Beyond Hogwarts -Chapter Seventeen

-=Beyond Hogwarts; Chapter Seventeen=-

When James Apparated home that evening, his first reaction was to storm the house looking for Lily, whom he found curled up on a plushy sofa, next to a tray with untasted food and drink and a half-opened script of Into the Woods—she had accepted the role from the director that afternoon.
   “Lily?” He moved quickly across the room, kneeling down next to her. “What happened today?”
   She raised a weary head to look at him, damp strands of her hair veiling reddened eyes. “I’m not having a baby, James. Ever. Not while Tom’s alive.”
   James was startled; he hadn’t expected that. With a swift lift, he swept her onto his lap, arms around her shoulders. “What happened?”
   Unbidden, and even more unexpected, tears started to flow over her cheeks. She had been mostly angry, very much frightened for her husband, though hardly close to tears that day, but they didn’t surprise her.
   “He hates you still. I can’t reason with him at all. He—he swore to me—that he’d wait till you had a son or a daughter—and then he fully intended to—to ‘lose someone precious to him, knowing he can’t protect her.’” Her lips formed an aggrieved smile. “He hates you as much as he loved her.”
   Truth be told, James wasn’t terribly worried. First—nothing had really had time to sink in yet, and secondly, the message hadn’t been delivered to him by Lord Voldemort himself. And he couldn’t see how this man could manage to come so far as to openly be able to murder someone whose death he’d announced beforehand, giving the man in question enough time to defend himself. After all, the Ministry of Magic wasn’t terribly hopeless, despite what several up-and-coming writers at the Daily Prophet were inclined to report. His only present concern was towards Lily, who was clinging to his robes as a lifeguard.
   A few minutes passed, while he rocked her back and forth, and then he ran his hand across her cheeks, drying them and wiping the hair out of her face.
   “Lily, he can’t get to us. We’ll live with or without whatever he wants to say—and with or without whomever wee want to.” He grinned at her. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
   She sniffed, smiling back. “We’d be living in our own fairy-tale world, you know, following that philosophy. Sooner or later he’ll be bound to do something to us.”
   James shrugged. “We’ll have that world to ourselves, then. And let’s fill it with full of evil knights and dragons you can slay.”
   Laughing, Lily stood up. “Don’t be too sure I won’t be one of those evil knights!”
   As if with a sudden headache or attack of dizziness, her smile vanished, and she looked commandingly at her husband. “But one rule we’re going to have: No children in this fairy-tale elysium.”
   James sighed, taking her hands and pleading. “Lily…”
   “No. That is final.”
   His shoulders drooped, and Lily, forcing herself not to give in, knew why. James was by nature a family person, someone so friendly that his cheerfulness had to overflow on millions of creatures at the least, and Lily knew he’d hoped for a son or daughter of his own.
   “All right,” he moaned. “But if we do end up having one, don’t blame only me for breaking a promise.”
   Lily laughed, grasping for the script she had been half-reading before he came. “Look!—spoken by the Baker:—“
   James snatched the script from her, gazing almost disbelievingly at the line she pointed to. “Maybe it will take the two of us to have this child?”
   She swept out of the room, catching up the by now snowflake-cold lunch tray with a smirk. “I suppose it might, though that’s open to debate.”
   James couldn’t very well inform the Ministry of what Lily had been informed of-it would have involved questions concerning why Lord Voldemort held a personal grudge against James, how James managed to come close to Lord Voldemort, how lots of things that would most probably lead back to Lily. They couldn’t do anything official, and they couldn’t do much of anything unofficial.
   January swept in with the long-awaited snow, and it was a nasty fight for Lily to get through to the theatre every other morning. The one-hundred and thirty-six teams of England wizards that were supposedly going to shovel the maze of magical alleys and streets free of bothersome precipitation had most conveniently gone on strike, refusing to work unless their pay was raised a Galleon and three Sickles a week. This meant that store-owners had swept their steps free of the snow that whirled around people’s calves, but peeved and freezing wizards, witches, and otherwise had to go about their business with robes all but soaked halfway to their knees.
   Lily was terribly grateful for the theatre’s position: three blocks away from the entrance into Diagon Alley from behind the Leaky Cauldron. She preferred not to Apparate there; half of the times she had done so, she’d been knocked down by someone who was walking very fast and couldn’t have had any idea that someone was going to materialize in front of their noses. The Leaky Cauldron had a roped-off area for people that wanted to Apparate, and it worked wonderfully.
   The theatre could hold a candle, though not a chandelier, to the one in Eschwegen she had visited in sixth year, but it was nice enough. The floors were carpeted comfortingly with a cheery, plushy red; the seats in the auditorium were covered in the same velvet colour. The stage was dominated by scarlet curtains with hanging gold tassels when the latter were closed, and there were two beautiful symmetrical chandeliers hanging just above where they would be blocking the view of the people in the second balcony.
   The theatre had been built when it was stylish to have an artist paint the ceilings, and the Gadsden theatre was no exception to the style. Cloaked and hooded figures holding gaily painted and ribbon-festooned masks, women dressed in long, flowing gowns talking to men with donkeys’ heads, princes with sheathed swords and spangled crowns, and fluttering, baby angels were the favorites of the artist the theatre had engaged. They displayed themselves proudly in the auditorium, in the entrance hall, and in the reception room off to the right of the stage, presenting their viewers with charming dreamy smiles.
   The story of the play revolved around five fairy tales: Cinderella, (the Brothers Grimm version), Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and another about a baker and his wife. In the beginning, everyone was given a reason to go into the woods-Cinderella to get to the king’s festival, Jack to sell his cow, Little Red Riding Hood to get to her grandmother; Rapunzel was just stuck in her tower, which was deep in the woods, and the baker and his wife had an odd story.
   The baker’s father was Rapunzel’s father, too, though neither sibling knew of the other. Rapunzel was to be born first, and to satisfy his wife, who ‘had developed an unusual appetite’ for greens, the baker’s father crept into the garden of the witch next door to steal what he wanted. The witch caught him and promised he would go unscathed if he would give her his child. She, however, didn’t know that he’d hidden six special beans in his pocket, which her mother had told her never to give away. As soon as the baker had left, the former beautiful witch was transformed into a hideous crone.
   The witch still lived next door by the time the baker’s son was grown up; his parents had supposedly died in a baking accident. She visited the couple one day and deprived them of any ability to have a child, then informed them that if they were to ever have one, they would have to go into the woods and fetch her a cape red as blood, hair yellow as corn, a slipper as pure as gold, and a cow white as milk. All the stories spun their way through the first act, and the baker and his wife got everything they needed, paying Jack five magic beans (from the baker’s father’s hunting jacket) for his cow and Cinderella one for her shoe, which she promptly threw away. They presented them to the witch, who ordered them to feed the items to the cow, then drank the milk that the cow gave afterwards, which transformed her into her former beauteous self.
   The second act opened with everyone most happy-Cinderella married to the Prince, Rapunzel married to the prince’s brother, Jack and his mother exceedingly rich, the baker and his wife holding a baby, and Little Red Riding Hood wearing the wolf’s skin as a cape, having given her red one to the baker. And then, the wife of the giant that Jack slew arrived in the land by means of the beanstalk sprouting from the one bean that Cinderella threw away, demanding Jack in revenge for her husband’s death.
   Everyone was forced into the woods again in fear, the narrator was given to the giant, who rejected him with a rather deadly toss, Rapunzel was squished, Jack’s mother was hit on the head by the prince’s steward, as she was angering the giant with her rather large mouth, Little Red Riding Hood’s mother and grandmother were squished, the witch left them in disgust after hearing their argument about how everything was her fault, since she grew the beans in the first place, and the baker’s wife was seduced by the prince and left to have a tree fall on her.
   Finally, the baker, Cinderella, Jack, and Little Red Riding Hood-the only survivors that refused to desert-thought up a plan to kill the giant and succeeded beautifully. Cinderella found out about her prince’s unfaithfulness, and she left him to live together with the baker, his child, Jack, and Little Red Riding Hood.
   It was a rather complicated story, but it was one of the most amusing roles Lily had ever considered herself for. There was a rap sequence in the beginning, where she was informing the baker of his father’s doings, and Mr. Nufflepeck had told her to shriek as loudly as she could while laughing between the last two verses. After the first example of her screeching capacity, though, preceded by a impish grin, Mr. Nufflepeck had her lower it to a tolerable level. She was getting to be as bad as the Marauders had been, James told her one evening, hearing of that.
   The rehearsal period only took three and a half weeks to come to a presentable level, and the costumes and sets were magnificently produced. Lily was especially enamoured with the dress she would wear after transforming back into her former self-it was a long, dark green affair, with somewhat of a train and the ends of the sleeves fastening to one finger on each arm in a triangle-ish form. The transformation would be easy, since they weren’t confined to Muggle practices-the costume people were affixing a mask to her face whose features would change when Lily’s did. All that she would have to do would be to mumble a short charm: her wand would be concealed in the staff she would carry.
   The very visible down side to the role she was given was that someone had managed to jam the opening of the staff while her wand was inside, so, till they could get someone in to help, she was stuck with the twining vine rod, which reached from the floor to her neck and was about as thick as two of her wrists.
   Sirius, Remus, and Peter had been invited to dinner the night Lily came home with that accessory, and they were sitting in the entrance hall with James, playing Exploding Snap, when she Apparated home.
   “I like the stick, Lil,” James grinned. “Is this a new trend?”
   Lily scowled. “My wand’s stuck inside. I’ve got to keep it this way till we can find someone who can fix it, and don’t laugh.”
   “We don’t laugh,” Sirius promised. “We just tease mercilessly. Say, does Ollivanders carry any more of those, or must one travel to specialized grape arbors and sort through their dead clippings?”
   Lily rolled her eyes. With a quick flick of her hand, the staff had whacked Sirius on the side of the head, and he yowled.
   “Ouch!”
   “I’m not sure I won’t patent this,” Lily said thoughtfully, running her hand down the length of the stick. “It’s a most useful method against annoyances.”
   “If you don’t carry it, you also wouldn’t have the annoyances.”
   Lily swatted him on the other side of the head, and, smirking at his reiterated howl, sauntered off towards the cloak rack. “I hope dinner’s ready.”
   “It is,” Remus confirmed, standing up and brushing off his robes. “Slenka didn’t seem to want our presence in the kitchen, so we were sent outside.”
   “Why?”
   “No reason,” Peter said a bit nervously, sucking at a bit of blood on his thumb. “I—er—no reason.”
   Lily arched an eyebrow. “What happened?”
   “Don’t worry about it!” Remus took her cloak from her hands. “You’re rich, you don’t have to worry.”
   “What is that supposed to mean?”
   She heard a nervous squick-squoaaaak behind her and whipped her head around. Peter was rubbing his shoe against the floor.
   “What did you four do this time?”
   James came up behind her, draping an arm over her shoulders. “Er—let’s get into the dining room, shall we?”
   Five places were already set, with a steaming helping of a chicken stew on each plate. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong, and Lily cast a suspicious glance at the four boys, who were purposefully avoiding her eyes. Especially Peter.
   Torn between ignoring their behavior and making them tell her what they’d sabotaged or done this time, Lily took a large spoonful of stew, hastily grasping for the glass of water next to her plate, downing half of it. Face scrunched up with water in the corners of her eyes, she slammed the glass onto the table.
   “Lily?”
   “Hot,” she said by way of explanation, “and a piece of chicken got stuck in my throat.”
   Trying to get rid of the burning sensation in her neck, she gulped down the rest of the water, staring fixedly at her plate.
   “Lil, you all right?” James pushed his goblet over to her. “Need any more?”
   “No,” she managed. “I—“
   Lily fell silent, still staring at the empty spot on her plate where she’d taken the ladleful of stew from. For a good twenty seconds, there was an uncomfortable silence.
   “What did you DO,” Lily snapped finally; “break the entire stock of plateware?”
   Her plate was riddled with lines stained brown from stew and chipped splinters. Looking critically around the dining room, she could see that each of the boys’ plates looked the same.
   “What,” she repeated, furious, “did the four of you do?”
   “Er,” Sirius said uncomfortably, clearing his throat. “See, it was more like a most terrible accident than a misfired prank on Slenka or something. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault—“
   “Yeah,” James interrupted, “and it’s not really all that bad anyway. I would have fixed it beforehand, but you came home rather early, so we had to make do—“
   “I don’t much care about excuses. You seem to have wrecked my entire stock of tableware.”
   “No, not all of it!” Peter said hurriedly. “Only the cabinet full of the stuff for everyday use. The expensive stuff didn’t get broken.”
   “Thank goodness for small favors,” Lily said dryly. “Exactly what happened?”
   “Before we begin, Lily, Peter didn’t mean to levitate the stove,” Remus jumped in. “That was entirely unforeplanned.”
   “I did not levitate the stove! My wand did that! It acts funny sometimes.”
   “Oh,” Sirius said knowingly, “that would be the reason why you were mumbling Latin words under your breath that most conviently weren’t spells at all.”
   “I was trying to fix the window!”
   “The window? What in Merlin’s name happened to the window?”
   “Er…” James said slowly, “you might want to come with us. Things would explain themselves better if you saw the…er…battlefield.”
   Lily was faintly amused, but she wasn’t about to let the boys notice that. With a stern expression on her face suggestive of Professor McGonagall, she walked with them to the kitchen, arms folded.
   The kitchen door swung slowly open, and Lily’s eyebrow slowly rose as she surveyed the shambles. It seemed someone had levitated the stove; one corner was entirely smashed against the wall. And the window was indeed broken; slivers of glass decorated the floor along with several pounds of loose flour. A large cabinet, which had originally held all of their cups and plates, was lying on the floor, dismantled, looking like someone had crashed a house into it.
   “Before we begin,” James insisted, trying to pull her away from the kitchen, “I am perfectly capable of cleaning this up. It’s only the plates that gave us a bit of trouble, and that’s what we’d started on.”
   “You mean, clean up the plates like you’d cleaned up the cracked and chipped ones?”
   “Oh, no!” he clarified. “That was only because Peter seemed to have cast some sort of Shield Charm on them and I haven’t found out which one, yet.”
   Remus cleared his throat. “What happened was this, by the way.”
   “Ah, we come to a revelation. By the way, is all of this—this—“ Lily waved a hand around at the kitchen, at a temporary loss for a word—“this pile of—of—“
   “This evidence of geniuses at work,” James helped her.
   She almost snorted. “This pile of evidence of geniuses at work, if you insist. Is it confined to the kitchen?”
   “It is confined to the kitchen,” James repeated. “Most confined. Unless you count Slenka, who’s positively howling—she almost started hitting us with the rolling pin, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. Not at all as humble as most elves, she is.”
   “I suggest,” Lily said coldly, “that someone inform me of what happened to my kitchen.”
   “It’s not all that bad. We just came in to help Slenka with dinner.”
   “Who insisted she didn’t need any help,” Peter added. “Which is when I dropped the flour bag.”
   “The large flour bag, I’m assuming?”
   “The large flour bag, yes. Then Remus tripped over it, sending the flour flying everywhere,” Peter said studiously. “And the frying pan he was carrying flew through the window.”
   James and Sirius were fighting back large grins. “And then Peter wanted to fix the window, but accidentally said something wrong and pointed his wand at the stove, which started to fly.”
   “I’m assuming that the half-burned wood all over the floor came from inside the stove, then?” Lily asked.
   “Er, yes,” Peter mumbled. “I tried to fix it, though. Didn’t I?” he asked helplessly, appealing to the others.
   “You did,” Sirius said with a straight face. “You just don’t seem to like Latin words very much. The stove flew into the plate cabinet,” he explained to Lily. “Which is where the stove got that small crack.”
   “Crack?”
   “Okay, so it’s a gap.”
   “Try a HOLE,” Lily said dryly. “I think I can figure out the rest from here.”
   “Ye-es,” James said quickly, “It might take me an hour to clean up, though. Peter tried to stop the stove from smashing and accidentally hit the plates with the Shield Charm instead of the whole cabinet, and it backfired, so we’re having problems undoing the spells so we can magic everything back together.”
   Managing not to break down at the sight of Peter’s face, Lily left the kitchen for a pair of slippers; she intended to find out how badly her house-elf had been scarred. When she reached the entrance hall, however, her eyes landed on a figure that had obviously just Apparated; he was taking his cloak off.
   “Severus! How are you?” She hugged him fleetly. “What brings this visit into effect?”
   Severus half-grinned. “In case Potter’s listening at doors, I came to borrow a book.”
   “He’s too busy to clean up what once was a kitchen to do that,” Lily smirked. “I predict he’ll be at it for about an hour and a half.”
   “Is it a very large mess?”
   “Well, the stove’s smashed, the plate cabinet has been shattered, and the window’s broken, among several other charms Peter managed to cast.”
   “What happened—how did it start?”
   “Peter dropped a flour bag,” Lily said matter-of-factly, taking his cloak from him and hanging it up. “Come help me find my house-elf.”

   Slenka was huddled on her small bed, nursing a cut on her wrist and a shocked reaction. Lily was willing to bet she’d never seen that kind of mayhem before, and she was starting to get pretty glad house-elves couldn’t quit their position, even if they weren’t born into a house.
   “Slenka?”
   The large green eyes stared at Lily mournfully, then dropped to the dirty bathmat serving the elf as a garment. Fumbling, she tried to pick something out of the cut on her arm.
   “Here, let me,” Lily said calmly. Dropping to her knees, she took Slenka’s hand, and withing seconds, a sliver of glass was in her fingers.
   “There; that wasn’t so bad.” She smoothed the elf’s wispy hair. “Are you all right?”
   Large tears started rolling down Slenka’s cheeks, and she buried her face into her pillow, howling. Lily wasn’t quite sure what was wrong, but she stroked the elf’s back restfully.
   “Slenka, was it anything we did? Tell me, and I’m sure we can do something about it.”
   Instead of saying anything, Slenka sat up for a minute, her round face tear- and dirt-streaked. Still wailing, she threw her small, thin arms around Lily’s waist, hugging her tightly.
   Lily was more than a bit surprised, and she started involuntarily, but after a momentary astonishment, her arms went around the slight body, too, patting her on the back.
   Severus was more taken aback than anyone. He knew perfectly well that Lucius’ house-elves were perfectly terrified of their masters, and he’d never had the money to own one. Even the Hogwarts elves were submissive to the point of deserving to be kicked.
   Hogwarts-he remembered. Lily’d been his friend and several of the other Slytherins’, too, ignoring the caste system cherished for generations, the one saying that all Gryffindors are high-and-mighty prats, all Slytherins are evil, slimy, streetwalkers, and they don’t associate, unless the conversation happens to be in Latin. She’d befriended someone who was now the rising terror of the wizarding world and had a promise from him that she was safe from death at his hands-something even his own followers didn’t have.
   True, looking at all of that, he reflected that it wasn’t so out-of-place for her to be seen hugging a house-elf, but it was still a bit astounding to see an affectionate little slave.
   But, most likely, that was because Lily didn’t treat her like a slave.
   When Slenka’s sobs had diminished to hiccupping, Lily lifted her up and handed her to Severus.
   “Be gentle with her, now; she’s a bit frightened still.”
   She led the way to her rooms, and Severus was struck by the clinginess of the elf, who was curling her fingers into his robes like a child; like a child to her father. True, he was also trying to ignore the fact that she was wiping her nose on his collar, but that was beside the point.
   Lily led them into her bathroom and filled the tub with a jab of her staff. She pointed for Severus to put Slenka down in a large armchair, and then waved for him to come over to her closets.
   “What’re you doing?”
   “Using this moment to get her to accept something decent for us to wear. Goodness knows she needs it, and I think that now I might be able to manage it so she won’t feel she’s been disgraced or anything. Do you see anything in here that’s elf-sized?”
   “No,” Severus said after an extended search. “I see diamond-spattered dresses, silk dressing-gowns, velvet bliauts, satin riding habits, and an assorted collection of miscellaneous and wizard robes, but you don’t have anything her size.”
   Swiftly, Lily pulled a dress off of its hanger. “What about this one?”
   Severus looked at it. It was a light green linen dress with long, tight-fitting sleeves and a dark green sash; it didn’t look half as expensive as some of her other things did, but-
   “Lily, if Slenka put that on, she’d be tripping over the waist of that dress.”
   “I’m going to shrink it!” she scowled at him. “Don’t hold me for that stupid. But do you think she’ll take it?”
   “I think she’ll run out of here crying oceans because she thinks you’ve discharged her before you get a chance to explain.”
   “You are a most annoying pessimist, do you know that?”
   “I find it a highly enjoyable profession. But so are you sometimes.”
   Lily snorted. “You are absolutely no help, and in that you’ve got something in common with the Gryffindor boys downstairs.”
   When the bathroom door opened shyly a half-hour later, a most different figure trotted out, clad from shoulders to beyond her toes in a large, fluffy, white towel. Lily smiled at her, holding out a piece of clothing.
   “Slenka, put this on for me. It’s for you.”
   The elf’s eyes widened in dismay and fear, and Lily rushed to explain.
   “No!-Slenka, I’m most certainly not firing you; I couldn’t manage without you. Your-er-bathmat got hopelessly torn, and this is to replace what James and the rest did. We’re awfully sorry, and we’ll hope you’ll still stay with us.”
   Slenka’s nose grew swiftly red, and she shuffled forward, taking the dress with a sniff and vanishing back into the bathroom, shutting the door with a soft clunk.
   “I must say,” Severus admitted, “that was handled beautifully.”
   “That’s as may be.” Suddenly, Lily flung a hand in front of her mouth. “I almost forgot! You’re not hungry, by any chance?”
   She knew very well that Severus wasn’t able to find a job just now, owing to a nasty distrustfulness of strangers which Tom’s attacks were bringing about, which meant that each repast she and James could give him would help him immensely, even though he was much too proud to admit it. So, when he didn’t reply, she took his silence for a yes and vanished for the kitchen, despite his protests.
   Lily appeared again in moments with a tray loaded with the supper leftovers and a smirk.
   “They’re not half done cleaning up the kitchen,” she reported. “They’ve fixed the cabinet, the window, and some of the plates, but one of them managed to leave the faucet running, so they’ve got a small flood in there.” Setting the tray down on the table across from Severus’ armchair, she placed herself on the floor.
   “I’m terribly hungry. The boys managed to disclose the disaster with the plates to me before I had hardly started my dinner, so I haven’t had much to eat.” She held out a crescent roll to him. “These are good; I rescued them from the pantry. Have one.”
   Severus grinned, taking it from her. “You’ve got a most talented husband, my dear.”
   “He excels himself when he’s armed with fireworks and Dungbombs,” Lily said matter-of-factly. “Butter on your roll?”
   Lily had just shoved the last spoonful of stew into her mouth when the door swung open to reveal James and Peter, who were grinning rather proudly.
   “Is that smirk significant of a job well done or another mess well made?” Lily inquired, pulling the spoon out of her mouth.”
   James kissed her forehead. “We’re all finished!”
   “No more flood?”
   “No flood.”
   “No glass splinters or flour everywhere?”
   “Er.” James slid down on the floor next to her. “Remus is sweeping that up, since he says it’s his fault.”
   “A decent Gryffindor,” Severus said dryly. “I’m ready for the Apocalypse.”
   “I’ll be sure to put you in the middle of whatever explosion I can foretell or cause,” James promised, “and that promise, as a decent Gryffindor, I am obliged to keep.”
   “You two,” Lily said sternly, “aren’t in school anymore, and I should think you’d have gotten over the fact that you were in separate houses by now.”
   “There is such a thing as Gryffindor pride, Lily,” James admonished. “And I’ve got plenty of it for both of us.”
   “Shucks,” Lily muttered tonelessly. “Severus, ignore him. He’s just happy that he got the kitchen clean in under two hours.”
   Severus tried to hide a grin, but he was having problems doing it. Instead, he reached over to the bundle of fur that was lying half hidden under the blankets on the bed. “I’d almost forgotten about her.” He lifted the sleeping cat up, causing it to shake its whiskers sleepily. “My namesake, isn’t she?”
   “She’s a credit to you,” Lily observed. “Hasn’t torn up more than two sleeves and only chewed on James’ glasses.”
   Severus shot a conquering look over to James, who had bereft him of Vera. “His glasses? She certainly is a credit to me.”
   “Too much of one,” James said darkly. “Just another hint of credit, and both of you’ll be out of the house before Peter can cause another accident. It took me a week to get the glasses replaced.”
   Lily tried to keep down a laugh, but it came out in giggling hiccups.
   Later that night, when Slenka had led Severus to the white-and-blue guest room, Lily was brushing her hair in front of the bathroom mirror. Retying the sash of the long, silver dressing gown, she set the brush down and eased the door to the bedroom open quietly.
   An amusing sight met her eyes, and she had to laugh. The same full-blown Gryffindor that had been protesting that he couldn’t stand the Slytherin cat was lying on the bed, on his side, curled around Vera, and poking her gently with the frame of his glasses. Vera was having one of the times of her life chasing the black poky things, and she was flopping all over herself in an effort to get at them.
   “Is that a good cat? Is that my gooood kitten? Yesh; get the naschty glasses! Oh, no! They’re over here! They ran away! Catch them, Vera, catsch! Gooood cat! Oh, no! They escaped! They’re over here by your ears, kitty-chew those nasty things to pieces! Good cat!”
   He heard Lily’s outburst and snapped the glasses back onto his face.
   “Oh, thank goodness you’re here. That cat’s been impossible; she’s been biting at everything she can see,” he managed with a completely straight face.
   “Hypocrite,” Lily said with a grin, sitting down on the bed. “Hypocrite to rule them all.”
   “You won’t tell Snape, will you?” he asked, worried.
   “Nope; too troublesome. But you owe me a drink at the Leaky Cauldron or at the Three Broomsticks.”
   “Done!”
   Lily smiled, settling back into the pillows. “Thank you.”
   “I do what I can,” he smiled. “Hand me the cat, please.”
   About a quarter-hour later, he was asleep, with Vera curled up onto his stomach. Lily turned her head away from them, thinking.
“I’m not having a baby, James. Ever. Not while Tom’s alive.”
   “What happened?”
   “He hates you still. I can’t reason with him at all. He-he swore to me-that he’d wait till you had a son or a daughter-and then he fully intended to-to ‘lose someone precious to him, knowing he can’t protect her.’ He hates you as much as he loved her. One rule we’re going to have: No children in this fairy-tale elysium.”
   “Lily-”
   “No. That is final.”
   “I wish none of this had ever happened,” Lily sighed to herself. “If we don’t end up having a baby, he’ll fill this house with animals and we won’t be able to move, let alone live in it.” She rolled over onto her back. “Blast.”

NEW STORY STARTS HERE