By Admiral Albia
In which a baby is born and subsequently named, and the Dursleys meet the Potters...
Disclaimer; I own nothing except the plot and any characters you don't recognize from the books. It's very simple. Jiggy McCue (and the other Musketeers) belong to the great god Michael Lawrence, the rest belongs to the great goddess J.K. Rowling. All lyrics from the musical Anything Goes belong to whoever owns Anything Goes.
My heartfelt gratitude to Caitlin Black. A better beta-reader I could not ask for.
Chapter 16; Tying Up Loose Ends
Any dawn hikers would have been greatly surprised,
on July 2nd, to see a young woman in her early thirties lying under a tree
giving birth, with a Siamese cat perched on her chest.
And if they had waited a little longer, they would
have seen a man and another woman, who looked tired, suddenly appear out
of thin air.
As a matter of fact, somebody did witness
all of this, but as he was the village drunk nobody paid much attention
to him. Besides, the Blacks were very popular in Wherwell, for all their
peculiarities.
After a while, Emilily sat up, smiling. Felix fell
off her chest and stalked away, but was careful to remain within earshot.
Sirius hid a grin.
"It's a girl," Lily yawned - she had just been woken
up for the fifth time in one night.
And that's a red squirrel, Tkaa commented,
looking up at the tree Emilily was lying under.
Don't eat me! The squirrel cried.
"Nobody's going to eat you," Sirius said, shooting
a look at Felix, who was edging closer.
Well, the cat'll try, so take him with my blessings
and may Mother Nature smile on your child! And the squirrel dropped
a small bundle onto the baby and scampered off. There was silence. Then:
"Well I never," Emilily said quietly. ""Two squirrels
in one season, that has to be unusual."
"You sort it out," Lily said tiredly. "I'm going
back to bed. Here's her birth certificate, fill in the name then owl it
to me, I have to make a copy." With that, she handed Sirius the slip of
paper and Disapparated.
"Holly," Sirius said firmly. "It's simple, you can't make any awful puns with it, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with any canines of any description."
"Um," Remus said.
"Remus? You've got a horrible you're-not-going-to-like-this look on your face..."
"Yeah..."
"Well? What is it? Spit it out, wolf-man!"
"Er... `Holly` is the most popular name for female dogs in Britain..."
Lily heard Sirius' scream of rage from the other end of the garden.
The Dursleys and Aunt Marge were waiting there. Aunt Marge, having found Harry's weak spot two years ago, immediately began talking about his parents.
"So. Have you found out what your father did yet?"
"Yeah." Harry grinned. "He was a prototype broomstick tester for Nimbus, which is a very dangerous job because if the Braking Charms aren't good enough then the first anyone knows of it is when you go headfirst into a brick wall." They all stared at him, then Aunt Marge rallied.
"Oh, a cleaner was he? I might have known. And your Aunt here told me your mother was a prostitute..."
"Gosh, was I really?" A familiar voice asked interestedly from behind Harry. Aunt Petunia went an interesting greenish colour. "The things I've done that I don't know about, eh, James?"
"Intriguing. Of course, my job has suddenly degenerated into floor sweeper." James shook his head sorrowfully. "I don't know, the things Muggles will do with a perfectly good racing broom... I saw some kid only last week with a Firebolt, he nearly flew into the Quidditch stands with it..." Harry blushed. He had a horrible feeling that he wasn't going to be allowed to forget that incident any time soon.
"I treated him as my own!" Aunt Petunia cried. Despite himself, Harry snorted.
"Oh, dear," Lily said. "And there was me thinking Harry was healthy, too."
"What?"
"Well, twenty per cent of all Muggle or wizarding death are due to obesity... and yes, young man, I am talking about you." Now it was Dudley's turn to go pale.
"And just who do you think you are?" Uncle Vernon roared.
"I don't know who she is, but I'm Harry's father," James said quietly. "Remember me? Remember my fist?"
"B-but... but you're dead..." Aunt Petunia whispered.
"Why does everyone I meet think I'm dead?" James inquired of the world in general. Lily shrugged.
"I dunno. I mean, if I was dead I'd've found it a bit hard to have Myrtle, wouldn't I?" The baby gurgled, and a small grey squirrel head popped up over Lily's shoulder, peering inquisitively at the scene on the station. "Oh, she's awake."
"Hold on a second." Aunt Marge had made a recovery. "Are you saying that you faked your deaths, dumped this... this disgusting little brat on good, hard-working people like these, and now you're calmly walking back to take full credit for what little development he's made?"
"No." James sounded angrier than even Lily had ever heard him. "We are saying that we were in danger of our lives and in a rush to get into hiding, I - you see, Lils, I'm admitting it - I picked up the wrong baby. Nobody knew until we realised, and then there was... an accident. If we had had any intention of leaving Harry with your disgusting relatives, then believe me at least one of my friends would have turned us both into Social Services."
"So you only just bothered to find him?" Uncle Vernon asked.
"We only just found out he was alive!" Lily cried. Dudley squeaked. "You know what happened, Vernon, nobody thought to tell us-"
"I've had enough of this," Uncle Vernon growled. "You! I'll take you on."
"Fine," James said, pulling out his wand. "Sparks at ten paces all right by you? Or would you prefer - oh, dear, you can't do magic, can you? Ah well." In one swift movement he put his wand away, drew back a fist and...
"JAMES POTTER!"
...jumped suddenly to attention, yelled "It wasn't me, mum!" then looked thoroughly confused. "Mum?"
"No, actually," Sirius said, "but I had to get your attention somehow. Sorry."
"Sirius? What are you doing here?"
"I thought you were coming to see Death Eating By Numbers, I was just wondering where you'd got to. That's all.
"Oh, right. We'll come now then, shall we?"
"Good idea," Lily cut across Sirius. "Come on, boys..." before they could argue, she had pushed past the Dursleys and stalked off with Harry's trunk.
A/n; Just the epilogue to go now, and I've written that. g> Just need to type it up... oooh, that reminds me, this story is book length! Impressive, no?
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