Chapter Text
I
“The problem is we don’t even know where to start,” Remus says, poring over his notes.
“We start with the Death Eaters,” Sirius sighs, waving a dismissive hand. “Bet those squirrelly bastards are hiding some knick-knacks Voldy wouldn’t want us to have.”
Lily shakes her head. “We can’t. If they find out we’re looking we’ll have more resistance than we need –”
“Yes, yes, I know – is anyone else feeling like their contribution isn’t being appreciated in this war meeting?” Sirius huffs. “What do you think, Remus?”
“It’s not a war meeting,” Lily sighs.
“Feels like one,” Sirius mumbles.
Remus sighs from his chair at Monty’s old desk, flipping through the journals Mary had loaned them – Dorcas’ from the first war. Always the writer, always the scorekeeper. Lily had read a few passages before she’d had to stop. The descriptions of ghosts had underlined her grief too heavily.
“She wrote about the attack on Gringotts in ‘80,” Remus mutters. “I remember it…one of the government vaults was forcibly opened. We all responded.”
“Not me,” Lily says softly. “I was seven months along, only helping at headquarters by then. But I…I remember it. Dumbledore never said if he figured out what was taken, not even when I asked him about the bank’s security.”
“It’s why we added the extra measures to the Potter account,” James adds. “Frank and I were paired up because…because Peter couldn’t make it. We had to split up when part of the lobby collapsed. We joked that, erm, that our wives would kill us if we left them pregnant and alone, so we couldn’t die.”
Lily grimaces. James squeezes her hand apologetically.
“I remember that,” Sirius sighs. “Frank was good with plants, wasn’t he?”
“He helped me a lot in herbology, yeah.” James smirks, his gaze darting toward Lily. “Until I got a much more attractive tutor.”
“You would’ve been better off with Sirius for all the good I did you.”
“Yes, but I had much more fun with you,” he says, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.
“Can I continue?” Remus asks, but there’s a smile peeking at the corners of his mouth. “After Frank got cut off from Prongs he must’ve headed down into the tunnels to help hold the line. Dorcas says he ran into her and Marlene by the carts and they ended up taking a cart down to the vault when another wave managed to get past them.”
“So they were together,” Sirius says. “What about it?”
Remus purses his lips. Lily shakes her head when he glances her way and he looks back at the journal.
“This is what I mean. Listen: ‘The gits shoved the goblin off the vault platform. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the creature managed to grab hold of the cliff’s edge. Frank tried to take the shot but Marly and I had bad angles. No one could cover his back and he had to let go or take the curse. When he turned around I could tell he’d seen something strange inside the vault, but we didn’t have much time to talk. One of the Death Eater’s – Marlene insists I write that it was definitely Selwyn – was holding this intricate yellow teapot. It bore the seal of Hufflepuff House.’”
“The Death Eaters were taking historical objects?” James wrinkles his nose.
“And Hufflepuff ones at that,” Sirius snorts. “Doesn’t sound like them.”
“The teapot got shattered,” Remus says, rolling his eyes. “Frank cast the spell that broke it and Dorcas says later that the Death Eater that lost it was furious after that. Nearly took Marlene out because of it.”
“McKinnon would’ve liked that death better,” Sirius mutters, and Lily stiffens. James moves a hand up to her shoulder. Remus clears his throat pointedly.
“‘When we got back to headquarters Frank rushed off to see Dumbledore, shrugging his wife off to do it,’” he continues to read. “What do you reckon he saw that was so important to report right away?”
“And why wouldn’t Albus pass that report down to us?” James says. “Especially when Harry became involved.”
Sirius crosses his arms, leaning back in the nice leather chair he’d taken residence in for the hours they’d spent theorizing.
“Sounds like we need to speak with Frank,” he says. Remus winces.
“Where do they live now, Remus?” Lily asks. “Do you know?”
“St. Mungo’s Thickey unit last I heard,” he says. “They were attacked in the days following Halloween…tortured. It was how they found a lot of the Death Eaters still evading custody, like the Lestranges."
Lily’s stomach drops down to her toes. James takes her hand again.
“Bellatrix did always have a flair for the dramatic,” Sirius says, hiking his knee up onto the chair. “Shame about the Longbottoms.”
James frowns at his best friend and tugs Lily closer.
“I’ll visit them tomorrow then,” she says, fighting to hide the lump in her throat by speaking clearly and confidently. “I hesitate to call it convenient, but…”
Sirius stands up and paces to the door, though he doesn’t try to leave the study. Remus closes Dorcas’ journal and sets it aside, his knee bouncing.
“We don’t know what their condition will be,” he says. “The Cruciatus –”
“We don’t know,” Lily agrees. “But we have to check every avenue, yes? Tomorrow I will check this one.”
“Prongs should go with you,” Sirius says quietly, his face turned away from her.
“We talked about this –”
“Yes, I know, Harry,” he says, and it comes out the way a frozen pond sounds when it cracks under your skates – sharp and ominous. “Believe it or not I do listen when you speak, Evans. You don’t trust me to watch my godson?”
“Watch your tone,” James says, gritting his teeth. “Of course we trust you with Harry.”
“So you don’t want to go with her, then?”
“Sirius, why don’t we –” Remus starts.
“Of course I want to go with her, but Harry’s been through a lot,” James interrupts, his voice raising a notch higher. “We haven’t left him with anyone but Mary and he still doesn’t really talk to her.”
“He talks to us,” Sirius gestures to Remus.
“Yes, but leaving you alone with him, that’s differ–”
“Is it different?” Sirius strides across the room to James. “Or are you just too much of a coward to be honest with me?”
James pivots so Lily is behind him, his pointed chin raised.
“You want me to be honest with you? You’ve been a bit prickly, yeah,” he says. “Even Harry can see how much of a dick you’ve been –”
“Alright!” Remus crosses the desk and pushes his shoulder between James and Sirius. “Let’s all take a breath. Sirius, d’you think you could use some sleep?”
The man’s eyes, dark as sleet, narrow. The circles under his eyes are pronounced, worse even than they were the day he got released. He scoffs, turning on his heel and slamming past the study doors into the corridor.
Lily wipes her eyes, drawing James’ attention. Remus looks away pointedly.
“Thank Merlin for silencing charms,” he mumbles, shuffling the notes on the desk with shaking hands. “Are you sure you want to visit the Longbottoms tomorrow? It’s not going to…it will be hard to see them like that, I’d think.”
“I wasn’t very close to them,” Lily says, but all she can think about is the stealthy smirk Alice used when passing her crisps in the middle of a long meeting.
The way she always seemed so put together to Lily, even though they got pregnant at the exact same time, and how Alice seemed so much more prepared to be a mother. They weren’t friends, but she can’t help wondering what happened to her son, the one due within days of Harry.
Remus nods and sits down, returning to his research.
“I’ll keep looking. There’s got to be something that will give us a lead,” he says. “All the books we’ve been able to find that cover horcruxes indicate they have to be made from objects that have meaning to someone. It can’t be completely random.”
“We should go to bed,” James says, touching a hand to Lily’s elbow.
“I want to check on Harry first,” she says. “Make sure Sirius didn’t wake him up.”
James nods and she moves to leave the study. As she nears the doors, Remus speaks again.
“You should go together,” he says. “To the appointment. You should get to…to go together. It won’t just be Sirius. I’ll be here too.”
Lily’s hand flexes over the door frame. When she looks over her shoulder, James is giving her a guarded look. She nods.
“I’ll think about it.”
-o-
James is sitting up on the bed when she walks in, staring into the fireplace. Its stutters and stops are the only sound in the room.
“Harry still asleep?” he asks. She nods.
There’s nothing to say as she goes about her night routine. She washes her face and does her hair, her husband scrutinizing the back of her neck the entire time. When she crawls under the covers he does the same, blowing out the candles and dimming the fire with a wave of his wand. His arm hooks over Lily’s side, pulling her body into his chest.
“Did you check on Sirius?” she asks. James sighs.
“No,” he says.
“You should talk to him soon,” she replies, quickly. “It’s been weeks of this. I saw Harry turn the other direction in the hall when Sirius came out of his room the other day.”
“There’s nowhere else for him to go, I –”
“Hey.” Lily turns over so she can see his face, brushing her fingertips to his bearded cheeks. “That is not what I’m saying. He’s family, he’s staying here.”
“He’s miserable to be around.” James sighs. “And we have to think of Harry.”
“He’d be more miserable alone,” she counters. “And Harry’s not afraid of him, hasn’t been for weeks. He’s just…sensitive. To arseholes.”
James snorts. “It’s Regulus.”
“I know.”
“I think if he knew for sure…” He sucks his teeth. “The not knowing is worse for him. He’s imagining all these…ways. D’you think he’d talk to Remus about it?”
“That would require him letting Remus in,” she says. “And they haven’t quite reached that stage yet, it seems.”
“They talk.”
“Publicly,” Lily says. “At breakfast and when they have to. They joke around if we can hear them, but they don’t talk. Not like before."
James sighs and she drops her head to rest against his chest. He strokes his fingers through her hair. It’s tied in a loose braid that will undoubtedly get caught between them at some point tonight if she isn’t thoughtful.
“Remus can watch Harry tomorrow,” he says softly. “I want to be with you.”
Her heart squeezes. “James –”
“I know we talked about it.” He kisses the skin just beneath her earlobe. “I know you said you’d be fine going alone, but this is…we’re doing the right thing, but it’s hard anyway.”
Lily tightens her arms around his waist, burying her face into his shirt to hide the tears that threaten to escape the moment his lips find her skin.
“It’s not that I don’t want you there,” she whispers. “I’d love to have you there with me.”
“Then I should be there,” he whispers back, bending to look at her flushed cheeks. He wipes them with his thumbs, smiling sadly. “I want to be there for you.”
“Harry –”
“Harry will be safe and sound inside the wards with Sirius, who would die for him even if he is a bit…prickly at the moment, and Remus, who will reel Sirius in if he goes too far.” James tucks the shorter edges of her hair behind her ears. “It won’t even be a full day. If we can trust Mary alone with him then we can trust them.”
His face is soft, his smile warm. She loves him so much.
“I always thought we would get to have more kids,” she rasps. “Not that Harry isn’t enough, but…”
“I know,” he says. “He’s everything.”
She nods. “He’s everything.”
“When this is all over,” James begins, his throat catching on the last word. “We’re going to have a whole Quidditch team of kids. Gryffindor won’t know what hit it.”
She smiles somewhat tiredly and tries to ignore the twisting of her heart. Her thoughts stray to the bedroom across the hall from theirs where her son is sleeping. It’s only May, a mere six months since they’d returned. She’d only just found her footing again, and yet…
Three years . Their time is running out, but she's gotten so used to the life she’s rebuilt. It’s hard to think of giving it up. Even harder to imagine Harry losing them again.
“A whole Quidditch team,” she echoes, wiping her eyes again on the sleeve of James’ Muggle t-shirt. “Sounds nice.”
“Very nice,” he agrees, and they scoot just a bit closer to each other, hold each other just a bit tighter.
-o-
Lily traces the curve of her waist in the mirror. Her fingers graze across her ribs, no longer showing so dramatically as they were in November, and skate the doughy skin of her stomach. Marked with stretch marks and scars from battles. Memories of her past life. Her hand falls, inevitably, to the waistband of her trousers.
James comes up behind her in the mirror, fixing the fallen strap of her bra and squeezing her shoulders firmly. He’s wearing a set of new robes they’d ordered some time ago, looking as if he comes from a different planet than she does in her Muggle trousers.
“The zipper won’t go up,” she says, flatly. He swallows thickly, eyes darting away from her stomach in the mirror.
“Want me to grab you some robes?”
She nods and he disappears into the expanded wardrobes. He returns with a set of black robes. He helps her do up the line of buttons on the front. The fabric is light, perfect for the newly emerging spring weather, and it dances around her legs when she turns.
They look like a matching set now. No one would suspect a thing.
-o-
The Janus Thickey ward is quiet. It’s a Tuesday and not even eight yet, so it makes sense that this would be the case. The healer at the front desk looks up at them with a bored expression before recognition takes over her face.
“You’re James and Lily Potter,” she splutters. “Oh, Merlin, I never thought I’d get to meet you! Can I help you? Thank you, by the way. How…how can I help?”
Lily shrugs off the discomfort she feels every time she gets similar greetings and smiles halfheartedly back at the woman. James steps up to the desk, his best self-deprecating grin filling the space between them.
“You can definitely help us…” he says, gaze darting down to her nametag. “Amelia. See, we recently heard the news about some old friends – the Longbottoms. And we decided to visit them. Catch up a bit.”
Amelia nods quickly, pursing her cherry-red lips. “Of course, I understand. Are you on the approved visitor list?”
“That’s the thing,” James winces performatively. “We’re only in town today and we just heard so we haven’t had time to write to Frank's mother, Augusta. But she loves me – me and Frank go way back. Could we let it slide this one time?”
“Well, I don’t –”
“Please?” He smiles again. “My wife and Alice Longbottom were good friends too. Pregnant at the same time, you know how that would be, right?”
Her eyes blow wide and she looks at Lily.
“That must’ve been so scary, Mrs. Potter,” she says, then frowns. “I suppose I could get you in…but you only have half an hour, then it’s shift change and if you get caught in there it’s my hide.”
“Got it.” James winks, stepping back toward Lily. “Thank you, Amelia. You’re a star.”
The young woman blushes a pretty pink, her eyes lingering on Lily’s hand joining James’ before she writes something down in the guestbook.
“They’re in the room at the end of the hall,” she says, then bites down on her bottom lip. “I should warn you…they’re not lucid often and when they are they’re scared. Don’t expect much.”
“Got it,” James says, but Lily can see the tick of his jaw. “Thank you, again.”
“Of course!”
Most of the patients they pass on their way to the back of the ward are laying peacefully in their beds. One man with flaming red hair is walking slow circles from his bed to the door and pauses to stare openly at Lily as they pass.
“That was smooth,” she whispers to her husband, looking away from the unnerving man. “I’d almost forgotten how much of a flirt you can be.”
He opens his mouth to respond when a woman wanders out of the last door on the ward. She’s thin, swimming in a pastel blue sweater over her hospital gown. Her shoulders are drawn up to her ears, angular in a way that betrays years spent without the ability or desire to eat. Her brown eyes, larger than they used to be, catch on James and Lily without an ounce of welcome. Her hair, once a rich deep chestnut brown, is a shock of white cut short around her head.
“Alice?” Lily steps closer and the woman shakes her head, disappearing back into the room she came from.
It’s a small room, with two small beds standing beside each other. Magical monitoring is managed through a channeling beacon above the beds. Two nightstands sit between the beds holding plastic cups of water and small globes of light contained within glass. Hung on the wall is a corkboard with a handful of small papers hung on it.
Frank Longbottom is sitting on one of the beds with a ball of aluminum foil between his hands. Alice scurries to his side, squeezing his arm fiercely. When he looks up and sees them, he stiffens on the bed.
“Hello, Frank,” James says, smiling gently. “Nice to see you again.”
Alice gives a squeak and clambers onto the bed, reaching under the mattress for something. She cradles the small object in both hands, against her chest, as she looks distrustfully at her visitors.
Frank shakes his head vigorously but says nothing.
James looks down at her, but Lily feels just as unsure as he does. What’s worse, her mind is stuck on the floor below in the family planning wing. She takes a hesitant step toward Alice, not missing the way she flinches, and feels James’ hand trail against the small of her back as she goes.
“What do you have there, Alice?” Lily steps closer, bending to put her head at Alice’s level. She peers into the woman’s hand and frowns at the sight of a crumpled tissue. “Oh! A, erm, a tissue?”
Alice meets her with a stare that could melt ice, silver brows drawn together. She waves her hand in Lily’s face, grunting loudly. Lily takes a startled step backward, looking at the disheveled bed, the mussed hair on Alice’s head.
Her heart aches for a woman that wasn’t quite a friend, but a woman who deserved better than this. How long did one have to be tortured for their mind to break this badly?
Her eyes drift sideways toward the corkboard, where they stick on a tiny photograph of a little boy with straight, brown hair laying flat across his forehead. It’s cut unfortunately bluntly just above his eyebrows and he’s wearing what must be a very itchy sweater in front of a Christmas tree, his pout and grimace replaying endlessly for his parents. In black pen at the bottom of the picture, someone has written his name.
Neville.
How had Lily never thought to ask what Alice’s son’s name was? He was born a day before Harry was, she knew that much, but she’d been caught up in the prophecy. Already in hiding by the time he came home with them from St. Mungo’s. She’d never even written.
“He’s adorable,” she says, pointing to the picture. “Neville. That’s French, isn’t it?”
Alice simply stares at her unblinkingly. She brings the tissue closer to her chest, holding it right up against her heart with white knuckles.
“Your father was French.” Lily swallows thickly. “I bet that’s why you picked it. You…you always loved names that meant something.”
They’d picked Harry’s name from a book. James had flat-out refused a family name – who could blame him – and Lily thought that naming after her own dad would’ve made it hard to look her son in the face. But they’d needed a name to leave Mungo’s and they’d both liked Harry. The book had explained its meaning, but Lily can hardly remember it now.
James’ hand lands against her back, moving up and down slowly. She looks over her shoulder at Frank, who’s stashed his ball of foil somewhere in the room. He swings his legs over the bed, narrowing his eyes at them both.
“Frank, we came to ask you about a mission you went on,” James says. Alice lets out an abrupt sob. When Lily swivels her head to check, Alice has fallen horizontal onto the mattress of her hospital bed, covering both her ears. The tissue peeks out from between her fingers. Lily tugs James’ arm.
He frowns but continues anyway.
“It was the Gringotts do,” he says uncertainly. “In 1980. You, Dorcas, and Marlene were on the front lines when…”
Frank stands, taking a step closer to James. James stumbles backward, his face turning a shade paler than before.
“Er, you were on the front lines when the Death Eaters got i–”
“NO!” Alice lets loose an unholy shriek, ripping at her wispy silver hair. “NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOO!”
Frank drops to his knees, hands over his ears. Lily jumps back when he nearly drops his head right onto her toes, and grips the hem of James’ robes for dear life. Her stomach in knots, she backs away from their old acquaintances.
“I don’t think they can help,” she breathes, tugging James toward the door. “We should go. We should leave.”
A healer pushes past James, knocking him into Lily, and her shrewd gaze – she is not Amelia – cuts to them immediately. She reminds Lily of Madame Pomfrey.
“Why are you here?” she asks. “There are no visitors scheduled for this room.”
“We…we were leaving,” James mumbles, unheard over Alice’s screams as he turns out the door, towing Lily out behind him. The healer’s glare sticks to her back as they make it back to the front desk, and Lily’s stomach gives a turn at the unsurprised expression on Amelia’s face.
“I tried to warn you,” she says, shaking her head. “They have so few visitors and they’re…they don’t like to talk about things from before the ward.”
Lily tries to catch the breath she hadn’t realized she’d lost in the room with the Longbottoms. Neville’s face comes to mind, in his itchy sweater standing in front of a Christmas tree in a home he wasn’t supposed to grow up in, with a person who wasn’t supposed to raise him, while his parents rot in hospital beds.
“How long have they been here?” Lily asks.
“Since the attacks.” Amelia says. “So just over three years.”
“Have they improved?” James asks.
“No,” she says, grimacing. “I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you more, but I can only say that doctors are considering all of the available treatment options.”
“Treatment options,” Lily breathes. “Like…like sedatives?”
Amelia pales slightly. “Well…you know…they’re so paranoid. It might help them to relax.”
“It might make them catatonic as well,” Lily fires back. “Couldn’t they use a potion? A Draught of Peace.”
“I-I don’t know,” Amelia stutters. “I’m only a trainee.”
“Amelia!” The healer that came into the Longbottom’s room storms down the corridor toward the front desk. “You! You two! Stay right where you are!”
Amelia goes a shade of gray. “If they find out I let you in without an appointment I’ll lose my job!”
“We’ll go,” James says, tugging Lily forward. “C’mon. We have to go, now.”
She follows numbly, the healer shouting behind them as James pulls her into the stairwell. Her feet work on their own, taking the steps at a double pace to keep up with James’ long legs.
“They lost their minds,” she mumbles. “They don’t even…they don’t even remember their own son.”
“I know.” James breathes, pulling her back into an alcove on the landing just as the doors to the psychological ward open and the healer pokes her head in to look. Lily tucks her face into his robes and squeezes her eyes shut. There’s a long, quiet moment, and then the doors shut again.
“James,” Lily puts a hand to the back of his neck and pulls away to look at him. He meets her gaze, hazel eyes focused and watery. “That could’ve been us.”
“What?” He shakes his head. “No, it couldn’t have.”
Lily nods. “Yes. The prophecy – I…the first one. D’you remember what it said about…about the baby that would end the war?”
“Sure I do,” he says. “A boy, born as July dies…oh.”
“Neville was born the day before Harry,” she says, blinking back to those hazy days in the hospital. “I’d heard they had a boy and they were supposed to be only a few doors down but we left early.”
“Because of the prophecy.”
“Right,” Lily says. “But the Longbottoms were never in hiding.”
“Dumbledore didn’t tell them,” he says, his hands curling into fists at her side. “He let them… why ?”
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t understand many of his choices these days. Or ever. I didn’t even put it together until I saw his picture on the board, but...”
“So Voldemort chose to go after Harry over Neville,” James says slowly. “And when…when he was gone, Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers went after Frank and Alice because they thought maybe…oh, Merlin.”
“We’re the reason they’re like this.”
James spears his fingers into her hair, shaking his head vehemently.
“No,” he says. “Dumbledore chose not to protect them, and we’re going to find out why. They deserve justice, and we can give it to them. To Neville.”
Lily blinks away her tears, nodding.
“I never wanted to spend any time with her,” she says. “Even when we were both stuck in Headquarters, I’d avoid her. She was so…ready to be a mom. She was so excited . All she wanted to talk about was pregnancy and motherhood and I was still so angry that I couldn’t help on the front lines anymore.”
James smiles, putting his forehead to hers.
“I used to hide in the brewing room and pretend I wasn’t in when she came knocking.” Lily huffs a laugh. “And still she’d smuggle me snacks at the evening meetings. She was so nice. She was going to be such a good mother. They took motherhood from her, James.”
“They took it from you, too.”
“It’s not the same,” Lily sighs. “If the healers are right, she never stands a chance of getting enough of her mind back to be with Neville. It’s worse.”
James’ mouth twists and he shakes his head. “One doesn’t have to be worse than the other.”
She nods.
“And maybe one day they’ll figure it out,” he says. “And they’ll get to be with Neville again. Maybe someone will cure them.”
“Maybe.”
-o-
The healer moves her wand over Lily’s lower stomach. Strands of light dance over her bare skin, ivory and gold and jade green, and the healer pockets her wand.
“You’re about twelve weeks along. The feotus appears healthy.” The healer says, looking up at them over her clipboard. “You’ve listed termination of the pregnancy as the reason for your visit. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Lily nods, her tongue feeling like lead.
“I need a verbal confirmation for the records.”
“Yes, I want the potion to terminate,” she croaks. The healer looks at James, who massages his thumb over the side of her neck as he nods.
“I’ll go and get it.” The healer says. “You’ll have to remain admitted for thirty minutes after taking it for safety.”
Lily nods and the woman ducks through the curtains separating them from the hustle of the family planning ward. The laugh of a toddler can be heard before the sound-shielded curtains fall shut again and Lily’s stomach revolts. She drops her head back onto the pillow.
“Alright, Evans?” His hand pushes back the hair that got loose during their mad escape from the Thickey ward.
“Grand,” she responds, deadpan. “Not a care in the world.”
James smiles warmly, taking her hand in his and kissing her knuckles.
“Your hands are always so warm,” he says, kissing them again. “Have I told you how much I love your warm hands recently?”
Lily shakes her head. Her throat feels tight as she watches him caress her knuckles, the ring he'd given her years ago. “No, you haven’t.”
“Well, I do. I love your hands.” James trails his fingers up her arm, stopping at her elbow. “And this. I love this.”
He thumbs the tiny, raised scar at the crook of her elbow.
“What’s it from again?”
“I broke my arm as a kid,” she says, flexing the joint. “The bone was showing. Petunia fainted and my dad cried in the ED. Muggles aren’t able to erase scars like wizards can.”
“Never understood why anyone would want to.” James shakes his head. “Don’t get it. They’re good stories, aren’t they? Proof of adventure.”
The shadow of a mischievous twinkle dances in his eye. Lily thinks of spiderling lines across a tiny, scrunched forehead and feels the tears coming before she can stop them. She wipes them away and he kisses her head.
Then her cheek. Her nose, her chin, her shoulder. All the way down to her stomach, which is when Lily gives up on trying to stop the tears and simply covers her face to hide how badly her bottom lip is wobbling. He pushes her hands away and kisses her softly on the lips.
“I love you,” he says, just for her to hear. “And I love everything we make together, even the things that aren’t made at the right time.”
Lily nods, but she thinks she might sob if he says another word.
“We're going to have more kids when this is done,” he adds. “A whole Quidditch team.”
She laughs and snot comes out of her nose, which is embarrassing but also doesn’t seem to bother James, who simply wipes it for her and kisses her again.
“Tonight,” she says, between kisses. “Tonight, after Harry and the boys go to bed, I need you to do lots of wallowing with me.”
He kisses her again, harder. “Yes, ma’am.”
The healer pushes through the curtains with a soft rustle, letting in a snippet of a mother’s scolding, and holds out a vial of mint green potion. Lily recognizes by the viscosity that it’s a simple pain-blocking potion.
“You take this one first,” she says. “For any pain you might feel. And then the second one five minutes later to begin the termination process.”
She holds up the second vial. It’s charcoal gray, no thicker than blood, and looking at it makes Lily’s stomach turn. James takes it wordlessly.
“Would you like me to have a nurse help with timing, or would you like to do it privately?” The healer asks.
Lily downs the first potion in a single swallow. It’s cold, cooling her chest and spreading quickly out to her fingers.
“Privately, please,” she says. The healer nods and passes the vial to James.
“We do ask that you return the empty vials,” she says, snagging the first vial from Lily’s hands. “I’ll return in ten minutes to check on how you’re doing. Pull the chain if you need anything.”
She gestures to the ornate bronze chain hanging from the ceiling. A handle at the end is printed in red letters: HELP. Once Lily nods the healer leaves and they’re alone again. James presses another kiss to her hand and she can feel the cool glass of the potion vial pressed between the back of her hand and his palm.
She turns her head so that she can look into his eyes. His wonderful hazel eyes, often mischievous and always planning. The eyes she fell in love with back in school when Harry wasn't even a thought. He looks back at her, a confused smile spreading across his face. “What?” he asks.
“Do you think they would have been a girl or a boy?”
Complicated emotions flit across his face and for a moment Lily can see the pain she’s feeling reflected just as deeply in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I haven’t been letting myself think about it. We decided against them right away, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but…” Lily swallows around the lump in her life. “I sort of thought Harry would love a brother. Like you and Sirius.”
James smiles tightly. “See, I was thinking a girl would be nice. To get some variety going.”
Lily’s heart contracts painfully. She pictures her, a girl with James’ unruly curls and Lily’s green eyes. Or auburn waves and hazel eyes. She pictures herself in a quiet nursery once more, rocking a baby to sleep, and instantly knows she wants it.
Oh, how she wants it.
“It’s been about five minutes,” she says, tightly, and she swipes the potion from James’ hand.
“I’d say more like three,” James says, snatching for it. “What if there’s side effects when you take it too soon?”
“There’s not,” Lily mutters. “It’s just pain management and I can take it. I want to get this over with.”
She uncorks the vial and the odor, like stillwater on a pond, floats up to her nose. She freezes, her hand trembling. James curls his hand around hers.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, quietly. “I wouldn’t…no one would blame you if you didn’t want to.”
“We agreed,” she says, her hand resting against her stomach.
“I know,” he says. “I know we agreed, but…we don’t have to. If you really don’t want to, we can figure it out –”
Lily tips the potion over her lips. It tastes of ashes.
James stays completely still, watching her closely. When she turns her head to look at him, his eyes are shining.
“I’m not abandoning another child,” she says firmly. “I can’t.”
He nods, wiping his wet cheeks with the heel of his hand. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right,” she says, laughing through her tears. Three years, the seer from Hestia’s memory hisses in her ear. Their child faces the end of his days alone.
Not if she has anything to say about it.