Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 60: Trouble in Paradise

April 2005

Annie quietly shut the back door of her house behind her and began tiptoeing silently toward the stairs so as not to disturb her sleeping daughter. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Georgeanna was napping in the little sling Annie always carried her around in. A happy, contented smile graced her features.

"Ahem."

She was startled to see George's sullen face where he sat at the dining table, drumming his fingers. Her heart sunk as she realized he appeared itching to go another round with her. When is this row going to end?

"You're home early," she said, keeping her voice quiet and level. She continued walking toward the staircase, intending to go upstairs and lay the baby down in her crib before tangling with George once again.

"And where have you been, as if I don't know? Caught you sneaking over there, haven't I?" he said quietly, but there was no masking the fury in his voice.

Stay calm. Don't rise. Annie turned to face him, one foot on the first step. "I wasn't aware I had to sneak anywhere. Angelina wanted to show me something."

It was adorable, what the children had been working on that day: a large mural painted with their hands and feet on an old sheet. They'd been extremely pleased with themselves, and every one of them was now a walking rainbow with the mess. The whole thing had been happy and hilarious. Every vestige of those pleasant feelings vanished with her husband's next comment, however.

"A handprint to clean off a window, perhaps? A spill that needed mopping up?" he said icily.

He'd found the hot button. A fury to match his flared before her eyes. "Is that what you think I do all day? I spend my time tidying up behind them?" She wished she could stomp loudly up the stairs but controlled the urge so as not to wake the sleeping infant in her arms and crept silently instead.

She heard him leap up from his seat and follow her up the stairs. "That's what got us into this mess, isn't it?" he snapped in a strained whisper from just behind her shoulder. "They take advantage of the fact you won't say no to any of them!"

"That's not true!" she hissed. She had never felt taken advantage of. It was only fair for her to pull her own weight.

"You're nothing but a glorified house-elf to the lot of them, and I won't stand for it any longer!" he hissed back. "They have Winky now. You stay here, understood?"

Annie bit her lip as she gently set their baby daughter into her crib, covered her with a blanket, then turned to her husband standing in the doorway. She glared at him and stabbed her finger toward the staircase. They both held their tongues as they dashed quickly down the stairs together until they were both back on the ground floor.

Then she spun around on him, using the same finger to stab him in the chest for emphasis. "Don't you dare speak to me like that!" Annie cried. "That was a hurtful thing to say, not to mention utterly false, and you know it! What's wrong with you lately? Why are you being such an overprotective and overbearing git?"

"Why are you being so perversely pigheaded about this?" he parried, equally livid. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings, but if that's the only way I can keep you safe...."

"Safe? I'm supposed to believe this is about my safety?" she spluttered in disbelief. "The war is over, George. It has been for a long time. Let it go! No one's coming for us anymore," she argued.

George grabbed her roughly by the shoulders as if he planned to shake her. "I can't lose you too!" he choked, his eyes glittering with panic and fury. "I won't watch you kill yourself for that bloody school! I need you more!"

Finally, we're getting somewhere, Annie thought with relief. All their arguments for four months now – ever since the night she'd gone into early labor – had been dancing around this, the real issue. And it became crystal clear to her in this second that they all led back to Fred, of all things. It wasn't about a balance of power between her and George, after all. It wasn't about his feeling neglected. This was about fear, pure and simple.

"George," she whispered, all the anger now sapped from her voice. She held his face in her hands as she spoke. "You won't lose me. I won't leave you!" she swore.

Her husband's lower lip trembled for a split second until he bit down on it.

"Every doctor in the hospital told us the same thing: the trouble with Georgeanna had nothing to do with my working at the school, or at home, or anything," she reminded him. "It was just one of those inexplicable things that no one can predict or control. And there's nothing you or I could've done to prevent it. I'm not in any danger now, especially from anything at the school. You can't hover over me like this for the rest of our lives."

"Can't I?" he asked, his sighing tone admitting his defeat.

She could see that in his rational mind, he knew she was right. He pulled her into a gentler but still firm embrace, holding her head against his chest with one hand as he buried his face in her hair. "I don't understand it: this hold it has on you," he mumbled.

"Do you remember when you were sixteen, and you decided to go into the joke business with Fred?" she asked, listening to his strong heartbeat pounding as she held him just as tightly as he held her. "Can you remember why?"

"We were idiots," he said lightly.

She lifted her head to look up at his face. George wore a slight, pained smile.

"Let's have some honesty, please. At least pretend to have a serious, adult conversation," she said.

"It was what we were meant to do, and we both knew it," he said with a shrug.

Annie nodded in understanding. "It was your calling. It still is. The humor, the creativity, the challenge of inventing something new: it's a perfect fit. Going to work every morning isn't a chore for you – it's a labor of love."

"I suppose you're right," he admitted reluctantly.

"So, why are you trying to take the same thing away from me?"

"Is that really how you feel about it?" he said, surprised.

"Yes!" she cried. How can he be so blind as to not see it? "This isn't some hobby or something I do just to fill time. Being with the children every day, taking care of them and teaching them all at the school.... I love it! It's what I was meant to do. It's something I'm good at – something valuable I can contribute...."

George snorted like a bull ready to charge. "There it is: that Muggle chip on your shoulder. I knew it was behind all this stubbornness somewhere. When are you going to get it through your remarkably thick skull that you are just as good, if not better, than any of the rest of us? Magic counts for nothing!" he said in a growl that would be shouting if not for the sleeping baby upstairs.

Annie paced across the kitchen floor. It frustrated her that he couldn't seem to put himself in her shoes, see things from her perspective on this point after all this time. "How would you feel if the situation were reversed?" she asked, and not for the first time. "If every effort you made could be improved upon, done faster and better with nothing more than a wish? Would you be satisfied to be kept like a bird in a gilded cage?"

George sighed. "You're not a pet..." he protested. They'd had this argument before, a dozen times at least.

"I know that. But it is how I feel, sometimes." She had already given in, conceded the upkeep of the school was outpacing her capability, and agreed to accept Winky's help. But the teaching... that was another matter entirely. She would never give that up!

"Imagine how wonderful it is to me to discover something I can do that can't be done better by magic!" she pleaded with him. "Something I can contribute through my own effort that is appreciated and important! And you want me to give it up!"

"I want you to be happy..." he argued. "But I want you to take it easy, as well. Don't lie to me or to yourself and say the past four months haven't shaken you, too. You're not as strong as you were before. Don't push yourself too soon. Promise me that."

Annie nodded, acknowledging his request was a fair one. And he was right: she had been rattled by the events in the hospital and would never be the same after what had happened with Georgeanna. "As long as you promise you won't punish me for going back to work at the school, eventually. I don't want to fight with you about it forever. I will take it easy for now, but I will go back," she said decisively.

George winced at the finality in her tone. "At a later date... to be determined jointly?" he countered, clawing for some small concession on her part.

"Deal," she agreed.

George pursed his lips, far from satisfied, but recognizing the futility of pressing the issue further for the moment. "No take-backs," he added grumpily.

*

Ron stepped out of the fireplace to an unexpected sight. The room was dark – that much wasn't a surprise. But the fact that his brother was standing half-naked a yard away, wand pointed directly at his face, was a bit of a shock.

"This had better be life or death, you little shit," George snarled, keeping his wand pointed right between Ron's eyes.

Frozen still, Ron glanced around for clues to explain his brother's irrational, aggressive behavior and immediately wished he hadn't. George was holding up his trousers with the hand that wasn't aiming his wand, and Annie was clutching an afghan around herself, bare arms and legs exposed, reclining on the sofa cushions.

"For Merlin's.... Right in front of the hearth?" Ron spluttered. "Why not outdoors? Or on a busy street where a few more people could see?"

"It's eleven fucking o'clock at night in my own goddamn house!" George hissed, taking a step to the side, attempting to help hide the worst of Annie's exposure and nudging his wand a few inches closer to Ron's nose as he did so.

"Ron, what's wrong?" Annie said, peeking around from behind George's legs. Hers was the calmest voice in the room by far.

Ron spoke while looking at the ceiling. "Right. Sorry, Annie. It's just... something's the matter with Hermione. She's locked herself in the toilet at our place. I can hear her crying...."

"What the hell did you do now?" spat George.

"Nothing! I swear! At least, I don't think so," Ron answered, indignation and confidence waning in his voice the longer he spoke.

George rolled his eyes, but lowered his wand at last.

"Ron, what's the matter?" Annie repeated.

"That's just it! I don't know, and she won't tell me. She just said she wants to see you," Ron whined.

"Me?" Annie exclaimed. That was certainly unexpected. As sisters-in-law, they got on just fine, but Annie and Hermione were hardly close. That was Ginny's special role.

"Please... will you come?" Ron pleaded.

Annie looked at George, who sighed in frustration but nodded all the same.

"You go on with the idiot here," George said as he jerked his head toward his fuming brother. "I'll go see if anyone at the Burrow can come watch the kids, then I'll meet you at their place in a bit."

Annie understood George still didn't like the idea of relying entirely on Winky for anything important, especially leaving her unsupervised with their children. He seemed to have some deep-seated trust issues when it came to house-elves.

"D'you mind?" Annie asked her brother-in-law, spinning her finger around in midair.

"Oh, right. Sorry," Ron muttered as he turned his back to her.

Annie quickly gathered up her clothes and scurried to the first floor bathroom to get dressed. A minute and a half later, she stepped into the fireplace, holding Ron's thick forearm, and emerged another moment later in his and Hermione's little London flat.

"Just upstairs and to the right," he directed her. Ron's face betrayed an enormous amount of stress and worry.

As Annie climbed the stairs, she began to hear sniffles and muted sobs from behind a small door with a light visible underneath. She knocked quietly on the door. "Hermione? You wanted to speak to me?"

"Annie?!"

She heard a click, and the door opened a crack. Hermione's puffy, distraught face peeked out, then pulled her quickly inside.

"Hermione! What's wrong?"

"Oh, Annie!" she wailed and buried her face in a handful of tissues. A fresh round of sobs issued forth.

Annie put her arms around her, trying to soothe her. "Calm down now, dear. Tell me what's happened."

Once Hermione finally gained some control, she began to speak. "Have you ever.... I mean, when you were... pregnant... did you ever... bleed?"

Annie closed her eyes as the air was involuntarily forced out of her lungs. Poor Hermione! Annie reckoned she understood what was wrong now. "How far along are you?" she whispered.

"Not long.... Only six weeks," Hermione choked out.

"And Ron?"

"Doesn't know. I never told him.... I was going to wait until our anniversary..." she choked and began to cry anew.

Their wedding anniversary. About two weeks away, Annie calculated. "Hermione... I'm not a doctor, you understand... but I'm afraid that if you're bleeding... heavily, that is... that it's not a good sign," Annie spoke as gently as she could. "Do you want to see a Healer or doctor or something, just to be sure?"

"I think I already knew," Hermione sniffed, shaking her head slowly. "You know me – as soon as I found out, I began reading every book there was about it. They all said that... loss... was more common than most people knew. And when it happens as early as this, it usually means... there was something really wrong... with the baby." And with that she lost control once more.

Annie held Hermione as they sat together on the edge of the bathtub, rocking her gently back and forth, allowing her to grieve. They cried together over the loss of the little life that had barely even started. It brought back the fear – No, abject terror, more like, she corrected herself – Annie had felt when she'd been worried about losing little Georgeanna so recently.

Annie brushed Hermione's hair back, turning her head up to face her own. "Listen to me, Hermione. I've read those books, too. And they all say just because this happened once, it doesn't mean you can't have a perfectly healthy baby next time. I know you must be hurting horribly right now, but don't give up hope. Promise me?"

Hermione nodded mutely, hugging herself tightly.

"Now, the best thing for you, I think, is to lie down for a while. Get some rest... 'til it's over. Can I get you anything?"

Hermione shook her head. She let Annie lead her into her bedroom and tuck her gently into bed.

"Hermione, dear... Ron really needs to know what's going on. He's worried sick about you right now," Annie said. "Are you ready? To tell him, I mean."

A panicked look joined the hurt on Hermione's face.

Annie sighed inwardly. She had already figured as much. There were some things that could cause even the much-vaunted Gryffindor courage to quail. "Or would you prefer it if someone else does?"

"Would you? I'm not sure I can...." Hermione squeezed her eyes closed, and tears coursed once more.

Annie kissed her tenderly on the forehead. "I'll send him up in a minute, all right?"

Annie went downstairs to find George and Ron silently glaring at each other from across the dining table she recognized from her Gran's kitchen. Or rather, she imagined Ron was glaring, since his back was toward her. One look at Annie's face, though, and George changed his expression. Genuine concern replaced every trace of irritation in an instant.

"Ron..." she said softly, not sure how to begin. She looked into his perplexed face. Perhaps a direct route is best in a time like this. "First... Hermione is going to be all right, yeah? But right now, she's... having a miscarriage." It was so hard to say the words – she could only imagine how hard it was for him to hear them.

Ron stared at her in utter confusion, shaking his head. "But that's impossible. She's not...."

"She was.... She just hadn't told you yet. I'm so sorry, Ron."

Ron's face began to screw itself up in pain as the significance of what Annie was telling him finally began to register. She patted his broad shoulders as he stared at the table in front of him, and tears began to silently roll down his cheeks.

"I know it hurts, Ron... but Hermione needs you right now to be with her. You need to grieve together, to comfort each other. Go on up to her," Annie urged.

Ron nodded with a great sniff, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hands. The chair made a horrible scraping noise in the silence of the flat as he rose from the table and began to trudge upstairs.

"Ah, Annie. This is awful. Poor kids..." George muttered when Ron was out of earshot. He buried his face in his hands for a moment, sighing deeply.

"Come on – let's leave them alone for now. We'll check on them tomorrow morning." Annie held out her hand, which George took, and they moved together toward the fireplace.

"I feel like such an arse," he sighed as they arrived moments later in their own home once again.

"Surely that's familiar territory?" she teased as she hugged him tightly. She was desperate for some way to lighten the horrible mood that had descended upon them.

"Ha, ha, ha," he answered sarcastically, but held her just as tightly anyway.

Light snoring could be heard coming from the guestroom. "Let's not wake Mum," George suggested in a whisper. "I don't want to talk to her about this tonight."

Annie nodded in agreement. Molly would find out about the tragedy soon enough. They both tiptoed up the stairs, still holding hands.

Annie let him go at the top. "I have to go give every one of them a kiss right now," she whispered, feeling an urgent need to gather each one of her children into her arms and hold them there forever.

George nodded and followed her, lurking just inside the doorways, feeling the urge to check on them as well. Both parents silently gave thanks for the five healthy little ones sleeping safely in their beds. The events of that night reminded them just how precious, how miraculous each one of their children was.

Afterward, as they crept into their own bed, Annie reached out and held her husband's face in her hands. "We've been so lucky, haven't we?"

George wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. "Unbelievably so," he agreed as he kissed her forehead. "We're ridiculously lucky."

George rolled onto his back, and Annie rested her head on his chest. "I guess it's their turn now, isn't it?" she said wistfully. "Ginny and Hermione and Audrey, I mean. It's their turn to have all the babies."

"Don't be sad, love. Our family is perfect exactly the way it is," he assured her, stroking her hair with his hand.

"I know.... But I can't help wishing. It's hard... to know there'll never be another new baby in our house again."

"You just finished saying how lucky we've been. You expect me to risk losing you for any reason?" he countered.

"You're right, of course. It's silly of me to be so selfish," she agreed, trying to be rational about it.

George had made it quite clear, in fact, that another baby was completely out of the question. Just after Georgeanna had been born, while Annie lay weakened in the hospital bed, the doctor had warned them that she should never try to get pregnant again. The toll on her body had been too great, he'd said. And then, it had taken her so much longer to physically recover from the birth this time. They hadn't been home long at all before George had made the appointment.

The surgeon had certainly been perplexed to see a not-quite twenty-seven-year-old man and his young wife in his office requesting a vasectomy. "Are you quite sure, young man? This is permanent, you understand, regardless of the nonsense you see in films."

George had nodded solemnly. "We have five children, sir, and the doctors said the next one could kill her," he had said in a rough voice, swallowing hard.

It had nearly wrecked Annie to see him so upset.

"Well, I suppose I can't argue with that, now, can I? Very well, then. Come back next Friday morning for the procedure," the doctor had replied.

It had broken her heart – just a little – to give it all up. Raising children was the closest thing to a calling she had ever felt. A happier, lovelier purpose in life she couldn't imagine. Being pregnant felt wonderful to Annie – feeling the little life inside as it grew, watching George smile with anticipation as he would kiss and stroke her swelling belly. She already missed it desperately. Perhaps it's just because it's still so soon after the last baby? she tried to comfort herself.

So soon, in fact, that tonight had been their first attempt at sex in months – since before all the trouble began, before Georgeanna was born. Annie had finally been declared completely recovered from the traumatic birth, and George's test results had come back that very afternoon: he was officially sterile. Annie had nearly teared up with the news but refused to make it worse by letting him see her cry about it.

And then Ron had burst through their fire. He certainly has a talent for interruption, she thought, recalling at least five other times her brother-in-law had unwittingly stumbled upon them nearly in flagrante over the years. Not that she begrudged him tonight, of all nights. It was just... frustratingly bad timing.

Oh, well, she thought with a sigh. There's always tomorrow night.

"You still awake?" George whispered.

Annie nodded against his chest.

"Mind if we pick up where we left off earlier?" he asked her, lifting her face toward his for a kiss. "It has been an awfully long time...."