Chapter Five
Ron Weasley was in a bit of a dilemma.
You see, his only daughter had married the only son of his mortal enemy. And then they had decided that their greatest dream was to have a family of their own, so now Ron's first grandchild was going to be a Malfoy. But to make matters worse, the Malfoy's were also some of the last surviving members of the Black family. And the Black family liked to name their children after constellations. And, on top of all of that, some complete imbecile had given Ron's niece Lucy some ridiculous book about the constellations which she and her cousins were going through trying to determine what horrendous name they thought would be bestowed upon Ron's poor, innocent grandchild.
But that wasn't even the worst of it. No, the worst part was that his nieces and nephews had decided to take a group field trip to the tea shop more than half an hour previously so now he didn't even have his horror at each new name they read off to distract him from actually taking time to dwell on what his grandchild's name might turn out to be. Of course, that was if his grandchild ever decided to put an appearance in.
Ron was quite positive that the wait for each of his own children's births hadn't been nearly as stressful as this one was turning out to be.
"Ron, dear," Hermione's voice suddenly broke through Ron's thoughts, "Are you all right?"
He stared at her blankly. "What?"
She nodded at his lap, "What did that handkerchief ever do to you?"
Looking down, Ron saw that, in his anxiety, he had twisted his handkerchief into something that vaguely resembled a knotted rope.
"Everything is fine," Ron said swiftly, dropping the handkerchief as if it had burned him.
Hermione gave her husband a concerned look. "Are you sure?" She pressed. "Maybe you should get some air. I'm sure the kids are still upstairs. Maybe you could go join them."
While Ron had already established that not having to hear his nieces' and nephews' ridiculous name ideas was only slightly less stressful than actually having time to dwell on their conversation, he highly doubted that going to find them was the best solution. For all he knew they could be taking this opportunity—now that they were away from the prying ears of family—to discuss things that were even more awful than his grandchild's possible name. And no, he did not want to even think about what could possibly be worse than the conversation he had already had to endure, thank you very much. Being in the general vicinity of them was clearly a no-win situation.
He couldn't very well explain that to his wife, though. And speaking of his wife, she was still giving him a concerned look. Clearly he was expected to answer her.
"I think I'll stay here," Ron said quickly.
"Clearly you need something to do, though," Hermione stated. "Didn't you bring any paperwork with you? You are always complaining that that's all you seem to do these days. Now would be an excellent time to get some of it done."
"Er…no…" Ron said slowly. "I…well, I was in a bit of a hurry to leave, after I got your owl. I…er…I must have forgotten to bring anything with to work on." When Hermione's expression twisted into an almost imperceptible frown he hastened to add, "But maybe once Harry gets here he'll have something for me to do."
"Hmm…perhaps," Came Hermione's response. Her gaze began to gravitate back towards her own paperwork at this point. "Personally, I don't know how you've been coping for the past two hours. I think I would be practically mad with nerves by this point if I was you. Of course…there was your handkerchief…"
Ron was saved from having to respond, however, by the sudden (and rather raucous) re-entrance of his nieces and nephews into the waiting room.
"I hope neither of you wanted to get anything from the Tearoom or the Shop," Hugo informed his parents as he sat down, his cousins also resuming the seats they had previously been sitting in. "Because I do believe they'll both be closed for a while."
"At least until Rose and Scorpius bring the baby home," Lily chimed in. "Once the hospital staff knows they're potentially safe from our presence up there."
"What did you do?" Hermione asked slowly, now completely distracted from her work. The horror was clear in both her tone and expression.
"I didn't do anything," Lily replied immediately. "No, it was all my dear older brother, James, plus Louis and Fred."
"Where is James?" Ron questioned over Louis and Fred's protests, having noticed that the oldest Potter hadn't returned with the group.
"See, it's like this," Fred began, cutting off the rest of his cousins as they all hastened to answer their uncle's question, "We were on our way up to the fifth floor; Teddy decided to go stop by to visit some relatives and Vic had gone off to floo Mrs. Tonks, so it's quite possible that we had just a bit less supervision than we would have had otherwise—"
"Fred!" Roxanne cut her brother off. "You're twenty seven years old! You shouldn't need supervision anymore!"
"That's not the point," Fred said with a wave of his hand, turning back to his aunt and uncle, "The point," He continued, "Is that we didn't have their guidance and none of us like listening to Lucy when she's being bossy. So, in a perfectly understandable turn of events, we got lost on our way to the fifth floor and ended up on the ground floor—"
"Which is where James discovered that Emma had gotten into a bit of an accident at practice—" Louis cut in, before being cut off himself by Molly.
"Which, really, when you think about it, might end up being a good thing, in the long run," Molly said decisively. "I mean, I love Emma, but if this injury takes her out of the Harpies' next match, then the Cannons might actually have a chance of beating them."
"The day the Chudley Cannons beat the Holyhead Harpies is the day hell freezes over," Dominique declared loudly. "Er, no offense, Uncle Ron. But seriously, when was the last time they had a good season, let alone won a game?"
"Next season," Roxanne said with a smirk.
"Oh, so you're a seer, now?" Molly asked. "Do tell us how in Merlin's name you think the Cannons are going to manage a good season next year."
"I've requested a trade," Roxanne said simply.
There was silence for a moment, everyone taking a moment to digest this information. The fact that James' wife was in the hospital with a Quidditch injury clearly long gone from their minds. The silence was broken, however, by a loud explosion of noise.
"You did what?" Fred demanded of his sister.
"That Magpies are actually good!" Louis chimed in. "Why would you leave them?"
"You're insane!" Molly declared.
"You're joking, aren't you, Roxie?" Lily asked. "I haven't heard about any trades, and I'm pretty sure I'd be the first to know about one."
"It's not official yet," Roxanne replied. "The management in Montrose thinks I'm insane to want to leave to go to the Cannons, of all teams, so they've okayed it because they don't think it's going to work out for me. But we haven't heard from the Cannons yet so we haven't made any kind of announcement to the Department of Magical Games and Sports or to the press; I'm pretty sure they're all in some state of shock over the fact that anyone would voluntarily want to be traded there."
"Why would someone want to be traded there?" Albus asked. "The Chudley Cannons haven't won the league in more than a hundred years."
"Forget everything I ever said about dad leaving you the business after he retires," Fred informed his sister. "Clearly I am the one with the brains out of the two of us."
"Clearly I'm just the one who likes a challenge," Roxanne told Fred. "The Cannons losing streak ends next season. But I'm sure that there are other things Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron would like to talk about?"
Ron opened his mouth to speak, but Hermione beat him to it.
"While I'm sure Ron would love to go on and on about how you're now his favorite niece," Hermione said, patting Ron's knee affectionately, "You still haven't explained what, exactly, happened to James."
"It was after we ran into Emma and her teammates," Lucy spoke up, "Naturally, James thought that his wife needed cheering up in the form of material goods—which is when this lot finally took my advice and we unfortunately found our way to the fifth floor." She took a brief pause before continuing, "Do you really want to hear the rest?"
"I think we'll just leave it to our imagination," Hermione said swiftly. "And I'm sure when Ginny eventually finds out what her son did we'll hear quite a bit about it."
"What has my son done this time?" A voice spoke up from the door.
As one, the group turned to see that Harry and Ginny had both finally arrived; Teddy was standing slightly behind them, still in the doorway.
"It was all James, mum, I swear," Albus said quickly.
"Isn't it always?" Harry asked, looking slightly weary. "I think we should just stop asking questions, Gin. Maybe then we'll finally be able to pretend like we have a normal family."
"Normal is incredibly over-rated, Uncle Harry," Louis said immediately.
"And since the topic is bound to come up eventually," Fred chimed in, "So is being mature."
"Basically," Lucy spoke up once more, addressing her aunts and uncles, "After James, Fred, and Louis managed to get all of us banned from the entire fifth floor of this hospital for life, James went to go check on Emma again. He said he'd come meet us back up here when she gets released."
"Or when she kicks him out of her ward once she finds out what he did," Albus muttered.
"Emma really is a lovely girl," Ginny commented absentmindedly, taking the empty seat next to Hermione, whom she immediately engaged in conversation. "Mum said she and dad will be here soon…"
It was at this point that Ron chose to tune out his wife and his sister's conversation. Instead, he turned to Harry, who had pulled out a large pile of paperwork almost immediately upon sitting down, and was about to ask if he could help with any of it when his nieces and nephews decided to resume their earlier conversation.
"We should get back to those constellations, shouldn't we?" Dominique asked. "We don't want the baby to be born before we can get through all of the name possibilities."
"That would be a great tragedy," her brother agreed. "Lucy, if you would be so kind as to continue?"
Ron turned away from Harry and sank back into his chair once more in defeat. There was no use even pretending like he was going to get anything worthwhile accomplished now…