Disclaimer: I do not own JK Rowling's characters

A/N: This is my first attempt at a oneshot. I doubt if it'll get much of an audience, but it came to me last night - the result of spending a week with my sister and her baby. I enjoyed writing it anyway.

It is set in the same world as all my other stories, and you will recognise the OC from several others. I've cheated a bit, because Lily isn't really a character in this story (and it certainly isn't a Lily/OC romantic pairing) - but she features heavily.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it. And if you want to read more about this character, take a look at Choices and Finding the Light, and potentially some other stories in the future.

Once, a long time ago it seemed, there had been three teenage girls. She remembered those girls well, although it seemed impossible that she had ever been one of them. They smiled out of photographs; young and careless and happy.

They had been normal girls, back then. They had gone to school, and worried about their exams, and got into trouble for chatting through lessons. They had thought about boys, and gone on dates, and cried over break-ups. They had discussed clothes, and make-up, and other people. They had got drunk, and smoked the odd cigarette, and sneaked out at night. They had sat up until all hours, just talking.

And sometimes, as teenage girls do, they had talked about love.

Evie, the romantic, had said that true love was being prepared to die for someone. That, she said, was the only real test.

Lily, the pragmatist, had said that that was a stupid test for true love, because by the time you knew if you would really die for someone, it was too late - you were dead. And anyway, 'true love' was a myth she didn't believe in.

Odette, with one of those sudden deep flashes they had come to expect from her, had said that dying for someone was the easy part; the real test of love was being able to live for them.

They had laughed at her, because Odette's deep thoughts were often fairly unintelligible, and it seemed out of character for her to have them. She was more suited to telling jokes than engaging in philosophical discussions. She hadn't minded though, because they were her best friends, and so were allowed to laugh at her. Indeed, she had laughed too, because it did seem ridiculous, even to herself, that Odette Irvine should have serious thoughts.

Funny how things turned out, Odette thought, as she rocked the baby in the darkness, rocking it off to sleep at last, dark lashes curved on pale cheeks, a drop of milk still on the little round chin.

Her baby.

She had never imagined that she would have children. She had always thought she would be the spinster aunt. The fun godmother to Lily and Evie's children. The one who disappeared off to foreign countries and came back laden with wonderful and inappropriate gifts. The one who played games and gave sweets and never said no. This had never been meant to be her role. She would do the fun bits, and then hand the children back at the end of the day. She wouldn't be the one who had to get up in the middle of the night. Who could give the comfort of a breast with milk when nobody else would do. Who would have to rock them through the crying, even when her own eyes could hardly stay open.

She was not tired now though. Perhaps she had gone beyond sleep. That happened, sometimes, and then she could almost enjoy being awake. There was something soothing about the night, when the world was asleep and all was silent. The curtains were slightly open, and she could see a waxing moon through the gap, with a halo of silver cloud.

In a few hours, the birds would wake. Odette had never been a morning person, and she had never heard the birds wake up before she had a child. It was a dreamlike experience, looking down at the face of her baby in the grey dawn, and listening to the chorus of birdsong.

She was a mother. The words sounded strange to her ears. Sometimes she looked down at the tiny elfin thing with its mop of dark hair and its eyes that were fast turning brown and the ears that stuck out just like her own, and she couldn't believe that this was real. That this little miracle had really come from inside her, and that it was here for good.

She had never been like Lily and Evie, who went soft-eyed and smiley at any baby they saw. She hadn't really been bothered about the things. They were noisy and smelly and got in the way of things.

But this one was different. This one was perfect.

Her first experience of a baby had been Harry. That had been strange enough, seeing Lily as a mother. And James as a father; that had been even weirder. She had always known that Lily would have kids, but not James. To Odette, he would always be the gregarious, slightly spoiled, Quidditch-obsessed child she had played and bickered with all those years ago. She looked at him, and saw a grinning eight-year-old, not a father. How had they all got so old?

She had had to admit that Harry was quite a lovely baby, although she had been a bit awkward with him at first. She hadn't known how to hold him, or talk to him. She had been afraid that she would break him. Evie, of course, had been perfectly calm and capable, but astonishingly, it had been Sirius Black who really took to babies like a duck to water. He adored his baby godson, and handled him so easily and casually that anyone would think he had been carrying babies around all his life.

Being beaten by Black in that way was unthinkable. After all, she was practically the child's godmother. If she hadn't been abroad at the time of the christening, Lily had said apologetically, Odette would have been Harry's godmother. Odette didn't mind too much. She knew that the christening had been a very quiet affair, coming so soon after the death of Lily's father. And she could be an unofficial godmother just as easily.

So she tried her best, and found to her surprise that it came remarkably quickly. Harry had been an easy baby; always laughing and smiling, and sleeping through the night by three months. She had found herself changing nappies, spooning mashed potato, cleaning high chairs, and babyitting while James and Lily went out for a break.

It was practice for when she had her own, Lily had said. Odette had laughed, unable to imagine that day.

Funny how things turned out.

Evie, who had believed that to die for someone was the ultimate proof of love, had had to learn the hard way how to live for the one you loved, even when they were gone forever. Sometimes, as Odette had said years ago, when they were young and carefree, living for love was more difficult than dying for it, and Evie's romantic heart had hardened and frozen with grief.

Lily, who had not not believed in all-consuming love, had found it with the most unlikely person. And Lily, who believed that dying for someone was a stupid test for love, had done just that. She had died for her child, and lay with James, cold beneath the ground in the graveyard in Godric's Hollow.

And then there was Odette. Odette had lost many of her old friends, but she had found two people for whom she would live or die, without question. One of them lay in her arms now, and the other breathed evenly on the other side of the bed.

There was no need to test it. This was love.