the baby project — act two
" welcome to parenthood "
﹙ 𝗦𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗬. ﹚

ADDIE HAD BEEN WAITING OUTSIDE OF THE ENTRANCE to Gryffindor tower far longer than she wanted to have been considering it was a Saturday morning and there were things she wanted to do.

However, as much as she didn't want to admit it, having a baby girl in the picture as of yesterday, sooner or later Addie would have to come to terms with the fact that her life was going to be very disrupted. She might as well say goodbye to the things she wants to do in her free time at the weekend now.

George had agreed that he would spend their first night with their unnamed daughter, leaving Addie to have her first peaceful night's sleep in a long time. He had then told her to meet him outside his common room in the morning so that they could spend the start of the day together as a family (yuck, kill her now, please and thank you) before Addie would take her for the rest of the day and they would get on with their separate things.

But no exact time was established between Addie and George and so it was left unknown to both of them what the other one's definition of "morning" is. Addie thinks that would be classed as around eight/nine-ish. George would say about eleven, midday if he's feeling lazy.

But with a crying baby? George assumed Addie would take into account the restrictions their kid would put on his sleeping schedule.

And so, she waited and watched by the door as students came and went for breakfast until breakfast was served no more. By the time that half eleven came around, Addie had retreated to the library to get her weekend homework out of the way, seeing as her baby was at least in George's care for now.

She was mid-way through her Herbology homework when she was disrupted by the sound of what seemed to be a row between a student and the librarian, Madam Pince. Shaking her head to free herself from the noise, Addie tried to refocus on the task in front of her until her ears picked up on one particular piece of dialogue that granted her recognition of which student was engaged in a hushed argument with Pince.

"Just give me one second. Please?"

She shouldn't have rolled her eyes. George would have found her at one point. In all fairness, she had been supposed to have spent a few hours with him but had wormed her way out of that in exchange for some much-needed time to get ahead with her school work, which the inevitable preoccupation with her daughter would have delayed.

"What the fuck?" George suddenly appeared at her desk, their daughter wrapped up in his arms. His hair was windswept, and there were bags under his tired eyes.

"Language, Weasley."

George looked as though he was grinding his teeth nearly as much as Addie usually does when speaking to him "Oh please," he whisper-shouted, cradling the baby's head and leaning over to speak to her, "they're not programmed to speak."

Addie had then opened her mouth to respond and explain why she had ended up in the library when Madam Pince strode over from behind a bookcase, her rectangular glasses resting low on the bridge of her nose.

"Excuse me, Mr Weasley!" She said and despite the hush of her voice, both Addie and George fully understood the rage bubbling up inside of her. "No, crying babies allowed! Did you read the sign?"

Addie was still in the fever dream period (as was most of the year group) and so usually didn't notice the babies around the school and especially not the one in George's arms. She didn't register the sign the librarian had put up restricting the seventh-year parents from bringing their babies inside the library out of respect for the other students.

Their daughter appeared to have just woken up, and Addie heard her hiccup and wiggle from inside her blanket. It was highly likely the tears were just seconds away even if the library was a very peaceful environment for the baby girl.

George, who seemed very flustered at this point, faced the librarian to say, "Sorry, ma'am. Just a second, if you please."

But he didn't get the chance to ask Addie where she had been all morning because Madam Pince had a response already formulated. "No, not just a second," she said, before gesturing to the baby in his arms. "Please take-" There was a pause and a blank stare. She turned to both Addie and George and asked with a haggard sigh. "What is your daughter called?"

And as Addie responded with: "We don't have a name yet."

George looked the librarian dead on and said with a confident nod at the same time: "George JR."

Madam Pince visibly tried to hide her perplexity but just shook her head frantically and stuttered out: "Right well, please take George JR and yourselves out of this library!" She said, quite obviously struggling with the odd choice of name. "You're disturbing your fellow students."

"Of course, Madam Pince. Sorry again," Addie winced, getting up from her seat as if to be ready to physically stop George from making more of a nuisance of himself and their child.

Madam Pince then stormed off giving Addie time to glare at George from up close despite the fact she too would have brought their to-be-named daughter inside the library from a lack of paying attention to the baby-free zone instructions sign-posted outside.

Addie felt exhausted all of a sudden as she looked at the whimpering baby in George's arms and the raised brows on the boy's face. He stared down at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation. But Addie wasn't prepared to give him that and if this fiasco with the librarian had taught them one thing it was that:

"We seriously have to name this baby."

Collecting her things from the library and making a hasty exit, sending Madam Pince yet another apologetic smile on the way out, Addie dragged George to the nearest empty corridor she could find to solve the crisis at hand.

Addie was still seriously disturbed by the fact that she had to pick the name of her baby at only seventeen. Some people she knew already had names picked out at young ages like teenagers, and maybe Addie did have some names that she had a preference for, but when George Weasley was the supposed dad of said baby, it made things hard.

"Any ideas?" She asked him but George just shook his head unbothered, his lips quirking up as if this naming business meant nothing to him. It didn't mean much to her either (all she cared about was doing well on this elaborate assignment) but she at least had to come up with a better alternative than George JR.

"Okay fine," Addie sighed already bored of this ordeal. "How about," she drawled, delaying her suggestion in an attempt to make it seem genuinely thoughtful, "Molly?" she shrugged.

George cocked his head to the side, a sly smile making its way onto his face. "Are you trying to be all romantic here, Sweeney?"

She should have guessed romantic was how George was going to interpret her suggestion, as opposed to considerate and generous. "Well that's your mum's name, isn't it?" She asked, desperately trying not to roll her eyes and/or walk out.

"Yeah, but what about yours?" George asked. "What's your mum's name?"

"Shelby," Addie said, only slightly sceptically.

George puckered his lips as if thinking very hard. He let out a puff of air, his lips rolling. "So how about Shelley?" He suggested finally, his eyes finishing their journey locked on hers. "A sort of mix of the two?"

Addie Sweeney doesn't think she's ever been stunned to silence. And she certainly never thought it would be George Weasley that left her speechless. Because his suggestion was perfect. Perfectly simple and beautifully suited.

She let out a relaxed breath of air, feeling a little weight be lifted from her shoulders. "I think that's the best thing you've ever said to me."

A proud smile slowly snuck onto George's face. He angled his head to speak softly to the peaceful baby girl in his hands. "I think mummy's beginning to like me, Shelley."

༺༻

IT HAD BEEN A MERE DAY AND A BIT SINCE THE students in their seventh year at Hogwarts had received their fake babies with their designated partners. And talk of the pairings and genders and naming shenanigans was far from blowing over.

They all wanted to compare their situations and decide whether luck was or wasn't on their side after all. All the while hauling around a baby which Addie and her friends had collectively decided not to refer to as fake because no one could tell they weren't real because of how freakishly uncanny they were to being real living and breathing babies.

Thank Merlin it was the weekend.

The sun shone down on the courtyard. The group had all agreed some fresh air would do them good because, with babies constantly in their arms, they felt confined and trapped with no escape. And so they decided to take the opportunity when it came ─ a bright blue sky and a fresh breeze to clear their minds.

"How was your first night?" Addie asked her friends whom she knew had drawn the short straw and had their babies in their dorm for the first night.

She felt as though she'd been pretty lucky so far. George was a bit of a rough start but compared to some, he was okay. The best of it however came from a peaceful first night. Neither she nor Laurie nor Tate had their babies in their dorm for the first night and Logan's little girl (Logan refused to argue any more than she had to with Kenneth) was as quiet as anything. Either that or Addie really can sleep through anything.

Jazz looked as though she was going to vomit up her ham sandwich at the question. "Catastrophic."

Gia too looked just as appalled. "Deadly."

Lee stopped rocking his and Tate's daughter in his arms to stare his dead, tired eyes at Addie. "Excruciating."

Tate discreetly winced in Addie's direction but Tate hardly felt bad for Lee ─ it would be her turn soon enough.

Jazz started picking apart the bread from her sandwich, the crumbs tumbling onto her lap but she seemed too preoccupied with her anger to care. At least Josh and Kenneth weren't present to make all of their lives worse.

"I'm not learning anything besides ways to kill a crying baby while I'm trying to sleep," she spat.

"We haven't given it enough time yet," Felix said from where he was sitting on the grass, his back against the bench that Quinn was sitting on, their son between his legs. "We'll all learn something eventually."

Addie watched as Quinn smiled to herself but she seemed to be about the only one with some respect for what Felix had said.

"Yeah well, what I really need to learn is how to pass my NEWTs successfully," Gia pointed out, glaring down at Fred JR in her lap as if it was all his fault. She had battled hard against Fred SR's choice of name but as they were assigned a son, Fred SR was just not giving up. Addie was hardly surprised that both Fred and George had had the same idea to name their children after themselves. She much preferred Shelley.

Speaking of, while Fred and Gia were sharing the weight of their son, Addie sat on her own while George was off changing his first nappy in the designated areas that had been newly installed.

"I dread to think what lessons are going to be like," Laurie added, her facial expression looking like a slapped arse.

Josh had made up some bullshit about having a Quidditch team meeting, (Jazz had heard nothing about this and Josh was only a reserve) obviously to get out of looking after his and Laurie's daughter but to be quite honest, she was perfectly okay to not have him around. Laurie saw them as divorced parents raising their child in a respectably healthy way.

The courtyard buzzed around them and the group were slowly coming to grips with the envy they felt for the younger students.

They had sat in the silence of the beating sun when Gia piped up. "Hey, Quinny?" She asked, grabbing the attention of the Ravenclaw on the bench by the cobblestone arch. "I was supposed to ask, who'd your brother get?"

"Atticus Castellan."

Quinn seemed entirely unaffected by the meaning of her response compared to the majority of the group. Addie wasn't gaping like Jazz was but she was at least a little shocked.

"There was an imbalance of guys to girls so they had to pair two boys together," Quinn shrugged, casually glancing down at Felix and their fake baby.

Jazz sat up a little straighter from her small patch of grass in the corner of the stone walls. "Fuck off," she said simply. Clayton was the only one to gasp at her language because he seemed to be the only one fully preoccupied with his baby. Even Felix (a seemingly great dad) took a second to express his confusion at the double-male pairing, ignoring the swearing.

"Lucky him," Laurie rolled her eyes. She had never taken the same liking to Lance Erwin as Jazz had ─ even Addie had the biggest school-girl crush on him when she was eleven ─ but Laurie could still at least appreciate that Lance would put the effort in and would make her life easier if they had been paired up.

"Damn right," Jazz said to Laurie, wholly flabbergasted at the whole ordeal. She would have done anything if she could guarantee that Lance Erwin was her partner and not Clayton. "I got the gayest guy in the school and sex God Lance gets Atticus douchebag Castellan?"

Clayton apparently wasn't paying any attention and as Addie watched the spat unfold she noticed how happily fazed out her Hufflepuff friend seemed to be. Clayton was tickling and cooing and making his and Jazz's daughter dance on his lap and seemed utterly delighted by the prospects of having a baby for the next few months. Jazz's insults meant nothing to him now that Bonnie was with him (his choice of name ─ Jazz said she didn't care enough to contribute).

For once, Addie did agree with part of what Jazz was saying ─ Atticus Castellan almost had as big an ego as Josh. Plus he was a raging misogynist, pretty much a bigot and his family practically crapped money out of their arses. So, have fun, Lance!

"I swear to God if you refer to my brother as a sex God one more time," Quinn scowled, "I will file a restraining order on his behalf."

Addie watched a lump in Jazz's throat bob and then sink. "I'll keep quiet."

"How about you just stay busy with-" Quinn began to suggest before she scrunched up her face in puzzlement and said, "What's your baby's name?"

"Fuck knows," Jazz said, while Clayton answered correctly still paying the minimum attention to his friends, fully focused on his baby: "Bonnie."

A series of awhs and oos followed, Jazz being the only one not to show enthusiasm towards the name of her own kid before Tate broke the cooing and asked Addie, "So what stupid name did George suggest?"

Addie decided to give George the benefit of the doubt and not mention the whole George JR debate, since Gia would no doubt bring up her and Fred's son's name, and opted to actually paint him in a good light. "Oh, you won't believe this," she said. "Her name's Shelley. It's a mix of our mums' names."

"Are you shitting me?" Laurie sounded like she was about to burst into tears, which, recently, had been quite a common occurrence. "I had to talk Josh out of calling our daughter Quaffle and George fucking Weasley merges the names of your kid's grandmothers? It's just not fair."

They all took one look at Laurie's pout and tried their best not to laugh profusely.

"Oh but Laurie," Jazz spoke with sarcastic sympathy, "Quaffle does have a lovely ring to it, don't you think?" She smirked and just like that, the dam broke for everyone else, and the laughter came tumbling out.

"It's not funny!" Even Laurie had the hint of a smile on her face when she pleaded for it to all end in a half sob, half laugh. "I was forced to compromise, so our daughter is called Lana Quaffle Sweeney."

"At least she's got your surname," Lee pointed out, trying to suppress his sneering expression.

Laurie's shoulders collapsed inwards, and even Lana Quaffle Sweeney looked as though she too was about to wail. "He only agreed to the Sweeney part after insulting it by claiming it sounded like some kind of "rotten vegetable"."

"To be fair," Fred said, his eyes exchanging between Laurie and then Addie, "he has a point."

Addie reckons the ability to piss people off ─ including insulting their last name ─ runs in the Weasley family. The two sisters subsequently scowled in Fred's direction.

Laurie then gently placed her hands over Lana's ears as if she were not only real but listening in on their conversation too. "I'm seriously considering throwing Lana Quaffle off the Astronomy tower so the worst I'll get is a fail."

"Yeah well, at least one of the twins got to name their kid after themselves," Gia heaved a sigh, before taking the full weight of her fake son and then holding him up to face the group. "Everyone meet Fred JR."

Fred grinned from ear to ear and lifted his chin smugly to the rest of the group, acting as though winning his fight with Gia over the naming of their baby was an honourable triumph. "He has my eyes."

"Why on earth did my mum push out seven of these things willingly?"

George's booming voice suddenly distracted them all away from Fred JR and over to the new Weasley arrival, who was striding over to them from inside the castle. George was gesturing to little Shelley with a disgusted look on his face.

When his brother was in earshot and settled beside Addie, who took Shelley in her arms sceptically, unsure of the naturalness of the exchange, Fred said: "Beats me, mate."

"I can't believe the teachers actually made these things wee and poo," George scoffed. "I just had to clean up weirdly realistic fake shit and my mum would have to have done that regularly six more times. But that shit would have been real!" He seemed utterly dumbfounded by the number of nappies his mother would have to have changed. "It's gross."

"You should make it as a product for your future shop," Addie suggested, glancing at George and then Fred. "I'm sure fake poo would rake in hundreds of sales."

"Maybe this Baby Project is good for one thing then," Gia said. Addie had meant her comment as a joke but both Fred and George seemed enamoured by the idea of selling fake poo alongside their other joke products. "Even if it does just benefit Weasley's Wizard Wheezes."

"Great name," Felix said.

Fred and George looked at each other, nodded and then nonchalantly said simultaneously. "We know."

"Fake poo," George then said dreamily after a pause, wistfully envisioning the endless possibilities for all the pranks they could pull with his fake baby's fake crap. He then turned to face Addie, where he slung an arm around her shoulders and awkwardly pulled her in closer. "Turns out, my baby mummy is a pranking genius."

"You're just figuring this out, Weaslebee?" Addie looked up at him dubiously, from where she was wedged under his arm.

Smirking to himself, George didn't remove his arm but simply let Addie decide whether she wanted to worm her way out from underneath him. And when he expected her to try, she didn't. She simply made sure Shelley was comfortable on her lap and she sat up a little straighter so that she wasn't pressed right up against his side. But Addie made no attempt to shrug George's arm off of his shoulder. And so, there it rested.

As the group's discussion shifted from baby names to Quidditch matches, George's mind wandered off. For once, he had no care to talk about his favourite sport because he was fixated on something else. Or rather, someone else.

He could feel the rise and fall of Addie's breaths and feel the heat from her skin from where she had been basking in the sun for so long.

With his arm feeling more innate draped over her shoulder, George turned his head to talk down to her, lowering his voice so that Addie knew his question was just for her. "You up for Hogsmeade tomorrow? One big happy family?" He asked as he watched her eyes glance up to his, her head turning away from the group to follow. "They did tell us that exploration is good for the baby."

It was true. In their first seminar on the Friday just gone, they were told the first few initiatives the students should take when approaching parenthood for the first time; one being, time away from the same repetitive places in the castle. And Addie knew she couldn't say no. It made perfect sense ─ it wasn't very cold out and they were permitted to go to Hogsmeade more often now they were seventh years with children. Addie had discovered she had fewer chances to say no to George Weasley since they have a kid together now.

Sighing, trying hard to accept that this was her new reality now, Addie said: "Fine. We'll go. But please, just be up and ready before the afternoon this time."

𝗔𝗗𝗗𝗜𝗘'𝗦 𝗧𝗜𝗣 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗬 ━━

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