For a couple of days, nothing noteworthy happened. Lily was really upset the next morning, especially since James and I didn't really know what to do with it that night, and she had to deal with a face full of caked dry blood before breakfast. We decided not to go to the Healer about it. I didn't want to have to explain what had happened, and besides, it didn't even hurt more than usual.

That was probably thanks to the painkillers. They were amazing. If I had known Remus had this stuff in school, I don't think I would've ever made it to lessons. I could see how he had such a hard time getting back to school after full moons. I was supposed to have a schedule for taking them, but I mostly took them whenever I wanted, typically when I woke up in the morning, and then with a beer at lunch.

That put me out all afternoon, usually. Sometimes, I took them again at night to help me sleep.

I could tell my perpetual listlessness was annoying Lily, but she wasn't going to say anything yet. It really wasn't fair; I slept all day with Lily around, and then woke up when James got home, and he didn't know the difference.

The next time I saw the Healer, she noticed that something had happened to my nose. At first I said I didn't know what she was talking about, but then she said it was a very serious problem if the painkillers were affecting my memory or causing blackouts. Then I confessed (except I didn't mention I'd been drinking), and she groaned out loud. Before I left, she forbade me from roughhousing. It was almost like talking to McGonagall.

When I got back home, Lily wasn't in, so I tried to do the bandages myself again. My fingers were not as adept as Lily's. I kept jerking the bandages the wrong way and abrading the tender skin. The Healer had said other than around my nose, the scabs were starting to form better and stronger and in some places even peel off naturally and leave fresh new skin there.

Eventually, I was able to get the bandages off and daub on thick layers of ointment. I was scared to put my fingers into the deeper wounds. I hadn't even washed my hands before I started. The Healer had told me I could use lighter bandages now, but I didn't really know how to wrap the bandages at all. They kept slipping off the back of my head. I realized after I'd finally managed to wrap a few thin layers sparsely over my face that I didn't know where the metal strips that held the dressings together were. I tried a sticking charm that seeped through the gauze and stung the wounds. After that, I just stopped trying and waited in the living room for Lily to get home.

She laughed up a storm when she saw what I'd done.

"I need to learn how to do this myself," I said through a clenched jaw.

"Well, hopefully, nobody will need to do it much longer." She was already undoing the mess I'd started with one hand and accio-ing the first-aid kit with the other. "What did the Healer say?"

"To come back in two weeks."

"Okay. That's good, right? An upgrade from once a week."

"Better, I reckon. Less annoying."

She pressed that little metal strip on and pinched my nipple. "Good as new."

"Christ woman, I'm going to tell James about this." I crossed my hands over my chest.

She wasn't listening. She was already in the kitchen, rustling around in the cupboards. "Do you know the worst thing about being pregnant?" She called. When she reemerged, she had a box of cereal in her hands.

"I imagine it's pretty stiff competition."

"And I can't even have a stiff drink!" She stopped what she was doing to shoot me a broad grin. "Do you get it?"

"And to think sometimes I wonder why you married James."

She shoved her hand into the cereal box. "But in all seriousness, I hate not being able to drink. You know, they tell me I can't even drink while I'm nursing because the alcohol will get in the milk."

"I think you were supposed to drink Guinness, because the yeast was good for the baby, or something." I stuck my hand out, and Lily passed me the box of cereal.

"Gross, don't get your bloody fingers in there. And I'm not even going to bother with saying how weird it is you know that. I can't keep the stuff straight, anyway. What you are and aren't supposed to do with your baby. Do you want to go to the kitchen? I'm going to make some tea."

We moved to the kitchen, where she made herself some tea, and I took a beer out of the refrigerator. It was coming up on March, and soon, we'd be able to sit outside, Lily said. It was still uncommon cold, though. The snow falling in Hogsmeade hadn't made its way down to Godric's Hollow, but you still couldn't go outside without your coat and scarf.

Lily squeezed the lemon she always took with her tea into her cup and blew across the top. Her lips looked chapped when she pursed them together.

"It's like you've become a mum overnight," I said.

She sat on a stool by the counter and crossed her ankles primly. "I know." She sighed. "It's a hard mold to fit. I'm only twenty years old, you know. It's not like I wanted to be a mother so soon."

"Well-"

"Not that I'm saying I don't want to be a mother. Of course I do. I'm so thrilled. But. I'm only twenty years old. I never saw myself settling down with James Potter. I love him, I love him so much, I do. But I saw myself becoming a Healer, having a professional career. I saw the two of us traveling more. I've never even been out of Great Britain."

I didn't know what to say. I looked out the window and watched the dead limbs on the trees out front blow in the wind. "You can still do all that stuff," I said, eventually.

"It's just this war. Everything seems like the last thing I'll ever do. This baby seems like the only thing that matters. Like I have to protect this baby, and that's what my life's about, now."

I felt my face redden. "Lily, don't think like that." I gripped my hands in my lap and held them tight.

"Well, look what's happening all around us. Everyday, I look at what's already happened to you. I don't even want to let James out of the house in the morning. Everyday he's ten minutes late getting home something in me just knows he's gone forever. I'm glad, every time you take your potion and go to sleep all day, cos I know where you are, and I know you're safe." She put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes glimmered.

I couldn't think of what to say, so I just reached out and squeezed her hand.

"But, I have something to tell you," she said, licking her lips and straightening her back. "I, er. I talked to some of James's parents' friends in the Ministry. And they have connections in the Justice Department, whom they spoke with. Er. So, basically there's a statute in place so family can visit their loved ones dying in Azkaban. No, don't worry, it's not-look, the way that it's set up, it can work both ways, in the statute they make an emergency exception to other visiting rules, including the one about, er, well, your situation, in the case of illness, one of the definitions being, er. Debilitation injury, which, actually, you qualify under." she tapped under her eye and bit her lip. "Because of the eye thing. So, well, the gist of it is that there's some paperwork, but basically, you can see Regulus." She took a deep breath.

"I didn't mean to overstep my bounds," she said, after I didn't respond right away. "James said I ought to let you do it on your own time. Or, I don't know. But I thought-"

"Thank you, Lily." That was the first think I could of, to assure her I wasn't angry. "You didn't overstep your bounds. Whatever that means." I looked down at my hands. "Thank you, I really mean it. I just."

"I understand if you're scared to go."

I twitched when she said that. I wished I could think of something to say. "When did you find the time to do all this?" I looked back up at her.

"There's a lot of time in the day, if you don't spend it all sleeping." She tried for a smirk. I could tell she was nervous, and the smirk came off pathetic.

"Oh, come on." I reached over and put my arms around her. "It's great, Lily, really. I just don't know what to say."

"I was really trying to help. I know I get too pushy-"

"It's not pushy, it's fantastic." I pulled away. "But I reckon you're right. I'm a bit nervous. That's all."

"Well, if you want me to go with you?"

I put my hand on her knee. "No way in hell."

She smiled.


That afternoon, I sat down with all the forms Lily had got together. They wanted a lot of weird things, numbers I wasn't even aware I had, things like that, but with some help from Lily, I got everything.

I argued with her about some things: "Do I really want it on Ministry records I'm missing an eye?"

"You must be joking. There's a mugshot of you with one eye. And besides that, are you mad? How could that possibly matter?"

But eventually, we rolled up everything and owled it to the Ministry.

That evening, I watched James try to set up a swing-set in the garden. Once the crossbeam fell on his hand, and while I was wildly laughing, he hit me with such a jelly legs jinx he had to carry me inside when I couldn't get up after fifteen minutes.

The next morning, an owl pecked at the kitchen window while we were eating breakfast. I opened the window, slipped a knut in the owl's leg pouch and brought the papers back to the breakfast table.

"Well, what does it say?" James asked. He still had a mouth half-full of porridge.

"It says I'm approved. I suppose. Whatever that means."

"When are you going?" Lily rose halfway out of her chair to peek over the edge of the parchment.

"Er. Where does it say that?" I rubbed at the corner of my eye. Lily slapped my arm away.

"Look at the end. Past all the rules and stuff," she said.

I flipped pages until I got to the last one and scanned it down to the bottom. "So. I think I'm supposed to go on… March 10. What day is today?"


That day was February 27, and the year was 1980, so it was a leap year. So I had twelve days, just a little less than two weeks.

Two weeks in my life was a time warp. I went into a day, and when I came out again it could be five minutes later or five weeks later. When I stopped to think about it, I hadn't lived with James and Lily for five weeks. That was hard to believe. In fact, on the 27th, I had lived with them exactly two weeks, or two weeks and half-a-day, if you count the evening after I got out of jail, which I don't. We didn't spend any time at the house that evening, anyway. I showered there, then we went out to dinner and James and I got pissed and I fell asleep at the table.

The day I woke up at St. Mungo's was December 12. I was arrested at the hospital and brought to the Ministry jail on the 13th. They decided to keep me there, instead of sending me to Azkaban. Something like protective custody. I don't know what they thought was going to happen to me that wasn't going to happen to Regulus, only worse, but I reckon that was the benefit of not being an ex-Death Eater.

The Ministry jail was boring and empty but largely inoffensive. It was not much more than a very slapdash row of holding cells in a kind of hallway space, and when someone opened the door at the end of the hall, I could hear people chattering on the other side. I think it was near some kind of offices. The main problem I had with the Ministry jail was that it was cold all the time, and everything jail-issue was uniformly threadbare. Going to sleep, I was always tempted to turn into Padfoot, but I figured I shouldn't put getting charged as an unregistered Animagus at the top of my to-do list.

At first, it was a lot worse. My face still caused me a lot of pain, then, and when the Healer came to change my dressings, every time the gauze moved across my face I tried to bit my lip and squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying, but I couldn't even do that. I had trouble breathing, too, and at night I couldn't get to sleep for hours sometimes because of it. Now, it was a lot easier, and I had trained the muscles around my right eye to act independently of those around my missing left, so I could squeeze my eye closed if I wanted.

Visiting was weird in the Ministry jail, since usually people only stayed there one or two nights, but James and Lily came by for a few minutes a couple of times. It embarrassed me, more than anything. I wasn't embarrassed about being in jail-if anything, it bolstered my confidence that I had done the right thing; I kind of felt like a political prisoner-until I had to talk to Lily through a set of bars.

I spent Christmas and New Year's in jail and got out two days before Valentine's Day. By the time I got out, I was so used to the jail routine, it was weird to move around on my own schedule, and I had only been in two months.

On February 28, which was a Thursday, I helped Lily research an essay for her Healer training courses, meaning I went with her to the library and pointed out articles with funny illustrations in them. On Friday, I went back to my flat and put the books I'd brought to the Potters' back, sat down to read on the sofa, and tried to fall asleep but couldn't get comfortable. When I went back to James and Lily's that evening, I brought my favorite blanket from the flat with me.

Saturday, the first day of March, the three of us went to a Quidditch match with Mary Macdonald. We were supporting the Falmouth Falcons, a wholesome and extremely violent West Country team, against the Tutshill Tornadoes, notorious liars and cheats. We wore silly hats, plastic glasses shaped like falcons, and face paint. We bought big and over-priced paper cups of lager and loudly challenged the masculinity of the opposing team and their fans. We lost, and on the way out we almost got into a fight with a couple of burly Tutshill fans when they heard James speculating about the variety of sexual favors fans and team members had been and would be performing of the officiating crew. They would have messed us up bad, too, except they saw Lily was pregnant. When they turned away, Mary screamed some very insulting words at them, and the four of us had to really leg it out of there.

On Sunday, James got the idea it would be nice for us to make Sunday dinner for Lily. I wasn't so sure about the whole proposition, but I made a good show of chopping vegetables and taking liberal helpings of the alleged cooking wine.

When dinner was finally served, after a fire scare or two and some mild to moderate bloodshed, Lily said the beef Wellington was "brilliant". Toward the end of the meal, when James was about to unveil his pièce de résistance, a lemon tart for dessert (which was honestly more runny lemon juice than anything else-he'd realized early on his plans to mold it into the shape of Lily's head were misguided and unfeasible), we got a Floo from Peter. We were worried something was wrong, but Pete said he just wanted to pop by that evening. So James and I went down the shop to pick up some beer. When we got back, Lily had fallen asleep on the sofa. James picked her up and carried her to bed (she was a heavy sleeper), and she didn't wake up again until Pete was already there.

Peter was doing accounting work for Gringotts, and he'd been watching the finances of a few, shall we say, persons of interest, for the Order.

It wasn't glamorously dangerous, he said, but it worked on his nerves. If he got caught at it, the least he would get was fired.

"I don't know, I'm not finding anything out," he said, working his fingers through his knotty blond hair. "If the Rookwoods are siphoning money off for You-Know-Who, they're not putting it through the bank, first."

"Probably hiding it in all those moldy stags' heads he keeps around." James pulled a face. He had always been personally offended by Rookwood's penchant for hunting.

"Well, I don't know what I'm gonna say at the next Order meeting. It's more than my life's worth for Moody to think I'm slacking." Pete got up to get another beer.

"Relax, Wormtail," I called after him. "It's not like he can assign you detention or something."

We heard bottles clinking in the kitchen. "There are fates worse than detention," he said when he came back into the living room, face pink.

James and I cracked up, but Peter stayed silent and fidgeted with the label on his beer.

"Peter, seriously." James put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "It's not your fault that maybe Rookwood's too smart to put dirty money through Gringotts. You're doing everything you can."

"Yeah." Peter just stared down at his hands. "Er, so, anyway, how did the Falcons game go?"

"Just about as bad as you'd think, listen to this." James leaned forward and put his hand out in front of him, ready to do some in depth gesticulating.

I leaned back in my chair just in time to see Lily reach the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing of James's shirts and her hair was rumpled.

"Hi, boys." She waved. "Do we have any olives?"

"Er, maybe." James looked at me, and I shrugged.

"I'll check."

When she came back, she had a jar of olives in her hand, and what looked like a handful stuffed in her cheek. She ruffled Peter's hair. "Hi, Pete. Would you like any olives?"

"No thanks, Lily." He grinned up at her. "How are you?"

"Hungry," she said. She sat down on James's lap and stuck her feet between the couch cushions.

"Pete can relate," I said. I punched him in the arm.

He rolled at eyes at me.

Lily fished an olive out of the jar with her fingers, and stuck them all in her mouth together. "This baby'll be the death of me, I swear. By the time it's done cooking I'll weigh 500 stone."

"I'll love you anyway, baby."

"You look just as beautiful as ever," Peter said.

"Aw, thank you, Peter," Lily said. She smacked James on the chest. "Why don't you ever say stuff like that?"

"Maybe because you're always hitting me."

"Don't be such a baby. If I were really gonna hit you, you'd know it," she said.

They kissed, and Peter and I pulled faces at each other.

Peter stuck around for another couple hours, politely listening to Lily fill him in on the intricacies of her pregnancy while James and I argued about Quidditch. When it was time to go, we stood out in the front garden for a bit, talking about the next all-Order meeting, which was in a couple of weeks.

When James went back inside to use the toilet, Peter and I stood out squinting at the cloudy sky. He cleared his throat, and I stuck my hands into my pockets.

"So, er, I'm sorry about, well, everything," he said.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about." I forced a yawn.

"No. But all the same." He kicked at the grass. "Just seems unfair and all."

I didn't say anything to that, and after a few minutes of silence, we said goodbye and he Disapparated before James came back.


A/n: I, too, am surprised by the prominent role Lily is beginning to play in this story. Idk maybe James would get more screen-time if he would sit still for a minute.