Disclaimer: NOT mine. If it were, would I be wasting my time writing FANfiction when I could be writing the actual thing?

Chapter Three: Wimples and Worries

Harry sat at the small portable trestle table, chopping onion and cabbage to add to the meat, barley and spices already simmering in the iron cauldron. Her mother was putting the finishing touches to a surcoat she had promised to have ready for one of the competing knights by dusk. The brass needle flashed in and out of the fabric with a speed and accuracy almost too fast to follow, but Lily was beginning to squint as the light faded and her eyes grew tired.

"Shall I light the lantern, Mama?"

"No, I've almost finished. Just this length here to do." Lily shook out the garment and turned it round. One half was blood red, the other a light orangey yellow.

"Who is it for?" Harry asked.

Her mother's lips tightened. "Peter Pettigrew," she said in a voice cold with distaste.

Harry swept the chopped vegetables into a wooden bowl and carefully tipped them into the cauldron. Peter Pettigrew was a man who not only fought to live, but lived to fight. He was her father's age, perhaps slightly younger, with a shock of prematurely grey hair, disfiguring battle scars and eyes like black ice. Men avoided him if possible, but no one was foolish enough to make him their enemy.

"We have to eat," Lily justified, as much as to herself as to her silent daughter. "In the good times we have to save our silver so that we can weather the bad." She bit off the thread on a broken tooth and held up the garment for inspection. "I would rather not sew for the man, but I cannot afford to refuse him."

Harry stirred the stew with a large carved spoon and glanced at her mother. Lily had been out of sorts for a couple of weeks now, tense and snappish, swift to find fault, slow to be pacified. Her father had been quietly avoiding his wife, a rueful look in his hazel eyes. For Harry it was not so easy. Unless sent on a specific errand, she had no excuse to make herself scarce. It was not safe for a girl of her age to venture too far from her own fire. Even fetching water from the stream had its hazards.

She thought of her encounter with Lucius's half-brother and the motion of her stirring increased. Draco Malfoy bore small resemblance to Lucius, who was huge and hearty. There was a brooding quality about the younger man, a hunger of the spirit as much as of the body.

"Careful!" Lily scolded. "Watch what you're doing!"

A cloud of hissing steam billowed from the fire beneath the cauldron and bubbles of stew bounced on the ion sides before vanishing in wafts of burned vapour.

"Sorry, Mama." Harry gave her mother a flushed, apologetic look.

"Daydreaming again," Lily chided with exasperation. "Harry, you must learn to keep your wits about you."

"Mama, I didn't mean to…" Harry broke off as a powerfully built man wearing a green quilted gambeson arrived at their hearth and commanded their attention. Peter Pettigrew was even taller then Lucius. Once he had been handsome, but the tourney circuit and the battlefield had taken their toll. His nose zigzagged down his face, following the line of successive breaks, and the flesh of his jaw was puckered from mouth corner to missing ear lobe where a sword had sliced him open to the bone.

"Is it ready?" he demanded.

"Of course," Lily said disdainfully, as if she had finished her sewing hours ago. Rising from her stool, she gave him the completed surcoat. Both her spine and expression were as stiff as wood. Peter's black eyes crinkled with amusement.

"I know that you like me not, Lady Lily," he observed, "but you do like my money, and that makes us equals."

"You flatter yourself," she said coldly.

"Then that makes us equals too, since you do the same." He delved in the money pouch at his belt. Harry watched her mother's mouth make small chewing motions and stepped up beside her, offering moral support.

Pettigrew assimilated the gesture and his amusement increased. "Tell your daughter that she will spoil her face and her fortune scowling like that," he said to Lily.

Lily drew herself up, her lips parted for a retort, but it went unuttered as her husband arrived at the fire. Pettigrew withdrew from any further confrontation by placing two small silver coins in Lily's palm, and turned away, the surcoat draped over his arm.

She closed her fist over the money, her expression one of barely controlled revulsion.

"Your wife sews a fine seam," the knight remarked pleasantly.

James Potter murmured polite agreement and held out his hands to the warmth of the cooking fire as if at ease, but Harry could sense his tension. Peter Pettigrew never made conversation just to be sociable.

"I hear that you and Lucius are fighting for Geoffrey Duredent tomorrow?"

Her father gave a guarded nod. "What of it?"

"It is good fortune. So am I. And I have a new flail to try out. I warrant I can dent a few helms with it, and beggar some high-born striplings into the bargain."

James made a noncommittal sound.

Harry wondered why Pettigrew was lingering. Surely he could sense he was unwelcome?

The knight caught her resentful gaze on him and stared her out with a smile. "Have you thought about betrothing your girl yet, Potter?" he asked provocatively. "She is almost a woman grown."

Harry went cold and folded her arms across her breasts in a protective gesture.

"There is time enough," James said repressively. "And I shall consider long and hard before I settle her on anyone."

"There speaks a wise father." Smiling, Pettigrew inclined his head and sauntered off in the direction of his own tent.

"The arrogance of that man," Lily hissed. "I wish I had never consented to sew for him. Did you see the way he looked at Harry?"

James sighed heavily. "Yes, I did, but I have to admit he was right. She is indeed almost a woman grown, and he will only be the first of many to look at her thus."

"I don't want a husband!" Harry burst out, her arms still folded across the unnatural breasts, and fear surging at her core. "I'm not even a real girl! Who would want me?"

"I have no intention of betrothing you anywhere for the nonce." Lines of care marred her father's face. "I have encountered no man I consider worthy, and until I do, your honour is mine to the last breath in my body."

Hearing the bleak note in his voice, Harry felt guilty. Her development into womanhood was the root of the problem. Nor was there a remedy unless she could find favour with a witch or became a nun.

Her mother said nothing, but there was a look of utter weariness on her face as she stopped into the tent to put her sewing box away.

Their guests arrived shortly after that, Lucius as heart and bold as ever and bearing a gift of six fresh duck eggs, their shells a delicate speckled blue. Lily accepted them with pleasure, a smile returning to her face, Lucius seated himself at their trestle with the ease of familiarity. Draco was more hesitant, torn between being polite and following his brother's casual example.

Harry murmured a greeting and busied herself setting out the eating bowls and a basket of small loaves in the centre of the trestle. She flickered a circumspect glance at Draco and met his eyes on her in a similar scrutiny. Both of them immediately looked away, but not before Harry had noticed that Lucius's rumpled spare clothes swamped the youth's gaunt frame. Her head was filled with questions, but none that she could ask without appearing rude or forward.

Indeed, the conversation during the meal that followed was carried almost entirely by Lucius and he father as they discussed their tactics for the morrow's tourney. Draco ate in silence, but was obviously listening hard, absorbing every word like a young plant putting out roots in search of nourishment. Harry eyed his slender fingers gripping the handle of his spoon, contrasted them with the ham-like ugliness of Lucius's and her father's and found it difficult to imagine Draco joining the two older men ion the battlefield. It was much easier to see him as a monk. And he spoke so little that she half wondered if he had taken a vow of silence.

A dish of raisins and slivers of dried apple completed the repast. Draco took only a small handful of the fruits and ate them slowly, declaring ruefully that he had lived so long without proper food that he had yet to adjust to eating a full meal again.

"You are young," James said comfortably. "You'll mend fast."

"Yes, sir." Draco slowly chewed another sliver of apple, the taste sharp on his palate and raised his eyes to Potter's shrewd hazel ones. "I want to earn my way in the world, not be a burden."

"Oh, you'll earn your way all right," Lucius declared, "every penny of it." He spoke brusquely, his words a shield against revealing tender emotions.

James considered the younger man thoughtfully. "Can you fight?"

"A little. I learned how to use a spear and shield before I was sent away to Cranwell, and before he died, my father had begun to teach me the rudiments of swordplay, and how to ride like a knight."

"Aye, you weren't a bad little horseman for a ten-year-old," Lucius acknowledged. "Of course, it depends how much you remembered, and if you have any talent for other skills."

James finished his dried fruit and continued to study Draco with slightly narrowed eyes. "Show me your hands," he said suddenly.

Obedient but mystified, Draco held them out to him, palms upwards. There was scarcely a tremor now. A line of tough, blistered skin marked the labour of gripping a hoe and rake in the priory's fields. His fingers too bore the rough texture of hard toil, but nothing could detract from their elegant symmetry. James took them in his, turned them over, pushed back the over sleeves and examined the long, scarred wrist bones.

"Takes after his mother," Lucius said. "There'll never be any meat on him."

"He's got time, and he is not as dainty as he looks," James answered judiciously. "See the strength of the bones here?" He raised Draco's right wrist and presented it to Lucius like a horse-coper selling the points of a thoroughbred colt. "See the span here? Add some weight and experience, and here sits a competent soldier." He released the wrist. "How old are you lad?"

"He'll be eighteen at the feast of St John," Lucius said.

"So he will likely not grow taller." James nodded.

"He stands need to. His head's already in the clouds!"

A faint smile crossed the older man's face as he turned to his daughter. "Where are your knucklebones, child?"

As mystified as Draco, Harry opened the small drawstring pouch at her waist, drew out the polished pig's-foot knuckles with which she sometimes gamed, and handed them to her father.

"Do you know how to play?"

Draco nodded, his puzzlement deepening. 'Knucklebones' was a game of speed, skill and manual dexterity. The bones were held loosely in the fist and then tossed in the air. The object was to catch them again on the back of the hand without dropping any.

"Show me."

Draco glanced at Lucius, then back at James Potter. With a shrug he took the bow0shaped pieces of bone and closed his fingers over them. If this was some strange form of initiation ceremony then it was a simple enough test to pass.

Drawing a steady breath, he tossed the knucklebones lightly in the air and shot out his hand to catch. The sequence of movement was almost too swift for the eye to follow. Two knucklebones landed squarely. A third rocked on the edge of his hand but did not fall. Draco tossed them again, this time centring them precisely, and then once more with the same result.

"Go on." James gestured when he hesitated. "I will tell you when to stop."

Time and time again Draco tossed and caught the bones, only dropping them once when Lucius moved on his stool and cast a sudden shadow over the play. At last James declared he had seen enough, and there was approval in his eyes as Draco cupped the bone in his palm and returned them to Harry.

"You have good coordination, lad," he commented, and smiled at Lucius. "Perhaps even better then your brother's."

"Anyone can play knucklebones," Lucius growled. "Lance and sword and mace are different matters entirely."

"Oh, indeed they are, which is why he will have to practise until he weeps tears of blood," James replied. "What I am saying is that he has the potential to become skilled."

Draco flushed with pleasure. His mind's eye was filled with the image of himself dressed as Lucius had been that afternoon, a sword at his hip and a mail coat meshing his body. "It is what I want to do," he said fervently.

Lucius bestowed him a brooding look but made no more adverse remarks. Lily Potter rose abruptly and began clearing away the empty bowls and breadbasket. Glancing at her, Draco saw that her lips were pursed and her eyelids tense. He could sense her irritation, but did not know what was wrong. There was a rueful expression on James's face. Lucius examined his fingernails.

"Some of us are here by necessity," James said. "Go grant you peace of soul, the gift of wise choice and the wherewithal not to squander your life. You will need more than prowess in battle to survive."

"Yes, sir," Draco said on a more subdued note.

James considered him. "Lucius tells me that you read and write Latin."

Draco moved his shoulders. "Enough to get by. I was not the most apt pupil."

"He wasted his time writing secular love poems," Lucius said drily.

James shook his head. "It matters not, it is another string to his bow hen it comes to finding an employer. If he can prove entertaining company n the great hall of a snowbound winter's evening, as well as fight, then he will always have a hearth at which to warm his hands."

"And a snug bed too, I'll warrant!" Lucius laughed, then bit his lip beneath Lily's severe look. "Speaking of which, it is time we made our farewells if I'm to be bright-eyed for the morrow!" He slapped Draco's bony shoulder. "Come, lad, the moon's half waxed already."

Draco rose from his stool and thanked the Potters for their hospitality. The girl smiled at him, her loose plait of black hair outlined by the lantern light, her eyes wide and sparkling. He had wondered whether to mention their encounter by the stream but had decided against it lest it cause trouble for them both. He needed this niche in the world. The mother smiled at him too, but she seemed preoccupied, and although she warmly wished them goodnight, Draco could tell that she was glad to see them leave.

He did not brood on the reason, for too many other thoughts were churning in his mind, James Potter had said that he had the potential to become a great knight, that with his background and then training to some. He was almost assured of a high career. Nervous excitement surged through his body. He thought of the girl's green eyes upon him and embroidered on her look until his imagination was filled with the vision of hundreds of young women tossing flowers at him in admiration as he sat astride a champing Spanish warhorse. Not even the musty smell of Lucius's tent and the scratchy texture of the coarse woollen bed blanket could dampen his enthusiasm. He had set his feet on his chosen road as a penniless beggar, but he knew that his destination would make him wealthy beyond compare.

FHGUFGHUDGHUFDHGUFHGUFHGUFDHGUFHGFDUIGHFUDIHFU:

James Potter lay upon his pallet and gazed up into the darkness. Beside him Lily was silent, but he knew that she was not asleep. Her hair tickled his chest; the warmth of her thigh lay along his own. They had a modicum of privacy; their bed separated from Harry's by a gaily-coloured hanging of woven homespun. On the other side of the screen he could hear his daughter's regular, soft breathing.

James wished that it were a midsummer evening so that he could see the pale glimmer of his wife's hair and the slender shape of her body. The thought stirred his loins to sleepy arousal. He had been twenty years old and she sixteen when they had eloped together and married against her powerful father's will. The lord of Stafford's blonde virgin daughter and a common household knight.

Another sixteen years had passed since that time, and through all the trials and hardships, the pain, the heartache and drudgery, their love had endured. It had to. There was nothing else to armour them against the cold. The story of their elopement had passed into troubadour legend, was sung at every campfire by young men no older than himself when he had burned his bridges.

Thinking of young men brought his mind to Draco Malfoy and he ran a gentle forefinger down his wife's bare arm.

"What did you make of Lucius's brother?" he asked.

"I thought him quiet," she said, "but not because there is nothing happening within. When he finds his feet, then we shall see."

"I like the lad."

"He seems pleasant enough," she agreed, "but he did not reveal enough of himself for me to make a judgement. Has Lucius discovered why he ran away from the monastery?"

"All he said was that the boy had good reason. He would not give me the details." His hand drifted form her am to the swell of her breast and gently stroked. "Of course, he has only heard one side of the tale, and there are always two, and often more." He was silent for a while, pondering, enjoying the silken feel of his wife's skin. She did not add to the conversation, which was unusual for her. Talking in the closeness of their bed at night, wrapped in each other's arms with the word at bay, was one of her favourite moments. She always had things to tell him, subjects to broach, and matters to discuss. When she did not speak, he mooted another concern of his won.

"It might be for the best if Harry were to wear a wimple when she does about the camp form now on," he suggested. "She had not ceased to be a child in my eyes, but in the eyes of other men, it is obviously different." The memory of Pettigrew's predatory gaze tightened his lips.

Lily captured his stoking hand in hers and held it still. "She has been a woman for almost a year now. You are right, it is time that she concealed her hair." A tremor entered her voice. "I was not much older than her when I first saw you across my father's bailey."

Her words sent a pang through James's vitals. "Your hair was loose then too," he murmured. "I had never seen anything so beautiful." There was pain mingled with the remembered spark of the moment. Had they resisted temptation, he would still be doing guard duty at Stafford's hearth, and she would be some rich baron's wife. "Do you have any regrets?" he asked.

"Of course I do," she said immediately, her breath soft against his bicep. He tightened it, preparing himself to hear what he would rather shut out. Her teeth nipped his skin. "Fool," she said with amused contempt, "I would follow you to the ends of the earth and over the edge of the world, you know that – or you should by now."

He was slightly mollified, but remained wary. "Then what do you regret?"

Lily sighed and curled in close to his body. "Sometimes I yearn for the protection of the bar of my former gilded cage and the days when even my thinking was done for me. Flying high and free had its price. I fear for our daughter. She is so young and fresh, and there is no man on the tourney circuit I would entrust her honour or happiness."

Not for the first time James was visited by guilt and a sense of inadequacy, He was an ordinary knight, competent, a better teacher of the skills than he was a fighter, His one act of folly in an otherwise responsible life had been to steal the exotic bird form its cage, and he had been paying for the sin ever since, There had never been a time when they had gone hungry, he had always managed to provide, and Lily's skill with a needle enabled them to dwell in relative comfort for his trade, but he could not give he the security of the massive stone walls from whose shadow he had snatched her away,

"Come the autumn, I will try to find a permanent position in a lord's retinue," he replied. "There is bound to be someone in need of hearth knights with Richard in prison and Philip of France free to wreak his worst."

"You will have to do more than try this year," she said quietly.

Her tone sent a ripple of apprehension down his spine. "Lily?"

She guided his hand down over her body, to the gentle curve of her belly. "I am with child again; for three months I have not bled."

He felt he soft flesh beneath his palm, but could not discern if it was any more abundant than usual. The early nights of winter, the dark mornings, meant that he had seldom seen Lily naked over the past few months. All conversation, all lovemaking had been conducted in the dark. "But that's imposs-" he started to say, then closed his mouth, remembering the time he had left it to the last moment to withdraw, the seed spurting from his body as he jerked out of the passage to her womb.

"Are you sure?" It was a stupid question. Of course she was sure. The worry, the keeping it to herself was the reason for her sharp tongue. "Ah, God, Lily." He freed his hand form hers and slipped it around her body, offering comfort, seeking it himself while he made a swift calculation. It was late April now, almost the feast of St Mark. By Martinmas, in November, he would be responsible for another mouth to feed. Fear assaulted him in a sweeping, physical wave. Lily had almost died bearing Harry, her hips too narrow to comfortably accommodate the baby's head. Old Mildred sold potions to the camp whores whose fluxes came late, but their efficacy was as dubious as their contents, and he knew that Lily would utterly refuse to dose herself. He could not bear the thought of losing her – she was all that he had – and cold sweat broke out on his brow.

"I will seek early for winter quarters," he agreed huskily.

Lily nodded against his chest. "I wish I had told you sooner, but I did not want to burden you until I was sure." Her voice was small and muffled against the bulk of his body.

"You should have done." He squeezed her against him, kissed her in reassurance, and thanked God for the darkness that concealed his expression, even as earlier he had been longing for the light.

FNJGFDHUGFHGUIDNGFUGHFUDIHGFJNVDHGUFDYGURHUFNDJGHFUGIFYEUTYURF

Woah. That one's over.

Sorry it took so unutterably long, but I've been busy with art coursework deadlines and shizz like that. This was unbetaed, as you could probably tell… not my fault, Cèline is away at her parents and is not allowed to go online. WHICH SUCKS. Yeh.

Love you allllll

Rye

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:Shakes pompoms and does something that might resemble a split-jump if you squint a bit: