Chapter One: The Clinical and the Not

There was a sterile smell and the seats were fake leather when Lily and James Potter sat down upon their cushions in the St Mungo's Healer's Room. As the Healer in his lime-green robes stepped up in front of them, he looked apologetic.

"So what's wrong?" James asked. "Why have we had so much trouble having a child?"

"The problem is a simple if profoundly tragic one, Mr Potter. You see -" the Healer began in a canned speech.

Narcissa descended slowly, the picture of elegance and grace, down the dark, winding stone steps into the Malfoy Manor dungeons. Lucius was down there in the shadows, bent over a bubbling, steaming cauldron.

"Usually this is Severus's work," he spat, harried, darting everywhere before the steam in the dark. "But when the Dark Lord asks for a series of poisons to make his Muggle killings more inventive -"

"You could have stopped," said Narcissa, "at 'when the Dark Lord asks'."

"This is the first step," explained Lucius, "for the specific kind of poison he wants. The first part of the potion builds up the victim's body, the second kind I haven't made yet is an Ever-Enlarging Potion."

"What is this?" Narcissa reached out her hand - and then stopped. "Dark magic." Her hand shot back beneath her black cloak. Her pale, icy, beautiful face twisted. "I should know better than to touch things I don't understand."

The artifact was simple enough - a little black book. The words T.M. Riddle were engraved gold-gleaming across a corner.

"It was given to me by the Dark Lord," said Lucius, "and it is indeed not to be touched. I still haven't locked it away -" Absently, to himself.

He reached in a mild panic over the cauldron to the little black book and - tragic accident - he tipped it.

The Potion fell as if in slow-motion, spilling across the dungeon floor, across the pages of the book, which slowly soaked in the purple foam and film as if by magic. Narcissa backed up in a panic, slipped across the cold stone floor -

And her stomach knocked right into Tom Riddle's diary covered with body building Potion.

There was a burst of light, a gust of wind, like lightning, everywhere white, glowing from the flipping pages of the book like they were in a high breeze -

And then the light was gone, and the little book was quite sad and dead, and Narcissa had fallen dazed to the floor.

"Narcissa!" Lucius was at her side in a second, helping her up.

"I am a month pregnant!" she cried, the words coming out in a pained shriek from her mouth. "What if we hurt the baby -?!"

Lucius put his wand over her stomach. "… The baby is fine," he breathed, the words tumbling out like dominoes in their relief. "The baby is fine."

"Then what… have we done…?" They looked up slowly as if a single fearful monster at the little black book, lying silently on the table.

"I do not know." Lucius tugged Narcissa to her feet. "But whatever it is, we're not telling him.

"Not ever."

The brown-haired woman lay pale and ill in the Muggle hospital, ghostly, veins blue against paper white skin, skeletal fingers. Dying. Her faded brown hair lay against her sweaty face on the pillow.

"I picked a hell of a place to die." She gave a weak grin, nodding her head to the car horns honking outside. "London."

"Cancer," said her nurse disapprovingly, moving instruments around at a nearby hospital work table, "is not a joke. Especially not the terminal kind that a patient has refused treatment for."

"Ah, sure it is." The woman looked away, grinning defiantly, her eyes hard and sad in a way no eyes should ever be.

Suddenly, she convulsed and shuddered, gasping. Gasping. Her eyes began rolling.

"Oh, Lord, she's dying!" the nurse cried on reflex, running to the woman's bedside. "Ms Crawley! Amanda!"

"He's… he's inside me… he's in such horrible pain… he's regretting something, he's in such pain…" Amanda Crawley gasped out, eyes rolling. "He can feel it at last…"

Elsewhere in the world, a golden cup, a silver diadem, a black stoned ring, and an engraved locket all shuddered, emitted a brief light - and went out.

Still. Dead.

Lord Voldemort in a darkened sitting room stopped to catch a breath, clawing long white fingers at the back of a winged back armchair -

"My Lord?" said Bellatrix frantically, running to him and putting a hand on his arm.

"… Nothing. I am fine." Lord Voldemort shrugged her off and stood straight, because he was always fine. Always.

He hadn't even really felt anything.

He was fine.

Amanda Crawley gasped, convulsed once - and lay quite still, gasping out breaths.

"He's fine now. He feels well again… for the first time in a long time… How do I know this?" she whispered, mind spinning, eyes searching.

On a sudden suspicion, the portly red-headed nurse lifted her bedsheets and did a check of her vaginal area and her abdomen.

"You're - I don't believe it - you're about a month pregnant," said the nurse in prophetic words, stunned. "But - you weren't before! I don't understand, you're dying, you have to terminate this -!" Disjointed sentences rushing out like a river.

"… No," breathed Amanda Crawley, eyes widening. "… No. I want this boy. He is a gift from God."

A dramatic declaration, borne partly of dying and partly of a woman who had spent her entire life in theater.

"Cynthia." She grabbed at the nurse's hand. "I won't be alive to do it. Take care of him. Tell him. Tell him God gave him to me."

"That's Nurse Paisley to you, and you may not even live through the labor -!" Cynthia was trying to put up a tough front. "I -" She saw Amanda Crawley's face. "Okay," she admitted. "If he makes it, I'll take care of him. I'll tell him.

"What'll he be called? Since you're so sure it's a boy and all." A weak smile, a joke, but Amanda took it seriously.

"A Biblical name. Nathaniel. That's what he'll be called.

"Nathaniel Crawley.

"You have to take care of him, Cynthia Paisley. Promise me." A hoarse whisper, brown eyes intense.

Portly red-headed nurse Cynthia Paisley for once looked anything but tough. Her eyes misted. "I promise," she whispered, for what else could this be but a miracle?

"I'll tell him his mother was a dying theater actress who distrusted medicine. She had cancer, but she had him as if from a miracle. She named him and she loved him very much. She wanted him to be cared for.

"I'll look after him, Amanda. I can promise you."

"The problem is a simple if profoundly tragic one, Mr Potter. You see -" the Healer began in a canned speech. "I don't know how to tell you this," he realized. "You are not having success with conceiving a child because you are infertile, Mr Potter."

Clinical language.

"You are infertile."

A Different Way

By The Blister Pearl Lady

Summary: When James discovers something about himself during the war, he asks Sirius for one of the most personal favors he has ever asked of him. From there, a rather unexpected and unconventional family forms. But unbeknownst to anyone, that's not the only thing that's different. A pregnancy and babyhood Marauders War Era family story. Not slash. HP Fix -It 1. James/Lily. Fem Harry.

Part One of the HP Fix-It Fic Series

When Sirius sat down jauntily in the rustic Potter Manor sitting room, with its warm red sofas and wood-paneled walls and big stone fireplace, he was cheerful and at ease.

"So how's settled married life?" He grinned. "Still boring and predictable?"

"Sirius, we have a problem. I have a favor to ask of you." James, sitting across from him in an armchair, had never looked that way before - like his entire life had come crashing down around him. Not even the war had made him look like that.

Sirius saw his haunted eyes. "Well, what the hell's the matter?" He straightened as if despite himself.

"You know we've been trying to have kids -" A sentence fragment.

"Well, don't worry, James, I'm sure you'll get there eventually -" But Sirius's next sarcasm was choked out of him.

"I'm infertile."

"… What?" It was all Sirius could manage; he was staring and he knew it was rude, but he couldn't help himself.

"Well, in common terms -" James's mouth pursed grimly. "It means I can't have kids."

Sirius turned to stare at Lily, who looked down. It was obvious, from the exquisite pain in her lovely face, that she had wanted a family more than anyone. She had a quiet sadness to her, like a flower wilting.

"We thought magic might be able to fix it." Her sentence was awful-sounding, in spite of the tiptoeing delicacy inside it. "But it's his magic that's blocking the ability.

"We got it from a Healer."

The final, bleak salvo, this decided everything.

"I… I'm sorry," was all Sirius could think of to say. He was at a loss, looking from one to the other.

James winced and looked up, as he often did when he had a particularly crazy idea. Sirius had just enough time to be surprised before James said, "Sorry enough to help?"

"How," said Sirius, "would I help with this? It's not even that I don't want to. But if this is a loyalty thing, isn't that raising the bar a little high? How could I -?"

"I want you to provide sperm in my place." James hid behind medical terms. "In a magical ceremony, not a sexual one. I want you to be the father of my child."

And then James and Lily sat completely still, the air pregnant with hesitancy.

There were jokes to be made, but instead Sirius's mouth fell open and hung there.

"I know you said you never wanted to get married, or settle down, or have a family. And you don't have to," James began. "But you're my best friend and -"

"Of course I have to! It'll be my bloody kid, too!" Sirius exploded. "And… you don't understand what you're asking," he said, pain in his voice. "The Black family doesn't exactly have a great track record with how their children turn out."

"But it'll be you," said Lily, as if she simply knew that would make everything okay. "And it'll be me, and the child will have all three of us. If you want to be a part of it, too. We were thinking -"

She and James exchanged a glance.

"We were thinking you could move in."

It took Sirius a while to process what this meant.

"As in… have a home? Not Grimmauld Place?" There was a kind of wonder to it. "… Have a family?"

"It would be a three-person family." Lily smiled. "James would be the legal father, you the biological one, and the child could inherit both fortunes - Potter, and Black."

Potter, and Black. Like a promise. Hope leaked into Sirius like warmth, like summer sunshine.

"Can I count on you?" James asked, as if worried.

And of course, he always could.

"Okay," said Sirius firmly. "As long as I get to make plenty of jokes, I'll do it."

James grinned. "Deal!"

And they clasped hands.

The green-robed Healer came to their home. Lily lay down in a great black and crimson velvet bed in the center of the echoing, high-ceilinged, grand Potter Manor entrance hall. Sirius stopped making weak and terrified jokes, James finally stood back from all his worrying -

And the ceremony began.

The Healer waved his wand over Lily's stomach and a great hole opened inside it, like a window into her internal organs. All in gleaming, graphic, red definition.

The Healer took up the glittering crystal vial. He poured it softly into Lily's insides - with a glittering like golden dust it soaked through her fallopian tubes -

And the Healer waved his wand and the hole got smaller and smaller until it was shut, like it had never been.

"That's it." The Healer nodded to James and Sirius, who had swallowed, white-faced and scared shitless. "That's the beginning."

When Sirius had moved in, he waved his hands in that same entrance hall and gestured to the place around him.

"Not that I don't appreciate the hunter's lodge decor and all!" He grinned. "But if I'm going to live here -!"

"You want modifications." James rolled his eyes, but was so grateful to Sirius recently that there was no bite to it, it was all bark.

"It's a good thing he's so impossibly charming, or we might actually get annoyed with him," said Lily fondly, amused.

Indeed, Sirius's grin was infectious. "If I may -!" He took out his wand. "Let's try for something a bit different - and let's not try to copy my family!"

The wand moved like Sirius was a conductor. The manor slowly in a wave of glittering magic changed itself over.

The entryway was black, with brass pendant lamps, free-standing mirrors, and a Moroccan tile floor. The kitchens became an industrial charcoal grey with dramatic light fixtures. The dining room became a combination of forest greens and browns, with striking chandelier light fixtures and mirrors.

The sitting room was decorated in dark grey and chocolate brown, with velvet sofas and rugs in neutral colors. The bedrooms were redone into deep earthy green colors, with mineral grey, brass details and retro furniture. The bathrooms became deep, dramatic shades like midnight blue and dark grey, with copper metals and tiny splashes of white here and there.

Lily and James walked around the manor, looking around in awe. "Industrial dark hunter's lodge," James decided thoughtfully.

"Exactly," said Sirius, pleased with himself, and James smiled.

"I wish my Muggle family had been able to redesign homes this easily," said Lily in wonder. Magic had never stopped being beautiful to her.

"Speaking of differences between Muggle and wizard - do we raise the kid in the Old Ways? Not those Old Ways." Sirius rolled his eyes, walking backwards down a dark-paneled corridor decorated with dramatic copper light fixtures, when James and Lily looked thunderous. "Not the Darkness. I'm talking about our traditional wizarding religion.

"We're closest to Wiccans," he said, when Lily looked confused. "To really shorten a really big religion, we care about and believe in nature and caring for the environment. We believe not only in the principles of magic but in equality for all. Women and men are equal to us, as are people of all races, genders, and sexualities. Gay and multi-person marriages are perfectly acceptable, there are magical ways for gay couples to have biological children, and sex transitions are a lot easier among wizards than among Muggles. Inter-racial marriages are also a non-issue for us.

"To make up for it all, some of us believe in killing anyone who isn't a Pureblood witch or wizard and in using our need for nature parts in magic as an excuse for being cruel to animals, so I guess it all evens out.

"We're really not into any Muggle religions, it must be admitted - it goes back to our inherent distrust of Muggles and Christianity, which always hated us - though we are trying to work on that.

"Our rituals and holidays all tie back to celebrating the phases of the stars and the nature seasons. We acknowledge what we call a Creative Power that is both masculine and feminine, and that exists in all men and women. Sex is sacred and a source of magical energy for us.

"We see the magic inside us as a kind of spiritual world or 'inner plane.' We believe we are inherently spirits and that is how we can do magic - it is also why we do not have to dress up and disguise ourselves as spirits on Halloween. We believe in relative evil and choice-based evil, but not in absolute and nature-driven evil. We have no 'Satan' and certainly do not worship Satan ourselves. Our beliefs are closer to karma - we believe everything a person does comes back to them in the end, and that people always have the choice to be good.

"We also have a belief in an afterlife called Summerland. There, the person reviews and relives the experiences of their actual life. After that they are reincarnated into the body of a newborn. Just as nature goes through cycles, so do souls.

"Those are all the big things I can think of. But it's why Hogwarts is built on ancient Celtic land and includes a graveyard. It's why we have wands - the Druids of ancient times came up with the technology, and the Druids are our direct ancestors. You can find some of them on chocolate frogs cards; they were the country's first scholars and they invented all sorts of things.

"My question is, do we raise our child that way?"

"They should know their own religion," said Lily, looking to James on reflex. "I can think of worse things for a person to believe."

"As long as we don't teach them anything Dark… I agree," said James with caution.

"Of course I wouldn't teach them anything Dark -" Sirius growled.

"Let's not fight," Lily sighed. "Let's talk about something else. James is going to let you and me decide on the child's name and nursery theme," she told Sirius, who blinked in surprise. "He wants to be the chief father in all other matters, but I managed to talk him into those two big concessions."

She winked.

Sirius paused - and grinned jauntily. "Well, I don't know if that's a good idea," he said playfully. "I could think of all sorts of horrible names and themes."

"That's why you have me," said Lily smoothly, with the utmost funny kind of dignity.

Laughing and talking together, they walked off down the Potter Manor corridor. They would still have a child and a family.

It would just be a different kind of family, done in a different way.