Where's My Little Girl

Chapter 4

At dinner, Mrs. Granger purposely seated Mr. Granger and Harry next to each other out on the patio where they were going to eat. When they sat down, Harry gave a nervous smile that remained unrequited.

For his wife sake, Mr. Granger didn't speak while the meal was being eaten. Harry seemed happy enough though, laughing and chatting spiritedly as he held Simon in the crook of his arm, feeding him his bottle.

"He sure eats, doesn't he?" commented David with a smirk. He turned to his wife. "Julia didn't eat that much did she?"

"Well," Rachael answered. "Julia is a girl. Men are always pigs." A Harry and David pretended to look hurt, she said. "Am I right?" to Hermione and Mrs. Granger, who laughed.

Mr. Granger rolled his eyes and tried to look dignified, as though this idle conversation was beneath his high-horsed notice. Harry and David might have been pigs, but Stanley M. Granger DDS was dignified.

Hermione, being across from Harry, reached over to grasp her husband's hand and smile at him. He smiled back. It was so obvious that they loved each other, but that still wasn't good enough for Mr. Granger.

He glared and his wife shot him a warning look that snapped 'don't you dare'. He heaved a deep breath. Mr. Granger couldn't help it.

Over dessert, the family discussed another touchy subject. Hermione's labor.

"Oh, I had it really easy. I was only in labor with him about two hours." She had moved to sit on Harry's other side. He had his strong arm draped around her shoulders. "He was pretty easy."

"Oh, I hate you!" Rachael joked, falsely hitting Hermione on the arm. "Julia was so much longer than that!"

Mr. Granger felt as though he were about to implode. "I beg your pardon, but I must go. I have work to do." He got up from the table and crossed the patio.

When he reached the screen door, he looked back at his wife, but instead glimpsed his daughter. He face had fallen; she looked so disappointed. It was all his fault. His fault. Something that *nothing* had been his entire life. HIS fault.

"Daddy?" All she had to do was say that, and Mr. Granger's whole body froze. "Daddy, can I talk to you?'

Stan rounded on her slowly, not quite sure he wanted to expose himself to another round of emotional Blitzkrieging form the women (well, woman and former woman) of the house. "Certainly, Hermione," he answered blandly in a professional voice. "What do you want to talk about?"

Hermione's face contorted as he struggled for the right words. Mr. Granger amused himself briefly while she did so with the simple thought of 'Well, at least she can't be asking me where babies come from or another crowned jewel from that treasury.'

"Why do you hate your own family?" The way she screwed up her face after she said that suggested that those weren't the words she'd been looking for.

Stan glared at her. "What do you mean? I love you and your mother very much! What ever gave you the impression I didn't?" He stormed into his home office and slammed the door, seething.

Breathing so loudly and hard through his nose soon began to make him feel light-headed. Without the racket of his vociferous respiration, it became quite clear that Hermione, distraught by his vehemence, was sobbing outside his door. This was one of the (let me count...) three sounds that upset him (the others being the sound of Lydia Jenkins's voice and the mad crunching noise of his dental records being smashed under the tire of an eighteen-wheeler trunk.)

Stan refused to let his conscience get to him. In his POV, anyone who accuses him of being family to Dirty Harry and Simple Simon deserved it.