Molly finds out about Lily's birth about three weeks too late; she sits in her living room, next to the knitting needles and their perpetual work, and cries. Arthur can only refill her cup of tea as she wails.

"Why won't they talk to me? Wasn't I good mother? Didn't make their lunches, teach them their letters? Didn't I kiss every scrape, didn't I tie every shoe lace?"

Arthur looks down at the sloshing tea as he pours and thinks of all the times he watched her write off Fred and George as hopeless, each time she ignored toddler Ron to fuss over a colicky baby Ginny. He thinks of Bill's pained face as she cut his hair before his wedding only to shriek later when he spelled it long again before the ceremony. He thinks of how Charlie would flinch each time she told him she was was waiting for him to bring home a nice girl, to make her a grandbaby.

Arthur sits, thinking of the times their children died from a thousand cuts, and realizes that it wasn't like he ever there to staunch the wounds.

Arthur doesn't say "well, it was to be expected that they'd leave," but he certainly thinks it.