I wanted to get this one finished before I started posting it, but it there's no way I'm going to finish it before Friday, and I want to get it up before Half-Blood Prince comes out, just in case anything I've come up with is what JKR actually does, to show I thought it up independently. This is canon through Book 5, but will undoubtedly end up wildly AU after HBP. It's based on an idea I had three quarters of the way through Order of the Phoenix. I was sure that's where she was going, but I ended up being wrong. Or maybe not, but she just hasn't revealed it yet. Oh, well, I can always hope... Anyway, this is my idea of how things might have been...

Chapter 1

Lily blinked and shook her head, then rubbed her bleary eyes, trying to force them to focus again on the spidery writing of the musty tome lying open before her. Across the table Alice looked up from the volume she was searching, concern on her round, open face.

"What's wrong, Lily?"

"Nothing. I was just up too late last night. And to think, I thought when I finished my NEWTs I'd be done with studying."

Alice groaned, stretching. "Oh, don't I know it. Do you think we really have any chance of finding something the Order can use?"

"Dumbledore thinks it's worth the effort." She glanced around the gloomy confines of the restricted section of the Hogwarts library. As a student, she'd imagined the intriguing secrets that must lie hidden there, forbidden to her. Now, as a trusted member of the Order of the Phoenix, her mission was deadly serious. And also, unfortunately, deadly dull. There was undoubtedly good reason to keep the students from the endless books of poisonous potions, sexually explicit charms, and stomach-wrenching reflections on the sickening mysteries of the Dark Arts, but when her mission was to ferret out any forgotten scrap of knowledge that might aid them in their fight, the ever receding stretches of shelves seemed less an enticing playground, and more a torture chamber. "But if there is anything here, You-Know-Who and all his Death Eaters may perish of old age before we find it."

Alice couldn't suppress a scandalized titter, even as she glanced reflexively behind her to make sure no one was listening. "Lily, hush! It's not something to joke about!"

Lily nodded, becoming sober again. Just last week, the Order had lost another member. The deaths of their friends weighed more heavily with each loss, yet as much as she grieved, Lily also resented the smothering gloom that had descended on so many of the Order, crushing any moment of levity beneath the burden of sorrow. She wished James were here with them. He would have laughed with her, and topped her irreverent joke with a more outrageous one of his own, casting their defiance against the darkness. But James was off working on his own assigned task, and Alice only bent dutifully again to her text.

Lily returned to her own reading. Page after page after page, she found nothing. This one had looked so promising, too. A Theory of Defense Against Ultimate Evil. But theory was all it was. Most of the spells proposed were wildly impractical, delving so far into the unexplored reaches of wizardry as to be laughable. Take the passage she was currently reading, for example:

A charm of this sort would align the essence of a person's being with the Light. The very fibers of his body would be filled with the powers most antithetical to the forces of evil: Faith, Hope, Love. The potency of one so imbued against the Darkest of magics would be almost unimaginable. Unfortunately, although the theoretical basis on which this charm is founded is sound, the power required to effect it in practice would be several thousand times the combined total power of all wizards currently living.

What use to them were impossible fantasies of superpowers? What she needed to find was some subtle way around Voldemort's defenses, something so small and tricky he would not have thought to defend against it. Or, alternatively, some insight into how he had put those defenses together, and what unsuspected weakness they might hold.

Lily slammed the book shut in frustration, and rose, shoving her chair out behind her. "That one's useless. I'm going to get another. But first, I'm going to the bathroom. In fact, I need a bit of a walk. I think I'll go down to the first floor and say hello to Myrtle."

"Tell her hi from me, too," Alice said absently, absorbed in her reading.

Lily made her way through the familiar halls and down the unpredictable staircases. It felt so strange to walk this way as a visitor, not as the student she'd been only a few months before. She felt safe, here, as she could in few places in these dangerous times. Could she have imagined, the first time she'd visited this bathroom, still half-terrified to see an actual ghost, how comforting and homey that ghost would someday seem compared to the real terrors she had experienced?

"What are you doing here? I thought you left school." Moaning Myrtle's insubstantial face poked out of the door at her. Myrtle was always touchy about the subject of leaving school, disliking the reminder that she never would.

"I did. I'm just back to do some research in the library. Alice Longbottom is here too; she says hi."

"She remembers me?" Myrtle drifted along beside Lily as she made her way to a stall. "She didn't want to come speak to me in person?"

"Well, she's busy, and I don't think she needed to go to the bathroom right now."

"Oh!" Myrtle sounded enormously affronted. "No one ever comes to talk to me unless they have to go!" She vanished into her stall, and Lily heard a splash as water flooded onto the floor.

Lily smiled, but at the same time she felt a wave of pity, almost revulsion. Poor Myrtle, stuck in this lonely bathroom, forever trapped as a pale imitation of the girl she had been. Lily didn't know why some people became ghosts when they died, but she hoped that fate would never befall her. She shuddered, thinking of the prospect. Far better to move on, to whatever lay beyond this world, when the time came.

She finished, and called "Bye, Myrtle," as she left to make her way back to the library. Turning her attention back to her task, she wondered whether it would be worth it to skim through the rest of Ultimate Evil in search of some scrap of practical magic, or whether she should move on to the next book on the shelf. Lost in thought, she barely noticed when she'd arrived back at the table, until Alice jumped in her seat and with a guilty expression tried to hide the book she'd been poring over.

"What?" Lily's curiosity aroused, she grabbed for the book and pulled it toward her. Alice grinned in embarrassment as she read the title: The Wise Witch's Guide to the Childbearing Year: Spells, Charms and Potions for Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth.

"Alice, you're not…." Lily stared at her friend.

"No," Alice muttered, hanging her head. "Of course not." Then she glared up at Lily. "But I wish I could be! Frank and I had just begun talking about it, when everything started. And now, of course, I wouldn't dream of bringing a baby into all this. It wouldn't be fair – he'd be a target from the day he was born, not to mention the Order couldn't afford to lose me. But still, every month when I drink the potion, I wish…. Don't tell me you and James haven't thought about it, too."

Lily sat down heavily next to Alice, flipping the book open and staring blindly down at it, to keep from having to look at her. "Of course we have. But you're right, now would be an awful time to get pregnant. There's no way we would risk it. But someday…." How long now had she lusted for James's child? Since before their marriage, surely. Maybe since the first time she had seen beneath that cocky exterior to the tenderness and strength of the man within. A warm heavy weight in her arms, with James's wild hair and her green eyes…. But they were young, just a few months out of Hogwarts, their marriage still excitingly new. In the normal course of things, they'd have years before children would become a serious consideration. But nothing was normal now, and a future measured in years seemed less and less likely.

"Someday when this war is over," Alice said bitterly. "Everything has to wait until someday. But none of us may even be alive by then, if it ever comes at all…." She bowed her head and her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Lily put her arm around Alice until the trembling stopped. Then Alice wiped her eyes self-consciously and pointed to the book. "You won't believe some of the stuff in there. Most of it's just ridiculous superstition, although some of it sounds like it might actually work."

Glad of the distraction, Lily leafed through the book with Alice. Potions to cure morning sickness, to lengthen pregnancy, or to shorten it. Spells to bless the child with luck, or wealth, or fame. Charms to choose the sex, or the hair color, or the eye color….

Remembering her fantasy of a black-haired, green-eyed baby, she flipped to the beginning of the Charms section and started reading. Mostly basic information she was thoroughly familiar with. Ah, this bit was interesting. She read aloud to Alice:

"Charms to influence the physical form of a child must be performed in the moment of conception. Both man and woman must participate in the casting of the charm, so that the desired trait can be incorporated into the essence of the child's being from the very beginning."

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Alice giggled. "Would you have to stop right in the middle…and do magic?"

Lily flipped over a few pages, to where the specific instructions for the charms were given. "That's exactly what it means. Except, it looks like you don't stop. The charms seemed to be… ah, incorporated into… well, you get the idea." She was grinning, but at the same time, fascinated. This was not a subject Professor Flitwick had ever covered, even in Advanced Theory of Charms.

She turned back to the introduction and picked up where she had left off, reading avidly. Then her grin faded, and her body stilled, as the import of what she read sank in.

This sort of charm must be performed with utmost skill and finesse, for although the amount of power required is minute, it must be controlled precisely. An equivalent charm performed on a full-grown individual would require an unworkably large amount of power, but the small scale of the newly conceived child reduces the amount required to very small levels. Along with this reduction, however, comes a need for extreme precision to perform the desired changes on such a tiny scale. Therefore, only witches very skilled in Charms should attempt the spells that follow.

"Oh my God," Lily whispered. "Oh my God. Alice, I think I've found it. Wait, where did it go?" She seized the book she had been so laboriously wading through earlier, and rifled frantically through its pages. Where had she left off? Where was it?

There it was. "… the power required to effect it in practice would be several thousand times the combined total power of all wizards currently living…" Did it include the technical details on how to perform the charm? Yes, here they were. She dug in her bag for a pencil and her notebook. The esoteric symbols and complicated formulas flowed in neat columns, just as she had learned in long hours of study with Professor Flitwick. Referring back and forth from book to book, she wrote with disciplined fervor. Alice watched, not quite understanding exactly what Lily was doing – her Auror's studies had not included the same depth of theory as Lily's Charms specialty – but knowing it was of deep importance.

"Damn." Lily looked at her calculations, tears starting in her eyes. "Damn. It still takes too much power. I was so sure it would work…."

Alice studied the passages in the two books, and examined Lily's notes. "So you are trying to construct a charm to give a baby, at conception, these powers it lists…"

"Faith, Hope, Love. The greatest powers against evil. So when the child grew up, it could be a match for You-Know-Who. It should work, it's all laid out right here, it's just the amount of power required. And doing it at conception does bring down the power a lot. It would work, if you could use enough witches and wizards, but this book is very specific, that for conception charms only the mother and father can be involved. And it's just way too much power for only two, even if they were very strong."

Alice grew very still, and her hands clutched each other until the knuckles turned white. "Unless you put in a Life Debt."

Lily looked at her, and considered it. "Maybe…." She pulled her notebook over, and slowly began to work the numbers. She stared at her results, then turned frightened eyes to Alice. "It's enough. But the debt would come due in only around two years, maybe three. Any longer than that and it doesn't give enough. And it would have to be both of them."

"So whoever did it, in two or three years, they would both die."

Lily nodded. "Or worse than death."

The two women stared at each other, shaken. Finally Alice looked away. "Let's take this to Dumbledore right now and see what he says."

Lily grabbed her by the arms "We can't go to Dumbledore. He'd never let us do it. Not at the cost of two lives, an orphaned child…."

"Us?"

Lily released her and turned away. "Who else? You and Frank, James and I, we're the only two married couples in the Order. Everyone else who's married, their spouse isn't part of it. And it would have to be knowing, and willing, by both. It would have to be one of us." She swallowed. The enormity of what she was saying sank in. "It should be me, really. I'm the Charms expert. James and I…."

James. Could she ask him to lay down his life, along with her? Everything in her rebelled against the idea. They had had such a brief time together, and so much of it marred by war and grief. What good would victory be, if it cost the life of the one she would give anything to save?

Yet they had always known what the cost might be. When Dumbledore had invited them to join the Order, they had talked frankly about the risk. So many had died already. Three times before now she and James had come close to losing their lives. Every time they faced Voldemort directly could mean their deaths. But this was colder, somehow. To decide ahead of time, to work the spell that would guarantee it, then to wait, knowing, until the reckoning came… she could hardly bear the thought. But if they did not seize this chance….

"So we would have to wait until the child grew up, and could face You-Know-Who," Alice said. "I don't know if the Order could even hold out that long. His power has been increasing so much lately. And what if we go through with it, then before the child is born, or before he grows up, we – they – find some other way to bring You-Know-Who down. Then it would all be a waste."

"And the debt would have to be paid, regardless." Lily shivered. "But it's a chance. It's more of a chance than we've ever had."

Alice bit her lip. "Could I really do that, to my own child? Make him a pawn in this contest, his whole life? Doom him to lose his parents when he's still a baby? And maybe all for nothing? How cruel is it, to conceive a child just to be a weapon in this war?"

Whitening, Lily stood up. "I'm not asking you to do it. It's my decision to make, not yours."

"Oh, no you don't." Alice stood up also. She glared at Lily, challengingly. "I'm in this too. It's both of us, or none."

They stared defiantly at each other for a long moment, and then Lily began to tremble. She shut her eyes, but it was no use; the tears leaked out anyway. She sagged, and Alice's arms were there to catch her. Clinging to Alice she wept, and Alice wept too.

"Oh, Alice, I don't want to die."

"Neither do I, Lily. Neither do I."

They cried in each other's arms for a long time. Eventually they separated, and silently prepared to leave. Lily checked out the two books, and then tucked them into her bag, along with her notebook full of calculations. They made their way downstairs and out the front entrance of Hogwarts. Together they walked down the path toward Hogsmeade, the crisp fall breeze ruffling their hair, until they came to the boundary of the Apparation shield.

"What are we going to do next?" Alice asked.

Lily had given this some thought. "Tonight, you tell Frank, and I'll tell James. But we can't say a word about it to anyone else. Then tomorrow you two come to Godric's Hollow for dinner and we can all talk it over. Then… we'll do what we have to do."

Alice nodded, and they bid each other farewell before they each Apparated home.