James and Lily spent one perfect week away from the rest of the world, secluded inside a small Grecian villa on their own private island. They swam and sunbathed and cooked and talked, and they spent an impressively large amount of time in bed. Mostly they were just them, James and Lily and no one and nothing else.

The morning of their seventh day together, James awoke to find Lily still sound asleep in his arms, her shoulders pressed against his chest and her fiery locks of hair spread messily across her pillow. He took a minute to savor the feeling of him and Lily wound so tightly together; then he leaned forward and planted a kiss beneath her ear to wake her.

"Mmm," Lily groaned, pulling James's arm more tightly around her. "Not yet."

"It's our last day here," James murmured back against the skin of her neck. "We've got to make the most of it, don't you think?"

"It can't be our last day already," Lily said with a yawn. "I won't allow it."

"Well, we told Dumbledore we'd be back in time for the Order meeting December second, and last I checked, today's December first."

"Ah, well…." Suddenly Lily went tense; she pulled herself up and spun around to face James. "Wait a second. December first…oh, shit."

"What's wrong with December first?"

Lily didn't answer; she ripped herself out of James's grasp and stumbled across the room, throwing on whatever clothes she and James had left lying around. "Shit, shit, shit," she muttered as she did.

"Lily," James said, "you're kind of driving me crazy right now."

"Well, James, I'm feeling pretty crazy right now," she retorted. "I can't believe I didn't realize…."

"Realize what? Lily, what the hell is going on?"

But Lily ignored him yet again, now mumbling something to herself that was too quiet and incoherent for James to make out. She grabbed the purse full of Muggle money they'd brought for emergencies and ducked out of the room.

"Lily!" James pulled on a pair of boxers and went after her, but before he was even halfway to the door she'd made it past the villa's wards and Apparated away. James ran outside, calling his new wife's name, but it was too late. Lily was gone, and there was nothing he could do except wait for her to return.

It was several nerve-racking hours later when James heard footsteps approaching the door; heart pounding, he ran to it and threw it open, finding Lily standing behind the threshold drenched to the bone. Wherever she had Apparated to must have been far away, somewhere distantly removed from the warm Greek sun of their island. She had a tiny stick clutched in her hand, her face was ghostly white, and she was trembling all over.

"Bloody hell, Lils," James whispered, pulling her inside. Her skin was freezing, covered in goosebumps. "Where were you?"

"I had to check," she whispered. "And I only knew the Muggle way to do it."

"The Muggle way to check what?"

"This." Slowly she raised her arm and held the stick in her hand out to James. It was a small white thing James had never seen before, with two lines etched into its miniature screen.

"I don't know what that is, Lils," James said nervously. "What—what does it mean?"

"It means I'm pregnant," Lily replied. She blinked up at James with tears in her eyes until her legs gave out and she collapsed onto the floor.

James stood frozen for a moment, processing what she had said; then he fell to his knees beside his wife. "Merlin's pants, Lily, that's amazing! You're pregnant!"

"Amazing?" Lily scoffed, wiping at her eyes. "We can't have a baby right now, James! What kind of world would we be bringing it into?" James grabbed her shoulders, doing his best to steady her. "It's not even just that we're members of the Order. People are dying every day—little children, whole families—and our kid…our kid would be such an easy target. We'd have to raise them to be afraid of everything and everyone. That's no way for a kid to live, James—it would be horrible."

"Hey." James pulled Lily closer and kissed her cheek as she shuddered. "It's okay, Lils. We're going to figure this out." He peered into her eyes, intensely green and wet with tears. "Do you not want to have a kid with me?"

"Of course I do," she said quickly, squeezing his arm. "Having a kid with you, starting a family together...it sounds absolutely perfect. It just…it doesn't feel like something we can do with everything that's going on."

"Yes, we can." James took Lily's chin and lifted her face gently up so he could study it. "Frank and Alice are going to have a child, right? And Molly Weasley's about to have her sixth. All right in the middle of the war."

"I know," Lily whispered.

"So why can't we?" He ran his thumbs along the rims of her cheekbones. "It'd be hard, Lils, but so's everything else we do. We wouldn't raise our kid to be afraid—we'd raise him to be strong, just like his mum and dad. And we've got a whole extended family to help us…the Marauders, my parents, Marlene, Dorcas, the Longbottoms…our kid could be mates with Frank and Alice's!" He kissed Lily again, this time on the bridge of her nose. "Of course things are dark right now, but we're going to keep fighting to make them better, right? For us, for our friends, for the world…and for our baby. Our baby, Lily!" He could hardly believe what was happening—all he knew was that it felt very, very right.

Lily sniffed, giving James a shaky smile. "I suppose that's true," she murmured. "Voldemort and the Death Eaters have taken so much from us—we can't let them take this, too. Not when it's what we both want." She gave James a tiny, tight nod. "All right—let's do it. Let's have the baby."

"Brilliant, Lils!" James pulled her down onto the floor, his hands around her neck, and kissed her until they were both grinning too hard to continue. "Can you imagine it?" he whispered. "A tiny James Potter running around the house?"

Lily tilted her head, narrowing her eyes playfully. "Why are you so certain it's a boy?"

"I just know it is," James insisted. He touched his nose to hers. "I can feel it."

"Well, I think it's going to be a girl. A beautiful ginger-haired girl with just a touch of her dad's arrogant toerag-ness."

"I could deal with that too," James replied. "As long as she likes Quidditch."

"She is definitely going to like Quidditch," said Lily. "I bet you'll start training her to be Gryffindor's next star Chaser as soon as she's out of the womb."

"Oh, you can be sure of that." Laughing, the two of them held each other and rolled around on the floor until their backs ached, listening to their hearts beat and dreaming of the future.