The Trouble With Love

Ch. 12: Oh Teddy Bear

September 2006

A/N: I apologize for the long wait. School just started, unexpected drama popped up between my parents and I, stress from my brain still being on vacation well into the beginning few weeks of school, and some weird feelings about my two fave classes (like I said, weird, but I’m over that now). And then my grandmother had a lot of medical problems, finally passing on almost a week ago. I’m all right, for the most part. But for a long time I just didn’t feel like writing. Now I do.

NOTE. If you’re reading any of my other CURRENT stories, look at my bio.

Thank you for the reviews, guys. They meant SO MUCH to me, they made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Like when you drink hot chocolate on a snowy day. X)

Oh….woe is me! The last chapter this…be! Ha ha. Not really. But anyway, I don’t think I’ll get as much length as last chapter (GOSH, last chapter was a doozy. But it just kept writing itself. ;) I hope you like this one nonetheless, and thank you ALL for reading. Including “Like Father, Like Son”, it’s lasted since about the first time I got here on and that passed the two year mark at the beginning of July. I think LFLS was my first multi-chaptered fic. And this is my first sequel. Sob!

Sigh. The last disclaimer! Well, we all know that one: I don’t own Harry Potter; information, though we’ve somewhat passed a lot of that, was supplied by World Book Encyclopedia, 2002 Edition, and I don’t own Spongebob.

“No, no, I like this one,” Ginny said, pointing down to a picture on the bed. Her long red hair swung forward into her view and she absently pulled it back behind her ears. She toyed with the edge of the picture in question and glanced up at Harry. “Why don’t you?”

Harry glanced down from the parchment he was holding to stare down at the picture she was now pointing to. When the certain picture she was so intent on registered in his mind, he sighed. “I love that one, Ginny,” he said wearily. “It’s one of the best.” He picked up another picture, a little farther away from her on the bed, and held it up so she could see it better. “But I have a gut feeling about this one. Anyway, we can pick more than one, remember?”

“I know we can pick more than one,” she huffed before looking down at the picture he chose. Her eyebrow twitched when she saw which one; he’d been going on about it for awhile now. “Whatever for, Harry? You’ve been obsessive about that one picture since Dumbledore brought in that weird camera of his.” She stared up at him with a confused and slightly exasperated expression on her face. “It is a wonderful picture, Harry, don’t get me wrong. But why are your knickers in such a twist over it?”

The corner of his mouth twitched as if he was trying not to smirk. “My knickers? In a twist?”

“Don’t change the subject,” she said, mock-glaring at him. “What is it?”

He ran a hand through his hair before glancing behind him and, spotting the chair, pulled it back up to the bedside. It’d been moved earlier when visitors had come in.

Currently, they were alone in the hospital room. While Elizabeth Potter was doing exceptionally well, the doctor said he wanted to keep her in a more private room until he was completely sure her immune system could handle ordinary germs and bacteria, the kind that everyone can encounter but not really be harmed by.

All of the pictures Dumbledore and Remus had taken were spread out on the bed in front of Ginny, where she was sitting up with her legs crossed Indian-style. Dumbledore had said it was no trouble at all to copy the pictures and make more than one, but he said it was a long process so, at least at first, they should only pick a few they really like. Right now they were sifting through the pictures, picking the ones they liked best – and which ones they thought everyone else would like best.

While Ginny openly liked all of them and was choosing between her favorites, Harry had adamantly held on to one, refusing not to pick it. It was a picture of her sitting in a chair, holding Elizabeth (whom everyone but Harry had started to refer to as ‘Lizzie’) and Harry kneeling beside her, his arm around Ginny.

The one she had been referring to was the one Dumbledore had snapped of Elizabeth Hope grabbing onto Harry’s nose while everyone around them laughed.

Harry hadn’t told anyone, though technically Remus and Dumbledore sort of knew, about the picture of his mother holding him and his father holding her close. But he had known that sooner or later he’d have to tell Ginny – not that he minded, of course, but…it had been something of his parents’ that had just been his. He knew it was a bit selfish of him to admit, but he didn’t want to share it with anyone, just yet at least, because he had only had it for such a short time himself. With a small, inner smile he realized now it was about time to show his wife that beloved – and, technically, inspiring – photograph.

“You know the pictures I told you about?” he asked, his voice a little dull sounding. “The ones with the letters from my parents?”

“Yea…oh,” she said, and comprehension dawned in her eyes. She studied him carefully, and not for the first or last time he was struck by how clever she was. “I have a guess, but keep going, so if I’m wrong you won’t know it.”

His mouth twitched but he continued. “There was a picture of my mum laying in the hospital bed, holding me, and my dad was standing with his arm around her and just looking down at me…he looked like he loved us so much…” His emerald-green eyes settled firmly on the ground in front of him, the small patch of linoleum between his foot and the metal railings of the bed. When she didn’t say anything immediately, he gave what looked like the smallest shrug known to man before reaching up to pull the picture out of his breast pocket. He looked at it for a moment before silently handing it over to her, eyes still glued to the photograph.

She took it in both hands, holding it like a treasure, her eyes taking in every fiber of the photo. A soft smile graced her lips. “And you wanted a copy of this picture, except with us in it,” she said, her voice gentle. “So that’s why you threw such a fit over where we were and how we were standing,” she said, her eyes never leaving the faces of the three happy people – well, two happy people and one oblivious one – in the photo.

“Yeah,” he said, giving her a small smile and finally looking up. “Except it was with a bed and ours was with a chair.”

She huffed, putting her hands on her hips, though the action was somewhat comical coming from her position on the bed. “You really wanted to take a picture of me right after I gave birth? You’ve got to be kidding.”

He smirked, reaching forward to tug her hand down from her hip and hold it closely in his own. “You’ve never looked more beautiful, Ginny.”

She started to blush, but tried to push that away. They weren’t really newlyweds but still, oh how he could send her heart a fluttering! “Oh, so you’re saying I don’t look beautiful right now?”

He mock-glared at her. “Ginevra Weasley Potter! You know you look beautiful at all times.”

“Yes, I do, don’t I?” she said cheekily, giving him a big smile when he arched his eyebrow at her.

He paused, seeming to think something over for a second, before returning her look with a slightly suggestive smirk. He leaned forward so that his mouth was at her ear, causing her to shiver from his warm puffs of breath. “You have no idea,” he whispered huskily.

She turned to meet his gaze, all joking aside. His green eyes were serious as he met her look. The same thought was running through their heads – they hadn’t had any ‘alone time’ in quite a long time. “H-Harry…”

His eyes dropped to her lips and he stayed like that, as if thinking again. Then he seemed to shake himself and he sat back onto the chair, running a hand through his hair again. “We can’t do anything just yet, Gin.” He could tell, without having to even look up, that she was about to interrupt, so he added, “Doctor’s orders.”

She studied his face again, mixed emotions passing over it, before she sighed. “Wanker,” she said, and smiled when his rich, loud laugh filled the small hospital room easily.

For a few minutes neither spoke, both opting to sit there in the contented silence. Ginny glanced to her side and noticed the calendar a nurse had put up weeks ago. The pictures were comical but she didn’t quite understand the point, or where they could have possibly come from; they seemed very, very random to her. But the nurse acted as if it were a given that Ginny would understand the pictures accompanying the calendar.

Most featured a yellow rectangular sponge with a face, clothes, arms, and legs. When she had been alone – she had forced Harry to go get something to eat – she had taken the calendar down to study it more thoroughly, hoping to get some sort of grasp on what it must be.

“SpongeBob Squarepants” it had screamed on the front, featuring the sponge-man and some other characters. Judging that none of the other drawings looking anything like a sponge, she supposed the yellow one was this “SpongeBob” fellow.

She had flipped the calendar over, looking for a possible explanation of it on the back. There wasn’t really one, just smaller versions of the larger pictures inside, although it talked about how young and old alike would enjoy something everyone could recognize (she didn’t, though, so obviously not everyone) and there were other characters named Patrick, Squidward, Sandy, Mr. Krabbs, and Plankton. From their names and the pictures on the front, she felt she could match them up – Mr. Krabbs could only the crab; Squidward, the squid, and Plankton, the…well, plankton. The squirrel and starfish she wasn’t so sure about, though after flipping through the calendar and spotting the squirrel in a skirt, Ginny felt pretty sure that Sandy was her name, which could only leave Patrick to be the starfish.

She smiled at the picture featured for this month. Spongebob and the pink starfish – “Patrick”, she guessed – were chasing what looked like animated jellyfish with butterfly nets. Her eyes drifted down to the calendar part and lazily, without much interested, she looked at the things written on each of the little squares. Suddenly her gaze focused on one caption, a simple sentence that both excited her and scared her to death. “H-Harry!”

At the sudden tenseness in her voice and body, his gaze snapped immediately to her face. With a slight frown he followed her gaze to the calendar, and his eyes widened to the size of half-dollars when he saw what had caused this reaction in her. He stared at it a moment before turning to meet her gaze, smiling largely. “I’d forgotten!”

“Me too!” she said happily, grinning at the calendar. “Oh, Harry, I wonder what they’ll say?”

He gripped her hand tightly. “Hopefully good news. We’ve been in here long enough.”

They stared at the little square, excited. A few minutes later the spontaneous cheer had subsided, however, and both new parents’ expressions had changed – hers to nausea and his to barely concealed worry. “When will they come by?”

He opened his mouth to answer but, as if right on cue, a knock came at the door. “Come in,” both Harry and Ginny said loudly at the same time, and soft footsteps followed the creaking of an opening door.

The nurse smiled as she walked in, clipboard in hand. “I’m going to take your vitals, Mrs. Potter, and then the doctor will come by to see you.”

They nodded and Harry watched quietly as the nurse went to work. “Have you been down to visit Elizabeth Hope lately, Mr. Potter?” she asked conversationally as she charted Ginny’s vitals on the clipboard with a ball-point pen.

“About an hour ago,” he said, watching the nurse reach down and feel Ginny’s wrist, one eye on her watch as she felt for a pulse. “I left Ron and Hermione down there to come up and see Ginny.”

Ginny scoffed as the nurse jotted down the results. “You make that sound like you were forced to.”

“But I was,” he said, a completely innocent look on his face. “I could feel the tug of your invisible rope around my waist, pulling me back to your bedside.”

The nurse chuckled and Ginny mock-glared for a moment before smiling and shaking her head. “Remind me again why we’re married?”

“Because you’re the only one who can keep me in line,” he answered immediately and with a completely straight face. “You felt obligated to marry me so I’d stay out of trouble.”

She looked at him for a split-second, surprised, but realized how joking he was and burst out laughing. When she stopped enough to speak, she followed along. “I didn’t know you knew,” she said, neither noticing the nurse had stopped to watch them. “We tried to keep it secret…” she sighed in a mock-regretting tone. “How did you find out?”

“I just know these things,” Harry said. “But I don’t care. As long as you’re married to me, I’m fine with it, whatever the reason.”

She smiled but then straightened, leaning forward to punch him lightly on the arm. “I guess if there was anyone I’d marry just to keep him in line, you’re the best one for the job.”

“How sweet,” a voice said from the doorway. Both Harry and Ginny jumped and turned to see the doctor standing there, smiling warmly at both of them with a manila folder gripped in his hands. “How is she doing?” he directed toward the nurse.

“Very well,” she replied, handing him the clipboard. “She is getting her energy back quickly and seems to be handling the long hospital stay wonderfully.”

“Good, good,” the doctor said half-absently, as he studied the facts and figures on the clipboard before him. “Your vitals are good, Mrs. Potter…”

“Thank you, doctor,” Ginny said, the anxiousness from earlier returning full-force as she stared at the physician standing at the side of her bed.

The doctor looked up at this sudden change, and noticed the same amount of apprehension on her husband’s face. An expression of comprehension dawned on his face as he realized what had brought about this reaction. “Ah,” he said, smiling knowingly. “Today’s the day, isn’t it?”

Both pairs of eyes stared up at him, wanting and also not wanting to know the answer to the question that burned across their hearts at that very moment. “Well, I have an answer for you,” the doctor said, his face now completely empty of emotion. “I don’t know how you might handle the news.”

Ginny’s face collapsed and her gaze dropped to her hands, one of which Harry was now gripping so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

“Nurse,” the doctor said, and did some gesture with his hands. The nurse nodded, apparently understanding what looked like a whimsical hand movement, and walked swiftly out of the door. “Do you want to hear what I have to say?”

“Yes,” Harry said almost immediately, his voice thick and rough.

The doctor paused, fully aware of the torture every second ticking by seemed like to the new, young parents. “Elizabeth Hope Potter, daughter of Harry and Ginny Potter…” a large, warm smile seemed to burst on his face as he beamed down at them. “…is free to go home!”

It took a moment for this to sink in, but when it did, the looks on Harry’s and Ginny’s faces were priceless. As Harry jumped up and started dancing and whooping with joy while Ginny stared up at the doctor, pure ecstasy on her face, the nurse slipped in with a pale emerald green bundle.

“Here you go, Mr. and Mrs. Potter,” she said kindly as Harry jumped up to meet her, a look of pure, unadulterated happiness and love on his face. He carefully took the bundle out of her arms and walked slowly back and leaned over so Ginny could see their beautiful daughter.

The doctor straightened and smiled, touched by the scene he was witnessing. He and the nurse moved back but needn’t have done so; the young couple’s thoughts were only focused on the tiny little girl in Harry’s arms. He glanced over at the nurse, whose eyes were shining. Both knew that this day went without saying to be the best day of their lives. The glowing look, the warm, soft smiles – things like that just didn’t need to be spoken.

They went home that very day – Dumbledore surprised them all by bringing with him a Ministry car to take the new parents home. The doctor and nurses stood at the doors and waved as Harry wheeled Ginny out to the car – they had insisted she be in a wheelchair until she was right at the car’s door. The nurses and doctor had surprised them all when, both mother and daughter were securely in the car, they had presented Elizabeth with a small teddy bear. It had warmed Harry’s heart and he could not stop thanking them.

The matter of payment was also settled. It seemed Dumbledore had been hard at work with that too, somehow managing to convince Harry really did have insurance and the pressure of his wife going in to premature labor had caused him to forget that. Somewhere along the way of this conversation between the receptionist and Hogwarts’s greatest Headmaster some sort of spell had been used and amazingly the hospital’s treasury had been filled properly, all records covered and nothing suspicious going on about it at all.

The unexpectedness of the birth had indeed caught the new parents off guard a little but Elizabeth Hope was settled into the Potter home fairly quickly. Many of Harry and Ginny’s old school friends were continuously stopping by to either drop off a gift of some kind – they hadn’t had a baby shower – or well wishes. The Daily Prophet had even tried to stop by and get an interview, but somehow they always came on days when the magical security spells and wards were being tested and, somehow, the interviewers and photographers always somehow seemed to trip the wards’ reaction switches and therefore were forcibly removed from the premises.

But even as the pain of the whole ordeal did begin to fade, the memory – and letters – were always fresh in the mind of the Potters, although more so in Harry’s than Ginny’s. The first birthday and first Christmas went by and through it all Harry always managed to hold on to the one word that tended to be used quite often, as their quite adventurous child began to crawl and then walk. However mad Ginny might be, the instant the name ‘Hope’ was uttered he would smile and begin to reminisce, something his new daughter found to be quite at her advantage.

“So that’s why Daddy would never punish me whenever he used my full name?” The seven year old Elizabeth Hope “Lizzie” Potter said, a look of utter bewilderment and disbelief on her face as she started at her father, a man whose name she still didn’t understand why was so important and why so many people tended to act funny once they heard that she was his daughter.

“Yes,” her red-haired mother answered from Cody’s bed, smirking when she saw the mock-glare on Harry’s face. “He would always forget why he was mad at you and therefore it was always left to me to make sure you knew whatever you had done was wrong.”

Harry shrugged, a smile on his face as he held Cody close to him. “I always had a weak spot for pretty girls with pretty names.”

Ginny just looked at him before rolling her eyes, but he didn’t miss the red tinge to her cheeks. She was still a Weasley, after all, even if her name had changed to his. He smirked; that was always a great thought.

“But that’s what happened?” Cody said, speaking up for the first time.

“Yep,” Harry said, ruffling his son’s hair. “That’s it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it,” Harry answered firmly.

Cody stared up at his father, his look unreadable. Suddenly he crossed his arms and said, huffing, “I want another story.”

“What?” Harry said incredulously. “Did you not like that one?”

“Too mushy,” Cody said indifferently.

“Your mother got kidnapped!” Harry said. This time it was he who looked disbelieving.

“Well that part wasn’t, but the rest was,” Cody said. Harry just stared at him before bursting out in laughter. Ginny just sighed.

The room was silent then for a few moments, every mind – well, except maybe Cody’s – thinking deeply. The silence was broken by a sudden gasp.

Harry looked up, curiously, at his wife; that’s where the sound had come from. He almost knocked Cody from his lap when he stood up, blood running cold at the look on Ginny’s face.

“Harry-” she gasped. “I think – I think it’s time!”

His face only slightly relaxed as he nodded. Cody, too, was looking alarmed as he stared up at his father, who had only barely remembered to grab him close as he had jumped up. “Stay there while I go contact Ron and Hermione.” She nodded and he set Cody down on Lizzie’s bed. “Help Mommy if she asks for anything, alright? I’ll be back in a minute.”

They nodded also and he ran out of the room to grab the cell phone from the kitchen table, punching in the memorized number of his best friends. After the night Lizzie had been born, and Ron had seen the cell phone, he had insisted on getting one, although he never paid enough attention as to how to use it. Nevertheless, it had become much more of a help than a hindrance to have the cell phone connection; it was faster than using owls, and less uncomfortable than using the Floo network.

“Hello?” Hermione’s voice came across the line. “Harry?” There was a sense of urgency in her voice.

He smiled; of course, she’d know it was he calling. He was the only one who called their cell phone (the other Weasleys knew about it, of course, but tended not to use it). And he only really used it in emergencies. “It’s time,” he answered, completely bypassing any greetings.

“Do you want us to meet you there or at the hospital?” she asked briskly. Once Ginny had found out she was pregnant with Cody, and then this new baby, Hermione had persisted until they had planned out what they would do when the time came to go to the hospital.

“Um…” at that very moment, he heard a yell from the room he had just left moments ago.

“HARRY JAMES POTTER, WILL YOU HURRY IT UP? THIS BABY’S NOT WAITING FOR YOU TO STOP CHIT-CHATTING ON THE PHONE!”

Across the line, he heard Hermione laugh. “I guess at your house?”

“Yeah, that works,” he said.

“Okay, we’ll be there in a few minutes to watch Cody and Lizzie.”

“See you then,” he said, and flipped the phone closed before slipping it into his pocket. It was the same one he’d had, those years ago, because he hadn’t had the heart to get a new one after “all that they’d been through”, he’d said to Ginny one day, only to have her burst out in laughter and smack him gently across the stomach.

“Ron and Hermione are coming,” he called into the kids’ bedroom as he walked into his and Ginny’s. Her answer came to him as he was sifting through the closet, looking for the bag they’d already gotten together of her personal items – clothes, toiletries, etc.

“WHAT’S TAKING THEM SO LONG?”

“Taking who so long?” came a voice from the kitchen he’d just vacated. “You couldn’t possibly be talking about us, could you?”

“HERMIONE!”

His hand gripping the bag tightly in his hand, he sprinted out of the room, squeezing Hermione’s arm as she was about to walk into the children’s bedroom.

“Better not stop to chat,” he said a little nervously, to which Ron gave a bark of laughter (quickly being silenced by the sharp look his wife sent him). Harry did not stop running until he was in the room where his own wife was, her face growing pink along with a hot glare aimed his way.

“Daddy?” Cody said from his bed, where Harry noticed – after quickly hiding a grin – the children had fled.

“It’s okay,” he said firmly to his son. “Okay, I have your bag, Ron and Hermione are here, the cell phone’s in my pocket, anything else?”

She shook her head. “Let’s go have this baby.”

He grinned. “Right on, sugar lump.” He laughed when she shot him another glare. “Okay, let’s go. Can you stand up?”

“With some help,” she said pointedly, and he rushed to her side. Grabbing her hand, he gently helped her scoot to the edge of the chair before pulling her up from the chair, one hand gripped tightly in his and the other splayed across her stomach.

“Everything going alright?” Ron’s voice came from the doorway, where he’d popped his head in to look at the expecting couple. His eyes fell upon the kids on the bed, looking weary as they kept their eyes glued to their parents. Lizzie hadn’t been very old when Cody was born, and therefore did not remember this happening before.

“Yeah,” Harry grunted. With another small pull, Ginny was up and gripping his arm as she tried to stay balanced. She reached to grab for her bag but started to waver, and Harry lifted it just out of her reach. “Let me carry it for you, Gin.” She sighed heavily but nodded, adjusting her grip on his arm.

Hermione came up from behind Ron, looking with an expression mixed with amusement and apprehension. “Taking the car?”

“Of course,” Ginny said without hesitation. “I refuse to try the Floo Network again, Apparation is out of the question, and I seriously doubt a portkey would be advisable at this stage and time.”

A car really had no purpose (“Except to harm the environment!” Hermione had said indignantly upon their decision to get one) but upon Ginny’s second pregnancy, the question of getting to a hospital had been broached. At one of the appointments with St. Mungo’s, they’d mentioned the hazards of magical transportation, and – knowing Harry’s Muggle upbringing – had suggested possibly obtaining some sort of Muggle transportation. The Healers had actually praised the work of the doctors and nurses considering the healthy handling of a premature baby and its mother, and also suggested that they continue going to that hospital if there were future pregnancies, as long as the main maternity doctor remained the same. Harry had agreed and convinced Ginny that not only would it come in handy when magical transportation would be unwise, it would also stop some awkward questions from their Muggle neighbors.

Hermione nodded. “We’ll be here if you need us,” she said, to which Ron nodded fervently.

“We know.” Both Ginny and Harry hugged both of them, Harry giving Hermione a brotherly kiss on the cheek.

“Well, we’d better get a move on,” Harry said, taking Ginny’s hand firmly. “Ready?”

“Do you have to ask?” she said dryly, an eyebrow arching upwards as she met his emerald gaze with her own.

“No, I suppose not,” he laughed. He gently let go of her to walk over to their children. “Love you,” he said. “We’ll be back soon, with your new baby brother or sister.”

“Yay!” the kids cheered. “Love you, Mommy,” they chorused.

“I love you too,” she smiled. She winced as a hand came up to her stomach. “Come on, this baby’s not waiting for us to finish talking.”

“Alright,” he said. “Bye guys,” he said to Hermione and Ron, walking toward the doorway. He and Ginny entered the kitchen and he grabbed the car keys from the little shelf near the door, making sure the cell phone was securely in his pocket. The bag was safely in one hand, Ginny’s own snuggly in the other.

Just as he opened the front door, squinting outside to see beyond the slowly growing darkness, he heard a small voice from behind him. “Wait! Daddy!”

He turned to see Lizzie running toward him, and was surprised when his eyes fell on a teddy bear. But not just any teddy bear…

“Here, Mommy and Daddy,” she said, slightly out of breath from running to them so quickly. “Take this with you.”

“But Lizzie,” Ginny said, somehow managing to lean down despite her large stomach. “This is your favorite toy.”

“But I just thought you might need it to remind you,” she said, and her next words would always be engraved in Harry’s heart. “Always have hope.”

Both parents stopped, their mouths open a little. A moment passed and Ginny recovered first. “T-thank you, honey. We will.” She reached down and hugged the little girl to her lovingly against her bulging stomach.

“Y-yeah,” Harry said, still a little dazed. “Thank you so much.” He reached down too, picking her up and hugging her close, the teddy bear held tightly in his hand. And at that moment, he knew that everything would be alright, no matter what happened, as long as he had hope.

THE END.

A/N: Well…there you are. I have a sense of completion about me. I sincerely hope you guys enjoyed that. Thanks again SO MUCH for reading and especially for reviewing. For old times’ sake, drop another?

There’s not much more I can say….thanks again. Please review.

Well, one final thanks to my reviewers: I love you guys SO MUCH, and I hope you enjoyed this story!

Signed:

GiGiFanFic, Julia Holtemore, Wolf’s scream, lifeisawsome89, lovly elly, ginnyweasleyrules, HarryGinnyfan23, Cleoannie, gryffindor-girl12, animefreak789, metalmarc, Snuffles95141, xLaceMeWithWindx, Meaghan Potter, MsMissLily, Beth5572, theauthorwearsprada, Little Sinner

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