Disclaimer: It's JK Rowling's characters and world, I'm just playing with it. It's all hers, not mine.

Talk of Litters

Sirius lets out a long sigh.

"Well, poor little bastard," he finally says after another minute of thought. "Looks just like James."

Remus closes his eyes and sighs. "If you value your ability to possibly procreate in the future you'll refrain from calling Lily's child anything but an 'adorable little angel' in her presence."

"Or a handsome little devil," Peter adds with a thoughtful nod.

They're standing along the wall, looking in at the rows of newborns lined up behind the glass, all swaddled in plain looking little blankets the hospital provided and hideous looking little knitted hats generously donated by little old ladies with too much time on their hands.

Lily had wanted to have the baby in the muggle hospital, despite the fact that everyone from Dumbledore down to Remus' own father had told her that a home birth would be much more secure, especially in the current states of the world.

"Dumbledore can have any house you like much safer than a hospital," Remus' father, Lyall, had told her.

Remus' mother, Hope, who'd been setting the table with the family's shabby dinner plates had given Lily a reassuring look. She'd taken up the position of mother after learning of both Lily's own parents' untimely deaths. "Whatever you do, love, everyone will be looking out for you."

That had been enough encouragement for Lily, having another person, a muggle like her own mother, tell her to follow her heart. She'd swiftly told James they were having their baby in the hospital.

"And that's final."

Remus had been a little wary of it, especially when he, Sirius, and Peter had been given the task of magically securing all the doors, exits and entrances, windows and laundry chute in the hospital.

"You lot were part of a clandestine group that wandered Hogwarts and Hogsmeade as well as the Forbidden Forest. Stealth and evasiveness are in your blood," James had told them. "I think you can handle locking a few doors and windows in a little muggle hospital."

Stealth and evasiveness were one thing, keeping Sirius from flirting with the aides and nurses as they masqueraded as maintenance was quite another.

"Will you keep you libido in check for five minutes so we can finish these protective enchantments?" Remus had grumbled. "This is the lives of your best friend, his wife, and your future god son we are talking about."

Sirius had rolled his eyes at that before quickly and quietly finishing off the spell right under Remus' nose. "Nag."

It had taken them, as well as a few of the other Order members, nearly a week to find all the cracks and crevices, points of entry, and stop them up. Remus envied the group that ended up at the Longbottoms' stately old manor. He doubted they were asked to mop up vomit in the hallway, as he'd been forced to do at least seven times during the course of the week.

Now though, looking through the glass at the perfect, healthy, and soundly snoring baby, Remus supposes it was all worth it.

"I might like one someday," Peter says as he smiles at a particularly chubby baby being rolled out of the nursery.

Sirius looks horrified, makes a gagging noise. "What for?"

Peter frowns in thought. "That's what people do, Sirius. They grow up, get married, have kids…"

That explanation doesn't seem to impress Sirius. "Well, I'm breaking from tradition. No marriage, no stinky brats, no growing up for me."

Remus rolls his eyes. "While I have no doubt you'll evade marriage, and I'm positive growing up is well beyond your grasp, I'm afraid one of these days you'll get a basket on your doorstop with at least one or two diaper wearing humans and a note pinned to their blankets telling you about the one beautiful, if abruptly short night, you and their mother spent together."

Just as Sirius opens his mouth, no doubt to say something vulgar, Peter begins giggling.

"Or a box of puppies," he manages to sputter out.

More at the look of absolute horror on Sirius' face than Peter's implications of how their friend spends his time in animagus form, Remus dissolves into laughter.

"There was that rather fetching stray that hung around the Hogs Head," Remus adds as he wipes at his eyes.

Peter's giggles intensify. "Oh, the mutt, the one that looked a bit like a corgi?"

Sirius makes a snarling noise and makes a grab for Peter's collar, but he ducks, sending Sirius into the wall, scrapping his knuckles and causing him to swear loudly.

A nurse with sharp features and hawkish eyes gives him a narrow look and presses her fingers to her lips, shushing him.

That, coupled with the particularly disgusted expression growing on Sirius' face, causes Remus to double over, wheezing with laughter.

It takes several minutes, and the frightening looking nurse threatening to toss them from the ward, for Peter and Remus to get their laughter under control. Even then a few bubbles of mad giggles still manage to escape them every few seconds.

"I hate both of you," Sirius mutters, crossing his arms and flopping against the wall to watch the particularly svelte nurse shuffle the babies in the window. "Half those rumors the two of you started."

Remus starts to point out that the other half Sirius and James had started, but holds his tongue. He supposes the idiot deserves at least one friend left.

Even if that friend had been the original source of his epic tales of sexual prowess.

When the last of the giggles burn off, Sirius' eyes cut over to Remus.

"What about you, Moony?"

Remus frowns. What about him?

Sirius arches one eyebrow. "Kids? You planning on a litter your own someday?"

For a second Remus stares past his friend, focuses his eyes on a father holding a particularly small girl up and pointing out her new brother or sister to her. Then he lets his eyes travel, settle on the rows of babies.

"Not really in my stars is it?"

He'll never get married, and he isn't planning on dropping off children like parting gifts to any number of unfortunate girls who might be willing and able to be with him without the promise of any long term commitment. Beyond that, he's an expert on his condition. There is no literature on whether lycanthropy can be passed from parent to child, it isn't something anyone is willing to put to test, or admit to at least. The chances are slim, but even a slim chance is a chance, and he won't curse a child the way he's been. He can't be that cruel. Even if they were normal, uninfected, he would never be able to provide for them, he can barely provide for himself.

Much as he'd love that life, a wife and children, a home and normalcy, his future had been sealed when he'd been bitten.

"But Addy said that fellow in the Werewolf Ward, Damocles or what not, was making that potion," Peter says, looking between Sirius and Remus. "She said he might have a cure…"

Remus sighs. Peter is always looking for escapes to the unpleasant.

"He might have something for the symptoms. There is no cure," Remus says finally.

Sirius' eyes follow Remus' line of sight, to the nursery, and he smiles. "But if they could get the symptoms under control then-"

"Then nothing," Remus snaps. "I'll still be-be what I am. I'll always be a vicious monster."

A mindless killing machine that has no business being around an innocent child, putting them through the same misery as him.

Sirius rolls his eyes so hard Remus is certain he'll need a headache curing potion before too long.

"Yes, Remus, you are truly a terror to behold," he takes a step around Remus, nudges Peter with his shoulder. "Watch out, Peter, he might try to give us a paper cut with some breastfeeding literature."

That gets Peter to snickering again.

Just as Remus is about to put a silencing spell over the both of them, or shoot one of the many wads of used chewing gum under the benches in the corner up their noses, a much more appealing option, something taps at them from the other side of the glass pane.

Grinning at them, almost manically, is James, hoisting the baby up and making it wave its chubby little fist at them.

"James!" Sirius laughs. "What are you doing in there? I thought they said it was staff only, that we had to be in the room to hold the baby?"

With a shrug, James shifts the baby.

"I used my charming personality and wit to convince them to let me in," he tells them, grinning.

"More like confounded one of them," Remus mutters to himself. He wouldn't be surprised if one of the poor nursery nurses turns up in a linen closet trying to bottle feed a mop head.

James shakes his head and feigns being wounded. "Remus, how can you think so little of me?" He waits a beat. "Lily did it."

Sirius lets out a loud, harsh bark of laughter. "That's our girl!"

That's not entirely surprising, Lily is astoundingly proficient at skirting the rules when she so feels. He also has every confidence that she would've secured the hospital much more efficiently than he, Sirius, Peter, and James ever could, even while pregnant.

Mostly Remus is just relieved to hear she's reverted to the Confudus Charm. The pregnancy had made her reliance on Densaugeo more alarming than anyone was willing to admit. If Remus' memory serves him correctly, at least Lily's confounding her will likely only result in the poor girl ending up down the street, at the little bakery, eating her weight in pastries, not booking an emergency appointment with a muggle tooth filer.

"So," Sirius moves on, his mind untroubled by whatever girl is now probably knees deep in cream filling, "what name have we decided on for the little imp? Elvendork?"

James actually looks disappointed. "No."

Sirius' eyes widen. "Not even for a middle name?"

"Also, sadly, no." James gives the baby an apologetic glance, as though its mother hadn't just saved it from a lifetime of being nickname 'Dork' Potter. If only Doras Meadowes parents had possessed such forethought.

James' expression brightens, though, as he shifts the baby in his arms, making him a little more visible through the glass. "We decided on 'Harry'."

Maybe he shouldn't thank Lily just yet.

While Harry is definitely better than 'Elvendork', a name Remus had been certain James and Sirius had been making up and had no real attachment to other than to annoy Lily, 'Harry Potter' is bound to have some very obvious drawbacks, as far as names are concerned.

Remus decides not to point that out at the moment, though, when he sees the contented smile on James' face. He doesn't think he'll be enlightening his friend on how cruel schoolchildren can be, but giving him a refresher course can wait until he's had a little more time with the child he's dubbed with such an easily distorted name.

"Harry Sirius Potter," Sirius says, beaming at the now slumbering little Harry through the glass. "I like it."

"Haha, Sirius," James rolls his eyes. "Harry James Potter."

Sirius shakes his head. "You couldn't even let the little ankle biter have an interesting middle name? Harry James Potter? Sounds like some muggle accountant."

James laughs, eyes twinkling back at his friends through the barrier between them. "I'll name the next one 'Paddy' in your honor, alright Padfoot?"

"Ah, 'Paddy Potter'," Sirius gives the name a theatrical amount of consideration. "I like it. I'll have papers drawn up this afternoon. Hold you to it."

"Lily might have something to say about that," Remus mutters out the side of his mouth to Peter who simply shrugs at his friends' apparent name pact.

They don't seem to care, just carry on, telling little Harry about all his future siblings, Paddy and Petra, and of course sweet little Lupina, numbering his fictitious siblings into the dozens before Remus casually mentions Sirius' undoubtedly numberless litters of puppies already in existence.

James looks delighted at the thought, and the look of utter disgust twisted up on Sirius' features.

"Hear that, Harry? You have little puppy cousins!" James gives Sirius a sharp look. "I suppose I should've looked into neutering you when we caught you with that twitchy looking witch when you went on holiday with us in the Pyrenees…"

"We were in France, James," Sirius tells him loftily. "Things happen in France and no one should be punished for that."

What things exactly 'happened' in France, Remus neither knows nor does he think he really wants to know. Knowing his friends, it's likely to be something Remus will need a memory charm to forget.

Or it'll be a complete fabrication.

And he'll still need a memory charm to sleep at night.

After ten minutes the lone nurse watching the babies finally has the chance to realize there's an unknown in her nursery and gets the hawk-eyed old nurse that had earlier threatened Sirius to kick James out, both threatening to ban him for the rest of Lily's stay if he entered again.

"Not if my wife has anything to say about that," James mumbles cryptically at them when they're out of earshot.

Remus presses his fingers to his temples.

One thing is for certain, in the unlikely event he ever has a child, he's not letting his friends anywhere near the kid. They're clearly bad influences.

And Lily will be in charge of securing the building. She's dangerous.