Who: Arthur & Molly Weasley What: Arthur finds out that Molly is pregnant again When: February 2019, evening after children are in bed Where: The Burrow Warnings: Language.
There were signs, of course. Molly knew them rather well by now. All signs that also tended to coincide with being overly stressed. She was stressed every ruddy day, so the symptoms she had been experiencing hadn’t been anything particularly outstanding.
It wasn’t until she started craving tripe mixed with not wanting to have sex with Arthur that the realisation finally hit her. “Arthur Weasley!” she called immediately, now sifting through their potion storage for a pregnancy test (which they tended to keep because of this very bloody reason).
“Yes, love?” he called back absentmindedly. He was flipping through the pages of Witch Weekly, deeply engrossed in the backstage stories of an up-and-coming singer for some band he’d never heard of. Arthur wasn’t sure what he thought about the man’s music but he had an interesting face and it certainly gave him a reason to put off charming a stack of dishes or yelling doxies out of the garden.
Molly tugged the potion down and from the cupboard, uncorking it and spitting into it immediately to start the process of waiting. She put a hand on her stomach, only noticing now the small paunch there that she’d perhaps been ignoring as a possible gain in weight. Was it good that she at least wasn’t getting fat? She wasn’t sure the trade-off was necessarily great. “Get your arse in here,” she replied haughtily.
“Coming, coming,” he mumbled as he set the magazine down. A woman on the front cover winked at him and he hurriedly flipped it over lest he find it in the waste bin later before he’d had a chance to finish reading it. Molly didn’t sound as if she was in a good mood at all.
“I was just, ah, finishing up some things. Did you need help with something?” Arthur asked, reflexively heading toward a pile of dishes on the counter. She hadn’t quite been herself lately, something that he was attributing to Ron’s fussiness of late. He knew it couldn’t be easy staying at home all day with the boys and he reflected that perhaps he should try and find a sitter so that they could have a bit of time to themselves.
Molly shook her head fervently at his question, pointing at the potion on the counter and saying nothing else. He would know exactly what it was seeing as they had already done this five times in the past. She only glared at him in response, as though this sort of outcome had only presented itself of his doing and had nothing to do with her own participation.
“Oh.” Arthur said. Then his mouth overtook his brain. “Well, a seventh son is something special, isn’t it?”
Molly raised her hands in the air. “Really? That’s your bloody response? Ron only just turned 12 months old!” If she was pregnant, she wasn’t certain how far along she was yet, but her first reaction certainly wasn’t to be excited about another child. Especially not when she’d had five other experiences to go by. “And what if we have sodding twins again?”
“But it’s a baby, Molly. Another bit of you into the world. How can I not be even a little happy about that?” he asked, moving a little closer and grabbing her hands. He smiled as he looked into her face. “We’ll make it work. We always have, haven’t we?” Inside, he was fighting his own fears, knowing that every word Molly said was true and yet, at the same time, he completely meant each one he’d just spoken.
Arthur always did have the ability to say the right sodding thing, even when Molly was trying her best to be overtly irrational. It had always suited her well just like Arthur’s patience had suited the both of them well. He knew how to calm her down even when she didn’t want to be calm. She sighed exaggeratedly, her stance deflating slightly at his words and his touch. “Yes, we have, to the ire of the entire Pureblood community.” She smirked a little, though obviously having a ton of children they could turn into small blood traitors was not the ultimate goal.
“It’s just the money, Arthur…”
“We’ll manage,” he said. “If I have to, well, I’ll go to my parents, Molly.” His thumb lightly stroked her wrist, fluttering gently over the soft skin just below her palm. He didn’t like the thought of it but he knew that he’d do whatever it took to support his family.
Standing a little straighter, Arthur squared his jaw and added, “Any road, we do have other options. I can get more hours at work or perhaps look at other departments. Artefacts isn’t the best-paid and perhaps someone else would take me on. We’ll figure it out, love.” But would they? he wondered. What if he did have to go crawling back to his family for help? To his mother? What would that cost them all?
The reaction in Molly’s face was enough to tell him what she thought of that idea. She didn’t want either one of them to go down that road, no matter how bloody in the hole they got. Begging on a street corner felt better to her than talking to their parents.
She shook her head and moved into him, resting her forehead on his shoulder. “You can’t do that. You love that job. I don’t want you to sacrifice your happiness either, Arthur.” She knew the right move would be on her end rather than Arthur’s, no matter how infeasible it seemed at the time. “I should go back to work.”
His first instinct was to tell her absolutely not. How on earth would they manage to care for so many young children if she did? How would they afford it, even on two salaries? But then he realized that it was selfish to expect that she’d actually wanted to stay home.
“Do you actually want to?” he asked cautiously.
Surprise hit her at his question, like maybe they’d never actually discussed the possibility before. Molly wasn’t sure how they’d decided that she should stay home with the children, she just knew that the pieces had fallen that way. She pulled back to look him in the face. “I dunno. Maybe? It could be nice, but…” She didn’t know that they could manage it. “I would miss the boys a lot.” Even if this hadn’t been the life she’d expected to have at the age of 18, she had never regretted it and she still didn’t.
“Maybe...maybe you should think about it,” Arthur said.
He was trying to remember how it had been decided that she would stay home. Perhaps it had happened when she’d felt so sick during one of the pregnancies or it had just seemed more natural, given that she wouldn’t have been able to work immediately after regardless. It troubled him to think that somewhere in the back of his mind, he might have somehow just assumed it of Molly. That she would stay home because it’s what mothers did--at least, what his mother did. Now, he was starting to wonder whether he hadn’t opened a Pandora’s box. Why was it that he’d never actually asked her this question before?
“Would you want me to?” Molly had spent a few years of their relationship only thinking about what she wanted and she never wanted to go back to that place. They were a team, for better or for worse, and it mattered more what they both wanted and not what one of them did. “It only makes sense if it’s the best decision for the family, not just me.” And certainly not her wants before the children, because they always came first. They’d come first even before Molly and Arthur had gotten married, for bloody sake.
“I hadn’t thought about it, if we’re being honest,” Arthur hoped that the admission wouldn’t hurt her. “And I don’t remember why we decided that you’d stay home with the boys. Did we actually decide it or did we just--go along with things?” He pulled back and looked her in the eyes, trying to read how she felt about working. Years ago, he thought he might have known but now? With their lives so consumed with the children, were they losing the people they used to be? Maybe Molly returning to work wouldn’t be such a bad thing or maybe it would break her heart. He really wasn’t sure.
She shook her head and randomly glanced at the potion on the counter, finally giving the results that she’d really already known. They both had at this point. “I don’t know.” Part of it might have stemmed from Molly’s indignance of her mother and her want to be everything her mother never had been. She and her brothers never spent much time with their parents, basically raised by house elves, and that might have spurned her desire to spend as much sodding time with her children as she could manage. To raise them to be decent human beings as opposed to what the Prewett name had produced so far.
“It was so many children ago I can hardly remember. I don’t… I don’t regret it though. You know that, right?”
He shook his head.
“But it doesn’t have to be you. You know that, don’t you?” He searched for the answer in her eyes, reaching out for her again. He wanted to say more--to remind her that this child also was a choice--but he didn’t know how to tell her that without somehow also admitting that he wanted all of their children, however much trouble it might cause. In the end, what Molly and the children had given him was a life far different from the one that he’d left behind when he became a man. He’d do anything to keep from going back to that still, angry place.
Leave it to her husband to give her the sort of choice that hardly any other man would - certainly not in the society they came from, anyway. Arthur surprised her near daily with his kindness, with his thoughtfulness. Everything about him screamed perfect to her when she herself was the furthest from perfect one could get.
“I know that I love you, Arthur Weasley,” she gave as a sort of non-answer, pressing a hand against his chest and leaning up to kiss him, “and I know that we’ve made a bloody amazing family. It doesn’t matter how many children we have - we’ll love them all the same and do the best we can for them. If that means changing things, then so be it, but I know I am happy with the way things are. I always have been, no matter my complaining.”
“I’m glad,” he tangled his fingers in her hair, watching as it sparkled in the light. “I’m happy too. Even if I maybe don’t say it as much as I ought.” He smiled. “I didn’t think that I’d have a life like this, growing up. It wasn’t what my parents wanted for me, you know--well, if they wanted anything at all.” He wasn’t sure they ever had.
Molly shrugged the last off. “What do parents know, honestly?” It obviously wasn’t lost on her that they were the parents now, but until their kids were of age, they had to listen. Besides, Molly and Arthur were a far cry from what their own parents had been so she liked to think that they were doing a better job of it. “We have a great life, Arthur, regardless of what anyone else might say. Yes it can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. And… don’t stress about the money. You’re amazing at providing for us, love. I don’t want you to think otherwise.”
He decided not to address that at the moment. Truth be told, he thought that probably what Molly had said wasn’t accurate at all. Inwardly, he sighed. If only I had more ambition…
“Well, then let’s start making plans for this little one,” he smiled, reaching out to caress Molly’s stomach. “Though what we’ll call him, I have no idea. Perhaps we should give Remus or Sirius the chance to name a child.” Arthur grinned, imagining how that might end up.
“You ought to start making plans to get my favourite foods,” she grinned, covering his hand with her own.
Truthfully the more kids they had, the less family members to name them after. It was the last that she snorted at though. “Oh hell no. I’d give Bill and Charlie that honour before those two. Haven’t you heard the nicknames they’ve given each other? They don’t even make any sense…”