Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
A few weeks later Lily was looking forward to her birthday since she was going to celebrate it with the ones that she loved. She had even invited Severus to come and join the celebration with their family in addition to having their own private celebration later on that evening. She wasn't too suprised when Severus did agree to spend the whole day with the family since Harry and Jamie would become his stepchildren one day. Lily wanted him to be able to spend time with her kids and not just her so that he can start to become a member of their family, even though they did have father figures in Sirius and Remus. Lily knew that she was planning on grooming Severus to take over as head of their family someday instead of putting that pressure on Harry's shoulders as being the oldest child and the Potter heir. She was finally looking forward to her birthday, since she now had Severus who would probably make her birthday extra special by taking her out and spending the night in a hotel room together, but not in the wizarding world in order to avoid gossip. She knew that Severus being seen with her in a romantic setting would put his life in danger though she knew that his spying for the Light side during the last war also put him in personal danger. She also knew Sirius's reaction if he knew that their affair had been recently consumated. She was able to concentrate on her patients all day though since her work fulfilled her as much as her kids did and it helped her keep her mind off the other night where she couldn't wait to see Severus again. She now didn't feel as lonely that she usually did whenever she saw couples either on the street or in hospital. Though she wished that she could take her relationship with Severus public but because of James and with his status as a spy for when Voldemort would return they had to keep their relationship secret. Both her and Severus now regret his involvement as a Death Eater in the last war but now the two of them had to live with that mistake. Lily though felt like she was almost a widow even though her husband was still alive but he was currently living in a nursing home not aware of his surroundings. When she returned home the next morning after her shift she wasn't too surprised to find out that her children were up already since they liked to listen to the children's shows on the wireless but she was surprised to see Sirius there. Lily hoped that he wouldnt' tell if there was a change in her and the reason for that change. Both Jamie and Harry though were excited to have Sirius to come and visit with them since they always had fun with them even when he had to babysit them while Remus was away. She found Remus in the kitchen cleaning up after the kids had their breakfast.
"What is Sirius doing here, he doesn't have to spend all day with them and I'm sure that he has his own life as well?"
"He came by and wanted to spend time with Jamie and Harry, and since I figured that you would be tired after a long shift from work that you wouldn't mind the chance that Sirius is giving you to rest," Remus answered her.
Lily appreciated Sirius's kind offer since she knew that Remus had to work on his next book that was coming out in the next couple of weeks, they were even invited to a book signing where he would sign copies of his book at a muggle bookshop in Surrey. She was almost glad however that Severus was too busy to come to the book signing since Sirius was already having a hard time accepting him into their group. She wondered though if she would run into her sister, since she lived in Surrey the last time that she had heard from her though she doubted that she would even want to read a book written about their world. As far as she knew that Petunia was still married to that Vernon fellow and had a son about Harry's age that she didn't want him to meet. The last time that she had even communicated with her sister was when Harry was a baby warning her that she may need to take in Harry if anything had ever happened to her and James. She only hoped that people would show up to buy his book, since this was his work and his means to support himself once Jamie had gone to Hogwarts and she didn't need his services as a nanny anymore. With the prejudices in the wizarding world against werewolves, writing his books can help Remus to be able to support himself without relying on the charity of others. She did know that he hated to rely on others for anything, though being with Sirius during his transformations did help. This is something that her and the children can do for Remus since they couldn't be animagi like Sirius to help him get through his transformations. They can show up at his book signings even if they were too young to read his books in her opinion. It was important to Remus and therefore she would bring the entire family other than James and Severus for obvious reasons. Besides the kids wanted to see Remus at a book signing instead of just seeing his books in the muggle bookshop. Though she didn't plan on having the kids stay there long since they would probably get bored just watching Remus sit around and signing books all day. Though it would be good for the kids to see that Remus had another job outside of being their nanny all day, since they were old enough to be in primary school all day at this time. They knew that once that they went off to Hogwarts they wouldn't need Remus to be their nanny anymore though he would still be their friend. Lily considered Sirius and Remus to be a part of her family since losing her parents in the first war and her sister not wanting to keep in touch, which she would be less interested in doing now that Lily was dating Severus and that James was in a muggle nursing home. She was almost embarrassed the way that the two of them had treated Petunia when they were growing up, excluding her from their playing because she wasn't like them which caused her to become bitter and hate magic, despising the fact that Lily was a witch and she wasn't though there was nothing that she could do about it since magic was a gift born to someone at birth, like singing or painting. Lily felt that it was too late now to even try to reconcile with Petunia, since too many years had gone by since they had last talked. Of course she probaly wouldn't see her anyway, but it didn't hurt to hope for a reconciliation and Sirius wanted to try to find himself a girl there since he had broken up with his last girlfriend when she started to talk marriage. Lily thought that her experience with James made Sirius gun shy when it came to marriage, but he never liked to be pressured into doing something that he didn't want to do and James was the only one who could talk him into things. Sirius was a loyal friend though and he would do almost anything for his friends and support them in their endeavors, such as Remus's writing. Sirius would also disapprove of Lily's affair with Severus, but she had been faithful to James until now. The truth was that James would probably never get better and she does get lonely sometimes at night and she had started to have feelings for Severus after James's accident that put him in the nursing home in the first place. Lily had already accepted the fact that she was just waiting for James to die and sometimes she even got mad at him for not dying but instead staying in the same state that he was in for as long as he was not even freeing her to marry another man not necessarily Severus. She wanted her children to have a normal life with both mother and father living at home, instead of their father living in a muggle nursing home which she felt that James sometimes had denied them by refusing to die. She did sometimes feel guilty about wishing that her husband would die, but these are different circumstances than normal. There was no one that she could confide in about her loneliness and isolation because of James's condition other than Severus since Remus and Sirius wouldn't understand her feelings about waiting for James to die. Her mother friends Molly and Laura thought that it was great that she was able to bring her kids to visit James in the nursing home but they didn't understand that sometimes she wanted to have a husband that was home with her not spending his last days in a muggle nursing home.