Beyond Hogwarts cont; Chapter Thirty-Nine

-=Beyond Hogwarts, cont.; Chapter Thirty-Nine=-

She stared at him for a few moments, her eyes blank. “What?”
   “We’re going to have a baby!” he repeated, grinning idiotically and seating himself on the bed next to her. “Isn’t that absolutely great?”
   “Great,” Lily repeated incredulously as the color ebbed from her cheeks. “Great?! You—you—have you any idea what this means?”
   “Yes,” James responded, a bullheaded expression starting to creep into his body. “Of course I do. Don’t worry, I’ll be the one getting up at two in the morning to give him his bottle, if you want me to.”
   “You’re purposely being stupid,” Lily remarked, rising up on her elbows. “Do you have any idea what this means, may I ask?”
   “Of course I do,” he countered stubbornly, dropping the façade of stupidity. “Yes, I know exactly what’s going to come of this. But, my God, Lily, are we just going to give up any chance of having a family only because you feel like buckling under to You-Know-Who?”
   “I am not buckling under,” Lily snapped. “If we have this child, it’s nothing short of murder—for it and for you! What I’m doing is trying to keep you alive, you obstinate idiot!”
   “I don’t care,” James said simply, staring directly into her eyes. “I really and truly don’t care. I want a family, Lily, and I’d rather live for only a few more years with one than die at ninety, completely alone.”
   “You have me,” Lily said icily. “Is that all of a sudden not good enough?”
   “There isn’t any right answer to that,” he shrugged. “Lily, isn’t this my life?”
   She was now sitting up entirely, unsupported by the pillows. “That is one of the most selfish remarks I have ever heard you make. Does it occur to you that you may be dying, but I will be the one living out seventy years without you?”
   “Now you’re being selfish,” he grinned impishly, stabbing at reconciliation. “Lily—“
   “Shut up,” she snapped coldly. “I am not having this baby and having you die because of it. We’re going to St. Mungo’s today—at least I am—and if I don’t have the day off, I’m going on my lunch break to schedule an appointment for this.”
   A tiny mass of compressed fury, she swung her legs out of bed, fought a wave of giddiness, and stormed over to her closet, yanking out a pair of indigo robes and slamming the door shut. Pointedly ignoring James, who was standing as if rooted to the floor, she locked herself into the bathroom to dress.
   Emerging a few minutes later, with her night-gown over her arm and her hair coiled into a knot of braids, she made for the bed, intending to propel the night-gown underneath her pillow, turn around, and leave the room. But she got no farther than thowing the night-gown away before James, jolted into action, reached in front of her with the speed of a hunted gazelle, clasped her wrists in one hand, and jerked her around to face him with the other.
   “No,” he said firmly, staring down at her uncompromisingly. “No. You’re not getting rid of this baby. I won’t let you.”
   “Try and stop me,” she hissed, trying to regain her wrists.
   “If I have chain you to me for the next eight months, you’re having that baby. Do you really think I’d let you kill him like that?”
   “I notice you’re quite positive that he’s a male,” Lily said scathingly. “I’d bet that if you found out it was a girl, you’d murder her out of wounded pride.”
   “I would not,” James frowned shortly. “You’re trying to push me, now. Listen, Lily, if you think that baby’s going to die either way, at least give it a few months of life!”
   “Yes, and have you die too?” she snapped, her voice rising several octaves in pitch. “I don’t want you to go, you triple ass! And I can’t handle children, you know I can’t! I’ve tried to tell you—this baby would grow up hating me if it did grow up at all! I can’t do this; I couldn’t be a mother; I’m not cut out for it!”
   “Not that many people are, Lily, but they learn! No one’s ever a perfect parent, and each kid hates his or her mother and father at some point in time. And—and besides, Lily, we’re both capable of fighting, and if we get rid of it now, of course the baby’s going to die, but if we don’t—listen, there’s a chance that we can save him—or her—even if the odds are the worst that ever existed.”
   “Let go,” Lily barked, finally managing to tear her wrists away. “You can’t stop me. I won’t let you stop me!”
   “I’m not trying to stop you,” he sighed sensibly. “I’m begging you, is what I’m doing. Yes, this was an accident, but I will crawl around on my knees for the rest of my days if you’ll only let it live. And—and besides, I’m his—or her—father—and I really want a family, Lily. You know I do; and I’m telling you now that even if I only knew the baby for a week, I’d consider my life well spent if I died trying to save him. Or her.”
   Lily stood quietly for a moment, her thoughts cavorting through her mind with violent, never-ceasing cartwheels. At long last, she raised her face to meet his beseeching one, faltering for a few seconds before taking a breath to speak.
   “I won’t do anything now. I think that’s fairest. I’ll wait—and if I can get you to agree with me, I won’t have the baby. Otherwise—well, otherwise I won’t do anything about it.”
   James stared, not quite prepared for this sort of capitulation. “Are you being serious?”
   “Yeah,” she said dully, “but don’t think that I won’t try my hardest to stop you wanting it.”
   He reached for her and enveloped her in an entirely grateful hug, pulling back after a few moments and kissing her. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
   “Don’t thank me yet,” she said acidly, slipping out of the embrace. “I am going to make your life a living hell from now on, remember that.”
   “What, really?” he asked, slightly disconcerted.
   “Of course, really,” she threw over her shoulder as she left the bedroom. “You are going to wish we had never made this bargain, believe me.”
   However, having made the resolution not to give in to her, James’ euphoria quickly billowed up again after making her promise that she wouldn’t do anything that could possibly hurt the baby, and he Apparated in to work humming the latest song by the Hit Wizards, a group blatantly named after the Ministry’s specific sub-departmental employees.
   He met Sirius for lunch in Firestream Lane at three at a small Caribbean restaurant—even lunch was taken in shifts; Lily’s had been at eleven—and he was still practically bouncing around on slippers made of bulging cumulus clouds.
   “Hullo, mate!” he called out jovially, swinging himself into a chair. “Life stopping its habit of shooting itself in the bum nowadays, what?”
   Sirius blinked. “What?”
   “I—am—HAPPY,” James pronounced with a wide grin, waving generously at nothing whatsoever. “And I will give you three guesses as to why.”
   “Severus Snape dropped dead,” Sirius said immediately, leaning forwards. “Please, please, please—”
   “Unfortunately, no,” his friend sighed. Turning to the elderly waiter who had just appeared in front of their table, he selected an item from the menu at random and accepted the glass of cocoa-nut-and-orange-flavoured syrup poured over a mound of crushed ice and three teaspoonfuls of champagne that Sirius had ordered for both of them (formally called the Notable Iced Taste of the Caribbean); it was a specialty of the house. “Guess again.”
   “You-Know-Who dropped dead?”
   “That would, also, have been really nice,” James said regretfully, spooning a bit of syruped ice into his mouth. “But no. Last guess?”
   “I have no idea,” Sirius admitted. “Have you adopted the Weasley twins?”
   James sat up quickly, pointing his spoon at Sirius. “Close, very close!”
   “What; are you really adopting kids?”
   “Nope. Better, better, much better!”
   “Oh, Merlin,” Sirius gasped, flabbergasted. “Don’t tell me—“
   “Yup!”
   “—But—how—Lily; how’d she agree—didn’t she—oh, my God.”
   Sirius leaned back abruptly, knocking over his glass, though, fortunately, this was the sort of restaurant that took the trouble to perform intricate No-Spill Charms on their glasses and cups. Therefore, the ice-and-syrup simply slushed to the opening of the glass and stopped there, as if a bit of clear plastic foil had been suspended over the top of the glass as a barrier. Tutting extravagantly, James reached over and uprighted the knocked Notable with a whisk of the fingers.
   “Well, is that all you can say?”
   “I—good Lord, James!” Sirius wheezed, firmly ignoring a painful and persistent twinging behind his eyes. “Yeah, of course I’m—congratulations, you old idiot!”
   Reaching around the table, he pulled his friend into a choking hug, not really caring much about the scandalized stares of a middle-aged, plump witch at the next table, whose nostrils were rising in a very snobby sort of way.
   “I am the kid’s godfather, got it?” he said as soon as he let go of James. “Don’t you dare let Lily rope you into saying yes to Snape; we don’t want the kid to cringe every time he hears the words ‘god’ or ‘father’.”
   “Of course you’re godfather,” James protested, almost insulted. “He may have walked Lily down the aisle at our wedding, but at any binding relation with our family I put my foot down. Permanently. Ooh; that’d just be hideous.”
   “Hum,” Sirius replied absently, beginning to think. “How did Lily react, exactly?”
   “Ah, yes,” James said, making an interesting sort of face by biting the right side of his mouth and wrinkling his left nostril. “She’s…er, well, she wasn’t happily thrilled, if you know what I mean.”
   “But she gave in?” Sirius asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
   “No,” James admitted. “It doesn’t. The arrangement basically is that if I survive the eight months until the baby’s born, then we can keep him.”
   “Oh,” his friend nodded, reassured. “Well, that isn’t so bad, is it?”
   “Er,” was all James could manage; the word was possibly a derivation of ‘sure’, but something in the way of the realization of a lie seemed to have happened to it.
   Lily, on her part, had told no one of what she considered to be frightening news. If she managed to convince James of the utter stupidity he was showing, then no one need know of their decision. Besides, the last thing she wanted was for the fact that she was going to have a baby to leak back to Lord Voldemort.
   Knowing quite well that it would do absolutely no good to behave like a distraught, hysterical, and easily enraged vixen for the next eight months, Lily bent her mind to devising a different battle strategy. After all, it would be only too easy for James to think to himself: “She’s only acting like this on purpose, and it’ll be over in eight months, anyway,” and so shrug everything that she might do off of his shoulders. The most effective plan, as far as she could see, would be to drive home the certainty that bearing this child would be murder to it.
   It was strange, this new way of life. She could not get used to the idea that there was an actual human being growing inside of her, and there were so many things she couldn’t do—the evening of the day that she had found out about her pregnancy, she had rushed outside to the stable for a ride, something she hadn’t done in a long time. Just as she had swung herself over her horse’s back, however, a sudden lurching in her stomach reminded her firmly that she couldn’t ride; it wasn’t safe—what if she were thrown again? It had only happened once, but that once was enough of a warning. Bitterly, she slipped back onto the ground, unsaddled her horse, fed it a lump of sugar, and turned her back on the stable. James found her on the balcony of their bedroom that night, re-reading Gone With The Wind, her attention indubitably fixed on the section in which Scarlett informed her husband of her intent not to have any more children.
   Sirius, of course, spread the news to Remus and Peter, and all three of them dropped by the following evening, laden heavily with spur-of-the moment gifts, mostly food. Loudly congratulatory, they overlooked Lily’s frosty deportment and tossed possible baby names back and forth between bites. However, midway through the evening, Lily stood up abruptly and left the room without so much as a polite “Goodnight, everyone.” James made to follow her, but he was yanked back down roughly by Sirius, who made the very valid point that she could get to him more easily if he were alone and without backup. Sighing, he slid back into his armchair and speared a bit of roasted chicken and a chocolate wand on a fork, which he stabbed towards the general direction of his mouth.
   Three days later, James was still trying to get a handle on the way Lily was acting; she was noticeably no different from before, and she had apologized gracefully to Sirius, Peter, and Remus for leaving them in the middle of dinner. But, inwardly, Lily was counting the seconds until she would be free of the baby; she had had to refuse to teach a second-year physical defense class for the Aurors-in-training, and she had to explain to Arabella Figg exactly why she was being restricted from violent movements. Consequently, everyone that she was even slightly acquainted with knew in the space of a week, much to her discomfort.
   On the evening of the sixth of December, Lily was packing up her things to go home when she was stopped by a vibrant Eva Apparating into her small office, hair muddled, robes untidy, and eyes aglow.
   “Lily!” she shrieked. “Oh, holy Merlin, you, too?”
   Puzzled was a nice way of putting Lily’s expression; she looked undeniably fishlike as her mouth dropped open in bewilderment. “Eva, have you gone quite off into the deep end with a bellyflop?”
   “You’re having a baby!” Eva re-stated, leaping around the desk and clasping her friend in a breath-killing hug. “I am, too, Lily! I am, too!”
   “You are?” Lily repeated, her eyes widening. “Really? Eva—did you just find out or—“
   “This morning,” Eva grinned, flushing up to the tips of her ears. “And then Frank came by to take me home and he told me that he had just found out about you and—Oh, Lily, isn’t this wonderful?”
   “I’m really happy for you,” Lily gulped. “You’ll be a—an excellent mother, Eva, you really will.”
   Dimly perceiving that something was wrong, Eva calmed down slightly. “Lily, is there something the matter?”
   “Not really,” Lily lied, “it’s just that…well, I don’t know if I’m ready to be a mother, that’s all.”
   “Oh, I’m not either,” Eva laughed, high spirits restored, “but no one thinks that they are, do they? Come on, Lily, this will be the best time of our lives!”
   Forcing back the memories of the sickeningly horrible feeling that welled up inside her every morning, Lily grinned. “Yeah, it’ll be great.”
   “We need to do dinner sometime,” Eva decided. “At our house, what?”
   “Sure,” Lily agreed, reaching for a pencil and her calendar. “What time?”
   “Oh, you are too organized,” her friend commented, wrinkling her nose. “I dunno; maybe…let’s say next Wednesday, at…at eight.”
   “Eight…o’clock,” Lily finished. “Good. I’ll see you—and we’ll bring food!”
   “I won’t say no to that!” Eva grinned. She leaned back over the desk and hugged Lily once more for good measure, and then Disapparated with a wave and a “See you Wednesday night!”
   Curiously enough, Lily was left behind feeling oddly empty, and quite lonely. Ostracized, even—she seemed to be the only one that did not want to welcome the baby she was carrying. And it wasn’t as if she would have gladly welcomed it if the threat to it and her husband hadn’t existed—she didn’t. She was almost afraid of it, of this new intrusion, when all she wanted, now, was to cling hopelessly to what life had been before. And she was hardly an optimist, either—deeply and truly, she knew that, if she had this baby, that James would die. Tom—Voldemort—wouldn’t hold for anything else.
   Now, too, she was regretting that she hadn’t opposed James further…but that still had time, she reflected. He was too much of an idealist—he seemed to have this mad idea that everything would turn out all right; that Voldemort’s powers might be overthrown before the baby was born, or that his magic would prove to be enough to fight against Voldemort and win…all senseless hopes, pleas for mercy, a begging for a normal life. They were wizards, and they were living in one of the most dangerous times that had ever been witnessed by men—normality had gone; sense had gone, and hope was almost gone.
   “Hope,” she whispered.
Hope—what good does it do us to hope now? When people are dying left and right, and if anyone tries to interfere in the slightest they are killed—hope? Hope is murderous to possess now. We can’t hope; we can’t afford to hope—we can only fight, blindly, and watch each other die. There’s no way to stop this, not while we know that the force rising against us is more than we can end or even suspend provisionally…dreaming and hoping can’t give us help. Unless a miracle beyond ordinary magic happens, we’re all going to die before our time. And the miracle that we would need—no, there’s no use.
"It’s hopeless." she said softly, serenely, and calmly, picking up her bag and Disapparating to her own house with a soft pop.
   She found James in the library, feet outstretched towards the blazing fire and a book on the different kinds of Shield Charms in his hands. Announcing her homecoming by dumping her bag onto the desk with a loud thump, she was given a vague gratification as he started minutely.
   He greeted her with a “Hey”, holding out his hand to her and letting the book fall onto his lap. “I would have waited for you,” he added, “but Merriwether sent me home around five, telling me to…research.”
   Lily nodded absently, helping herself to one of the Frisking Truffles that were piled into a tottering pyramid on their platter. “Good.”
   “Has Eva told you?” James asked, grinning. “I talked to Frank about—well, about our baby, and he stared at me as if I’d just sprouted moss-covered candelabras from my ears or something; it turns out that Eva’s expecting, too.”
   “Yes; I know; she dropped by,” Lily answered, dusting off her hands. “Just before I left, actually.”
   “You’ll have a partner in illness, then,” James said cheerfully, placing an arm around her shoulders. “Eva’s about ready to burst through the walls with excitement.”
   “I noticed,” Lily said dryly. “She also doesn’t have a very real death threat directed towards her husband and child.”
   Immediately exasperated, James spewed out a noise sounding like an imploding train. “Honestly, Lily, do you have to go there?”
   “I do,” she said unemotionally, staring directly into the fire. “If we go ahead with this, we’ll be bringing this child into the world to die—perhaps only an hour after its birth.”
   “Every child is born to die,” James muttered.
   “Yes, but usually parents expect their offspring to reach a year of age first.”
   “Lily, there’s always the possibility that he won’t die. Vol—er,…well, You-Know-Who…oh, blast it, Voldemort might not find out—or he could be overthrown, or he could not care anymore…”
   “That’s ridiculous and you know it,” Lily scoffed. “Of course he’ll find out; you have, after all, informed everyone within a hundred miles of us by today. And if he hasn’t been overthrown by now—no, he won’t be. He’ll grow stronger and stronger, because we can’t stop him now. We’re simply not strong enough. And of course he’ll still—care—as you put it. He still believes that you murdered—or brought about the murder—of Litharelen, and Merlin knows I’ve tried to talk him out of it.”
   “You know,” James replied, trying not to let all of this bother him, “getting rid of the baby now is definitely killing it, but—otherwise, it still has the slightest chance.”
   “It has a small chance,” Lily agreed. “Minuscule, but, still, a chance.”
   At her words, James sat up immediately, a fire of excitement twitching in his eyes and fingertips. “You—you—wait; you’re not capitulating, are you? I thought—“
   “You have to think of the odds, though,” Lily interrupted, pressing on as calmly as if only she had been speaking. “At least one million to one of the baby surviving, and then what if he doesn’t? You’ve heard of the Unforgivable Curses; we all have, but I believe you’re only thinking of Avada Kedavra. Lord Voldemort is also particularly fond of the Cruciatus Curse, though; we’ve heard all sorts of accounts from victims of that curse that weren’t killed immediately. What if he decides to force you to watch the baby being tortured before he kills it?”
   “Lily, stop it,” James hissed, teeth clenched.
   “There’s no use saying that he wouldn’t dare; we know he would. He isn’t—he doesn’t have enough compassion to care for anyone’s feelings anymore; that left him about three years ago. And he’d enjoy watching you while he tortured the baby; of course he isn’t above that.” For the first time during her litany, Lily turned her head to look at him. “If we let him live, it’s worse than murder; much worse. If you want to see it from his angle, that wouldn’t be true, of course; Lord Voldemort doesn’t believe that there’s anything worse than death, torture of all forms included.” Suddenly gentle, she placed a hand on his arm. “If we—take care of him—now, he won’t have to suffer through that. Listen to me; it wouldn’t be better off living; it truly wouldn’t.”
   I’ve won, Lily thought with a flash of triumph as her eyes fell on James’ deflated figure; he was bowed over, elbows on his knees and face hidden in his palms, rocking back and forth. Now and again a belated, sighing, heavy breath fell through his fingers, and he refused to look at her. It’s over; I won’t have to have the baby—and James won’t die now, either!—before his time, at least.
   He stood up abruptly, knocking his book to the floor and barely noticing the thunk of the binding on the carpet. “I—I’ll go on to bed,” he managed before leaving the library and shutting the door with a soft click. Lily was left on the floor, kneeling next to the chair with a straight back and a foiled expression on her face.
   Never mind, she consoled herself. He’ll capitulate sooner or later.
Tossing her head, she reached for a Frisking Truffle, bit away half of it, and tenderly picked up the book that was lying haphazardly on its side, pages flapping dangerously close to the fire. Dusting it off, she returned it to the bookshelf above her head, cast an approving glance around the neat library, and followed James upstairs, a curious tumult of faith in her own competence mixed with the memory of James’ reaction to her tactics in her mind.
   However, despite all of her attempts to persuade her husband otherwise, he held on to the baby’s life desperately; by the time Christmas rolled around with a slight damper on its otherwise glorious festivities, and by which time Lily had fully expected to be free of the sickening early-morning nausea and the hated waves of giddiness that swept over her, unannounced and entirely unwanted, he had not given in and showed no intention of doing so. To every single stab that she drove into him about the baby’s certain chances of a painful, doomed, and unhappy life, he either responded with a firm or shaky “No”, or he would leave the room brusquely.
   Their close friends were bewildered; Sirius, Remus, and Peter most of all. They knew that there was a particular reason for Lily’s aversion to the baby that went deeper than just a feeling of not wanting children, and neither James nor Lily intended, ever, to reveal the exact relations that Lily had had with Lord Voldemort, even if that had been when he was still Tom Riddle, to anyone, inclusive of their closest friends. Neither of them had forgotten Lucius Malfoy and his blackmail attempt, and it would be the height of madness to give anyone grounds for trying the same thing.
   Feeling rather shut out, their friends had turned to each other. To Lora’s ecstatic delight, she, Peter, and Amanda had been invited to Sirius’ and Remus’ for dinner one night, and they had all pitched in to the fund for a firework extravaganza that would be set on Lily and James’ lawn on New Year’s Eve. Incidentally, all that the host couple were aware of was that a small group of friends would be having dinner on the glass sun-room on the peak of their house; the secret was carefully kept and even more carefully elaborated upon.
   Christmas itself passed without much of a stir; gifts were exchanged and dinner was held at Eva and Frank’s; the small house was filled almost to overflowing, and the extra leaves were added to the dining-room table, so that there was hardly room to walk, but that only really mattered to the guests when Remus slid his chair backwards to stand up and accidentally pinned Amanda to the wall; everyone had quite a good laugh at that.
   Albus had not organized any more resistance movements after Marlene’s death, though the members of the Order were still keeping watch over the most secure and secret places inside the Ministry as well as over the new Minister of Magic and several other important and prominent members of government. Lily still insisted on standing guard with everyone else, and James suffered paroxysms of nerve-wracking anxiety every time that she did so, now doubly frightened: for her and for the baby.
   The year 1980 rolled in with the most astounding display of fireworks ever seen in the area where Lily and James lived; the visiting nephews of their closest neighbor, a Muggle, scampered across the extensive, cold, and ice-blue grounds to join the laughing, fire-cracker-mad group. Showing themselves to be the most affectionate children ever born, they made their presence known by pulling on people’s robes and asking to be held with outstretched arms. A few minutes later, they were joined by their parents, which caused a flurry among the witches and wizards present to stow their wands away; luckily, the only comment made by the mother of the three small boys was that the party must have an interesting theme.
   The crates of fireworks were spent by one-thirty in the morning, and a large patch of ground could be seen in the back yard; the snow had melted away to form mud, which had iced over by seven o’clock. Everyone except the Muggles had stayed the night, and every guest bedroom was filled and some people were sleeping on couches; everyone in the Order had been invited to come.
   Severus had also been invited, but he had declined hastily and firmly after finding out who else would be at the party; it was universally accepted among the Order of the Phoenix that any Slytherin was a probable Death Eater, and Severus’ friend-like relations with Lucius Malfoy were not kept secret. Lucius Malfoy himself was seriously suspected by everyone in the Order except Lily and James; they knew that Lucius was a Death Eater. Therefore, especially after Marlene’s death just a month and a half ago, Severus’ presence was not the smartest thing to include. It was during moments like these that James deplored bitterly the amount of loyalty that Lily gave her close friends, but he knew exactly just how pointless it would be to ask her to dissolve relations with him; the only uncertainty would concern the wording she would use, and if she would be content with the phrase: “Oh, sod off!”