the door to bring up the rear; very close behind Ginny.

"Oh, he's so cute!" Hermione sounded vastly more energized then she had in a long time; since S.P.E.W. perhaps?

Looking down at the baby, caught up in the prideful arms of his mother, looked rather like a very red sausage to Harry; he could only assume that all babies looked like this upon arrival, and then crew out of it, and into what could be called cute, until it threw up all over you.

"So, when can I expect you to provide me with a second grandchild Ronald?" Mrs. Weasley called over and around Harry, Ginny, and Fred to Ron and Hermione.

"Uh…" Ron's ears instantly took on a distinctive scarlet shade, as he glanced quickly to Hermione, who was deeply engrossed in a conversation with Angelina that she hadn't noticed her mother-in-law's question, and then back to his mother. "I don't know." Ron stumbled over his own tongue, and Harry bent his knees, slightly, to hide behind Fred, lest he be next.

"We have to finish school… And you didn't even want her to go to Diagon Ally; Hermione is not strong enough to have a baby." Ron had grabbed on this excuse, and had run with it, perhaps too enthusiastically; at his final proclamation Hermione was finally distracted, and looked back at Ron, perplexed.